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Saturday, October 27, 2007
"Victory" In Iraq
27 Oct 2007 10:05 pm
Matt sees what's going on:
Perhaps most important is what the story suggests about the declining violence in Baghdad (and perhaps elsewhere in the country): namely, that the spike in violence was associated with competing sectarian efforts at ethnic cleansing, and the decline in violence represents the success of those efforts...
This is the basically fraudulent nature of the American enterprise in Iraq. We're told we can't leave because of the civil war that would break out or intensify or whatever if we do. But our troops aren't really capable of meaningfully impacting the result of the sectarian conflict anyway. Instead, they're just being plopped into the middle of it and exposed to harm, so that when the conflict eventually ends (as conflicts tend to) we can call the results 'victory' and stay in Iraq forever. If the violence waxes, that shows the war needs to continue. If it wanes, that shows that we're winning and need to keep on keeping on. Meanwhile, in the real world, the civil war and ethnic cleansing we're supposed to be preventing are things that have already happened.
Another Drug War Victim
27 Oct 2007 09:20 pm
A woman kills herself to stop the pain of an illness she tried to alleviate with marijuana:
She was a high-profile campaigner for the Montana Medical Marijuana Act, and like others, she was dismayed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that drug agents could still arrest sick people using marijuana, even in states that legalized its use.
The ruling came to haunt Prosser in late March, when DEA agents seized less than a half ounce of marijuana sent to her by her registered caregiver in Flathead County.
At the time, the DEA special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain Field Division said federal agents were “protecting people from their own state laws” by seizing such shipments.
That DEA statement should go down in history as an emblem of the anti-federalist agenda of today's conservatives. It's up there with protecting people from the alleviation of their own pain. Prosser couldn't get the medicine she needed, except from unreliable and sometimes dangerous sources. Unable to cope with the pain of her illness, she took her own life.
“Give me liberty or give me death,” she wrote in July.
That's the American spirit. The government deprived her of liberty and so she chose death. May she and every other victim of the drug war rest in peace.
(Update: here's Obama on the question. He'd pull the feds off persecuting the sick in states where medical marijuana is legal.)
Face Of The Day
27 Oct 2007 09:01 pm
Rachael Grice of the UK poses in the Miss Figure 2 category during the Amateur Body Building Championships, October 27, 2007, in Southport, United Kingdom. By Sebastian Meyer/Getty Images.
Obama vs Clinton
27 Oct 2007 07:11 pm
A reader writes:
I'm not sure you've addressed the fundamental question that confronts Democratic primary voters: who is more electable, Clinton or Obama, or for that matter, Edwards (my current pick)? If the choice boils down to Obama vs. Clinton, all we've seen from Obama is a campaign organized around an airy platitude: kumbaya. Clinton hasn't been overly specific on policy, either, but during the debates this summer we got to see how she'd handle the Swift Boats next year -- with competence and a spine of steel. As much as I'm emotionally drawn to Obama, his performances in the debates and on the stump have been less than stellar. It's all too easy to imagine him getting his ass kicked by the GOP and losing in a landslide to a thuggish dictator like Giuliani. Clinton may never reach the 52% she'd need to win the election -- but so far, she's the only one who looks like she can give as good as she gets. And whoever wins the Democratic nomination will face a hell of attacks the likes we've never seen.
Also, tragically, I just don't think Americans will elect a black man with the middle name of Hussein and the last name of Obama. The GOP is already testing out that meme -- and I'm afraid Obama is exactly the kind of candidate they know how to run against (think Reagan in Philadelphia, Mississippi; Willie Horton; all the Rove tricks). Race still would derail Obama in the general, despite his potential to be, as David Brooks has pointed out, a transformational politician.
Who Was Responsible For McClurkin?
27 Oct 2007 05:46 pm
I don't think the use of an anti-gay Gospel singer on a muscial tour is a big deal. I don't believe it was done deliberately. Which means it was a staffer mistake. Here's one key test for the Obama campaign: has that staffer been fired yet? Who has been held responsible and fired for such an unforced error? If we are to be reassured that Obama can do what Bush can't: hold people responsible for mistakes, we need to know who did this and when they were let go.
Ebony And Ecstasy
27 Oct 2007 03:41 pm
Are hip-hop and disco coming together again? Kanye West offers Exhibit A:
Obama Wakes Up
27 Oct 2007 02:36 pm
This is surely overdue:
Asked in the interview on Friday if Mrs. Clinton had been fully truthful with voters about what she would do as president, Mr. Obama replied, “No.”
“I don’t think people know what her agenda exactly is,” Mr. Obama continued, citing Social Security, Iraq and Iran as issues on which she had not been fully forthcoming. “Now it’s been very deft politically, but one of the things that I firmly believe is that we’ve got to be clear with the American people right now about the important choices that we’re going to need to make in order to get a mandate for change, not to try to obfuscate and avoid being a target in the general election and then find yourself governing without any support for any bold propositions.” ...
“There is a legacy that is both an enormous advantage to her in a Democratic primary, but also a disadvantage to her in a general election,” he said. “I don’t think anybody would claim that Senator Clinton is going to inspire a horde of new voters,” he said. “I don’t think it’s realistic that she is going to get a whole bunch of Republicans to think differently about her.”
There are, to me, three core issues in this election: the Constitution, the war and the environment. All three are urgent, and the need for deep, radical change overwhelming. It's vital that the next president not assume and inherit the kind of extra-legal powers that Bush and Cheney have acquired as part of what amounts to a protectorate, not a presidency. The rule of law must be clearly re-established. Only Obama has the integrity to be trusted on that matter. Clinton will never have it. It's vital also that the next president be committed to withdrawal from Iraq as swiftly and as cleanly as possible. Again: the difference between a triangulating shell of a politician and an actual human being who was right about this war in the first place is completely clear. And we need someone in the administration - Al Gore obviously springs to mind - who can marshall the country's resources to tackle climate change and the urgent necessity for new energy sources. Gore loathes the Clintons as much as anyone, because he saw them close-up, and knows what their cynical, ruthless machine is really about: them. On those three issues, Obama is vastly superior to Clinton, whose history of executive secrecy and privilege, whose constant triangulation on the war and whose polarization of the country would make difficult and real change impossible.
Obama needs to be far more aggressive - but not hostile to Clinton. She just isn't right for this critical moment in American history, too inherently divisive to bring this country back together in an extremely perilous time, too cautious to effect real change, and still too spooked by Republicans to do what is needed in Iraq. There's still time to stop her. But it's running out.
(Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty)
The View From Your Window
27 Oct 2007 12:12 pm
Portland, Oregon, 4.55 pm.
Giuliani Makes Light Of Soviet Torture
27 Oct 2007 11:33 am
The ignorance of Rudy Giuliani with respect to the history of torture is almost on a level with his ignorance about Islam and the Middle East. Yesterday, he made this comment:
They talk about sleep deprivation. I mean, on that theory, I'm getting tortured running for president of the United States. That's plain silly. That's silly.
Really? Has Giuliani ever inquired about the history of sustained sleep deprivation as a torture technique? Stalin perfected it. And one of its victims was Menachem Begin, a man for whom presumably Giuliani has some respect. Begin was subjected to the same techniques that Bush has used by Joseph Stalin in the Gulag. In Begin's view, being forced - not choosing - to stay awake for days and even weeks on end (as Rumsfeld approved in Gitmo) is one of the worst forms of torture there is. He described just such a torture victim who is
"wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire to sleep, to sleep just a little, not to get up, to lie, to rest, to forget ... Anyone who has experienced the desire knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable it with it."
Do you think that starving someone until they tell you what you want them to say is torture? Do you believe that objecting to such torture techniques is "plain silly"?
Fox News and Giuliani
27 Oct 2007 10:31 am
If you've gotten the impression that Fox News is behind the small man in search of a balcony, your suspicions will not be allayed by this news.
Email From The Base
27 Oct 2007 09:27 am
This, I fear, is what the GOP base really feels on how Mukasey should respond to the Senator's letter on torture and waterboarding:
The correct answer is:
"Our interrogation techniques are classified, and I will not discuss them with you, since you treasonous bastards will immediately leak them to the Times and they will published forthwith, diminishing their effectiveness since the enemy will know what to expect".
The Islamofacists are irregulars. They should be interrogated any way which is effective (experimentation to discover which methods are most effective are highly encouraged) and shot promptly thereafter. If they suffer psychologically it won't be for long.
Mental Health Break
27 Oct 2007 07:22 am
David Brent gives the best comic performance since John Cleese's extremely silly walk:
Natural Born Brain Fart
27 Oct 2007 05:21 am
A reader writes:
The requirement that only a natural born citizen is eligible to be President is not an amendment, as you said on Real Time With Bill Maher. It is written in Article II, Section 1 of the original Constitution that was ratified in 1787.
Yep. That's embarrassing. Apologies.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Obama and McClurkin
26 Oct 2007 07:21 pm
A sane post.
The Clitoris vs The Theocons
26 Oct 2007 06:00 pm
"Pregnancy removes the female from reproductive sex for long periods of time. The primary source of sexual pleasure, the clitoris, is also biologically removed from the act of procreation. A man can successfully impregnate a woman without ever stimulating her clitoris or giving her sexual pleasure. A man can 
successfully impregnate a woman by raping her. The very existence of the clitoris is therefore a living rebuke to those who argue that nature itself - the way our bodies have been constructed - dictates a certain and necessarily procreative sexual morality.
What is the proper use of the clitoris? It plays no essential role in actual procreation, and yet is the prime source of female sexual pleasure. If this isn't an indication that nature allows for sex purely as pleasure or as a pleasurable way to intensify and deepen an emotional bond, then what is? Or to take a second example. All women eventually stop menstruating. On average, they live longer lives than men, and so whole swathes of their lives entail, as a function of biology, that their sex lives will be consciously and unavoidably non-reproductive. If natural law is premised on a commonsensical inference from nature, then how on earth can it be construed not merely to argue that procreation is the sine qua non of sex, but that everything else is anathema?" - Chapter Two, The Conservative Soul, now out in paperback.
Free At Last
26 Oct 2007 05:46 pm
Genarlow Wilson wins in the Georgia Supreme Court.
The Coming Ron Paul Media Blast
26 Oct 2007 04:32 pm
The NYT has the details: an upcoming $1.1 million ad blast in New Hampshire over the next six weeks. Of course, when you're a candidate like Paul, grassroots organizers have already been independently financing ads for you. Here's another one. Another independent group ThisNovember5th is a fundraising site. Over 10,000 people have signed up in less than a month. Watch Paul file in New Hampshire here. There are two reasons for his remarkable success so far: the Internet and the growing sense that this imperial presidency needs to be brought back to the vision of the Founders - both domestically and abroad. We have over-reached. He has the newest and the oldest campaign message there is: freedom matters. It is no surprise to me that the GOP establishment - now one of the most powerful forces against individual freedom in this country - is so panicked by his message. They should be.
A $2.4 Trillion War
26 Oct 2007 04:28 pm
You're not hallucinating. I doubt if George W. Bush himself ever dreamed of spending so much of other people's money:
According to the CBO'S report, the country has spent $604 billion since 2001. The total amount of money requested for 2008 alone is up to $196 billion, nearly a quarter of what's been spent over the past five years. At that rate, we'll sail past $2 trillion by 2014. And that's not counting interest.
CBO analysis (PDF) here.
Ebony and Ecstasy
26 Oct 2007 03:44 pm
Are hip-hop and disco coming together again on the dance floor?
The Beauchamp Case
26 Oct 2007 03:25 pm
Here is TNR's statement. I know my views will be discounted because of my long ties with the magazine and my deep respect for and loyalty to it, but readers know I am not afraid to challenge friends or those whom I support. Like Matt, I find TNR's statement persuasive; we do not yet know what actually happened, and Beauchamp has not been given a chance to fully defend himself without pressure from the military; and the military itself has not interviewed every relevant party, and leaked information in a selective way to political actors that does not reflect well on them. Beauchamp never recanted his story, despite some headlines to that effect. From everything I've read Beauchamp does not appear to be a reliable character. But even unreliable characters deserve fair treatment. We have no proof of anything yet.
I'd add also that the incidents at issue strike me as completely trivial.
Continue reading "The Beauchamp Case" »
The View From Your Window
26 Oct 2007 03:09 pm
York, Maine, 12.25 pm.
Mukasey and Waterboarding
26 Oct 2007 02:34 pm
His ability to become attorney-general may well hinge on his response to the waterboarding issue. (Note to self: did you ever in your entire life imagine you would have to write such a sentence?) Marty Lederman gives him some good advice.
The Universe According To Fund
26 Oct 2007 02:15 pm
How to get past the first sentence:
Republicans have won five of the last seven presidential elections by running candidates who broadly fit the Ronald Reagan model--fiscally conservative, and firmly but not harshly conservative on social issues.
Fund can honestly write - and his editors approve - the notion that Bush is now or has ever been a fiscal conservative. He has increased spending of all kinds by levels not seen since LBJ, is a big-government socialist compared to his predecessor Bill Clinton, and has uttered such statements, as in rebuilding Katrina, as" "it's going to cost whatever it will cost." As for not being "harsh" on social issues: does amending the federal constitution to render gay people permanent second-class citizens and locked out of the legal protections their other family members enjoy count? Does throwing a record of close to a million people into the criminal justice system for smoking pot count? Does supporting a constitutional amendment to criminalize all abortion count? Does throwing away every legal and constitutional barrier to grandstand over a vegetative woman in Florida count? I guess not. Sometimes, you begin to realize just how hermetically sealed the partisan right-wing cocoon is.
I'd mention the rest of the piece on Huckabee which echoes this post somewhat. But after that beginning, why should anyone believe a word Fund writes?
A Royal Birthday, Ctd.
26 Oct 2007 01:46 pm
Three more things to note. Bill Clinton's email was apparently paid for by the DCCC. And it contained a link to Clinton's campaign website. How can this be legal? Who approved it? Emmanuel? Has he already been bought and paid for by She Who Is Inevitable?
A Royal Birthday
26 Oct 2007 01:39 pm
Former president Bill Clinton uses DCCC email to urge all those loyal to the royal family to send his wife, the Senator from New York, birthday wishes on her 60th birthday:
In 36 years, Hillary and I have shared a lot of birthdays, and each year I'm amazed at everything she has accomplished. This is a very special year: we're celebrating Hillary's 60th, and I hope you'll join me in sending her a birthday message, sharing your wishes for her and your hopes for the coming year.
I'll make sure to share your message with Hillary. And please encourage your friends and family to send their messages as well.
You can see my birthday message to Hillary and add your own here:
Click here to sign the cardI know how happy Hillary will be to hear from you on her birthday. Thank you for helping me to make her day special.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
And so, in the middle of a primary campaign, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sends out a message from a former president touting everything one candidate has accomplished, who happens to be his wife. You think a former president would be using the DCCC to send birthday wishes to any other of the candidates? You think the DCCC would let him? And so our pseudo-monarchy deepens. Imagine the pardons when both of them can dole them out as Queen and Prince Consort.
Rumsfeld In Paris, Hit With Torture Charges
26 Oct 2007 01:12 pm
I've predicted this for a while, but it's the first real sign that many senior members of the Bush administration will have trouble leaving the country in future if they do not want to be arrested for war-crimes:
American and European rights groups filed a legal complaint in France accusing former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for torture in Iraq and at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, the groups said on Friday.
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and two Paris-based groups, the International Federation of Human Rights and the League of Human Rights, said they filed the complaint with the Paris prosecutor's office as Rumsfeld arrived in France for a visit.
The groups say their complaint could go forward because people suspected of torture can be prosecuted in France if they are on French soil. The complaint says Rumsfeld, in his former position as defence secretary, "authorized and ordered crimes of torture to be carried out ... as well as other war crimes."
Le Monde's story is here. Sooner or later, the men who authorized war crimes in the US will be brought to justice.
(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty.)
Heads Up
26 Oct 2007 01:06 pm
I'll be on the Bill Maher show tonight on HBO. I think I'm on with Martina Navratilova and Wesley Clark, which means I'll be the least butch one on the panel.
Brown Rebukes Bush-Cheney
26 Oct 2007 12:35 pm
The new prime minister's speech on British liberty is worth reading in full. It's a little too collectivist and communitarian for my taste, but when you compare this Labour prime minister's concern for safeguarding individual liberty in the context of the war on terrorism with Bush and Cheney, it's night and day. But the most striking part of the speech to me was the following:
In my first days as Chancellor of the Exchequer I gave up power to the Bank of England. To restore the credibility of government economic policy we had to constrain the power of government to put the politics of the moment ahead of the national economic interest.
Now - in my first few months as Prime Minister - we are consulting on other areas where the Prime Minister and executive should surrender or limit their powers, re-examining patronage where it is arbitrary and at all times seeking to bring the executive under democratic control.
In my statement to Parliament before the summer, I proposed that in twelve areas important to our national life the Prime Minister and executive should surrender or limit their powers - the exclusive exercise of which by the government should have no place in a modern democracy - including:
* the power of the executive to declare war;
* the power of the executive to ratify international treaties without decision by Parliament;
* and powers in the appointment of judges -- ensuring the independence of the judiciary and recognising their role in safeguarding liberty.
Now recall what Bush and Cheney have done: insisting that the Congress has no final say in whether the United States goes to war or not (in flagrant violation of the Constitution); insisting that the executive branch can unilaterally withdraw from or ignore treaty obligations, such as the Geneva Conventions, without Congressional assent; and abusing the Justice Department to enforce partisan and ideological conformity, rather than to administer justice as impartially as possible.
Remember: this is a Labour prime minister. Remember also that America's historical commitment to individual liberty has actually been deeper than Britain's; and the American constitution's protection of the separation of powers does not exist in the same categorical way in Britain. This is how far America has sunk.
The Ten Most Terrifyingly Inspirational '80s Songs
26 Oct 2007 12:13 pm
Cracked.com kinda rips off the Dish's '80s video contest. (I'm thinking of running a contest, like the movie lines, by the way. The only problem is that Viacom has yanked a lot of the best videos from Youtube. Should we try?) Not that riveting, but it's a great excuse to run one of the biggest crowd pleasers of the series: Pat Benatar's "Love Is A Battlefield." Hey, it's Friday, I'm in LA, and I'm off to lunch with Arianna:
Schmuckabee?
26 Oct 2007 11:47 am
The American Spectator parts from the emerging CW:
Fourteen times, the state ethics commission -- a respected body, not a partisan witch-hunt group -- investigated claims against Huckabee. Five of those times, it officially reprimanded him. And, as only MSNBC among the big national media has reported at any real length, there were lots of other mini-scandals and embarrassments along the way.
He used public money for family restaurant meals, boat expenses, and other personal uses. He tried to claim as his own some $70,000 of furniture donated to the governor's mansion. He repeatedly, and obstinately, against the pleadings even from conservative columnists and editorials, refused to divulge the names of donors to a "charitable" organization he set up while lieutenant governor -- an outfit whose main charitable purpose seemed to be to pay Huckabee to make speeches. Then, as a kicker, he misreported the income itself from the suspicious "charity."
It's worth a read.
(Photo: Stephanie Kuykendal/Getty.)
The View From Your Window
26 Oct 2007 11:32 am
Ottawa, Canada, 11.30 am.
The End Of The Hedgehogs?
26 Oct 2007 11:26 am
"For the Bush Doctrine to survive Bush, it will have to incorporate all we have learned since he formulated it. Much of it comes down to this: the Middle East is not Europe, Iraq is not Germany, and Afghanistan is not Japan. (They are not Vietnam either.) The road to hell is paved with bad analogies, which are no substitute for lived experience and specific knowledge. According to the Greek poet Archilochus, “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” The hedgehogs have taken the Bush Doctrine as far as they can. Now it is the turn of the foxes," - Martin Kramer, Commentary.
My only quibble is that seeing the fight against Islamism as a subtle, multi-pronged effort that requires more than brute force - i.e. restraint, unseemly alliances at times, diplomacy, etc. - is essentially the end of the Bush doctrine. And can you imagine Rudy Giuliani being able or willing to adopt any such strategy? And yet Kramer is advising him.
The Gay Guide To The Daily Show
26 Oct 2007 11:12 am
After Elton has compiled Stewart's greatest hits on the gay issue. I should say I feel an enormous debt to Stewart and his writers. To hear and watch a straight guy consistently and passionately defend the rights and dignity of gay people, and to see him skewer so much of the pompous, irrational and hateful blather that comes out of today's degenerate GOP is a mitzvah. He does it better than our often-lame gay groups. And he doesn't have to do any of it. Thanks, Mr Stewart. History will be kind to you.
Mental Health Break
26 Oct 2007 10:21 am
One sign that Afghanistan is too ready for democracy. They like fart jokes too:
One Iowan Is Pissed At She Who Is Inevitable
26 Oct 2007 10:01 am
My bet is she'll be calling him soon enough:
Much to my amazement, I found out that she certainly could have found 10 minutes for the voters of Harrison County at some point in the last four months.
According to the Washington Post, since July 30 Hillary Clinton has missed 42 votes in the U.S. Congress. That's right. Forty-two votes. Her job right now is campaigning to be the next President of the United States. It's not serving the people of New York.
Since January, 18 people running for President of our great country have granted me time over the phone - some, like Barack Obama, Tom Tancredo, Joe Biden and Tommy Thompson have even met with me in person. Sen. Clinton, my number is 712-216-0012. Call any time.
Heh. She's not president yet!
Snap Judgments and Elections
26 Oct 2007 09:41 am
Maybe everything else is just make-work:
A split-second glance at two candidates' faces is often enough to determine which one will win an election, according to a Princeton University study.
Princeton psychologist Alexander Todorov has demonstrated that quick facial judgments can accurately predict real-world election returns. Todorov has taken some of his previous research that showed that people unconsciously judge the competence of an unfamiliar face within a tenth of a second, and he has moved it to the political arena. His lab tests show that a rapid appraisal of the relative competence of two candidates' faces was sufficient to predict the winner in about 70 percent of the races for U.S. senator and state governor in the 2006 elections.
Continue reading "Snap Judgments and Elections" »
The World's Worst Airports
26 Oct 2007 09:16 am
You think Newark sucks? Try Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport:
Location: Dakar, Senegal
Firsthand account: “There is only squalor, an unnerving sense of confinement, and to some extent danger.” —Patrick Smith, Salon.com, May 25, 2007
Why it’s so bad: Because it’s standing room only. As a regional hub, an ordeal at Senghor is often unavoidable for travelers to West Africa. Once you’re in the terminal, don’t plan on relaxing: There are no seats, and guards will advise you to stop loitering if you hang around in one spot too long. Immigration lines can take up to three hours. And in any event, it’s best to keep moving since you can expect to be surrounded by vendors selling counterfeit goods and unofficial “porters” who will pressure you into hiring their services if you happen to come to a standstill.
Foreign Policy tells you where else to avoid here.
Thompson Breaks With Cheney
26 Oct 2007 08:34 am
This is interesting:
Thompson agreed that he didn't share the views of Vice President Cheney when it comes to the supremacy of the executive branch.
"No, I think the constitution in times of war, especially, is very definitive about that," he said. "The president is the commander in chief, but the Congress has the power of the budget. The power of the purse. So everything has to go through that prism. So it’s divided power in the constitution. Our founding fathers divided that up. Divided it up at the federal level, the idea being that things like Watergate should be made very difficult to happen. So no one branch of the government can misuse power."
Thompson described checks and balances as "a constant tug and pull. Controversy and differences of opinion over legitimate national security concerns is not a bad thing. Every branch needs to stand up for itself. And I saw that as, in effect, an attorney for the executive branch, and then as a legislator."
And this is what a humble Christian sounds like:
Continue reading "Thompson Breaks With Cheney" »
The World We Cannot Control
26 Oct 2007 08:30 am
Americans are becoming more anxious about US foreign policy and much more skeptical that we can do anything much to affect the rest of the world:
The public not only doubts that U.S. foreign policy is working, but they’re increasingly skeptical about whether anything can turn the situation around. The public shows an increasing loss of faith in many policy options, while public approval in almost every policy area has declined.
This decline in confidence seems to occur whether the proposed strategy is “hawkish” or “dovish,” whether it involves "hard power" or "soft power" or whether or not the public put much stock in it in the first place. In some cases, confidence has declined slowly over two years, while in others it has dropped sharply in the past six months.
I know the feeling.
Clinton's Latest Spin
26 Oct 2007 07:00 am
In supporting legislation that seeks to exert diplomatic pressure on Iran, Senator Clinton is standing up to the Bush administration, which has recklessly refused to talk to Iran about its clandestine nuclear program. In voting for a non-binding resolution that urges the administration to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, she is forcing the Bush administration to apply diplomatic pressure.
Kyl-Lieberman is standing up to the Bush administration? The lies have already started, haven't they?
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Imaginationland
25 Oct 2007 09:32 pm
If you read one post today, I hope it was this one.
Those Irish Gabbers
25 Oct 2007 08:20 pm
Oh crap. A reader writes:
Congratulations (I think) - you are far more complex and less readable than James Joyce was in Finnegan's Wake. At least you aren't as prolix.
Yeah, well if you count up the words on this blog - closing in on 700,000 words a year, you might think again.
Bush and Cuba
25 Oct 2007 07:46 pm
A reader writes:
Babalu Blog completely misses the point on Bush's Cuba speech. It's not that Bush is wrong about Cuba -- clearly, he's right. But unlike Reagan in 1987, Bush in 2007 has as much credibility lecturing about the human rights of prisoners as the Catholic Church would have advising schools on how to prevent child molestation.
Imaginationland Ctd
25 Oct 2007 07:35 pm
A reader writes:
I was finally moved to write you in response to today's "Imaginationland" post. I think you've connected a couple of very important dots here, and it reminded me of something I read more than a year ago in a Washington Post book review of Ron Suskind's "One Percent Doctrine."
Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."
The time frame here is mid-2002 and, according to Suskind, Abu Zubaydah was the first guinea pig for these techniques. In that case, it seems unlikely that an October 2001 bomb scare would be based on information derived from torture (or at least U.S. torture; the info could always have come from less scrupulous sources overseas). But by Suskind's account, the dynamic you describe has been distorting U.S. policy for at least five years now.
The Risk Of Obama
25 Oct 2007 06:47 pm
Ross makes the case:
Hillary may not be the best choice for the Democrats, but she's definitely the safest; I think nominating her more or less guarantees the party 48 percent of the vote, since she's sufficiently tested and savvy and all the rest of it to make a Dukakis or Dole-style wipeout almost completely unimaginable. And in a year when things will (probably) be going the Democrats' way anyway, there's a lot to be said for nominating a known quantity and assuming that, in spite of what Jonah rightly calls the "irreducible core" of anti-Hillary sentiment, the political landscape alone will ensure that her guaranteed 48 percent rises to 51-53 percent by November '08. Whereas Obama and to a lesser extent Edwards both have a higher ceiling, but also a much lower floor, since neither has been through the fire already the way Hillary has (indeed, Obama has never run against significant GOP opposition of any kind), and either one could flame out disastrously in the heat of a general-election campaign.
I don't disagree. Clinton is the hardest candidate to sell but equally the hardest candidate to beat. I think the salient questions are: how dangerous do you think the world now is? And how dangerous is the polarization that Clinton - with say a brutally divisive, Bush-style 51 percent victory - will, to my mind, inevitably deepen in that context? Those are the themes of my essay coming out in the next Atlantic, so I'll shut up now until people can read and respond to the full case for Obama I try to make.
Imaginationland Watch
25 Oct 2007 06:28 pm
Fox News is actually broadcasting the notion that the Los Angeles fires were set by al Qaeda?
Nanny-State Watch
25 Oct 2007 06:05 pm
Now, the feds are after almonds.
Ron Paul vs Hillary Clinton
25 Oct 2007 05:43 pm
He does better in the polls than you might expect.
An Ex-Libertarian
25 Oct 2007 05:20 pm
Glenn Reynolds comes out of the closet and says he's no longer a libertarian. After four years of his defending or ignoring every abuse of government power under the Bushies, this is hardly a surprise. But the caricature of many freedom-lovers offered by Stephen Green is silly. Yes, the more doctrinaire libertarians are too wedded to ideology and unable or unwilling to look at the empirical world and make adjustments. No sane freedom-lover would, in my view, believe that 9/11 changed nothing. Of course, it required sacrifices of liberty. What it did not require was the permanent suspension of habeas corpus, the transformation of the executive branch into a de facto extra-legal protectorate, the breaking of laws by the president, the authorization of torture, warrantless wiretapping, a war based on intelligence that simply wasn't there, and a ramping up of the drug war. Those are the policies that Glenn Reynolds, by silence or active support, has enabled. I'm relieved that he no longer even identifies as a libertarian. It helps clear the air.
"Effective Liberty"
25 Oct 2007 05:00 pm
Two of the most chilling words you'll ever hear. Crooked Timber wants the government policing speech to protect minorities. At last they're honest about the true agenda of the left. Notice this isn't about "hate-crimes". It's about "hate-speech." But the motivation behind hate-crime laws - a loathing of liberty and group-think victimology - is still out there. To make my own position clear: The elimination of bigotry is not a legitimate role of government. In fact, bigotry is a right, a basic freedom, as intrinsic to freedom as freedom of religion and speech. Once you start deciding what speech is or is not acceptable, we no longer live in a free society. We live in a tyranny - where Crooked Timber and the benign left will call the shots and enforce their orthodoxy.
If you're interested in my 1999 New York Times Magazine essay, "What's So Bad About Hate," it's available in full here. Those newish readers who now think I'm some sort of lefty because of my opposition to Bush's incompetence, fiscal recklessness, and authoritarianism might realize upon reading it that I'm still a proud conservative, fighting a for a tradition today's Republicans, more than anyone else, have attacked and defiled.
Watch Your Planet Melt
25 Oct 2007 04:41 pm
NASA's time-lapse photography of what happened this winter in the Arctic. Astonishing - and grief-inducing.
Derb Fisks The NYPost
25 Oct 2007 04:31 pm
An instant - and hilarious - classic.
Coulter and Christianity
25 Oct 2007 04:09 pm
Have you noticed that the long-legged bigot has been touting her Christianity lately? She knows where the market is, I guess. Michael Livingston argues:
She has dismissed most of the Bible and the words of Jesus defending the poor, the widow, the prisoner—the least among us—and spewed her venom that has little or nothing to do with orthodox Christianity. But Ms. Coulter and her ilk are the ones to whom the media gives most of its attention.
He suggests that the media should shut her out. I don't think they can, although my respect for anyone on television actually inviting her on to spew more hatred is, shall we say, limited. In the end, I have faith that what she represents, apart from her own callow self-enrichment, will be seen for what it is. I'm with this guy:
So you keep on spewing, Ann Coulter. You keep right on saying all the detestable things you perhaps even believe, so that the average American can see the buffoonish and ugly face of the religio-political underside. And you, dear media, keep right on allowing her and her kind plenty of airtime and space with which to hang themselves.
As Mr. Livingston himself concedes, while seemingly missing the why, "There are some signs that the toxic message of the extreme right of American Christians may be faltering."
That's the beauty of media exposure. In time, it tends to devour the offensively unhinged.
Face of the Day
25 Oct 2007 03:58 pm
(Photo: Land-mine victim and former pro-goverment village guard Murat Benek sits in his house with his friend on October 24 2007 in Hilal village in the southeastern Turkish province of Sirnak at the Turkey-Iraq border. The Turkish army has moved more throops to the Iraqi border after Kurdish rebels ambushed a military unit killing 12 soldiers and increasing pressure on the Turkish government to stage attacks against Kurdish rebel camps in Iraq. By Burak Kara/Getty Images.)
A Clinton-Pelosi Faultline?
25 Oct 2007 03:25 pm
That's what Jim Vandehei and John Harris see beneath the surface:
The temptation for many commentators has been to dismiss Pelosi’s ventures into foreign policy as blunderbuss moves by a new speaker unseasoned on the world stage. She was hammered for her visit to Syria earlier this year to talk peace. She was recently forced by her own members to surrender on the “Armenian Genocide” resolution after Turkey, a U.S. ally with a critical supply line to Iraq, re-called its ambassador in protest.
But Democratic foreign policy experts in the think tanks along Massachusetts Avenue will also have to get over it: Pelosi is authentically representing the mainstream of her party when it comes to America’s role in the world.
Pelosi has managed to make Hastert look like a leader, hasn't she?
Gays, Obama and Double Standards
25 Oct 2007 03:23 pm
Why, asks Archpundit? Three initials: HRC - the candidate and her "gay-rights" organization.
Branding Atheism
25 Oct 2007 03:05 pm
They now have a cool logo. Well, the other guys do have a fish:
But doesn't it look a bit like a scarlet letter to you?
The Music For "Gaytanamo"
25 Oct 2007 03:02 pm
The most tasteless gay porn movie ever made has an extra piece of obscenity, as a reader notices:
Did you notice that the soundtrack for the trailer on Dark Alley's website is the Finale to Shostakovitch's Symphony No. 5? These queens thought it made their groomed porn studs seem more dramatic and heroic, I suppose. I wonder if they realized that the background of the piece was the composer's personal spiritual triumph over the threat of being sent to the Gulag, along with his family, for writing music that was not condoned in Stalin's USSR.
I am reminded of a friend of mine's quip: "I'm not a self-hating homosexual. I like myself. It's all the other homosexuals I can't stand."
Giuliani On Waterboarding
25 Oct 2007 02:55 pm
He tells the truth about what Bush and Cheney believe. Asked in Iowa last night whether he believed that waterboarding was torture, he replied:
It depends on who does it.
If the Khmer Rouge does it, it's torture. If the United States does it, it's not. This man cannot be allowed to be president of the United States. He believes that the United States is above morals and the president of the United States is above the law. He is a tyrant to the depths of his being.
Gallup On Obama
25 Oct 2007 02:46 pm
An interesting analysis, worth reading in full. The bottom line:
Obama and his Democratic rivals have their work cut out for them in trying to defeat Clinton for the Democratic nomination. The fact that Clinton leads not only among Democrats nationwide but also among every key Democratic subgroup makes targeting one’s campaign efforts a challenge. Obama’s relatively strong appeal to black and young Democrats is somewhat of a double-edged sword, because those groups are usually among the least likely to turn out to vote. But Obama’s ability to inspire people may help him capitalize on his strengths among these groups. His relatively weak support among older Democrats (and older Americans) is somewhat of a liability, because this is one of the groups most likely to vote.
Should Obama survive the Democratic primaries, he may be fairly well positioned to win the presidency, given his relatively high favorable ratings and a political environment that currently advantages the Democratic Party.
A "Tropical Gulag" In Cuba
25 Oct 2007 02:38 pm
Yeah, Mr President, you're right about that. Including Guantanamo Bay. Another blogger is more generous:
Did he introduce any great new measure that will lead directly to the fall of the regime? No, not really. But he explained what needs to happen for that fall to happen. The free world needs to rally around the opposition in Cuba. Did he say anything new? Not really. Everything he said has been said on this blog and others and in other venues at some point or another. But periodically you need a reaffirmation, a charge to the old batteries.
…
You'll remember that in 1987, with only slightly more time left in office than President Bush has now, that Reagan's speech was not considered to be earth-shattering. Especially by his critics. The imminent end of the Soviet Union was not an event that many were forecasting. But today, that speech stands as one of Reagan's finest moments. When he reiterated to the world what they already knew but were unwilling to recognize. That freedom must triumph over tyranny and that the United States would always stand on the side of freedom.
Why No One Reads Post-Modernists
25 Oct 2007 02:25 pm
You don't need Amazon's cool, nerdy word-stats features to know that. They're unreadable. Amazon shows you how, and Steven Johnson explains:
The two stats that I found totally fascinating were "Average Words Per Sentence" and "% Complex Words," the latter defined as words with three or more syllables -- words like "ameliorate", "protoplasm" or "motherf***er."
Drum-roll:
Check out Foucault and Jameson. They are literally on another planet. The top spot goes to Jameson's "Postmodernism" book which I read like scripture my first year of grad school: 53 words per sentence! Interestingly, most of the variation shows up in sentence length not in word complexity -- you often hear people complain about the impenetrable jargon of critical theory, but it looks here like the sentence length is as least as much of a culprit.
The amount of brain cells wasted reading impenetrable bullshit artists like Jameson! Here are the results for Virtually Normal. Uh-oh. Per word, my anthology on same-sex marriage is a better bargain.
A Soldier Speaks
25 Oct 2007 01:55 pm
On the support-the-troops question:
I have no use for the support of people who uncritically assume that, since we're at war, it's their duty to support it in order to help the troops. History is replete with examples of troops getting the shaft during wartime, and the only way to protect them against that is through critical thought. You can oppose the war without opposing the troops; people do that every day. I would much prefer the support of people who have examined the war, found it wanting, and seek to bring me home than those who will continue mindlessly beating the war drum regardless of the circumstances on the ground. (Please note that my own position on the war remains one of principled uncertainty.)
The sooner people realize that critical thinking is an asset rather than a liability, the better off we will all be.
Critical thinking? Tell that to Reynolds/Malkin/Limbaugh. Critical thinking is for MSM traitors.
Diaper Donors
25 Oct 2007 01:37 pm
The latest twist in campaign finance reform lunacy. The Ankle-Biter vents here.
The Conservative Case For Huckabee
25 Oct 2007 01:27 pm
Domestically, John Hawkins says it's a third term for Bush:
Would Huckabee be a strong, socially conservative candidate for the GOP in 2008 with an excellent chance of beating Hillary? Yes, he would. In the last 9 elections -- at a minimum -- the more likable candidate has won and Huckabee beats Hillary hands down in that category. Also, the fact that he's a governor, not a Washington insider, would also be a huge advantage. If you ask me who is more electable in a general election, Huckabee, Romney, or Rudy, I'd take Huckabee over either of them by a good margin. Given that the war on terror and the Supreme Court will be hanging in the balance, electability is no small thing.
However, the downside of Huckabee is that he's essentially George Bush with charisma when it comes to domestic issues. He is not a small government guy or a fiscal conservative, he doesn't seem to be a movement conservative, and he's not someone who can be trusted to be tough on illegal immigration.
On foreign policy, we're talking Bush in 1999.
Mental Health Break
25 Oct 2007 01:17 pm
Well, in this case, that might be optimistic. More proof that the Japanese are among the weirdest people on the planet: a series of animated shorts for some baby-dolls. You can view the rest here. If I were you, I wouldn't click on the one whose head looks like brown soft-serve ice-cream. That's not the analogy they had in mind. This one is just creepy - babies body-building until their lats pop.
The Ron Paul Wars
25 Oct 2007 12:53 pm
RedState defends its decision to bar future posters from supporting Ron Paul:
Erickson thinks that they're a human political cocktail of Code Pink activists and Neo Nazis, and he doesn't expect them to vote for anyone other than Paul.
All thinks that a lot of them are those who buy into Paul's message of limited government and fiscal responsibility.
I don't think I qualify as a Neo-Nazi or a Code Pink activist. Full Wired story here. But here's a simple message to Ron Paul supporters. You're welcome here. The Dish believes in expanding the range of debate among conservatives, not crushing it. And any cursory look at the degenerate state of American conservatism would not lead you to think your problem is too much diversity of opinion.
The Lonely Candidate
25 Oct 2007 12:24 pm
Niche-blogging at its best: a blog devoted to isolating and examining every time a candidate says s/he's "the only one" to do or have done something. Most of the quotes are bullshit, of course. But this is politics.