Saturday, April 12, 2008

12 Apr 2008 08:40 pm

"Clinging To Guns"

An interesting analysis of the voting in states with the highest gun-ownership rates. So far, Obama has beaten Clinton in almost every one.

12 Apr 2008 08:17 pm

Will Clinton Over-Reach?

The "bitter" spat is gold for Morris-Rove politics, which is why Clinton is exploiting it so baldly. It is exactly the kind of debate that has constructed American politics since Vietnam; it is exactly the kind of politics that Obama has been trying to transcend. Clinton will use anything at this point to destroy Obama's candidacy and message; but by adopting Rovism at its reddest, the Clintons do risk looking too obvious. Check out the comments in CNN's Politicker. At some point people will realize that the Clintons represent a continuation of the kind of politics that has made a serious engagement with this country's profound problems impossible. Or is acknowledging profound problems now unpatriotic?

Is this election about how to salvage the least worst option in the Iraq disaster? Is it about restoring some kind of fiscal sanity? Is it about doing all we can to unite Americans in a war against Islamic terrorism? Is it about restoring America's compliance with the Geneva Conventions? Or is it again about red-blue culture wars? We know what the professional political class is comfortable with. We know what Rove and Bush and Penn and Clinton believe. What we will find out soon is if Americans want more of the same. It's a free country - and people can vote. Goodbye to all that? Or hello again - for yet another cycle? A reader writes:

I am a rustbelt native. I live near Gary, Indiana and have never lived anywhere else. I’ll probably die here.

I read and, more importantly, listened to Barack Obama’s response to the Clinton cacophony after his remarks about blue collar/regular people/rustbelt voters. The difference between the two politicians is amazing. One is thoughtful and unafraid while defending a politically risky yet righteous position. The other is just noise.

 

Continue reading "Will Clinton Over-Reach?" »

12 Apr 2008 05:58 pm

Mental Health Break

Enjoy Tab and be a "mindsticker":

12 Apr 2008 05:55 pm

The Preamble

Ben Smith has more of Obama's remarks in San Francisco. Here's what preceded the passage jumped on by Clinton, McCain et al:

Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism.

It is indeed easier to play the red-blue resentment game. We'll see if it still works ...

12 Apr 2008 05:18 pm

Clinton Pounces

She goes in for the kill on Obama's "bitter" comments, as one would expect. The goal is to kill Obama's candidacy - for now and in the fall, if she can. Noam thinks she's playing into Republican hands. You think? Here's the Rove Clinton soundbite:

"Sen. Obama's remarks are elitist, and they are out of touch. The people of faith I know don't 'cling to' religion because they're bitter ... I also disagree with Sen. Obama's assertion that people in this country 'cling to guns' and have certain attitudes about immigration or trade simply out of frustration. People of all walks of life hunt — and they enjoy doing so because it's an important part of their life, not because they are bitter."

Whatever works - or might work. I still reserve judgment on how this eventually plays out. America is a little too angry and restless right now to be parsed once again into the red-blue divide, even if it helps the Clintons for a nano-second.

Just out of interest: how regularly does Clinton go to church, compared with Obama? An "elitist", of course, is someone reared by a single mother whose net worth is a fraction of the multi-millionaire former first lady. Al Giordano comments here. David Brody wonders what the big deal is here. Ambers on Obama's "regrets" here.

12 Apr 2008 05:01 pm

So Fallows Is Fallible

We now have Japanese waistline mandates. Here's Jim in a 1986 article on fitness in Japan:

Some Japanese friends tell me that things are changing. Kids are overeating now; adults are starting to worry about weight. I don't believe it, but I take heart from their concern. When Jane Fonda's Workout Book becomes a best seller in Japan, we'll know that our industries have a chance.

12 Apr 2008 04:59 pm

Israel's Nukes

Thomas Barnett last year:

Israel's 200 nuclear warheads provide all the genocidal capacity it needs to adequately defend itself. This strategic Goliath can hardly pass as David any more, meaning any American obligation to ensure survival was fulfilled long ago.

So why does Krauthammer want to up the ante?

12 Apr 2008 04:10 pm

The View From Your Window

Montevideo, Uruguay, 10.42 am.

12 Apr 2008 03:31 pm

Krauthammer vs Krauthammer, Ctd.

A reader notes:

Israel has had, for some time now, a nuclear deterrent in the form of its three (soon to be five) Dolphin Class submarines which can carry nuclear armed submarine launched cruise missiles.

Deployed in the northern reaches of the Indian Ocean, the submarines could easily reach any target in Iran. Since Iran has no deep-water navy, the submarines are in no danger from attack.

His source is this. More here. If accurate, it would render Krauthammer's argument about Israel's needing US nuclear protection from a first strike risk implausible.

12 Apr 2008 03:12 pm

The Decline of Grammar

A weekend Atlantic archive classic: Geoffrey Nunberg's 1983 essay on the changing nature of grammar and its police:

The point of traditional grammar was to demonstrate a way of thinking about grammatical problems that encouraged thoughtful attention to language, not to canonize a set of arbitrary rules and strictures. And in the absence of an academy, our authorities traditionally were chosen by the consensus of a public that recognized questions of grammar as worthy of constant consideration and revision. But the new attitudes toward grammar -- as evidenced by the ossification of the rules and the partisan tone of the discussion -- have put the whole matter on a different footing. Prescriptive grammar has passed out of the realm of criticism, where it sat for two hundred years, to become instead a branch of cultural heraldry.

12 Apr 2008 02:47 pm

Face Of The Day

A mourner cries during a funeral of Riyadh al-Nuri, a senior aide to the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the home town of al-Nuri in the Sadr City Shiite district on April 12, 2008 in Baghdad, Iraq. Al-Nuri was shot dead by unknown gunmen in Kufa near The holy Shiite city of Najaf on April 11, 2008 after Friday prayer. Seven people died when U.S. helicopters fired on homes and shops in Sadr City district early Saturday according to the Iraqi police and hospital officials. By Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty.

12 Apr 2008 02:12 pm

Obama, Israel And Hamas

Chait responds to Ezra's accusations that Obama has been intimidated by the Israel lobby because he won't negotiate with Hamas:

It's true that Obama has declared his willingness to negotiate with various dictators. But there are some key differences. First, Obama has not said he'd negotiate with terrorist groups -- indeed, the centerpiece of his foreign policy is destroying al Qaeda, not negotiating with it. I think there's a pretty clear principle operating here. When you merely have strong differences with an adversary, like the Soviet Union, you can negotiate. When your adversary is committed to your destruction, there's nothing to talk about.

Now, it's true that Hamas is not committed to the destruction of the United States. But it is committed to Israel's destruction. And Israel is our ally. Now, you might think that makes the principle of not talking to enemies would be weaker, but it actually makes it stronger. We can negotiate with our own enemies at our own risk. To negotiate with the enemy of an ally is to undercut your ally.

Matt weighs in:

I think it's perfectly reasonable for an American president to say that he wouldn't have any diplomatic talks with Hamas as long as that's Israel's position as well -- after all, what would they talk about? Hamas can't make concessions to the United States nor is there much of anything the United States would concede to Hamas. So in that sense, Barack Obama's refusal to expand his generous meetings policy to Hamas is both defensible policy and a good cheap talk way of saying something that "pro-Israel" folks like.

The more meaningful question facing an American administration would be what kind of counsel/pressure/whatever they give to the government of Israel regarding holding talks with Hamas.

12 Apr 2008 12:51 pm

Owning A "Somalia With Oil"

Blake Hounshell writes:

Surge or no surge, it’s extremely doubtful the U.S. occupation can ultimately produce a successful Iraq—a stable, unitary, democratizing state at peace with its neighbors. The surge is merely the most preliminary precursor to this intended outcome, and even Petraeus admits that it could all come undone overnight. For that matter, Iraq is just one part of a larger strategic picture, as former CENTCOM commander Adm. William J. Fallon tried to impress upon the Bush administration before he resigned. A myopic, irrational focus on Iraq has impaired the United States from making progress on the Arab-Israeli conflict, managing the rise of China, and everything in between. In short, the Iraq war is long past being worth the $120 billion a year being spent to wage it—an amount that exceeds Iraq’s entire annual economic output.

This is hardly the fault of Petraeus, a brilliant general tasked with a nearly impossible mission. Building a decent political order in Iraq has always been something of a fantasy. Even if Petraeus somehow succeeds in bringing violence down to a manageable level, it may be generations before Iraq becomes the “dramatic and inspiring example of freedom” in the Middle East that President Bush has repeatedly invoked. Instead, it will most likely evolve into a country plagued by instability, ethnosectarian violence, weak institutions, and unreliable oil production—if we’re lucky. Few Americans would support spending $12 billion a month in Iraq if they understood that they were buying, at best, another Nigeria, and at worst, Somalia with oil.

12 Apr 2008 11:23 am

Obama Responds

No backing down:

I don't think he's wrong either. And, in this strange, constantly shifting campaign, I'm not going to venture a guess as to its impact. Matt is just as suspicious of the instant consensus that this is a killer. What we're testing in this election is just how deeply American politics has changed in the wake of the Bush-Cheney disaster. Most seem to think it hasn't; and Obama's campaign is therefore a "fairy-tale." Well, we're finding out.

12 Apr 2008 11:22 am

"We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it."

While the blogosphere explodes dissecting how big a snob Obama is, the president of the United States cops to authorizing torture:

Bush also said in an interview with ABC News that he approved of the meetings, which were held as the CIA began to prepare for a secret interrogation program that included waterboarding, or simulated drowning, and other coercive techniques.

"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people" by learning what various detainees knew, Bush said in the interview at the presidential ranch here. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

The remarks underscore the extent to which the top officials were directly involved in setting the controversial interrogation policies.

Bush suggested in the interview that no one should be surprised that his senior advisers, including Vice President Cheney, would discuss details of the interrogation program. "I told the country we did that," Bush said. "And I also told them it was legal. We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it."

Notice that for this president, the law is an obstacle to be overcome with opinions he orders up from his underlings.

12 Apr 2008 10:19 am

Who Needs A Veep?

From Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s 1974 rant against the vice presidency:

It is a doomed office. No President and Vice President have trusted each other since Jackson and Van Buren. Mistrust is inherent in the relationship. The Vice President has only one serious thing to do: that is, to wait around for the President to die. This is hardly the basis for cordial and enduring friendships. Presidents see Vice Presidents as death's-heads at the feast, intolerable reminders of their own mortality. Vice Presidents, when they are men of ambition, suffer, consciously or unconsciously, the obverse emotion. Elbridge Gerry spoke with concern in the Constitutional Convention of the "close intimacy that must subsist between the President & vice-president." Gouverneur Morris commented acidly, "The vice president then will be the first heir apparent that ever loved his father."

12 Apr 2008 09:25 am

The Audacity Of Complexity

A reader writes:

You wrote:

"Sometimes I wonder if some white Republicans actually believe that black people in this country have no reason to feel any anger or alienation at times."

Some white Republicans? Try most. And probably a good chunk of white Democrats as well. Many people want to believe in the basic goodness of this country. If there were some problems in the past, well, now they’ve all been fixed, so any lingering anger or distrust on the part of black people must mean that they hate America. I think every white person in America must have heard some version of this line of thought from at least one of their relatives at some point. My family is quite liberal and I’ve heard it.

Obama is trying to get white people to be honest about this as well as to understand where black anger comes from and why criticism and dissent is not incompatible with being fully American. At the same time he is trying to get African-Americans to be honest about the fact that things are not the same as they were a generation ago and that one of the great things about this country is that change for the better is possible. This is one more area where Obama embraces authentic complexity and rejects simplistic half-truths.

12 Apr 2008 08:32 am

Malkin Awards All Around

This is one of the most intolerant exchanges I have ever seen:

12 Apr 2008 06:52 am

Crayola Art

A few of Pete Goldlust’s carved crayons. More work by the artist here.

(Hat tip: Sheila Ryan)

Friday, April 11, 2008

11 Apr 2008 08:52 pm

Face Of The Day

Iraqi men take part in Friday prayers in the holy city of Karbala on April 11, 2008. Gunmen shot dead a top aide to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Iraq's holy city of Najaf today, sparking anger among his followers as they battle government forces on two fronts. By Mohammed Sawaf/AFP/Getty.

11 Apr 2008 08:11 pm

At The Movies

Great moments in film one clip at a time.

11 Apr 2008 08:10 pm

AP Confirms ABC News

Torture latest:

Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned. The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to the AP to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.

They knew what they were doing. The law was "fixed" to back up what was already decided. The parallel to WMD intelligence - the Downing Street memo - springs to mind.

11 Apr 2008 07:54 pm

The Red-Blue Divide

These remarks by Obama in San Francisco are, to put it gently, not the most felicitously phrased:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

You can see the point he is trying to make - it's the Thomas Frank argument - and you can argue about its merits, back and forth. I don't think it's meant pejoratively about the blue collar workers Obama is trying to engage. But the context of these remarks is political gold for McCain and Clinton. Especially Clinton. You will hear these words on Fox News for a very, very long time.

11 Apr 2008 07:47 pm

Krauthammer vs Krauthammer, Ctd.

A reader challenged me to explain why this sentence in Charles Krauthammer's column didn't address the precise question I asked about whether Israel's own nuclear deterrence isn't enough:

Redundant, it will be said, because Israel could retaliate on its own. The problem is that Israel is a very small country with a small nuclear arsenal that could be destroyed in a first strike. During the Cold War, both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. created vast and invulnerable submarine fleets to ensure a retaliatory strike and, thus, deterrence. The invulnerability and unimaginably massive size of this American nuclear arsenal would make a U.S. deterrent far more potent and reliable than any Israeli facsimile — and thus far more likely to keep the peace.

My bad. I guess I just presume that the Israeli nuclear capacity - of which we know not a huge amount for sure - is capable of devastating Iran and constructed to ensure invulnerability in any first strike. I'm not sure how Charles knows otherwise, and if there's evidence that Israel cannot unilaterally have viable nuclear deterrence, I'd be interested in understanding that further. But how many nukes would it take to devastate Iran? I imagine that both sides would get to the MAD point pretty quickly. I also presume that if Iran passed the nuke bomb threshhold, the Israelis would be way ahead of the game in making sure their deterrence was valid, and as devastating to Iran as any exchange would be to Israel. If the Israelis need help in maintaining such deterrence, we should of course, be willing. But I see no reason why fusing America's deterrence policy with Israel's makes Israel any safer and some reason to fear it would play into the hands of the worst elements in Iran's leadership.

I also think that once you have conceded that there may be any element in the Tehran leadership that is rational and is capable of responding to rational deterrence theory, the entire premise of the World War IV case implodes. The evidence of revolutionary Iran is, moreover, that it has acted as rationally as one might predict in responding to real military threats. If deterrence worked against Mao and can work against Kim Jong-Il, then a nuclear Tehran may be containable.

11 Apr 2008 06:32 pm

Comedy Contest

YouTube is holding a sketch comedy contest. One of the finalists:

Here are the rest.

11 Apr 2008 06:16 pm

Diller's Black Web

Jeff Jarvis worries. My own view is what it has always been: never bet against Barry Diller. He's smarter than anyone else out there (with the exception of Rupert Murdoch).

11 Apr 2008 05:13 pm

RNC vs Obama

In North Carolina, the GOP is ignoring Clinton.

11 Apr 2008 04:52 pm

Leadership Is Hard Work

Above is a new proposal for a world leaders' retreat. Subtopia explains:

Floating amidst some yet unseen mirage aglaze over the pink Nevada floorscape is a proposed new retreat for the world’s top brass to quietly converge and unwind within the pleasant confines of this preeminent orb of privatopic escape. Reminiscent perhaps of a fallen Death Star, or a desert pearl settled in the valleys of some of America's most remote real estate, The Universitas Leadership Sanctuary is hailed by the Guardian as a globular sphere of monkish architecture, a miniaturized vacation planet that is “part monastery and part conference centre” intended to strip presidents, prime ministers and the most powerful people on Earth of their monumental stresses, and restore them to proper world governing condition.

Could we put it on Mars?

11 Apr 2008 04:39 pm

On Books And Brains

Raymond Tallis explains why neuroscience can't fully describe our experience of literature or the world:

Under normal circumstances, experiences are had by a person, not by a stand-alone brain. The brain of an experiencing person is not isolated, like the famous “brain in a vat” of Hilary Putnam’s thought experiment: it is in a body. Corresponding to this is the fact that when, for example, I see something I like, or someone I love, my brain, or some small part of it, is not the only part of me to light up. My heart may beat faster, or more thickly; a smile may appear on my face; and my step may be a little jauntier. The effects do not stop there. My body is located in a currently experienced environment; and, since I am human, that environment is situated in a world that is extended in all spatial, temporal, cultural directions. This world, too, may be transformed by my encounter with the loved one’s face, and I may think differently about it. For the extraordinary thing about human beings – and what captures what is human – is that they transcend their bodies; that human experience is not solitary sentience but has a public face; it belongs to a community of minds.

(Hat tip: Frank Wilson)

11 Apr 2008 04:19 pm

Silencing Corvino

A sad day for Catholic education, when a reasonable, extremely well-educated, respectful lecturer on morality and homosexuality is barred from even engaging in a debate on a Catholic campus. I've made forceful arguments and enjoyed really stimulating discussions over the years at Notre Dame, Boston College, Marquette, Fordham, and many other places of Catholic learning. When will the church realize that allowing the truth to emerge from reason is not a threat to God or the church? Why are we so afraid of the truth?

11 Apr 2008 03:51 pm

"Stalker Enthusiast"

Strange advertisements for binoculars in 70s/80s era style.

11 Apr 2008 03:46 pm

The Toll, Continued

A reader writes:

I read with great sadness the article you posted about Dr. Torres.  In the summer of 1986, I walked into a dingy office at the New York City health department to report for the first day of my summer internship following my freshman year at Cornell.  They had already given out all the best assignments and I got to pick from the last two that had been passed over by all the other students: work in the NYC morgue or go down to St. Vincent's hospital and work on an AIDS project.  Later that day I found myself in Dr. Torres' office.

Continue reading "The Toll, Continued" »

11 Apr 2008 03:40 pm

Gerson On PEPFAR

It's a very encouraging column, and it will always be on the good side of the ledger of the Bush administration: that they gave a damn about people with HIV when they didn't have to. PEPFAR is still up for renewal, and the repeal of the ban on all travel and immigration into the US for people with HIV is finally in the Senate version. No other civilized country still has this ban, enacted by Jesse Helms decades ago. And yet there is still some Republican resistance to lifting it. The president and his friends who have done so much to alleviate the stigma of HIV in America and the world need to tell their GOP allies that there is nothing to fear in removing this anachronism. It will simply treat HIV as it does every other similar disease and require all immigrants to prove that their illness will not become a public charge on government services or expenditure. And it will end an unwarranted stigma and allow the US to be treated once again as a leader - rather than an immigration outlier like Sudan and Saudi Arabia - in the way it treats all non-citizens with HIV.

11 Apr 2008 03:22 pm

Immaturity Has Benefits

Humans' long development phase may have more purpose than you think.

(Hat Tip: aldaily)

11 Apr 2008 02:50 pm

Art In Iraq

Has it ground to a halt? From an Iraqi sculptor on the NYT blog:

As for me, I have stopped doing art since the early days of the invasion. I lost the desire to do it: the scenes of death and horror we see every day filled my mind and made me stop thinking about beautiful things anymore. I know that many Iraqis feel the same way, because they are just like me, seeing death and killing around them every day.

So every time I pick up my pen and try to sketch, I find myself drawing scenes of death, and when I try to think of it as a way to let off steam a little, I start to feel pity for the person who is going to see it. Since art is a way of communicating, then I’m going to add more frightening thoughts. This is when I decide to stop.

Many of my fellow artists have fled the country, going to places where the might find a bit of hope and a space to breath clean air again in order to be again as creative as they once were.

But those murals on the massive concrete walls we've constructed to separate sects? Who's painting them?

11 Apr 2008 02:50 pm

Creationist Bubbles

Scientific American reviews Stein's Expelled:

It speaks to their anti-intellectualism and fundamental misunderstanding of science that for the makers of Expelled (and ID advocates more generally) the answer "we don't know yet" is a badge of shame. "We don't know yet" is what defines the fruitful frontier for science; it is what directs scientists' curiosity and motivates them to spend years on research. Research starts where knowledge and certainty drop off. It's one of the many ironies of Expelled that Ben Stein says he wants this movie to free people to ask questions about science, but the ID theories he defends would close off inquiry with nonanswers.

Like the decision to call evolution Darwinism, the omission of science from Expelled was a deliberate choice.

Continue reading "Creationist Bubbles" »

11 Apr 2008 02:14 pm

Mental Health Break

Seeing music:

(Hat tip: Notcot)

11 Apr 2008 01:45 pm

Lesbians And Clinton

A reader writes:

You can be such a shithead when you talk about lesbians, Andrew: That you "can understand" and that political dissent is not tolerated. I don't know whether you just have some monolithic view of us from 15 years ago that you can't let go of or what. Anyways, out of every girl I know NOBODY can stomach hillary, save one friend in Denver. And the demographic matches just about what we see other places. It's probably a class split, with less educated tilting to Hillary.  I'm 33. I expect the women 20 years older than me have more Hillary support, but I haven't seen it.

Continue reading "Lesbians And Clinton" »

11 Apr 2008 01:37 pm

Krauthammer vs Krauthammer

Today:

How to create deterrence? The way John Kennedy did during the Cuban missile crisis. President Bush's greatest contribution to nuclear peace would be to issue the following declaration, adopting Kennedy's language while changing the names of the miscreants:

"It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack upon Israel by Iran, or originating in Iran, as an attack by Iran on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran."

Two years ago:

Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?

Is Iran deterrable or not? And if it is, why is Israel's own nuclear deterrence not enough? Joe Klein weighs in here.

11 Apr 2008 01:18 pm

Not A Flip-Flop?

Michael Scherer studies McCain's position on torture. Marc summarizes McCain's stance. My own view and distinct recall of the passage of the Military Commissions Act is that McCain blinked - and is still blinking in the face of massive pressure from the torture-wing of the GOP, which has at its center the vice-president's office. Largely, I think McCain's stand has been admirable; but it would not be intellectually honest to describe it as steadfast. Maybe if he gets to be president, this nightmare will end. But his legislative actions have ensured legal immunity for the civilian war criminals and the possible continuation of torture under Cheney's and Bush's extra-legal rule.

11 Apr 2008 01:10 pm

"Nothing But Contempt"

Begala has at Penn. It is also, sadly, hard not to feel the same thing about Begala. I don't think I've ever heard him say in public something that wasn't purely designed to achieve a political end. He was trained by the Clintons well.

11 Apr 2008 01:07 pm

Bill's Bill

He's earned tens of millions - but still costs tax-payers almost twice as much as any other ex-president.

11 Apr 2008 12:55 pm

The Far Right and Obama

They are now using his staggeringly honest autobiography against him, using out-of-context quotes to make him seem like a racist. Yes, the repellent Coulter - still treated as a legitimate voice on the far right - has called Obama's book a dime-store "Mein Kampf." Sometimes I wonder if some white Republicans actually believe that black people in this country have no reason to feel any anger or alienation at times. I'm not talking about letting it consume you - just feeling it, dealing with it, managing it.

I guess I might feel the same way as these sheltered folk if I weren't gay. But anger is a totally legitimate thing to feel when you grow up and realize you will never be allowed to celebrate a marriage or build a family like your parents or siblings. It is totally legitimate when your emotional core is constantly ridiculed, demeaned and even treated as a sickness or a sin. It became a necessity when hundreds of thousands died while others looked on, or persecuted the sick with segregation or disdain, or blamed them for their disease. It is totally understandable when even now, after living in this country for 24 years, with a family and a home, I have to seek a waiver from the government every year to allow me to stay in this country because I have HIV, and only people married to a member of the opposite sex are treated like human beings if immigrants. The government denies you family, dignity and even a secure home - and you are never supposed to feel anger?

My "conservative" position in gay politics has never been that anger is wrong. It is that it cannot provide the full answer. It's a trap that can destroy you if you allow it to. We have to get beyond anger to explain, engage, persuade, reason, integrate ... in order to make anger less relevant to the next generation. With gays, each generation springs afresh from new heterosexual homes and families, and so healing can be relatively fast, even if it is never easy. But with African-Americans, these disadvantages and resentments and feelings are more easily passed from generation to generation, and skin color can act as a constant, unpassable feature of your life that can drive you crazy if you do not master it. Economics entrenches this. You have to be blind not to see the pathos of so many trapped in this. Conservatives should be able to see this pain, and help alleviate it in ways that make sense (not socialism or big government dependency), not dismiss it as a form of hatred.

The great spiritual gift of Obama is that he has mastered this - not by suppressing it or denying it. But by confronting it, looking at it, expressing it, and channeling it to better ends. That some on the far right would now use this process of honesty as a way to describe Obama as a racist is a sign of their cramped hearts, frightened souls and utter inability to empathize. One day, they will feel ashamed. Right now, they simply have to be overcome.

(Photo: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty.)

11 Apr 2008 12:32 pm

Relieving The Military's Strain?

Not-so-fast. Phillip Carter writes about actual combat tour length:

Most soldiers I know greeted yesterday's news about the reduction in combat-tour lengths with a great deal of cynicism. It's not that they don't appreciate the reduction -- they do, and their families most certainly do. It's just that even a 12-month tour is such a hardship, such a departure from the deployment models used before the Iraq war strained the Army to its breaking point.

I can only imagine the profane responses from soldiers in Iraq when they heard the news -- particularly the point that the shorter tours only apply to troops deploying to Iraq after Aug. 1, 2008.

11 Apr 2008 12:31 pm

McCain Sends Arnold

That's his surrogate at the Log Cabin Republican convention - something Bush never did to my knowledge. McCain has said he'll meet with LCR's leadership. If you want a sign that Rove's bigotry may not define the GOP in this election cycle, this is a small, slender reed of hope. McCain should support some kind of civil union for gay couples. He'd bring a lot of moderate Republicans with him if he dropped the total, blanket hostility to legal protection for gay relationships that the national GOP now upholds. More from the convention here.

11 Apr 2008 12:03 pm

Eight Factual Errors?

Tapper checks Bill's latest flim-flam on Bosnia. Man, has that old pol lost his touch.

11 Apr 2008 11:51 am

The Mood In Iraq

Michael Yon argues that it's more important than statistics or over-arching calcification of the "political" system. And he says it's changed dramatically since the change in US strategy:

As the outrages of Abu Ghraib faded in memory – and paled in comparison to al Qaeda's brutalities – and our soldiers under the Petraeus strategy got off their big bases and out of their tanks and deeper into the neighborhoods, American values began to win the war.

Iraqis came to respect American soldiers as warriors who would protect them from terror gangs. But Iraqis also discovered that these great warriors are even happier helping rebuild a clinic, school or a neighborhood. They learned that the American soldier is not only the most dangerous enemy in the world, but one of the best friends a neighborhood can have.

This is obviously a subjective and anecdotal inference, as Yon concedes. But it may be true - I cannot know this far away - and worth adding to the equation.

11 Apr 2008 11:42 am

Aging Talent

Concerts won't save music:

Concerts might be a short-term fix. As one national concert promoter says, “The road is where the money is.” But in the long run, the music business can’t depend on concert tours for a simple, biological reason: the huge tour profits that have been generated in the last few decades have come from performers who are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. As these artists get older, they’re unlikely to be replaced, because the industry isn’t investing in new talent development.

11 Apr 2008 11:40 am

"You are truly a piece of work, Hillary Clinton."

Brendan Loy tells the truth.

11 Apr 2008 11:34 am

Brown To Hire Penn?

Uh-oh. I guess the Tories will win next time, then, won't they?