How mad are the Republicans?

I sense that the syndrome says something about what has gone so badly wrong with the conservative movement in the past ten years. It has become so intolerant and exclusive that once orthodox views are now regarded as heresy; while views once merely narrow and eccentric are now prerequisites for membership.

One of Mr McCain’s biggest sins is to have opposed tax cuts in the early years of the Bush presidency because there was no effort to cut spending to match them. This runs counter to the new orthodoxy on the Right that believes tax cutting is a kind of alchemy – cut taxes anywhere at any time and you will always and everywhere produce increases in government revenues. There is not the slightest evidence for this, but no matter. You must believe.

Mr McCain is unacceptable also because he has insufficiently orthodox views on human rights. Last week a writer in the National Review said that Mr McCain was not a conservative because he opposes torture of terrorist suspects. Quite how the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower came to erect a “Torturers Only” sign at its gate will be a matter for historians.

An interesting read and generally spot on in my view. Even if McCain doesn’t pick up South Carolina it won’t mean he can’t win sufficient support on Super Tuesday to make him the clear front-runner. But, as I have said all along, he is the only serious challenge to the leading Democrats. Sadly some Republicans clearly are delluded in believing Huckabee or Romney could do better. Or maybe they know McCain is their only real chance, but the last thing they’d want to admit is that he could win.

We shall see in a couple of weeks whether Republicans would prefer to try to win or sulk because the country doesn’t share their “values”.

Achmed the Dead Terrorist

From Youtube

It’s “one of those weeks” where I’ll be essentially hiding out. But this story is too significant to pass up. It’s an old story, maybe as old as China itself – the government seizes land used by farmers for many years and tries to profit from it. The interesting issue here is the chain reaction of protests this is setting off in multiple locations.

About 1,000 farmers gathered in the village meeting hall here at 8 a.m. on Dec. 19 and proclaimed what amounted to a revolt against China’s communist land-ownership system.

The broad, flat fields surrounding Changchunling belong to the farmers who work them, they declared, and not to the local government. The farmers then began dividing up the village’s collective holdings, with the goal of making each family the owner of a private plot.

“There is no justification for taking the land away from the farmers,” said one of the participating peasants.

The redistribution exercise at Changchunling was not an isolated incident. Rather, it marked what appears to be the start of a backlash against China’s system of collective land ownership in rural areas….

But here in the Fujin area, farmers have not just exploded in anger, but have taken on the system that gives officials their power over the land. Moreover, they have coordinated with other farmers via the Internet and sought tactical advice from democracy advocates in Beijing who see an opportunity to advance their political agenda.

“It is a frontal challenge,” one activist said.

Is this more of the same, or a “revolution”? Whether it’s a revolution or just another of those countless demonstrations that erupt every year in the countryside here, it all goes back to the same issue – corrupt local officials trying to fuck their people over, and a central government too weak and insecure to do anything about it. That corruption, after all, is the grease that keeps the CCP power machine humming. One more embarrassment the Party will have to deal with as its day in the sun approaches.

TPM Muckraker offers an excellent look at how the Bush administration is using language to obfuscate the fact that the surge failed to meet nearly all of its stated objectives. As I’ve thought for years, we’re just going to quietly pull out and say, well, it’s up to the Iraqis now – and then the real chaos will begin.

The one thing that saves Bush from total revolution is the shockingly short attention span and memory of the American public, as the aforementioned post indicates in its first sentence. To repeat a simple but often forgotten point, the surge was about achieving a series of measurable benchmarks. Its end goal was not a reduction in violence but political reconciliation. It has thus far been yet another failure.

That’s how much gold is up since I urged readers to buy it almost one year ago. Maybe I can retire earlier than I’d expected. (Well, not really; I am still recovering from my losses from the dot-com crash. But this has definitely been my year for bouncing back.)

This is an example of blogging at its very best. Anonymoused for your convenience. Thanks to Danwei for the tip.

This was just put out by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China:

DONGZHOU, GUANGDONG PROVINCE: LOCAL OFFICIALS ASSERT THEY CAN BAR REPORTERS ON SECURITY CONCERNS

Plainclothes personnel riding in a marked police vehicle detained AP correspondent Bill Foreman, and authorities escorted him out of the village of Dongzhou in southern Guangdong province. He went there to confirm reports of renewed protests in the village where two years ago three men were shot and killed in demonstrations against government land acquisition. At the time, residents said the government gave them inadequate compensation for land taken to build an electric power plant. In December 2007, Radio Free Asia reported that about 1,000 riot police fired tear gas at protesters in Dongzhou. Residents were reluctant to speak about the protests to a foreign correspondent. Foreman said while he was walking down a narrow side street lined with shops, four plainclothes officers in a marked police car grabbed him by the arm and put him in the car without saying what he had done wrong. At the police station, after 30 minutes, a vice director of the propaganda department of the local communist party committee showed up. He wanted to see Foreman’s passport and press card. He also wanted to know to whom he had talked [to] and what they said. (Foreman said he couldn’t understand anyone because they spoke in dialect). Foreman brought up the new media guidelines, and the official said the law allows local governments to declare that certain places are off limits because of security concerns. Another official said reporters would probably be allowed to return to Dongzhou by February…

It’s still far from being a free country. We in the big cities need to remind ourselves of that every once in a while. The laws are there on the books, but when officials can ignore them and break them at will and impose their own “laws,” you have a situation akin to a police state.

I would prefer Obama to win the nomination, but I was happy to see Senator Clinton win in NH tonight. I have been ashamed of our media going after her for choking up at a difficult moment, as I was when they went wild with clips of the “Hillary laugh” a couple of months ago. As I said in comments to the previous post, I believe her display of emotion actually helped her, humanized her – and the laying on of attacks only generated more sympathy for her.

The nomination process shouldn’t be signed and sealed in Iowa, so I’m not unhappy with what we are seeing in NH. I do worry about McCain winning, as he is the best candidate the GOP has and the only one who could possibly win, and we don’t want a far-right (on most issues) hawk winning the presidency again. I admire McCain in some ways, but I also know he has a fiendish temper and at times a disgusting mind. (This is my favorite example: McCain, reveling in adoration at a June 1998 Republican fund-raiser and sure his joke would go no further, said: “Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father.” Funny, ha ha. Still, if there’s a pearl among the swine it’s McCain, even if the pearl has some nicks. (You’ll find lots more of what I mean if you click that link.)

Getting back to the poor treatment of Senator Clinton (I am no longer referring to her as “Hillary” since a commenter pointed out how sexist it is; when you think about it, it’s true)… Today Gloria Steinem has a thoughtful column about the bias against Senator Clinton (subscription required) – both the media’s and our own. It made me think (not change my mind, just think).

I’m supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country’s talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule. I’m not opposing Mr. Obama; if he’s the nominee, I’ll volunteer. Indeed, if you look at votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more than 90 percent of the time. Besides, to clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama.

But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex.

What worries me is that she is accused of ‘playing the gender card’ when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations.

What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.

What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama’s dependence on the old – for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy – while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo.

The key phrase: “Indeed, if you look at votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more than 90 percent of the time.” In other words, maybe the meme that Hillary is right of center is just that, a meme.

Again, I am hoping Obama wins, but again, I’ll support Senator Clinton if I have to. She has been so demonized by commentators on both sides, though it hurts me the most to see her savaged by the left. Despite her alleged ties to the status quo and to big business and to the “old system,” few on this planet have done more to pursue noble liberal goals. Her votes on Iraq may constitute a serious mistake, but she doesn’t deserve the kind of contempt I’ve witnessed in recent weeks. Shameful.

Onto the next primary. The weeks ahead will be interesting, to say the least.

I’m not necessarily in favor of China’s one-child policy (I hate it, but I also wonder if there’s much choice in the matter – something drastic had to be done, thanks to Mao’s stupidity in advocating higher birth rates). I am, however, in favor of governments applying their laws to all citizens, including those in the government. So I’d say the CCP did the right thing in expelling these 500 party members who defied the law.

Really. Very, very funny and even more revealing.