Month: February 2010

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish we hailed Colin Powell's coming-around on DADT (exposing McCain's cynicism even further). Saxby Chambliss and Peter Sprigg spouted nonsense on the subject, a reader pwned Kristol, and another shared some wisdom. Marc Lynch cheered Iraq's decision to reverse the Sunni ban. In Iran, Ahmadi seemed to reverse course on the nuclear deal and tried to hide his opponents. Meanwhile, Mousavi muscled up for February 11.

In other news, we learned how we got more intelligence from the undie bomber, found out the shoe bomber was Mirandized as well, and reminded readers of the best way to think of terrorists. Palin defended her Tea Party funds (and ducked her taxes?) while Andrew called out her cant and played coy. Scott Brown slowly backed away. Alaskans tired of her. And the GOP looked darker by the day.

Prop 8 reenactments here. Sign this petition. Tumbleweeds were never so entertaining.

— C.B.

Very Gradual Change We Can Believe In

Chris Beam endorses the slow approach to ending DADT:

This process might sound belabored. But it's probably the only way it can work. The reason: cover. Both the White House and Congress are cautious about doing anything that would be perceived as harmful to the military. Gates and Mullen, meanwhile, don't want to be seen as making policy. The study buys both sides not just time but deniability. Congress can say it's merely carrying out the wishes of the military leaders. Military leaders can say they're merely carrying out the orders of the president. Both can say they're being careful not to damage the military's effectiveness. Meanwhile, gays who want to serve will experience for themselves one of the military's unofficial mottos: Hurry up and wait.

Great News From Iraq, Ctd

Marc Lynch celebrates the election breakthrough:

This doesn't mean that all is now rosy.  The elections, as I wrote yesterday, may still very well fail to produce "meaningful change" (however this is defined) and could still lead to disappointment and frustration among the losers.  The process of forming a new government after the elections could prove explosive and drawn-out.   Everyone — Iraqis, Americans and other international actors — should be proactive about avoiding problems such as those which hamstrung the recent Afghan elections (or even the Iranian election or the 2005 Iraqi election).

The first step is to do everything possible to help ensure a free, transparent, and clean election — which should include a robust system of international monitors (whether American, UN, EU or independent NGO), as many Iraqi political leaders (including Vice President Hashemi yesterday) have requested.

But that's for tomorrow.  For now, a sigh of relief that the political crisis over the election ban appears to have been averted — a good sign for the ability of Iraqis to save themselves from such logjams, and a credit to the Obama administration's approach. 

Earlier thoughts here.

A Real Health Care Debate

Mark Thompson calls Ezra Klein's interview with Rep. Paul Ryan the "best thing I’ve seen in the health care debate in months." A short quote from Ryan:

I feel obligated to put big ideas on the table and break up the status quo and this awful inertia we have out here. We shoot at anyone who pops their head above the foxhole and proposes anything big. This fiscal situation will destroy us if we don’t start stepping up. I don’t have all the answers. I put out a real, credible plan in the hopes that other members of Congress will do the same, and we can get on with the business of hashing out how to fix the problem.

Face Of The Day

SUFIPOTHEADBehrouzMehri:AFP:Getty

A Pakistani Muslim Sufi devotee smokes a cannabis cigarette in a Christian grave yard next to the Data Darbar the burial place of the Saint Syed Ali bin Osman Al-Hajvery shrine, popularly known as Data Ganj Bakhsh, during the three-day annual ''Urs'' religious festival in Lahore on February 3, 2010.

Data Ganj Bakhsh was a Persian Sufi and scholar during the 11th century. He was born in Ghazni, Afghanistan (990 AD) during the Ghaznavid Empire and settled and died in Lahore spreading Islam in South Asia. During the festival the shrine is lit up with candles and lights, donated dinner is prepared for the people and Sufies dance around and musicians play music for hours.

The Palin Cult, Ctd

A reader writes:

This is the umpteenth time you've written something like, "The truth about Sarah Palin, in fact, has yet to be disseminated."  It's time you either spilled or stopped.  I have no more love for Palin than you but this I-know-something-you-don't-know business is unfair and unprofessional.  If you have something substantial publish and stand behind it.  Otherwise, cut out the sophomoric, irrefutable non-allegations.

Another writes:

Obviously, you know something.  How about just a little, teeny-tiny hint?  I'm just a suburban housewife.  Who would I tell?!  It can be a vague hint.  It could be a one syllable hint.  My inquiring mind wants to know!

I'm waiting for Levi.

Marriage And Biology

Heather Mac Donald worries about the "institutionalized severing of biology from parenthood":

The facile libertarian argument that gay marriage is a trivial matter that affects only the parties involved is astoundingly blind to the complexity of human institutions and to the web of sometimes imperceptible meanings and practices that compose them.

Equally specious is the central theme in attorney Theodore Olson’s legal challenge to California’s Proposition 8: that only religious belief or animus towards gays could explain someone’s hesitation regarding gay marriage. Anyone with the slightest appreciation for the Burkean understanding of tradition will feel the disquieting burden of his ignorance in this massive act of social reengineering, even if he ultimately decides that the benefits to gays from gay marriage outweigh the risks of the unknown.

This argument becomes less and less compelling as states and nations embrace marriage equality, the unknown becomes known, and no ill effects result. Another section of the article contradicts her central objection:

Even if gays never gain the right to marry, the practice of gay conception will presumably continue apace. Given that continuation, gay marriage at least preserves one strand of traditional child-bearing arrangements: raising children within the context of marriage.

Stressing The Troops

A few years ago the American Psychoanalytic Association found that DADT has psychological ill effects on gay and lesbian soldiers. Timothy Kincaid comments:

One has to wonder if the stress on that young straight conservative serviceman being forced to coexist with a gay soldier even remotely compares to the young gay (probably conservative) servicewoman being forced to hide, deny, and lose access to her support network and even her partner. Somehow it makes all the deference to the fragile sensibilities of the sheltered homophobe seem a bit disingenuous.

Miss Fox

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The future former governor of Alaska in Sarah Palin: The Untold Story, now on magazine stands. Andrea Stone finds that Alaskans are happy to be rid of her:

Palin has “what any politician out there would kill for,” said Andrew Halcro, who competed against Palin as an independent gubernatorial candidate in 2006 and is challenging U.S. Rep. Don Young in the Republican primary this year. “And that is the ability to make substance irrelevant.”

Speaking of her new side job as a news-network analyst, Halcro said, “It’s brilliant for Fox. She brings in a built-in audience who want to listen to Sarah Palin and not listen to what she says.” It’s also, he believes, an opportunity that fits her better than her old position did.

“This is her sweet spot. This is what she was always cut out to do. She’s found her groove.”

She’s a beauty queen again! And her Fox gig is basically the equivalent of the interview segments of a pageant. Plus: she gets to rake in more moolah … until the hole she has already dug for herself falls in on her.