The Dish

Curiouser and curiouser.

A REAL COMMENCEMENT SPEECH: Jon Stewart nails it.

HARD ROCK VS. CHOMSKY: Here’s a delightful interview with rock star, John Schaffer, of the heavy metal group, Iced Earth, by a young Chomsky-reading Canadian leftist for the online magazine, Brave Words and Brass Knuckles. Money quote:

BW&BK: “This next question is controversial so I’m letting you know before we proceed. Some political analysts have articulated the view that what happened on September 11 was justified due to America’s presence in the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia. Some political analysts view it as retaliation for what the US has done in the Middle East in the past. As a Canadian, I’m interested in hearing what you have to say about this view that’s been put forth by analysts.”

JS: “No, it wasn’t justified. Not at all. And anybody who says so needs to have their fuckin’ head examined.”

BW&BK: “Do you think 9/11-will be-viewed as the first event in the US empire’s decline and fall?”

JS: “No. This is not an empire, first of all. If-the United States-was an empire, your country would be our 51st state.”

BW&BK: “I understand.”

No he doesn’t understand. Read the whole thing. Parts of it are marvelous.

You knew he’d have to find some way to deflect attention from the fact that Sarin was confirmed in an insurgent bomb in Iraq. And, sure enough, he did. His kicker: “Whether the shell came from inside or outside Iraq has yet to be determined.”

KRAUTHAMMER ON GAS: I was only kidding when I said that “you read it here first” in mentioning Charles Krauthammer’s sane endorsement of a gas tax. Both he and Gregg Easterbrook have been in support of this for a long, long time, and didn’t need any prompting from yours truly. In fact, Charles was advocating this as far back as the mid-1980s, when it might have made a real difference. He was ignored then. He’ll be ignored today. But he’s still right.

You knew I couldn’t resist, didn’t you?

Two hare-brained ideas floated in this blog seem to have gained some traction. Raising gas taxes gets support from Easterbrook and Krauthammer. A Kerry-McCain ticket gets an endorsement from Hillary.

Josh Marshall has just done a survey of his readers. It’s an interesting contrast with mine. First off, the similarities. Josh’s readers are 81 percent male; mine are 85 percent male. This is no big surprise: for some reason, political opinion sites (and magazines) always skew toward the testosteroned. 35 percent of my readers are 35 or under; 29 percent of Josh’s are. 36 percent of my readers are over 45; 46 percent of Josh’s are. In other words, my readers are slightly younger on average than Josh’s. Wealth? 29 percent of Dish readers earn $50,000 or less a year; Josh’s demographic is identical. 35 percent of Dishies earn $100,000 or more; 34 percent of Josh’s do. Politics? Polarization is real. 60 percent of Josh’s readers call themselves “liberal”; only 6 percent of Dishies do the same; 12 percent of Josh’s readership call themselves “New Democrats,” while 9.4 percent of mine call themselves “center-left.” I have more Independents and way more conservatives. My center-right/conservative total amounts to 61 percent of the total; Josh’s “liberal/New Democrat” coalition amounts to 72 percent of his readers. My readership, in other words, is slightly more diverse in political opinion than Josh’s – but not an awful lot. That either implies, I guess, that Josh is preaching more to the choir than I do and is more ideologically homogeneous in his views – or it means that liberals are more open-minded and read people with whom they might often disagree. I’m not sure that any of this amounts to much. But it is interesting. Meanwhile, I’m thinking: what if Josh and I combined in a pitch to advertizers? We’d cover the entire spectrum of opinion.

Yes, I get anti-Semitic mail. Here’s a classic: “AndJew Sullivan. no, that won’t work … What does it take to be a shill?” Charming.

AN EAGLE NETWORK: An organization has begun bringing together socially liberal, fiscally conservative souls in Britain. It’s called the Wave Network. Check it out.

QUOTE OF THE DAY II: “It’s extremely difficult to govern when you control all three branches of government.” – House Speaker Hastert’s spokesman, John Feehery. He should be careful what he wishes for.

FISKING FOCUS ON THE FAMILY: Josh Foust does a good job on the Christian right group’s poll-tested talking points on marriage rights for gays.

The president’s speech last night gets a B+ rating from yours truly. He did much of what he needed to do, even explaining what has gone on in Fallujah and Karbala and Kufa. It began abruptly, but soon settled down. The critical point that the swift victory over Saddam paradoxically made the occupation more difficult – because Saddam’s minions were able to escape, melt into the population and fight another day – was made early on. Bush could have made more of it – and should do in the weeks ahead. People need to be reminded who the enemy is; and why he’s worth fighting. My own sense of what was new was the clear and emphatic declaration that the transfer of sovereignty June 30 will be real. That’s critical – and critical to deliver. I also liked the way the president unapologetically linked what we are doing in Iraq with the broader war on terror. Critics like to believe that Saddam was somehow utterly unconnected to broader terror, had no potential to enable it, and was too secular to cooperate with al Qaeda. They’re wrong on all counts. In the wake of 9/11, a Saddam-Zarqawi alliance would have been a terrible threat. Now we have a Baathist-Zarqawi insurgency. And we have had a year to defeat it. Threading the needle of sovereignty, transfer of power, battling terrorism and coordinating elections is still a massive undertaking. But I was reassured by the president’s speech. It’s a beginning. He now has to make a version of it again and again and again. He is up against a press corps determined to make this transition fail, in order to defeat a Bush presidency. He will need true grit to withstand it.

STILL DEFENSIVE: But I must also add some comments about the manner of Bush’s speech. He seemed exhausted, which is hardly surprising. But he also seemed defensive. He doesn’t want to concede errors, because, in this polarized climate, the opposition will seize on them for their own narrow purposes. But he should trust the public and dwell more on the inevitable setbacks and failures of warfare. He should not be afraid to tell us when we have suffered losses. He should not be wary of conceding that he and everyone else under-estimated the strength and tenacity of the insurgency. He still seems brittle to me in his accounts of what has transpired. It makes optimism less credible and hope more elusive.

“Some say that the US must withdraw from Iraq right now for the best of Iraqis; I say, Ok, the US withdrew from Somalia a long time ago and what was the result? What’s Somalia like now?
Humanity, in its nature, has an inclination to move forwards and those people are acting against this nature and once again I tell you that their job is very easy and it won’t need much to be done while my job is a hard one that needs a lot but I’m not giving it up.
A prosperous and democratic Iraq will be a reality; it’s just a matter of time. Everyone should believe in this, more than this, we should start to feel it from this moment and the obstacles we’re facing right now will be a history that we would only discuss in the future to get some lessons from.
Finally, I have a question to the anti-change and to our friends in the biased media wherever they might be; if all your stories were true and if we were wrong about everything we did, what suggestions would you offer to make things better? what are your plans?
What?! What did you say? I’m listening.” – Mohammed, on the indispensable Iraqi, blog, Iraq the Model.

THE U.N.’S SEX ABUSE SCANDAL: You probably won’t read much about this. no photos, after all. But U.N. soldiers in the Congo have been allegedly sexually exploiting rape victims in refugee camps. (Hat tip: Michael Moynihan.)

THE WEDDING PARTY: I owe you a further explanation. I’m impressed by the fact that the military found plenty of evidence that the bombed site was indeed a way-station for foreign terrorists to infiltrate Iraq. Whether “wedding party” innocents were also killed is still unclear. Belmont Club has a useful examination of the nuances. But what is undeniable is that this was not a strike at a mere party caused by celebratory gunfire, which was the initial party-line. It was a legitimate military target. If civilians were killed, the responsibility lies with those terrorists who use civilians as human shields for their deadly work.

The slide in Bush’s approval ratings is almost entirely due to Republicans’ losing faith, according to the Washington Post poll:

Bush’s political standing has been weakened by an erosion in support among independents and by signs of potential disaffection among his typically rock-solid Republican base. Democrats continue to give the president low marks across the board.
A month ago Bush’s job approval rating stood at 51 percent, and virtually all of the decline since then is attributable to a drop of 7 percentage points among Republicans.

Interesting. I wonder which Republicans and why. My hunch: Bush is seeing the support of libertarians and fiscal conservatives wane. And with his expansion of the nanny-state and huge spending increases, you can see why. But Kerry still cannot make the sell. By the way, I’m not too impressed with the Zogby poll showing Kerry winning in many battleground states. It’s an online poll, and I cannot even find the data on how many people in each state participated. Enough said.

OLD EUROPE VERSUS NEW EUROPE: Geitner Simmons explains how Chancellor Schroder is trying to export Germany’s high-tax economic torpor to the Eastern European tigers. If they don’t want it, he’s going to try and force it upon them.

A must-read analysis on National Review Online.