By Artur Davis, on Fri Jun 8, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  It’s worth reading EJ Dionne’s latest piece about the essence of modern conservatism, not so much for the originality of its analysis—its argument that conservatism has morphed into a mean-spirited, anti-communal, exercise in selfishness is a standard liberal trope at this point—but because it revives a valuable debate I’ve written about before: is the Republican Party really in the midst of a hard-right revolution and has the right all but given up on community?
To be sure, there’s a lot to assail about Dionne’s history lessons. Trying to re-imagine Civil War pensions, or the creation of national hospitals to treat sailors under John Adams, as relevant entries in a debate over modern ideology is about as illuminating as linking pro-slavery antebellum Democrats to the modern Democratic Party’s stance on abortion, or dwelling on the Ku Klux Klan’s twenties era power base in the Democratic Party. In other words, minor rhetorical noise, but not much light. Similarly, describing McCarthyism, Vietnam, the civil rights fires, Watergate, and the generation gap as minor pauses in a robust past consensus is the slight-of -hand of a DC pundit framing another lament about the allegedly woeful times we live in now (times that don’t feature inner-city riots, assassinations, 56,000 deaths in a foreign war, or the wiretapping of political enemies).
 I won’t challenge Dionne’s premise that modern conservatism is mainly a campaign for “low taxes, fewer regulations, [and] less government.” It is distinguishable from earlier phases when conservatives spent much energy on co-opting liberals, i.e, George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism”, Gerald Ford’s off and on economic stimulus proposals; Richard Nixon’s forays into affirmative action and environmental protection. And to be sure, the cable news organ of the contemporary right sometimes blends an unattractive fearfulness about the future with a bravado-laced denigration of the left (that is of course, matched by the left’s unadorned contempt in return).
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: Republicans and Community, Redux
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Jun 7, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
“Confirmed: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it” [ars technica]
Check out this amazing, new touch-screen from Tactus Technology! [TG Daily]
Gizmodo makes the appeal that Xbox Live should switch to being free, or at least the streaming video parts of it. [Gizmodo]
Audi’s laser rear fog light marks a safe distance to back up. Awesome. [picture]
“Nook version of War and Peace turns the word ‘kindled’ into ‘Nookd'” This is just silly. [ars technica]
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Jun 7, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET  The Politics of Pigskin “6-Year-Old Sends Brandon Jacobs $3.36 So He Can Stay With Giants.” Cute story. [CBS Chicago]
You may want to become more familiar with the so-called 3-3-5 defense or the 30 Stack. [Grantland]
More news that could make Saints fans more uneasy than they already are: fights breaking out during OTAs. Could more sanctions be looming for the Saints? [PFT]
Justin Blackmon is not a smart man. [Sports Illustrated]
Just for fun – Bill Belichick in a suit. [picture]
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jun 7, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET  Today….was a day. Where nothing happened in my life.
I didn’t work.
I didn’t rest.
I didn’t play.
I worried a little and wasted a lot of time.
I’m not even sad the day is almost over.
I don’t feel guilty.
I just feel …..well, really I don’t feel anything about today.
It was a nondescript inconsequential day.
Today was to the days of my life what James Polk was to the presidency of the United States. A president no one really remembers or ever talks about. He was probably competent enough but mostly just inconsequential in the public memory. Much like today was for me.
A James K Polk day.
By Kristen Soltis, on Thu Jun 7, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET  This May, thousands of young Americans walked across the stage at their graduations, collected their hard-earned (and likely expensive) degrees, and promptly moved their belongings back to their parents’ houses.
They are not the first graduating class during Obama’s presidency, and they are not the first to suffer this depressing set of circumstances.
Yet last week’s jobs report offers a picture of a generation that isn’t exactly gearing up for yet another “summer of recovery.”
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rates remains high for this group, at 23.5 percent for 18–19 year olds and 12.9 percent for 20–24 year olds.
 However, seasonal adjustment masks the devastating trend of increased unemployment over April’s figures for Obama’s coveted 18–29 demographic, ticking up from 11.6 percent to 12.1 percent unadjusted. (The BLS unfortunately does not release seasonally adjusted data for 25–29 year olds.)
It makes sense that an influx of young graduates hitting the job market would cause a spike in the unemployment among these groups. It isn’t surprising to see the unadjusted numbers tick up this time of year, but that doesn’t make it less troublesome for the young grad with a resume that is getting no bites.
Read the rest of…
Kristen Soltis: Jobs Report Shows Continuing Pain for Young Americans
By RP Staff, on Thu Jun 7, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET This morning, The Huffington Post features an exclusive excerpt from the RP’s latest book, The Liberal Case for Israel: Debunking Eight Crazy Lies about the Jewish State” In the excerpt, the RP discusses the toxic charge of “pinkwashing,” in which anti-Zionist activists claim that Israel brags about its extraordinary LGBT culture to brainwash Americans about its other activities:
Israel’s commendable gay rights record should be a cause for the American Left to celebrate. But in the Orwellian dystopia that is our political discourse today, the Israel-is-always-wrong crowd has used Israeli publicity of its proud LGBT culture as yet another reason to criticize the Jewish State.
Borrowing a term coined by the breast cancer prevention community to describe companies that claim to care about the disease but at the same time sell carcinogenic products, the anti-Israel crowd has redefined “pinkwashing” as Israeli propaganda designed to hypnotize American liberals into ignoring Israel’s transgressions in the disputed territories.
The most quotable advocate of this terminology is CUNY English Professor Sarah Schulman, who described her objective as trying to frame the Palestinian cause with simpler language, “like in the kinds of magazines you read in the laundromat.” (Perhaps “pinkwashing” is supposed to remind laundromat users of the infuriating consequences of leaving a red shirt in a white washload?)
Click here to read the entire excerpt at The Huffington Post.
Click here to review and/or order “The Liberal Case for Israel”
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Wed Jun 6, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
A Confession [SMBC]
Doing the best he can. [picture]
Some people just don’t know the line. [comic]
Kill Hitler [xkcd]
ManSpider [Optipess]
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jun 6, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET What is the sound of one hand clapping? Or one person drinking coffee?
This morning I was set to have coffee with a friend at 8am but he was running behind.
Finally, at 8:15 I emailed him and told him I was going to go ahead and start the conversation without him and when he arrived he could jump in and pick up wherever we were at that time.
Fortunately, he showed up about 3 minutes later.
The conversation was off to a sluggish start by myself and seemed to jump from irrelevant topic to irrelevant topic.
Fortunately, we ended up having a great conversation.
Which just shows a conversation with 2 is much better than a conversation alone.
By Jeff Smith, on Wed Jun 6, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET  Michael Jordan was one of the first people in pro sports to realize that politics and sports don’t mix.
When asked to endorse black Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt in an epic 1990 Senate race against longtime civil rights opponent Jesse Helms – a nod that could’ve had a profound impact in Jordan’s home state – MJ famously declined. “Republicans buy shoes, too,” he is reported to have said.
As a Gantt supporter I was very disappointed in Jordan’s refusal to get involved, but it was probably smart business. And I suspect that the Mets may be about to learn as much.
(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from Politico’s Arena)
By Artur Davis, on Wed Jun 6, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET The outcomes in specific US House races rarely matter outside their own borders: the fact that 63 Republicans took over Democratic seats in 2010 is known exponentially more than any single one of the 63 contests. Indeed, the most consequential House-level results in the last several decades have arguably been the defeats that redounded to the benefit of three future presidents: imagine the ways George W. Bush and Bill Clinton might have been diminished had they won their House races, and spent the eighties in congressional firefights and intra-party battles to ascend to the Senate; think of Barack Obama beating Bobby Rush and trying to overcome the marginalizing bounds of holding an African American district.
I’ll venture a guess that Utah’s newly created 4th District is about to break the pattern of irrelevance, at least if a thirty-something African American woman, who happens to be a conservative Mormon Republican, wins a battle that is well within her reach (a dead heat against a Democratic congressman in a Republican leaning seat). Mia Love’s potential breakthrough in one of the whitest districts in America would be a message in a bottle from the future—the kind of promise that is attracting outsized attention and dollars from around the country.
 Mia Love It’s important to note what Love is not: unlike Barack Obama, she is not the beneficiary of a liberal party self-consciously aware of the chance to write history, and there was no racial base ready to rally around her, or to punish the party if she had been rejected in her primary. She is no caricature who bends so far to the right that it seems like a disingenuous pose: there is a distinct absence of fire and brimstone, and her embrace of Republican agenda items like the Ryan Plan is couched in process-minded tones, with no overheated claims that socialism is around the corner. Notably, her own mantra on the stump is that she asks about the sustainability and affordability of programs first—a conservative stance but a contrast with, say, Grover Norquist’s flamboyant description of shrinking government to a size that makes it fit to be drowned in a bathtub.
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: Mia Love and the Future
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