Author: Andrew Sullivan

Give a gift to remember:

Pearl Necklace is a seemingly amorphous cast silver shape on a chain that is actually an accurate representation of semen. It is a visual marker of chaos turned perfection through an act of beauty and lust. Pearl Necklace is a physical reminder of a fleeting moment of pleasure.

(Hat tip: Nerdcore)

Brian Mockenhaupt has captured one platoon’s effort to teach their replacements the lay of the land in the dangerous Arghandab Valley region in Afghanistan:

Lachance and his platoon mates called the area “The Devil’s Playground.” I’d seen the ledger of their time there, tallied in photographs. “He was killed. He was shot in the face. He broke his back,” Staff Sgt. Edward Rosa told me one night, pointing at pictures on a laptop screen in a small plywood-walled room at the outpost, part of a motel-like warren of sleeping quarters that 2 Charlie had built to augment the school’s half-dozen classrooms. “He’s gone. He’s gone. He’s gone,” Rosa said. His voice trailed off. 2 Charlie first came to Afghanistan in September 2009 with 42 soldiers; nearly half had been killed or wounded, mostly in the Arghandab.

But with the losses came experience.

After months of patrolling the valley, the platoon had learned bloody lessons about where to walk, which areas to avoid, and how to spot an ambush or a hidden bomb. Even an infantry unit would have trouble adapting in the middle of fighting season, but the incoming 101st artillery unit, trained to fire cannons that can lob 100-pound shells up to 20 miles, had the added burden of learning a new job. They had trained for several months on infantry tactics before deploying. Now the best 2 Charlie could do was walk through the area with them, and pass on scraps of accumulated knowledge.

I posted earlier that his commitment to filibustering the end of DADT in the lame duck session this December left him some "wiggle room", because he said

"Absolutely I will filibuster or stop it from being brought up until we have a thorough and complete study on the effect of morale and battle effectiveness."

The study will be released on December 1. But as a reader noted, McCain said last month:

''I'm also very concerned about this survey itself. This survey itself is how to best implement repeal. What we really need is a survey that says what would be the effect on battle readiness, morale and recruitment.''

So that implies he would filibuster until another report is issued, not on how to best implement ending the ban, but whether to or not. I fear the worst. But then I often do.

As Dish readers know, Indiana governor, Mitch Daniels, seems to me the kind of man the GOP desperately needs: a real fiscal conservative, socially inclusive, open to serious tax reform and politically adult conversation to regain the center ground. Here's why the Dish loves him so:

Let’s raise the retirement age, he says. Let’s reduce Social Security for the rich. And let’s reconsider our military commitments, too. When I ask about taxes—in 2005 Daniels proposed a hike on the $100,000-plus crowd, which his own party promptly torpedoed—he refuses to revert to Republican talking points. “At some stage there could well be a tax increase,” he says with a sigh. “They say we can’t have grown-up conversations anymore. I think we can.”

David Brooks has hailed him as the "spiritual leader" of the new pragmatists in the GOP and the likeliest GOP nomineet in 2012. Ross Douthat likes him too, as Patrick noted here. Last Thursday he gave a speech that exemplified why he gives so many on the thinking right hope:

Daniels, once the Hudson Institute’s chief executive, described himself as an acolyte of [Herman] Kahn’s and marveled at the creative thinking evident in his 1982 book, “The Coming Boom.” Daniels recited from Kahn’s book: “It would be most useful to redesign the tax system to discourage consumption and encourage savings and investment. One obvious possibility is a value added tax and flat income tax, with the only exception being a lower standard deduction.”

But I'm not in denial about what the GOP now is – which is why I didn't buy David Brooks' prediction. Well, sadly, it appears I was right:

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has now managed to alienate prominent social and fiscal conservatives. The potential presidential candidate’s already rocky path to the Republican nomination became more treacherous this weekend after the country’s most powerful anti-tax activist and one of the House’s most respected fiscal conservatives disparaged Daniels’ openness to considering a controversial value added tax as part of a larger tax system overhaul.

Sane fiscal conservatives know that some kind of VAT may well be essential if we are to get some kind of balanced budget in the future without jacking up income tax rates to the heavens. And taxing consumption is better in my view than taxing income. Still, the real point is that all this should be debatable, if conservatism is going to regenerate as a serious governing philosophy, rather than as a formula for media success. But here is Grover Norquist's head exploding in response:

“This is outside the bounds of acceptable modern Republican thought, and it is only the zone of extremely left-wing Democrats who publicly talk about those things because all Democrats pretending to be moderates wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot poll. Absent some explanation, such as large quantities of crystal meth, this is disqualifying. This is beyond the pale.”

Notice the formulation: that there are "boundaries of acceptable modern Republican thought." Yes, this is a church or a party? And Norquist may not be the Pope (that would be Limbaugh) but he is in the college of cardinals). And notice the extreme rhetoric accusing Daniels of being on "crystal meth". Daniels also spoke last week of a possible gas tax:

“One fully justifiable tax would be on imported oil.”

Daniels, in other words, represents both the hope of the GOP and the most damning evidence that right now, it's hopeless.

(Photo: Shawn Thew/Getty.)

Unknowable. Steve Schmidt says yes: she brought more of the base out than McCain ever could have. Much research says no, and that she probably deprived him of 2 percent of the electorate. We cannot know for sure – there are no control experiments in history, as Matt Continetti concedes (while breezily ignoring his own view).

My hunch is that she did indeed bring out some of the base that otherwise would have stayed home, and may have helped fundraising – but she may have lost many more moderate Republicans and Independents to Obama than, say, McCain's first choice, Joe Lieberman, would have.

“lmmigrants should learn to speak German … At the beginning of the 1960s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country. We kidded ourselves a while, we said: ‘They won’t stay, sometime they will be gone’, but this isn’t reality. And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other… has failed, utterly failed… Immigrants should learn to speak German … “We should not be a country either which gives the impression to the outside world that those who don’t speak German immediately or who were not raised speaking German are not welcome here,” – German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Maureen O'Connor reiterates her right to mock men and women equally, contra Virginia Congressional candidate Krystal Ball's Huffington Post piece:

Is it really sexism every time someone publishes an embarrassing picture of a woman? Maybe the person who leaked her dildo-nosed reindeer pictures was "slut-shaming" (Ball is a Democrat; the pics first surfaced on a right-wing website), but I find it insulting to my womanity that it's fine to ridicule male politicians in almost any context, but not okay to point out even the most obvious of female politicians' bloopers.

Because, c'mon, there's a dildo attached to a man's nose and between the lips of a person who wants to be in Congress. If that's not worth laughing at, what is? I'm not sure I could dream up a more embarrassing situation than a simulated sex act involving a Santa and a dildo-nosed reindeer if I tried. Until we can mock female politicians at least sometimes, there is no equality in the world.

Sgt. Adam Sniffen from the 101st Airborne Division delivers the game ball via parachute before the Michigan vs. MSU game at Michigan Stadium on Oct. 9, 2010.