Month: December 2008

Pulling The Plug On Putin?

By Patrick Appel
Brian Till wonders if falling oil prices will weaken the hand of Ahmadinejad, Putin and co.:

The most pedestrian conclusion is to believe that struggling domestic spheres will lead to more reckless acts in the international sphere. That Iran and Russia, attempting to turn inner angst against an outer foe, will become all the more boisterous and rogue. But it’s difficult to imagine these states taking more aggressive tacks then those that which they’re already on. I wonder if we might, ironically, see the opposite: domestic aggression combined with a softening toward the international society.

Today’s The Day

by Chris Bodenner
To call in gay. The NYT takes a look at Stonewall 2.0, and strikes this awkward note:

The sudden burst of energy has drawn some comparisons to demonstrations during the early days of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. But Larry Kramer, the playwright and founder of ACT UP, which used confrontational tactics to fight for money for AIDS treatment and research, said advances in treating the disease had, somewhat incongruously, robbed the gay rights movement of broader political momentum.

“For activism to work, you have to be scared and you have to be angry,” Mr. Kramer said. “Nobody’s frightened anymore. The drugs have taken care of that.”

The Conservative Approach To DADT, Ctd.

By Patrick Appel
A reader writes:

I am a commissioned officer in the USAF who went to Penn on an ROTC scholarship and have served for over 22 years on active duty. Having schools such as Harvard, Columbia, and other elite institutions have ROTC active on their campus is a benefit to all and especially those that want to repeal DADT.
The argument that a school like Columbia or even Penn benefits low income students well enough that ROTC is not a good trade off is incorrect.  My scholarship was more generous than anything the university would have given me.  Moreover, my experiences at Penn helped me realize that being discriminatory toward gays is wrong.  I have argued in favor of dropping DADT to my contemporaries in the military for many years now.  I believe it will be repealed in the near future because it is not beneficial toward good order and discipline, let alone discriminatory.  Having officers educated at schools such as Columbia is a great leveler in an organization that is already overwhelmed by conservative, southern, Christianist elements.  ROTC provided an opportunity for me and others to go to a school that we otherwise would not have been able to attend and it has made a profound difference in my life and my career in the military.

Sabotage?

By Patrick Appel
Scott Horton on the Gitmo trials:

As President-elect Obama works to make good on his promise to shut down Guantanamo Bay, including the military commissions system that his predecessor put in place, and which has become the butt of worldwide ridicule, the Defense Department’s close-knit circle of neoconservatives is busy laying traps and bombs to obstruct Obama’s plans.

Their objectives are clear: they want to push the process of the commissions as far as they possibly can so that by January 20, Obama is presented with a fait accompli. This strategy has led, among other things, to the extraordinary meeting arranged among defendants at Gitmo to push them into guilty pleas; next, I expect to hear still more charges and cases announced in advance of the transition in power in Washington. But of course if the 9/11 defendants really do want to plead guilty, that’s all the more reason for this to occur in a federal court context, where the process and the punishment stand some chance of being viewed credibly by the world.

“Brigitte Bardot With Caligula’s Eyes”

by Chris Bodenner
John Coyne, Jr. examines the softer side of The Iron Lady:

[Thatcher] "simultaneously exploiting every politically useful aspect of her femininity and turning every conventional expectation of women upside down." "What was the source of her charisma?" Miss Berlinski asks the master of Balliol College, Andrew Graham, a man of the left. "Well," he says, "I didn’t think this … but quite a lot of people – some men – found her quite sexy."

Charles Powell, a senior adviser from 1983 to 1990, tells Miss Berlinski: "She was always very conscious of being a woman. This was a tremendous part of her political personality, and she played it for what it was worth – which was a lot … and it was very sensible to do that – after all, there were enough strikes against her as a woman to justify making the most of the advantages of it."

Malkin Award Nominee

By Patrick Appel
"…in another sense, [Blagojevich’s crimes are] just plain enjoyable. It’s like when you watch "Cops" and the idiot burglar tries to hide beside a tree in the dark, even though he’s wearing light-up sneakers. It’s like when Dan Rather dares the world to prove he’s a clueless ass-clown. It’s just good stuff. There’s no tragedy here. No wasted potential. No undeserving victims. No profound and complicated symbolic issues (I somewhat doubt the Serbian-American lobby is going to cry racism). This is the sort of criminality we want the Feds to find, particularly in Chicago. Everyone gets what they deserve — at least so far — and all of the guilty parties are all the more deserving of punishment because they don’t quite understand what the big deal is. I love it," Jonah Golberg, NRO.

How Corrupt Is Chicago?

By Patrick Appel
Very:

The most straightforward way to measure corruption is to check the number of convicted local officials. Between 1995 and 2004, 469 politicians from the federal district of Northern Illinois were found guilty of corruption. The only districts with higher tallies were central California (which includes L.A.), and southern Florida (which includes Miami). Eastern Louisiana (and New Orleans) rank somewhat further down the list.