Wednesday morning stuff *UPDATED*

A few things have crossed my radar this morning that I hope you’ll find as interesting as I did:

Is Michelle Obama depressed?  One of my friends thinks she is.  That is, she thinks Michelle has moved beyond anger and arrogance and landed in sheer misery.  She sent this link along as an example of Michelle’s current lack of happy fizz.  My friend may be right.  Michelle Obama, who has presented herself over the years as an angry person who feels that, both personally and by race, she’s always had the short end of the stick, probably believed that, when she got to the White House, she would suddenly be fulfilled and happy.  However, wherever you go, there you are.  Whether living in Chicago or the White House, Michelle is still Michelle — and she’s a person who has made a lifestyle out of angry grievance.  She doesn’t know from happy, and she’s probably more unhappy than ever now that she’s discovered that the White House isn’t a cure all for the anger that ails her.

As you know, I’ve been opposed from the beginning to inquiries into Elena Kagan’s private life.  Whether she is lesbian is irrelevant to her politics, which are defined by her liberalism, not her sexuality.  Michael Kinsley, however, has gone the other way.  He thinks that we ought to start savaging other justices private lives.  His first target:  Antonin Scalia, who has nine children:  “Why does Justice Antonin Scalia, by common consent the leading intellectual force on the Court, have nine children? Is this normal? Or should I say ‘normal,’ as some people choose to define it? Can he represent the views of ordinary Americans when he practices such a minority lifestyle? After all, having nine children is far more unusual in this country than, say, being a lesbian.”  If I was in the same room as Kinsley, this is what I would say:  “It’s true that so many children isn’t the norm, but having children is the norm, both biologically and culturally.  And fortunately we’re still enough of a freedom loving country that we allow people to figure out how many of the norm they want in their lives.”  (H/t:  The Anchoress)

In my post the other day about liberal illogic, I noted the illogic that has American blacks hostile to the police, even though blacks are most likely to be the victims of black-on-black crime.  I acknowledged that blacks in the past had good reason to fear the police, who did harass, assault, arrest and even kill them as form of sport.  But I said, the past is past.  Well, it turns out that, for American blacks, the past is not the past, because the liberal media is a well-spring of misinformation.  The media makes much of the fact that police target minorities more, without stating (a) that minorities commit more crimes and (b) that minorities are actually understopped relative to the amount of crime they commit.  Here’s the cause and effect question for you:  If minorities were targeted proportionate to the amount of crime they commit, might they be deterred from committing more crime?  And as you think about that question, do keep in mind that minority criminals commit the majority of their acts against their fellow minorities.

Peter Beinart says that, if we really love Israel, we should beat up on her more.  To which I say:  wife-beaters.  There comes a point where “I love her” is a justification for abuse, not a declaration of true feelings.  Beinart’s attitude would be more palatable, of course, if people loved the Palestinians, Saudis, Iranians, Egyptians, etc., enough to criticize them constantly too.  But they don’t.  It’s only Israel who comes in for this violent, destructive, sometimes deadly “love.”

UPDATEDavid Solway on the scary cipher in the White House.

The Mexican President, whose country is home to some of the most restrictive immigration laws in the world, blasts Arizona from trying to enforce America’s much laxer federal immigration laws.  I know why he’s upset.  If America really tightens her borders, Mexico will have to clean its own house.  It will no longer have a safety valve for the unemployed and the criminal, nor will it have the billions of dollars these “immigrants” (none of whom are committed to America) routinely send to float the Mexican economy.  Obama should have slapped him where he stood.  Instead, he essentially supported Calderon’s swipe at our national sovereignty.  Barack Obama, you are a very bad man; a very bad man (see at 1:08; 1:20; 2:17; 3:35)

UPDATE IIA blast from the past.  I don’t know why, but I’ve always found it cool to peer backwards through time and really look at the people.  They are so like us — as the reconstructed image shows — and yet so very, very different in their world view.

UPDATE III:  Obama, no matter how careful he is, exposes his incoherence and bias.