A history of world warfare since World War II, dramatized by the food stuffs of the various powers. Yes: so those battling pieces of battered cod: they’re the Brits. Sushi? Yep. The US? Hamburgers and fries, of course. Enjoy:
Bush and AIDS
No one should diminish the scope of his effort in Africa. As someone who lives with the virus, I’m grateful, surprised, and impressed. Now, let’s refund PEPFAR and end that Jesse Helms travel ban.
The Pure Luck Of McCain
A really insightful post from Ross:
He was lucky, to begin with, that George W. Bush lacked an heir apparent – no Jeb, no Condi, no Dick Cheney – who could unite the movement establishment against him. He was lucky that Mitt Romney was a Mormon. He was lucky that Fred Thompson, a candidate who might have succeeded in rallying both social and economic conservatives against his various heresies, was out-campaigned by Mike Huckabee, whose appeal was ultimately too sectarian to make him a threat. He was lucky that Rudy Giuliani ran an inutterably lousy campaign…
And on it goes.
A New Monasticism?
Even evangelicals are being drawn to the calling to withdraw from the world:
Ours is a time of rapid social change. We are post-modern, post-Cold War, post-9/11, even post-Christian. All signs point to change, and we know things aren’t what they used to be. But we hardly know who we are. Amidst wars and rumors of war, our global identity crisis threatens to consume us.
But we have hope. The Holy Spirit is stirring in the places overlooked by Empire to raise up a new monastic movement. We don’t know yet what this movement of the Spirit will become. “New Monasticism” is the language we’re using to talk about it in the meantime.
Full story here.
Obama In Brooklyn
A reader writes:
Contra your speculation, my guess would be that Obama’s strength in NYC comes mainly from Brooklyn, not Manhattan. Brooklyn = Minorities + Overeducated White Youth; Manhattan = Rich Old People + Tourists + Harlem.
All of the black politicos in Brooklyn are lining up behind Obama; not so the Harlem powers-that-be. Everywhere you go in brownstone Brooklyn you seem Obama stencils and posters; I’d be really surprised if the closeness of the NYC race wasn’t emerging from this dynamic.
Priorities
A reader writes:
I don’t think the fact that Democrats want to help the uninsured and Republicans don’t is any great surprise.
What shocks the hell out of me is that by a 12% margin, Democrats are more interested in reducing the budget deficit. Barely half of Republicans even care. What ever happened to what was supposedly the party of fiscal responsibility? Dick Cheney was right. Deficits don’t matter, at least not to Republicans.
McCain And The Neocons
Bainbridge worries about the senator’s statist and interventionist rhetoric:
McCain has a lot more in common with TR and Bill Kristol than Ronald Reagan. And that’s damned scary. Why? If the Bush era has taught us nothing else, it is that we must be skeptical of interventionist foreign policies whether grounded in the national greatness “conservatism” of a Teddy Roosevelt or the neo-"conservatism" of a Bill Kristol. It produced a foreign policy quagmire that eviscerated any opportunity to advance the conservative agenda at home, as I’ve complained in more detail elsewhere. Importantly when it comes to McCain, his interventionism is fundamentally contrary to the traditions of mainstream conservatism. We can complain about various McCain positions, like McCain-Feingold, but in a sense those are tactical issues. Here is where, in my opinion, McCain fundamentally goes off the reservation. After all, as Russell Kirk wrote:
Are we to saturation-bomb most of Africa and Asia into righteousness, freedom, and democracy? And, having accomplished that, however would we ensure persons yet more unrighteous might not rise up instead of the ogres we had swept away? … In short, deliberate entry into war commonly brings on consequences disagreeable even to the seeming victors. Prudent statesmen long have known that armed conflict, for all involved, ought to be the last desperate resort, to be entered upon only when all means of diplomacy, conciliation, and compromise have been exhausted.
Query whether Teddy Roosevelt or Bill Kristol would ascribe to those principles?
Trees Reviewed
Steven Frank goes where few critics have gone before:
A tree generally consists of a straight, vertical middle section (the "trunk") with several smaller sections ("branches") coming off of it. Sometimes the branches will have leaves or fruit, although it is extremely difficult to tell, without specific training in advance, which trees will offer these features and which won’t. This is an area where user experience could be improved.
Hat tip: Chris Glass
Quote For The Day
"See, because I had the nerve to tell the unvarnished truth about Bill Clinton the sexual predator, I’ve been called a liar by more so-called "journalists" than I can count. My every utterance has been parsed and examined, just like yours will be," – Kathleen Willey, in an open letter to Barack Obama.
How Edwards Helps Obama
A reader’s thesis:
Edwards dropped out the day after Florida, not yesterday or the day before. It steps on Hillary’s Florida spin. But endorsing Obama today would be too transparent…plus it’d give up the opportunity to have some influence on another news cycle later in the week. Edwards dropping out now is a huge boost for Obama. In the big states like California and New York, Edwards cuts into Obama’s base. Obama is going to win the rural states anyway, as evidenced by Iowa, rural Nevada, and rural New Hampshire (the western part, away from the Mass border) which all voted for Obama. This is bad news for American because Edwards had important things to say, but it’s good news for the Obama campaign…
