Category: The Dish

Norm Geras makes what is increasingly a minority case among Americans:

The intentional targeting of civilians is a war crime, and not just the use of nuclear weapons against them. That is why terrorism is a criminal act. So is the carpet-bombing of population centres. I also agree that one shouldn’t treat international law as if it were a system without blemishes, imperfections, problems – to be remedied and improved upon….

On the other hand, to dismiss the concept of crime from the conduct of war would amount, in effect, to allowing that war may be lawless – fought without moral restraints of any kind, only strategic ones. …Whatever the deficits of international law may be at present, the world would be a different, and a worse, place if there were no laws of war and no concept of war crimes.

Norm is responding to this.

Ponnuru counts them:

The Giuliani bandwagon includes conservative commentator John Podhoretz, New York Post columnist Ryan Sager, American Spectator reporters Philip Klein and Jennifer Rubin, and the editors of the New York Sun. Several writers affiliated with NR or National Review Online are also on board. David Frum and David Pryce-Jones are formally affiliated with the Giuliani campaign. Richard Brookhiser has endorsed the former mayor’s run, as has Lisa Schiffren. Deroy Murdock regularly turns out supportive commentary.

Murdock is the columnist who argues that Americans should be proud – proud – of torturing prisoners. Just an appetizer for next year if Giuliani wins the nomination. it will be a campaign, I predict, whose central pillar will be deporting immigrants, waging war, and torturing prisoners. And it will have a powerful resonance for the Fox News base.

These book covers cracked me up. "Let’s Go To Iraq!" They’re all supposed to be taken seriously, or were at some time or other. You can buy the book here. Hat tip: Paper Cuts.

How to price a product and account for its health costs at the same time.

From the work of Jason Salavon, courtesy of Kottke, who adds:

You may remember Mr. Salavon from his composite photographs and videos of blowjobs, late night talk show hosts, and Playboy centerfolds.

A brief tour through the raciest right-wing programming out there:

Hat tip: Nerve.com.

The West has a duty and an opportunity right now: we need to do all we can to give assistance to those Bangladeshis whose lives have been destroyed by the recent cyclone. It’s at moments like these that we can push back against Islamists and help bolster support for and fondness of the US. Of course, we should help because it is just the right thing to do. But it is also strategically shrewd – a useful reminder that strength does not always means bombs and soldiers; it can also stem from clear moral standards and humanitarian care.

We just got "Ratatouille" from Netflix. That’s on the agenda for tonight chez Sully. Beats parsing Nixon in a pant-suit on CNN. Part of me is curious enough to want to go see "Redacted" in the theater, but Aaron has come to hate something he once loved: the grimy, sticky floors, the rip-off munchies, the idiot with the cell-phone, the non-stop chatterers, the poky, ill-ventilated multiplex rooms, and on and on. John Patterson sums up my feelings pretty well:

I didn’t have to rob any banks to fund my massive TV and thundering sound system. It wouldn’t kill me to save up for a customised DVD projector with a 12-ft canvas screen and perfect clarity; I have a quote on one for just over $2,000. This would transform my living room into a private screening salon just like any studio mogul’s, except that my guests can smoke, drink, make out, pause the picture and yell at the screen. NetFlix enables me to programme my bills as perversely as I wish without even leaving the house. And since I’m the boss-feller, the DVD dictator, the moviehouse Mussolini, I can unilaterally ban popcorn, which to my nostrils has a far more offensive odour than fags or vomit, and immediately eject idiots who leave their cellphones on.

Honestly, with all that available, why should I ever hit the multiplex again?

He means cigarettes, by the way.

In stencil anyway. More here.

Some brutal data:

Overall, family incomes have risen for both blacks and whites over the past three decades. But in a society where the privileges of class and income most often perpetuate themselves from generation to generation, black Americans have had more difficulty than whites in transmitting those benefits to their children.

Forty-five percent of black children whose parents were solidly middle class in 1968 — a stratum with a median income of $55,600 in inflation-adjusted dollars — grew up to be among the lowest fifth of the nation’s earners, with a median family income of $23,100. Only 16 percent of whites experienced similar downward mobility. At the same time, 48 percent of black children whose parents were in an economic bracket with a median family income of $41,700 sank into the lowest income group.

But Booker Rising blogger Shay has some methodology questions.