The League of David

You go, girl!

I recall only one time in my life when going to jail seemed like a viable option.  I was in an interview at the development office of the Library of Congress.  They needed a librarian.  This was a new thing, you see, because the office never actually employed librarians before; they weren't used to it.

However, my interviewer said, they needed someone who could work around a diverse group of people.

Oh, I said, I currently work for a federal office that handles minority health policy.  I have a proven record of working with people from diverse backgrounds.

No, she corrected with a sneer, I mean diverse populations

Well, that's what I mean, I said.

No, she said, this office works with very wealthy people, and we need someone who can work with them.

I was silent.  I still didn't understand.

She continued, "I can tell by your accent that you're probably not used to working around wealthy people."

At that moment, My Three Readers, I seriously considered grabbing her oft-dyed blond head and pounding it through the leaded glass coffee table we were sitting around.  Really, how much jail time would I get if I told the judge what she just told me?  Instead,  I kept my cool.  I felt the blood rush to my face.  I took a deep breath, and knowing that I had only one chance to return the favor, I said, "I'm sorry.  I didn't know that finishing school was one of the educational requirements for this position.  But, I can assure you, I do know how to hold my fork, and I didn't have to go to school to learn."

I finished the interview soon after, and thankfully never heard from those horrible people again.  Later on, I told a friend who worked at the Congressional Research Service (a branch of the Library of Congress).  She dismissed it and said that the office was just full of "congressmen's wives."  Unfortunately, that wasn't my first or last scrape with DC's "power elite," but it has informed my perception of this vast collection of over-privileged and underwhelming people. The vast majority of them do no harm, and, thankfully, drift away depending on which political party is in power that year, but they're replaced with others.  All of them make up the DC "power elite," and they are, as a whole, a very dull, dour group of Philistines.

Which brings me to several conservative complaints about Harriet Miers.

George Will -- the Garrison Keillor of the right -- has had an unmanly snit fit over her nomination.  He's huffing and puffing, and throwing his sizable weight around Washington, suggesting that she needs to be rejected in order to force the president to nominate one of Mr. Will's choices.  His column today is an appalling collection of shoddy reporting and elitists poseuring:

It is not important that she be confirmed because there is  no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks. The president's "argument'' for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their prepresidential careers, and this president, particularly, is not disposed to such reflections.

I'm agreeing wholeheartedly with InstaPunk. This is the kind of B.S. you expect from E.J. Dionne or Maureen....Dowd.  He's pissed that the President Bush didn't pick someone he could schmooze with at La Chaumiere.   Note to George: you have space in all  the newspapers because the leftists who run them aren't frightened by you anymore.  You're one of them.

Over at RadioBlogger there's posted a transcript of a conversation between Hugh Hewitt and blogger Beldar.  Here is described some of Harriet Miers accomplishments, these are the things they're not talking about at the Corner:

WD: She actually oversaw the merger between Locke-Purnell, which was the Dallas firm, and the Liddell-Sapp firm in Houston, each of which were major firms in their respective markets. It was a merger of equals, and left that firm as a clearly one of the powerhouse statewide firms, probably...certainly on anybody's top ten list for major Texas law firms, and on most people's top five list.

HH: Blue chip law firm, in other words, capable of handling...

WD: It's a blue chip firm representing corporate clients, mostly, and clients who are used to picking the best lawyers every place they need lawyers.

HH: The kind of talents that you bring to that job, I've argued with Ramesh Ponnuru and others, are sophistication in the management of strong personalities, knowledge of all the human resources laws and their complexities, contract law, compensation law, ERISA, the sort of things that any large-size American corporate CEO would know, but which is an alien factor on the Supreme Court today.

WD: Well, there's a lot of different management styles within different law firms, and a lot of different ways to skin that cat. But all the managing partners at successful firms, and hers has been a successful firm, they all have certain things in common. For one thing, they all have the respect of all the partners in the firm. And when you're talking about a 400 lawyer plus law firm, it's probably 200 odd partners, getting someone who everybody, or nearly everybody agrees to respect, is not mean feat. They have to have the ability to either induce or compel those people to get along together and work together productively. They have to have skills to mediate, they have to have skills to order. They have to have skills to supervise, they have to run a business, make payroll, handle all the myriad employement logistics, all the sort of problems that any business have, and then they also have to attract business.

HH: Yup. Oh, you have to be...absolutely, you have to be entrepreneurial. Bill Dyer, what about the charge that SMU just isn't good enough for the Supreme Court?

WD: That's something that I can understant how people, particularly from out of state might jump to that conclusion. Here in Texas, the SMU Law School has a good reputation, and always has, particularly in Dallas. It is a well regarded firm. I did recruiting there several years ago at two different law firms I was at. And we considered the top students there as being competitive with the students we hired from more prestigious law schools, including the University of Texas or Harvard, Stanford, whatever. It's not as deep, but the top students can be very, very good. The Law Review she was on there, for example, is a good law review. At the time she was at that school, it was almost certainly the best law review on state law issues, better than the Texas law review. So, it's a little misleading, I think, to the people who are making out like she's some kind of night school graduate, practicing law out of the strip shopping center, are just way off base.

HH: Not that there'd be anything wrong with that, to quote Seinfeld.

WD: Well, no.

HH: Bill Dyer, what about what it takes to become the president of the Texas Bar Association. All bar associations are different, and they're...you know, I often wonder about dogs who chase cars, what are they going to do when they catch it. And so, what about that? I'm not a big ABA guy, or a California Bar guy. I belong to them, but that's because I have to.

WD: Sure. Well, the Texas Bar is very, very different from the American Bar Association. And I have a word or two to add about the ABA later. But for people who aren't familiar with the Texas Bar, it is the organization in Texas that basically supervises everybody who practices law, and everything professionally that they do. It is a mandatory organization that you get your license through it. And you can't not be a member of the Texas Bar, if you're licensed in Texas to practice law. So to develop a leadership position in the Texas Bar, you have to be able to serve and attract a broad constituency. You have to please the office practice lawyers, and the adversary practice lawyers. You have to handle the plaintiff side of the bar, and the defense side of the bar. Big cities, small town. Basically, every kind of lawyer, you have to have some kind of sensitivity to. And they're all involved in the Texas Bar. And the Texas Bar has been one of the leaders in the nation, in terms of things like adopting mandatory continuing legal education, to make sure that lawyers stay up to speed, or board certification procedures like the medical doctors have. We do that now in Texas, and that's something the Texas Bar has done. So being president of the Texas Bar is a significant credential. It shows a level of leadership within the profession, and service to the profession, that we still take real seriously.

I have a lot of respect for President Bush for choosing a woman who has more to offer than the same credentials that have, quite frankly, gotten us such horrible decisions like Kelo (5-4) and  Lawrence v Texas (6-3(!)). 

I can see also other reasons for her nomination.  One that stands out  is her experience making important legal decisions in the war on terror.  I know everyone is sick and tired of the GWOT, but there are years and years of it yet to fight, and I suspect there are going to be major cases dealing with extremely difficult issues that haven't even appeared in a courtroom yet.  If there is one person who has a long view of  the GWOT it's the President.  I suspect with that view in mind, he made the decision to go with an accomplished lawyer who's actually participated in the GWOT.  And, no, playing a round of golf with a well-connected general doesn't count.

Now did Miers spend her legal career writing for all the right publications and attending all the right conferences? Obviously, no.  Does she belong to all the right organizations?   I would bet the answer is no.  She's not part of those elite circles where conservatives and liberals hobnob together in mutual self-congratulation of their power and status.  And it's those closest to that sphere of influence -- like the "bloggers" at the Corner -- who have come out with the harshest, ill-informed criticisms. 

The more some conservative commentators ooze condescension toward this accomplished attorney, the more I am going to support her.  I've been on the receiving end of a sneer, and I know how it must feel.  All I can say is, "You go, girl."

10 Years of the "Arab Street"

I'm on a Philistine news watch today.

I recently noticed something about MSM coverage of the Middle East.  The Arab Street has vanished.  It seems that for years we've been reading and listening to people talk about the Arab Street as if this vast wave of angry, pitch-fork wielding Arab proletariat was going to rise up from the sand and take over the Levant in one, last great Revolution. 

I never bought it.  The Arab Street never existed.  It was the fantasy of an aging leftist intellectual class that refuses to give up.  Philistines may come in all shapes and sizes, but there is one general characteristic: a cosmic longing for the Revolution.  Unfortunately, lefty intel analysts I've worked with in the past (especially the ones educated in Middle East Studies departments) bought into the idea of the Arab Street.  Some are still waiting for it, like an analytical Second Coming.

However, I have unscientific evidence that this revolution, too, is vanishing. 

 

I went on to an excellent commercial online database called Factiva and performed two types of searches on  the exact phrase "arab street."  I restricted my dataset to four Philistine newspapers:  The New York Times, the L.A. Times,  the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post.  I further  restricted my search to exclude republished news, pricing info, etc.  I then did two sets of searches. 

I'll start with the second search because that's what's represented above.  I searched the phrase in these four newspapers for a full year of each year since 1995.   I then recorded the number of "hits" (results) that were returned.  This isn't scientific because the results could include duplicates or unrelated articles that happen to have those two words in succession.  It also doesn't read for context , and so articles and columns that have to do with the Arab Street, but didn't phrase it precisely in that way, aren't included.  The results, however, are startling:

1995:3

1996:6

1997:6

1998:7

1999:3

2000:13

2001:48

2002:61

2003:89

2004:19

2005 (so far):16

In the first set I searched the phrase in three separate data ranges:

01/01/1995-09/12/2001:  48 hits  (approx. 5.5 years)
09/13/2001-02/01/2005: 208 hits  (approx. 4 years)
02/03/2005-10/01/2004: 15 hits  (appox .5 year)

I love this.  It looks like our premier newspapers of record discovered the Revolution soon after 9/11, further building up the fantasy ahead of the Iraq invasion.  But after watching Arabs in Iraq and Lebanon voting and waiving American flags, thanking America, the Arab Street vanished.  In the Philistine mind, if the Revolution isn't their Revolution then it doesn't exist.

Let me suggest the Endangered Liberal Meme Act of 2005,  intended to preserve this and other quickly vanishing leftist memes for posterity.

Not One Named Source?

Al-Reuters published a bizarre article this morning, linked at the Drudge Report, that has not one named source.   I never comment on these lapses of journalistic judgment because I could be here all day doing only that, but this one is so blatantly bad that I can't let it go.

CIA faces spy shortages as staffers go private
By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As CIA Director Porter Goss tries to rebuild the agency's global operations, he faces a shortage of experienced spies created by a post-September 11 stampede to the private sector, current and former intelligence officials say.

Okay.

Goss, who a year ago inherited a CIA wracked by criticism of intelligence failures over Iraq and the September 11, 2001, attacks, has come under fire from critics about the publicized departures of several high-level clandestine officers.

Okay.

Reform advocates see the loss of senior officials as a natural consequence of changes intended to root out an old guard blamed for lapses that prompted Congress to put the CIA under a new director of national intelligence, John Negroponte.

Okay.Then it starts getting funky.

"The CIA and the intelligence community failed this country pretty badly. That's why there's new leadership at the CIA. Change is not easy," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee.

When I read this quote, my librarian's sense for news started creaking into action. After many years of reading article, after article, after article, in an endless stream, day-in, day-out, you can tell if a quote is canned or if it comes from a real interview.  This looks like an official statement, not a quoted source.  I may be wrong on this one, but it just sounds like something a Congressman would say "in committee."

But current and former officials say Goss does face problems stemming from the agency's reliance on a robust private contracting market for skilled intelligence and security workers that has grown more lucrative since the September 11, 2001, attacks and the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

As a member of the vast military-industrial complex I can agree with this to a point.The Agency, like many federal agencies, is losing staff. However, it's much more complex than big bucks.  Many bureaucrats are leaving because they're reaching retirement age, and these folks are bailing with a 20-year pension and the hope of making even better money in contracting. This article doesn't mention the retirement-phenom, only market pressures.

"Goss realizes he has a major problem in the (clandestine service) because he's having major bailouts among the old guard and also retention problems all the way down the ranks," said a former clandestine officer.

[Unnamed source #1].

I don't buy this. Most former clandestine officers are...in their late forties or older, and I'm not sure folks in that age group would use a phrase like "major bailouts."That's an idiomatic expression more often used by Xers, like me.

Experienced spies have been surrendering their blue staff badges and leaving the CIA in droves, often to return the next day as better paid, green-badged private contractors, current and former officials say.

[Unnamed Sources #2]

Again.Who?

But as contractors, they can no longer supervise fresh recruits at a time when the CIA is pursuing a 50 percent  increase in spies. Nor can they supplement a pool of experienced operatives from which the agency traditionally draws its top leaders.

Sure...

"You've got a seismic shift with the contractor issue," said a intelligence official who views the trend as byproduct of low morale among clandestine staff officers.

[Unnamed Source #3]

"It's frankly scary to look at the number of middle managers that are diving out with 10, 15, 20 years in because they're going to make $175,000 or $200,000. It reduces what we  call the 'blue badges' -- government people with clearances.

This quote isn't very clear, and leave me asking more questions.  Clandestine (DO) or Analytical (DI) middle managers?  What kind of jobs are they taking? What kind of jobs are offering that much? Are they security consulting? Straight analysis? IT work? I've been in and out of contracting for fifteen years, and the 175K salary for a "middle manager" seems more like science fiction to me. Unless you're well-connected, you're not making an easy 200K. A salary like this in defense/intel contracting usually comes with a dozen or more employees and multi-million dollar budgets.  And you're going to have to bring in a steady stream of business.

If this source exists, then I would say his/her golf buddies are lying about their salaries.

PAY IS BETTER FOR PRIVATE CONTRACTORS

A $200,000-a-year contracting salary compares with annual  pay of about $135,000 for experienced CIA staffers at the very top of the scale used to set federal salaries in Washington.

"Often you leave behind the deadwood. The deadwood gets in charge, and then even more people move on," the official said.

This could be just sour grapes from a former DO/DI official (again, it isn't made clear) who was forced out, or was smart of enough to know the writing on the wall.  I've been through several downsizing/management changeovers, and it's always been the case that the safest managers are the ones that share the new management's goals. A new leader in any kind of organization is going to have men and women around who are going to forward their vision and agenda.  If you don't like it, then you can leave.  Sometimes a manager who is too closely associated with the "old" management is going to be compelled to leave.

Reading articles like this, I'm always surprised at the incessant griping that government bureaucrats do when faced with an all-too-common situation in the private sector.  The sense of entitlement can be brutally obvious. 

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck said Goss is determined to stem the trend toward private contracting by rebuilding the blue-badged workforce as CIA operations expand worldwide.

Good.  And I hope they find folks from private industry.  Is Donald Trump available?

Officials say the U.S. Congress set the stage for today's shortage of experienced staff by ordering a 17 percent across-the-board reduction in agency personnel in the mid-1990s after the Cold War.

Who’s fault is that?  Let me guess: George Bush.  He and Karl Rove used their Jedi-mind trick powers on Clinton-era policy makers and compelled them to cut the Agency’s work force.  However, they didn’t get rid of enough whacked-out Philistine analysts, according to this Frontpage article.

The Directorate of Operations, which runs CIA clandestine activities, has dwindled to fewer than 5,000 staff members from a peak of over 7,000 in the 1970s, intelligence sources say.

Quality, not quantity.

To supplement the clandestine ranks, Goss issued an appeal to former senior intelligence officers over the summer to consider returning to help train new recruits.

But already, inexperienced clandestine officers have shown up at the CIA's Baghdad and Kabul stations in numbers that some current and former officials find worrying.

Again, who?  And how do we know how many “inexperienced clandestine officers” are showing up in Iraq and Afghanistan?  Do they wear name tags?

"They're great places to learn. But where are the people to lead?" complained a former senior clandestine officer. "Running around Afghanistan trying to recruit Afghans is a piece of cake compared with trying to recruit an Iranian nuclear scientist."

[Unnamed Source #4]

I’m sorry.  They weren’t doing that over the last 20 years.  Now the folks who weren’t doing that ten years ago (when we still had a chance to stop the Iranians) are complaining that no one is around to do that.

Please stay retired.

But Goss' success could depend on how he is perceived by the remaining clandestine staff.

He has been portrayed as a director struggling against opposition from clandestine officers who some say are offended by his reliance on a personal staff known to insiders as the "Gosslings."

Oh, spare me.  The old-timers are just frustrated they can’t get access to the big man.  They resent that they’re not in loop.  This is not necessarily a problem.

"We hear people feel like there's no strategic vision coming out of Goss. He's behind a wall of staff and his staff are disruptive," said a congressional aide briefed by CIA officials.

[Unnamed source #5]

Added a former clandestine officer with long experience in world hot spots: "The old CIA is finished. What happens now, I don't know."

[Unnamed source #6]

”The old CIA is finished?” Good.  It didn’t protect us on 9/11, why would I or any reasonable America boo-hoo the demise of an organization that won the Cold War (despite its Marxist analytical work force), but couldn’t pull the trigger on a crazy Arab in the Hindu Kush?

But I also have to ask the question again:  who is saying this?  If they're former, why won't they come forward?  The fact is if these are real people they are probably unwilling to name themselves because they are working in the vast military/intel complex themselves.  They're contractors.  I doubt, however, they’re all making 200K.

The Elvis of Che

For giggles I typed "resurrection Che" into Google, and sure enough, on the first page I saw this irony-free article on the importance of Che:

Today, when Che's image occupies every vacant public advertising space, it is easy to forget that for a decade his memory was quite systematically underplayed by the Cuban government. Why it was reborn in the 1990s is the theme of what follows - but it can be asserted that the official rehabilitation of Che has had much to do with the ideological needs of a Cuban regime under siege. To some extent (and a limited one) his reappearance on the international scene was an echo of what was happening inside Cuba; but Cuba's impact on the world was far more limited in the 1990s and its authority was significantly weakened. So the rediscovery of Che beyond Cuba has other origins, perhaps in the search among new movements of resistance robbed by the collapse of Stalinism for a political tradition which could provide a symbolic language of resistance.

In that political vacuum very few figures have been rediscovered who for one reason or another were not associated with that discredited past. Malcolm X was recuperated; so were ignored feminist revolutionaries from Sojourner Truth to Louise Michel. And Che Guevara emphatically returned. It is now clear from John Lee Anderson's exhaustive biography that Che did consider himself a Marxist and place himself in a revolutionary tradition. At first sight that might disqualify him from the list of uncontaminated fighters. But over time Che has been progressively disengaged in popular thinking from his role in the Cuban Revolution and from his responsibility for a failed strategy of guerrilla warfare; he has been relocated on a terrain of pure rebellion, individualistic and informed in the first instance by moral rather than political considerations.

Che lingers on and pops up again and again  like the Elvis sightings so popular in the 1980s.  He'll be resurrected over and over until all that's left in the public memory is a parody of the man. 

Who's This?

Part of an ongoing series.  Who's this?

1. A Buddhist monk auctioneer?
2. Evel Knievel's other brother, the lounge singer
3. The lame boy left behind when the "mountain-side shut fast"
4. Peer Gynt


Answer.

Communism is Dead. Die with it.

I went downtown today to meet up with a friend, and I decided to stop by the Support Our Troops rally on the Mall and test out my new camera phone.   It was a small rally (they usually are).  I've noticed over the years that conservatives and Republicans don't generally "rally."  They vote.

I listened briefly to the speakers, but to be honest, the stories of losing children to war were too heart-breaking to listen to for too long.  I decided, instead, to take pictures of some of the signs, and some of the people.  Then I began to hear a group of people chanting, at one point they were drowning out the folks on the stage.  I looked over and saw a group of protesters standing across the street and screaming to drown out the rally speakers.  I snapped a few pictures, and then let go.

I thought for a minute, "what do I say?"  "USA!"  No.  "Support the Troops!"  No.  Then I thought about what would really get them going.  What is the one characteristic that each and every Philistine/moonbat shares?  They still believe in the Revolution.  They still believe the people are going to rise up and establish the grand socialist Utopia.  It gives them strength.  It feeds their ever-wackier fantasies.

I said the one thing I know would drive them crazy:

Communism is Dead!  Communism is Dead!

I never say anything, My Three Readers.   Everyday the Philistines shove their angry, incoherent, frivolous "attitude" into every aspect of my life.   From the repulsive, obese "wymyn" with the CATS NOT KIDS bumper stickers, to the endless condescending, biased media stream, to the self-absorbed posturing of the liberal Boomers I deal with every day,  I bite my tongue, and ignore it.

But not today.

Communism is Dead.

You want to drive an aging Philistine crazy?  Remind them that their lives are dedicated to a barren, lifeless ideology.   Remind them that they've failed.

Communism is Dead.

And I was having so much fun.  I have a very loud voice when I want to, and I think I was louder then all of the them combined.  I know that some of them were stunned at my first chant.  Some woman was videotaping me.  I don't like that, and I'm sure I came off looking like a rabid idiot, but I couldn't help myself.  I was having fun.  If I had more time I would have stayed behind and made faces at the Philistines, but I needed to get back to meet my friend.  I screamed it a few more times, and a cop came by and asked me to stop goading them on.  Of course, I'm going oblige a police officer.  I turned and left.

The fact is, we didn't ask for this.  They declared war on us.  And if it's war, then, so be it.  Fighting a war involves the scariest, ugliest, and evil tasks that good people are forced to do.  It involves sacrifice of every kind: the lives and limbs of young men and women, the lives and minds of young analysts, and the long, sleepless nights they spend exposing themselves to the basest, most vile states of human nature. 

This is what war requires. Not frequent shopping at Whole Foods and another set of tongue piercings.  The Philistines are fighting a different war from the rest of us.  They're still fighting the Cold War, and they're willing to say and do whatever it takes to win, even though the Good Guys won over a decade ago.

Imagine if they put their hearts and minds to fight the terrorists rather then their fellow Americans.

Warning:  the pics are quite awful.  They remind me of the grainy shots I used to take with my old Kodak disk camera.  Sorry.   I'll link to better pics later.

The Philistines:

Here's one for the road:

Amen, sister!

UPDATE:  A few days too late, but Instapundit has a link to a few pictures much better than mine.  Here are a few from FreeRepublic.

In Her Wacky (Bird) Brain

I've been scanning My Favorite Philistine's blog for something to ridicule, but she's been so dull of late it's hard to find anything interesting to say.  There's more Rove.  As a matter of fact, she and the wacked-out folks at Daily Kos are the only ones following this pointless story.  But even she admits there's not much going on. 

A slow news cycle, however, is all that needed to get the paranoid juices flowing.  On the President's pathetic poll numbers, she has this to say:

It's likely that once Bush gets back to Washington in September and the Bullshit Machine is cranked up to full speed, enough propaganda will be catapulted to reassure the righties. But I think Bush has finally painted himself into a corner, and all the photo ops and banners and talking points in the world won't get him out of it.

Everything is spin and propaganda, and everyone who isn't part of her little circle of geniuses is a mindless fool doing whatever The Government says.  The low-level noise in her head is glum, very glum.  There's nothing witty or fun in her musings.  When she does "laugh" it's usually some sinister, cynical snickering.

Her wacky, glum worldview is so common among the Philistines that it's hard not to see her as the Perfect Leftist.  She's their canary in the coal mine, albeit a rather large, hoary bird.

Fetus Hater's Consort

If it's possible, Barbara "Fetus Hater" O'Brien has a male counterpart.  He's a poseur, so obtuse, so utterly wrong about every single issue he comments on, that it's hard to believe he's a college professor.  Oh, wait, he's professor of Middle East studies.  That makes more sense.

Today Professor Juan Cole, president of the Middle Eastern Studies Association, has decided that we're not really at war.  He spends a considerable amount of time identifying what he sees as the indoctrination of a jihadist (what he describes as the installation of software).  And then he says this:

It is not a war. It is counter-insurgency. Gen. Anthony Zinni tells the story about how he had been away from the Pentagon for a while and then was (as I remember) brought back to give a backgrounder. And a young soldier saluted and said he was there to fight the G-WOT. And Zinni said, "Come again?" The soldier looked puzzled and said, "Why, the Global War on Terror, sir."

I don't know how this story is supposed to support his argument.  A senior military commander may not be clued-in to every new acronym.  So how does this prove that we're not in a war?  He doesn't say.  More importantly, he never gives us a reason for the indoctrination.  He's about as blinkered a thinker as his female consort and fellow fool, Babs the Fetus Hater. 

Several bloggers have done the work of responding to Cole's post.  Unfortunately, Cole teaches college age students.  Thus, all the bloggers in the world won't stop him from corrupting students' minds with this wacky sort of thinking.

My favorite line:  "If you try to "profile" the terrorist using such social markers as class or ethnicity, maybe even religious background, you will go badly astray."

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most Islamic terrorists are Muslim.  I could be wrong.  Perhaps "Allahu Akhbar!" is a rallying cry at the Silver Spring Unitarian Church; it certainly isn't at St Michael's.

These Philistines have jihad written all over them:

Rebels Without a Clue

I used to read articles like this when I was in my twenties and still interested in reading the newspaper (it supposedly made me smarter).   It was Philistine navel-gazing back then, and it still is:

The hypnosis of hipsterism is entrenched among many of L.A.'s urban sophisticates, especially those who work in the trend-driven industries of media, music and fashion. But for many twenty-, thirty- and fortysomethings, the appeal of being cool and edgy is rapidly deteriorating. "The last identity you would want to claim now is a hipster," says John Leland, author of "Hip: The History." "It's the worst of insults."

Just what is hip has become nebulous in a digital age of microtrends, when a cultural blip goes from underground to overexposed in one season. Likewise, the original concept of hip as something outside the purview of the mainstream has been replaced by the hipstream: mainstream cool packaged by corporate marketing departments.

The inevitable backlash — not against the bohemian veritas but the sycophantic consumer of cool — is well underway.

Of course, this is a load of crap.  "Hip" will always be important to media trendsetters and the advertisers who fund them.  Let's face it: consumerism defines the reality.  The LA Times reporter just saw a clever story hook, and decided to run with it:  a group of over-educated Philistines haunting LA's tawny neighborhoods who decide to forgoe the purchase of $200 designer jeans this week.  The article peeks with this fascianting vignette:

Erica Timmerman realized she didn't care about trying to be hip anymore when, at age 30, her doctor told her she had thyroid cancer. The diagnosis annihilated her ambitions to be a walking pop culture encyclopedia or to cultivate a pose of ironic detachment. Cancer, after all, doesn't respond to wisecracks.

"When you think you might die, you look at your life and realize what's important to you," says Timmerman.

The now 40-year-old Silver Lake resident has felt pressure since adolescence to be considered cool. That pressure, along with her cancer, is now in remission. "And I'm not going to let anyone dictate how I'm supposed to look or act, and stop trying to be something I'm not," says Timmerman.

No, really?  Cancer puts a damper on your trendsetting?  Who knew?   Let's face it, the only real rebelliousness is the life of total self denial.

Now these are rebels with a clue:

The Guy is Dead

Barbara "Fetus Hater" O'Brien is such an awful writer, I don't know what she's talking about here.  The king of Saudi Arabia dies, and it reminds her of the Air America scandal because both stories are fake. 

While I'm on the subject of "undersourced" news, as I am here and here--today's news that King Fahd of Saudi Arabia is dead reminded me of another time the Right was faked out. And the pattern is remarkably similar to that of the Air America "swarm"

So conservative bloggers are ignorant because the Washington Times misreported the death of a dying, sick old man a few weeks ago.  As a result,

This is pretty much what the Right is doing with Air America. They pay no attention to where a source is coming from or consider how credible it might be. And then they treat subsequent news stories that do nothing but site the original source  as "new" news items. This is either grossly disingenuous or just plain stupid.

When a Philistine can't argue on the merits of a issue, they either change the subject or pervert the issue.  In this case Fetus Hater has decided that nothing really happened because the sources don't meet her high standards.  It's an unbelievably obtuse argument, but unsurprising for her.