Via Talk Left, I see that there is an excellent site dedicated to the war on your neighbor called the Drug War Rant. You can find Drug War Rant in the permalinks down and to the right.
John Cole started Balloon Juice early in 2002. Those who have followed along know that this has been quite the journey.
Recall Lunacy
I have been against the recall since day one, but will everyone on the left please quit calling this an unconstitutional power grab. Clearly, it is constitutional. Clearly, Davis is scum. Not so clear, however, is how wise the recall provision of the California consititution is or how wise it is for judicial interference in elections BEFORE they occur.
Not Even Close
John Hawkins surveyed Right Wing Bloggers tyo find out who their favorite editorialist/opinion writers were, and the results can be found here.
For the record, my top three were:
1.) Mark Steyn
2.) David Warren
3.) Christopher Hitchens
Wednesday Bullets
Tacitus has his daily bullets up, and this might be the anrkiest episode ever. I particularly enjoyed the description of Kevin Drum’s Paul Krugman interview:
Paul Krugman is hopelessly naive and never paid attention to conservatives before the year 2000. That’s the only conclusion I can draw from his interview with Kevin Drum, in which he plumbs the depths of the right’s hidden agenda to find that we’re opposed in principle to most if not all social programs! Back to the hive, comrades, we are exposed. The corollary rhetoric about the abolition of the First Amendment and the cancellation of meaningful elections is just risible paranoia. There is a worthwhile nugget of insight in his observation that the strategem of “starving” social spending via underfunding and deficits simply won’t work absent national catastrophe; certainly an important point in itself. But on the whole, if Drum’s exposition was supposed to move us beyond Krugman’s image of a frenetic, blinkered partisan, it only succeeded in solidifying that perception. Next: Krugman finds that libertarians want to eradicate government altogether. Someone must warn the American people.
Giggle.
Great Advice For Everyone
Meanwhile, Will Saletan has some great advice for the hacks who have spent the last few months doing nothing but working on the ‘Bush is a liar’ meme. No need to point names- you guys kow who you are (and this will apply to the right wing should the Democrats ever get their act together and get in power of something other than the NAACP and the NEA). Saletan explains it is time for you to grow up:
I’m not excusing the games Republicans play. But by projecting all evil onto Republicans, Democrats spread the same political disease: the notion that you don’t have to be wary of lying or cheating unless the other side is doing it. Lying and cheating don’t belong to Republicans or Democrats. We’re all susceptible, and we’re all guilty.
Sure, some people are more guilty than others. But if that’s your obsession, I commend to you the words of my colleague, Jack Shafer: If you’re interested in which wing lies more, you’re probably not very interested in the truth.
The natural response- “But Bush really is the biggest liar ever- we can’t let the Re’thug’licans bully us into not playing hardball.” The Shafer piece is a must read, btw.
David Corn, Liar
In the Nation (the left wing political rag whose editor does not know who represents her in Congress), David Corn writes:
September is back-to-school time, and Bush hit the road to promote his education policies. During a speech at a Nashville elementary school, he hailed his education record by noting that “the budget for next year boosts funding for elementary and secondary education to $53.1 billion. That’s a 26-percent increase since I took office. In other words, we understand that resources need to flow to help solve the problems.” A few things were untrue in these remarks. Bush’s proposed elementary and secondary education budget for next year is $34.9 billion, not $53.1 billion, according to his own Department of Education. It’s his total proposed education budget that is $53.1 billion. More importantly, there is no next-year “boost” in this budget. Elementary and secondary education received $35.8 billion in 2003. Bush’s 2004 budget cuts that back nearly a billion dollars, and the overall education spending in his budget is the same as the 2003 level.
Sounds damning, and some on the left rushed to link approvingly to this newest bit of evidence to add to the “Bush is a Liar” meme.
The problem is that Justin Katz and Steve Verdon have run the numbers- and Bush wasn’t lying. Corn was:
In summary, it is only through a combination of selective data and careful parsing of words that David Corn is able to exploit the habitual budgetary tricks of the federal government to call the President of the United States a liar. And his faulty conclusion has probably already caught on sufficiently that careful analysis of boring numbers will not prevent it from becoming “common knowledge.”
This is the Democrat strategery, and it started with the fabricated yellowcake ‘scandal.’ Simply make charge after charge about Bush being a liar, and don’t waste a second checking the facts. The idea is to just throw things up and hope they stick. When you are corrected, merely ignore the corrections, and wait a couple of weeks to re-surface the charge. By then it will be, as Justin pointed out, ‘common knowledge.’ The Democrats will know it is a lie, but they will keep saying it over and over again, because it might lead them to the only thing they care about- winning the White House.
Batteryless Flashlight
The Instapundit talks about Fed-Exing flashlights and batteries to relatives, and it reminded me of a really cool invention I saw the last time I was at my parents house. Batteryless flashlights. I thought they were a super cool idea.