Month: May 2006

A rugby-playing reader writes:

Thanks for the Bingham Cup mention in your blog Mr. Sullivan. However, there are some niggling points to, well, point out. First, tournament play is broken down to 20 minute halves (from league-standard 40 minute halves) and, as a veteran of the 2004 Cup, the cumulative amount of playing time for most teams will exceed three hours not 90 minutes.
There will also be lots of beer during the matches, if the UK/Ireland teams have anything to say about hospitality.

Ah, yes. The memories of seven years in high school rugby come flooding back.

More reporting on Africa’s greatest nightmare – from Beliefnet.

"As Weitz’s film, ["American Dreamz] implies, we now live in a country that has a government of incompetence and prevarication. And we know it. No rational person ever completely believes any government, but now we sense, almost like a physical chill, a gap between the administration and the country. We feel that our lives are in the hands of a government that, day by day, speech by speech, is more and more feeble, myopic, and mendacious. The country seems schizoid: on one side, the tremendous power of the government; on the other side, us. This condition seems the base of the cartoon here – the president floundering in the middle of a smarmy television show, trying to bridge the gap – and it gives this modest picture a scary sting," – Stanley Kauffman, The New Republic.

A reader dissents from my welcome to Mary Cheney in the battle for marriage rights:

I wish I had the time to write a calm and reasoned response to your entries about Condi Rice and Mary Cheney, but since I don’t, this is going to be from the heart:

It’s irrelevant that Rice or any of the other members of this administration are "tolerant" of GLBT people or that they have gay/lesbian family members or friends, when they win elections by stirring up anti-gay prejudice in this country. Why don’t you see this?

Of course, Condi and the Bushes and the Cheneys are tolerant of gays and lesbians. They are sophisticated people who have known gay people as neighbors, colleagues, family members, and friends all their lives. If anything, that makes their cynical exploitation of gays as a campaign issue all the more contemptible.

As for Mary Cheney, yeah, I’m glad she’s FINALLY spoken up. But she has it pretty cushy, no? No matter what happens to the rest of us — when "marriage protection" laws go into effect in state after state, potentially depriving us of existing domestic partner benefits, wills, powers of attorney, guardianship, or any other rights that "approximate" marriage — she and Heather will still be sheltered by the wealth and privilege they enjoy by being members of the Cheney family.

Until all gay people have equal rights and protection under the law, I don’t give a good god damn that Condi Rice was sweet to some transgendered person or that the Cheney’s love their lesbian daughter. Did you read Mary Cheney’s coming-out story? She said that her mother wept out of sadness and fear that her daughter would face a life of "pain and prejudice" as a lesbian. From whom I wonder? Oh yeah, right, the people who put her father in office.

Point taken. Hence my hope that Mary actually walks the walk – and fights for the rights her party would take away.

They’re our best hope, according to Bernard Lewis. (Hat tip: Ron.)

Hugh Hewitt explains it all for you.

Many of you have challenged me to explain and defend my use of the term "Christianist" to define those who want to conflate religion and politics. Well, you asked for it. My Time essay on the question is now posted. My Times of London column on the closet tolerants, Bush and Cheney, is also posted.

(Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP.)

Now, that’s a counter-intuitive idea. What we now know is that there is no relationship between cutting taxes and reducing spending – at least according to Bill Niskanen. Niskanen worked in the Reagan White House and now chairs the Cato Institute. Sebastian Mallaby explains:

Niskanen has crunched the numbers between 1981 and 2005, testing for a relationship between tax cuts and government spending, and controlling for levels of unemployment, since these affect spending and taxes independently. Niskanen’s result punctures his own party’s dogma. Tax cuts are associated with increases in government spending. The best strategy for forcing cuts in government is actually to raise taxes.

How can this be? Mallaby suggests an answer:

Maybe cutting taxes before cutting spending makes government feel cheap: People are still getting all the services they want, but they are paying less for them. Maybe this illusory cheapening has a perverse effect: Now that government feels like a bargain, people want more of it.

And conservatives then provide rationales for giving it to them. Welcome to Big Insolvent Government Conservatism, the nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue.

How low can Bush fall in the polls? Will he sink as far as Nixon? And without even an impeachment?

The next CIA resignation is forthcoming.