It’s a given that Peter Beinart’s flatulence that Kagan should apologize for banning U.S. military campus visits for their policies violating school non-discrimination policies is more of his soft-minded weakness. Like his rah rah for the Bush Administration in the Middle East well into 2005. Not a serious mind for serious (or unserious) people. What about principled Obama supporters distancing themselves from Kagan?
We confess to know almost nothing about Kagan. Not only because she has no substantial body of legal writings. She came of age after the Stitung’s work with and for some of the Nation’s foremost legal minds (including but definitely not limited to Kagan’s colleague, Liz Warren). We know nothing about how her mind works. A deanship or Supreme Court Clerkship? Ticket punches only. How she succeeds in quelling Harvard prima donnas as Lunch Room Monitor irrelevant and delusional – as if Alito, Roberts, Scalia or Thomas will somehow be hypmotized [sic]. Yet her ‘legal mind’ and Harvard faculty Jedi mind tricks are the crux of Obama’s confidence in her.
We can’t speak for you, Dear Reader. We no longer accept ‘Trust Me’ IOUs from this crowd. We look forward to the confirmation hearings (see comment below).
Comment says
Secular Socialist Nazi Machine Postmodern Yule Log:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/20/live-gulf-oil-spill-video-feed_n_583682.html
Comment says
Tweety is having a strange personal eruption over Blumnenthal’s Nam lies – It’s obviously strikes him close — The GOP candidate is trying to explain to Tweety how veterans discuss things.
Comment says
MoDo increasingly using her columns as psychotherapy session
Comment says
Cut off that limb we went out on – looks like Sestak will win.
Comment says
We heard that Rand Paul won – we have not watched results, but we’ll go out on a limb and predict Arlan will win against Sestak – Sestak is impressive in many ways, but there is something about him that sets off doubts. Just an impression – So Arlen will be the devil they know and he will defeat Toomey.
Comment says
Normally we try avoid these topics that center around human failure – People make mistakes and politicians are notorious. But this video is just so funny because of Sauder’s body language – Hollywood could not have cast a better look of conflict and repression. So obvious that the cute staffer is way beyond what he could have gotten in on his own when young. Just inevitable.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/rep_souder_and_mistress_recorded_video_on_abstinen.php?ref=fpb
Comment says
We shouldn’t gossip – but Souder’s girlfriend seems pretty good looking – Shows Dr. K was right about power.
Comment says
Newt – and Armey = still reek of social resentment. Newt is one dismissive comment from someone like Larry Summers away losing what little cool he has.
Dr Leo Strauss says
A Salon type catches the briefest glimpse of the full splendor . . .
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/05/18/ignore_newt_gin
Comment says
Newt’s whole RC shtick smells of gimmickry – He thinks JP2, unlike bene, is a poll tested brand is there is something phony about they way hie politics religion/.
Comment says
Newt will fall on his face if he runs – Romney is candidate for grown ups and Palin is for the bomb throwers. Newt should know that insider elites who pretend to respect his “ideas” are BSing/ His getting worked up over Kagan’s military policy is partly due to compensate for his own Vietnam avoidance
Comment says
Nice feud:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2010/05/greenwald-on-obama-civil-liberties-and-public-opinion.php
Dr Leo Strauss says
Saw Newt’s new firebrand anti-Obama marketing product/book on the shelf. The cover itself looks old school, lacking the gleefully incoherent rage of the Becks, Palins, etc. It must be bewlidering for an irresponsible self-styled bomb thrower to realize compared to the New Kids he’s been tossing water balloons.
A friend went to the premiere of ‘Citizens United’ (David Bossie) so-called Newt’s film on Pope John Paul – the 9 Days thing. This friend is enmeshed around the Values Voter Movement’s aorta. Newt’s not in the film much – for all the hype. An acquaintance who helped produce it did say Newt was involved at least electronically; he would send his now time worn barrage of emails about various re-writes, edits or inserts, each contradicting the last with the latest ‘We Should Do This!’ *idea*.
Be that as it may, my friend at the premiere (100% in the tank for the movie going in) says the thing is exhausting. Just when it seems like the movie reaches a logical ending, it lurches up again into a new tangent which peters out, only to stagger onto another segment and so on.
And so our response? ‘Now you know Newt’s contribution’.
People who remain close to him say he’s leaning towards running.
Comment says
Newt was always limited by his personal insecurity and his reliance on gimmicks and dumb word scams – but he seems to have really lost his thread lately.
Comment says
Glen Greenwald was relentless against Craig today on This Week – over Kagan – Craig’s unspoken argument is that Kagan is just trusted by the best people in the establishment – Normally that just sort of works on Sunday shows, but not this time.
Comment says
Pat switched to “Dumbing down” on McLaughlin – His TV schtick is always less piquant. John Paul Stevens was a big believer in the theory that the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de vere – was the true author of Shakespeare – As is Scalia. We still don’t know where Kagan stands on the authorship question.
Dr Leo Strauss says
@Comment
Yeah, it’s a shame that people like Pat will benefit Kagan and unwittingly ease her undeserved confirmation. Although according to AIPAC’s more ardent proponents, it is impossible and *incorrect* to separate ethnicity and faith when it comes to supporting Israel. Geopolitics aside it’s not impossible to have a little sympathy – many sentient bi-peds might well be appalled at Madonna cavorting around sacred sites with a motley band of
kidnappedadopted kids as the most famous convert/face of a given faith.If Obama was really smart, with Madonna he would have gotten a trifecta – raised Catholic, female, now a convert to Judaism. And with a history of practicing law equal to Kagan. And unlike Kagan, Madonna actually spoke out quite forcefully on the First Amendment, Gitmo, surveillance at the time when it mattered. As for persuasiveness on the Court, one can guess Scalia’s copy of her ‘Sex’ book is . . . dog eared.
Comment says
Uncle Pat is up to his old tricks – notice that no one seems to pick up on the fact that he ignores Sotomayors religion, but notes her ethnicity instead -http://mediamatters.org/blog/201005140048
Comment says
re Decline & Fall = Tweety was off tonight – because he was in Chicago receiving another honorary degrees.
Tweety has many honory doctorates. Strange.
Comment says
Yes – mgmt was probably warning him with growing irrelevance –
Comment says
Not to beat a long dead horse, but also recall when Tweety shouted at beinart that he was way ahead of him on the issue of military progessivism – he was actually changing the subject – fearful that the pencil necked beinart may be out neck-thicking him. Lots of conflicting resentments came to the surface in a flash.
Dr Leo Strauss says
It’s also curious to observe Tweety’s week long quest to provoke a squabble with Rush, much like the little playground kid kicking sand to get attention. His complete disavowal of his professional record and cling to Obama as ‘us’ and these labored efforts hoping Rush will acknowledge him on radio bespeak possibly to a senior management memo to shake the show up.
How it must grate Tweety to sit in those meetings and be told he should be more like Maddow.
Comment says
Leo – also when tweety said Pencil necks – he also did a quick boomer beltway namecheck of Colin Powell as an example of a real soldier who opposes war,
Comment says
Just came accross an amusing letter to the editor in the NYT from 1998 mocking VDH for his inaccurate understanding of Thucydides.
sglover says
“We can’t speak for you, Dear Reader. We no longer accept ‘Trust Me’ IOUs from this crowd.”
Oh, I place a certain amount of trust in Hope’n’Change’s moves. I trust that anything he does will placate the oligarchy, or — better yet — increase their power.
At the risk of sounding all Teabaggerish, isn’t it about time that the Ivy League pedigree becomes a **dis**qualifier for public office? I mean, if a member of a Harvard or Princeton science* department ran for office — hell, if a working scientist from **any** school stood — he’d have some serious qualifications. But I look at Wolfowitz, Feith, Bush the Lesser, that twit Andy Sullivan, and all I see are some seriously fucked-up, zero-integrity ticket opportunists.
*Note: “science” — that excludes economics, political “science”, and other flavors of academic circle jerkery.
Dr Leo Strauss says
‘pencil necks’ and ‘intellectuals’ – he’s become Darrell Hammond.
Comment says
Tweety just announced in passing that kagan banned the military from the HLS campus – something she did not have the power to do. This whole issue attracts Twwety types because it allows them to pretend to be working class in attitude.
Comment says
The ‘hearings’ are just an Oriental ritual
Dr Leo Strauss says
Lessig was on one of the MSNBC evening shows defending Kagan. A major qualification in his mind was he left Harvard for Palo Alto and she asked him to come back. He did. Upon return, all the fractious personas sang Kumbaya.
It gets better and better.
Dr Leo Strauss says
‘look forward to the hearings’ meant as we learned so much about Roberts’ radicalism from his, didn’t we?
Comment says
Beinart is an example of a Dem showing weakness when he thinks he is showing strength – Ofcourse he agrees with Kagan et al about the principle behind the recruiting ban, but since he wants the dems to embrace a hawkish image that will wow the lunch-pail types, he thinks one should pretend to more conservative.