Month: May 2011

Long-time Limbaugh watcher Conor Friedersdorf makes sense of the tactic Rush deployed yesterday:

In order to fully grasp [Rush Limbaugh's] mastery of the strategically ambiguous monologue, let's go back to the line I flagged before: "Last night I was as proud as I have been of the U.S. military in I don't know how long." Earnest praise for the troops? Sure seems like it on first listen. Mocking allusion to Michelle Obama's controversial "proud of my country for the first time" remark? Also plausible! Especially in context. Certainly some of his listeners heard it that way and chuckled. But also totally deniable if necessary! The important thing to realize is that there is no right answer, other than whatever happens to be more convenient for Limbaugh at a particular moment in time.

According to a new study of pundits, he has made 16 predictions between September 2007 to December 2008. 14 were proven wrong, one was right and one was hedged. He was at the bottom of the list. Of pundits in general, as far as predictions go, you may as well throw the dice. But Krugman was at the top of the list.

A truly weird analogy from The Donald:

At one point, he compared his opposition to the legalization of same-sex marriage to his reluctance to use a new kind of putter. “It’s like in golf,” he said. “A lot of people — I don’t want this to sound trivial — but a lot of people are switching to these really long putters, very unattractive,” said Mr. Trump, a Republican. “It’s weird. You see these great players with these really long putters, because they can’t sink three-footers anymore. And, I hate it. I am a traditionalist. I have so many fabulous friends who happen to be gay, but I am a traditionalist.”

A thrice-married traditionalist.

"If we have any feeling of victory or triumph in the case, it should be because we have succeeded in disabling [Osama] — not because he is dead," – Christine Korsgaard, a philosophy professor at Harvard University.

"This idea we caught bin Laden because of waterboarding I think is a misstatement. This whole concept of how we caught bin Laden is a lot of work over time by different people and putting the puzzle together. I do not believe this is a time to celebrate waterboarding, I believe this is a time to celebrate hard work," – Senator Lindsey Graham. DiFi confirms.

Patrick Clark is troubled, from a Catholic perspective, by the celebrations of bin Laden's death:

[S]hould we be comfortable with the utter absence of any public expression (or even the possibility of any public expression) of forgiveness for the crimes that were committed against our citizens? Shouldn’t this bother us as Christians? Surely part of Augustine’s claim that killing another person can in fact be an act of charity is the supposition that one can and should forgive the enemy which one must, regretably, kill. Is there any way we as a nation could ever incorporate an expression of forgiveness into such acts of “justice” as those ordered and carried out on this Divine Mercy Sunday?

As a nation? No. We cannot expect all Americans to adopt one of the hardest of Jesus's teachings: that we must not just forgive but love our worst enemies. But those of us who are Christians are required to try.

Electro pop duo Capital Cities remixes a hathos-filled rendition of DC Talk's "Nu Thang":

Daniel Larison goes there:

Whenever an allied government doesn’t measure up to what the U.S. expects of it, it is tempting to accuse it of perfidy or betrayal, but that avoids considering whether we are expecting something that the ally can reasonably provide. Libya hawks have taken to bashing Germany for its pacifism, which is another way of saying that allies are supposed to act like satrapies: they are not permitted to make independent judgments about policy questions, nor are they allowed to act in their own interests.

Iraq hawks derided Turkey for its opposition to the invasion, and some of them built up entire narratives that portrayed France as our traditional nemesis. Considering how widely loathed our government is in Pakistan, and considering how antagonistic many of our policies are to Pakistani interests, the U.S. has no reason to expect any Pakistani cooperation. For various reasons, we have received some cooperation anyway. Inevitably, that isn’t enough for some people, who seem to expect allied governments to commit a sort of suicide to fulfill our demands.

Goldblog likewise refuses to label Pakistan an enemy.

The government may release video of Osama's funeral. Allahpundit is aghast:

If the point is to get rid of the body as semi-respectfully as possible and return Bin Laden to afterthought status, why would you circulate a video of the burial that guarantees the scene will live forever? Plus, you’re bound to make some group angry. If the clip shows U.S. sailors behaving solemnly, it’ll irritate Americans that they were forced to give this monster a dignified end. If the clip shows them laughing and high-fiving (presumably it doesn’t or else the vid wouldn’t be released), then you’ll create exactly the sort of backlash in the Middle East that the sea burial was designed to avoid.

Philip Gourevitch is also against the release of photos:

ABC News is reporting that the first image of bin Laden that the White House may show us is “bloody and gruesome, with a bullet wound to his head above his left eye.” If it’s released, this is the image that will instantly supplant every other account of Sunday’s raid as the iconic representation of America’s moment of triumph over its most wanted enemy. Is that what we want—the official equivalent of the Saddam hanging video? Did we learn nothing from the past decade about the overwhelming power of crude images of violence to define and polarize our historical moment?