Category: The Dish

Even more of a non-starter, according to Ross. Agreed. McCain has real problems with his partisan base. Having Lieberman tout his climate change credentials wouldn’t help bring home the uber-cons.

Is it a non-starter?

A reader writes:

I think the patriotism issue is related to the conflation of the Head of State with the Head of Government.  The American president is both of those things, formally and culturally — going all the way back to the first President, who remains, more than any other historical figure, the avatar of America.  Contrast the prime minister in a constitutional monarchy, who is a policymaker only.  The degree to which a particular president’s perceived embodying of the nation requires patriotic reaffirmation — and bars him from calling us to national self-criticism — varies with the historical conditions of the moment.  When, as now, we’re feeling embattled, unsure of our country’s primacy (and its righteousness), more of us neurotically demand that the president be the face-painted superfan.

The current administration has calculatingly stoked this need for its own political gain, and happily gratified it, too.  But in more confident times (and when presidents have truly led), Americans have embraced a president who adheres to Teddy Roosevelt’s view that "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."  (TR would no doubt have agreed with the converse, which is what we’re discussing here, i.e., that it is equally unpatriotic and servile to demand that the president uncritically "stand by" the country.)  What an irony if our rejection of monarchy has led to a state of affairs where our elected executive’s duty to provide an honest diagnosis of the nation’s condition is hamstrung by the demand that he function — like the Queen — as a patriotic symbol.  For most of my lifetime, we’ve been a better, more (small "r") republican people than that.  I audaciously hope that our next President will bring us back to that place.

A reader writes:

"He is reported in evangelical circles to promote the biblical justification for an Obama plague-like presidency."

Heh. If this scenario holds true, Obama likely will preside over a catastrophic terrorist strike on the US, lead us into a bloody war with no clear exit strategy, invite the wrath of God on a major city in the form of a hurricane, and destroy America’s moral standing in the world by authorizing inhuman acts against our enemies.

Nah, that could never happen.

When my conservative friends ask me how I came to like Obama, despite his liberal policies, I really only have one response. On spending, war, debt, torture, executive power, federalism, individual liberty and the size of government: how much worse could it get? Would any far left liberal have done the damage that the Bush Republicans have? And with so little conservative resistance?

Ali Eteraz differs:

Islamic law recognizes abandonment by the biological father. Obama’s Kenyan father abandoned Obama. As such, any religious imprimatur he may have had over Obama — which is already a stretch since the man was an atheist — is null and void. In such a situation, Obama’s mother’s religion is controlling. She was not Muslim. Even if someone makes the argument from patriarchy: that Obama’s paternal grandparents were his rightful guardians, that would fail since they also constructively abandoned him.

There is a corollary issue here: what about the fact that Obama’s second father, the Indonesian, was a "non-practicing Muslim." Doesn’t his faith transfer over to Obama? The answer is no.

This is outside my area of expertise. I’m just glad that the meme that Obama is still a Muslim is no longer currency in informed circles. Luttwak’s point would still hold, of course, if enough Muslims believed it. And the level of paranoia and stupidity in some areas of the Middle East eclipses that in Harlem or West Virginia. But what can anyone do about people willingly believing demonstrable lies?

Obama takes the federalist position and pledges an end to DEA harassment of California’s pot clubs.

"Wouldn’t taking [Karl Rove’s] advice be a little like getting health tips from a funeral home director?" – Bill Burton, Obama spokesman.

An immensely encouraging story in the NYT. "Immensely" because the Iraqi army seems to be the major force here. "Encouraging" because the pushback against Islamism is part of it:

At the College of Fine Arts, female students said they  felt more, but not entirely, free to wear the clothes they liked.

“I used to be challenged for what I wear,” said Athari, a 19-year-old student wearing heavy makeup and a bright orange headscarf pushed high back on her head in the liberal fashion disapproved of by Islamic radicals. “Makeup was forbidden; short skirts were forbidden. I will not mention their name, but they were extremists. They are still here, but quieter now.”

Qais, a music student, spoke of his relief at no longer having to hide his violin in a sack of rice in his trunk.

Most of the students were Shiite, but one youth named Alaa said that he was a Sunni and that 95 percent of his relatives had fled Basra after sectarian killings, including that of his uncle. “I want to thank Mr. Nuri al-Maliki, because he cleaned Basra of murderers, hijackers and thieves,” Alaa said.

This last comment from a Sunni could be in the counter-insurgency handbook. Yes: the gains are obviously fragile and reversible. Yes: Basra is much easier than, say, Mosul or Baghdad because of its relative Shiite homogeneity. But that this calm has come with the Iraqi army, that is reflects on Maliki as much as the British and Americans: these are good things. If we are to leave Iraq, this is surely the best way out.

A reader writes about his struggle with rising gas prices:

Not only is it 25 miles round trip just for me to go to the grocery store, hardware store–any store–but I drive for a living, 150,000 miles a year. With the economy in the dumps, freight has tanked. Because there are too many trucks and not enough freight, many freight rates are flat or lower–and have been since Christmas. Meanwhile, diesel has skyrocketed. It’s hard to tread water…most of the time I feel like I’m sinking. I lose being out on the road working but I cannot afford to stay home either.

So, while the wealthy can afford the increases in fuel and food, and city people at the very least have alternative ways to get around, those of us in the country (and those of us who haul the stuff that everyone buys) are having a very, very hard time. I’d love ‘research into alternatives’; I’d love alternatives period. But while I wait for those–and oil continues to rise–I’ll likely lose my truck and my home of twenty years.

More evidence that nature is not what the Christianists believe:

Yesterday, NPR had a fascinating story about two six year olds who are transgender. You can either read or listen to it here; if you have twenty three minutes, I recommend listening to it. One thing that becomes very clear when you listen to it is that these are not kids (biologically, boys) whose parents put the idea of being girls into their heads. They came up with it on their own. They played with dolls, not trucks; they identified with female characters, not male ones; one decided to go trick or treating as Dorothy when he was two and a half (and that’s not the half of it; read or listen to the story.)