Friday, April 11, 2008

11 Apr 2008 11:26 am

Philly's "Street Money"

Will Obama's refusal to hand it out hurt him in Pennsylvania?

11 Apr 2008 11:18 am

The View From Your Window

Scottsdale, Arizona, 8.15 am.

11 Apr 2008 11:11 am

Liberal Homophobia Watch

A classic from Spencer Ackerman. "Twinkletoes" is especially fifth grade.

11 Apr 2008 11:09 am

He Just Can't Leave It Alone

Bill Clinton disinters the Tuzla story. And gets it wrong.

11 Apr 2008 10:40 am

Rough Day At Work?

It could be worse.

11 Apr 2008 10:35 am

Eternity and Boy Bands

A reader writes:

I think of Eternity in terms of one day at a time. Would I rather not die today?  Yes, I think I would rather not.  Carry that into the future, and you've got Eternity.

There's no point in trying to comprehend what Eternity would be like, because we couldn't comprehend it even if we were living it. The human brain has only so many cells in which to store so many memories. Long before a thousand years pass by, and assuming we had the technology to do so, you'd have to perform a 'spring cleaning' on your brain and decide which memories to keep and which to discard so that you could have room to store new memories.

In effect, thanks to the memory storage limitation of the human brain, we are immune to Eternity. Therein, of course, lies good and evil.

If we had the technology to reverse the aging process, the big deal wouldn't be about the existential crisis of facing Eternity, it would be about the sociological crisis of one generation never making way for the next. Imagine New Kids on the Block plotting a comeback every decade for the next thousand years, and you'll see what I mean.

Shudder accomplished.

11 Apr 2008 09:59 am

Liberal Homophobia

Unthinking hostility to gay people is far more entrenched among Republicans than Democrats, alas. But prejudice and fear are human things - and liberals aren't immune. Some deploy homophobia when it suits them. Take Joe Wilson on the right-wing attacks against him:

"He's had three wives, he's a womanizer, he's done drugs. But then they realized they couldn’t use those because I've never actually denied them. I mean, I'm the first to admit that, unlike Ken Mehlman and David Dreier, I really like women."

Jamie Kirchick explores this territory here. The truth is: there are tolerant Republicans who nonetheless acquiesce in their party's institutional hostility to gay people, and intolerant Democrats who never get called on their shit.

11 Apr 2008 09:50 am

Six Months At A Time

How to become an empire without ever fully realizing it. (Hat tip: Matt.)

11 Apr 2008 09:34 am

Photoshop Ate My Head

A blog dedicated to photoshop mishaps. South Park already did this to Britney.

11 Apr 2008 09:28 am

Snubbing China

Ezra on all the presidential candidates entertaining the idea of an Olympic boycott:

...this Olympics idea is the worst of both worlds. It's a high profile snub that will piss off the Chinese without actually exerting any real pressure on them. Why bother?

Amen.

11 Apr 2008 08:56 am

McCain And Burke

From the newly released May issue, Jonathan Rauch's take on McCain and conservatism:

...some of what [McCain's] detractors view as inconsistencies display a distinctly Burkean logic. McCain opposes gay marriage but also voted against a federal constitutional amendment to ban it. Inconsistent? Not if you think that marriage is best handled by the states, which have handled it since Colonial times, or that there is nothing conservative about preemptively amending the Constitution to end-run the Supreme Court, a stratagem future liberals could have all kinds of fun with.

McCain voted against Bush’s big tax cuts, but now says he supports extending them rather than risking damage to the economy. Flip-flop?

Continue reading "McCain And Burke" »

11 Apr 2008 08:41 am

While Everyone Is Focused On China

American Footprints says Pakistan is going to hell.

11 Apr 2008 08:21 am

Fictional Authors

I share Scott Esposito's befuddlement over this concept:

According to Sara Nelson, the editor in chief of Publishers Weekly, "Since there seems to be a blurring of lines between fiction and reality on TV, in books, in politics even, it stands to reason that a fictional character could write a book that actually gets published. It strikes me as one of those ideas that’s so bad it’s good."

11 Apr 2008 08:19 am

China As Scapegoat

Nikolas Gvosdev argues convincingly that other nations are ducking responsibility for Sudan and Zimbabwe by blaming Beijing.

11 Apr 2008 07:23 am

Clinton As Gay Diva?

A reader writes:

I don't have anything witty to say about that passage you posted, other than it made me furious for about five minutes. This whole primary is turning into just bad theater with actors that aren't sure when they are supposed to leave the stage and an audience made up of people that bought matinee tickets and were somehow upgraded to the evening performance.

Another adds:

You've got it all wrong. She's, like, a total bitch. And that is why we love her.

And another:

Jeez, don't assume it's just gay men. She's also hugely popular among lesbians too. Spread some of that disdain around!

Thursday, April 10, 2008

10 Apr 2008 08:06 pm

The Toll

Like wars, plagues can still affect those caught up in them years after the first wave of crisis is over. The psychological toll, post-traumatic stress, the need for escape, the sudden loss of purpose, and sheer exhaustion can take even the strongest men and women by surprise. These are our walking wounded; and sometimes, as David France memorably shows here, they fall.

10 Apr 2008 07:55 pm

The English Raincoat

A brief history of the condom.

10 Apr 2008 07:36 pm

The Audacity Of Tolerance

Pace my approval of McCain's web ad, Chris Orr writes:

But for half or more of its running time, this ad looks as though it's an ad for Barack Obama (though, admittedly, still not a good one). Rather than coopt Obama's message of tolerance, this ad seems merely to endorse it. I suspect if it got wide airplay--and it won't--it would benefit Obama far more than McCain.

10 Apr 2008 07:13 pm

Yglesias Award Nominee

"I knew I should have withheld comment. Last month, I said something nice about John McCain’s tough-sounding stand against federal housing bailouts. Should have known better," - Michelle Malkin. Clinton got it right for once.

There are no small government conservatives running for either major party in this election. Which is why Bob Barr remains intriguing for libertarians.

10 Apr 2008 07:08 pm

"What Part Of No Don't You Understand?"

Petraeus says he will never hold political office. A relief.

10 Apr 2008 06:54 pm

Bush As Wilson?

Not so fast on the Wilsonian analogies, argues Erez Manela.

10 Apr 2008 06:44 pm

Why Iraq Remains A Tough Call

David Kurtz is impressed with the testimony about a sharp reduction in violence from John Burns and Dexter Filkins. The question, of course, is whether the conditions underlying this reduction can be sustained, or whether we have unwittingly laid the groundwork for even worse if we leave. Matt remains underwhelmed.

10 Apr 2008 06:36 pm

Obama And The Gays

An interview with the gay press from 2004. Almost no change in rhetoric or positions.

10 Apr 2008 06:11 pm

Beer Rising

Peter Suderman looks at how biofuel subsides are impacting beer prices, while Ronald Bailey points out global warming's effect on the same. The Homer Simpson vote is up for grabs.

10 Apr 2008 05:38 pm

The Dems' White Working Class Blues

Chait worries. Obama keeps gaining among educated whites, but can't seem to make much headway beyond.

10 Apr 2008 05:15 pm

Face Of The Day

An elephant wears paint on its face in preparation for the upcoming Thai New Year, on April 10, 2008 in Ayutthaya, Thailand. Thai's are getting ready to celebrate the Thai New Year, called Songkran, a three-day holiday which is celebrated with a water festival during the hottest time of the year. A mahout is an elephant jockey. By Paula Bronstein/Getty Images.

10 Apr 2008 04:47 pm

Clinton's Diva Appeal

One explanation for her resilient gay support:

Hillary is the diva, the fabulous woman who is fabulous just because she says so.  She's the woman who is abused (by her husband), ridiculed (by the press), hated (by Republican mouth-breathers), yet she's still standing.  She's like from some exploitation film where the heroine is beaten and barely raped before pulling a knife out of her sock and slicing the mean guy's balls off.  Her supporters have stood by her and fought her battles with her - and sometimes for her - since the 1990s.  The emotional connection runs too deep.  R-e-s-p-e-c-t, she shakes her finger.  Find out what it means to me.  And the crowd eats it up.

Nevermind that Hillary Clinton hasn't ever really ever done anything for the gay community.

If gay male voters back her on these grounds, they'll deserve every betrayal they'll get.

10 Apr 2008 04:44 pm

Eternity, Ctd

A reader writes:

Of course, if you envision eternity only as an endless quantity of time it becomes a horror.  But that is not what the Bible means. Frederick Buechner, a wise and provocative writer, paints a different picture in his book Wishful Thinking:

When you are with somebody you love, you have little if any sense of the passage of time, and you also have, in the fullest sense of the phrase, a good time.  When you are with God, you have something like the same experience.  The biblical term for the experience is Eternal Life. Another is Heaven.

Eternity is not endless time or the opposite of time. It is the essence of time.

My own stab at this question from The Conservative Soul:

The precious gift of religious life lies in part, in Oakeshott's words, "in the poetic quality, humble or magnificent, of the images, the rites, the observances, and the offerings (the wisp of wheat on the wayside calvary) in which it recalls to us that 'eternity is in love with the productions of time' and invites us to live 'so far as is possible' as an immortal."
I'm reminded again of T.S. Eliot's assertion that

"to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint."

These moments may come upon us when we least expect them. We may see flashes of eternity in the simple grin of a child in a game of hide and seek, in the approach of the tide on an autumn afternoon, in the eyes of a lover in sex, or in a grandmother's ritual - but we know them when we see them. The key is to be open to them, because they happen all the time, all around us. But we are too "busy" to notice.

10 Apr 2008 04:26 pm

Clinton On SCOTUS II

A reader writes:

I have to take issue with this reader's dissent, least of all that it portrays an historically inaccurate test for who should sit on the bench.  There is a growing consensus in the legal profession/academy on the alarming lack of professional diversity on the Supreme Court at this point in history (Jeffrey Toobin's "The Nine" addresses this point, among others) .  The Roberts Court, in fact, is the rare recent example of a bench composed entirely of circuit court judges.  This is not problematic, per se, but it's hardly an "ideal" (least of all because no ideal exists where the Court is concerned) scenario.  Earl Warren, Lewis Powell, and Sandra Day O'Connor hadn't served a day on the Federal bench (the former two were never even judges) before being nominated to the Court and yet nobody would deign to say, at the time of their nomination, that they had "no claim to the gifts of a Supreme Court Justice" (what these gifts are I'm not aware, as it's known to be a tremendously isolating and intellectually burdensome position in our political system).

Continue reading "Clinton On SCOTUS II" »

10 Apr 2008 04:01 pm

Trick Shots

Don't play H-O-R-S-E with this guy.

10 Apr 2008 03:31 pm

What Happens In Sex?

A Slate video. If you've never seen a 4-D ultrasound of heterosexual intercourse, here it is: "the worst sex anybody could have."

10 Apr 2008 03:05 pm

Powell On Wright

"Rev. Wright is also somebody who has made enormous contributions in his community and has turned a lot of lives around. And so, I have to put that in context with these very offensive comments that he made, which I reject out of hand ... I think that Sen. Obama handled the issue well ... he didn't look the other way. He didn't wait for the, for the, you know, for the storm to go over. He went on television, and I thought, gave a very, very thoughtful, direct speech. And he didn't abandon the minister who brought him closer to his faith. It was a good (speech). I admired him for giving it. And I agreed with much of what he said," - Colin Powell.

10 Apr 2008 02:28 pm

McCain's Faux Lead

That was my recent take. Chuck Todd maps McCain's path to victory and his challenges:

Currently polls show McCain either narrowly ahead or even with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It is impressive considering how poorly the GOP, and specifically the president, are viewed by the public.

But it is a faux lead. If the de facto Democratic nominee is clear within the next 4-6 weeks, that person will see a poll bounce. And according to GOP pollster Steve Lombardo, it could be one heck of a bounce, like post-convention. He anticipates the Democratic candidate will move up 10 points once the primary race is over.

James Joyner, reacting to Todd's analysis, underscores how tough Obama will be to beat:

Obama is going to be the nominee, barring some major development. His charisma, youth, and energy is going to be hard to run against, especially with a public tired of eight years of a Republican president, tired of a war with no end in sight, and worried about their ability to make ends meet. McCain’s only real advantage will also be his greatest liability: His decades of experience/he’s older than the hills.

10 Apr 2008 02:08 pm

Preachers Of Hate

Foreign Policy lists the worst, hate-mongering fundamentalist leaders from around the world. Nasrallah comes in first.

10 Apr 2008 02:02 pm

Funny Stuff

A list of the 50 greatest comedy sketches of all time. The Dead Parrot wins. The fish-slapping dance remains my favorite.

10 Apr 2008 01:33 pm

Wrong Track

Record levels of discontent in the latest Harris survey. This is a change election.

10 Apr 2008 01:31 pm

McCain's Unplugged Outreach

John Dickerson catalogues the risks and goals of McCain's outreach tour:

...the McCain tour is not aimed at winning a host of black votes. Nor is it primarily about the next obvious play: showing independents that he cares about minorities and the underprivileged, a traditional bank shot candidates take in order to make themselves appealing to moderate voters. The tour, which will include lots of freewheeling town halls, is more like performance art, an attempt to show off authenticity and the unfiltered McCain. "People can come in and do what they want," says McCain's top adviser, Mark Salter. "They can praise, chastise, and argue with him. This isn't just his style. It's a part of his message."

10 Apr 2008 01:30 pm

Sistani and Sadr

Some distancing.

10 Apr 2008 01:04 pm

Vent Of The Day

"After 30 seconds you are yelling at it "Get to the F-----g Point!" It never does. It's Barney the purple dinosaur's speech at the next Bloomberg Nonpartisanship Symposium. Repeat playing would be an excellent enhanced interrogation technique," - Mickey, elaborating further on McCain's ad, which I liked.

10 Apr 2008 12:59 pm

Ohhhh-Bama

The merchandizing of thongs.

10 Apr 2008 12:52 pm

Quote For The Day

"I suspect the central question in Iraq now is not whether things will get better but whether the drive for a long-term, neocolonialist presence will make the situation irretrievably worse," - Joe Klein, in a very canny column on the Petraeus hearings.

Obama, Joe noticed, asked the sharpest questions, the kind I'd want a commander-in-chief to ask his generals and ambassadors.

10 Apr 2008 12:46 pm

Malkin On Bilal Hussein

She did speak:

There is more to this story, believe me. Amnesty does not equal absolution. Stay tuned–and do not just rely on the conflict-of-interest-addled Associated Press for the news.

Nothing since.

10 Apr 2008 12:27 pm

The View From Your Window

Nis, Serbia, 3.51pm.

10 Apr 2008 12:26 pm

Live-Blogging Scalia With Kids

An Althouse special.

10 Apr 2008 12:20 pm

The Blogosphere's Loss

Scott Horton calls it quits. Blogging is too time-consuming. I'm grateful to Scott for various pioneering efforts, but most especially on the question of torture. He has corralled and led and investigated and goaded and advised and cajoled on the question. And much of his work has been vindicated. More will be. Blogging is indeed a punishing profession - and this recent bout of ill-health on my part hasn't been much fun. But it can make a difference. And Scott has.

10 Apr 2008 12:06 pm

Obama, Gays, Generations

Obama sits down with the Advocate, after some predictable tantrums from Clinton supporters in the gay press. Money quote:

I actually have been much more vocal on gay issues to general audiences than any other presidential candidate probably in history. What I probably haven’t done as much as the press would like is to put out as many specialized interviews. But that has more to do with our focus on general press than it does on … I promise you the African-American press says the same thing.

He's right. On every gay issue he's as good as, if not better than, Clinton. And he does not have her and her husband's long record of betrayal either. This also means a lot:

An area that I’m very interested in is making sure that federal benefits are available to same-sex couples who have a civil union. I think as more states sign civil union bills into law the federal government should be helping to usher in a time when there’s full equality in terms of what that means for federal benefits.

The Clinton forces have been successful in using the McClurkin affair to sow doubt and fear of Obama among gays. And Clinton follows the classic identity politics playbook of target-niching each interest group. Obama has tried to get beyond it, which is a good thing. Raising gay issues in front of black audiences is further than any candidate has ever gone in defending gay equality in history. (Thank Jeremiah Wright's influence). And if gay voters actually look at Obama's record, they will be reassured.

More pertinent: look at his age. The sooner this country's leadership shifts generations, the more equality gay and lesbian people will have.

10 Apr 2008 11:48 am

Lost

Roughly my reaction to the plot as well:

(Hat tip: Dan Savage)

10 Apr 2008 11:33 am

Rice And Cheney Approved Torture In Detail

ABC News has a remarkable new report out:

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.

What you see above is one of the techniques used at Abu Ghraib, one of the mildest forms of "enhanced interrogation". It was approved by these principals - all along the line to waterboarding. If you ever believed that these kinds of tactics were "improvised" by people at the lowest level of the chain of command and managed to "shock" the president and his senior aides, when they were revealed, then you need to read this story:

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

The Principals also approved interrogations that combined different methods, pushing the limits of international law and even the Justice Department's own legal approval in the 2002 memo, sources told ABC News.

At one meeting in the summer of 2003 -- attended by Vice President Cheney, among others -- Tenet made an elaborate presentation for approval to combine several different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time, according to a highly placed administration source.

Now absorb the fact that many of these techniques, including the one above, were explicitly and in detail, approved by the highest officers in the land. Including Condi Rice. She did so even after Abu Ghraib was known about and after Jack Goldsmith had withdrawn the OLC's "legal" sanction.

10 Apr 2008 10:55 am

Bilal Hussein Exonerated

Scott Horton, who worked as Hussein's counsel in 2006, explains the case. Michelle Malkin, who accused Bilal of being a jihadist-collaborator, remains quiet.

10 Apr 2008 10:54 am

An Atheist On Eternity

A reader writes:

As an atheist reader of yours, please think of eternity in the eyes of James Joyce, from "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." Although he's talking about hell, imagine an eternity in heaven:

"For ever! For all eternity! Not for a year or for an age but for ever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness; and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away, and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time the mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would scarcely have begun."

We are lucky to be alive, and life is precious because it's finite.