Month: November 2008

The SOFA deal reveals just how empty the Bush administration’s and McCain campaign’s claims were that a fixed deadline for withdrawal meant failure. It was all Rovian politics: it was never serious. Obama was right all along – and Bush has now conceded that fact. Their explanation:

Bush administration officials acknowledged yesterday that the timetable laid out in the final agreement is not what the president wanted originally but said that they could go along with it because of a decline in violence in Iraq in the past year. "The security considerations on the ground have improved so much and the Iraqi security forces have improved so much that you can now set a date and be comfortable with it," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

Pure hooey. If anything, signs of violence have ticked up in the past couple of weeks. And there is no assurance that the Sunnis and Shiites have come to any real deal that will prevent a civil war from happening the minute a new security vacuum emerges.

Yglesias ponders the future of journalism:

Ultimately, I think this transition is going to be much less of a disaster for journalism than a lot of people in the business seem to think. What it probably will be is a rolling disaster for journalists in which outlets are consolidated, jobs disappear, lots of people see their wages fall, and everyone sees their working conditions deteriorate as there’s pressure to produce more and more for more venues — web articles, online video, etc.

Can’t we have bailout money? (Just kidding.)

Goldfarb, fresh from the McCarthyite frontlines of the McCain campaign, likes the idea:

Of course, if Clinton takes the job one expects she’ll be loyal to her new boss. Though it would be extremely entertaining, we probably wouldn’t see Madame Secretary working to undermine an Obama administration with recalcitrance and rogue diplomacy. But then Colin Powell was a dutiful soldier while inside the Bush administration and that still didn’t prevent him from becoming a foil for the administration’s opponents.

It’s not difficult to imagine Clinton performing a similar service for Republicans. She could be held up as the very model of a responsible Democrat, forced against her better judgment to partake in a series of reckless diplomatic escapades pursued by a more ideological president.

Clinton would be a fine Secretary of State, and she is likely to be a nuisance to Obama whether she is inside or outside of his administration, but as our top diplomat she could reprise a role that made Powell a kingmaker in this year’s election. And perhaps she could even present the case for war with Iran to an insubordinate United Nations in the event that Obama’s personal diplomacy somehow fails to deter the mullahs from their present course.

And still they dream of war.

(Hat tip: Smith)

George Packer wants an end to the embarrassment:

The real grounds for firing Kristol are that he didn’t take his column seriously. In his year on the Op-Ed page, not one memorable sentence, not one provocative thought, not one valuable piece of information appeared under his name. The prose was so limp (“Who, inquiring minds want to know, is going to spare us a first Obama term?”) that you had the sense Kristol wrote his column during the commercial breaks of his gig on Fox News Sunday and gave it about the same amount of thought.

Listverse has a haunting collection of the last photos taken by or of various individuals. The one above is the last known picture of Diana, the late Princess of Wales:

The photo shows the four speeding away from the Ritz Paris At around 12:20 a.m. on August 31, 1997 with Henri Paul the hotel driver, right, and Dodi Fayed’s bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones in the passenger seat. In the rear seat is Princess Diana (looking back at the pursuing paparazzi) with Dodi Fayed sitting next to her. Seconds after this picture was taken the Mercedes entered the Place de l’Alma underpass going at an estimated speed of 105 km/h (65 mph.)…

Sorry, Camille, but the truth hurts:

By stepping into the spotlight unprepared, Palin reinforced some of the most damaging and sexist ideas of all: that women are undisciplined in their thinking; that we are distracted by domestic concerns or frivolous pursuits like shopping; that we are not smart enough, or not serious enough, for the important jobs.

Greenwald goes in for the kill:

Our political system is afflicted by many, many problems.  A lack of bipartisanship hasn’t been one of them.  At least during the Bush era, the Beltway political establishment has been fueled by trans-partisan cooperation and internal allegiance far more than by any ideological differences, policy debates, or partisan warfare.  Do the last eight years — defined by George Bush’s virtually unimpeded political agenda — leave any doubt about that?   

That’s why the outcome of this Joe Lieberman "controversy" is anything but surprising.   Having Democrats overlook Lieberman’s extremist views and reward him is anything but "change."  That’s perfectly consistent with — not a departure from — how Washington works:  political disagreements can be expressed on the rhetorical level but they’re virtually always subordinated to the far greater imperative of bipartisan harmony within the political class.

On resolving the myriad factual discrepancies still left open by the candidacy of Sarah Palin – the blatant lies left hanging in the air, the bizarre details that refuse to become normal with the passage of time – the MSM has "moved on." They’ve done their celebrity sit-downs, they got their "get", and they supped their moose stew. That’s what Greta and Matt do for a living: it sure isn’t journalism. Meanwhile, some ornery, amateur bloggers refuse to give up in investigating a woman who is touted as a possible president, and nearly succeeded. Why? Oh, because of pesky things like the facts.

Like so many other models of political organization, like the top-down Clinton campaign, the special interest group politics of an institution like the Human Rights Campaign is finished. They are no longer even faintly relevant to the struggle for gay equality. Markos Moulitsas:

The Human Rights Campaign … is being rendered irrelevant by current events, and with irrelevance, it will shrivel up and die on its own. … The anti-Prop 8 campaign was an exercise in frustration. What we’re seeing now … is brilliant. … These nationwide protests are a watershed moment of sorts — the moment when the gay community realized that it had the power to fight for change on its own, and didn’t require any of its so-called, self-appointed ‘leaders’ to give them permission to engage.

I’ve been dreaming of the death of this useless, fearful, money-vacuum ever since I saw the potential for marriage equality and they wouldn’t. Rex Wockner:

You don’t have to listen to the gay "leaders" who failed you anymore, you don’t have to give them any more money, you just have to figure out what you want to do next with the power that now is yours — to get what you want: Full equality.