Month: March 2012

Walter Kirn, a former Mormon, puts Mitt's Mormonism in context:

Romney's fringy Mormonism, much like JFK's Catholicism, insures against him going too far out. Santorum, for one, may be able to delude himself that his beliefs are normal and widely shared and that policies based on them are moral givens. Romney can't afford to think that way… It's only when Mormonism's teachings accord with those of the broader religious right, as they do in the case of homosexuality, that a public figure from the faith can hazard writing them into law. That's scary enough for some folks, and it should be, but Romney the centrist won't go there, I suspect—not if he's actually elected president. As the bearer of Mormonism's long-standing yearning for mainstream modern acceptance, he'd be well advised to sit out the Culture Wars and leave them to more established bands of bigots.

But Romney has gone there – backing a federal constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality for ever; and his church was the core funder of Prop 8, to deny gays the right to civil marriage in California. He's punched every Christianist card he can. If in office, my view is that he will cede social policy to the "more established bands of bigots" who run his party. I know Walter is referring to historic Mormon moderation when engaging the public square. But that's much truer of Huntsman and Reid, rather than Romney and Hatch. It's looking at Morminism in the rear-view mirror, as opposed to the Christianist popular front (evangelicals + Benedict Catholic rump + Mormons) that a Romney presidency might entrench. Wilkinson calls Kirn's article "the most interesting meditation on the subject this campaign season":

Mr Kirn brings to our attention the possibility that it is a mistake to think that Mr Romney has struggled because of his perceived inauthenticity. Rather, Mr Romney has survived despite his Mormonism for many of the same reasons he seems a bit fake. A fully authentic Mitt Romney would be a frankly Mormon Mitt Romney, and that guy wouldn't stand a chance in a Republican primary.

Following the birth of his twins, Paul Ford wonders what to do with the extra fertilized eggs he and his wife no longer need:

[D]o we donate? Hand over the genetic material gathered at great personal and financial cost so that a stranger can carry a child of her own? It's a box you check at the clinic, and then they’re not your eggs anymore. These babies might look like us, but they would not be ours. We might never even know the children exist. What is the moral thing? To let the stranger have a chance at that "mutually enriching, mutually enhancing love"?

Crockett, California, 11 am

"The article by Angela Morabito to which Kathryn links is a good example of how conservatives must not sound if they wish to win the debate over the HHS mandate. It suggests that Sandra Fluke has too much sex, says she speaks for 'skanks who don’t want to take responsibility for their choices,' and rebukes her for having 'missed the ten commandments.' Maybe the author was trying to be funny, but instead she conveys arrogance, condescension, and a total lack of manners. But it’s not just about manners. It’s also about making the right arguments. Nothing in this debate hinges on the particular sexual choices of Sandra Fluke, whatever they may be," – Jason Lee Steorts, NRO. 

Jan Sapp reviews the evidence in two new books on the topic:

[N]ot only are the differences between the classically defined "races" very superficial, they are also of surprisingly recent origin; the variety of human populations seems to have both accumulated and begun to reintegrate within the past 50,000 to 60,000 years. The diversity among us has arisen in a blink of evolution’s eye. The process of relative geographic isolation of local populations into what might have been true races (genetically differentiated populations) during the last Ice Age began to reverse as formerly isolated human groups came back into contact and interbred. That reintegration, which has occurred intermittently throughout human history, is sped up today because of great migration and widespread mating of individuals from disparate geographic origins. The result is that individuals identified as belonging to one “race,” based on the small number of visible characters used in historical race definitions, are likely to have diverse ancestry. 

Jerry Coyne responds that "if that's the consensus, then I am an outlier":

In my own field of evolutionary biology, races of animals (also called "subspecies" or "ecotypes") are morphologically distinguishable populations that live in allopatry (i.e. are geographically separated).  There is no firm criterion on how much morphological difference it takes to delimit a race.  Races of mice, for example, are described solely on the basis of difference in coat color, which could involve only one or two genes. … As we all know, there are morphologically different groups of people who live in different areas.

Kenan Malik stakes a middle ground:

There is no such thing as a ‘natural’ human population. Yet, many of the ways in which we customarily group people socially – by race, ethnicity, nationality, religious affiliation, geographic locality and so on – are not arbitrary from a biological point of view. Members of such groups often show greater biologically relatedness than two randomly chosen individuals. Such groups have often been ghettoized by a coercive external authority, or have chosen to self-segregate from other groups. Hence they are inbred to a certain degree and can act as surrogates, however imperfectly, for biological relatedness. Categories such as ‘African American’, ‘people of Asian descent’ and ‘Ashkenazi Jew’ can be important in medical research not because they are natural races but because they are social representations of certain aspects of genetic variation. They can become means of addressing questions about human genetic differences and human genetic commonalities.

It seems to me pretty obvious that superficial racial differences are a function of relatively recent evolutionary adaptation – and have no core essence or "natural" permanence. Miscegenation and travel scrambles them, making race an increasingly complex phenomenon. But the notion that there are no "human genetic commonalities" that are related to differing populations we crudely assign to something we "socially represent" as "race" is indisputable.

(Photo from Tumblr user Taiga)

Currently, according to a big poll conducted by Fox News, Obama is leading Romney among Latino voters by 70 – 14 percent. Last time, Obama beat McCain by 67 – 31. Money quote:

While the poll indicates that four of five Latinos who voted for Obama in 2008 would vote for him later this year, Latinos who voted for Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain four years ago are now divided between voting for Obama and the Republican candidates. Forty percent said that they favored Obama while 38 percent said they would vote for Romney. Obama also leads Santorum 38 percent to 34, and Gingrich 40 percent to 38.

I cannot see how the GOP has a future with this kind of gap.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of a moribund ideology is that it seeks not converts but heretics. And one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Greater Israel lobby is that it is rarely satisfied with making its case for constant war in the Middle East, but always tries to target its critics as bigots or "something much darker", as anti-Semites or self-hating Jews, and does what it can to harm these critics – by getting them fired, or removed from think-tanks, or used as disposable pawns in larger political games.

The Emergency Committee for Israel is almost a parody of such tactics, rolled up into one toxic little ball of rage and fanaticism. It's currently engaged in an attempt to get one MJ Rosenberg fired from his perch at Media Matters for using the term "Israel Firster", and to get the White House to diss Media Matters. Alan Dershowitz is also apparently fired up over this campaign to police the discourse:

Not only will [the Media Matters controversy] be an election matter, I will personally make it an election matter…I will speak to every Jewish group that invites me, and I think it’s fair to say I speak to more Jewish groups than probably any other person in the world. I spoke to over a million Jews over the years,,,You know, just last Thursday I spoke to 1,200;  just in the next weeks alone I’ll be speaking — and in the past weeks — to thousands of American Jews. And believe me, I will not let them ignore this issue.

And lest you think Rosenberg will escape his ire, Dershowitz says

I don’t know whether President Obama has any idea that Media Matters has turned the corner against Israel in this way…I can tell you this, he will know very shortly because I am beginning a serious campaign on this issue and I will not let it drop until and unless Rosenberg is fired from Media Matters, or Media Matters changes its policy or the White House disassociates itself from Media Matters.

Lovely, isn't it? I don't like the term "Israel Firster" and have not used it. But the idea that "the full Cantor" is not the guiding principle of AIPAC right now is bizarre. Of course it is. Dan Drezner's definition of the Full Cantor is Cantor's quote that

"we need to make sure that this president is also going to stand by Israel and not allow his administration to somehow speak contrary to what our ally thinks is in its best interest."

Isn't that exactly what ECI believes? And however needlessly provocative the term "Israel Firster" might be, does it compare with the following statement for ugliness, racism and neo-fascism:

“Round up [Gilad Shalit's] captors, the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood and use women … as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are, and throw them not into your prisons … but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.”

Or this, after an Israeli bomb killed a Hamas leader – and 18 others, including the man's four children and wife:

The fight against Islamic radicals always seems to come around to whether or not they can, in fact, be deterred, because it’s not clear that they are rational, at least not like us. But to wipe out a man’s entire family, it’s hard to imagine that doesn’t give his colleagues at least a moment’s pause. Perhaps it will make the leadership of Hamas rethink the wisdom of sparking an open confrontation with Israel under the current conditions. Or maybe not, and the only way to stop Hamas is to eliminate its capacity for violence entirely.

The two statements are from ECI Board member, Rachel Abrams, and its spokesman, Michael Goldfarb. I'd argue that the implication of Goldfarb's last sentence is close to genocide.

My point would simply be this: by what chutzpah do people who have called for war crimes against their enemies, and urged instrumental mass murder of civilians, turn around and get squeamish about a rhetorical excess by someone who is clearly a passionate liberal Zionist? And by what chutzpah do they purloin truncated quotes from five sources for a newspaper ad, four of whom have now objected to being coopted in this manner?

It takes a fanatic.

A reader writes:

Where does this "15 million Rush Limbaugh listeners" number keep coming from?  Talkers Magazine? You think they just might have a vested interest in propping up Rush's numbers, and those of every other yakker they cover?  Check out this image [seen below]. They say they make estimates based on "analyzing" reports from Arbitron, which are absurdly unreliable.  

Another writes:

As someone who has worked in the media business for a while in magazines, newspapers, and online, I have seen how those industries can easily blow up their numbers about their audience. So whenever I hear talk about audience size I usually let it fall by the wayside as it really depends on the media and who is calculating the numbers and how they got there. My partner has told me that he was amazed that Limbaugh had 20 million listeners. I told him it was probably way off, based on my experience in other media. So I dug around and found a very helpful article from Media Matters, which estimates his audience at 1.4 million:

[H]ow amazing is this: Limbaugh in 1993 claimed he had 20 million listeners, and in 2009 the press is still mouthing the same statistic. Meaning that, until recently, Limbaugh's audience hadn't budged — not up, not down — in 16 years.. Obviously that doesn't pass any kind of smell test.

Why is it so difficult to pinpoint the number? First, much of radio's ratings methodology remains stuck in the 1960s, and it takes months to generate nationwide audience figures — unlike TV ratings, which can often be measured within 24 hours. And second, because Limbaugh appears on a patchwork of stations all over the country, it's tough to add up all the numbers for an accurate reading. As [Paul Farhi noted], Arbitron, the overseer of U.S. radio ratings, has never tried to measure Limbaugh's audience. And it has no plans to since, as its spokesman told the newspaper, "There is no economic motivation for any objective third party to do that kind of analysis."

Obviously radio syndicators have ratings numbers off of which they sell advertising, but those figures are closely held — unlike Arbitron data, which is more widely available. So, basically, it's up to the syndicator to dole out the ratings numbers to the press; like last year, when Limbaugh's syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, claimed 20 million listeners tuned into Limbaugh's show each week.

Also keep in mind that eight-digit number is what's known in radio as the "cume" (short for cumulative). It in no way reflects the actual audience size like the way television shows are measured minute by minute or half-hour by half-hour. Instead, the cume number represents a very large — and generous — umbrella covering the number of people who, in theory, tune into a program at any time during the week, even if it's for just two minutes.

Please put the numbers to some test. It is THE reason that politicians listen to him and don’t say anything. They think he has numbers much larger than he does because they are not  trying to get the truth of the size of his audience.

Yesterday, Holder gave a speech on the targeted killing of Americans abroad:

Ackerman still has questions:

Holder did not explain why U.S. forces could not have captured Awlaki instead of killing him, nor what its criteria are for determining on future missions that suspected U.S. citizen terrorists must be killed, rather than captured. Holder did not explain why Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, whom a missile strike killed two weeks after his father’s death, was a lawful target. Holder did not explain how a missile strike represents due process, or what the standards for due process the government must meet when killing a U.S. citizen abroad. Holder did not explain why the government can only target U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism for death overseas and not domestically.

In a separate post, Spencer opines that such killing "must require more protections for a citizen’s rights than the blithe, trust-us assurances that Eric Holder provided." Serwer was also unsatisfied by Holder's speech:

If the standards for when the government can send a deadly flying robot to vaporize you sound a bit subjective, that's because they are. Holder made clear that decisions about which citizens the government can kill are the exclusive province of the executive branch, because only the executive branch possess the "expertise and immediate access to information" to make these life-and-death judgments.

Lucy Steigerwald joins the chorus:

The most frustrating part about this might just be how generous and transparent Obama's people think they are being by explaining this. But why bother with the speech at all if it's always going to come down to trust us, this is legal?