Contrary To The 2008 Campaign? I Think Not

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by Smitty

Via Power Line, Jay Cost at The Weekly Standard perceives a tension, which I may help him resolve, emphasis mine:

This is why Obama does not care if his attacks are unfair, untrue, unoriginal, unseemly, or whatever. He has only one goal: The state of the union stinks right now, and I must keep that stench off me.
So were you outraged by Obama’s smarmy remarks about the Supreme Court? Too bad, he does not care. He is not after your vote. He is after the vote of the fellow in the middle of the electorate, who may never have even heard of Marbury v. Madison, but certainly knows about $4 gas. If Obama can get that guy to direct his anger at somebody else for the next seven months, then he wins reelection. This week the fall guy was the Supreme Court. Next week it will be John Boehner or Big Oil or whomever. Really, it does not matter so long as it is not the president.
This runs contrary to the very premise of the Obama candidacy from 2008. Remember, he had little experience in national affairs, but that was supposed to be a great thing because Washington, D.C. had not corrupted him with its brand of divide-and-conquer gamesmanship.

Contrary, sir? I think not. The apparent tension is resolved by what appears to be a timeless bit of Ruling Class wisdom: people are sheep.

The entire Progressive Project is rooted in this assertion. #OccupyResoluteDesk is just the culmination of a century-long bladder load down the back, while claiming precipitation:

The survey result that one in four Americans strongly approve of this golden shower of malarky underscores the point: large numbers of people exhibit sheepish behavior, at least for a time.

That the Ryan budget, which isn’t vigorous enough in reforming the problem, in my opinion, is a case in point: a rational entry into what is far too emotional a discussion.

The difference between the Left and Right is that the Left grasps the fundamentally emotional nature of the national discussion. It is irrelevant, for example, that a rational view of the Trayvon Martin tragedy would encourage caution and a thorough investigation before reaching a conclusion. Shag that. There is tremendous power to be gained from playing the raaaaace card early. Fret not that those pesky facts and meddling bloggers will overturn the narrative; the emotional hit is the important part.

Or so the Left thinks. The sheep aren’t capable of the intellectual reflection necessary to see through this demagoguery. And so you have the spectacle of BHO delivering a speech that could have rolled smoothly off of the lips of Chavez or Castro, if either of those thugs were in the habit of permitting the kind of political dialogue enjoyed in this country.

I don’t think Barack Obama, the flock-head of the Left, is capable of evolving his weltanshauung to encompass the idea that the American people are rational. And so he’s going to ride the sheeply theory into his political grave.

Update: Power Line brings Alexis:

A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.

Update II: linked at BPI Campus, a Lefty blog, in what amounts to a cute format.

They Told Me If I Voted For McCain, ‘White Folks’ Would ‘Keep’ Charter Schools For Themselves!

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by Smitty

“If charter schools were so good, why didn’t the white folks keep them for themselves?”

This isn’t just wrong; it’s discouraging. When you look at the photo album of Washington DC charter schools, they may not fit the Chicago narrative. Nor, in fact, does the funding news.

But its not the reality of charter schools as both (a) racially agnostic and (b) genuinely helpful that is the bummer.

Nor is it the media and Raaaaacism Industrial Complex (RIC) insistence that only people of European extraction, plus certain useful exceptions like George Zimmerman, are  the only racists. That they’re conservatives who want to poison children. This while other actors like the speaker in Chicago, Sharpton, or Jesse Jackson are fighting for ‘justice’ when they play their games.

Nor am I given to any special guilt at the implication that I, as a member of the ‘white folks’ (when the inevitable binning has to occur) have in any way dealt with academics whatsoever. I have not so much as thought negative thoughts on the topic.

What I have done is serve my country in the military, which is shockingly, shockingly! (to any RIC rollers) integrated, egalitarian, and meritocratic, not only toward other service members, but toward the whole country. That is, I did not just don a uniform out of enjoyment of tooling around in a uniform, going to all kinds of exotic places I never would otherwise. No, I actually considered it an honor and privilege to support the ideals inherent in our Constitution for all Americans of all genetic backgrounds, religious persuasions, sexual orientations, education levels, medical conditions, economic profile, and, indeed, every single categorical line along which the Left is attempting to divide and conquer the country.

And for that reason, lady in Chicago whom I do not know, but I hope someone gets you copy of this post: I forgive you. It’s possible some people in Hyde Park or wherever actually measure down to the implication of your statement. However, know that, while “they’s some men you just cain’t reach”, the more accurate statement is that the bulk of people in this country just aren’t RIC members. I pray that enlightenment finds you, and you find yourself welcome in the egalitarian America which most of us enjoy, but by your very words, your eyes are too closed to see.

Update: linked by Daily Pundit. Thanks!

Update II: linked by Sentry Journal.

Use ‘Derbyshire’ as a Verb

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It’s an interesting word-game concept, eh?

For years, I’ve advocated the overthrow of the decadent Rich Lowry regime at National Review, hoping that Jonah Goldberg might lead the coup. So my main interest in this remarkable controversy is whether or not it serves to undermine Lowryism.

What you might not notice is that this is a skirmish on the fringes of the Trayvon Martin controversy, which has turned into a stalemate, so that now frustrated people are in scalp-taking mode. The NBC producer got taken out by conservatives and now, for some strange reason, NR‘s John Derbyshire just volunteers himself as a target for the Left?

The smart thing to do would be to stay away from this, but Dave Weigel wandered over and made some remarks, and now the Left is going after Weigel: He’s not sufficiently outraged for their tastes.

The Left is intolerant, opportunistic and unprincipled. While it is impossible to imagine any scenario in which Lowry won’t be forced to fire Derbyshire now, I’m actually more fascinated by the Left’s attempt to bully Weigel for failing to denounce Derbyshire in strong enough terms.

This is a sort of Maoist tactic, the demand for conformity and solidarity. The Left is enraged by the fact that Weigel is an ideological wild card, yet employed by a “mainstream” news operation. So now they’re trying to indict him as “soft on racism,” and I suppose it wouldn’t help Dave any for me to say how much I’ve always liked him, huh?

Probably not. Anyway, the other day, a conservative friend of mine pointed out that, given Jen Rubin’s annoying pro-Romney bias, maybe some people are wishing they’d never gotten Weigel fired from the Post.

And now the Left’s trying to get Weigel fired from Slate?

Be careful what you wish for, lefties. It could be worse. Trust me.

Also, here’s the best headline yet in the Trayvon Martin controversy:

Armed Neo-Nazis Now Patrolling Sanford, Say They
Are “Prepared” For Post-Trayvon Martin Violence

Remember what I said about the “riot ideology“? Some people will be disappointed if the Trayvon Martin controversy doesn’t provoke a riot.

UPDATE (Smitty): linked at The Conservatory.

UPDATE II: Some interesting comments below, including this:

99% of the homeowners who are appalled by that article bought their house in the “whitest” school district they could afford.

UPDATE III: Also, Dan Riehl describes his own experience, and this is an important point: Everybody forms their own opinions based on their own experiences, and it is difficult to argue with people’s experience. That is to say, when discussing the military, lifelong civilians must defer to the combat veteran.

So when Dan says, “Here is an experience I went through, which exemplifies a general tendency,” your argument that no such tendency exists must be based on first-hand experience to the contrary. But if you’ve never been in a schoolyard fight — the subject of Dan’s anecdote — your personal experience is inapplicable as evidence.

One problem I’ve discovered in trying to communicate with intellectuals is that so many of them are wimps from sheltered backgrounds whose mamas wouldn’t let them play football — apple-polishing goodie-two-shoes who never strayed outside the confines of their safe, wholesome, upwardly-mobile affluent cocoon.

Dan’s from New Jersey and smokes Marlboro Reds. Deal with it.

Moe Tkacik Nukes the Bridge

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In 2008, Moe Tkacik was hailed as a ‘literary it girl.’

“I know of one wretched hack who lists ‘Thought Leader’ as his occupation on his Twitter profile; he recently scored a fellowship with the American Enterprise Institute.”
— Moe Tkacik, The Baffler No. 19

Sometimes there is nothing so wonderfully educational as seeing someone else react badly to a problem you have yourself encountered and, perhaps, handled in less than an exemplary manner.

Being both ambitious and a journalist is generally a formula for bitter disappointment. No matter how talented and hard-working you may be, your ambitions will almost always exceed your achievements. The root problem, of course, is that many talented people share similar ambitions, and there are only so many hours in a day in which you can attempt to out-work them. Furthermore, there are factors other than talent and hard work involved in the processes by which career opportunities are allotted, and the people in charge of these processes are not obligated to give a damn whether their choices are “fair” — the scare-quotes necessitated by the impossibility of defining fairness.

OK, so . . .

If Maureen “Moe” Tkacik is a writer whose name rings a bell, that may be because in December 2010 she rather famously got fired (or resigned) from the Washington City Paper after she made the unilateral decision to publish the names of the two Swedish women who had accused Wikileaks founder Julian Assange of rape.

That made Moe the object of feminist wrath, which called her to the attention of Donald Douglas at American Power, which in turn led me to enter the battle in Moe Tkacik’s defense: Whenever any woman is under attack by feminists, I figure she must be a good woman.

Once that controversy subsided, I lost track of Moe’s doings, until someone called to my attention this article she had published in The Baffler, a left-wing journal that publishes people like Thomas Frank, Matt Taibbi and Barbara Ehrenreich.

Moe’s article is a 5,400-word laser-guided weapon of journalistic destruction targeted at The Atlantic, most especially the magazine’s publisher, David Bradley. It includes some fascinating history, as well as a vicious jab at David Weigel as a “pimply blogger.”

What Moe’s article does not contain, however, is a disclaimer.

According to at least one source close to The Atlantic, Moe Tkacik once applied for a job at the magazine — and didn’t get it.

So while it is said that some people burn their career bridges behind them, Moe evidently decided to nuke that particular bridge.

Was this a wise decision? I dunno. Applying crude math to a 2008 item that describes her as having been an undergraduate at Penn in the late 1990s, Moe is in her mid-30s and has paid her dues, writing for the Wall Street Journal and other publications before joining the Nick Denton Online Sweatshop Content Factory (i.e., Gawker Media) about five years ago. She is therefore at that awkward stage of her career where she is no longer a Promising Young Talent, but rather an Experienced Journalist Who Hasn’t Written a Bestselling Book Yet.

Thank God I spent a decade in the newspaper business before I had access to this “Internet” thing, or I might have gotten messed up on that same kind of hyper-ambition trip. I didn’t make it to the Big Leagues until 1997, at which time I was a 38-year-old married father of three and was quite frankly grateful merely to be in the Big Leagues. While my ambitions were lofty — perhaps even to become a “public intellectual” at some point — I never harbored any illusion that my upward ascent would be swift or easy. Having worked hard to get as far as I had, I knew I’d have to work even harder to get any farther.

My perspective on Moe’s nuke-the-bridge career tactic is therefore prejudiced by the fact that, when I was her age, I was making about $20,000 a year as an assistant editor at the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune.

Moe’s evident decision to cast her lot with the anti-capitalist crowd — I mean, c’mon, Barbara Ehrenreich? — might bring her opportunities she would not have otherwise had, without being what you’d call a really good career move. At some level, I can relate to Moe’s plight: She has recognized that there are people who play the role of Status Arbiters, whose favor must be curried if one wishes to advance within whatever sphere of influence where the Arbiters wield influence.

Moe describes them as “Omniscient Gentlemen” and, if what my source says is correct, her resentment of them is quite personal.

Well, OK, fine. But it’s a free country, and there’s a whole world out there where David Bradley has no real influence. And in offering that advice to Moe Tkacik, I realize I’m talking to myself, eh?

Anyway, Moe’s article is worth reading, if only because of what she tells us about the people who hold the hoops through which ambitious journalists are expected to jump. Ambition is a cruel master.

BHO Bummed You Didn’t Get The Janice Joplin/Starland Vocal Band References

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by Smitty

#OccupyResoluteDesk is a man of obscure references, that’s for sure. So many people, for example, have misconstrued his famous 2008 remarks:

“If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them,” Obama said, responding to a question about his cap-and-trade plan. He later added, “Under my plan. . .electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

Nobody is telling you that you can’t build a coal-fired plant, any more than they are telling you not to hang out with Bobby McGee. Bankruptcy is synonymous with ‘nothing left to lose’, which is precisely the kind of liberty that #OccupyResoluteDesk wants you to enjoy.And ‘prices will necessarily skyrocket’? Who alive, or who’s seen Anchorman, fails to recall ‘skyrockets in flight / afternoon delight’?
It really is just a crying shame that more people are missing BHO’s classic rock references, and getting all hung up on these pesky economic/employment/foreign policy/electoral fraud/budget deficit/national debt/war on religion/critical race theory/crypto-marxist/total non-command of the Constitution/crony capitalism/2nd Amendment crushing/politicized unemployment statistics issues.
How is a poor President to help us win the hope and change the future?

via Instapundit

Higher Ed: A Bubble About To Burst

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special guest post by Meika Jensen

[I was approached via email by the author with a request to post on the higher education bubble. Give her constructive feedback, you scalawags.
—Smitty]

In economic terms, a pricing bubble occurs whenever a commodity is traded in high volumes for prices that are far greater than the products actual worth. The inherent problem with type of market is that by the very nature of a bubble, eventually it has to burst. We’ve heard a lot about the US Housing Bubble, the China Stock and Property Bubble, and of course the Dot-com Bubble of the late 90s and early 00s. In each case, a period of euphoric buying and selling gave way to a sobering reality that purchases were worth far less than most consumers had been lead to believe. Recent chatter among economists and pundits is suggesting that the next economic bubble, a Higher Education Bubble, has already been forming for some time, and may soon burst.

Since the global economic collapse in 2008, more people have been delaying retirement. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 2008 to 2009, the number of people over 65 years looking for work increased a staggering 46%. From 2000-2009, the number of students enrolled in college increased 5.8%. An ever-increasing numbers of college graduates flooding the workforce where no one is retiring.

Meanwhile, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, from the 1999-2000 school year to 2009-2010, prices for undergraduate tuition, room, and board at public institutions rose 37%, and 25% at private institutions, adjusted for inflation. What does this all mean? Well, if the value of a college degree is determined by how much it positively affects one’s job prospects, then a college Bachelor’s Degree or Master’s Degree is becoming less valuable every year.  Simply put, the product (college) is becoming more expensive while its rewards are diminishing. A classic economic bubble scenario.

On paper, it appears a Higher Education Bubble is imminent. However, there are some experts who refuse to strap on their tinfoil hats just yet. They suggest that there are intrinsic differences between the value of Higher Education and the value of, say, a house or an internet domain name that will protect the institution from the traditional bubble-burst cycle.

According to Sandy Baum, senior fellow at the George Washington University School of Education, “When people lost their jobs or the economy turns shaky, a lot of folks return to school to learn new skills or bolster their resumes”. Unlike an individual who purchases a house that is inflated in value and has to deal with the repercussions after a real-estate bubble bursts, Baum suggests that the skills learned at university will still put an individual in a much better position than one without a degree. Even completing just part of a masters degree program may actually help. A recent Pew Research Analysis supports this view, showing that a worker with a bachelor’s degree still makes over $650,000 more than a high school graduate over their lifetime.

With markets becoming ever more globalized, competition is greater than ever. For the time being, it is difficult to argue with the lifetime earning advantages of a college degree. Current statistics, coupled with a culturally embedded belief in the importance of higher education create an environment where avoidance of a potential Higher Education Bubble burst seems nearly impossible. What an individual can do is make the most of their education. Take out as few loans as possible. Learn valuable and marketable skills, build an invulnerable resume and hope for the best. Even still, though, it might be wise to prepare for the worst.

Update: thank you, Instapundit!

When the Blogosphere Gets Weird …

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. . . the weird get blogging, and the past few days have kept me tied up in all kinds of “deep” stuff that prevented me from keeping up with the flow of events on the blogosphere. First there was that weirdness about the Planned Parenthood bombing in Wisconsin and the MSNBC “Republican War on Women” meme. Then I spent yesterday immersing the entirety of my cerebral cortex in campaign-finance reports and the details of the Florida primary campaign in order to locate the precise moment when Newt Gingrich’s campaign became an irretrievable disaster.

So I’m trying to get back in the flow now, which isn’t helped when Bill Quick — The Guy Who Named the Blogosphere — whacks me for my post about Gingrich. Look, Bill: This stuff is important, OK?

The big media are going to tell their own version of the 2012 campaign, shaped by their various prejudices in favor of the Conventional Wisdom, and so there is real value in publicly re-examining the facts of the campaign, thus to provide at least the raw materials for crafting a counter-narrative. It might be nice if there were a think tank, a philanthropic foundation or a book publisher offering to cut me a fat check, so I could afford to hire an assistant do all the research — e.g., what’s the daily charter rate for a 16-seat Gulfstream IV? — but as it is, there’s just me and I’m actually kind of enjoying it.

Remember my wild ride to McCarran International Airport with the Best Cab Driver in Vegas? I’d forgotten all about that until I started digging back through the archives. If the GOP primary campaign is now effectively over (an assertion that Rick Santorum certainly does not accept), then the question of How We Got Here becomes a matter of historical interest, because those who don’t know history are doomed.

Then again, maybe we’re all doomed.

Maybe history is now repeating itself for the very last time. But the ancient Mayans could not be reached for comment.

At any rate, Bill Quick’s contempt for Rick Santorum isn’t what this story is about, except insofar as it serves as an example of how the perception of candidates affects the reality of campaigns. If you’ll check page 404 of Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, you’ll find Hunter S. Thompson talking about how “perception” was the key word to understanding what went wrong with George McGovern’s campaign.

Of course, looking back over the distance of four decades, it is possible to perceive that McGovern was doomed beyond all hope of redemption from Day One, that Nixon’s Campaign to Re-Elect the President was destined to crush whoever got the Democratic Party nomination that year, and that any perception to the contrary was never more than a mirage.

Let’s not ponder whether that shoe is now on the other foot, eh?

Leaving aside such premonitions, I remain fascinated by the gap between perception and reality in politics, and what happened to the Gingrich campaign is a textbook example: On that Monday before the Florida primary, Newt was still the national front-runner, barely a week had passed since he’d beaten Mitt Romney in South Carolina and — if all you knew was what you saw on Fox News — it was going to be Newt-vs.-Mitt all the way to the end.

But there was something drastically wrong with that perception. I sensed the disconnect, but couldn’t quite identify or adequately describe what it was that bugged me. It wasn’t until I took the time to start going through the details of the FEC reports (which of course weren’t available at the time) that I located the relevant facts, demonstrating that while Newt had already passed his fundraising peak on Jan. 22, his campaign was still spending as if those days of six-figure contributions would stretch forward infinitely.

This was, I say, a Neutral Objective Fact — but a fact that was not known at the time, and its shrewd concealment permitted the Gingrich campaign (which was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy throughout February) to maintain an illusion of viability for several more weeks. The revelation of how such a perception-reality gap developed may not disturb Bill Quick, given his animus toward Santorum’s social conservatism. Yet it might disturb those conservatives whose idea was to find the strongest “Not Romney” candidate in order to prevent the GOP Establishment from once again imposing a non-conservative nominee on the unwilling grassroots.

Surely there must have been many millions of Republican voters, and thousands of campaign contributors, whose primary motive in backing Newt was their belief that he was the Only Candidate Who Could Stop Romney. By the end of January, however, that belief was already being falsified by the Gingrich campaign’s overspending, tactical errors, and strategic miscalculations. Yet they were able to keep up the pretense of viability all through February and on into March.

Maybe that doesn’t bother you any more than it bothers Bill Quick, but don’t you think it’s an important reality that deserves to be understood? Just look at today’s headlines:

President Obama raises nearly
$1.5 million in 3 hours
— The Hill

Effort would change Texas primary
to winner take all, benefit Santorum
— Austin American-Statesman

Rob Portman tops veepstakes
— Politico

What is the reality-perception gap today? What unknown facts contradict our superficial perception of political events, a perception based on news coverage that can never include all the facts? How much different would our perception be, if we were privy to all the relevant facts, rather than just those facts we glean from media accounts that are always incomplete, even when they are not actually biased?

Maybe that’s too “meta.” Never mind. I try not to take this stuff too personally. Go hit Bill Quick’s tip jar, just to let him know it’s OK.

BELLA SANTORUM HOSPITALIZED

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Rick Santorum’s campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley just issued this terse statement: “Rick and his wife Karen have taken their daughter Bella to the hospital. The family requests prayers and privacy as Bella works her way to recovery.” I’ll try to update if more deails become available.