Year: 2003

The Catalogue for Philanthropy measures – on the basis of tax returns – how generous people are in various parts of the nation. Not absolute generosity – but charitable donations as a percentage of income. You can see the latest state rankings here. And here you can see how these states voted in the 2000 election. Bottom line: states which voted for Bush – you know, all those callous, selfish rich Republicans who don’t give a damn about anyone else – dominate the rankings.

Josh Marshall may be at it as well.

Peter Berkowitz points out the obvious:

what the president has given voice to are convictions central to the liberal tradition. Freedom is not just good for Americans or for the British. It is good for all people everywhere, because it reflects a universal aspiration, a permanent inclination of the human heart. While forms of government for securing individual rights will vary, as will the choices individuals and peoples make about how to take advantage of the blessings of freedom, no individual wishes to be imprisoned, tortured, or enslaved. Individuals should not be forced to be free, but free nations may be compelled to use force to counter the threat posed by governments that subjugate their own people and threaten the liberties of other nations.

Now when will real liberals realize this?

The “Mission Accomplished” photo-op is now a campaign ad, as the administration hoped. What they didn’t plan for is that it has become a campaign ad for the Democrats.

Mike Kinsley pulls off the astonishing feat of trying to tackle how president Bush went from being an anti-nation-building realist to a liberal internationalist in a few years without mentioning a certain incident that occurred, oh, say nine months or so into his presidency. Memo to Mike: some terorists attacked U.S. soil on September 11, 2001. 3,000 people or so were killed. It made a teensy little difference to U.S. foreign policy. Kinsley’s gaffe, however, is revealing about certain strands in some liberals’ thought these days. For them, 9/11 changed nothing important; it meant relatively little; it was a distraction from more important issues like Enron, as Paul Krugman opined, during the height of the Raines madness. These people don’t just have blinders on; they’ve attached them with super-glue. (On another very simple point: when Kinsley states that the war against Saddam “was sold to the country on totally non-Wilsonian grounds,” he knows that’s untrue, right? I refer to the New York Times editorial I cite below praising Bush for doing exactly that last February:

“President Bush sketched an expansive vision last night [at his American Enterprise Institute speech] of what he expects to accomplish by a war in Iraq. Instead of focusing on eliminating weapons of mass destruction, or reducing the threat of terror to the United States, Mr. Bush talked about establishing a ‘free and peaceful Iraq’ that would serve as a ‘dramatic and inspiring example’ to the entire Arab and Muslim world, provide a stabilizing influence in the Middle East and even help end the Arab-Israeli conflict. The idea of turning Iraq into a model democracy in the Arab world is one some members of the administration have been discussing for a long time.”

You could argue that this wasn’t the main thrust of Bush’s argument; but the notion that it played no role in the administration’s case is verifiably untrue.)

“These well-meaning gentlemen of the British Broadcasting Corporation have absolutely no qualifications and no claim to represent British public opinion. They have no right to say that they voice the opinions of English or British people whatever. If anyone can do that it is His Majesty’s government; and there may be two opinions about that. It would be far better to have sharply contrasted views in succession, in alteration, than to have this copious stream of pontifical, anonymous mugwumpery with which we have been dosed for so long.” – from a speech in the House of Commons, February 22, 1933.

CONDI AS A “MURDERER”: That’s the considered view of Michael Moore’s favorite cartoonist, Aaron McGruder. The NAACP’s Julian Bond concurred.

Josh Marshall and I have been tussling for a while over various aspects of foreign policy. I think he’s wrong about many things but I deeply respect his panache and integrity and reporting skills. Today is his third anniversary blogging – and he’s getting better all the time. Congrats. And check out his site.

Cozying up to Syria. Hey, they’ve lost one critical friend and ally, in Saddam. Time to find another anti-Semitic dictator to do business with.

Fascinating breakdown of counties not by vote tallies but by financial contributions to parties and candidates. The red-blue split is not as obvious as you might think.

On the Patriot Act. And don’t miss this fisking of Fisk either. Money quote:

Fisk’s third stay in Baghdad lasted from the end of August to late September. Fisking involves both commission and omission. Once again, he reported nothing from Kurdistan, nothing about the return of the Marsh Arabs to their immemorial home. A journey to Basra provided a single story designed to show that the editor and publisher of a new paper there was a stooge who would give no trouble. Nothing about the new central bank, the opening of lines of credit or the currency reform. Nothing about goods and services, or supplies to hospitals. Nothing about markets. Nothing about private lives. Not a single interview with American officials or Iraqis trying to reconstruct their country. Nothing about Ahmad Chalabi. Fisk seems only to have haunted the prison of Abu Ghraib and the mortuary of Yarmouk hospital, exclusively searching for American brutality.

If Robert Fisk isn’t malign, he’s nutty. I see no other alternative explanation.