Fables of the reconstruction

Wounded Soldiers Ordered Not to Tell Press How Bad Hospital Is

Navy Times:

Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.

“Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media,” one Medical Hold Unit soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The wounded soldiers were ordered not to go outside their chain of command with any complaints. All Building 18 NCOs - presumably complicit in spreading the word about the horrible conditions there - have been replaced, and all the patients at the building, which is easily accessible to reporters, will be transferred to a secure building where reporters will be dogged by PR minders at all times.

This is a full-court stonewall. Here are the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee, including Pennsylvania delegation Representatives Joe Sestak and Patrick Murphy. See if your Senator or Representative are on these committees, and CALL THEM. Even if they're not, CALL your Senators and Representative ANYWAY. Raise some hell about this!

[snark] I note that Instapundit has said nothing about this story. Why doesn't the right care about the troops??? [/snark]

(Via Nitpicker.)

No, But Three Rights Make a Left

Washingtonpost.com:

Not that Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) was out for revenge or anything. But he did seem to enjoy at least a small measure of satisfaction in making mega-GOP-donor Sam Fox squirm during yesterday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to consider Fox's nomination to be ambassador to Belgium.

Fox contributed $50,000 to fund the infamous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads that sought to smear Kerry's Vietnam War record in the 2004 presidential campaign.

So, how did Maximum John nail the creep?

[Kerry asked,] How does the nominee feel about the level of "personal destruction" in politics these days?

Fox replied that he was "very concerned" that politics have become too "mean and destructive," especially with the participation of independent "527" groups such as Swift Boat Veterans. ...

Why then, given Fox's dim views of 527s, did he give such a large chunk of money to help Swift Boat? Kerry asked.

Fox explained that he and his wife donate generously to GOP political causes. "When we're asked, we generally give," he said. He said he could not recall who asked for the Swift Boat donation but explained that he thought it was important to give to a 527 working on behalf of Republicans because a 527 "on the other side" was stooping to such low levels as comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler.

"So two wrongs make a right?" Kerry asked.

What that asshole Fox is referring to is an urban legend: Namely, that MoveOn.org ran an ad depicting Bush as Hitler. In fact, MoveOn held an ad contest, and one of the many entries submitted - and promptly rejected - compared Bush to Hitler.

So there you have it: The far right makes up things about the left, and then does those things themselves.

Honeybees Mysteriously Dying Off

NYTimes.com:

Beekeepers have fought regional bee crises before, but this is the first national affliction.

Now, in a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. And nobody knows why. Researchers say the bees are presumably dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold.

As researchers scramble to find answers to the syndrome they have decided to call “colony collapse disorder,” growers are becoming openly nervous about the capability of the commercial bee industry to meet the growing demand for bees to pollinate dozens of crops, from almonds to avocados to kiwis.

Along with recent stresses on the bees themselves, as well as on an industry increasingly under consolidation, some fear this disorder may force a breaking point for even large beekeepers.

A Cornell University study has estimated that honeybees annually pollinate more than $14 billion worth of seeds and crops in the United States, mostly fruits, vegetables and nuts. “Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food,” said Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation.

If you have a large freezer, you might consider stocking up on frozen fruit to tide you over when apples are $15 a pound.

Rice Sits Down to Talk with Iran and Syria About Partitioning Iraq

NYTimes.com:

American officials said Tuesday that they had agreed to hold the highest-level contact with the Iranian authorities in more than two years as part of an international meeting on Iraq.

The discussions, scheduled for the next two months, are expected to include Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Iranian and Syrian counterparts.

The announcement, first made in Baghdad and confirmed by Ms. Rice, that the United States would take part in two sets of meetings among Iraq and its neighbors, including Syria and Iran, is a shift in President Bush’s avoidance of high-level contacts with the governments in Damascus and, especially, Tehran.

What's going on here? I think this announcement should be read in conjunction with yesterday's adoption by the Iraqis of an oil-sharing plan. In short, we have reached a basis for the effective partition of Iraq, and Rice is now sitting down with the leaders of the other two major powers to seal the deal.

What leads me to this conclusion?  Back in October, I wrote (but did not publish) a post on the possibility of an effective partition of Iraq, explaining what I see as the dynamics and calculations involved. The reason I did not publish it is because it's a very long analysis, and I felt insecure because I am in no way a foreign-policy expert.  What I was discussing was simply my putting two and two together from reading the news. I am publishing it below, because I now think the analysis was and is still valid:
___________________________________________________________________

October 18, 2006

So, did anyone else notice that Iran wants to be our friend?

That's how I am interpreting events.  Last month, Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Tehran with hat in hand to ask for Iran's help, and came away calling Iran "ally" and laden with riches: a pledge of security cooperation to stop insurgents crossing into Iraq, a deal on joint oil exploration, and a deal on agricultural cooperation.  How convenient. I imagine that Maliki, who is Shiite and lived in Tehran for a portion of his exile from Saddam, alternately cast himself as a shrewd negotiator and the Iranians as a bunch of swell guys when he showed off the trove to his cabinet and the Americans. 

For anyone who might be suspicious that it was all too pat, context had been helpfully provided.  Former Iranian President Khatami made a 5-city tour of the U.S., visited Monticello, spoke at Washington National Cathedral, called the American people "great", gave many interviews and public appearances where he fielded hostile questions, all to make a case that Iran could be very reasonable if the U.S. was. Iran would join a regional nuclear nonproliferation treaty if the U.S. sat down and asked for it, U.S. military options in Iran were poor anyway, Iran never intended to destroy Israel, and Iran was moving toward democracy slowly but was overcoming millenia of despotism - all in all, saying that he was a very astute player representing a moderate faction who could be very helpful if the U.S. only stopped its unwise antagonism that strengthened the Iranian hardliners. Like a detective playing bad cop on cue, said hardliners publicly denounced Khatami's speech. It's your choice - me or them, Khatami implied; I could do something about that pesky insurgency problem in Iraq, while the Iranian fundamentalist wing will pin your Marines down for years. For a decade. Let me take that albatross from around your neck, you poor Republican Party, so you can go back to that culture war stuff you do so well. Did I mention we execute homosexuals in my country? It's like we're family.

That's clever, but not the truly brilliant part. Offering the Republicans a way out of their political jam isn't enough, the Iranians know, because the Republicans are in thrall to their own mad mullahs at the various think tanks and the office of the Vice President. To co-opt them, Khatami implicitly validated the neocon thesis that American arms can transform tyranny into democracy, and an implacable enemy into a valuable partner, and provided the soothing explanation that if the U.S. hasn't quite been able to prove the theory right in Iraq so far, it's an understandable result of the labyrinthine ways of the Middle East: "You guys are geniuses and your theory is brilliant, but the Middle East is a hall of mirrors. Hey, I can hardly keep track of it all myself - tribes, blood feuds going back centuries, wars over ancient history. Did you know Shiites and Sunnis are different? Crazy, I know. The only way out of the maze is to have a guide, sahib, a sharp one, like us Iranians.  You can trust us because we want the money and influence only you can bestow, oh Great Ones. We need your help, and you need ours. If we work together, Iraq can be transformed from a mess into a brilliant success, before President Bush's term ends and you lose all influence." It's a story tailor-made for the idiots who thought the Iraqis would throw flowers at our feet.

In fact - following the train of thought to its logical end - it's a two for one deal, because Iran will also be transformed, from Axis of Evil to strategic partner in about six years. Implicitly, this holds up Iran as the model of how other Islamic countries could successfully transition to democracy, aided by more judicious applications of American power, by integrating Islamic values with modern notions of minority rights and rule by the people.

Who knows, maybe it's even true.  Clearly, the Iranians are engaged in a ploy, but maybe with a kernel of truth. There is an argument to be made that Iran really has the best chance in the region to evolve into something bearing a resemblance to a rights-protecting pluralistic republic.  The Iranians are not uneducated, they're not the Taliban - they fight the Taliban, they've studied in western universities, they grew their own democratic government before we toppled it, they understand that democracy can bring stability as well as freedom, and stability is one prerequisite to accumulating the kind of power that can prevent Iran from becoming a puppet for foreigners again. All the Iranian factions agree independence is a key goal, so maybe an Islamic democracy is the means to secure it.

How likely is it? Consider: First, unlike most others in the region, Iran is a real country with a real history, not a line on a map drawn by a British colonial administrator as the best way to divide up ethnic groups and keep the pot boiling.  A national identity is a much better base to work from when dealing with things like political change. Second, say whatever you want about the Islamic Revolution, it was a nationalistic movement that threw out a foreign puppet, maybe clearing the way for better things. Consider Vietnam as a parallel - whatever you thought of Ho, he liberated his country, so 30 years later it shows faint stirrings of freedom and is our good trade partner.  Third, the conservatives have the upper hand in Iran, but it is also true that the political system provides for other centers of power and a (heavily constrained) diversity of views.  From our standpoint, it's outrageously repressive, but notice that over 27 years the Revolution's absolutism gave way to jockeying between conservative elements and reformists somewhat like the seed of a modern political process. It's not much, but maybe it's a way to steer between fundamentalists and jihadi death cultists like bin Laden and the Taliban, on one hand, and despots like Saudi Arabia and Saddam who just breed more of the cultists, on the other.   

All bull-session theorizing aside, you have to admire the sheer nerve of the Iranians.  Their strategy is to use the U.S.'s own theory against it, and so vault from pariah to power, by essentially promising to help stop the insurgency as if they had nothing to do with it.

What next? After the Americans, the Saudis present the biggest obstacle. A couple of weeks ago the Saudi Interior Minister declared that all of Iraq's neighbors were on board with the Iranian security proposal, too, because of the danger that the sectarian conflict could spill over Iraq's borders.  Words mean very little, of course.  There has to be a workable plan that lets the Saudis know their interests will be protected.  Maybe the Baker commission is working on it:

In an interview on the ABC News program “This Week,” Mr. Baker said, “I think it’s fair to say our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of ‘stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’ ”

Mr. Baker, who served Mr. Bush’s father as secretary of state and White House chief of staff, did explicitly reject a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, which he said would only invite Iran, Syria and “even our friends in the gulf” to fill the power vacuum.

What the hell does that mean?  The overseas press think they know:

The Baker commission has grown increasingly interested in the idea of splitting the Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish regions of Iraq as the only alternative to what Baker calls “cutting and running” or “staying the course”.

“The Kurds already effectively have their own area,” said a source close to the group. “The federalisation of Iraq is going to take place one way or another. The challenge for the Iraqis is how to work that through.”

...

His group will not advise “partition”, but is believed to favour a division of the country that will devolve power and security to the regions, leaving a skeletal national government in Baghdad in charge of foreign affairs, border protection and the distribution of oil revenue.

In other words, they're going to carve Iraq up into three pieces and give one each to Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, without saying so.  If the Iranians deliver on their promises on security and oil, the extra money could grease the way for partition, the Iraqi "government" could adopt a meaningless constitution with lots of nice democratish words, the U.S. military could pretend the Iraqis can defend themselves and so withdraw with honor, Bush could declare victory, the Republicans could put the whole nightmare behind them and name an airport for Dick Cheney, and the Iranians could look like heroes while they sit back and contemplate the next move.

Procrastinating Clients Are the Best

You know what I love? I love it when someone calls you out of the blue and says, "Uh, I guess I should have given you more notice about this, but remember that deal I said was going to happen? Uh, it closes in a week. Is that a problem?"

As my dad used to say, better than digging ditches or pumping gas for a living.

Federal Court Holds Bloggers Immune from Liability for Comments

The American Constitution Society:

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides that "[no] provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider," and that "[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section."  A recent decision of the First Circuit has reaffirmed the broad protection this statute provides to bloggers and message board administrators.

I have not read the CDA in a while, but this language appears to apply to more than defamation. If a commenter threatened someone and posted identifying information about them, for example, the blogger would be immune from any kind of civil or criminal action, even if she left the comment up.

(Via Becks at Unfogged.)

Libby Jury Down to 11

NYTimes.com:

A juror in the perjury trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, was dismissed from the panel today after acknowledging that she had had outside contact with information related to the case.

Federal Judge Reggie B. Walton said the jury’s deliberations, which began at mid-day Wednesday, could go on with 11 members on the panel. “I don’t think it would be appropriate to throw away those two and a half days,” he said, alluding to the work that jurors had done up to this morning.

The judge’s decision came over the objection of the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who wanted one of two remaining alternates to be seated, bringing the jury panel back to 12. But that would have required the newly constituted jury to begin deliberations all over again, a development that the chief defense lawyer, Theodore V. Wells Jr., said would be prejudicial to his client.

Judge Walton said the problem juror’s exposure to outside information was the result of a misunderstanding rather than intentional on her part. But he said he had no choice but to dismiss her.

I didn't know you could go with fewer than 12 jurors in a criminal case. It's done in civil cases, where you don't even need a unanimous verdict. (For example, I was on a medical malpractice jury where you only needed 9 or 12 to reach a verdict.)

I also don't understand how restarting deliberations with a full 12 is prejudicial to the defendant. Is he more likely to be convicted that way? Or is he just bored with waiting?

Timothy Noah, Wikiwanker

Dear Mr. Noah:
I know your column was intended to be kind of cutesy and self-promoting ("Hey, look everyone, I have a Wikipedia entry, for now!"), but your effort to indict Wikipedia for having notability standards is just lame.

1. "Wikipedia commands what is, for all practical purposes, infinite space and infinite manpower." You do work for an online publication, right? Because I would expect this sort of thing from a total newbie. Wikipedia has editorial administration, oversight and management, because it does have standards for completeness and style, and there will always be disputes over editing. Someone needs to have final say. Adding untold millions of articles on any subject or person, no matter how minor, is guaranteed to break the system.
2. "If Wikipedia publishes a bio of my cleaning lady, that won't make it any harder to field experts to write and edit Wikipedia's bio of Albert Einstein. So why not let her in?" The internet is wonderful, but it's not magic. A huge database is difficult to manage, and expensive to host. A database run amok with useless entries is the shortest distance to bankruptcy. And yes, Mr. Noah, it costs money  to run a site like Wikipedia.
3. "Another limit is accuracy. The bio's assertions about my cleaning lady would have to be independently verifiable from trustworthy sources made available to readers. Otherwise Wikipedia's vast army of volunteer fact-checkers would be unable to find out whether the bio was truthful." The vast army of volunteer fact-checkers also has to care enough about a topic to check it. Having a notability requirement helps to ensure this.
4. "We know why other encyclopedias need to limit the topics they cover." Here's the basic problem: You don't understand why an encyclopedia is useful. You don't need to create an article when the information is readily available elsewhere. Googling your name tells one all they need to know about you because there isn't that much which needs explanation, unlike - for example, using "random article" - coronal loops.
5. "We limit entry to the club not because we need to, but because we want to." This ending is just wacky. You're protesting being removed from Wikipedia, not because your cleaning lady never got an entry in the first place. You are pissed because you want to be in the club, not because entry is limited. And using an internet resource - especially one like Wikipedia - as an example of an exclusionary social structure is ludicrous. Google exists, okay? If you feel the need to be known, put up a vanity page. Get a free blog and autobio yourself until you can't autobio anymore.

Update: I had forgotten I had written this about Noah three years ago. He makes as little sense now as he did then.

Liberals Are Just Prejudiced Against the Clueless

Responding to an attack by Franklin Foer, editor of the New Republic, Daily Cause says:

If I'm waging a "war for ideological purity", I'm doing about as good job of it as the New Republic is of running its magazine.

Luckily, I'm not. And TNR has still lost half its circulation in the past six years.

He could have been even crueler just to quote Foer more:

“It just seemed to me, given my own intellectual and moral synergies with Leonard J. Asper, a very good partnership,” he said, referring to the chief executive of CanWest. Mr. Asper was not available for comment yesterday.

What the hell are "intellectual and moral synergies"? They're both smart and moral, but together they're super-duper extra smart and moral?

Conservatives Pretending to Care About Human Rights Again

Dear Prof. Reynolds and Mr. Simon:

Just a quick note to assure you that I really, really tried to get defensive about this:

It's frustrating to read stories like this. You want to do something, but you don't know how. I quickly clicked onto the websites of Human Rights Watch and PEN (of which I was once the West Coast president), hoping they could do something, but found no references to Abdel Kareem under either spelling. Maybe I missed something. I checked Atrios and the Daily Kos as well, but nothing there either about their fellow blogger. Perhaps they are unaware of what is happening. You would think this was a situation that would transcend domestic politics - the guy's going to the slammer - but so far apparently not.

Where to begin? First, try to avoid being completely wrong about one of your targets. Second, it's probably not the best tactic to wonder aloud why human rights don't transcend partisanship while you're engaged in a partisan attack. Making your opponent laugh out loud sort of undercuts the needling effect you're going for. Third, in future bear in mind that google exists and provides ready answers from the very people you accuse during the last time Egyptian democracy was in the news:

[T]he more interesting question is why conservatives aren't jumping up and down about this. I think it's pretty obvious -- most aren't particularly concerned with spreading Democracy around the world. George Bush might actually be sincere in his new mission, though I don't think he has a deep grasp of what "democracy" is, but most of the rest of them aren't.

Republicans have never stopped being isolationist and anti-nation building (true of most of the US population, actually). They don't think tyranny leads to terrorism (nor am I claiming there's necessarily a strong connection), and don't really want to expend any treasure helping out "the other." What they do like is killing bad guys, and when George Bush says "spreading freedom and democracy" what they hear is "killing bad guys." They like killing "bad guys," and they're a bit lost without an enemy, so the actual spreading of democracy just doesn't excite them that much.

Which is to say, you're well-known to be hypocritical and opportunistic on this issue, trumpeting the "spreading freedom" rationale for invading Iraq after the "mushroom cloud" one didn't pan out. As well as the vigorous action in Darfur for which you were keen right up until the 2004 election. Afterward, you just tended to moan like a grocery clerk telling people his lane is closed:

Yes, of course. We should all do what we can. But this shouldn't be an exclusively American problem. It is a world problem. The United Nations, which was formed in the wake of genocide and was supposed to make the repetition of such horrors its number one priority, has not nearly done its job here, just as it did not in Rwanda. Why? Maybe there just isn't any money it.

The U.N. doesn't intervene in Darfur because there's no money in it? Funny, we were just thinking that about Bush. You know, Messrs. Reynolds and Simon, your political party did control the executive and legislative branches of the federal government for some years. Never mind invading, during that time couldn't Bush have scraped together a few pennies and conducted a bombing campaign against the Khartoum government, as he is preparing to do in Iran? Admittedly, there was no Security Council resolution to enforce, but that didn't stop him in Iraq, and there was precedent in President Clinton intervening in Kosovo (for no money, and over the strong objection of then-Governor Bush and other numerous prominent Republican elected officials).

So please forgive me for not getting worked up the way that you want. Call it Fake Outrage Fatigue, which results when the sufferer gets jerked around one too many times, and can only giggle and snort when someone tries to do it to him again.

Most sincerely,

Mithras Invicti

P.S.: If you ever sincerely wish for a united front against human rights abuses, I can provide you with Duncan's and Kos's email addresses.  Rather than starting off attacking them, it's much more effective to first try privately asking them to make common cause. Not only will this show your good intentions, it has a far greater chance of working.

"What's Good Enough for New York May Not Always Be Good Enough for Philadelphia."

From the local business fascist radio station:

Steve & Barry's, a national sportswear company, offered to donate Stephon Marbury's "Starbury" sneakers to each of the varsity boy’s basketball players in the Philadelphia School District.

Enter School Reform Commissioner Marty Bednarek, who said, "€˜What about the girls?"

"They originally said they weren't going to be able to do that. So I told them then that they could keep their sneaks."

Then the negotiations began:

"They said, well, New York accepted them. I said well, what's good enough for New York may not always be good enough for Philadelphia. So we got the sneaks for the girls."

1,600 Philadelphia boys and girls basketball players got their new sneakers this month.

Mr. Bednarek just got himself another term on the commission, at least, if he desires.

Campaign to Free Jailed Egyptian Blogger

(Via Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing.)

Bush Demands Israelis Not Talk to Syrians

Ha'aretz:

The United States demanded that Israel desist from even exploratory contacts with Syria, of the sort that would test whether Damascus is serious in its declared intentions to hold peace talks with Israel. ...

The American argument is that even "exploratory talks" would be considered a prize in Damascus, whose policy and actions continue to undermine Lebanon's sovereignty and the functioning of its government, while it also continues to stir unrest in Iraq, to the detriment of the U.S. presence there.

It is also known that Syria, like Iran, continues to provide Hezbollah with arms and equipment.

I don't even know if I buy this story. The Israelis are hardly ever reluctant to break off talks to "send a message", so it's possible they're offering an excuse not to talk just to appear tough. Even if it's just a ploy, I would think the Bush Administration would have had to agreed to it first. At best, it's in accord with U.S. policy; at worst, it is U.S. policy.

Why would the Bush Administration not want Israel to talk to Syria?

For the same reason the Bush Administration does not want to talk to Iran.

For the same reason the Bush Administration yanked U.N. inspectors out of Iraq and gave Saddam impossible conditions to forestall an invasion.

The leaders and funders of the Republican Party believe it is in the party's interest to pursue a policy of confrontation rather than negotiation. They think they benefit economically and politically from war, not from peace. So they pursue war, whether it is in the interest of America and the world or not.

Republicans who have abandoned Bush over Iraq need to realize that the problem is not one war or one President, but the strategy of the people in charge of their party.

(Via Hilzoy at ObWi.)

What's the Environmental Effect of a Fence on the Mexico Border?

Interesting issue:

IN the debate over how to prevent illegal immigration from Mexico into the United States — armed patrols, electronic surveillance, prison time for first offenders and a 700-mile-long 15-foot-high fence — few politicians have voiced concern over the last option’s profound effects on wildlife.

Obviously, it will prevent the migration of a number of species. Are any of them the kind Republicans like to hunt? (Other than the two-legged kind.) Because that's the only way we can get them to care.

The Advantage of Being Criticized by Cheney

I don't know what Dick Cheney thinks he's doing criticizing the contenders for the Democratic nomination for president, but it is such a wonderful gift, I feel like sending the man flowers. Do Republicans think it's a good idea for a politician with current favorability rating of 29% to be leading the charge against the opposition? It's awfully considerate. When the nominees debate sometime next year, look forward to the Democrat saying, "My opponent agrees with Dick Cheney that ...."

Which Came First, The Chicken or the Egg?

The egg.

Motorola Q versus Treo 700p

This is not a full-blown review, just a summary of my personal experience as a long-time user of Palm devices in comparing Verizon Wireless's Motorola Q and the Treo 700p.  My conclusion is that - for someone like me - there is ample reason to get the Treo over the Q. Even if you haven't used Palm devices before, you may find some factors - the battery life, especially - important.

I've used Palm devices since about 2000. First I owned a Kyocera 6035 Smartphone (and I think its bulky corpse still haunts my repository of discarded electronics). Dissatisfied, I replaced the flawed convergence device with a combination of a regular cell phone and a PDA - first, a Handspring, and when that broke, a Sony Clie SJ-20. Finally, in mid-2004 I got a Treo 600 from Verizon Wireless. Having overcome my resistance to using a headset to talk on, I finally was able to simultaneously talk on the phone and use the Calendar and Contacts. From my perspective, that's the only way a convergence device is useful - if it does different things at the same time. As a major bonus, there was a wonderful array of free applications created by Palm enthusiasts available online. 

When it came time to replace my old Treo, because of what I read about it in magazines like Wired and testimonials like Albert's, I first got the Motorola Q. I have been using Windows PCs since 1987, so I figured my learning curve for  Windows would be trivial. I fully expected to be blown away, but long story short, I took advantage of Verizon Wireless's policy that you can return any new device within two weeks. I then got the Treo 700p, and was thrilled with it from the moment I turned it on.

First, here's a (very bad) picture I grabbed off the web of the Q next to the 700, just for size comparison:

And here are my old Treo 600 and new Treo 700p:

Here are the factors that went into my comparison of the Treo and the Motorola, in descending order of importance:

• The Treo's battery life is significantly longer.  When I charge the Treo overnight, under normal usage conditions, it lasts me all day and all evening. If I neglect to charge it the next night, it will still have juice through the next morning. Doing the same thing with the Q gave it enough power to get through the day and part of the evening, and then it crapped out. That alone was very close to being a deciding factor for me. Worse, when you plug in a Q with a very low battery, the phone does not come on again for several minutes. If I push the Treo to its battery limit and then plug it in, it works.
• Treo's ergonomics are superior to the Motorola's. Long story short, the Palm is designed to fit in your palm, and the Q is not. This one completely caught me by surprise.  One of the reasons I wanted the Q was it was much thinner and lighter than the Treo. But it turns out the thicker, heavier Treo is much easier to hold and use one-handed, a key advantage. The difference is the result of a basic design decision: the edges of the Treo are curved, while the Q is a thin, rectangular box. When you hold the Treo, your hand and fingers are  actually touching the curved portions, resulting in you having a good quarter-inch of skin gripping each side of the device. This allows your thumb to reach all the buttons on the phone without worrying it will slip out of your hand. When you hold the Q, by contrast, your hand and fingers are trying to grip it on the sharp bottom edges. That means you have to grip it harder to make it feel secure in your hand, but a tighter grip makes your thumb unable to reach all the buttons.
  
• Programs run faster on the Treo. When I open an application or perform an operation inside an application on the Treo, it almost always happens instantly. (Occasionally, there will be some lag when scrolling through menus, but if that happens the worst that results is you overshoot the menu you wanted to get to.) The Q lagged a lot while opening new applications and, significantly, lagged while performing operations within an application. That second kind of lag is really undesirable, because if you're not sure if you just missed the right button, you end up hitting it twice, and when the Q finally catches up, you may have done something you didn't want.
• SMS conversations are in IM format on the Treo. This is a feature of the Treo I have always liked, and it mystifies me that Microsoft didn't steal it. If you're like me, you text with the same people all the time. When I open the SMS folder, all those conversations are grouped by the person's name, just like an IM chat log. You can't do that on the Q.
• You can search all the data on your Treo, but not the Q. The Treo has a search function that allows you to search all the application data on the phone. Since my phone holds a lot of data in different ways - contacts, appointments, SMS - it's helpful. You can't do that on the Q. In fact, I couldn't figure out how to search Contacts at all, which is really a drawback when you want to find a person based on some detail you entered in their profile.
• The Treo has a touch screen, the Q does not. Even if you don't enter data using the stylus, having push buttons in applications just makes life easier.
• One advantage for the Q: screen resolution.  The one thing I found more desirable about the Q was that its screen was sharper. That was the only thing I liked better about it.

A Military Coup Could Allow Bush to Withdraw From Iraq

Regarding the idea that Bush will bend to the will of the people and withdraw our troops from Iraq before the end of his term, Duncan says "na gah ha pen."  I tend to agree that is the correct prediction, but I can see at least one scenario where it is not: The Maliki government falls to a military junta that declares it is seizing power to "counter the Iranian threat" and "safeguard the transition to democracy."

Is that scenario likely? No. One, Cheney and company have proved themselves incompetent at intrigue, so there's no reason to think they've suddenly become adept at it. To pull this off, you'd need to find Sunni generals who could command loyalty from Shia troops (are there any?) and tame Shia generals (same question), and then catch the Iranians napping. Two, radical Shia have taken over all the power centers they need to put up a strong fight.

So not a likely outcome, but one that needs to be included for the sake of completeness. If it did occur, I would expect there would be fighting between elements of the Iraqi army, in which the U.S. would not overtly take sides. Our troops would withdraw from the areas of fighting until the issue was decided, and then either way, Bush would draw down our forces. Assuming our puppets won, we'd keep some troops on bases to "assist" in securing them against outside interference. If the Iranian-aligned Shia won, they'd certainly know we had been behind it and we'd be invited to leave completely, which is what makes this a high-risk gambit.

I've been predicting since August of 2003 that Bush would have to bring back an anti-Iranian strong man. At the time, I thought he'd do it soon, since I figured he couldn't be so stupid as to let the Shiites actually take power.  Before that, I thought he couldn't be so stupid as to invade Iraq in the first place. Realizing I have gone wrong in my predictions when I have overestimated the intelligence of George W. Bush, I now think the coup scenario is possible but unlikely. All else equal, I think I won't completely discard the possibility until next summer, when it will be too late for the Republicans to get any electoral advantage out of the move.

New Radiation Warning Symbol

Here's the IAEA's new radiation warning sign, meant to supplement the use of the current trefoil:

The idea, I suppose, is that you will grok that anything bearing the trefoil symbol causes death via the wavy lines, so you should run away.  The IAEA claims:

The new symbol, developed by human factor experts, graphic artists, and radiation protection experts, was tested by the Gallup Institute on a total of 1 650 individuals in Brazil, Mexico, Morocco, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, China, India, Thailand, Poland, Ukraine and the United States.

I had no idea there was a job called "human factor expert." And:

The symbol was tested with different population groups - mixed ages, varying educational backgrounds, male and female - to ensure that its message of "danger - stay away" was crystal clear and understood by all.

Crystal clear? I don't think so, but it's pretty good given the space limitation of a triangular sign. Some people will think they're being told to run to the right. Also, why is the background red? Isn't the standard symbol black on yellow?

Just off the top of my head, I think a better sign would have been rectangular and had three panels stacked vertically: First panel, Mr. Stick Figure sees the trefoil symbol (dotted line with arrow from head to symbol). Second panel, trefoil symbol radiating with wavy lines at the skull and crossbones. Third panel, Mr. Stick Figure running away from trefoil symbol.

In any event, you probably won't be seeing this symbol anytime soon, unless your hobby is taking medical equipment apart:

The symbol is intended for IAEA Category 1, 2 and 3 sources defined as dangerous sources capable of death or serious injury, including food irradiators, teletherapy machines for cancer treatment and industrial radiography units. The symbol is to be placed on the device housing the source, as a warning not to dismantle the device or to get any closer. It will not be visible under normal use, only if someone attempts to disassemble the device.

(Via Pwylla at Low Grade Panic.)

Three Things About Religion in Politics

During all the back and forth over liberal evangelicals, there are a few points I have been meaning to mention:

1. Liberal evangelicals mean well, but just don't know what they're proposing.  I said in very strong terms that the religious left is naive. More gently, they're new to organized politics and don't understand that some of the things they say raise huge red flags to Democrats. At the same time, outside of a few grifters who posture as leaders, I think liberal evangelicals really do want to find a political home in the Democratic Party, because they're genuinely repulsed by the Republicans.  But when they ask for changes to the  party's position on the two biggest culture war issues - gay rights and abortion - they fail to understand that most people who are already passionate and active in the party got into it in the first place because of one of those issues.

2. Democrats could hoodwink religious liberals, but that would make us Republicans. The average conservative evangelical voter has been essentially taken for a ride by the leadership of the GOP, who use religion as a marketing vehicle. If I were as cynical as a Republican operative, I probably could concoct a strategy whereby we maximized the religious vote while not actually delivering anything of substance.  Since Democrats don't do that, we actually treat religious voters with more respect than the Republicans do. We don't do anything for them either, but at least we don't lie to them.

3. Religious beliefs don't deserve privilege in political debates, and they don't deserve to be excluded. I think a lot of secular voters feel pummeled by years of rightwing Christofascist (there, I said it, and I feel better) rhetoric, and as a result, they advocate excluding all religious arguments from the political sphere. To which conservatives respond, "Martin Luther King!" and then go whine the mean liberals said nasty things about the Holy Spirit.  The events of the past couple of weeks have crystallized things for me: Religious beliefs deserve to be respected until are brought into policy arguments, and from then they are subject to the same level of criticism as secular arguments, no more and no less.  They can't be a sword and a shield - you can't argue that your religious belief compels a certain policy and then also say that belief is off-limits to criticism. On the other hand, it's not fair to say "religion has no place in politics" and then ally yourself with liberal evangelicals who believe, say, that their faith requires them to be good stewards of the planet. I can ridicule people who believe a blastocyst is a person, and the right wing can try to trash the beliefs of people who think they're caring for God's creation. We win.

The Kind of Political Blogging Newspapers Respect

As a follow-up to the post about the story about Kos, I wanted to bring up a counter-example of something newspapers consider "good" blogging - in this case, the campaign for  net neutrality. I think the reason reporters don't feel threatened by this kind of political activity is because (a) it's about the web itself, so they feel it's bloggers' "territory", and (b) it's not the kind of political issue that makes them horny, like presidential races do.

Maliki Bestows Honors on Shiite Policemen Who Allegedly Raped Sunni Woman

Good thing we got rid of Saddam's rape rooms:

Maliki had said on Monday that the alleged rape would be thoroughly investigated by a committee. Hours later, however, in a subsequent statement, he said the investigation had concluded that the woman fabricated the story and he announced that the alleged rapists would be honored.

To be honest, I can't say for sure that the cops raped her. Who knows, maybe she's lying for political reasons. Maybe Maliki is. (I am betting Maliki.) Whichever, the fact that Maliki goes and gives awards to the cops in question two days after he found out about the case just draws another big red circle around the question, "Why the hell did we depose Saddam in the first place?" After all the nonsense being said about what this or that American proposes "sending a message" (either the wrong one or the right one) to the insurgents, Maliki sends an unmistakable message to Sunnis in Iraq: You are dirt.

If the civil war wasn't on before, it's on now.

Rumsfeld the Convenient Scapegoat

William Arkin at Early Warning:

If Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) thinks that the buck stops with Donald Rumsfeld, he is not qualified to be President.

On the campaign trail, McCain labeled the former Secretary of Defense the worst in history Monday.

Sure there is a lot to criticize about Rumsfeld. 

What I detect, though, is a virus that is also spreading through the Pentagon right now, in which the former defense secretary is the excuse and the whipping boy for all of America's problems.

Rumsfeld's missteps indeed made a major contribution to the mess in Iraq and the mishandling of the "war" against terrorism. In blaming Rumsfeld, however, McCain sidesteps the faulty logic of American interest and necessity that justified the war in the first place. And he excuses the larger national security team who equally has responsibility for the war and its subsequent design. Finally, McCain ignores the Commander-in-Chief: He will later need Bush on the campaign trail.

The Pentagon leadership is similarly quick to pin it all on Rumsfeld, a monumental passing of the buck that excuses those in uniform at the top who made their own bad decisions or rolled over and played dead in the presence of a strong civilian leader.

Even factually, it is wrong to say that Rumsfeld led everyone astray, that he ignored military advice, that he screwed up what otherwise would have been a successful enterprise.

More fundamentally, what is wrong with the anti-Rumsfeld virus is this: It is just too convenient of a way for the military leadership, the Congress, and the national security establishment to move forward without accountability.

The political, military and intelligence establishments need to make the Iraq debacle about someone's personal failings because otherwise the analysis would turn to one of institutional failure. The story would not just be that Rumsfeld and company were wrong, but that the Pentagon, CIA and Congress - at best - failed to use the power and resources entrusted to each of them to prevent such a far-reaching strategic error, or - at worst - actively aided and abetted the birth of that error through a short-sighted or incompetent calculation of their institutional interests. That the invasion of Iraqi rather than being the result of a breakdown in the system, was the disastrous outcome of that system working as designed is a narrative the bureaucracy cannot abide.  As someone wrote in another, similar context, they can't countenance a theory of their own incompetence.

So Rumsfeld is designated to take the fall, or perhaps Rumsfeld together with Doug Feith, officially known in the blogosphere as The Dumbest Fucking Guy on the Face of the Earth. Liberal blogs blame Bush's incompetence, of course.  (Duncan recently expressed puzzlement at why the right wing has not turned on Bush, too. The answer is simple: Conservatives worship authority, and Bush is the king. One does not question the king - it's treason, you know - until one is sure the king is dead.  Once Bush leaves office, though, look out. MoveOn and Kos will look mild in comparison to what the rightwingers will say about Bush then.) But all of it is beside the point.

The bureaucratic incompetence analysis of the Iraq war transforms sparring between liberals ("Bush was wrong!") and conservatives ("Bush was right!") from the central political battle into a sideshow that distracts from the real issue. But it's worse than that: Our political system may be incompetent to remedy the institutional failure. It was both parties, after all, that made up the Congress that passed the force authorization resolution. On one hand, the Republicans still believe that resolution was justified. On the other, Democrats say either their vote for the resolution was a mistake (Edwards) or that they were misled (Hillary).  But none of the current Democratic officeholders or candidates for President say that the problem goes deeper than that.  It's not clear that any of them think it. The Democratic Party, recently restored to power, is in no position to launch an assault on the Pentagon and the CIA, even if it wanted to.  After 30 years of being battered by Republican propaganda that they were weak on national security, the party leadership instinctively cringes from criticizing the military and the spies as entities. Individuals like Rumsfeld are fair game, yes; the defense establishment as a whole is sacrosanct. Meanwhile, Republicans are too busy feeding at the Pentagon trough to pause to do anything but belch the word "traitor" at anyone suggesting they stop.

Pathetically, the only political groups that have been remotely right about the nature of the defense establishment are the far left and the paleoconservative right. But their critique is that human and political catastrophes like Iraq are the inevitable result of the exercise of power, which, to put it mildly, is something no one else in America wants to hear. Left or right, mainstream America thinks that only if their side were the ones wielding power, then it could be done wisely and well. (When it all goes wrong, of course, the buck stops elsewhere, which is how I got started on this topic.)

The dystopian conclusion to all this is that humans suck and should never be trusted with anything. That's a cop-out, of course. Renouncing all earthly works as flawed just means you don't care about this plane of existence. Eschewing power yourself may be noble, but hardly guarantees that someone else won't gather power and use it badly, so you in your noble powerlessness effectively stand aside and let others be harmed.

The slightly less gloomy conclusion is to start with the common ground held by both the far left and paleoconservatives: When tempted to use power for a sweeping, grand plan, don't. Just don't.  But since life must go on, let restraint and caution be your operating principles. Question your own assumptions; take honest criticism to heart and use it as a tool for improvement. If you're going to use power, keep your goals concrete and discrete. Buy a tank, build a highway. Feed people, house people. Cut pollution, plant trees in the rainforest. Start little wars, and end them. What this implies is that the best political tool for an average person is a fine-tuned bullshit detector. Mine pegged in the red back in 2002 when Bush brought up invading Iraq. If more people's were working back then, we wouldn't be where we are now.

 

Kos v. Tauscher

Washingtonpost.com:

Progressive blogs -- including two new ones, Ellen Tauscher Weekly and Dump Ellen Tauscher -- were bashing her as a traitor to her party. A new liberal political action committee had just named her its "Worst Offender." And in Tauscher's East Bay district office that day in January, eight MoveOn.org activists were accusing her of helping President Bush send more troops to Iraq. ...

MoveOn.org had two Bay Area chapters before the election; now it has 15, and they could all go to work against Tauscher in a primary. "Absolutely, we could take her out," said Markos Moulitsas Zúniga -- better known as Kos -- the Bay Area blogger behind the influential Daily Kos site.

The article, from headline ("Woman in the Middle) to close, depicts Tauscher as a moderate, and never bothers to examine the charge that she's too conservative for her district. On the other hand, it starts out portraying Kos and MoveOn as thugs, then veers near the end:

But Kos points to Harman as a perfect example of how the Net roots can keep Democrats in line. He said Harman used to be a constant irritant, a go-to quote for reporters looking for a Democrat to tweak liberals -- until she had to fight off a primary challenge from the left in 2006. "She's been great ever since," he said. Now Harman even writes on the liberal Huffington Post blog.

Kos can imagine a day when Tauscher still holds her seat but is no longer distasteful to the left. "That's what victory would look like -- a more responsive representative," he said. So when Tauscher praises Pelosi as "perfect on substance, perfect on optics," it's hard to know if that's a result of personal evolution, political trends, or blogospheric pressure, but it's music to Kos's ears.

It will be great when the day comes when newspapers can resist the urge to paint blogs as fever swamps. That day has not yet come.

Here's Some Religion I Can Get Behind

Washingtonpost.com:

Several leading liberal Episcopalians said yesterday that they would rather accept a schism than accede to a demand from leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion for what they view as an unconscionable rollback of the U.S. church's position on gay rights. ...

"Yes, I would accept schism," said Bishop Steven Charleston, president of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. "I would be willing to accept being told I'm not in communion with places like Nigeria if it meant I could continue to be in a position of justice and morality. If the price I pay is that I'm not considered to be part of a flawed communion, then so be it."

Rock on, Bishop Steven Charleston.

I'll Mercilessly Ridicule What You Say, But Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It, You Hack

Mona at Unqualified Offerings:

Finally, a MSM organ (The Rocky Mountain News) is highlighting the extremists on the pro-Bush right, in this case Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds’ outrageous advocacy that the United States assassinate Iranian civilians – scientists and religious leaders. In an RMN op-ed, Law Professor Paul Campos denounces Reynolds as a right-wing equivalent of Ward Churchill, and rightly so.

Ah, yes, the consequences of getting yourself onto CNN and such is that all of a sudden you can't spout your eliminationist drivel and not get called on it. 

However:

Campos is wrong about a very crucial matter, however. He thinks Reynolds may well merit sanction by the University of Tennessee for his assassination advocacy. I would contribute to an ACLU fund to defend Reynolds’ right to announce any heinous political views, even those that he did about murdering Iranian civilians.

Me, too. Unlike the case with Charles Stimson, Reynold's remarks are not an attack on the administration of justice itself, nor is Reynolds in any position of power or public responsibility (thank god).  Let's live up to our principles, especially when it comes to people like Reynolds, who would discard those principles.

Enemies on All Sides

Jim Henley, reacting to the assertion that the insurgency is primarily trying to influence American public opinion, says:

And Iraq has long since passed simple insurgency-vs.-occupation anyway. There are at least four wars going on, in most of which the belligerents interpret the US presence as damage and route around it, as the internet, back in the good old days, did with censorship.

Right. If you're still alive in Iraq, you realize that the Americans are going to leave, sooner or later.  So, you focus on your ultimate opponents - other Iraqis, usually - and use the Americans as a shield or a sword or you ignore them, whichever makes sense in light of your aims.

In other words, our forces are approaching irrelevance, which is why we should leave.

Also, von gets his history of the Tet Offensive completely wrong. The North Vietnamese didn't launch its campiagn "in order to establish .... that the North Vietnamese still had capacity to wage war."  The Tet Offensive was aimed at a domestic audience; namely, the North deludedly thought the people of the South were primed to rise up and shake off their foreign occupiers, and that all they needed was the push that the offensive provided.  The actual history of Tet supports Henley's interpretation of the events in Iraq.

Which Way Does This Cut?

The far-right fanatic billionaire from Pittsburgh who underwrote the witchhunt against President Clinton now has apparently changed his mind about both ol' Bill and Hill:

Mr. [Richard Mellon] Scaife, reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, spent more than $2 million investigating and publicizing accusations about the supposed involvement of Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton in corrupt land deals, sexual affairs, drug running and murder.

But now, as Mrs. Clinton is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Scaife’s checkbook is staying in his pocket.

Christopher Ruddy, who once worked full-time for Mr. Scaife investigating the Clintons and now runs a conservative online publication he co-owns with Mr. Scaife, said, “Both of us have had a rethinking.”

“Clinton wasn’t such a bad president,” Mr. Ruddy said. “In fact, he was a pretty good president in a lot of ways, and Dick feels that way today.”

As for the conservative response to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, Mr. Ruddy said, “The level of intensity and anger toward Hillary is not getting to the level that it was toward Bill Clinton when he was president.” He added, “She has moderated and developed a separate image.”

To which Thers, gobsmacked, adds, "Sorry about provoking the ridiculous constitutional crisis." But the first thing that occurs to me is: Does this say more about Scaife or more about the Clintons?

On one hand, Scaife just might be acknowledging reality, and not throwing away another $2 million. Hillary has already signaled that she's primed to counterpunch if attacked, so Swift Boating her won't be as easy as Kerry. Scaife might figure attacking her on the qualities that make her the antichrist to the far right just would backfire, anyway. The main right-wing slam against Hillary is that she's a brainiac ballbusting bitch, but after two terms of a lying incompetent like Bush, a brainiac ballbusting bitch may be just want the public wants. Scaife might figure attacking her on the qualities that make her the antichrist to the far right just would backfire, anyway. Also, Bill left office with the highest approval ratings of any modern President, so you can't use him as a negative to hang around Hillary's neck.

On the other hand, it's possible that Scaife has come to accept the Clintons on substantive grounds. Bill didn't do anything to stop growing income inequality, the subject nearest and dearest to the heart of a robber baron.  Hillary, while not Genghis Khan, has already demonstrated she is more "reasonable" (from the robber baron perspective) than, say, that trial lawyer Edwards. If not quite an endorsement, a judgment by Scaife and his cronies that Hillary is acceptable doesn't exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy about her.

Tomorrow's Wingnut Talking Points Today

About shit like this, I predict the follow-on will be something like:

I see this has struck a nerve. Guilty consciences, perhaps? Liberals who love America (I assume there are some) would never have recognized themselves in the accusation, and shrugged it off.

How to Win: Talk, Wait, Lead By Example

As I was driving home late tonight I apparantly was having thoughts similar to Hilzoy's at ObWi:

Democracy is the best system of government there is. People do want to be free (though, obviously, they want other things as well.) We could try to help them along when it seems appropriate: providing monitors and security for elections, for instance, or helping fledgling democracies deal with crises that threaten to put them under more strain than they can bear. Alternately, we could just get out of the way and let history take its course. Not being an isolationist, I very much prefer the first option. But why pursuing the kinds of policies we pursued in Iraq seems like a better alternative to anyone at all is a complete mystery to me.

I heard an ad on the car radio for a breakfast hosted every weekend at the Philadelphia Visitors Center by a Ben Franklin impersonator who has studied Franklin's life and works and so gives the visitor the simulated experience of trading ideas with him.  I was thinking about how lucky we got to be in the right place (buffered by oceans) at the right time (the zenith of the Enlightenment, before we started to slide back toward a high-tech version of the Middle Ages) and got the Constitution that we have today.

All lasting safety and prosperity stems from freedom. As badly as it works oftentimes, our Constitutional structure is very much a cleverly-designed freedom machine. The basis for our success is representative democracy - as much as Republicans delight in pointing out we are a republic, not a pure democracy, it only shows their ignorance - because by leaving ultimate decision-making power in the hands of all the people equally, we maximize the chance that the people will feel invested in their government, and when motivated will take action to right it when it goes wrong.

If I were talking to people from Iraq, I would say that Bush's supporters were arrogant in thinking they could transform a country into a carbon copy of the U.S. by force. (I don't believe Bush ever thought anything of the kind himself; he just used the idea as a smokescreen to pursue his aim of creating a puppet.) But I would also say I think a secular, pluralistic, rights-protecting government founded on democratic principles in what we all should aspire to.

And I think that Hilzoy's other point is important, too. We didn't win the Cold War by fighting. We won it because the other guy lost. We won it by not fighting. We could have nuked China; we didn't and China is slowly moving down the path to freedom. We killed a million Vietnamese for no good reason and it took far longer for them to move to a free-market economy than it would have if we had dealt with Ho when he first came to us, after World War II. So much suffering we caused by blundering around, so much harm we did inadvertently to the cause of freedom. As Franklin once wrote:

I join with you most cordially in rejoicing at the return of Peace. I hope it will be lasting, and that Mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable Creatures, have Reason and Sense enough to settle their Differences without cutting Throats; for, in my opinion, there never was a good War, or a bad Peace. What vast additions to the Conveniences and Comforts of Living might Mankind have acquired, if the Money spent in Wars had been employed in Works of public utility! What an extension of Agriculture, even to the Tops of our Mountains: what Rivers rendered navigable, or joined by Canals: what Bridges, Aqueducts, new Roads, and other public Works, Edifices, and Improvements, rendering England a compleat Paradise, might have been obtained by spending those Millions in doing good, which in the last War have been spent in doing Mischief; in bringing Misery into thousands of Families, and destroying the Lives of so many thousands of working people, who might have performed the useful labour!

A war to liberate people from an invader, as we did in Europe in the 40s or even in Kuwait in the 90s, makes sense. A war to liberate people from the trials of their own history does not.

"Desperately Seeking to Avoid the Embarrassment of Political Defeat in Iraq"

From Tom Ricks at washingtonpost.com, here is an email from Army Reserve Lt. Col. Craig T. Trebilcock, a veteran of the Iraq war, in its entirety:

"Our civilian leadership, desperately seeking to avoid the embarrassment of political defeat in Iraq, proposes to send in its military reserve, calling it 'a temporary surge' for political consumption. From a military operational standpoint this will enable us to kick in more doors, kill more bad guys and secure more territory -- in the short run. From the strategic political standpoint this will expose the inability of the weak Iraqi government to rule its own people, create more civilian casualties among an already embittered populace and likely become the final straw, rendering open domestic political opposition to our continued military presence in Iraq acceptable to a war-weary citizenry. In the end, by ignoring the cultural and internal political realities of Iraq in favor of a one-dimensional approach based upon military remedies, the civilian leadership of our military likely will win the battle and lose the war."

Please note that Col. Trebilcock calls it a "political defeat." As I have said many times, we are involved in a political conflict that the Bush Administration and its simple-minded followers have chosen to fight solely using military force, instead of persuasion, marketing and diplomacy. And when, inevitably, the tide turned against us, the only solution they can come up with is more force ... for a longer time ... and then more force ... for even longer. Until they find they can no longer escalate the force, and they're still losing. That's when they turn and blame it all on the dirty liberal hippies who didn't clap loud enough.  Except it's harder to impeach the credibility of someone like an Army officer who is a veteran of that war.  Harder, but like with Max Cleland, the pondscum running the Republican Party will not hesitate to try, because they have no honor and no shame.

Against Stupidity the Gods Themselves Struggle in Vain

Brad Altrocket at Sadly, No!:

The warbloggers have completely internalized their support for this war to the point where their very identities as human beings hinge on its success. They see the war as a symbol of what makes America, and by extension themselves, strong, noble and good. And since America can never be anything but strong, noble and good, any negative news about the war must by necesity come from an Internal Enemy Within that is jealous of America’s strength.

Arguing with these guys becomes extremely depressing after a while. It’s like trying to convince the average LaRouchie that the Queen of England does not, in fact, run the world crack trade. Sure, you occasionally get guys like John Cole who get deprogrammed, but most will be stuck this way for the rest of their lives. 9/11 permanently traumatized an entire generation of right-wing nerds, and nothing we say can change that.

Or, as I like to say, dumb people are dumb. You can't use empirical evidence and logical argument to change the mind of a crazy person.

The Baghdad Workout

It's impressive when someone succeeds at being sarcastic  in a foreign language. Laith, one of washingtonpost.com's stringers, at Inside Iraq:

First of all, I would like to thank our beloved Mr. PM Nouri Al Maliki and the greatest US President George W. Bush for the new security plan which started few days ago. The plan changed many sides of Iraqis life. The check points which were set on the bridges will keep Iraqis walking every morning until the end of the new security plan which I don’t know when. ...

The bus driver switched off the engine because he didn’t move more than a meter during more than 5 minutes. At last, he suggested that we get down and start walking. The man was right and he said “guys, I swear walking on feet will be faster than waiting in the bus”. ...

I had to walk for about 30 minutes. ... While I was walking, I was looking at the lines of cars waiting to be searched. When I reached the check point, I found out 4 Iraqis soldiers, three of them were busy with things have nothing to do with the secuirty plan like smoking and talking to each other and the fourth was working as a traffic policemen, he was giving the drivers the permission to pass, they didn’t have any equipment showing that they are really searching the cars looking for the bombed ones and the soldier was just looking at the faces of the drivers without even asking them for their papers.  At that moment, I was sure that this plan had failed. In fact, the long lines of cars make these cars an easy target and any attack can cause big casualties.

I think the third worst position to be in is to live and work in Baghdad right now. The second worst position would be to work as that bus driver. The absolute worst position would be those soldiers at the checkpoint, just waiting their turn to be murdered.

Also, how totally surprising is it that a program conceived by the Bush Administration turns out to be a sham?

I Was Just Saving Myself for the Right War

New get your war on:

(Via Michele at Letters to the Management.)

A Woman President or a Black President?

Gallup:

"Between now and the 2008 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates -- their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be [see below], would you vote for that person?"

• Catholic 95% yes
• Black 94%
• Jewish 92%
• A woman 88%
• Hispanic 87%
• Mormon 72%
• Married for the third time 67%
• Seventy-two years of age  57%
• Homosexual 55%
• Atheist  45%

Asked of those who answered "yes" to each appropriate item above: "Would you be completely comfortable voting for a qualified presidential candidate who was [see below], or would you have some reservations?" Combined results, based on total sample.

• Black 84% completely comfortable
• Woman 78%
• Mormon 58%
• Married for the third time 54%
• Seventy-two years of age 43%

About this, the insufferable enfant terrible says:

The polls indicate that being a woman is a smaller electoral handicap than being a Mormon (Romey), 72 years-old (McCain), or on a third marriage (Giuliani), but a larger one than being an African-American.

Look, a lot of the people in that poll who say they would vote for a black person or a woman are just lying.  I know, shocking, that people would lie to a pollster about their views on race and gender. To the extent they're not lying to the pollster, they're lying to themselves.  It's clear from the "entirely comfortable" question, which takes them from the realm of the entirely theoretical to the somewhat more realistic. But you know where the real catch is? "Generally well-qualified." When they actually go into the voting booth, they find themselves turning the lever for the white guy because, darn it all, there are just too many unanswered questions about that well-spoken black gentleman and that very forceful, highly-educated female.

So don't take such polls seriously, okay?

Matt's post has this context:

Two key black political leaders in South Carolina who backed John Edwards in 2004 said Tuesday they are supporting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

State Sens. Robert Ford and Darrell Jackson told The Associated Press they believe Clinton is the only Democrat who can win the presidency. Both said they had been courted by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama; Ford said Obama winning the primary would drag down the rest of the party.

"Then everybody else on the ballot is doomed," Ford said. "Every Democratic candidate running on that ticket would lose because he's black and he's at the top of the ticket -- we'd lose the House, the Senate and the governors and everything."

"I'm a gambling man. I love Obama," Ford said. "But I'm not going to kill myself."

Are we playing that "electability" game already?  I guess we are. For once, we're playing it on race (and gender) rather than on policies. Matt calls this "dirty pool."  I actually am okay with it, because it's a much less squishy attack than the one about someone (like Howard Dean, say) being "too liberal" for America. You can't test that hypothesis until you get to the general election because you don't know how events (in Iraq, say) will develop in the meantime, which scares people away from voting for the candidate they actually prefer because they're worried he'll lose.  But I think race and gender bias will get sorted out during the primary itself.

While I think Rep. Ford overstates the case, political hackery aside, it's not hard to imagine why people might agree with him. Can you picture, for example, a black man as presidential nominee with a white man as his vice president - in all respects, his underling, a step beneath him?  How do you think white America would feel when that image appears on their televisions? 

Anyway, I don't think we'll even find out. My prediction is that Democrats will go into the booth and decide Obama just isn't "ready" yet. That is to say, white people fear black people a lot more than men fear women.

Armed Hijacker Jumped By Passengers and Crew

Washingtonpost.com:

The Air Mauritania Boeing 737 carrying 71 passengers and a crew of eight was hijacked by a lone gunman brandishing two pistols Thursday evening shortly after it took off from Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, for Gran Canaria, one of Spain's Canary Islands, with a planned stopover in Nouadhibou in northern Mauritania.

Turns out the guy's motive was to fly to France and seek political asylum, but the passengers didn't know that:

"We thought it was people from al-Qaeda or the Algerian GSPC who were going to cut our throats," said Aicha Mint Sidi, a 45-year-old woman who was on the plane. GSPC stands for the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.

Then the pilot twigged:

Along the way, the pilot realized the man did not speak French. He then used the plane's public address system to warn the passengers in French of the ploy he was going to try: brake hard upon landing, then speed up abruptly. The idea was to catch the hijacker off balance and have crew members and men sitting in the front rows of the plane jump him, the Spanish official said.

It worked. The man, who was standing in the middle aisle when the pilot carried out his maneuver, fell to the floor, dropping one of his two 7mm pistols. Flight attendants then threw boiling water from a coffee machine in his face and at his chest, and about 10 people jumped on the man and beat him, the Spanish official said.

The hijacker was arrested by Spanish police who boarded the plane after it landed at Gando airport, outside Las Palmas.

Air Mauritania identified the pilot as Ahmedou Mohamed Lemine, a 20-year veteran of the company.

Way to go, Capt. Lemine.

Provide Proper Care for Wounded Soldiers - Now

The Democratic Congress should use its funding authorization power to address at once what Republicans neglected - the care of wounded troops:

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses. ...

Not all of the quarters are as bleak as Duncan's, but the despair of Building 18 symbolizes a larger problem in Walter Reed's treatment of the wounded, according to dozens of soldiers, family members, veterans aid groups, and current and former Walter Reed staff members interviewed by two Washington Post reporters, who spent more than four months visiting the outpatient world without the knowledge or permission of Walter Reed officials. Many agreed to be quoted by name; others said they feared Army retribution if they complained publicly. ...

Seventy-five percent of the troops polled by Walter Reed last March said their experience was "stressful." Suicide attempts and unintentional overdoses from prescription drugs and alcohol, which is sold on post, are part of the narrative here.

Vera Heron spent 15 frustrating months living on post to help care for her son. "It just absolutely took forever to get anything done," Heron said. "They do the paperwork, they lose the paperwork. Then they have to redo the paperwork. You are talking about guys and girls whose lives are disrupted for the rest of their lives, and they don't put any priority on it."

Fucking disgusting. 

Hillary Clinton's Inability to Face Up to War Resolution Mistake

There are several things at play in Hillary's decision not to characterize her vote for the force authorization bill as a "mistake". First, as a woman candidate, she must be constantly on guard against giving any sign of weakness for sexist attitudes (conscious and otherwise) to latch onto. Second, she knows she'll get hammered on it by Obama whatever she does, so she figures drawing the line firmly is better primary politics. Third, she figures it will make better general election politics to say that if the intelligence about Iraq had been true, then the U.S. invasion would have been justifiable. Either way, though, she will pay a price, and she knows it:

Her decision not to apologize is regarded so seriously within her campaign that some advisers believe it will be remembered as a turning point in the race: either ultimately galvanizing voters against her (if she loses the nomination), or highlighting her resolve and her willingness to buck Democratic conventional wisdom (if she wins).

At the same time, the level of Democratic anger has surprised some of her allies and advisers, and her campaign is worried about how long it will last and how much damage it might cause her.

There is an element that Hillary and her advisors may have missed that is very important to primary voters. The major weakness of the Bush administration, beyond its lack of honesty, is its lack of self-doubt. Bush himself can never admit to a mistake. People make mistakes, but it's those who can't admit it who are truly dangerous. Not being able to admit you were wrong is a clear sign of irrationality.  We've had six years of it with Bush, we don't want to trade a Republican who can't admit when he's wrong for a Democrat who can't admit when she's wrong.

Hillary is smarter than Bush by miles, and that's great. But being slightly less than brilliant and able to correct your mistakes is miles better than being brilliant and pigheaded.

(Via Booman.)

The Boys and Girls in Green and Blue Missing Arms and Legs

Hilzoy commenting on this at Obsidian Wings:

[I]t defies belief that nearly four years into a war, we haven't got arrangements in place to allow VA doctors to get the full medical records of wounded veterans. I cannot think of a single good reason -- not one -- why this should still be an issue.

I pass this along because it is very surprising. Everyone knows liberals don't care about the troops. Hilzoy clearly must have some anti-American angle on this; I just haven't figured out what it is yet.

Republican Legislators Think Evolution is a Jewish Conspiracy

From the American Constitution Society:

A memo being distributed by conservative Georgia and Texas legislators argues that teaching "evolution science" is unconstitutional because the Theory of Evolution originates in an 2000 year-old but newly-rediscovered Jewish conspiracy. ...

The URLs referenced in the memo link to an organization called the Fair Education Foundation (FEF), a group devoted to exposing "Copernican and Darwinian Myths." In addition to promoting the notion that evolution is an ancient but long-unknown Jewish conspiracy, the FEF's website, fixedearth.com, argues that the theory that the earth revolves around the sun is also a lie passed down by Jews.  It is unclear whether the legislators distributing the anti-evolution memo also believe that the earth does not revolve around the sun.

The memo went on to say that Amanda Marcotte is a bigot.

More on the Republican Brand

John Cole:

I have realized that many on the right in the blogosphere don’t have principles, they have a team they are rooting for, and nothing more. That doesn’t mean I have been converted, but it does make me disgusted and disgruntled.

It's not just the blogosphere. My rough estimate based on the Republicans I meet is that about 60% of them like the Republican party for the same reason they drive a Dodge, drink Coors, and root for the Yankees. It's a familiar brand that is marketed by tapping into positive images for them in some shallow way. And, most importantly, all their friends like the Republican brand too.

Kung Fu Monkey Does Honor Among Thieves

John Rogers of Kung Fu Monkey lands a directing gig:

StudioCanal's other trio of remakes are "Honor Among Thieves," based on Alain Delon-starrer "Adieu Lami"; "Max," based on Claude Sautet's "Max et les Ferrailleurs"; and "The Prone Gunman," adapted from a novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette, which inspired "Le Choc," starring Delon and Catherine Deneuve.

First into production is likely to be "Thieves," a scam-cum-heist story being written by John Rogers ("Transformers") with a view to Rogers helming and [John] Woo mentoring.

Rock on.

Religious Left Wannabe Power Brokers

Regarding the dustup between Duncan and Mark Kleiman, Kleiman asserts:

I'd love it if fervently religious folks decided to try to be "the soul and conscience of the Democratic Party," for example by insisting that the party stand foursquare against torture, or, as Mara Vanderslice suggests, that we need to be fervent rather than lukewarm in insisting on economic justice. And of course if you want to appeal to fervently religious folks, casting them in a role they'd like to occupy is a good way to do it.

It takes a truly Donohuesque level of abusive misrepresentation to translate that into an accusation that non-religious folks are without conscience.

Really? When someone says they're running for President from the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party", would Kleiman say there's no criticism of others within the Democratic Party implied?  If someone says "integrity and honesty need to be restored to the office of the president," is it hard to tell what they think of the incumbent? When someone says her co-religionists would like to be "the soul and conscience of the Democratic Party", the clear implication is that the Democratic Party lacks a soul and conscience now.

It's one thing to say that your religious values tell you that the goals of the Democratic Party are good and right, and so you support them. There's absolutely nothing wrong with saying that the morally desirable policies of the Democratic Party have not been effectively communicated to a group of voters. It's quite different to imply that your religious values are morally superior to those of other people, and that the goals of the Democratic Party must be religiously redirected to be good and right.

Kleiman says we're all just a bunch of meanies:

But there's no denying that the megachurch as it currently stands is one of the props of the God-and-Mammon Coalition that is the contemporary Republican Party. That's partly because the Democrats have allowed themselves to be associated with a contemptuous view toward "revealed" religion.

Again, really? That means someone like me, a lifelong atheist, who admires the hell out of an evangelical Christian like Fred Clark - a guy, by the way, pretty frequently quoted by Duncan - is just faking it. All of us secular liberals don't mean it when we say that what enrages us is someone citing God as the justification to, say, take away women's constitutional rights. In fact, we really hate Christians who behave like they really believe in peace and justice. It must have something to do with us also loving terrorists. Perhaps Kleiman can consult Ann Althouse to figure out what makes us so wacky.

The real reason the "megachurch as it currently stands is one of the props of the God-and-Mammon Coalition" is not, as Kleiman thinks, because Democrats shun religion. It's because the religious left as a group has not gotten off its collective ass and done anything. They let their denominations be taken over by conservatives who used hardball tactics. They failed to build other churches or organizations as competitors to the conservatives'. And they utterly failed and continue to fail to convince their co-religionists not to side with the conservatives.

That last bit is not due to Democrats having contempt for the religious. It's due to the fact that conservative Christians hate and despise liberal Christians. They don't respect them, and they don't fear them. Why should they? As far as the conservatives are concerned, the religious left are apostates, and weaklings to boot.

Kleiman believes that all we need to do is be nice and the Christian Right loaf can be leavened with religious liberals:

That the current organized anti-abortion movement is also anti-women, anti-gay, anti-sex, and often economically reactionary as well, is true. But I would be delighted if it became false, as it might.

Get that? The anti-abortion movement, dominated by bigoted conservatives,  could be infiltrated by the crafty operatives of the Religious Left, if only we hugged them and told them how smart they are. It's naive in the extreme to think the cultural right and the Republican party would allow itself to lose control of the anti-abortion movement. Liberal Christians have no traction on such issues because we're insufficiently encouraging? As someone else has said, it's a fight, no one is handing out invitations, so if you want to participate get in there and start swinging.  Land a few solid punches for the side of right and then you'll get a pat on the back - you earn respect by doing what's difficult and right.

As it is, the Christian Left as a group is in the position of having had its ass handed to it by the conservatives, and now they're trying to pull those of us who have been fighting long and hard against the evil pricks off them. And what do they tell us to do? Be nicer. Agree with them that abortion is morally wrong and God approves only of heterosexuality.  Give them the right to say how the Democratic Party should handle "moral" issues. Basically, give them power that they haven't earned, and abandon principled, moral positions to do so.

To what end? Kleiman claims to be a hard-nosed pragmatist, "Personally, though, I don't value elevated hackles as much as I do winning elections." Again he naively assumes that all we're talking about is adding a new member of the Democratic coalition, rather than risking alienating large numbers of people who are already winning elections for us. We've been down this road before, you know, when a liberal interest group who had failed to win over the electorate claimed to have been shut out of the Democratic Party. Vanderslice is doing much the same thing Nader did in 2000 - she's out to extort the Democratic Party into changing its positions to match hers. All well and good - that's what politics is about. MoveOn and the netroots did much the same to support Howard Dean as head of the DNC and generate opposition to the war.

The question for Vanderslice, as it was for Nader and MoveOn, is: Will adopting your positions gain us more votes than it loses? It's indisputable that Nader cost Gore the election, but if Gore had bought Nader off by adopting some of his policies, it's just as sure that moderates who otherwise would have supported Gore would have bolted. Gore loses either way. On the other hand, MoveOn and liberal blogs energized a Democratic base that was sick and tired of Democratic candidates wimping out, without driving away anyone who wasn't probably going to vote Republican already. Dean championed this approach and won the DNC chair, which led to the 2006 midterms; John Kerry failed to embrace it and lost.  Accepting Ms. Vanderslice as the "soul and conscience" of the party means adopting positions that implicitly undermine the political rationale for the civil rights of women and gay and lesbian people. Kleiman just assumes, based on nothing I can see, that we'll pick up more votes among evangelicals than we'll lose elsewhere. Does that strike you as realistic?

Look, I am all in favor of individual Democratic candidates who base their policies on issues like abortion on their religious convictions. I only have one condition: Win. It's funny to push a consultant like Vanderslice out in front of this issue when her relevant experience is for the '04 Kerry campaign. I'll tell her and Kleiman the same thing I tell the Naderites and the Greens: Prove your case. Win an election. Go out and find yourself a Congressional race and put your program into effect. I know, it's harder because of the party machinery and the power of incumbency. Politics is hard work, as the Decider-in-Chief says. You can find a district where there's no Democratic incumbent, but make sure to pick one where there is a sizable block of Democrats that you risk pissing off proportionate to their presence in the Democratic Party nationwide.  That is, pick a representative district. Win the primary. Better yet, win the seat.  Winning is prima facie evidence that you can add evangelicals to the coalition without convincing others they're being sold out. 

I bet you can't do it. But if you do, you can come back to skeptics like me and say, "It works. How about we talk about altering the national platform and who is nominated for President." Until you prove you know how to drive, stop asking for the keys.

Update: Replying to Duncan's criticism, Kleiman says:

As to "proof by assertion," where's your evidence for the claim that "religious left" leaders such as Vanderslice are demanding that the Democrats backslide on reproductive freedom? Insofar as they do make such demands, I'm happy (again, as I said above) to help you push back. But why cry before you're hit?

Okay, I'll volunteer. From the very article about Vanderslice under discussion:

The Republican Party and the right wing in this country have had a strategy of reaching out to Catholics, white Protestants, evangelicals going back for 20 years. The Democrats, if we're going to make up this gap, this "God gap," so called, we will need to invest, I think, in a long-term strategy in reaching out to these communities and ... listening to them, to giving them a seat at the table so that we can hear what their concerns are and can let them know that there's a place for them to be people of moral values, religious people, Christian people, and be Democrats. I also believe that the Democratic Party -- we really need to engage in a more thoughtful debate on the abortion issue in this country. I can't tell you how many times I had conversations with people of deep faith [who] said, "I support you [and] everything you are doing on every other issue except for this one." It is such a painful and divisive issue in this country, and we have, therefore, avoided it, I think, to a large extent. I don't think that does service for us. I believe that we need to work across our differences to find ways to reduce unwanted pregnancies. There are a million and a half abortions every year in this country, and no one can feel that's a good place for us to be. But we need to support the programs that we know reduce the need for abortions. Abortion rates went down to their lowest levels in 25 years under President Clinton; abortion rates went up under President Reagan. We need to work together to support the programs that will help women choose life, and I think we need to be open to a new dialogue on this issue.

First, note her statement that Democrats need to work to convince religious people that it is possible they can be "people of moral values" and "Democrats."  Kleiman argues that the generous reading of this to Vanderslice is that we need to do a better sales job. Duncan says that you would have had to have been asleep for the past six years to believe that the Republican Party - which tortures people, jails others without charge, allows American cities to be destroyed by natural disasters, and starts wars on a pretext - are the moral ones. If they haven't been asleep, what Vanderslice must be saying is that evangelicals have real, substantive concerns that Democrats are less moral than Republicans.

The leaves us with only two possible conclusions: That evangelicals who don't vote Democrat are stupid and uninformed, or they're stupid and unable to make good moral decisions. Either way, I am not in favor of catering to them.

Second, do we really need "a more thoughtful debate on the abortion issue in this country"? I thought the discussion for the past 35 years has been full of thought, as well as spittle, invective, threats and the whiff of gunpowder. I don't recall avoiding the "painful and divisive issue" as I was doing clinic defense and patient escort during attempts to blockade the clinic by anti-abortion zealots.  I do recall wondering if I was going to get shot. If by "thoughtful" Vanderslice means "Evangelical anti-abortion people need to tone down the murder rhetoric", well, count me as on board that ship.  Not that long ago, there was a guy who was blowing up abortion clinics, and he hid out in the woods where he got help from good, God-fearing Christians:

It is thought that Rudolph had the assistance of sympathizers while evading capture. Some in the area were vocal in support of him. Two country music songs were written about him and a locally top-selling T-shirt read: "Run Rudolph Run." Many Christian Identity adherents are outspoken in their support of Rudolph; the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, notes that "extremist chatter on the Internet has praised Rudolph as 'a hero' and some followers of hate groups are calling for further acts of violence to be modeled after the bombings he is accused of committing."

You know, to put the best possible spin on it for Vanderslice, I am sure she is a very sweet person:

Someone had forwarded [it] to me when the Catholic League put their release out. I remember the title said, "John Kerry's Religious Outreach Director Is a Real Gem." Naively, I actually thought maybe it was going to be someone saying nice things about what we were doing.

She thought the Catholic League was going to say nice things about her.  Similarly, she thinks if we just sit down and listen seriously to anti-abortion evangelicals, they'll come over to our side. I am sure the anti-abortion folks she talks to don't want to hurt this sweet lady's feelings, so they say things like, "I support you [and] everything you are doing on every other issue except for this one."  Of course, what they really mean is, "You work for babykillers."  You want to give these people a seat at the table? The price they will exact is that certain other people lose their place at the table.  They are not interested in compromise to reduce the number of abortions; that's been on the table for years. They don't want to fund sex ed and contraception.  They want to ban abortion. Then they want to ban sex ed. Then they want to ban contraception.

The nicest thing you can say about Vanderslice is that she is in over her head. Kleiman too.

 

"Kings Had Always Been Involving and Impoverishing Their People in Wars"

Once again, Fred Clark from slacktivist comes through, this time with a quote from Lincoln:

Let me first state what I understand to be your position. It is that if it shall become necessary to repel invasion, the President may, without violation of the Constitution, cross the line and invade the territory of another country, and that whether such necessity exists in any given case the President is the sole judge. ...

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If today he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us"; but he will say to you, "Be silent: I see it, if you don't."

The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.

Yahoo! News Flash Presentation on Gay Marriage

Yahoo! News has a nice little flash presentation titled "Gay Marriage: Focus on Family", featuring two California same-sex couples.

Gretchen Bender and Lisa Marie Rabo:

Matthew Mattozzi and David E. Garcia:

The "family" hooks are understated but all the more powerful for that. David Garcia had been in a car accident, and although it was not serious, he and his husband Matt became concerned that if one of them were hospitalized the other would have no say in the care or even visitation rights. To give their relationship formal legal protection, they got married at San Francisco City Hall three years ago today, only to have the Supreme Court of California nullify their marriage in a Dred Scott-like decision. David and Matt then sought a lawyer to prepare cross wills and durable medical powers of attorney as a substitute for the rights that straight people are given automatically. Of course, such private arrangements are vulnerable to attack by bigoted family members and medical professionals.

Gretchen Bender and Lisa Marie Rabo are raising two teenage daughters from Gretchen's first marriage. The pictures of their family speak for themselves. The couple plans to be joined in civil union in May, but because they are second-class citizens, they can't get the same benefits and protections of marriage that any straight people can.

I Only Drink Bud

Digby points to this op-ed by Thomas Schaller, a University of Maryland poly sci prof:

According to the latest Gallup survey, Republican self-identification has declined nationally and in almost every American state. Why? The short answer is that President Bush's war of choice in Iraq has destroyed the partisan brand Republicans spent the past four decades building.

That brand was based upon four pillars: that Republicans are more trustworthy on defense and military issues; that they know when and where markets can replace or improve government; that they are more competent administrators of those functions government can't privatize; and, finally, that their public philosophy is imbued with moral authority. The war demolished all four claims.

Schaller goes on to analyze exactly how the war did that.

Much as I would like to believe this, I don't think the Republican brand has been "destroyed".  People in the United States don't switch brands that easily, especially - I would think - conservatives, who view continuing loyalty to their accepted authorities as a good unto itself, even if the authority behaves badly.  For them, voting Republican is just what they do, not a choice to be re-evaluated.  Also, conservatives - again, I think - see themselves as part of a conservative or Republican team more than liberals or Democrats see themselves that way, and loyalty to one's friends on the team also inhibits critical thinking. As many people have pointed out, conservatives often accuse others of being what conservatives themselves actually are, and it seems true here: Conservatives practice identity politics instinctively, while claiming that liberals do.

Secondly, Schaller cites to Gallup as the source of his data on the supposed destruction of the Republican brand. Gallup's survey question on party affiliation asks:

In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent? (Asked of independents: As of today, do you lean more to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?)

As of today, including leaners, people are 40% Republican and 52% Democrat.  This contrasts with the numbers from around the same time in 2004, when the percentages were - 43% and 49%.  A movement of all of three percent. Of course, the figures have bounced around a lot over those three years, but unless Schaller is using numbers I am not seeing, I can't agree with his characterization that the Republican brand has been destroyed.  Adherents to the brand have been demoralized, sure, but it would take an unprecedented Democratic marketing campaign to actually get them to switch. The national Democratic  party lacks the imagination and initiative to run such a campaign, so that means the GOP has plenty of time to regroup and re-energize their minions.

Ice Storm Warning for Philadelphia Region

Stay off the roads and expect to lose power.  Western suburbanites, that means be ready for three days with no electricity. National Weather Service (emphasis supplied):

156  AM EST WED FEB 14 2007

...ICE STORM WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL  10 AM EST THIS MORNING... ...WINTER  WEATHER ADVISORY NO LONGER IN EFFECT...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MOUNT HOLLY HAS ISSUED AN ICE STORM WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 AM EST THIS MORNING. THE WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.

WARMING ABOVE THE SURFACE AND SHALLOW COLD AIR AT THE SURFACE HAD COMBINED TO CHANGE PRECIPITATION OVER THE AREA FROM MAINLY SNOW TO MAINLY SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN. ADDITIONAL SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN ARE EXPECTED THROUGH DAYBREAK AS LOW PRESSURE REDEVELOPS NEAR THE COAST AND DEEPENS AS IT MOVES NORTHEAST.

UP TO AROUND ONE-HALF INCH OF ICE ACCRUAL IS EXPECTED OVER THE AREA. THIS WOULD CAUSE TREE LIMBS AND POWER LINES TO FALL...ESPECIALLY UNDER THE WINDY CONDITIONS...WHICH WOULD LEAD TO POWER OUTAGES. IT ALSO WOULD CAUSE DANGEROUS DRIVING CONDITIONS THROUGH THE MORNING COMMUTE. TEMPERATURES MAY RISE ABOVE FREEZING BY MID-MORNING.

PLEASE DO NOT DRIVE THIS MORNING  UNLESS IT IS NECESSARY. IF YOU MUST  DRIVE...PLEASE DRIVE VERY CAREFULLY.

I love snow. I hate ice. I hate losing power - and thus heat - even more.

Someone's Been Reading a Little Too Much Tom Clancy

Instahack is not so quietly out of his mind:

We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs' expat business interests out of business, etc.

First of all, assassination is very rarely a subtle option. In this case, it's likely the proof that the United States had carried out the assassinations would be substantially more compelling than the proof that the Iranian leadership has been sending shaped charges to Iraq.

My source on this is none other than a real soldier, who really served in Iraq, and - of all things - was in a real intelligence unit looking at real evidence about IEDs:

About two years ago, in Iraq, we saw what we called then "platter charges"---a tube of explosive, with a bronze plate, concave or convex (I can never remember which is which) welded at the business end. The technique was Syrian, and at least thirty years old. They were devastatingly effective. With detonation the brass plate melted into a projectile which destroyed any and all armor, either vehicular or the personal type, worm on the bodies of soldiers. It reduced kevlar helmets to shreds. Within two months we saw more and more of them. There was no talk of blaming Iran then. The president wasn't trying to forget one unsuccessful war by starting another.

Now I watched CBS news and saw them highlighting these bombs. They're blaming Iran, and acting as if they are new weapons.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Not of our enemies: of our government, for the fights they desire cannot be fought with weapons.

Call me crazy, but after the WMD debacle, I think I'll take the word of a vet like ginmar over some lazy, rightwing law professor sitting on his fat ass in Tennessee.

Then, the immorality of it. Reynolds says:

But if civilization will not allow itself to respond to the barbarians who are making war on it -- complete with a nuclear weapons program that violates the "international law" usually invoked with such vigor where U.S. actions are concerned, and the fomentation of widespread murder throughout the region -- then civilization will not persist, and barbarism will flourish.

Okay, first of all, as we said, that Iran is doing this is definitely not proved yet. Secondly, you can call the Iranian government a lot of very bad things, but "barbarians" is not on the list. They're our adversaries, certainly, maybe even our enemies. They want power, and we don't want them to have it (as much as the Bush administration has done to hand it to them on a plate). But to pretend that Iran is not civilized is not just wrong, it's grotesque. And third, Reynolds' crude attempt to forge a link between Iran's supposed nuclear weapons program and a supposed clash between civilization and barbarism is D+ propaganda. There are other countries in the region who have developed nuclear weapons, some with our approval (Israel and Pakistan) and some without (India), and we haven't started killing their scientists and religious leaders. In fact, Iran wouldn't be where it is today with its program (wherever that is) without the kindly aid of a Pakistani scientist named A.Q. Khan, who at the U.S.'s behest received a stern talking-to for being so naughty.

The last major point is the question, where do Reynolds and his ilk think this idea would lead us? I really do blame action movies and writers like Tom Clancy for making stupid people think that war is a nice, neat process.  In Clancy's book Clear and Present Danger (which was also made into a movie I didn't see), the President of the United States of America secretly declares war on a non-state actor, in this case, South American drug cartels. In this rip-roaring tale, the following happens (1) The U.S. secretly sends a regiment of Spanish-speaking U.S. soldiers (without U.S. uniforms) into the Columbian hills to kill drug traffickers, destroy their processing facilities, and disrupt their communications, (2) the U.S. assassinates a number of drug lords - and kills nearby civilians - by faking a truck bomb outside the drug lords' meeting place, which is intended to spark a inter-cartel war, (3) the U.S. military shoots down light, unarmed aircraft attempting to enter U.S. airspace that don't obey orders to land, and (4) the U.S. military carries out mock executions of suspected drug traffickers in order to coerce their confessions and gather intelligence. Much exciting trouble ensues, but in the end the U.S. succeeds in knocking back drug smuggling into the U.S.

Really.  That's the plot.

(A significant character in the book is a renegade Cuban intelligence officer who leaves Cuba to work for the cartels because Castro resists his advice to use drugs to undermine the hated Americans. Which, if you know anything about big-time drug smuggling, is fucking hilarious.)

It's fiction like this that shapes how conservatives like Reynolds think about how force can be used to advance U.S. goals.  Reality is far messier and unpredictable. In fact, if we took his advice, we'd probably find that Iran could kill more American soldiers in Iraq - who are just walking around out in the open, by the way - a lot faster than we could kill more Iranian mullahs and scientists who identifiably were involved in feeding arms to Shiite militias. From there, the only way to escalate is to a general bombing campaign, which would backfire, and from there, to an invasion, which we are incapable of doing. It would be Iraq all over again - the U.S. begins a fight it can't finish, and couldn't have finished under any circumstances given its unachievable goals, and which leaves the U.S. in a worse strategic position than when it started.

(Via Scott Lemieux.)

Which America Do You Believe In?

Habeas corpus - why should I care?:

(Via Andy at Speaking Freely.)

Amanda Quits; Things Don't Look Good for Our Hero John

Amanda Marcotte has resigned as John Edward's blogger.  It's a feather in that boor Donohue's cap, although Amanda vows to fight to clear her name. (And a pony!)

Not so hot for Edwards. He had one of his staffers picked off by a right-wing nutbag whose claim to fame is making excuses for priests raping children. I ain't saying it's over, but this demonstrates toughness and competence that vies with '04 John Kerry levels. That weak shit won't win the general.