September 2013 – Page 21

If There Is No Deal With Iran …

… then military conflict looks inevitable:

Matt Steinglass likewise urges Obama to pursue diplomacy:

Barack Obama would have to be crazy at this point not to take up the diplomatic overtures the Iranian government has been making over the past few weeks. We shouldn’t have any illusions about what is on offer here. America and Iran are never going to be terribly friendly, or not on any foreseeable time horizon. We have commitments to Israel and the Persian Gulf states which we’re not about to drop and the Iranians are not about to forget. They have a partially theocratic system of government that entails human-rights violations we’re not about to overlook, and they’re not about to abandon their support for Hizbullah or for the ideology of Shiite jihad. But we have by now given up on the illusion that our problems in the Middle East will be solved by “regime change”. Indeed, the countries where the regimes change seem to be the ones where our problems now lie. We need to start approaching the regimes that aren’t likely to change and trying to arrange a wary but peaceful standoff, because the level of carnage and chaos at the moment is more than we can handle.

How Likely Is A Shutdown?

Philip Klein is betting against it:

The nation now has more than two and a half years of experience with divided government during the Obama presidency. And each time there has been a major crisis, it’s followed a familiar pattern. The sides are far apart. It looks like the crisis may hit. Then, at the last minute, there’s some sort of deal that’s able to pass the Senate that Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is able to get through the House of Representatives with a lot of help from Democrats.

Cohn mostly agrees:

Most informed observers I know would agree with his assessment and, for the record, I would too. The conflict over financing government operations—and, weeks from now, raising the debt ceiling—is all about Boehner and his lieutenants waiting until the last possible minute, so that he can extract the biggest concessions from Democrats while telling the conservative base he did the best he could. One way or another, the two sides will come together before the government runs out of money and before it taps out its borrowing authority. In fact, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announcing that he won’t support Senator Ted Cruz’s call for a filibuster, the chances of a shutdown just diminished a little more.

But if the chances of either a shutdown or a debt ceiling crisis are modest, they aren’t modest enough. And there’s a chance the confidence all of us feel could actually make a last-minute deal less likely.

Ezra’s view:

Most in Washington and on Wall Street hold to a serene faith that the two parties will figure something out. And that’s probably right. But in interviews with both Democratic and Republican staff from the House and Senate leadership, as well as the White House, I have yet to hear a plausible story for how they figure something out. The tales range from the unlikely — Republicans expect Senate Democrats to force the White House to delay the individual mandate, while Democrats expect Boehner to simply fold and absorb the backlash from his party — to the nonexistent.

“I don’t know the end of this movie,” says Rep. Chris Van Hollen, ranking member on the House Budget Committee. “I don’t think anybody knows how it ends. And that’s a very dangerous place to be in.”

Missing Matthew Shepard

Stephen Jimenez, author of The Book Of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard (out today), describes what Matthew’s complex story means to him:

An excerpt from the new book is now available at the Daily Beast. Below is a long video that details some of the evidence and sources that back up some of Jimenez’s more provocative claims about Shepard and his murderer, including a sexual relationship:

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Steve’s previous videos in the series are here. Our full interview archive is here.

The Sex Life Of Edie Windsor

June Thomas highly recommends Ariel Levy’s profile (paywalled) of the civil rights hero:

[W]hen it comes to straight talk about sex, the piece does not hold back. Again and again we hear about how great the couple’s sex life was—even after Thea was paralyzed by multiple sclerosis, they used the pulleys that helped get her into bed at night to facilitate lovemaking. Edie goes to great lengths to remind everyone that she was Thea’s lover, not her nurse or her friend—though she performed those functions, too. The profile even includes a couple of lines I thought I’d only see in lesbian porn: “I never wanted anybody inside me until I met Thea,” Edie tells Levy. “And then I wanted her inside me all the time.”

But this isn’t just about prurient thrills. Lesbians and old people are all-too-often perceived as being sexless creatures who couple for companionship rather than pleasure. Edie Windsor will remind everyone who reads this week’s New Yorker that neither perception is accurate.

Yes We Can

Beinart encourages Obama to follow in Reagan’s footsteps:

[T]he same “Reaganites” who will bash Obama for compromising with Rouhani once bashed Reagan for compromising with Gorbachev. As late as December 1987, Charles Krauthammer was writing that “the fundamental misconception about Gorbachev is that he has somehow broken the ideological mold.” Until virtually the day the Soviet empire collapsed, Rep. Dick Cheney was calling glasnost a fraud. In 1988 George Will accused Reagan of having “accelerated the moral disarmament of the West … by elevating wishful thinking [about Gorbachev] to the status of public policy.” When Reagan brought the intermediate missiles deal to Congress for ratification, a right-wing group called the Anti-Appeasement Alliance took out newspaper ads comparing Reagan to Neville Chamberlain.

Yes, those political struggles were easier for Reagan because he hailed from the political right. But that wasn’t the only reason he triumphed over the “Reaganites” who now take his name in vain. He triumphed because he had the moral imagination to envisage a relationship beyond confrontation and war. Musing in late 1987 about the opponents of his nuclear deal, Reagan declared that “some of the people who are objecting the most … whether they realize it or not, those people basically down in their deepest thoughts have accepted that war is inevitable.” Because Reagan refused to accept what others considered inevitable, he achieved one of the greatest successes in the history of American foreign policy. Now it’s Obama’s turn to imagine a future that his critics cannot and to have the guts to make it real.

Obama’s careful speech at the UN today did not sound like Reagan’s dreamy optimism toward Gorbachev at Reykyavik – another moment when neoconservatives denounced Reagan as aggressively as they will surely denounce any diplomacy with Iran. It was designed to express caution – too much caution, in my view. Money quote:

I don’t believe this difficult history can be overcome overnight – the suspicion runs too deep. But I do believe that if we can resolve the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, that can serve as a major step down a long road toward a different relationship – one based on mutual interests and mutual respect.

I understand the delicacy. But what Rouhani needs is what Gorbachev needed – a big gesture – or the nit-pickers and nay-sayers and militarists in both countries will once again seize the initiative.

(Photo: Former US President Ronald Reagan greets former president of the former Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev upon his arrival in the US. By Mike Nelson/AFP/Getty Images.)

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #172

A reader writes:

This photo is from a very lush and slightly tropical place. The truck driving up the road in the distance on the far right of the photo appears to be driving on the left side of the road. The buildings appear very British – Scottish actually. There seems to be a flag over the cemetery but the flag looks light blue and white. Argentina? That’s not helping. I’m going to guess the north island of New Zealand on the east coast. Let’s say the Auckland suburbs.

Another:

I know that the palm trees in the picture are yucca trees, which are ingenious to the Americas, the tree version being found closer to water and wet climates while the shrubs are found in dryer climates. Put that with the cliffs and my guess is the coast of California – no idea what city. Also, the road on the left side of the picture along the cliff side looks like Highway 1, which runs along California’s coastline.

Another:

I’m in the midst of moving so I have little time for research, but that view of the breakwater looks very much like the one in Victoria BC, especially with that size lighthouse at the end. Of course a few of the trees in the photo don’t exactly scream Pacific Northwest, but with the exotic Butchart Gardens nearby I think the locals are inspired to grow non-native flora.

Another:

The vegetation and houses remind me of South Africa’s “Garden Coast” east of Cape Town. I’m guessing Kynsna, mainly because it’s such a lovely name to say (“NIZE-na”) and such a beautiful place.

Another gets on the right continent:

“Oh wow,” I thought to myself, “that looks just like the Irish coast. The random tropical plants, the blocky stucco houses, the steel-gray skies. I’ll just pop over to Google maps and trace the coastline until I find a breakwater and some rocky coves! Easy!”

Oh, except Ireland has about four billion miles of rocky coastline, and I’m supposed to be working. So I’m going to guess Dun Laoghaire, because who are we kidding with that spelling? Plus it’s the first place I thought of, even though I’m pretty sure it’s not correct.

Another is also frustrated:

I just can’t get this one. It screams southwest Ireland to me – we do actually have palm trees there – but I can’t identify the place. To solve the Cork VFYW contest I went all around the coast of Ireland on Google maps until I found the right port. But here I’ve gone back and forth from Cork to Waterford and on to Wicklow and Wexford and I can’t find the river (or inlet) that’s going into the sea. But a guess is better than no guess, so I’m going to say it’s County Cork, somewhere near Schull. Even if I’m not close it’s a very beautiful part of the country and it’s nice to remember my trips there.

Another gets on the right island:

I think this is near a small resort town called Largs on the west coast of Scotland. The tropical looking trees might have thrown me off but I was there a little over a week ago and was surprised that they were growing there. Also, the buildings look like what you would find in that area.

Another gets closer:

I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in Britain. The cars are driving on the left and the boxy white house on the left is very typical British residential architecture. I first thought it might be Torquay, England, where I visited many years ago and recalling how surprised I was to see palm trees there. But checking Google street view, it looked like Torquay was too built up. So I thought of Penzance, further down the coast. I couldn’t find the view in the photo, so I’m really just guessing. (Alternative guess: Hamilton, Bermuda)

Another:

Oh, those little palm trees don’t fool me. Those windows! The chimneys! The roan sky! Definitely England. Got to be the southwest coast, a place with a quay. How about Falmouth? Is it Falmouth then?

Nope. Another:

My first entry ever and I wouldn’t know how to begin doing it properly, but I think it’s the south coast of Cornwall. Even if it isn’t, it reminded me of home, so thanks.

Very close. Another nails the right town:

This week’s VFYW contest is in Fishguard, Wales. Palm tree was a bit of a red herring. Having visited Ireland, Wales, and England last month for the first time, I immediately recognized this scene as in that general area (rocky coast, palm trees, that glass enclosed room in the foreground). After Google Maps-ing around the circumference of Ireland without much luck, I went to Wales, where I found the view pretty quickly. The image is from Fishguard, Wales. I don’t have the exact window but my guess is that the image was taken from the back of The Manor Town House, on Main St./A487.

An aerial view of Fishguard:

Another nails the right window:

There is a car on the road driving on the left side of the road and I immediately thought Australia. They apparently have some pine trees as seen in the picture, but after an hour I figured out that there are no inhabitants in the northern coast of Australia.

Enter the girlfriend. One look and she says “Cornwall UK!” – they have warm weather, so an hour or two searching for a pier on Cornwall and Truro and islands off the coast … nothing. Then she emails me this morning – “Fishguard!” – gloating because I nailed Sintra in under 30 seconds three weeks ago. I don’t know yet how she did it.

Anyway, I looked around Fishguard for a white canopy/gazebo thing … nothing. That was hard, so I went for a drive on Google maps, focused on the main street area and then I get email #3 from the GF: Manor Town Hotel on Main street (it has great reviews btw). She was on fire.

The pic was likely taken from the second floor window. I’ve attached an almost identical picture taken from the room #1:

Room #1 it is. Another reader:

As it happens, this is the town in which my mother was born, though I’ve never been. Fishguard (in Welsh, “Abergwaun”) is where you get the ferry from the UK to Ireland. It was where the film Under Milk Wood (with that great Welsh actor Richard Burton) chose to portray Dylan Thomas’ fictional town “Llareggub”.

A good hour on Google Maps tells me this window belongs to the back (north-side) of the Manor Town House, 11 Main Street, Fishguard, SA65 9HG, which is now a guesthouse. You can just about make out the circular gazebo on the satellite view. The houses you can see on the hill opposite are on a street called Penslade (which has Streetview, so you can tick off the houses by colour).

A visual entry from a reader:

You know you’re a little too into the VFYW contest when you find it while furiously searching for clues over Amtrak’s spotty wi-fi on the train down from Albany.

Of the dozen or so readers who correctly answered Room #1 at the Manor Town House, only one of them has correctly guessed a challenging window in the past without yet winning. The tie-breaking entry:

It’s raining. So we must be in the UK. In the background, we see the end of what is either a pier or a breakwater, a pretty big one it seems. Does that point to Plymouth, and its enormous breakwater in the Plymouth Sound? It doesn’t. This picture was taken from what I believe is Room 1 at the Manor Town House Bed & Breakfast on 11 Main Street in Fishguard in lovely Pembrokeshire on the west coast of Wales. (Fun fact: not too far away was the site of the last successful French military invasion of Britain during the War of the First Coalition in 1797.)

(Archive)

Cruz’s Mel Gibson Strategy

Bernstein unpacks the logic in a deranged, bewildered, frustrated GOP:

When you’ve reduced your entire movement to saying “no” to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, is it any surprise that whoever shouts “NO” the loudest will wind up defining what counts as “conservative”?

Indeed, if you happen to be a demagogue running for president on the platform that you are the only True Conservative and everyone else is a squish or a RINO or a secret liberal, then the best plan is to find the most convoluted, self-destructive, but nevertheless very loud way of saying “no.” Which is basically what Ted Cruz and his allies have done with the demand that Republicans tie keeping the government open to defunding the ACA.

Frum is in the same territory:

Obviously, Ted Cruz is going to lose his confrontation over Obamacare. In losing, however, he will taint his possible rivals—including Rand Paul—as pitiful members of the “surrender caucus.”

Only he will stand brave and true, like Mel Gibson playing Braveheart. The Wall Street Journal calls his campaign “kamikaze.” But the art of political leadership includes a shrewd understanding of how to engineer the right political defeat, for the right audience.

In the Senate, Cruz may look right now the very opposite of shrewd. But the view Cruz cares about is the view from Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina — and from there he looks like a hero to many of the Republicans who’ll choose the party’s nominee in 2016.

When a party is fed on talk-radio drama rather than actual legislative or policy ideas, Cruz is the natural fit. No wonder Hugh Hewitt is so keen. Waldman, on the other hand, isn’t taking Cruz seriously:

Rand Paul and Ted Cruz don’t have much more chance of becoming president than Bachmann did. That doesn’t mean they might not be interesting characters (Bachmann sure was). But we make the mistake of assuming that all the momentary attention necessarily means there’s great substance lying underneath.

I think Waldman is wrong. In their cocoon, the GOP base believe they haven’t had a true leader since Reagan. And given how apocalyptic they feel about the US, and how completely nuts they will become at the prospect of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, Paul and Cruz could go much further than most Washington pundits want to believe.

At least, that’s my bet. These people thought Palin could be president, remember? Never under-estimate their recklessness or extremism.

AIPAC Readies To Kill Outreach To Iran

In our latest video from NIAC founder Trita Parsi, he explains that, if Rouhani hopes to maintain his power, his diplomatic efforts must ultimately improve Iran’s economy:

Near the end of the video, Parsi wonders if Congress will stand in Obama’s way. You think? Eli Lake talks to Israel’s proxies on the Hill:

If Obama seeks to take advantage Rouhani’s outreach, he will need support from a Congress that appears unconvinced about the new Iranian president’s charm offensive. One House staff member who spoke to The Daily Beast Monday said Iran would need at the very least to suspend uranium enrichment to stop legislators from moving a new sanctions bill aimed at the regime’s nuclear program. A memo released last week from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel group that has made Iranian sanctions a centerpiece of its lobbying efforts since the 1990s said, “The international community should only consider sanctions relief if Iran complies with United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions that require suspending its nuclear activities. Any such relief must be commensurate with the extent of Tehran’s actions.”

Which means that the Greater Israel lobby will do all it can to prevent any conceivable deal that could ensure Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy – the sine qua non of any breakthrough. Which means they aim to kill diplomacy to get the war they have been wanting for more than a decade. In this sense, AIPAC is the American equivalent of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in terms of scuppering any possibility of genuine peace, by refusing to treat Iran as anything but a pariah state. Israel, meanwhile, sits on a couple hundred nuclear missiles aimed in part at Iran. But that inconvenient truth cannot be uttered on Capitol Hill.

Yesterday, Parsi detailed the very limited window Rouhani has for success, as well as how he thought the US should tackle this new opportunity for rapprochement.

Our full Ask Anything archive is here.

Quote For The Day II

“So I’m at the Patrons Ball tonight and Lynne Cheney, the mother of Liz, comes up to my father-in-law [Alan Simpson] and tells him to … I believe the direct quote was “Shut your mouth” regarding his support of Mike Enzi,” – Deb Oakley Simpson, on her Facebook page.

The Cheneys deny it, but would not talk personally to the press or offer an alternative account of the exchange. I guess it’s better than Dick Cheney’s trademarked “Go fuck yourself.”

Meep Meep Watch

David Corn echoes a lot of what I’ve been arguing about Obama’s trajectory at this point in his second term. Politico-style pageview-grabbers keep talking about a “lame duck” while the GOP keeps talking as if Obamacare, which only truly gets going next month, is already fatally wounded. McCainiacs talk as if getting Putin to take ownership of preventing further use of chemical weapons in Syria is some kind of defeat for the US – which it is only if you truly want another Middle East War. And in Washington, Obama’s solid refusal to jump into negotiations over the defunding of Obamacare or the debt-ceiling has allowed the Republicans to organize themselves into a Dick Cheney hunting expedition. After Syria, moreover, there is the first real chance of a deal with Iran over its nuclear program along the lines of Assad’s sudden volte-face. The long term strategy of sanctions and an open hand is bearing fruit.

None of this will please Maureen Dowd. And yes, of course, much can still go awry. Politics requires nimbleness of action and steadiness in strategy. But when I watch Karl Rove laying into Congressional Republicans, and Bill Kristol, in panic-mode, calling for Israel to strike Iran, I can’t help but smile. This terrible strategic president, this useless schmoozer, this aloof, Washington inadequate has a lot of foes back on their heels right now.

That doesn’t happen entirely by accident.