What’s up?
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Juan Williams begs the busing question
I shouldn’t have to think this hard, and it makes me suspicious.
Juan Williams begs the question in his analysis of “Little Rock 50 years later.” He laments Supreme Court decisions that reigned in busing and housing patterns have led to de facto segregation, decades after de jure discrimination was stomped out. Then comes what to me looks like sleight of hand:
This trend toward isolation of poor and minority students has consequences — half of black and Latino students now drop out of high school.
Integrated schools benefit students, especially minorities. Research on the long-term outcomes of black and Latino students attending integrated schools indicates that those students “complete more years of education, earn higher degrees and major in more varied occupations than graduates of all-black schools.”
The question begged is cause or effect. Are the home environment of the integrated families who are already doing better economically and socially themselves the real variable? Is it the superior facilities or instruction that makes the difference? Or is it integration per se — simply being around white people — that improves life chances?
Williams’ blanket statement cries out for qualification. I suspect that the research has been done and the answers are not to his liking. Otherwise I wouldn’t have to think this hard about his claim.
That’s not a mistake: It’s malfeasance
I always teach my kids the diff between an accident and negligence. When they break something and say, oh, it was an accident, I say, well, accidents happen, but negligence is avoidable.
But then there is a whole nuther category: malfeasance. It’s not a mistake when you meant to do it and got caught. Whatever the New York Times might think:
The liberal advocacy group should have paid $142,000 for the ad calling the U.S. commander in Iraq “General Betray Us,” not $65,000, the paper’s public editor wrote yesterday.
Clark Hoyt said in his column that MoveOn was not entitled to the cheaper “standby” rate for advertising that can run any time over the following week because the Times did promise that the ad would run Sept. 10, the day Petraeus began his congressional testimony. “We made a mistake,” Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis was quoted as saying.
Gingrich the visionary?
David Broder has an interesting piece on Gingrich today. If Gingrich is right, the current field of Republicans has little chance of countering Hillary. But Gingrich, who benefited the last time a Clinton was in office, has hopes for what might follow:
Gingrich is brimming with ideas on these subjects, but he is realistic enough to suggest that it may be five years before public opinion — and other politicians — are ready to embrace some of them.
That five-year estimate is significant. It would run to the end of the next presidential term. Gingrich has a low opinion of the ingenuity and independence shown so far by the GOP field, and he predicts that the battle for the nomination will be long. Even the Feb. 5 massing of primaries in big states is unlikely to produce a clear winner, he says, and the result may be “chaos” or a brokered nominating convention.
By contrast, he says, Hillary Rodham Clinton faces few obstacles to winning the Democratic nomination. And he leaves reporters with the feeling that he thinks a Hillary Clinton presidency would provide fertile ground, just as Bill Clinton’s did, for a Republican revival.
Rorschach test
Here’s a quick inkblot test. I give you two phrases, you tell me what comes to mind: “give a village challenge” and “rich donors.” Don’t know about you, but I immediately thought “Hillary Clinton,” combining “takes a village” and “Norman Hsu/Mark Rich.” Here’s the headline:
‘Give a village’ challenge to rich donors
Turns out it wasn’t some new way of combining Hillary’s faux social activism with her genuine campaign cash drive. It’s actually a project that gives specific badly needed things to poor communities in India and Africa.
Bush does look like a chimp
But that is the least of his problems. Reaction to the Bush talk here. Bottom line seems to be mixed. I saw only part of it, and I couldn’t really stand watching any more. His delivery was forced and defensive, I thought, hardly Reaganesque. As usual, Bush does a less than stellar job stating the merits of a strong case. As Jules Cittenden writes:
Fred Kaplan at Slate sees nothing but lies and wants to know what world George Bush is living in. Other lefty blogs said more or less the same thing, only more incoherently, with lots of f-words.
Short answer to Fred: one in which Islamic terrorists seek to humiliate us and regain a pariah state from which they can attack us. One in which terrorist-supporting Iran seeks control of more of the world’s oil supply. Fred’s right in a way, though. Bush didn’t do that good a job driving those points home, as well as the genocide thing, America’s standing in the world.
I caught part of the Democratic response, and I found it disengenous as usual — calling for retreat without wanting to own defeat, advocating engagement and transition, without grasping the commitment needed to make this possible.
Define “smart”
The Politico headline says, “MoveOn’s ‘Betray Us’ ad a smart move.” What do they mean by smart? Apparently, they mean that the ad is already getting tremendous exposure and could increase the size of their membership list:
We could be wrong, but here’s a prediction about the power of viral campaigns: By the time the dust settles on the storm kicked up by MoveOn.org’s highly provocative “Petraeus/Betray Us” ad in The New York Times on Sept. 10, the online group will have seen its 3.2-million-strong e-mail membership list grow substantially.
That’s because MoveOn understands the way messages move in our new Internet-driven media environment. It’s not enough to make a speech or issue a press release or buy a newspaper ad. Nor does it matter if you have a great press list, or ins with all the top political bloggers on the planet or a blog of your own.
But might this be a case of confounding means and ends? If the objective is to reverse U.S. policy in Iraq, and your ad alienates the thinking center ultimately making it more difficult for centrist Democrats to critique U.S. policy for fear of associating themselves with intemperate slander, is that a win? It’s only a win if increasing your mailing list from 3 million to 3.5 million is your end game.
Gonzales says he may not resign after all
Oh, dang. He already did. Is it really too late? Larry Craig, on the other hand, was much more astute, only announcing that he intended to resign in 30 days, leaving himself the out to reverse himself:
A senior GOP Senate strategist said Republican leaders want him gone now and will press for him to keep his promise to resign. The strategist warned Craig is “losing any goodwill built up among his colleagues,” adding, “He is simply a fish out of water, floundering right now to get his last gasp of political air.”
“It simply defies reality,” said a Senate GOP aide. “You can’t make this up even if you are heavily medicated. The American people heard from Larry Craig that he would resign, and using the word ‘intent’ as a back door doesn’t work with them.”
Look, the senator never consummated the intention, OK. This was all just a misunderstanding, so to speak.
Bad news, good news
The bad news: I’m going to be restricting my posts to a couple a day for the next few weeks. I’ve got a couple of projects that will be draining my energy for a couple of weeks.
The good news: Starting on October 1, I’ll be a featured blogger on the new AOL news & commentary section. At that point, I’ll be posting more here as well.
Thirst you say? I could go for a pint
Watching Britain deal with guns kind of reminds me of watching the West deal with Iran: you know nothing you do is going to work, but admitting as much is too horrible, so you just keep trying–whatever.
First, let’s define the problem:
This month, an inquest heard how Jessie James, 15, was killed on Sept 9 2006 in Moss Side, Manchester, because he refused to join a gang. In London there have been a spate of shootings involving youngsters.
Scotland Yard recently compiled a list of more than 170 gangs in London alone, some of them up to 100-strong. It means on any given night, several thousand gang members are roaming the capital, many of them thirsting for violence.
So we have rampant gang banging–is rampant a strong enough word?–and a pervasive thirst for violence. Thirst, you say?
On Monday, Merseyside’s Chief Constable, Bernard Hogan-Howe, called for the reduction in the number of off-licences [liquor stores] and legislation to prevent under-21s buying drink at “grog shops”.
Uh, that was a thirst for violence, guys.
Someone’s missing something [but it ain’t me]
Perhaps the New York Times took the comment out of context. Perhaps the historian is this dumb. Either way, this is a funny commentary on somebody. The president commented the other day that the hasty retreat from South East Asia led to the death and persecution of
“ … millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,’ ‘re-education camps,’ and ‘killing fields.’ ”
But Robert Dallek, a leftish presidential historian, is not impressed:
Those assertions are already being criticized by Democrats, including the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid [et tu Brute?], and at least one historian, Robert Dallek, a biographer of presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Both said Mr. Bush was ignoring fundamental differences between the conflicts. Citing Cambodia in particular, Mr. Dallek said in an interview that the mayhem under the Khmer Rouge “was a consequence of our having gone into Cambodia and destabilized that country.”
Now the vital distinction is clear … as mud. Let’s review: the Khmer Rouge genocide resulted from the U.S. destabilizing Cambodia and leaving it in a mess, and the slaughter in Iraq that will follow our hasty exit will be caused by ….?
Will someone please strip search this man?
His name is Brad Berry. He is the Nazi District Attorney of Oregon’s Yamhill County. He should be ridden out of the state on a rail, but only after he is shackled and strip-searched for the ghastly and inexcusable treatment of two young men.
Kudos to Dennis Prager for leading the fight. His listeners raised $40,000 for the legal defense team, and provided invaluable moral support. More shocking details here:
“After hours of interviews with students,” The Oregonian continues, “the day of the February incident, the officer read the boys their Miranda rights and hauled them off in handcuffs to juvenile jail, where they spent the next five days.”
Two seventh-graders were read their Miranda rights for butt-swatting?
And hauled off to jail for butt-swatting?
And kept in jail for five days for butt-swatting?
This is worse than a bad joke; it is actually sick.
And it gets worse. The seventh-graders were not permitted contact with their parents for 24 hours, they were brought into court in shackles and jail garb, and they were strip-searched four times.
Strip-searched four times? What were the perverts looking for?
If a recall in Yamhill County does not result from this, the people of Oregon are sheep.
BBC hit by friendly fire
In continuing its ongoing spat with the UK, over the UK’s peculiar insistence that assassinating a political refugee in London is bad form, Russia has kicked the BBC world service off the airwaves in Moscow.
In explaining the decision,
Spokesman Igor Ermachenkov insisted management had taken the decision to remove BBC programming without outside interference.
“It’s no secret the BBC was established as a broadcaster of foreign propaganda,” he said.
Indeed it is not a secret. Many of us have felt this way for years. I felt this just the other day with the Padilla conviction, when the whole BBC story consisted of interviewing some barely coherent spokesperson from an obscure human rights group. The Queen of England felt that way when the BBC fabricated a media hit on her.
The BBC has long been an ideologically slanted thorn in the side of Western governments, particularly the UK and the US. All the more irritating because it is unaccountably funded by British tax dollars.
The puzzle is why the Russians would object. If there is an anti-Atlantic alliance story to be told, the BBC is usually in the forefront in telling it. Memo to Putin: The BBC may be SOBs, but they are not our SOBs.
If you can’t say anything nice…
A straw poll yesterday in Illinois drove Mitt Romney to a fit of admiration for the retiring Duc de Mediocrity, Dennis Hastert. The nice thing about being a pundit, rather than a candidate, is that you don’t have to lie. No one really admires Dennis Hastert as a leader. We hope Governor Romney at least had an ironic twinkle in his eye when he issued this statement:
“When Dennis Hastert was elected Speaker in 1999, he ushered in an era of principled leadership [first principle: pork for me and pork for you] advancing our common belief that America’s strength lies in the American people [means what?] . As the longest serving Republican Speaker, he led the Congress to achieve great things for the American people – bipartisan education reform [aka, no child gets ahead], the most significant tax relief in a generation and new measures to protect our country. [Being present at the creation does not make you a co-creator.]
“Leaving the Congress after 20 years of service, Speaker Hastert built a record of accomplishment that has improved the lives of the American people. His leadership will be missed by all. Ann and I wish him the best during his remaining time in Congress and in his future endeavors.”
Thanks Governor. But we’ve been missing Hastert’s leadership for the last 20 years.
We don’t love Qwest
Eric has been temporarily sidelined by a down network and is hanging around waiting for a Qwest representative to get there and fix the problem. Stay tuned.
So open minded we are scatter-brained
The concept of the sanctuary city is frankly beyond me. Maybe Rudy can explain it.
HotAir has a weird exchange between Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo Rivera. Rivera is always at best an odd duck. That mustache is just outa control. But here he’s flippin angry at the focus on the illegal alien who raped a five year-old in Newark, was released on bail only to murder three college students.
Why wouldn’t illegal immigration be the story here? Scores of people–the judge, prosecuters and policy force in Newark–all new this creep was a threat. And they all knew that he was in our society illegally. Why would you not alert DHS to sweep him off our streets?
“This was a heinous crime, and these suspects have deep psychological issues,” said Gustavo Ramirez, head of the Passaic-based Immigration and American Citizenship Organization. “This crime, however, cannot be explained by immigration status, any more than terrorism can be.”
Yeah, don’t link terrorism to our slack immigration policy. The tragicomedy that is U.S. immigration continues apace.
Lancelot, Galahad, and I jump out of the rabbit
IHT tells us that the big gun Dems have deep thoughts on how to get out of Iraq. Edwards, for instance, will first pull our troops off the field to some kind observatory bases, then allow the enemy to dig in, stockpile weapons, assassinate collaborators, and intimidate betrayed civilians.
Then, under the cover of darkness, we will plunge our troops back into the now much more dangerous crossfire to help contain the resulting genocide. [The italics are to help the reader with the necessary Monty Python intonation.]
It’s loopy, it’s daring, but it just might work:
“We’ve got to be prepared to control a civil war if it starts to spill outside the borders of Iraq,” Edwards, who has run hard against the war, said at a Democratic debate in Chicago last week. “And we have to be prepared for the worst possibility that you never hear anyone talking about, which is the possibility that genocide breaks out and the Shia try to systematically eliminate the Sunni. As president of the United States, I would plan and prepare for all those possibilities.”
Uh, John, if you never hear anyone talking about it, maybe you broaden your circle of friends beyond the Kos Kids?
Yo mama, says Obama
At the last Democratic debate, Obama deflected every challenge to his foreign policy experience or mental capacity with the same response. Challenged on the lunacy of his “I’ll invade Pakistan” pledge, he answered:
“Well, look, I find it amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me for making sure that we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war against terrorism,” Obama said to applause for the crowd.
No one can lay a glove on him because he opposed the war in Iraq.
He may have opposed it for the wrong reasons, or simply gotten lucky. He may have been utterly clueless about the foreign policy considerations that weighed one way or the other.
He can offer personal diplomacy to the world’s nuttiest dictators without condition. He can counter that by offering to invade a volatile and unstable ally with potentially devastating consequences.
He can talk like Jimmy Carter, the Krusty the Clown of foreign policy. He can demonstrate again and again a blithe indifference on the fundamentals of foreign policy.
But he can laugh it off and you can’t touch him because he opposed the war in Iraq.
And you didn’t.
Brits reconsider interpreter betrayal
Prime minister Gordon Brown has announced that they will review the policy that was scheduled to leave Iraqis who had served as British interpreters abandoned to death squads.simply announce that the indefensible policy of abandoning their Iraqi interpreters would be reconsidered:
Gordon Brown has ordered an urgent review into the plight of 91 Iraqi translators abandoned by Britain to persecution and death as a political campaign in favour of granting them asylum gathered pace.
The Prime Minister has demanded an explanation for a decision to deny them any special favours, which aides insist that he knew nothing about.
He will now consider whether to overturn Tony Blair’s decision, amid growing demands from leading military figures and politicians from all parties that the Government should meet a moral obligation to Iraqis who have served Britain.
Why cultural assimilation is a good thing
Islamic honor killings bring focus to purely evil expressions of backward civilizations functioning badly in Western countries. Here’s a story of ignorance and superstition leading to mayhem without the systematic character of radical Islam:
(AFP) - French police have arrested two women who confessed to killing a 70-year-old Tunisian grandmother in an “exorcism” ritual at her home in the eastern city of Lyon, court officials said Tuesday.
The victim’s adoptive daughter and a friend she met during a stay in a psychiatric ward are thought to have suffocated the elderly woman with a scarf and a plastic bag, causing her to lose consciousness. She died in hospital.According to the officials, the women, both Tunisian-born, said they were trying to cure her of behavioural problems, and tied her head in a bag “to trap the devil”.
The family friend has been placed under investigation — the first step to indictment — for voluntary violence having accidentally caused death, while the daughter is being investigated as an accomplice.
The woman’s death was thought to be an accident until her daughter mentioned the “exorcism” during a visit to the police station. Her body, buried in Tunisia, is be exhumed and an autopsy carried out.
In this case, these were first generation immigrants. But this is nonetheless an example of the kind of cultural baggage a healthy immigration system should filter out over time through diffusion and education, but which becomes difficult when huge waves of immigrants from the same location form assimilation-resistant enclaves.
