The Dish

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown speaks during a joint press conference with US President George W. Bush at Camp David, Maryland, 30 July 2007. By Jim Watson/Getty.

That’s the claim. Greg Djerejian is having none of it:

I don’t know precisely when or how a middle-ranking power like Iran–rivaled in its immediate neighborhood alone by the likes of Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan–has somehow metamorphosed into America’s mega-foe thereby presenting us with a full-blown  "Cold War II" (I kid you not, do click through the link), but apparently among a certain bien pensant Beltway set this is what passes for foreign policy deep-think these days. I know I will be accused by some alienated or disgruntled readers for engaging in foreign policy analysis via resort to heaping doses of condescension, but apart from pleading time constraints (in terms of not spelling out in more detail the bill of particulars re: why this is so absurd), really, this is one of those res ipsa type things, no?

Hilzoy splutters:

OMG: A Green Curtain!!1! And what is it exactly that has made Iran’s shadow grow so large and menacing? Could it be … SATAN?? No. It was us.

We had the clever idea of ending several decades of successful containment of Iran by cleverly transforming Iraq from Iran’s biggest regional counterweight into a chaotic failed state "led", if that is the right word, by people with close ties to Iran.

In the process, we even more cleverly pinned our troops down right where Iran could get at them, and gave them every incentive to do what they could to keep us tied down there by hinting that as soon as we were finished with Iraq, it would be time to take down Teheran. We can’t get out unless the Maliki government succeeds, and so even though it is led by Shi’as and friendly to Iran, we are funding and supporting it, and trying to do so without empowering Iran, which is, um, impossible. At the same time, we are trying to contain Iranian influence in the region and mollify our increasingly nervous Sunni allies by by selling lots and lots of weapons — $20 billion worth — to the delightful government of Saudi Arabia. But guess what? Saudi Arabia is arming — of course — the insurgents who are fighting against the Maliki government — the very same government that we are trying to prop up!

Mark Kleiman begs to differ with the New York Times.

Why letting employers access previously private criminal records might be good for black men looking for work:

The existing empirical evidence suggests that criminal background checks may benefit African American male job applicants as a whole, by permitting employers to sort among ex-cons and those lacking criminal records. In the absence of accurate criminal history information, employers concerned about keeping ex-offenders out of their workplace appear to hire too few African American males – penalizing African American males without criminal records and hiring ex-cons who are members of groups with low offending rates.

"The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility. Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense of a popular phrase) all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world," – G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.

Another installment in George Saunders’ exploration of Americana for the Guardian. This one concerns bears, the feral kind:

A recent headline indicates a number of disturbing American trends: Father Kills Bear Charging At Son With Log.

First of all, who’s giving these animals logs? There’s nothing in the world a respectable bear needs with a log. If that bear has a log, he has it for one reason: to kill somebody…

Oh, wait, hang on. I just went back and read the article. Turns out the father used the log, to kill the bear…

What bothers me about that bear story is this American tendency to step in and do everything for our kids. It would have been better if the father had just handed the kid the log, and said, "Son, throw this, hard, at that bear. Or you’re dead." That way, the kid learns something. I’m sure we’ve all heard the biblical proverb, "If you teach me to fish, I fish for ever; if you kill my fish with your log, next time I’m hungry, I’m just going to come walking up to you with a log and a live fish."

Ross Douthat tackles Kevin Drum on eugenics.

Fred Thompson appears to have come down with a bad case.

The bond between apes and men is sometimes the hand on the face:

"The gesture rarely lasts longer than a few seconds, so it is not easy to see, yet once [primatologist] Wallis told the audience what to look for, the muzzle wipe was clearly evident. Nervous baboons could be seen constantly putting their hands to their faces in difficult situations. She noted that monkeys make a similar move and that a chimpanzee will often put its wrist to its forehead in similar contexts. . . . Humans do put their hand to their face when nervous, and indeed, as she pointed out, psychiatrists and law enforcement officials often interpret a hand-to-face gesture as evidence of uncertainty or even deception."

Further political reflections here.

 

"While Christians respect Islam and desire to dialogue with Muslims, [we] must act to protect the Christian identity of Europe… I believe the Regensburg speech, as it is known, was prophetic… Attempts at the ‘Islamification’ of the West cannot be denied. And the associated danger for the identity of Europe cannot be ignored out of a wrongly understood sense of respect… The Catholic side sees this clearly and says as much," – Georg Ganswein, the Pope’s private secretary.