WFB, RIP

Bill Buckley has died at 82.

He was very important figure not only to those who practice the conservative glass bead game, but to American political letters generally.

There's certainly much to criticize in one who was so prolific, but he was a giant.

Lord have mercy. Memory eternal.

Debate No. 20

I sat through the rematch last night. Nothing happened to turn the race around. Here's a middle-of-the-night riff on the thing, PC to the contrary be damned.

Obama is engaging, and his coolness beats Hillary's nerdy intensity by a mile. Lots of men who in theory would vote for a woman President, will never vote for her. Her public persona just grates on men. We all know the Hillary from high school or college. She might get better grades than we, but she's just so damn annoying. Who would date her just to get help on his term paper? Plenty of people would key her car.

Michael Medved, who went to Yale Law with Hillary, and doesn't agree with her politically, says she was kind and compassionate. It doesn't show on the campaign trail.

On substance, they're both off base on Russia. Yes, she's authoritarian, but that's not our business. Why we insist on antagonizing a no-longer-expansionist country that has 5,000 nukes is beyond me. I don't think Obama had a clue who Medvedev, the President-to-be, is, so he was smart to let Hillary mispronounce the name. Their answers about Russia and Kosovo show they are just as interventionist and hegemonist as "Chimphitler," but they buy UNICEF cards, which Bush won't do.

Then there's the Oprah bit. Women with sick children, people who are unemployed, yadda yadda. Somehow the Nanny State is going to rescue each and every one of them. This is unadulterated poppycock that won't withstand serious examination. Compassion won't trump analysis, although a show of it wins Democratic primaries, dominated by women and minorities, every time. A nation of whining victims? Disgusting.

As much as I think he's wrong about just about everything, I find Obama likeable. He'll actually concede a point, with charming condescension. Imagine, OTOH, a Hillary State of the Union message. I'd run screaming from the room.

YARN: Yet Again, Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader has always stuck in my craw. He has always seemed to be the quintessential Nanny Stater, who would impose his quirky asceticism on us all.

Now he's running for President yet again. Spare me the Harold Stassen of the left.

The Audacity of Vacuity

The cynical and hostile observer might note that the success of such a campaign thus far indicates some significant and widespread neurological damage in the voting population, but when all is said and done it is hard to fault a mass democratic election campaign for being largely vapid and bereft of substance. This is one of the reasons I tend to think so poorly of mass democracy, but since it is what we have at the moment there is a certain absurdity to the charge of insubstantiality, as if Mitt Romney rattling off 20 year-old talking points about the welfare state and family values represented some kind of substantive engagement with contemporary problems or John McCain repeating “we are winning” at every debate showed something other than the unimaginative status quo campaign that he is running.

--Daniel Larison

I've pounded on Obama for the contrast between the passion of his rhetoric and the small beer that is his substance. I think, though, that Daniel has a point. I'm probably better informed about things political than the average citizen, and my eyes glaze over when Barack and Hillary bicker about the details of their health care proposals.

The question of whether the federal government should in effect nationalize the health care system is fairly momentous, as is the difference between a single-payer plan and one that allows for competition between different private plans. The nature and extent of mandates might be an important question, but like practically everything about health care policy, it leaves me totally cold. (Take it away, Cole!)

Since we regularly elect doves who turn out to be hawks, and soi-disant conservatives who turn out to be spenders of our grandchildren's substance, the policy thing is a bit of a charade, anyway.

Mass democracy brings out the worst in candidates and people alike. But the fact that Obama is better at infusing his image-building with poetry may not be the best reason to reject him.

The fact that his supporters, or some of them, endow his persona with messianic hopes, is, natheless, a reason to fear. The kindgdom is not of this world, and to pretend that it is amounts to political idolatry. The best weapon against this sort of thing is mockery.

Kosovo

I've liked maps since I was a little kid, and the map-conscious part of me likes it when the political map changes. However, not all these changes are good. In particular, the creation of an "independent" Kosovo is not good news.

Not only is Kosovo the historic heartland of Serbia, but the country has no visible means of support, it is run by gangsters, and its Albanians have a nasty habit of burning historic churches and monasteries that even the Albanian Nazi legions left alone. Kosovo's independence is also another needless provocation of Russia.

Why are we messing in the affairs of people so inconsequential for our interests, so far from our shores, and whom we understand so little?

Some of it is post-Wilsonian nonsense about self-determination. Some of it is wanting to show we care about "genocide" directed at Muslims, as well as at Jews--even if there was no genocide in Kosovo. And some of it is a strange antipathy to Orthodox Christianity.

It's an adventure of which we should be ashamed, and one that will do us no good.

UPDATE: This is not to say that the Serbs are blameless in this affair or the other recent Balkan affrays. It is to say that granting independence to every ethic enclave whose denizens have been abused by the majority is a recipe for endless conflict. And who, pray tell, are we to decide these questions? And what good does it do us to mess with them?

Strange New Respect Dept.

I watched the CNN debate tonight, and hard as I have been on Sen. O, mostly for being inspirational but vacuous, I must confess that tonight he was as substantive as Hillary, and more Presidential.

He's a smart guy, possibly up to the job. Too bad the social-democratic nostrums to which his party is addicted leave me cold. And too bad his critique on foreign policy is limited to Iraq rather than extending to hegemonism and interventionism generally.

It's also too bad that Mrs. O. says such creepy things.

Still and all, it seems the race is over and Hillary is running for VP, a job for which I prefer Jim Webb.

pome

as the country clatters down the mineshaft railway to hell illuminated by the glittering invective of posttrostskyist psychotics and the noncrip adjusts his flourescent postglobal warming halo and the cuckolded wellesley wife natters incessantly the hypnotic wonkish warble pursued by armies of her livingdead betrayed friends while zionists wail that the mulatto messiah does not love their suburbs erected on bulldozed olive groves and their clusterbomb democracy enough and the exprisoner fails to point out there was no astroturf on his pickup even when he was younger and could cut the mustard heterosexual angels weep for the republic as the decider awards independence to the whiteslave and drug capital of the balkans and his troll puppetmaster juggles bunkerbusters to distract from the shredding of commercial paper and jihadi youthgangs lionize their offended prophet by burning bimmers on the streets of the little mermaid and what about the polar bears and the forklifted downer cattle and the worshipers of the real american idols are the streets still negro or are they aftricanamerican now let us diversely gambol down the mulatto streets at noon looking for the heavenly prozac ritalin methlab of freedom from politics the media big oil but not big pharma and there is noone to rescue the poor singed little mermaid ah fuggedabadit ill buyya a maltliquor and we can take a leak off the parapet onto the gamboling cartoon animals of our playedout imaginations

Forgive Me, But I Despise These People

The NY Times runs an article that observes, "Some parents wonder whether having children will mean the end of their high-design dream."

Some DINKS (double income, no kids) who invested heavily in furniture manage to procreate in their late 30s, and face a dilemma (as described by the Fishwrap)

Suddenly they were confronted with a question that had never before occurred to them: given the way baby gear and toys take over households, the uncivilized habits of toddlers and the dangers posed by sharp-edged contemporary furniture, could Ms. Brown and Mr. Friedman continue to live their high-design dream?

My wicked side questions whether people who worry about such matters should be allowed to live.

These people are scum. I pity their children. The reporter is an idiot, too.

Momentum?

The Young Prince of Stentorian Vacuity has now opened up a lead in the RealClearPolitics.com national polling averages, and more importantly, the Rasmussen tracking for the moment favors him in a big way over the Red Queen: by 12 percentage points!

Barack Hussein's website is cool; Hill's is Micro$oft boring and tacky.

Barack carries Wisconsin, though not by much. That leaves Ohio, Texas and later, Pennsylavania. The Ohio polls still favor the apparat-chick, but polls are to primaries as schedules are to airline arrival times.

The black super-delegates are flocking to Sen. Obama.

Let's hope the nicely cut suit isn't as empty as it seems to be, and be prepared to pity the woman who stayed married to the Hot Springs philanderer, only to have the Nation turn its lonely eyes to some upstart mulatto.

So sad.

Could I 'ave That Rabbit Chow With a Bit Less Jew In't, Then?

Western Lent having begun, the stores are stocking up with tooth-destroying rabbit gear.

Not to be outdone, Hamas TV has launched a new kids' character, Assud the Rabbit, successor to Farfour the Mouse. Assud not only loves his country and hates Jews and Zionists, but promises to eat the wily bastards:

Saraa Barhoum: "Of course, Assud. We will liberate Al-Aqsa from the filth of those Zionists."

"I, Assud, Will Get Rid of the Jews, Allah Willing, and I Will Eat Them Up"

Saraa Barhoum [to girl in the audience]: "Is there anything you want to share with us?"

Girl: "Arnoub ['Rabbit']?"

Saraa Barhoum "His name is Assud ['Lion']."

Girl: "How come you are called Assud, even though you look like a rabbit?"

Assud: "Because a rabbit is not good. He's a coward. But I, Assud, will get rid of the Jews, Allah willing, and I will eat them up, Allah willing, right?

This new carnivorousness raises many questions:

• Do Jews, like rattlesnakes, taste like chicken?
• Is Assud related to the pro-apartheid rabbit that attacked Jimmy Carter?
• What if your rabbit won't eat people? Is he Brunswick stew?
• Is the flesh of a rabbit fed on pork-eating Jews halal?
• When the lion lays down with the lamb, will they be munching on clover, or Jew?
  

So many questions, so little time.

Say what? You're in a HURRY, white boy?

This is Maggie Williams, Hillary's new campaign manager.

I won't say hee face is pure evil, but she is the clerk at the Department of Motor Vehicles, who told you after an hour's wait, that you were on the wrong line and it was time for her break.

Supposedly she once bit a Secret Service agent. Entirely plausible.

They Bomb Tokyo, We Bomb Washington

Considering Sen. Obama's sweep this weekend of Lousiana, Washington, Nebraska, Maine and the Virgin Islands, I am reminded of a World War II cartoon in the New Yorker. Two Japanese men overlook the ruins of Tokyo, and one says to the other something like, "Well, that's war. They bomb Tokyo, we bomb Washington."

That's the sense I get from the Hilary camp's reaction to these Obama victories in a rather diverse collection of states. They knew they would lose and have taken it into account. The problem is, Obama has a lead in number of delegates and number of states, a lead that will grow when the vote from Maryland, DC and Virigina comes in this week.

Hillary's not a quitter, and will soldier on, but the chances of her winning keep dropping. Obama's just a lucky guy.

The unspoken reluctance of many to vote for a woman President is also a factor. We have various ready-made styles of leadership for men, but not for wormen. McCain's the old soldier, putting on his armor for one more battle. Huckabee's the democratic guy next door, man of the people, and so on. Each woman has to reinvent her own leaership style, which will inevitably rile some people, including women. So many women don't want to work for a woman boss.

I don't know whether there's a "Bradley effect" meaning that a certain number of voters who will tell pollsters that they intend to vote for a black candidate, but in the privacy of the voting booth, can't bring themselves to do so. A similar effect may also exist for a woman candidate, at least for maximum leader.

As Democrats realize that Obama will be more effective against Sen. McCain, the Obama bandwagon may begin to accelerate.