The first one is The National Review. Not writing about them to encourage anyone to give to them, but more to ask a question: How is it there is a high profile and very well established (founded by Buckley after all) right wing publication that actually needs to beg for donations from ordinary readers? No doubt their likely pitiful subscriber base and meagre online advertising doesn't cover their expenses, but there's just no way that there isn't a rich GOP daddy Koch/Murdoch/Scaife/Coors/Devos/Hedgefund rentsucker/etc willing to fund them as a loss leader for more wars and tax cuts. So why the begging? Do America's owners just enjoy making middle class conservatives pay for a propaganda outlet to advocate for policies which actually hurt the middle class? Is it just a good way to keep the wingnut readership emotionally invested? No way Jonah, Lopez et al like doing the begging. What's the point?
Atrios is the second one, and worth giving if you can spare it. When I first started reading blogs, I really didn't get the fuss about Atrios, those odd short posts and a lingo you need to learn, but over time his ability to sift out reams of material and find items worth more attention becomes impressive. He's also pretty good at explaining economics in very short spaces. Finally, he's an under-credited wit in coining or popularizing humourous terms. I spent about 20 minutes and came up with (in no particular order):
What a surprise: Federal employees favor Obama, according to the always-interesting "Federal Diary" in the Washington Post. Is there a better reason to vote against the guy?
[...]
I rather like Derb's suggestion that we disenfranchise the tax-eaters:
Take away their vote. If you let public employees vote, what do you think they are going to vote for? For more public spending, more government jobs, higher government wages. Can you vote yourself a pay raise? No, and neither can I. Bill Bureaucrat and Pam Paperpusher can, though, and they do. Bill and Pam have no problem at all with ever-swelling public budgets, with ever-expanding public services, with the creeping socialism that is slowly throttling our liberties out of existence.
There we have it. Conservatives are quite literally reduced to arguing that the franchise should only extend to people likely to vote the right way.
As part of conservativism's campaign to avoid any blame for this mess falling on its vaunted pillars of deregulation, naked greed and bubblenomics, they have gone back to some golden oldies and are trying to blame uppity minorities for creating the mortgage crisis with all their crazy shiftless dreams of living in a house they own. This week, the National Review published an editorial on this, and another item from Mark Krikorian. Today we have Glenn noting that NR is blaming minorities for WaMu's failure. Paul previously attacked NR in a lengthy but righteous quick hit but this needs more light.
I'd just like to quote the National Review from an editorial published 1957 and remind them to think twice before opening their filthy racist sewer mouths again:
The Central question that emerges--and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal is whether the White community in the South is entitle to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes--the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race...
National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to afirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.
National Review, Editorial, August 24, 1957 - as quoted in p103 of Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman
I was going to bold the worst parts of the second paragraph, but it's all despicable. And with the possible exception of overt statements of racism, none of this has changed. NR still believes the enlightened minority should prevail over the "atavistic" majority, and violence is an acceptable solution to make that happen.
"Objectively racist: That which has a racist impact, effect or result, regardless of conscious intent, or even awareness.
"Combination Shot: A shot where the cue ball first contacts a ball other than the ball to be pocketed.
One of the right's favorite racist moves developed over the past 20-30 years is combinaiton shot using Martin Luther King, Jr. After demonizing King throughout his life, and long afterwards (in the case of John McCain, on into the mid-1980s), many on the right realized it was time for a strategic repositioning. Instead of demonizing King, they would try to steal him. In doing so, one of the chief objectives was to use him against other blacks-both against the black radicals of his own time, and against contemporary black activists, politicians and anyone, really who got in their way.
At the same time that the present-day upstart is put down, King is simultaneous repositioned ever farther away from where he historically was, as well as from where his ideological descendents are today. This is the essence of the combination shot: the immediate target is "pocketed" and King re-positioned by an initial contact on the way to hitting the immediate object of attack.
There was nothing new in this, of course, especially in the more generic sense of simply using one black figure against another. Using one slave or prisoner against another is one of the oldest tricks in the book, a dynamic that works so well, it became even more valuable after the institution of slavery had been formally abolished. But because King's stature had become so overpowering, the use of him in this manner took on a dynamic of its own. Any black figure who troubles the right in any way is likely to find themselves unfavorably compared to King, and, of course, Barack Obama is no exception-even though the right has already delighted in using Obama himself in a similar fashion, to denigrate and disparage more class- and race-consious politicians such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
(I wrote about this in detail in my diary, "Conservatives Play The Anti-Race Card", during the early primaries, when George Will said that "The big losers, two big losers tonight are probably Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton," and Bill Bennett said Mr. Obama "has taught the black community you don't have to act like Jesse Jackson; you don't have to act like Al Sharpton. You can talk about the issues. And, this is a breakthrough." I showed rather handily that Sharpton and Jackson were demonstrably quite issue-oriented, not only in comparison with Obama, but even moreso in comparison with Will and Bennett.)
That was fine before the general election campaign started. But now its Obama's turn to be targeted.
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