Month: October 2007

His list of donors is a classic:

Paul’s third-quarter financial disclosure report is sprinkled with supporters whose self-descriptions of their occupations are unusual, to say the least. Wade Talkington of Panama City, Fla., who donated $1,000 to Paul, lists his occupation as “tax slave to the Federal Govt.” Erik Hovden of Olalla, Wash., is the “Head slacker in Chg” at Simpson LLC, and housewife Pamela Schuberg of Moorpark, Calif., a $2,300 donor, lists her employer as “our children.”

Donald Cowles lists himself as self-employed and his occupation as simply “Capitalist.” On the opposite end, David Cameron of San Jose, Calif., lists his employer as “Looking for Work” and his job as “Unemployed.” Still, Cameron has given a total of $1,900 to the campaign.

Griswold Draz of Wellfleet, Mass., a $500 donor, is a self-described “curmudgeon,” and Andrew Maul of Pittsburgh, Pa., is a “Citizen Fighting Tyranny.” Others are more coy. James Harper of Vancouver, Wash., a $600 donor, offered “guess? ;)” as his occupation.

Starchild, a San Francisco-based escort and exotic dancer who ended up on Paul’s list as “Star Child,” contributed $300.

God Bless America.

The Pope just announced 23 new ones, including a Texan. No one does Vatican politics like Rocco. Check him out for the inside dope.

He’s doing much better than expected, and you can see why. He really does represent the GOP that Bush and Rove have helped create: based on fundamentalist religion and dedicated to massive government spending on the needy as a sign of one’s own virtue. He’s also congenial in the same way Bush is.  He’s the obvious successor. And if the Christianists wants a candidate who represents their views and doesn’t frighten the horses, they could do a lot worse.

A new initiative from the Bush administration: Africom. But no bases.

A Serbian writer reflects on his own country’s relationship with Kosovo’s Albanians:

A few years ago the Serbian media reported for months on end on mass graves whose dead had been identified by forensic experts as Kosovo Albanians. One of the most horrific images was that of a refrigerated lorry out of which murdered Kosovo Albanian women, children and old people were disposed in Lake Perucac, near the mouth of the river Derventa. On our screens we saw half-decayed, clothed corpses being pulled out of the water, we heard the shocking confession of the driver, who had been told to transport the dead out of Kosovo in order to cover up the crime. At the time a Belgrade television station broadcast an interview with a man bathing untroubled in this beautiful lake from whose green waters the corpses had just been pulled. When the reporter asked whether this bothered him the simpleton stood there shaking his head as the water dripped off him. Blinking innocently and smiling laconically, he looked at the camera and said without turning a hair: "To be honest, I don’t believe all that," and dived defiantly back into the water…

Denial is one of the central new Serbian qualities. It is so new that we don’t even have a proper word for it, and those who realize what is happening simply use the English word instead. Denial.

My take here.

A reader writes:

I wish I could be sanguine about Mukasey’s testimony that you highlight, but it seems more artful than committal.  Mukasey never alleges–or even implies–that the United States practices torture.  What he offers is an avowal that we don’t torture–without a definition of the term.  He denounces the Bybee memo as faulty but doesn’t address whether the memos or policies that replaced it were valid.  When asked about information obtained by waterboarding, Mukasaey claimed "I don’t know what’s involved in waterboarding"–which is either implausible or, if true, inexcusable.  He adds that he’d be "uncomfortable" with any evidence that was "coerced" without saying whether waterboarding would amount to coercion. Yes, he talks about the horrors of Nazi camps and how we came to understand the importance of not duplicating such horrors, but he never suggests that that’s what’s happened  In fact, all he’s doing is setting an incredibly low bar.

I hope I’m not being naive. I’ll go over the testimony again.

An interesting discussion about the relative performances of al-Jazeera and the Washington Post during the Iraq war. Money quote:

I asked both Mirazi and Wright to reflect on their media’s coverage of Iraq.  Mirazi largely rejected criticisms of al-Jazeera and the Arab media in 2003 and beyond:  given how horribly Iraq turned out, if anything the Arab media wasn’t critical enough of US invasion. He did say, however, that the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, should have been more of a moment of self-criticism for the Arab media:  how could it have been so mistaken in its reporting of the balance of forces and the military situation? Beyond that, however, he didn’t seem to think that the Arab media had a lot of accounting to make for its performance in Iraq.  The biggest problem, he argued repeatedly, had to do with the continuing domination and ownership of the media by Arab regimes – as long as terrible, undemocratic governments controlled the Arab media, directly or indirectly, there would be harsh limits on its ability to really progress.

Wright admitted that the media performed poorly in the runup to the Iraq war, but offered the defense that at that time it was hard to challenge the official narrative….   She argued that the press would not likely repeat its mistakes in the face of a campaign for war on Iran….

But after that appropriately self-critical opening, Wright surprised me by offering a chillingly persuasive argument about how the rationale for war with Iran had shifted from the nuclear program to its role in Iraq…

"Once a voice of restraint and reason, Sullivan now specializes in shrill panic: mercurial ranting full of operatic arguments, steeped in bad faith, aimed at people he once praised (including yours truly). There are many theories about what "happened" to Sullivan. They vary wildly in charity. But it’s fair to say that for many conservatives, Sullivan has become the intellectual equivalent of a write-off… Which is why most conservatives won’t buy, or read, his book," – Jonah Goldberg, National Review.

"Sullivan wants very badly to be described as a conservative, but he is no more a conservative than I am a Russian," – Hugh Hewitt.

You can buy the book Hewitt and Goldberg lambasted here.

Or what JFK, Gore "I’m not gay" Vidal and Tennessee "Who am I kidding?" Williams have in common.