Bernstein is looking forward to the GOP debates:
If the goal of the real candidates, especially Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney, is to keep the distance between themselves and the loony fringe small enough that no one can accuse them of being moderates and RINOs, then how much tougher is that going to be with five or six candidates egging each other on for the title of King or Queen Crazy?
Romney's hollow pandering is always amusing. This year, it could be hysterical.
A reader urges me to look closely at the belt of the pro-Qaddafi demonstrator featured yesterday. Notice anything?
A milestone is, in a way, a gravestone:
Levin said he would talk to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about prospects for getting a vote on a resolution officially authorizing US deployments in support of UN-backed operations in Libya. "The president said he'd welcome it and I think it would be helpful. It'd show public support for the effort. And that's always useful," said Levin, who underlined that a debate would also give voice to congressional opposition.
So the only vote held will be a retroactive attempt to rally behind the president, and happens only after the president has given the go-ahead. Just a reminder:
The Congress shall have the power …
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
This is a constitution specifically designed to make warfare rare. But we now live in a permanent war, and each time it ebbs, a president comes in to add to the fire. When you have that kind of power, the temptation to use it can be overwhelming. I know that the Congress has ceded its Constitutional responsibilities in this respect to the president in recent times. But the Constitution is clear enough – and has not been amended. And its essential abeyance for so many years is one reason this republic has become an empire; and an empire requires an emperor. If a man like Obama succumbs to this temptation, the ball-game is over.
For those who wanted change after eight years of war in Arab countries, the joke is on us.
"This is my 10th presidential campaign, Lord help me. I have never before seen such a bunch of vile, desperate-to-please, shameless, embarrassing losers coagulated under a single party's banner. They are the most compelling argument I've seen against American exceptionalism.
Even Tim Pawlenty, a decent governor, can't let a day go by without some bilious nonsense escaping his lizard brain. And, as Greg Sargent makes clear, Mitt Romney has wandered a long way from courage. There are those who say, cynically, if this is the dim-witted freak show the Republicans want to present in 2012, so be it. I disagree. One of them could get elected. You never know. Mick Huckabee, the front-runner if you can believe it, might have to negotiate a trade agreement, or a defense treaty, with the Indonesian President some day. Newt might have to discuss very delicate matters of national security with the President of Pakistan. And so I plead, as an unflinching American patriot–please Mitch Daniels, please Jeb Bush, please run. I may not agree with you on most things, but I respect you," – Joe Klein.
Several readers have submitted aerial views lately. They don’t qualify for the regular feature, but we thought we’d run some of our favorites anyway. The above shot is of Beirut, Lebanon, 1.30 pm. More after the jump:
Seattle, Washington, 12 pm
Wilmington, North Carolina, 9.47 am
Yukon River, Alaska, 1 pm
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 7 pm
A reader writes:
I've been amusing myself with
It really is weirdly brilliant. After hearing it, I literally could not think of what the word "skirmish" was for a while. She's like an intellectual stun-gun.
Another writes:
Urban Dictionary got there first.
Another:
I've looked at the clip and, as usual, can't really make heads or tails of what Palin is talking about. Could the half-term governor be advocating that the U.S. deal with Qaddafi by challenging his regime to a full seven ogre match of 43-man Squamish? I don't know if the US still has a team, but even if they don't, there are enough 50-somethings out there who must remember enough of the rules from Mad Magazine 45 years ago, so that we should be able to make short work of any team Libya is able to field.
I, for one, can only admire the daring brilliance of Palin's plan. Get Qaddafi out on the flutney and beat his brains out with our frullips, while the little madman is trying to figure out what the point of the pointless game is. He will never know what hit him (although he should recognize frullips as modified shepherds crooks, as I hear there are a lot of shepherds in Libya).
On a more substantive note, Palin, during that Fox segment, "was reckless with basic facts and casually septupled the cost of U.S. intervention."
Despite statements from leading organizations – most prominently, Immigration Equality – suggesting that the cases would be held in abeyance until DOMA's constitutionality is settled, a DHS official told Metro Weekly on Monday night that the abeyance could last for as little as a week.
Dan Savage is crushed. I am too – for more personal reasons, of course. Look at this from a heterosexual female point of view. Let's say you meet and fall in love with a man here on a work or student visa. After a few months, you realize this is it. You get married. A few months later, his visa expires. You have to leave the US to stay together as a couple.
I think most straight men or women would find this outrageous. And it is.
The US recognizes the marital and familial bond as the most sacred factor in deciding immigration questions. Why? Because it is understood that the right to marry whomever one chooses is an elemental human right, and that a government that insists on breaking up such marriages, or forcing those in them to leave their own country, is violating basic human rights.
Which means to say that the US government regards gay Americans as sub-human in their needs and wants and rights. Their loves and relationships mean nothing under the law every time they encounter federal authoritah. Aaron and I are total strangers to one another in the eyes of federal law. And because we are legally married, I am paradoxically more vulnerable to being deported than I would be if I were single – because it's plain that I intend to reside in the US indefinitely, even though my visa has an expiration date. So I'm a risk – hence my huge anxiety if I ever leave the country. I am lucky to be able to apply for a Green Card on my own merits, under the rubric of what's called extraordinary ability in my field (it's still in process). But most people are not so lucky. They just fall in love. Only to have their own government rip their marriage apart, or force the American into exile.
If this isn't wrong, what is?
And a kind of mashup of various Dish themes over the last couple of months. Oddly, or perhaps not, I find myself playing more Angry Birds right now. It's a relief from the saturation in such bloody and chilling news stories – from Surt to Fukushima. And it's the one thing I can do while attaching myself to my daily asthma nebulizer.
Sadly, of course, the American Eagle has much more power to remove Qaddafi in an iPad game than in reality.
(Hat tip: Evgeny Morozov)
A report by Joe Karaganis, Media Piracy in Emerging Economies, finds that piracy is on the rise:
[W]e have seen little evidence—and indeed few claims—that enforcement efforts to date have had any impact whatsoever on the overall supply of pirated goods. Our work suggests, rather, that piracy has grown dramatically by most measures in the past decade, driven by the exogenous factors … high media prices, low local incomes, technological diffusion, and fast-changing consumer and cultural practices.
Felix Salmon calls this the "best report ever on media piracy":
The big forces driving media piracy in developing countries are real and powerful and will not be changed, no matter how many western politicians get on their moral high horses and insist that countries like India and China build a “culture of intellectual property.” But the irony is that if governments and corporations really wanted to build such a culture, then they would encourage companies to set their prices low enough that the populations of those countries could actually afford to buy music, movies, and software at the full legal retail price.
"To men, the bicycle in the beginning was merely a new toy, another machine added to the long list of devices they knew in their work and play. To women, it was a steed upon which they rode into a new world," – Munsey's Magazine, 1896.
The Dish 