Month: August 2006

by David Weigel

And apparently we’re supposed to be outraged by this, too.

CHRIS WALLACE: What kind of chance would a northeastern liberal like Joe Biden stand in the South, if you are running in Democratic primaries against Southerners like Mark Warner and John Edwards?
JOE BIDEN: Better than anybody else. You don’t know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state is the eighth largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a northeast liberal state.

Like Biden’s earlier comment that – shock! – Indian-Americans own convenience stores and Dunkin Donuts – there is nothing offensive about this at all. Nothing. Biden was a little put out explaining Delaware’s unique and vital relationship to the rest of the contiguous United States to a shallow talking head. I’m often stuck explaining to people that, while Delaware is on the Northern side of the Mason-Dixon line, it has a historic Southern culture that’s increasingly politically outmatched by economic immigrants to Wilmington or the beaches. Before Emancipation, it was a slave state. But since all DC journalists know of Delaware is the Rehoboth-Dewey-etc pleasure circuit, they assume it’s got the culture of Vermont.

Just another example of the media’s structural bias against Delaware and Joe Biden, which I’ve raged against previously.

by David Weigel

The Republican National Committee’s "research briefing" on Markos "Daily Kos" Moulitsas has been roundly mocked around the blogs, and with reason. The idea that the embattled GOP can transform a famous-in-DC blogger into a swing-voter-poisoning Goldstein is absolutely insane – one of the best reflections I’ve seen of how the post-1994 GOP has become as myopic and beltway-bound as the Great Society Democrats ever were.

The RNC’s briefing reminded me, though, of how much blogs have changed since their liftoff in 2001 and 2002. Kos started off a pro-Democrat blogger who engaged in tense-but-civil discussions with the right-wing and pro-GOP sides of the blogosphere. (I touched on this in a July Reason story about the mainstreaming of blogs.) The first Daily Kos post, archived here, now read like the musings of a Democratic activist calmed beyond reason by a combination of Quaaludes and Republicans holding his family hostage.

From November 5, 2002:

While the Dems will have lots of new governorships to celebrate, the night belonged to the GOP. I sincerely congratulate them — they clearly waged a better campaign than anything the Dems were able to put together.

From November 8, 2002:

Georgia’s Zell Miller has reiterated that he will not be abandoning the Democratic Party. That’s good — I do believe that the Dems have an interest in ideological diversity. Otherwise, I’d be a Green. And I actually genuinely like Zell, even if I don’t care much for his politics.

But Kos isn’t the only blogger who’s hardened his views in the last few years. Quick: Who said this on September 12, 2001, when a shattered nation was coming together to battle the Islamo-fascist etc etc?

Bush’s speech last night was just pathetic. Obviously rehearsed, not a word unscripted, totally devoid of anything real or spontaneous. Very disappointing. I really hope he can find it in himself to rise to the challenge and act courageously, for once in his spoiled rich party boy life.

That’s right – it was Charles Johnson on Little Green Footballs. Like another unhinged-by-the-war-on-terror pundit mused: My, what we’ve lost.

by Michael J. Totten

SOUTHERN ISRAEL, NEAR GAZA ‚Äì All eyes turned from Gaza to Lebanon as Israel fought a hot war with Hezbollah across its northern border. Before the Lebanon war broke out, the fighting in and around Gaza was the big story in Israel. But once the media coverage ended it stayed ended, even after foreign correspondents were free to pick up where they left off. Perhaps the kidnapping of two Fox News journalists by the latest in a long line of Palestinian terrorist groups — the Holy Jihad Brigades — all but guaranteed reporters wouldn‚Äôt go back.

Even though I’ve been in Israel for a couple of weeks, I still didn’t know any more about what’s going on down there than people who have never been here before. News from Israel’s other rocket war barely trickles up to Tel Aviv. So I hopped in my rental car and drove down to Mishav Klahim, just east of Netivot and 20 kilometers from Gaza, to meet Shika Frista who promised to show me what’s going on.

I missed a turn on the coastal road when I was supposed to veer left to avoid driving straight into Gaza. Suddenly mine was the only car on the road. An aerial surveillance balloon hovered in the air up ahead. It looked just like the one I saw flying on the border with Lebanon while Hezbollah fired barrages of Katyusha rockets into Israeli cities.

The war of the rockets was supposed to be over. But I was back in it.

read the rest over at michaeltotten.com »

by David Weigel

Forgive me, but I just can’t muster up the mandatory outrage over NBC running its filmed intro for the Emmys. In Kentucky, hours before the broadcast, a passenger plane crashed right after leaving the runway. In the Emmy intro, host Conan O’Brien is flying in a luxury jet that starts going down and strands him on the "Lost" island. HotAir, which has a clip of the O’Brien sketch (notice we never see the plane crash – did NBC actually snip part of the segment?), sees blue state bigotry at work.

This looks like a case of awful timing more than awful taste (and yes, we’re aware it’s a Lost parody); nevertheless, it’s going to be a night to remember for NBC, the Emmys and Conan O’Brien. On the other hand, if the Comair crash had happened on the Left Coast, would NBC have gone through with the skit?

Oh, come on. They awarded the big statues to "24," didn’t they? Not the actions of people who stay up late thinking of ways to torment red-staters. (They stay up late, but for better reasons.)

I completely understand how Kentucky viewers were shocked by this, as the Emmys began right after a local update on the crash. But hectoring NBC for insufficient pandering to tragedy seems a mighty lame tribute to 49 people.

by Michael J. Totten

Hassan Nasrallah sounds like your typical delusional Middle East despot when he boasts that Hezbollah “won” the war against Israel. He has a problem, though. Hezbollah lives in Lebanon, not in Iraq, Egypt, or Syria. Mainstream Lebanese culture is too well-educated and democratic to fall for that kind of alternate-universe propaganda.

Today he all but admitted on New TV that Hezbollah blew it.

“[W]e did not believe, even by one percent, that the captive operation would result in such a wide-scale war, as such a war did not take place in the history of wars. Had we known that the captive operation would result in such a war we would not have carried it out at all.”

If the latest round against Israel were such a great epic victory, why say he wouldn’t have started it if he would have known how it would turn out?

Geraldo gets high. In 1974. He was kinda hot, back then, in a 70s-porn kinda way.

by Michael J. Totten

The two Fox News journalists who were kidnapped in Gaza were released today. They were taken to the Beach Hotel where they were greeted by Palestinian journalists, members of the Palestinian Authority, and even by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. 

It still is not clear who the kidnappers are. Was it Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda 3.0, or some other Islamist terrorist organization?

It seems unlikely that it was Yasser Arafat’s secular Fatah movement or one of its offshoots.

The two journalists were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. And the kidnappers released a revealing threat to anyone else who may want to visit Gaza for whatever reason: “Any infidel who comes to Palestine will be killed unless he converts to Islam.”

Caribou Lake, Minnesota, 10 am, from a tent window.

by David Weigel

The Alabama Democratic Party has reversed the decision of a local authority (first noted here) and reinstated out lesbian Patricia Todd as its state legislature candidate.

Patricia Todd was reinstated Saturday as the Democratic Party’s nominee for a seat in the Alabama Legislature.  The Alabama Democratic Party Executive Committee voted 95-87 to reject the ruling of a subcommittee two days ago that had voted to disqualify Todd.

Todd beat Gaynell Hendricks in the primary. But Hendricks’ mother-in-law filed an appeal filed with the Democratic Party claiming that Todd timed the filing of her campaign finance report with the Secretary of State’s office shortly before the deadline to keep voters from learning she was supported by the Victory Fund, a Washington DC-based organization that helps the campaigns LGBT candidates.

With no Republican candidate on the November ballot, Todd is about to become the state’s first out legislator.

A Madonna video montage.