Est Quod Est makes a "Best Of" list

Wow! We made a Best Links of 2009 list with my post Why I am a Bad Blogger.

But I must admit, I just re-read it and it is pretty damn funny.

Anybody remember the First Amendment?

James Kirchick pulls the curtain on the "no politicizing" wizard. Excerpt:

Rather than engage its critics, the White House adopted a holier-than-thou approach to the controversy. "The President doesn't think we should play politics with issues like these," spokesman Bill Burton told reporters.

That's strange, for the supposed gravity of an issue hasn't stopped liberals from "playing politics" with other matters they deem to be of life and death importance - or from "playing politics," repeatedly, with national security in the past.

The truth is, politicization of an issue ought not be an accusation at all. It's by politicizing issues, no matter what they are, no matter which party does it, that we debate them. And it's through debating them that we engage in the democratic process.

But that reality hasn't stopped Democrats from hurling around the term like a grenade.

He then goes on to remind liberals blasts on the megaphone like Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and hysterical howls about Halliburton. His conclusion:

Determining which issue isn't kosher for "politicization," then, becomes a form of special pleading. We all have our sacred cows, and it suits us to declare certain topics off-limits. But in a country where the powers of the state derive from those it governs, it's inevitable that practically everything under the sun will emerge as a subject of political debate. Rather than bemoan this, we ought appreciate just how lucky we are to live in a democracy where we have the luxury to complain about the amplification of politics, as opposed to their suppression.

I think Kirchick is right about this. It may be noble to let politics "stop at the water's edge", but it doesn't represent good debate strategy. Of course, squelching ideas is much more a tactic of the left as we can see from the President's pompous rhetoric about "tired old arguments" an the like. The speech protected by the First Amendment is first and foremost political speech and it should be always welcomed by Americans. If you disagree with it, use your own free speech rights to combat it. Trying to get your opponent disqualified is not American.

Dead White Guys

I got a kick out of this article. Those who argue that rock and roll is nothing more than nostalgia can use 2009's top sales as a centerpiece for their argument. I know that MJ wasn't really white, but he was getting pretty close. I also know that Paul and Ringo are still alive, thanks.

Excerpt:

Unsurprisingly, Michael Jackson was the year’s best-selling artist, as the singer’s June 25th death led to a massive resurgence of his catalog. In total, the King of Pop sold 8,286,000 units in 2009, easily beating out the 4,643,000 combined albums Swift sold last year. Jackson’s 2003 compilation Number Ones was also the year’s third-best-selling album, totaling 2,355,000 units sold. Jackson came in at Number Three on the top-selling digital artists chart.

In a year that featured new releases by U2, Green Day and Pearl Jam, it’s surprising that the year’s best-selling band is, well, no longer a band. As Rolling Stone previously reported, the Beatles’ best-of collection 1 was the decade’s top-selling album, and 40 years after the breakup, the Fab Four were amazingly also the top-selling act of 2009. Thanks to their remastered catalog, the Beatles sold 3,282,000 units in 2009 without the aid of digital music services, placing the group third behind Jackson and Swift and in front of Boyle on the 2009 top-selling artist chart. Additionally, Abbey Road was the year’s best-selling vinyl with 34,000 copies, beating out Jackson’s Thriller and Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. Radiohead, however, was the year’s best-selling artists on vinyl with 45,700 records combined.

Obama renominates anti-Catholic Dawn Johnsen

From Bill Donohue of the Catholic League:

Catholic League president Bill Donohue calls attention to the decision of President Obama to renominate Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel:

Most of the critics of Dawn Johnsen focus on her strong pro-abortion record. While that is disturbing, a pro-abortion president can be expected to staff his administration with such persons, and no one doubts President Obama’s position on this subject. But it is an entirely different matter when a president selects bigots to work for him.

Dawn Johnsen is not someone who simply takes issue with the Catholic Church’s pro-life position: she wants to punish the Church. In the late 1980s, she joined a cadre of anti-Catholics to strip the Catholic Church of its tax exempt status. The charge? The Church was guilty of violating IRS strictures because it took a strong pro-life position. The lawsuit failed.

The person who led this assault was Lawrence Lader, co-founder of NARAL with Dr. Bernard Nathanson. (Nathanson later dropped his pro-abortion position, became a strong pro-life advocate and converted to Catholicism.) At the time the two men founded NARAL, Lader, according to Nathanson, liked to refer to the Catholic Church as “our favorite whipping boy,” maintaining that his goal was to “bring the Catholic hierarchy out where we can fight them. That’s the real enemy.” (Italics in the original.) That was in the late 1960s. Twenty years later, Lader published a vicious book assailing the Catholic Church, and it was at this time that he launched his bid—assisted by Johnsen—to break the Church.

This is who Dawn Johnsen is. She is a person who is so fueled with hatred of the Catholic Church that she would like to destroy it. Having failed to secure her appointment last year, Obama has decided that he just can’t proceed without her. How telling.

Johnsen is not the first anti-Catholic chosen by Obama, but she is by far the most extreme and the most dangerous.

Bigotry is like potato chips, I guess. Or maybe crack. Addictive.

Seattle Airport Customs plays IRS

Here's one for the "good grief" file. Michael Yon—a preeminent war correspondent and Green Beret—was arrested for refusing to disclose his salary.

Got arrested at the Seattle airport for refusing to say how much money I make. (The uniformed ones say I was not "arrested", but they definitely handcuffed me.) Their videos and audios should show that I was polite, but simply refused questions that had nothing to do with national security. Port authority police eventually came—they were professionals—and rescued me from the border bullies.

Here's a more full account of what went down. It's possible that these guys gave Yon a hard time because of this article he wrote about TSA, referring to them as "border bullies". In the reader comments on the BigGovernment entry, it is mentioned that TSA will soon be unionized. That's great; they'll be even more unbearable while continuing to let guys named Muhammed bring pipe bombs onto the plane.

Update: Whoops, per Michael Yon, it was the customs people who were asking the inappropriate questions. I updated this entry somewhat. But his "border bullies" article was talking about Homeland Security in general.

Obama screws the CIA

Remember the mock outrage about the Valerie Plame non-story? Well check this out from Redstate. Excerpt:

It appears Barack Obama inexperience and amateurishness has just started bonfires on the bridges connecting him to the American intelligence community and delivered a huge, HUGE psychological win to Al Qaeda.

People tell me the President’s rush to acknowledge the attack on the CIA in Afghanistan and mourn the deaths openly, publicly, and via press release is a huge no no. The CIA and greater intelligence community would prefer not to have the attention put on them. Additionally, because the President took the time to draft a blanket statement focused on the CIA in general instead of individually and more privately focusing on the families of the victims, it acknowledges the CIA’s work in Afghanistan, acknowledges that the attack has an impact on the CIA, and gives the terrorists a new recruiting tool — “you too can cause America to publicly mourn the loss of their spies.”

To you and me this may not seem like a big deal. But I’m told this is hugely significant and shows just how out of touch the Obama administration is with the intelligence community. I’m told that no other President has issued such blanket statements of public mourning directed toward an attack on the CIA and thereby having the White House itself confirming an attack on our intelligence community.

Then he links to this piece of devastation. It turns out that Obama had been at least to some degree warned about the Christmas sausage bomber incident. Excerpt:

Presidential aides are concerned that Obama will somehow be unfairly accused of dropping the ball on the fight against terrorists in Yemen—a country where, in fact, the evidence suggests that Obama, as early as last summer, ordered a significant increase in U.S. intelligence activity. In the weeks before the Christmas incident, several U.S. officials have told NEWSWEEK, Obama authorized a major expansion in U.S. intelligence, military, and material support to Yemen's government—an escalation that some officials acknowledge could be characterized as a new covert war. But Obama's public and private actions in expanding counterterrorism operations in Yemen may not help him avoid answering further questions about what intelligence agencies told him—and didn't tell him—about possible threats to the U.S. homeland in the days and weeks before the alleged underpants bomber boarded his Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Italics mine. Because President Bush was never unfairly accused of anything, was he?

Catholic Christmas 2009: Christmas carols are yuck

All through Advent I was wondering why we weren't singing Christmas carols at mass. Turns out Christmas carols, kind of like GW Bush and mainstream conservatism, don't quite cut the Catholic mustard. They're just not special enough. Nevermind that their lyrics are theologically appropriate and consist of melodies that have stood the test of time -- the fact that these carols are played at hall in the dens of iniquity known as shopping malls makes them inappropriate for mass. So no, your kids won't learn these carols by singing them in church. Instead, said carols will be familiar only as tinny piped-in music at your local Target (should you be confused enough about the true "reason for the season" as to take your children to a big box store).

OK, so Advent is off limits .... I thought maybe when Christmas finally arrived we'd get to sing "O Come All Ye Faithful". But no -- my local Christmas mass (the "children's mass") was turned into a Suzuki violin recital. Four children violinists played all through a very lengthy Christmas communion with no congregational singing. And throughout the rest of mass the only kids allowed to sing were the ones who joined the "children's choir". Everyone else had to sit silently because they didn't pay obeisance to the music director gods by hauling their overscheduled kids to "choir practice" or violin lessons at the local Suzuki mill.

As a violin teacher myself, I was left to wonder a) why the particular violin students didn't sound, um, better, b) why the leader of the student violinists thought music from Suzuki Book One had anything to do with Christmas, and c) who decided that Christmas mass is a great opportunity for a violin recital. But the church and our musical/spiritual betters are always a step ahead. Glad someone is thinking about this stuff.

F

You have to read the British press to get anything resembling common sense about Obama. In this scathing take-down, Toby Harndon gives the big guy a failing grade in counter-terrorism.

In his studied desire to be the unBush by responding coolly to events like this, Obama is dangerously close to failing as a leader. Yes, it is good not to shoot from the hip and make broad assertions without the facts. But Obama took three days before speaking to the American people, emerging on Monday in between golf and tennis games in Hawaii to deliver a rather tepid address that significantly underplayed what happened. He described Abdulmutallab as an “isolated extremist” who “allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body” – phrases that indicate a legalistic, downplaying approach that alarms rather than reassures. Today’s words showed a lot more fire and desire to get on top of things – we’ll see whether Obama follows through with action. In the meantime, he went snorkelling.

Can you imagine the rage which would have been directed at Bush if he was goofing around while everyone was reeling from this wiener bomber's failed terrorism attempt, which wasn't stopped by the "system", but by passengers plus a bad case of projectile dysfunction?


I'm especially disappointed with Jan Nepalitano. I figured any chick that butch would be a little tougher at getting these guys, especially dudes obsessed with their phalli. It just goes to show you the danger of gay stereotypes.