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Saturday, July 12, 2008
A History Of Hooch
12 Jul 2008 07:19 pm
Sam Anderson reviews Iain Gately’s book Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol:
Alcoholic tastes, throughout history, are surprisingly diverse. The Greeks drank wine (mixed with water, spices, and honey) constantly, a tradition the Romans inherited and spread to the far corners of their empire. The barbarian tribes that eventually ruined Rome were binge beer drinkers. Huns drank fermented horse milk; Anglo-Saxons drank mead and ale. Aztecs liked fermented sap, but had a legal drinking age (52) higher than their average life expectancy—although every four years they’d hold a New Year’s festival called “Drunkenness of Children,” at which all citizens, including toddlers, were required to drink.
Continue reading "A History Of Hooch" »
The Risk Of Centrism
12 Jul 2008 06:23 pm
In this 1996 article, Thomas Edsall lamented Clinton's move to the center:
Clinton's presence in the White House has facilitated the work of the conservative revolutionaries in a way that a fully Republican-controlled government could not have. In his bargaining with the congressional leadership Clinton has moved much further to the right than Ronald Reagan would have considered doing. In the past year Clinton has attempted to structure his Administration as a rearguard holding action, protecting whatever possible of the liberal state. In practice, however, he has been a crucial, if unknowing, participant in an assault on that very state. For both the public and the press, the bipartisan nature of the debate in Washington gives the prospective outcome a legitimacy and a protective cover that would not be possible if a Republican were in the White House with Republican majorities in the House and the Senate.
That's why I liked his substantive legacy, of course. And why Bush's resurrection of massive, profligate government drove me and so many others up the wall.
Buying The Shark
12 Jul 2008 05:27 pm
Tyler Cowen reviews Don Thompson's The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art:
Many people recoil from the contemporary art market as the home of pretension and human foible, but as expensive pursuits go, the art market is a relatively beneficial one. The dead shark cost $12 million to buy but, of course, it didn't cost nearly that much to make. So the production process isn't eating up too many societal resources or causing too much damage to the environment. For the most part, it's money passing back and forth from one set of hands to another, like a game — and, yes, the game is fun for those who have the money to play it. Don't laugh, but we do in fact need some means of determining which of the rich people are the cool ones, and the art market surely serves that end.
The art market sells fame more than it sells objects. Focusing on the shark misses the point: conceptual art emphasized the idea over the object, and the art market responded by commodifying the idea. When the rich buy artwork, they may be buying their way into a select group of the "cool" rich but they are also asserting their understanding of contemporary art. That most people wouldn't buy a $12 million stuffed shark, even if they had the money, is part of the allure.
Meanwhile, Winkleman hears whispers in Chelsea about another art market crash.
Face Of The Day
12 Jul 2008 05:06 pm
Participants enjoy mud during the Boryeong Mud Festival at Daecheon Beach on July 12, 2008 in Boryeong City, South Korea. The annual mud festival, now in its 11th year, features mud wrestling, mud sliding and a mud king contest. By Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images.
Barcode Art
12 Jul 2008 04:06 pm
How Dangerous Is Biking?
12 Jul 2008 03:56 pm
Ezra joins the debate:
How dangerous is biking, really? It certainly feels dangerous. Over at Grist, Alan Durning explored this very question. His answer, basically, was that biking is pretty dangerous, but not biking is even more dangerous, and it would be simple to make biking safer. The breakdown is that bikers are at increased risk for accidents, but that risk is outweighed by their decreased risk for health problems (namely cardiovascular disease). Meanwhile, the dangers of biking have a cultural component. American drivers aren't very used to bikers. They're not on the lookout for them. When they do see them, they tend to be offended by their presence, and dumbfounded that they'd try and take up a lane and slow down the road's rightful users: Cars. In Europe, attitudes are different, and so too are outcomes.
Those Anarchistic Urban Cyclists
12 Jul 2008 03:35 pm
A reader writes:
Wilkinson seems to assume that the only people on the street are in cars or on bikes. The traffic rules he objects to are also there to protect pedestrians. I live in Manhattan and do most of my daily traveling on foot. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell few bikers obey the stop-signs, traffic lights and one-way signs. I have seen many more bike-pedestrian accidents than car-pedestrian ones. Consequently, I think that bikes are less, not more, compatible than with the greenest mode of transportation -- feet.
Another quips:
Continue reading "Those Anarchistic Urban Cyclists" »
The View From Your Window
12 Jul 2008 02:38 pm
Taos, New Mexico, 1.45 pm.
The Ultimate Tracking Shot
12 Jul 2008 02:13 pm
Many readers have written in about this film:
You should know about Alexander Sokurov's 2002 film "Russian Ark," a dazzling sprint through 400 years of Russian history, filmed in 33 halls and galleries of the Hermitage museum with a cast of 2,000. The entire 96 minutes is one long tracking shot, filmed with a Steadicam; there's not a cut nor an edit in its entire breathtaking length.
Another reader adds:
It covered acres of ground with a cast of hundreds, took months to prepare, and the museum gave the producers literally one chance and one day to shoot it. A 2-hour charge battery was invented to power the camera, one that could not be recharged. It was all or nothing.
Panglossianism Or Pessimism
12 Jul 2008 01:06 pm
Ross has a sane post on the economic politics of both parties:
When economic times are tough, Democratic politicians and pundits tend to go way overboard exaggerating how dire things are, while Republican politicians and pundits tend to go way overboard insisting that everything's fine and the public needs to stop whining, stop listening to the media, and start enjoying the good times. In 1979, the tendency to play to type produced Jimmy Carter's famous malaise speech, in which the American people were informed that the solution to their economic problems was to accept a wartime mentality in which the government would massively regulate the energy sector and everyone would have to make do with much, much less. In the 2000s, it's produced too many Republicans who think and talk like Phil Gramm, whether they're insisting that a sluggish economic recovery with weak wage growth for most middle-income Americans actually represents "the greatest story never told," or claiming that we can just "drill our way out" of the current energy crunch.
PZ Myers And The Danish Cartoons
12 Jul 2008 12:01 pm
A reader writes:
I do think that you come dangerously close to a double standard in defending the Danish cartoonists on the one had – while referring to PZ Myers as a catholic bigot on the other. However, (in your defense) your position is complicated further by the fact that you have strongly condemned exploiting a prisoner’s religious beliefs when questioning them, while consistently criticizing abuse of the Koran in particular. This- then – would actually seem consistent with your calling PZ Myers a catholic bigot.
Continue reading "PZ Myers And The Danish Cartoons" »
The Newsweek Poll
12 Jul 2008 11:21 am
A plummet for Obama. Other polls show stability: around a 5 - 6 point lead for Obama. Nate Silver explains the discrepancies here. Interesting nugget:
61 percent of Obama's support is 'hard' and 39 percent is 'soft'. McCain's numbers are the precise opposite -- 39 percent of his support is hard and 61 percent is soft.
The Human Mirror
12 Jul 2008 11:13 am
Improv fun with fifteen sets of identical twins on the subway:
A German Take On The Brandenburg Gate Kerfuffle
12 Jul 2008 11:10 am
From Titanic magazine:
Whiners
12 Jul 2008 11:04 am
Barnes agrees with Phil Gramm:
Amicitia
12 Jul 2008 10:30 am
Rob Horning looks at a study on friendship:
...the study suggests that attempts to rationalize friendships in advance may fail to capture what makes friendships work, which may in part be an ineffable spirit of coincidence, hanging over and enchanting everything the friends do together. And even more so, a feeling that the friendship is authentic precisely because there is no good reason for it and no calculation went into it.
Or as Montaigne put it, because it was him, because it was me. My own extended essay on friendship, with reflections on Aristotle, Emerson, Aelred of Rievaulx, Oakeshott, and Jesus, is the last third of "Love Undetectable."
More Reagan Than Carter: The Pragmatism Of Obama
12 Jul 2008 10:20 am
Eli Lake has an open-minded and interesting analysis of how an Obama administration will grapple with international terrorism. It will be no more purist than the presidential campaign. It will work with unsavory characters. And it will aim to kill those terrorists we cannot sway. Money quote:
Susan Rice is tipped to be a senior figure in an Obama administration. Earlier this month, I sent her a handful of questions about counterterrorism policy. Her answers were filled with all the hedges and qualifications that you would expect in the middle of a campaign. She told me that Obama would eschew a "one size fits all approach" to fighting terrorism. "In some cases that may mean strong support for proxies (as in Anbar). In other places it may mean direct U.S. action. In others, it may mean relying more on an allied government or the international community."
But there were several answers she provided that I found highly revealing. She described Obama's opinion of America's historic involvement with insurgency and counterinsurgency. She applauded the 1980s arming of the mujahedin resistance to the Soviets: "[S]upport for the Afghan resistance to Soviet aggression was the right decision in the 1980s." And she said that the Anbar Awakening was "responsible for much of the security progress we have seen in Iraq," though she insisted that Sunni militias must eventually be incorporated into state security forces. In light of some of the criticisms that have been lobbed in Obama's direction, those are pretty suggestive allusions.
Read the whole thing.
The Classy President
12 Jul 2008 10:06 am
Did Bush really do this?:
The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.” He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.
Well at least he didn't give them all unprompted neck massages.
Do Blogs Suck?
12 Jul 2008 09:34 am
David Appell seems to think so. Matt wallows in his own worthlessness here and here. I think Appell misunderstands the nature and appeal of blogging. It's a form of conversation, not a medium of absolute authority. He writes:
It takes weeks and months and years to understand situations, to write from anything like a position of expertise. You don't get it by quickly flying out to Aspen and back, or by reading an article from the Brookings Institute or from Harvard's 321 course on Environmental Philosophy. It takes blood, sweat, and tears, it takes going out and looking at rivers, pouring over government reports and spreadsheets, hiking to the tops of mountains for the big picture, calling 25 people a day -- precisely the thing the blogosphere does least of.
You bet. Which is why this blog contains not just my musings but links to many other deeply reported stories, essays, specialist blogs, videos, and emails from expert readers, etc. Moreover, different blogs can do different things - and this one has evolved over the years from a purely personal diary of sorts to more of a broadcast hourly magazine. The point is that I don't expect or hope that any reader relies on the Dish alone. The Dish is a portal as well as well as a blog - to all the information and ideas percolating out there. And my role has evolved from purely an opiner to a web DJ of sorts, re-mixing and finding and editing the thoughts and images and facts of others.
Who Needs Friends?
12 Jul 2008 08:49 am
Reality shows are serious business:
Friday, July 11, 2008
Dissent Of The Day
11 Jul 2008 08:21 pm
A reader writes:
In today's Moore Award post about PZ Myers you write:
"It is one thing to engage in free, if disrespectful, debate. It is another to repeatedly assault and ridicule and abuse something that is deeply sacred to a great many people."
On Feb. 11, 2006 you posted the following, in relation to the Danish Cartoonists ridiculing Mohammed and Islam:
"The point is this: everyone is supposed to observe the religious constraints of one particular faith, regardless of whether we share it. And if we don't observe Islamic etiquette ... we're lucky if we only get cursed and condemned. Get that?"
That sounds like a double standard to me. Are we supposed to be more deferential to Catholics than Muslims, when it comes to ridiculing what some of us see as silly and oppressive superstitions? I don't recall you referring to the Danish cartoonists as "bigots." The only difference I can see here, is that now it's YOUR personal religion that's being ridiculed. So of course that makes the offender a bigot.
Another reader adds:
Continue reading "Dissent Of The Day" »
Torture vs FISA
11 Jul 2008 07:16 pm
Some of you have wondered how my passionate opposition to torture can be reconciled with my tolerance of the new FISA regime. And the invasion of our correspondence and communications by the government is indeed a threat to liberty; and there is no denying that our liberties have been seriously eroded by the last few years in this respect. I just understand that some loss is defensible in the war we now fight, and wire-tapping, if monitored by the Congress, a FISA court, as well as the executive is a price we may have to pay to keep our intelligence accurate. Torture, on the other hand, is a far more invasive attack on liberty, a threat to reliable intelligence, a danger to our own troops, a violation of treaty obligations, and an act of human cruelty inimical to the core meaning of the West.
I made the case the best I could three years ago in TNR for why I think torture is in a separate category. The essay is here. Two key points:
Torture is the polar opposite of freedom. It is the banishment of all freedom from a human body and soul, insofar as that is possible. As human beings, we all inhabit bodies and have minds, souls, and reflexes that are designed in part to protect those bodies: to resist or flinch from pain, to protect the psyche from disintegration, and to maintain a sense of selfhood that is the basis for the concept of personal liberty. What torture does is use these involuntary, self-protective, self-defining resources of human beings against the integrity of the human being himself. It takes what is most involuntary in a person and uses it to break that person's will. It takes what is animal in us and deploys it against what makes us human.
And:
The very concept of Western liberty sprung in part from an understanding that, if the state has the power to reach that deep into a person's soul and can do that much damage to a human being's person, then the state has extinguished all oxygen necessary for freedom to survive.
Continue reading "Torture vs FISA" »
Only In Russia, Dept
11 Jul 2008 06:39 pm
The referee is drunk?
Grand Nixonian Party?
11 Jul 2008 06:22 pm
R&R try to net the upper middle class for the Republicans:
The challenge for Republicans is to find a set of wedge issues that will enable them to do the same thing with the upper middle class — issues that convince proto-Bobos in Northern Virginia or suburban New Jersey that they have more in common with Sam’s Club conservatism than with the silk-stocking liberalism that they’re increasingly embracing.
Wedge issues? I'm working on a few posts on the many merits of Ross' and Reihan's book, but I should say by far the least appealing aspect of it is the lip-curling contempt the book often shows toward the prosperous middle and upper middle classes. "Silk-stocking liberalism" and "proto-bobos" and "lifetyle liberalism" are phrases and attitudes that don't exactly help appeal to the very people the GOP has lost.
You'd think the successful, educated inhabitants of the newly prosperous cities might evince some kind of respect, especially since many are exhibiting the 1950s virtues R&R admire and want the Sam's Club demographic to embrace. But no: the book sometimes crackles with contempt for these people. And after the horrors of Rove, is it really necessary to use expressions like "wedge issues" to advance your case? Either the proposals are worthy on their merits, or they are not.
R&R talk of some of Nixon's virtues. But they also sometimes give in to Nixon's fatal flaw: his deep resentment of educated elites, contempt and loathing for yuppie liberals and a great deal of animus toward the cool kids in class. This can undermine otherwise worthwhile ideas. It alienates unnecessarily.
The Iranian Threat
11 Jul 2008 05:43 pm
Drudge is touting evidence of its phoniness. Could we be facing another pre-war Iraq situation? Could we risk a global war for smoke and mirrors?
The Social Security Flap
11 Jul 2008 05:31 pm
I hadn't paid a lot of attention to McCain's social security gaffe, mostly because McCain didn't call social security itself a disgrace, as some on the left are whining, but called the way we are funding it a disgrace. Here's what he said:
Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed.
Good for McCain. The only problem with this statement, as Ezra points out:
[John McCain] seems to believe that at some other point in history, retiree benefits were paid for through taxes contributed by former workers, or possibly the retirees themselves. But, as Dean Baker says, "present-day retirees have always been paid their benefits from the taxes paid by current workers. That has been true from Social Security's inception." And it would remain true, incidentally, in the partial privatization plans that McCain and other conservatives favor: Those plans would still see Social Security funded out of payroll taxes, with current workers subsidizing current retirees.
Coupled with Gramm's gaffe, this became a pretty rough economics week for McCain.
Face Of The Day
11 Jul 2008 05:06 pm
World famous polar bear Knut sticks out his tongue as he sits in his enclosure at the zoo in Berlin on July 11, 2008. By Michel Kappeler/AFP/Getty.
Baghdad PD
11 Jul 2008 04:52 pm
Phillip Carter questions Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik's optimism about Iraqi troop readiness:
...it's important to note the forces he's not talking about -- namely, the local Iraqi police, the Iraqi national police, and all of the Iraqi government institutions responsible for supporting the security forces. Those are still in dreadful condition, notwithstanding the steady improvement helped by the infusion of American advisers and support. Ideally, it is these forces, and not the Iraqi Army, who will patrol the streets of Iraq and keep its people secure. That Dubik devoted so much of his attention to the Iraqi Army is telling -- and a sign that we have a long way to go.[...]
When I came home from Iraq, I thought it would take at least five to ten more years of sustained advisory assistance to build the Iraqi police force. I still think that's right. The Iraqi Army is further ahead, largely because that's been the main effort for the American military. But if our only legacy in Iraq is the Iraqi Army, we will not leave a stable and secure Iraq in our wake -- let alone a democracy dedicated to the rule of law.
In Defense Of Max Mosley
11 Jul 2008 04:39 pm
Johann Hari offers some good sense:
Sadomasochists are as sane as the rest of us. The psychologist Stephenson Connoley found they were no more likely to be depressed or insane than you or me. It doesn’t appeal to me, but it seems to be a way some people leech out their anger or lack of control. Fine. Let them.
There is an easy solution. In Britain, you are currently allowed to consent to injury in four specific situations: sport, surgery, piercing, and circus performing. Why not add sadomasochistic sex?
Mental Health Break
11 Jul 2008 04:20 pm
With some help from computer graphics, via Second Life, a dive into a Van Gogh painting:
Bollocks
11 Jul 2008 03:54 pm
Bryan Appleyard responds to James Bowman's paleocon lament about Hollywood:
The movies are as full of heroes as they ever were, though it may be true to say that the apparent horizon of heroism has narrowed. It is a commonplace of contemporary heroes that they are aware of their limitations and do not, unless they are superheroes, expect to save the nation or the world. Indeed, it is a crucial aspect of their heroism that they fight on in spite of this. To wish, as Bowman does, that the movies would feed an (entirely fictional) audience appetite for supposedly traditional heroes is to miss the peculiar beauty of which both film and especially TV is now capable.
All About Blackwater?
11 Jul 2008 03:34 pm
Madhavi Bhasin blames Blackwater, and its immunity from Iraqi law, for Maliki's recent wants:
The demand of Prime Minister Maliki is less reflective of his confidence in the stability of Iraq and more a sign of the growing apprehensions over the privatization of the Iraqi reconstruction efforts.
Obama-Hagel In Iraq
11 Jul 2008 03:30 pm
How fuck-you to McCain-Lieberman is that?
Quote For The Day
11 Jul 2008 03:28 pm
"Who had appointed me the custodian of intellectual standards on the right? I wasn’t sitting in some think tank cogitating policy initiatives for the GOP. I was a commercial book editor, and I did what I had to do to remain competitive in a highly challenging environment. I couldn’t afford to be squeamish... I reserve the right to stoop and pander when it suits me," - Adam Bellow, defending himself for publishing the recent tomes of Dinesh "The Enemy At Home" D'Souza and Jonah "Liberal Fascism" Goldberg. My review of D'Souza is here. I made a good faith effort to read Jonah's book. Couldn't make it through.
Surveying The Accident
11 Jul 2008 03:23 pm
Another tracking shot classic:
The reader who sent it in writes:
As a long time political junkie and film major, your recent string of postings on the greatest tracking shots has been a joy for me. I just wanted to recommend to you the traffic jam tracking shot in Jean-Luc Godard's "Weekend" Godard's last film before he descended into ten years of marxist "film-essays." The most striking part of these long tracking shots is how the keep an integrated physical reality without compromising space for the sake of the cut. The cut is a kind of artifice by its very nature, and our breath can be taken away by these long shots so easily simply because of how magical our own physical reality seems when reflected back to us. It is a kind of religious feeling to be awed by a reflection of the intact physical world, with only the subjectivity of the moving camera.
Obama, Stealth Jew
11 Jul 2008 02:26 pm
According to PEW, one percent of Americans think Obama is Jewish. Oy.
Out Photoshopping The Iranians
11 Jul 2008 02:11 pm
The power of the internet unleashed: here and here.
The View From Your Window
11 Jul 2008 01:57 pm
Little Walsingham, Norfolk, England, 9 am.
Two-Wheel Wonders
11 Jul 2008 01:26 pm
Wilkinson doesn't "give a fig":
People complain about bikers breaking traffic laws. Well, I’m guilty, and I’m damn well going to keep doing it. A lot of traffic regulations make sense for cars, but just don’t for bikes. For example, I ride home almost every day the wrong way up a one way street, and nobody coming the other way gives a damn. Why should they? I honestly don’t give a fig about my carbon footprint (and anyway, since I’m not a breeder, I really should get carbon carte blanche). But I like biking because it’s faster than driving — because I blow through stop signs, go the wrong way on one-ways, etc. Were I suddenly to become fastidious about heeding traffic laws intended to regulate cars, one of the main advantages of biking over driving would evaporate. So I think people who do give figs about carbon really ought to encourage bikers to break traffic laws, or at least promote EXTRA traffic laws for drivers, in order to increase the relative benefit of biking. How about intersections where four-way purple means you’ve got to stop unless you’re on a bike? That would be pretty sweet.
I'm with Will. It reminds me of a day I spent a long time ago in Berlin. I rented a bike and merrily explored as much of the city as I could. At one point, I was riding down a side-street, and two police cars came screeching down the road toward me. I looked behind to see who they were chasing. Then they rammed on the brakes and burst out their cars and ran up to ... me. I was riding my bike the wrong way down a one-way street. Yes: Germany.
Reading The Legislation
11 Jul 2008 12:59 pm
Orin Kerr is puzzled by the media coverage of FISA:
As I see it, the new law takes the basic approach of the Protect America Act of 2007 and adds privacy protections and bolsters the scope of judicial review. On the whole, the new law strikes me as pretty good legislation: It nicely responds to the widely expressed fears last year about how the Protect America Act could be implemented. and it ensures that the FISA Court will play a major role in reviewing surveillance of individuals located outside the U.S. Indeed, it seems to me that the new rules create pretty much the regime that critics of the Protect America Act wanted back in 2007.
"Categorically" Torture
11 Jul 2008 12:28 pm
That's the Red Cross' analysis of what Bush and Cheney sanctioned in Gitmo, according to Jane Mayer's new book. I've read some summaries of the book's key points but haven't gotten a hold of the galleys yet. But suffice to say: it's as bad as we feared:
The book says Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he had been waterboarded at least 10 times in a single week and as many as three times in a day.
The book also reports that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, told the Red Cross that he had been kept naked for more than a month and claimed that he had been “kept alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room.”
The report says the prisoners considered the “most excruciating” of the methods being shackled to the ceiling and being forced to stand for as long as eight hours. Eleven of the 14 prisoners reported prolonged sleep deprivation, the book says, including “bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds 24 hours a day.”
This is what we know from the history of torture. Some of the least superficially awful techniques - such as the Gestapo-perfected "stress positions" and "hypothermia" - can actually be the worst in terms of suffering. There is no doubt at this point that the president of the United States is a war criminal. The only question is whether he will ever be brought to justice. I'll be blogging the book in detail as soon as I get my hands on it.
Yglesias Award Nominee
11 Jul 2008 12:03 pm
"That sound you’ve been hearing all day is me hitting my head in Boston with a baseball bat, trying to forget all the silly things the McCain campaign has done this week. First, McCain surrogate Carly Fiorina engaged in some freelance idiocy as she riffed on abortion. Next the candidate himself made some intemperate remarks about social security and killing Iranians. The former will almost surely come back in the form of an Obama advertisement in the fall, and may even surpass “100 years” as McCain’s biggest misstatement of 2008. Now, ranking McCain economic advisor Phil Gramm has told America to stop whining about the economy while pronouncing the country in the throes of a "mental recession." Brilliant," - Dean Barnett, Weekly Standard.
The Children of Presidents, Ctd.
11 Jul 2008 11:43 am
A reader writes:
I wanted to write in to remark on this recent reader comment about Obama and McCain and their families.
1) While McCain is not pushing that he has a son in the service, he certainly hasn't been putting the muzzle on his daughter, Meghan. She was in GQ, pictured sitting on a bed, beer in hand talking about the kind of men she likes to date, among other things.
2) Obama has small children.
Continue reading "The Children of Presidents, Ctd." »
Moore Award Nominee
11 Jul 2008 11:37 am
"Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I'll send you my home address," - PZ Myers.
It is one thing to engage in free, if disrespectful, debate. It is another to repeatedly assault and ridicule and abuse something that is deeply sacred to a great many people. Calling the Holy Eucharist a "goddamned cracker" isn't about free speech; it's really about some baseline civility. Myers' rant is the rant of an anti-Catholic bigot. And atheists and agnostics can be bigots too.
McCain's "God's Children" Ad
11 Jul 2008 11:30 am
Here's the pitch on immigration that seems to target Tom Tancredo. The hard right is offended:
This sounds now like a deliberate provocation to the Right, who in fairness have never — never — discounted the contributions of Hispanic citizens and legal residents, especially not their long history of service to this nation. The issue is illegal immigration and border security, not whether we know that Americans of Hispanic descent have risked and given their lives for us.
This is a monumentally stupid ad. It spends a full minute saying nothing about the issue it supposedly addresses, and it insults the intelligence of the people whom McCain is trying to woo. And I’m someone who has a little more sympathy for McCain’s efforts on immigration than most on the Right. Take two big steps backward, Senator McCain.
I loved it.
Someone Got It Right
11 Jul 2008 11:21 am
In September 2006, in some of the darkest hours in Iraq, Mario Loyola wrote a very prescient piece in NRO on Iraq. Since so many - including me - have gotten so much wrong (and understandably in the opaque chaos of post-Saddam Iraq), it's worth tipping the hat to someone who got it right and for the right reasons. The piece is reprinted here. Money quote:
As the months pass, the struggle for Iraqi democracy is rapidly becoming Iraq's fight. Nearly all military operations in Iraq today are either joint or Iraqi-led. Coalition casualties have evened out, while those of the Iraqi security forces have increased dramatically. These are grim but telling statistics. Iraq's government of national unity is not out of danger yet. But given its broad representation of Iraq's communities--and the absence of any real competition--it is getting harder to see how it can fail. And victory by default is victory all the same.
Another Tracking Shot Stunner
11 Jul 2008 11:11 am
This Children Of Men shot is fantastic:
The Latest From Hewitt's Cocoon
11 Jul 2008 10:33 am
He's decided to stick with his original plan of describing Obama as a commie alien. To buttress this idea, he writes:
Obama strongly supports same-sex marriage, and opposes the California amendment to restore the definition of marriage and rebuke the California Supreme Court's usurpation of the people's authority to define such a basic right, in a stroke putting himself on the far left edge of the crucial debates on marriage and the role of the judiciary.
Actually, of course, Obama has consistently (alas) opposed marriage equality. Obama supports civil unions that provide the same benefits as civil marriage, but not full equality within the same civil institution. More to the point, if you look at the most recent national Gallup poll on the subject, fully 30 percent support marriage equality and a further 27 percent favor civil unions. So, according to Hewitt, some 57 percent of Americans are on the "far left edge" of the debate. It's only the "far left edge" if you want to deny gay couples all legal rights and stigmatize them permanently in the constitution of their own country.
The Boot Drops Again
11 Jul 2008 09:59 am
Max Boot once again attacks my position on Iraq. He concedes:
I will end on a note of concurrence. “If the Iraqis ask us to leave, we have no business staying,” you write. I agree. My point was that the Iraqis aren’t asking us to leave because, unlike you and other anti-war voices in the United States, they realize that the consequences of a an overly hasty American pullout would be catastrophic.
But the Iraqis aren't asking for an "overly hasty" pullout. They are asking for assurances of an eventual withdrawal. There's more:
"perhaps you could provide some convincing evidence that the U.S. can invade a country, topple its regime, leave immediately – and expect a lasting, positive outcome."
Leave immediately? Does Max know what year it is? But maybe he could ask Bill Kristol the same question. Kristol and Kaplan argued for the war thus:
As other countries' forces arrive, and as Iraq rebuilds its economy and political system, that [75,000] force could probably be drawn down to several thousand soldiers after a year or two.
Several thousand after a year or two. We are now in year six with 150,000 still there. You'd think that people who had made such confident predictions might show a little humility at this point. But let me remind Boot that there was no mention before the war that we were there to secure oil supplies as he now argues.
Continue reading "The Boot Drops Again" »
Obama Is The New ...
11 Jul 2008 09:48 am
Nate Silver rounds up the endless analogies. We clearly have a pundit glut.
PEPFAR Next Week
11 Jul 2008 09:35 am
The threat to removing the HIV immigration ban comes from a point of order. Here's what can happen:
Opponents of the bill will likely raise a Budget Point of Order against the bill. This is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to kill the bill.
Continue reading "PEPFAR Next Week" »
Bush Targets Obama
11 Jul 2008 09:27 am
More details are emerging about Obama's Germany trip and the president's determination to meddle with it.:
Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt told the mass circulation tabloid Bild that "it would be nice if the German government would focus on strengthening its contacts to us rather than already beginning to look for our successors."
And this:
"It's said that the Chancellor's foreign policy advisor, Christoph Heusgen, was berated by a member of the Bush team over Obama's plans at the G-8 summit in Japan."
And it turns out that speeches at the Brandenburg Gate are pretty much a dime a dozen. It looks to me as if the Bushies are desperate to prevent Obama getting an ovation in Europe. Given the disdain and contempt of much of the European public for Bush, and the powerful advantage the Europe trip will give Obama, it's understandable. But no less tacky.
Obama In Europe
11 Jul 2008 09:22 am
My English gut tells me Ambers is right:
Obama's trip to Europe will be a huge event...maybe as big as his convention, maybe as big as a debate. Sheer curiosity will translate into enormous crowds, even as most of Obama's events will be small and pooled. The European press will climax, repeatedly.
I predict an extended media orgasm as well. Europeans are desperate to fall in love with America again. This young, black Kennedy figure will likely create iconic scenes - reminding the old of the America that once inspired them and the young of the capacity for change that America still contains. And it's simply great theater.
One thing we have learned about the Obama campaign that has been overlooked: they understand theater. In fact, no campaign has understood theater this way - and its powerful relationship to politics - since Deaver managed Reagan.
(Photo: Obama in Virginia this week by Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)
Christianism Watch
11 Jul 2008 08:46 am
Another informative episode on "Christian Worldview Network":
Part II: In today's program Brannon exposes that lie that Hitler killed homosexuals. Even a homosexual writer admits that is false. Some of Hitler's inner circle were homosexual and bi-sexual. The Brown Shirts started as a homosexual and bisexual organization.
How To Report On G8?
11 Jul 2008 08:14 am
Gideon Rachman takes Alan Beattie's advice:
An ineffectual international organisation yesterday issued a stark warning about a situation it has absolutely no power to change, the latest in a series of self-serving interventions by toothless intergovernmental bodies.
But the photo-ops make everyone feel important, no?
Obama At The Gate
11 Jul 2008 07:39 am
A reader in Berlin writes:
Everyone just assumes that thousands will come out for such a speech. And they’d be right. Berliners has already hosted dozens of Obama events, dating back to February. The Democrats Abroad were almost co-opted by groups organizing here before the Dems as a party could coalesce around a candidate. On Monday night there is another one – held perhaps ironically at the bar and club "White Trash Fast Food“.
It’s worth noting – in all of the dispute – that Kennedy’s most famous Berlin speech – the "ich bin kein Berliner" speech – was not held in front of the Brandenburg Gate, or the Berlin Wall, but instead in a (today relatively inconspicuous) market square at the Schöneberg city hall.
With the opening of the embassy last week here right next to the Brandenburg Gate, the Pariser Platz square has suddenly become the focal point for US-German relations. There is no better place for a speech by a person whose candidacy holds so much promise for the restoration of cooperation, mutual trust and amity between Europe and the US.
Larison sees the Brandenburg option as more hubris. I have a feeling it won't happen. Why not Schoneberg? And take Caroline.
Drill, Drill, Drill
11 Jul 2008 07:22 am
Kudlow revises his cap-and-trade reporting:
...as far as abandoning, that’s not what I said. I wrote that a McCain presidency might resurrect cap-and-trade, although it will be a much different format. But the key point is that several campaign advisors told me that the issue now is jobs and the economy, and of course $4 gas at the pump and $140 oil in the world market ... Hence, the senator is being smart to move away from cap-and-trade and instead support drill, drill, drill for more energy supplies to reduce gas prices, as well as tax-cut plans to spur economic growth and jobs.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Busted
10 Jul 2008 09:23 pm
Loved this detail from the LA Times:
On Tuesday, a staff member in the digital department e-mailed Jackson's comments to a producer for "The O'Reilly Factor," who was vacationing in France.
Why does an O'Reilly producer hate America?
Face Of The Day
10 Jul 2008 09:05 pm
British Paratrooper from the 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment, Lcp Michael Taylor, 25-years-old from Liverpool sits in his mosquito net tent on July 9, 2008 in Gibraltar FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Upper Gereshk Valley,Helmand Province, Afghanistan. By Marco Di Lauro/Getty.
Hollywood's Lost Heroes
10 Jul 2008 08:41 pm
A paleocon laments:
"The Wild West has been resurrected not as a story of taming the wilderness, both external and internal, on behalf of decency and civilization, but as a convenient synecdoche for that dark, amoral, and timelessly violent world that all art worthy of the name today must presuppose. Where there is no hope of a better world, there can be little to distinguish heroes from villains."
I guess WALL-E doesn't count.
His Face Only Goes So Far
10 Jul 2008 08:29 pm
Obama isn't going to please everyone:
Most Arabs only know Barack Obama's name and skin color, so, unsurprisingly, they are fairly enthusiastic about his candidacy. But what are Thomas Friedman's Arab equivalents, the opinion leaders of the Middle East, saying about Obama? A famously diverse group--ranging from idealistic reformers to moralizing Islamists--the Arab world's pundits are almost unanimous in their skepticism of him, offering a sharp corrective to the narrative of a world united in its ardor for Obama. They have been arguing that he is not so unconventional an American politician when it comes to the Middle East, and that the people of the region have reason to be worried about an Obama presidency.
(Hat tip: Michael Totten)
Why Jackson Said It
10 Jul 2008 08:12 pm
Marc points to this piece by Eric Easter:
The fear among critics is that the real audience that day was not the Black people in the pews at all, but the white people in middle America looking for a strong signal that Obama was rejecting the politics of racial division and animosity. By choosing that moment to castigate Black fathers, some worry that Obama gave public voice to what white people whisper about Blacks in their living rooms and cemented his image as a post-racial savior at the expense of Black men. Whether that was Obama’ s intention or whether he just figured it was Father’s Day so why not do the absent Father stump speech again is impossible to know, but the event smacked of calculated political expediency that troubled more than a few people.
Continue reading "Why Jackson Said It" »
Ads And Reality
10 Jul 2008 07:14 pm
Fun in food-packaging from Germany. The processed ones are actually pretty accurate, but fast food? Oy.
The War Against Robots
10 Jul 2008 06:37 pm
If we lose in air hockey, it's truly over for humanity.
McCain's Message
10 Jul 2008 06:30 pm
Joyner writes:
I’d say McCain’s bumper sticker message is “Elect a grown-up.” And I don’t think wanting to drill for more oil while simultaneously trying to end our need for it in the longer term is at all problematic; it’s essentially a right-of-center answer to Bill Clinton’s “third way.”'
The Children Of Presidents
10 Jul 2008 06:15 pm
Drum thinks I am overreacting:
Now, sure: of course young kids should be generally off limits from the campaign press. But does that mean they should literally never be seen on TV? What's the harm? Families are a staple of American politics, people are legitimately curious about what Obama's family is like, and a few minutes with Maria Menounos is the safest, least toxic interview imaginable. It's the 21st century equivalent of one of those carefully staged Life photo spreads from the 50s. Shouldn't we all calm down about this?
A reader doesn't:
One thing you don't hear from McCain is the fact that he has a 19-20 year old son who has done an Iraq tour as a Marine, and another son at Annapolis who is almost certain to be deployed to the region. That's a bit of class that Obama would do well to emulate.
Non-Spoilers
10 Jul 2008 05:44 pm
Mark Blumenthal evaluates support for Nader and Barr:
I believe that many voters are telling pollsters they support Barr or Nader now, especially when offered the four-way choice, because they are not entirely sold on Obama or McCain and would rather grab for the "independent" as a way to give the interviewer a satisfactory answer...
The Handwriting Of Typographers
10 Jul 2008 05:28 pm
If you love fonts as much as I do, you'll be intrigued by the actual way the font-creators write.
The Brandenburg Gate Speech
10 Jul 2008 05:12 pm
Did Bush intervene to get Angela Merkel to oppose Obama's campaign event? That's what I'm told the German evening news is reporting.
"Un-American" Obama
10 Jul 2008 05:08 pm
A reader writes:
In response to all this talk about Obama being a commie or Marxist or un-American, I have this to say. I think for all black people in general, full disclosure I am AA, being labeled unAmerican is common. It seems as if we don't wear flag pins daily or color our houses red, blue, and white we are less American than white Americans. I sometimes feel that AA have to resort to the "we built America" argument.
Sure, I may not have a American flag bathing suit- but I love this country because it has given me and my family a future. So, when people question Obama's patriotism I get what they are trying to say. He cannot love this country because he is black. I think the same holds for all non-white Americans.