Obsidian Wings

Good is good policy.

From the Paratrooper of Love:

Iraqi media, almost unbelievably, have in recent days begun to editorialized astonishment at how the United States has responded [to the prison scandle]. No covers ups. No denials. The President of the United States, the world's most powerful man, formally apologized to the people of Iraq. The U.S. Congress grilled a senior member of the Administration and all the while the U.S. media was allowed to report on the unfolding story with full freedom and access. "Why does Arab media fail at self criticism and why can't Arab human rights NGOs pressure Arab governments the way their counterparts do in America?", asked the host of satellite news channel al-Arabiy's (one of the harshest critics of the United States) "Spotlight" news program. The follow up commentary was even more astounding, given the source. "The Americans exposed their own scandal, queried the officials and got the American Government to accept responsibility for the actions of its soldiers," stated the host before asking her guests why this sort of open and responsive action isn't taken in the Arab world.

One of the largest newspapers in the Pan-Arab world raised the stakes even higher yesterday with this editorial comment: "Bush has apologized and claimed that democratic regimes make mistakes, but that the guilty will be punished. What happened at Abu Ghuraib is not surprising as there are many stories of horror inside Arab jails. The abuses that the Arab governments condemn at Abu Ghuraib are nothing compared to what happens in these governments' jails. Will the Arab regimes go on TV and apologize to their people in the same way President Bush did?"

My colleague who heads our Arab media unit here in Baghdad called these statements nothing short of revolutionary for the Middle East media. And while they may not seem that profound on the surface, they are threads of a far greater, and still unfolding, story. Yes, the horrific actions of a few have tainted the good work of the many. But they have unwittingly done something else. The events of the past several days have given democracy a global stage within which to prove its worth.

Like the Cold War, this is a battle of ideals. We win by staying true to our own.

Ohio, Ohio, Ohio

Howard Fineman calls it the "Mother of All Battleground States" and there's a growing concern that it's not looking so good for the incumbent there:

It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that if [Timken,] follows through on the plan [to close its nearly century-old manufacturing plants in its hometown of Canton]— which will cut 1,300 high-paying jobs and produce a nasty spin-off effect — it could cost George Bush the presidency.

Yes, but as we've hashed out here time and time again, the President cannot honestly be held accountable for each and every job that's lost in a changing economy. Only problem is, this President can't seem to stop himself from promising such things.

From The Center for American Progress (Via Kos)

On 4/23/03 President Bush visited the Timken Company in Canton, OH, and touted the company as a demonstration of the success of his economic policies. Bush said "the future of employment is bright for the families that work here, that work to put food on the table for their children."

That's what happens when you're only in it for the sound bite. How difficult would it have been for the Bush team to place a phone call and ask the Timken folks if, indeed, the future of employment for Canton families was bright.

"Rove here, look, the President is going to say 'blah, blah, blah.' Can you think of any reason he shouldn't? This is important. Think hard."

A lot can happen in one year, I know, but surely you don't just wake up one morning and decide to move a plant that's been in the same location for more than 100 years. As Fineman notes:

No wonder Gov. Bob Taft, a Republican who accompanied the president to Canton, is all over the case, urging the company and the union to cut a deal to save the plants. From his point of view, it’s hard to imagine a worse story. Is the union making unreasonable demands so that the plants will have to close, in the Machiavellian hope that the news will sink Bush in Ohio? Could be, though I doubt it. Does the governor want Timken to cut a deal at any cost? Probably. Is Karl Rove following the details? I’m sure.

Sure, Rove's interested now. But before this announcment, Timken was just a backdrop for another stump speech, and the carefully written words meant to convey that the president was truly concerned for the folks listening to him were as cookie cutter and unconnected as those prepared for his next appearance. If those fools in Canton actually believed him, well, they just haven't been paying attention.

Cold War Lessons

Kevin Drum writes an interesting post about Cold War lessons as he (and apparently Wes Clark) think that they ought to be applied to the War on Terror. He draws the wrong conclusions, but he is dealing with the right issues:

Clark's point is a simple one: Neither Reagan nor any of the seven Cold War presidents before him ever attacked either the Soviet Union or one of its satellites directly. This wasn't because of insufficient dedication to anticommunism, but because it wouldn't have worked. In the end, they knew that democracy couldn't come at the point of a gun; it had to come from within, from the citizens of the countries themselves.

Is this right? To argue otherwise is to suggest that our Cold War strategy was also wrong. Perhaps we should have rolled our tanks across the Iron Curtain after World War II, when the Soviet Union was exhausted and weary. Or attacked China instead of accepting a truce in the Korean War. Or sent NATO troops into Hungary in 1956.

Of course not. Even if we had "won," we wouldn't have won. In the end, the patient strategy of military containment and cultural engagement was the right call, and it's the right call for the war on terror as well. Too bad George Bush doesn't seem to get this.

It is important to look at the lessons of the Cold War, but this is wrong on a number of levels.

First, we did not immediately engage the Soviet Union because we were just finishing World War II. The nation was neither willing nor able to prosecute a serious war at that point. The Soviet Union wasn't the only country that was weary. Later we had the problem of Russian nuclear weapons to contend with. We did not avoid a confrontation because, "In the end, they knew that democracy couldn't come at the point of a gun; it had to come from within, from the citizens of the countries themselves." First it is a ridiculous assertion. I offer Japan, Germany, and South Korea as only the most obvious counterexamples. All three had bumpy rides on the way to democracy, and the first two literally had it shoved down their throats by the U.S. South Korea was just strongly encouraged down that direction. The path it could have taken can be clearly seen by North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia. We didn't avoid a direct confrontation because successful democratic systems cannot be forced on a country. We avoided it because we were not super-thrilled with the idea of nuclear annihilation.

We settled on containment because it was the least evil choice, not because it was a great idea. We settled on it because we had to choose between nuclear annihilation, containment, and the spread of the Communist empires through conquest and genocide. When those are your only three choices, you go with containment.

Since Kevin misidentifies the centrality of nuclear weapons to the problem of containment, he gets the lesson of detterence wrong: "In the end, the patient strategy of military containment and cultural engagement was the right call, and it's the right call for the war on terror as well." The key here is 'patient'. In the Cold War you could afford to be patient because the Soviet Union knew that a Soviet attack in the United States would lead to a nuclear exchange. The terrorists know no such threat is viable. Perhaps if we said that any further attacks on America would trigger a nuclear attack on Mecca and Medina we could set up a similar situation. But that would really turn the war into a war against Muslims instead of a war against Islamists, so it isn't available as an option.

I think there is another thing wrong with his containment lesson, but it is sufficiently controversial that I had better save it for another post, or it will drown out my other points.

Wheel of morality, turn turn turn...

Amygdala (run by Constant Reader Gary Farber, who I believe is still looking for work, if you've got any) linked without real comment to this NYT article about the newer, hipper Christianity (Christian Cool and the New Generation Gap). As I recall, this sort of thing comes in waves, about every 20 years or so; the last time was the televangelists in the 1980s. Before that we had the street Christianity movement (or whatever they called it) of the 1960s; I don't remember anything in particular about the 1940's - big war going on anyway, which would skew stuff - but I dimly recall from my history classes that there were regular instances of tent revivals before that point.

Of course, this doesn't mean that there has to be anything phony or insignificant about the current manifestation of popular religious interest: indeed, I consider this to be a hopeful sign for developing various forms of tolerance*. I just think that it's funny when things like this are treated as new.

Moe

*My hopes for the Right? A full moral and ethical reconciliation between evangelical Christianity and homosexuals. My hopes for the Left? A full political and social reconciliation between evangelical Christianity and the Democratic Party. We could use both right now, frankly.

And now it's apparently 1988.

Or not: James Pinkerton (the author of this article) is presenting arguments both for and against the notion that this election will repeat 1988. On the whole, I'm going to say 'Not'; you can link up any two events or concepts if you try hard enough, and human eyes are often quite good at seeing patterns even when there actually aren't any.

Besides, Nader's mere existence (difference #5, according to Pinkerton) ought to have been enough to make the entire article moot. I didn't really expect him - Nader, that is - to acquire the Reform Party nomination, and I'd love to know what the Hell he's trying to accomplish, besides of course burning down the Democratic Party in its current form and urinating on the ashes. Not to mention that I'm having difficulty imagining the mental gyrations that party needed to go through in order to shift from Pat Buchanan to Ralph Nader in four short years.

Still, like OTB I'd agree that the article's worth reading.

Moe

Seeing as...

...all the good domestic political stories got taken*, let's look at an international one. India's surprising results went more surprising: Gandhi 'Humbly Declines' India Leadership.

NEW DELHI - Stunning her supporters, Sonia Gandhi announced Tuesday she would "humbly decline" to be the next prime minister of India, sidestepping Hindu nationalist outrage over the prospect of a foreign-born woman leading the nation.

Gandhi, an Italian who became an Indian citizen 21 years ago when she married former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, did not say whom she would nominate for the post. The favorite appeared to be Manmohan Singh, the architect of India's economic liberalization program during the last Congress-led government from 1991 to 1996.

Reading between the lines, I think that Ms. Gandhi was going to take the position up to the point where the Indian stock market started going south; investors there are apparently worried about economic policy changes, especially regarding the continuance of the current privatization campaign. Letting someone else be prime minister is probably the best solution for that problem, perception counts for a lot, especially with stock markets. Needless to say, best of luck to her and her party, and may they continue to work with Pakistan to chart out a peaceful future.

Moe

*Well, the ones that I felt like blogging about, at least.

Yup, that's about right.

I think Matt Yglesias (who's 23 today*) has got it 'bout right regarding gay marriage: It's generational and it's inevitable.

Some social conservative types have speculated to me that the overwhelming pro-gay sentiment among young people can be counteracted by the natural conservatizing effects of aging. Folks who think that are, I think, seriously underestimating the extent of the young-old disjoint on this topic.

Support for gay marriage isn't something that one's likely to outgrow, because it's essentially founded on the notion that gay marriage is a matter of civil rights. If you don't buy that proposition, then you probably can't be convinced to support gay marriage. (Some libertarians among you might be convinced that marriage in general is none of the State's business, but that's merely an extreme version of the "civil rights" argument.)

Once you buy the proposition that gay marriage is a matter of civil rights, however, it's not easily discarded. You don't wake up one day and say, hmm, now that I'm 35 (or 45 or 55), it's time for me to outgrow my youthful notions of "civil rights." This isn't like, "man, I used to like the kine bud, but now I got a job, a house, and two kids in school, so you knowwwwww." This is a world-view issue, not a life-style issue.

Thus, I predict that within 30 years laws permitting gay marriage will be the rule, rather than the exception.

von

P.S. So you can judge your messenger's bias, know that I strongly support gay marriage (though I believe it should be accomplished by legislative means, not lawsuits). Know also that, just because I've framed the debate as a civil rights issue, I do not believe that those who oppose gay marriage are necessarily homophobic; nor are they evil; nor are they bigots. Many base their opinion on deeply-held religious beliefs that root themselves in the highest and kindest aspirations of humanity, and which we would all do well to respect.

Continue reading "Yup, that's about right."

US Troops Reportedly Abused Reuters, NBC Staff

I'm nearly at the saturation point for bad news from Iraq, so I'm hoping someone can disprove this story.

Reuters, NBC Staff Abused by U.S. Troops in Iraq

U.S. forces beat three Iraqis working for Reuters and subjected them to sexual and religious taunts and humiliation during their detention last January in a military camp near Falluja, the three said Tuesday. The three first told Reuters of the ordeal after their release but only decided to make it public when the U.S. military said there was no evidence they had been abused, and following the exposure of similar mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

An Iraqi journalist working for U.S. network NBC, who was arrested with the Reuters staff, also said he had been beaten and mistreated, NBC said Tuesday.

Two of the three Reuters staff said they had been forced to insert a finger into their anus and then lick it, and were forced to put shoes in their mouths, particularly humiliating in Arab culture.

I may need to follow Rumsfeld, who followed Bush, in not reading the papers anymore soon.

www.soxaholic.com

Being an Indians fan (and therefore having enough of my own problems) I've never quite appreciated the whole Red Sox vs. Yankees thing, but in the interest of supporting a good friend who's built this website

http://www.soxaholic.com/

I thought I'd pass this along. That's him in the Martinez t-shirt in the bottom photo. He used to live in NYC but then returned to the most reasonable state in the union.

Reliving 9/11

I guess its fitting that today, as the 9/11 Commission begins hearings in NYC, my office building had a full evacuation rehearsal today. There was a time when such drills met choruses of groans and saw people hiding in conference rooms to avoid having to file down the staircases and out into the streets. Now, however, there's a much less grudging compliance, accompanied by stories of friends and relatives who escaped one of the WTC towers and how these drills are not so bad after all.

Continue reading "Reliving 9/11"

For Those Inclined to Gloat, We Mock You

Advisory: My allergies are off the charts today making me extra crispy cranky.

Sitting on the train this morning, waiting for the Claritin to kick in, I spy it from 20 feet away. Hell, I could have seen it from 100 yards away. There, in what must be at least 300-point type, on the cover of the New York ComPost blares the headline:

WMD: Nerve-gas blast in Baghdad

The opening:

A bomb containing the deadly nerve agent sarin exploded near a U.S. military convoy in Iraq - the first discovery of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction since the war began.

The frightening development, along with the recent finding of a mustard-gas shell near the Syrian border, raised fears inside the Pentagon that Ba'athist terrorists may have gotten their hands on a chemical arsenal of unknown size.

Ooooo....I smell a Pulitzer!

Buried at the bottom of this alarmist tripe is the necessary CYA acknowledgement: In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cautioned that the sarin results were from a field test, which can be imperfect.

Which brings me to the glaring need to mock these ersatz "editors"* so desperate to exculpate their earlier doomsday editorials, so anxious about possibly having been duped, that they'll elevate two crusty cannisters to represent a (what's the latest WH-approved term?) "imminent" (no), "gathering" (?) threat.

Wait until they find the pea shooter in the third-grader's desk. Holy Armageddon!

Pathetic.

*See Heavy Handed Headline for more

Bad Net Connection Current Affairs Open Thread

Three loss of dial tone* between last entry and this entry.

Moe

*Yes, yes, DSL/Cable Modem/anything besides dialup would be better. Tell me something I don't know.

Bad Connection Politics Open Thread

Intermittent connection problems all evening, and sleeping sounds good right now. So, here's a couple of fresh threads to post to. I hope that they post...

Heavy Handed Headline

It screams at you on the FoxNews.com site homepage: U.S. Confirms WMDs Found in Iraq

But it's not very likely the discovery that an IED exploded today contained sarin (and another was found to contain mustard gas) will justify that editorial choice.

From MSNBC.com

Two former weapons inspectors — Hans Blix and David Kay — said the shell was likely a stray weapon that had been scavenged by militants and did not signify that Iraq had large stockpiles of such weapons.

No, just enough to let those who really wanted there to be WMD in Iraq believe they're now exonerated. Well done Fox.

For those about to get married

Via Instapundit

This is simply lovely: A Quick Note to About-To-Be Married Gays and Lesbians

When you get right down to it...

...this has got to be the best commentary of the blogosphere ever.

(via Backward)

UPDATE: Oh look, it kinda works for other sites too!

sample 1
sample 2

Sorry...had a bit of a flashback to the second grade there for a moment.

A Unity Ticket

Calpundit Guest blogger, commedian Jay Jaroch, offers a lighthearted look at some of the top news stories, including what's perceived in some quarters as the Democrat's inability to find a Kerry runningmate among themselves who's half as appealing as John McCain.

All this McCain talk sets too high a standard for a running mate. If I were the Kerry people I’d be out floating names like The Rock or Gary Condit. Then when you pick Evan Bayh Americans will be saying, “Oh, thank Christ it’s Evan Bayh!” and not “Who’s Evan Bayh?”

And I watched McCain on MTP yesterday make it really, really, post-Jetdry® crystal clear that he would not accept the offer, so...that's it I suppose.

But, then again, if we can take the Democratic leadership at their word (and no that's not a trick question, down doggies), and the goal is to unify the Red and Blue states at a time when divisiveness is not serving any of us well, why not move on to the next best Republican choice?

I'm serious. We know the Bush campaign is not going to make any sacrifices toward unity---the idea that Cheney would step aside and W would invite Edwards (or whomever) to be his runningmate is simply snortworthy---so such an effort will need to come from Camp Kerry.

I do believe the nation will survive this currently toxic climate, but not without costs, both domestic and international. The argument against a Unity Ticket of course would be there's no guarantee it will work smoothly. That is, without the sort of loyalty and tight teamwork the Bush Administration has, will things get done? OK, now that's a trick question.

The Garage Is Open

Why do we let Chalabi get away with this?

Council member Ahmad Chalabi said terrorists are using the insurgent Sunni stronghold of Fallujah, where U.S. Marines stopped patrols last month and allowed an Iraqi security force to oversee security, to prepare car bombs like the one that killed Saleem.

"The terrorists are free to roam around and they have been given sanctuary in Fallujah," Chalabi said. "The garage is open and car bombs are coming repeatedly."

Clearly, at this point, the origin of the car bomb that killed the head of the Iraqi Governing Council Abdel-Zahraa Othman, also known as Izzadine Saleem, is still under investigation. So to even hint that it came from Fallujah, or to use this attack as a platform for such blathering really gets on my nerves. This kind of opportunistic, passive-aggressive swipe tells me all I need to know about Chalabi and the kind of leader he would be. It also reinforces for me why the US needs to slap him upside the head, along with the fools over here who ever listened to him in the first place.

We, as Americans, as the ones paying for this grand experiment in social engineering, are being asked constantly to get behind the effort to bring stability to Iraq, to stop second guessing the DoD's every move. It seems that's the least we could expect from the whiny, petty gangster we're giving a leg up in the race to become Iraq's next authoritarian ogre.

For the record, I don't disapprove, either.

Short Hope Unfiltered has an interesting anecdote up that might illuminate some hithero overlooked connections between Social Security, immigration and outsourcing one's retirement. Or not. It may just be an anecdote about a guy with a pretty clever idea on how to stretch out his retirement income. I find that I am especially tired tonight, no doubt from the excitement of seeing Samurai Jack for the first time.

Yes, yes, I hang my head in shame. Shame!

Good news. Symbolic?

It would appear that the American bald eagle will be taken off the threatened species list, thanks to a thirty year program of careful breeding, legal protection and the continuing nonusage of DDT. This is, of course, excellent news. The bald eagle will continue to enjoy federal protection, but apparently being taken off the list will cause an official shifting of formal support for further recovery lists. I use the modifiers because as a practical matter existing support will not decrease, because this is a democracy and some policy positions are no-brainers. Really, would you want to give your political opponent the opportunity to tell the folks back home about how you shafted our national symbol?

At any rate, the group Environmental Defense* has a press release on the subject. In time honored fashion, they're using the opportunity to push for more species recovery programs and the encouragement of private landowners to participate in conservation efforts. Good on them.

Moe

*A group that I've never heard of, but a look at their website indicates that they're apparently quite fond of Kyoto, so I'm guessing that they ain't Righties (seeing as we invariably cast rare and potent curses against the Protocols every night of the new moon).

A Public Service Announcement.

When the recipe books all tell you that a regular sized chicken can be slow roasted in 3.5 hours, they lie.

Oh my droogies, how they ever lie.

Verify first. Then we'll see about trust.

Somebody will eventually bring up this Seymour Hersh piece (The Gray Zone), so I might as well post a link to it now - and note for the record that when Hersh is prepared to risk his career by naming his sources, I'll be prepared to listen to his theories with an open mind. I get so sick of whispers from the shadows.

(pause)

Ahh, who am I kidding? In my opinion Hersh is an aging hack justly afraid that if he publishes his sources the public would twig right away to the fact that this article was a typical Dizzy City smearjob 'supported' by the allegations of people that you wouldn't trust to walk your dog properly. That's my operating theory - and I'll note right now how easy it would be to prove me wrong: Hersh can do that handily by publishing his sources. Let's decide for ourselves, shall we?

Moe

UPDATE: Hellblazer and The Glittering Eye both have their own observations on the matter; it's not coincidental that both are also being moved from Backscratch to Regulars.

Hey, does anybody here...

...not spit at hearing the words "Agricultural Subsidies"?

(pause)

Thought so. This should be cheering news, then: In U.S., Cotton Cries Betrayal.

Sumner, an agricultural economist at the University of California at Davis, played a key role in an international trade case that is shaping up as one of the most significant defeats the United States has ever suffered on the trade front. An analysis that he wrote helped frame a preliminary decision issued two weeks ago by a World Trade Organization panel, which held that the federal subsidies paid to U.S. cotton farmers violate WTO rules because they cause overproduction, drive down world prices and impoverish farmers in developing countries.

Needless to say, those groups busy sucking away at the public teat affected by the possible loss are commenting in an, shall we say, intemperate manner:

Since Sumner served as a paid consultant for Brazil, which brought the case against Washington, he is being reviled as a traitor by some U.S. farmers. Leaders of some farm groups, furious at Sumner for helping a foreign government win a victory that could end agricultural subsidies in their current form, are vowing to retaliate by cutting off funding for other work that he does.

I bolded that bit because the idea makes me feel all tingly inside, not because I expect us to get that lucky that easily. If nothing else, the politicians on both sides are going to be exasperatingly nuanced about this. For example, neither Presidential candidate is going to want to tell, say, Iowa that the free ride's over, Sparky, and really, can you blame them? Ag subsidies have been a goddamned bipartisan [text changed - ed.] albatross for so long that people have gotten used to them - and, just so we're clear, the short-term results from abolishing the subsidies are going to be painful. Which is one reason why nobody domestic wanted to bell that particular cat... but that might be academic now, thanks to the WTO. Bad WTO! Bad, evil, wicked, naughty WTO! Bad! No biscuit!

In public, at least.

(Via Marginal Revolution and Pejmanesque)

Moe

UPDATE: Bipartisan albatross, tanjit. Bipartisan. 2AM posting mistake; sorry about that. Thanks to Constant Reader Dave Schuler for strongly objecting; I hope that this clears things up.

"One week ago I learned that my friend Nick was missing in Iraq."

Before he became a symbol of man's inhumanity to man, he lived. Jake V, a longtime Tacitus commentator and friend to Nick Berg, remembers the life of a courageous young man. Go and read the whole thing.

Piker.

James Joyner let that pollster off the hook waaaaay too easily; in my house we treat one of their calls as an opportunity to practice our improv skills. In my day I've:

*Start babbling mid-sentence, then just as stopped just as rapidly;

* Randomly adjusted the volume control while talking;

* pretended that the volume was fluctuating, requiring me to shout my answers and insist that the interviewer whisper to me;

* Abruptly ordered a pizza halfway through, no anchovies, double cheese;

* Given the same answer to each question;

* Answered Question #2 with the answer to #1, and going down the line;

* When asked for a number between 1 and 5, picked 3.653, then settle down for a fun discussion on what the terms 'number' and 'positive integer' mean, and why you shouldn't use one when you mean the other;

* Asked the interviewer if he knew who wrote the screenplay for Patton (hey, he might have known);

* Answered all questions as if I were my current roleplaying game player-character;

* Answered all questions as if I were my mom;

* Answered all questions as if I were Doctor Doom;

* And picked an appropriate moment to yell "What? WHAT?!? NEVER CALL HERE AGAIN, YOU BLOODY FASCIST!!!!!" and hang up the phone.

There's a lesson there.

(pause)

OK, granted, lessons: one is "Moe can be a real schmuck sometimes"... and the other is "Don't trust polls".

I saw a cicada today.

On our way back from IKEA (too hot and muggy for my dad to do the tourist thing; he decided to stay home and watch 3,000 Miles to Graceland in a nice, dark, air-conditioned room). It was on the sidewark to our house; it had the weird eyes and wings, so it was definitely a cicada, and it didn't buzz when my girlfriend lightly poked it with a stick, so apparently it wasn't a male.

Doesn't seem like that big a deal, all in all.

ACLU and religious expression.

The American Civil Liberties Union just won a Michigan court case involving religious expression in a school (in this case, a high school yearbook). At issue was whether a high school valedictorian would be allowed to use a Bible verse as a special quote for the yearbook (not the regular quote under her picture; one solicited by the school itself); the ACLU won an overwhelming victory. Quotes Kary Moss, ACLU head for Michigan:

"There are reasonable limits the schools can place, and potential for disruption is one reason a school might be able to limit certain speech," Moss said.

Are my Righty colleagues annoyed, yet?

Continue reading "ACLU and religious expression."

Crikey! Pretend that it's May 13th!

Because May 13th was Obsidian Wings' 6 month anniversary, that's why. What's the blogospheric equivalent of running to buy flowers, chocolate and a really, really good excuse? I mean, how do you make it up to a website?

Moe

Life, meet the Onion.

The Onion: 34 Congressmen Arrested In D.C. Cockfighting Crackdown

WASHINGTON, DC—Washington police seized 22 members of the House of Representatives, 12 members of the Senate, and more than 100 fighting cocks Monday night, in the latest crackdown on blood sports at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

Life: Scorpion panic as Colombia election bill advances

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - A bill that would allow popular Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to stand for a second term passed another legislative test on Friday after a raucus late-night session in which a senator thrust a scorpion at a rival.

No, it's not an exact match. Never go for a 100% match - if nothing else, you'll make it impossible for either party to have their own space. The idea is to find that fine balance between too much common interest and too little; it's all about getting the proper chi flow, in other words. Smoothing out the tangles. Stuff like that.

I'm sure that Life and the Onion will be very happy with each other, those newly-anthropomorphized abstract scamps, them.

(Via Poliblog, who probably isn't babbling right now. Although the stuff in comments there about Rick Santorum nude photos... yipe.)

Ye gods. Maybe trolls have uses after all.

I have my parents visiting*, so posting may be light this weekend. If you haven't checked out Kevin Drum's analysis on the strengths of blogging, do so: it's pretty comprehensive, although I think that he's ignoring one in particular. Not fact-checking - he's aware; he just doesn't think that it's all that important - but something that I'd call... hrm... is there a word, actually? It's the condition where you gain reassurance (via an act of communication) that you really aren't nuts, because other people react to what you're communicating in an emphatic way. Those reactions could be either positive or negative; it's not important, because it's the reaction that tells you that you aren't alone for thinking something's important.

Which is good, because let's face it, folks: we're all more or less weirdos, here. We give a damn about politics, including the really obscure stuff, and we're obsessing over an election that 90% of the population hasn't even begun to care about yet. More to the point, I'm willing to bet that at least half of us have loved ones who just generally don't give a flying leap - thus forcing us to peck, peck, peck away at our keyboards for half the night until we find somebody else who wants to talk about pollution credits.

(pause)

Then again, I could just be projecting.

(Via Priorities and Frivolities)

Moe

*My esteemed Leftist readers will no doubt be pleased to hear that they are genially taking me to task for my Republicanism - although neither of them are going to vote for Senator Kerry. Politically speaking, it's a wash.

And it keeps getting stranger

Bizarre New Link In Berg Murder

CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports U.S. officials say the FBI questioned Berg in 2002 after a computer password Berg used in college turned up in the possession of Zacarias Moussaoui, the al Qaeda operative arrested shortly before Sept. 11 for his suspicious activity at a flight school in Minnesota.

The bureau had already dismissed the connection between Berg and Moussaoui as nothing more than a college student who had been careless about protecting his password.

But in the wake of Berg's gruesome murder, it becomes a stranger-than-fiction coincidence — an American who inadvertently gave away his computer password to one suspected al Qaeda operative, Moussaoui, is later murdered by another notorious al Qaeda operative, Zarqawi.

Combined with the conflicting stories about whether Berg had been in US custody, it seems there's a few things to be cleared up here.

UPDATE: And, via Constant Reader Timmy the Wonder Dog, it may already have been cleared up. Berg's encounter with 'terrorist' revealed

Berg said his son cooperated fully with an FBI investigation into the matter.

"He was happy to cooperate, and that was never an issue," he said. He emphasized that the individual was not a friend of his son's or even an acquaintance -- "just a guy sitting next to him on the bus."

It's still stranger than fiction.

May 17th, 2004

I've been scouring the news and comics all morning for something to shake this melancholy that's got me in its grasp at the moment. Not sure if it's my allergies, or the relentless barrage of images of horror, or just the drain of the current political climate, but give me a guitar and I'd make BB King look like Carrot Top today.

Even what should be a very joyous day in the history of the US for me, the upcoming legalization of marriage in Massachusetts for same-sex couples, is twinged with a sorrow at the response it's provoking in other people.

After Monday, everything changes, gay marriage opponents say.

"It is a day of mourning, because we are losing something very precious and practical and very needed in society," said Glenn Stanton, a senior analyst at Focus on the Family, the Colorado-based organization that sent money and volunteers to the fight in Massachusetts. His group is among several urging passage of a federal constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage.

That response makes me doubly sad. First because opponents of gay marriage are clearly torn up inside about this "defeat" (as they view it). The statments in the article cited above range from "My world changes in the fact that the marriage license I hold with my wife will no longer mean what it meant on May 16," to "[May 17 will be] a slap in the face." Not viewing any opponent of gay marriage as my enemy, per se, I'm saddened by their despondency. They should not have to lose anything so that I can gain something.

But it also saddens me because it preemptively devalues what May 17th could/should have meant for all of us.

When the Supreme Court struck down the nation's remaining sodomy laws, impromptu celebrations sprung up in gay communities across the country. One image from those celebrations made a profound impact on me; the sort of shock to my system I had thought my NYC-jaded psyche was now immune to. In Castro Street in San Francisco, folks took down the Rainbow Flag (a symbol of the gay community) and replaced it with the Stars and Stripes. It literally jolted me when I heard that. "Yes!!" I thought, that is definitely what the SCOTUS decision means to me. It made me thrillingly proud to be an American that day.

Each time a major social change takes place in the US there are those who celebrate it and those who deeply resent it. How dark this coming Monday may be for opponents of gay marriage may be totally inconceivable a generation or so from now. Or, perhaps the opponents will find a way to reverse this change and a generation from now the anticipation and joy gay couples preparing to wed feel will seem totally inconceivable a generation from now.

I don't need to tell you which scenario I hope comes to pass.

Enlightenment is where you find it.

It's interesting how many stops on the blogosphere remind me of this passage from The Illuminatus! Trilogy:

..."As for the rest of you - who can tell me, without uttering a word, the fallacy of the Illuminati?"

A young girl - she was no more than fifteen, George guessed, and the youngest member of the crew; he had heard she was a runaway from a fabulously rich Italian family in Rom - slowly raised her hand and clenched her fist.

Hagbard turned on her furiously. "How many times must I tell you people: no faking! You got that out of some cheap book on Zen that neither the author or you understood a damned word of. I hate to be dictatorial, but phony mysticism is the one thing Discordianism can't survive. You're on sh*twork, in the kitchen, for a week, you wise-ass brat."

The girl remained immobile, in the same position, fist raised, and only slowly did George read the slight smile that curled her mouth. Then he started to smile himself.

(Pages 429 - 430)

No, I'm not going to tell you what post on what site sparked this observation, because it's not going to make any real sense unless you understand what the above passage is driving at, and I have no intention of explaining what the above passage is driving at. You either get it, or you don't - and as the Church of the Subgenius points out, when it comes to enlightenment... if you think that you got it, you didn't really get it*.

Moe

Continue reading "Enlightenment is where you find it."

Silence and the Moderate Muslim (part 3): Resistance is Futile

Andrew McCarthy's essay on NRO reads like a summary of every argument I've had over the past two years about whether or not we're in a religious war disguised as a "war on terror." In general, he stops short of saying our enemy is "Islam" (he carefully uses "militant Islam"), and he clarifies that doesn't mean a war against a religion, but rather against an ideology.

Given that his first clarification is something it normally takes me months to get from those I debate, I consider McCarthy's point of view refreshing to some degree. But I was actually quite disturbed as I read through his argument when it was confirmed for me what this war is really about for some: assimilation. Now this had occurred to me before, but it wasn't until someone as honest with himself as McCarthy outlined the ideas here that it became crystal clear.

Continue reading "Silence and the Moderate Muslim (part 3): Resistance is Futile"

Sounds about right.

I've been critical (oh, pardon the pun) of Josh Marshall on at least one occasion, so it's only fair that I note that I would have made roughly the same reply to a criticism made by one of his readers. Said critique was the standard You Haven't Written About This So I'm Going To Be Offended Now line that every blogger has had tossed at him or her; Marshall's reply is quite good. A snippet:

Perhaps I simply have nothing to add. The online world has lots of vociferous me-too-ism, going on record saying in fist-clenched tones things I think we all know we all feel. That's fine; I just don't like doing that.

As I've said, I've been there. Nobody can cover everything, all the time; for that matter, there's a couple things that I could be harping on, but don't, because doing so with bore me. Finite time, finite resources, finite outside/inside interest and this isn't a publication of record, either.

Serendipity.

I was searching for what Senator Kerry actually said to have the AP claim that he called the war in Iraq a failure (I found the lack of direct quotes... well, 'diagnostic' works, huh?); I haven't, yet, but I found this in the process: Nader Wins Endorsement from Reform Party.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Independent Ralph Nader, reviled by some Democrats for his presidential bid, was endorsed Wednesday by the national Reform Party, giving him ballot access in at least seven states, including the battlegrounds of Florida and Michigan.

Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said the candidate welcomes the support but plans to continue running as an independent. He said Nader would decide on a case-by-case basis whether to accept the Reform Party's ballot lines in each state, or try to gain ballot access through other means.

In an interview with Associated Press Radio, Nader said he is counting on Reform Party members to help him get on the ballot in other states. "We'll get a greater get-out-the-vote drive - there are tens of thousands of Reform Party people in California alone," he said.

He's like a bloody dandelion, huh? Just keeps coming back, year after year after year...

Should post something, huh?

What with me home sick and everything. OTOH, I am actually home sick (though feeling much better), so I'm behind on the post-it notes. And Edward Underscore (guess we've got his superhero name, huh) just cut n'pasted that interesting hilzoy comment, so that's out.

(pause)

Look! Monkeys!

Moe

Silence and the Moderate Muslim (part 2)

In the previous thread on this topic, Constant Reader Bird Dog raised a good question about why Arabs choose to believe anti-American propaganda. The following response from reader Hilzoy deserves its own thread I believe:

Continue reading "Silence and the Moderate Muslim (part 2)"

One note and then meeting hell

I'm actually gonna have to earn my keep today, so my only contribution until I get out of meeting hell is going to be this thought from Thomas Friedman:

It has always been more important for the Bush folks to defeat liberals at home than Baathists abroad.

Spanish Retreat from the War on Terrorism

I was willing to give the Spanish a little bit of wiggle room on Zapatero's implementation of the Spanish withdrawal from Iraq. I really tried, here and here.

First I thought Zapatero was just fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw troops from Iraq if there wasn't a UN force there. I thought that he had a very poor sense of diplomatic timing with respect to the war on terrorism when he decided to make all of his early major speechs about the issue only days after Al Qaeda successfully bombed the Madrid train stations. Al Qaeda explicitly got the foreign policy change they wanted, and that victory could have been muted a bit by changing the policy quietly. Zapatero didn't do that, but I thought it might have been mere bad diplomatic judgment rather than real appeasement or a withdrawal from the war on terror.

Later he decided to withdraw his troops even earlier than expected, which seemed strange in light of the US-UN negotiations regarding troops. But he promised to double his forces in Afghanistan, so arguably (though I didn't really believe it since the Spanish commitment to Afghanistan was miniscule anyway) he wasn't retreating from the War on Terrorism.

But now it is becoming apparent that Zapatero really just wants to pretend that he can disengage from the War on Terrorism completely:

On Afghanistan, Moratinos said Spain supported the peacekeeping mission there because - unlike that of Iraq - it had a U.N. mandate, was under the command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and had the legitimate mission of fighting terrorism.

"Bin Laden is not in Iraq. Bin Laden is in Pakistan or Afghanistan," Moratinos told the Telecinco television network.

But the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is only exploring options for possibly increasing its 120-man contingent in Afghanistan. "For now no decision has been made," Moratinos said.

This is clearly an attempt to back away from adding even a paltry 120 additional men in Afghanistan. For those who employ their political skepticism only to attack Bush, when your defense minister says that you will be doubling the troops and two weeks later you specifically address that with a 'no decisions have been made', you are clearly signalling that unless there is a huge public outcry you aren't standing by the previously announced policy.

As I said before, the damage of the Al Qaeda propaganda victory caused by being able to plausibly claim that they changed the outcome of a Western election and got the foreign policy they desired could only be contained by a strong Spanish front somewhere other than Iraq. It is becoming clearer that Spain will not be doing that. They are retreating from the War on Terror.

I'm always out of the loop.

Especially on this entire lemur thing from Reuters: Lemurs Aren't So Dumb After All, Study Finds.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lemurs, once believed to be cute but basically stupid, show startling intelligence when given a chance to win treats by playing a computer game, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

Heck, I wasn't aware that their being dumb was a particular issue. Then again, nobody ever tells me anything.

(pause)

OK, let's pretend that the bad joke referencing your favorite video game was made, likewise the bad joke referencing Cornelius and Planet of the Apes and ditto on any similarities between lemurian* behavior patterns and the average denizen of the Internet. I will, however, note with approval the fact that Reuters deliberately picked a scene from that CGI movie to accompany the story. Or was that the only appropriate one that they had? If so, then I guess that I'm not the only one taken aback by the lemurs' sudden ascension...

Moe

*And don't even think about the esoteric puns... heh. Sorry about that.

In light of the earlier post...

...Here's someone who decided to let his inner Thomas Jefferson do the talking (Update here) - or, as he puts it, "Strengthening the Good". Every little bit helps.

Cold thoughts for a warm night.

When the Commissar states that one of the wars going on right now is the one "between our inner Thomas Jefferson and our inner Phil Sheridan", he is being entirely correct.

When Donald Sensing warns about the consequences of making this war personal, he is being entirely correct.

And when Wretchard declares himself to be afraid what of what comes next*... a merciful God willing, we will not have to determine whether or not he is entirely correct as well.

Moe

UPDATE: Jeebus, you know that it's been a bad week when Lileks is being grim:

The West doesn’t have the power to change Islam; it only has the power to destroy it. We have a lot of nukes. We could kill everyone. We could just take out a few troublesome nations, kill millions, and irradiate Mecca so that the Fifth Pillar is invalidated. The hajj would be impossible. Every pilgrim a martyr. I don’t think we’ll do either; God help us if we do, but inasmuch as we have the capability, it’s an option. But it would be a crime greater than the crime that provoked such an act, and in the end that would stay our hand. They know we won’t do it.

Strong horse, weak horse.

There is another path, of course. Simply put: if a US city is nuked, the US will have to nuke someone, or let it stand that the United States can lose a city without cost to the other side. Defining “the other side” would be difficult, of course – do you erase Tehran to punish the mullahs? Make a crater out of Riyahd? These are exactly the sort of decisions we never want to make. But let’s say it happens. Baltimore: fire and wind. Gone. That horrible day would clarify things once and for all. It’s one thing for someone in a distant city to cheer the fall of two skyscrapers: from a distance, it looks like a bloody nose. But erasing a city is a different matter.

Everyone will have to choose sides. That would be one possible beginning of the end of this war.

Continue reading "Cold thoughts for a warm night."

Finally, Some Good News

This is the purest good news I've heard in ages.

Iraq Soccer Team Qualifies for Olympics

Iraq's soccer team qualified for the Athens Olympics on Wednesday, less than three months after the country was reinstated by the International Olympic Committee.

Iraq beat Saudi Arabia 3-1, and then clinched the third and final Asian qualifying spot when Kuwait held Oman to a scoreless draw.

God bless 'em.

The Boston Globe clearly needs to bookmark ObWi...

...because its editorial staff looks fairly stupid right now.

The short version: the Globe covered a presentation by Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner that purported to show American soldiers raping Iraqi women (Councilor takes up Iraq issue Turner releasespurported images of rape by soldiers). Now, the article itself is reasonably objective, as far as it goes: indeed, the author seems quite skeptical of the claims.

She apparently wasn't skeptical enough for her editors, however, because World Net Daily called up and pretty much gleefully pointed out that they had scooped the pictures' origins in bad porn sites a week ago (you may remember our story on the subject, which was apparently slightly relevant after all). WND, equally cheerfully, is careful to apportion blame:

The Globe published the photos despite the fact a skeptical Slack had raised serious doubts about them and was not able to verify their authenticity. Slack was assigned to report on the press conference and did not approve of the photos being published. The photos were approved for publication by three Boston Globe editors.

In the article the Boston Globe ran with the photos, Slack underscored her skepticism: "The images, depicting men in camouflage uniforms having sex with unidentified women, bear no characteristics that would prove the men are U.S. soldiers or that the women are Iraqis. And there is nothing apparent in the images showing they were taken in Iraq. Unlike the photographs widely publicized last week, the images appear to have been taken outdoors in a sandy area with hills in the background."

What really sets this story off from the usual run was the accompanying photo. Drudge managed to find a screen shot of the picture that ran with the print article (NOT WORK SAFE!), which caused Dan Kennedy to gracefully backtrack a bit from an earlier position. Mind you, obviously nobody intended to publish graphic porn images in a major American paper: Kennedy's quite right about that. Still, Slack should have checked the story better and the editors who caused grainy pictures of several men's units achieve mass distribution across Boston are probably shotgunning Maalox right about now. I can't wait to see how the Globe apologizes for this one.

(Via Instapundit)

Silence and the Moderate Muslim

Each time an Islamist terrorist commits some atrocity against us, it's natural to be angry.

It's also natural to be angry indiscriminantly at Muslims. Not honorable, but natural. Until reason kicks in, that is.

But as the War on Terror progresses, I'm seeing a trend whereby Americans can't get past what they see as a fundamental faithlessness among so-called Moderate Muslims: Why don't they decry this violence? Are we to take their silence as sanction?

Personally, this strikes me somewhat as laziness and xenophobia (we don't need our fellow Americans marching in the street to tell us they don't support the likes of Timothy McVeigh). But I've realized that listing dozens of links to moderate Muslim sites that do decry the atrocities will not convince anyone for whom this remains a problem. So I'm abandoning the quantitative approach. It's a problem. But where does it come from?

Let me begin by acknowledging the perception: the Muslims of the world are not as vocal about these acts of terror as we want/need them to be.

Personally, this "silence," such as it is, doesn't confuse me. I put two and two together and figure if a military power like the US is unable to completely protect itself from these killers, let alone track them down and bring them to justice, how are the people of much poorer nations supposed to stand up to them? In other words, there's a bit of fear at play here. I fully expect, however, that argument to issue in charges of cowardice, and that's unfair to the brave Muslims I know (and some prominent Muslim thinkers strongly deny that's it), so I took some time to look deeper.

Continue reading "Silence and the Moderate Muslim"

Rummy Must Go? Ummm, no (Remix)

I've twice argued that Rumsfeld should not depart his post over the alleged abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison. If this statement by Powell (via Marshall, who has commentary) proves true, however, it seems my defense has been in vain. Key passage:

"We kept the president informed of the concerns that were raised by the ICRC and other international organizations as part of my regular briefings of the president, and advised him that we had to follow these issues, and when we got notes sent to us or reports sent to us ... we had to respond to them, and the president certainly made it clear that that's what he expected us to do," Powell said.

Powell said that he, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld kept Bush "fully informed of the concerns that were being expressed, not in specific details, but in general terms."