In preparing his speech, Obama had called and talked to the hurt and the survivors. He could tell their personal stories. Michelle Obama invited the family of the murdered nine-year-old to visit her in the White House. Obama came to the speech from the bedsides of those who had been wounded. Their message to him was one of dedication: “They believed, and I believe, that we can be better.” This rang a bell with me.
It reminded me of the lesson of the fallen that Lincoln took from Gettysburg—“that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.” At Gettysburg Lincoln might have been expected to defend the North and blame the South—which is what Edward Everett did in the speech preceding his. Rather, the bulk of his speech was given to praising the dead and urging others to learn from them.
[I]n the Old South, all white men were expected to aspire to be gentlemen, and all white women were expected to aspire to be ladies. Black people were expected to aspire to give all their labor to their masters, and to stay right with God. (The two were very often linked.) A gentleman was expected to lord over an estate, supervise his slaves and superintend their Christian enlightenment, and–from the battlefield to the horse track–bring honor to his family name. A lady, as the historian Steven Stowe writes, was expected to be "ornamental," to be "mild, loving and beautiful."
This was the society as God had ordered it, and as sure as the natural kingdom is ordered, so too was the kingdom of people. Science is embryonic in this era–everything from personal beauty, to the shape of one's head is believed to indicate intelligence. The term "good breeding" was used as interchangeable for "good manners." What I'm driving at is the notion of individuality, that you could be both a woman and an individual person, with equal and individual ambitions, hadn't really been absorbed. Your birth marked your estate, and your lot in life was to till that estate to the best of your abilities.
An aide close to Sarah Palin says death threats and security threats have increased to an unprecedented level since the shooting in Arizona, and the former Alaska governor’s team has been talking to security professionals.
[T]he government has enormous expenditures every month, and debt service constitutes an important yet small part of them. If the debt ceiling weren’t raised, it stands to reason that just about any other form of government spending would get cut before Tim Geithner dreamed of defaulting on risk-free bonds.
1740 GMT: Reports say a ruling committee has been formed, headed by the Speaker of Parliament and including the Minister of Defense.
1725 GMT: Counter-Narrative. According to Al Arabiya, Speaker of Parliament Parliament Speaker Fuad Mbazaa says he is running Tunisia temporarily and will announce early elections. Under Tunisian law, those elections must take place within 60 days.
Above screenshot is from a live announcement by the Speaker of Parliament. Lucas again:
1752 GMT: Al Jazeera says fallen President Ben Ali is heading for Malta.
This week was simply disgusting, a new low in toxic hate. Is this hatred and bile genuine? Or merely lucrative? I suspect the former. David Corn:
On his radio show, Limbaugh declared,
What Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full support of a major political party in this country. He's sitting there in jail. He knows what's going on, he knows that…the Democrat party is attempting to find anybody but him to blame. He knows if he plays his cards right, he's just a victim….That smiling mug shot–this guy clearly understands he's getting all the attention and he understands he's got a political party doing everything it can, plus a local sheriff doing everything that they can to make sure he's not convicted of murder – but something lesser."
Limbaugh was suggesting–no, make that stating as a fact–that the Democrats want to help Jared Lee Loughner escape full justice for allegedly murdering six people (including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl) and attempting to kill Giffords, a Democrat quite popular within her party. What could Limbaugh be thinking?
Leave Limbaugh to one side for a second. What must an entire political party be thinking that it allows itself to be defined, led and inspired by this font of despicable callousness?
Sarah Palin's biggest obstacle to the White House may not be her remarkable level of unpopularity with Democrats and independents. Her more immediate problem is that she simply doesn't have much support in the vital early Republican states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Florida.
Jensen acknowledges that polling can change wildly, but he argues that politicians who gain momentum "tend to be folks who start out with very low name recognition and gain more and more ground as they become better known" – which doesn't apply to Palin. He also notes that if "Mike Huckabee doesn't run that will definitely help Palin in these early states".
Not so fast – talk of reconciliation gives way to more bloodshed after Ben Ali announces he is dissolving the government. Scott Lucas is live-blogging the rapidly changing scene:
1635 GMT: Al Jazeera AND Al Arabiya both report heavy gunfire in Tunis, with many injured. Al Jazeera reports tear gas in front of the Ministry of Interior.
1625 GMT: A summary of the turn this afternoon, as peaceful protest gave way to conflict….
Wire services report that 8000 people were demonstrating outside the Ministry of Interior, chanting, "Ben Ali, leave!" and "Ben Ali, assassin!", when gunshots rang out and police fired tear gas to disperse them. Crowds of youths who retreated a short distance from the building started throwing stones at the police, who responded by firing more tear gas grenades.
This version differs from an earlier report that the tear gas was fired when protesters got onto the roof of the Ministry (see 1400 GMT).
1545 GMT: I'm back from Manchester — thanks to Ali Yenidunya for keeping the LiveBlog ticking over — to find stunning developments. News came through 45 minutes that President Ben Ali had announced he was dismissing the Government and calling elections within six months.
EA has more footage. Marc Lynch is "glued to Al Jazeera, watching the absolutely riveting scenes unfolding":
The only path forward I can see which doesn't involve significant bloodshed and chaos is a "soft coup," with a caretaker government and promise of rapid move to elections. I hope that somebody — the Obama administration, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, President Sarkozy — is ready to make that quiet phone call and tell Ben Ali that his service to his nation has come to an end. This could end well… or it could end bloody.
One thing to say about this David Brooks column: What separates constructive pundits from destructive ones is often mere investment in the idea that intellectually honest exchanges can bear fruit, and that error in oneself can be usefully corrected by others. That's certainly the aspiration here: you help me – through error and insight – to get closer to the truth sooner than if I were trying to understand the world alone.
The competing approach is to regard the whole of public discourse as a zero sum game where each side is meant to seize whatever ground is immediately before it that day. Increasingly, I think this is the core divide in our politics – not left or right, but open or closed. Both sides bear some fault for this, but in my view, the right is in a class of its own. It has become not just closed but hermetically shut.
The Dish 