Charlie Crist refines his plan to get married before the election:
In fact, Crist said, during the early 1980’s, a few years after his marriage, he had a romantic relationship with a Maryland woman he met at Ronald Reagan’s inaugural, and the two became engaged. They then broke up, but reunited later and got engaged again. Counting Rome, his engagement to his former wife, and the two engagements to the Maryland woman, Crist said, he has been now been engaged a total of four times.
A reader writes:
In regards to the FISA capitulation, you’ve helped answer one of your oft-asked questions – where’s the anger? You ask this in relation to torture and have ended several posts with "get angrier". I couldn’t agree more, and I can’t understand your indifference to telecom immunity and this FISA BS. The same principle is in play for torture and FISA – whether the country is ruled by men or ruled by laws. Torture may be more abhorrent, but the bar is very low for both issues and this administration’s over-reach so disturbing, that I can’t understand your passion on one and indifference on another.
You say you can’t get worked up about it (as opposed to simply not being worked up about it), your priorities are different to Glenn Greenwald’s, and you’re probably assuming no-one is breaking your civil rights by checking on your communications. It may even be that you wouldn’t mind if someone listened in on your phone calls, while you certainly would mind being tortured. Would you mind if someone in authority took a disliking to you and spied on you to cause you harm? I suspect your indifference here is similar for a majority of people with torture – it only happens to bad people, most likely brown people, and it will never happen to me, so … whatever.
The FISA capitulation is infuriating. Torture is infuriating. If those responsible are never held accountable, then America is a very different place from now on than it was before. I’ve donated to Obama, which I thought was kinda weird ’cause the money in politics is obscene, but he won’t get another cent from me. I’ll also be checking out Glenn’s blog more often, and maybe yours a little less (that Obama ad really is annoying).
I re-read Glenn’s many posts on this subject and listened to his debate with Soderberg and re-read accounts of the bill last night. I hope I’m not indifferent to this, and regret my occasional glibness, although I do think of it less profound an issue – in moral and political terms – than torture. There are important principles here and I respect the case that Glenn has made and admire his passion on it. It’s clear, moreover, that crimes were knowingly committed;
it’s clear to me that the president seized powers beyond his reach and, more importantly, retained those powers after the initial crisis; it’s clear too that the telecom companies should have known they were complying with illegality and refused after an initial period.
But it seems to me the focus of blame should be on the president and should be exercized primarily through political rather than legal means. And the trouble with prosecution is that it does become difficult to determine when exactly we stop forgiving illegal actions designed for the public safety in the immediate wake of a catastrophe like 9/11. I do forgive it in the wake, and see some lee-way for executive energy in moments of crisis or unknowing probably for a while thereafter (even though it horrifies me that the Bush administration would have merrily assigned all these powers to itself indefinitely if it could, and not even told anyone, let alone come promptly to the Congress asking for a reformed FISA law). But how do you prosecute a company on the basis of that kind of blurry line – granting immunity before but not after a point we deem appropriate or defensible?
My concerns are appeased now that the Congress has signed on in the light of day, that a court is there as a safeguard, retroactively if necessary, and that FISA is re-established as the exclusive mechanism for government wiretapping. I don’t consider this a capitulation to triangulation or Beltway insiderism or to Obama-worship. I consider it a middle ground between vital intelligence gathering – the non-coercive type – in an increasingly complex telecommunications system in a very dangerous war.
Joseph Romm is half-impressed with Pickens’s plan to get America off oil; Katie Fehrenbacher lists ten things to know about natural gas vehicles; and Ross has video and wants to know what Manzi thinks.
Yeah, right. But Peter Zeihan has a stimulating essay in Stratfor nonetheless. He believes that a deal between Israel and Syria may be looming, with Israel ceding much of Lebanon to Damascus in return for Syria neutering Hezbollah. But his most interesting analysis is of the U.S.-Iran relationship:
Iran is involved in negotiations far more complex and profound than anything that currently occupies Israel and Syria. Tehran and Washington are attempting to forge an understanding about the future of Iraq. The United States wants an Iraq sufficiently strong to restore the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and thus prevent any Iranian military incursion into the oil fields of the Arabian Peninsula. Iran wants an Iraq that is sufficiently weak that it will never again be able to launch an attack on Persia. Such unflinching national interests are proving difficult to reconcile, but do not confuse “difficult” with “impossible” — the positions are not mutually exclusive. After all, while both want influence, neither demands domination. Remarkable progress has been made during the past six months.
The two sides have cooperated in bringing down violence in Iraq, now at its lowest level since the aftermath of the 2003 invasion itself. Washington and Tehran also have attacked the problems of rogue Shiite militias from both ends, most notably with the neutering of Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia, the Medhi Army. Meanwhile, that ever-enlarging pot of Sunni Arab oil money has been just as active in Baghdad in drawing various groups to the table as it has been in Damascus. Thus, while the U.S.-Iranian understanding is not final, formal or imminent, it is taking shape with remarkable speed.
There is obviously a pragmatic deal to be made with Iran. Who could best make it: Obama or McCain?
Lee Drutman reviews The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein. The book’s thesis:
Increasingly disconnected from the "adult" world of tradition, culture, history, context and the ability to sit down for more than five minutes with a book, today’s digital generation is becoming insulated in its own stultifying cocoon of bad spelling, civic illiteracy and endless postings that hopelessly confuse triviality with transcendence.
Drutman rebuts:
The natural (and anticipated) response would indeed be to dismiss him as your archetypal cranky old professor who just can’t understand why "kids these days" don’t find Shakespeare as timeless as he always has. Such alarmism ignores the context and history he accuses the youth of lacking — the fact that mass ignorance and apathy have always been widespread in anti-intellectual America, especially among the youth. Maybe something is different this time. But, of course. Something is different every time.
Kassia Krozser comments:
So tired of Mark Bauerlein and his theories on how weâ??re going to hell in a handbasket. Is it really such a shock that 15 to 24 year olds arenâ??t doing a lot of pleasure reading in their free time?
I liked Carr’s article better.
Obama is doing less well among the less educated than previous Democrats have, but he is now even with McCain in this group while dominating the over-educated:
And it’s this group that the Clintons argued Obama couldn’t win. In fact, almost all his gains since March have been in this demographic.
Flint, Michigan outlaws baggy pants:
Jonah Lehrer discusses a new study that shows children don’t cause "happiness":
The fact of the matter is that it’s much easier to quantify pleasure on a moment-by-moment basis that it is to quantify something as intangible as "unconditional love". Changing a diaper isn’t enjoyable, and teenagers can be such a pain in the ass, but having kids can also be a profound source of meaning for people. (I like the amateur marathoner metaphor: survey a marathoner in the midst of the race and they’ll complain about their legs and that rash and how the race seems like it’s taking forever. But when the running is over they are always incredibly proud of their accomplishment. Having kids, then, is like a marathon that lasts 18 years.) The larger point, though, is that just because we can’t measure something doesn’t mean it isn’t important, or that we should always privilege the quantifiable (pleasure) over the intangible (meaning). Real life is complex stuff.
The older I get the more it seems to me that the biggest difference is not between gay and straight, or even so much male and female, but between those who have children and those who do not.
Yes, the cyclists have to stop from time to time. A classic photo here.
Another disturbing story from the military.
The Dish 