Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Foolish American imperialists cannot make the air conditioners stay on in Bahrain.

It’s a quagmire!

Also from the same Steinberg column discussed below:

How the Republicans could have imagined there would be any upside in questioning John Kerry’s Vietnam record is a mystery. Doesn’t it all boil down to this: Kerry went to war and President Bush didn’t? Frankly, if Kerry had responded to combat by flinging away his gun and hiding in tears under a tarp on his swift boat, it wouldn’t erase the overarching fact that he put himself in harm’s way for his country, while Bush hid behind the privilege that was to eventually deposit him, blinking and amazed, into the White House.

Not unless you’re purposefully trying to oversimplify the matter.

Oh, I guess that’s what he’s trying to do by removing the context of each’s service.

In his latest column, Steinberg muses:

Why is Barack Obama an African American?

He presents himself that way, based on his father being a Kenyan immigrant. But his mother was a white woman from Kansas. Why couldn’t he just as easily decide he is a white man? Why does the black half trump the white half?

The answer has nothing to do with appearances, or affirmative action, or cultural pride, nothing to do with exotic Africa proving a more appealing back story than the bland wheat fields of Kansas. It doesn’t have anything to do with Obama specifically — anyone with a black parent and a white parent is thought of as black. Why is that?

The answer is: because of our unconscious reflection of 19th century racist attitudes, where one drop of “corrupting” blood — be it black or Jewish or whatever — is enough to put you into a certain racial camp. Obama’s great-grandfather could be black, and that would be enough to make him black. It is indeed the logic of plantation owners, accepted unthinkingly by a society that would otherwise reject it. A form of reasoning, I might add, all-too-gladly taken up by some activists, eager to pump their numbers and prestige. Thus Obama — and Halle Berry, and Tiger Woods and anyone else of mixed parentage — doesn’t get a say in how their heritage is viewed. The choice is already made for them.

Mind you, I’m not blaming Obama. He didn’t invent this. But I do think it is worth noting that we are using a very old scorecard when it comes to race, and as our society moves into the blended, multiethnic mix it is certain to become, we’re eventually going to have to come up with something new, and finally set aside the whole idea of “blood,” the biblical notion of viewing people through the prism of their parents and their parents’ parents, and instead see them for who they actually are. Finally judging them not, as Dr. King said, by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

He helpfully muddies African-American, which would denote origin, with black, which descibes skin color and is sometimes associated with origin, race, or ethnic heritage.

Blackness is more meaningless than any hyphenation which ends in -American because the second at least indicates that the noun modified by the adjective had the good taste to join those of us born here.

So, to recap: Is Barack Obama black? Look at him. Is he African-American? Second generation, so only by heritage. Is he a good man? Seems okay in character, but somewhat wrong on his philosophy.

AFP, which stands for “Agents of France Posse”, reports Blair refuses to accept US award, by which they mean the Congressional Medal of Honor:

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair is refusing to fly to the US to receive a medal bestowed on him by the nation for his support over last year’s Iraq war, a London newspaper reported today.

US President George W. Bush has put huge pressure on his closest ally to pick up the Congressional Medal of Honour in person, the Sunday Mirror said, quoting a senior British government source.

Well, that senior source can (how would a silver-tongued sub-Continental bureacrats understand it?) SMEG OFF. Tony Blair cannot recieve a Congressional Medal of Honor. Period. Source this to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, whose word I would trust over some government functionary leaking to the French any day:

The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in action against an enemy force which can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the Armed Services of the United States. Generally presented to its recipient by the President of the United States of America in the name of Congress, it is often called the Congressional Medal of Honor.

The only way he could get it would be if he really were a bona fide US operative. Is that what they’re “admitting” here?

Reader Cagey sends in this example of so-called on CNN: Bush adviser quits after appearing in swift boat ad:

As a so-called 527 group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is barred from coordinating efforts with an election campaign.

Unfortunately, the authors of this enlightened piece do not actually misuse so-called correctly. Matthew Hoye or Phil Hirshkorn (Hi, fellows! I know you’re going to Google yourselves sometime!) uses so-called as a synonym for what is known as or also known as, which shortcuts the true power of the idiotm.

No, fellows, to properly use so-called to denigrate the noun it modifies, to diminish and sneer with journalistic “sophistication” by using this term, you should have written:

As a 527 group, Swift Boat so-called Veterans for so-called Truth is barred from coordinating efforts with a so-called election campaign.

Behold the true power!

Another alleged “professional” writer deploys the bane of my existence. Eleanor Clift, writing in Newsweek, uses “so-called” to disparage something:

The fact that Kerry attributed the breakdown in military discipline to the policymakers in Washington is lost on these men, who take Kerry’s words personally. This is not about Kerry’s performance in Vietnam; it’s what he said when he came home. Kerry has never made extravagant claims about his heroism in Vietnam. He never said his wounds were serious, and he never said he didn’t want to get out of Vietnam. After three wounds, under military rules, he was entitled to ship out, which he did after a combat tour of four months and 12 days. Nothing these so-called Veterans for Truth have come up with contradicts what Kerry has said, but that’s not the point.

Come on, Eleanor; so-called makes your prose sound more juvenile than your content does. It’s “talk to the hand” or “whatever”; if you say so-called past age 23, your development has arrested.

(Link seen on Outside the Beltway, where James Joyner thoroughly fisks Clift’s column.)

Here’s the beginning of a story on CNN.com entitled Missing Arkansas girl found dead:

The body of a 7-year-old girl missing since Sunday was found Thursday night in a northeastern Arkansas field not far from where her shoes and pink bicycle had been recovered days earlier.

The family’s pastor, the Rev. Stephen Chitman, said police searching among corn and soybean fields found the body of Patricia Ann Miles, who disappeared Sunday morning after riding her bike to a grocery store. Television footage showed family members wailing after officers told them about her death.

Can anyone here tell me why the journalist who wrote this piece saw fit to include a detail about television coverage of this story, particularly an invasive convention widely deplored?

Just what do they teach in journalism schools these days?

Walter Olson at Overlawyered speculates on upcoming litigation after Hurricane Charley.

This sounds like the perfect opportunity for a pool!

$5.00 gets you a square. Pick the lawsuit and timeframe in which you think it will be filed.

I hate it when rich capitalist developers aren’t too proud to beg for tax money:

Schnuck Markets Inc. plans to close its only store in East St. Louis, but the company has extended the store’s life for another 30 days while a developer tries to buy the building and negotiate a more favorable lease that would allow the store to remain open.

Clayton developer Jim Koman has the property at 25th and State streets under contract, but wants financial assistance from East St. Louis and the state of Illinois before closing on the property, which is held in a trust with a Belleville bank.

“If we don’t get some kind of support, it will be difficult for us to make this transition,” said Koman, the president of Koman Properties. And, he added: “We don’t have an agreement with Schnucks.”

So the only thing he’s guaranteeing is that he’ll take the tax dollars.

It’s not even begging, it’s extortion, and deals like this give capitalism its slightly darker tint. Unfortunately, city and state officials enable this stupidity when they spend the people’s money to ensure that developers with their own millions in liquid cash don’t have to risk anything to turn a profit.

Germany appeals to United Nations:

Make the Americans occupiers stay in our country.

President Kerry: Our Allies Need Our Troops to Support Humanitarian Missions

Our Military Spending Props Up Important Progressive States

Germany Blindsides France With Another Invasion

Seeks to Cure Unemployment with Military Adventure, Hostile Domestic to Occupation by American Imperialists

Make your own. Here’s the starter kit: Germans Wary of U.S. Troop Withdrawal
.

Steve Chapman comes out in favor of eliminating the electoral college. Because, I think he argues, it doesn’t empower individual states. And:

Another claim is that this system upholds federalism and decentralization. In fact, no state government would find itself weaker without the Electoral College, because it confers no meaningful authority on state governments.

Nor does it protect small states, which are granted proportionally more votes than large ones. Residents of Delaware and Idaho have no discernible common interests merely because they happen to live in small states. New York and Texas are both big states but, trust me, they don’t feel a deep and special bond because of that. Americans vote on the basis of ideology, religion, race, economic concerns and the personal appeal of the candidates, not on some hazy “state” interest.

Most small states, in fact, get zero attention. During the 2000 general election campaign, says Edwards, only six of the 17 smallest states were visited by either presidential candidate. Many bigger ones (like Illinois) also got shortchanged–and are getting similar treatment this year.

Why? Because of the Electoral College. John Kerry will get millions of votes in Texas, but none of its electoral votes. No matter what Kerry does in California, he’s almost guaranteed its electoral votes. Neither he nor President Bush has any incentive to waste much time in those places. They focus instead on the few states where the outcome is in doubt. Under a direct election, by contrast, candidates would go where the votes are–giving most Americans actual exposure to the campaign.

The electoral college preserves federalism, and although it doesn’t give any small state a lot of power, it does ensure that presidential candidates pay attention to regions comprised of small states. Make no mistake about it, if the candidates only had to pander to the interests of the populous coastal states and not to the Midwest, the plains, and much of the South, they would not–and our government would tip further to a rule by the coastal elite, who don’t care if gas taxes go to ten dollars a gallon because they live in small states where if they trip in Maryland, they bang their heads in Delaware, or who think eliminating all guns is noble because they won’t be called upon to reason with a bobcat or a bear.

But Steve Chapman lives in Chicago, which would be the lone visit between coasts for candidates, and I guess he wants his exposure to them.