The Necropolitan Sentinel

Victor Davis Hanson on Obama’s leftist sea change:

We are in the year four of our lord, when darkness was made light, the seas gently receded, and the planet cooled. In the space of 24 hours in January 2009 the world was turned upside down: massive deficits were no longer “unpatriotic”; 5% (heck, even 9%) unemployment was no longer to be seen as a “jobless recovery”; $4 plus gasoline no longer would become “intolerable.” Filibusters suddenly became ossified obstructionism. Recess appointments were now quite legitimate; lecturing the media about the myth of objective fairness was salutary. Pay-for-play time with the president was consulting; attacking the “unelected” courts was progressive. Voter fraud was not thugs eyeing polling monitors with clubs, but officials asking voters to present a picture ID—and mentioning any of these inconsistencies or writing about the Trostkyzation of American life was either racism or Palinism.

Around March 2008, the Ministry of Truth had issued new edicts about campaign financing, big Wall Street money, and the supposedly pernicious role of contributions: all bad if Bush trumped Kerry, all now good if Obama trumped McCain. So when Obama became the first candidate in the history of the law to renounce public campaign financing in order to shake down $1 billion, there was silence. The Left never really worried about Big Money, but only if more Big Money went to conservatives than to themselves. (Consider the current shameless money grubbing of Jon Corzine to raise cash for Obama after Corzine’s looting of thousands of individuals’ lifetime investments, or the shrillness over Mitt Romney’s supposed mansion in La Jolla juxtaposed to the prior silence about the Kerry mansions, the multiple Gore residences, or “John’s room,” as in the huge and crass Edwards estate.) What was interesting about Hilary Rosen was not her stupid thoughts on Ann Romney, but her cursus honorum that led to hired-gun riches by parlaying political contacts into commerce.

Washington Post debunks myths about women voters created for this purpose by Washington Post. Takeaway: when women go to the powder room together, they are not likely to do so in order to vote.

Nice Deb on the DoJ’s contempt of Congress:

Kerry Picket at the Washington Times Water Cooler reported this, last Wednesday:

Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has yet to charge Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt of Congress for failing to supply Mr. Issa’s committee with thousands of pieces of documentation relating to the Justice Department’s gun walking operation known as “Fast and Furious.”

Rep. Issa told me on Tuesday night to expect movement on the contempt charge towards A.G. Holder very soon.

“We’re going through a process,” said Congressman Issa. “That process is going to take weeks but not months more.”

This comes after a year of threats made by Chairman Issa to hold officials of the Obama Justice Department in contempt for their obstruction of justice surrounding the Fast and Furious scandal, unless they started cooperating more fully.

Surber on Voter ID:

Democrats have gotten too clever for themselves in battling voter ID. Requiring people to show the same ID to vote that they must show to buy cigarettes or beer somehow disenfranchises them according to those great super-duper thinkers on the Left. It’s comical. And the British business wire service, Reuters, bought into the liberal line so much that it inadvertently makes Barack Obama seem like one big crook.

From Reuters: “The new laws – many of which include measures requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls — could carve into Obama’s potential support in Florida, Ohio and a few other politically divided states likely to be crucial in the November 6 election, analysts say. The analysts note that massive registration drives in 2008 helped put millions of people aged 18 to 29 on voting rolls, and that age group — which makes up roughly one-quarter of the U.S. electorate — helped propel Obama to victory, voting 2-to-1 for him. Rock the Vote, a nationwide organization that mobilizes young voters, said the new laws would make it more difficult for the group to educate people on how to sign up to vote.”

Might I suggest that if you are too ignorant to figure out how to sign up to vote, you really are not intelligent enough to vote? Getting a driver’s license is much more difficult.

Unsurprisingly, these three are all from the “scandals” section of Larwyn’s Linx at Doug Ross. Two of the three I had open tabs on, to direct your attention to them this morning. Though I get the feeling he seldom visits here, Wombat-Socho also does a bang-up job with the links round-up over at TOM.

If you haven’t been to BadBlue, lately, go over there and admire the facelift. I find that BadBlue replaces Drudge better than it does Insty, who seems better at listening. BTW, that’s not an invitation to bash Drudge.

Twitchy is out there doing good work, too. Certainly much lighter on its feet than Drudge, though I see more and more clearly that we were not a good fit. I do peek in on their Alexa stats once in awhile, and they sometimes surprise me. I would think that given the large numbers of Twitter weekend warriors, the site’s readership would jump over the weekend, but that only happens sometimes. I continue on good terms with Jimmie Bise and Sarah Desprat, but no longer in contact with the Malkins and never featured as a Twitter source for stories, which is too bad for me, I guess. I’m not sure what I’ve done to get the Big Ignore, and my mind-reading skills are very poor—which is one of the reasons, no doubt, that I’m a conservative.

On the other hand, I don’t really care about whether I go to BlogCon or not. Jerry found the tweets from the conference less than edifying, in the aggregate, and has some kind words for our former contributor and still-friend Jennifer Dailing Waite, whose family are still struggling to get rid of the Albatross . . . the house that they put on the market to make their move. Jennifer’s presently stranded in the Dark Night of the Blogging Soul, too. You may recall that the principal reason she left here was that she was offended by much of the invective against public employees during the still-ongoing Wisconsin ugliness, which she felt, probably with justification, was far too broad brush. To clarify, we are aware that there are good, dedicated, principled, hard-working public servants, and we’re not shocked or appalled to discover that Scott Walker has restored merit pay increases for many public employees, because . . . merit is something we feel should be rewarded. Axelrod says Obama is “apoplectic” about the GSA scandal, but Obama seems not very interested in this merit concept, and not very apoplectic over all those many billions in wasted ‘green’ stimulus money, or bundler Jon Corzine’s stealing a billion plus, or dead Mexicans.

To be plucked from obsurity and then gently returned there poses no psychological problems for me, but to lose friendships does. Regarding BlogCon, I don’t believe that most of the people whom I know online had much to learn from the sessions, but if I am mistaken and you were there and attended any that were terrific, I’m all ears. For my part, it was fun watching people have fun there. I like fun; always have.

Speaking of which, the Dottirgirl is flying into Chicago tonight to spend her spring break here, mostly with her brother Brendan, but also with me, so my contributions here may be light at times. To tell you the truth, though I’m certainly not considering quitting on this site, I’ve reached the conclusion that I need to be paying greater attention to some other aspects of my life, so I may have to spend less time at this blogging business. Blogging and social media aren’t always good for the soul, as many other people have concluded. Last night, I got to witness an ugly exchange between “Jim” “Treacher” and John Podhoretz on Twitter over Podhoretz’ treatment of l’affaire chien last night.

To tell a tale out of school, the first time I ever communicated at any length with Andrew Breitbart, whom I adore just this side of idolotry, like many other people, was when Facebook first made their chat feature available. I saw Breitbart, and messaged him, and we had a long conversation (it was the first he became aware of the feature) at one of those hours that he was so famous for keeping. I had been a long-time fan of “Mother May I Sleep with Treacher” and come to know the author online, and followed him when he started contributing at the Red Eye site, before it was taken over entirely by the “Arquette Sisters.” I urged Breitbart to hire him, to which Andrew asked me several times who he was, a question that I couldn’t answer. Being Breitbart, he wanted to hoover up as much information on other online personalities as I had, too. So, I was delighted for Treacher when he was hired by The Daily Caller, and visited when I happened to be at the NHS with my schizophrenic son, Aidan. We had a nice lunch, on The Daily Caller’s tab, and I got to visit with C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb on his citizens’ education bus, which he had parked out front. We stopped talking when Tucker Carlson boarded, because I could tell that Tucker wanted to talk to him, but our conversation revolved around the apparent contempt in which lawmakers and bureaucrats held the intelligence of regular citizens, a point on which we were well agreed.

As everyone knew at one time, though some have probably forgotten, Treacher was struck by an official vehicle in a crosswalk, and has been dealing with rehab and the legal ramifications ever since, and I’m sorry to say that that struggle is ongoing, and I feel for him. Still, I see evidence of what the Freudians call hypercathexis, or what we might denominate PTSD in today’s parlance. The dulcet flavor that used to underlie the astringent tannins of former Treacher are less and less in evidence, and the vintage strikes an ever more strident note. Part of this is, no doubt, what happens to people generally when they turn controversialists, but I find it distressing. Perhaps I misremember, but . . . I seem to recall a lot more good humor in the good humor of this good humorist, and a lot less picking of bones.

I may be suffering from a similar syndrome.

“Jim” has been scrupulous to note that this kerfuffle or controversy, or what have you, is not of his manufacture; that it was created by Obama himself or by Bill Ayers, depending on one’s beliefs regarding the authorship of Dreams from My Father; that, as Podhoretz points out, it was the Obama mouthpieces who brought the issue on themselves by harping on the Seamus on the roof incident. All true. I’ve got to say, though, that I read Podhoretz’ New York Post piece a couple of times, and could find nothing in it that I would consider even vaguely prejudicial to Treacher. Maybe I missed something, because I actively tried not to read the exchange.

Have I lost sight of the fact that a dog was the victim of all this, forty-some years ago? What has happened to me? I detest PowerPoint.

I’ve complained many times about critics who will take a matter like Jane Eyre and pass it through a Marxist grinder (or any other kind of ideological grinder) and pretend that the inedible mess that emerges is savory and delicious. I think it took a 5 hp Controversy grinder to create one out of that. But who am I to judge, and what gives me the authority?

I am on the Internet.

UPDATE: And, just like that, I am autobeshmucked.

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