The Dish

There are legitimate debates to be had about the relationship between carbon dioxide and global warming (although I think the debate is now overwhelmingly in favor of those arguing for a close and increasingly dangerous connection). But I know of no one who has any clue about the issue saying something like this:

Just as you shouldn’t go grocery shopping when you’re hungry, you probably shouldn‚Äôt discuss climate policy during a heatwave … Because the thing about this global warming thing is that it’s [sic] effects aren’t global. The Southern hemisphere, for instance, is having a pretty frigid time right now, with snow in South Africa (as Kathryn pointed out yesterday) and some real ‘brass monkeys’ (as we’d say in the UK) in Argentina and New Zealand.  And even in the US, a friend of a friend in Alaska on a fishing trip says it is so cold and stormy out there they can’t get out on the water.

I would have thought that even a minimal understanding of global warming would grasp that indeed it will result in many parts of the earth getting much colder. No: increasing heat-waves in the US do not prove anything as such (they’re just the latest in a mass of data pointing in one direction). But the idea that because there’s a cold snap in South Africa, global warming is a hoax is, well, the kind of thing you now read at National Review.

Between them, Bush and Rove have managed to eviscerate what was left of conservative coherence. E.J. Dionne gets a whiff of the stench around the corpse.

No community-theater linguists allowed – but you can now become a new recruit at the age of 42.

Bill Clinton is no fool. He knows who the real Democratic front-runner is, and it isn’t his wife.

Was Dick Cheney’s version of his shooting Harry Whittington a complete fabrication? Here’s an on-site investigation. The persuasive claim of the video: Harry Whittington was shot at close range, between 15 and 18 feet, not the 90 claimed by Dick Cheney and the Secret Service. Make your own mind up.

A reader writes:

I am remiss at not writing long ago to thank you for continuing your "window" offerings.
I am a moderate democrat, and a grandmother whose only grandson, a Marine, will soon be on his way back to Iraq. I tend to agree with you on most issues, and I hope I will live long enough to see gay marriage a reality, and a significant decline in Christianist influence.
I read your blog daily, and consider you one of the voices of reason amid all the noise. I feel sad and anxious about the state of our world. When my grandson goes back to Iraq, I face another 7 months of holding my breath, and waiting for that dreaded knock on the door.
As I read your blog, every one of those window views that pops up gives me a brief moment of peace. Thank you.

Thank me? Thank the readers of this blog. In an insane world, small glimpses of normal life – the life the media rarely covers – can be curiously calming.

An unexpected guest dropped by yesterday afternoon. I live twenty yards away from this baby sea-lion who wandered onto the beach for what the animal control people described as a rest. He chilled for a while, and then plopped back into the bay.

A reader writes:

Today you wrote:

"It’s amazing that a president who claims to see the world in black and white, and good and evil, sees the question of torture as one full of gray."

It’s not amazing, it’s human nature. 

We’ve always seen the evil other people do in clear terms of black-and-white, and our own evil is always lost in a fog of gray. We grant ourselves vast swaths of nuance, while demanding clarity from others. Our enemies’ motives are always clear and wrong, our own always justified and right.

It‚Äô’s a story as old as time. You’ll find it told in the Illiad, in the Bible, in Shakespeare and Dickens, in Mark Twain and Sinclair Lewis. Heck, you’ll find it in "The Sopranos" and any sitcom.

To find this amazing you’d have to believe we are really different from our forebearers, that our own apple fell across the street from the tree. The human condition didn’t change because we have better technology, technology just distracts us from ourselves more efficiently.

But it is also possible to make the effort to resist this inevitable distortion of human nature. What is amazing about the Christianists is not that they fail at this effort; but that they do not even try.

It’s from a major political campaign speech:

"America’s armed forces need better equipment, better training and better pay … A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam: When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming … I don’t have enemies to fight. I have no stake in the bitter arguments of the last few years. I want to change the tone of Washington to one of civility and respect … We’re learning to protect the natural world around us. We will continue this progress, and we will not turn back … to lead this nation to a responsibility era, that president himself must be responsible. So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to … uphold the laws of our land … I will not attack a part of this country because I want to lead the whole of it …"

Yep, you guessed right.

So now the Pentagon confirms what most of us have known for a while: Iraq is in the middle of a sectarian, civil war, and it could get much much worse. Now, remind me: what did Rumsfeld tell the Congress only six months ago? Here’s a useful reminder. Three words: Fire Rumsfeld Now.