All quiet on the UW front in advance of Coulter speech

Today's Casper Star-Tribune featured an article about Ann Coulter's speech this evening at UW. A couple things stand out:

The argument about free speech on the UW campus is alive and well. That's a good thing. Keep bringing in the speakers and keep debating.

The UW Foundation didn’t respond to repeated queries about whether any alumni threatened to stop donations to the university because of Coulter.

Good coverage of the Ann Coulter's Home Rainbow fund-raiser for Wyoming LGBT orgs.

Read the article at http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_af219e5f-0256-5e4b-b475-8dc5ac629eaa.html

Million Moron March today in D.C.

I went to Glenn Beck's Million Moron March and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt

(from a post on http://watergatesummer.blogspot.com)

Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Booboisie!

My 25-year-old niece Meghan lives in Manhattan and travels the world for Google. She's not a kid but I think of her that way because I've known her since she was a baby. I'm her godfather, too, a title that's meaningful to Catholics, even those (like me) who've strayed far from the confessional and the cathecism.

Meghan received an e-mail from her aunt, her father's sister. It's that scurrilous e-mail that blasts Sen. Obama for the photo where (horrors!) he allegedly doesn't put his hand on his heart and recite the pledge of allegiance. As most bloggers know, the photo was taken at a ceremony where the national anthem was playing. You do not have to place your hand on your heart during those occasions. Still, the Republican Slime Machine is spreading this photo accompanied by the lie that Sen. Obama doesn't believe in the pledge and, besides he's a Muslim, don't you know. The e-mail keeps spreading, which makes you fear for the future of the Republic. H.L. Mencken used to refer to these type of people as the "booboisie." Bill Maher calls them morons.

Anyway, Meghan got steamed by the e-mail and fired back a reply that set the facts straight. Her mother -- my sister in north Florida -- e-mailed me a copy. She's proud of her firey daughter, even though her politics are a bit less liberal. My sister's an Obama supporter, but she's also voted Republican on occasion, something I've never done. We'd all be better served if we fired off responses as Meghan did. There would be fewer scurrilous e-mails. And the booboisie might learn a thing or two.

Lest I get all highfalutin', it's helpful to note that we liberals (even prog-bloggers) have fallen for outrageous claims about those we despise. We can be ridiculous grand-standers too. I believe it was George Carlin who said that the world is a circus and that the great thing about being an American is that we have front-row seats. Mencken might agree. Here's one of his quotes from 1926:

I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself - that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle. I do not know: I report only that when the suckers are running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating.

Savage capitalism skewers wingnuts

This post is by Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly:

SCHADENFREUDE ALERT....The New York Times reports today that a group of conservative authors, including Swift Boat nutball Jerome Corsi, is suing right-wing darling Regnery Publishing. The lead plaintiff is Richard Miniter, author of Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush Is Winning the War on Terror, who apparently got his hands on a royalty statement he wasn't supposed to see:

"It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance." He added: "Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?"

....The authors, who say in the lawsuit that [Regnery's parent company] has been "unjustly enriched well in excess of one million dollars," are seeking unspecified damages. But Mr. Miniter said, "We're not looking for a payoff; we're looking for justice."

Well, we're all looking for justice, aren't we? But if a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, what do you call a conservative who's come face to face with the naked face of vertically integrated capitalism?

Majority (minority) rules in the U.S. Senate

Mike Reagan, whose only claim to fame is that he carries the DNA of conservative icon Ronald Reagan, appears regularly in our local paper's opinion page. I get a kick out of him because he makes about as much sense in print as he does on the radio. This morning, he was chortling in print about the latest defeat of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill. He quotes Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning, a much better pitcher than legislator. Bunning was ticked off that minority members were shut out of the legislating process during the bill's creation and amending. Said Bunning: "The Majority Leader is taking an unprecedented step to shut off the rights of senators to debate and amend a bill. This is not the Senate."

I'll continue when the Democrats stop laughing.

For six years, when the Repubs were in charge of the House and Senate, Demcrats were consistently shut out of the lawmaking process. And look what we got: Iraq, illegal wiretapping, Gitmo, no increase in minimum wage, lousy health care, etc.

So the Dems are taking the same low road and the Republicans are howling in outrage.

Anyway, Mike Reagan knows why the immigration bill failed: "The bill died because the vast majority of Americans wanted it dead. They had the good sense not to trust the powerful forces behind it."

So this is how it works? When a vast majority of Americans want something, it happens? This will be a surprise to the vast majority of Americans who want the U.S. out of Iraq. This will be a surprise to the vast majority of Americans who want expanded stem cell research. This will be a surprise to the vast majority of Americans who want the Bush administration to respect all tenets of the U.S. Constitution.

This is a long list. If it's true that majority rules, when will the majority get what it asks for -- and what the country needs?