Now it’s dumb women as well as dumb blacks for Murray

Charles Murray, not content to be a racist on the matter of human intelligence, has now decided to out himself as a sexist as well.

“It’s quite satisfying to see that I didn’t get nearly the hostile reaction I was expecting this time,” Murray says from his home near Washington. “After ‘The Bell Curve,’ I was the Antichrist, so perhaps we have moved on and we can start looking at this data in an un-hysterical way.”
Perhaps. Another explanation may be that Murray has used up his 15 minutes of fame. Lisa Randall, an eminent Harvard theoretical physicist and cosmologist, had agreed to dissect Murray’s work, which appeared in the September issue of Commentary magazine in the US, for Inquirer but on reflection declined to respond. “The reason is that this just isn’t news and it’s not worthy of being covered,” she says. “If it really gets to the point where people accept it, I can explain the many logical fallacies in his piece.”

Isn’t this the BushCo “base” — the angry racist, insecure, pseudo-intellectual white male?

So much to blog about, so little time and room

1. Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore running for governor. Did God tell him to do that, from Sinai, after handing down the Ten Commandments to him?

2. Tom DeLay indicted again (see below). Did Sears or another TRMPAC-funding business finally roll over for Travis County DA Ronnie Earle? And notice that while mouthpiece Dick DeGuerin fired off right away, the Hammer himself is zip-lipped so far?

3. Harriett Miers for SCOTUS? Those of us who saw her in action, (or is that "inaction"?) on the Dallas City Council know that she is indeed third-rate, as even conservatives in this area will admit, off the record. W could have trumped his dad with a black woman (Janice Rogers Brown) or a Hispanic (Alberto Gonzales). Is he trimming to the political wind?

4. The Cardinals have their eyes on that World Series again. I think this could be the year. Thank doorknobs we don't face the Astros to start the playoffs.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, Tom DeLayay, good bye

First the conspiracy, now the actuality

Just days after an indictment on conspiracy charges, Tom DeLay gets the real bullet: an indictment on actual crimes, namely, Money laundering.

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

So much for principal, Judy, Judy

Floyd Abrams, who seems about as capable of telling the truth as George W. Bush, now claims he sought a deal with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald on Judith Miller’s grand jury testimony more than a year ago.

"I tried to get a deal a year ago." But Abrams said that when he spoke to Fitzgerald about it at the time, he would not agree to limit his questions "to assure that the only source he would effectively be asking about was Mr. Libby.”

Sure, you did, Floyd. Trying to burnish your legal résumé there?

But, let’s assume this has some degree of basis in fact. Miller has obviously shown that her claim of “principle” is bogus, as if right-thinking people didn’t already know that.

American exceptionalism and the potential American downfall

And, how it could affect Peak Oil aftermath

Rod Dreher of The Dallas Morning News thinks the size and nature of the federal bureaucracy, regardless of conservative or liberal elected political leadership, prevents — and will continue to prevent — federal responses to events like Hurricane Katrina from being as satisfactory as the afflicted might like.

It’s a partially right, and simplistic answer.

On the simplistic side, most events as large and divers as Katrina and the post-Katrina response simply can’t be boiled down to one cause.

On the partially right issue, beyond the simplicity, I see another cause.

Here, it’s not a question of federal response, but public disbelief in the possibility of such disasters.

I contend part of the problem is -- American exceptionalism -- or the concept thereof, held by many conservatives and liberals alike, whether explicitly tied to a religious backgrounding for it or not.

Americans continue to believe that: "Event X (whatever, fill in the blank) can't happen here."

They thought a terrorist attack couldn't occur here, even though it already had nearly a decade earlier. They thought that hurricane couldn't become the "perfectly imperfect storm," if you will, even though presidents from both parties had cut Corps funding for levee improvements AND the Corps had itself essentially caused much of the problem with upstream levees for years beforehand.

There's also an adjunct to American exceptionalism -- the worship of technology, engaged in by Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, secular and religious alike.

It is most exmplifying itself in the refusal of elected leaders of both parties to seriously discuss Peak Oil, and just how hard of a slog it is going to be to deal with that, especially if the peak's downside is precipitously, not mildly, sloped.

Newsweek still kind of clueless on DeLay-Earle

The first three pages of its Oct. 10 “Exterminator” story on Tom DeLay are pretty decent, but page 4 pretty much veers into cluelessness.

Eleanor, “Gee, I’m Swellinor” Clift et al seem to think that Earle begged to have “The Big Buy” filmed, whereas in actuality, he had to be begged by Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck to let filming go on.

Add in the fact that nobody from Earle’s staff, nor from the grand jury, was quoted, and while not as one-sided as it could have been, it is still somewhat that way.

Even worse, beyond the “sidedness,” it is clearly written from an inside-the-Beltway perspective. That’s why it lacks quotes from Earle’s staff or grand jury — it would be too much fricking work to venture outside Washington, either mentally or physically

Update: I originally typoed the title as Newsweek still kid of clueless ...," which actually made sense as written.