Month: January 2011

A fantastic NYC timelapse:

NYC – Mindrelic Timelapse from Mindrelic on Vimeo.

Jonathan Alter predicts that the president will comment on the Gifford tragedy during the SOTU address:

The State of the Union will almost certainly begin with heart-wrenching symbolism. Ever since Ronald Reagan put a “citizen hero,” Lenny Skutnik, in the balcony of the House chamber after he rescued passengers from the wreck of an Air Florida jet that crashed in the freezing Potomac River in 1982, American presidents have all used their State of the Unions speeches to honor their own “Skutniks,” as they’ve come to be called in Washington. This year will be no different. At least one or two people connected to the horrific incident (The 20-year-old office intern who heroically applied triage to Gabrielle Giffords? A relative of slain federal judge John Roll?) will undoubtedly sit with Michelle Obama at the speech. And it’s hard to imagine that the poignant birth date of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Greene, September 11, 2001, will escape mention.

From there Obama and his speechwriters will try to set the incident in context. This won’t be easy. As I wrote last week, he needs to govern more in poetry than he has thus far. But if the prose is too purple, it falls flat. If he over-analyzes the tragedy, he risks seeming to middle-of-the-roaders as if he’s politicizing it. (The Right will think that in any event). And if he even implies a direct connection between the words and websites of politicians and the twisted mind of Jared Lee Loughner, he’s asking for trouble.

David Link notes the unexpected impact of the splinter gay Republican group:

Today, there are simply too many examples of decent, moral, public and powerful homosexuals to sustain the notion that “they” are evil or harmful or much of anything other than fellow citizens, friends, coworkers, neighbors and family members. Republican leaders have suppressed their party’s best instincts about this for too long, and GOProud is, as ACT-UP did before it, unleashing the power that’s been there all along.

GOProud can be as juvenile and theatrical as their predecessors, but they are also, like ACT-UP, a deeply serious group – as this reaction to their existence shows. Maybe the timing is better for them than it ever was for Log Cabin. Or maybe Log Cabin’s political strategy wasn’t what was needed to blow up the party’s entrenched hypocrisy. But either way, GOProud is now forcing their party to have a public conversation about a fundamental question that has been kept at the margins: What would Republican conservatism look like if it weren’t anti-gay?

That's a very good question. Here's how FRC answers it:

We recognize that some organizations represented at CPAC are silent on the issue of homosexuality. But organizations whose whole reason for existence is to promote the forced public affirmation of homosexual conduct should not be welcomed at CPAC, because that is not-by any stretch of the imagination-a "conservative" agenda.

[Their italics.] The key phrase, it seems to me is: "promote the forced public affirmation of homosexual conduct." Unpack it.

It seems to me that no one can physically force public affirmation of anything without being subject to criminal charges (unless you're Dick Cheney). As for "conduct", is GOProud forcing Christianists to say that non-procreative sex is moral? Please. What they are doing is simply being there – evidence that even among the most die-hard GOP activists, there are gay people who simply reflect reality, i.e. that gay people do not "choose a lifestyle" but emerge in life as gay as others emerge straight. FRC and the Christianist right cannot handle this because it undermines their core case about gayness as entirely immoral conduct. They cannot handle it because it is true. So their response is to take their marbles and go home:

The suggestion that conservatives should debate marriage on our own turf is demeaning and downright deceptive. This is a fundamental principle that shouldn't be up for debate in any conservative gathering. If the policy is not up for discussion, why foster the impression? If it is, then make that clear upfront.

Should not all sorts of positions be up for discussion among an unruly coalition of partners? Isn't that partly what a movement is actually, you know, for?

Another highlight from Mother Jones interview noted earlier, Loughner quit smoking pot a few years ago, according to his friend:

In October 2008, [Bryce] Tierney was living in Phoenix, and Loughner came to visit. They went to see a Mars Volta concert with friends, and Tierney was surprised when Loughner said he had quit partying "completely." Loughner, according to Tierney, said, "I'm going to lead a more healthy lifestyle, not smoke cigarettes or pot anymore, and I'm going to start working out." Tierney was happy for his friend: "I said, 'Dude, that's awesome.' And the next time I saw him he was 10 pounds lighter." Tierney never saw Loughner smoke marijuana again, and he was surprised at media reports that Loughner had been rejected from the military in 2009 for failing a drug test: "He was clean, clean. I saw him after that continuously. He would not do it."

Andrew Leonard interviews Bruce Bartlett about what might happen if the US doesn't raise its debt ceiling and defaults on its debts:

The problem is that the Tea Partyers are nuts. That is my point. They are irrational, they are ignorant, they don't know anything about financial markets and they think that they are standing up for God and the balanced budget.

Yglesias differs and urges Obama to call the GOP's bluff.

Conor refuses to blame Palin for this weekend's events. His take:

The strongest case against these people isn’t that their rhetoric inspires political violence. It’s that they frequently utter indefensible nonsense. The problem isn’t their tone. It’s that the substance of what they’re saying is so blinkered that it isn’t even taken seriously by their ideological allies (even if they’re too cowardly, mercenary or team driven to admit as much).

They’re in a tough spot these days partly because it’s impossible for them to mount the defense of their rhetoric that is true: “I am a frivolous person, and I don’t choose my words based on their meaning. Rather, I behave like the worst caricature of a politician. If you think my rhetoric logically implies that people should behave violently, you’re mistaken – neither my audience nor my peers in the conservative movement are engaged in a logical enterprise, and it’s unfair of you to imply that people take what I say so seriously that I can be blamed for a real world event. Don’t you see that this is all a big game? This is how politics works. Stop pretending you’re not in on the joke.”

Frum makes a shrewd point:

Palin failed to appreciate the question being posed to her. That question was not: “Are you culpable for the shooting?” The question was: “Having put this unfortunate image on the record, can you respond to the shooting in a way that demonstrates your larger humanity? And possibly also your potential to serve as leader of the entire nation?”

… Of course, Palin has yet to give the answer called for by events. Instead, her rapid response operation has focused on pounding home the message that Palin is innocent, that she has been unfairly maligned by hostile critics. Which in this case happened to be a perfectly credible message. And also perfectly inadequate. Palin’s post-shooting message was about Palin, not about Giffords. It was defensive, not inspiring. And it was petty at a moment when Palin had been handed perhaps her last clear chance to show herself presidentially magnanimous.

Magnanimity is not in her genes.

Joe Gandelman foresees one:

Most likely, there will be a period where politicos, talk show hosts, bloggers, talking heads, newspaper columnists and partisan activists from both parties reign in some of the vitriol. But then place money in Vegas that it’ll be business as usual. There is now too much of an institutional and cultural vested interest in American politics in keeping the tone and pundit flow as it now exists: partisans and ideologies on both sides find that pushing “hot buttons” is a way to rally sympathizers to your side and talk radio and cable ideological shows and websites make money throwing read meat to an audience that show up because they already agree with opinionated host or info-outlet.

With what appears to me to be a renewed threat of violence:

I hate violence. I hate war. Our children will not have peace if politicos just capitalize on this to succeed in portraying anyone as inciting terror and violence.

It's barely literate, but what can it mean that children "will not have peace" if people are held morally responsible for consequences of their violent rhetoric? How can asking people to turn the volume down lead to an absence of peace? Then this:

According to Beck he wrote to her saying:

“Sarah, as you know, peace is always the answer. I know you are feeling the same heat, if not much more on this.  I want you to know you have my full support."

He then encouraged her to get some protection because an "attempt on you could bring the Republic down."

A reader writes:

Frum's suggestion that pot is the true culprit in the Tucson massacre is ridiculous on its face. My daughter has been hospitalized three times due to psychotic breaks, so I know that many things can trigger such an episode. Copious amounts of marijuana, sure. Alcohol even more so, and with much more moderate usage. Any mind-altering substance used recreationally is dangerous for the mentally ill, but fasting or having one's sleep disrupted can also trigger psychotic breaks. Frum's post is a truly laughable red herring.

Another dissents:

This weekend you dedicated post after post to the idea that the right wing, and Sarah Palin in particular, share a small portion of the blame for the Tucson attack because they have fostered a political climate of hate through their charged and occasionally violent rhetoric. Yet when David Frum suggests that marijuana may have had a role to play in the attack, you sarcastically dismiss it. You scoff, "Frum goes there…", as if it is a ludicrous suggestion.

I share your worldview in a lot of ways, but I think you've got this one completely upside down.

The alleged killer seems to be a mentally disturbed individual, possibly schizophrenic, who has no discernible political ideology and no connection I know about to Palin or the right wing. I think the answer to the question of whether Palin bears any responsibility at all for this attack is – based on what we know at present – "no, not at all".

On the other hand, I think it's undeniable that this individual's disturbed mental state played a serious role in the attack. Witnesses suggest he smoked a lot of marijuana, and there is strong scientific evidence that shows a correlation, at least, between marijuana and mental problems like schizophrenia. In that context, why is it ridiculous to suggest his weed-smoking could be responsible? If he was an alcoholic, and Frum had suggested his alcoholism could have played a role, I doubt you'd be scoffing. I think it's certainly just as likely that marijuana is to blame here as Palin – probably a lot more likely.

I agree that the right wing has been dangerous with their rhetoric over the last few years. But you need to stop looking at the world through your own limited prisms every single time – "it's Palin's fault", etc.  Sometimes you react with gut instinct instead of reason.

Another writes:

Frum isn't totally off-base here. There is evidence that THC can, in rare cases, induce psychosis in certain people who are susceptible.

But the full story goes deeper than that. While THC itself can act as a psychotic, another chemical in cannabis called cannabidiol or CBD acts as an anti-psychotic, and shows promise in treating schizophrenia symptoms. The result is that the two chemicals seem to balance each other out. What's more, there's only so much of both chemicals that a cannabis plant can produce. So as cannabis plants are bred to produce more and more THC, they also produce less and less CBD, disrupting the balance.

If you were to ask me, the solution isn't to ratchet up the war in soft drugs; the answer is to regulate them. If the state mandates and monitors the acceptable levels of THC and CBD in cannabis, it can ensure that the two forces stay in balance. Yet another reason to legalize.

Another emails the above screenshot:

I was both tickled and horrified by this banner ad on Frum's cannabis post.