"And people talk about Ronald Reagan, but I remember Ronald Reagan very well. … But Ronald Reagan would probably not recognize the description of Ronald Regan that is coming out of a lot of the tea party blogs. Ronald Reagan, yes he was very conservative, yes he was a man of principles, and he wouldn’t budge on those principles. But he said something that would be absolutely anathema to many of the tea party people when he said it’s better to get 80 percent of what you want than zero. And Reagan would compromise, Reagan would make deals," – former GOP Senator Bob Bennett.
Month: February 2011
The GOP’s Marriage Dilemma
Boehner promises a decision on DOMA by the end of the week:
"I'd be very surprised if the House didn't decide that they were going to defend the law," Boehner said.
Is A No-Fly Zone Over Libya Possible?
Edward Rees goes over logistics:
The Bosnian [No Fly Zone (NFZ)] was conducted over a small airspace just 51,000 square miles, and even the Iraq cases were larger at approximately 100,000 square miles. A proposed NFZ over Darfur was mooted in part because the region, at 550,000 square miles, is simply too big.
Unlike in Iraq and Bosnia, there are no obvious air bases near Libya from which to impose an NFZ, so the aircraft would likely have to be based on aircraft carrier. But it's not clear that the U.S., or even NATO, has that kind of capacity to spare. Using European bases would require many more aircraft as the greater distance severely limits the amount of time each plane could actually spend over Libya.
Home News: Your Take
Dusty remains indifferent. But she is always indifferent, except when a potato chip falls to the floor. A reader writes:
I took immense pleasure in using The Daily Dish as an excuse to avoid The Daily Beast and HuffPost. Now I fear your identity will get sucked into theirs and you won't be allowed to keep doing fun posts about hot hot bears.
Oh ye of little faith. I would hope my identity is strong enough to survive. TNR, The Sunday Times, The NYT magazine, Time, the Atlantic … I am, as the lyric has it, what I am. And I retain editorial responsibility. So if you hate our blogazine after it moves, blame me and no one else, least of all our new host. Another:
OK Beast move. Just don't give up VFYW contest.
Are you kidding? Of course we won't. Another:
Well, I feel like when my parents divorced, and my trying to get used to Dad's new girlfriend (which by the way never happened, until the 2nd girlfriend post-divorce ;-)… So, okay, Andrew, I'm trusting this is a good thing for you, and I'm happy for you and the Team.
Another:
Probably the Lone Ranger here, but this feels sad to me. Newsweek came into my family's home for 50 years but after they all passed, I abandoned its increasingly malnourished content. Picked it up again when Ezra Klein signed on but found even a young hero of mine wasn't enough to maintain subscription.
I'm left wondering how much more financially secure you and Aaron are going to be with this move, and whether (please, Lord, no) you will be expected to appear occasionally on Morning Joe.
I will not be appearing on Morning Joe. I am asleep during most of Morning Joe, and intend to remain so. But trust and verify. If you feel we are straying from our standards in any way, let us know. Another:
And not to make it about readers like me but what happens now to readers like…well…me? Unimportant, terribly opinionated readers like me. (Whimpering pathetically.) Will you still get our emails? Or will it become something now we read but don't feel need to respond because there will be A) A message board or B) Some secretarial person who puts it in a file and know you'll never hear opinion anyway or C) Well I don't know what else. But something else.
I don't do change well obviously. And The Dish has become a daily fixture. It will still be The Dish right? The wonderful Dish. Or will it be … something not The Dish?
I have to go tend pot pies. I don't know whether to have an appetite. I'm still happy for you though.
Please. I and Patrick, Zoe, Chris and Conor will always be reading your emails, selecting the best and most persuasive and doing what we have always done. I'll be working from my blog-cave on the same blogging platform with the same amazing little team we've put together. We'll be having our weekly editorial lunch at the local diner. I'll be larding the place up with beards and MHBs and beagles and Pet Shop Boys lyrics. I didn't send a decade evolving the Dish to throw out our model. I'm sure we'll change – but we changed radically at the Atlantic.
Very gradual change we can believe in. That's the concept.
Bush, Torture And The Arab 1848
Here's a fascinating take on how George W. Bush might unintentionally have made the Arab world more conscious and supportive of the concept of human rights. Money quote:
A particular event can trigger a rise or decline in rights consciousness in any country or culture in the world- East or West.
of personal violation. As they grappled to formulate a response, they often found themselves invoking human rights.
“Abu Ghraib probably brought home the concept of human rights more strongly than anything else. People started debating human rights issues in talking about Abu Ghraib…What is your right to be treated like a human being in dignity?” an Arab activist told me in Amman in 2006. Gauging public sentiment, some Arab leaders joined in. Hosni Mubarak called Abu Ghraib “abhorrent and sickening, and against all human values and human rights confirmed and defended by the international community”.
Denials of fair trials in Guantanamo, CIA black sites, renditions of terrorist suspects to third countries known to torture, and legal formulations paving the way for “enhanced interrogation techniques” all brought discussions of human rights further to the fore of Arab consciousness. Instead of viewing human rights as a Western imposition, increasingly it became a language that Arab populations embraced to challenge America’s post-9/11 policies.
And so America's violation of core human rights de-stigmatized the concept in the Arab mind, and enabled the Arab world to fully own the concept for themselves. One of the key catalysts for the revolts was, after all, the torture regimes in Jordan and Egypt and Libya and Tunisia. Suddenly, this was like America. And therefore more indefensible. Which led to more consciousness of this evil, and more determination to fight back one day against it.
And what mattered were videos and images of the torture – just as in Abu Ghraib. Here is one of the YouTubes of gruesome torture by the Egyptian police (extremely disturbing) that helped galvanize the populace. Every single thing you see in this video was also committed by US forces against defenseless prisoners during the presidency of George W Bush. Every single one – except the sodomitic rape – was approved by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – and then made "legal" with skewed legal logic (according to the Justice Department) by their legal hatchetmen, John Yoo and Jay Bybee. Now you know why the CIA destroyed the tapes of their own torture sessions. Here is a Mubarak-style "stress position" captured, as in Abu Ghraib, by a digital camera (this time with a cell-phone):
Remind you of anything?
That's Shai Mokhtari's argument at least – and it requires more evidence than the piece provides. But it has a ring of truth to it to me, not least because it serves as an almost perfect example of unintended consequences.
It rings true to me in another context as well. When I'm asked who has been the most important catalyst for marriage equality, I think of George W. Bush. Before his endorsement of the Federal Marriage Amendment, there was some lingering debate in the gay community about whether civil marriage should be a key priority (Democratic Party front-groups like the Human Rights Campaign were deeply opposed to making civil marriage an issue throughout the 1990s). But as soon as Bush came out against it, the gay community united in favor of it.
As soon as America used torture, many young Arabs associated their own regimes with the demonized West. And so it became more legit to fight back against them. When you are dealing with populations who have developed a deep suspicion of those in power in America, this can happen.
Quote For The Day II
"I think it's clear that something like same-sex marriage – indeed, almost exactly what we would envision by that – is going to become normalized, legalized, and recognized in the culture. It's time for Christians to start thinking about how we're going to deal with that," – Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, speaking with Focus on the Family's Jim Daly about Obama's DOMA decision.
A Tunisian Tsunami? Ctd
Protesters in Oman have set cars, homes, a police station, and a supermarket on fire in a third day of protests. Sultan Qaboos bin Said, ruler since 1970, has tried to mollify demonstrators–who are demanding more jobs–by hiring 50,000 new government employees and offering $390 a month in unemployment insurance. Qaboos has also fired six members of his cabinet, but protesters aren't satisfied and want more power in parliament, the Christian Science Monitor's Tom A. Peter reports.
Rallies were most violent Monday in the port city of Sohar, with some reports indicating police used lived ammo and as many as six deaths. Protesters blocked a road leading to the city's port, saying they want oil wealth more equitably distributed to the citizens, Reuters reports.
Enduring America is tracking today's protests.
(Photo: Omani protesters demanding jobs and reform gather at the Sohar roundabout monument during a demonstration in Sohar, more than 200 kms (125 miles) northwest of Muscat, on February 28, 2011, a day after police killed at least two as the turmoil rocking the Arab world reached the normally calm Gulf sultanate. By Karim SahibAFP/Getty Images)
The Mystery Of Beardage
A reader writes:
I confess I haven't really been able to wrap my head around the whole beard theme that has been going around the Dish over the past few years. But this winter, through laziness and curiosity, I let my own ruddy Jewish Viking beard grow for about three
months and have become quite attached to it. In alternating turns, I look like a crazy person, a Hassid, an indigent, and a terrorist, but my dress makes me look more like a hipster tough, so I defy easy categorization or prejudice as I walk the streets of New York.
I need to do some video work over the next few weeks and can't use this look as my appearance for posterity. When I did the unlit screen test, it literally looked like an Al Qaeda video with the heavy undercarriage of my beard magnified by a camera-low framing. But I am dreading having to shave. Over the past week I have had two random guys stop me on the street to complement me on the beard. Don't really know what to say, but I will not feel like the same powerful person without this wild tangle on my face. Considering just holding on, posterity be damned … or maybe just canceling the shoot.
I guess it's now that I'm starting to understand the mesmerizing power of extreme facial hair that has seized your attention lo these many months. My 5 o'clock scruff and 2-week wonders only hinted at the mysteries to come from a full, thick, orange muff attached to my face. I don't know that I'll ever be able to let it go.
So whatever beard cult is coalescing around the Dish community, count me in. I don't understand it, and I don't even want to. I just want this thing to stay on my face until my skin rots away and it sits like a tuft upon my mandible for all the worms to admire for ever and ever.
Home News
In case you missed it, as you were watching the Oscars – a strange mix of Weekend At Bernies and Inception – check out the post last night. An answer to several readers who asked about this. Our policy of no comments will continue. Our policy of reading emails and selecting the best will continue. The Dish will remain the Dish you have long known, and evolve organically and with input from you.
Fear vs Hope In The Arab 1848
Niall Ferguson fears the Middle Eastern revolutions:
The people who made the American Revolution were, by 18th-century standards, exceptionally well-off and well-educated. People in Libya today are closer to the sans-culottes of the Paris back streets, the lumpenproletariat of the Petrograd slums, or the illiterate peasants who flocked to Mao’s standard. And that is why the likelihood of large-scale and protracted violence is so much greater in the Arab world today than it ever was in North America in the 1770s. Poor, ill-educated young men. Around 40 million of them.
I certainly think caution is warranted – but do not see how this could be stopped, and fail not to feel hope and exhilaration at the toppling of tyrants in this remarkable way. Kristof argued otherwise in his column yesterday. Mataconis adds:
One point that Kristoff misses which I find interesting is the different reactions that you’ve seen from many on the American right to the uprising in Eqypt as compared to the ongoing uprising in Libya and 2009?s Iranian uprising. The Libyan and Iranian protesters are characterized as freedom fighters and President Obama is criticized for not speaking out more forcefully or, you know, doing “something” to help the uprising (even though it’s never made clear what exactly we could do to influence events inside nations ruled by leaders who hate us). The Egyptian protesters, though, were tools of the Muslim Brotherhood and, if you listened to Glenn Beck, the advance army of a worldwide caliphate.
(Photo: A rebel militiaman stands in the ashes of an alleged torture chamber of the former Libyan Internal Security force on February 28, 2011 in Benghazi, Libya. The notorious building was mostly burned in the uprising that drove loyalists to President Muammar Gaddafi out of Bengazi the week before. By John Moore/Getty Images)
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