Saturday, February 21, 2015

Last Call For Just Not Like Us

Jonathan Greenberg at the New York Observer puts forth one of the most obnoxious and truly stupid theories on radical Islam that I've ever had the misfortune to read, so to spare you I'll summarize it:

Bell Curve for Muslims.

The Obama Administration believes that people everywhere share the same basic values as Western civilization: we all negotiate in good faith to seek positive-sum solutions (this is the fallacy that drives administration policy on Iran), we all prefer an uncomfortable peace to war, and we are all more or less motivated according to Maszlow’s hierarchy. This is Prof. Landes’ meaning of cognitive egocentrism. Despite tremendous evidence pointing to the fact–and it is a fact–that the people we are fighting are zero-sum barbarians who glory in brutal war motivated by religious fanaticism, our leaders are more comfortable thinking that, deep down, they’d be happier manning the check-out lane at Wal-Mart.

It is, of course, terribly out of fashion to acknowledge that different people in different societies are different. Far more fashionable is the obnoxious bigotry that everyone–yes, everyone–is pretty much exactly like us! Hurrah!

Pause.

Rewind.

"It is bigotry to believe that Muslims share any values at all with people of the West."  If that odious argument sounds disturbingly familiar, replace "Muslims" with "the blacks" and you have the entire Southern Strategy of the last 50 years. Greenberg calls his opinion "fact".  It's ridiculous on its face.  And then he continues.

Fashionable or not, we can no longer afford leaders who refuse to believe their lying eyes about the motivations and values of radical Islamists. Are there deep-seated reasons for cultures becoming what they are? Of course. But we can’t go back to school every time someone beheads one of our journalists. We can’t have leaders who agonize about root causes and long-term economic development while Coptic Christians are butchered by the dozen.

The enemy, of course, hears our assessment of the “root causes” and cackles maniacally. Even if it doesn’t represent administration policy, just once I’d like to hear something from the State Department that indicated an understanding that people in Tehran and Damascus and Sanaa and Gaza are listening.

Marie Harf is, of course, only a mouthpiece for Administration policy. What she said, while insipid, is only dangerous insofar as it reflects the public and private thinking of the Obama foreign policy team. Until our leaders start seeing the world as it is instead of as they wish it were, we’d better start killing our way out of this war. Because our cognitive egocentrism is preventing us from winning in other, preferable ways.

Got that?  Treating Muslims as human beings instead of vermin is making the war worse.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Like I said, utterly ridiculous nonsense.

Splitting Hairs In Colorado

Police have arrested a suspect in last month's bombing of an NAACP office in Colorado Springs, but the suspect is saying he wasn't targeting that office(?) KUSA in Colorado Springs:

Investigators are looking into the possibility a tax preparation business may have been the target of the bombing as opposed to the NAACP.

Thaddeus Murphy, 44, of Colorado Springs has been arrested by federal law enforcement officials, but so far charges haven't been officially filed against him.

9Wants to Know has learned Murphy was taken into federal custody sometime on Thursday.

According to high-level sources close to the investigation, Murphy's home was searched, and investigators found items that connect to the bombing.
The FBI, ATF and Colorado Springs law enforcement officers were seen executing a search warrant in Colorado Springs on Thursday.

Murphy told investigators he intended to target the tax preparation company and not the NAACP during an interview, according to sources.

An affidavit said Murphy was targeting an accountant named Steve Dehaven who "wouldn't return to him his tax records from 2006 to the present and wouldn't return his phone calls." The affidavit says Murphy had to file bankruptcy and needed the records due to his financial issues.

The affidavit claimed he "flipped out" and "built the pipe bomb as a warning."

The right seems to think this is now okay and that the real bad guys here are anyone who "jumped to the conclusion" that the NAACP office was the target, despite the fact that the NAACP office was indeed damaged.  You know, I'm the bad guy here rather than the guy who planted a pipe bomb and a can of gas.

Apparently being thought of as racist is worst than a terrorist act of using an explosive on a place of business in order to terrorize someone.  "As a warning". 

Funny, entirely not-racist world we live in, huh.

"MSN Be-See"-ing Ya

The good news is Ronan Farrow's awful MSNBC show is gone.  The bad news is so is Joy-Ann Reid's show, and the Sword of Phil Griffin is set to fall on Chris Hayes, Al Sharpton and more as NBC's corporate master Comcast no longer wants to offend conservatives with pesky nonsense like "liberal opinions".

It was hardly a surprise Thursday when ratings-challenged MSNBC announced the cancellation of the poor-performing afternoon programs hosted by Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid after less than a year, with veteran news anchor Thomas Roberts stepping in to preside over the two-hour block from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Until a permanent replacement is named for Roberts’ 5:30 a.m. program Way Too Early, the 6 a.m. Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski will temporarily take up the slack by starting a half-hour earlier.

But according to knowledgeable sources at the Comcast-owned cable network, Thursday’s moves were only the opening salvo in a wider programming shakeup.

In the relatively near term, two well-placed sources predicted to The Daily Beast, Chris Hayes will be relieved of his weak-performing 8 p.m. show All In,to be replaced by the current 9 p.m. host of The Rachel Maddow Show, while a talent search is underway to fill the prime-time slot to be vacated by Maddow.

An MSNBC spokesperson—who tried put a happy face on the demotions with talk of prime-time specials and “multiplatform” national reporting for the still-employed Farrow and Reid—declined to comment on the Hayes-Maddow scenario.

In the longer term, these sources said, the Rev. Al Sharpton—a larger-than-life personality who attracts a 35 percent African-American audience but continues, after 3½ years of nightly practice, to wrestle with his Teleprompter—could eventually be moved from his weeknight 6 p.m. slot to a weekend time period, as MNSBC President Phil Griffin attempts to reverse significant viewership slides by accentuating straight news over left-leaning opinion.

“Everybody in the food chain from top to bottom understands that the Olbermann era is over,” said an MSNBC source, referring to the glory days during George W. Bush’s administration when incendiary liberal Keith Olbermann regularly attracted a million viewers—many of them seeking refuge from White House and Republican talking points.

The MSNBC source said, “Going left was a brilliant strategy while it lasted and made hundreds of millions of dollars for Comcast, but now it doesn’t work anymore...The goal is to move away from left-wing TV.”

MSNBC had moved away from left-wing TV when they got rid of Olbermann and the cold hard fact is there's no place on the entirely of the cable spectrum for smart, nuanced news that a FOX News nation will tolerate.

Here's the bigger issue: TV news itself is all but dead.  My generation is cutting the cable, and anyone younger than me doesn't watch TV news at all.  Hell, I stopped watching Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow years ago, because I was sick of them entertaining guests who constantly attacked President Obama.  Hell, Hayes should have never been moved from his "Up" time slot on weekend mornings.

We'll see what happens, but I get almost none of my news from cable TV anymore.

And here's a free hint, MSNBC.  The real problem is Phil Griffin.