Month: June 2011

Is Mitt adopting the Obama approach – just ignore her? A reader writes:

Quite to my surprise, I've found myself thinking a lot about Mitt Romney over the past few days. I kind of get the feeling he's biding his time right now on the Palin front. Mama Bear essentially stepped on his toes at his campaign kick-off; she then proceeded to mangle basic U.S. History that pretty much proves what the answer would be were she on Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? Why not attack now?

Because whatever he is, Mitt Romney is not a stupid man.

Say what you will about his being a slick louse of a politician; he's that and more, but he's not stupid. If he gets into a fracas with Palin, as she's been trying to bait him to do, before she gets into the election cycle herself, he looks weak because he's attacking a "private citizen" and someone who's "not really" a candidate for President. Instead, waiting puts the onus on her: she can keep running her mouth but never gain real power (which I don't believe her ego will allow her to do), or she'll eventually have to put her money where her mouth is and join the campaign — including the Republican debates.

All Mitt will have to do is hammer her in one debate — one — to completely tank her candidacy. I can already hear his subtle digs now: "I'll never quit on my constituents; not everyone on this stage can say the same," "I learned that from my History classes in high school, which President Obama obviously didn't; neither did some of my opponents," "Some say I've changed my positions more than Sarah changed colleges, but really, it's been my continued education."

Mitt doesn't like attention; he likes power. He likes being the overseer, even if his greatest success wasn't in business but in being a general administrator, for the Salt Lake City Olympics. Palin, on the other hand, is an attention whore, in the truest sense of the phrase: she cashes in on the attention she can generate for herself, whether or not that attention is positive or negative. While she could indeed become the nominee, I don't think we're going to see Romney go down to a blockhead like her without a fight. Perhaps, like Obama so often does, Mitt's just biding his time. Why bother nipping her nonsense in the bud now when there's so much more bullshit bound to come out of her mouth between now and the time she officially enters the race?

Walter Kirn puts the religion in a good light:

In an age of spiritual consumerism, when many people regard religion as a therapeutic lifestyle aid, faith is often expected to serve the individual. For Mormons, it’s the other way around.

The result is an organization that resembles a sanctified multinational corporation—the General Electric of American religion, with global ambitions and an estimated net worth of $30 billion. The church runs and finances one of the largest private universities in the country (Brigham Young University). Many members serve two-year missions abroad for the church, acquiring fluency in foreign languages (and foreign cultures) along the way. (Mitt Romney learned French on his mission to France, while Jon Huntsman picked up Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan.) More than many other faiths, the Mormon church prepares its members to engage intelligently with the broader culture and the wider world.

Kirn also explores why Mormons tend to vote Republican in overwhelming numbers:

It’s hardly surprising that support for low taxes and a minimum of government regulation would appeal to a community that once endured severe government-sponsored oppression. Congressman Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) sees an even deeper connection between his faith and his economic and political views. According to Mormon tradition, God and Satan fought a “war in heaven” over the question of moral agency, with God on the side of personal liberty and Satan seeking to enslave mankind.

(Image via Tumblr user pastamate)

Niall Ferguson worries that the sagging economies of Arab Spring nations may spark further destabilization:

In a report published last month, the Institute of International Finance predicted that growth in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia will fall from 4.4 percent in 2010 to -0.5 percent this year. Egypt’s economy will contract by 2.5 percent, Yemen’s by 4 percent. … The bottom line is that economic conditions have gotten worse, not better, as a result of the Arab Spring. Inflation is now above 12 percent in Egypt. Unemployment is up, too.

None of this should surprise us. Such is the life cycle of revolutions. What begins with euphoric crowds soon slides into a second phase of economic paralysis. The same happened in France after the initial “bliss” of 1789 and in Russia after 1917. In each case, exuberance at the overthrow of the old regime was swiftly succeeded by exasperation at the decline in living standards. And that was what gave the political extremists their opportunity to peddle their radical ideology of war against internal and external foes. Yesterday, the Jacobins and Bolsheviks. Tomorrow, I fear, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda.

But the alternative was shoring up Mubarak?

A great, feisty Syrian blogger, Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari, who went by the name Gay Girl In Damascus, has been disappeared. Some twenty-something goons, assumed to be agents of Assad, grabbed her on the street. Her last post was a poem, which just brought tears to my eyes. It’s worth reprinting in full:

The bird flies free
Knowing no boundaries
Borders mean nothing
When you have wings

My heart and my soul
Long to follow and soar
Out over mountains
And deserts and seas

I have no wings
And earth presses in
Wrapped in a sheet
Forever to lie

Weighed down by dirtclods
Never to feel
Wind on my wings
Sun on my back

Soaring and flying
Freedom is coming
Here am I wanting
To know it one day

Pray for her, wherever she is. And for the people in her country, who are yearning to fly.

"Diaspora Jews no longer have the option of not taking a position on Israel’s policy, because silence has also become a stance. The supposed “big tent” organizations and especially AIPAC are responsible for that. On one hand, AIPAC has presented itself as the voice of Israel’s supporters in America. On the other, its positions are distinctly hawkish. It has put its energies into restricting or foiling U.S. relations with the Palestinians, not into supporting peace efforts (as I described in greater depth in this 2008 article). It has been far warmer to right-wing Israeli governments than to dovish ones.

American Jews can actively support AIPAC, or groups to its right such as the ZOA, or more dovish organizations such as J Street. Saying nothing, however, is likely to be misread by politicians, and by lazier political reporters, as tacit support for the AIPAC position," – Gershom Gorenberg.

Erica Grieder applauds:

Mr Romney himself has already been on record as being worried about [climate change], and the only reason he would back off that belief in the context of a Republican primary would be that he is trying to gin up votes among a sceptical primary electorate. In standing by his professed belief as the campaign gets underway, he is resisting (in this case, at least) the incentive to flip-flop, and while that shouldn't be a cause for celebration, it is.

David Frum asks why Pawlenty's straight-talk on ethanol subsidies was widely cheered while Romney's global warming truth-telling has mostly been ignored.

Re: Paul Revere et al. A summary:

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink."

Get used to it until you are so numb you simply surrender.

Goldblog just can't help himself. He's not alone.

And how can you blame him?

Sam Harris's earlier thoughts apparently "elicited a very heated response" from his readership. He goes another round:

As my friend Dan Dennett has pointed out, many people confuse determinism with fatalism. This gives rise to questions like, “If everything is determined, why should I do anything? Why not just sit back and see what happens?” But the fact that our choices depend on prior causes does not mean that they do not matter. If I had not decided to write my last book, it wouldn’t have written itself. My choice to write it was unquestionably the primary cause of its coming into being. Decisions, intentions, efforts, goals, willpower, etc., are causal states of the brain, leading to specific behaviors, and behaviors lead to outcomes in the world. Human choice, therefore, is as important as fanciers of free will believe. And to “just sit back and see what happens” is itself a choice that will produce its own consequences. It is also extremely difficult to do: just try staying in bed all day waiting for something to happen; you will find yourself assailed by the impulse to get up and do something, which will require increasingly heroic efforts to resist.