Saturday, August 25, 2007

25 Aug 2007 05:42 pm

Like Father, Like Son [Jamie]

Max Blumenthal, son of Sid, sits down with the Forward to discuss the work that has made him relatively famous with the left-wing blogosphere: crashing crazy right-wing events and making the participants look dumb. It's not so hard to do, and this type of gotcha "journalism" is lazy and cuts both ways. A writer for National Review could just as easily attend an anti-war rally and find some wingnuts to lampoon. Come to think of it, it's been done.

Portraying himself as a truth-telling hero for capturing the wignuttery of Christian Zionists, this part of the interview is particularly laughable:

That’s partly why I produced it, to break out of the liberal intellectual bubble that I’ve been working in and that audience that I’ve been writing for. And I think I’ve really broken through.

Because as we all know The Nation and The Huffington Post are bastions of objectivity and politically diverse readerships.

On this subject, it's well worth going back and re-reading Andrew's review of Blumenthal père's hagiography of the Clintons. An excerpt:

It has the tone and manner and piety of one of those "Lives of the Saints" books most Catholic school kids were once forced to read at some point or other. It's not a memoir, or a history. It's a Gospel. Its facts are assembled, as the facts in the Gospels were assembled, for one purpose only: to affirm the faith, to rally the flock, to spread the further glory of the Church.

25 Aug 2007 05:14 pm

More for the O'Hanlon Brief [Steve Clemons]

Mike O'Hanlon is under siege from many corners.  He's a smart, prolific guy -- and I wish he had not co-written the oped that got George Bush to finally read the New York Times.

But he and his co-author Ken Pollack have written a piece that has empowered those who believe in devoting more lives and treasure for a flawed and illegitimate war and occupation -- and they've set themselves up for this onslaught. 

I still don't understand how O'Hanlon could have co-written with James Steinberg one of the very first major articles calling for US troop withdrawals from Iraq and then have written "A War We Might Just Win."

I recently communicated with Steinberg and then encouraged The Nation's Ari Berman to follow up, and as Berman makes clear, Steinberg has not changed his views even a nanometer.

I've also recently learned that Mike O'Hanlon is under contract with the US government's propaganda network, Alhurra.  I'm not quite sure what I think about that yet -- but it's something that ought to be in the open.

(Many thanks to Andrew for the guest-blogging perch this week along with blogger-stars Hillary Bok, James Kirchick, and Gregory Djerejian.  Here's a short piece I wrote recently about Andrew's Monday nuptials with the pleasantly startling Aaron Tone.  You can catch my regular political and foreign policy commentary at The Washington Note.)

25 Aug 2007 01:58 pm

The FairTax and Scientology [Jamie]

Did you know that Mike Huckabee's FairTax--a national retail tax that would replace the current federal income tax--was devised by Scientologists? Bruce Bartlett, erstwhile blogger on this site, explains why that's not the only reason one should be skeptical about it.

25 Aug 2007 01:16 pm

Murdering Mugabe [Jamie Kirchick]

First off, many thanks to Andrew for letting Hilary, Greg, Steve and me post on his blog this week. I'm honored to be included amongst such an impressive cast of writers. I've been reading Andrew's blog  since I was in high school and its surreal to be posting on his site. I work for The New Republic (where you should read the best political blog, The Plank) and write a column for The Washington Blade. Hopefully, we will be able to keep your attention while Andrew delivers his matrimonial vows and takes a much-deserved honeymoon.

While we're discussing such good tidings, what to make of the prospects for murdering Robert Mugabe? That's what the British human rights activist Peter Tatchell thinks ought to be done. Tatchell has suffered beatings from Mugabe's bodyguards on multiple occasions for attempting to perform "citizens' arrests" on the Hooligan of Harare. Now, he says, the murder of Mugabe may be justified:

The prospects for democratic, peaceful change seem to be closed, in the same way as in Nazi-occupied Europe," he says. "In all normal circumstances, I'm against violence. All violence. But in the extreme situation of a dictatorship where tens of thousands, if not millions, of lives are at stake, there may be a moral and ethical case for the people of Zimbabwe to kill Mugabe."

Tatchell's right that the Zimbabwean people "may" have a "moral and ethical case" to kill Mugabe. But given how long Mugabe has been ruining his own country and how loyal the military is to him, this will not happen anytime soon. Last month, I weighed the pros and cons of foreign intervention to remove Mugabe, which a Zimbabwean Catholic archbishop recommended.

P.S.: As an umpteenth example of the United Nation's utter fecklessness, the world body has decided that the millions of Zimbabweans who have fled to neighboring South Africa over the past several years are not entitled to refugee status, and thus won't receive any of the U.N.'s enormous largesse. Apparently because only a limited number have applied for political asylum (a limited number due to the fear of being caught and deported to a land where they will starve and/or be tortured) these poor people will continue to languish in penury, ignored by the international community. Meanwhile, the grandchildren of Palestinians who fled during Israel's 1948 War of Independence have a unique status--conferred upon them by the U.N.--among the world's refugees.

Remind me, again, why the U.N. matters?

Friday, August 24, 2007

24 Aug 2007 05:29 pm

Off To The Chapel

Well, a garden, actually, but the same idea. I'll be back after Labor Day, and a brief honeymoon. Once again, I've been more than lucky to persuade four of my favorite bloggers to fill in for me. They are Hilary Bok, aka Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings; Jamie Kirchick of TNR; my friend Steve Clemons of the Washington Note; and Greg Djerejian of Belgravia Dispatch. They don't agree on everything, especially foreign policy, which should make for some fun. In the new year - by which I mean September (yes, I'm still a grad student in my soul) - we'll launch the Best Movie Line Ever poll. In the meantime, wish me luck. I'll see you on the other side of matrimony. And be nice to our guests.

24 Aug 2007 03:14 pm

Letter of the Day

A classic:

June 25, 2002

Stonewall Veterans' Association 70-A Greenwich Ave. New York, NY 10011

Dear Friends:

I wish to extend my warmest congratulations to you on the occasion of the 33rd anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion. The work of the Stonewall Veterans' Association keeps the spirit of the rebellion alive. The Rebellion was a triumph at a time when the struggle for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Civil Rights was just beginning.

Over the past several decades, S.V.A. has preserved the spirit of the original rebellion and continues to work tirelessly for the cause of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender and Human Rights in general. Your educational program is exceptional in helping others to learn about the cause, the history and to fight prejudice.

Again, I would like to extend my congratulations and commend you on a job well done.

Sincerely,

Rudolph W. Giuliani

More here.

24 Aug 2007 02:02 pm

When All Else Fails, List

The crutch of uninspired magazine editors everywhere is perhaps more ubiquitous than it seems:

Even blogs, in their traditional form, are essentially lists. Some bloggers even turn the form back on itself, working their way through other people’s canons: The New York writer Christopher R. Beha is writing a book about reading the Harvard Classics; a fundraiser for the University of Virginia named Tara Saylor is making every recipe in The Joy of Cooking; I’m watching all the movies in the Criterion Collection. And all of us have blogs.

And what are the Ten Commandments but a list?

24 Aug 2007 01:45 pm

The View From Your Window

Orono, Minnesota, 9.30 am.

24 Aug 2007 01:02 pm

Faith-In-Doubt, Doubt-In-Faith

"Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear," — Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979.

"Where is my faith? Even deep down … there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. ... If there be God — please forgive me... Such deep longing for God ... repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal... What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true," - Mother Teresa in her correspondence.

"The 16th century writer Michel de Montaigne lived in a world of religious war, just as we do. And he understood, as we must, that complete religious certainty is, in fact, the real blasphemy. As he put it, "We cannot worthily conceive the grandeur of those sublime and divine promises, if we can conceive them at all; to imagine them worthily, we must imagine them unimaginable, ineffable and incomprehensible, and completely different from those of our miserable experience. 'Eye cannot see,' says St. Paul, 'neither can it have entered into the heart of man, the happiness which God hath prepared for them that love him.'"

In that type of faith, doubt is not a threat. If we have never doubted, how can we say we have really believed? True belief is not about blind submission. It is about open-eyed acceptance, and acceptance requires persistent distance from the truth, and that distance is doubt. Doubt, in other words, can feed faith, rather than destroy it. And it forces us, even while believing, to recognize our fundamental duty with respect to God's truth: humility. We do not know. Which is why we believe," - The Conservative Soul.

24 Aug 2007 12:41 pm

Reality

From the NIE Report:

There have been measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq’s security situation since our last National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in January 2007. The steep escalation of rates of violence has been checked for now, and overall attack levels across Iraq have fallen during seven of the last nine weeks. Coalition forces, working with Iraqi forces, tribal elements, and some Sunni insurgents, have reduced al-Qa’ida in Iraq’s (AQI) capabilities, restricted its freedom of movement, and denied it grassroots support in some areas. However, the level of overall violence, including attacks on and casualties among civilians, remains high; Iraq’s sectarian groups remain unreconciled; AQI retains the ability to conduct high-profile attacks; and to date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively. There have been modest improvements in economic output, budget execution, and government finances but fundamental structural problems continue to prevent sustained progress in economic growth and living conditions.

We assess, to the extent that Coalition forces continue to conduct robust counterinsurgency operations and mentor and support the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), that Iraq’s security will continue to improve modestly during the next six to 12 months but that levels of insurgent and sectarian violence will remain high and the Iraqi Government will continue to struggle to achieve national-level political reconciliation and improved governance.

So we're left with continuing the current strategy, which will give us no real gains over the current situation, or leaving, and the civil war that would follow. It seems to me the choice is between an open-ended occupation, hoping with no reason for the best and a prudential withdrawal, expecting with good reason the worst.

24 Aug 2007 11:14 am

The Poetry Of Train Travel

A zoologist rhapsodizes:

The train to Buffalo isn't just the train to Buffalo, it's the train to everywhere in between New York City and Buffalo. Announcing a train departure properly can't help but have more personality than an airport speaker's monotone statement that 1st class passengers are now welcome to step onto flight somethingoranother going to whothehellreallycares. But there was one guy at Grand Central when I was growing up who could really do it right. I can still remember:

"Now boarding at Gate Number twenty-three, Platform A, Train Number 63, The Lake Shore Limited 2:30 departure for Buffalo. Making station stops at Crrrrrrr-Oton HarmonPoughkeepsieRhinecliff HudsonAllll-Bany Rensselaer. Schnectady. AmsterdamUticaRomeSyracuseRochesterBufffffff-Alo Depew! Continuting on to Erie. Cleveland. Chicago. Connect at Chicago for Allllllllll points west and south. Now departing Gate Number Twenty-Three Alllllll-A-bo-oard!"

It had rhythm and poetry. It was a performance in the spoken word. And I miss that magic.

It's appropriate on the eve of my own wedding, but my favorite poem about trains is "The Whitsun Weddings." It's here. You won't regret the read.

24 Aug 2007 10:06 am

Best. Movie. Line. Ever.

"You've got me? Who's got you?" "Superman."

(With love from Matt Forke to Margot Kidder.)

Thursday, August 23, 2007

23 Aug 2007 06:55 pm

Kristol and History

A reader writes:

What strikes me about Kristol's rhetoric of late, and Bush's Vietnam analogy, is how this War's supporters --more so then it's critics--have "given up". Chait is right, Kristol is smart, he knows how this will all end. He too, like us, has watched the moments of promise, of crumbling statues, of elections, disintegrate in chaos. He no longer has any interest in finding a way of out Iraq, instead he's preparing for a way out of "Iraq Syndrome". When Kristol says:

"They sense that history is progressing away from them"

It is actually a much deeper and profound thought then you give him credit for. We have to remember that this has always been about "History" to the Neo-Cons. They were going to be the triumphant liberators of Iraq, upon whom books and movies would be based, they were going to knock the "greatest generation" off their pedestal through the sheer magnanimity of their glorious re-shaping of the world. But what Kristol, Perle, Bush et al. are now left with is a harsh reality, where to be effective they would have to engage in the relativism of picking lesser evils and there's nothing glorious about that. So instead, they've just skipped a few pages in the history books, to where we all wonder "who's to blame".  That's what Bush was doing yesterday. Building an alibi. Blame the detractors for the negative externalities of my war and then get off the hook for blowing it.

23 Aug 2007 06:23 pm

The Book Of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered

A digression into literary envy by David Leavitt. Clive James said it best, though:

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life's vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book --
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seeminly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.

Continued here. Book here.

23 Aug 2007 05:27 pm

Iconic Photography and Iraq

Whatever happened to the current generation of Matthew Bradys? Missing in action.

23 Aug 2007 04:37 pm

Obama On Marriage Equality

An interesting part of his debate in the 2004 Senate race against Alan Keyes:

23 Aug 2007 04:30 pm

If Shakespeare Had a Hard Drive

There would be even more dissertation topics, I guess:

"If the plays had been written with a word processor on a computer that had somehow survived, we still might not know anything definitive about Shakespeare's original or final intentions — these are human, not technological, questions — but we might be able to know some rather different things... We might discover the play had originally been called GreatDane.doc instead of Hamlet.doc. We might also be able to know what else he had been working on that same day, or what Internet content he had browsed the night before (since we'll assume Shakespeare had Web access too). While he was online, he might have updated his blog or tagged some images in his Flickr account, or perhaps edited a Wikipedia entry or two. He might even have spent some time interacting with others by performing with an avatar in Second Life, an online place where all the world is truly a shared virtual stage.
...
We may no longer have the equivalent of Shakespeare's hard drive, but we do know that we wish we did, and it is therefore not too late — or too early — to begin taking steps to make sure we save the born-digital records of the literature of today."

23 Aug 2007 04:15 pm

Dear Joe

Matt Yglesias explains to Senator Lieberman who the insurgents are in Iraq.

23 Aug 2007 03:36 pm

The Meaning of Pets

Things have changed over the years:

Cats were not discussed in America’s first general pet reference guide, the 1866 Book of Household Pets, even though almost every household had one. But cats weren’t pets; they were seen, according to pet historian Katherine Grier, as “independent contractors,” housed in exchange for controlling vermin. Today, pets rarely have practical functions. According to the APPMA, the most frequently cited benefit of pet ownership—listed by 93 percent of dog and cat owners alike—is “companionship, love, company, affection.” The second-most-cited benefit is “fun to watch/have in household,” and the third is “like a child/family member.” Seventy-one percent of dog owners consider their pet a member of the family, as do 64 percent of cat owners, 48 percent of bird owners, 40 percent of small animal owners, and 17 percent of reptile owners. Even the scaly and cold-blooded, once brought into the home, can inspire parental affection.

I wonder if there's a book about the evolving meaning of pet-ownership as a parallel to the evolving meaning of marriage. Snoop-Dogg puts clothes on his, by the way.

23 Aug 2007 03:30 pm

Best. Movie. Line. Ever.

"I coulda had class... I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am - let's face it." "On The Waterfront."

23 Aug 2007 02:54 pm

A Banned Commercial

But a cool one:

23 Aug 2007 02:27 pm

Forbidden Thoughts About You-Know-Who

A reader writes:

Your "Quote for the Day" from Roger Cohen caused me to do a double take. I am for Obama at the moment, but this quote made me think that one of the great advantages with Clinton is that the whole world LOVES Bill Clinton. Restoration of the House of Clinton would be a signal to the world that the Americans have finally come to their senses. Obama will have a lot of work to do to rebuild trust. He will have a honeymoon, but he will also have misteps. There will be a time when the international community will be wondering if he has what it takes.

With Clinton, America regains it credibility in the international arena virtually instantly. The world knows this dynasty, and the evidence is that they like it. I doubt that any foreign government will spend more than two minutes worrying about what Cohen refers to as "stripping the regal". They'll be so relieved that we've stripped the arrogant neoconservative war mongering machine.

It is a fact, I think, that Bill Clinton is a huge asset to the Clinton candidacy. To deny that is to deny reality. He brings to the Middle East, especially, real star power. For some reason, they love the guy, probably because they are as addicted to lying and bullshit as he is. But, hey, he nearly got an agreement at Taba. Maybe the burbling, beaming bubba is what Iraq needs.

I had another illicit thought about Hillary the other night. Yes, I was the worse for wear, so take this for what it's worth. I was thinking: however awful it would be to have Hillary as president, wouldn't the fact of a woman running the most powerful country on earth piss off the Islamists in all the right ways? Her appointing her own husband - an ex-president no less - to a lesser position would also tick the mullahs off. How better to tell those sexist pigs what we stand for? That's where my thoughts were. Maybe I should have left them where I found them. But what else is a blog for?

23 Aug 2007 01:47 pm

Obama on the Daily Show

In two parts:

23 Aug 2007 12:53 pm

VDH Responds

The riposte is a little sad, really. Hanson clearly favored an aggressive strategy that concentrated on shoot-to-kill aggression and opposed any increase in troops back in 2004; Petraeus, in contrast, was a stern critic of past efforts, wanted many more troops and emphasized classic counter-insurgency tactics - patrolling and living with Iraqi civilians to win their trust, while cordoning off terror hubs and attacking them. Hanson is now in favor of the troop increase (surprise!), but still doesn't say how this squares with his previous position that 138,000 was plenty. He simply says that 160,000 is closer to 138,000 than to 200,000. Sure, but if 138,000 and more aggression had been enough in 2005 and 2006, why did we need the surge at all? If Hanson realizes he was wrong back then, why not say so? It seems to me he has a choice between jettisoning some (but not all) of his past arguments and taking his current position or admitting he was wrong, explaining why, and moving on. But he's on the neocon right; and they simply cannot admit they're ever wrong. Like cardinals defending orthodoxy rather than politicians defending policies, they keep repeating themselves. So we're left with the contortions of this morning.

Hanson tries to square the circle by saying that our recent "success" is due to more aggressive tactics, not the troop increases. If you believe Petraeus has instituted more shoot-to-kill operations in civilian areas, less outreach to the public and more lethality, then he may have a point. But I'm guessing you read the papers as well as I can. Certainly Petraeus believes more troops made a difference. (Of course, almost the entire difference is a function of Shiite militias pulling back and waiting for us to leave, and the Sunni tribes in Anbar realizing al Qaeda is a bunch of barbarian fanatics.)

Hanson's peroration is a recitation of a creed. This creed endures like all creeds, irrespective of reality. The last five years have told us a lot, and there's plenty to disagree on and think about. If it has entrenched your view that the Arab world is just itching for normal democratic development, that it's another post-war Germany or Japan on the verge of a miracle, then fair enough. But surely it behooves you to say why any sane person would draw such a conclusion. Hanson doesn't. He simply darkly accuses me thus:

I am not sure that Sullivan can read the English language.

I used to think Sullivan was perhaps unstable, but not necessarily dense. But I fear that he is increasingly both - or more still.

More still? More than unstable and stupid? You mean I'm Al Gore now?

23 Aug 2007 12:12 pm

Romney's Non-Flip-Flop

He hasn't changed; he's just defending a very convoluted position on abortion. Ambers explains. On marriage, however, he favors the full monty, states' rights be damned.

23 Aug 2007 11:42 am

The View From Your Window

New York City, New York, 10 am.

23 Aug 2007 11:41 am

The Weimar President

His speech yesterday actually managed to shock. You might think that, in wartime, a president would acknowledge what no one denies is a terribly grim decision in front of us - whether to pursue a clearly unwinnable war in order to govern a clearly ungovernable country - or withdraw and redeploy in ways that will doubtless lead to even more bloodshed. But no. There is no gray here; no awful decision for the least worst option; not acknowledgment of his own moral culpability for such a disaster. There is instead an accusation that those who reach a different judgment about the course of the war are, in fact, enemies of the troops:

Our troops are seeing this progress that is being made on the ground. And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they're gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq? Here's my answer is clear: We'll support our troops, we'll support our commanders, and we will give them everything they need to succeed.

To place all the troops into the position of favoring one strategy ahead of us rather than another, and to accuse political opponents of trying to "pull the rug out from under them," is a, yes, fascistic tactic designed to corral political debate into only one possible patriotic course. It's beneath a president to adopt this role, beneath him to coopt the armed services for partisan purposes. It should be possible for a president to make an impassioned case for continuing his own policy in Iraq, without accusing his critics of wanting to attack and betray the troops. But that would require class and confidence. The president has neither.

(Photo: Paul J Richards/AFP/Getty.)

23 Aug 2007 11:07 am

Bill Kristol, Thug

It's on now:

There was a time when neoconservatives sought to hold the moral and intellectual high ground. There was something inspiring in their vision of America as a different kind of superpower--a liberal hegemon deploying its might on behalf of subjugated peoples, rather than mere self-interest. As the Iraq war has curdled, the idealism and liberalism have drained out of the neoconservative vision. What remains is a noxious residue of bullying militarism. Kristol's arguments are merely the same pro-war arguments that have been used historically by right-wing parties throughout the world: Complexity is weakness, dissent is treason, willpower determines all.

Kristol's good standing in the Washington establishment depends on the wink-and-nod awareness that he's too smart to believe his own agitprop. Perhaps so. But, in the end, a fake thug is not much better than the real thing.

Chait is strongest when highlighting this particular bit of bile from Kristol:

Having turned against a war that some of them supported, the left is now turning against the troops they claim still to support. They sense that history is progressing away from them--that these soldiers, fighting courageously in a just cause, could still win the war, that they are proud of their service, and that they will be future leaders of this country.

The clear assertion is that the "left", which includes in the Iraq case, many, many conservatives, not only knows that the surge is working, but wants to withdraw precisely because the surge is working. Because, apparently, they hate America and a free society so much they are happy to consign Iraq to a burgeoning civil war rather than face reality. Because they hate patriotic and courageous soldiers.

This is pure toxin. The truth, of course, is that this might conceivably apply to a fringe on the extreme left - but they never supported the war in the first place. Those of us who did and who have watched as the effort has been bungled morally, strategically and diplomatically to almost comic degrees, are guilty of a few things. We are guilty of accepting that there is no good, medium term end to this catastrophe; we are guilty of sticking to the basic premises of counter-insurgency warfare when judging how far the surge can go; we are guilty of tending to the very political benchmarks that Petraeus and every other sane observer has called the essential metric for judging the surge's progress; we are guilty, unlike Kristol, of taking some moral responsibility for the carnage and evil our previous positions have helped unleash and, in the case of torture, actually imposed.

Maybe we're wrong (we have been before).

Continue reading "Bill Kristol, Thug" »

23 Aug 2007 10:32 am

Quote for the Day

"To the next U.S. president will fall the huge task of restoring America’s international standing. I wonder whether a dynastic succession back to the House of Clinton as if all we had were Tudors and Stuarts would be the best way of stripping the regal and so returning the country to itself and the world," - Roger Cohen, NYTime$, today.

23 Aug 2007 09:54 am

AIDS In Africa

Gap-minder gives a graphic illustration of what has happened.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

22 Aug 2007 07:23 pm

Because Sewage Doesn't Lie

A new drug-test.

22 Aug 2007 07:20 pm

The OED and the Simpsons

Another cultural landmark.

22 Aug 2007 06:59 pm

Mitt, Can You Beat Hllary?

Rudy lays down the fundraising gauntlet.

22 Aug 2007 05:56 pm

Maliki Is Right

"Iraq is not a democracy."

22 Aug 2007 05:28 pm

Male Pregnancy

A look at the science that may one day make this a reality. Pharyngula muses:

It sounds feasible to me. Zygotes are aggressive little parasites that will implant just about anywhere in the coelom — it's why ectopic pregnancies are a serious problem — so all we need to do there is culture a bit of highly vascularized tissue in the male abdomen that will serve as a secure home for a few months. We'll have to play some endocrine games, too, which may effect his love life but will also prepare him to lactate post-partum. There's the minor anatomical problem that the vagina is a unique tissue, and no, the urethra is not homologous or analogous (fortunately; we wouldn't want to have to push an 8 pound baby through the penis, even if female hyenas can manage it) — but that's what c-sections are for. Given money, time, and a few weird volunteers, it could be done.

That strange swooping sound you hear is Ramesh Ponnuru fainting.

22 Aug 2007 05:18 pm

Bullet-Proof Baby Update

A reader writes:

You and bloggy "Presurfer" have been had by a creative movie promotional. This is a viral promotion for the upcoming "Shoot 'Em Up". Thus the link to the movie with a fake testimonial and the copyright at the bottom of the site.

The film opens September 7th. Just goes to show you, if it's unreal it probably is. And yes...Monica Bellucci is smoking hot regardless of sexual orientation.

22 Aug 2007 04:53 pm

Face of the Day

Yang Jianli (R), a Chinese political dissident who has returned to the U.S. recently after he was accused spying for Taiwan and was detained for five years by the Chinese government, speaks as his wife Christina Fu (L) wipes tears during a news conference August 21, 2007 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Yang spoke the first time publicly since his release from China. By Alex Wong/Getty Images.

22 Aug 2007 04:25 pm

War, Right and Left

Larison responds to an Yglesias post:

There is nothing particularly ”far left” about repudiating and deploring wars of aggression, which seem to me to be the kind of war that Greenwald is rejecting ... Greenwald is saying that wanton aggression is not the norm, and wars of self-defense and national security are.  …He says simply that the default condition for the use of force for most states is self-defense, which seems pretty clearly true.

22 Aug 2007 04:01 pm

Best. Movie. Line. Ever.

"No capes!" "The Incredibles."

22 Aug 2007 03:56 pm

Foxman and the Armenian Genocide

The ADL head is coming in for criticism over this quote:

"We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against Armenians as massacres and atrocities," Foxman said in a written statement yesterday. But upon reflection, Foxman continued, "the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide."

One blogger is underwhelmed. Jewcy isn't so sure either:

[Foxman] seems to acknowledge the genocide, without explicitly stating that he does. He says that he's consulted with those who "acknowledge the consensus," that it was "tantamount to genocide," and "If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide." It would have been nice to see a simple "It was a genocide," but this is certainly a major step forward.

But the rub is that Foxman is trying to placate his critics while maintaining his opposition to the Congressional resolutions that would acknowledge the genocide. My bet: it's too late for that. And I'm certain that most Armenian-American activists will not be satisfied with this statement.

22 Aug 2007 03:33 pm

Gender and Speech

There are differences between how men and women communicate, but they are not what you might expect, a new study finds:

Participants were categorized as facilitative or nonfacilitative, and results indicated that their conversational partners responded to them in a systematic way regardless of gender. Over time, however, women and men shifted their speech towards gendered patterns. Men's talk increased, their utterances became longer, and they asked fewer questions of their partners. Women increased their use of minimal responses, reduced the amount they spoke, and asked more questions. Over time, women and men's language became more clearly differentiated.

22 Aug 2007 03:01 pm

The View From Your Window

Dalian, China, 5 pm.

22 Aug 2007 02:55 pm

"Bosnia Done Backwards"

Thomas Barnett isn't posturing about Iraq; he's thinking:

In the end, no one wants partition but the Kurds, hence my call for the 2K solution: draw down and pull back in southern Iraq and move bulk of forces to Kurdistan (where we are small) and Kuwait (where we are already large) and simply wait out the Sunni-Shia fight, which our generals on the ground don't want because they'd view that path as their operational failure. But frankly, political requirements (i.e., protecting our public's willingness to stay militarily engaged in the region) should overrule that professional desire. Political leaders don't tell generals how to fight, but they should--in our system--tell them when our fight has logically concluded.

By releasing the Sunni-Shia dogs of war, we force Saudi Arabia and Iran to fish or cut bait. Whatever they choose, we save our troops' lives and our political will to remain engaged.

To have unleashed this conflict and then stay to try to put it in slow-motion seems to me the worst of al worlds. Barnett has a point.

22 Aug 2007 02:29 pm

Iraq and Vietnam: The Real Parallel

"In the middle of a crisis even more dangerous than Vietnam, President George W. Bush sits isolated in the White House, surrounded by a dwindling band of advisers, and continues to talk about winning in Iraq. His supporters in Congress and the media seize every short-term success, in Washington or Iraq, to flog their opponents as defeatists and lay the groundwork for a stab-in-the-back narrative. His critics in Congress and the media clamor for him to admit defeat and begin an immediate withdrawal. Over the course of 2007, the two sides haven’t begun to negotiate the possibility of a compromise; instead, they are driving each other to increasingly bitter resistance. The national tragedy in Iraq is taking place against a political culture personified by the departed Karl Rove: tactically brilliant, strategically blind, polarized into highly partisan bases and orthodoxies endlessly repeated through the mass media. You don't often hear it mentioned, but this might be one of the most important differences between Vietnam and Iraq," - George Packer, on his New Yorker blog.

22 Aug 2007 02:22 pm

Hurricane Dean and Climate Change

It was one of the ten most intense Atlantic hurricanes ever reported. What we can and can't say for sure.

22 Aug 2007 01:42 pm

The Morality of Single-Payer Healthcare

My new colleague, Megan McArdle, has jumped into the Atlantic ocean with a big splash. And the water's a little nippy (what lesbians call "bathwater"). Money quote:

A gigantic single-payer system is a pretty blunt instrument; it transfers money from one group, the young and healthy, to another group, the old and sick. It does not distinguish much more finely than that between the deserving and undeserving within that class. This is why discussions of particularly deserving or undeserving people within the larger class, such as your fine old Uncle Bob who served his country in two wars before becoming a minister, are irrelevant; as with the surfers and taxi drivers, almost any class we can specify will contain some very worthy members who deserve more from society than they have gotten. What we need to know is whether the class of old and sick people as a whole are much more deserving than the class of young and healthy people; whether our transfers do more good than harm.

Single payer advocates seem to invariably assume that the answer is yes. This is a natural reaction; the old and sick inspire our sympathy. But I am not sure that, as a group, they should also summon our sense of social injustice.

Read the whole thing. The woman has guts. Which is why some seem to hate her.

22 Aug 2007 01:39 pm

The Voice of Roger Stone

Blech. State-of-the-art sleazeballs should know better than to leave voicemails.

22 Aug 2007 01:17 pm

Romney's Negatives

In a crowded field, he even beats Clinton. A full quarter of Republicans say they are definitely against him.

22 Aug 2007 01:05 pm

Remembering The Troops

Two videos from the frontlines: one angry and bitter, one not-so-much. I hope they don't shock Victor Davis Hanson's delicate sensibilities.

22 Aug 2007 12:34 pm

Victor Davis Hanson, Fabulist

In his NRO splutter this morning, military expert Victor Davis Hanson hyperbolized the following:

No one necessarily believes anything in once respected magazines, whether the Periscope section of Newsweek or anything published in The New Republic.

Let me suggest two articles in The New Republic that no one should have believed at the time, two articles that have been debunked by subsequent events, two articles that reveal spectacular misjudgment about the war in Iraq, two articles that should consign the author to irrelevance, unless he has explicitly explained why he was wrong and apologized. The two articles, of course, are by Victor Davis Hanson. Let's roll the tape, shall we? The first is an argument that counter-insurgency works best when American troops stay in their tanks and kill people. It's a June 2004 defense of a strategy not exactly identical with the Petraeus strategy Hanson is now touting. Money quote:

For their part, American troops have discovered that they are safer on the assault when they can fire first and kill killers, rather than simply patrol and react, hoping their newly armored Humvees and fortified flak vests will deflect projectiles.

This is the context for the current insistence on more troops. America's failure to promptly retake Falluja or rid Najaf of militiamen demands more soldiers to garrison the ever more Fallujas and Najafs that will now surely arise. In contrast, audacity is a force multiplier. A Sadr in chains or in paradise is worth more, in terms of deterrence, than an entire infantry division.

There are other advantages to a force of some 138,000 rapidly responding soldiers, rather than 200,000 or so garrison troops. The more American troops, the less likely it is Iraqis will feel any obligation to step up to the responsibilities of their own defense. The more troops, the more psychological reliance on numbers than on performance of individual units. And, the more troops, the higher the profile of culturally bothersome Americans who disturb by their mere omnipresence, rather than win respect for their proven skill in arms.

So Hanson was a key voice arguing against the counter-insurgency strategy now being pursued belatedly and with too few troops in Iraq. But now Bush has signed on, Hanson is on board and busy excoriating the media. Let's not hold our breath for intellectual accountability, shall we? Let's instead go back to February 2005 as well, where Hanson saw the then-strategy, which even Bush has now disowned, as the right one:

The third and best alternative is to continue on the present path of countrywide reconstruction in hopes that the democratic process will begin to create a momentum of its own - as we have seen in the scenes of genuine post-election rejoicing. Soon there will be a psychological shift as Iraqis begin to blame other Iraqis - rather than Americans - for shortfalls of power or gasoline and start to appreciate the difficulties that the United States has faced.

Continue reading "Victor Davis Hanson, Fabulist" »