Month: October 2009

Henry Sokolski at NRO delivers this whopper:

[T]he fuel that France and Russia will send back to Iran will be far more weapons-usable — it will be enriched with 19.75-percent nuclear-weapons-grade uranium — than the 3.5-percent-enriched brew Iran currently has on hand. If Iran were to seize this more enriched fuel, it could make a bomb much more quickly than it could now.

Michael Roston sighs:

Iran isn’t going to get back fuel that “will be far more weapons-usable.” In fact it’s getting the opposite. Iran sends Russia the uranium gas it has, which enriches it to a higher level. Russia sends the fuel to France. France fashions the uranium into metal fuel rods that can be used in the reactor. To make that bomb usable, you’d have to take it out of fuel rod form and enrich it more, and then fashion it into a functioning warhead.

I’m not saying the guys at Los Alamos or at the best Russian labs couldn’t figure this out if they screwed around for a really long time with endless resources. But it’s not exactly how you go about building a credible nuclear deterrent.

A reader writes:

In this post you say, “I wonder what the equivalent would be for Israel, which you and I partly pay for.”  The answer can be found in this article from The Economist.  It works out to just over $2300 per person and makes Israel the only nation to exceed the United States in military spending.

I didn't think it was a good idea for Obama to go to Copenhagen given the intense policy questions he as to address right now. It seemed a trivial matter to me compared to two wars, healthcare, the Iran question and the fiscal and economic crisis. I didn't say so at the time because it really didn't seem that important given the other issues in the air this week. But this reader's email again reminds me how utterly politically obsessed some on the right have become – even to the point of celebrating the fact that America lost:

I awoke this morning in Sydney, my current home, and put on the morning news to find out that Chicago lost its bid for the Olympics. My immediate reaction, as an American, was disappointment. Obviously, when it comes to sporting events like the Olympics I want my country to win. I then hopped online and skimmed through the blogosphere and was surprised to see the vast majority of posts on The Corner were in the form of mocking Obama for failing in his attempt to win the Olympics for Chicago. There was even an odd sense of excitement on The Corner about the fact that he lost. Do they not realize how petty and partisan this makes them look? 

It's the Olympics! Not exactly a divisive political issue. Why in the world would you a) be excited that the US did not get the Olympics and b) mock Obama for trying? Imagine if Bush tried to win the Olympics for Dallas and lost and a liberal blog was mocking him. They all would be up in arms. National Review used to be a publication for grown ups, sad to see it has stooped to such low levels.

Criticizing a president is one thing – and important. Hoping he fails – even to the point of celebrating a national loss – is a sign of partisanship that has become pathologically blind to any sense of perspective or patriotism.

This could prove interesting:

One of the arguments of the Olson/Boies legal team that is suing to overturn California’s Proposition 8, is that the motivation and intent behind the anti-gay marriage amendment was one of animus directed towards gay people as a group…To advance this argument, they subpoenaed the correspondence of the Yes on 8 campaign. Naturally, the campaign resisted, but Judge Vaughn Walker agreed with the Olson/Boies argument…The most relevant information will be in relation to what messages the campaign decided not to present to voters as this will put those they did use in perspective.

But I’m sure that the virulent homophobia and blind hate expressed in the communications will also go far to illuminate the attitudes of the campaign against marriage. Unless, of course, the Yes on 8 Campaign always spoke in loving terms about gay people and couples…

 
Captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is seen in a video broadcast by an Israeli news channel on October 2, 2009. Israel freed 19 Palestinian women prisoners in a swap for two minutes and 40 seconds of footage showing soldier Gilad Shalit looking healthy after more than three years in captivity at the hands of Gaza militants. By Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty.

"Note to GOP officials/consultants – resist temptation to pile on about Chicago losing just becuz Obama made the pitch," – GOP strategist Scott Stanzel, via Twitter. (Glenn Thrush spotlights those who failed to heed the advice while Yglesias patiently explains to the Corner why the Olympics is not like negotations with Iran.)

Ambers explains the administration's view on consistency:

It's quite possible that a variant of the failed strategy in Iraq — primarily counter-terrorism + bribery + a war of attrition over the resources (substitute poppy for oil) might work better in Afghanistan. If  Obama decides to go this route, and it looks like some influential folks are beginning to favor it, he will have backed away from what one might call a campaign promise to resource Afghanistan properly.  That doesn't get you points in politics. For some reason, everyone obsesses about consistency, which this administration believes is just about the worst value to hold when it comes to foreign policy.

To them, consistency is dogma. In their view, the U.S. ought to treat situations differently because they are different, because ceteris paribus never applies, because situations are always evolving, because interests are always more pressing than values. The downside of flexibility is that it comes at the cost of legitimacy. But so does does dogma, magical thinking, a blind faith in whatever patterns we think we see in the void. I don't know if Brent Scowcroft would call this approach "realism."  It's more… ad hoc.

Reihan doesn't think that Iran handing over the uranium is such big news:

All of this sounds like good news, and it is. Unfortunately, it is also extremely good news for Iran and Ahmadinejad, who has managed to buy still more time to build his weapons program. There's little doubt that the Qom facility is just part of a vast network of secret nuclear facilities that the Iranians have been building for years to evade inspectors. It solves the "puzzle" of why the Iranians haven't been able to account for large amounts of uranium from one of their mines…So while the Iranians will hand over low-enriched nuclear fuel they've said they have, they're not about to give up the nuclear they haven't said they have. Get it?

Juan Cole counters:

The NYT report on all this adds in all kinds of extraneous and unproven allegations, of a network of secret enrichment plants or secret stores of low-enriched uranium or nefarious Iranian plans to make a bomb, or of Iran having enough nuclear material to make a bomb (irrelevant if they can't enrich to 90%), and what Israel thinks of all this (since the Israelis really have thumbed their nose at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and made a whole arsenal of bombs, thus further destabilizing the Middle East, why they aren't under UN sanctions I'll never understand; but they certainly don't have standing to dictate anything to other countries on the proliferation issue). It reminds me of all the NYT front page stories about aluminum tubes and Iraqi WMD of Judy Miller in 2002. Isn't it bad journalism to report completely unproven allegations for which there is no evidence?

Joe Carter circles back to the "Going Galt" phenomenon and makes an astute point:

During the Cold War-era people who held incompatible views—such as libertarianism and social conservatism—embraced a limited form of “fusionism” in order to provide a united front against a common enemy—communism. Today, the common enemy is liberalism and the fusionism occurs not between disparate groups but within an individual. People who would laugh at the absurdity of a “Christian Muslim” seem not to recognize the similar incongruity between being a follower of Christ and an acolyte of Ayn Rand.

He also points to a cult of personality on the right:

Their defense tends to be based on a variation of a common theme: They don’t actually subscribe to those crazy views (at least not all of them), they just align themselves with a personality that does. It’s politics by proxy with a Machiavellian cult of personality twist. If any victories against liberal elites can be attributed to our favorite TV personality/failed politicians/radio host/third-rate novelist, then that cult figure, their views, their motives, and their actions, are provided blanket immunity against criticism. These St. Georges slaying the liberal dragons are placed beyond reproach. You are no more allowed to question the right’s preferred cult of personality – CoulterHannityBeckLimbaughPaulLevinRandPalinWhoever – than liberals can challenge Obama.

I had my first Big Mac in months last night having landed back in DC. It's one of my favorite comfort foods. For the poor, it has the same appeal. TNC talks about coping on a tight budget:

When other aspects of your life aren't going to well, that McFlurry is an awesome pick-me-up. Trust me, I know. I almost hit 300 pounds (298 at the height of my glory) while I was doing the entry work of becoming a writer–spend long hours alone in the library at Howard, writing pieces for 10 cents a word, coming to New York and writing editors who didn't know me from the next wannabee, losing three different writing jobs. I had years when I grossed five figures, years when I worked as a food delivery boy, and years when Samori's pre-school bill was higher than my earnings.

Ezra chimes in:

This reminds me of Charles Karelis's "The Persistence of Poverty." The basic argument is that the wealthy misunderstand the mental state of the poor, which leads them to make conceptual errors when creating policies to address poverty, or, in this case, obesity. Think of a bee sting, he advises. If you have a single bee sting, you'll go buy some salve to take away the pain. Now imagine three bee stings, a sprained ankle, a burn, a cut, a crick in your neck, a sore throat, and arthritis. Does the bee sting matter anymore?

Karelis argues that this is more the situation of someone in poverty. Obesity is bad, but it may be just one of many bad things. Overdue bills. A horrible part-time job. Endless commuting time on the bus. A mother with diabetes. A child running with the wrong crowd. A leaking roof. In that scenario, slowly reversing your weight gain might be a good idea, but it hardly makes a dent in the overall crumminess of the conditions. It won't replace pain with pleasure. So you do things that are surer to replace pain with pleasure, like have a delicious, filling, satisfying, salty, fatty meal. That may make your overall situation more unpleasant, but then, making that situation pleasant didn't seem like an option in the first place.

This, he would say, is fundamentally different than the situation of someone who is fundamentally happy with his life but thinks he should lose 30 pounds. For that person, those 30 pounds are the main thing standing between him and perceived happiness. It's one bee sting instead of a dozen ailments.

Cigarettes too. I know they're awful. But I find the puritanism and bossiness around them curiously blind to the fact that for many people in rough times and rough places, they are one of life's pleasures. For people with many pleasures, quitting is tough but won't really affect their quality of life. For those with very few, it's one more assault they could do without. Leave people alone.