Author: Andrew Sullivan

$8 billion – and no accounting of it? That's the GOP we have come to know and love, isn't it? And notice how this story has stirred minimal outrage on the bloggy right. If $8 billion were going to the poor in America, you'd sure hear of it. Juan Cole:

In the chaotic days after the fall of the Baath government and the collapse of the old economy, Paul Bremer & Co. attempted to jump-start the Iraq market economy by giving out large sums in brown paper bags with no questions asked. They did not understand that the Iraqi market had been killed by decades of government control and that no magic hand any longer existed, so they might as well have taken that money and buried it in the ground.

Meanwhile:

About $60 billion have poured into Afghanistan since 2001 in hopes of bringing electricity, clean water, jobs, roads and education to the crippled country. The U.S. alone has committed $51 billion to the project since 2001, and plans to raise the stakes to $71 billion over the next year — more than it has spent on reconstruction in Iraq since 2003.

An Associated Press investigation showed that the results so far — or lack of them — threaten to do more harm than good. The number of Afghans with access to electricity has increased from 6 percent in 2001 to only about 10 percent now, far short of the goal of providing power to 65 percent of urban and 25 percent of rural households by the end of this year.

The madness of the national security state deepens. As the new chief for Af-Pak just stated emphatically:

"We are not leaving."

The first of many, I suspect, as what's left of American conservatism reacts to the re-emergence of the real kind in Britain.

“I am sure Ezra had good intentions when he created it, but I am offended the right is using this as a sledgehammer against those of us who don’t practice activist journalism. Journolist was pretty offensive. Those of us who are mainstream journalists got mixed in with journalists with an agenda. Those folks who thought they were improving journalism are destroying the credibility of journalism. This has kept me up nights. I try to be fair. It’s very depressing," – Chuck Todd.

I haven't commented on this dog-bites-man story of the Vatican being crammed to the gills with homosexual priests who have long since abandoned the increasingly frantic anti-gay ideology of Ratzinger. And most of the commentary has rightly focused on the extreme response of the Vatican – defrock them now for consensual adult sex! – compared with the long tolerance of child rape and abuse. But it is worth noting, once again, how utterly hollow the Vatican is on the subject of homosexuality. It is an institution so embedded with homosexuality it makes Broadway look straight. The stories I've heard! The network of gay priests is vast in Rome, and is, in my mind, as unhealthy for those who get away with it – the hypocrisy must hollow out the soul in the end – as for those who impose it. Instead of grappling with this fact, owning it, and seeking to diversify the priesthood by ending the celibacy requirement and men-only anachronism, the Vatican clings on to denial and repression. And as society and the actual church evolves – as both must – the denial and repression must increase in proportion – until the sheer ridiculousness of the whole thing becomes apparent even to the most devout.

Increasingly, on these issues of modernity, the Vatican of the new millennium seems like the Soviet Politburo of the 1980s. They pretend to believe what they preach while we pretend to obey them. One day, this surreality will pop like a bubble. One day. 

(Photo: Joe Klamar/Getty.)

Classic movie beard-shaving scenes. I look away.

The cultures of Cheney and Palin are converging over opposition to the building of a mosque in Temecula, California:

An e-mail alert sent to area newspapers last week announced that a one-hour "singing – praying – patriotic rally" will begin at 12:30 p.m. July 30 at the Islamic Center’s existing facility. The advisory – sent by a leader of a conservative coalition that has been active with Republican and Tea Party functions – recommended participants "bring your Bibles, flags, signs, dogs and singing voices."

"We will not be submissive," the notice proclaimed. "Our voices are going to be heard!" The alert went on to question what its authors described as Islamic beliefs. It suggested that participants sing during the rally because Muslim "women are forbidden to sing." It suggested that rally participants bring dogs because Muslims "hate dogs."

This is great news for al Qaeda, and for all those Jihadists who want a civilizational war over religion. Are there any countervailing voices in the GOP? Anyone willing to stand up to this? When Gingrich has signed on, you realize that there are no moderating elites any more. Just opportunists willing to ride the tiger of polarization.

(Hat tip: RWW)

Douthat follows up:

Imagine that a more perfect version of cap-and-trade could have been smoothed into law by G.O.P. support. And let’s further bracket Manzi’s favorite debating terrain, the (extremely important) question of whether the costs of a carbon cap are worth the expected economic benefit, given the likely damage wrought by climate change. Even then, I still don’t understand how progressives can believe — especially in the wake of the Copenhagan summit — that this bill actually opens the way to an actual global insurance policy against catastrophic climate change. Spending 1 percent of our G.D.P. as a hedge against catastrophe might make sense; spending the same amount without any prospect of actually getting that insurance policy seems like idealistic folly. And so far, when it comes to actual mechanisms whereby Waxman-Markey becomes a model for the developing world, all I’ve heard from the left are neoconservative-style arguments about how “if the world’s leading power leads, everyone else will follow,” and visions of a carbon trade war between the West and China. Neither seems persuasive.

Actually, of course, the world's leading power (in terms of economic potential) is leading. China, that is.

And to say that we shouldn't start disincentives for carbon-use because we cannot guarantee a solution to climate change seems overly pessimistic and non-dynamist to me. My view is that, in the very end, humankind willl find some way to harness non-carbon energy to sustain our way of life – or we will return to a more rudimentary life style (if it isn't imposed on us by a WMD catastrophe). And the geo-strategic advantages of ending our addiction to mainly foreign oil are also surely to be taken into account. Anything that can get us out of the endless wars of the Middle East is well worth 1 percent of GDP, no?

A reader asks if I was channeling Professor Farnsworth. Indeed I was. The new Futurama season? Trying a teensy bit too hard, in my view. But still brilliant in flashes, and they'll get their groove back soon enough.

A reader writes:

When I saw the latest FOTD, I could only imagine the sheep’s thoughts: “Whoa… Double windmill!  What does it mean….?”

Sorry.

Apology accepted.