The American Conservative

Wow — no matter where one stands on medical marijuana and drug decriminalization — today is one for the history books. The Obama Administration via AG Eric Holder has just announced that it will not pursue prosecution of medical marijuana users, growers or dispensaries, as long as they are operating within state law. Seeing that 13 states already have laws allowing for some form of medical marijuana, and several others have been debating proposed legislation allowing for such access, this formal directive will have a big impact. States like California and Colorado have been grappling over how to square their own laws with that of the federal government, which still considers pot an illegal drug of the most dangerous order. But in issuing new guidelines preventing the prosecution of protected users, sellers and growers, Obama is leaving it up to the states, making a major break from the Bush Administration, which went after such “criminals” with zeal.

Read the whole story here.

Richard Spencer has written a response to my response to his critique of my TAC article “Breaking the Bank.” He correctly points out that populist movements in the past, when they’ve dealt with the economy, have been inflationary rather than deflationary.

However, it should be pointed out that’s not always been true of all strains of populism. The early Christian right was a populist movement that did not deal with money or finance. The Perot movement concerned itself with reducing the deficit, not more government spending. And those students at a Ron Paul campaign rally at the University of Michigan back in 2007 were burning dollar bills, not asking for more.

A person would burn paper money only if they felt it was worthless. I suspect those adherents of a new populist movement, after watching attempts to grow the economy through deficit spending, subsidizing risky mortgages to pump prime the housing market and creative, dishonest financing so the Feds could spend billions on wars and farm subsidies and give out funds to other favored interest groups are not going to demanding a 16-to-1 ratio of silver coinage to gold. They’re going to be demanding a change in the system so that the federal government live within its means with real money back real things like silver and gold.

One can disparage the GOP and be well justified and one can call for a new major party and be right, but alas, the real world of politics is what we have to deal with and if a Republican Party, or any opposition party for that matter, cannot attack and stand against the takeover of this nation’s economy by Goldmann Sachs and their thievery of the nation’s taxpayers, then such a party does not deserve to exist and we might as well accept a one-party socialist state (instead of a multi-partied one).

There are many kinds of populism and many kinds of issues that populist movements form themselves around. But the one thing they have in common is not inflationary policies, but the sense of aggrievement by the masses against a powerful, controlling, distant few.

here’s a couple of differing views on the Limbaugh/NFL business. Jay Nordlinger had a little tantrum about it:

Frankly, I’m so angry about this, I’m not sure I should write about it. I’m even a little shaken, and perhaps you are, too. Let me be blunt: The effort to keep Rush Limbaugh from participating in a bid on a football team was disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. For many years now, we have witnessed an attempt to banish Rush to the margins of American life. To make him a pariah in our society, a non-person.

Actually, Limbaugh flourishes at the margins. It’s anywhere else that he has trouble. Conor Friedersdorf noted that for someone complaining about the sting of being called a racist, he is freely tars others:

At the very least, he’s been bandying about the ‘r’ word rather frequently.
Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates? “He’s a racist,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “He’s an angry racist.”
Sonja Sotomayor? “She’s a bigot. She’s a racist,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “How can a president nominate such a candidate? And how can a party get behind such a candidate? That’s what would be asked if somebody were foolish enough to nominate David Duke or pick somebody even less offensive.”. . .
Liberals? “You know, racism in this country is the exclusive province of the left.”
The media circa January? “We’re witnessing racism all this week that led up to the inauguration. We’re being told that we have to hope he succeeds. That we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father’s black, because this is the first black president.”. . .
Oh, and don’t forget the NFL. As of this week, it is “an outpost of racism and liberalism.” (Strange that a league that is supposedly racist against white owner candidates has so many white owners.). . .

Those who have been hoping that J Street would develop into pro-Israel lobby free of many of the objectionable features of AIPAC should think twice.  J Street’s Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami has just released a statement on Iran which I will reproduce in full:  “J Street supports the thoughtful and nuanced approach to Iran sanctions legislation articulated yesterday by Chairman Howard Berman. We agree that it is a vital interest of the United States, Israel and the entire Middle East to ensure that Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons. Further, we agree with the Chairman’s stated policy preferences for achieving that objective. J Street’s first choice – as it is for President Obama and Chairman Berman – is to resolve the nuclear issue through diplomatic means.  We too strongly support the Obama Administration’s efforts to engage Iran and hope for promising follow-through to the first round of talks held in Geneva on October 1. However, should engagement not produce the desired results, we too believe that the United States should seek hard-hitting multilateral sanctions through the United Nations Security Council.  If that course of action proves impossible, then the U.S. should work to build the broadest possible international coalition to back such steps. The imposition of unilateral sanctions, without UN approval or the support of allies, should be, as the Chairman himself says, a last resort. J Street supports the Chairman’s intention to mark up the bill on October 28th and to give the President further time to pursue our preferred options. As we have said before, J Street does not oppose the imposition of sanctions per se. We prefer, as do Chairman Berman and President Obama, attempting to achieve the desired result through diplomatic engagement and multilateral action.”

Describing Congressman Howard Berman as “thoughtful and nuanced” regarding Iran is to say the least generous and many have noted that his house bill is basically an act of war.  Supporting “hard-hitting multilateral sanctions” will only end any hopes for a negotiated solution and will strengthen Iranian hardliners, as J Street well knows.  There is in fact little difference between J Street’s position and that of AIPAC.

I attended a J Street sponsored event about a month ago with retired Israeli Major General Danny Rothschild.  The general was being introduced around Washington because he openly advocates a two state solution with the Palestinians, though he also reiterated standard Israeli talking points about ”Islamofascism” and Iran, i.e. that there is no use talking to those people and that Iran intends to develop a nuclear weapon to destroy Israel.  He advocated a military solution to the Iran problem.  It seems to me that J Street has been drifting closer to the hardline positions that it once seemed to criticize and, if I were being cynical, I might wonder if that was the program right from the beginning.  I believe J Street is holding something like an annual conference in Washington in about two weeks.  It will be interesting to see who attends and what comes out of it.

Before President Obama even landed at Andrews Air Force Base, returning from his mission to Copenhagen to win the 2016 Olympic Games, Chicago had been voted off the island.

Many shared the lamentation of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, “What has become of America, when Chicago can’t steal an election?”

A second and more serious battle of Copenhagen is shaping up, in mid-December, when a world conference gathers to impose limits on greenhouse gases to stop “global warming.” Primary purpose: Rope in the Americans who refused to submit to the Kyoto Protocols that Al Gore brought home in the Clinton era.

The long campaign to bring the United States under another global regime — the newest piece in the architecture of world government — has been flagging since 2008. Then, it seemed a lock with the election of Obama and a veto-proof Democratic Senate.

Why has the campaign stalled? Because global warming has stalled. The hottest year of modern times, 1998, came and went a decade ago. Read More…

I promised when I returned from my blogging vacation (a little longer than I had anticipated) to address Richard Spencer’s critique of my TAC article “Breaking the Bank”, back in August, specifically his question “What then?”:

“A more fundamental problem with Scallon’s essay is that he never informs us what he wants to take the place of the Fed after we’ve “broken the bank.” What do we want? Free banking? (That is, should we allow independent entrepreneurs to establish private banks, perhaps even issue their own currencies, with no assistance and regulation by the federal government?) A national gold standard (like the one we had in the Good Old Days)? Or should we give the money printing and interest-rate powers to the Treasury or the Congress or the President?

My answer is that I have no idea what replaces the Fed.  Congress already has the power to coin money but I don’t think even Ron Paul wants to have politicians controlling the money supply. This is not Argentina. Returning to the gold standard sounds fine and no I don’t wish to see a situation develop like that in the Ohio Valley between 1813-1819  where local banks were giving loans out to everyone who could walk and crawl. Since I’m not an economist, I’ ll step aside and let them figure out what fills the void when central banking is taken out of the picture.

What I do know is that if the right wants to be taken seriously once again as an electoral force, it needs an issue or series of issues that two of two things: 1). Excites the base and 2). is intellectually serious. This addresses the dilemma that was posed by Jim Antle in his recent article.  The current crop of conservative “intellectuals” still support discredited Bush II policies that many within the “base” have given up on because they have failed. But what excites the “base”, whether it’s Obama’s birth certificate or “death panels” risks its further marginalization. Why not try a political strategy that both populistic and an idea discussed and proposed by thinkers and economists? Why not try idea that may very well enlarge the base and split your opponents?

Granted this all political strategizing but before anyone can even begin talking about “End the Fed”, people have to have the power to do so.

It looks like Rush Limbaugh won’t be part owner of the Saint Louis Rams. His failure reminds me of his short-lived career as a spokesperson for Florida Orange Juice in 1994. I remember seeing footage of dittoheads wading through angry feminist protesters to purchase orange juice by the case. Not surprisingly, the orange juice mandarins didn’t like the controversy and eventually dropped Limbaugh as a spokesman.

The lesson for Limbaugh from the orange juice flap, his brief career as ESPN commentator and his apparently failed bid to become a part owner in the NFL; is that he should stay inside the bubble. In the rightwing bubble, nobody is bigger than Limbaugh, but on the outside he is a mere mortal. Media Matters has an extensive list of Limbaugh comments that they find objectionable. I wouldn’t want Media Matters to define the parameters of acceptable debate, but the worst of Limbaugh’s statements are offensive. I agree with Rod Dreher that Limbaugh was “deliberately trying to whip up racial fear and loathing of the president” with his comment about “Obama’s America.” But I assume he was indulging in innocuous sarcasm when he said that Like Obama, “God does not have a birth certificate either.”

I scarcely blame the NFL for not wanting to devote all of their public relations to defending and contextualizing the ravings of one of its part-owners on an almost daily basis. And that is what they would have to do if Limbaugh was involved.

Glenn Reynolds absurdly claimed that “this whole NFL thing is a Limbaugh-set trap for the press and Democratic pols, and it’s working . . . .” No, this “NFL thing” was an attempt by a very wealthy man who loves pro football to become an owner and perhaps, one day, to slip a super bowl ring on one of his pudgy fingers. And its not working . . .

Liz Cheney’s “Keep America Safe” group, a new-fangled PR initiative against executive branch “weakness” on foreign policy, is obviously preposterous. But then what should one expect from the Angler’s spawn? Have a gander at their spooky-spook ad:

Deborah Burlingame, sister of the pilot whose plan crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, has been on Fox cheerleading Cheney Jr’s campaign. She says that America under Obama is returning to the dreaded — you guessed it – “pre 9/11 mindset.” Burlingame no doubt means well, but for readers of realist persuasion, the Obama policies she objects to are surely the most (only?) attractive aspects of his presidency. With America still ruining herself abroad thanks to the Bush Doctrine, the idea that it is of tantamount importance for Obama to preserve precisely the same foreign policy as his predecessor is laughable.

But the worrying aspect of this beware-Obama-the-appeaser rhetoric is the effect that it might have on Obama’s supporters. Rather than laugh it off, the Obama faithful, more concerned about their man’s image than the complex realities of international relations, appear to feel he must act tough to silence his hawkish critics on the Right. Even Gideon Rachman, the Financial Times’s estimable and fair-mindedly pro-Obama foreign-affairs commentator, is urging Obama to show that he can “punch harder”. One fears what that could mean. It would be a sad irony if Obama, accused of being a weak-kneed PR man, responded by sending men to their death for some good PR.

Those who have been following my extended rant on speed cameras know that my objection to them is based on their role in the developing all-surveillance-state-all-the-time as well as their denial of any due process.  I have also noted that their deployment is generally based on potential revenue generation rather than safety.  Chevy Chase (not the actor) in Montgomery County Maryland has made so much money from the cameras that it is pondering what to do with the cash.  It is considering spending $30,000 of the loot on arming all of its police with tasers.  Tasers are controversial to say the least and some consider them to be the closest thing that the police have to legalized torture.  One presumes that the number of drivers complaining about tickets will decline sharply when confronted by a potential jolt of 60,000 volts if one objects too vociferously.   Using money extorted from motorists in a possibly unconstitutional fashion to purchase weapons that could be used on those selfsame motorists and other citizens objecting to police conduct made me briefly consider moving to Canada (until I read an article about a Canadian truck driver being arrested and fined by police for smoking in the cab of his own truck because he had created an unsafe work environment).

All my life, said Voltaire, I have had but one prayer: “O Lord, make my enemies look ridiculous. And God granted it.”

In awarding the Nobel Prize for Peace to Barack Obama, the Nobel committee has just made itself look ridiculous.

Consider. Though they had lead roles in ending a Cold War lasting half a century, between a nuclear-armed Soviet Empire and the West, neither Ronald Reagan nor John Paul II ever got a Nobel Prize.

In 1987, Reagan negotiated the greatest arms reduction treaty in modern time, the INF agreement removing all Soviet SS-20s and all U.S. Pershing and cruise missiles from Europe.

Other than hosting the “Beer Summit” between Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, what has Obama done to compare with what these statesmen did to make ours a more peaceful and better world? Read More…