Month: June 2010

The Palin Model, Ctd

A Virginia conservative blog is ejected from a Palin war rally:

We're being kicked out. So much for transparency.

They were tolerated for the entire program until Palin started speaking. Then her goons got them. By the way, the motto for their site is:

Most navigation rules state that the best course of action with constant bearing and decreasing range is to alter one's course to starboard – the right! Therefore, most of us at Bearing Drift ascribe to this rule – if it looks like the ship-of-state is going to wreck, move right; you can't go wrong!!!

But even these true-believers cannot be trusted in Palin-land.

Angle On Abortion

Following the Palin model, she won't talk to the press any more so you have to go back to January to find a radio interview on this subject. In it, she explains why she believes that abortion should be illegal in all cases, including rape and incest:

You know, I'm a Christian and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.

I'm not sure I could ever vote for Harry Reid, but I sure couldn't vote for Sharron Angle.

The End Of Privacy And The Rise Of Surveillance Power

A brilliant little essay is on the Economist site that really helps take the debate about what just happened to Dave Weigel – and about Internet privacy altogether – to the next level. The gap between our public and private selves is simply part of human nature; but when that discrepancy can be proven, and when "journalists" seek to exploit that discrepancy by publishing examples of a journalist thinking in private, then it's more about power than transparency or morality. Money quote:

Without reaching to the Soviet bloc for examples, one case of such an artificial and untenable code is the American demand that all politicians be monogamous and drug-free. The press both creates this untenable expectation and exploits violations in order to entrench its power over the political system.

The demand that political journalists either not hold, or never express, their own political opinions is another such artificial and untenable code. Politically interested actors who attempt to enforce this code by revealing the private convictions of reporters do not have the moral goal of ensuring that political reporters have no political opinions; such a goal would be absurd. Rather, they aim to aggrandise their power over journalistic organisations by exacerbating the hypocrisy of those organisations' official codes of conduct, and then exploiting evidence of that hypocrisy when useful. The aptly named FishbowlDC has just played this game successfully enough to gain influence over the hiring decisions of the Washington Post. The main lesson here is to be wary of the claim that surveillance is intended to further moral goals at all. Sometimes it is, and then Mr Westacott's concerns come into play. But often enough, the furtherance of morality is a pretext; the surveillance is all about power.

To wit:

I've been leaked postings from JournoList before — wonderfully charming things written about me, as you might have guessed — and I haven't had the opportunity to use them, but would be happy to if the need arose. 

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #4

Vfyw-contest_6-25

A reader writes:

Somewhere tropical, reasonably developed. Not continental US. Can’t find somewhere in Hawaii with this much flat land. Phuket, Thailand?

Another writes:

Looking at the chair, it has a certain elegant South Asian feel to it. But the water has that beautiful tropical glow and the surroundings look fairly prosperous. Thus, I’m going to guess: Victoria, Seychelles.

Another:

Judging by the trees, landscape, ocean color, and river through town, I’m going to wildly guess Hoi An, Vietnam.

Another:

I’m going to guess that’s the Rock of Gibraltar out in the water, so let’s try La Linea De La Concepcion in Spain.

Another:

This one’s tough. Inactive, eroded volcanoes in background point toward somewhere in the South China Sea.  I’m taking a stab in the dark: Malaysia, the city of Georgetown.

Another:

Based on foliage, the style and condition of the buildings, and the odd looking vegetation, combined with the terrain, I’ll say Australia. Google image search, combined with combing through Australian coastal towns, leads me to believe this must be Townsville, Queensland.

Another:

This game is fun, especially for those of us who enjoy maps. Trying to match the Google satellite images of my guesses to the little clues offered here is one way I’ve attempted to answer. So, this is probably Christchurch, and more specifically, taken from the Phillipstown section of the city, looking east. Now, go ahead and tell me that I’m half a world off the mark.

Half a world. Answer after the jump:

If this isn’t my hometown, I’ll be embarrassed to misidentify it, but this looks like Honolulu, Hawaii. Specifically, the neighborhood of Kailua, overlooking the Enchanted Lakes section. If I’m right, it was the silhouette of the Mokapu peninsula in the distance that tipped me off.

About 40 out of 500 entries were Kailua. But the VFYW book has to go to the reader who divined the exact street address:

That is obviously the view from Kailua looking towards Kaneohe on Oahu, so I figure the location guess has to be pretty specific. Mahalo to the fellow with the skylights to the right for an easy landmark to look for in Google Earth for the street.

Congrats to the winner. A few readers have more on Kailua:

The water in the foreground is Enchanted Lake. The water in the background is Kailua Bay. The mountains on the left are the Ko’olau. The mountain in the far right actually looks like a sea turtle up close. The crunchy brown seed pods off the lanai are called “haole koa.” The picture was taken on a foggy day, but it’s usually much clearer there because of the trade winds.

Another:

The area is home to the Marine base at Kaneohe Bay (K-Bay, as it’s known on the base). My brother-in-law was stationed there for three years, deployed to Iraq from there, and met my beautiful sister, an island girl, in Kailua Town.

Another:

Would be great if you posted a link to last week’s winner with this week’s entry, will save your readers a lot of digging through the Dish to find it. Thanks!

You’re welcome. See you Saturday at noon.

The Palin Model

Sharron Angle is only doing what Sarah Palin did – ducking the media, channeling her message entirely to the base, avoiding what she called the “filter” whereby her statements and record could actually be challenged by reporters. Angle has not quite gotten away with it because the Nevada press is much, much more professional than the national press corps. But she’s trying. And she heralds a possible era in which candidates do not even pretend to be accountable, but exist in a bubble of machine politics, with its own media apparatus, designed for p.r. not scrutiny.

And then there are the clones, as above. If the pretty, big-boobed, gun-toting hottie paradigm was enough to get an unbalanced know-nothing thisclose to the presidency, then you can rest assured others took notice.

Ross On Afghanistan: Getting Warmer, Ctd

In response to Millman, Douthat fleshes out his position:

[Yglesias] concludes that American policy toward Afghanistan should “restrain our goals, shy away from efforts to conquer hostile territory, and simply try to provide some help to friendly Afghans while scaling our commitment of resources down to a more sustainable level.” Aiming for “a more sustainable” American presence doesn’t sound like a policy oriented toward an actual withdrawal; rather, it sounds like a recipe for what Rory Stewart, in an essay admirable for its honesty about the scope of the commitment he has in mind, suggested would be 20 years or more of muddling through in Afghanistan.

This possible future seems at once unacceptable and all-too-plausible. And it’s precisely because I don’t think we can afford to spend upwards of two decades heavily invested in the Hindu Kush that I’m unwilling to give up on the hope of a more decisive outcome — not a final victory, which I agree is a chimera, but a shift in the balance of power in Afghanistan that makes it easier for leading U.S. policymakers to embrace a real withdrawal.

Yeah but how credible is that? Somehow the US has to convince the Taliban that it cannot outlast us – by ramping up forces now with the obvious, if ambiguous, exit ramp in the summer of next year – while holding hearings in which the debate about how long to stay is completely transparent. What Ross is proposing sounds awesome in theory – if we prepare for a permanent occupation, we will get a more temporary one. In practice, in a ten-year war for a negotiated settlement with the people who allowed al Qaeda to attack us a decade ago, with a bankrupt and teetering Treasury, the US has no chance of meeting the determination of the Taliban to control what is their country according to their profound and passionate religious beliefs.

It's over, Ross. All over, but the coming decade of muddling through to more stalemate. And this month saw more NATO casualties than at any time since the beginning.

Hewitt Award Nominee

“Somebody has to say this. When Hitler took power, no one wanted to think that the Holocaust, the murder of 6 million Jewish people, was possible. I’m saying that you have to recognize and name tyranny when you see it. And I think people are finding out that I’m the candidate who’s willing to speak clearly and not be afraid of sounding politically incorrect, and my opponent isn’t that candidate," – congressman congressional candidate Rick Barber, finally forced to respond to the press about his increasingly deranged ads.

And by the press, I mean, of course, Dave Weigel.

Quote For The Day

"When I first heard her say that, I thought to myself, "That has to be a joke. It's sarcasm, right?" But then I went back and replayed the clip – no sarcasm! She meant it! If I'm hearing [Lara] Logan correctly, what Hastings is supposed to have done in that situation is interrupt these drunken assholes and say, "Excuse me, fellas, I know we're all having fun and all, but you're saying things that may not be in your best interest! As a reporter, it is my duty to inform you that you may end up looking like insubordinate douche bags in front of two million Rolling Stone readers if you don't shut your mouths this very instant!" I mean, where did Logan go to journalism school – the Burson-Marsteller agency?" – Matt Taibbi, journalist.

But my favorite sentence from the piece is one that resonates so fucking strongly in this time of such fantastic media corruption and cowardice:

If there's a lower form of life on the planet earth than a "reputable" journalist protecting his territory, I haven't seen it.