Month: July 2008

We’re Muslims. Here’s one way to alienate majority British opinion: insist that dogs are ritually unclean.

New lows in vicarious living:

From the guy behind Overheard in New York, WB’s a delightfully despicable site that lets you predict the nuptial success of unsuspecting lovebirds based entirely on submitted couple photos (a Hot or Not for judging eternal bliss).

"Barack Obama is a better candidate than his predecessor John Kerry in at least one important sense: he opposes a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, namely, in California. Over the weekend, Obama released a letter saying: "I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states."

That’s quite a departure from the position Kerry and his runningmate, John Edwards, took in 2004. Indeed, the two couldn’t find an anti-gay marriage amendment that they didn’t support, swooping into states and urging Democrats to vote against civic equality…  In many ways, Barack Obama is just another politician. Here’s an exception," – Jamie Kirchick, TNR. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

I have no idea whether Bill Clinton really said that Obama will have to "kiss his ass" in order to get his support. But I am curious as to exactly where this dude thinks his leverage is coming from. Last time I checked, two in ten Dems and four in ten independents said that Bill Clinton would be a problem if Hillary were the VP. More to the point, exactly what country does Bill represent? Obama is beating McCain among women. He’s beating McCain among Hispanics. He’s even beating doing well among working class whites. So who exactly is Bill Clinton supposed to be wooing for Obama? Am I missing something here? Did Obama actually lose the primary?

Here’s one (always stupid but nonetheless tenacious) meme that must now surely die out. Obama was billed by some – on Fox right and Clinton left – as a lofty, saintly, principled figure who would bring the party crashing to its usual "eggheads-and-African-Americans" defeat because of his super liberal squeamishness. Yeah, right. Most black male 46 year-olds manage to get to be the favorite for the presidency by acting like Gandhi.

But Obama’s post-primary pivot to neutralize all the usual GOP attacks – and reintroduce himself to Middle America – has been more than usually pronounced. He can live with FISA telecom immunity; he’s flexible on troop withdrawal from Iraq; he’s happy with executing child rapists; he doesn’t need public financing; he’ll out-patriot the Right; he’s touting his support for welfare reform; he’ll expand Bush’s faith-based programs; and he’s okay with the Supreme Court’s view of the Second Amendment. Oh, and he’ll reduce taxes on the middle class, while hiking them for the rich or successful or whatever you’ll let me call them.

Does this sound like a man who’s happy to lose an election rather than compromise on a few political stands?  He knows that the pent-up desire among Democrats to win this election gives him more lee-way with the base than he might otherwise have. And he’s using that as effectively as he can.

It’s been clear for a long time: A man who beat the Clintons is as ruthless as they are. Just smarter, and less susceptible to losing his grip on the core principles he still believes in.

(Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty.)

Back to the book Bill Kristol co-wrote on Iraq. In it, he takes aim at Senator Chuck Hagel. This particular passage stood out:

Iraq’s uncertain future, as opposed to its totalitarian present, has become the principle [sic] concern of many realists. "What comes after a military invasion?" Senator Chuck Hagel would like to know. "Who rules Iraq? Does the United States really want to be in Baghdad, trying to police Baghdad for twenty or thirty years?"

Kristol goes on to mock this question with his usual assurance:

Predictions of ethnic turmoil in Iraq are even more questionable than they were in the case of Afghanistan.

Unlike the Taliban, Saddam has little support among any ethnic group, Sunnis included, and the Iraqi opposition is itself a multi-ethnic force… [T]he executive director of the Iraq Foundation, Rend Rahim Francke, says, "we will not have a civil war in Iraq. This is contrary to Iraqi history, and Iraq has not had a history of communal conflict as there has been in the Balkans or in Afghanistan…"

Look: we all get things wrong. But that means a responsibility to set them right. Has Kristol ever publicly acknowledged or taken responsibility for these flatly wrong assertions of his, assertions that led to a war that gave us the slaughter, ethnic cleansing, torture and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people? This isn’t a rhetorical question. If someone can point me to any piece of writing in which Kristol does take personal responsibility for these profound errors of judgment, I will gladly post it.

(Photo: the sectarian murders Kristol said couldn’t happen, in Baquba, by Ali Yussef/AFP/Getty.)

I think I’d rather have an octogenarian:

Fyodor Uglov, who died on Monday aged 103, earned an entry in 1994 in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest practising surgeon, and laid down his scalpel only at the age of 102.

A reader makes an interesting point:

Any discussion of the Supreme Court must take account of the fact that the Democrats will have close to a filibuster-proof majority in the next Senate.  Therefore, the possibility that another Thomas or Scalia will get on the Court is nonexistent. 

A bigger question for McCain is how will he get the sorts of nominees he says he supports—those in the Roberts and Alito mold—onto the Court?  Does he have a strategy for doing so?  If so, I’d like to hear it.  Also, what assurance is there that even if he tries to find another Roberts or Alito that he will be successful? Every postwar Republican president has promised to appoint only strict constructionists, yet many of the most liberal justices of the last 60 years were appointed by Republicans including several on the current Court.  Does McCain have a plan to guarantee that this won’t happen again?  If so, what is it?

I’m guessing it’s not there.

It appears that the founder of the PUMA PAC was a McCain supporter all along. But there are a lot of PUMAs in Florida.

Bainbridge takes a stand. I’m assuming this story about Romney as the Number One veep pick is entirely designed to placate the theocons before picking someone else. McCain can’t be that suicidal, can he?