Saturday, March 3, 200703 Mar 2007 11:15 pm Coulter QuarantinedRomney, McCain and Giuliani all put some distance between their campaigns and the woman from under the Republican rock. 03 Mar 2007 11:02 pm How Does HIV Spread So Swiftly in Africa?Steve Sailer suggests a theory:
Dry sex? 03 Mar 2007 09:01 pm So You Wanna Be A Jedi Knight?It's America. And your one minute and 48 seconds are up. 03 Mar 2007 07:29 pm Quote for the Day"I have said it before and I'll say it again: social conservatives have taken over the Republican party. Fiscal conservatives have allowed social conservatives to not just take over their party, but even to determine the meaning of conservatism. If the Republican party, however, wants to win in 08, they’d better break with the social conservative movement/religious right," - Michael van der Galien. I make a similar case in "The Conservative Soul," which last year prompted some critics to say I was over-stating the influence of the Christianist right in redefining conservatism away from its roots in skepticism, limited government and individual freedom. But I've noticed a slight uptick in interest in the book lately, as some Republicans have headed toward new extremes. Even Derb says he may re-read it. Try Chapters 5 and 6, Derb. I bet you find more there to agree with than you might expect. 03 Mar 2007 06:32 pm The View From Your WindowLincoln, Nebraska, 6.30 am. 03 Mar 2007 05:43 pm An Epidemic of Self-EsteemOne thing that emerges from reality-television. It is now simply de rigueur always and everywhere to proclaim one's own talents publicly, to boast about doing a great job always, to predict one's own imminent triumph - and never to engage in self-criticism. I see it on Top Chef, Project Runway, and American Idol (my three faves). I find it unappealing and wonder if the producers demand it. But the epidemic of self-esteem seems to be growing more generally among the young, according to this piece from the Detroit Free Press. 03 Mar 2007 04:22 pm Face Of The DayUS General David Petraeus talks with an Iraqi man in the Shorja market area while on foot patrol to meet shopkeepers and other Iraqis March 3, 2007 in the downtown area of Baghdad, Iraq. General Petraeus is implementing a new plan for the American effort in Iraq, which relies heavily on frequent contact with normal Iraqis in the streets. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images) 03 Mar 2007 02:57 pm HRC and HRC: The Love-InHere's Senator Clinton's speech to Human Rights Campaign volunteers yesterday. Money quote on HRC's talk to HRC:
There was no press coverage of this speech, and HRC kept it very hush-hush, which is weird, defensive, suspicious - but that's HRC, sucking money out of gay pockets to finance an insider, velvet-rope elite of D.C. hacks. But the speech is significant in one respect, it seems to me. HRC, the organization, is now fully integrated into HRC, the campaign. It is the Clinton campaign. Clinton calls HRC's executive director, Joe Solmonese a "colleague." She talks of a future "relationship" with HRC in a Clinton administration: "You will have an open door to the White House". Among HRC's victories, she cites the 2006 election turn-out campaign ... for the Democrats. To her credit, she forthrightly backs gay adoption. And she backs ENDA and hate crimes. But no mention of marriage. She's against it. She also makes no commitment to passing ENDA (the Employment Non-Discrimination Act) or hate-crimes laws in the current Congress. That's also significant. I have a feeling that they've run the numbers (that's what HRC does when it's not fund-raising for the Dems), figure that employment discrimination could actually be the first gay wedge issue to work against Republicans, and are going to hold off to use it in the presidential campaign. What matters is what's in the best interest of the Clintons and the Democrats. It's 1992 all over again: 03 Mar 2007 02:54 pm Life in Bush's AmericaJust a sample:
The administration will not apologize or make any redress for outsourcing their torture of this innocent man. To do so would expose a "state secret" that has been in every newspaper in the world and a program of "extraordinary rendition' that has been publicized globally. The current administration - from its disappearance of critical pieces of evidence in the Padilla case to its refusal to hear el Masri's case - is behaving like a regime in a banana republic with a lot to hide. 03 Mar 2007 02:15 pm The "Faggot's" FaithBeliefnet has an engaging interview with John Edwards and his religious faith here. Money quote:
I believe all three things. I'm happy to hear a Democrat say it. And notice this isn't Christianism. He is speaking of his faith, not his politics. And he understands the importance of putting clear sky between the two. 03 Mar 2007 01:46 pm The Presidential SuccessionNorm Ornstein thinks we have a problem. Since there's a small but real chance of impeachment of president and vice-president in the next two years, under certain circumstances, it's worth fixing ahead of time. 03 Mar 2007 01:33 pm The Right Vs. CoulterDreher lets her have it here:
Reynolds here. Ed Morrissey here:
This response seems to me to capture the underlying truth:
I hope that conservatives finally repudiate Coulter for reasons other than opportunism. The issue is not that she makes other conservatives look bad; it's that she is cynical poison for any serious political movement. Conservatism should be about expanding opportunity for all, not restricting opportunity for the already-marginalized. That it has morphed from one to the other is a sign of something deeper than cosmetics and manners. It's time to acknowledge and deal with that. 03 Mar 2007 12:49 pm Romney at CPACHe's the base's strongest candidate, I think. His speech was an artful attempt to put the Republican Humpty-Dumpty back together again. He kept repeating the importance of a conservative coalition. He spoke of bringing economic and social and national security conservatives together one more time. On fiscal issues, he definitely had me. He pledged to keep non-defense discretionary spending one percent below the inflation rate. His best un-Bush line:
Nothing on entitlements, of course, which are the main problem. But he certainly seems to understand the centrality of fiscal balance to any conservative coalition. He called Bush's record "embarrassing." It's worse than embarrassing. I loved his phrase: "simpler, smarter and smaller government." Yes, please. The rest, however, was weak from my point of view. On social policy, he's a theocon. But then you ask yourself: what is a president actually going to do about marriage equality in Massachusetts? Or stem cell research in California? Not much. He would doubtless help legitimize the marginalization of gay people in our society. And that's a big thing. But the FMA is surely dead, and it's hard to see him out-doing Rudy on Supreme Court appointments. Still, his rhetoric on the judicial branch was vulgar: the usual boilerplate about men "in black robes" thwarting the will of the people. Has it occurred to Romney that the entire point of an independent judiciary is to thwart the will of the people sometimes? I get the feeling that large parts of the Republican party would rather the judiciary didn't exist. That's a strange position for true conservatives to take. But, as you know, I think true conservatives are increasingly rare in the GOP. On foreign policy, Romney was bold enough to call the Iraq fiasco "under-prepared, under-managed, under-manned and under-planned." But he had no strategy for countering Jihadism except lots of military spending and some kind of "Marshall Plan" for moderate Muslim countries. You know a candidate has no ideas when he mentions anything like a "Marshall Plan." But he will run on torture - that much we already know. The religious right base actually seems to believe in torture. Along with making lots and lots of money, and losing weight, torture is now apparently a one of Jesus' core teachings. What was his biggest applause line? "I will fight to repeal McCain-Feingold." I kid you not. The base gets excited by things most Americans haven't even heard of. His position in immigration? Lou Dobbs'. He kept saying "McCain-Kennedy" as if this crowd needed to hate McCain more. As for Romney's game-plan against Giuliani, it seems to be this: put the family forward. His wife is a looker. She introduced him. They've been married 37 years, we were told a few dozen times. They have five sons and ten grandchildren. Unlike who? Yeah, we know. But they should try not to look too much like the Osmonds. I know what the national polls say. I know he makes John Kerry look like a stopped clock on, well, anything. But he'll have an understanding with the religious base: I'll do whatever you want, give you the judges you want, and you'll forgive me for being a Mormon. He has no core principles, and they understand that. What matters to Dobson et al is results. They've had enough of men like Bush who are sincere evangelicals but useless in actually implementing the theocon agenda. Romney's their tool - and a very competent, effective one. And they are his tool. It's a solid basis for a political marriage. I think he's the most formidable long-term candidate on the right. Up against Clinton, he'd probably win. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.) 03 Mar 2007 10:41 am Obama at AIPACI wasn't there. Someone sent me the text. Money quote:
03 Mar 2007 08:15 am Washington Times DramaIf this blogger is right, it's one hell of a newsroom right now. 03 Mar 2007 07:07 am Derb on the BlogalogueFrom his latest column:
Derb still wants to know how I square my desire for homosexual civil equality and my support for gay love with Catholicism as it is now authoritatively defined by the Vatican. The short answer is: I don't. The long answer is the first chapter of "Virtually Normal". The fact of the matter as a spiritual issue is that I know I am a sinner in many ways. But being gay isn't one of them. Friday, March 2, 200702 Mar 2007 08:33 pm Barnett Gets ItI'm not being an hysteric about Coulter. Republicans, if they are serious about reaching the people they lost in 2006, need to start distancing themselves from her. She's their Michael Moore. 02 Mar 2007 08:16 pm Black EnoughThe Economist notes Obama's rise and Hillary's decline. Tomorrow's face-off at Selma could accelerate the trend:
He's now leading Clinton among blacks by 44 to 33 percent. (Photo: Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty.) 02 Mar 2007 07:31 pm Schizoid On Coulter?A reader writes:
It's a fair point. I once called her a "drag queen posing as a fascist." But I didn't mean that as a compliment. My only response to my reader is that seeing her live in front of a young, cheering crowd made me feel a lot less complacent. Being a gay man in a crowd that cheers a woman denigrating someone for being a "faggot" is an educative experience. Seeing college kids line up to worship her tore me up. These kids deserve better. They're young and smart enough to be interested in conservatism - and this is what they are getting? From a stage where two presidential candidates just spoke? I guess I've been a bit of a smug ironist who just got mugged by conservative reality. 02 Mar 2007 06:57 pm Walter ReedI told you it's serious. And a resignation, in my view, is absolutely appropriate. It was also appropriate after Abu Ghraib, no? 02 Mar 2007 06:10 pm The "Faggot" VideoHere's a video of Coulter calling John Edwards a "faggot" to her adoring crowd at CPAC. Romney said before her: "I am happy to hear that after you hear from me, you will hear from Ann Coulter. That is a good thing. Oh yeah!" But he did follow it with a remark that I don't have in my notes, but in my memory, took the edge off the praise. I think he said something along the lines of: "It's always good to hear from the moderates." Very deft - as was his entire performance. I'm sorry I missed Giuliani. People in the crowd told me that there was stony silence during his entire talk. Some attributed it to respect, others to a lack of enthusiasm. The big passion at CPAC is between Brownback and Romney, with some love for Hunter and Tancredo. That's the base. It's a party that wants nothing to do with someone like me. All I heard and saw was loathing: loathing of Muslims, of "illegals," of gays, of liberals, of McCain. The most painful thing for me was the sight of so many young people growing up believing that this is conservatism. I feel like an old-style Democrat in 1968. 02 Mar 2007 05:01 pm Coulter In Her Element"I was going to talk about John Edwards but these days, you have to go into rehab if you say the word 'faggot,'" - Ann Coulter, cheered to the rafters at CPAC today. No wonder she and Mickey Kaus get along so well. When you see her in such a context, you realize that she truly represents the heart and soul of contemporary conservative activism, especially among the young. The standing ovation for Romney was nothing like the eruption of enthusiasm that greeted her. One young conservative male told her he was single and asked for her cell-phone number. Other young Republicans were almost overwhelmed in her presence. "When are you going to get your own show?" one asked, tremulously. Then there's her insistence on Christianism as the central message for Republicans: "There are more people voting on Christian moral values than on tax cuts." This from an unmarried woman who wears dresses that are close to bikinis on the morning news. Hey, it's Democrats who are Godless. Her endorsement of Romney today - "probably the best candidate" - is a big deal, it seems to me. McCain is a non-starter. He is as loathed as Clinton in these parts. Giuliani is, in her words, "very, very liberal." One of his sins? He opposed the impeachment of Bill Clinton. That's the new standard. She is the new Republicanism. The sooner people recognize this, the better. 02 Mar 2007 04:49 pm Live From CPACThe delay in posting is because I've been listening to Mitt Romney and Ann Coulter at the CPAC conference. I'll post my impressions soon, but here are some pics. Here's Romney leaving the hotel with his wife, surrounded by raucous cheers by his supporters and a few characters yelling 'Flip-Flop!', 'Flip-Flop.' Coulter endorsed him, and he praised Coulter. 02 Mar 2007 03:05 pm Face Of The DayCharles Hunt listens to the candidate speak during a debate for the open seats on the Loxahatchee Groves Town Council March 1, 2007 at the Sunsport Gardens Family Naturist Resort in Loxahatchee Groves, Florida. Only one of the 10 candidates running for the open council seats didn't show up for the debate. The town is looking to seat its first council as it recently was incorporated. With few businesses in the area and the rural nature of the town the voters living at the nudist colony are a big voting block. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) 02 Mar 2007 02:39 pm Naughty Words on BlogsThis has to be the biggest waste of time ever devised in the blogosphere. Which is probably why you'll click on the link. 02 Mar 2007 01:27 pm How You'll DieA cheerful assessment of the ways to go. Yeah, I know you're sitting there cheerfully tapping at your computer, planning for the weekend, digesting lunch. But do you realize ... well, The Flaming Lips said it best (in one of the best pop songs of the decade): 02 Mar 2007 01:06 pm Quote for the Day III"The obstinate and imperious nature of the King gave great advantages to those who advised him to be firm, to yield nothing, and to make himself feared. One state maxim had taken possession of his small understanding, and was not to be dislodged by reason. To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections" - Thomas Babington Macaulay on King James II. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.) 02 Mar 2007 12:37 pm Polling The Netroots RightThe rightwing blogosphere is almost certainly to the right of most Republican voters, let alone independent voters who are open to the GOP. But I didn't expect quite this amount of loopiness. Of 63 blogs queried, we get survey results like this:
The last one strikes me as astonishing. Some skepticism is warranted in climate change science. But the fact that the scientific community overwhelmingly believes that humans are primarily responsible for current climate change and none of the right-wing bloggers does suggests to me another sign of severe conservative meltdown. (Hat tip: Ann.) 02 Mar 2007 12:08 pm Confessions of an American TorturerA soldier who tortured defenseless detainees for president Bush, vice-president Cheney and defense secretary Rumsfeld tells his story. Tony Lagouranis is a guy who went to St John's College, a great school for reading great books. He speaks fluent Arabic. He joined the military to learn Arabic and to pay off student loans. We were at peace then. At interrogator school, before Bush authorized torture, he went through the normal procedures:
At Fort Gordon, after war broke out, and after the president authorized torture for detainees, he began to hear stories of what was now allowed in Afghanistan and Iraq:
You think Lynndie England came up with this by herself? Really? By the time Lagouranis arrived at Abu Ghraib, the scandal had come to light (Rumsfeld knew about it long before the photographs emerged and had done nothing to stop it) and there was reform. Soon after, however, Lagouranis interrogated a prisoner who said he'd been tortured. Lagouranis filed a memo. That memo disappeared. Then assigned to Mosul, he got the hang of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld policy: his unit used a shipping container as a makeshift torture-cell. Dogs first, something particularly terrifying in Arab culture:
As Orwell pointed out, pretty soon, the point of torture is torture. Still, Lagouranis's unit was milque-toast compared to the others:
The most remarkable line in the entire piece is:
The results on these people were intense:
Another interrogator confirms Lagouranis's account and adds:
Last year, the commander-in-chief who is ultimately responsible for every act committed under his command, passed a bill exculpating him and every other civilian employee of the government from any legal consequences for committing war-crimes. Regular soldiers were not given such immunity. The war criminals who gave the orders get off free, while the grunts they ordered may face prosecution at some point (but not if the Pentagon can cover it up). Last week, the critical DVD that was made of the last "interrogation" of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla - a piece of evidence central both to U.S intelligence and to the military justice system - mysteriously disappeared from the Pentagon's library. One question: When are people going to wake up? 02 Mar 2007 11:26 am Quote for the Day II"You have prevented us from marrying, please do not prevent us from caring for each other," state senator, Ed Murray, after the Washington state senate passed a domestic partnership bill that grants a few basic rights to gay couples inder the law. Those who want to prevent gay couples from caring for one another will now have to live in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the state most dedicated to attacking gay couples and families. 02 Mar 2007 11:03 am On TolerationIan Buruma confesses ambivalence about Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Money quote:
(Photo: Scott Barbour/Getty.) 02 Mar 2007 10:45 am A New Conservative SloganIt fits the new party well:
More from CPAC here. 02 Mar 2007 10:27 am Quote for the Day"When I look around me at the world we got, the world we created after 2001, that's the question I keep coming back to: What went wrong? The question nags me all the more because I was part of it, swept along with all the currents that took us from the ruins of the World Trade Center through the shameful years that followed. Iraq, the war on terror, the new European culture war. This mirror of "What Went Wrong" wouldn't be a story on the same scale, but it has the main theme in common. It would be about Westerners who had their reality bubble pricked by people from an alien culture, and spent the next couple of years stumbling about like idiots, unable to deal rationally with this new reality that had forced itself on them. Egging each other on, they predicted, interpreted, and labelled – and legislated and invaded. They saw clearly, through beautiful ideas. And they were wrong. Who were these people? They were us." - Bjorn Staerk, a European war-blogger, able to confront his own complicity in the mistakes we made. (Hat tip: Crooked Timber.) 02 Mar 2007 10:06 am The View From Your WindowIxonia, Wisconsin, 8.50 am. 02 Mar 2007 10:00 am Instapundit's Coverage of Walter ReedIt's this. Phillip Carter, meanwhile, explores the problem further at Slate. 02 Mar 2007 09:50 am Is Michelle Malkin A Shill?Here's a useful test. 02 Mar 2007 09:43 am Clinton's "Hidden" ThesisHere is part of the presidential candidate's long hidden senior thesis at Wellesley:
This was her assessment of Johnson's War on Poverty. Quite a little neocon, wasn't she, as president of the college Republicans in her freshman year? Those looking through the thesis for some kind of endorsement for its subject, leftist organizer, Saul Alinsky, will be disappointed. Clinton is not a radical. She's a deeply pragmatic, high-minded centrist - much like her husband, without any of his charisma. 02 Mar 2007 09:31 am Obama and the FutureI'm not sure Barack Obama has sounded an off-key note in his campaign thus far. Am I swooning? No. I've learned my lesson. But read this NPR interview, where Obama has to walk through a racial and cultural minefield. He strides straight ahead, unflappable and sane. I think his appeal is precisely this. He is moving our narrative forward. He is able to speak of race and faith and politics without the usual ideological cant, and without the conventional cliche-ridden positioning. Compare him with Romney's or Clinton's parsed pirouettes. They just don't feel fake in comparison; they feel old. Money quote from Obama:
Why do I keep feeling that he's actually being honest? 02 Mar 2007 08:10 am What He Said Or What He Left Behind?A reader writes:
Thursday, March 1, 200701 Mar 2007 08:14 pm A Self-Fisking ReadershipOne reader fisks another:
01 Mar 2007 06:59 pm "Him"It's a movie that was made, shown and is now utterly lost. There are more of those than you'd imagine, though probably not as many as you'd like. Here's the synopsis of its history:
Not actually mind-boggling. Policing the culture can be cold and lonely work and someone's got to do it. [Update: Here's an interesting summary of the debate about whether this movie ever existed or whether Michael Medved just made it up. Here's an open question to Michael Medved. Was this your hoax? Can you tell us now? Did you watch this movie? Or did you make it up?] 01 Mar 2007 06:25 pm Tossing For BritainA mobile sperm bank is spotted in Oxford. Or is it Cambridge? If it's finals time, there should be plenty surplus material. 01 Mar 2007 06:17 pm Rage Over Walter ReedIt's growing. Intel Dump's Phillip Carter gets mad. And madder. If my military readers are any indication, this is a huge story, and rightly so. Where is McCain? He should have announced his candidacy at Walter Reed, not Letterman. 01 Mar 2007 06:13 pm Cheney's PlaneHe flew to Pakistan "in the belly of The Spirit of Strom Thurmond." I bet he did. (Hat tip: Moderate Voice.) 01 Mar 2007 05:26 pm Bill vs AriannaIt's a classic gambit: forcing Huffington to disown leftist commenters on her site. But she has, hasn't she? She wrote of the comments:
I think some Huffposters' desire to see the vice-president assassinated is repulsive on every level, and indicative of real sickness on the far left. But I would be more impressed if I had ever heard Bill Kristol ever take on the extremists that dominate his side of the aisle. Has Kristol ever said that he finds Ann Coulter's books to be disgusting? Has he ever disowned his Fox News colleage Sean Hannity's equation of liberalism and terrorism in the subtitle of a recent book? Did he offer a squeak of opposition to a book titled "Party of Death," clearly referring to the Democrats? Did he dress down the more extreme anti-Clinton elements in the 1990s? Not that I recall. Maybe I have missed his criticisms of fellow "conservatives". If I have, I'll gladly post them. But for a man who has made a career appeasing and coopting extremists on the far right, he is in a pretty elaborate glass house with respect to Arianna. 01 Mar 2007 04:32 pm Classy ObamaYeah, he's covering his own ass as well, but this is refreshing in our current climate of rabid partisanship:
01 Mar 2007 04:18 pm Face Of The DayRalf Schumacher of Germany and Toyota watches from the pits during Formula One testing at the Bahrain International Circuit on February 28, 2007, in Sakhir, Bahrain (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images) 01 Mar 2007 03:46 pm The War From The InsideThe Weekly Standard decides to do its own regularly updated analysis of the Iraq war, to counter-act the accurate but sometimes misleading news reports of the various bombings, murders and kidnappings that are plaguing the country. My view is: the more we know the better. We need to know about the civil war; but we also need to know more about what Petraeus is trying, aganst all the odds, to accomplish. Sometimes you need a military expert to help. The author does not appear to me to be a shill for anyone. According to the Daily Standard,
Money quote:
It's downloadable as well. 01 Mar 2007 03:18 pm The Missing Padilla VideoWhere is the videotape of Jose Padilla's final interrogation? It's crucial evidence, and could be central to showing the American public in graphic terms what the Bush administration has done to a U.S. citizen. Sometimes you need to see what torture is, as in Abu Ghraib, before you grasp what it is that these thugs in the Bush administration have been up to. And yet ... the video has somehow just "disappeared." Money quote:
Given what we have discovered about the criminal conduct of the Bush administration with respect to detainees, the notion of "losing" such critical evidence isn't, to my mind, credible. We cannot prove this, of course. But put it all together and you have two alternatives: a) the Pentagon is so disorganized and incompetent it can lose a critical piece of evidence in its most high-profile case or b) we have a government run by war-criminals covering their tracks. Feel safer? 01 Mar 2007 02:58 pm "Money Quote"Bill Safire helps my mum understand some more. |















