The Anchoress

A very satisfying and fun-ee three part read from Frank J. at IMAO, and his imagined Bush blog: Dubya explains it all

“Due to a large pamphleteering campaign,” said the anchorman, “not authorized by us, your trusted mainstream media, citizens have gone back to believing that blogs are a good thing, despite polling telling them they don’t actually think that. In a stunning move, President Bush has given a full pardon to blogger Glenn Reynolds for his cross country shoot out with the police, a move supported by bloggers across the world but very unpopular to law students at the University of Tennessee. There have been some implications that quid pro quo was involved, as Bush received what is called an ‘Instalanche’ to his own blog, Dubya Explains It All, right after issuing the pardon. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan denied these charges, but we remind viewers that he is tubby.”

“I sent him a coupon saying he could get a free steak dinner here. Muh ha ha ha!”

If you haven’t read parts I and II, you’ll want to. Funny stuff. Frank is a sick, sick boy. I mean that in the very best way!

then you have missed an ongoing dialogue - it’s been literally going on for a month or more - between parents, teachers, people of faith, people without faith on the whole issues of education, creationism, morality, parenting…go back - read the archives.

Now, after all that - after allowing everyone to have their say (and no one is more generous about highlighting the salient points made by commenters - on ANY side of an argument - than SCA - they often use commenters points as jumping off points for new threads) SCA has finally spelled out where they have landed, in the debates, and they ask some very provocative and thoughtful questions of their readers. Go. Read. You’ll like.

So, as my friend Michael says, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and Bob Geldorf didn’t know these silly-assed bracelets were being made by slave-laborers.

That said, am I the only one who thinks these bracelets are as pointless as Gerald Ford’s old “Whip Inflation Now” buttons were?

“But Anchoress, how can you be so hard-hearted! These bracelets raise AWARENESS! We all need to be more AWARE of the POOR!”

You want to be more aware of the poor? Go find a soup kitchen and volunteer at it - you may have to close your eyes to the fact that you’ve got to enter a church to do it. Go spend a few hours sorting through donated clothes at a thrift shop that caters to the less fortunate. Go talk to Fr. Jim and ask him about the Grandmothers in Haiti who spend 7 hours a day unweaving delivery bags so they can spend another 6 hours the next day reweaving them into rope, which they sell at 50 cents a length. Then DO something meaningful, or at least write a check for more than you would spend on a self-indulgent shopping spree, and put it where it will do some REAL good - somewhere in your own local community, and not to some trendy “chic-charity-of-the-moment” effort that - however well intended - never manages to get the job done.

The poor are not a “trendy” concern to be flashed on a bracelet so you can show how much you care, and how compassionate you are. And no one is going to “Make Poverty History,” because the poor will always be among us, for many reasons. This silly idea that poverty, everywhere, can possibly be forever eliminated is dishonest and dishonesty never serves anything constructively. You can’t make it go away by buying a bracelet, or even by writing a check. You can’t make it go away by “raising awareness” by attending a dinner wherein straws are drawn and the short straws are served beans and rice while the long ones get lobster. Its SOUNDS noble and enlightening, but it’s just posturing, in the end.

Poverty must be defined - it has to be more than “this guy has a plasma tv, and all I have is this used portable.”

And then it must be served…but how that is done…well, that’s the question, right? If I volunteer at a soup kitchen this Thursday, most of the same people will be back on Saturday. Soup kitchens are necessary to keep a body going, but they solve nothing. The government “redistributing” weath solves nothing, too…they are actually the same thing. Both the soup kitchen and the redistributive government hand out a temporary salve…but unless people are educated and then given a chance to reach their potential, the cycle never ends.

Sigh. Buy the bracelets, if you must, but unless the monies realized are going to do more than buy foodstuffs which will never be delivered to the starving because warlords won’t allow the stuff off the docks, unless the monies are going to help build schools and pay teachers and supply books and design real, long term means of helping people…it won’t do any good.

A poor child in Haiti will get nowhere on your sympathy. He might get somewhere on a full belly. He might go even further with an education, at least at high-school level, and maybe some vocational training…but if his government is corrupt, disinterested in entering the marketplace of goods and ideas…he’s going to be just as trapped as ever.

Capitalism is imperfect. Democracy is imperfect. Put them together, and they are the imperfect means of lifting people from mean poverty into something like survival and eventually into something more stable. All the bracelets in the world won’t help the folks whose government don’t give a crap for them.

UPDATE: Punditguy has additional thoughts, and the comments section has a bunch of good comments, including Jean’s on the “culture of poverty” which I had never heard about before, and did not quite understand until she explained. Go. Read!

Kind of reminds you of the Democrats in the Senate, doesn’t it?

Says Polipundit: This will help you appreciate how undemocratic the European Union is:

Unlike France’s referendum [on the European Constitution], which was binding on the government, the Dutch vote is advisory. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s governing party said Monday it will accept a “no” verdict only if turnout reaches at least 30 percent and if 55 percent of those who vote reject the charter.

A yes vote needs only 45 percent, no matter the turnout. A no vote needs 55 percent, with at least 30 percent turnout. How very fair!

Sooner or later it is going to happen. Younger voters are going to demand it.

Seems to me the smartest thing the Democrats could do would be to acknowledge that it needs reform and try - at least on this ONE issue - to work with the President’s plan - perhaps offering a few ideas of their own - rather than simply doing the “No. No, because we said no, because you have the wrong letter after your name and we’re not going to work with you, no, America will have to wait until Mrs. Clinton gets into the WH, because we will not embrace reform that gives Bush the credit, so no. No, no a thousand times no,” thing.

In a manner of speaking. Seems folks in Dubai are not happy with radar cameras watching over them like Big Brother.

A source from the Radar Department at Dubai Traffic Police said such incidents were quite common and mainly involved young men, but sometimes women as well.

“When the young man was summoned to the traffic police to discuss the incident he showed no regret and was very rude. The Radar Department made this young man sign an undertaking pledging he would not repeat this offence.

I think this might be my very favorite story, today.

Once again, instead of offering clarity, the Church of England confounds.

HOMOSEXUAL priests in the Church of England will be allowed to “marry” their boyfriends under a proposal drawn up by senior bishops, led by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I’m a little surprised at the blatantly sexist and insensitive language in that paragraph…what about lesbian priests and their girlfriends, why did the writer of this article fall back on patriarchal language when discussing an enlightened church which ordains females?

They will, however, have to give an assurance to their diocesan bishop that they will abstain from sex. The bishops are trying to uphold the church doctrine of forbidding clergy from sex except in a full marriage.

Yeah, good luck with that.

The Midwest Conservative says it’s a predictable happening.

Maxed-Out Mama had a good comment that I wanted to highlight:

It is remarkable to contemplate that a supposedly sane church leadership could propose such a thing. One notable feature of this is that it offends every human being involved in the church.

There is a live, vibrant and growing Anglican church, but it is not the one associated with this leadership. I foresee a broader schism in the church between the orthodox and the revisionists; the two camps can no longer have any confidence in one another.

I’m sure, knowing MOM, that she’ll eventually write a bang-up post on this at her own site.

Seems to me, if you want to be the Goddess of Peace and Understanding Amongst Peoples, you could do a better job of it than this.

Remember a while back, the Washington Post reported on secret tapes of President Bush, having been made by a trusted friend, being released?

‘member that? Think back. It was a HUGE story…until the tapes got listened to and…ewwwwww…Bush actually came off like a sane, rational and decent man!

Ewwwwwww! That wasn’t what the MSM had in mind, at all!

And so the whole story died, very quickly.

One of the things I remember reading in the transcripts was President Bush’s absolute refusal to bash gays. Many bloggers noted it, simply because the taped remarks were so clearly at odds with the narrative the gay left has been pushing for years, that Bush is a mean old homophobe who is out to put all gays in concentration camps. The tapes showed a man who basically had a perfectly respectable “live and let live” idea about homosexuality, although - by his lights - he could not go the “gay marriage” route.

So, then of course, the goalposts got raised, and “live and let live” wasn’t good enough. Suddenly, you were only a “good” person if you moved beyond “live and let live” and into a full and whole-hearted support of gay marriage. Unless you were, of course, John Kerry or Bill Clinton, in which you could have EXACTLY the same position on the issue as President Bush, and yet be assured that your “gay-friendly” credentials would be intact.

Because President Clinton could sign the Defense of Marriage Act, and John Kerry could campaign that he was “against gay marriage” just like President Bush, but neither one of them had to endure this sort of dubious “art” from the angry gays who feel un-tolerated, oppressed and pushed aside when a Republican says “no” but don’t much mind if the same word is said by a Democrat.

This is such seamless hypocrisy I doubt these “artists” right hands ever knew what their left hands were doing.

Michelle Malkin has jpegs of the taxpayer funded (and profoundly stupid, and intellectually dishonest) “artwork” that features such images as a naked President Bush, bent over an oil barrel and being sodomized by an Arab. (Because, you know, everything President Bush does is all about ooooiiiiilllll. ) The President as the Statue of Liberty, wearing a Bishop’s mitre (an economical modern-day “tolerant liberal,” this artist manages to skewer two targets at once) and a button saying, “God hates fags” while an Iraqi flag burns in the torch (you know, Iraq - the place Bush just helped to liberate - the place that just had elections and put a government in place) and the obligatory “Presidency for dummies” book tucked under the arm (because the “Bush-is-stupid” yawner simply can’t be said enough by these bright, brilliant, hip, enlightened eternal adolescents (giggle-snort, LOOK what I DID Mommy! I was daring and bold, wasn’t I?? Woohoo, I’m such a COUNTER-CULTURALIST, giving it to the establishment! Ooooh, this is DANGEROUS!)

Because it is so dangerous, so very dangerous, to use juvenile ideas to castigate someone all your friends already hate.

Dangerous, I think, is daring to engage in a little intellectual honesty, even if your friends won’t like it…but I guess you have to be an 800-lb gorilla like Bono, if you want to do that.

I’m just disgusted and disappointed in this silliness, and by the double standards we see again and again. Oh, and btw, according to Malkin, there’s also yet another “Bush-as-Hitler” piece of “art.” How ORIGINAL! No one’s ever thought of THAT before! (Although if you suggest that Howard Dean’s hate-speechifying rants remind you a bit of Berlin in 1931, why…why…you are horrible to imply that anyone could be a nazi! Except Bush or most Republicans!)

Taxpayer funded posturing, double-standards and hypocrisy.

These people can say any damn thing they want, but I’m a little tired of my hard-earned bucks going to fund some darling who doesn’t have to get a job because he is busy drawing a cartoon of mindless hate, and if I don’t like it, well, I must be a nazi, too. It’s tiresome. It’s idiotic. It’s phony and fake and hypocritical. But there it is. Over and over again.

Victor Davis Hanson is right. These people are just boring.

And yet, so morbidly fascinating are they, that I still must stop and stare. This much hate, produced so mechanically, so thoughtlessly…it’s boring and hideous…but I can’t look away!

In the WaPo today we find this story which discusses Hillary’s strategy for her ‘08 presidential campaign, you know, the one she says she hasn’t thought about at all. (Note to Hillary : You do not do “coy” well. It comes off as disingenuous and intelligence-insulting. Everyone wishes you’d just drop the act and be bold, be honest, OWN what you are up to.)

A couple paragraphs into the article we get: The strategy, confidants say, has three elements. On social issues, it is to reassure moderate and conservative voters with such positions as her support of the death penalty, and to find rhetorical formulations on abortion and other issues – on which her position is more liberal — that she is nonetheless in sympathy with traditional values.

Finding the perfect phrase…something that MEANS nothing, but causes the press to suggest she has centrist values on those issues, even as it winks to her base, “believe none of this.”

I guess “I mean what I say and I say what I mean,” isn’t appealing. Too nuanced, or something.

On national security, it is to ensure that she has no votes or wavering statements that would give the GOP an opening to argue that she is not in favor of a full victory in Iraq. In her political positioning generally, it is to find occasions to prominently work across party lines — to argue that she stands for pragmatism over the partisanship that many centrist voters especially dislike about Washington.

They’ve forgotten the last part of the strategy, which is directly related to how Hillary campaigned in 2000: SILENCE on any issue that is particularly dicey. Hillary was remarkably quiet during the Terri Schiavo affair. When I called her office to learn her feelings, I expected the first part of the script - they say it all the time - “the senator is studying that issue,” then came the second part, “she has not made any public statements.” Ask her what private statements the senator may have made, what sense the staff may have of her position, line one was reactivated, “the senator is studying that issue.”

In 1993, White House aide Rahm Emanuel — now a Democratic House member from Illinois — planned an event inviting prominent Republicans to a White House dinner as a way of garnering support for the North American Free Trade Agreement. He assumed he would win praise for a clever tactical maneuver. Instead, the first lady was infuriated. “What are you doing inviting these people in my home?” she said, according to people familiar with the episode. Nearly sobbing with anger, she told him: “These people are our enemies. They are trying to destroy us.”

So…lemmee guess…we won’t be hearing about “setting a new tone,” anymore?

Stories of Hillary Clinton’s occasionally fierce temper have led to perceptions that she is privately shrewish. Yet very few people who have worked closely with her over the years regard her that way. To the contrary, she has inspired a loyalty among staff that has kept many top aides by her side for more than a decade.

But…but…we’ve been hearing throughout the Bush presidency that that sort of loyalty is suspect, scary, “lockstepping nazi” behavior. Now it’s a GOOD thing? Oh…I get so confused with the double standards and shaky values.

Still uncertain is whether Hillary Clinton can prove her husband’s equal in presidential politics. In interviews, she insists the question is not on her mind — only next year’s reelection. “Oh, I’m not even, you know, remotely considering that,” she said on CNN last week. “My view is that, you know, life unfolds at its own rhythm.”

I know I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: When she starts “you know”ing all over the place, she’s lying.

I love this part: Now she regularly accepts such publicity and takes assertive stands on national issues.

Well, no, she takes fuzzy stands using those rhetorical formulations we read about earlier, so she can talk and talk, but say nothing substantive.

An example was a speech last winter on abortion. Although reasserting her longtime view that abortion should be legal, she argued that more should be done to make abortion rare. Her political team was thrilled with the publicity the speech got, though Bill Clinton said he was irked by the widespread analysis that she was expediently changing her stripes for political reasons. “Give me a break!” he said at a recent talk at the Time Warner corporate headquarters in New York.

Um…yeah. Because Clintons never do anything for political expediency. Only OTHER politicians to that!

Clinton said he did not know whether his wife would run but asserted that the key for Democrats to win in Republican-leaning states is not to change views but to “change the way we talk about” issues so as not to cede the values debate to conservatives.

Okay, so…am I missing something here? Clinton was offended when it was suggested that Hillary’s “new tone” on abortion was politically expedient, (”Give me a break!”) but in the next breath he endorses the “plausible lie, rhetorical formulation” idea…the whole “wink-wink” we’re-not-stepping centrist-we’re-just-talking-like we are-because-those people-on-that side-are-so-stupid they’ll-buy-it and-the-press will-validate-it-because-they-love-us-and-hate-them.

Penn, while emphasizing he does not know Hillary Clinton’s presidential plans, pointed to a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll last week finding that for the first time a majority of voters say they are likely to vote for her if she runs in 2008. “She’s demonstrated in New York and in the years she’s been in the Senate that she has the will, the ability and the seriousness to overcome all the obstacles that the Republican Party threw at her and continue to throw at her,” he said.

Honey, if you can’t get great poll numbers with incessantly positive and gushing press, then you’re REALLY in bad shape, aren’t you?

I’ll give Hillary her props - she is tenacious, and I do believe that she hunkers down with the books and briefs and studies policy and gets herself very well informed. She is careful to step away from issues that could hurt - she’s NEVER in the thick of the “big” stories - Terri Schiavo, the Filibuster - she lets others take the hits, there. She has voted shrewdly. When the gang of 14 put together their “centrist solution” she was smart enough to vote with the majority and not do the “spiteful vote against cloture - on principle” that clueless John Kerry fell for. She’s patient and ambitious and those things are not bad, either.

But…she’s so predictable, and so completely unaware, sometimes, of how she comes off - like an entitled elitist who will say anything, no matter how implausible, and expect that because she has SAID it, it must be true! (The fact is I have ALWAYS been a Yankees fan! I have NO IDEA how I made $100,000 in cattle futures in a week, I am only a simple caveman, woman in a pink pantsuit, who never, ever thought to even ask how $1,000 could become $100,000 because you know, I just had no curiosity…you know, I’d forgotten all about that…)

Meanwhile, John Podhoretz has a very interesting theory about who he believes will be the most effective candidate against Hillary in ‘08.

Is it just me, or is it really too damned soon to be this focused on ‘08 elections? I think it might be. But then again, Hillary has a lot of work to do, and she WILL do the work. But I don’t know if I am interested in watching it all for three years. Two years is plenty.

As a New Yorker, though, I DO wish she would stop playing the “oh, golly, I’m not even thinking about running for president, I’m still too busy enjoying you know, that I get to work so hard for New York” game and let someone who is actually going to stick around and maybe even SERVE NEW YORK to run for her senate seat. Frankly, I’d rather see our next junior senator be elected by the populace than appointed by some putz like Eliot Spitzer.

As I said in the post below, the whole point of this “sensational new book about the Clinton White House” is to get this crap out of the way now, so that in two years it will all be “old news” and “forgotten.” Yawn. I’m going back to bed. Here is an earlier post on Hillary’s common ground.

Related: Hillary’s common ground sinks some more