Wednesday: Does anyone on the left possess a sense of self-preservation??

Al Qaeda bombs the embassy in Kenya, 1998

Oh, My, GOD, sometimes I want to slap the shit out of the people in the left  blogosphere who let their ideology do their thinking and can’t help posting idiotic drivel.  Thank goodness the left is so good at expressing its total lack of self-preservation in hyperbolic parody or the right would have to do it for them.  We spare them the extra effort and they file it away for future use.  The latest nonsense comes from madamab, who never lets an opportunity pass to jump on the bandwagon and express her self-righteous comaraderie with the soft and squishy.  I don’t mean to single her out because she is not the only hand-wringer who is feeling profound sadness and despair over the death of Osama bin Laden but she is exquisitely good at setting my teeth on edge:

Sorry folks, there is no activism today (oh, drat, and I was on the edge of my seat, eagerly anticipating more activism). I’m still processing my feelings about the shocking developments of last Sunday evening.

What I’ve ultimately settled upon, after my initial excitement has faded, is a feeling of despair (FEEElings, nothing more than FEEElings).

What has happened to my country? Didn’t we used to be proud of our Constitution? Didn’t we used to think we were exceptional not because we killed more people than anyone else (our troops are the best in the world! USA! USA!), but because we didn’t treat terrorists and criminals with the lawlessness they had shown to us? Wasn’t the Unabomber, Ted Kaczyinski, tried and convicted? Wasn’t the blind sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman, tried and convictedafter he attempted to destroy the World Trade Center? Didn’t this due process make us all feel good after the murder and mayhem they perpetrated upon us? Didn’t our consciences tell us we had, indeed, obeyed our laws and lived in accordance with our own preference for justice over brutal Bronze Age morality?

No more. The Feelings Police have spoken. No “decent” person could possibly do anything but celebrate Osama bin Laden’s death. Bullying, swearing and shouting will be doled out to anyone who dares say otherwise. As usual on the Internets, the loudest, least reasonable voices prevail. And so, mindless expressions of unadulterated joy are the plat du jour. It’s revolting to me.

It’s a tragedy alright.  I suppose the next time someone flies two jets into the workplace of thousands of people, we should send them a sternly worded letter and make them sit in time out.

Once again, our brothers and sisters on the left have opened their minds so far that their brains have fallen out.  For the record, there are more than two possible responses to the death of bin Laden.  Yes, you don’t have to be either offensively euphoric or fashionably maudlin. The left used to believe that the Republicans’ tendency towards black/white thinking was stupid and laughable.  Now, it seems to have adopted that mindset.  Fortunately, it is possible to be unmoved in either direction while at the same time acknowledging that a bastard like bin Laden set himself up for a brutal ending at the hands of some country’s military and intelligence apparatus.  It didn’t have to be ours.  Bin Laden was an equal opportunity murderer. Kenya and Tanzania in the 90’s?  London?  Madrid?  Check out this list of Al Qaeda attacks.  bin Laden and his droogs have been very busy.  If WE didn’t eventually get him, someone else would have.

Anger and the desire for revenge are perfectly normal feelings responses to outrages as serious as the ones committed by Al Qaeda.   We can argue whether it would have been more *effective* to the demoralization of Al Qaeda to try bin Laden and then erase him from history by burying him alive in a mountain cell in Nevada but killing him became a legitimate option when he was more than happy to take the credit for planning and executing the death of thousands of other people.

Bin Laden was a nasty piece of work, madamab.  Dispatching him had almost nothing to do with our loss of liberties since 9/11.  We can attribute THAT to the authoritarian impulses of Bush, Cheney and the Republicans and the cowardice of the Democrats who allowed themselves to be bullied into acting rashly when they should have been using their heads.  I suspect they were watching too much TV.

If you want a balanced response to the death of bin Laden, read the response of someone who doesn’t have a TV and was able to process the information without someone telling her what position to take.

Now, can we stop wailing about the unfairness of it all to the poor, poor mass murderer and get back to what is important??  Like finding jobs for the unemployed?

Here’s a much more interesting and relevant post from Corrente on the ways in which women are getting stiffed in the job market.  Take it from me, this is the real tragedy.

In other news:

Democrats pick Senator from one of the most sparsely populated and conservative states in the nation to work on the budget with Republicans and are shocked, SHOCKED, when his proposals are more conservative than the White House’s.  From the HuffingtonPost (not exactly a progressive *media* outlet):

“The problem is the Republicans wouldn’t agree to anything. They just keep dragging it out,” the Democratic aide said referring to the Gang of Six talks.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said that Conrad gave no clear indication that the talks would result in a deal.

“He said that it was up and down, up and down, up and down. But I don’t know whether it was up or down the last time he talked to us,” said Cardin after being briefed by Conrad, who is retiring at the end of this session.

“I ask all the time,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) of the halting progress of the Gang of Six. “Every day is a different story. One day I hear, ‘It’s great, we’re going to get a deal.’ The next day, they’re not. So I don’t know. The answer is, I honestly don’t know.”

Democrats, yur doin’ it rong.  Here’s what’s supposed to happen: The Republicans propose some cruel and unusual punishment for the masses and cushy breaks for their friends and the *Democrats* say they won’t agree to it.  This is what Clinton did in 1996.  Gingrich took the government hostage and became very unpopular and whiny.  What is wrong with this current batch of Democrats?  Is it really the 2012 elections they are worried about where lots of Democratic Senators are in danger of losing their jobs?  Well, it’s a recession guys.  You can’t go wrong making the Republicans look bad.  Try harder.

In NJ, round trip to Manhattan from nearest station to my house- $28.50.  I love rail.  I’m a big supporter of public transportation in part because my grandfather was a bus driver.  But with the recent increase in NJTransit fares since Governor Christie took office (check out how he balanced the transit budget by $300bn, by reducing staff and shorting their 401K contributions.  Nice!), a trip to Manhattan and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for Brook and me is out of the question.  If the cost were less, the inconvenience of taking the train, plus the transfer, plus buying a Metro Card for the subway might be an option.  But at more than $50 bucks, I might as well drive to Manhattan and park the car.  It’s funny how Christie couldn’t come up with the money to subsidize NJTransit but he can come up with a plan to salvage the plans of the developers of a white elephant mall called Xanadu.  I believe the amount we are handing over to developers is about the same amount we cut from the transit budget.

Well, we must have priorities.

And this from The Onion is just too funny: Pfizer Breaks Psychological Need to Always Seek FDA’s Approval.  Or it would be funny if the FDA weren’t always so effing negative all the time…