UPDATED: Hagel Raises Neocon Hackles (‘Axis Of Error’ Enraged)

Foreign Policy, Israel, Middle East, Neoconservatism

Neoconservatives are having grand mal seizures and that’s a good thing. “President Obama on Monday nominated former Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel as defense secretary,” reports the Washington Post.

Obama called Hagel “the leader that our troops deserve” and a “champion of our troops and our veterans and our military families.” He said Hagel, a former Army sergeant, would be the first person of enlisted rank and the first Vietnam War veteran to head the Defense Department.
“Maybe most importantly, Chuck knows that war is not an abstraction, Obama said.

CNN recounts that Hagel’s:

fierce opposition to the Iraq War went far toward creating the schism that now exists between him and the Republican establishment.
“The damage this war has done to our country will play out for years to come,” he wrote in his 2008 book, “America: Our Next Chapter.”
“While it is easy for nations to blunder into war, they never blunder into peace,” he added.
His opposition to the 2009 surge in Afghanistan put him at odds with the president who nominated him.

This is all good, although Hagel’s promise to “advance global freedom, decency and humanity’ in the effort to ‘build a better world for all mankind'” smacks of neocon Manifest Destiny. Defend US borders and no more.

As to the hackles Hagel has raised among Israel devotees. “Nothing Hagel has said about Israel,” ventures Richard Cohen at the WaPo, “is not said in the Israeli press on a daily basis. Trust me: By the Wall Street Journal’s standards, Israeli media would be deeply anti-Semitic.”

(Cohen points out that Chuck Hagel “earned his wariness of war the hard way — two Purple Hearts in Vietnam.” Cohen is wrong to frame war wariness as a privilege that needs to be earned.)

UPDATE (Jan. 8): Lindsey Graham, a member of the unholy trinity of neoconservative law makers—the “three amigos; the three blind mice; aka the ‘axis of error’”—“was on CNN’s ‘STATE OF THE UNION’ yesterday calling this an ‘in your face’ nomination and basically saying that this is going to be a very controversial pick for President Obama.”

The Comfort of Strangers

Family, Film, Hollywood, Ilana Mercer, Race, Racism

Thank you all, on Facebook and beyond, for wishing me a happy birthday in so many nice ways.

These many wishes, mostly from strangers, made me think of the one and only message I took away from Gran Torino, an awfully mundane, politically correct flick, in which the white old veteran is depicted as the rank racist; his Hmong neighbors—a South-east Asian minority that contributes significantly to crime in the US—act as founts of multicultural wisdom.

Walt Kowalski, “played with grandstanding gusto and unfakeable star quality by Clint Eastwood,” is treated with callousness by his family and great kindness by the cloistered Hmong, who, paradoxically, attempt to rid the old American of his biases.

Consequently, the veteran character bequeaths his worldly goods, including his prized ride, to his Hmong friends. That made good sense to me.

So often the greatest kindness comes from unrelated strangers.

Sundering What’s Left Of The Founder’s Senate

Constitution, Democracy, Democrats, Founding Fathers, Law, Politics, Republicans

I once harbored hope that due to self-interest, the Stupid Party, Republikeynesians, may just tackle the 17th amendment (as in repeal it), a 1913 abomination that sundered the republican scheme of governance put in place by the Founding Fathers, whereby senators were to be elected by the respective state legislatures. But I was operating under the naive assumption that Republikeynesians may have had a stake in the Constitution’s original intent.

Since they don’t, it is understandable that Republican senators would align themselves with Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Senate Democrats in furtherance of Senate “reform.”

In particular:

A group of liberal Democrats had been pushing Reid to trigger the so-called “nuclear option” on Thursday, the first day of the 113th Congress, to make it more difficult for the minority to stall legislation and nominees.

Say bye-bye to the legislation-stalling filibuster.

The filibuster is a powerful parliamentary device in the United States Senate, which in recent years has meant that most major legislation (apart from budgets and confirmations) requires a 60% majority to head off a filibuster. In recent years the majority has preferred to avoid filibusters by moving to other business when a filibuster is threatened …

Efforts to retard legislation are a good thing, unless the legislation being sabotaged is legislation to repeal and nullify other legislation.

“Junior Democrats, including Sens. Tom Udall (N.M.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.),” have been successful in recruiting to their nefarious cause some familiar sickos such as the too-decrepit-to-filibuster (as in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)”Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), as well as Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).”

This lot “favor[s] using the nuclear option, which they call the ‘constitutional option,’ to effect this change through a simple majority vote. But they need 51 of the 55 members of the Senate Democratic Conference to back them.”

“You need a two-thirds vote in the Senate to change any of the chamber’s rules,” laments sympathetic statist Ezra Klein of the WaPo. Like the politicians, Klein dislikes any minor obstacles still extant to mob rule.

Other vile leftists like Klein complain bitterly that, “The Senate is in a prolonged, self-induced coma. It does not produce creative legislation.”

It is a well-known fact that US Senators are comatose. But we’d like their legislative efforts to be as still as their comatose minds.

Indeed, both Americas deliberative bodies are in a comma, but that’s not because of a deficit in democracy driven, legislative Brownian Motion (besides which the Founders were no fans of democracy).

The news reports are as muddled as ever on this issue. Some reports claim that the colluding quislings wish to force senators who filibuster to actually speak on the floor. That sounds good. However, can “the majority leader call for a simple majority vote on the pending business once the debate stops”? That I do not know.

UPDATED: Armstrong’s ‘Very Strong’ Post-Office Culture

Drug War, Ethics, Law, libertarianism, Sport

A friend of Lance Armstrong assured fans of the disgraced cyclist, who has been accused of doping, that Armstrong “is doing O.K. for a guy that has had his livelihood and his life torn from him, but he’s very strong.”

Armstrong may be strong but he’s also very weird.

Disgustingly weird.

Armstrong is the Michael Jackson of sport. The late Michael Jackson had hired a doctor to feed narcotics directly into his bloodstream. Taking his “milk” is how the disturbed, body dysmorphic, drug-addicted Mr. Jackson referred to this necrophilic practice.

Armstrong is alleged to have resorted to “saline and plasma transfusions,” as well as blood transfusions, where “an athlete re-injects stored backup units of blood for a red blood cell boost.”

Via The NYT:

Lance Armstrong and two of his teammates on the United States Postal Service cycling squad flew on a private jet to Valencia, Spain, in June 2000, to have blood extracted. In a hotel room there, two doctors and the team’s manager stood by to see their plan unfold, watching the blood of their best riders drip into plastic bags.
The next month, during the Tour de France, the cyclists lay on beds with those blood bags affixed to the wall. They shivered as the cool blood re-entered their bodies. The reinfused blood would boost the riders’ oxygen-carrying capacity and improve stamina during the second of Armstrong’s seven Tour wins

The guy from the loopy webzine Slate concludes that “Lance Armstrong Is Like Lehman Bros,” and that there are “striking similarities between the culture of cycling and the culture of Wall Street.”

Come again?

Armstrong was riding for the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team.

He and his teammates had a strong Uncle-Sam culture.

Of course, there should be no United States Anti-Doping Agency. There should be no ban on doped-up games and competitions. These events should be held openly and be funded privately. Some spectators will want to watch souped-up sportsmen compete; others will prefer unenhanced athletes. Organizers can cater variously to these preferences. Athletes will have a choice: compete for the title of Tour de Frances au naturel, or on drugs.

UPDATE: Oh yes “blood doping” is weird and wacky. As I understand it, “blood doping” is not merely about removing a vial of blood. It’s about draining a whole lot of it, re-engineering it and then transfusing it back into the body. It’s easily more repulsive than mainlining. As I said, Armstrong is an athletic Michael Jackson. Imagine the track marks Armstrong sported on his arms.