Month: September 2009

A reader writes:

Israel has already and is continuing to investigate what happened in Gaza. There are court cases underway, but apparently for the UN this isn’t enough. One report by the Israeli Foreign Ministry can be found here (pdf).

Israel used about as much excessive force in Gaza as America used in Iraq and is using in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Is Judge Goldstone and the UN going to be calling on America to investigate and prosecute the war crimes that it is committing? Dozens of civilians are incinerated when American warplanes bomb gas tankers that at the moment presented no military threat and somehow life goes on for the American army and much of the blogosphere seems to not care, yet when it comes to Israel…

A number of people have already shown how much of the UN report is a rehashing of claims that have been shown to be false or unverifiable

Hold Israel to the same standards and behavior that America and its allies are and then the criticism will be taken a bit more seriously. Take a quick look at Col. Richard Kemp, Former Commander British Forces in Afghanistan’s talk and how he describes Israel’s efforts to avoid civilian causalities.

David Kravets describes the three provisions set to expire that the Obama administration wants to renew:

*A secret court, known as the FISA court, may grant “roving wiretaps” without the government identifying the target. Generally, the authorities must assert that the target is an agent of a foreign power and/or a suspected terrorist. The government said Tuesday that 22 such warrants — which allow the monitoring of any communication device — have been granted annually.

*The FISA court may grant warrants for “business records,” from banking to library to medical records. Generally, the government must assert that the records are relevant to foreign intelligence gathering and/or a terrorism investigation. The government said Tuesday that 220 of these warrants had been granted between 2004 and 2007. It said 2004 was the first year those powers were used.

*A so-called “lone wolf” provision, enacted in 2004, allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of an individual even without showing that the person is an agent of a foreign power or a suspected terrorist. The government said Tuesday it has never invoked that provision, but said it wants to keep the authority to do so.

I don't have a major problem with these court-checked initiatives. And I never did. What worried me was the claim that the executive could do this without any accountability or scrutiny at all.

Sharron Kay Thornton during a press conference to discuss the procedure used during surgery for her to regain sight in her left eye at the University of Miami Bascom Palmer Eye Institute on September 16, 2009 in Miami, Florida. Thornton who was blind for nine years underwent a first of its kind procedure in the United States known as — modified osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis (MOOKP). The procedure implants one of her teeth in her eye, as a base to hold a prosthetic lens. By Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Megan responds to this reader e-mail:

How are we paying for this?  Dunno.  It's all too vague.  But to my ears, Obama has so far failed to rule out anything expensive, like generous subsidies, and also failed to outline who he's going to tax or cut benefits to if he's serious about deficit neutrality.  So a mere stated wish to stay deficit neutral just won't do–every president states that sort of wish.  The question is, what will they do to get there?  Obama's coyness on this topic is reaching its sell by date.  It's time for the president to commit to an actual plan with actual numbers we can check.

It's possible that he will manage to pay for it all, in which case, I salute him–but that still leaves that deficit of 4% of GDP in 2019.  Even George Bush made a stab at getting his future deficits lower than that, and in fact managed to get it down near 1% towards the end of his second term.  Spending your limited ability to raise taxes on new programs, rather than reducing the existing deficits, and hoping that someone else will be forced to fix the problem sometime in the future, is not fiscally responsible.  Fiscally responsible is when you put balancing the budget in front of the other things you want to do.  Neither Bush or Obama has, thus far, evinced any actual willingness to do so.

Fred Kaplan has a recommendation:

Whatever President Obama decides on troop levels, the real task at hand is to create legitimacy and build popular support for the Afghan government. The first step is the most crucial: If Karzai is declared the winner, then the United States needs to take extraordinary measures to push him into forming some sort of unified government with the runner-up, Abdullah Abdullah. And extraordinary measures also need to be taken to get Abdullah to go along. (This may be especially difficult, as he has already denounced Karzai's electoral fraud as treasonous.)

By "extraordinary measures" I mean heavy bribery.

The tool of empires everywhere.

Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, calls Karen Armstrong an atheist because she asks whether we can use evolution "to recover a more authentic notion of God." Here's Mohler:

We should at least give Dawkins credit here for knowing what he rejects.  Here we meet an atheist who understands the difference between belief and unbelief.  As for those, like Armstrong, who try to tell believers that it does not matter if God exists –  Dawkins informs them that believers in God will brand them as atheists.  "They'll be right," Dawkins concludes.

It's telling that both Mohler and Dawkins are both dedicated to the maintenance of a certain brand of doubt-free, doctrinally absolutist, fundamentalist versions of faith. There are other kinds. And fighting for that center is an important task in a world being torn apart by politicized religion.

A reader writes:

If you can only show that a movement is significantly animated by racism by showing obvious kooks supporting it (white hoods, people holding Obama witch-doctor posters, whatever), then you will of course not find many of those. Welch is right that those people are genuinely unpopular.

What is far less unpopular is believing that lots of federal tax money went to black welfare queens in the 1980's (despite no such evidence) or that lots of federal tax money in today's democratic health care proposals would go to illegal immigrants (despite explicitly being precluded by law, and despite no evidence that enforcement would be a

problem). Are these views not "animated by racism?"

You don't have to wear a white hood to have views that are significantly animated by racist beliefs and fears–and saying that a lot of the hysterical protest on the right (stylized as a desire for 'small government') is significantly animated by racist beliefs and fears is most decidedly not to say that "limited government sentiment is automatically a form of subliminated racism." Much of it is so animated, but that doesn't mean that each person with such 'limited government' views is a racist, let alone has a penchant for white-hood wearing.

Here's a question: what proportion of the people clamoring about 'limited government' at these rallies seem to have no problem with–indeed seem to much support–federal programs that they think benefit them and people like them (Medicare, Social Security, federal spending that provides jobs in their community, such as on defense, etc.), but are rabidly opposed to things that they think will go to people unlike them? I think an answer to that question would go a long way to answering how much of the protest is animated by racism.

Chris Dierkes questions the tenets of the 9/12 project. It helps if you read them in light of this.

A useful bit of perspective in these fetid days:

After eight months in office, 31 percent of Americans in the latest ABC/Post poll strongly disapprove of Obama’s performance as president. Bill Clinton reached the same level of strong disapproval in five months. And while it took George W. Bush longer to get there, he traveled much farther into strong disapproval, and languished there for years.

James Joyner asks the MSM to do its job:

[B]ecause there are alternative media for the left and right, it’s now incumbent on the mainstream press to investigate the big stories that percolate in those venues to ensure that they’re shared outside of self-selected cliques and to present the story in proper context, not just the cherry picked facts touted by the partisans.  Is there more to Van Jones than youthful sympathy with Communists and having put his weight behind the Truther movement?  Is ACORN corrupt at its core or is it merely mismanaged, with a shoddy business model that invites corruption?  Are the Tea Party protesters racist yahoos marching to the tune of Glenn Beck and Freedom Works, a diverse grass roots movement, or what?  The partisan media generally lack both the resources and incentives to report these things.

The Daily Show took on the ACORN story last night.