Category: The Dish

I’ll try not to be jealous. Money quote:

"A community formed overnight," Serin said in an interview. "It wasn’t a very positive community."

Heh.

Fascinating demographic research about who exactly is accessing the wesbites of Clinton, Obama and Edwards. Clinton’s here; Obama’s here; Edwards’ is here.

This piece in the Los Angeles Times strikes me as very important. One fact in plain sight about this administration is that they failed both to prevent 9/11 and to catch its perpetrators. Now, the misbegotten war in Iraq may actually be helping to finance the group that murdered so many innocents on 9/11:

A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads on his whereabouts, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of Al Qaeda operatives and money into Pakistan’s tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation.

In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda’s command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network’s operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.

The influx of money has bolstered Al Qaeda’s leadership ranks at a time when the core command is regrouping and reasserting influence over its far-flung network. The trend also signals a reversal in the traditional flow of Al Qaeda funds, with the network’s leadership surviving to a large extent on money coming in from its most profitable franchise, rather than distributing funds from headquarters to distant cells.

Al Qaeda’s efforts were aided, intelligence officials said, by Pakistan’s withdrawal in September of tens of thousands of troops from the tribal areas along the Afghanistan border where Bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, are believed to be hiding.

Little more than a year ago, Al Qaeda’s core command was thought to be in a financial crunch. But U.S. officials said cash shipped from Iraq has eased those troubles. "Iraq is a big moneymaker for them," said a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official.

The story raises as many questions as it answers. But if it’s true that the occupation of Iraq has not only emboldened Iran, crippled the U.S. military, and damaged our moral standing in the world, but has also provided a financial lifeline to al Qaeda then the sheer magnitude of the damage this administration has done to national security is hard to fathom. This much I know, however. If Bush were a Democrat, the Republicans would have impeached him by now for reckless endangerment of the security of the United States.

A reader remembers a classic Marx Brothers line that almost perfectly sums up the rationale for the Romney candidacy:

"Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others."

"I won’t be posting much about Ron Paul during this campaign. The highest office he’ll ever hold is probably his current one, and that frustrates me just as it does his more ardent supporters. But his continued presence as a candidate is important as a public service if nothing else. That’s confirmed by the strangely disproportionate attention he’s getting from the Titular Right. Paul is their mirror, an unsettling reminder of what they’ve become during the past six years.

I have no doubt they’ll keep trying to break that mirror, which is why Paul should keep doing exactly what he’s doing," – Cunning Realist.

From emails, it appears some of you think I’ve endorsed Paul. Please. I’m nowhere near as isolationist as he is. And he’s polling at zero percent. My view is simply that he is a particularly timely breath of fresh air in the fetid swamp that has become American conservatism. Anyone who loves democracy – who loves debate and and exchange of ideas – should be grateful he has expanded the range of thought within the primaries of the GOP. And it says a huge amount about the degeneracy of the current right that their response is to try and smear him and silence him. They don’t get liberty, do they? And I don’t think they realize yet the scale of what’s coming to them.

A reader writes:

In "Falwell’s Legacy" your reader wrote:

"the classic definition of conservatism (smaller government + lower taxes = more personal liberty and a stronger, freer republic) has been on life support since the right sold their souls and went after the wallace voters in ’68 and then embraced falwell in ’80."

The Bush/Cheney/Gonzalez/Rove "unitary executive" effort has given the conservative movement one more thing to face down: authoritarianism. As you rightly said, conservatism is historically about smaller government. The "unitary executive" as a concept and as a policy could not be more the opposite of this, yet it is what conservatism stands for, at least in large part, in early 21st century American politics.

Could there a better example of it and how far it’s reached into our culture than Mitt "aims to please" Romney offering to double the size of Guantanamo?  Short of jack-booted thugs checking people’s citizen ID cards, I can’t think of any. Thank god we’re not there. Yet.

The "double Guantanamo" moment should indeed define Romney. It was a moment when he said something literally meaningless in order to appease and whip up hysteria on the far-right. How exactly, after all, does one "double Gitmo"? Go out to the Muslim world and round people up? Rudy’s proud authoritarianism is worn on his sleeve. Romney’s tailored cuffs are far harder to discern, but just as troubling.

Tucson, Arizona, 3 pm.

For an interactive gallery of Dish readers’ window views across the world, click here.

A reader writes:

I am a small town lawyer in a vital small town. As the building trades are extremely active here, Hispanics are the fasting growing minority by far. Large general contractors avoid the potential pitfalls of hiring illegal immigrants by hiring as many subcontractors (framing, plumbing, roofing, etc) as possible.  But the number of Hispanics here has reached critical mass.  In order to be competitive in the market, one must use Hispanic labor. Therefore, the subcontractors, who do only one thing, are the ones stuck with the potential risk of using illegal immigrants.

A recent event epitomizes some facets of the immigration problem you might find interesting. Client needs a substantial addition to his house.  The lowest bidder by far (40% lower) is 100% Mexican. They are paid in cash. They do an extremely fine job, probably better than any non-Mexican group. But they are not able to do all the work (plumbing for instance) and a sub is found.  This one does not hire immigrants. He comes on site, sees the Mexicans at work, gets back in his vehicle screaming about the G-D Mexicans, and drives away from the site, never to return.

This example is important for many reasons. First, from the consumer’s point of view, this is a no-brainer. The quality of the work is outstanding and cheap. Second, there is no big business ripping off the Mexicans in this example, as the group itself is Mexican and undercuts the market because it does not pay social security, medical insurance or worker’s compensation, and the workers live more cheaply than people who know they will be living here forever. Third, the level of hostility that is beginning to surface is palpable.

I am sure the problem has many more faces than we see here in the building trades, but I think it safe to say the problem defies simple analysis. It is multivariable.

"Many of the predictions that Chuck [Hagel] made about how the war might go have come true. A lot of us still believe that some of his early predictions – that this was going to be a very tough project – have proven to be accurate," – Senate Minority leader, Mitch McConnell, in Nebraska. It’s going to be an interesting September, isn’t it?

Unleashed against women in Tehran. Warning: very disturbing image.