Glad for 2000

Boy, when you put it like that, I'm really glad Gore lost in 2000:

In other words, had it not been for [GOP vote-theft in 2000], Lieberman would be vice president, the Iraq war in all likelihood never would have happened, and Lieberman's increasingly mutual estrangement from the Democratic Party would be unthinkable.

Except that Liberman would, in all likelihood, be the presumptive nominee for the 2008 Democratic party. And, backed by 8 years of incumbency, that would be terrifying.

Oh, and if you think that being veep would have kept Lieberman from sticking the knife in Gore's back, you're dreaming. He didn't hesitate to try and torpedo Clinton, and he was happy to scuttle Gore's attempts for justice in Florida. Given time, he would have found some way to hurt President Gore in office. If nothing else, his ridiculous crusades against Grand Theft Auto would have given the Greens the youth vote.

Actually, Hezbollah won twice

Wow. Not satisfied with merely surviving in the face of a major Israeli offensive, Hezbollah is now vowing an "unlimited budget" when it comes to rebuilding damage done by Israel.

Frankly, if I were in the Israeli or American governments, I'd be humiliated right now. First, Hezbollah "wins" against Israel by staying alive and operating as a cohesive force. Secondly, it looks like Hezbollah is also going to show the Americans what a competent rebuilding program looks like after a war.

For too long, we expected our enemies to act like idiots. In Hezbollah, we may finally - in a small way - have gotten a competent adversary. And while we used to be competent when it came to fighting wars and rebuilding, we seem to have lost any capability of that now.

Any bets on when Nasrallah becomes PM of Lebanon?

Heh. Indeed.

According to Elspeth Reeve, liberals hate Ann Coulter because everything she says is "kind of true." Lance Mannion chomps at the bit:

It's "kind of true" that some Jews are cheap, that some Irishmen drink and fight too much, that some Poles are dumb, that some black people and Mexicans are lazy, that some women are castrating shrews and battleax fishwives.

But ethnic jokes don't attack cheapness, drinking and fighting, stupidity, laziness, or castration. They attack Jews, the Irish, Poles, blacks, Hispanics, and women.

The object is to define "the other," make them objects of derision and contempt, in order to justify treating them as others and excluding them from any definition of "fellow human being."

Coulter tells the political equivalent of ethnic jokes.

When the subject is Muslims, she tells the ethnic joke equivalent of ethnic jokes.

Thank you, Oscar Mayer!

If it weren't for you, I'd have to wait whole minutes longer to eat a microwaved hot dog! God bless the Oscar Mayer corporation and its marketing subsidiaries!

I had a similar joyous reaction when Kraft introduced EasyMac. Exactly how stupid are we as a civilization that there was a market for Kraft Dinner that was mildly easier to make?

No fiber for you

Seattle: We'd like a fiber-optic network for our city.

Qwest: Nope.

Seattle: Fine, if you won't build it - we'd love to buy the service from an established player - we'll just have to build it ourselves.

Qwest: Hey, no fair!

Every time this plays out, the telcos look more and more ridiculous.

Ruled by Children

If we needed more evidence, the President is a moron:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 — President Bush made clear in a private meeting this week that he was concerned about the lack of progress in Iraq and frustrated that the new Iraqi government — and the Iraqi people — had not shown greater public support for the American mission, participants in the meeting said Tuesday.

Those who attended a Monday lunch at the Pentagon that included the president’s war cabinet and several outside experts said Mr. Bush carefully avoided expressing a clear personal view of the new prime minister of Iraq, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki....

More generally, the participants said, the president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd. “I do think he was frustrated about why 10,000 Shiites would go into the streets and demonstrate against the United States,” said another person who attended.

Wow. Who'd imagine that shia in Iraq would have any kind of solidarity with shia in Lebanon. A mystery for the ages...

And if it needed to be said, Atrios is still right: As long as Bush is president, the US is staying in Iraq. If Bush wants to stick to his guns, then we might be in for a showdown between Congress and the President when the US public realizes that withdrawal is the only sane option.

Sounds fun!

Well duh

Billmon:

A source with access to the report said its main conclusion is that Israel has no security solution to the threat of rockets launched from the West Bank against population centers. The report's authors assume that following a unilateral Israeli pullout from the West Bank, Hamas will takeover and deploy rockets.

Another conclusion is that Israel will not gain international recognition for an end to the occupation if it continues to hold significant portions of the West Bank. Similarly, it is doubtful whether such recognition would be forthcoming even if it unilaterally withdraws to the Green Line.

In another astonishing conclusion, the report noted that the sun generally rises in the east, the earth is the third planet from the sun and it does, in fact, frequently rain in Indianapolis in the summer time.

Rearview Mirrors

Earlier today, I referenced something I wrote a few months before I started blogging - November 3, 2004 to be exact. I actually dug up the piece in question, and it's amusing to me what I got right and what I got wrong, as well as the generally angry tone I had immediately after the election. I remember now how upset I was that Bush could be re-elected, despite everything that had happened.

Anyway, I thought it might be amusing to share this piece, and submit to a bit of criticism with almost 2 years having passed.

***

What Now?
November 3, 2004

Its no exaggeration or surprise to say that the results of this election are probably shocking to the rest of the world. Almost certainly, Europe will go to bed this evening wondering what the hell is going on in America. Large parts of the Arab world will finish their evening prayers wishing a new kind of vengeance on President Bush. The Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian leaderships will no doubt be trying to estimate how damaging this will be to their nations. Ironically, the people this election helps most may be the parties of the left in Europe and Canada. Canadians and Germans will likely be less supportive of any Conservative party that seems too close to President Bush.

But what does this mean for the United States and the World? Well, seeing as I predicted Kerry getting 300-310 electoral votes and 50% of the popular vote, my opinion has the weight and substance of wet tissue. However, there are some obvious consequences to the decision of the American electorate to validate President Bush's next four years, and arguably the last four as well. First off, Bush and the Republicans in Congress will have to deal with the consequences of their actions. The days of reckoning for Bushs policies were put off until after thiselection, but they cannot be postponed beyond the next. Unless there is some truly unprecedented shift in fortunes, the collapses of the USmilitary presence in Iraq, the value of the dollar, and the solvency of the Government of the United States will all come some time in the next four years. As bad as Bush 2.1 was for America, Bush 2.2 is going to be far, far worse. Too bad the People just wasted their last chance to hold the President accountable.

The issues that seem to have decided this election for Bush were moral issues. Put more plainly, the GOP is now the party where "We Hate Fags" is considered good policy. The fact that Bush's margin of victory was likely suburban voters who disagree with him on every facet except the War on Terror makes this frankly hilarious. Security Moms have just helped to elect a man and a party that will usher in a domestic agenda that they would never have knowingly voted for. Except that they just did.

Not a single American can say on November 3, 2004 that they didn't know what they were getting when they voted. They had the experience of four years of Bush in the White House and twenty years of Kerry in the Senate. Like it or not, voting Bush meant voting for the whole Republican package. At least those who voted Kerry but disagreed with parts of his platform could say that the GOP would control the Congress anyway. Voting Bush meant, essentially, voting to legitimize the Republican party platform as the leading philosophy of US politics. Not that the GOP cares too much about legitimacy.

Some could argue that voting Bush in 2000 didnt seem that dangerous. That no longer applies. Not only do we know how dangerous he is, but the world is rapidly entering an unusually dangerous phase. The increasing militancy of the United Statesis tearing the post-WWII order apart, and Bush no longer needs to fear the discipline of public opinion. And now, the world has the task of managing a profound economic (and presumably political) shift in the world order from Europe and America to China and India. These periods are never easy. Arguably, the last time the world faced a period like this, where antagonist nations were jockeying for world supremacy, was the period of roughly 1870-1945 when Germany, Japan, the United States, and the British Empire were all playing the game of empire at various times with various levels of enthusiasm. Two world wars, the razing of whole continents and the deaths of tens or hundreds of millions were necessary for that contest to come to a temporary resolution. The Cold War put history on hold, but since 1991, just as it was being declared dead, History has returned with a vengeance.

Now, faced with the rise of China and India as economic powers, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran as nuclear powers, and the increasing unification and opposition of Europe to American policy, the global situation is becoming tenser and tenser. Would anyone like to suggest that George W. Bush is capable of navigating the reefs and shoals of the 21^stcentury? Does anyone think that Bush would have made an excellent Prime Minister of Great Britain, circa 1904?

History isn't destiny, of course. But the people of the United States have just delivered a massive fuck you to the rest of the world, friend and foe alike. They have legitimated for American politics illegal war, torture, imprisonment without trial, and hysterical nativism a la freedom fries. Herbert Stein, advisor to President Nixon, once said "Things that can't go on forever, don't." This is a useful reminder for all of us in these days of despair. A quick list of things that can't go on forever:

-Iraq: Elections or no, the Iraqis have already voted with their guns. The Americans are in a position identical to the war in Vietnam invaders propping up the carcass of a hated government against its own people. The war gets worse with every day, with more Americans (and vastly more Iraqis) dying every day for an outcome that has already been determined. The only thing that will change between now and then is the body count. Being wrong on this count, and seeing a flourishing of democracy in the Middle East, would please me immensely. I would ask only one question: where is the good news Im missing?

-Oil: The life blood of western civilization, and getting scarcer every day. By some estimates, we are already at the point of peak global production. At best, we probably have little more than a decade. After that, the amount of oil available every year will begin shrinking, just as China begins trying to build an automobile industry. Given how long it takes to cycle old cars out of the market, we need to begin retiring every car on the market now, and replacing them with vastly more efficient models. The Prius will not save us, and it may already be too late. Who thinks that Bush 2.2 will be the presidency to take on Detroit and win? Nixon-to-China scenarios are possible, but do we want to risk the future on hypotheses? Well, 51% of the electorate just did.

-Trade: The US trade deficit gets larger and larger, despite the devaluations of the US dollar in recent months. This mainly has to do with China's decision to peg its currency to the dollar while investing billions in the same. Eventually, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Tokyo will stop throwing good money after bad. When that happens, the post-bubble recession of 2001 will look like an adolescent's grounding after missing curfew. The correction this time could quickly devalue the US dollar to the point where the worlds largest import market could close off almost entirely. Good for domestic US producers, bad for the other 95% of the planet. Except, hypothetically, to the Chinese. But do they want to chain their economy to a drowning man?

Despite an admittedly churlish desire to see the Americans take one in the gut, I couldn't argue that any of these problems are a good thing for non-Americans. Oil is obviously a problem the world will have to deal with, and the other two will leave the rest of the world with a problem regardless of the outcome. And so we come back to the original problem: In what universe is Bush the man to deal with these problems? His advisors have demonstrated incompetence and corruption in spades, and he has not demonstrated any ability to control them. Cheney was elected as much as Bush was. With Powell likely leaving, one of the last moderates in the government will be gone. With Rice, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft now officially unbound from any sense of restraint, we in the sane world now have the experience of wondering how much worse it can get.

When Kaiser Wilhelm fired Bismarck, the British papers called it dropping the Pilot. The Democratic Party has twice produced candidates who understood the world of the 21^st century and would have helped America find its way across these unfamiliar, treacherous waters. Somehow, the American system has rejected both candidates in favor of a man who ridicules the very idea that America should pay attention to the world in any way aside from mass violence. The fact that he is more popular today then he was in 2000 only underscores the danger of our times. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, even the Prophet Muhammad all espoused the belief that people acting in consensus would never make a mistake. I fervently hope, but no longer believe, they were correct.

***

Something I got wrong: "Ironically, the people this election helps most may be the parties of the left in Europe and Canada. Canadians and Germans will likely be less supportive of any Conservative party that seems too close to President Bush." Er, not so much with that one. The influence of Bush is debatable, but conservative parties have "won" in both Canada and Germany.

Feel free to put in your own additions to what I got wrong in the comments, now that I've broken the ice!

Next: Terrorists Want a Cookie, Need a Nap

Only in Harper's Canada:

Should 10-year-olds face jail?
Minister floats lowering age of legal responsibility
Janice Tibbetts, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, August 15, 2006

ST. JOHN'S - Children aged 10 and 11 who run afoul of the law should be brought before the courts, Canada's Justice Minister said yesterday in a controversial and surprise proposal to expand the age of criminal responsibility, which is currently 12.

"We need to find ways of ensuring that children are deterred from crime," Vic Toews told the annual gathering of the Canadian Bar Association.

"We need to give courts jurisdiction to intervene in the lives of these young people."

Speaking to reporters later, he did not rule out incarceration of children under 12, but he said the courts' primary focus should be treatment programs outside the jail system.

The mind boggles. The justice system is stunningly incapable of deterring adults, and Toews thinks that 10 and 11-year olds are going to think twice about, what, stealing a candy bar?

Exactly how many violent crimes are committed by children under, say, 16 in Canada anyway?

Value Nothing: A Military Doctrine

One of the interesting things I've been hearing from more than one place regarding Israel's war in Lebanon is that regardless of the merits of Israel's actions, it was going to happen once the IDF's soldiers were kidnapped because Israel, more than other countries, has a deep, abiding connection with each and every soldier that puts on the uniform.

(We'll leave aside, for the moment, the fact that other IDF soldiers had been kidnapped before without this kind of gotterdammerung.)

If this is true - if Olmert believed, either because of priniciple or political expediency, that he had to do this because of the precious lives of Israeli soldiers - then it simply shows that this attachment to soldiers' lives is positively harmful to Israel's interests.

Let's start with the specific case: Whether you agree with the opinion that "Hezbollah won" or not, arguing that Israel has won a lasting victory in this case is difficult at best. Most observers see this as having empowered Hezbollah politically, while seriously undermining Israel's defensive credibility. If Israel embarked on this foolish war because of an attachment to two soldiers, and got a couple dozen of its own soldiers killed in the process, well that's just dumb. It served neither the immediate tactical goal (getting the soldiers back, or more generally preserving soldiers lives) nor the strategic goal (defeating the as-yet undefeated Hezbollah.)

This is not meant to be a callous argument along the lines of "it's the soldier's job to die", or more classically, "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." Rather, it's important that when states engage in international affairs, they not have too many "lines in the sand". The refusal to negotiate with terrorists is, as always, a instinctively satisfying response. It is also, as always, incredibly stupid. To go to war with all of Lebanon over 2 soldiers, or destroy Falluja over 4 mercenaries, is simply insane. It shows the enemy that they can control you, or at least goad you in to a response that you might not have thought fully through.

If Olmert or Bush had been in charge of facing down the USSR during the Cold War, I fear we probably wouldn't have survived.

Bush, 1962: The Rooskies have put missiles in Cuba? Fuck 'em, let's get our missiles in the air!

A few days ago, Kevin Drum wrote that:

It's human nature to demand action following an attack. Any action. Counseling restraint in the hope that it will pay off in the long run is politically ruinous.

Well, that's not exactly true, is it? Or at least, it explains a whole lot less than Kevin might think. Nobody now argues that the most reasonable response after the Tonkin Gulf was to begin a massive, decade-long war to... do what, exactly in Vietnam? Less understood is that there were voices in 1964 who were saying exactly the same thing, and if President Johnson had joined them (after running against war in Vietnam, after all) he could very well have held off any public clamour for war that might have developed.

More broadly, counseling restraint may be politically ruinous, but practicing restraint is quite another thing. Israel could have not changed its rhetoric one bit, but instead conducted a series of limited air strikes against Hezbollah targets, and would be far, far ahead of where it is now. Or, to put it more simply: If you can't actually talk to the public about restraint, that doesn't mean you can't lie and be restrained anyway. Indeed, the public may thank you for it later.

Equality matters

I mentioned earlier that, like Billmon, I've become increasingly cynical that even the removal of the Bush administration will change the course of things sufficiently quickly to avert the oncoming disasters. However, my personal disillusionment with the Democrats is also due to the fact that by and large, Democrats seem to have forgotten how to talk about rights, equality, and justice.

Aside from John Edwards, we have yet to see a Democratic politician with an explicit message about poverty and inequality in America. Certainly, Edwards is the only major Democratic politician who's made it central to his campaigns. (This may mean Edwards is the nominee in 2008, who knows?) Moreover, while the Dems are eager to put out bad messages about how "together, we can move America forward" or some godawful tripe like that, they singularly avoid the basic issue of justice.

From unions and health care, to women's and gay and lesbian rights, the Left has been at its best and at its strongest when it remembers that our demands are not privileges to be shared, but rights that are owed to us, and are to be demanded.

We deserve a say in our daily life in the workplace because democracy is not just for every fourth year. Democracy is something you believe in every day of your life, or it's nothing.

We all deserve health care because if our most basic asset - our physical health - can be denied us because of poverty, or the status of our employer, then nobody is free.

Women, homosexuals, minorities of all kinds, not to mention those of us in the majority, are owed equality before the law and before all of us because, in the words of Joss Whedon, "Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women." Together.

When I see someone - other than Joss Whedon - making those arguments to the public, then (maybe) I'll start to be more optimistic about our future.

Two subsidiary notes: 1) If you'd like to read the text of Whedon's speech, sans video, follow this link.

2) My girlfriend's sister's immediate reaction, upon seeing Whedon's speech: "Is he married?" (He is, but more importantly so is she.)

Lieberman Lies in the Globe

In the Globe and Mail today, there's an incredibly addle-brained opinion piece about how mean the Democratic party has been to Joe Lieberman. I swear to God, this is the very first sentence:

You'd have to look far in U.S. politics to find a finer public servant than Senator Joseph I. Lieberman.

No, you wouldn't. Any one of the men who did better than Joe in the 2004 Democratic primary - aside from being better at getting votes, a crucial skill for a politician - are also better public servants. These, however, are the second and third sentences:

And, having looked far, you still wouldn't find one. For intelligence, integrity, sobriety, and devotion to the public good, Mr. Lieberman tops the charts.

Intelligence: Lieberman believed that there were WMDs in Iraq, and continues to support the Bush administration. Aside from the moral and even religious issues (twice-married Joe is always telling us how religious he is), this is just d-u-m-dumb.

Integrity: He constantly runs against his own party, but wants the same party to hand him a Senate seat unopposed. Having been beaten in a fair fight, he's now smearing the party he still claims to represent.

Sobriety: Good to know that a U of T professor isn't above a crack at Ted Kennedy. Maybe someday, when I'm a tenured academic, I can coarsen the debate, too!*

Devotion to the Public Good: If by "public good", you mean "Joe Lieberman", then yes Joe Lieberman is devoted to the public good. Indeed, his devotion to that public good "tops the charts", as Orwin writes.

I'll spare you people because, God help us, we're only three sentences in. The other most offensive line in the piece is this:

Mr. Lieberman is apprehensive about the future of the party, and as his fellow Democrat, so am I. Will it ever grow up and become a post-9/11 party?

Unlike Mrs. Lieberman or Orwin, the Democratic party is a post-9/11 party. In point of fact, the Dems are the only post-9/12 party. You see, for people like Lieberman, Orwin, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, the only thing that ever happened of any importance to anyone, anywhere, were the attacks of September 11. The 9/11 attacks, despite being five years distant now, are still apparently the only historical event you need to know about to pontificate about national security, or be a Director of the Munk's Centre.

Knowing, and understanding, that the Iraq war is a collosal mistake, an arrogant blunder, and a national security disaster is apparently irrelevant, because it didn't happen on 9/11.

Men like Orwin and Lieberman refuse to understand that 9/11 is not the sum total of existence, much less the sum total of the national security debate. There was a September 12, and a 13 after that. The Democratic voters of Connecticut understand that questions of national security need to be answered by people who live in the present, and can anticipate the future.

Orwin and Lieberman can only see the horrors of the past, and refuse to admit their part in the horrors of the present. For that reason, if no other, men like them need to be ignored and have their authority stripped from them.

*The other meaning of the word "sobriety" - moderate, serious, temperate - can never, ever, in any way be applied to people who advocated and continue to advocate for the war in Iraq. So I'm actually being charitable here, and assuming that Orwin isn't a total retard.

The Left is right about everything, always, cont.

So at places as variegated as Atrios, The American Prospect, and Talking Points Memo, there's a bit of a discussion about how the Bush Administration has driven even middle of the road Democrats - people who spent the 1990s reading Friedman and thinking "y'know, he's got this globalization thing wrapped up nicely" - in to fits of screaming madness.

I think maybe the most interesting effect of the Bush Administration has been to rehabilitate the left in the public discourse. Casting our eyes back to, oh, 1998 or so, it's difficult to remember that even Democrats ran, screaming, from both the label "left" but more importantly most of the policy prescriptions of actual leftists. People like Robert Reich and James Galbraith were among the few to consistently and vocally raise issues of inequality and class. And they were - outside of places like The American Prospect magazine - entirely ignored. It took the capricious cruelty of the Bush Administration to make people remember two things:

1) Competence matters. The Clinton administration, for all its faults, was competent to a degree like no President since... well, maybe ever. If, after five years of Bushocracy, you still doubt this is important, I reccomend a vacation to New Orleans.

2) The economy doesn't always grow. Sometimes, the economy starts to downright suck. This cuts two ways. If the economy is growing, concerns about inequality can be muted, if only because a growth in absolute wealth silences a lot of concerns about relative poverty. This was a benefit for Clinton-style Democrats, as it let them address poverty and unemployment (which Clinton genuinely cared about) without having to use "old" Democratic ideas like stronger unions, fiscal stimulus, etc.

But the problem is - if you govern as Clinton did, and assume that growth is a substitute for improvements in equality - when the economy starts to tank again (and it always does) then the floor falls out from the people who didn't have much to begin with.

Of course, this was exactly what was being yelled by economists on the left. Problem is, the party of the Left (which Truman's Democrats unquestionably were) no longer existed. Indeed, I'm not convinced it exists today, even with the insanity of the Bush administration. Like Billmon, while I'm happy to see the Bushies driven from office (preferably with fire) I have a hard time believing that Bush's removal will harken a new age of good governance - which is not the same thing as competence, which I do believe the Dems will deliver.

The problem is that we no longer have the room or time to spare for mere competence. Far too many problems were put off for another day during the Clinton Administration, and those issues have positively worsened during the Bush years. We don't need a caretaker President in the US, we need a revolutionary. Think first term FDR, and then add some extra ambition.

Shortly before I began blogging, I emailed friends and family with a note written the day Kerry conceded the election. In it, I noted that when Kaiser Wilhelm dismissed Otto Bismarck as Chancellor of the German Empire, the British press called it "dropping the pilot."

The meaning was this: Bismarck has proven his ability to navigate the treacherous shoals of late Victorian-era European politics. He'd wielded the German military with both incredible efficiency and daring, and he'd humiliated Europe's traditional great power (France) while doing so. Unfortunately for Bismarck, his personal strength and reputation conflicted with the desire for grandeur of the new Kaiser, so Bismarck had to go. The Wilhelmine era that followed was one of crisis after crisis, eventually leading to World War I.

The short list of crises on Bush's watch would include Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, Sino-US relations, Sino-Japanese relations, Indo-Pakistani relations, climate change, energy shortages, the disembowelling of the American treasury, and the total collapse of American legitimacy abroad.

In 2000, the American people were given the choice of continuing the Clinton legacy, and they dropped the pilot.

In 2004, they were given a chance to recant, and they stuck with their latter-day Wilhelm.

If, in 2008, the Democrats attempt to win by running for President as "Wilhelm, but more competent", or even another Clinton, then we might as well all go home. We'll already have lost.

Mantario?

Ah, a brief diversion to Canadian provincial politics.

Apparently, a pair of social scientists have raised the idea of north-west Ontario breaking off and joining Manitoba. Economically, there would be little to zero gain for the people of the northwest, but they would be far better represented politically.

(An additional historical twist: Manitoba and Ontario both claimed the area of Thunder Bay for themselves. In typical Canadian fashion, it was settled by the British.)

I don't know what to make of this idea. On the face of it, I'm not opposed to it. I generally think that political organizations shouldn't, by their very structure, marginalize people. And let's face it - any attempt to put southern Ontario and Kenora in the same province is going to marginalize Kenora.

I also tend to believe that it was a mistake to allow the existing provinces to claim all the new land Canada appropriated. Better to create dozens of smaller provinces out of the new land. Best of all, in my fantasy politics of the 1880s, to have a very centralized (but still federal) state.

Anyway, I just think the name "Mantario" is kind of funny, and thought I'd share my thoughts.

Telling

My Internet is all screwed up, but if you go to Salon.com and click on the Daou Report, you'll see the quintessence of modern political divisions.

From the left: Eric Boehlert on the Bush Administration's handling of the Press.

From the right: The virtues of killing children.

The Crazification Factor

A while back, John Rogers of Kung Fu Monkey wrote:

John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is --

Tyrone: 27%.

John: ... you said that immmediately, and with some authority.

Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.

In related news, the State of Florida is now polling at 25% for Senatorial aspirant Katherine "I miss the poll tax" Harris.

I think we need to add, like, a 5% margin of error on the crazy factor. Bizarre that it should actually favor Florida of all places.

Civility in the Jerusalem Post

Yikes:

Painful retreats and peace-plans are only possible under popular prime ministers - Menachem Begin with the Egyptian treaty, Yitzhak Rabin at Oslo and Ariel Sharon and his disengagement. A discredited prime minister going ahead with such a controversial plan, whatever its merits, is a recipe for chaos and even civil war.

There's somethign wrong in a country's political culture - and I'm not speaking exclusively of Israel, as the US has the same syndrome - that the "dovish", sensible foreign policy can't actually be pursued by doves, for fear of domestic political consequences. So if McGovern had been President in 1972, it would have been impossible for there to be a rapprochement with China because "only Nixon could go to China." Or if Mondale had won in 1984 (Ha!) Gorbachev might have been a missed opportunity because as a pro-nuclear freeze Democrat, Mondale wouldn't have been able to do exactly what Reagan ended up doing at Reykjavik*.

It bears saying that this makes no sense at all.

*It also bears saying that, after tens of billions of dollars, the only thing that Reagan's SDI dreams have materially accomplished was to scuttle a Soviet offer in Iceland to eliminate all intercontinental ballistic missiles by 1996.

Me too

Yglesias:

At any rate, normally the point of MEMRI transcripts is to indicate that each and every figure in the Arab world who doesn't like Israel is also a wild-eyed extremist hell-bent on the destruction of the United States, but these MEMRI excerpts just make Qaradawi sound like a somewhat more candid version of a conventional socially conservative American religious leader. I wish they had provided the entire dialogue, since I'd really like to know how he followed-up on the claim that "lesbianism is not as bad as homosexuality, in practical terms."

First Chinese soldiers, now Muslim clerics.

Thought-provoking

via Defensetech.org, these presentations (1, 2, in PDF) from some of the designers of the F-16, F-15, and A-10 make some alarming claims.

Probably the most controversial would be that the US Air Force hasn't fielded a truly superior aircraft (superior to it's rivals, I assume) since the F-86 in the Korean War. Even worse, they both argue that the F-22 is going to be a disaster.

I have some reservations about this analysis - notwithstanding my hostility to the F-22 - because a lot of their criteria for evaluation seem to rig the game in favour of smaller, cheaper planes and don't (I think) take in to account enhanced capabilities. David Axe at Defensetech says he'll give the aviator's response to these criticisms soon.

My reservations notwithstanding, it's a very, very interesting read for anyone interested in the evolution of combat aircraft since, oh, the 1950s.

Quotes of the Day

At best, the policy is a gigantic gamble that a stable and decent regime can be established in Iraq and that this can produce reform in the other countries and a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. In this case, the United States might gain much more support and approval, if not love. But anything less will leave the United States looking neither strong nor benign, and we may find that the only thing worse than a successful hegemon is a failed one. We are headed for a difficult world, one that is not likely to fit any of our ideologies or simple theories. [emphasis added.]
-Robert Jervis on the Bush Doctrine

Barbara Tuchman, writing about Chiang Kai-Shek, said that as much as power corrupts, powerlessness corrupts even more. I've been thinking about that line a lot recently.

“Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de tres bon Foi, believes itself Right. Power always thinks it has a great Soul, and vast Views, beyond the Comprehension of the Weak; and that it is doing God’s Service, when it is violating all his Laws.”
-John Adams, writing to Thomas Jefferson