more on perceptive commentary

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Chris Beck <cbeck () pacanukeha net>
Date: October 9, 2005 1:18:17 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] perceptive commentary


Dave - the first one was sent by mistake.  Sorry - here is the real  
reply.

Ummm, OK, I will agree that Bush has done and will do a pathetic and  
destructive
job as President.  We can then divide the rest of this "perceptive"  
screed into
 3 parts - a section on bloated and corrupt government which  
everyone but
Halliburton shareholders can agree on, a completely misguided rant on
unconstitutional judges and then a heart-warming we're- 
all'conservatives-here-
y'all-best-git-out rant(1).

Others more capable than I can and have dealt with the  
unconstitutionality
arguments
[http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2005/10/interpretive-means-agrees- 
with.html].

It is also amusing to note that this farcical polemic sounds rather a  
lot
like the language used in Charles Krauthammer's op-ed piece in the  
Washington
Post
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/06/ 
AR2005100601468.html].
I wonder who plagiarised who.

(1) To avoid complaints of an ad hominem attack I present to you "The  
rise of a
popular and populist right-wing politics in America over the past 35  
years is
one of the most extraordinary events in modern Western politics; it  
is unique to
the United States, helping to explain the country's  
exceptionalism"(2) which
states a fact and then draws 3 faulty conclusions: a) the changing  
face of
politics is a constant rather than a unique event; b) the author's  
Russian
friends seem to be going through something of a right-wing revival at  
the
moment; c) that the US is exceptional cannot be denied, that this is  
due to
recent growth in right-wing politics is clearly false in that it  
assumes that
"exceptionalism" is a recent phenomenon.

(2) My spell checker denies the existence of this word.  As it should  
- a poor,
clumsy-sounding thing that should be put out of my misery and  
expunged from the
English language.

Cheers,
Chris


Rumour has it David Farber, on or about 09.Oct.2005 09:25, whispered:


> IT should have been the crowning moment of his administration, the
> opportunity to exercise one of his most important privileges as
> President by picking two new judges to serve on the Supreme Court,
> thereby stamping his mark on American society for the next few  
> decades,
> as only a few presidents have done before him.  Instead, President
> Bush�s astonishingly short-sighted decision last week to nominate a
> close colleague with no judicial track record for the Supreme Court,
> following an earlier uninspired choice, risks condemning his
> administration to being remembered as the most debilitating since the
> sorry rule of Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s....  But we know a lost
> cause when we see one: the longer President Bush occupies the White
> House the more it becomes clear that his big-government domestic
> policies, his preference for Republican and business cronies over
> talented administrators, his lack of a clear intellectual compass and
> his superficial and often wrong-headed grasp of international  
> affairs �
> all have done more to destroy the legacy of Ronald Reagan, a President
> who halted then reversed America�s post-Vietnam decline, than any
> left-liberal Democrat or European America-hater could ever have  
> dreamed of.
>
> ...Last month�s death from thyroid cancer of Chief Justice William
> Rehnquist and the retirement of Sandra Day O�Connor was a unique
> opportunity for Mr Bush to tilt the Supreme Court to the right,
> completing the reversal of the liberal dominance instituted under
> President Roosevelt seven decades ago. There is not much in Mr  
> Bush�s
> conservative social agenda that we admire but the two vacancies  
> were an
> opportunity finally to bring down the curtain on the unconstitutional
> judicial activism which has dominated the Court since the Roosevelt
> years.  Sadly but characteristically, Mr Bush has blown it: instead of
> the conservative intellectual jurists that his supporters had the  
> right
> to expect, Mr Bush has made the mediocre John Roberts, a moderate
> conservative with an undistinguished legal track record, the new Chief
> Justice and nominated Harriet Miers for the O�Connor vacancy.
>
> ...The modern Supreme Court has set the standard for America�s  
> lesser
> courts to use the judicial system as a mechanism for social change,  
> for
> which Americans did not necessarily vote, in areas ranging from school
> bussing and prayer to the death penalty and abortion (and most  
> recently
> the powers of the President versus those of Congress in times of war).
> An extraordinary decision by the Supreme Court in June illustrates its
> power and the controversial nature of its decisions: it ruled five to
> four that local governments could force property owners to sell their
> homes to private developers whenever officials decide it would  
> �benefit
> the public�, even if the property is not blighted and the new  
> project�s
> success is not guaranteed.
>
> ...They were already furious at the President�s incompetent  
> selling of
> his social security reforms; they were equally angry at the  
> collapse of
> his plans for major tax reforms through White House neglect; they have
> watched in despair as the President�s upbeat rhetoric in Iraq was
> confounded regularly by tragic events, including an appalling American
> death toll and a neo-con mission clearly adrift; those who fought the
> good fight to restrain government in the Reagan years stood by in
> disgust as Mr Bush increased domestic spending faster than at any time
> since President Johnson�s Great Society; and the nativist right is
> increasingly and dangerously surly at what it views as the  
> President�s
> failure to tackle illegal immigration and secure the country�s  
> borders.
>
> ...Nor is it just the White House that is contaminated by it: when
> senior Republican leaders in Congress, who have presided over an  
> orgy of
> public spending and pork-barrel, claimed that there was no fat left to
> cut in federal spending and that �after 11 years of Republican  
> majority
> we�ve pared it down pretty good�, it was clear that the inmates  
> had
> indeed taken over the asylum.
>
> ...Far more Americans now describe themselves as conservatives than
> liberals; the Democrats now need to grab 60% of moderates if they want
> to win Congress or the White House, a pretty high hurdle, especially
> given the unimpressive state of the Democrat Party, which is
> increasingly in the grip of its left-wing activists and devoid of  
> fresh
> or stimulating ideas.
>
> The rise of a popular and populist right-wing politics in America over
> the past 35 years is one of the most extraordinary events in modern
> Western politics; it is unique to the United States, helping to  
> explain
> the country�s exceptionalism and its growing cultural divergence  
> with
> Europe.  The damning charge against Mr Bush is that, instead of using
> the continued dominance of the right to finish the large amounts of
> uncompleted business from the Reagan revolution � sorting out the  
> social
> security system, simplifying the tax code, tackling America�s  
> abysmal
> primary and secondary schools, reforming corporate welfare with the  
> same
> gusto as welfare for the poor was reformed, forging a new consensus to
> wage the war or terror � Mr Bush has failed in all these areas,  
> and in
> some has taken America backwards.


--
Chris Beck  -  http://pacanukeha.blogspot.com
"You are going to run out of denial long before
this world runs out of storms" - Bruce Sterling




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