I need help.

I don't understand this (h/t James Taranto, OpinionJournal):

(NORFOLK, Va.) In a last-ditch, against-the-odds effort to help Creigh Deeds win election as governor of Virginia next week, President Obama invoked the assistance of "Cousin Pookie."

Addressing a campaign rally for Deeds at an arena at Old Dominion University, Mr. Obama used a device that served him well during his presidential campaign – especially before African-American audiences.

"Go out and get your cousin who you had to drag to the polls last November, Cousin Pookie, you go out and get him and you tell him 'you got to vote again this time.'"

Is Cousin Pookie a general term for random relative?  Is Pookie an African-American name?  I know I haven't been keeping up with this, but a friend of mine used to send me each year's update on the most popular names in Washington, D.C., and last I checked, "Pookie" didn't make the list.  Is Pookie a guy's name?  Is it a gangsta rap name?  What: Li'l Pookie? Mos' Pookie? Or is "Pookie" just code for "This guy Deeds is a total loser.  But if you're going to vote, just make that turn around the block and vote again the way you know "Pookie" would want you to [wink!]."

There's no more room on State's face for more egg.

Tin-foil Hat Alert, Central American Edition: Manuel Zelaya, c/o "Brazilian Embassy Basement, Tegucigalpa, Honduras" has short-circuited negotiations for his reinstatement by issuing an ultimatum, to wit: "NOW!!" which wasn't met. One can forgive him his impatience: this is a yellow-tinged account of his captivity that is, to some tastes, entertaining, especially if you keep repeating to yourself, "Now this is torture!." He gets a toidy to himself, two others are reserved for his wife and "his closest aides" and the other three are shared by some forty people, including the ambassador. Nice touch: there really is tin foil. No mention of Israeli mercenaries.

But the real news is what's happening in Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega has finessed a reelection by arranging for the Nicaraguan Supreme Court to overturn the constitutional provision that bars his reelection. From the WSJ:

Last week the court's constitutional panel obliged him. The Nicaraguan press reported that the vote was held before three opposition judges could reach the chamber in time for the session. Three alternative judges, all Sandinistas, took their place and the court gave Mr. Ortega the green light. Mr. Ortega has decreed that the ruling cannot be appealed.

Officially, we are "concerned" about this turn of events. Like we were "concerned" about the elections in Iran, the invasion of Georgia, and the prospect of the White Sox making it to the World Series.

Waiting for someone to call this a coup... waiting.... waiting....

Ross Douthat on the Vatican's Invitation to Anglicans

Mr. Douthat hits it out of the park.  All the stuff about married priests, their own rite, etc. is secondary, and in any event redundant (there are already married priests in the Roman Catholic church, and there are already Anglican Use parishes.)  Mr. Douthat, however, correctly zeroes in on the very big picture: Benedict+ is the only leader in Europe, and globally, who has both the intransient authority and the will to defend the West.  Mr. Douthat refers to the Regensberg address, which not only challenges Islam, but also criticizes liberal "emergent" trends in Christian theology that seek to dehellenize Chrisitanity.  His point is that Christianity was born in a hellenized culture: the New Testament is written entirely and originally in Greek, and the Church fathers were all intellectually indebted to the Greeks- none more so than St. Augustine.  To Benedict, this is the fortress that defends our faith and the culture of freedom.  That Rowan+ has folded like a cheap lounge chair in the face of Islamic militancy makes Benedict's case more attractive, more compelling to Anglicans, especially in Global South, where the specter of churches being burned by Muslims is not a theoretical phigment but a reality.

SNAWWU

And you thought the drones were just for our enemies: I thought I was joking about this.  It turns out, it's true.

Best Read of the Week: Mark Steyn.

The trouble is it isn’t tough, not where toughness counts. Who are the real “Untouchables” here? In Moscow, it’s Putin and his gang, contemptuously mocking U.S. officials even when (as with Secretary Clinton) they’re still on Russian soil. In Tehran, it’s Ahmadinejad and the mullahs openly nuclearizing as ever feebler warnings and woozier deadlines from the Great Powers come and go. Even Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is an exquisite act of condescension from the Norwegians, a dog biscuit and a pat on the head to the American hyperpower for agreeing to spay itself into a hyperpoodle.

Biden's Week: One day, the Wall Street Journal reveals that the expert analysts couldn't base a military strategy on his hare-brained propsals (his own staff had to pull something out of the nether reaches to counter General McChrystal's recommendations); three days later, the Washington Times finds him comparable in many some a few in one way to Cheney, in the same week that the first Cheney takes the chainsaw to aforesaid hare-brained proposals.  Sandwiched between, this little gem:

Asked what he thought about criticisms former Vice President Cheney had made about the Obama administration, Vice President Joe Biden told reporters “Who cares what – ” and then stopped himself.

The Ladies Are Restless: I, too, was annoyed about the "all boys" basketball game.  Kathleen Sebelius played in college, for heaven's sake: she's shut out, but Timmy The Jockey plays?  This is taking affirmative action too far.  But we all know why it has to be this way:  females would get in the way of all the man-crushy mojo. 

Now Joanne Lipmann whines in an OpEd for the NYT (h/t J-Rub, Contentions.)  It's another "Oh, gawd" moment: she blames 9/11 for the flatlining of "women's progress" then veers off into "But we need to measure progress differently" because "women are different from men." So, by the new metric, women are really doing well, right?  Uh, no.  Forget it, Joanne: everyone knows that it's your progress you're worried about.  You're out of a job and you're projecting.  Get a grip, honey.

Not to be outdone, MoDo is on a tear about nuns being second class citizens in the Catholic Church.  Breaking news from Nought-A.D.

Michelle as you've never seen her:  Is it my imagination or is that hula hoop fitting a little more snugly these days?  I confess, I love the "home movie" quality of this video, especially the part where she kinda runs off into the woods... oh, darn, she comes back.  Watch out- double dutch disaster!  I think she and Kathleen should just crash the damn basketball game and show the boys some moves, like a few personal fouls (is there a right hook in basketball?)

Yay for the Underdog, er, Underbird!:

Hell Hath No Fury: Feline Version

The Fake Thesis, etc.

The background to this post is here.  The comment thread begins a discussion about "redistributive justice" and what this means about Barack Obama's attitude towards capitalism.  I think it has less to do with capitalism, per se, than race relations and justice.  Here are my thoughts:

I heard Rush reading from the supposed thesis yesterday, and listened long enough to hear that he got it from Michael Ledeen.  Instinctively,  I turned off the radio muttering, "This is stupid."  In the nanosecond it took for me to come to that conclusion, I think I processed various ideas like, "Sounds abysmally childish" and "He was an International Studies major: why would his thesis be about the Constitution?" and "Sounds like that stupid NPR interview."    Your point, CK, is well-taken.

Nevertheless, the comment thread on CK's post led me to jot a few thoughts.  Here goes:

Can we have a point of clarification?

Is "redistributive justice" code for reparations?

I'll answer my own question: yes.

For decades now, racial justice has been defined in terms of structural changes external to black society itself, with the quick fixes of affirmative action and reparations (the payback that dare not speak its name) being the principal mechanisms. But in order for true repair to take place, internal change must happen. It's a fact, however, that the middle-class values that would lead blacks out of the wilderness are widely disparaged by popular black culture and by the likes of Barack and Michelle Obama, who are, ironically, the examples ne plus ultra of the dogged embrace of those values.

In his autobiography, DOMF, BO discusses the dynamic within the black community and disparages the middle class blacks for looking down on and being judgmental of others in the community who engaged in antisocial behavior. For him, the good Marxist, solidarity is the thing, the way the group is going to get "theirs."  His path to success depended on two things: his own self-created solid family life and work ethic (you don't have to agree with the work to know that he has discipline and talent) and the reinforcement of the destructive and dysfunctional status quo for the vast majority of his community. It was in his own best interests as a politician to not truly address the degeneracy of the crime-ridden poor neighborhoods but to maintain that external factors, especially racism, were the first causes and beyond the control of the group.

Michelle, for her part, straddles the divide between personal conduct and political ideology with a brazen panache that is, IMO, the product of blissfuly ignorant hypocrisy .  On the one had, she wants everyone to eat vegetables and she makes her kids go to sleep at 8:00 p.m.  On the other hand, she childishly explains the economic pie as something that most people are happy to have a tiny sliver of, and her husband is going to take from those greedy people who want too much and give to those who need just a tiny bit more to be content.  Meanwhile, she's against vouchers and her kids go to Sidwell Friends where they spend an hour on Wednesdays thinking about ways to "give back."

A part of the destructive pathology of the black community is that they are conditioned to look for a messiah, someone who will facilitate reparations in whatever form.  This is the self-reinforcing mechanism for the promulgation of adept, shallow, charismatic leaders who bubble up from that community who never really help.  It's not in their interest.

"We don't even know where the money went"

Some news items just write themselves- months in advance. TARP was so necessary. We were "investing" in the automotive industry (quote: paragraph 6, here.)

Last I checked, when you invest in something, you can expect a return on investment.  That's kind of the point of "investing," as opposed to "giving away free money."

Barofsky says it's "extremely unlikely" that taxpayers will recover the $77 billion committed to the ailing auto industry or the $60 billion in TARP assistance to American International Group as part of a pledge of up to $180 billion in aid. An additional $50 billion to modify unaffordable home mortgages "will yield no direct return."

Michael Scott Holds A Press Conference

It starts a little slowly, but becomes full-blown "Gobsmack of the Day." 

This guy is channeling Michael Scott.  It's the harmonic convergence of the White House strategy of demonizing the Chamber, Global Warmist Cult Hysteria, and "The Office."  Larry Kudlow thinks the White House is actually behind this.  I would have said, "Nah- too amateurish!" only a few weeks ago, but this is the same White House that is unabashedly weighing the Joe Biden Afghan Non-Plan against the considered judgment of General McChrystal, General Petraeus, and the entire military chain of command.  It's the same White House that sent BO to Copenhagen with Oprah and Big Bird.  It's the same White House that endorses "Cookies for Criminals" as a policy shift toward Sudan.

So- put me in the "Wouldn't Put It Past Them" column.