Their systematic disruption of the 2010 speech is part of a widespread trend among college students, usually on the left and commonly on the Islamist left, to shout down speakers with whom they disagree. The chilling effect  caused by such aggressive protests on campuses across the country has prompted prominent non-leftist, non-Islamist speakers to bring private security to speaking events, and campuses to require that student organizers arrange for campus security personnel to be present.

Efforts by student groups to silence the opinions of campus political minorities are an open assault  on the civil society colleges and universities should be fostering on their campuses.

I was surprised yesterday when I read an article by John Hrabe opposing last Friday’s conviction. Hrabe compares the case of the Irvine 11 to a scene from “Dead Poets Society”:

“’Dead Poets Society is a collection of pious platitudes masquerading as a courageous stand in favor of something: doing your own thing, I think,’ [Ebert] wrote in the opening line of his scathing review.

“Which makes me wonder what the fastidious movie critic would think of an alternate ending, one in which the students are punished by the school and then brought up on misdemeanor charges by the local district attorney for conspiracy and disrupting a meeting?

“Oh wait, that isn’t fiction, but the real life story of the ‘Irvine 11.’”

But it’s not the story of the Irvine 11. The students in question weren’t protesting the firing of a favorite professor in their class room. They were systematically shutting down a speech they weren’t required to attend – a speech other students wanted to hear. “The Heckler’s-veto,” writes Hrabe “wasn’t the only First Amendment issue in this case.” The Irvine 11 were singled out for prosecution because they were Muslims, criticizing a Jewish Israeli.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the District Attorney selectively prosecuted,” said Hussam Ayloush, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations — Greater Los Angeles Area, “because the students were Muslim, the speaker was an Israeli diplomat, and the verbal protests centered on Israel’s long history of war crimes.”

So the Executive Director of CAIR thinks the students were singled out because they are Muslims who were attempting to fight the Israeli/Palestinian conflict  in the auditorium of an Orange County campus? I doubt that these students were “selectively prosecuted.”

The Muslim Student Union and Students for Justice in Palestine groups on Irvine’s campus have long led the most vitriolic “Israel Apartheid Week,” also known as “Anti-Israel Week,” in the country featuring  speakers such as Imam Abdul Malik Ali. Malik Ali is known for using Holocaust references, 9/11 trutherism, and his viceral hatred of all things Jewish and American to rile up campus Islamist groups across the country. His speeches have never been systematically disrupted or shut down by students. The MSU and its views are not singled out for punishment on campus, in fact they’re quite popular and wide-spread.

The question in this case was quite clearly the “heckler’s veto,” and the attempt to shut out of campus opinions that some students don’t like.

I’m not saying that debate on campuses should be “nice”—some things you just can’t be “nice” about—it should, however, be ordered and civil.

When controversial speakers are prosecuted under ridiculous “disturbing the peace” statutes, it sets up a forced choice for freedom. Every speaker must live in fear of prosecution, or worse, only the dissenting speakers get quashed. Either scenario is unacceptable because both outcomes lead to less speech.

In this case we have an example of the opposite of the scenario Hrabe illustrates. By taking a firm stand in support of civil discourse and in opposition to the “heckler’s veto” the Irvine 11′s prosecution could finally lead to an opening for civil debate and a hearing of all sides on our campuses.

If we expect young Americans to be educated and prepared to participate in civil society, colleges and universities should foster environments where all opinions can be heard and discussed; and enforce strict rules against the disruption of civil debate.

“Civil” disobedience has replaced civil society on our campuses. This case could be the first step towards restoration of free and open speech for students.

A Facebook post announcing plans by a UC Berkeley Republican group to sell baked goods priced according to race, gender and ethnicity – “White/Caucasian” pastries for $2 and “Black/African American” pastries for 75 cents, for example – has drawn outrage on campus.

You may be surprised by this but, UC Berkeley College Republicans do exist. And, they’re usually great. This time they’re getting attention over an event posting on Facebook for their planned “Increase Diversity Bake Sale” on Tuesday;  bringing attention to SB 185 a bill on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk to allow the CSU system to pick new students by race.

Once known as Affirmative Action Bake-sales, these events have been a hit with lefties and righties on campuses for quite some time. They enrage the left, on campus and in the media, because they’re so clear—and so true.

This from a campus lefty:

“I’m ashamed to know that I go to the same school with people who would say stuff like this,” responded student Skyler Hogan-Van Sickle on Facebook. “I’m really trying to figure out how someone can be this hateful.”

Wahh, waah, waaah. I’d be ashamed to go to a school where administrators care more about my “ethnic background” than my academic ability.

Read the story here: Racially heated posting sparks UC Berkeley Outrage.

Berkeley students call “Emergency” town hall meeting on “racist bake-sale. Cal student senate will meet tonight to discuss SB 185 and the bake-sale.

Full text: Be Not Afraid.

(h/t FlashReport)

The California GOP had a close encounter with cannibalism as the leftist wing of the party attempted to gut the party’s platform Sunday. Fuentes’ warning should guide republicans into the final platform vote next Spring and into the Presidential election next Fall.

The guy with Obama’s hand in his face is supposedly the Mongolian President, an American ally. We know how the President likes to treat our close ally’s.

Photo Credit: Allan Tanenbaum-Pool / Getty Images

A new factory built with public money boasted a gleaming conference room with glass walls that, with the flip of a switch, turned a smoky gray to conceal the room’s occupants. Hastily purchased state-of-the-art equipment ended up being sold for pennies on the dollar, still in its plastic wrap, employees said.

As the $344 million factory went up just down the road from the company’s leased plant in Fremont, Calif., workers watched as pallets of unsold solar panels stacked up in storage. Many wondered: Was the factory needed?

The WaPo story explains how Solyndra attempted to exploit the administration’s apparent thirst for gambling on its “Green Jobs” scheme after receiving the $535 billion loan.

Solyndra’s ability to secure federal backing also made the company eager for more assistance, interviews and records show. Company executives ramped up their Washington lobbying efforts, hiring a former Senate aide to work with the White House and the Energy Department. Within a week of getting a loan guarantee commitment from the Energy Department, Solyndra applied for another, worth $400 million. It never won final approval.

…

The leading investors in Solyndra were two investment funds with ties to George B. Kaiser, a major campaign fundraising “bundler” for Obama.

The White House had scheduled a press event around the time of Solyndra’s factory groundbreaking on Sept. 4, 2009. Federal reviewers gave their final nod to the deal on Sept. 2.

With the loan guarantee in hand, Solyndra built a second, seven-acre factory with 19 loading docks. As part of the expansion, Gronet and fellow managers hoped to cut costs by speeding up the automated assembly. To do so, they bought a custom-made assembly tool from VDL, a Dutch company. The company had never built that kind of equipment, but it promised the assembly tool would arrive in the summer of 2010. By that time, Gronet had been pushed out as chief executive. Workers told The Post in interviews that they were shocked that summer when Harrison, newly installed as CEO, told them that sales projections used to justify the new factory to federal agencies had been far too optimistic.

Read the whole story here.

In an interview with NR’s Andrew Stiles, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) discusses how risky Obama’s bet really was.

The site as been sitting around idly for quite some time (if you’re reading this now, you probably noticed). But this week it’s coming back. There’s just too much going on right now for the Dana Report to remain silent.

• The Palestinians—you know, those Arab fellows living in Judea and Samaria—are bum-rushing the UN this week to get their aid-supported terrorist-run jew-hating backwater declared  an independent state and member of the community of nations. Not that I care what the UN does, but other people do; and those people think the UN is a BIG deal.

• Republicans are revving up for an exciting (maybe?) primary cycle.

Rick Perry is running at the head of the pack, now. So was Rudy Giuliani in 2008. But, Rick’s my guy as long as he keeps up the fight. If he’s not your guy, let me know why down in the comments (unless Ron Paul is your guy. I’d rather not hear about that).

Mitt Romney is up there too. But he’s too . . . squishy for my taste.

Bachmann’s still in there.

Thad McCotter is awesome. You say, “But he voted for the Auto Bailout!” he did, not so hot, but I can deal with it. Thad won’t make it out of the single digits—he just doesn’t look “presidential,” whatever that means. I’d like to see him in one of the debates though. He’s smart.

• The President, or Barack, as he likes to be called, is acting more like a Barack than a Mr. President.

He’s screwing up really bad. If you read this site before we went AWOL you expected it. Although I didn’t expect him to fail so badly.

The Solyndra investigation should be fun. Andy McCarthy over at NRO is calling that scandal “fraud,” he’s probably right. How high it goes in the administration, we’ll see in the next few months.

The AG, Eric Holder, should be fired. He should have been a long time ago. But Fast & Furious should be the last straw.

Boeing and the NLRB. It’s shameful.

Secretaries paying as much in taxes as “millionaires and billionaires?” C’mon.

• Stay tuned. The Dana Report is back.

George Washington’s proclamation of Thanksgiving, October 14, 1789:

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANKSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;– for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;– for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;– and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us. [Read More...]

Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation of Thanksgiving, October, 3 1863:

…No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union. [Read More...]

Happy Thanksgiving!

From National Review Online – Uncommon Knowledge, Nov. 20, 2008

With incumbent Minnesota GOP Senator Norm Coleman leading Democrat Al Franken by 206 votes as state election officials proceed to hand count each of the 2.9 million votes cast on Election Day, the very premise upon which the former comedian is basing his recount effort is worthy of a good laugh.

Having seen first-hand in Florida how claims of “under votes” can stir the passion of partisans, the one salient observation one can make about Franken’s claim there is a vast “under vote” that will catapult him into the lead against incumbent GOP Senator Norm Coleman is that it is illusory – and an objective look at public polling data corroborates this viewpoint.

Now that Franken is a two time loser – having now lost for a second time following the completion of the canvassing process – his campaign’s entire legal strategy and rationale is premised upon winning this mythical under vote.

Franken’s “under vote” argument suggests that if a voter cast a ballot for Barack Obama, but did not vote in Minnesota’s senate race, it was a mistake and that individual intended to vote for him. This is ludicrous, and Al Franken knows it is wrong. But he’s now using this ruse as a fundraising gimmick. Anyone getting a call from team Franken asking for a contribution to his “recount fund” are being taken for a ride.

Why? Because every public poll taken before the election had Al Franken running significantly behind Barack Obama. And despite what appear to be ever more desperate pleas from the Franken campaign attempting to convince anyone who’ll listen that “under votes” throughout the state will automatically translate to a Franken win, consider these facts:

From Labor Day through Election Day, according to the four public polls that consistently surveyed both Franken and Barack Obama’s ballot positions (Rasmussen, Survey USA, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Minnesota Public Radio), Franken continually underperformed Obama in the ballot between 5% to 16%. The final polls before Election Day found Franken trailing Obama by an average of 12.6%.

It is highly implausible, and statistically unlikely, that Franken will see his “extra vote” strategy materialize when the under votes are analyzed – simply for the reason the “new” votes will not be there, and never existed in the first place.

From a public relations perspective, his reliance on “extra votes” is a loser – and puts a bright spotlight on the fact his strategy all along has and always will be to add votes to those already counted on Election Day. That’s why it was so damaging this past week that the only real story anyone in America remembers about this race was that 32 Franken ballots were “found” in the backseat of an election official’s car.

Furthermore, the absence of Obama coattails in the Minnesota Senate race was documented by the Minnesota media well before the ballots were cast. An analysis by the Minneapolis Star Tribune found that only 68% of self-identified Obama supporters planned to vote for Franken. (Source: “Split Decisions Could be Key to Election” 10/28)

Al Franken lost the U.S. Senate election because many Obama supporters considered him to be unfit for public office, and simply opted not to cast a vote for him. Franken’s consistently poor image ratings took a major toll on his final standing on Election Day.

Franken fell short then, and he will likely fall short now that the ballots are about to be counted for yet a third time.

Among the many new “rights” being conjured out of thin air, a new one seems to be a “right” to win.

Americans have long had the right to put their candidates and their ideas to a vote. Now there seems to be a sense that your rights have been trampled on if you don’t win.

Hillary Clinton’s supporters were not merely disappointed, but outraged, when she lost the Democrats’ nomination to Barack Obama. Some took it as a sign that, while racial barriers had come down, the “glass ceiling” holding down women was still in place.

Apparently, if you don’t win, somebody has put up a barrier or a ceiling. The more obvious explanation of the nomination outcome was that Obama ran a better campaign than Hillary. There is not the slightest reason to doubt that she would have been the nominee if the votes in the primaries had come out her way.

As the election approached, pundits warned that, if Obama lost, there would be riots in the ghetto. We will never know. But since when does any candidate have a right to win any office, much less the White House?

The worst of all the reactions from people who act as if they have a right to win have come from gay activists in the wake of voter rejection of so-called “gay marriage,” which is to say, redefining what marriage has meant for centuries.

Blacks and Mormons have been the main targets of the gay activists’ anger. Seventy percent of blacks voted against gay marriage in California, so racial epithets were hurled at blacks in Los Angeles — not in black neighborhoods, by the way.

Blacks who just happened to be driving through Westwood, near UCLA, were accosted in their cars and, in addition to being denounced, were warned, “You better watch your back.”

Even blacks who were carrying signs in favor of gay marriage were denounced with racial epithets.

In Michigan, an evangelical-church service was invaded and disrupted by gay activists, who also set off a fire alarm, because evangelicals had dared to exercise their right to express their opinions at the polls.

In Oakland, California, a mob gathered outside a Mormon temple in such numbers that officials shut down a nearby freeway exit for more than three hours.

In their midst was a San Francisco Supervisor who said “The Mormon church has had to rely on our tolerance in the past, to be able to express their beliefs.” He added, “This is a huge mistake for them. It looks like they’ve forgotten some lessons.”

Apparently Mormons don’t have the same rights as other Americans, at least not if they don’t vote the way gay activists want them to vote.

There was another gay activist mob gathered outside a Mormon temple in Orange County, California.

In the past, gay activists have disrupted Catholic services and their “gay pride” parades in San Francisco have crudely mocked nuns.

While demanding tolerance from others, gay activists apparently feel no need to show any themselves.

How did we get to this kind of situation?

With all the various groups who act as if they have a right to win, we got to the present situation over the years, going back to the 1960s, where the idea started gaining acceptance that people who felt aggrieved don’t have to follow the rules or even the law.

“No justice, no peace!” was a slogan that found resonance.

Like so many slogans, it sounds good if you don’t stop and think — and awful if you do.

Almost by definition, everybody thinks their cause is just. Does that mean that nobody has to obey the rules? That is called anarchy.

Nobody is in favor of anarchy. But some people want everybody else to obey the rules, while they don’t have to.

What they want is not decisive, however. It is what other people are willing to tolerate that determines how far any group can go.

When the majority of the people become like sheep, who will tolerate intolerance rather than make a fuss, then there is no limit to how far any group will go.

© 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Iraq’s cabinet approved a security pact to keep U.S. troops in the country another three years. The agreement goes now to the parliament, where it seems likely to win approval.

The United Nations mandate under which American troops were operating lapses at the end of the year. If we hadn’t reached an agreement with the Iraqis, our troops no longer would have been able to operate in the country. The negotiations were long, complex, and highly controversial within Iraq. That they were successfully concluded is a blow to the schemers in Iran — and to their cat’s-paw, Moqtada al-Sadr — who did all they could to torpedo the pact. The Iranians ran a substantial propaganda campaign in Iraq against the agreement beginning in May of this year. They lobbied Iraqi politicians and offered them bribes. The Iranians don’t like having us at their doorstep and don’t like the version of Iraq — an ally of the United States — that our continued presence implies. Iran’s implicit threat to Maliki was that his government would fall if he supported the agreement.

That Maliki has defied Iran is another sign of his growing confidence following successful operations to clear Sadr’s Mahdi Army out of Basra and Sadr City. Sadr had launched protests against the agreement with the goal of ending the U.S. “occupation” of Iraq. The pact demonstrates again his waning power. Grand Aytollah al-Sistani blessed the agreement, pointedly siding with the elected Iraqi government.

Maliki drove a tough bargain with us, and the agreement is far from ideal. We protected our troops from falling under the jurisdiction of Iraqi law, but we didn’t protect contractors. And we gave in to two ill-advised hard deadlines.

U.S. troops are scheduled to cease combat operations in Iraqi cities by June 2009. This kind of deadline is unwelcome, since conditions can change, but at the moment it looks as though it may be practical. We are only conducting major combat operations in Mosul right now, and central Iraq is mostly quiet, so we have already effectively been shifting to peacekeeping operations.

The agreement also calls for all U.S. forces to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, another unconditional deadline. But there’s nothing keeping a future Iraqi government from negotiating a new pact with the U.S. that is less categorical.

Declining levels of violence are going to tempt both American and Iraqi politicians to opt for a too-rapid deadline. They should be looking around the corner to elections next year that could occasion more violence. First, there are the provincial elections in January, which will be very contentious in Ninewa province, where the Kurds and Sunnis are jockeying for control, and in Basra, where various Shia factions are at daggers drawn. Then, there are national elections, probably in the fall of 2009. It is extremely important that these elections succeed and our troops remain Iraq’s most capable and neutral arbiter.

We hope Barack Obama pays heed. He has been handed an extraordinary opportunity. Few would have thought when President Bush ordered the surge two years ago that there would have been such extensive security gains and that a sovereign Iraqi government — albeit flawed and fragile — would be in a position to begin taking control of its own destiny. Obama will have the chance to preside over a successful endgame in Iraq. This is the gift the surge has given him, if he doesn’t throw it away.

From USA Today:

NEW YORK — Elton John, accompanied by his longtime partner, David Furnish, had some choice words about California’s Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage that passed on Nov. 4.

In December 2005, John and Furnish tied the knot in a civil partnership ceremony in Windsor, England. But, clarified the singer, “We’re not married. Let’s get that right. We have a civil partnership. What is wrong with Proposition 8 is that they went for marriage. Marriage is going to put a lot of people off, the word marriage.”

John and Furnish, and their two cocker spaniels, Marilyn and Arthur, were in town for Tuesday’s annual benefit for the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

“I don’t want to be married. I’m very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership,” John says. “The word ‘marriage,’ I think, puts a lot of people off.

“You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships.” [Read More]

With Grove and Americana developer Rick Caruso out of the race (he wasn’t really in the race, but he was thinking about it), LA Mayor Antonio Villar is almost guaranteed reelection. The  race is about money, and Villar has enough to run his campaign and shrug-off debates with opponents. Villar said in a recent statement kicking off his reelection campaign,

“Whether you like me or don’t and think I’m in front of a camera or whatever it is, you have to look at what we’ve done these last three years.”

It’s true that he loves to be in front of the cameras (and behind the scenes, wink wink), but, he’s running Los Angeles into the ground. Our schools are failing, we’re throwing millions of dollars in the garbage with hokey mass-transit schemes (light rail and the “subway to the sea”), and under Villar there is no end in sight.

Walter Moore, a business trial lawyer, is the only candidate that has significant support and funding. But Moore’s $160,000 doesn’t compare to Villar’s $2.3 million. Moore’s most important issue is over-turning Special Order 40, the “sanctuary city” law. It’s an important issue, but it may not be enough to carry him to a win in March. Especially if he continues to be completely ignored by the mainstream media.

Mr. Moore is a regular guest on many local conservative radio shows.

Dhimmis getting out of line are put back in their place. Will university administrators stand idle? “Arab Students at UC Berkeley Disrupt Israel Event, Attack Jews” by David Shamma for Israel National News, November 16 (thanks to Paul):

Arab students disrupted a pro-Israel event at the campus of the University of California at Berkeley Thursday night, unfurling a large Palestinian flag in front of a crowd of hundreds of supporters of Israel who were enjoying a pro-Israel hip-hop concert. The event was sponsored by the Zionist Freedom Alliance student group.

The Arab students unfurled the large flag on a balcony above the outdoor site where the concert was taking place, inciting a provocation right in front of the concert-goers, who were enjoying the event as part of the campus’ Israel Liberation Week. Several Jewish concertgoers went into the building to ask the Arabs to remove the flag – but were viciously attacked, with one male concertgoer knocked down from a blow on the back of his head, witnesses said.

College alumnus Gabe Weiner, who was helping run the concert, was assaulted by the leader of the anti-Israel group, Husam Zakharia, who also attacked one of the performers, Yehuda De Sa. The fight was finally broken up by John Moghtader, a senator in the UC Berkelely student organization. Police were called in and arrested Zakharia along with others from his group, charging them with battery. Witnesses said that the Arab students shouted anti-Semitic curses and epithets throughout the incident, calling the Jews “Nazis” and “dogs,” and threatening to kill them. According to one witness, as many as 20 anti-Israel students participated in the attacks. [Read More]

More on this story from American Thinker: “Berkeley’s Idea of Tolerance“

Finally, the outlines of a coherent debate on the federal bailout. This comes as welcome relief from a campaign season that gave us the House Republicans’ know-nothing rejectionism, John McCain’s mindless railing against “greed and corruption,” and Barack Obama’s detached enunciation of vacuous bailout “principles” that allowed him to be all things to all people.

Now clarity is emerging. The fault line is the auto industry bailout. The Democrats are pushing hard for it. The White House is resisting.

Underlying the policy differences is a philosophical divide. The Bush administration sees the $700 billion rescue as an emergency measure to save the financial sector on the grounds that finance is a utility. No government would let the electric companies go under and leave the country without power. By the same token, government must save the financial sector lest credit dry up and strangle the rest of the economy.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is willing to stretch the meaning of “bank” by extending protection to such entities as American Express. But fundamentally, he sees government as saving institutions that deal in money, not other stuff.

Democrats have a larger canvas, with government intervening in other sectors of the economy to prevent the cascade effect of mass unemployment leading to more mortgage defaults and business failures (as consumer spending plummets), in turn dragging down more businesses and financial institutions, producing more unemployment, etc. — the death spiral of the 1930s.

President Bush is trying to move the Libor or the TED spread, which measure credit flows. The Democrats’ index is the unemployment rate.

With almost 5 million workers supported by the auto industry, Democrats are pressing for a federal rescue. But the problems are obvious.

First, the arbitrariness. Where do you stop? Once you’ve gone beyond the financial sector, every struggling industry will make a claim on the federal treasury. What are the grounds for saying yes or no?

The criteria will inevitably be arbitrary and political. The money will flow preferentially to industries with lines to Capitol Hill and the White House. To the companies heavily concentrated in the districts of committee chairmen. To clout. Is this not precisely the kind of lobby-driven policymaking that Obama ran against?

Second is the sheer inefficiency. Saving Detroit means saving it from bankruptcy. As we have seen with the airlines, bankruptcy can allow operations to continue while helping to shed fatally unsupportable obligations. For Detroit, this means release from ruinous wage deals with their astronomical benefits (the hourly cost of a Big Three worker: $73; of an American worker for Toyota: $48), massive pension obligations and unworkable work rules such as “job banks,” a euphemism for paying vast numbers of employees not to work.

The point of the Democratic bailout is to protect the unions by preventing this kind of restructuring. Which will guarantee the continued failure of these companies, but now they will burn tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. It’s the ultimate in lemon socialism.

Democrats are suggesting, however, an even more ambitious reason to nationalize. Once the government owns Detroit, it can remake it. The euphemism here is “retool” Detroit to make cars for the coming green economy.

Liberals have always wanted the auto companies to produce the kind of cars they insist everyone should drive: small, light, green and cute. Now they will have the power to do it.

In World War II, government had the auto companies turning out tanks. Now they would be made to turn out hybrids. The difference is that, in the middle of a world war, tanks have a buyer. Will hybrids? One of the reasons Detroit is in such difficulty is that consumers have been resisting the smaller, less powerful, less safe cars forced on the industry by fuel-efficiency mandates. Now Detroit would be forced to make even more of them.

If you think we have economic troubles today, consider the effects of nationalizing an industry of this size, but now run by bureaucrats issuing production quotas to fit five-year plans to meet politically mandated fuel-efficiency standards — to lift us to the sunny uplands of the coming green utopia.

Republican minimalism — saving the credit-issuing utilities — certainly risks not doing enough. But the Democratic drift toward massive industrial policy threatens to grow into the guaranteed inefficiencies of command-economy maximalism.

In this crisis, we agree to suspend the invisible hand of Adam Smith — but not in order to be crushed by the heavy hand of government.

Suppose you’ve been living under the protective wings of a benevolent superpower for sixty years. And suppose you’ve used that big half century to take off on an endless vacation — spending all your tax money to buy votes for the socialist Ruling Class. It’s been one long, grand, drug-infested, sex-drenched, self-indulgent, tabloid party scene. Any time danger threatens you look to Washington for protection. The rest of the time you noisily abuse those Yankee imperialists, merely to boost your fragile ego.  Corruption has become pervasive.
That’s Europe today.
What a sweet deal.
But now you see your guardian superpower electing a guy who wants to follow your example. Whooops! Time to sober up. Fast. Yes, you went hoarse cheering Obama’s ego trip at the Berlin Victory Monument, because you love the idea that O will teach America to love Eurosocialism forever and ever. But shivers are running up and down your spine — because if he is what you think he is, America won’t be there any more to save you. It will just slide into vegetarian nihilism and leave Europe to the New Soviet Empire.
Europe would crumble like a soggy crouton without America’s commitment to its defense. We saw that happen three times in the 20th century, and the bad news is that it’s starting again. Real danger is at the gates; Europe’s Ruling Class is in denial; and half of it is preparing to surrender to the Russians or the Muslim fascists, whichever gets there first.

[Read More...]

Friedman argues that mismanagement at the Big 3, in addition to the failure of Michigan’s entire congressional delegation to do anything besides follow the demands of the companies and the UAW, have led to the current crisis. He says that if we are to send taxpayer dollars to the Big 3, the money must include some conditions: firing the Board and Management, stripping contracts from the Unions and re-negotiating, appointing a “czar” with “broad powers” to revamp the industry, and forcing the companies to get rid of gas-guzzlers and invest in “innovation.”

But what about Bankruptcy!? The United States, as David Brooks rightly asserts, already has a system for rescuing those who have fallen on hard times, or companies that have failed for any reason. It’s called bankruptcy, and it is basically a time-out in which one can restructure, re-organize and come back leaner, stronger and more efficient. In the free-market we have what Brooks calls “creative destruction,” breaking down the old and worn, for the new and efficient; this is something that can only work in a competitive market. Keeping dead companies afloat on taxpayer dollars kills competition, and wastes money that could be used for real innovation. Brooks offers two options in his closing:

Is this country going to slide into progressive corporatism, a merger of corporate and federal power that will inevitably stifle competition, empower corporate and federal bureaucrats and protect entrenched interests? Or is the U.S. going to stick with its historic model: Helping workers weather the storms of a dynamic economy, but preserving the dynamism that is the core of the country’s success.

Let’s hope the Democrats will choose the latter. Like my uncle said in his e-mail:

People voted for democrats and change is coming,
Unfortunately, it is the worst kind of change.

Sen. Barack Obama may be our President Elect but election season isn’t over quite yet. A Dec. 2 runoff is being held in the sate of Georgia because neither incumbent Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) nor challenger Jim Martin (D) obtained the majority required under state law in the Nov. 4 election.

Yesterday Sen. John Ensign (R- Nev), and Sen. Chambliss held a conference call to briefly update the media on the status of the campaign and take questions.

Chambliss said that his campaign feels “very good about the fact that [we] beat Jim Martin by 115,000 votes, and obviously assuming that we get those folks back to the polls on December the 2nd or beginning next week with the early voting then we are going to be fine.” [Read More]

Sen. Chambliss needs your help! [Click here to contribute]

Excuse me if i remain unmoved by the misguided religious fervor.

Just one punch of the ballot is all it took. Now suddenly almost every one, here and abroad, is supposed to appreciate the newfound morality of the American people, change their own prior wicked ways, and do what they must for newly elected Barack Obama.

Some columnists are now putting Europe, Russia, China — and the whole world — on moral notice: we Americans did the right thing in electing the first African-American president and a charismatic, hip, commander-in-chief. They must now, too — or else!

Our divine edict from on high is simple: O wide world of little faith: Don’t blow it! So Europeans buck up for Barack, and get back in Afghanistan! Illiberal Russia, hands off those democracies on your borders and don’t make Barack do something we will all regret later! China, keep Barack’s air clean and don’t dare burn any more dirty coal!

Excuse me?

The world may be temporarily awestruck with the wise and all-powerful Obama, but it’s not quite ready to coalesce into a kinder, gentler global family — one people, under one Messiah, indivisible, with peace and justice for all.

In fact, Vladimir Putin doesn’t care a whit that Barack Obama is a path-breaking African-American, much less the first person of color to be an American president. The Chinese can’t quite appreciate in translation Obama’s mellifluous cadences. France’s cool Sarkozy isn’t swayed much by the Obama sunglasses, snazzy polo shirt, or nifty outside jump shot.

All these states have interests — not deities. For the most part, either their enmity with or fondness for the United States antedated George Bush. The world’s mental map wasn’t erased away when Bush took power. Being the planet’s most powerful democracy, and a free and confident world peacekeeper, either excites admiration or earns envy — and even the most crude or the most elegant American president can’t change much that simple fact of global human nature.

To the small degree Obama’s superior charm and style will improve things, the Russians may toast, backslap, and bear hug Obama — before seeking to body slam him against the wall on Polish anti-missile sites. The smiling Europeans will scurry around mumbling “Yes, but of course!” — as they shirk even more. An unhinged President Ahmadinejad will endlessly write rambling letters to Barack Hussein Obama as the last centrifuges come on line. The jihadists will sigh rather than swear as they continue to try to blow us all up.

Next we are told by many in the media that African-American activists of the race industry will inevitably bow before the transcendent, postracial new President Obama — and recede into the background as they shut down the once-productive victimization assembly lines. After all, did not Americans just prove, through their magnanimous vote — again, it took just one punch of the ballot — that we are no longer racists and should be collectively, if not at least symbolically, relieved at last of an age-old charge of intolerance?

Excuse me, again.

An Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, or Charles Rangle is not about to close the plant, and issue lay-offs just because Americans elected an African-American president.

Why should they? Would a Rev. Sharpton really wish to confront his unresolved Tawana Brawley past? Would a Rev. Jackson welcome the public opprobrium accorded most pious white evangelicals, in leisure suits and pompadour hairstyles, who foster out of wedlock children? Or would Charles Rangle wish to pay all his taxes on time, without excuses, as do most other Americans who are not the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee?

Victimization for generations has proven lucrative, precisely by allowing self-appointed leaders to advance their careers through doctrinaire “they did it” complaints. The script is now old indeed: Blame the pathologies of the underclass that hamper economic progress — inordinate drug usage, illegitimacy, crime, or dismal graduation rates — on the racism of those with “power.” “The Man” can find penitence only through perpetual apologies and the proper channeling of plentiful lucre. All that, too, antedated Obama and will transcend him — until either African-Americans en masse reject their leaders’ racial scapegoating; or bored whites, Asians, and Hispanics simply cease listening to the shouting of “Racism! Racist!” and turn the channel.

Unfortunately, Barack Obama did not suggest to the nation that the forces behind John McCain were soon going to wage a racist campaign against him because he had any shred of evidence that they were. And he did not listen at the knee to Rev. Wright for 20 years because he found the venomous preacher to be a racial healer. Trinity Church was not renown for staunch opposition to anti-Semitism, its advocacy for Martin Luther King—-style American integration, a self-help promotion of black middle-classness, or its stern criticism of ethnic stereotyping. After all, when Rev. Wright G-D-ed America, talked about those long Italian noses, and laughed about our 9/11 chickens finally coming home to roost, he was not met with jeers, but with wild, standing ovations.

President-Elect Obama once praised the Right Reverend as his spiritual mentor and a brilliant scholar because such an affinity was a wise investment. Not all that long ago, such pandering to, and subsidization of, Trinity ensured to his own budding political constituency that Obama was hardly an avatar of real change, but more safe business as usual. The “usual” was rightly understood as directing state monies into the coffers of various practitioners of victimization, and excusing all social pathologies under the banner of racism and “they raised the bar on you.” Moral historians remind us that those who once sought power through disreputable means for supposedly lofty ends rarely change methodology when they finally achieve authority.

Then there are the intellectuals who are giddy that they finally got their Adlai Stevenson. Obama quotes big thinkers. Big thinkers like him. He reads big books. Like Bush, he went to Harvard — but in his case a real Harvard professional school, with an admission slot earned not by undue insider influence (unlike the case of the hated Bush), but on merit alone, and on the basis of an intellectual’s sterling undergraduate record at Columbia. (So please, now, intellectuals of the world, unite — and ask that his undergraduate transcript be freed, so in comparison we can snicker one last time at the hated Bush’s inferior Yale effort!).

Snide intellectuals are now told to cool it, and also win one for the Messiah as well. The usually hillbilly Palin-loving Americans — again with just one punch of the ballot — proved their intellectual seriousness and gave thinking men and women another rare Camelot gift comparable to the Pulitzer Prize—-winning JFK.

Pointy-heads likewise better not blow it, with snarky rebuke and nasal whining, but thank their lucky stars that one of their own finally made it. No more nihilism from Nicholson Baker and his postmodern novel about killing a president. No more chic prizes at Toronto for Gabriel Range’s “breathtakingly original” documentary about shooting a president. No more of Jon Stewart’s neat little side-riffs about a moronic chief executive — perhaps (wink, wink, nod, nod) who thinks that we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan by diverting all those much-needed Arab-speaking translators from Kabul to Baghdad.

Excuse me a third time.

Do intellectuals — real and imagined — believe, like Barack Obama, that those who were born in 1922 lived through the two world wars? Or that sometimes we have 57, sometimes 47 states? Or that brave Americans liberated Auschwitz? Or that old Kentucky borders on illiberal Arkansas, but not on progressive Illinois?

Were Barack Obama a mom of five from Alaska with a Fargo accent, long ago we would have learned the candidate was a weird sort of Chicago law professor who never wrote a scholarly essay, a strange sort of Harvard Law Review editor who never published a legal article, and not all that deep a thinker who thought inflating air tires negated the need to look for more oil.

And do intellectuals anyway necessarily make good Presidents? Maybe a John Adams or Teddy Roosevelt — maybe not a utopian megalomaniac like Woodrow Wilson. History is not encouraging when we ponder voracious book readers like Richard Nixon. Brilliant Antiphon tried to overthrow Athenian democracy. The friends of Socrates and Plato — mad writer Critias leading the pack — formed much of the bloodthirsty Thirty Tyrants. The poet Nero finally did away with his insider advisors, including the once sycophantic moralist Seneca and novelist Petronius. Reading a snippet of Thucydides in Greek about the helots at Pylos did not make Thomas Jefferson go out on the veranda and free all his slaves in the fields. Sorry, but quoting Niebuhr has zero relevance in suggesting Obama will out-think our enemies or — elbow on knee, chin on palm — figure out the enigmas of the economy, or offer moral guidance.

Unless Obama really is the Messiah, human nature won’t change much just because we elected someone who we want to think might be divine. So give Obama, the man, not the god, a chance to earn, rather than merely assert, his respect. Quit the smug moralizing that we have somehow proved to the world and ourselves that we are now finally worthy and deserving of adulation — as if wisdom and morality were always only an easy punch of the ballot away.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.