Month: May 2011

A reader sends in this video of the last thylacine, a blurring of cat and dog, which we featured photographically here. It’s somehow moving – seeing a living creature that no longer exists:

Les Gelb wants us out of Afghanistan by the beginning of Obama's second term, if he wins one. With the killing of bin Laden, the stalemate within Afghanistan, and the impossibility of trusting the Pakistanis, the logic is pretty sound. Money quote:

The U.S. beef is not with the Taliban. It was over their hosting al Qaeda, and now there is little to host. If the Taliban are prepared to restrict their fight to Afghanistan, stopping them from regaining power inside their own country is most certainly not vital to the United States…

Then there's Pakistan. Presidents Bush and Obama have both argued that Afghanistan's fate would have a profound bearing on Pakistan's. But that argument has exploded. As circumstances have improved recently in Afghanistan, they have deteriorated in Pakistan. The fate of Pakistan, which has a powerful army and five times more people than Afghanistan, rests almost entirely in its own hands.

If Obama pledged that his second term will see an end to US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, I wouldn't bet on the GOP finding the will to oppose him.

Rabbi Jason Miller reacts to the photoshopped removal of Hillary Clinton by a Hasidic newspaper:

To my mind, this act of censorship is actually a violation of the Jewish legal principle of g'neivat da'at (deceit). I wrote about this subject a year ago following the Flotilla debacle in Israeli waters outside Gaza when the Reuters news agency doctored photos that it published by removing weapons from individuals aboard the Mavi Marmara. The doctoring of photographs like this is referred to as "Fauxtograpphing." I'm curious to hear how Der Tzitung responds to its attempt to remove Hillary Clinton from this iconic photo and thereby from this historic event.

Update: A reader adds:

Someone should point out that the other woman in the photo, above Hillary's head and over Daley's shoulder, has also been removed.

It is the great depressive donkey's 140th birthday today and this description of him rang familiar:

In literary terms, Eeyore is the archetypal outsider. The other animals – Pooh, Piglet, Owl and the rest – dwell happily within Hundred Acre Wood, knocking on each others' doors, having tea and embarking on adventures. But not Eeyore. He lives on the other side of the stream in his Gloomy Place – marked on the map as "Rather Boggy and Sad". Rather than venture out to see others, he waits for them to pass through his field, which doesn't happen often. "I have my friends," he notes ruefully. "Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said 'Bother!' The Social Round. Always something going on."

So what does Eeyore spend most of his time doing? Like all great outsiders, he Thinks – and he takes great pains to distinguish himself from the other animals for this. ("They haven't got Brains, any of them, only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake…"). There he is in his lonely corner of the forest, sometimes thinking sadly to himself, "Why?", and sometimes "Wherefore?" – and sometimes not quite knowing what he's thinking at all. While the other animals amble contentedly through their daily lives, Eeyore wrestles with these questions alone.

While observed by millions of children and discerning adults for decades.

(Illustration: the great E.H. Shepard.)

Another air-tight argument:

Well, you know, when it comes to racism and racists, I am the least racist person there is. And I think most people would me would tell you that. I am the least racist, I’ve had great relationships. In fact, Randal Pinkett won, as you know, on The Apprentice a little while ago, a couple of years ago. And Randall’s been outstanding in every way. So I am the least racist person.

Reihan rallies the GOP troops around Canada's conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

In a typical Harper stump speech, the phrase “low-tax” was used dozens of times, to hilarious effect. Yet there was no mystery as to what Harper intended to deliver: low taxes. The beauty of Harper’s approach, however, is that he has carefully balanced tax cuts with planned spending reductions, to avoid mounting debt levels. At last [week's] Republican presidential debate, the candidates spent a great deal of time lambasting President Obama and demonstrating their conservative bona fides. They spent very little time explaining how they would defend the interest of the middle class, or how they intended to make inroads with the Latino and Asian voters who are so crucial to victory in 2012 and beyond. They need to give Stephen Harper a call.

Or David Cameron. The critical difference between conservatism in Britain and Canada and conservatism in America is that the Brits and Canadians want low taxes in the context of balanced budgets. The Republicans simply want low taxes, and refuse to contemplate raising any regardless of the effect on the debt.

(Photo: Prime Minister Stephen Harper celebrates his majority government win in the federal election, May 2, 2011 in Calgary, Canada. By Mike Ridewood/Getty Images)

An explanation of how he really is responsible for the death of Osama bin Laden.

Dara Lind anoints them "Barders":

[J]ust as much of Obama-skepticism is motivated by the belief that a black dude could not possibly be legitimately qualified to edit the Harvard Law Review or become president of the United States, much of Barderism is motivated by the belief that a man from a small town without a university education couldn't possibly have written some of the best literature in the English language.

Barders will frequently argue that the references to, say, falconry or court intrigue in Shakespeare's plays could only have been written by an aristocrat, or that no one would be able to write as intelligently about law as Shakespeare did without a degree from Cambridge or Oxford. The snobbery of this is pretty obvious — it's as if the Barders had never heard of an autodidact before.