Month: July 2009

Biden’s Latest Burst Of Genius, Ctd.

Marc Lynch:

[A] variety of comments from assorted well-placed worthies have come my way over the last day, some online and others privately.  Most suggest that Biden’s comments were not meant to change U.S. policy, and that if anything he meant to distance the U.S. from any Israeli strike (though a few speculate that it was actually meant to strengthen the U.S. bargaining position ahead of the Moscow talks).  If that’s the case, then it is only that much more important to repeat that his comments are being nigh-universally presented in the Middle Eastern media (Israeli and Arab, at least) as a “green light.”   If that wasn’t the intended signal, then the administration needs to recognize that its signaling has gone awry and clear it up before it’s too late…

Why is Biden allowed on national television? He’s incapable of staying on message which, in terms of foreign policy, is a disaster. He should be used internally.

Dispatches From Fake America

Weigel tackles the "real Americans" mumbo jumbo:

By every metric, Palin is one of the less popular Republican politicians on the national stage: her ticket even carried less of the vote in Alaska (59.4 percent) than the Bush/Cheney ticket carred in 2004 (61.1 percent). And yet mainstream pundits insists that she represents more of the country than the people who won the 2008 election. It’s quite extraordinary.

Fred’s Palin Plan, Ctd.

A reader writes:

Pace Fred Barnes, I don't think that Sarah Palin could beat "Nick" Begich in 2014 even though he's been dead for decades.  Nick Begich was one of the first prominent politicians in the state of Alaska, and his son, Mark, has carried on in his footsteps.

Sounds like Sarah Palin's supporters are as informed about Alaskan politics as Sarah herself.  She was never interested in the details of governing, and Fred Barnes didn't do his basic Alaskan political homework.  I notice that the name is now corrected, reads Mark Begich, so I suppose one of the rabid Palin supporters in Alaska or elsewhere pointed out to him that he had the name wrong.  They've been gunning for Mark Begich since he was elected.  And there's no love lost between Begich and Palin, though he deserves credit for not maligning her decision — not that he's going to get it.

Can we make her go away now?

The only thing that will make her go away is the truth. Good luck with that.

Can Cap & Trade Get Through The Senate?

Nate Silver analyzes:

Although the model considers only 52 Senators to be more likely than not to vote for the bill, there are somewhere between 62-66 votes that are perhaps potentially in play. But Joe Mauer-like precision will be required in targeting the undecided, and further compromises would almost certainly be needed, some of them designed to placate as few as one senator. The question is how many ornaments the Democrats could place on the Christmas Tree before it starts to collapse under its own weight.

Ancient Gay Sex

And the Romans were unfazed enough to put it on a coin:

Cc64455a

Details:

Spintria; AE 21, c. 22-37 AD, 3.80g. Buttrey, Spintriae, Num. Chron. 1973, Scene 7. Obv: A man with erect penis reclining r. on his front on a couch, supporting his upper body on his l. elbow and looking back l. at another man who is making love to him; this second man holds the first man's thigh with his r. hand, and the first man holds the second man's arm above the elbow with his r. hand; a footstool and drapery are seen under the couch, and additional drapery hangs in l. background. Rx: Numeral XII within circle of dots and laurel wreath. Ex M&M 79, 1994, 639; ex Sternberg 21, 1988, 532. On less well preserved specimens the figure reclining on the couch could be thought to be a woman, but his sexual organ on our coin proves that he is in fact a man. Our obverse is from a different die than the specimen illustrated by Buttrey, pl. 3, 7. According to Buttrey, p. 60, another specimen like ours combining this scene with the number XII on reverse is in the BM. This is one of the few coins in the Spintria series that shows homosexual intercourse. It is a great rarity of historical significance. Some corrosion on the reverse edge, otherwise EF. A remarkable coin.

When A Veep Matters

Ezra Klein points to some charts made by Richard Johnston and Emily Thorson on candidate favorables during the 2008 election:

The first graph is simple enough: It's the poll standing of the two candidates. The dark vertical lines show moments when Sen. John McCain's numbers dropped precipitously.

Graph number two shows assessments of the economy. The voters were pessimistic and became more so as the campaign wore on. But the line doesn't correspond to McCain's falls.

The third graph shows the average favorability toward the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Obama and Biden, you'll notice, seem virtually independent of each other. But McCain's drops are almost entirely predicted by Palin's much longer falls. It seems that every time Palin lost respect among voters, a certain portion of those voters turned against McCain, too.

As well they should have. In my view, McCain should have retired from public life after this debacle. It showed he was unfit for higher office, incapable of making sober decisions, incompetent in staffing, and incredibly reckless with this country's national security. Instead, the MSM refuses to follow up on the question he needs to be asked: what were you thinking? And when will you apologize to your supporters, allies and contributors?

Beating Up On The Neocons

Gregory Djerejian offered a semi-mea culpa and semi-defense of "neo-con bashing" a few weeks ago:

[T]o be a purported Wise Man or foreign policy expert, you must be able to recalibrate and learn from one’s mistakes. Instead, as David Rieff once quipped to me: “(l)ike the Trotskyists of yore, these people are never wrong if only they had been listened to and allowed to follow their mad utopian schemes to their limit.” This failure to learn from experience, this rigid ideological lock-step (indeed they essentially look to double-down even post the Iraq debacle, now with some calling for bombing Iran), in my opinion, displays a lack of character that is very worrisome and frankly reprehensible, especially given the human and other costs (of which more in a subsequent post). Forgive me therefore for not trusting their policy suggestions on Iran, or any other issues, for that matter. And forgive me too for on occasion having gotten overly hot-headed.

Yglesias replies.

Blaming The Critics

Conor Friedersdorf politely rebuts Douthat:

[It] seems clear to me that Sarah Palin has been criticized unfairly at times, sometimes offensively so — and equally clear to me that every candidate on a presidential ticket in my lifetime has been mocked and misrepresented. Anyone who doubts that others have faced similarly offensive attacks have too short a memory.