An Annapolis Joke

Blake Hounshell wonks out:

An Israeli and a Palestinian are watching a Western. In the movie, a cowboy is riding bareback on a particularly wild horse. The Israeli, being aggressive, says to the Palestinian, "I’ll bet you 10 shekels he falls." The Palestinian, being impulsive, replies immediately, "I’ll bet you he doesn’t."

The cowboy falls, and the Palestinian forks over 10 shekels. The Israeli, feeling that famous Israeli guilt, refuses them. Then he admits, "I’ve seen this movie before."

The Palestinian replies, "So have I. But I thought he would learn from his mistake."

Hey, it kills them at Brookings. Still: not quite as good as my favorite Middle Eastern joke:

Q: Why do you never want to date an Israeli?

A: Because they always say they’re going to pull out and they never do.

After Lebanon, maybe we should change that to "Republican".

PC HRC

I mean the Human Rights Campaign, not She Who Is Inevitable. Their latest commissioned poll of "LGB"s, i.e. lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, has the following demographics: 51 percent gay/lesbian/homosexual and 49 percent bisexual. On what planet is that a representative sample of any actual population? Ditto: 51 percent female. I don’t know any demographer who thinks that lesbians and gay men have equal numbers in a fictional lesbian-gay community. So the poll is designed to reflect a pre-ordained political "community", rigged for PC purposes to inflate the numbers of bisexuals and lesbians. No big surprise which Democratic candidate won in a landslide: the candidate HRC has been supporting from the start.

Hence Huckabee’s Appeal, I Guess

"Honestly, this is getting ridiculous. Giuliani won’t fire a pedophile priest from his payroll no matter how it might look for his campaign. He pushed his incompetent, mobbed-up henchman for Homeland Security Secretary and, terrifyingly, almost got his wish. He blew 9/11 when he ignored advice and based his emergency command center in the WTC. Why? Apparently so that he could use the lavishly furnished site as an adulterous love nest. The guy has a messianic infallibility complex that would make the President blush.

I can sort of get the 9/11 aura that convinced the GOP to let Giuliani throw his hat in the ring, but at some point the party needs to think about staging an intervention. With Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley (and, soon, practically the entire Alaskan Congressional delegation) so fresh in the nation’s memory is this guy really the best face that the GOP can put forward?" – Tim F at Balloon Juice.

Huckabee On Torture

Not so fast:

For the most part, Huckabee told reporters after speaking in Cedar Rapids on Thursday morning, U.S. policy ought to be to "never support anything done to others that we would not want done to our own soldiers."

As to waterboarding, "I would defer to John McCain for this simple reason: John McCain has been tortured and nobody else running for president has,” the former Arkansas governor said. "I’m not about to stand on any stage in America and act like I know more about torture than John McCain does."

What does "for the most part" translate to? This:

Huckabee would leave decisions about the appropriateness of the technique "because of a unique situation" to commanders in the field.

If it’s illegal, it’s illegal. No commander-in-chief grants commanders the power to overrule the laws of war. But his position is better than Giuliani’s or Romney’s.

The Hillary “Plant”

Funny how a trivial subplot becomes the main story, innit? I don’t see any evidence of underhand manipulation from Clinton here, just incompetent vetting by CNN. Still: it shouldn’t have happened. And the fact that it did was probably just enthusiasm on CNN’s part to have such a vivid questioner. And, of course, yes, I suppose CNN’s producers are more likely to support lifting the ban. Most non-fundies are. My take on the actual, you know, issue here is below.

Dissent Of The Day

A reader on Huckabee:

While I despise the "what would Jesus do?" mindset ("original intent" to the nth) and regard Christianism as a major threat to our democracy, I thought Huckabee’s "Jesus was too smart to run for public office" response to the death penalty question was kind of brilliant. You found it a "cheapening of Jesus’ radical injunction to forswear worldly power and wealth"  — I thought it was a dead-on voiceover of "render under Caesar what is Caesar’s."

The thing is, Huckabee has been Caesar, i.e. has had to make the life-and-death decisions, which he spoke of rather movingly (not glibly, though I can’t gauge his sincerity). What he said, in effect, was that Jesus offered no direct guidance to worldly rulers about what to do when the apparent demands of public welfare (or security) clash w/ the dictates of the Sermon on the Mount.  In a way he was also saying he would have been ‘smarter’ to stay a minister rather than enter politics – there’s that humility reflex, real or faked, which is part of his appeal.  More to the point,, "Jesus couldn’t (wouldn’t) tell me outright what to do as governor." There’s an unBushlike shunning of certainty there that’s also part of his appeal.

Another reader adds:

But what about his discussion of immigration? That really impressed me.

It was clear he believes in the dignity of everyone, really believes it, instinctively, and instead of pandering to the worst sentiments of his party, he stood up and said, why punish children? Why not let them succeed?

Romney on the other hand, probably wouldn’t have opposed allowing children of illegal immigrants who had gone to Mass. schools to compete for scholarships, but he was happy to make a big deal out of it because someone told him that Republicans don’t like brown people. The exchange was as enlightening as Mitt’s craven discussion with McCain on waterboarding. I like Huckabee because he isn’t angry and he doesn’t hate people and he isn’t going to pretend he does. Yes, his demonstrative religiosity is worth watching, but as far as I have seen he doesn’t play up torture or racism or nativism, in other words fear, and that really is something in his party.