Month: May 2011

Alex Massie referees one aspect of my debate with Douthat:

Andrew admits it's "facile" to suppose there's any linkage between the President's actions and the reformist movements springing up across the Arab and Persian worlds before suggesting that perhaps there is a link and look! this President just by virtue of who he is and the colour of his skin can make worlds move simply by standing still and pronouncing it so. Not being George W Bush has obvious advantages, not the least of them being avoiding responsibility for the Mesopotamian Misadventure. But any successor would have enjoyed that advantage to one degree or another. Perhaps Obama has been able to capitalise on that bonanza more than, say, President Hillary Clinton would have been able to but that's evidently a matter of conjecture.

The Cairo speech mattered, in my view. And yes, only Obama could have done it the way he did. If he can outlast Netanyahu, his role may be viewed as historic.

… another dubious gesture by Assad:

Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has ordered troops not to fire on pro-democracy demonstrators, a rights campaigner has told Reuters news agency. This came ahead of Friday prayers that have become a rallying point for protesters in the country's now eight-week long uprising.

EA:

Bashar al-Assad may have already showed how serious he is at protecting protesters. A source with family in Daraa and Damascus has this report: "The young man Nadeem of Bab Dreeb #Homs has been martyred by gunfire of security forces against protesters #Syria"

A more recent update drives home that reality:

Al Jazeera is confirming that secret police have opened fire on protesters in the Bab Dreib neighborhood of Homs, Syria. At least one protester has been killed. It is interesting to note that, while there is a huge army presence in the city, plain clothed police are reportedly to blame for the shoot[ing]. … Also, two eyewitnesses report snipers on the roof tops.

Enduring America has already compiled many clips from today, including the female-filled march seen above.

Audrey Ference says that Bristol Palin is “not necessarily lying” about her jaw surgery. Ference suspects she had the same operation:

Did Bristol “need” to have her chin fixed? Did I? I don’t know. I still feel weird guilt about my plastic surgery chin, but it’s a decision I can’t change now. When I look in the mirror, I see me. This new face has grown with me, and now it’s mine.

Whatever work Bristol had done, for whatever reason, let’s give the girl a break. A new face is strange to live with.

The impression one often gets from reporting on Israel is that the country's elites share Netanyahu's neocon paranoia about Iran's nuclear capacity. But it seems increasingly clear that this is not the case. When the hawks' hawk, former Mossad head Meir Dagan is calling an attack on Iran "one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever heard," and he is far from alone among former security chiefs, you know the country is as alive with dissent as it so often is.

Funny how we keep getting a different view in the US, where we are told we simply don't understand the psychology of the Israelis. Nope. We don't understand the traumatized psychology of Netanyahu. And that psyche may be far more like American neocons than sane Israeli defense and security chiefs. Here's hoping the calmer, saner voices prevail.

Can you imagine what Fox News would make of what the former president was doing when he was told to call the White House because of bin Laden's death:

"I was eating souffle … "

Physically and mentally I mean, judging from his GMA appearance. I can't help but note also the difference in tone between his response to the remarkably successful raid on Osama bin Laden's compound and those of the hardcore Cheneyites. Bush echoes Obama in how it came about:

When asked by forum moderator Melissa Lee of CNBC how he felt upon learning the news, Bush said he was "not overjoyed," explaining that the campaign to track down the 9/11 mastermind was done not "out of hatred but to exact judgment."…

"The guy is dead. That is good," Bush said of bin Laden. "Osama's death is a great victory in the war on terror. He was held up as a leader … The intelligence services deserve a lot of credit. They built a mosaic of information, piece by piece," he said, claiming no credit for himself.

Then he pivots toward a broader point:

Bush said U.S. foreign policy needs to continue to promote the ideas of democracy and freedom as a way to combat global terrorism.

"The long-term solution is to promote a better ideology, which is freedom. Freedom is universal," Bush said. "People who do not look like us want freedom just as much. The relatives of [former Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice over 100 years ago wanted freedom. It is only when you do not have hope in a society that you join a suicide bomber team."

That doesn't sound like Cheney, does it? He still befuddles me, this man. His heart seems so often in the right place, and then he defers to thugs and cowards. Maybe he was just out of his depth. But my feelings about him remain much more complicated than about Cheney, Rumsfeld and Yoo. And when you see him again relieved of the burden of office, you realize how he got elected twice to the White House. He'd rather have been cycling.

After watching the Pomplamoose cover, a reader sends us a three-week-old video we should have caught sooner:

The comedy group Key of Awesome did a parody of Adele's "Rolling In The Deep" and changed it to be about Angry Birds. You're welcome.

But we keep forgetting the angriest birds of them all:

Michael Kazin attempts a Mitch Daniels hit piece. The substance of Kazin's disdain for Daniels:

Elected with the help of donations from the Koch brothers, he signed bills that abolished the right of teachers to bargain for anything other than wages and wage-related benefits and initiated the largest private-school voucher program in the country. He’s said he will sign a bill that will end Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood in his state and ban all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. For good measure, he’s also privatized a state highway. Before Daniels ran for governor, he held an important fiscal post in George W. Bush’s White House, and now, he supports Paul Ryan’s plan to cut taxes for the rich while starving Medicare. What’s more, before getting into politics, he was president of Eli Lilly, one of the largest drug companies in the world. So far, the governor has been silent about the fact that, under his watch, Lilly had to pay out almost $3 billion in fines and damages for illegally marketing two of its best-selling products.

He privatized a state highway! The horror. Kazin says that Daniels supports the Ryan plan, but if you read the post Kazin links to, all Daniels said was that Ryan's plan "is the first serious proposal produced by either party to deal with the overriding issue of our time." That doesn't mean Daniels supports every aspect of the plan. It does mean he is more serious about debt reduction than Obama seems to be.

Syria's astonishingly brave democracy protesters take to the streets again today in large numbers in Homs, and in several cities and towns. Not since the Green Revolution have demonstrators persisted in nonviolence despite a murderous response from a scruple-free regime:

“It looks like we have reached a dead end and we don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel,” said Aref Dalila, a leading dissident who met this week with Bouthaina Shaaban, a government adviser, who has opened talks with opposition figures. “The country that we know will not be able to survive; it is from the past. The current situation is dead; it is from the past. We should acknowledge the fact that change is needed and very necessary, and it will happen no matter how hard we try to resist against it.”

A reader writes:

I always find it amusing that Johnny Cash can sing lines like "Early one morning while making the rounds, I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down" or "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die" and everyone pretty much accepts that he's in character telling a story. But a rapper has gotta be squeaky clean if he or she doesn't want to be labeled a "thug". Even more amusing is to consider the legacy of Cash's famous appearances at Folsom and San Quentin prisons. Can you imagine such an event happening today with a rapper, even one as milquetoast as Common?

Another writes:

Given the furor from conservative corners about Common's invitation to the White House, I feel compelled to remind folks about some past films of prominent Republican icons: Clint Eastwood was the celebrated hero of at least two movies where he guns down corrupt police officers ("Magnum Force," "Unforgiven") and Arnold Schwarzenegger became a star in "The Terminator" which features a "gee whiz, ain't it cool" shoot-out/massacre at a police precinct.

Mary Elizabeth Williams is on the same page:

The Daily Caller was quick to register its fury at Common's presence on the bill, with writer Neil Munro singling out "Letter to the Law," which dares to include lines like "Tell the law, my Uzi weighs a ton" and "Burn a Bush cos' for peace he no push no button/Killing over oil and grease/no weapons of destruction." This, according to the Caller, is tantamount to "threats to shoot police and … calling for the "burn[ing]" of George W. Bush."

Yes, and when William Blake wrote, "I am black," he literally meant he was black. And when Sylvia Plath wrote, "Daddy, I have had to kill you," she really killed her father. And when T.S. Eliot wrote, "We are the hollow men," he was in fact a chocolate Easter bunny. Because there's no room for metaphor or imagery or drama in poetry.