John Hinderaker: Democrats would like to commit genocide

John Hinderaker at Power Line: "How many Democrats are National Socialists at heart? Quite a few, I suspect, and every now and then the Democrats’ totalitarian urges break through to the surface. Thus, we have the Governor of North Carolina, Bev Perdue, suggesting that we “ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years.” The press assures us that she was just kidding. I would modestly submit that suspending elections is not something an elected executive should kid about."

Sure. Because one Democratic governor said something unwise—granted—off-the-cuff, I think that merits painting the American left as a bunch of genocidal tyrants in waiting. We'll leave alone, for the moment, Hinderaker's revisionist take that Nazism was a left-wing phenomenon. (The brown shirts beating up Communists was apparently left-wing intramural sport. Right.) The truth is you can't summon up Nazism without summoning up 6 million slaughtered Jews. Ever. Hinderaker surely knows that. Which makes his casual Nazi analogy cynical and despicable. 

Before Solyndra before they were against it

Solyndra isn’t the best poster child for what’s wrong with President Obama - The Washington Post: "What McConnell neglected to mention is that Solyndra was cleared to participate in this loan-guarantee program by President George W. Bush’s administration. He also did not mention that the legislation creating the loan-guarantee program, approved by the Republican-controlled Congress in 2005, received yes votes from — wait for it — DeMint, Hatch and McConnell.

This doesn’t mean that Bush is to blame for Solyndra or that the Obama administration should be absolved. Obama, whose administration gave the company the loan guarantee, deserves the black eye that Republicans have given him over the half a billion dollars squandered on the company. But the Republican paternity of the program that birthed Solyndra suggests some skepticism is in order when many of those same Republicans use Solyndra as an example of all that is wrong with Obama’s governance."

'via Blog this'

Vote Michael Untermeyer for Philadelphia City Council. Because otherwise, black dudes will try to have sex with white women.

I dunno. Is there another message I'm supposed to take from this?

 (Hat tip: Hickey)

The next big discrimination barrier to fall in the armed forces: Letting women fight

Under the law, American women are not allowed to serve in combat roles in the military. In practice, of course, wartime necessity has meant something different. Officially, though, the discrimination still exists—and with good reason, defenders say: Women tend to be smaller and weaker, and changing combat-ready standards to include them would diminish the readiness and roughness of our armed forces.

My response has always been: Don't change the physical standards. Just change the discrimination. And now I see that's what is happening in Australia:

In a landmark move for the Australian military, women will be allowed to risk their lives alongside male soldiers and serve on the frontline. In a move described as "a significant and major cultural change" the Australian army will remove all gender barriers over the next five years and women will be able to take up roles that previously were considered too dangerous.

Women who met the same stringent physical and psychological criteria required of men would be able to work in the most dangerous of roles after the Australian cabinet approved the measure, said the defence minister, Stephen Smith.

"This is simply about putting into the frontline those people who are best-placed to do the job, irrespective of your sex," he said. "In the future your role in the Defence Force will be determined on your ability, not on the basis of your sex," said Smith.

Conservatives have other objections, of course—the co-mingling of female and male soldiers, the ability of Americans to deal with seeing women soldiers come home in body bags. In truth we've been dealing with both situations for years. And yes, there have been some horrific bumps along the way. But there's no reason the country should deprive itself of the service of the people best prepared and most willing to serve it—no matter their gender.

Still glad that Arlene Ackerman is gone

Annette John-Hall in today's Inky suggests deposed school superintendent Arlene Ackerman was somehow redeemed by a new report that shows she was pressured—Philly-style!—into making a company favored by Sen. Dwight Evans the new charter operator of Martin Luther King Junior High here in Philadelphia.  Ackerman, it seems, was the victim of dirty dealings.

But Ackerman can be the victim in the MLK story and Philadelphia can be better off without her. The bill of particulars against Ackerman isn't limited to the MLK debacle. There's also....

• Getting caught by surprise by a $600 million budget deficit. 

• Her slowness in responding to attacks on Asian students at South High, waiting until the situation boiled over into a very public crisis.

• Her "buck doesn't stop with me" attitude in response to the crisis of violence in Philadelphia schools overall. 

Even the trend of higher district test scores—which began before she came to Philadelphia—looks to be tainted.

So. The head of Philadelphia schools couldn't manage the budget. She couldn't keep the schools safe. And there's real reason to believe that she wasn't improving the education in a district renowned for its awfulness. Plus, she and her PR team were brittle and defensive. It was time for her to go.

Max Boot still sounds like Paul Krugman

I noted recently that conservative hawk Max Boot was starting to sound like Paul Krugman. Today, he again makes the economic case for leaving the military budget untouched:

If the Pentagon is forced to slash a trillion dollars during the next decade—which would amount to an 18 percent reduction from the Obama budget projections released earlier this year—the Committee staff projects the total size of the Army and Marine Corps could fall from 771,400 personnel today to just 571,000, a 25 percent reduction that would make it impossible to respond to a range of different contingencies around the world. Some 200,000 soldiers and Marines who signed up to serve their country will be fired—and many of them will be hard put to find work at a time when the national unemployment rate is over 9 percent and the unemployment rate for young Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is believed to be over 20 percent. (For wounded veterans the rate is said to be over 40 percent.) We would not only be breaking faith with these heroes but also jeopardizing our security—and that of our allies—in the process.

Again, that's the Krugman argument against recession austerity—that reduced budgets kicks thousands and thousands of public employees off the payroll into an unwelcoming job market. Soldiers, sailors, and marines are to be exempt from this process because they provide us security. Police and firefighters, apparently, don't.

But wait. There's also our security. What valuable security interests do we have that require 771,400 soldiers and Marines that 571,000 won't? Boot doesn't answer that question—there's always danger out there, nebulous though it may be. Instead, he relies ever-more-heavily on the economics argument, even noting that cutting a number of weapons programs will result in private-sector layoffs:

Cutting all these programs will result in even more job losses—the report projects at least 25 percent of the civilian defense workforce will have to be furloughed, resulting in the elimination of 200,000 jobs.

Again: The argument applies just as well to non-defense sectors of government spending.

Do we owe our veterans something more than unfettered capitalism? Maybe. Do we need to have a rough-and-ready defense force ready to protect our country? Sure. But the government is tightening its belt. We have to live within our means—and maybe that means giving up the ability to invade countries on the other side of the planet.  But if the primary argument against defense cuts is that it will harm the economy, and the unemployment rate, then that argument applies to the rest of government as well. Our military is special—but it's not that special.

Ben Shapiro, Hollywood elitism, and America's love of dick jokes

Hey! Look! Ben Shapiro is griping again about how Hollywood is out of touch with mainstream American values, with shows that make light of sex and use the word "vagina." Truth be told, I don't have much use for the new fall season shows he criticizes at National Review, but then he reaches this astounding conclusion.

Some of these shows may be good. Who knows?

I enjoy how the quality of shows is irrelevant to his critique of them. I enjoy how he implicitly admits that he hasn't seen the shows he's criticizing.  But that's not the juicy part.

 Maybe Hollywood will stumble onto something. But note a pattern: the network that continues to appeal to most Americans — and the network that doesn’t appear on this list — remains CBS. That’s because they aim at older audiences, and so have less need to be “edgy.” It’s also why you won’t see them winning too many Emmys in the near future.

Well sure. CBS is the most-popular network—and its most popular sitcom, Two and a Half Men, has more dick jokes per minute than a Milton Berle roast. (Note: I am not 70 years old.) Same for its other hit, The Big Bang Theory.

Now: I suspect that dick jokes actually do reflect mainstream American values—which, as Shapiro notes, is why CBS is so popular. But it really doesn't offer much support for his analysis that real Americans want some good old-fashioned family values served up during primetime. It's almost as though Shapiro's got a theme he intends to keep hammering, no matter what the evidence actually shows.