Month: December 2009

Anup Kaphle just put up a video profiling the British Gurkha fighting in Afghanistan. Kaphle embedded with British forces in June and July:

A reader writes:

As a conservative Christian, I'm glad the Rick Warren and Tom Coburn finally got around to speaking out against the Uganda bill, but at the same time I'm disappointed that it took so long, and I'm disappointed that there are so few voices condemning the bill among those leaders who claim to speak for people like me.  Having grown up as part of the politically active religious right, I've seen religious conservative leaders put their vast networks of contacts to use time and again for issues large and small even back in the days before email when they got people to start making phone calls to their friends to make sure information spread. The silence of the religious right social networks is deafening.

Religious conservatives need to be hearing about Uganda from sources like James Dobson and Focus on the Family and the American Family Association because like it or not, those are the sources that they trust. As much as I'm glad that people like you and Rachel Maddow are continuing to draw attention to what's going down in Uganda, I fear that it's mostly preaching to the choir and I worry that people like the friends and family I grew up with aren't going to take it seriously until they hear it from their leaders. Those leaders know that as much as anybody, but they're still mostly silent. I think it's time to start putting pressure on them to speak out too.

Then again, the silence on what seems like it should be obvious to everyone is a basic human rights issue is yet another reason why I'm increasingly reluctant to identify myself as a conservative.

E.D. Kain watches Colbert's interview with Conservapedia founder Andy Schlafly and winces:

Watching Schlafly try to reconcile free markets and Christianity is just sad. It’s exactly why thoughtful proponents of free markets run into such jaded and hostile reactions from people on the other side of the fence. I think Christianity and free markets are reconcilable but only with the addition of some form of safety-net-state. The Christian Democrats understand this concept over in Europe. Americans like Schlafly think Jesus was the first coming of Milton Friedman.

A reader writes:

I only caught a few minutes near the end of this piece from Minnesota Public Radio on Monday but it included some "man-on-the-street" type interviews from December 7, 1941. What I found most interesting has been echoed by your commenters: people were a bit ambivalent about the war, even after the attack. Most of the interviewees said things like "I'm sure we'll win" but there was a quavering in their voices. That and the fact that most of the enlisted men had been drafted and you could sense a general "oh, boy, we didn't sign up for this but now we have to deal with it" in the interviews. Yes, the "Greatest Generation" stepped up in the long run, and won the war, but they weren't gung-ho from day one.

Interviews start at the 37:00 mark.

A reader writes:

I would abandon the word 'denialist'. it is too close to 'deniers'. There are lots of (disparaging) ways to describe those who agree that warming is going on but that man is not the chief cause without using a word coined specifically to describe those who cast doubt on the fact of the Holocaust. Call them idiots or flat-earthers or morons. Call the apostates or dissenters. Call them Palinenetologists. Saying that questioning AGW or the degree to which it is responsible for warming or beyond that the entire approach favored by the environmental mainstream to deal with it is akin to those who denied the camps goes beyond innocent provocations as when conservatives delight in calling the Democratic Party the 'Democrat' party. That is just childish. Those willing to use it demonstrate either their own insecurity or (as in Gore's case) that they are arrogant to a grotesque degree and unaware of it.

Brian Beutler passes along a graphic created by the Democratic party to highlight the hypocrisy of the GOP. Weigel sighs:

This is mostly a message problem for Republicans, but it’s one that’s been a long time coming. Much of the conservative movement has honed in on “Medicare cuts” as a killer argument against health care reform. This led to even the 60 Plus Association, a conservative group more or less founded to campaign for the privatization of entitlements, running TV ads to demand that seniors get all the Medicare benefits they were promised. It was not hard to find Republicans who’d admit that a spirited defense of Medicare was not in their long-term interests — Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) told me as much — but they expected immediate short-term benefits.

Frum runs an excerpt on conditions in Iran from Michael Ledeen's upcoming book. Among other harrowing statistics:

The country’s wealth is firmly in the hands of the regime’s elite families. More than 80 percent of the country’s gross national product comes from the petroleum industry, which is entirely in government hands. The mullahs have effectively ruined this primary source of national wealth: Oil production is currently around three million barrels per day. It was 6.2 at the end of the shah’s rule. According to a study released by the National Academy of Sciences on Christmas Day 2006, oil exports are expected to decline by upwards of 10 percent a year for the foreseeable future.

The Daily What:

Cutest kid ever performing the cutest version ever of Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” on the ukulele. Disclaimer: TDW may not be held responsible for any and all spontaneous pregnancies which will occur as a result of this video.

"Yes, it's true, my magazine, E&P, axed today, out of job. At office until end of year–and here, of course," – Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor and Publisher (est. 1884), via Twitter.

(Hat tip: John Cole)