Month: March 2011

Todd Gallagher says yes:

As strange as it may sound to anyone with a sense of decency, there is actually sound reasoning behind it. Because of the geometry of the game, the potential for one mammoth individual to change hockey is staggering. Simply put, there is a goal that's 6 feet wide and 4 feet high, and a hockey puck that needs to go into it in order to score. Fill that net completely, and no goals can possibly be scored against your team. So why hasn't it happened yet?

One answer is that professionalism and fair play prevent many sports teams from doing whatever it takes to win. This is also known as "having no imagination." Additionally, in hockey the worry of on-ice reprisal from bloodthirsty goons would weigh heavily on the mind of any player whose very existence violated the game's "unwritten rules."

What follows is an essay that proves one thing: mocking the obese in print is so accepted in society that the Wall Street Journal will print an entire article that relies on doing so throughout for a punchline.

Senator Lugar wants to end all that:

The collapse of communism brought an end to many of the world’s command-and-control economic systems and central planning by government bureaucrats. But a notable exception is the United States government’s sugar program. A complicated system of marketing allotments, price supports, purchase guarantees, quotas and tariffs that only a Soviet apparatchik could love, the U.S. sugar program has actually lasted longer than the Soviet Union itself.

Let's hope the Free Sugar Act Of 2011 is a winner.

Charli Carpenter demolishes the myth of female nonviolence in the foreign policy sphere:

In 2003, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed for war in Iraq. In 1998, U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright and a significant faction of U.S. feminists strongly advocated for military intervention in the Balkans. Jeane Kirkpatrick, President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy adviser and later U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was never known for pacifist views. Nor are women associated with the “security mom” movement, which, in the wake of 9/11, harnessed maternal fears of terrorist attacks to influence elections. Their calls for a tough foreign policy to protect America’s young infused former Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s rhetoric and launched women such as the conservative blogger Michelle Malkin to national prominence.

(Photo: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton listens to a question during a news conference after the Libya Conference at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office on March 29, 2011 in London, England. By Toby Melville – WPA Pool/Getty Images.)

A reader writes:

If indeed Gandhi was gay, neither the news clipping you link to nor your post provide any evidence for it. Please do. The author – who is an acknowledged student of Gandhi's life/works – seems to think otherwise. The author might err in mistaking only sexual relations for homosexuality, but you likewise err – unless you have evidence otherwise – by equating "intimacy" with a romantic or sexually interested relationship. Heterosexual men form intimate relationships from time to time. There is something non-sexual, but decidedly something other than "friendly", to many a bro-hug.

Well, here's what I know from the Roberts review of the book, to which I linked. Gandhi chastely slept naked with young women with this effect:

"Despite my best efforts, the organ remained aroused. It was an altogether strange and shameful experience."

And this:

The love of his life was a German-Jewish architect and bodybuilder, Hermann Kallenbach, for whom Gandhi left his wife in 1908. "Your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece in my bedroom," he wrote to Kallenbach. "The mantelpiece is opposite to the bed."

For some ­reason, cotton wool and Vaseline were "a constant reminder" of Kallenbach, which Mr. Lelyveld believes might ­relate to the enemas Gandhi gave ­himself, although there could be other, less generous, explanations.

Gandhi wrote to Kallenbach about "how completely you have taken ­possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance." Gandhi nicknamed himself "Upper House" and Kallenbach "Lower House," and he made Lower House promise not to "look lustfully upon any woman." The two then pledged "more love, and yet more love . . . such love as they hope the world has not yet seen."

They were parted when Gandhi ­returned to India in 1914, since the German national could not get permission to travel to India during ­wartime—though Gandhi never gave up the dream of having him back, writing him in 1933 that "you are always ­before my mind's eye." Later, on his ashram, where even married "inmates" had to swear celibacy, Gandhi said: "I cannot imagine a thing as ugly as the intercourse of men and women."

I have never met or known of a straight man for whom this could conceivably be true. The notion that Gandhi was not gay – based on this evidence – is preposterous.

(Wiki caption: "Kallenbach sewed this photo in the collar of his jacket before joining Gandhi in England during the First World War. Being of German origin, he feared being arrested and the image seized. He was effectively arrested, but the police never discovered the photo.")

This speaks for itself:

President Obama finally and quietly accepted his “transparency” award from the open government community this week — in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House on Monday.

David Frum cuts through Obama's spin:

[T]he U.S. mission is aimed at the overthrow of Qaddafi. The U.S. is engaged in sophisticated propaganda operations urging Qaddafi’s troops to turn on him. And it’s reported that the U.S. is negotiating with Qaddafi about a secure exit from Libya.

In fact, the U.S. mission is as deeply concerned with European energy security as with the humanitarian crisis. Critics correctly point out that the US has managed to ignore many other humanitarian crises – and is in fact ignoring one right now in the Ivory Coast. This particular crisis is occurring in a country from which NATO ally Italy buys more than one-fifth of all its net oil imports and in which Britain has a very large investment. We are not going to war for oil. But we very rarely go to war without oil.

Alex Massie nods. I sigh. I wonder what Americans would say if told they were intervening in Libya to protect Italy's oil supplies and BP's investments. How many Americans should die for BP? Yeah, I'm not surprised that Obama didn't put it quite like that.

U.S. Army Cpl. Andrew Wilfahrt, a gay service member, died for his country. His parents tell his story:

(Hat tip: Thompson)

J.S. at Environmental Economics sighs:

The modern Republican Party has absolutely no affirmative environmental agenda whatsoever, and goes so far as to contest the entire rationale for continued environmental progress. Ironically, this extremely reactionary environmental agenda is coming at a time when the ideas that Republicans once championed are now widely accepted as the best ways to structure environmental policy.

Yes, I'm old enough to remember when cap and trade was the right-wing, pro-market view. And the conflict between conservatism and conservation is a perverse one. In so many ways, conservatism should be the greener option, as it has become in Britain.

“The rationale for vesting the power to launch war in Congress was simple. The Framers' views were dominated by their experience with the British King, who had unfettered power to start wars. Such powers the Framers were determined to deny the President,” – Joe Biden in a Senate speech delivered on July 30, 1998.

Now, the Obama-Biden administration is apparently refusing even to abide by the War Powers Act. It is asserting that the president has the right to wage war alone, with no Congressional vote, for as long as it likes.

"I was happy to see that Newt Gingrich has staked out a position on the war, a position, or two, or maybe three. I don’t know. I think he has more war positions than he’s had wives. […] There’s a big debate over there. Fox News can’t decide, what do they love more, bombing the Middle East or bashing the president? It’s like I was over there and there was an anchor going, they were pleading, can’t we do both? Can’t we bomb the Middle East and bash the president at the same time?" – Senator Rand Paul.

Lovin' it.