The Crowbar

We can only hope that Alec Baldwin never gets into a serious position of power. In an article that reads like a water cooler politics conversation, Baldwin blames automakers’ resistance to stupid environmental regulations for their current plight:

they spent billions of dollars attempting to bribe the Congress to avoid putting in seat belts and air bags, installing catalytic converters and reaching more ambitious fuel efficiency standards. For the most part, they succeeded. [emphasis mine]

Obviously, the industry did not succeed in it’s resistance to seat belts, airbags and catalytic converters. So, now we know that Baldwin has only green on the mind. More:

I feel horribly for every single man and woman who will suffer as the result of this heartbreaking turn of events. I was the voice of Chevy Tahoe TV spots for five years in the early 90′s. I drove a Tahoe then and loved it. Now, I drive a Prius.

LOL. Yeah, I’m sure he feel sooo “horribly” for them. So now we know that Baldwin drives an ugly fish-like car… er, I mean a Prius. And, finally, we get to the heart of Baldwin’s water cooler screed:

Let energy conservation and fuel efficiency rule the day. Let the carmakers go under.

So here we have Baldwin, who feels “horribly” for all those people “who will suffer” advocating for automakers to go under for the sole reason that they resisted idiotic environmental regulations. Nice. Of course we all know that those people “who will suffer” would be the unions, who are the real reason US automakers are in the mess they are in. Unions are unsustainable in a free market, which is why they always attempt to regulate the market in their favor, etc. Automakers would be wise to abandon an impossible situation. Baldwin’s popularity declined by 2% this week. If his acting is as lame as his attempts at political writing, that might explain it.

If ever there was a column to read about the idiotic “torture” debate in America, this is it.  Sowell brilliantly explains the moral confusion amongst liberals who refuse to grow up:

Whatever the verbal fencing over the meaning of the word “torture,” there is a fundamental difference between simply inflicting pain on innocent people for the sheer pleasure of it– which is what our terrorist enemies do– and getting life-saving information out of the terrorists by whatever means are necessary.

The left has long confused physical parallels with moral parallels. But when a criminal shoots at a policeman and the policeman shoots back, physical equivalence is not moral equivalence. And what American intelligence agents have done to captured terrorists is not even physical equivalence.

I recommend that everyone read his column, it brings amazing clarity to “torture” issue that few other commentaries have.

Say what you will about Cheney, but the top left bloggers really REALLY hate him with a passion. They’ve recently devoted lots of webspace to their rage: HuffPo’s Borowitz spews out lame satire at Cheney, saying the Former VP is To Travel Around Country In Sound Truck. Groan. DailyKos’ David Swanson verbosely explains the Three Worst Reasons to Delay Putting Cheney in Prison. Like all morally confused liberals, Swanson is SO for “enforcing laws.” Of course, laws only apply to liberal causes, they can be skirted with “empathy” when laws cause “social injustice.” Aside from that, it’s doubtful that any laws were actually broken, and there will never be prosecutions b/c top Democrats would be dragged down, too.  The fringe leftists at Democratic Underground indulge in ancient Cheney-based fantasy claiming Cheney Confirms Iran-Contra Cover-Up; says Cheney:

“I went through the Iran-contra hearings and watched the way administration officials ran for cover and left the little guys out to dry. And I was bound and determined that wasn’t going to happen this time.”

Because he used the word “cover,” he has now admitted a “cover-up”? Oy. The ever-excitable Andrew Sullivan has another go at Cheney, implying that Cheney betrayed his oath of office by supporting harsh interrogation of deranged psychopaths bent on killing Americans. Says Sully, “Is Cheney’s ultimate defense is that he didn’t understand the oath he took?” Go ahead and believe that Sullivan, you’re already a lost cause. ThinkProgress works it over hard, trying to make Cheney look bad because he’d choose Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell. Who in their right mind would choose Powell the Backstabber? Greg Sargent at Plumb Line gets himself all excited when he finds out White House To Declassify “Holy Grail” Torture Report That Could Undercut Cheney. The report supposedly says it’s “difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks.” Just because it’s difficult, doesn’t mean it’s impossible, duh. Another secret the White House will give to the terrorists for free. How quaint. Josh Marshall at TPM is so hot and bothered he decided to share a Dick Cheney Deep Thought, “Megalomania is a hard drug to kick.” Save it for twitter, Marshall.  Heather at Crooks and Liars thinks she really has something in taking advantage of Cheney and Limbaugh’s negative poll numbers. Take a look-see at Mary Matalin: Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh Exemplify Conservatism. Heather seems to think that Republican policies have been rejected by a large portion of the electorate. Yep. That would be the self-identified “Democrats.” Brilliant like a stone light bulb. Hilzoy at Political Animal gets dramatically offended by Cheney and decries, “How Dare He?”

Dick Cheney forfeited the right to lecture anyone on their willingness to sacrifice American lives the day he decided to deceive us into an unnecessary war.

Please stop with your Superior Moral SuperForce, Hilzoy, you’re making the chickens nervous.

HuffPo gets wacky with it (as of 9:32 AM 5/8/2009): Here we have the implication that Amazon does not worship (as everyone should for their own good) the Left’s One True Living God With Glistening Pecs: Emperor Obama. How could Amazon NOT consider the EXTREME IMPORTANCE of ensuring the Great One’s name is pronounced correctly? Only those who harbor RAAACIST HATRED would overlook such a detail.  It’s clear that Amazon is on the Angry Left’s hit list, especially after the GLBT book delisting debacle. HuffPo links to a NYT article and even the article acknowledges another instance of the Kindle mispronouncing:

Kindle owners in Boston, however, may want to avoid the sports pages for now. The Kindle pronounces “Celtics” with an initial hard “c.”

This must mean that Amazon harbors deep antipathy toward the Boston Celtics too! Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos debunks the idea that there’s anything amiss:

When asked about the error in pronouncing the president’s name, Jeffrey P. Bezos, chief executive of Amazon.com, said, with his trademark laugh, “that’s unfortunate.” The next day, an Amazon spokesman, Andrew Herdener, wrote in an e-mail message that Nuance Communications, the Massachusetts-based company that licenses its text-to-speech engine to Amazon for the Kindle, had added the correct pronunciation of the president’s name.

Once again, the Angry Left harms their credibility.

Goes without saying that Jonathan Addler needs some better manners:

Oprah Winfrey has decided to promote the career — and by extension, the dangerous and lunatic ravings — of professional-bimbo-turned-anti-vaccine-activist Jenny McCarthy.

Why Addler thinks it couth to call McCarthy a bimbo is beyond me and beneath respect. This is the kind of snark that gives the right a bad name. Get a clue Addler, please stop this kind of behavior.

At long last I have assembled a list of top conservative blogs. It’s based on Technorati, Alexa, and Wikio rankings plus my well-honed intuition. It is subject to change if I happen to discover another blog and/or the rankings change.

1. Michelle Malkin – About
2. The Corner – National Review
3. Hot Air – About
4. NewsBusters – Media Research Center | About
5. American Thinker – About
6. Power Line – John H. Hinderaker
7. Red State – Erick Erickson | About
8. The Volokh Conspiracy – Eugene Volokh
9. Instapundit – Glenn Reynolds
10. Gateway Pundit – Unknown Identity
11. Marginal Revolution – Tyler Cowen | Alex Tabarrok
12. Big Hollywood – About
13. Ace of Spades HQ – About
14. Reason Magazine/Hit & Run – About
15. Weekly Standard/The Blog – Michael Goldfarb
16. Jihad Watch – Robert Spencer
17. Atlas Shrugs – Pamela Geller
18. The Jawa Report – Rusty Shackleford
19. Stop The ACLU – About
20. Right Wing News – About

Ten Worthy Mentions

• Althouse
• Iowahawk
• Patterico’s Pontifications
• Wizbang
• The Next Right
• Daniel Pipes
• The Becker-Posner Blog
• Protein Wisdom
• Jammie Wearing Fool
• Debbie Schlussel

For all you Universal Heath Care lovers out there, here’s a dose of the medicine you want to force everyone to take; from a UK’s DailyMail:

Despite the fact that around half a million children and adults in the UK are affected, treatment for the condition is woefully underfunded, according to the National Autistic Society (NAS). ‘The services and support available to people with autism and their carers are often hugely inadequate,’ says Caroline Hattersley of the charity.

The family wanted an official diagnosis, but were astonished to find [an Autism diagnosis] could take between 18 and 24 months because health services are so overstretched.

Crikey, 18 to 24 months? And, this is not just ANY family, this is the family of wealthy singer/actor Keith Duffy (Boyzone), his daughter, Mia, has Autism:

For Lisa and Keith Duffy, it was a heartbreakingly long wait before they heard their daughter Mia speak for the first time… Mia has autism, a developmental disorder which affects her ability to relate to people and situations.

Ahh, but that’s not all, here we have another example of just how crappy socialized medicine is in the UK, Parents Forced To Wait A Year For Autism Diagnosis:

Health boards have been branded “compassionless” for forcing hundreds of parents to wait a YEAR to find out if their children have autism. Experts say the earlier children are treated, the better they will respond. But NHS Dumfries and Galloway have Scotland’s longest waiting time of 15 months for 61 children who have been referred for assessment. In Ayrshire & Arran, youngsters face waiting up to 14 months, while 100 kids are caught up in a year-long backlog in NHS Lanarkshire. Greater Glasgow is next on the list, with a waiting time of 10 months for more than 80 children. Bill Welsh, president of the Autism Treatment Trust, said: “Early diagnosis is absolutely vital. Taking a year to make a diagnosis is crassly inefficient and compassionless. “The worry aside, the child may be inhibited from gaining communication skills they should learn at an early age.” Evelyn and Iain Lindsay face waiting until next year to discover if their son Ben suffers from autism. They have been told that three-year-old Ben is 87th on the list. Evelyn said: “We are being left in limbo.”

This is the promise of Universal Heath Care, coming soon to America, to be left in limbo while faceless bureaucrats decide everyone’s fate. But, hey, at least everyone will be covered, right?

Taking a moment here to immortalize the small minority of base liberals on Twitter who revel in the death of a conservative. First we have this jem, a combo ReTweet of two snipes at Jack Kemp: The trolls feel quite justified in being base because, as they say, the conservatives did it first: I’m sure some base minority of conservatvies did say awful things about Kennedy and Wellstone, yet any sane person knows that if someone wrongs you it does not give you just cause to wrong them. Trolls will be trolls, great examples of How Not to Be Human.

Matt Yglesias lamely attempts to tie conservatives to white supremacists: 

I wish progressives wouldn’t be so defensive about this. The idea of an “activist judge” is something that was cooked up by white supremacists in the 1950s and 60s who didn’t like judges bossing people around and telling them they had to let black people vote and go to school. To me, frankly, it’s a bit shocking that modern-day conservatives are still so eager to associate themselves with the legacy of the racist backlash of a couple of generations ago.

Do I even have to explain why this feeble-minded sewage is so wrong? Ugh, I suppose I do, for Matt’s sake. White supremacists did not cook up the idea of an “activist judge,” or judicial activism. The concept was around earlier, but the term itself came from a January 1947 article in Fortune Magazine written by Arthur Schlesinger.  From California Law Review’s THE ORIGIN AND CURRENT MEANINGS OF “JUDICIAL ACTIVISM”:

Schlesinger’s article profiled all nine Supreme Court justices on the Court at that time and explained the alliances and divisions among them. The article characterized Justices Black, Douglas, Murphy, and Rutlege as the “Judicial Activists” and Justices Frankfurter, Jackson, and Burton as the “Champions of Self Restraint.” Justice Reed and Chief Justice Vinson comprised a middle group.

What’s even more fun is the article was about the New Deal - you know – one of Yglesias’ favorite pieces of legislation:

By 1947, none of the justices openly questioned the constitutionality of the New Deal. Instead, the Court split over the interpretation of legislation and “the proper function of the judiciary in a democracy.” 

How ironic is it that the term “judicial activism” came about because, from the beginning,  progressives have tried to change inconvenient laws to suit their paradigm. There is good reason progressives feel “defensive” about something so obviously unethical. So judicial activism wasn’t invented by white supremacists – Matt will be very disappointed. He is either making this stuff up or repeating something he read/heard. But, again, the facts don’t matter much to progressive bloggers like Yglesias – it took me about 30 seconds to find the California Law Review paper.  Hmm… frankly, it’s a bit shocking, don’t you think?

The deceptive Andrew Sullivan calls coercive interrogation defenders ignorant because they allegedly don’t know that Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions bans “waterboarding, forced nudity, total sensory deprivation, slamming against walls, multiple beatings, hypothermia, stress positions, hooding, phobias (dogs, insects), confined coffin-like spaces, and brutal long-term sleep deprivation.” How does he prove his point? By citing commentary about Article 3, of course! In Sullivan’s world, approved commentary = fact:

Article 3 has been called a “Convention in miniature.” It is the only article of the Geneva Conventions that applies in non-international conflicts. It describes minimal protections which must be adhered to by all individuals within a signatory’s territory during an armed conflict not of an international character (regardless of citizenship or lack thereof): Noncombatants, combatants who have laid down their arms, and combatants who are hors de combat (out of the fight) due to wounds, detention, or any other cause shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, including prohibition of outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment. The passing of sentences must also be pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. Article 3′s protections exist even though no one is classified as aprisoner of war. The article text for Article 3 of the Second Geneva Convention differs from the other three Conventions in that it adds “shipwrecked” to the “wounded and sick.” Article 3 also states that parties to the internal conflict should endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the Geneva Conventions.

Oh no! Whatever will the “torture lovers” do when they read this? Sullivan triumphantly beats his chest and authoritatively declares:

Notice that this isn’t just a ban on “torture” however legally parsed. But a ban on all inhuman treatment, including outrages on personal dignity.

Yes, Sullivan, that IS indeed what the commentary is implying. So, why, oh why, did he NOT cite the full text instead of  commentary? What a GREAT question! That would be because the spirit of the full text doesn’t fulfill Sullivan’s neurotic need for reality to conform to his viewpoint. Here is the FULL TEXT of Article 3

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions: (1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed ‘ hors de combat ‘ by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. (2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for. An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict. The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention. The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

My, my OH my – isn’t THIS interesting? So, according to Article 3 Section 1a, “torture” is grouped with “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment.” That effectively excludes ALL of the coercive interrogation techniques used by the CIA; that would mean that they aren’t classified as torture. That’s what Sullivan means by “legally parsed;” yeah, that crazy technical leagalese, LOL. Now it’s clear why Sullivan deceptively quoted commentary and tried to pass it off as the actual Article 3 – it makes him look like a dunce and obliterates his huffy puffy arguments on “torture.”