From Chuck Asay (click for a larger version):
Just a bit of perspective before tossing around the "racist" or "Nazi" labels.
From a comment:
In Mark’s post-modern relativistic world it appears almost impossible for anyone on the right to say anything untrue. Likewise there’s almost nothing Obama can say that can’t be ret-conned into a lie.
In the above, the accusation leveled at myself is likely a charge made reflexively whenever Mr Boonton (or likely any number of interlocutors from the left) sees someone on the right suggesting that a phrase or word can be taken in more than one way. This is noted in the wake of the particular history of post-modernism/quasi-Derridan theories of language and as a result of the rejection of the same by conservatives. The ironic thing here is that the accusation of this sort attempts to at the same time defend relativism, i.e., multiple meanings while at the same time force a particular meaning to be established.
Foucault and Derrida, as is my understanding, suggest that fixing and setting the meaning of words and phrases, fixing the primary hermenuetic if you will, is an act of power and that furthermore there is no intrinsic meanings for things beyond being an expression of power. While this is undoubtedly a simplification at the same time has the problem of getting the matter exactly wrong.
Meanings are fixed … but their particular assignment to particular words is not. When one says something the intention, the meaning is the one thing which is fixed and not a thing captured or expressed fundamentally in and via particular words. The act of speaking and then of hearing is a distortion on the original meaning (or web of meanings) which is being expressed. Conversation is one aid to the exercise of transmitting this which allows one to correct and refine the transmission. This is of course an exercise made more complicated by the fact that the idea reflected back is itself distorted by the act of expression by the receiver. If speaking is a lossy transmission of one’s thought to another. When you converse and try to get your meaning across, discussion is the act of trying to correct the image of your idea into another’s mind through the quadruple layers of distortion (thought -> spoken words then perceived words -> thoughts with a reflection).
What perchance does this have to do with the title selected for this particular essay? Well, in our political discourse peculiar (particular?) assumptions are made about what phrases mean which are normally misinterpreted by the other side and which make our discourse more contentious than it would normally be. One of the common irritants between parties then aligns along the continual frustration which this engenders. One says a thing to express one idea and by the other’s reaction and comments it is clearly misunderstood. Furthermore as one clarifies and attempts to more clearly state and restate the original point one either gets nowhere or the act of restatement is interpreted as an attempt at “changing” what one originally said.
There is an encouraging move afoot by conservative evangelicals to deal constructively with the immigration issue and to find a solidly biblical approach not necessarily in line with majority Republican or Democratic positions.
The effort is headed by Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Matt Staver, dean of the Liberty University Law School, and Samuel Rodriquez, head of the largest evangelical hispanic group in the nation.
A growing chorus of conservative evangelical leaders has broken with their traditional political allies on the right. They’re calling the Arizona law misguided and are attempting to use its passage to push for federal immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
The group, which includes influential political activists such as Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy wing, and Mathew Staver, dean of the Liberty University School of Law, will soon begin lobbying Republican leaders in Washington to support comprehensive immigration reform under President Obama.
But a big part of their job is to first persuade rank-and-file evangelicals to get on board.
“There’s a misconception among people at the grass roots that the pathway to citizenship is amnesty, and it’s not, but we have to overcome that,” said Staver, who heads the law school at the university founded by Jerry Falwell. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”
Staver and Land have partnered with the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, an influential Hispanic evangelical figure, and Rick Tyler — former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s longtime spokesman and head of Gingrich’s new values-based organization — to try to draft a consensus evangelical position on immigration reform.
Mark had a thought. 😀
It has been noted that the Times Square car-bomb was incredibly even fancifully badly executed. So, given the apoplexy its generating and going to generate in the public square. Could that have been the intention all along? To roil the waters of partisan stupidity.
No, I’m not referring to the Arizona immigration law (that does not impose any new documentation requirements). I’m talking about a national, biometric ID card. Liberals are shocked — SHOCKED — that this is being proposed by Democrats.
But this conservative is not surprised at all. In Georgia, they digitize your fingerprint and print it on your driver’s license. This was passed, on a party line vote, when Democrats controlled the state. Having committed no crime, your fingerprint is in the database. And now Democrats on the national level are essentially doing the same thing.
This is a freedom thing, and it meshes with the idea of the state taking all control over your life, from what health care you buy to obtaining your fingerprint without charges. More government control. That’s the direction Democrats want to take us.
PolitiFact does a fact check on this statement from George Will:
"What the Arizona law does is make a state crime out of something that already is a crime, a federal crime," he said. "Now, the Arizona police — and I’ve spent time with the Phoenix Police Department — these are not bad people. These are professionals who are used to making the kind of difficult judgments. Suspicion of intoxicated driving, all kinds of judgments are constantly made by policemen. And I wouldn’t despair altogether their ability to do this in a professional way."
PolitiFact went to legal scholars and found out that, indeed, this is the case.
The legal scholars we spoke with told us to take a close look at two key sections of Title 8 of the U.S. Code. Section 1304e requires that "every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him." Those who fail to comply will be guilty of a misdemeanor and will be fined $100 and can be imprisoned up to 30 days.
Section 1306a says that, "Any alien required to apply for registration and to be fingerprinted in the United States who willfully fails or refuses to make such application or to be fingerprinted, and any parent or legal guardian required to apply for the registration of any alien who willfully fails or refuses to file application for the registration of such alien shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall, upon conviction thereof, be fined not to exceed $1,000 or be imprisoned not more than six months, or both."
Indeed, section 3 of the new Arizona law makes it a state crime if immigrants are in violation of either of those codes.
So, when it comes to that section of the law — arguably the "meat" of the new law — "it’s very clear that in this respect, George Will is right," said Paul Bender, a law professor at Arizona State University.
They ding Mr. Will on some misdemeanors that are also included in the Arizona bill, but overall, Will is correct. And yet many liberals are overreacting and protesting or boycotting Arizona in response. Some uninformed individuals are even boycotting New York over this. Jim Wallis and the Sojourners are, unfortunately yet predictably, against this measure that simply allows Arizona to enforce the law that the feds won’t.
2 words: Knee. Jerk.
No, not that D.A.R.E. I’m talking about Democrats Against Renewable Energy. The Obama administration has prevailed.
BOSTON, Mass – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today approved the Cape Wind renewable energy project on federal submerged lands in Nantucket Sound, but will require the developer of the $1 billion wind farm to agree to additional binding measures to minimize the potential adverse impacts of construction and operation of the facility.
“After careful consideration of all the concerns expressed during the lengthy review and consultation process and thorough analyses of the many factors involved, I find that the public benefits weigh in favor of approving the Cape Wind project at the Horseshoe Shoal location,” Salazar said in an announcement at the State House in Boston. “With this decision we are beginning a new direction in our Nation’s energy future, ushering in America’s first offshore wind energy facility and opening a new chapter in the history of this region.”
The Cape Wind project would be the first wind farm on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, generating enough power to meet 75 percent of the electricity demand for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Island combined. The project would create several hundred construction jobs and be one of the largest greenhouse gas reduction initiatives in the nation, cutting carbon dioxide emissions from conventional power plants by 700,000 tons annually. That is equivalent to removing 175,000 cars from the road for a year.
This project has been held up for at least 7 years, with liberal luminaries like the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Walter Cronkite opposing it. It’s all well and good for us plebeians, but not where it might spoil the view for the well-heeled.
It’s good of the Obama administration to get this project unstuck, but he has to get his own party on-board with renewable energy in their own backyards, and ensure that delays like this don’t happen again, if he wants to be taken seriously with this whole "green energy" thing.
“We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” – President Obama (HT: HotAir)
I guess telling other people where their paygrades end isn’t above the President’s paygrade.
From James Taranto’s column in the Wall St. Journal Online:
Ho Hum, a White Supremacist Rally
"A rally of about 40 white supremacists Saturday on the lawn of Los Angeles City Hall drew hundreds of counter-protesters, sparked brawls in which two people were severely beaten and ended with crowds of demonstrators hurling rocks and bottles at police and departing supremacists," the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. The violence came from those who had come to counter the hate:A bare-chested middle-aged man with Nazi insignias tattooed on his chest and back walked into a crowd of hundreds of counter-protesters gathered near 1st and Spring streets.
Surrounded, the man mockingly bobbed his head to the rhythm of demonstrators chanting "Nazi scum." About a dozen protesters suddenly began pelting the man with punches and kicks. He fell and was struck on the back with the wooden handle of a protester’s sign, which snapped in two. Police eventually reached the man and pulled him from the melee, as blood poured from the back of his neck.
Another man was rushed by a mob on Spring Street. He was punched in the face and kicked for about 20 seconds before police made it to the scene. After that beating was broken up, the man began running south on Spring Street, only to be chased down by a protester and slugged in the face. He collapsed and his face slammed to the curb as protesters began pummeling him again.
The bloodied man was then escorted away by police. Both victims were treated and released, police said.
His sign, unclear in its intended meaning, read "Christianity=Paganism=Heathen$" with an arrow pointing at a swastika.
"Gosh, I think he just didn’t have a clear message. I don’t even think he was a Nazi," said one man, looking at the broken pieces of the sign left behind.
The Left insists that these sorts of folks come from the Right, and thus it would be safe to assume, then, that those counter-protesters were mostly from the Left. For those who say that all this sort of physical violence comes solely from the Right (I’m looking at you, Dan) may need to rethink your premise. I think violence from both sides, fringe (relative to both sides) though it may be, is a reality. Many suggest that Limbaugh and Beck are to blame for violence. How about Olberman and Schultz now?
Anyone? Hello? Crickets?
Taranto goes on to make a very salient point about this actual racism vs. the accused racism of Tea Partiers.
If you haven’t heard about this until now, you’re not alone. Blogger William Jacobson points out that the media hardly noticed:
Outside of the local media and a handful of blogs, the event received scarce attention. None of the usual suspects bothered to cover or comment on it. Firedoglake and Huffington Post covered it, but we saw none of the hyperventilated commentary and lecturing that is directed at Tea Parties.
How curious. Tea Party events which are not white supremacist events are met with derision and abuse, while a real white supremacist rally is met mostly with silence.
There is a lesson here. The attacks on the Tea Parties have nothing to do with stamping out white supremacy and everything to do with shaping the political dialogue to stamp out legitimate opposition to Obama administration policies.
[…]
But Saturday’s tumult is a timely reminder that in 2010, as in 1999 [the date of a Klan rally in LA]–and, for that matter, in 1977, when the U.S. Supreme Court held that neo-Nazis had a right to march in Skokie, Ill.–white supremacy is a fringe ideology that appeals only to a minuscule number of weirdos.
The people who claim to be alarmed by the "racism" of the tea-party movement know this as well as we do–which is why they respond to a display of actual racism as nonchalantly as we do. They desperately attack the tea-party movement for the same reason we cheer it: because it is made up of ordinary Americans anxious and unhappy about the ever-expanding power of government over their lives.
A mass movement of Americans concerned about preserving their freedom is a threat to the political agenda of the left. A gathering of a few dozen actual white supremacists is a threat only to whatever shred of dignity the supremacists may retain.
Sorry for the long quotes, but this is a point that Taranto has been making for some time (which is why I highly suggest getting the daily e-mail of his column), and this particular incident highlights precisely the the disingenuousness of it’s being used as a political football by the Left. It’s the race card they play; a game to stifle dissent (such dissent formerly being the highest form of patriotism).
We are post-racial only to the point that charges of racism aren’t used as some political ploy. Actual racism is very much on the decline, as President Obama’s election highlighted brightly. It shows that the Tea Party’s detractors have very little in their corner. They’re reduced to name-calling.
Yes, some folks weren’t paying attention and thought all this "free" health care was supposed to kick in the day after The Won(tm) signed it into law. And now buyer’s remorse has hit.
Three weeks after Congress passed its new national health care plan, support for repeal of the measure has risen four points to 58%. That includes 50% of U.S. voters who strongly favor repeal.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters nationwide finds 38% still oppose repeal, including 32% who strongly oppose it.
But while those folks may just not have been fully informed, our Congress folk should certainly have been caught off guard. That’s what we pay them for! And yet…
It is often said that the new health care law will affect almost every American in some way. And, perhaps fittingly if unintentionally, no one may be more affected than members of Congress themselves.
In a new report, the Congressional Research Service says the law may have significant unintended consequences for the “personal health insurance coverage” of senators, representatives and their staff members.
For example, it says, the law may “remove members of Congress and Congressional staff” from their current coverage, in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, before any alternatives are available.
The confusion raises the inevitable question: If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?
To answer that question, we look to other news items. A few weeks ago, Congress was shocked — SHOCKED — to find companies writing off millions and billions in losses over a federal prescription medicine that was going away. Companies are, by law, required to honestly represent their revenues and liabilities, but Democrats will have none of that, if it reflects poorly on their pet project. But now, a lot of other shoes are starting to drop. At the SayAnything blog:
A starting revelation on the Scott Hennen Show today from Rod St. Aubyn, Director of Government Relations for Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota. St. Aubyn notes that under Obamacare, all polices offered in North Dakota must be approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services and that this approval process will force BCBS to reduce its insurance offerings from over fifty different policies…to four.
(Audio at the site.) And if you do get insurance, ObamaCare may be doing nothing about its cost.
Public outrage over double-digit rate hikes for health insurance may have helped push President Obama’s healthcare overhaul across the finish line, but the new law does not give regulators the power to block similar increases in the future.
And now, with some major companies already moving to boost premiums and others poised to follow suit, millions of Americans may feel an unexpected jolt in the pocketbook.
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Although Democrats promised greater consumer protection, the overhaul does not give the federal government broad regulatory power to prevent increases.
And once you’ve paid for it, good luck finding a doctor.
Experts warn there won’t be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000.
And if you do find a doctor, good luck finding a hospital.
The new health care overhaul law, which promised increased access and efficiency in health care, will prevent doctor-owned hospitals from adding more rooms and more beds, says a group that advocates physician involvement in every aspect of health care delivery.
Physician-owned hospitals are advertised as less bureaucratic and more focused on doctor-patient decision making. However, larger corporate hospitals say doctor-owned facilities discriminate in favor of high-income patients and refer business to themselves.
The new health care rules single out such hospitals, making new physician-owned projects ineligible to receive payments for Medicare and Medicaid patients.
Existing doctor-owned hospitals will be grandfathered in to get government funds for patients but must seek permission from the Department of Health and Human Services to expand.
All this and more (including increased taxes on those making less than $200,000) is summarized in a very informative Wall St. Journal op-ed. Yeah, you can try to paint the WSJ as some right-wing editorial board, but they quote the NY Times, the LA Times; hardly bastions of conservatism.
And so we go back to the question asked by the NY Times, "did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?" I think it’s pretty clear they didn’t.
I was on Spring Break vacation with the family last week, so other than my post-dated blog posts, I didn’t write much … well, anything. But I did surf the web and kept track of some articles I wanted to highlight when I came back. Here they are, in mostly chronological order of when I found them.
Amnesty International decided that jihad was not antithetical to human rights so long as it’s "defensive".
The bump in polling numbers after passing health care "reform" was supposed to go to Democrats. Instead, while it’s just a measure of emotion at this point in time, you’d think that all the promises of the bill would give Democrats a few higher point. Instead, they’re at an 18-year low. It’s quite possible that people are only now understanding what they supported all along, because the "free" stuff isn’t materializing right now.
What was the point of the resurrection on Easter? Don Sensing has (had) some thoughts.
The Tea Party’s ideas are much more mainstream than the MSM would like you to believe. And Tea Partiers are much more diverse that the MSM realized. Turns out, they did some actual journalism and found out the real story. Imagine that. Has the liberal slant of the press become a problem of corruption, especially with, first, the willful ignoring of the Tea Party story, and second, the willful misreporting of it?
Toyota cars have killed 52 people, and got a recall for it. Gardasil, a cervical cancer vaccine, has had 49 "unexplained deaths" reported by the CDC and it’s still required in some states.
Changing the names to protect the guilty, the words "Islam" and "jihad" are now banned from the national security strategy document. When the next terror attack Islamic jihadists happens, it’ll be interesting to find out how they describe it.
Cows have been exonerated of helping to cause global warming. No, really.
Rep. Bart Stupak’s reversal of his principles is having the proper effect; he’s decided not to seek re-election. Likely, he couldn’t get re-elected anyway, after betraying his constituents, but let this be a lesson about trusting "conservative" Democrats too much.
And finally, media scrutiny of church vs. state (click for a larger picture):
Oh, that liberal media.
That interesting turn of the phrase goes to Andrew Breibart as he documents how desperate the Left has become in trying to paint the Tea Partiers with the broad, and very overused, brush of racism charges. The latest example; as the Congressional Black Caucus paraded to the Capitol for the health care reform vote, they claim racial epithets were yelled at them. However, with as many cameras, smart phones and video recorders as there were on the scene, not a single second of proof has emerged. Click the link for the videos and other examples of this desperation.
Breibart says, regarding this political theater:
There is no reason in 21st century America on an issue that is not a black or white or a civil rights issue to have a bloc of black people walk slowly through a mostly white crowd to make a racial point. The walk in and of itself — with two of the participants holding their handheld cameras above their heads hoping to document “proof” — was an act of racism meant to create a contrast between the tea party crowd and themselves.
And it failed.
(Fake photo credit: Chris Jamison)
So the health care "reform" bill passed last night, complete with payoffs, abortion funding and fake projections of "savings" required to try to pass it via reconciliation. And in an entirely "unipartisan" manner. (Even the New Deal had bipartisan support.)
So what does this mean for American politics? Glad you asked.
Everything about this legislation — above and beyond the usual sausage-making that is the political process — is absolutely awful, regardless of its actual contents. And its actual contents, once we have it, no matter how awful it turns out to be, is now with us for good. (Barring a repeal, which is very hard to get the political will to do in Washington.) If it’s an abject failure, or even it if just keeps the status quo at the cost of billions every year to run in place, it will not go away. We’re stuck with this ball and chain.
And a parting "shot", if you will, from Michael Ramirez. (Click for a larger version.)
Word is the House is not going for the “Deem and Pass” option in spite of saying they would. My guess is that it didn’t pass the PR test.
At least we’ll get an honest vote out of this. Too bad the Democrats didn’t choose the honorable way first.
Can’t get a 60-vote majority, and reconciliation seems unobtainable? Just play make-believe.
After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate’s health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.
Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers "deem" the health-care bill to be passed.
The tactic — known as a "self-executing rule" or a "deem and pass" — has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.
"It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know," the speaker said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. "But I like it," she said, "because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill."
Why bother with a pesky Presidential signature, or an actual up-or-down vote, when keister-covering is so much more politically expedient? Let’s just pretend the bill passed.
Shouldn’t something as massive as this have broad bipartisan support? But not even the Democrats themselves, when they held a 60-vote majority, could get it past their own folks. This is just wrong.
