Month: November 2011

The right is apoplectic over a number of sightings of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) flag, which they label al-Qaeda’s. Will McCants says it isn’t that simple:

[The flag’s] appearance in Benghazi certainly raises questions… Nevertheless, the appearance of the flag in other Arab countries is not necessarily evidence of growing support for al Qaeda or terrorist group’s presence. It could just as easily be youth taking advantage of their newfound freedom to scare their elders, or repressed Salafis using the most shocking symbol possible to voice their anger in public. There is also an element of “Wish You Were Here” photography to many of the photos of the ISI’s flag being unfurled around the Arab world and posted in jihadi forums. This is not to say that the appearance of the flags, particularly in protests, should be ignored. But more corroborating evidence is needed before hitting the panic button.

Adam Serwer won’t even go that far. Aaron Zelin gives a primer on the history of the ISI flag.

(Photo of the flag that sparked the whole debate by Vice‘s Sherif Elhelwa)

Zeke Miller and Michael Brendan Dougherty wonder:

As conservative groups plot to take down Romney — fearing he will abandon Republican principles in the White House — a Huntsman second-look would be the continuation of the months-long anti-Romney boom-bust cycle. But Huntsman is mathematically the most electable of the Republican candidates — and given the time and resources to introduce himself to national voters, he could prove his bona fides to conservatives. Save for Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman has the most conservative record in the Republican field on taxes, gun-rights, and abortion. 

Massie yawns:

Jon Huntsman, second look or not, is no more going to be the Republican nominee than Donald Trump or Herman Cain and there's not much, at this stage, he can do to change that.

Today on the Dish, Andrew live-blogged the Cain press conference, and we corralled reader reax here and blogger reax here. We assessed new and creepy developments, Karen Kraushaar came forward, and there’s a lot that Cain doesn’t know. The latest WSJ poll represents the broader collapse of popular support for 1980s Republicanism, and the conservative movement has has close to nothing to say about what's happened since. Erick Erickson unleashed "a meaty, anguished" crusade against Mitt Romney as some in the GOP establishment cautiously embraced him, Erickson's notion of conservatism is based entirely on taxes, and Obama's campaign prepared to exploit the GOP's extreme unpopularity. In our video feature, Andrew explained why he's not interested in having children, and a reader pondered the "self-obliteration" of parenthood in response. 

Andrew confronted the "literal insanity" of war with Iran, Sarkozy and Obama gossiped about Netanyahu, the hard left held out against the Libya intervention, and we addressed free speech in the case of Charle Hebdo.

We wondered if OWS is deteriorating, ex-con Jack Abramoff suggested shutting the revolving door, and our oil predicament is not about scarcity and abundance. Obamacare won big, the WSJ assumed that seniors would happily shed Medicare for the private sector, and cannabis-related health costs are virtually negligible. We reflected on American quirks, Jon Huntsman genuinely loves Beefheart, and chimps can communicate. Peacefulness is not a product of evolution, sperm age matters, and losing weight requires metaphorical surfing. Homesickness plagued the Civil War, Magic Johnson marked the 20th anniversary of his HIV announcement, and Glee broached gay sex. We continued the debate on fantasy and spirituality, and sampled the world's most horrible fonts.  

Dish check update here, correction of the day here, tweet of the day here, Doctor Who crack here, FOTD here, MHB here, VFYW here, and VFYW contest winner #75 here. 

— M.A.

Judging from Gloria Borger's reporting on CNN just now, Karen Kraushaar, the woman who filed a sexual harassment complaint against Herman Cain, and won a settlement, is now clearly angry about Cain's denials. And I can understand why. He's saying she never experienced sexual harassment and saying that is a "fact." If I'd been sexually harassed by a boss years ago and had thought it was over with but then had to hear him say publicly it never happened at all, I'd be furious. It's a second kind of emotional assault. She wants to get all five women together to tell their tales.

More to the point, she says she has the complete documentation of her sexual harassment in her possession, in explicit detail, and is now released from any confidentiality agreement. Borger also reported that Kraushaar insisted that the settlement agreement was specifically on the grounds of sexual harassment, and for $46,000, a year's salary.

If that's true, then what's in those documents is going to be by far the most important factor from here on. The NYT has talked to Kraushaar as well. It will interesting to see how their reporting develops.

(Photo: Republican presidential candidate and former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain speaks at a press conference November 8, 2011 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Cain is facing pressure after a fourth woman came forward Monday to accuse Cain of inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment when he was while CEO of the National Restaurant Association. By Eric Thayer/Getty Images)

Ponnuru predicts that the Obama campaign will choose to portray Romney as a right-wing extremist (rather than a wooden flip-flopper) in the general election: 

It will be much more plausible for Democrats to warn next year about unchecked conservative control of the government. If they do, they will be hitting the Republicans where they are weak. There is a lot of evidence that voters have lost confidence in Obama, but little evidence that they have gained confidence in Republicans. In the most recent CNN, Gallup and ABC/Washington Post polls, a majority of Americans say that they have an unfavorable impression of Republicans. They may not think the GOP can be trusted to govern. 

E.D. Kain tackles the question:

I think fantasy is not really bound to any religion so much as it is bound to a particular way of looking at the world. Somehow the faeries from the old English countryside infected the intellectualism of Oxford’s finest minds. Somehow the old magic of Merlin survived Christianity and became part of the mythical world-building of Tolkien and Lewis and the many non-religious fantasy authors who followed them.

Alyssa Rosenberg complicates this thought:

That we see certain things on the market doesn’t mean that fantasy is limited to those things, or inherently grows out to those things. It just means that we’re reliant on old patterns. 

Adam Serwer also chimes in. Kain follows up.

Michael Berube surveys the hard left's reaction to Obama's war, and is appalled:

Alexander Cockburn, James Petras, Robert Fisk, John Pilger—all of them still fighting Vietnam, stranded for decades on a remote ideological island with no way of contacting any contemporary geopolitical reality whatsoever—weighed in with the usual denunciations of US imperialism and predictions that Libya would be carved up for its oil. And about the doughty soi-disant anti-imperialists who, in the mode of Hugo Chavez, doubled down on the delusion that Qaddafi is a legitimate and benevolent ruler harassed by the forces of imperialism, there really is nothing to say, for there can be nothing more damning than their own words. But if it were just a matter of a handful of left dead-enders muttering to themselves, I wouldn’t bother. What I was newly struck by—in a way that challenged even my usual cynicism about human affairs—was the frequency and the volume of dead-ender sentiments that began popping up in almost every liberal/progressive blog’s comment threads.

BJ Bjornson thinks Berube goes a bit too far.

(Photo: An anti-war protester takes part in a demonstration in front of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 26, 2011 urging an end to the war on Libya. By Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images.)

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of his HIV announcement. A look at how the basketball star changed public opinion on the virus:

Although views of homosexuals were associated with opinion about AIDS — those with less favorable views of homosexuals were in turn less likely to support spending for AIDS treatment and research — Mr. Johnson’s announcement made attitudes toward heterosexual sex a more important underpinning of opinion about AIDS. In particular, those with more conservative values (in this case, those who believe premarital sex is always or almost always wrong) became slightly less supportive of spending to fight AIDS. But those who believed that premarital sex was only sometimes or never wrong became more supportive of AIDS spending — by 15 points, in fact. Mr. Johnson’s announcement had shifted the types of values that people drew on when forming opinions about AIDS.

While savaging Romney, Erick Erickson claimed that "Republicans on Capitol Hill are about to raise taxes on the American people with this Super Committee, but they’ll say they are just 'raising revenue,' not taxes." Weigel counters:

No, they won't, because no, they're not. … Democrats on the supercommittee have proposed $400 billion of cuts to Medicare as part of a supercommittee deal. The Gang of Six want to change the Consumer Price Indexing of Social Security in a manner that cuts benefits. The conservative line right now: Forget about that, because if you raise any taxes in any way, you're betraying the movement. The implication: Wait until 2013, when you can dislodge the New Deal without compromise. 

In other debt committee news, TPM sees nothing but gridlock, and Chait rejects the GOP's leaked debt deal as unserious.

Steven Taylor:

[Denying any memory of Bialek] strikes me as a dangerous way to play this, as if any evidence can be conjured that Cain did know Bialek, then that will undercut his overall denial.  And in this era of cameras everywhere, this strikes me as a dangerous bet for Cain to take unless he is 100% certain of the claim.

Ace of Spades:

I want him to confirm or deny that hotel upgrade.

Jim Geraghty:

Herman Cain has completed his press conference… which could have used questions like, “Did you rent or upgrade a hotel suite during the time period in question? If you did, why did you rent a luxury suite in a hotel in a city where you lived at the time?”

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

I think I speak for the "Democrat machine" when I say they'd love nothing better than to run against Herman Cain.

Michael Crowley:

It’s possible that Cain is being unfairly targeted, but as the volume of the charges mount and the accusers step forward–and Cain flails so unconvincingly–that seems less and less plausible. Virtually every member of the Washington press corps thinks so. And with his talk of journalistic codes of conduct, and now this afternoon’s weak attempt at taking “hard questions,” Cain has only waved a red flag of hostility at the people he needs to help clear his name: journalists. 

Dan Amira:

Cain is being accused of things he says never happened.  If he passed a lie detector test — as unreliable as those can be — it would go a long way toward clearing his name in the court of public opinion. If that's not a good enough reason, we don't know what would qualify.

Allahpundit:

[T]he highlight of … [the Cain press conference] was probably him saying he’d be willing to take a lie-detector test — but only if someone gives him a good reason to do it. I’m thinking the spectacle of multiple accusers in front of the cameras, using their own names, at a joint press conference would be withering enough to give him that reason. 

Ana Marie Cox:

Cain is not handling this scandal like a typical politician would; he's handling it like a reality television star. But not the kind most people root for.