Year: 2003

Don’t miss the results of Mickey’s Krugmania contest, picking the worst prediction of the gloomiest economist around, Paul “Enron” Krugman. Yes, I know this is getting a little petty. We all make mistakes. But Krugman is so wonderfully easy to tease – and you can get such a kick out of it – that it’s irresistible.

Here at the downtown Chicago Starbucks, all is well, thanks to T-Mobile. I’m here to see the boyfriend, but also for two talks. I’ll be speaking tomorrow evening at the University of Illinois, Chicago, at 7 pm, on the battle to end discrimination in marriage. It’s at the Chicago Illinois Union Rooms, A, B, and C. Then I’ll be at the Omni Orrington, Evanston, for the Online News Association conference, giving a 12 pm talk on Saturday. Next Monday evening, I’ll be speaking at Williams College, Massachusetts, on the fight for marriage rights, again. Come say hi. Blogging may be a little sporadic during my travels. But not too bad, I hope.

I scrutinize his New Yorker comments on Iraq and Kosovo. Check it out at the New Republic Online.

REFORM AT THE BEEB? A piece of extremely good news from London. The Israeli government’s refusal to cooperate with the BBC probably played the most important part. But pressure from the blogs, and from the mainstream media (which followed the blogs in this), undoubtedly helped. Your support for this site and others gets results! Thanks, and congrats.

SHATTERING GLASS: The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher reports on the Stephen Glass spin-machine.

GAY CATHOLICS GET RADICAL: A report from Patrick Giles in the Village Voice.

I guess I don’t need to stress my support for gay legal equality. So I hope I won’t be misconstrued when I say that the notion that someone can actually be prosecuted for offensive ideas about gays is truly noxious. There’s no real free speech in Britain, alas, so this case can happen there. A recent U.S. case that forbade a parent from indoctrinating a child with homophobia also struck me as a hideous precedent. There can and must be legal equality for gay citizens. But there can and must also be space for those who dissent to have their say. That’s the classically liberal message of my book, “Virtually Normal.” A free society will have space for both fundamentalists and homosexuals. An unfree society is one in which either group suffers from legal, criminal or civil restrictions. Our freedom is their freedom, which is why I’m also against hate crimes laws and attempts to coerce the Boy Scouts into doing the right thing by not discriminating against gays. It’s also vital for people of good will to understand that civil rights for gay people in no way should affect the rights of others, especially in religious denominations of all kinds, to loathe, disdain, pity or malign homosexuality. These people couldn’t be more wrong, but in a free society, you have the right to be wrong. That goes for religious groups hiring gays as well, in my book. They shouldn’t have to. There has to be space for all of us. Now, if only fundamentalists would live up to the same civic principles, this debate would be over.

Here’s Microsoft in 1978. No, I wouldn’t have invested either.

THE THREAT OF FREEDOM: It’s not just the right to free speech and free association that the left is now worried about in Iraq. It’s the possibility of capitalism breaking out. At this rate, some in the Arab world might be rich as well as free. Deeply, deeply worrying.

THOSE WMDS: Since everyone who opposed the war, we’re now told, didn’t believe that Saddam had WMDs, why did they use preposterous arguments like the following:

If Saddam’s regime and survival are threatened [by invasion], he will have nothing to lose, and may use everything at his disposal… If weapons of mass destruction land on Israeli soil, killing innocent civilians, the experts I have consulted believe Israel will retaliate, and possibly with nuclear weapons… Nor can we rule out the possibility that Saddam would assault American forces with chemical or biological weapons.

That was Ted Kennedy. It’s worth recalling, as those with 20/20 hindsight lambaste the administration for taking intelligence threats seriously, that even opponents of the war believed that Saddam had the capacity to use WMDs at a moment’s notice against American troops.

A NEW RESOURCE: The web provides a tool for reading and researching some of the most important speeches in history – and some of the more contentious ones today. Enjoy.

An interesting post from a blogger who just heard Bernard Lewis speak. Money point:

I was struck with the matter-of-fact way Dr. Lewis referred to the Al Queda, and Wahabi, assumption that, of the two great super-powers, they had defeated the more menacing of the two. The Islamists not only have taken credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union, they have also assumed that the soft-Americans would be much easier to defeat. According to Bernard Lewis, the September 11 attacks were to have been the final, devastating blow to America. Twenty years of seeing American casualties at the hands of Islamist Jihadists followed by American retreat and withdrawal, gave them the impression that the same would happen when the fight was finally brought to American soil. The Arabs have been shocked at America’s reaction.
Surprisingly, Dr. Lewis attributes that shock to keeping the Jihadists from making any further attacks on American interests around the world since 9/11. By no means does he see it as assurance that future attacks won’t happen, certainly our vigilance is required. Instead he would have us look at the way the Islamists have responded.
To continue centuries of experience in playing two enemies off against each other, the Arabs needed to find a counter to America. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Arabs have increasingly looked to Europe and to factions within America to act as the counter force for them. Adding to Islam’s crisis is the practical inability of Europe to counter America’s power. Although they may have the will, they do not have the means. Predicting the Arabs’ response to that is one of our tasks.

Yes, the Islamist-European alliance is absolutely predictable. And doomed. We get so used to self-criticism we don’t yet see how much of the anger now directed at the U.S. is a function of this country’s extraordinary success in the war on terror so far. We have destroyed two evil regimes; and are busily rebuilding an entire country in the teeth of limited guerrilla warfare. Every casualty is awful – but the casualty rate in these wars (on both sides) is an historic low. Everyone knows this. And the enemy, knowing this, is actually afraid. We have to keep them that way.

The Volokh conspiracy thinks so.

Worst Swedish album covers. (Via Dave Barry.)

A timely reminder from a while back:

The war in the Persian Gulf could end within weeks, but what if it drags on? Many people assume that a protracted war will deepen the current recession, delaying the US recovery from late 1991 to mid-1992 and raising the peak unemployment rate from 7.5 per cent to as much as 9 per cent.
The lesson of history, however, is that wars cause booms not recessions.
Every US war in this century has been associated with rapid growth and falling unemployment.
The economic costs of war – primarily inflation – came after the peace treaties. Military conflict is awful, but it need not result in economic disaster.

Who produced this gem of politico-economic insight? Step forward … Paul Krugman, long-running prophet of wartime economic collapse. (The column ran in the Sunday Herald, February 3, 1991.) Maybe he’ll explain in a future column how things have changed in a decade.

How much money did Rahm Emmanuel make in the brief interlude between being a Clinton hack and a Congressman? In thirty months, $16.5 million. In an investment bank. For deals involving people he’d previously had political contact with. All legal. All familiar. But please tell him to shut up when he starts grandstanding about the corruption of “crony capitalism.” He was a crony. He’s now a capitalist.