Carnival of the Asshats

Years ago I read a few pieces by Dinesh D'Souza and found him generally inspiring. More recently I've been very put off by his appearances as a talking head...where he comes off rather creepy.... like Pat Buchannan or Ann Coulter, almost as a cunning plot by lefties to defame us righties. That's silly of course, the recent elections were a textbook example of our rightie representatives shooting themselves in the foot. ....and anyway, lefties aren't that smart... :) (he ducks...he covers...he makes good his escape)

Eric Shehei of Classical Values has read D'Souza's latest book so that I don't have to. From said review, it a appears to be that Mr. D'Souza needs a whole book to express the trancendental idiocy that Jerry Falwell was able to articulate in a mere soundbite.

This quote is particularly disturbing....
Instead of trying to unify America and the West, the right should highlight the division between red America and blue America, and also between traditional America and decadent Europe. By resisting the depravity of the left and the Europeans, conservatives can win friends among Muslims and other traditional people around the world.

Emphasis mine.

This is bigotry, stupidity and divisive partisanship of the most poisonous nature. It is even worse than that. The argumnent here is essentially the same as the far left. "They hate us because we are bad, and disrespect them and they were oppressed and we don't appreciate their culture...blah blah blah..." The only difference here is dickering over what exact things we need to change about ourselves to earn the special treat of not being blown up or beheaded.

This is advocating Dhimmitude pure and simple. Turn on the gays, pornographers and un-bhurkha'd women....then we will have peace in our time.

Brickmuppet blog denounces this loathesome ode to bigotry, cowardice and appeasement.

On the other side of the political spectrum, we have Pelosi and tunagate. It seems that the Dems have raised the minimum wage by about two bucks an hour, which effectively means that you, I and everyone else just got a 2 dollar pay cut. This for the first time was applied to the territories and will likely devastate the economy of the Northern Marianas which are in a fairly precarious position economically with competitive labor expenses being one of the few things they can to do make themselves marketable in the western Pacific....

But wait...not ALL of the territories are covered be the minimum wage...American Samoa ,that oft forgotten bit of the US south of the equator, was completely exempt...I'm no fan of the minimum wage, but as Lance and company point out, if there is anywhere in the US where a strong argument that the minimum wage might well be necessary, it is in Pago-Pago which is virtually a company town...exactly the sort of monopolistic environment that the minimum wage wage was passed in response to. Capitalism breaks down in monopolistic settings.

So where raising the minimum wage is useless or damaging, (mos places) it goes up...by a lot. Where it is actually needed the Dems suddenly develop an appreciation for local government..as long as that govt. is run by Democrats and Big Tuna itself is in the Speakers district

Of course, as Pelosi is one of 2 congresscritters at all likely to bennefit from this bassackwards application of buraucratic wickedness, this comes off as rather....fishy.

UPDATE: Pelosi is backtracking and American Samoa may get its raise..which may or may not be good.