Month: November 2010

Every now and again, you stumble across a passage in literature that seems so fresh and contemporary, you sit up straight – or feel a cold chill go down your spine. A Dish reader was browsing through George Bernard Shaw's play, "Geneva" (Collected GBS, vol. V, pp. 687-88) and came across this exchange about a new figure on the political stage:

"What an amazing young woman! You really think she will get in?"

"Of course she will. She has courage, sincerity, good looks, and big publicity…Everything our voters love."

"But she hasn't a political idea in her head..[S]he is a complete ignoramus. She will give herself away everytime she opens her mouth."

"Not at all. She will say pluckily and sincerely just what she feels and thinks. You heard her say that there are lots of people in Camberwell who feel and think as she does. Well, the House of Commons is exactly like Camberwell in that respect."

“The aim of an artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations,” – Leo Tolstoy, as quoted by David Brooks in a column on the great Christian writer.

"To be on the internet is to never be alone. … Sophomore year of college was the last time I remember attending a party I didn’t want to go to in spite of myself, the last time I remember choosing people I didn’t really like over solitude. How dumb of me to think that I don’t do this online every day now," – Alice Gregory.

Denis Dutton leans on Darwin to provide an answer:

While you were having a life, the Dish was purring along all four days of the holiday. Among the posts you may have missed, check out Lincoln's beard-trendiness in his day, my absurdly passionate defense of the Pet Shop Boys, the 49th Odd Lie Of Sarah Palin, (it's about Trig), Hugh Hewitt's epic Von Hoffmann Award on Tom DeLay, why America, in the end, will not endorse Palinism, how Sarah Palin's public display of her kids truly is unprecedented and disgusting, and one of the best Thanksgiving Proclamations of all time.

This also has to be easily, in my view, the favorite in the Shut Up And Sing Contest. But you will decide the winner in the end, of course.

Have they told us they will launch a war against Iran by Christmas? My take on the latest Wikileaks dump here.

Daisy Banks interviewed international terror expert Jessica Stern on why terror appeals to some:

War simplifies life. So does terrorism. There is an enemy. The enemy is evil, and we are good. There is a reason for living and all the ordinary confusion of life falls away. The adrenaline becomes addictive. … It’s ironic that the mission of [Al Qaeda] shifts so regularly and is so highly dependent on the audience they are trying to reach that you do question the extent to which bin Laden believes his own rhetoric.

Bin Laden started out with the goal of forcing Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. Next he aimed to force US troops out of Saudi Arabia. Next he claims to be representing the interests of all the world’s oppressed. At one point Zawahiri tried recruiting African-Americans with messages referring to Malcolm X. Now al Qaeda claims to be fighting global warming and is urging followers to help those suffering from the floods in Pakistan.

So you think al Qaeda has gone too far in trying to be all things to all people?

Yes, I do.

An insight into the mind of the far right: an essay decrying the excessive modern power of the executive branch, without mentioning the presidency of George W. Bush. It goes straight from FDR to Obama.

Lindsey Graham's opposition to repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell is not very surprising. Not asking and not telling about sexual orientation is, after all, as central pillar of his own public identity as it is for Elena Kagan. But his smug dismissiveness toward a profound social and civil rights issue is illuminating:

"This is a political promise made by Senator Obama when he was running for president. There is no groundswell of opposition to Don't Ask, Don't Tell coming from our military. This is all politics. I don't believe there is anywhere near the votes to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. On the Republican side, I think we will be united in the lame duck [session] and the study I would be looking for is asking military members: Should it be repealed, not how to implement it once you as a politician decide to repeal it. So I think in a lame duck setting Don't Ask, Don't Tell is not going anywhere."

We should wait for the study, which asked open-ended questions of servicemembers about their views on the matter. But notice that he was echoed almost verbatim by McCain this morning:

“There was no uprising in the military. There were no problems in the military with ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ … It’s called ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ OK? If you don’t ask them, you don’t ask somebody, and they don’t tell.”

(This, of course, is untrue, as blatant violations of this have been documented.) Notice too that Butters reduces this question to a campaign promise – as if a clear promise by a president who won a landlside victory is of no consequence whatever to Senate poobahs like him. Notice also that his criterion for such a change is a "groundswell" in the military. But the civilian branch controls the military and decides its policies – not the other way around. The House of Representatives, the commander-in-chief, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the defense secretary and a hefty majority of Americans in most polls all want the change. Who does Graham think he is to dismiss all of this with a "not going anywhere" back of the hand?

Recall that Graham, not so very long ago, was regarded as one of the more centrist and reasonable Republicans. The degeneracy of that party is well illustrated by his and his buddy McCain's evolution.

"The most famous Christians of the early church were martyred. The most famous Christians of today get book deals," – tweeter Steve K McCoy.