The Third Way

Thomas B. Edsall of the Washington Post writes in this article about two Democratic analysts who are arguing that their party cannot hope to win back the White House if the party continues to tilt to the hard left.

The liberals' hope that Democrats can win back the presidency by drawing sharp ideological contrasts and energizing the partisan base is a fantasy that could cripple the party's efforts to return to power, according to a new study by two prominent Democratic analysts.

In the latest shot in a long-running war over the party's direction -- an argument turned more passionate after Democrat John F. Kerry's loss to President Bush last year -- two intellectuals who have been aligned with former president Bill Clinton warn that the only way back to victory is down the center.

Democrats must "admit that they cannot simply grow themselves out of their electoral dilemmas," wrote William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck, in a report released yesterday. "The groups that were supposed to constitute the new Democratic majority in 2004 simply failed to materialize in sufficient number to overcome the right-center coalition of the Republican Party."

Since Kerry's defeat, some Democrats have urged that the party adopt a political strategy more like one pursued by Bush and his senior adviser, Karl Rove -- which emphasized robust turnout of the party base rather than relentless, Clinton-style tending to "swing voters."

But Galston and Kamarck, both of whom served in the Clinton White House, said there are simply not enough left-leaning voters to make this a workable strategy. In one of their more potentially controversial findings, the authors argue that the rising numbers and influence of well-educated, socially liberal voters in the Democratic Party are pulling the party further from most Americans.

On defense and social issues, "liberals espouse views diverging not only from those of other Democrats, but from Americans as a whole. To the extent that liberals now constitute both the largest bloc within the Democratic coalition and the public face of the party, Democratic candidates for national office will be running uphill."

I think that what is most interesting about this is the group that sponsored this study. Note their name: "Third-Way." Historically this term was a reference to the view among leftists and Democrats that there was some mythical 'third way' between capitalism and communism. One that would presumably retain the high economic achievements of the free market while allowing those same liberals and leftists to control the system and decide how to re-distribute wealth they themselves had not created. Let's take a look at what their website says:

There are some who believe that progressives simply need to better “message” their current economic agenda. We believe that is a fantasy. The middle class has heard the progressive agenda. Whether they simply don’t believe our policies will make an appreciable difference in their lives or whether they actually view our policies as harmful, they clearly are no longer motivated to support progressive ideas out of a sense that we are the indispensable defenders of their economic interests.

Translation: The public knows what we stand for now and they aren't buying it because they have a better understanding of how free markets work. They know that it is under a free market system that real growth and 'progress' is most likely to occur.

Third Way’s Middle Class Project is designed to re-forge the economic bond that once existed between progressives and middle class workers and families. We will do so by realigning progressive policies and narratives with the actual economic experiences, interests, and aspirations of today’s middle class. Third Way is using its idea network to conduct intensive research and engage in extensive consultations with leaders from academia, labor, business, and the non-profit sector to define the changing world of work and to develop a new, relevant progressive economic agenda. This work has three fundamental aspects:

Note here the continuing emphasis on class identification. For the left and the Democrats the Marxist notion of class warfare has yet to be abandoned for the fantasy that it is. That phrase, "realigning progressive policies and narratives" sounds very much like the current mantra that Democrats "need to get their message out." And just what do academia, labor and non-profits have to say about business and the economy that we don't already know?

And here is the money quote:

In addition to commissioned papers and reports, Third Way is engaging a broad idea network — The Third Way Idea Network — of leading experts to develop policy options that respond to the contemporary economic challenges facing the American middle class, as well as themes that communicate progressive economic values and priorities in ways that will resonate with middle class workers and their families.

In other words, "We need to get out message out and then they will vote for us."

The people who make up this group are obviously still mired in an outdated 19th century social and economic theory, Marxism, which has long outlived any possible relevance to the present day and which has been abandoned by both the public as well as conservative thinkers from every intellectual field.

Until the left gives up this quaint philosophy, they will remain in the minority. But looking at this group's website, we can conclude that it hasn't happened just yet.

Interestingly, Byron York wrote about this in his recent book "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy," a book which I would recommend by the way. He pointed out that in the last presidential election the Democrats were in the position of having just as much money as Republicans and that they were able to turn out more voters than they ever had before. But it was still not enough to win.

And in the most recent 'dead tree' edition of The American Spectator, Peter J. Wallison argues that the election of 2004 demonstrated that the long awaited republican re-alignment has already occured.

The argument in favor of this position would be that the dominant and traditional American political outlook - defined as conservatism in the American idiom - favors smaller or limited government (with an exception for military strength), individual responsibility, and government policies that enhance equality of opportunity rather than equality of result. This was certainly the prevailing view of governemnt's role before the Great Depression and the New Deal. After a 40 year experiment with regulation, high taxes , and big government programs, it seems, Americans are resuming their traditional outlook. And Republicans - having since Reagan, established themselves as the conservative party - are the beneficiaries of this trend.

This article is not yet available on their website, so you might want to actually go to your local newstand and pick up this issue; it's a very interesting read.

Bill Bennett Attacked by the Angry Left

As we have all heard by now, the Angry Left is in a tizzy over remarks made by Bill Bennett on his morning radio show. Now I don't usually listen to this show; I have only so much time in the day and I listen to other shows in any case. But it looks to me as though this is another attempt by the left to smear a conservative without having to deal with the conservative ideas that the show is about. And there is little doubt that the heart of the matter boils down to the fact that the left is out of gas intellectually.

In making his comments Bill Bennett was not advocating a new eugenics program against blacks; far from it as Bennett is an opponent of abortion. But the hypothetical point he was making was predicated on the idea that there is indeed a crime problem in the black community, particularly in urban areas.

"Freakonomics" author Steven D. Levitt argues that if you account for certain external factors, the differences between white crime and black crime are substantially reduced:

It is true that, on average, crime involvement in the U.S. is higher among blacks than whites. Importantly, however, once you control for income, the likelihood of growing up in a female-headed household, having a teenage mother, and how urban the environment is, the importance of race disappears for all crimes except homicide.

But the problem I have with this argument is that dysfunctional urban environments are not randomly distributed. Indeed, the notion that crime is caused by poverty rather than poverty being caused by crime is an idea whose time has come and gone. The real issue is thus not race or income, but culture. There is a cultural pathology in today's black urban environment which is a direct cause of the problems, including crime, which have proven so difficult to eradicate. The question is where does that pathology come from and how to get rid of it.

I don't think that Bill Bennett owes anyone an apology for his remarks as the facts and evidence back up his point of view. Everyone who cares to investigate the subject knows that years of police and FBI statistics show urban blacks to be responsible for far and away more crime than their numbers in the population would suggest. This is an undeniable fact.

But notice that in all of their chest-thumping the left fails to deal honestly with the underlying issue.

Who controls the inner cities where poor blacks live? Who set up the welfare state? Which political party has said that children don't really need fathers and that the family is a "artificial social construct?" Who created the urban blight that runs through poor areas of big cities?

The dysfunctional areas of urban America, such as we recently saw in New Orleans, are the direct result of liberal ideas being put into practice for generations. The people there have indeed been taken in by liberal ideas and they have paid the price in lost futures, crime, violence and dependency with no hope of a better life.

Rush is right when he says that liberals are using political correctness to avoid facing facts that refute their utopian fantasy. This is just another example. And the dysfunction we find in the black inner city will only be eliminated when the ideas that created it in the first place are replaced with a philosophy of self-reliance, responsibility and self-motivated achievement.

"Commander in Chief": Hillary's Infomercial

I did not see "Commander-in-Chief" when it went on the air the other night on ABC and based on what I have read about it I do not plan to waste my time doing so in the future. Ben Johnson, however, did watch it and has written this review which gives us a look at yet another cartoonish depiction of enlightened leftist liberals vs cruel and doltish republicans that might have been hatched by any of the denizens of Democratic Underground or Indymedia. But Hollywood has been striking out with viewers a lot lately and clumsy efforts such as this are doomed to failure. New media will get the word out about this show and its transparent and ham fisted political agenda, so that smart people can spend their valuable time watching better quality entertainment.

And while we're on the subject of quality entertainment, it's worth pointing out that ABC is behind the curve in any case. Because there is another show which has been on the air for more than two years that also features a woman president. A show which has far better writing than anything that the amateurs at ABC have been able to offer. A show that features characters with depth and complexity in a great dramatic story that keeps me tuning in week after week. This show does not need to hit its viewers over the head with politics to tell a great story. And the fact that a woman is president in this show is taken for granted, without any need to make a big point of it. Who is this woman and what is the name of the show you ask?

President Laura Roslin on Battlestar Galactica of course.

US to UN; "Hands off the Internet"

John Zarocostas writes in this article in The Washington Times about the whining and moaning of the dictators and kleptocrats over at the UN who are unable to create anything of their own but who are eager to take over the creations of others. Apparently they claim that they can run them "better" than the original creators and owners. That's what they want for the Internet. (Al Gore has yet to comment on this development by the way.) In truth their real motive is control.

Most of these societies are dictatorships or nanny states of one sort or another and as a result they don't deal well with criticism. And their imprisoned populations cannot be allowed to know what life is like in a free society or just how backwards their own countries are when compared to western nations in general and America in particular. So the enlightened leaders of those nations would prefer to "protect" their citizens from information that might upset the status quo. Fortunately the US government told the enlightened leaders to stuff it.

Major developing nations spearheaded by China, Brazil, South Africa, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and a number of industrialized countries including Norway, Switzerland and Russia would like to see the United States relinquish its historic control of the Internet.

"This situation is very undemocratic, unfair and unreasonable," said Sha Zukang, the ambassador from China, which this week imposed new rules that allow only "healthy and civilized" news to be read by the mainland's 100 million Web users.

China's government will determine which news is healthy and which news is not.

The Usual Suspects

Ben Johnson gives us a who's who of the guests at last week's Parade of Useful Idiots in Washington D.C. which featured Angry Leftist Moonbats of every possible description conveniently arranged into Groups with Pretentious Names. Of course when it comes to ideology, there was little to distinguish them from each other. Sadly, Mr. Johnson does not provide information on whether the guests were deloused after the event.

Mary Mapes and Weepy Dan

During the Rathergate scandal, Weepy Dan was confronted with the fact that the new media is able to pull together vast numbers of people from across the nation who have facts and expertise on just about any subject one can name. And they can now pool that knowledge to discover an obvious forgery and the political motivations behind it that purport to be "news."

But for Dan there is another function of the Internet which will forever haunt him and that is its collective memory. The Elite Media Monoculture will move on to other things in their endless attempt to bring back the glory days of their fading empire and they will never again mention Rathergate. But the Internet will not forget. And when weepy Dan goes out in public to demonstrate his limitless capability for self-pity, bloggers will be there to remind everyone of just why he is feeling sorry for himself and why none of the rest of us should wish to join him.

And now Mary Mapes has come out with a book of her very own which gives us a glimpse into the sheer surprise and terror of The Elite Media Monoculture as it discovers that there are many people who do not automatically take the media's word on the matter when they bring forward fabricated documents just days before a presidential election in the hope of using them to smear a candidate that they hold in contempt. Mapes's shock is an indicator of just how out of touch with reality the elites on the coasts have become. And they show no sign of learning anything new anytime soon.

Mary Mapes and Weepy Dan II

Within a few minutes, I was online visiting Web sites I had never heard of before: Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, Power Line. They were hard-core, politically angry, hyperconservative sites loaded with vitriol about Dan Rather and CBS. Our work was being compared to that of Jayson Blair, the discredited New York Times reporter who had fabricated and plagiarized stories.

All these Web sites had extensive write-ups on the documents: on typeface, font style, and peripheral spacing, material that seemed to spring up overnight. It was phenomenal. It had taken our analysts hours of careful work to make comparisons. It seemed that these analysts or commentators---or whatever they were---were coming up with long treatises in minutes. They were all linking to one another, creating an echo chamber of outraged agreement.

I was told that the first posting claiming the documents were fakes had gone up on Free Republic before our broadcast was even off the air! How had the Web site even gotten copies of the documents? We hadn’t put them online until later. That first entry, posted by a longtime Republican political activist lawyer who used the name “Buckhead,” set the tone for what was to come.

There was no analysis of what the documents actually said, no work done to look at the content, no comparison with the official record, no phone calls made to check the facts of the story, nothing beyond a cursory and politically motivated examination of the typeface. That was all they had to attack, but that was enough.

Mary Mapes and Weepy Dan III

Note that Ms. Mapes can't even get her facts straight after all this time. There is no such thing as "peripheral spacing." The analysts at CBS that she speaks of were obviously not from the world of graphic arts, like yours truly, or they would have known that there is no such thing, although there is line spacing, proportional spacing and kerning, all of which one has to know about to be considered competent in the field. And what kind of analysts did she have if they actually thought that there was such a thing? You can judge for yourself.

But this is what makes the Internet and the blogosphere so valuable as a counter to the incompetence and outright bias on display in this short excerpt. People who take an interest in such things, who are also experts in their respective areas, and who are not blinded by liberal-leftist bias are proving to be better analysts than the supposed journalists themselves.

I think that there are a couple of reasons for this. The first and most obvious is left wing bias as everyone on the right side of the debate can see for themselves. I could spend a lot of time writing about that here, but there is another angle that I want to focus on. Just as important in cases such as this is the lack of education we see in today's reporters.

Most journalists go to school to learn journalism. But it's important to note that a degree in journalism does not automatically give one knowledge about any other specialized field. Journalists are, as a rule, specialists only in their own field. If they want to be educated in any other area, such as science or economics for example, they have to make a special effort to go and take those courses as well. Most, of course, don't do so. And whether the reason is intellectual laziness or simple lack of time and money, the results are the same. Add to this the ever present liberal bias at most universities along with an elite rejection of reason and standards of objectivity, and you have a recipe for intellectual blindness and ignorance that is widespread throughout the media. The simple fact is that journalists just don't know much about subjects other than the news business.

If journalists never work in any area other than journalism then they do not pick up extensive knowledge about anything else. Most of the rest of us have a lifetime's worth of experience about our own areas of interest. Sometimes we have knowledge about several areas as we switch from career to career over the course of a lifetime. But reporters don't benefit from this same process as long as they stay firmly rooted to the news business. And it is rare indeed to find people in the news business who have a background in something other than journalism. (And by the way, have you noticed that some of the best bloggers also have some other area of expertise? Charles Johnson is a web designer, the Powerline guys are in law and Hugh Hewitt is a radio host.) News organizations want credentials, which is understandable. But if you have to have a journalism degree in order to get a job at The New York Times or CBS, then the chances are diminished that you will spend time and effort taking unrelated courses in other subjects.

And so a process of self-selection leads reporters away from having any more detailed knowledge about the subjects on which they are supposed to report and lacking the reasoning skills to understand how to ask questions in such a way as to lead to real knowledge rather than the thin pre-packaged boilerplate that is losing the media its audience in larger and larger numbers.

A Civilizational Vacuum

One of most revealing things we have seen emerge from the Katrina crisis is the different ways in which people have reacted to the situation and how The Elite Media Monoculture has gone to extreme lengths to avoid noticing. After all, New Orleans was not the only location which was ravaged by the storm. But somehow the breakdown of civilization seemed to be limited to New Orleans while other areas, such as those in Mississippi and Alabama, had no such eruption of mass anarchy. In The American Spectator George Neumayr writes about this phenomenon and points to a lack of civilizational values; a point which I also made earlier.

A free republic such as ours cannot be made to function if its citizens are unable or unwilling to govern themselves according to the dictates of civilized norms of conduct. We need to have a populace that is self-responsible and self-reliant in order to have the foundation for a free nation. But this idea of self-responsibility is just what modern leftist thought is set against. The entire notion of a vast and all encompassing welfare state socialism is predicated on the idea that individuals are not competent to run their own lives and that therefore the state must do it for them. But this idea inevitably leads to a population that no longer see itself as pro-active but rather as passive. Thus large numbers of people waited for others to come and save them, rather than acting at once to get out of harms way. What other explanation can there be for the vast number of cars and buses which were left to be flooded while there was still time to drive out of the city?

The reality is that many people simply didn't take responsibility for their own safety and thus were left helpless when the storm approached. And it was the ideology of dependency which left them that way. The Elite Media Monoculture has helped to inculcate this ideology in those people who stayed behind even though they had transportation, thereby leaving them intellectually helpless in the face of a crisis which demanded immediate action.

And isn't it interesting to observe that it is the left which claims to be "compassionate" with regard to these same people? Ask yourself if you agree that it is compassionate for the left to make you into a helpless, witless victim; unable to act to act to save yourself, while thus forced to wait for an equally witless Democrat run state and local bureaucracy to save you.

Useful Victims

Lisa Fabrizio gives us a rundown on all of the various hate-Bush themes we have heard in the wake of hurricane Katrina and how The Elite Media Monoculture and their Democrat allies have jumped from one to the next in the vain hope that one of them will stick.

More on Katrina

Ben Stein writes about the riot of Bush Derangement Syndrome which we have seen from The Elite Media Monoculture in the wake of hurricane Katrina. How lucky we are to have alternative media available so that we can get the whole story and judge for ourselves without the spin from The Angry Left.

Democrats in Permanent Decline

Patrick Hynes argues that the Democrats are up against demographic and systemic factors which will keep them in the minority for the foreseeable future.

Lonely Days, Lonely Nights

Red America vs. European blues.

Jonah Goldberg examines how anti-Americanism in Europe is an old problem and how it will be with us for many years to come. The cold war kept it at a minimum because the Europeans back then were not totally stupid. They understood that living under the Soviets would have put a bit of a crimp on their cocktail parties. But now that the bear is gone, they feel free to attack us as much as they want. And they do so out of envy and resentment at not being the masters of the universe that their socialist ideology tells them they should be. Of course they still refuse to reform their economies and adopt more free-market policies. Taxes remain high and anti-business and anti-investment regulations are still plentiful. Wealth re-distribution from the productive to the parasites is still a way of life. Thus they remain mired in an economic quagmire.

Dreams die hard for the elitists of The Angry Left.

Louisiana to Evacuees: Drop Dead

Major Garrett of Fox News is reporting that state officials deliberately kept both the Red Cross and the Salvation Army from providing assistance to the people who ended up at the Super Dome when rising water forced them from their homes. In this interview with Hugh Hewitt on last night's show, Garrett details how those state officials made a bad situation worse because they didn't want to "encourage" people to go to the Super Dome.

Ray Nagin: I'm Waiting for Godot

I want Greyhounds; not school buses

In an interview reported on CNN, Ray Nagin, perhaps the most incompetent mayor to ever have lived, complained that he was looking for the federal government to provide him with Greyhound buses for the Katrina hurricane emergency. But as we have seen by now, he had more than 250 school and CTA type buses standing by which went unused and which were eventually submerged under water and rendered useless. How many ways can you say stupid fuckwit?

Old Media vs New Media

In case you missed it, Hugh Hewitt interviewed Tim Rutten of the L.A. Times on the subject of newspapers and media last week just before the hurricane hit. It is a lengthy interview, but well worth reading as it amply demonstrates just why The Elite Media Monoculture doesn't get it. Tim Rutten is a smart guy. But like most liberal lefties in the media, he seems unable to see his own bias or to understand how an entire newspaper run by biased individuals like himself would drive away half of its potential readership. Nor does he acknowledge the value of truth in advertising when it applies to himself. It's funny how reporters don't seem to understand that they are part of a business. And they don't understand how driving away half of your readership is bad for business in an age where people can go elsewhere for news and information.

Our Dogs Days

August has passed, but its craziness may not have.

Victor David Hanson gives us a review of August and comments on those wacky confused Democrats and their core of Angry Leftists. They have certainly made for a great source of entertainment recently. From the anti-war moonbats like Cindy Sheehan to the MoveOn.org crowd to the Democratic hacks looking for any and every reason they can find to blame bush for everything wrong in the universe including act of nature, it requires a great deal of effort just to keep up with the new complaints and fads coming from The Angry Left. But today's fads fade as quickly as morning fog to be replaced by the next round of complaints and whining. So stay tuned, because as surely as the sun rises, there will be more insanity from the left tomorrow.

The Media Quagmire

The mainstream media understands the war in Iraq only through casualty counts and the Vietnam lens.

Scott Johnson writes in The Weekly Standard that The Elite Media Monoculture insists on seeing Iraq, and every other conflict for that matter, through the lens of Vietnam. Naturally this results in propaganda rather than informative coverage. Thankfully, the new media is around this time to offer an alternative to the depressing drumbeat of defeatism and surrender.

PR Machine Behind Cindy Sheehan?

The devastation of Katrina has pushed "Camp Cindy" off of the front page. But before Cindy fades into the sunset after her 15 minutes of fame we should take a moment to look at where the money came from to finance her circus in a ditch.

New Orleans, the Tragedy

American Thinker Thomas Lifson writes about the endemic corruption which has kept New Orleans back in terms of both business achievement as well as population. And it is this corruption which helped to make the tragedy worse after Katrina had passed.

An Unnatural Disaster

A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

Robert Tracinski writes for The Intellectual Activist on the chaos we have seen coming out of New Orleans. Many others have also commented on the problems there both in new media and old. The old media is, of course, blaming President Bush already and doing its best to score political points as they always do, rather than trying to understand the underlying reasons for the problems. Mr. Tracinski argues, as I did briefly below, that what we have seen is a result of a lack of civilizational values which motivate behavior. And the welfare state is the inculcator in this case.

We have, in the case of New Orleans, an example of what happens when you create a class of people who are totally dependent on the state and have lost the ability to act for themselves. Such people do not react as you and I would under similar circumstances. Rather, they apply what they have always knows to the new situation. They take from others what they want without consideration of the consequences. They prey on the weak around them because they know nothing about independence and self-restraint. They build nothing, they create nothing, they are responsible for nothing and thus they contribute nothing in an emergency and instead become part of the problem. The welfare state has given this to us. It has created people who are totally incapable of self-motivated action to govern their lives and who, therefore, have no ability to act constructively in an emergency.

Relief Efforts for New Orleans

Bloggers accross the net are making information and links available for those who want to provide some assistance regarding the situation down in New Orleans. Here are some organizations which are helping out. Donate if you can.

This is a list provided by Instapundit:

UPDATE: I am recommending The Salvation Army as my charity of choice here as I have donated to them in the past. I will be keeping this list at the top of the page throughout the weekend so as to make it easy to pick a charity for donation purposes, even though I will be blogging on other stuff. You might want to visit Truth Laid Bear who is keeping track of all the bloggers who are making this effort. Visit Technorati for more info on flood aid and hurricane katrina. Thanks to everyone who is helping out. And I am adding more links below thanks to Instapundit

American Red Cross

Catholic Charities

Episcopal Relief and Development.

The Humane Society

Mennonite Disaster Services

The Mercy Corps

Methodist Relief

Operation Blessing

The Salvation Army

Samaritan's Purse

Southern Baptist Disaster Relief

United Jewish Charities

LDS Humanitarian Services

Soldiers' Angels

Strengthen The Good

Craigslist New Orleans

Lutheran World Relief and Lutheran Disaster Response

UMC Disaster Relief

Feed the Children

Armed Forces Retirement Home

Catholic Charities

Second Harvest

Atlanta Red Cross

The Doomed Cities

The heart of New Orleans.

Michael Ledeen writes about the culture and atmosphere of New Orleans and points out how its culture is informed by the knowledge of its own mortality and the fragile nature of human existence.

Bureaucratic Failure

To understand Katrina's problems, read the 9/11 report.

Daniel Henninger argues that if we depend on big government bureaucracies for our survival we won't last long. And indeed in the case of the hurricane disaster we have seen plenty of evidence of government being slow to respond and disorganized at best. This has been particularly true at the state and local level. On the other hand we are seeing self-motivated efforts coming from the private sector which are helping to fill the gap. Both charity organization as well as businesses and individuals are making a big effort to get goods and services where they need to go as quickly as possible. And in general these efforts are more efficient than those that government can provide.

The history of markets shows that they are almost always more nimble and quicker off the mark than government agencies. We need government in order to restore law and order in New Orleans. And the military is doing an admirable job of plucking people off roofs and getting them to dry land. But much of the background work thereafter will be done by the private sector. And we owe all of those people a big "thank you" as well.

The Battle of New Orleans

Even in America, civil order is more fragile than we think.

The editors of The Wall Street Journal remind us that the veneer of civilization is not as thick in all people as we would like to believe. The anarchy we have seen in New Orleans in the wake of the disaster teaches us, once again, that the order we take for granted is the result of ethical restraint combined with the threat of physical force. Most people are governed by some amount of the former. That is why most people don't run a stop sign in the middle of the night even though there are no police around to observe them.

But there is a minority, and sometimes a sizable one at that, which has no such restraints. They are the ones we have seen on the news hauling flat screen televisions out of department stores even though they have no place to plug them in and no electricity with which to run them. These people are only stopped from doing such things the rest of the time by the threat of arrest and jail. And since that threat was absent for a time, we saw their true nature on display. Some have called this a return to the primitive. But in truth it would be more accurate to say that these people were never really civilized in the first place. Because civilization cannot be preserved unless most people carry the ethical restraints within them and abide by them even when they don't have to do so. For the rest, the prospect of a prison cell is what keeps them more honest than they otherwise would be.

The Katrina Crisis

A hurricane produces an integrated energy disaster.

Daniel Yergin takes a look at how Katrina has damaged critical energy assets in the Gulf area and how future diversification and redundancy could help us prevent another energy disruption due to a natural disaster.

"Stop Singing at Me!!"

AirMoonbat Goes Berserk, Again.

This is a pretty typical example of what one can expect to hear on AirMoonbat on any given day. And it helps to explain why the network is crashing and burning with no hope of recovery.

They will not last another year.

The Angry Leftist Network has two problems which will doom it to oblivion. The first is financial and the second is ideological.

The financial adventures of AirMoonbat have recently come to light thanks to bloggers such as Michelle Malkin and Brian Maloney. Now we know that not only did they steal close to a million dollars from widows and orphans via The Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club in order to stay on the air, we also know that they stiffed their creditors, Multicultural Broadcasting, to the tune of at least 1.25 million with their fake "reorganization." This is a serious criminal event which will, I believe, land several people in jail in the not too distant future. And these financial troubles alone will make AirMoonbat's survival in the future impossible. AirMoonbat is a sinking ship with the water just about up to the first class cabins.

The second problem is one of ideology. The majority of Americans, including many moderate rank and file Democrats, just don't buy into the America-is-the-root-of-all-evil-in-the-world-and-needs-to-be-defeated-for-peace-to-prevail mindset which has possessed The Angry Left and its spokescreatures at AirMoonbat. Byron York talks about this in his book, "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy" when he says that getting louder amplifiers doesn't give you better music.

Janeane Garofalo's reaction to the caller in the above sound clip is telling. She takes it as a personal attack when the caller disagrees with her and, most importantly, she refuses to engage in a discussion. And this is critical. As Garofalo's screeching loudly demonstrates, the left is both unable and unwilling to engage in the debate over ideas. She is typical of the insularity and brittleness of today's Angry Left. Her hysterical emotional tantrum shows that the left no longer has any tether to the traditional realm of intellectual discourse. And it has no interest in ideas for their own sake. They have been reduced to shouting and screaming at those with whom they disagree. They don't just consider them to be mistaken; they consider them to be evil and thus unworthy. Indeed; debate for The Angry Left is now secondary to destroying their enemies.

In the old days, before the rise of The Angry Left, it was not only possible, but considered desirable for intellectuals to actually discuss ideas. It was understood that ideas were to be taken seriously, whether one was interested in politics, economics, science or culture. Ideas mattered to the left as well as the right because people understood both that ideas have consequences and that you have to convince other people of the value of your positions, whatever they might be. It was understood that to get at the truth of things you had to hash it out and defend your point of view. And if you were unwilling or unable to do so, your position was assumed to be weak and indefensible. But this is a lesson which Garofalo and company either never learned or have outright rejected. For they no longer are interested in persuasion. They have substituted rage for enthusiasm, volume for clarity and style for substance.

The Angry Leftists who came up with the concept of AirMoonbat based their views on a faulty premise; namely that what the left needed was to match what they though was the style of conservative talk radio. Byron York writes:

"And more important, in creating the network, its executives relied on a caricature of what they believed conservative talk radio to be. Conservatives are mean? We'll be mean too. Blow-torch? Wait'll you hear us. That's how Air America ended up with Randi Rhodes talking about killing George W. Bush."

The fact of the matter is that leftist's plan for AirMoonbat, like so many other plans formulated by them, was based on a fantasy of what the world was like rather than the real thing. And when you live by a fantasy, you die by a fantasy.

Conservatives Cause Global Warming and Left-Wing Press

Ann Coulter has a bit of fun in this essay which looks at the ways in which market forces are, perhaps, finally forcing The Elite Media Monoculture to come to grips with the fact that the far-left-America-is-always-wrong boilerplate they put out is just not a big seller with the public. This should make sense to anyone with a brain. No reasonable person wishes to hear their country badmouthed on a daily basis. Nor do reasonable people think that America is all evil while its enemies are the apex of truth and light. Only moonbats on the fringe left think this. Everyone else thinks that America is a generally good place, albeit with some flaws here and there like any other country.

If the mainstream media were to acknowledge this fact, the collapse of their viewership and readership might turn around. It remains to be seen whether they will learn this lesson before they lose their jobs.

Liberal Talk Radio Has Values of Enron

Doug MacEachern of The Arizona Republic brings us up to date with the latest in the developing AirMoonbat scandal. That would be the scandal in which rich white millionaires like Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo are working for the leftist radio network that stole $875,000 from a children's charity in the Bronx. That's right; boot out the widows and orphans and take the cash. We need to get rid of the excess population in order to make room for the intellectual elite.

The Other War

The ACLU thinks cops are a bigger threat than terrorists.

Dorothy Rabinowitz takes a look at the issue of ethnic profiling and increased police security in the New York subway system. In the wake of the London attacks, New York is putting greater security measures into place as one would logically expect. But just like clockwork the ACLU has come out against any actions which might help to catch the bad guys.

But don't question their motives or patriotism. They're not really on the other side; they just always seem to be against ours, at least when it comes to terrorism.

Bookends

Why the base--and some outside it--are standing by President Bush.

Peggy Noonan writes about why she thinks that President Bush continues to have the support of most of the American people in this essay from The Wall Street Journal. Her argument consists of two parts; the first is uncontroversial. 9-11 was a critical event which defined a previously undefined presidency. The American people were deeply affected by the events of 9-11 and they understand that bad people are out there trying to get to us to kill us if they can. And there is little doubt that George Bush's presidency was fundamentally changed after that day. But her second argument, that Bush's popularity is a function of the fact that we have not been further attacked, I think is somewhat off the mark.

I think if you were to ask most people, they would probably say that some kind of additional attack is not only possible, but probable as well. The jihadists don't give up and they are trying like mad to get at us. At some point some of them are going to get lucky. And I don't think that will be a reflection of our abilities or diligence. The simple fact is that we can't guard everything and everyone all the time. It just isn't possible. But perception is important here. I think most Americans understand that the President is working hard to prevent any attacks. He means what he says and he does what he says he is going to do. We know he is not perfect, but he doesn't have to be in order for people to respect him. They know he is working hard to protect them. And making a real effort to fight the bad guys counts for a lot.

The Democrats, by contrast, look small and petty most of the time. Their contributions consist mostly of complaining, sniping and insulting those who are not part of the lunatic fringe. And this is plain to many Americans. The Democrats are just not very serious about defending the country. Indeed, they seem more determined to attack our defenders and to defend our attackers. Dick Durbin calls our troops "Nazis" while his fellow liberals in the ACLU are trying to get terrorists released from Gitmo. They applaud Lyn Stewart while attacking Donald Rumsfeld. Their sorrow and grief seem to be exclusively reserved for the jihadists in captivity and those like them who are still free to cause misery and mayhem. But they have no respect for those who, in uniform or out, are trying to stop the bad guys from attacking us.

The moonbat fringe at Air America calls the President a "thug" and a "criminal" on a regular basis. Just today I heard host Mike Malloy say he is full of hate for all Republicans. He is not at all shy about calling us evil and demented. One wonders at the level of insanity required of a leftist to think, simultaneously, that most of the country is filled with knuckle dragging bigots and that telling these same people that you hate them and everything they stand for will somehow get you their vote. Even if anyone was actually listening to them, which most are not, no sane person could be persuaded by the Angry Leftists at Air America to change their minds because the die-hards over there don't really offer any kind of rational arguments or ideas. Mr. Malloy didn't offer any kind of in-depth analysis or intellectual argument today that I noticed. What he did have was a bad cliche imitation of a supposedly ignorant good old boy southern accent combined with an overbearing disdain for anyone from a red state. He is very good at letting you know how filled with hate he is, and the people over there are constantly letting us know how much they hate all of the rest of us in Fly-Over-Country. Hate and rage seem to be all they have. But while that might get you some pity, it won't get you respect.

To tell the truth, my reaction to the Angry Left is now mostly one of boredom. I mean, do the moonbats at Air America and all their Angry Leftist cousins think they are going to win the intellectual debate by coming up with new ways to call Republicans "fascists?" How many ways can Janeane Garofalo and Mike Malloy call Republicans "thugs" and "criminals" before people fall asleep from repetition? As a blogger I will continue to follow the antics of these people because I am fascinated with political debate and the importance of ideas. But really; do they think they are making any impact on the American public? Or is it more the case that they can't really help themselves and venting is the only response of which they are now capable? I tend to think the latter, because if they were going to offer some real alternative ideas they would have done so by now. And every time we hear from Democratic party leaders they tell us how they have to "define their message." This of course is an admission that they don't have one.

The fact is that Bush gets support from the American people because he earns it. And there is nothing the lunatic fringe can do to change that.

The Roe Effect

The right to abortion has diminished the number of Democratic voters.

James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal and author of "Best of the Web" argues again in this essay for his theory of abortion demographics which he calls "The Roe Effect."

If you assume that children tend to get their values from their parents, and if you also assume that pro-choice women are more likely to end a pregnancy than pro-life women, then you logically come to the conclusion that legal abortion will tend to result in fewer Democrats and more Republicans being born over time. And in fact there seems to be supporting evidence for this theory. We can see the change in state populations where red states are picking up population and thus more electoral votes, while blue states are losing both population and electoral votes.

Disorganized Labor

American unions' problem isn't politics--it's workers' lack of confidence in them.

Pollster John Zogby gives us his take on where unions stand today. Now I am not a big fan of opinion polls and I have said so more than once. But it remains a fact that unions just don't have the numbers they once did. And from personal experience I think it is safe to say that younger workers just don't see union membership in the same light as older generations did. Today's workforce is a lot more individualistic and certainly more mobile than in days past. And both of those play against the union mindset.

The Great American Jobs Machine

Employment is higher than at any time in history.

The editors at The Wall Street Journal take a look at the most recent jobs numbers from the Labor Department and find much good news. The last month's numbers show continued strong job creation and a healthy economy. Check out the graph in the story which shows the rapid rise in jobs occurring at the same time as the President's tax cuts were put into effect. As I recall, most Democrats were against those cuts calling them "tax breaks for the rich." Actually they should be called tax breaks for those who want to become rich. And there's nothing wrong with that, unless you are a resentful lefty.

Who’s Da Peeps?

Polls are a stupid way to set policy.

Jonah Goldberg writes in National Review on the subject of polls and how seriously we should take them. I'm inclined to take most them with a big grain of salt; even the ones with results I might like. Goldberg focuses on the question of just how informed the public really is, and one can indeed make the argument that the portion of the population that closely follows politics is much smaller than the general population. And it is the people that follow the issues who make, and frame, the political debate across the country.

But there are other factors to consider. The reason I tend to be wary of them is that these polls so often turn out to be poor predictors of future results. Just consider how wrong the exit polls were on election day. Polls can be poorly designed, poorly worded and can fail to ask the right questions. All of these reasons make polls a poor guide to actions, which instead ought to be based on firm philosophical and political principles.