Month: January 2006

Kevin Drum notices a fascinating nugget: the more education you have, the less likely you are to support a swift withdrawal from Iraq.

First Prada and Gucci. Now this:

"The pope who wears Prada has a new set of chic custom wheels.Pope Benedict XVI, who has made headlines with his high-style red designer loafers and his Gucci shades, is tooling around the grounds of Vatican City in an electric car outfitted in luxurious Natuzzi Italian white leather."

Just white leather? No ermine trim this time?

I know my job is to come up with a solution. Apart from doing everything we can to support and aid the younger generations of Iranians who want the West’s freedom, I can’t see many feasible options. Sanctions may hurt the next generation and barely dent the regime’s hold on power. A military invasion would be all but impossible without a drastic overhaul of the defense budget and the Iraq occupation. Air-strikes might delay nuclear advancement, but couldn’t stop it. Iran’s maniacs have played their hand shrewdly. Still, I can link to a couple of pieces that have helped me think through the opposite sides of the debate. Here’s Simon Jenkins, in a pretty clear case for what can only be called appeasement. And here’s a full-blown argument for military invasion. Michael Ledeen is a broken record, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t right and worth listening to – like, say, two years ago. I wish I could come up with a third way. Maybe a reader can.

"[This] is political porn for every conservative who knows where to find it." – David Adesnik, on a new profile of Markos Moulitsas, the man who’s doing so much to ensure that the Republicans stay in power for ever. Enjoy.

A reader demurs:

One of your readers neatly summarized the Post-PC mindset: “if you offend everyone, you offend nobody”. This is in fact a deeply nihilistic attitude, and the popularity of Post-PC humor derives directly from the feeling of most people I know that the world is totally out of control. This sensibility holds at its core that offending everyone is acceptable and funny because nothing matters, nothing has any value, and the there is nothing which is beyond the pale. It is a very liberating outlook, because there is no need to examine your own attitudes or beliefs, because any action or statement is acceptable.

While I am no apologist for the ultra-sensitive PCistas, I believe that there are such things as right and wrong, whereas those who write Post-PC shows assert the opposite, or at least assert that those who try to demarcate right and wrong are clowns.

I don’t dispute that some of the post-PC humor is a response to a sense that the world is spinning out of control. But I think it’s not so much nihilism as the latest cultural adjustment to the astonishing diversity of modern life. It doesn’t preclude the idea of right and wrong. It just brackets it, like much humor, while it laughs at our mutual differences. I think that’s a sign of cultural health, not sickness. But then I’m a fan of modernity, which appears to be a lonelier position than it was only a short time ago.

There’s a new treatment for sleep apnea: playing your didgeridoo. I will refrain from the obvious gag.

Brokeback’s Number One at the box office.

A reader writes:

The reader’s letter you posted regarding the bad company of Christopher Hitchens nails my sentiments. But while I think Hitch is as aware of this administration’s incompetence and moral bankruptcy as any of us, we are unlikely to hear him speak forcefully against Bush’s execution of the Iraq war anytime soon. As he wrote in the Weekly Standard (Sept. 5th, 2005, "A War to be Proud Of"):

"If the great effort to remake Iraq as a demilitarized federal and secular democracy should fail or be defeated, I shall lose sleep for the rest of my life in reproaching myself for doing too little. But at least I shall have the comfort of not having offered, so far as I can recall, any word or deed that contributed to a defeat."

I have to say that Hitch is a friend and his motives, as far as I am concerned, are unimpeachable. As is his commitment to freedom and secularism everywhere. For my part, I don’t believe criticizing this administration’s conduct of the war is contributing to our defeat. Democracies do better in wars precisely because we have more internal criticism and therefore more flexibility and capacity to correct error. Sadly, this administration seems to specialize in sticking its fingers in its ears.

Robert George thinks the former veep is a more formidable opponent of the Bush administration than Senator Hillary Rodham-Clinton. I’m not so sure. But Al’s recent speech is definitely worth a read. Frankly, I hope neither runs next time (yes, I know: fat chance). But Gore’s nuanced and powerful critique of the president’s use and abuse of executive power is a public service. Money quote:

"The executive branch has also claimed a previously unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture and have plainly constituted torture — in a widespread pattern that has been extensively documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world.

Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being tortured by executive branch interrogators. Many more have been broken and humiliated. And, in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, investigators who documented the pattern of torture estimated that more than 90 percent of the victims were completely innocent of any criminal charges whatsoever.

This is a shameful exercise of power that overturns a set of principles that our nation has observed since General George Washington first enunciated them during our Revolutionary War. They have been observed by every president since then until now.

They violate the Geneva Conventions, the International Convention Against Torture and our own laws against torture."

Alas, all of this is indisputable.

I would have voted against the new Medicare entitlement on fiscal grounds alone. It’s an insanely expensive new entitlement that we simply cannot afford – and it’s dedicated to the most prosperous elderly generation ever. But if you’re going to do it, you should at least pull it off half-way competently. But, then, this is the Bush administration, and, once again, it’s doing a heckuva job. Jon Cohn explains what went wrong, and how the worst could have been avoided.