Setting a low bar

Politico:

       One of President Barack Obama’s fiercest Benghazi critics said on Tuesday that      Obama’s comments on the matter are “insulting” his intelligence.

       “The President is insulting my intelligence and the American people by suggesting he called #Benghazi a terrorist attack from the get-go,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tweeted.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/lindsey-graham-president-obama-benghazi-91351.html#ixzz2TIou0qae

Find common enemies

How Northern Ireland's Troubles might have been avoided:

On April 29th, a motion to legalise same-sex marriage was defeated in the Northern Irish assembly by 53 votes to 42.  Both the Catholic and Presbyterian churches had urged members to vote "no"—but on that question, at least, politicians of Catholic heritage were less obedient to their church than their Protestant counterparts. Sinn Fein, the standard-bearer of militant Irish nationalism, proposed the motion, and one of its members lamented afterwards that the legislators had "missed an opportunity to bring equality to the LGBT community."  Father Tim Bartlett, a Catholic spokesman, said the Democratic Unionist Party (the main "Protestant" party, established by the firebrand preacher Ian Paisley) was doing a better job of defending traditional values than any other political group. Think about that: the Catholic church praising a party whose founder's trademark was denouncing the pope as the Antichrist...

On the question of abortion, things are even more confusing. An "all-party pro-Life group" in the assembly includes DUP members, moderate Catholic nationalists and one member of Mr Ford's Alliance party. Here again, Sinn Fein has carved out the liberal ground, although most of its voters are more-or-less practising Catholics. On March 12th, Sinn Fein successfully blocked a move that would have banned abortions (only available in Northern Ireland in very limited circumstances) from being performed by private clinics. Some 53 assembly members were willing to back the move (which would have forced the closure of a newly-opened abortion clinic in Belfast) while 40 were against; but Sinn Fein used a procedural device, designed to stop one Northern Irish community imposing its will on the other.

Watch what I do, not what I say

Columbia journalist/blogger Brad Warthen had this to say a few days ago:

But Sanford isn’t “right-wing;” nor are those who tend to flock to his banner. He is libertarian, a classical liberal, which is why, even as his party establishment deserts him, he is backed by the likes of Ron and Rand Paul.

Contra, consider David Weigel's column in Slate yesterday, about a day spent hanging with Sanford:

The big press event of Sanford's Saturday (he doesn't campaign on Sundays, so the b-roll needed to happen FAST) was an endorsement event with the Tea Party Express in Summerville. Sanford fans and Tea Partiers from as far away as Beaufort (about 90 miles south and east) drove up for the event; Ann Ubelis, a Beaufort Tea Partier and radio host seen to Sanford's left (camera right), introduced the man by warning fellow conservative of "what Dante wrote about hell." The hottest places were reserved for those who saw evil and did nothing. Evil, in this case, would be failing to back Sanford.

Sanford's pretending an empathy he does not possess, either in person (read his wife's book) or politically. When questioned about the usual red-meat social issues in this campaign, he pivots to talking about humility and understanding others better. But he doesn't answer the questions in terms of how he'd vote. He leaves it to listeners to think he's learned something and would show a broader-mindedness in a second go as a congressman.

He won't. It'll be reusuable post-its redux.

As Eco's The Prague Cemetery shows, you just pull out a libel and fill in the group

Historian Niall Ferguson's  fracas over Keynes' sex life seems to have gone really big in the more ideologically-tuned regions of the blogdom. On the right, One Robert Stacy McCain illustrates the same logical fallacy Ferguson fell into- that 1+4-3= 178.

And he illustrates the comment Waldo made about Ferguson's off the cuffery: how a remarkable number of people reflexively resort to gay slurs:

Why I’m Not on the Harvard Faculty

Posted on | May 4, 2013 | 45 Comments and 0 Reactions

Besides the fact that all I’ve got is a bachelor’s degree from a third-tier state university, there’s also the problem that I don’t think it’s necessary to apologize for saying bad things about dead bisexual British economists, which is now apparently taboo. You can badmouth dead people or defame the British or libel an economist unless any of them happen to be bisexual, in which case, they are beyond reproach.

A friend on Twitter informs me that John Maynard Keynes was an anti-Semite who was also head of the British Eugenics Society, which under ordinary liberal custom would be enough to render someone historically radioactive. However it seems the new rule is that being gay — or, as was apparently the case with Keynes, being nominally bisexual — is sufficient to silence all criticism.

Niall Ferguson says, in effect, “John Maynard Keynes was a bad economist who was wrong about everything and also, he was gay, which might be relevant to the problem.” OUTRAGE!

Well, here you go: Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer and a cannibal, and also, he was gay, which might be relevant to the problem.

Good-bye, Harvard faculty appointment!

UPDATE: My larger point — and if Ken at Popehat didn’t see this, no one else can be blamed for missing it — is to wonder why this particular molehill has become a peak in the Himalayas. The Ferguson/Keynes controversy was the top thread at Memeorandum, as if it were the most important thing that happened Saturday.

Does this make any sense? Why was this academic controversy magnified out of all proportion? Is necrohomophobia — fear of dead homosexuals — really such a serious problem in America? One of the commenters takes this jab at me:

Robert Stacy McCain is a simple-minded, hateful person, and also, he wears stupid hats, which might be relevant to the problem.

Simple-minded and hateful — and why? Because I did not rush to join the online lynch-mob of ritual denunciation?

It’s this aspect, redolent of the Moscow Show Trials, that alarms me. Also, how dare you call my hat stupid, you hat-hater!

These are the jokes, people. Lighten the hell up.

UPDATE II: Speaking of jokes, Andrew Sullivan has nominated me for the “Malkin Award.” This is my second such honor, the first having occurred in the aftermath of the 2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza, when I outlined my “Mideast Peace plan” as the hypothetical first gentile Prime Minister of Israel. These damned hypotheticals are always getting me in trouble.

Inside the teeming id of El Rushbo

“Folks, I grew up in a family where people's sexual orientation preferences, whatever, weren't even discussed,” said Rush Limbaugh. ““Why does it have to be rammed down our throats, figuratively speaking? Why does this have to be thrust at us?”

NRA's Daily Moment of Dumb

Well of course. Figure out there's a bomb near you, and shoot it:

NRA Chief: "How many Bostonians wish they had a gun two weeks ago?"

Norquist inconsolable

Otis Bowen, a former Indiana governor who pioneered shifting tax burdens from property owners to the poor and thus became a wildly popular Republican, has died.

Guess what her nickname is

Politico:

Palin insisted that all Americans felt “despair, sadness and absolute anger” when they saw what happened in Connecticut. She said everyone should care more about those getting gunned down every single day on the streets of places like Chicago and New York City, but that shouldn’t guide public policy.

“Now, emotion is a good and a necessary thing. But we have politicians exploiting emotion for their own agenda,” she said. “We have well-meaning Americans who are desperate to respond.”

Palin, a longtime NRA member, pleased the crowd by noting that her son Trigg’s nickname is “Trigger” and that her nephew’s middle name is Remington. She was rewarded with a standing ovation after describing the 4.5 million members of the group as her “brothers and sisters.”

The angriest black man in America

Clarence Thomas is still sulking, 22 years on.