This gives you a sense of the vibe among some on the religious right today. It’s from GodTube.com. The official caption reads:
This video depicts the attitude that the body of Christ needs to embrace for these days that we are living. To be offensive in the advance of the Kingdom of God.
Jim Geraghty has the mayor’s back on his Ground Zero visits and Yankees game attendance.
A heart-breaking but also encouraging story from Buffalo, New York, about a cop and her partner.
Well, he won’t have his head chopped off, but the parallels are interesting. A reader writes:
Of course, historical analogies can be very treacherous and they never hold at every point. That said, like you and Horton I have been struck by the many resemblances between George W. Bush and Charles I. Neither man was stupid in the ordinary sense of the word, but neither had the intellectual capacity required by the position in which fate placed him. Both were genuinely devoted to, and determined to protect, their respective countries and both inflicted frightful harm on the principles that made their countries worthy of that devotion. Both were menaced by actual danger from malevolent enemies. Both had wise advisers whom they ignored or marginalized. Both clung doggedly to policies that everyone else could see had failed. And neither was capable of even the mildest self-criticism. "It would be unjust to deny," says Macaulay,
"that Charles had some of the qualities of a good and even of a great prince … Faithlessness was the cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on his memory. He was, in truth, impelled by an incurable propensity to dark and crooked ways. It may seem strange that his conscience, which, on occasions of little moment, was sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproached him with this great vice. But there is reason to believe that he was perfidious, not only from constitution and from habit, but also on principle. He seems to have learned from the theologians he most esteemed … that he could not, even if he would, divest himself of his despotic authority; and that, in every promise which he made, there was an implied reservation that such promise might be broken in case of necessity, and that of the necessity he was the sole judge."
Add "lawyers" to "theologians" and much of what we have seen over the past six years is right there – signing statements, illegal surveillance, dismissal of the insufficiently servile, the rule of law displaced by his naked will, and all of this accompanied by the willingness to tar those opposed to his designs as traitors. And unlike England in the 1640’s, we have no Hampdens and Pyms in our parliament.
The threat is apparently growing.
My first post stands. This does not seem to me to be an attack – even a veiled one – on Senator Clinton:
That one of the most important things that we need to know about the next President of the United States is, is he somebody that shares our values? Is he somebody that respects family? Is a good and decent person? So our view was that, if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House. So, so we”ve adjusted our schedules to make sure that our girls are first, so while he’s traveling around, I do day trips. That means I get up in the morning, I get the girls ready, I get them off, I go and do trips, I’m home before bedtime. So the girls know that I was gone somewhere, but they don’t care. They just know that I was at home to tuck them in at night, and it keeps them grounded, and, and children, the children in our country have to know that they come first. And our girls do and that’s why we’re doing this. We’re in this race for not just our children, but all of our children.
I haven’t written on this hideous story about dog-fighting and the NFL because it seems obvious to me what is wrong about it. In a word: cruelty. It’s a vice we don’t talk of much, but it is essentially the aspect of the human psyche that sees a vulnerable person, animal or thing, and exploits that vulnerability with further violence or power. It’s evil. It’s why I despise torture in every form. It is not just the absence of love or respect; it’s the active presence of its opposite. And animals, creatures over which we have near total control or dominion, are more vulnerable to such cruelty than many humans. Vick is an inhumane bully, an exemplum of cruelty and arrogance. That’s all I have to say, although Dusty and Eddy may enjoy this.
Cut but don’t run too fast. Bribe the Sunni Arab governments to keep Iraq from falling apart. Install a Sunni in Baghdad. Allawi? Get an Israel-Palestinian deal of sorts. Pray. That’s Douglas Davis’ take in the Spectator of London. Sounds pretty desperate to me, and I have no knowledge if it’s for real. It may well be the case that we need to firm up the Sunnis to avoid a total collapse or genocide. But trying to prop up a Sunni regime in a Shia majority country we liberated seems to me a fool’s errand. Whatever else we fought for, it wasn’t to keep the Saudis happy.
There are also rumors, however, of something quite surprising that might happen in September. Petraeus may disappoint Hewitt and the Weimar brigade and call for a serious but gradual drawdown of troops along the lines of Warner and Lugar. The reason is an obvious one: the total impasse on the political front and military deployment limits. The Maliki government is more dysfunctional than ever; and its sectarian agenda harder to conceal. It would take some sort of miracle to extend surge-level forces beyond next March. Such a drawdown, of course, is perilous and could well lead to even more violence and mayhem in Iraq, which may, in turn, mean the need to accelerate withdrawal. Will we have another Vietnam-style rush to the helicopters? It would mean a lot of helicopters and a serious rush.
Fred’s cruising for a bruising. And you have to hand it to Lane Hudson for making his life difficult. He has a track record: Hudson started the chain of events that brought down Mark Foley.
Megan investigates.
