Soberish

Jonah Goldberg is a fucking idiot (I might have to make this into a new series).   No one ever doubted that there are enough people out there stupid enough to think he’s some sort of scholar.  Simply because his book is popular doesn’t make his arguments correct, and the fact that Matt Yglesias‘ book is not as popular does not make Yglesias wrong.  Goldberg would do well to read up on his logical fallacies, specifically the argument from popularity.

I’ll be hosting trivia again tonight at the Wonderland Ballroom.  However, I just remembered that this morning, so I’ll be frantically writing questions for the rest of the day.  Shit!

This happens every time I start watching Yacht Rock again.  This is currently what’s listed as “Recently Added” in my iTunes:

• If It’s Not What You’re Looking For - Kenny Loggins
• Takin’ It To the Streets - The Doobie Brothers
• Gino (The Manager) - Hall & Oates
• Rich Girl - Hall & Oates
• This Is It - Kenny Loggins & Michael McDonald
• You Make My Dreams Come True - Hall & Oates
• Ever Fallen In Love - The Buzzcocks
• Ride Like the Wind - Christopher Cross
• What a Fool Believes - The Doobie Brothers
• Watching the Detectives - Elvis Costello & the Attractions

If it weren’t for some choice bits of proto-punk goodness, I’d be drowning in a sea of smooth right now.  Perhaps seeing the Flight of the Conchords tonight will jar me out of this mellow state, but for now, get on a sailboat and enjoy the weekend.

When I’m mayor, I’m abolishing the Advisory Neighborhood Commissions.  For those not in DC, the ANCs are neighborhood based councils that allow the asshole on your block to have political power matching his ambition.  That ambition, of course, being to meddle with his neighbors’ lives and ensure that bars don’t allow live music or dancing.  Shit like this drives me up the wall.

While I am and always will be a liberal in most respects, I’ve come around to strict libertarianism on the local level.

When it first came out that Barack Obama had a pastor who said batshit insane things, Obama supporters found at least some consolation: conservatives couldn’t possibly say he was a “secret Muslim” anymore. Reverend Wright is undoubtedly a Christian pastor of a Christian congregation. Obama’s decades long membership in that congregation clearly shows which religion he belongs to, no?

Apparently not. Lisa Schiffren, perhaps the Cornerite least troubled by posting complete horseshit, does her best today to resuscitate the “secret Muslim” smear. What exactly is the proof that Obama really is the Jihadist Candidate? Was it a secret memo outlining his plans to institute sharia and surrender to al Qaeda immediately upon entering office? Perhaps an intercepted communique between Obama and Hezbollah? Was he planting bombs in a neighborhood school while chanting Koran verses in Arabic?

Well, no. He was listed as Muslim on some Indonesian school forms. And, as Daniel Pipes puts it:

In Islam, religion passes from the father to the child. Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936–1982) was a Muslim who named his boy Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Only Muslim children are named “Hussein”.

As if religion were some sort of gene to be inherited, and not a choice one makes.

No, it seems the cranks won’t let this one die. “Obama is a Muslim” just hits all the right racist, xenophobic, and fundamentalist notes, and the right simply can’t bear to part with such a perfect smear. They’ll even defy the truth in front of their faces to keep it alive.

After noting that there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, which I’m sure she feels makes up for her brazen lying, Schiffren closes with hilarious proof that she lives in a wholly impenetrable right-wing bubble:

We don’t know if he is, but we know Daniel Pipes is no crank.

To steal a line from Orac: the stupid, it burns.

My fares tonight, from my home on Capitol Hill to the bars in Logan Circle:

From home to the bar (with the zone system):  $9.80

From the bar to home (with a meter):  $9.25

Not much of a difference, especially since I paid both drivers $11.   However, it’s much more satisfying to see your fare tick away than to trust that you know the zone boundaries as well as the cabbies.  Viva la meter!

There was an new episode of Yacht Rock and nobody told me?  What good are you, Internet?

My erstwhile bandmates in The Frustrations are having their CD release party tomorrow night at the Rock & Roll Hotel with Hello Tokyo and Five Four. You should all totally go! In their honor, I give you a live, 1978 TV performance of “(I Don’t Wanna Go To) Chelsea” by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. For those who are about to rock, I salute you.

It’s not that often that I agree with anyone at the Corner, but I’ve got say that David Freddoso is making quite a lot of sense in his series of posts (one, two, three) about the current food crisis and it’s relationship to US agricultural subsidies.  The fact that we are subsidizing ethanol as a climate change measure when it does absolutely nothing to lower greenhouse gases and has all sorts of negative externalities is ludicrous.  Not to mention the unjustifiable sugar subsidies that drive food companies to use high-fructose corn syrup, which also raises corn prices.  It’s yet another example that protectionism is rarely anything but distorting and counterproductive.

Where Freddoso is wrong, however, is to cast the blame for our current situation on big government liberalism.   The fault lines on agricultural subsidies are regional, not partisan.  It’s not at all surprising that two men living in urban, east coast Washington, DC (which Freddoso and I are) would agree on this issue despite other political differences.

The real blame lies with farming states themselves.  Their over-representation in the Senate allows them far more power than they would have in the population-based House.  The primacy of the Iowa caucuses encouraged pandering on ethanol; it was inevitable that this chit would eventually be called in.  Florida’s status as a populous swing state ensures that sugar is more expensive in this country than any place else in the world.  The list goes on and on, and the protectionists (and their opponents, for that matter) come from both sides of the aisle.

Freddoso’s absolutely right that we could solve this problem without spending a dime, all we would need to do is abolish agriculture subsidies.  Unfortunately, urban liberals like me are not the people he needs to convince.

Incidentally, Freddoso and I also agree on another matter:  Capitol Lounge is the best bar in DC.

I’m sure most of you have seen this already:

For the uninitiated, a group calling itself the “Greenwash Guerrillas” threw a pie at New York Time columnist Thomas Friedman on Tuesday while he was giving a speech at Brown University. Leaflets thrown to the crowd during the pieing stated that:

Thomas Friedman deserves a pie in the face…

* because of his sickeningly cheery applaud for free market capitalism’s conquest of the planet

* for telling the world that the free market and techno fixes can save us from climate change. From carbon trading to biofuels, these distractions are dangerous in and of themselves, while encouraging inaction with respect to the true problems at hand.

* for helping turn environmentalism into a fake plastic consumer product for the privileged

* For his long-standing support for the US Occupation of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Such committed support to the US War Machine and its proxy states overseas cannot be masked behind any twisted mask of “green” - the US Military is the largest single emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.

* for his pure arrogance.
On behalf of the earth and all true environmentalists — we, the Greenwash Guerrillas, declare Thomas Friedman’s “Green” as fake and toxic to human and planetary health as the cool-whip covering his face.

It’s long been my opinion that campus activism is generally done by self-righteous idiots who achieve nothing, trying to be like their parents in the 60’s and 70’s, who were also self-righteous idiots who achieved nothing. True to form, these imbeciles qualify.

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