The Conventional Wisdom of the Chattering Classes (CWCC) says that an African American will emerge as the Democratic nominee for the November faceoff with Republican Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica.

 

To my mind, here is an opportunity for the county’s black leadership to demonstrate political maturity and cohesion. So far, it’s shaping up to look like a food fight.

 

Publicly, they are saying one thing. Privately, it’s something else. Granted, it’s tough to campaign for a job by walking over someone’s hospital bed. Talk to Forrest Claypool about it.

The joker in the deck is Cook County Assessor Jim Houlihan. There a tiny problem there. He happens to be white. He also happens to be very qualified. Houlihan is a policy wonk who actually has a plan to turn the county around.

 My mystery candidate is one who could handle those sharks with aplomb — CHA Board Chairwoman Sharon Gist Gilliam.

“What [Ill.] Gov. Rod Blagojevich is trying to do to the state and its taxpayers [selling off assets to pay bills] used to be called “living out of the attic.”

“Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sexual orientation.”

Take a look at “Freakoutonomics,” by Charles R. Morris, in NYT, as socio-economic-psychological explanation of people’s worries and fears about our economy — indicators up, attitudes down.  He compares our time to the 1870s, when the economy was booming and most people’s, including farmers’, situation was improving.  Farmers didn’t think so, however, and in any case prices were in play globally, leaving some in the dust.  Most interesting is Morris’s point about lost egalitarianism, what I’d call those old income-gap blues, which feed on bigger-than-ever disparities.

Before the Civil War, America was perhaps the most egalitarian society in the world. But the unbridled entrepreneurialism of the 1870’s gave rise to the robber barons [a highly debatable term, by the way, coined or disseminated by committed leftist and careless historian Matthew Josephson]. Even if ordinary people were doing better in the 1870’s, the yawning gap between the very rich and everybody else fanned resentments. Interestingly, wealth inequality in today’s America is roughly the same as in the Gilded Age.

Add to that the sheer discomfort from big changes:

The sharply increased social and geographic mobility of the 1870’s set people adrift from traditional sources of security in families and villages. In our own day, the destruction of employer-employee relationships, the erosion of pension protection and employee health insurance may be creating a similar loss of moorings.

And you have reason enough for sadness in the midst of prosperity.

However, consider also F.A. Hayek’s argument of the importance of income disparity for the good of all, if only to show the way to the rest of us about how to live if you can afford it. 

Moralistic fussbudgets inveigh against consumerism but have no suggestions about how better to stoke the progress that saves lives through expensive medicine, to name one obvious benefit.  As someone else argued recently, how would the all-night pharmacy be available if it weren’t for the doo-dads and knick-knacks whose sales support the mall?

For Hayek’s thinking in the matter, try Don Boudreaux, “Americans are Wealthy (and Getting Wealthier),” at Cafe Hayek. 

As for Morris, he has “many highly praised books,” says the Century Foundation, including Computer Wars, American Catholic, and The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy.

About Haditha as the new My Lai, Jed Babbin:

The accelerating media feeding frenzy over the alleged killings of twenty-four Iraqi civilians in Haditha by US Marines last November is about to overwhelm American politics. Propelled by their most irresponsible war critics, the left will try [to] use Haditha as it used My Lai thirty years ago: as a political tool to take apart America’s support for the war and to shatter the legitimacy of our cause and the morale of our troops.

“We don’t know what happened in Haditha, an insurgent stronghold in Anbar Province,” he continues.

Unverified press accounts allege that members of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, First Marines, were hit by an improvised explosive device and one of them was killed. Others, according to these reports, went on an hours-long killing spree to revenge their comrade’s death, leaving about twenty-four men, women and children dead. Navy and Marine Corps investigators are at work, and other reports indicate that at least three Marine officers, including the battalion and company commanders, have been relieved of duty. It’s also reported that more than one enlisted man has been detained pending charges about to be brought.

We don’t know because Lemming Press accounts are “unverified.”  This is media bias returning to bite them.  Their trust level low, they shout and we don’t listen.  Or they are silent and we go elsewhere for our information.

In the wake of My Lai, we left Viet Nam, 

abandoning our allies and hanging our heads in shame. This is the political result the left wants from Haditha, and we cannot allow it to happen for one very big reason. The Vietnam War ended in Vietnam, leaving America incapable of taking action in defense of itself or its allies for decades. The end of the war against the terrorist nations won’t occur in Iraq, and we must be prepared – psychologically and politically – to continue the fight. When we lost Vietnam the enemy didn’t follow us home. Radical Islamists will. If they win, we will literally lose America.

In other words, this time the enemy won’t leave us alone.  Look for Haditha as the new anti-battle cry.  And anti-military, with loss to fighting morale.

Just as the few disgraced the many at Abu Ghraib, the very few who may have committed murder in Haditha will place a burden on the shoulders of every soldier, sailor, airman, marine and coast guardsman fighting terrorism. Each of us has a duty to not add to that burden, and to help relieve it as well. If those few Marines killed innocents in Haditha, their conduct is an aberration, not the norm. It is up to each one of us to ensure that the events of Haditha do not tarnish the brave and selfless service of the many who came before, or any who come after. Except for the aberrant few, the Marines are always faithful to America. In times such as this, we cannot fail to be faithful to them.

Let us not get sucked into a media-created morass of self-flagellation.

====================

Meanwhile, hold on about Lemming Press being no longer trusted.  By whom? is the question, of course.  By more today than yesterday is the quick answer.  But the eminent Thomas Sowell says it ain’t over yet, not till it’s over, in fact:

Conservatives who point out the declining audience for the big television network newscasts, and declining public trust of the media in general, often underestimate how much clout the liberal media still have.

For example, while the economy has had near-record highs in growth rates and in the stock market, with near-record lows in unemployment and inflation, polls show that the public thinks the economy is in big trouble. A steady diet of gloom-and-doom spin in the liberal media has worked. The death of media influence has been greatly exaggerated.

more more more:

Regardless of what the facts are, you can always find exceptions to those facts. The liberal media inundate us with stories about those exceptions, who are presented as if they were the norm.

The middle-aged single mother struggling to make ends meet, while working at a minimum wage job, has become a staple of these journalistic tales. In reality, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that only about 2 percent of workers who are 25 years old or older have minimum wage jobs.

But you would never guess this, judging by media hype.

Sneaky guys and gals.