Quote For The Day
"Change is not running up even bigger deficits that George Bush did," - Rep. Gene Taylor (D).
Agreed, but look: you don't expect a Democrat to act like a Republican, especially after the Republican, on spending, acted like a liberal Democrat. And I didn't expect the Obama administration to be the Ron Paul administration. I did expect more than what now looks like deceptive rhetoric on fiscal sanity in the long run. If the president thinks fiscal conservatives will be satisfied by hiking Medicare premiums for the very rich and a proposal to end ag subsidies that may be dead on arrival in Congress, he's mistaken.
But it's the Democrats' government now. And I think I see why Judd Gregg couldn't handle this. I couldn't either. There's a difference between patriotically supporting a new president inheriting some goddawful problems and betraying every fiscal principle you ever had.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Disillusionment Begins
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Dead media attempts relevance, fails
If the election of Barack Obama truly signals a "post-partisan" America, then Andrew Sullivan should be appointed the country's blogger-in-chief. Sullivan was defying political labels long before it became fashionable. He describes himself as being "of no party or clique," and his blog — reliably conservative on military matters and the role of government, aggressively liberal when it comes to gay marriage and the legalization of soft drugs — is daily proof of his stance. In a blogosphere choking on its own partisan entrees, The Daily Dish is a welcome meal that's good for you.
That's right, no partisanship here. And Time is objective, too.
Monday, February 16, 2009
25 Best Conservative Movies, part II
1. The Lives of Others (2007): “I think that this is the best movie I ever saw,” said William F. Buckley Jr. upon leaving the theater (according to his column on the film). The tale, set in East Germany in 1984, is one part romantic drama, one part political thriller. It chronicles life under a totalitarian regime as the Stasi secretly monitors the activities of a playwright who is suspected of harboring doubts about Communism. Critics showered the movie with praise and it won an Oscar for best foreign-language film (it’s in German). More Buckley: “The tension mounts to heart-stopping pitch and I felt the impulse to rush out into the street and drag passersby in to watch the story unfold.”
2. The Incredibles (2004): This animated film skips pop-culture references and gross jokes in favor of a story that celebrates marriage, courage, responsibility, and high achievement. A family of superheroes — Mr. Incredible, his wife Elastigirl, and their children — are living an anonymous life in the suburbs, thanks to a society that doesn’t appreciate their unique talents. Then it comes to need them. In one scene, son Dash, a super-speedy runner, wants to try out for track. Mom claims it wouldn’t be fair. “Dad says our powers make us special!” Dash objects. “Everyone is special,” Mom demurs, to which Dash mutters, “Which means nobody is.”
3. Metropolitan (1990): Whit Stillman’s Oscar-nominated debut takes a red-headed outsider into the luxurious drawing rooms and debutante balls of New York’s Upper East Side elite. One character, a committed socialist, falls for the discreet charm of the urban haute bourgeoisie. Another plaintively theorizes the inevitable doom of his class. A reader of Jane Austen wonders what’s wrong with a novel’s having a virtuous heroine. And a roguish defender of standards and detachable collars delivers more sophisticated conservative one-liners than a year’s worth of Yale Party of the Right debates. With mocking affection, gentle irony, and a blizzard of witty dialogue, Stillman manages the impossible: He brings us to see what is admirable and necessary in the customs and conventions of America’s upper class.
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4. Forrest Gump (1994): It won an Oscar for best picture — beating Pulp Fiction, a movie that’s far more expressive of Hollywood’s worldview. Tom Hanks plays the title character, an amiable dunce who is far too smart to embrace the lethal values of the 1960s. The love of his life, wonderfully played by Robin Wright Penn, chooses a different path; she becomes a drug-addled hippie, with disastrous results. Forrest’s IQ may be room temperature, but he serves as an unexpected font of wisdom. Put ’em on a Whitman’s Sampler, but Mama Gump’s famous words about life’s being like a box of chocolates ring true.
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5. 300 (2007): During the Bush years, Hollywood neglected the heroism of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan — but it did release this action film about martial honor, unflinching courage, and the oft-ignored truth that freedom isn’t free. Beneath a layer of egregious non-history — including goblin-like creatures that belong in a fantasy epic — is a stylized story about the ancient battle of Thermopylae and the Spartan defense of the West’s fledgling institutions. It contrasts a small band of Spartans, motivated by their convictions and a commitment to the law, with a Persian horde that is driven forward by whips. In the words recorded by the real-life Herodotus: “Law is their master, which they fear more than your men[, Xerxes,] fear you.”
6. Groundhog Day (1993): This putatively wacky comedy about Bill Murray as an obnoxious weatherman cursed to relive the same day over and over in a small Pennsylvania town, perhaps for eternity, is in fact a sophisticated commentary on the good and true. Theologians and philosophers across the ideological spectrum have embraced it. For the conservative, the moral of the tale is that redemption and meaning are derived not from indulging your “authentic” instincts and drives, but from striving to live up to external and timeless ideals. Murray begins the film as an irony-soaked narcissist, contemptuous of beauty, art, and commitment. His journey of self-discovery leads him to understand that the fads of modernity are no substitute for the permanent things.
7. The Pursuit of Happyness (2006): Based on the life of self-made millionaire Chris Gardner (Will Smith), this film provides the perfect antidote to Wall Street and other Hollywood diatribes depicting the world of finance as filled with nothing but greed. After his wife leaves him, Gardner can barely pay the rent. He accepts an unpaid internship at a San Francisco brokerage, with the promise of a real job if he outperforms the other interns and passes his exams. Gardner never succumbs to self-pity, even when he and his young son take refuge in a homeless shelter. They’re black, but there’s no racial undertone or subtext. Gardner is just an incredibly hard-working, ambitious, and smart man who wants to do better for himself and his son.
8. Juno (2007): The best pro-life movies reach beyond the church choirs and influence the wider public. Juno was a critical and commercial success. It didn’t set out to deliver a message on abortion, but much of its audience discovered one anyway. The story revolves around a 16-year-old who finds a home for her unplanned baby. The film has its faults, including a number of crass moments and a pregnant high-school student with an unrealistic level of self-confidence. Yet it also exposes a broken culture in which teen sex is dehumanizing, girls struggle with “choice,” and boys aimlessly try — and sometimes downright fail — to become men. The movie doesn’t glamorize much of anything but leaves audiences with an open-ended chance for redemption.
9. Blast from the Past (1999): Revolutionary Road is only the latest big-screen portrayal of 1950s America as boring, conformist, repressive, and soul-destroying. A decade ago, Hugh Wilson’s Blast from the Past defied the party line, seeing the values, customs, manners, and even music of the period with nostalgic longing. Brendan Fraser plays an innocent who has grown up in a fallout shelter and doesn’t know the era of Sputnik and Perry Como is over. Alicia Silverstone is a post-feminist woman who learns from him that pre-feminist women had some things going for them. Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek as Fraser’s parents are comic gems.
10. Ghostbusters (1984): This comedy might not get Russell Kirk’s endorsement as a worthy treatment of the supernatural, but you have to like a movie in which the bad guy (William Atherton at his loathsome best) is a regulation-happy buffoon from the EPA, and the solution to a public menace comes from the private sector. This last fact is the other reason to love Ghostbusters: When Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) gets kicked out of the university lab and ponders pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities, a nervous Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) replies: “I don’t know about that. I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results!”
11. The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003): Author J. R. R. Tolkien was deeply conservative, so it’s no surprise that the trilogy of movies based on his masterwork is as well. Largely filmed before 9/11, they seemed perfectly pitched for the post-9/11 world. The debates over what to do about Sauron and Saruman echoed our own disputes over the Iraq War. (Think of Wormtongue as Keith Olbermann.) When Frodo sighs, “I wish none of this had happened,” Gandalf’s response speaks to us, too: “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
12. The Dark Knight (2008): This film gives us a portrait of the hero as a man reviled. In his fight against the terrorist Joker, Batman has to devise new means of surveillance, push the limits of the law, and accept the hatred of the press and public. If that sounds reminiscent of a certain former president — whose stubborn integrity kept the nation safe and turned the tide of war — don’t mention it to the mainstream media. Our journalists know that good men are often despised by the mob; it just never seems to occur to them that they might be the mob themselves.
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13. Braveheart (1995): Forget the travesty this soaring action film makes of the historical record. Braveheart raised its hero, medieval Scottish warrior William Wallace, to the level of myth and won five Oscars, including best director for Mel Gibson, who played Wallace as he led a spirited revolt against English tyranny. Braveheart taught that freedom is not just worth dying for, but also worth killing for, in defense of hearth and homeland. Six years later, amid the ruins of the Twin Towers, Gibson’s message resonated with a generation of American youth who signed up to fight terrorists, instead of inviting them to join a “constructive dialogue.” Liberals have never forgiven Gibson since.
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14. A Simple Plan (1998): A defining insight of conservatism is that whatever transcendent inspiration there may be to moral principles, there is also the humble fact that morality works. Moral institutions and customs endure because they allow civilization to proceed. Sam Raimi’s gripping A Simple Plan illustrates this truth. Bill Paxton plays a decent family man who lives by the book in every way. But when he’s cajoled into breaking the rules to get rich quick, he falls under the jurisdiction of the law of unintended consequences and discovers that simple morality is not simplistic, and that a seductively simple plan is a siren song if it runs against the grain of what is right.
15. Red Dawn (1984): From the safe, familiar environment of a classroom, we watch countless parachutes drop from the sky and into the heart of America. Oh, no: invading Commies! Laugh if you want — many do — but Red Dawn has survived countless more acclaimed films because Father Time has always been our most reliable film critic. The essence of timelessness is more than beauty. It’s also truth, and the truth that America is a place and an idea worth fighting and dying for will not be denied, not under a pile of left-wing critiques or even Red Dawn’s own melodramatic flaws. Released at the midpoint of Reagan’s presidential showdown with the Soviet Union, this story of what was at stake in the Cold War endures.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Maureen Dowd is worried about Joe Biden's feelings:
Mr. Biden’s stream of consciousness can be impolitic. Politico’s Glenn Thrush refers to “the human political polygraph that is Joseph Robinette Biden.” It can also be bracingly honest.
Joe is nothing if not loyal. And the president should return that quality, and not leave his lieutenant vulnerable to “Odd Couple” parodies.
On a recent “Saturday Night Live” skit, Jason Sudeikis’s Biden leaned over Fred Armisen’s Obama, to tell Americans: “Look, I know $819 billion sounds like a lot of money. But it’s just a tip of the iceberg.”
Armisen’s clenched Obama murmurs: “Couldn’t pick Hillary. I just couldn’t.”
Gawker, a media gossip blog, translated Monday’s Garrett-Obama exchange this way:
“Uh, Mr. President, Joe Biden said something yesterday about how you two will eventually destroy the world, forever. Care to comment?”
“Oh, that’s just the vice president. We all know he’s mentally unbalanced, right, guys? Ha ha ha ha. But seriously: He’s nuts, please keep him away from sharp objects.”
Friday, February 13, 2009
Obama LIES!!!!
"They seem to have narrowed it down to a labradoodle or a Portuguese water hound ... medium-sized dog, and so, we're now going to start looking at shelters to see when one of those dogs might come up."
"So, you're closing in on it?" Stephanopoulos asked.
"We're closing in on it. This has been tougher than finding a commerce secretary," the President-elect said.
I want to see Andrew Sullivan to start counting.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Obama Prays Biden has Tax Problem
VP forces Jake Tapper to reconsider policy toward loquacious blue hen:
"The president and I were talking about something yesterday in the Oval Office — which, to the press here, I'll not suggest what it was — but the response was to the folks that were in the office with us — was, you know, if we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, we stand up there and we make really tough decisions, there's still a 30-percent chance we're going to get it wrong," Mr. Biden told attendees of a House Democratic retreat.
Last night, our friend Fox News' Major Garrett asked the President about Biden's remarks.
"Since the Vice President brought it up, can you tell the American people, sir, what you were talking about?" Garrett asled. "And if not, can you at least reassure them it wasn't the stimulus bill or the bank rescue plan, and if in general, you agree with that ratio of success, 30 percent failure, 70 percent success?"
Responded the president: "You know, I don't remember exactly what Joe was referring to. Not surprisingly."
It is tempting to look at Obama's vice presidential choice as part of a larger emerging trend of presidential decision making. But remember, Obama picked someone with such a serious, adult attitude, and sacrificed himself for the sake of the country.
Twenty Five Best Conservative Movies
16. Master and Commander (2003): corner
17. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (2005): corner
18. The Edge (1997): corner
19. We Were Soldiers (2002): corner
20. Gattaca (1997): corner
21. Heartbreak Ridge (1986): corner
22. Brazil (1985): corner
23. United 93 (2006): corner
24. Team America: World Police (2004): corner
25. Gran Torino (2008): corner
Monday, February 09, 2009
Good News News
Martin Peretz:
I sat with one of these authoritatives last night and she was giving me
news, future news about the news. She was credible, having been the first to
suggest to me that the print edition of Mort Zuckerman's U.S. News and World
Report was going under and would be supplanted by its website. She was correct.
What other tidings did she have? That Newsweek was also going to the web
exclusively. And that the March of Time would make Time a monthly. Less Time, I
guess.
Then we had a long and inconclusive conversation about The New York Times
Company. One of its properties, the Boston Globe, is now so thin that there's
now pretending it abides by the oath pledged on the front page of the Times
itself every day: "All the News That's Fit to Print." In the emaciated Globe,
there's hardly room to print anything. If it were to vanish only the sports fans
would notice.
And as for the future of the Times itself: let us pray.
He doesn't say which way to pray, but I assume it's obvious.
Obama for President!
Update: he can't even make up new content:
President Obama Recycles Old McCain Housing Slam as he Returns to Campaign Mode for Stimulus
February 09, 2009 3:56 PM
Just as the president has recently been using some of the language he used to assail the ideas of his erstwhile campaign opponent, 72-years-young Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. -- deriding opponents' ideas as "old" and "worn out," as he did during the campaign -- he today in Elkhart, Ind., slipped comfortably back into his criticism of the multi-aboded McCain.
Friday, February 06, 2009
Jake Tapper's the Man
but he should probably be watching for his life.
Update: Michael Goldfarb's looking like a pretty good spokesman right now.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Remember the controversy over Linda Darling-Hammond, Obama's campaign and transition adviser on education? Well, she's back. Rumor has it that Darling-Hammond might be getting the deputy secretary position at the Department of Education, which, as this graph shows, wields great power. "That's the person that really runs the agency," one education expert and reformer told me. It's a scenario that reformers, who favor tough new approaches to changing education and see Darling-Hammond as a traditionalist, had hoped wouldn't happen. "I guess we lost on this one," the reformer told me.
Calls to several education policy experts confirmed that word is circulating in the community that she might be tapped as second-in-command under Arne Duncan. "She's made the rounds talking to people, doing the kinds of things you do if you're expecting to stay in Washington," said Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank in D.C. He noted that, if she's not about to get the deputy gig, she could be getting another department position, perhaps one focusing on teacher quality.
In my conversations with them, education policy folks also said they've heard that Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, of which Darling-Hammond isn't a big fan, turned down an administration job. Michael Johnston, an Obama campaign adviser, TFA alum, and school principal who's working in the senior staffing process for the education department, declined to comment on who's getting which posts. "The team will be tremendous," he said in an e-mail, noting that an announcement about senior staff could come any day now.
Reformers are crossing their fingers that Darling-Hammond won't be named the No. 2.
--Seyward Darby
