Saturday, November 24, 2007

24 Nov 2007 07:32 pm

RCP and Ron Paul

24 Nov 2007 06:46 pm

The View From Your Window

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 4 pm.

24 Nov 2007 05:59 pm

Heads Up

I'll be on the George Stephanopoulos show tomorrow morning.

24 Nov 2007 05:51 pm

Quote For The Day

"In a direct sense, the carnage on Wall Street is all about the great housing slump. This slump was both predictable and predicted. “These days,” I wrote in August 2005, “Americans make a living selling each other houses, paid for with money borrowed from the Chinese. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a sustainable lifestyle.” It wasn’t," - Paul Krugman yesterday.

24 Nov 2007 05:41 pm

Madison Now

A reader writes:

While doing some quick research for a job I’m applying for at James Madison’s Montpelier I ran across some unbelievable quotes attributed to the father of the Constitution given our current political and historical situations:

“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

“The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.”

“War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.”

“Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.”

Now read this. And this. And people wonder why Ron Paul and Barack Obama have traction out there.

24 Nov 2007 04:32 pm

The Imperial Bunker

As it becomes clearer and clearer that the actual plans are for an occupation of Iraq with at least 100,000 troops for a decade or more, William Langewiesche takes a look at the massive US embassy being built as the central imperial palace in Baghdad. Money quote:

The construction has proceeded within budget and on time. For the State Department, this is a matter of pride. The prime contractor is First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting, which for security reasons was not allowed to employ Iraqi laborers, and instead imported more than a thousand workers from such countries as Bangladesh and Nepal. The importation of Third World laborers is a standard practice in Iraq, where the huge problem of local unemployment is trumped by American fears of the local population, and where it is not unusual, for instance, to find U.S. troops being served in chow halls by Sri Lankans wearing white shirts and bow ties.

First Kuwaiti has been accused of holding its workers in captivity by keeping their passports in a safe, as if otherwise they could have blithely exited the Green Zone, caught a ride to the airport, passed through the successive airport checkpoints, overcome the urgent crowds at the airline counters, purchased a ticket, bribed the police to ignore the country's myriad exit requirements (including a recent H.I.V. test), and hopped a flight for Dubai. Whatever the specific allegations, which First Kuwaiti denies, in the larger context of Iraq the accusation is absurd. It is Iraq that holds people captive. Indeed, the U.S government itself is a prisoner, and all the more tightly held because it engineered the prison where it resides. The Green Zone was built by the inmates themselves. The new embassy results from their desire to get their confinement just right.

The gilded cage of empire. Get used to it.

24 Nov 2007 01:26 pm

Aha!

Another parody of our winner.

24 Nov 2007 01:19 pm

Howard Goes

Two obvious reasons to be thankful: his denialism with respect to climate change deserves a rebuke. And his almost blind support for president Bush, regardless of the quality of the policies he was implementing in Iraq, made him neither a good ally nor a genuine supporter of an effective war effort. Bush has now lost Blair and Howard as too-stalwart allies.

24 Nov 2007 01:09 pm

Squirrels! Ctd.

Alex Massie directs me to an important historical document on the question of squirrels, a subject the beagles care a great deal more about than habeas corpus. In fact, habeas corpus means an entirely different thing to beagles with respect to squirrels. It's a debate in the House of Lords about the fate of the British red squirrel. The NYT had a piece on the subject recently and unaccountably did not reproduce whole segments of the debate in the Lords. Here it is, at some length, for your Thanksgiving weekend education:

Earl Peel: To many, the red squirrel represents an integral part of our woodland landscape—an iconic creature, immortalised by Beatrix Potter, through the charismatic character of Squirrel Nutkin. But before concentrating on Squirrel Nutkin—or sciurus vulgaris, to give him his rather unflattering title—I thought I might conduct a brief health check of some of the main characters in Beatrix Potter's class of 1912. Starting with Tabitha Twitchit and Tom Kitten, they are truly on top of their game—despite the fact that against a declining wild bird population they are responsible for the killing of some 160 million birds per annum. It is perhaps surprising, given this carnage, that some of the conservation charities do not cry "foul"—but that might have something to do with the small matter of membership.

Let us now consider the status of Mr Todd, the fox. On second thoughts, given that he has taken up 700 hours of parliamentary time, it would be somewhat hypocritical of me to prolong the debate; but something tells me that we have not reached the end of Mr Todd. Is he doing well since the legislation? Not particularly, I think.

Continue reading "Squirrels! Ctd." »

24 Nov 2007 01:00 pm

And the Winners Are ...

Worst '80s Video:

Runner-up here.

Best '80s Video:

Runner-up here.

Best-Worst '80s video:

Runner-up here.

Honorable mention for the following, a video that alone failed to get any votes at all, which, in this contest, is an achievement all by itself. Looking at it again, though, I can see why:

Major thanks to Jessie Roberts who put all this together.

Friday, November 23, 2007

23 Nov 2007 04:22 pm

America The Mild, Ctd

A reader writes:

I too have a noticed more of a capacity for emotional detachment at English dining tables than American ones. I am not English, but I was born outside of the United States, and I must say that I like that about you fellows. I had previously ascribed this tendency to your educational system: you spent your undergraduate years jousting with a don while American undergraduates were snoozing at lectures.

That well may be, but I suspect there's more to it than that. It's more of a freewheeling attitude you have over there to the business of politics. Look at the vocal, even rowdy culture of British Parliament as opposed to the relatively more sedate American Congress. We don't even have to limit ourselves to the English. Look at the righteous fury of the Pakistani body politic as their constitution is mauled. It's true, here in the U.S. we have not suffered damage of that extent, but our constitution has suffered an evisceration too. All the time the general population has been perfectly anesthetized -- perfectly polite.

It's somewhat of a paradox though, isn't it? I think Americans are correctly pegged as being more extroverted and demonstrative than other cultures, certainly more than the reserved British. But when it comes to politics they're shyer than mice.

23 Nov 2007 04:08 pm

Squirrels!

A squirrel leaping from bough to bough, and making the wood but one wide tree for his pleasure, fills the eye not less than a lion,—is beautiful, self-sufficing, and stands then and there for nature, - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

23 Nov 2007 03:01 pm

Yglesias Award Nominee

"Look, I don’t agree with the guy on anything politically, but he seems like a genuine, nice guy and in this instance I think it was appropriate to bring up the mistakes he made in his past, not to show he’s “human” like some candidates are trying to do when they speak of past errors, but rather to show that it was the wrong road for him to be going down, and that kids shouldn’t make those same mistakes.

And it’s not as if Obama is bringing this up at every campaign stop along the way.  And now that he’s slowly climbing in the polls, politically it’s probably the worst time for him to start talking about this issue.  However, given the question he was asked and the setting, I don’t see anything wrong with it.

And quite frankly Mitt Romney is living in a fantasy world if he really thinks that 'it opens the doorway to other kids thinking, ‘well I can do that too and become President of the United States,'" - Bull Dog Pundit, from the famously ankle-biting zone.

23 Nov 2007 02:31 pm

Face Of The Day

Palestinian women shout slogans during a rally organized by Hamas movement against next week's Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, November 23, 2007 at Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. The United States has announced it will host a Middle East peace conference on November 27 in Annapolis, Maryland in order to hopefully launch formal negotiations to create a Palestinian state. Along with Israel and the Palestinians, the US has invited a key Arab states including Syria and Saudi Arabia. By Abid Katib/Getty Images.

23 Nov 2007 12:14 pm

The Final Stretch

The three racing to the finish line are this in the best category, this in the worst, and this in the best-worst. This has the most votes in all three categories, with five hours to go. Here's one of my faves:

Oh and here's a classic parody of a finalist:

Results at 5 pm.

23 Nov 2007 11:54 am

Between Fear and Loathing

Lying awake the other early morning, I found the twin images of Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton coming into my mind. Maybe it was the Ambien, but inevitably the choice between those two haunts the fevered brow in the dead of night. I realized that beyond the policy arguments, my psyche sees the decision between the two of them as the choice, baldly put, between fear and loathing. I loathe Clinton; I fear Giuliani. Which emotion surges most? Clinton could still pull it out as my least favorite, but right now, my fear of Giuliani is outweighing my loathing of Clinton. David Brooks reminds me today how that didn't use to be the case. I always admired Giuliani, marveled at what he did with New York City, liked his social liberalism, admired his way with bureaucracies, enjoyed his knockabout style. Any pol who's happy to put a dress on for a bit of fun is fine by me.

But that was before 9/11, and before the Bush-Cheney presidency. All the things I admired about Giuliani as mayor loom as liabilities as president. The security state is understandably more pervasive and powerful than before. But the newly empowered executive branch - with powers to seize anyone anywhere without charges and torture them if necessary - makes a man with the instincts and temperament of Giuliani a real danger in the White House. Oddly, then, it is 9/11 that has made Giuliani intolerable to me. His obsessive loyalty to aides, his reflexive defense of the security and police forces, his discomfort with any argument smacking of civil liberties, his mean streak, his desire to extend his own term of office as New York City mayor, his authoritarian, meddling instincts, and his frequent, hotheaded outbursts: all this make giving him the Cheney-style presidency a huge risk. Maybe not immediately - but in the wake of another terror attack, I don't think anyone can feel comfortable with what he might do to the Constitution and American liberty. Maybe this worry of mine will lead to charges of "shrill hysteria" from those already declaring that it's World War IV, but it's my gut sense of the kind of man Giuliani is and the kind of world he would confront as president. We can't risk him under those circumstances. So it's back to dealing with a candidate who, however loathesome, is not quite as dangerous.

23 Nov 2007 11:23 am

A Little Breather

Blogging has been light this long, Thanksgiving weekend. I've been spending some down-time with hubby, friends and beagles. I'll keep blogging but not the usual frantic pace. Once we get back, it's going to be one crazy ride to the nominations.

23 Nov 2007 09:54 am

The Hathos Of K-Lo

A reader writes:

I enjoy reading The Corner because, like most Americans, I prefer my warmongering from real men like Rich Lowry and Jonah Goldberg.

What I don't enjoy, however, is reading the adolescent cheerleading of Kathryn Jean Lopez. And by that I mean I do enjoy it, because it's the closest thing to humor you can get on a site like The Corner.

But I'm still trying to figure out what her purpose is over there. Perhaps you can explain it to me, because virtually all of her posts can be boiled down into these three categories:

1. Look what I read today! (Link.) Perhaps you'd like to read it, too! (No added comment, because she's got nothing to say.)

2. Look what Mitt Romney said today. (Link.) Isn't he awesome? (This makes up roughly 85% of her work.)

3. Look who died today. (Link.) R.I.P., please pray for his/her soul, our hearts go out to the family of blah, blah. (This one works for anyone from obscure television stars to conservative journalists that no one has ever heard of to former Reagan administration officials who hated communism more than you ever did. ... that no one has ever heard of.)

PS - Stem cells are people, too.

Am I missing something?

Not much. She's not related to any senior conservative macher, unlike so many others in the conservative establishment, so that doesn't explain it. But she does most of the work, I think. I hope this isn't taken as a recommendation that she cease blogging. There's a hathetic quality to her teenage blurts that remains compelling.

23 Nov 2007 09:44 am

The View From Your Window

23 Nov 2007 07:46 am

The ENDA Debate

Rob Anderson squares off against Kate Sheppard. Her bottom line:

Most of the discrimination directed at the LGBT community is based not on actual knowledge that someone’s sexual orientation is something other than heterosexual, or seeing direct evidence thereof, but on the suspicion that one might be. That suspicion comes from assumptions about how men and women should speak, interact with others, groom themselves, or dress—all of which falls solidly in the gender identity and expression realm. If gender identity is excluded from ENDA, the protections for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals aren’t actually guaranteed, as a detailed examination of the legislation conducted by Lambda Legal concluded.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

22 Nov 2007 02:06 pm

America The Mild

Stephen Fry discovers something:

I was warned many, many years ago by the great Jonathan Lynn, co-creator of Yes Minister and director of the comic masterpiece My Cousin Vinnie, that Americans are not raised in a tradition of debate and that the adversarial ferocity common around a dinner table in Britain is more or less unheard of in America. When Jonathan first went to live in LA he couldn’t understand the terrible silences that would fall when he trashed an statement he disagreed with and said something like “yes, but that’s just arrant nonsense, isn’t it? It doesn’t make sense. It’s self-contradictory.” To a Briton pointing out that something is nonsense, rubbish, tosh or logically impossible in its own terms is not an attack on the person saying it – it’s often no more than a salvo in what one hopes might become an enjoyable intellectual tussle.

Jonathan soon found that most Americans responded with offence, hurt or anger to this order of cut and thrust. Yes, one hesitates ever to make generalizations, but let’s be honest the cultures are different, if they weren’t how much poorer the world would be and Americans really don’t seem to be very good at or very used to the idea of a good no-holds barred verbal scrap. I’m not talking about inter-family ‘discussions’ here, I don’t doubt that within American families and amongst close friends, all kinds of liveliness and hoo-hah is possible, I’m talking about what for good or ill one might as well call dinner-party conversation. Disagreement and energetic debate appears to leave a loud smell in the air.

I think that's why I enjoy blogging so much. It has Anglicized American debate somewhat. But my jousting still evokes hurt or anger or personal woundedness. Nothing personal is intended, even when I rip into another blogger, or, ahem, a presidential candidate. 

22 Nov 2007 01:40 pm

The View From Your Window

22 Nov 2007 11:08 am

MormonGate Update

Mark Blumenthal tries to calm down those who see a Romney dirty trick. A commenter notes that two of the 600 recipients of the calls just happened to be Romney staffers who subsequently expressed outrage to the press. The firm that did the polling also has Romney donors high up in its staff.

22 Nov 2007 11:00 am

A Thanksgiving Question

Will it blend?

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

21 Nov 2007 06:30 pm

Dog Police

I have no idea why this isn't in the lead for worst. But this is unsurprisingly the front-runner for best:

Voting is still open. Have fun this holiday: here, here, and here.

21 Nov 2007 05:57 pm

Race and IQ

A useful nuance in the debate:

Geneticists have come up with the concept of a reaction norm to describe the range of environments in which a genetic trait might develop. Under this view, characteristics of organisms are not either innate or learned: they vary in the width of the reaction norm describing the kind of environmental inputs they require. Under this view, the race and IQ question comes down to the question of whether African IQ deficits are like dark African skin, so pervasive across all imaginable environments that calling them innate is perfectly reasonable as a first approximation, or more like African-American success in popular music, for which we require no scientific evidence to attribute to the particular combination of history, culture and sociology of the present time. We are justifiably offended by a hypotheses involving, say, an innate gift of rhythm.

What we're discussing is a function of both genetics and environment and their interaction. I don't think those pointing out resilient racial differences in IQ are positing anything as crude as "innate."

21 Nov 2007 05:27 pm

The Stem-Cell Debate

A Christianist predicts:

Narratives about positions on public policy are like enormous steamships: It takes a long time to turn them around. But if the news of stem-cell breakthroughs prove accurate, we may well see over the next few years a gradual reversal in news stories and editorials. Watch for it, now that abortion is out of the equation: Much less hype about all the miracle cures that stem cells will bring us, more suspicion about the cancers and genetic pollution that may result, and just about the same amount of bashing of religious believers—this time for their ignorant support of science.

Hat tip: Ross.

21 Nov 2007 04:49 pm

Christianism Watch

"You have to wonder whether he or Giuliani would put people on the bench that reflect my Christian values," - a Republican voter in Iowa. What Christian values are involved in judging the constitution, one wonders? I had no idea that the Gospels actually had guidance on judicial philosophy.

21 Nov 2007 04:29 pm

Face Of The Day

Bangladeshi cyclone-affected man Khalilur Rahman, who lost 11 members of his family including his wife and his other children, cries holding his only survived daughter while waiting to get relief goods in Fokirghat, on the southern coastal area of Bangladesh, 20 November 2007. Urgently-needed supplies of food, water and medicine were nearing people in remote areas of Bangladesh where a devastating cyclone has left millions homeless and thousands dead. With roads now cleared of hundreds of trees that had blocked aid convoys, officials said relief was finally starting to get through to the most inaccessible areas four days after the colossal storm hit. By Farjana Khan Goghuly/AFP/Getty Images.

Info on how to help here.

21 Nov 2007 04:25 pm

"Norman Mailer, he is not."

A profile of Nobel-winner Orham Pamuk, "celebrity outsider." Hat tip: Arts Journal.

21 Nov 2007 04:19 pm

Cook on Krugman

Right, but wrong:

I think Paul's rebuttal [to Ruth Marcus] is correct, so far as the "circumstances" are concerned. But the circumstances are of course not the only thing to have changed since he opined on this topic in the past. His modes of analysis and expression have changed too, and radically, in ways that often seem calculated to obscure the fact that he is one of the four or five most brilliant economists of his generation. This is not incompetence or inadvertence on his part; it appears to be a conscientious choice. He wants to fuel the rage of the administration's opponents more than he wants to help people think through the arguments. He feels that this now serves the greater good. Bush and his people are too wicked for dispassionate analysis, he believes; there will be time for Seriousness later.

21 Nov 2007 03:51 pm

The Solution: Open-Source Militias?

Are they the only coherent response to a global open-source insurgency? Reihan notes a must-read blog post by John Robb of Global Guerillas. Money Robb quote:

The US military is on the slow path to the realization that nation-building — from reconstruction to other forms of traditional COIN dogma that serve to return legitimacy to the government — doesn’t work. Politics and populations in our new global environment fragment faster than they can be assembled into cohesive entities. What does work to slow the spread of temporary autonomous zones and open source insurgencies are open source militias...

The use of a plethora of militias to fight a global open source insurgency from Nigeria to Mexico to Iraq to Pakistan is effective within a grand strategy of delay (it holds disorder at bay while allowing globalization to work). Most beneficially, it eliminates the need for nation-building, massive conventional troop deployments, and other forms of excess. Some questions remain: can the US manage something this complex or this messy? Will the rest of the US military/contractors sit idle (and as a result fall victim to budget cuts) while light weight special operations forces (and their allied private military corporations) take center stage?

Is this the real lesson of Iraq?

Some helpful background on John Robb and his ideas here. The obvious benefit of this strategy is that it allows us to do more with less, and avoid the financial and human hemmorhaging of a permanent occupation of a place like Iraq, where nation-building seems increasingly a quixotic exercise.

21 Nov 2007 03:15 pm

As McClellan Turns

Michael at Balloon Juice writes: 

It’ll be a ton of fun watching the Democrats in Congress do nothing about the now obvious felonies commited by both the President of the United States and his Vice President...  So, let’s watch what happens. As of this posting, I see nothing on Malkin, NRO, Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt, and others explaining how McClellan is just a tool of the wacky left. But it’s early yet.

21 Nov 2007 03:09 pm

The End Of Gay Culture?

21 Nov 2007 02:52 pm

Christianists vs Rudy

Tony Perkins joins the throng with a pointed column:

The point is that Giuliani is adamant that his public and oft-repeated language on judicial restraint is consistent with the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court who will uphold Roe and its progeny.

That is why it is all the more appalling to see social conservative leaders embrace Giuliani’s campaign.

21 Nov 2007 02:49 pm

Bush On Musharraf

Oh dear:

"He hasn't crossed the line. As a matter of fact, I don't think that he will cross any lines."

21 Nov 2007 02:49 pm

Mission Accomplished Watch

More premature victory dances in Iraq. Gerard Baker echoes the meme here. Orin Judd worries about returning Iraqi refugees from abroad:

“The downside is that it relaxes pressure on Syria.”

Gordon at Harry's Place is less measured. It seems to me that we should be immensely grateful for what tactical successes we have gained in Iraq, for some Sunni rejection of Wahhabism, for Iran's apparently better behavior, for what seems to be some fatigue from sectarian warfare, and for the record 175,000 troops now there. But it's crazy not to realize that the deeper political question remains unresolved, that US forces have to decline in the near future, and that the best case scenario if we do not simply leave soon is an occupation with around 100,000 troops for a decade or more. We need to be open-minded in the face of empirical change; but just as clear about what we still do not know. The current calm could be the end of the beginning of the occupation; or the eye of a storm about to rage again. Mission Accomplished banners - however emotionally satisfying for some - are as dumb now as they were four years ago.

21 Nov 2007 02:48 pm

Huckabee vs Bush

He parts company with the Decider on Plame.

21 Nov 2007 02:41 pm

Stem-Cell Gloating

21 Nov 2007 02:25 pm

The Second Amendment

21 Nov 2007 02:14 pm

The Mormon Question

21 Nov 2007 02:10 pm

A Man Of The Year

Ron Paul makes GQ's list. Next year: Sexiest Neo-Nazi Alive!

21 Nov 2007 02:04 pm

Things To Be Thankful For

21 Nov 2007 02:01 pm

Micro-Campaigning In New Hampshire

Ambers has the goods on Clinton's sophisticated mailing effort.

21 Nov 2007 01:50 pm

Fallows On The 80s Video Contest

He's shocked at an omission; and has his own preferences.

21 Nov 2007 01:26 pm

Coming Up Fast

21 Nov 2007 01:22 pm

Frum-Bait

21 Nov 2007 12:50 pm

Malkin Award Nominee

21 Nov 2007 12:42 pm

Nixon 1968, Clinton 2008

21 Nov 2007 12:20 pm

The Subtext Of Bonnie Tyler