Month: June 2007

Only in the Guardian, I guess.

A reader writes:

Your reader wrote:

"We saw what happened the first time we entrusted the White House to a person with behavioral traits like this."

Yes, it was pure hell:

1)The end of the Vietnam War
2) Opening to China
3) Stability among the major nations in the Middle East
4) A weaker USSR
5) A decrease in nuclear weapons around the world

Yes, he wasn’t perfect, but no president is, was, or will ever be. We’d be lucky to have another Nixon.

And fiscally, even more liberal than Bush.

"Father’s Day is coming up, and as the oldest of five sons, I feel responsible for making sure my Dad feels appreciated on his special day. This year, I had a particularly difficult time deciding how to celebrate Dad.  So much has happened this year and I wanted to give him a great gift.

Often, under pressure to give a holiday gift, we buy our family and friends something they don’t want or won’t use and I’m sure I’ve even given Dad a couple of useless gifts.

That’s why this year, I want to be sure that my brothers and I do something for Dad that we know he wants and will appreciate – raise $500,000 toward his end-of-quarter fundraising goal," – Tagg! Romney, the gift who keeps on giving, in a fundraising email sent out last week.

Still think Rumsfeld had no idea what was going on at Abu Ghraib? Still believe he didn’t personally authorize "verschaerfte Vernehmung"? These documents are worth a look.

Salman Rushdie, that avatar of liberal hipness, accepted a knighthood. Tory bohemian Michael Oakeshott turned one down.

A reader writes:

I am surprised that the Politerati, or DC’s chattering class, have not seen the parallels between Hillary Clinton and Richard Nixon. They both have brilliant strategic minds, suffer from extreme paranoia about the enemy of their agenda, and both are extremely secretive. Nixon had very high negatives, and re-launched his "brand" image in the 1968 campaign, just as Hillary is doing in 2007. In short, Hillary is Nixon in a dress, or more appropriately Nixon in a pant suit. We saw what happened the first time we entrusted the White House to a person with behavioral traits like this. Do we want to go through it again?

(Photo: Win McNamee/Getty.)

Having been compared to Reagan, Thompson now seeks Thatcher’s imprimatur. The guy is the conservative nostalgia candidate – you know, for the period when conservatism meant something.

"[Bill] Kristol is like a horrifying right-pundit Chimera fusing together the worst aspects of Krauthammer and Barnes, but adding in a strain of raw cleverness that elevates – and yet denigrates – the resulting punditry from banal categories like ‘worst’ to more exalted realms of ‘dangerousness,’" – Matt Yglesias, gloves off. A little rough, but then Kristol is now writing:

Real progress has already been made in the war against Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the terrorists know it. That’s why they’re surging against our surge, and why they are attempting to convince us that we have lost when it is they who are losing.

Any argument to hand, I guess.

The Islamists are furious that Salman Rushdie has been made a knight by the Queen. I think all knighthoods are preposterous baubles, but I’d defend any preposterous bauble against the murderous rage of violent Islam. This really got my goat:

Today, Pakistan’s religious affairs minister suggested that the knighthood was so grave an offence that any Muslim anywhere in the world would be justified in taking violent action.

"If somebody has to attack by strapping bombs to his body to protect the honour of the Prophet then it is justified," Mr ul-Haq told the National Assembly.

The minister, the son of Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator who died in a plane crash in 1988, later retracted his statement in parliament, then told the AFP news agency that he meant to say that knighting Rushdie would foster extremism.

"If someone blows himself up he will consider himself justified. How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West?" he said.

He said Pakistan should sever diplomatic ties with Britain if it did not withdraw the award, adding:"We demand an apology by the British government. Their action has hurt the sentiments of 1.5 billion Muslims… If Muslims do not unite, the situation will get worse and Salman Rushdie may get a seat in the British parliament."

Now that would be pleasant, wouldn’t it? There’s an online petition in favor of Rushdie here.