Friday, December 25, 2009

25 Dec 2009 06:46 pm

My Reader's Literary Mentor

A reader writes:

The tone of the "From The In-Tray II" emails reminds me of the great Ignatius J. Reilly character in A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.  Maybe the funniest book I've ever read. A few Ignatius gems...
"A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss.”
and
"I am at this moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip."

25 Dec 2009 05:48 pm

The View From Your Window

Blue-bell-PA-1148pm

Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, 11.48 pm

25 Dec 2009 04:04 pm

The Iran Policy

There's a lot to agree with in this almost sensible post by Ed Morrissey:

The truth is that we don’t have any good options on Iran and its nuclear-weapon program. Sanctions won’t work, because the Russians and the Chinese conduct too much trade with Iran. The Chinese won’t agree to them, and the Russians will cheat to get around them. Military strikes sound good, but Iran has significant military capabilities of its own that can hit us in Iraq, the Straits of Hormuz, and throughout the Persian Gulf — and Iran has dispersed its nuclear program to avoid having it destroyed by airstrikes. Invasion would be almost impossible, thanks to the terrain and the 72 million Iranians that would resist it.

The best option we have in dealing with the Iranian nuclear and terrorist threats is regime change. Replacing the radical mullahs with almost anything else would improve the situation, and a popular uprising that replaced the theocracy with a secular republic like Turkey would be the best outcome. Instead, Obama seems intent on regime strengthening. We should be encouraging the democratic activists in Iran not just for the sake of democracy but also to relieve two of the greatest threats to regional stability.

I think it's an absurd stretch of anti-Obama rhetoric to say he believes in "regime-strengthening" in Iran.

Continue reading "The Iran Policy" »

25 Dec 2009 03:31 pm

The Revolution Continues

QOMAFP:Getty

The latest from Iran:

Iranian security forces clashed with supporters of dead dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri in the northwestern city of Zanjan on Thursday, a reformist website said. The authorities have banned memorial gatherings for Montazeri in most parts of Iran, reformist websites said, days ahead of an emotive Shi'ite ritual that may draw more opposition protests.

The Jaras website said some people were injured and arrests made when the security services intervened to enforce the ban in Zanjan. There was no immediate comment from the authorities. On Wednesday, an Iranian official denied reports by opposition websites of clashes between mourners and police in the central city of Isfahan, one of Iran's biggest cities. There were also reports of scuffles in his nearby hometown, Najafabad...

On Thursday Jaras quoted an eyewitness as saying mourners held a memorial service in the street because the mosque was locked. It said a number of people were "severely wounded" and a "large number" were arrested among the crowd who chanted anti-government slogans such as "Oh Hossein, Mirhossein" in reference to opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi, "Montazeri congratulations on your freedom," and "Down with the dictator."

Najafabad was Montazeri's home town. To give you a brief glimpse into the extent of the fraud in last June's rigged elections, the coup regime argued that 70 percent of Najafabad's voters backed Ahmadinejad. And yet the entire town is convulsed in anti-Khamenei demonstrations.

(Photo: Iranians hold portraits of Iranian cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri during his funeral procession in the holy city of Qom on December 21, 2009. Hundreds of thousands of mourners turned out in Iran's holy city of Qom for the funeral of the top dissident cleric, opposition websites reported. Montazeri, 87, a fierce critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was once tapped to become Iran's undisputed number one, died of an illness on December 19, his office said. AFP/Getty Images)

25 Dec 2009 03:04 pm

Depressing Christmas Songs, Ctd

For all of you actually working today, a reader offers Harvey Danger's "Sometimes You Have To Work On Christmas."

Continue reading "Depressing Christmas Songs, Ctd" »

25 Dec 2009 03:01 pm

One Window Of Many

A reader writes:

I just opened my book tonight.  It's cold and snowing outside, and I'm surrounded by boxes and half-packed items.  I'm moving in a few days, into a new home--my first.  But the hustle and bustle of the moment means I'm having to forgo traveling to family, and for the first time in my life I am alone on Christmas Eve.Window-cover

As I leaf through the book in an empty place, there's one deep, constant feeling.  I've never felt  so at home in the world.  We're all here, looking out windows and hoping and working through the day.  And the way Chris put it all together--we're waking up together, going to bed together, reading together.  We're experiencing together, and we're all connected by the Dish.  I'm reading along with people in 80 countries!  How amazing to know that?  And I don't think I really knew it till now.

You mention in the prologue that you started up the windows to give us insight into ourselves, your readership, to hold up a mirror.  For me (a 10 time daily reader) the windows were usually only a passing fancy, breaking up the meat of the day.

Not so anymore.  Brilliant job.  And you just made my Christmas Eve way warmer than outside.  Thanks.

It really is much more than the sum of its parts. You can buy it here.

25 Dec 2009 10:49 am

The Final Stretch

The voting is going on for the finalists carefully selected by our blue-ribbon panel. If you haven't voted yet, just pick a category and test your judgment against the current totals. Click the following links to vote for the 2009 Malkin Award, Moore AwardYglesias AwardPoseur AlertHewitt Award and Mental Health Break Of The Year. Also - for the first time - Face Of The Year and Cool Ad Of The Year are on the ballot. Among the various contenders for the prizes, a roster of the big names in political and cultural discourse: Gordon Liddy, Rush Limbaugh, Gore Vidal, Erick Erickson, Michael Goldfarb, James Wolcott, Lee Siegel, Leon Wieseltier, Diane Sawyer, Katha Pollitt, Newt Gingrich ... and Michelle Malkin.

We're giving readers a week to pick the winners for these prestigious prizes. The winners will be announced this time next week. You picked many of the entries; we just marshalled the very best/worst for your selection.

Award glossary here. Vote early. Vote often. 

The Daily Dish Awards Glossary

Click here to vote for the 2009 Malkin Award!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Poseur Alert!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Yglesias Award!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Moore Award!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Hewitt Award!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Cool Ad Of The Year!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Face Of The Year!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Mental Health Break Of The Year!

25 Dec 2009 09:04 am

Merry Christmas

Thursday, December 24, 2009

24 Dec 2009 07:44 pm

The View From Your Window

6a00d83451c45669e20120a7739fba970b-500wi

Washington, DC, 1.49 pm. 

Merry Christmas from Patrick, Chris and me.

24 Dec 2009 07:28 pm

Depressing Christmas Songs, Ctd

A reader writes:

Perhaps because I'm a church musician, I find it interesting that many of these "depressing Christmas songs" have nothing to do with Christmas whatsoever.  They're straight up pop songs stuffed onto a Christmas album because the lyricist managed to find a way to put the word Christmas in there somewhere.  Believe me, there are plenty related to the season that top these if you really think about it.  Peter Warlock's "Bethlehem Down" comes to mind. The message?  All is sweet for now, but you know soon enough the babe is going to be crucified.  If you don't fully buy the notion of the resurrection, what could be more maudlin?

Lyrics after the jump:

Continue reading "Depressing Christmas Songs, Ctd" »

24 Dec 2009 06:17 pm

From The In-Tray II

Another of my constant correspondents. The energy this must take. He has penned hundreds this year and many before. A flavor of the usual themes (mainly about my AIDS dementia):

I understand that David Bradley has put you on suicide watch as a result of this poll. Even your arch nemesis, Dick Cheney, is approaching Obama approval levels. I wonder when the calls for impeachment will begin since you and Gleenwald will be just about the only supporters left.

And again:                            

The above single sentence excerpt from your post, reads as if written by a drugged and/or drunken fool. As far as one can determine, the folks at The National Review are not, as is your particular case, fucking idiots and dementia-driven fools. Stronger views to follow.

And again:

Your initial post and your response to this reader represent a new low in your dementia-infested mind. 

And again:

I do visit your site with a fair degree of regularity when I'm not otherwise busy with my other life. I must say, however, that the continued decline in your mental state makes continuation of that highly problematic. I have offered in the past, and I continue to offer, the names and recommendations of several highly acclaimed medical professionals who could perhaps be of assistance to you in this phase of your life. In fact, perhaps the leading such authority in the world is among my neighbors in Gstaad.


By the way, I notice that you have totally ducked the basic thrust of my e-mail, which had to do with the fact that you have largely relied on whack jobs and perverts for much of your defamatory comments on Governor Palin.

Oh tidings of comfort and joy!

24 Dec 2009 05:12 pm

Gore And The Iraq War

Many readers spluttered at my belief that Al Gore would have gone to war against Saddam if he'd been inaugurated in 2000 instead of Bush. As someone who has known Gore for years, and edited TNR with which he was closely associated, and worked for Marty Peretz, one of his closest friends and mentors, I base my assessment on what I know of the guy, and his record. Jeff Weintraub basically agrees, although he argues that the way Gore would have gone to war would have been markedly different than Bush's, a sentiment which I tend to agree with as well. Here's a passage of a speech Gore gave in 2002:

Even if we give first priority to the destruction of terrorist networks, and even if we succeed, there are still governments that could bring us great harm. And there is a clear case that one of these governments in particular represents a virulent threat in a class by itself: Iraq.

As far as I am concerned, a final reckoning with that government should be on the table.

Continue reading "Gore And The Iraq War" »

24 Dec 2009 04:20 pm

Mental Health Break

Puppy and ice cube engage in mortal combat (and a nice palliative to all those depressing Christmas songs):

(Hat tip: TDW)

24 Dec 2009 04:08 pm

Reds Under Obama's Bed

Ron Radosh, whose blog is fast becoming a petri dish of aging neocon obsessions, fearlessly exposes that Barack Obama over a decade ago had interaction with and support from a group called the New Party, whose left-liberal views amounted to "full employment, a shorter work week and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal ’social wage’ to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth and like programs to ensure gender equity.”

How they must love Obama now! But, of course, Radosh's main concern is Israel, and he joins the throng of Likudniks who want to get the scalp of one Hannah Rosenthal, Obama's appointee to combat global anti-Semitism. His conclusion?

Continue reading "Reds Under Obama's Bed" »

24 Dec 2009 03:27 pm

From The In-Tray I

I thought it might be revealing to open up the in-tray from a few of my regular correspondents. A few of them are truly a little, well, passionate. The following writes multiple times a month - and has sent hundreds of emails over the years. Here's a selection. December:

Shameless shill ... …that would be you….celebrating…in dishonest terms, of course….the health care disaster…."the government [sic] helping the working poor [sic]"…meaning, as always, forced re-distribution….well, duh!!....the "government" can always "help" whatever targeted group the bien-pensants wish to benefit, can't they…with MY money….that's always the left's claim as they accrue power and wealth to their New Class selves….at the same time exhibiting and expressing utter contempt for the intended beneficiaries…"clingers", remember? "tea-baggers" with obviously false consciousness failing to recognize the beneficence of their saviours…as that CNN bitch openly expressed it contemptuously… Oh, yeah…the Hope and Change thing, too….what a crock!...what liars!...what hypocrites, shameless dissemblers!

November:

He's probably just going through a PROH-sess, see…..LOL!!...His Oneness doesn't know whether to shit or go blind….if He lets the kooks have the nukes….He's toast…worse than the helicopters on the roof in Saigon (how did that work out for the left?)…it will be dolchstoss, baby!!.....and if He preëmpts….it's the Bush Doctrine…and the left will eat Him alive….we'll help them….can't wait….

October:

Continue reading "From The In-Tray I" »

24 Dec 2009 02:30 pm

Christmas Hathos Motherlode


(Hat tip: Dreher)

24 Dec 2009 01:35 pm

The View From Your Recession: Checking Back In

This reader was a third-year law student about to take the bar exam in Massachusetts. Original post here. He writes:

I graduated this spring with a law degree, and spend the summer in bar preparation.  I sat simultaneously for the New York and Massachusetts bar exams, figuring that I would put my eggs in as many baskets as possible.  Afterwards, I moved to D.C. from Boston in search of work.  From all I had read, D.C. seemed to have a better job market for attorneys than any other locale.

I threw myself into the job hunt with gusto – I was on ten different job email lists, and probably can immediately recite twenty different job posting websites off the top of my head.  I informational interviewed and attended alumni and networking events.  I also applied to thirteen temping agencies, primarily legal.  When I say I applied, I mean I actually went to their offices in suit and tie ready to sell my skill set and impress them – these were not anonymous resume drops.  Each agency’s representative was pleasant and said that opportunities would come in any day now. And then they shooed me out of the office when I tried to press for details.  I call each every Monday and leave a voicemail (always a voicemail).  Since mid August, I have not received one job opportunity from these companies.  Not one.

The first job I got out of law school requires me to wear an apron and hairnet, paying me twenty-five cents an hour less than a high school job I had in 2001.  I’ve also proctored the LSAT, and joined an HIV vaccination study for money - yes, my health is now for sale. 

Happily, my story ends on a happy note. 

Continue reading "The View From Your Recession: Checking Back In" »

24 Dec 2009 01:24 pm

The New Montazeri, Ctd

Al Jazeera aired a fascinating short documentary on Sanei - the "Online Ayatollah."

24 Dec 2009 12:33 pm

The Real Rogue Of 2009: Levi Johnston

Gallery_enlarged-levijohnston-gq-photos-05282009-06
 
Sure, Palin can get Adam Bellow to drop the last fig leaf from his commercial privates and turn Jonathan Burnham into an openly gay publisher of a vicious homophobe, but what courage does that take? Sure, Palin can bamboozle the press corps with fantastic lies, and a press strategy currently being used by Tiger Woods, but in the face of all this, a 19-year-old was prepared to one-up her with Vanity Fair and Playgirl and act as if he had not a care in the world.

And what a story he has told.

It is as follows: Palin is a total fraud. She is not what she says she is. According to someone who lived with her for years, who fathered her grandson and fell in love with her daughter, the last thing she is is what her followers blindly believe: authentic.

She's a phony, according to Johnston, a negligent mother, a devious plotter, an alienated wife. Far from a "real American", she is layer upon layer of political artifice, designed cynically to appeal to pro-lifers and feminists, evangelicals and populists, independents and rock-ribbed Republicans, all laid on top of a fanatically narcissistic sociopathy. Here's a taste of what Johnston has asserted:

The Palin house was much different from what many people expect of a normal family, even before she was nominated for vice president. There wasn’t much parenting in that house. Sarah doesn’t cook, Todd doesn’t cook—the kids would do it all themselves: cook, clean, do the laundry, and get ready for school. Most of the time Bristol would help her youngest sister with her homework, and I’d barbecue chicken or steak on the grill.

Remember that Johnston is the only family member who actually knew and lived with Palin and has broken ranks. He could be lying, of course, or seeking revenge, or bargaining for more access to his son, or something else we don;t know about. But given Palin's record of dissimulation, it seems to me he deserves at least as fair a hearing as she has had, even if nothing like the millions she has raked in. His story deserves to be taken more seriously as a real account of what Palin really is. Until Wallace and Schmidt screw their courage to the sticking place, he's the best we've got.

Here, for example, is his recounting of an incident that few MSM observers can quite handle:

Sarah told me she had a great idea: we would keep it a secret—nobody would know that Bristol was pregnant. She told me that once Bristol had the baby she and Todd would adopt him. That way, she said, Bristol and I didn’t have to worry about anything. Sarah kept mentioning this plan. She was nagging—she wouldn’t give up. She would say, “So, are you gonna let me adopt him?” We both kept telling her we were definitely not going to let her adopt the baby. I think Sarah wanted to make Bristol look good, and she didn’t want people to know that her 17-year-old daughter was going to have a kid.

So the "outrageous" conspiracy theory aired on the Internets in late August 2008 that Palin had a cockamamie idea to pass off her daughter's baby as her own actually happened, according to Johnston. But it was not about Trig as the soon-debunked rumors first had it - whom Bristol simply could not have chronologically given birth to. But it was about Tripp - and indicative of a deeply deceptive, half-nuts mentality. I mean: did Palin think she could ever have gotten away with that kind of baby switcheroo, when the real father and mother opposed it? Notice that this was not planned as an open adoption. It was designed to hide Bristol's pregnancy, which would remain a total secret, meaning "nobody would know that Bristol was pregnant," meaning in turn that Palin's own pregnancy would have had to be faked. Now, maybe Levi is just harassing Palin using half-baked Internet rumors about Trig to apply to Tripp. But, again, she is the one with the record of proven lies, not Johnston. And what this says about Palin's capability for outright deception is quite striking, if true.

Johnston's account for the reasons for Palin's bizarre resignation are also more convincing than Palin's classic insistence that she was quitting because she was not a quitter:

Sarah was sad for a while. She walked around the house pouting. I had assumed she was going to go back to her job as governor, but a week or two after she got back she started talking about how nice it would be to quit and write a book or do a show and make "triple the money." It was, to her, "not as hard." She would blatantly say, "I want to just take this money and quit being governor." She started to say it frequently, but she didn't know how to do it. When she came home from work, it seemed like she was more and more stressed out. It seemed like she couldn't handle the job anymore. I think that she was just through with it all or that she'd become used to getting everything she wanted handed to her. She'd rather take the money and keep that kind of lifestyle. When a magazine offered six figures to be at the hospital when Bristol gave birth, she said yes at first but then told us not to do it.

She was not exactly a diligent governor either:

Throughout the years I spent with them, when Sarah got home from her office — almost never later than 5 and sometimes as early as noon — she usually walked in the door, said hello, and then disappeared into her bedroom, where she would hang out. Sometimes, she’d take an hourlong bath. Other times she sat on the living-room couch in her two-piece pajama set from Walmart — she had all the colors — with her hair down, watching house shows and wedding shows on TV. She always wanted things and she always wanted other people to get them for her. If she wanted a movie, Bristol and I would go to the video store; if she wanted food, we’d get her something to eat, like a Crunchwrap Supreme from Taco Bell. She’d try to bribe everyone in the house, or give us guilt trips. She used to make Bristol feel bad by telling her that she did everything for her. This was unfair because, even before the campaign, Bristol was already the mom in the house, and she got tired of having to take care of her siblings.

What can we make of this?

Continue reading "The Real Rogue Of 2009: Levi Johnston" »

24 Dec 2009 11:46 am

Not Blue America, Not Red America

Kevin Drum wants to know when Obama willl give up on bipartisanship:

Obama clearly seems dedicated to a program of compromise and bipartisan comity, and he wants to keep at it long enough to give it a real chance of working.  But how long is long enough?  I never really believed Republicans were ever likely to respond to olive branches in the first place — they need a few more years in the wilderness before they're willing to really take stock of the corner they've painted themselves into — so I'm not a good judge of this.  But it's been nearly a year now and Republicans, if anything, are more intransigent than they were on inauguration day. How much longer does Obama give them? Another year? Two? At what point does he finally give up and decide that he's just being played for a patsy?

He keeps going because the party that loses the middle is the party that looks the most intransigent and ideological. I hope he keeps up the kind of discipline he has so far.

24 Dec 2009 11:06 am

Depressing Christmas Songs, Ctd

A reader submits Merle Haggard's "If We Make It Through December." Lyrics after the jump:

Continue reading "Depressing Christmas Songs, Ctd" »

24 Dec 2009 10:37 am

250,000 People Without A Bookstore, Ctd

A reader writes:

I live very near Laredo and it is no more appropriate to talk about book stores in Laredo without mentioning Nuevo Laredo than it would be to talk about Brooklyn and fail to mention Queens. They are right on top of each other and most Laredoans routinely cross the border for groceries, tools and, yes, books. Nuevo Laredo, like much of Mexico, is awash in oodles of little book stores with titles primarily in Spanish, but English too. Book store life - with readings, discussion groups, good coffee and bad guitar playing - are very alive and well in Nuevo Laredo and enjoyed by the Laredo crowd as well.

24 Dec 2009 10:33 am

Quote For The Day

"Pope Benedict’s action this week seeks to destroy the evidence, which is the point. If he were to have his declaration hoisted as a sign, it would say: “The Holocaust was the work of a few Nazis, period.” In fact, that has been a theme of his controversial papal statements on the subject. In Cologne, in 2005, he told an audience of German Jews that Nazi anti-Semitism “was born of neo-paganism,” as if it were unrelated to the long history of Christian anti-Judaism, embodied in the “Christ-killer” slander, and preached from nearly every Christian pulpit nearly every Good Friday for more than a thousand years. Speaking at Auschwitz in 2006, Benedict blamed the Holocaust “on a ring of criminals,” an exoneration of the larger German nation that is almost unheard of among the impressively self-critical Germans of Benedict’s generation. At the death camp, he went on to make the astonishing claim that by eliminating Jews, the Nazis were “ultimately” attacking the church. He complained of God’s silence, but not of the previous pope’s," - Jim Carroll, whose Practicing Catholic was one of my favorite books of the year.

24 Dec 2009 09:52 am

Sir Patrick Stewart, Ctd

Another performance by the soon-to-be knight:

24 Dec 2009 09:08 am

Meep, Meep, Ctd

A reader writes:

Three years ago my partner and I visited India.  The sites that impressed me even more than the Taj Mahal were the man-made Ajanta and Ellora Caves.  For centuries, Buddhist monks and others, using primitive tools, spent their entire lives carving these caves knowing they would never live to see them finished.  Back home I was working on a lawsuit where corporate directors had committed fraud, doing all they could to inflate the next quarter's earnings reports.  All that mattered was the next financial statement. 

The contrast couldn't have been more striking.

Continue reading "Meep, Meep, Ctd" »

24 Dec 2009 08:37 am

The New Montazeri

Sanei-Mousavi

Josh Shahryar profiles Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei, the most prominent of the remaining opposition clerics:

Sane’i is the perfect man to replace Montazeri. He represents the same brand of moderate Islam that Montazeri espoused. This includes his stance that women have equal rights with men and can be judges and sources of jurisprudence. He has denounced suicide bombings, considers nuclear weapons as being against the soul of Islam and forbidden and perhaps shockingly, even believes that followers of other religions if they are sincere would go to heaven. These are the qualities that endeared him to the late Montazeri and this is the reason why today, thousands of people from around Iran announced their willingness to defend him against the government.

And he'll need it; Sanei's offices were attacked by Basiji militiamen yesterday.

24 Dec 2009 08:02 am

Marriage Equality In Latin America, Ctd

A reader writes:
Argentina (as a country) did not legalize civil unions, the City of Buenos Aires did. Argentina (its a matter of Federal law) does not permit adoption of children by same-sex couples. Hopefully Congress and/or the Supreme Court will take up these issues soon. Argentina is an interesting case, it's 90% catholic and quite conservative, but for some reason (probably as a reaction to the years of the Dictatorship in the 70/80s and as a consequence of the internet, flow of information, etc. in the last decade or so) progressive positions are adopted (See, for example, here. Argentina's Supreme Court decriminalized the small-scale use of marijuana on Tuesday, opening the way for a shift in the country's drug-fighting policies to focus on traffickers instead of users).

24 Dec 2009 07:32 am

Piercing The Heartland

The LA Times reports:

Large-scale protests spread in central Iranian cities [including Esfahan and Najafabad] Wednesday, offering the starkest evidence yet that the opposition movement that emerged from the disputed June presidential election has expanded beyond its base of mostly young, educated Tehran residents to at least some segments of the country's pious heartland. [...] The central region is considered by some as the conservative power base of the hard-liners in power.

Iranian authorities are clearly alarmed by the spread of the protests.

Continue reading "Piercing The Heartland" »

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

23 Dec 2009 11:00 pm

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish, Andrew presented his first-year evaluation of Obama. Readers responded here and here. John Cole reviewed the president's record of promises while Steve Lombardo and Andrew analyzed his approval rating.

Sully also tackled Robbie George over natural law and responded to a reader's dissent on Gore. Sprung fisked Jane Hamsher on healthcare and worried about the future. Megan called out Harry Reid. Beck set off the red hathos alert while others on the paranoid right continued to retreat to the fifties. And their fearless leader tweeted some more on death panels.

The Dish revisited Jim Manzi's important piece in National Affairs and ran more commentary on gays in comics. More depressing Christmas songs from Roy Orbison and Dr. Elmo. Another VFYR update here. Ten more MHBs of the year here. And a spectacular viral skit here.

-- C.B.

(Today's Wrap brought to you from the Chicago O'Hare Airport. Ugh.)

23 Dec 2009 10:45 pm

Across The Universe

And a merry Christmas to all you geeks and hippies out there (you know who you are):

23 Dec 2009 10:44 pm

Colbert After The White House Correspondents' Gig

Great catch by Jim Warren:

When the dinner was over, "I don't think I'm dying. I go to sit down and nobody's meeting my eye. Only [the late journalist-turned-White House spokesman] Tony Snow comes over and says I'm doing a great job." Then Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia came his way and told him he was brilliant.

"I said, oh, s-, don't let me like Antonin Scalia!"

Wondering what exit he should use, Colbert recalls being approached by actor Harry Lennix, whom he knew from their days at Northwestern University. Colbert indicated that he sensed some of the audience wasn't happy. "And he [Lennix] said, 'f- these people."

Indeed.

23 Dec 2009 10:39 pm

The Press And Palin

Dave Weigel makes a point the Dish has been banging on about for a year and a half now:

The problem is that Palin has put the political press in a submissive position, one in which the only information it prints about her comes from prepared statements or from Q&As with friendly interviewers. This isn’t something most politicians get away with, or would be allowed to get away with. But Palin has leveraged her celebrity — her ability to get ratings, the ardor of her fans and the bitterness of her critics — to win a truly unique relationship with the press. She is allowed to shape the public debate without actually engaging in it.

To be fair to Palin, she had every right to try and get away with this. But she couldn't have if the press had truly resisted together. They could have all refused to do one-on-one interviews until she gave a live, long, no-holds-barred press conference, answering any question asked. But they didn't. They each wanted their ratings-winning "get" more than they wanted to expose this person's ineptitude and cluelessness for the good of the country.

They've also lost their nerve, fearing that aggressive, adult but civil questioning of Palin would get them tarred elitist or condescending or all the other class warfare memes the GOP is now so adept at deploying. And so this farce of a candidate continues to plague us.

But, yes, Dave, it probably doesn't help to cite her Facebook nonsense. I just feel a responsibility to keep tabs on the lunacy, and have done since it began.

23 Dec 2009 07:35 pm

Depressing Christmas Songs, Ctd

A reader submits Roy Orbison's "Pretty Paper." It centers on a homeless man:

23 Dec 2009 07:09 pm

A Wrestler For Obamacare

Jim Cornette lets it rip against those, on both sides, who have resisted the opportunity to extend insurance to so many who don't have it or can't afford to get it. It's a TNC classic.

23 Dec 2009 06:34 pm

The Hitchhiker's Guide To Murder

Someone needs to sign these guys:

(Hat tip: TDW)

23 Dec 2009 05:56 pm

A Liberal Reagan?

A reader writes:

I agree that Obama has a chance to reorient American politics the way Reagan did, but I think he first needs to explain to the American public a comprehensive political philosophy.

Like Reagan, Obama ran against a political philosophy that was weakened by current events (2008 meltdown was to laissez-faire economics/deregulation as Stagflation was to Big Government liberalism). Reagan explained that government wasn't always the answer, and was often part of the problem. His subsequent tax and regulatory policies were consistent with his stated philosophy.

Obama's philosophy could be called "pragmatism," but the problem is that while pragmatism might reorient how things get done in Washington, it won't reorient the country's political philosophy because it won't connect with the public.

Continue reading "A Liberal Reagan?" »

23 Dec 2009 05:54 pm

Back To The 1950s!

CPAC will be co-sponsored this year by ... drum-roll: The John Birch Society! I think it's a prefect match for today's conservatism: paranoid, angry, convinced of a Jihadist-Communist plot, and deeply deeply populist and, er, white. Genius.

23 Dec 2009 05:03 pm

Face Of The Day

SHOPPERDonEmmert:AFP:Getty

A shopper, bundled up against the cold temperatures and high winds, near 58th and Fifth Ave. in Manhattan December 23, 2009 in New York. With just two days left to shop before Christmas some last-minute holiday shoppers are facing disappointment as stores are running out of key holiday items. By Don Emmert/AFP/Getty.

23 Dec 2009 04:52 pm

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

You wrote:

"My only real regret is Bush in 2000. I trusted Bush's incompetence over Gore's insufferable ego. But I suspect that with the invasion of Iraq, the end-result would have been the same. They both would have gone in on false pretenses. And would have failed for similar reasons."

Is it possible to find a worse moment of self-justification, of self-absolution and post-hoc rationalization, than this? So Gore, the one major political figure to publicly oppose the Iraq War before its start, who had nothing to do with the neocons and had been part of an administration that focused with urgency during its waning days on the problem of Al Qaeda -- Gore is just as likely to invade Iraq as W? "The end-result is likely the same"? This is absurd on its face.

Continue reading "Dissent Of The Day" »

23 Dec 2009 04:32 pm

A Must Read Piece About America's Future, Ctd

Jim Manzi's long article in National Affairs on the international economic order and America's past and future place in it hasn't gotten the attention it deserves (besides a pair of posts by Friedersdorf). Here's a good-sized chunk that begins by criticizing the stimulus:

Only about 5% of the money appropriated is intended to fund things like roads and bridges. The legislation is instead dominated by outright social ­spending: increases in food-stamp benefits and unemployment ­benefits; various direct and special-­purpose spending relabeled as tax credits for ­renewable-energy programs; increased funding for the Department of Health and Human Services; and increased school-based financial ­assistance, housing ­assistance, and other direct benefits. The objective effect of the bill is to shift the balance of U.S. government spending away from defense and public safety, and toward social-welfare ­programs. Because the amount of spending involved is so enormous, this will be a dramatic material shift — not a merely symbolic gesture.

Continue reading " A Must Read Piece About America's Future, Ctd" »

23 Dec 2009 03:51 pm

Mental Health Break Of The Year: Honorable Mentions

Selecting ten finalists for the best MHB was perhaps the most difficult of the award categories, given the nearly 365 entries to choose from across a variety of themes and sensibilities. So, to keep the fun going, we picked out another ten to watch again. Enjoy:

Trippy Mary Poppins

Shifting Faces

Sleepyhead

Time-Lapse Haircuts

Two-Legged Dog

Reggie Watts

Movie Titles

Beat-Boxing Harmonica

Worst Music Video

Dancing Mom Remix

23 Dec 2009 03:41 pm

The View From Your Recession: Checking Back In

This update is from the actor in New York with a young family and variety of sporadic jobs. Original post here. The reader writes:

Earlier this year I was an out of work actor living in New York. Now I'm an out of work actor living in Los Angeles. My wife and I had been planning the move before the recession hit, and I must admit that the financial crisis gave us pause. Others might very sensibly have decided to hunker down and weather the storm, putting off the move to some hypothetical future. But we decided that the move was always going to have an element of risk, and we might as well subject ourselves to that turmoil in a year when turmoil would seek us out anyway. Never waste a crisis, so to speak.

We've received mixed reactions to this decision.

Continue reading "The View From Your Recession: Checking Back In" »

23 Dec 2009 03:18 pm

The View From Your Window

Brussels-belgium-205pm

Brussels, Belgium, 2.05 pm

23 Dec 2009 02:57 pm

The Fightin' Neocons! Ctd

Hitch got there first:

The neo-conservative movement is really a mentality, a mentality of refined pessimism about politics and rancid pessimism about human nature. As such, it is more or less impervious to new evidence or new experience, and increasingly obsessed with refighting battles of the past... It has also been centrally preoccupied with power and more explicitly concerned with its cultivation and exercise than any comparable intellectual movement...

Continue reading "The Fightin' Neocons! Ctd" »

23 Dec 2009 02:48 pm

In Case You Were Getting Too Cheerful

Andrew Sprung gets a case of the Christmas willies about the future of health insurance reform:

It worries me that the health care exchanges won't power up until 2014 (if HCR passes) -- while cuts to Medicare Advantage start right away.  Couple this with Democrats' flirtation with weakening the filibuster, and that leaves me chewing a few cuticles about a worst-case scenario: Democrats lose lots of seats and maybe a chamber of Congress in 2010, and the Obama administration goes into a Clintonian holding pattern. The asset bubble bursts in China, or there's some other second wave economic tsunami, or a successful terrorist attack, and the Republicans win the presidency in 2012.  With the filibuster weakened -- and the precedent set for weakening it further -- Republicans repeal health care reform before the exchanges ever get started.

He thinks the filibuster will then become the Democrats' best friend.

23 Dec 2009 02:21 pm

Meep Meep: Readers Respond

A reader writes:

Your views aren't part of the minority, they're part of the Silent Majority.  The Vocal Minority may win the news cycle (i.e. fantasy world), but out here in the real world, we can see the progress.

Another:

It is disgusting to see the far left complaining about Obama as much as the right wing does. Hope the sane Center holds.

Another:

There is actually a pretty simple reason for the unhappiness with Obama of many on the left.  Many on the left decry the consumerist behavior of some Americans -- spending on anything that happens to catch their fancy, whether they really need it, or can afford it, or not.  But much of the left is infected with exactly the same flaw: the demand for instant gratification.

Continue reading "Meep Meep: Readers Respond" »

23 Dec 2009 01:45 pm

Yes, Negligence Is A War Crime Too

Richard Norton-Taylor notes the moral and legal consequences of the recklessness of the Iraq invasion:

Under the fourth Geneva convention, adopted in 1949, occupying powers are obliged to protect the civilian population of the country they are occupying. No wonder the British and American governments backed away from the description of "occupying power" – as evidence to Chilcot has heard – even though that was their formal status established by the UN.

Some well-placed former public figures involved have said privately that prominent policy-makers in London and Washington at the time could be tried more easily for war crimes for breaching the fourth Geneva convention than for other acts or omissions.

23 Dec 2009 01:30 pm

Did The Chinese Scuttle Copenhagen?

Mark Lynas, who was in the room, says so; Fallows responds.

23 Dec 2009 01:14 pm

Hewitt Award Nominee

"The way HCR has proceeded somehow reminds me of the way slavery got built into the Constitution," - Will Wilkinson.

23 Dec 2009 12:59 pm

Meep Meep, Ctd

A reader looks at what Obama has done to the Republicans:

The GOP has wedged itself into a position that is, essentially, bankrupt from a policy standpoint.  The party has been so focused on electoral gaming that it has managed to install a set of politicians who know little and care less about actually governing.  All they know and care about is getting elected.  In our existing climate, that no longer works - and faced with complex issues, with gray areas, that demand  they are simply out of their league.  Furthermore, and perhaps most interestingly, they have put together a set of competing coalitions and messages that simply does not allow them to move in any meaningful way on policy.  How do you balance the teabaggers and the fiscal conservatives?  How can you make meaningful budget cuts when what you need to cut are policies you put into place?  How can you be for personal responsibility and against gay marriage?  How can you espouse non-intervention and then the Iraq war?  How can you be for fiscal responsibility and support Medicare part D?

Finally, when you spend a year or more calling the president a socialist, you simply cannot cooperate with his policy, at all - even when significant pieces of that policy are, in fact, what you yourself have espoused (e.g.: allowing interstate health insurance competition, cost transparency within exchanges, etc.)

Just bankrupt, across the board.

The real conservative here is Obama, bizarrely enough.  And these nitwits don't see it.

To have Sarah Palin as the leader of the current GOP and McCain as her pathetic, bitter side-kick is about as fatal to the right's long-term goals as putting Cheney up in 2012. And ask yourself: how has the GOP managed this past year to reverse its disastrous slide among racial minorities? Without some outreach to blacks and Hispanics and Asians, the GOP is doomed. But the party that called Sonia Sotomayor a racist, that demonized a healthcare plan extremely popular among Hispanics, and that seems increasingly represented by the likes of Dobbs and Tancredo has only further isolated itself from the mainstream.

It was their choice, but Obama gave them the rope. And the higher they get on the fumes of tea-party revolt instead of crafting actual policies to address actual problems, the worse it will get for them. Sure, they may win a few seats and galvanize their base next fall. But for what? A protest is not a party and a cable propaganda outlet is not a government.