Month: July 2008

Voters are split, again. Marc speculates why:

…my best guess is that partisan differences are reasserting themselves — Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are coalescing around their nominee and his position. Or maybe this is a tribune to McCain’s astonishing personal brand; or, the American people have moved on Iraq from 2006 and tend to accept the premise that The Surge is working.

Or maybe it’s a tough call. And what Obama calls listening to the generals on the ground and what McCain calls leaving victoriously may end up being relatively similar when it comes to 2009. The difference the seems to me to be the salient one is long-term intent. Are we there to stay for ever, with the invasion regarded as a launching pad to confront Iran? Or do we intend to leave as soon as possible, because enmeshment in Mesopotamia for the next few decades will be much more trouble than it could possibly be worth?

Michael Yon thinks we have won the Iraq War:

I would go so far as to say that barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What’s left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed, and the Iraqi military has dramatically improved, so those spectacular attacks are diminishing along with the regular violence. Now it’s time to rebuild the country, and create a pluralistic, stable and peaceful Iraq. That will be long, hard work. But by my estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won.

Joyner is less optimistic. But the task now is how best to manage withdrawal and whether to put down permanent roots. McCain and Obama are essentially competing for who is best to manage this difficult task.
 

Be afraid?

I stick by my support for the New Yorker cover, and disappointment at the Obama peeps’ response. DB Dowd explains why:

The most promising aspect of Barack Obama’s candidacy from my point of view has to do with his apparent irritation and boredom with dominant modes of political behavior over the past 20 years or so. The stupefying simplicity and know-nothingism that has dominated campaigning seems unappealing to him. Thank God. (For that matter, the know-nothing mode doesn’t seem to appeal to McCain either, but because he’s been lashed to dumb policy ideas, he’s stuck with it. What else can he do?) Yes, some of it comes with the territory. So wear the dumb flag pin. Ultimately I think he thinks we can manage ambiguity or difficult problems, because we’re not a bunch of idiots, even though we have been treated as such and been complicit in it to boot. The electorate can handle satire. Have some faith in us, folks.

Bill Burton: that also means you.

The campaign sends a statement to this blog for the record:

"McCain could have been clearer in the interview in stating that his position on gay adoption is that it is a state issue, just as he made it clear in the interview that marriage is a state issue.  He was not endorsing any federal legislation.

McCain’s expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible.  However, as an adoptive father himself, McCain believes children deserve loving and caring home environments, and he recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes.  McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative," – Jill Hazelbaker, Director of Communications

A priest writes:

A person in a free society is at liberty to burn his own Torah scrolls, to tear up his own copy of the New Testament, to plunge his own copy of the Koran in his own toilet, and to trample his own stock of communion wafers. That should be recognized as protected religious or anti-religious expression under the First Amendment.

However, no one is free to break into a synagogue, to take the Torah scrolls enshrined there, and to burn them. Or to do that with a Koran belonging to a mosque where he is visiting, or to take the Bible or the Blessed Sacrament from a church and desecrate them. If a particular religion gives its sacrament or sacred things only to its own members and someone deceives the adherents of that religion in order to desecrate their sacred rituals or objects, then that is a fraud and a violation of the religious liberty of others.

Religions are entitled to make rules for their own members and to demand that outsiders leave religious adherents in peace within their own sacred precincts. The Catholic Church clearly did NOT intend to give communion to someone like this fellow and did not invite him to receive. Non-adherents are entitled to criticize or oppose from outside but not to disrupt worship, to commit fraud against religious believers they dislike, or to take religious goods from religious institutions under false pretences.

For example, I regard Muhammad and Joseph Smith as false prophets and say so openly. I regard the Koran and the Book of Mormon as being of merely human origin. If I want to oppose Islam or Mormonism and even to burn their allegedly inspired writings, I am free to do so. But I am not free to go into Muslim or Mormon places of worship, deceive the worshipers there, and then desecrate what they regard as sacred.

It’s not a matter of punishing blasphemy but of the civil and religious right to be left alone.

A reader writes:

I live in Montgomery, and I just called Jeff Sessions’ DC office to register my frustration at Sessions’ efforts to keep the HIV travel ban.  I explained why I was calling to the woman who answered the phone, who responded, "it’s not that he’s against it, he supports it, but it’s just that he wants to find another way to get the money, because it costs $50 billion dollars."  Confused, I asked, "it costs 50 billion dollars to let people with HIV into the country?" She said yes and went on to say something incoherent about where President Bush was planning to get the money from and what Senator Sessions thought about that, blah blah.  I explained that I wasn’t talking about the money to fund efforts to fight AIDS, I was just talking about the discriminatory HIV travel ban.  She thanked me and said she’d pass my message along.

Anyway, it made me think that I might be the first constituent to call Sessions about this.  I get why you asked your readers to call Specter, but it might be worth asking Alabama readers to call Sessions office, if only so that his staffers be forced to learn something about the discriminatory agenda of the guy they’re working for.  The DC office is (202) 224-4124.

The possible expenses – if you think after ten years some immigrants with HIV might need public services – have already been paid for by a tiny increase in the visa application fee. There is no fiscal cost to repealing the HIV travel ban – in fact, with the new visa fee and the taxes immigrants will pay, it will almost certainly add to the Treasury.

How would the Republican base react to this:

"In Arizona, the only way to get around the state is by small private plane," – Cindy McCain. So she bought her own plane, of course. With money she inherited.

Marbury:

Having said all that, I should add that I like the guy. Just maybe not quite as much as he does. And I ask this question partly out of concern for his safety. I mean, this is what he’s like as a candidate. What if he wins? And then what if things go reasonably well in his first term and he wins a second term? It’s quite possible that he’ll jump off the top of the UN building in New York in order to show other world leaders his ability to fly.