He adopts Mbeki’s appeasement. All to avoid some rough headlines? Disappointing, to say the least.
CALLING HILLARY FAT: Ms Coulter takes the high road again.
NYT ERROR PAGE: Worth a look – if only for a chuckle.
SORRY: For the infrequent posting yesterday. Blogger was screwed up again. I’m beginning to think I’ll have to use another platform.
I was long criticized for using this blog to expose the extraordinary attempt by Howell Raines to turn the New York Times into his personal vehicle for quixotic left-liberal causes – or simply to throw his weight around. He was an insufferable, arrogant tyrant. As more details come out, the most paranoid anti-Raines arguments gain more traction. Now here comes David Margolick’s piece in the new Vanity Fair. I offer a single example:
Worse, Raines would not let facts get in the way of a story he had ordered up or a point he decided to make. “Howell wanted a thought inserted high in one of my stories,” says a metro reporter. “The only problem was, it wasn’t true. Mind you, this was on my beat, a beat he didn’t really know about. I said to the editor who was the message-bearer that it wasn’t true, and it didn’t belong in the story, period. A while later he came back to me and said, ‘Well, you’re right, but Howell wants it anyway.’ It became clear that the editor had not fully conveyed my arguments to Howell, because he was afraid to. I said, ‘F— that — I’ll tell him myself.’ And he literally seized my arm and said, ‘You don’t want to do that.’ And ultimately the editor-intermediary and I compromised on a version of what Howell wanted that was just vague enough not to mean much, but still close enough to a falsehood to make my very uncomfortable.”
It was as bad as we thought. Even worse, actually.
TO THE PEOPLE OF IRAN: A blogger’s open letter. Here’s another take. And another.
Students call off their July 9 protests in Tehran when threatened with a massacre. All the more reason to extend our visible support and solidarity. But less organized resistance seems to be continuing.
“Judgment Day is approaching for those who have shed the blood of tens of thousands of innocent Iranians. Judgment Day is approaching for those who have ordered the stoning of women. Judgment Day is approaching for those who ordered the bombing of the Jewish community center in Argentina. Judgment Day is approaching for those who ordered the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon and the Khobar Towers in Riyadh. Judgment Day is approaching for those who started the chant: “Death to America” and everything America stands for. Judgment Day is approaching for the Islamic Republic of Iran. It may not be tomorrow, but soon this evil regime will join the other evil regimes in the dustbin of history. Judgment Day will come.” – Pooya Dayanim, National Review.
QUOTE FOR THE DAY II: “It is almost over, my trip back to home. I feel both sad and happy. I’m sad becasue I have to say good-bye and happy because I got to come back. Everyday was sweet and magical. It was the most memorable trip of my life. The reason I came back is this: I missed Iran and its people. I missed my home where everyday of my childhood was spent at. There are many who say they love their land, yet they never put an effort or the will to come for a visit. I did with the help of my parents. I did because I wouldn’t have been me if I hadn’t come back. People forget what a life without freedom is and how it feels to be watched and told what to do or how to dress. Where words of complaint can lead to death.” – from a young Iranian girl, blogging about what has been done to her country. (Via Jeff Jarvis.)
NOW, HUNGER STRIKES: Iranian students use the ultimate non-violent weapon. Economic failure helps build support for regime change in Tehran. Winds of Change also has an excellent round-up of recent Iranian news and activism. I learned a lot from the WhoMan as well.
GET IN LINE: Asparagirl will be at the Iran anti-theocracy demo in NYC tomorrow. It’s at 11 am to 2 pm at 47th St. and 1st Avenue. In D.C., the rally today is at 10 am, at the West Capitol.
“Just wanted to apprise you that the Anglican Schism already occurred long ago. I’m not being flip. It in fact occurred. This, after the Lambeth Conference back in 1978 which gave the green light to the ordaining of women as priests. Ever since then, a veritable slew of parishes, formerly “high-church” parishes, pulled out of ECUSA (Episcopal Church USA), creating several orthodox Anglican “communions” outside the See of Canterbury, or the “official” Anglican Communion. The problem, however, is that once the over-arching communion is broken, the new orthodox communion(s) brought forth as rivals continue the process of fisuring — but doing so amongst themselves — such that there exist several Anglo-Catholic all claiming to be the communion truly “Anglican” and orthodox. And as my orthodox Roman Catholic friend assures me, this is the nature of all heresies — they keep fisuring until they go out of existence, leaving the rock of St. Peter standing, having weathered the storm — as it always has for two thousand years.” – more unconventional wisdom on the Letters Page.
THE SILVER LINING: From Afghanistan. You won’t read this in the NYT.
BUSH AND GOVERNMENT: He’s no conservative in a small government sense. Spending billions we don’t have, piling on regulations, burdening businesses, Bush is turning into a Nixon in domestic economic policy. He will regret it. So will we.
My 2002 man of the year is back stateside. And shunning the press. A class act, still.
ON SECOND THOUGHTS, DON’T SUE ME: Mark Glaser looks into that blogger libel decision. Not as encouraging as it seemed at first.
AOL BLOGS: Yes, the behemoth will soon unveil its own blogging software – and the advance reviews are good.
THE INCREDIBLE WILLY: Yep, the Hulk is hung.
“Our original Constitution divided the powers of the government and put restrictions on those powers, in a Bill of Rights, and in the retention by the states of much of their sovereign power. Lincoln’s War overthrew that Constitution. When 11 “free and independent states” sought peacefully to depart from the Union, they were dragged back in, by invasion and war. By 1884, Woodrow Wilson was writing in his “Congressional Government,” “we are really living under a constitution essentially different from that which we have been so long worshiping as our own peculiar and incomparable possession.” – Pat Buchanan, yearning for the Confederacy. I’m beginning to think that Lawrence vs Texas has driven several conservatives out of their minds.
Good for David for distancing himself from the dumb and ugly message of Ann Coulter’s latest book:
[Coulter’s use of the term] ‘functionally treasonable’ is … disturbingly reminiscent of the old Stalinist term ‘objectively fascist.’ This was how people who swore their loyalty to the cause were condemned (often to death) if they deviated from the party line. Stalinists defined all dissent as ‘objectively’ treacherous. This is not a path that conservatives should follow. When intent and individuality are separated from actions in a political context, we are entering a totalitarian realm where Ann Coulter does not really want to be.
I wish I could be so sure about Coulter’s ultimate intentions. She strikes me in this book as a crazed fanatic. When she can equivocate over whether John F Kennedy was a traitor to his country, she has written herself out of rational discourse.
No, I haven’t seen T-3, but I hope to. The political emergence of Schwarzenegger is a wonderful development, and not just for hacks like yours truly who love a good story. Arnold is an “eagle”: he’s tough on terror, open-minded on cultural issues, fiscally conservative. He’s also a brilliant politician. How do I know? Just rent “Pumping Iron,” the legendary bodybuilding documentary of the 1970s. It captures Shwarzenegger’s extraordinary ease with people, his irony, his composure, his wit, his gift with strategy and his determination. If I’m not mistaken, it also shows him lighting up a big fat joint after one of the contests. If ever there was a moment for that type of Republican, this is it. Boomshock fills in the details. Arnold’s my man.
“If the Democratic Party intends to run against a popular war, its leaders might wish to recall the lesson of a Democrat who ran against an unpopular war. He lost 49 states.” – Lawrence F. Kaplan, in the Wall Street Journal today. Lawrence is basically right, I think. Many liberal Democrats – and the media in general – are beginning to act as if the war is over and they can score debating points with a president’s foreign policy, rather than seriously proposing their own. That’s a formula for disaster. The unseriousness of the current Democratic field in national security matters is the determining factor in the next year and a half. Forget money, personality, media. The question every voter will and should ask of any Democratic in 2004 is a simple one: would I feel as safe with this guy in the White House? Right now, the answer is a resounding no. Until the Demsfigure out a way to tackle this, they’re screwed. And they deserve to be.
The Dish 