Can A Woman Save Us From A World Of Woe?

Kathleen Parker's column about how Hillary Clinton can Save The World has to be read to be believed:

Op-ed columns are filled with advice about what Hillary needs to do. She needs a narrative. A message. It can’t be that she’s a Clinton or a woman. It has to be . . . 

What? 

Here’s a thought: She can save the world. 

Yes, all right, perhaps that’s a trifle hyperbolic, but hear me out. And keep in mind that this works only as a long game. We may not live to see salvation but one has to start somewhere. Thus far invasions, bunker-busting mega-bombs and killer drones seem not to be having the desired effect. 

Let’s begin with a working (and provable) premise: Women, if allowed to be fully equal to men, will bring peace to the planet. This is not so far-fetched a notion. One, men have been at it for thousands of years, resulting in millions and millions of corpses. Two, countries where women are most oppressed and abused are also the least stable. 

Three, as women become more empowered, especially financially, countries become more stable. When women have money, they can feed their families, get health care, educate their children, start businesses and so on. The ripple effect is stronger families, stronger communities and ultimately saner nations. 

This fact, reinforced by numerous economic studies, has not escaped the attention of corporate America, which is investing heavily to reach women in developing countries. As Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coca-Cola, put it: “Women are already the most dynamic and fastest-growing economic force in the world today.”

It's a "provable premises" that women will bring peace to the planet, eh? Have you mentioned that to Margaret Thatcher? Golda Meir? How about Argentine President Christina Kirchner, who has been wagging the dog over The Falklands? Or how about Hillary herself, who chortled "We came. We saw. He died" about the late Muommar Qaddafi? The list could go on, all the way back to Queen Elizabeth, Joan of Arc and beyond.

Women who gain political power have no problem waging war. Any study of history will teach you that, but I assume that's not the sort of studying the Kathleen Parkers of the world like to do.

Great Guitars: Craig Chaquico

As long as we're covering Jefferson Airplane/Starship guitar players, how about some love for the Starship's Craig Chaquico? Yeah, I know he's associated with Starship's decline into '80's MOR cheese, but some of his tunes - especially "Jane" and "Find Your Way Back" - hold up well. And, have you listened to Dragon Fly or Red Octopus lately? Those are incredible albums! Chaquico's playing on those records is masterful especially when he's trading solos with Papa John Creech. Chaquico is not a "genius." Instead, he's an immensely talented virtuoso who could probably join any band, whether ska or jazz or rock or country or whatever, and immediately raise its profile.

Great Guitars: Paul Kantner

The Jefferson Airplane/Starship was always staffed with top-flight, glamorous musicians; even when they were singing hippie anthems about revolution. Then there was Paul Kantner, the nerdy looking rhythm guitarist who looked perpetually peevish, as if sharing stage time (and a bed) with Grace Slick was a chore. Actually, Kantner was the musical engine of the group, cranking out album after album for years, even as members came, left and returned. His early Seventies albums, especially Blows Against the Empire and Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun are communal, hippie music at its best. It's tough to find clips featuring just Kantner, but here's a duet with Grace Slick from 1988. 10 seconds in you understand how the unprepossessing Kantner has managed to work with so many heavyweights.

 

Great Guitars: Jorma Kaukonen

The Jefferson Airplane's lead guitarist is often over-shadowed by his Summer of Love colleagues Carlos Santana and Jerry Garcia, but don't doubt that he is a powerful player who helped birth not one, but two, iconic musical styles.

The "electric" Jorma, paired with Grace Slick's contra-alto vocals, laid the basic template for the "wailing lead guitars under soaring vocal lines" that every hard rock and metal band has aspired to. The stage is a little crowded in this clip, with everyone from Marty Balin to David Crosby (?) trying to horn in on the camera, but Jorma's easy enough to find. He's the serious looking kid in the center playing the kick ass solos:



At the same time, the "acoustic" Jorma created the open-tuning, finger-picking style that a million New Agers, not to mention heavyweights like Jimmy Page and Steve Howe, brought to the masses:



He also founded Hot Tuna, one of the earliest of the jam bands, and has kept that going strong for decades. Incredibly, for a Sixties guy, Jorma is (1) still alive and (2) quite normal. He always seems perpetually bemused more than anything else, but very few living musicians have bridged so many styles with so little effort.

Don't Bring The CrazyStupid: How To Run For the GOP Presidential Nomination

Baseball Crank has a list of 73 things you need to do if you are going to run for the Republican presidential nomination. I particularly liked these two:

24-Being a consistent conservative will help you more than pandering to nuts on the Right. If you can't tell the difference between the two, don't run. 

25-Winning campaigns attract crazy and stupid people as supporters; you can't get a majority without them. This does not mean you should have crazy or stupid people as your advisers or spokespeople.

People forget this now, but the conservative movement during the Reagan ascendancy was absolutely be-set with loons, many of whom managed to get on the news and embarrass themselves and the movement. (that's why the media has always tried to play up the alleged "crazies" in the Tea Party. They remember the halcyon days when a Bircher droning about the fluoridation of the water supply was considered good TV, so long as it made the Right look bad). Probably the ultimate right-wing crazy person was Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt. Among other things he:

1. got into a beef with the Beach Boys (which he lost) 

2. once said, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations. 

3. once said, "If you want an example of the failure of socialism, don't go to Russia, come to America and go to the Indian reservations." 

4. and, most famously, he described the make-up of a coal-leasing panel as comprising: "A black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent." This last bon mot cost him his job.

On the other hand, he did not say "After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." That's apocryphal. (phew!) But, it gives you an idea of what people thought Watt was capable of saying at any second. To say that James Watt lacked message discipline is putting it nicely. 

On the other hand, Watt was everything you would want from an evil right-wing Secretary of the Interior. He delighted in leasing federal lands for mining, drilling, timber cutting, what have you. Let wiki-pedia tell the rest of the tale:

Watt resisted accepting donations of private land to be used for conservation purposes. He suggested that all 80 million acres (320,000 km²) of undeveloped land in the United States be opened for drilling and mining in the year 2000. The area leased to coal mining companies quintupled during his term as Secretary of the Interior. Watt boasted that he leased "a billion acres" (4 million km²) of U.S. coastal waters, even though only a small portion of that area would ever be drilled. Watt once stated, "We will mine more, drill more, cut more timber."

Great stuff, but because Watt acted like he had a mouthful of buckshot every time he spoke in public, no one remembers any of it.

Look, Reagan was a movement conservative. So was Watt. So were a lot of people inside and outside the administration. They were constantly getting p*ssed with the 40th president, holding his feet to the fire, etc. Ronaldus had to prove and re-prove his conservative bona-fides to an extent that would have left RINO's like Mitt Romney and John McCain covered in flop sweat. 

More important, and unlike the "disciplined" campaigns of the early 21st century GOP, Reagan was not above firing the idiots and reckless word-meisters who were drawn to his message, campaigned for him passionately, and then threatened to destroy the last best hope on earth with ill-chosen words about minorities,  the Civil Rights Act, etc. Of course, the king of the gaffe was Ron himself, but he was the indispensable man and any way his mistakes had a certain charm that the likes of James Watt utterly lacked. 

It's an iron law of Anglo-American political systems that the conservative party is the Stupid Party. We can live with that. But, even stupid people know and understand what is or is not acceptable public discourse. If you are running for president and you find yourself talking about Gardasil causing mental retardation; or you have a close adviser who thinks, in all sincerity that Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant (then why are you a member of the party of Lincoln); or you can't stop talking about "sodomy" (get a room), you are probably not meant to make a serious run for the GOP nomination. Just sayin'.

Money For Nothing: Corey Booker's "Start-Up"

I think this Times puff piece about Corey Booker was supposed to cause Jerseyites to admire his visionary tech-saavyiety (new word alert. Call the OED), but instead it reveals to how a handful of billionaires have used an internet start-up as a front to funnel money into Booker's bank account. 

Mr. Booker personally has obtained money for the start-up, called Waywire, from influential investors, including Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman. A year after its debut, Waywire has already endured a round of layoffs and had just 2,207 visitors in June, according to Compete, a Web-tracking service. The company says it is still under development. 

Yet in a financial disclosure filed last month, Mr. Booker, 44, revealed that his stake in the company was worth $1 million to $5 million. Taken together, his other assets were worth no more than $730,000. 

That revelation, with just a week left in Mr. Booker’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate, shows how a few tech moguls and entrepreneurs, many of them also campaign donors, not only made a financial bet on the mayor’s political future but also provided the brainpower and financing to help create a company that could make him very rich. 

Waywire has also provided jobs for associates of Mr. Booker: the son of a top campaign supporter and his social media consultant, who is now on his Senate campaign staff.

Waywire is a pathetic nonentity in the world of the internet. It's a video sharing platform. Wow! a video sharing platform? On the internet?! Althouse, who flagged some of the purple prose from the Times, brings us a dramatic report from the Waywire site:

Here's Waywire, by the way(wire), so check for yourself if it's haywire. You can't tell from one look how long these items have been at the top, but the timelessness of the subject matter makes me think: a long time. I mean: "7 Great Beatles Performances," "Top 15 Most Patriotic Songs," "30 Best Summer Songs"...? These seem to pre-date the Internet! But let's be fair and watch "Top News, August 8," which appears in the upper left-hand corner of the grid. It starts off (for me, now, anyway) with a grainy 38 seconds of a guy in a suit drawing all the pingpong balls for a set of Powerball numbers. (That fits with "betting on Booker.") It then proceeds to another video, a minute of Obama on Leno, then another (showing "Suffering in Syria"), then something about Egypt, something about Dustin Hoffman, something else about Egypt, and ending the run through the top news that you need to know today, August 8th, with "Toddler Beaten to Death by Foster Mother." We see her sad face in a thumbnail. 

Just to add to the appearance of impropriety, one of the board members is Andrew Zucker, a 15 year-old boy. Or, was. He has since resigned, no doubt because someone realized having Jeff Zucker's son on the board of Booker's nest egg would probably give rise to questions about the nexus between the MSM and the Democrat Party. 

Well.

As with John Edwards, who actively worked to separate the nonagenarian Bunnie Mellon from hundreds of thousands of dollars, all in the name of funding his political career, one has to ask how any of this is legal. Conservatives like Sarah Palin have to keep every receipt from Target, lest they be hounded for accepting a $50 "gift," while Dems can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars through cattle futures, bogus start-ups or simple "gifts." I'm starting to feel like there's a double standard at work here. 

Booker has been a real up-and-comer; a golden boy who waded into the corrupt world of Newark politics and seemed to be cleaning it up. Then again, there's apparently a lot of hometown griping that he hasn't done all that much to turn Newark around, except remove some of the more egregiously corrupt civil servants. Crime, poverty, unemployment are still sky-high, and indeed are unchanged from the beginning of his administration. Booker's run for the NJ Senate seat has been treated as a for-ordained glide path into national politics, but clearly there is much that is lurking under the surface for a determined foe or journalist to dig into.  

P.S. As much as we can be discomfited by Booker's arrangement with his donors, the fact is that people like him need to sustain themselves and raise a family. Human nature being what it is, you can't expect civil servants to live penuriously. No one likes to hear this, but most elective offices are severely underpaid. Senators and congressmen should be earning in the low seven figures, not the relatively small salaries they are actually paid. If Corey Booker was actually earning a salary commensurate with his skills and his job duties, he wouldn't have to enter into bogus "investments" funded by billionaires living 3,000 miles away from the Garden State. 

Charlie Rangel H8's The Tea Party: Can't We All Just Get Along?

Charlie Rangel wants you to know what he really thinks of Republicans and, especially, the Tea Party:

There is little question that Rangel is nearing the end. First elected 43 years ago, after having defeated the man whose name adorns the building where the congressman keeps his office, he is musing aloud now about what he once forbade anyone to discuss with him: his own retirement. 

But even at 83, dressed in a blue bow tie and crisp gray suit, Rangel is relentless toward those who he feels are slowing the forces of progress. 

House Republicans? Have done more damage to American competitiveness than al Qaeda ever could. “What is happening is sabotage. Terrorists couldn’t do a better job than the Republicans are doing.” 

The Tea Party? Defeat them the same way segregation was beaten. “It is the same group we faced in the South with those white crackers and the dogs and the police.”

Uh, no they're not, jerk, and you know it. The Tea Party has nothing to do with segregationists, who were Democrats who voted for every New Deal and Fair Deal program under the sun, so long as the "Solid South" could remain a segregated backwater. The Tea Party is trying to reduce the size of the federal leviathan, starting with Obamacare, and moving on down the line. I know it's hard to understand, given how all us white people (aka "crackas") look alike, but that's life for you. 

The real problem with the Tea Party, if you are Charlie Rangel, is that it is dedicating to reducing the various hand-outs, transfer payments, subsidies and "free" stuff that he has spent a career acquiring for the "community." Rangel's power has come from ginning up outrage and then dispensing goodies to his constituents, many of whom think of Great Society programs as a sort of reparations for slavery. (something they never personally experienced, btw, but the "right" to reparations is something they inherited, I guess, like white people inherit stocks and bonds). Cut welfare? Why don't you just cut off Charlie Rangel's arms?! That would definitely be racist.

America has never had a shortage of roguish politicos, but Charlie Rangel really takes the cake. He's used the ideals of the civil rights movement and the righteous anger of African-Americans to build an empire of boodle where he stood at the head of the line dispensing Obama-phones and AFDC checks like a ward-heeler (hey, what's this "like" stuff?" That's what he is) passing out stringy turkeys at Thanksgiving. Along the way, he's amassed a fortune worth many times what he could have earned through his congressional salary, not that anyone's cared to inquire too closely about that. Even the IRS could be sent packing on Rangel's behalf. 

But, when the taxpayers who pay for Rangel's power revolt and demand some sign that the Rangels of the world at least to pretend to live within the limits of the Constitution, not to mention math, suddenly it's all firehoses and dogs and Bull Connor. It's absurd. If anything, Rangel is now part of the noxious power structure. If he needs to insult decent Americans to keep his place there, I guess that's what he's got to do. 

Alert! Alert! Rogue Yemeni Email Shuts Down US State Dept!

Don't mean to minimize the dangers of Islamic terrorism or anything, but the latest round of travel warnings and temporary embassy closings has an especially bogus "Shark Week"-level hype to them:

The United States will temporarily shut down its embassies and consulates around the world Sunday -- including those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt -- as a precautionary measure over terror-related concerns, State Department officials said. 

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf did not say how long the international installations would stay closed -- only that the decision was taken “out of an abundance of caution and care for our employees and others who may be visiting.” Officials would not describe the nature of the threat.  

Sunday is a normal workday in many Arab and Middle Eastern countries, meaning that is where the closures will have an impact. Embassies in Europe and Latin America would be shuttered that day anyway. 

“We have instructed all U.S. embassies and consulates that would have normally been open on Sunday to suspend operations, specifically on August 4,” a senior State Department official said Thursday night. “It is possible we may have additional days of closing as well.”

Hey, maybe there's really a bunch of terrorists massing somewhere, ready for Benghazi II, but I just don't believe it. And, why the heck are we closing embassies, even for a second? If you don't want a repeat of the attack on the Libyan consulate (which was actually a "mission," or some such), then maybe post some Marines with actual weapons containing actual bullets and see how far your typical terrorist gets. But, that's not how things work under the Obama Doctrine, where concepts like "Defending Yourself" and "Refusing To Knuckle Under To Vague Threats" are now verboten for being the tools of imperialist running dogs. Anyway, one of Obama's two big talking points last year was that "Osama was dead and al-Qaeda on the run," so what's the problem?

I will have no problem repudiating the above should there be a massive, fatal terrorist attack sometime in the next couple weeks, but how likely is that to happen? Not very. But, this grand display of weakness and duck & covering will encourage the next "out of nowhere" attack.