Saturday, August 9, 2008

09 Aug 2008 09:24 pm

Faces Of The Day

Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall in their role as the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay, attend the Mey Highland Games at Queens Park on August 9, 2008 in Caithness, Scotland. HRH The Prince of Wales is the honoray chieftan of the Games carrying on the role of the late Queen Mother. By Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.

09 Aug 2008 08:11 pm

Will Smith vs John Wayne

Neal Gabler on the Obama-McCain race.

09 Aug 2008 07:08 pm

What Will The Collider Find?

Physicists call it the LHC for Large Hadron Collider. It's about to be turned on. One physics-blogger (yes, of course they exist) runs through the various chances of new discoveries.

09 Aug 2008 06:02 pm

Thought For The Day

From a great survey of how artists work. John Cage:

One day when I was studying with Schoenberg, he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said, “This end is more important than the other.” After twenty years I learned to write directly in ink.

Recently, when David Tudor returned from Europe, he brought me a German pencil of modern make. It can carry any size of lead. Pressure on a shaft at the end of the holder frees the lead so that it can be retracted or extended or removed and another put in its place. A sharpener comes with the pencil. The sharpener offers not one but several possibilities. That is, one may choose the kind of point he wishes.

There is no eraser.

09 Aug 2008 04:55 pm

You Think?

Steve Waldman notices something:

Saying that Republicans are taking Obama's comments out of context doesn't come close to capturing this. What Obama probably meant is pretty much the opposite of what they're implying he meant.

I realize that I'd lost the outrage at this kind of thing, and had come to expect it.

Here's why all this matters.

Continue reading "You Think?" »

09 Aug 2008 04:20 pm

Mental Health Break

A moose, her two kids, a garden and a sprinkler:

Continue reading "Mental Health Break" »

09 Aug 2008 04:17 pm

Silence On "The Dark Side"

The devastating narrative pieced together in Jane Mayer's must-read book, The Dark Side, has met with no response from the White House, credibly accused of war crimes. The conservative media have also shut out discussion of Mayer's book. Some things are simply indefensible in public, I guess, even for the usual suspects. Jane's take:

    There has been just plain radio silence. Though, I can say, I’ve actually heard from some of the sources. This book is not just based on talking to critics of the administration. It’s talking to lots of people on the inside: inside the White House, inside the CIA and the FBI and the military. And it’s been really gratifying. I’ve actually gotten some really wonderful phone calls from people who’ve said, “You know, you got it. Thank goodness someone told the story.” So that actually has really made me feel good.

Read the book. Your children will ask what you did to stop these people.

 

09 Aug 2008 02:23 pm

Obama's Olympics Ad

What a contrast with the GOP machine: it's an entirely positive ad on energy issues. No mention of "celebrity" or the class warfare the Republicans are now adept at. Maybe this doesn't work. Maybe he needs to run ads personally targeting and tarnishing McCain as McCain has against him. Or maybe this is the change we've been waiting for:

09 Aug 2008 12:34 pm

Barack Roll

Seriously, guys, this rocks:

09 Aug 2008 12:04 pm

Email Of The Day

A reader writes:

Thanks for linking to the Out article.

Like the author and many men he knows, I found myself addicted to Manhunt (and silverdaddies) a few years back, going home and logging on and . . . waiting.  Staring at the screen.  Waiting for someone to want me (which is at the core of it).  But after years of being single and after tiring of this useless addiction, I determined that a committed, long lasting (lifetime) relationship is what I wanted.  I made the effort, and I found it. 

Being coupled is not easy. 

Continue reading "Email Of The Day" »

09 Aug 2008 11:36 am

The View From Your Window

Copenhagen, Denmark, 8 am.

09 Aug 2008 11:00 am

What's A 5 Point National Lead In The Electoral College?

If history is any guide, a landslide.

09 Aug 2008 10:45 am

So Funny, Ross

Here's the latest t-shirt design from RedState:

Ross thinks it's "(ahem) a joke," which it is. A harmless joke, given the legions of evangelical Christians waiting for the Rapture and convinced that only the Republican party represents the will of God? I guess it's just as well that Ross thinks the religious right is entirely a function of the liberal media's imagination. Just as David Brooks once did. After he strikingly didn't.

09 Aug 2008 10:37 am

Orwell Blogs!

Well, not exactly, but the Orwell Prize is running his diary chronologically online from the years 1938 to 1941, starting today, 70 years to the day after his first entry. Here's the link.

09 Aug 2008 10:04 am

Diagnosing Van Gogh

His doctor's letters have been published in the latest British Journal of Psychiatry. Jonah Lehrer has a fascinating discussion of it here. Money quote from the doc:

Vincent was above all a miserable, wretched man,... he would talk to me about complementary colours. But I really could not understand why red should not be red, and green not green!... When I saw that he outlined my head entirely in green (he had only two main colours, red and green), that he painted my hair and my mustache - I really did not have red hair - in a blazing red on a biting green background, I was simply horrified. What should I do with this present?

The painting below the fold:

Continue reading "Diagnosing Van Gogh" »

09 Aug 2008 08:26 am

In Response To Ambinder's Question

A commenter at Kevin Drum responds:

A Jordanian chap named Abdullah
for favors is paying top dollah.
And who stands to gain?
A man named McCain.
So why won't the press raise a hollah?'

Friday, August 8, 2008

08 Aug 2008 11:03 pm

Elizabeth Confirms The Timeline

And why should she lie about this? Her statement:

Our family has been through a lot. Some caused by nature, some caused by human weakness, and some – most recently – caused by the desire for sensationalism and profit without any regard for the human consequences.  None of these has been easy.  But we have stood with one another through them all.  Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now, when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him.

John made a terrible mistake in 2006.

Continue reading "Elizabeth Confirms The Timeline" »

08 Aug 2008 08:00 pm

Face Of The Day

A young ethnic Uighur girl watches the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games on a big screen in the main square in Xinjiang's famed Silk Road city of Kashgar in China's far northwestern, mainly Muslim Xinjiang region on August 8, 2008. Chinese authorities announced stepped up controls on religious figures and potential 'trouble-makers' in the Muslim city of Kashgar to guard against attacks on the Beijing Olympics. By Peter Parks/AFP/Getty.

08 Aug 2008 07:07 pm

Economic Insecurity

Do women feel it the most?

08 Aug 2008 06:29 pm

The Stoned Olympics

They start in Athens where a joint is lit. It seems a good time to listen to Eddie Izzard - but the language is NSFW:

08 Aug 2008 04:52 pm

Quote For The Day

"I think this President has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen," - John Edwards, on Bill Clinton, 1999.

08 Aug 2008 04:49 pm

The Lies Of John Edwards

A reader reminds me of Shrum's take:

Kerry talked with several potential picks, including Gephardt and Edwards. He was comfortable after his conversations with Gephardt, but even queasier about Edwards after they met. Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn't pick Edwards unless he met with him again.

Continue reading "The Lies Of John Edwards" »

08 Aug 2008 04:33 pm

The Age Issue, Ctd.

A reader writes:

One of the readers who responded with some disgust at your "ageism" toward McCain suggested that Obama may be just as much of a risk because his mother died of cancer and the incidences of some cancers are dependent on genetics, whereas Momma McCain is alive and kicking, so maybe McCain will live to be 95.

1) I don't think we have to worry about Obama dying from ovarian or uterine cancer, which is what killed his mother. Meanwhile, John McCain has had a deadly form of cancer already.

Continue reading "The Age Issue, Ctd." »

08 Aug 2008 04:14 pm

The Timing

Yes, cheating on your wife is bad. Cheating on her when she's been diagnosed with incurable cancer is just caddish. So maybe that's why Edwards isn't conceding he is the father:

Elizabeth Edwards was diagnosed with incurable cancer in late March of 2007. Rielle Hunter's baby was born in late February of 2008. That means that if Edwards is the father, he was definitely still carrying on the affair with Hunter after he knew his wife's cancer was back.

So when do we get the Maury Povich paternity test? And when will we hear from Rielle? It seems to me that she was obviously the source for much of the Enquirer's reporting. Then there's this strange detail: Edwards is insisting he didn't love Rielle. That should keep her quiet, shouldn't it?

08 Aug 2008 04:07 pm

Sparing Elizabeth

If that was the goal of MSM reporters, it appears to have been misplaced. Edwards says he told his wife of the affair two years ago. Of course, putting her through the media spotlight is another matter. But still, the less you know ... There is this pleasing wrinkle:

According to people close to the Edwardses, Elizabeth Edwards has secured a primetime speaking role at the Democratic National Convention; John Edwards, as of this point, does not, and people close to him think he will beg off and not attend the convention so as not to distract Obama. Obama aides would not say whether either Edwards is on the schedule.

08 Aug 2008 04:03 pm

Not Mine

John Edwards denies that he's the father of Rielle Hunter's baby girl. But he's now been shown to be a bald-faced liar:

When the National Enquirer first reported the alleged Edwards-Hunter affair last October 11, Edwards, his campaign staff and Hunter vociferously denounced the report. "The story is false, it's completely untrue, it's ridiculous," Edwards told reporters then. He repeated his denials just two weeks ago.

Elizabeth was told in 2006, apparently. But the child was conceived last year. He better not be the father, or we have another set of lies.

08 Aug 2008 03:59 pm

Burma, Twenty Years On

A reflection on the first serious uprising against military rule - on an even more auspicious date than today: 8/8/88.

08 Aug 2008 03:56 pm

Internet Sex And The Gay Male Psyche

Michael Joseph Gross has a really intelligent essay in the new Out. It will earn him ire, but the profound impact that the web is having on gay life and gay culture is undeniable and well worth talking about. I have lived it myself, got a lot out of it, but agree with Michael that, in the end, the social isolation and human objectification it rewards can have some pretty grim consequences for one's self-esteem as a gay man. Read the whole thing. Money quote:

[P]erpetually settling for Mr. Right Now becomes a failure of hope. When you came out, you did it because you wanted something. Part of what you wanted was sex, but part of what you hoped for was the possibility of being loved as your true self. And when, as often happens while cruising online, we diminish the hopes that drew us out of the closet, we reduce sexy to a purely physical act.

When we do these things we lie to ourselves -- and worse, we tell the same lies that our enemies tell about us. The fundamentalist canard about loving the sinner but hating the sin draws a nonsensical distinction between person and act. Cruising online, by encouraging us to separate sex from the rest of our lives, does exactly the same thing. These are falsehoods about human nature and about the place of love in our lives, and they undermine the belief that sex can be anything more than a pastime.

Larry Kramer had a point, didn't he?

08 Aug 2008 03:12 pm

Another Scummy McCain Ad

The new one truly is painful. Note how a negative ad is constructed. There is a cover: in this case an argument about Obama's pledge to raise taxes. That argument is dishonest as Ambers explains:

It claims that Barack Obama voted to raise taxes on folks earning more than $42,000 a year. Technically, the claim stands up-- Obama voted for a budget resolution that  would have restored the 25% tax bracket to 28%, which, in theory, might mean more taxes paid by those earning as little as $42,000.  But Budget resolutions aren't bills; they're broad targets... so the McCain folks are having a little fun here.

A little fun? Obama isn't proposing to raise taxes on people earning $42,000 a year, as the ad insinuates. The ad is substantively sleazy. But the tax issue is not what this ad is about. The ad is designed to perpetuate the notion that Obama is a wealthy, pampered socialist elitist, while "we" are not. When you look at McCain's bio and Obama's, you begin to appreciate the chutzpah.

Continue reading "Another Scummy McCain Ad" »

08 Aug 2008 02:52 pm

In Praise Of Good Parenting

Let's hear it for Michael Phelps' mom.

08 Aug 2008 02:15 pm

Putting Them In Crates, Ctd.

A reader writes:

I remember some time in the 1960's Life magazine published a series about Auschwitz. It was a pull out section, I seem to remember it being printed on manila paper. I cried when I read about standup coffins in the camp.

I have tears, again.

Another writes:

Just when I think I can't get any more upset, something new comes along. I am truly ashamed of my country. When I toured Auschwitz a few years ago, my guide, whose uncles had died there, showed us similar cells that the Nazis used to torture inmates. I never thought the United States would lower itself to Nazi methods. If the curtrent administration is not tried for war crimes, no one should be.

And yet somehow I suspect that the neocons will be silent. There is no evidence, so far as I know, that anyone has actually died in any of these interrogation coffins (although the Bush-Cheney administration has presided over scores of deaths in interrogation, as the Pentagon itself has conceded). They were merely used for torturing prisoners and now, we're told, for restraining them. The proof of direct Bush-Cheney copying of actual Gestapo interrogation techniques - techniques the US once executed the perpetrators for - can be read here. Sometimes readers think I'm engaged in hyperbole. I wish I were.

08 Aug 2008 01:54 pm

Malkin Award Nominee

The latest in "conservative" leisure-wear, now advertizing on the Drudge Report:

And some wonder why some of us have come to see the conservative movement as, at its base, disgusting.

08 Aug 2008 01:33 pm

McCain And The Geezers

This is not an atypical email:

Andrew; I'll be 74 this coming December. Aside from a cane needed to walk, I'm in good shape. One of the sorry parts of aging is to suddenly realize that a friend is 'losing it' to age. Slowly comes this feeling that Charlie isn't doing too well. You intuitively know why he's not ok. You begin to worry about him, and wonder if you have the same symptoms. After all, you're not healthy enough to be the last one standing. But Charlie - god, the guy's on the down slope and the poor bastard doesn't even recognize it!

I was proud to be a McCain supporter in 2000, but you can switch 'John' for 'Charlie.' And, God help you, your time will also come, Andrew. So keep the faith.

08 Aug 2008 12:44 pm

War!

James Joyner has the best summary of the Russia-Georgia conflict.

08 Aug 2008 12:32 pm

The Hamdan Fiasco

You will get the gist from two very different posts in the blogosphere - Scott Horton's careful and enraged account of the case is here (he posted it before the sentencing), and Andy McCarthy's even angrier splutter is here. What does it tell you about the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies that they have managed to appall those who care about this country's reputation for justice and madden those who want to see all al Qaeda operatives, even very low-level functionaries like Hamdan, kept behind bars? I can't help thinking of Dick Cheney on television, asserting mastery in his gravelly unflappable voice, oozing competence and assurance, even as his pig-headed arrogance and ideological extremism have revealed his vice-presidency as a farrago of cockamamie, incompetent, know-nothing machoism. Just because you have the anal-retentive David Addington running your office doesn't mean you have anything under control.

Five and a half years (with time served), moreover, is not a crazy verdict when you examine the case. Even that judgment may well be overturned, as Scott explains. Hamdan is only still in jail at all because the government introduced new charges - inapplicable to a military commission - after the original, appropriate ones collapsed:

Continue reading "The Hamdan Fiasco" »

08 Aug 2008 12:24 pm

Cheney Will Speak In St Paul

On the same night as Bush.

08 Aug 2008 11:58 am

Question For The Day

Ambers:

If there were a group of questionable donations all with the name Abdullah
that were funneled through a guy in Jordan
who is a Jordanian national
who is under investigation for war profiteering
and it were Barack Obama instead of John McCain
would this be a bigger deal?

08 Aug 2008 11:39 am

The View From Your Window

Rome, Italy, 9.34 pm.

08 Aug 2008 11:01 am

Moore Award Nominee Update

A reader writes:

I think you may be giving Alec an excessively hard time. Condoleeza Rice is a love interest for his character on the show, so I think he means that the writers have a hard time making that recurring joke funny without crossing a line into graphic offensiveness (i.e., having his character make anatomical references to the Secretary of State). Arguably, a line is crossed by alluding to her as a love interest in the first place, but it’s hardly the first time an actual public figure has been invoked in a sitcom.

My bad. I don't watch the show and didn't know it was an inside-joke.

08 Aug 2008 10:59 am

Don't Mess With Josh Green

The Clinton campaign may already be regretting it. Stay tuned to the Atlantic for the full campaign memo doc-dump. Can't wait.

08 Aug 2008 10:47 am

Getting Your War On

Poulos is covering the Russia-Georgia smackdown.

08 Aug 2008 10:45 am

Terrorism As A Nuisance

That's what John Kerry said his policy was in 2004 for which he was mercilessly ridiculed and attacked by Bush and Cheney. "Senator Kerry talked of reducing terrorism to - quote - 'nuisance' - end quote - and compared it to prostitution and illegal gambling," President Bush said. "See, I couldn't disagree more. Our goal is not to reduce terror to some acceptable level of nuisance. Our goal is to defeat terror by staying on the offensive, destroying terrorists, and spreading freedom and liberty around the world." Here's how the Bush Pentagon just described their anti-terror policy in the just released National Defense Strategy:

"Victory will include discrediting extremist ideology, creating fissures between and among extremist groups and reducing them to the level of nuisance groups that can be tracked and handled by law enforcement capabilities."

Memo to Obama: keep Gates at Defense.

08 Aug 2008 10:30 am

Romney Tries To Help Joey Cheek

And good for him:

Cheek, now a Princeton University student, was planning to attend the games as a human rights activist and support the 73 members of Team Darfur who will be competing. Calling the decision to revoke Cheek's visa a "serious error," Romney said he is writing letters to the Chinese leadership and Chinese Olympic officials urging that the decision by revisited.

08 Aug 2008 10:24 am

Dissents Of The Day

A reader writes:

I felt like taking a bath after reading "The Age Issue".  Can Andrew really have sunk this low, I asked myself? You have no evidence that McCain is suffering any cognitive impairment.  You are smearing him not for his ideas or positions, but for his age.  Are you recommending an age limit for the president - and if so, what is it? You have no evidence of cognitive impairment - but are very happy to insinuate it. That's despicable.

Another adds:

Since Obama's mother died of cancer at age 52 (only a bit more than a half decade older than Barack Obama is right now), whereas McCain's mom is still vigorously alive today at age 96 — and since cancer is a malady where one's genetic heritage (inherited from one's parents) is an extremely important aspect of one's own susceptibility to the disease — why isn't Obama's health an important question in this campaign?

Another:

 

Ronald Reagan turned 70 three weeks after beginning his first term (January 1981); he was three weeks shy of 78 when he left office eight years later.

Continue reading "Dissents Of The Day" »

08 Aug 2008 10:17 am

The Democratic Platform And Fatherhood

A welcome shift to a clearer statement of the importance of intact families for children:

    Too many fathers are missing - missing from too many lives and too many homes. Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and are more likely to commit crime, drop out of school, abuse drugs and end up in prison. We need more fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to understand that what makes a man is not the ability to have a child-it's the courage to raise one. We will support fathers by providing transitional training to get jobs, removing tax penalties on married families, and expanding maternity and paternity leave. We will reward those who are responsibly supporting their children by giving them a tax credit, crack down on men who avoid child support payments, and we will ensure that payments go directly to families instead of bureaucracies.

08 Aug 2008 09:34 am

Putting Them In Crates

The latest from Gitmo: a display of the upright coffins that violent prisoners are now being kept in. The use of extremely restrictive boxes to torture prisoners is, of course, well documented. Abu Zubayda was put in a "tiny coffin". From "The Dark Side":

Zubayda's "hard time" began when he was locked into the "tiny coffin" for hours on end, which he described as excruciatingly painful. It was too small for him to stand or stretch out, so small he said he had to double up his limbs in a fetal position. Because of his recently healed injuries, he described this position as particularly agonizing, since it caused his wounds to repoen ... A source familiar with Zubayda's account described the tiny coffin box as "unbearable, most terrible." Article 21 of the Third Geneva Convention - which applies to all prisoners of war - specifically prohibits such forms of cruelty, which are classified as "close confinement."

Not so long ago, the Bush-Cheney thugs denied they were violating the Geneva Conventions. Now they're bragging about it. It is important to note that there have been no reliable procedures to determine the guilt or innocence of many sequestered at Guantanamo Bay and the Bush administration has conceded that many were innocent of anything. Remind me: if a cab driver can be convicted of war crimes, why can't the president who authorized torture? Meanwhile, Bush is in China referring to human rights abuses. The rest of the world laughs at him. They know what America now stands for.

(Photo: one of the larger windowless boxes in which prisoners are isolated. The Pentagon has not released pictures of those that are merely 3 feet by 3 feet by 6 feet.)

08 Aug 2008 09:22 am

Malkin Award Nominee

"So Obama will be jetting off to Geneva, Switzerland to hob nob with the expats and raise a bundle of cash with the help of George Clooney. I guess that's what citizens of the world do. The Obama-Clooney-Pelosi-Marie Antoinette Democrats intend to maintain their lifestyles even as ordinary voters forfeit theirs at the pump and via massive government regulation," - Hugh Hewitt. For the record, Obama isn't going to Switzerland.

08 Aug 2008 08:39 am

Obnoxious

Tyler Cowen unloads opaquely:

I read many blogs but there is only one -- of the two or three hundred I have sampled -- which I find truly obnoxious.  I find the content obnoxious and I find the style obnoxious and I find the blogger obnoxious.

But he won't say which it is. Doesn't stop the commenters from guessing, though.

08 Aug 2008 08:26 am

The Issues In Wisconsin

The economy and Iraq are Obama's strongest areas:

The two issues that voters felt personally were most important to them were the  economy and creating jobs (24%), and dealing with the war in Iraq (12%). On these issues Senator Obama had large leads. On the economy, Obama led Senator McCain by a 62% to 20% margin. On dealing with the war in Iraq his lead was 66% to 22%. Another issue that was frequently mentioned was  improving education, where Senator Obama’s lead was 73% to 10%.

08 Aug 2008 07:39 am

Moore Award Nominee

"The fact that we have a smart show with nothing that caustic or harsh is a miracle. To talk about what I want to do to Condoleezza Rice sexually without saying something really, really anatomical -- that takes a lot of doing," - Alec Baldwin. (Hat tip: Chris.)