Reprint Heaven: Youth Conservatives Rage Against The Machine

(Originally Thrown At You On July 2, 2010)

Elena Kagan; First Day Of Confirmation Hearings (Photo: AP)

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- At the U.S. Capitol yesterday, some fifty self-described D.C. "youth conservatives" protested against the nomination of Elena Kagan to the United States Supreme Court.

"We're, like, just very upset that this kind of person is, like, going to be on the Supreme Court?" said Britney Hollingsworth, 20, a student at Georgetown University and president of its local chapter of Campus Young Republicans. "I mean, oh-kay; Hell-o?? I mean just, like, you know, look at this person. She's just won't do, at all."

Some Of Fifty Young Conservatives, At The Capitol

(Original Photo: Evan McMorris-Santoro, TPM)

"Most of these, uh, kind of people, you know?" added Caroline Wilksberry, a 19-year-old Freshman at Brown University, "They just don't represent us, you know, mainstream Americans? I had my driver bring me down here today, you know? Because I saw her [Kagan] on television and just thought, you know, 'Ugh'. I mean, she's so tacky. Plus, she's part of a liberal conspiracy to make us all, just-- " Wilksberry waved one hand in the air -- "like, peasants!"

"Rully, rully true," Hollingsworth said. "I mean, I don't want this Kagan person on my Supreme Court. Let's just, you know, like -- put it right out there, you know? Let's just 'speak truth to power', okay? She's, like, not like Chief Justice Roberts, or Justice Kennedy, or even Justice Scalia or Justice Alito. I mean, they're Catholics and all, but they're on the right side. Kagan's just not, you know, 'batting for the team'."

Britney And Caroline At George Will's House In Georgetown

For The Protest After-Party (Photo: YoureNotOurCrowd.kom)

"Not the actual girls' team, added Wilkesberry.

Were the protesters implying that Kagan was homosexual? "Oh, dear; I wouldn't know about that," Hollingsworth responded. "I think Carrie -- and don't let me, like, put words in your mouth, or anything -- what she means is that Kagan's, like, you know -- like, 'not mainstream'."

Then, were they commenting on the fact that Kagan, 50, is Jewish? Both young women responded in the negative. "That's just so unfair, you know? What an awful question," Hollingsworth said. "We, like, have tons of Jewish friends and stuff. My father's accountant is Jewish; I mean, they're like, fine, okay? I've even been to that thing they have at Easter, which isn't Easter. I was in Tel Aviv -- okay, just to change planes; but, I mean, still."

"Me too," added Wilksberry. "I've changed planes there."

"Was that when you and Kiki went to Davos?" Hollingsworth asked.

Other Youth Conservatives Relax In New York City

"No, that was that 'Spring Arab Thing'," Wilksberry responded with a giggle. "Anyway -- we just think Kagan is a tacky socalist. They need a lot more spa days -- and Kagan could stand some exercise -- 'Boot camp for you, girl!' And she was the legal-something for Harvard; I know, but it wasn't like she went there, but because they hired her, okay? Hell-o? And she denied the military to do its constitutional duty to serve and protect, you know; or whatever that scandal was that she did. Plus -- oh! oh! Here's something --"

"I so totally know what you're gonna say!" Hollingsworth added.

"Totally," Wilksberry said. "Okay. Okay -- I know, okay; I know a guy at Yale whose family's groundskeeper was, like, some Communist? Or who went to some twelve-step program they have for Communism, or something? And he told this guy I know that he had seen Kagan in, like, Nicaragua or Cuba or someplace, in 1970!!" Wilksberry paused, smiling. "I mean, there you are!"

"They should, like, be asking her about that in there," Hollingsworth said, pointing in the general direction of the Capitol.

Steven Prescott Kingsford III, Near The National Mall

When it was pointed out that Kagan would have been nine years old in 1970, the two women, and a number of other Youth Conservatives in earshot, gave hoots of derision.

"Hoot! Hoot! That's the liberal media for you," said Steven Prescott Kingsford III, a Sophomore at Princeton. "If you do an analysis of every legal interpretation Kagan has ever made, you can see she quotes radical extremists and Communists. And if things go much further this way in America, I guess we'll just have to hire a bunch of these fundamentalists to run things for a while and get people like Kagan off our backs."

"Hoot!" added Edward Biddle Barrows, who accompanied Kingsford from Princeton, where both are on the university's Lacrosse team. "The ladies here," Barrows said, gesturing at Hollingsworth and Wilksberry, "Are perhaps too polite to say; but, Kagan just doesn't measure up to service on the high court. Not in any way."

Barrows, And Friends, In George Will's Basement At The

Protest After-Party: Lacrosse High Five (Photo: A Blog)

"It's like promoting your cook to become your business manager," Hollingsworth said. "Not that such people like that can't, you know -- whip up one hell of a meal on short notice. But to do an investment analysis, or make a decision involving, like, you know -- big stuff? Well, they're just not up to it." Flipping her blonde hair fetchingly, Hollingsworth smiled. "Kagan should just realize her limitations."

"When you have to hire persons," Kingsford added, "they have to be adequately trained; have some seasoning. They have to be -- the right sort. Kagan isn't; not trained, not seasoned, and not right."

"That is so right on," Wilkesberry said. "I'm not going to stand by and watch the interests of people who matter in this country be compromised by a woman who dresses like a Sunday school teacher in Bar Harbor."

"Decide Between Buying 200,000 Forested Acres In Western

Canada, And Investing In Bonds? Above Her Pay Grade!"

"Sweetie, she couldn't teach Sunday school," Holligsworth responded, and the party of Youth Conservatives laughed before going off, as they noted, "for cocktails". A protest after-party was held at George Will's Georgetown home, where the Youth mingled with the likes of Will, Red State's Erik Erikson, newly-married Megan McArdle (trailed by son, Megalon, and his wranglers), and a special-surprise guest appearance by Charles Krauthammer's hair colorist.

Kagan completed her questioning by Senators as to her qualifications for a position in helping to shape the legal basis for American society. Red State later claimed Kagan had been seen buying a book on Marxist political theory in the "Gay and Lesbian" interest section of a local McBorders.

In fairness, it should be pointed out that Red State also believes Jonah Goldberg's tome, Liberal Fascism, is as important a book as Rand's The Fountainhead, or the two metric tons of Ezra Pound's unpublished anti-Semitic writings.

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Random Barking

Arthur Miller

To my mind the essential difference, and the precise difference, between tragedy and pathos is that tragedy brings us not only sadness, sympathy, identification and even fear; it also, unlike pathos, brings us knowledge or enlightenment.

As Aristotle said, the poet is greater than the historian because he presents not only things as they were, but foreshadows what they might have been. We forsake literature when we are content to chronicle disaster. Tragedy, therefore, is inseparable from a certain modest hope regarding the human animal. And it is the glimpse of this brighter possibility that raises sadness out of the pathetic toward the tragic...

The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle he could not possibly have won. The pathetic is achieved when the protagonist is, by virtue of his witlessness, his insensitivity or the very air he gives off, incapable of grappling with a much superior force.

Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible.

-- From “The Tragedy of the Common Man”, and “The Name of Tragedy”; New York Herald-Tribune, 1949

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Think Of The Lobster

And They Are Where?

So I'm sitting around, waiting for The Girl to call, and already know the answer to the "Are we going to war with Iran?" question (Why? Because Your Elders 'n Betters are in fact that stupid, that's why), and the "Why does Lard Boy Hate Wimmins?" query (Man, that one's easy).

That's all bye the bye, boyo. What bothers me is: Where is Giblets? Where is Fafnir? What about the grilled cheese sandwich?

What About The Medium Lobster????

Just Sayin'.

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Talk Amongst Yourselves

Go Ahead. We Trust You.

As I said a while ago, I'm not entirely sure about continuing to blog.

If this was the principal focus of my day, I'd be happy to opine on all manner of Stuff™. If I were both educated in depth, and employed in, a field that deals with many of the subjects I like to talk about, it's possible I'd be offering original ideas that might have a positive outcome for actual people.

But I do have a job, and a life, and if I spend time here, I don't want to just make wisecracks while passing along the wisdom of others, prophets spraypainting wisdom on their own subway walls. It's not very original, and not very satisfying.

I do like keeping tabs on what's happening. I like having an opinion about things, and putting it out there (It's something the Intertubes is famous for; talk about Democracy -- you can tell people you speak for the High Thetan Council Of the Magellan Cluster, or post your mother's favorite recipes, with equal abandon). I enjoy looking at situations, and can make an educated guess about what may happen based on nothing but what I know, everything I read, and on whatever currents in the culture or world events I smell with my Dog's Nose.

But all that is an illusion -- the idea that making pronouncements about the State Of Things is any better than reading tea leaves... and in that sense I'm no less equipped to prognosticate than a majority of the paid "policy analysts", bombasticating from their Institutes in and around the Beltway. The difference between them and myself is, they believe they can shape reality with their opinions, and are paid handsomely to do so; I know that the world is too slippery a place for anyone to say what will happen, and when. We can't even agree that facts are actually facts any longer, and that spells trouble.

It is a fact that we, in America and elsewhere, have been screwed while still wearing our pants for a long time; and the game is so rigged in favor of a tiny segment of the population that the immensity of it is barely comprehensible. We can see the world in motion, right in front of us, rising and falling in new patterns like a fantastic kaleidoscope every hour of the day. I have opinions about all of it, but they are just opinions, and they are only mine.

I joke that three people and a superintelligent parakeet are the only ones who actually read Before Nine, but in truth I never started doing this for any other reason than to have a bit o' fun. It certainly wasn't about popularity or money.

While I care about politics and economics, I'm neither an economist, financial analyst or political organizer. There are, however, other things I care about -- it's what the masthead says: One Person's Art and Literature. So perhaps this Blog will continue, but if so its focus is likely to change. We'll see.

It probably will, because some people do read it. After all -- you don't want a superintelligent parakeet pissed off at you. You don't. Trust me.

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There's A Reason For That

Apparently, We Need To Be Reminded

Barry Ritholtz, at his The Big Picture, recently weighed in on events -- which he's both witnessed and reported on -- that have been happening in the banking and financial sector since the turn of this century... MFGlobal being the most recent and obvious example.

It's a Back To First Principles moment, and I love it when he does this. It's like a scene in a Frank Capra film: In a room full of people, babbling about events that have just occurred, a lone character stands up on a chair and delivers a three-minute speech, telling everyone the Truth -- exactly what's happened and why. No equivocation, no hyperbole, and clear as a bell.

And watching this, most everyone in the scene (as well as the theatre) says, "Hey -- she's right! This Bullshit is fucked up an' shit!!"

(All right; save it -- and yes; I borrowed that tart little phrase from The Great Curmudegon. But the people in the theatre are thinking something like that.)

This will be a short but simple post, to clarify some fundamental misunderstandings about the purposes of laws, regulations, and codes of conduct in society.

Laws do not prevent crimes. We can legislate all the criminal laws we want, but there will still be bank robberies and drunk driving and murders. We pass laws not to prevent these acts from taking place, but rather, to make sure there is a very high cost to committing them.

In fact, we legislate criminal laws for three broad reasons:

1. Let people know exactly what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
2. Punish people who violate these norms.
3. Remove the dangerous people from society for the protection of everyone else.

We create corporate regulations in order to effect similar broad policy purposes:

1. Inform companies what is unacceptable economic behavior.
2. Punish corporate management who violate these norms.
3. Remove dangerous economic behaviors from society.

By economic behaviors, I refer to any impact a company has in the broader economy...

When it comes to laws, there is always a trade off: My freedom ends where your nose begins... Anything a corporation does that threatens these same things is fair game for regulation.

There is a nefarious group of corporate cronies who abuse the word “Freedom.” They employ the word to mean curtailing everyone else’s freedom. They seem to believe Freedom is a license to behave recklessly, to endanger third parties, to risk the economy.

It is not.

The sooner we recognize these simple truths, the faster this society will be heading in the right direction. I suspect that the longer we delay recognizing these truths, the slower our economic recovery will be.

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Making Little Rupert's Faux Daughter Happy

Scotland Yard Gave Rebecca Brooks A Pony

Remember Rebecca Brooks, the nasty, lying, opportunistic sociopath former head of Little Rupert's British organization, who appeared to be hand-picked by The Crafty Ol' Digger himself for greater things? Until she resigned in disgrace, and was immediately arrested on charges arising from what's become the largest case of a single industry corrupting the police agencies of an entire country?

Proving that there's nothing Merry Olde England's Right-wing politicians won't do to get into bed with a Joey Goebbels Wannabe, it appears -- among the many perks 'n treats provided to Little Rupert's News Corp -- that Scotland Yard, that venerable Olde English institution, provided Lil' Becka with her own police horse.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police pointed out that it is routine for retired Mounted Branch horses to be lent out to members of the public at the end of their working lives, but the arrangement is likely to raise fresh questions about the Met's relationship with Mrs Brooks.

The news comes a day after the Leveson Inquiry was told that Mrs Brooks was briefed by a senior Met officer on the progress of the original phone-hacking inquiry and even consulted on how far she thought the investigation should go.

Little Rupert's comment, true 'fuck'em' Aussie fashion, was to observe that Lil' Becka "saved" the horse from the "glue factory".

As the writer Antole France once observed with irony: The law, in all its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges."

So we should simply pass laws which allow people like 'Becka, Little Rupert and his Issue, Jimmy The Fish, to do whatever they want without fear of prosecution. They can bribe cops, tap phones, steal, and whatever else comes into their little minds. Absolutely anything.

Why not? They're going to do it anyway. We may as well acknowledge what we can see with our own lying eyes, and as reported in the few journalistic organs Rupert doesn't own; and just get it over with.

And Little Rupert's "news" organs can trumpet the good news: The Rich win. Yay !

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Andrew Breitbart Dead

And A Nation Mourns


Screenshot From The "Goof Gas Attack" Episode Of
Rocky and His Friends, 1962 (Wikipedia)

However, the nation in mourning is Pottslyvania. Told of Breitbart's death, Fearless Leader said, "Who?"

I won't be making any (other) cheap jokes at Herr Breitbart's expense. I never knew the man -- he was (as Commander Worf pointed out from time to time on STNG) "Not of my home world".



Life isn't only only about showing up; what you do while you're here, and how you affect others, matters. And if you demanded more attention from the world in life than most people -- your actions affect so many more.

Here are Breitbart's Tweets following announcement of Senator Ted Kennedy's death:

@AndrewBreitbart
AndrewBreitbart
26 Aug 09 via web

-- Rest In Chappaquiddick

-- Kennedy is my villain. He took me
from left to right during the [Clarence]
Thomas hearings. Really. Then read Joe
McGuiness book & I wanted to puke.

-- he was a f@#$er. a big ass motherf@#$er.
this aint a 24-hour zone, baby. he was a bad,
bad dude. & if mary jo were your kin youd
be dancin'.

-- This duplicitous bastard spit on GWB's face
when he reached across party lines. T was a
grade school trick. Even til the end, he was a prick.

-- I'll shut my mouth for Carter. That's just
politics. Kennedy was a special pile of human
excrement.

When another conservative replied, asking him not to treat Kennedy like they believe some on the left treated the passing of Tony Snow and Ronald Reagan, Breitbart responded:

-- @AblativMeatshld How dare you compare Snow
& Reagan to Kennedy! Why do you grant a BULLY
special status upon his death? This isnt lib v con.

-- Look, this man was granted absolution for nothing.
Class, life station played a part but PARTY was every-
thing. GOP couldnt get away with it.

-- In this moment I cant but recognize absolute back-
wardness of media & society. Bush=EVIL. Ted Kennedy=SAINT.
Im gonna keep fighin', folks.

This is an example of one man's actions, and in comparison I don't want to celebrate another person's death by heaping my own vitriol on them. I know about the effect of individual deaths on the people who love them (and yes; even this man had them). That needs to be recognized.

However, the lessening of negativity and the spewing of falsehoods and hatred into our national discourse in the wake of one man's death is not a cause for sorrow. I mourn the man; but I am grateful for waking into a world with that much less unnecessary divisive anger.

I didn't like what Breitbart did, and didn't like his 'contribution' to our culture. But, from wherever he is, now he knows what we do not.

The players you have seen; whether their acts were bad or good; whether they were rouges or heroes; They Are All Equal Now.

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Ruh-Roh

One Minute And Thirty Seconds To Midnight

The NYT Reports that the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has issued an eleven-page report after returning from a truncated tour of (some of) facilities in Iran tied to it's nuclear development program.

International nuclear inspectors reported on Friday that Iran was moving rapidly to produce nuclear fuel at a deep underground site that Israel and the United States have said is virtually invulnerable to attack.

The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency indicated that for the first time Iran had begun producing fuel inside the new facility in a mountain near the holy city of Qum. The agency’s inspectors found in their most recent visits that over the past three months Iran has tripled its production capacity for a type of fuel that is far closer to what is needed to make the core of a nuclear weapon.

The report about progress at the new facility is likely to inflame the debate over whether Iran is getting closer to what Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, calls entering “zone of immunity.” The phrase refers to a vaguely-defined point beyond which Iran could potentially produce weapons fuel without fear of an air attack that could wipe out its facilities...

The 11-page report also described how Iran has refused, in two separate meetings with inspectors, to answer questions raised in the I.A.E.A.’s last report, issued in November, about experiments that could be linked to work on nuclear weapons. Inspectors were told they could not visit a military site called Parchin, where the inspectors suspect work was done on conventional explosives that can be used to trigger a warhead. “Iran stated that it was still not able to grant access to that site,” the report said....

The failure of the most recent visit by nuclear inspectors is likely to increase already heightened tensions after the assassination of nuclear scientists in Iran and suspected retaliation against Israeli diplomatic workers. Bellicose statements by officials from both countries have fueled speculation of a possible military strike by Israel against the Iranian nuclear facilities.

I give the whole thing three weeks at the outside before something happens and then everything gets really interesting, which are polite euphemisms for "air strikes", and "the possibility of a much wider international conflict with both unconventional and global dimensions".

And, the Pinhead Gallery, famous for having no foreign policy whatsoever a two-dimensional view of relations with other nations, weighs in:

...on CNN Thursday night, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani... casually [said] President Obama should threaten to “bomb” Iran to prevent the country from developing a nuclear weapon.

Obama has made the situation more complicated by being such a “weakling,” Giuliani said, including writing a secret letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamanei asking for a dialogue.

The president instead should be convincing Iran that he’s serious and capable of launching military strikes, which is the United States’ best chance to avoid actually carrying out a military mission, Giuliani said.

“(Obama) can’t say the words ‘bomb them,’” Giuliani said. “We need a president who can say the words ‘bomb them’ and actually can do it if he has to protect us from Iran becoming a nuclear power.”

Once the president convinces Iran that he will “bomb the hell out of them,” Giuliani said, things will change. “We are the largest military in the entire world, they are a small, tiny little military power compared to us.”

Or, as the 'Crazy Old Grandfather' character says in the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, "C'MON -- BRING IT !!"

I'm so old a Dog, I remember when The Mayor Of 9-11 was considered a Very Serious Candidate for the presidency. But,as well, too also we had President Cheney running the country then, and '"Lil' Boots" feeling puffed up and happy he was Bigger 'N His Daddy At Last. Good Times...

... and may we never have any like them again.

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Doubling Down

Iran's Government Pins 'Bomb Me' Signs To The Backs Of Their Beige Windbreakers

From Alan Cowell in The Paper Of Record This morning:

LONDON — As tension grew in its nuclear dispute with the West, Iran was reported on Tuesday to have struck an increasingly bellicose tone, warning that it would take pre-emptive action against perceived foes if it felt its national interests were threatened...

Without mentioning Israel directly, Mohammed Hejazi, the deputy armed forces head, said on Tuesday: “Our strategy now is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran’s national interests, and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their actions,” Reuters reported. Divisions in Iran’s leadership make it difficult to interpret the government’s intentions, but the statement showed a new level of aggressiveness in Iran’s rhetoric.

The statement came a day after a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Tehran on Monday for the second time in three weeks...

The inspectors did ask on Monday to see a military complex outside Tehran that is a suspected secret weapons-making location, Iranian radio said, according to The A.P... As the I.A.E.A. delegation left its headquarters in Vienna late Sunday, its leader, Herman Nackaerts, said the delegation wished to investigate “the possible military dimensions” that Tehran insists the program does not have and that the inspectors’ previous visit did nothing to resolve.

International tension has been rising steadily, as Iran claims significant technological advances in uranium enrichment and threatens retaliation against countries that pursue sanctions against it, including a boycott of its oil.

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More Idiot Wind

Republicans' Transformation Into The Party Of Stupid Bad Crazy Nearly Complete

...and to prove it, reflect on this: Little Ricky Santorum is the front-runner in the Rethug Clown Show race to become the party's nominee against President Barack Obama in November. This should surprise no one.

So far, we've seen:

• Clueless Mitt, flip-flopping back and forth;
• Randyman Newt, who, if elected, could easily hand his wife divorce papers the second before the inauguration;
• Citizen Herman Cain, who can't recall any of the five or more women whom he may have groped or had long-standing affairs with;
• Le Governour Placard, Pastor Rick Perry, whose "I dunno" proved that he is in fact dumber than a bag of hammers;
• Ron Paul, who of course likes all people of color and believes a Giant United-Nations-Developed Radioactive Scorpion lives in his basement;
• Grand TurtleBear Bachmann, who pointed to signs that $2/gallon gasoline meant (somebody's) god would strike all gay people down, or force them into her husband's clinics, or something.

There was one adult in the room, John Huntsman -- but it was precisely because he appears to be an adult that no Rethug would listen to him. That isn't the direction the Republicans are headed. With a battle for control of the party between the Tea Partei / UN Black Helicopter / Evangelical Taliban on one hand, and Old Guard GOP Beltway Insiders on the other, He Who Has Risen is none other than Little Ricky, god's messenger in troubled times.

Sahil Kapur In today's TPM:

Climate change denial has become a litmus test for modern Republicans, but Rick Santorum, in his fondness for melding faith and government, has become one of the precious few to cite the Bible as evidence that the science-accepting crowd has it all wrong — and apparently the first to bring that thinking to the presidential stage.

“We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit not for the Earth’s benefit,” Santorum told a Colorado crowd earlier this month.

He went on to call climate change “an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life.”

The surging presidential hopeful fleshed out this argument further this Sunday on CBS Face The Nation, when asked to justify his recent controversial claim that President Obama has a “phony theology” that’s not “based on the Bible.” He said the President sides with “radical environmentalists” who don’t understand what God intended to be the relationship between humans and the planet.

“When you have a worldview that elevates the Earth above man and says that we can’t take those resources because we’re going to harm the Earth; by things that frankly are just not scientifically proven, for example, the politicization of the whole global warming debate — this is all an attempt to, you know, to centralize power and to give more power to the government,” Santorum said.

And the former Pennsylvania senator doubled down Monday, declaring that, “Unlike the Earth, we’re intelligent, and we can actually manage things.”

This is the level of candidacy for high public office in the United States. This is the level of public debate. This is the caliber of person who wants to speak for America.

Small wonder so many Rethugs polled choose "Somebody Else" when asked who they favor as their candidate for President.

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