The Dish

A reader writes:

Ordinarily I might be inclined to agree that the soft power of the poodle (the toy variety, of course) could give one pause to wonder, "Who is walking whom?"  But that suggests that Bush is the one at the business end of the leash.  The only tether that really matters in Washington for the next 16 1/2 months is the one Dick Cheney feeds out just far enough to keep himself from accounting for actions done in the name of his own poodle.  In fact, this is more like the kind of child-leash that parents use to give their offspring the illusion of independent action.  The Blair-Poodle is merely an enhancement of the illusion.

Condi Rice says it again. Jeff Weintraub notices.

Michael Ledeen quotes a famous general complaining that

we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers!

I think it’s Michael’s attempt to persuade people that what the media is reporting – the failure of the surge in Iraq – is to be ignored in favor of generals who know how to win the war. Except the quote is from Robert E. Lee. D’oh!

A reader writes:

I don’t even know where to start with your "Dissent of the Day". I’m sure they would dismiss me as "tone-deaf" on Hillary too, but objectively, I can’t grasp what is so special about an ex-president’s wife running for president. I would also love to see a woman president, but not one that owes her prominence to her man. And that is the bottom line with Hillary – without the exposure she got as First Lady, she would not be a Senator or a serious contender to the presidency.  Sorry – it is your "dissenter" that is tone-deaf … and apparently blind.

Hillary Clinton had a chance to pioneer feminism. But she preferred her own ambition to her alleged principles, and when it really came down to it, she deferred to a man. Bill came first, however brutally he humiliated and used her. But she knew her place – and coped by trying to leverage it for more power. A profile in feminist courage she has never been. Too risky. When it comes to feminist pioneering, she’s less Margaret Thatcher than Cory Aquino.

His dedication to using the executive branch (which, natch, he isn’t in) to create a roving extra-legal wing of government, able to detain individuals indefinitely, and torture them, is well-documented. But I didn’t know he essentially spied on and intercepted White House staff to prevent the president getting alternative views:

At the White House, [White House national security lawyer John] Bellinger sent Rice a blunt — and, he thought, private — legal warning. The Cheney-Rumsfeld position would place the president indisputably in breach of international law and would undermine cooperation from allied governments…

One lawyer in his office said that Bellinger was chagrined to learn, indirectly, that Cheney had read the confidential memo and "was concerned" about his advice. Thus Bellinger discovered an unannounced standing order: Documents prepared for the national security adviser, another White House official said, were "routed outside the formal process" to Cheney, too. The reverse did not apply.

Powell asked for a meeting with Bush. The same day, Jan. 25, 2002, Cheney’s office struck a preemptive blow. It appeared to come from Gonzales, a longtime Bush confidant whom the president nicknamed "Fredo." Hours after Powell made his request, Gonzales signed his name to a memo that anticipated and undermined the State Department’s talking points. The true author has long been a subject of speculation, for reasons including its unorthodox format and a subtly mocking tone that is not a Gonzales hallmark.

A White House lawyer with direct knowledge said Cheney’s lawyer, Addington, wrote the memo. Flanigan passed it to Gonzales, and Gonzales sent it as "my judgment" to Bush. If Bush consulted Cheney after that, the vice president became a sounding board for advice he originated himself.

What a total tool Gonzales is. How mortifying to be revealed as someone who, under the guise of Office of Legal Counsel, is just a device for David Addington’s ventriloquism.

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

There’s an art to it. A real life guide from Japanese television about watching the O’Reilly Factor, and how to avoid the worst consequences:

Among the more anachronistic relics of the gay liberation period is the Pride Parade. No mystery why, in Manhattan and other blue-state oases, it’s a dying institution:

"I live in New York, and it’s sort of like every day is Gay Pride Parade," said Matt Davie, 37, an associate publisher at Simon & Schuster, standing in the main room of G Lounge in Chelsea on June 14. "It’s not this special day that I can suddenly throw on my rainbow flag, or whatever. That’s every day. I don’t need this special day where I’m out of the closet."

"We’ve been able to benefit from a lot of things from the Parade and all that it symbolizes, and now you have this option to opt out of it," said Mr. Patton, who goes every year largely because of his work at the Anti-Violence Project. "What you see is a lot of people exercising that option."

He said he and friends who work for gay causes talk often about whether they’d go if they didn’t have to for work. The consensus seems to be that they wouldn’t.

Last week, more than a dozen gay men interviewed at gay bars said they wouldn’t attend the parade (only two said they would: one who said he’s been living here for eight months, the other for nine months). One generation that actively attended seems to have grown up, and another younger one doesn’t seem interested to begin with.

A 26-year-old graduate student in art history at New York University, Joe Ackley, who was at the Phoenix last Wednesday, doesn’t go.

"I hate Pride. My friend and I celebrate Pride by going to straight bars."

The far left accuses the opters-out of being racist. Nah. They’re just bored. And faintly embarrassed.

The Village Voice has an article in the current issue on the question. More and  more people seem to be questioning the practice of scarring men’s genitals for life without their consent. The Voice includes a brief history of the practice outside the Jewish and Muslim communities:

The practice began in English-speaking countries in the mid-1800s as a way to prevent masturbation, which was believed to cause many diseases. By the 1900s, infant circumcision had become widespread thanks to the shift in control over the birthing process from female midwives to male obstetricians; the rise of medical experts, who began recommending it; and the increase of advertising aimed at convincing people they were dirty in order to sell hygiene products.

Scott Horton sees one:

So let us review how the stage is being set now for a war against Iran. We can say, of course, that war preparations are the essence of every sound military – that they should not be viewed as any sort of guarantor. A show of strength may avert war, as one of my Air Force friends correctly says. And to that I can only quote one of my best military analyst friends, who last night had one single word to cover all this: the word was "likely." "I have come to the conclusion that a major military conflict between the United States and Iran is now likely," he said. So what, exactly, does "likely" look like?

You might say that the soundest approach in feeling the path to any conflict is simple: "Watch what we do, and not what we say." So what are the U.S. and the Iranians doing that makes a conflict seem "likely"?

The evidence is striking. I worry about this not because I think we should never wield the threat of military force against Iran. It’s because events seem to be favoring the West in Iran anyway and a Cheney-driven bombing campaign could reverse it. Tehran’s theocrats, as this blog has reported (samizdat video from Tehran University here), have been cracking down on dissent more brutally than in a long time. They’re very insecure and with reason: their economy is going down the tubes (as always happens when you have absolutist maniacs running the show); they may soon have to ration gasoline; they have lost the next generation of Persians. Now is a rational time to focus on tightening the sanctions that have already taken a bite out of the regime. Ahmadinejad’s intransigence has helped keep even the Russians on board.

Instead of answering their extremism with our own belligerence, it seems to me we need to leverage the mullahs’ fanaticism against them. A bombing attack on a soveriegn nationa would do more to poison the younger generation’s view of us than anything Ahmadinejad can say. One day soon, that generation will have a huge influence on the Middle East. It’s time we realized that. Cheney is a one-man threat to exploiting that central strategic advantage.