Courtesy of Crooked Timber's John Quiggin:
That's a Purple Heart on a band-aid, and Republican delegate Morton Blackwell is distributing these boutennieres to delegates at the RNC. As an admirer of Kerry's service, I'm sure President Bush is plainly disgusted by the display. Much as he fretfully pooh-poohed the RNC's decision to award the opening invocation to Sheri Dew, who publicly compared support for gay equality to support for Adolph Hitler. (Which really doesn't even make horrible-sense, since Adolph Hitler exterminated homosexuals with the passion he showed for Jews.)
Delegates aren't exactly part of the established party hierarchy, it's true, and a party can't control for its every bad apple—these are arguments I'd be more willing to acknowledge had I not just seen Kerry's strict, on-message, disciplined, don't-screw-this-up-guys convention in which no one slurred President Bush.
Huh. Enough to make a yellow dog Democrat go GOP, though I'm hardly seeing much in the way of family values. I might find more reason to tune into the Republican convention if said were representative of the sort of coverage one could expect.
(If it is not abundantly clear from the above, there is a picture of an attractive, underdressed (but SFW) woman at the end of that link. My intention was to pass that photo along, and I've tried to write some text to substantiate a post, such that it is. If I could somehow express to you a tail wagging, tongue rolling out like a carpet, ears whistling steam, and a lot of hollering, it would be more to the point.)
I don't quite know what to say about the tectonic plate–shifting story regarding suspected Israeli mole, Larry Franklin, that evolved over the weekend, but check out this summary version by Josh Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Paul Glastris here.
Here it seems we have another instance of Marshall's and Rozen's story getting scooped, although it sounds as if we're getting close to a revelation (a second one) regarding the forged Niger yellowcake documents. What do yellowcake and Larry Franklin have in common? Search me, but of particular interest is this December 2001 meeting in Rome featuring a Hogan's Alley of suspicious elements, including Larry Franklin (the potential Israeli spy), Harold Rhode ("a polyglot Middle East expert"), Manucher Ghorbanifar (Iranian arms dealer; sinister Iran contra player), and Michael Ledeen (American Enterprise Institute neocon, apparently working in some consultancy capacity for Douglas Feith):
The meeting was a source of concern for a series of overlapping reasons. Since the late 1980s Ghorbanifar has been the subject of two CIA "burn notices." The Agency believes Ghorbanifar is a serial "fabricator" and forbids its officers from having anything to do with him. Moreover, why were mid-level Pentagon officials organizing meetings with a foreign intelligence agency behind the back of the CIA -- a clear breach of US government protocol? There was also a matter of personal chagrin for Sembler: At State Department direction, he had just been cautioning the Italians to restrain their contacts with bad-acting states like Iran (with which Italy has extensive trade ties).You couldn't write this stuff if you tried—Jack Kelley's copy for USA Today wasn't this good and he was making shit up. I can't quite wrap my head around it yet but suffice it to say I see reason enough to be skeptical of the Financial Times version of the Niger/SISMI documents origination.According to U.S. government sources, both the State Department and the CIA eventually brought the matter to the attention of the White House -- specifically, to Condoleezza Rice's chief deputy on the National Security Council, Stephen J. Hadley. Later, Italian spy chief Pollari raised the matter privately with Tenet, who himself went to Hadley in early February 2002. Goaded by Tenet, Hadley sent word to the officials in Feith's office and to Ledeen to cease all such activities. Hadley then contacted [US Ambassador to Italy, Mel] Sembler, assuring him it wouldn't happen again and to report back if it did.
Who's going to connect the dots? (So you know, unsubstantiated rumor-mongering is the norm around here. If you knew what I know about the Olympic Committee. . . .)
Flattery will get you everywhere with me, so I couldn't say no when the guys at Begging To Differ invited me to join their group blog. As the token liberal, I'll be contributing the commentary you've come to expect here and adding a bit of Big XII sensibility to a group who obviously suffer some ACC delusions. (Kidding about the token part. I get my own email address and everything.)
Since BTD is a relatively polite and invective-free forum, G.p shouldn't suffer for material.
MORE: First post is up over there, on diving boards and imperial decline.
I don't see how I can miss the 2004 DC National Rock, Paper, Scissors Championship taking place tonight at DC9, seeing as how that bar is located precisely one block from my home (and better than it used to be). Seeing as how I would have home-field advantage, I may even be forced to emerge from retirement and compete, though I'm not playing with any communists who run 1-2-3-go instead of 1-2-3, and you'll never see me in that bar again if I even so much as lipread the word "roshambo."
My strategy? Please. I hope I don't need to tell you that I'll be riding paper through this tournie all the way to the top. It covers rock. How could you beat that?
My friends and readers here (especially of the shirt-making variety) will hang their heads in shame if they recall that I am impossibly in love with Maureen Dowd. I pine in silence, but don't mistake my lull for tranquility. I feel quite like the New York Post gossip index:
I HATE that Maureen Dowd is maybe the sharpest and — here's the part I hate most — best-looking columnist in the business. I also hate that her new Putnam book "BushWorld: Enter at Your Own Risk," with smarmy writing like, how "the black sheep usurps the dutiful brother," and how "the bag emperor calls me 'Cobra' ," made the best-seller list. I also hate that she's slim, red-haired and sports industrial-strength mascara. At her Four Seasons book launch party, she discussed this new glam:There's just no good reason for MoDo to be alone. It's dreadful to think that she might curl up at home on Sunday nights wearing an oversized cableknit sweater in the winter/Warren Sapp jersey in the summer to watch Da Ali G Show alone. I sort of doubt she is:"Next to Bill Safire, I'm the Times' worst-dressed writer. I'm forever schlepping stuff. My wardrobe's jeans, T-shirts, vintage and funky because, with everyone usually angry with what I've written, I'm mostly alone. My world is isolation. And who has time? It's always a choice between a manicure or reading the Wall Street Journal. But, doing my first book tour in 13 years, I had to fix up.
"And everybody's weighing in on the look. Readers comment the under-eye makeup is too strong. My brother, who never before noticed anything, said my lipstick's too dark. The publicist complained, 'You say "ummmm" too much.' When I didn't know what to wear on TV an editor told me, 'Dress in jackets. You'll look more professional.' "
Jackets? When I saw her she was flashing a lush neckline that was so low you could've shoved a computer down it.And it's things like that that make me forgive her her columns. It's worse than love—I'm becoming a Maureen Dowd apologist. The NYP doesn't much share my sentiment:
I hate Maureen Dowd.Who knows love, who know only love? (. . . I don't know what that means.)
Reports are pouring in regarding a "grammarpolice.net" shirt spotted along the Western seaboard. By reports, of course, we mean "instant messages," and by Western seaboard, we mean "Stanford," but my friend was emphatic nonetheless. I googled some Cafe Press-type shirts but no, she tells me, the dot-net was there, man. Policy, art, rhetoric—t-shirt.
We're entirely skeptical that anyone in Cali even reads this stuff, what with, you know, the huge time difference and all. But if you're out there and making G.p clothing for the West Coast, cease and desist immediately. Just kidding. Send me one, uh, dude.
Come on. How do you refuse a triple amputee and former senator when he comes to your door? Bush is giving Texas hospitality a bad name. As Steve Gilliard noted, "[A] real man would have invited Cleland and Rassman up to the ranch house, gave them some sweet tea, taken the letter and let them go." Damnit, it's Hatch chili season, and any Texan not born in Connecticut would have some chili-sausage on hand and hatch quesadillas in the oven. But Bush sent a flunkie without so much as a jalapeno to offer to greet a visitor and former colleague. (No wonder the mayor of Crawford TX is voting for Kerry.) Cleland turned to the cameras and listed GOP and Bush slime crimes against himself, McCain, and now Kerry—what's a man to do?
It's high political theater and it worked because Bush could be depended on to bumble his part. But more importantly, it's very interesting calculus on Kerry's behalf. Astonishingly, the Kerry campaign is refreshing the SBVT story's currency in the news cycle. Do they see a critical mass building for a backlash? No Al Gore is this . . . .
Congrats to Zunta Catherine on her new gig as a contributor to the so-fresh-and-so-clean-clean DCist site. Read her stuff and fall in love . . . all over again.
Word to the wise: I'll also be contributing some area arts heads-ups to the site. And word to the good Samaritan reader: Put a few dollars toward Catherine's "Kick Cancer's Ass" purse. She's raising $2,000 ten dollars at a time in order to participate in a marathon (like an Olympian!) for the purpose of demolishing cancer. A nonpartisan cause if I ever heard one. She'll cover you with kisses for if you contribute here.
Coming right on the heels of the last post comes the announcement that Ben Ginsberg is resigning as President Bush's top outside legal counsel. Taking the medicine (after the fact, anyway) that he prescribed for the Democrats:
Ben Ginsberg, a legal adviser to the Bush campaign, specifically condemned the dual roles played by Democrats Harold Ickes and Bill Richardson, who had official roles at the convention and also within prominent friendly 527s. "They're over the coordination line," Ginsberg said of Ickes and Richardson. "The whole notion of cutting off links between public officeholders and soft-money groups just got exploded."He said that before he gave counsel to SBVT but while he acted simultaneously as chief counsel for Progress for America, a shadowy conservative 527 organization, and President Bush. So sorry to see him go!
UPDATE: JSB in comments offers a counter that I meant to anticipate in this post: Kerry hired MoveOn PAC creative director, Zach Exley. I've heard it all before. To wit:
A MoveOn statement said Exley and the staff of all MoveOn entities have agreed that they will not be in contact through the election period to avoid the appearance of coordination, "even though federal election rules permit some forms of communication."Let me one more time submit that the MoveOn/SBVT equivalency is totally bogus. MoveOn PAC—created in 1998 to butress Clinton against Contract With America. SBVT—created 15 minutes ago to smear John Kerry. Kerry and MoveOn—both predict that hire could be seen as evidence of dubiousness; both issue press releases and severe all ties. Bush and SBVT—obfuscate connections; open secrets are exposed and resignations follow. So the Exley business doesn't matter except inasmuch as it is serves as an illustration of the right way to go about your business and, moreover, is a feint.
The unrelenting, to-the-word literalism with which Kerry's critics have pursued his record (and ignored official Navy and government documents regarding the same) would not seem to apply to the members of the SBVT organization. Why, for example. . .
. . . is John O'Neill lying about his being in Cambodia?
[CNN's Joe Johns]: The co-author of the book "Unfit for Command," former swift boat commander John O'Neill said Kerry made up a story about being in Cambodia beyond the legal borders of the Vietnam War in 1968.I wouldn't take his word on Cambodia.O'Neill said no one could cross the border by river and he claimed in an audio tape that his publicist played to CNN that he, himself, had never been to Cambodia either. But in 1971, O'Neill said precisely the opposite to then President Richard Nixon.
O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.
NIXON: In a swift boat?
O'NEILL: Yes, sir.
And why is Steve Gardner lying?
Stephen Gardner has been touted by the anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and by conservative hosts as a singularly authoritative critic with firsthand knowledge of Senator John Kerry's (D-MA) record in Vietnam because Gardner -- unlike all the other members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- actually served on a swift boat that Kerry commanded. Gardner has questioned Kerry's integrity; has claimed personal knowledge of the circumstances leading to Kerry's first Purple Heart; and has spoken with authority about the events leading to Kerry's Bronze Star. Fellow anti-Kerry Swift Boat Vets member Larry Thurlow has also cited Gardner as eyewitness support for his accusations against Kerry and against Kerry's first Purple Heart. Yet while Gardner did serve as a gunner under Kerry's command on PCF (Patrol Craft Fast) 44, he has admitted that he -- just like the rest of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth claiming that Kerry is lying about his medals -- was not present for the incidents leading to Kerry's receipt of any medals or any of Kerry's three Purple Hearts.I wouldn't take his word on Purple Hearts.Gardner admitted that "he was not on the boat with Kerry during the incidents for which Kerry got his medals," reported The Columbus Dispatch on August 6. And as a guest on Michael Savage's radio show, Savage Nation, on August 2, Gardner said that of Kerry's three Purple Hearts, he could only attest to the first; Gardner later admitted to Savage that he was "not on the boat with him [Kerry]" when that injury occurred.
And if Bush has no connection to this organization, why is SBVT founder Bob Parry listed as co-host for a Bush/Cheney fundraiser?
Houston home builder Bob Perry, a key bankroller for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is listed as the co-host of a New York City fund-raiser next week for the Harris County GOP, whose guest list includes President Bush's top political adviser.I wouldn't take Perry's word or Bush's word that there's no connection.Mr. Perry, who has given $200,000 to the veterans' group to help launch the anti-John Kerry ads that question the Democrat's Vietnam War record, has denied any links to Mr. Bush or the national Republican Party regarding the Swift Boat Veterans' campaign.
Bill Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Perry, said that while the prolific GOP donor has given money to the local party, he was surprised to find his name on the invitation.
"He told me, 'I never approved the use of my name. I'm not going to be there,' " Mr. Miller said.
Mr. Perry also does not plan to attend the convention in New York City, Mr. Miller said.
Invitations to the Harris County reception and fund-raiser Sept. 1 at Tavern on the Green name Mr. Perry as an event sponsor, and those on the invitation list include former President George Bush, presidential adviser Karl Rove and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
Furthermore, why is Bush's legal counsel advising SBVT (possibly pro bono)?
The Bush campaign's top outside lawyer said he has given legal advice to the group of veterans attacking Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record and antiwar activism in a book, television commercials and countless appearances on cable news.Why would he work for them for free? Surely there's money somewhere to pay for it.The lawyer, Benjamin Ginsberg, said that the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, called him in July to ask for his help and that he agreed. He said that he had yet to work out payment details with the group and that he might consider doing the work pro bono.
Speaking of money, just a few months ago, reports Roll Call, "Top Republican campaign officials [began] meeting [. . .] to lay the groundwork to raise and spend $50 million or more on a soft-money advertising and get-out-the-vote blitz in support of President Bush." What is it about 527s that makes Bush so flippety-floppity?
James Francis Jr., who put together the 1999 to 2000 Bush Pioneers, one of the most successful fundraising operations in U.S. history, has been asked to chair the lead GOP organization, called Progress for America (PFA), Francis and other Republican activists said yesterday.And—wait a second, let me get this straight—isn't Ben Ginsberg, Bush's top outside legal counsel and adviser to SBVT—also chief counsel to PFA? I had no idea that Republican hatchetry was an area of practice.[. . .]
Tom Synhorst, a direct-mail and phone-bank specialist, is a key strategic adviser to PFA. He is a partner in a direct mail and voter contact firm that has major contracts with both the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign and the Republican National Committee. Brian McCabe is the executive director.
The backers of PFA are working at top speed to revitalize and change the legal structure of the organization in order to capitalize on the FEC's May 13 decision to postpone adoption of rules governing the soft-money activities of "527" organizations.
[. . .]
This week's National Journal reported Francis's and Synhorst's involvement with PFA, along with James W. Cicconi, AT&T Corp.'s top Washington lobbyist.
Synhorst's company, Feather, Larson & Synhorst, has already been paid at least $1.6 million by the Bush-Cheney campaign. Tony Feather, the lead partner, was political director of the 2000 Bush campaign.
Feather founded PFA in 2001 but withdrew from the organization last year after receiving legal advice that his involvement with PFA and the Bush-Cheney campaign could violate federal laws barring coordination between the groups.
It's a crying shame that intelligent people are swallowing this smear hook, line, and sinker, but recognize it as the latest in a series of character stands (McCain's child is black, McCain's war record is questionable, McCain's unhinged, Gore's too robotic, Gore's unhinged, Gore's too liberal, Gore's not the guy you want to have a beer with, Kerry's not the guy you want to have a beer with, Kerry's not strong on security, 9-11, Kerry's a flip-flopper, Kerry's too liberal, Kerry's the number one most liberal Senator, 9-11, Kerry's unhinged, and Kerry's unfit to command) upon which our President depends.
My conservative friends, critics of Kerry—why are you listeing to this shit?
Several Vietnam veterans are calling for an assistant district attorney to resign after questions were raised about his statement in a recent ad criticizing Democrat John Kerry's military service.If you've been sympathetic to these guys, I don't think anyone will begrudge you the decision to recast your opinion with some good, American skepticism. French now stands to be in real trouble, and depending on Oregon's bar regulations, he could very well be disbarred.Alfred French of the Clackamas County district attorney's office appears in the ad sponsored by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In the spot, French says: "I served with John Kerry. ... He is lying about his record."
A group of Vietnam veterans who protested outside the county courthouse Monday said French implied he had firsthand knowledge of Kerry's war actions when in fact he had heard about what Kerry did from friends.
In an interview with The Oregonian newspaper last week, French said he relied on the accounts of three other veterans in making the statement about Kerry and did not personally witness the events. French did not return two messages left at his office Monday.
"As a senior assistant district attorney, you know as well as we do that that kind of ridiculous statement would never pass muster in a court of law," veteran Terry Kirsch said of French's account.
"We question your fitness to serve as an enforcer of the law after swearing to facts in a legal affidavit that you do not know to be true," he said.
Before recording the ad, French signed an affidavit that said: "I am able to swear, as I do hereby swear, that all facts and statements contained in this affidavit are true and correct and within my personal knowledge and belief."
I'll have more later—this is one of those topics I'd love to laugh off, or say that I've hit my saturation point (I have) and just won't deal with it any more (I don't want to), but it's important (to me) to dig in and hash this stuff out. Important to me, even if it makes for bad reading and typical rhetoric, because it just makes me sick.
For what it's worth, I think we SBVT skeptics are better off referring to these guys by name and as individuals only. Alfred French admits that he is a liar, but as Bob Dole says, it's easier for French to blunt criticisms under the monolithic cape of a team name (i.e., "see, SBVT are liars"). So: Alfred French is a liar and his statements are not credible. That's one more down.
You know, I think Viagra really is a wonder drug: it seems to have made Bob Dole an even bigger prick than he used to be.What did happen to America's favorite sweet, horny GOP grandpa? He's not a pundit, he doesn't make the Sunday circuit rounds of his own accords, and he has even little to add to the SBVT argument. He suggested that "odds are" they can't all be Republican liars and he seems to doubt that Kerry bled from his Vietnam wounds, a baseless charge neither substantiated by a first-hand account on behalf of Dole or confirmed by the people who were there and did see the wounds. Undignified for a man of his stature, and I'm sorry to see the baser elements of his party get to him. Unfortunately, I'm afraid he's now an official Douchebag of Liberty.
My apologies go out to Mr. Kerry—I've been saying for some time that I thought it was odd that he embellished the account of his whereabouts over Christmas of 1968. But I think Fred Kaplan has the Occam's razor accounting of where he was—right there in Cambodia, like he said. We certainly can't know the full details of that adventure, since it was an extralegal operation, but Kaplan certainly helps with a bit of context for the chopped quotes that SBVT have been floating. If you wondered where Kerry was, do yourself a favor and read the column.
Kaplan—he makes it look so easy!
You guys may already have read about the men's high bar even tonight (which all happened much earlier today), but I'm watching this right now and it's total chaos. Chaos! I'm waiting for Paul Hamm to pull out some kendo sticks and attack the crowd.
Everyone I know keeps expressing the judgment that the theft of Munch's Scream is totally insensible because you can't very well sell such a famous painting. Intuitively sound, but not exactly accurate, I think. Stolen art and antiquities, it turns out, are the third most-trafficked commodity in the United States, falling just behind the less culturally esteemed drug and gun markets.
The NYT cites unspecified art experts as saying that it would be nearly impossible to sell either The Scream or The Madonna to a collector due to the paintings' fame. True, perhaps, but not for lack of interest. There's a market principle informing the bet that these paintings will be ransomed. The work is certain to find an interested collector, just as Nazi loot, illegal excavation sales, and out-and-out thefts to this day find buyers who know full well that the sale was illegal or dubious at best. Stolen art typically sells for a sliver of the market estimation anyway, but the massive dormification of the Munch piece marginally increases the degree of risk involved with the purchase. Mostly, though, the thieves know they can get more by ransom than by the offers they may receive. On the other hand, they invite greater risk to themselves with a ransom than with a discrete sale.
My initial guess was that these goons were hired for the purpose—they certainly don't have a professional interest in art, since they not only apparently dropped the paintings in the process but also ripped it from its frame and glass. I doubt anyone who realizes that Munch painted The Scream on a piece of cardboard would do expose it even for the sake of a getaway. Goons or amateurs, they've almost certainly destroyed the piece. (And the Munch Museum did not insure the painting. There's a real abundance of stupidity to attribute in this story.)
Interestingly enough, stolen art is more difficult to reobtain once it's been identified than you might think, mostly because stolen art often winds up in wealthy American hands even though American museums have led the charge in returning stolen art and advising international standards of governance. Tricky stuff.
UPDATE: Reading over that statistic, I think that art ranks as the third most moneymakin' trade in the States, not third in volume—but it's still hundreds of thousands of works we're talking about. The language isn't precise but I don't think there are more Albrecht Durers than Honda Accords passing through the shadows of the black market.
One thing I find astonishing (that probably only proves my naivity) is that Bush has implemented a campaign platform consisting of nothing more than a negative referendum on John Kerry. Beyond Mars, can you name a single significant feature of Bush's proposed next four years? No initiatives, no new legislation, no areas of focus. And more stunning still: No accountability for what's happening now. Where, to list just one small gi-normous example, did that $8.8 billion go? Bush really ought to fire someone over that, but I have no indication that he even realizes it's happened. It's not a partisan request and it's not too much to ask and Jesus, $8 billion, that's a lot of money to lose—fire someone.
Every respectable conservative person I know (including no less a man than Bob Dole, whom I don't know personally (although I know he has erectile dysfunction issues, which confers a sort of intimate knowledge)) is obediently issuing a lockstep, stifling condemnation of John Kerry: "He brought this upon himself for emphasizing Vietnam."
What good sheep. I'm shocked that skepticism isn't traded as the valued currency that it was just in 2000, when Bush's racist push-polling against John McCain met with widespread disdain (except, of course, among the target racist audience that made up Bush's base). Perhaps none of you remember the Democratic primary, when it was clear to just everyone that George W. Bush would defeat all contenders that could not match his formidable wartime experience, which include a haut toit Vietnam dodge in Alabama, a bad stint with the Texas Rangers, and the followthrough-free executions of both the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. And, of course, September 11: the most devastating attack against the homeland ever witnessed, whose perpetrators remain at large and unmolested.
To the Kerry's fault tune I would echo "http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/opinion/22dowd.html">Maureen Dowd's refrain: "The White House must tear down his heroism before it can tear down his patriotism." It was always going to be this way, and we know this because John O'Neill and Lee Atwater are parcel to this operation, a smear campaign not unlike the dirty work they've perpetrated since Nixon's administration.
Another indication that a good section of the American punditry seem to have lost voluntary control of their critical functions: The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are lying. There's nothing of substance to their accusations—what does one do to bring lies upon himself? Tell the truth in front of Congress about the sworn testimony you've received from thousands of returning Vietnam War veterans? Apologize for bad language and blanket statements made in one's early twenties, as Kerry has done with regard to his much-maligned Meet the Press interview? I fail to see any just desert to all this—instead, it seems that conservatives just love being lied to.
The good news here is that the stolen painting is not the only existing version of Edvard Munch's The Scream. I don't know if I've ever heard of an armed robbery at a gallery—art theives tend more toward jewel thieves than liquor store scourges. What's really wild is that this is not the first time a version of this painting was stolen from Oslo. The good news is that these efforts never work.
So, anyway, back to the irrational Bush hatred.
Everybody's talking about Michelle Malkin's odd-job performance on Hardball with Chris Matthews last night, but frankly, Matthews's rhetoric was at least as professionally objectionable as Malkin's—though let me insert a great big glaring neon Vegas caveat by saying that no single individual in journalism is as ethically, morally, and criminally objectionable as Michelle Malkin. You read don't have to read her spittle-filled defense to acknowledge the point that "self-inflicted wounds" does not equate to "intentionally shooting yourself." When my enemy's enemy is a cable news personality I suppose I ought to expect these hurdles.
All Matthews or anyone else ever needed to say was that these sort of accusations need to pass a certain credibility standard before you reframe the presidential debate with regard to disputable narratives; and these don't pass the laught test. The "questions need answers" tactic may have vaulted the Clinton "Troopergate" drug smuggling and murder lies into the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal, and SBVT will have a permanent seat on the front page of the Washington Times up until and perhaps after the election, but it's obviously not flying in the mainstream media. And Kerry has been exceedingly smart to not acknowledge their presence except insofar as to link them to President Bush.
I'm happy to see the media hold their nose on this "story," and I'll be even happier when major outlets stop printing wingnuttery for the sake of upholding some vaulted notion regarding balance. Internment is not an issue in need of balance—internment is bad. The Japanese internment during World War II was specifically bad, and anyone who says otherwise should absolutely be blacklisted. What would you do if your local fishwrap printed David Irving?
My final word on Malkin: If you're interested in reading a professional and thorough demolition of her terrible new book, In Defense of Internment, let me direct you to David Neiwert, who has not only worked with her in the past but also written a book on the subject of the Japanese wartime experience called Strawberry Days: The Rise and Fall of a Japanese American Community. Neiwert recognizes that rehabilitation precedes denial, and just as happened in the efforts preceding slavery and Holocaust denial, Malkin has laid the foundation—and not just for internment camp denial but for the rehabilitation of the procedure. Impossibly crazy. You'll say I cross the line for saying so, but she, truly, is the portrait of the graduated process by which the Nazi pathos came to dominate a society. She's nearly one herself—as close as they come.
Sometimes writing a weblog feels like being a superhero—not only am I saving the world one keystroke at a time, but my public life tends to interfere with my moonlighting Internet heroics. With great bandwidth comes great responsibility.
All that is to say that I'm too busy to comment at length on Blake Gopnik's challenge to Washington art collectors, which has garnered both praise and disdain from arts-interested bloggers. Gopnik's suggestion for a Washington Collectors' Project, in brief:
Here's how it would work: A consortium of the city's best collectors of contemporary art would come together to make their art available for exhibition. They would find a modest, white-cube space and invite independent curators to fill it with selections from their holdings.My immediate thought is that Gopnik probably overestimates collectors' philanthropic spirit and really underestimates the necessary flow when he dismisses the costs as "minimal." And rotating collections, rotating curators, and rotating financiers amount to too many variables—centralization would be key to professionalism and smoothing over the different expectations that the various players would bring with them. But the District has no lack of need for a dedicated contemporary institute, this much is certain.
Almost time again for the Hatch Chile Festival—I bet any day now bushels upon bushels will start arriving at Central Market in Austin, Texas, where they are spend hours outside in a smoker before being mixed into sausages, chiles, and salsas. I can't promise that my District hatch party will compare, but that's my plans for Labor Day Weekend. Who's in?
P.S. Who wants to help me build a smoker?
P.S. 2 Uh, who wants to mail me a festival's worth of hatch chiles? (Sometimes Texas feels very far away.)
The NYT reports that First District Court of Appeal in Florida ruled that public school vouchers can't be used for religious private schools. This is a remarkable decision, since the Supreme Court previously punted on the question as to whether states could be compelled to create vouchers for these institutions, meaning the state answer will likely be the authoritative one.
There was a great deal of design synthesis between No Child Left Behind and the voucher movement (though I don't think that proponents of one are necessarily proponents of the other). But both run ashore on the same ground: Unlike the public educational fabric of our nation, the private educational system is not homogenous. Though in a city like New York, where vouchers mean access to any number of private school options, the same can't be said about the Midwest, where fewer private schools must service vast areas under NCLB provisions. To the one, those schools (especially in rural areas) tend to be religious institutions. An already unworkable national voucher concept is DOA if religious schools can't get in on the dole.
I'm pleased with the decision—a nation in which any number other than zero percent of the population believes that the universe was created in six actual days has already had way too much religious instruction, frankly.
You really want to watch this. Really have to wonder what the GOP was thinking when it scheduled its convention in New York—my roommate from the village thinks it's sly warfare on behalf of not-that-Republican Mayor Bloomberg. I understand that NYC is probably the most populous Democratic center on Earth, but the threat of actual violence is apparently real enough to substantiate a bridge that moves over the street, sealing the delegates' hotel to the convention hall. Sort of similar to the GOP's original design for the convention: a cruiseship anchored in the Hudson. I'm sure that New Yorkers will appreciate the choruses of "nine-eleven" coming from a conventionful of elites that under no circumstances will risk coming into contact with New Yorkers.
Belle Waring invites you to laugh at black metal—talk about your not-in-my-backyard issues. The other night at the Black Cat (which is not that sort of bar, believe it or not) I saw a guy who was wearing a T-shirt that read, "Born Under the Blackening Skies of Gaul," which really is some kind of statement when you think about it. He looked to me like he was born in Plano, but you never know with these pre-civ, dark eternal warriors. Incidentally, later at the same bar I saw four women make out with each other—hardcore in its own right.
You seen this terrible Bush campaign ad in which he and Laura talk about September 11? In it Bush says something along the lines of, "I can't imagine the agony of those parents on 9/11 who had to decide which of their children to save first."
Not to put too fine a point on it, but did this likely happen even once? Nearly everyone at the Pentagon or the WTC was working—although progressive daycare makes this scenario remotely conceivable. This potential notwithstanding, what justifies Bush's formalizing of an imaginary narrative? There is no limit to grotesque imagery that you can abstract from the unknown and unknowable horror from inside the twin towers; you would need to be aesthetically negligent to the point of criminality to want to imagine up the most horrific, pornographic scenarios you can get away with broadcasting, done for the purpose of appealing to base instinct—i.e., Bush's campaign advertisements.
I always recommend that people read Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho because he clearly reveals the relationship between bad aesthetics and bad ethics—save your time, people! Instructive lessons from the President of the United States of America, airing almost daily.
UPDATE: The specific line in question: "I can't imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September the 11th." I remembered this line as "which child to save" since I interpret it as such, but I recognize that it is open to debate as to what he actually means. It strikes me that if Bush does mean to refer to parents deciding which school or daycare to go to first during an attack, it's still a far cry from "I'm going to promote a to accomplish b . . ."
Yesterday's post met with some blank stares from some parties, so we'll elaborate our findings. Based on our highly empirical, politicometric analysis, the single best predictive factor as to whether a Hollywood star stands to successfully realize gubernatorial ambitions later in life is whether or not he starred in Predator (1987). Our carefully gathered sample comprises Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger; outlier data (Ronald Reagan) have been discarded. As Carl Weathers played the third baddest dude in Predator (and I acknowledge there is some dispute here; some camps have it that he is cooler than Blain, but we believe they understate the awesome quotient of a gatlin gun), it is therefore our estimation that within our lifetime Apollo Creed will defeat all political opponents for the governor's mansion.
Nearly equal scientific rigor was dedicated to the age-old question re: Predator vs Alien. We have determined that while Alien's most significant disadvantages are likely strategic (belonging to the fact that, as a pack animal, Alien's offensive and defensive strategies are generally manifested within the framework of a team), Alien is phenotypically superior to Predator by several measures. Predator's claw? What good does it do him against an organism in whose veins runs acid? The long range battle is surely Predator's, but the fight almost certainly tenders a significant close-quarters struggle in which the Alien's superior natural defensive characteristics grant Alien the advantage over Predator's technology.
Whoever wins, the governors lose.
Outing blackmail or nu sex scandal? I haven't read all there is to read about Governor McGreevey, but I don't think that being gay is the sort of substantial revelation that by itself impels a New Jersey governor to fall on his sword. Or what have you.
Seriously. Carl Weathers is next. I'd vote for Action Jackson.
ALSO: Alien will totally win this shit this weekend.
Good call, Norbizness—I don't want to read any more editorial apologies from the newspapers of note until the Iraq war coverage stops sliding from the front page. Just like Peter Singer says:
Still, considered as a whole from July 1 to the present, coverage of Iraq seems to have diminished. "It's incredible how the press has veered away from Iraq" since June 28, says Peter Singer, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution. Last week "six U.S. soldiers were killed in 24 hours, and there was nothing. If you're President Bush and you see headlines about Martha Stewart and Laci Peterson, you've got to count yourself lucky, because that means the focus is no longer on Iraq."That sounds like a good rule of thumb: When a US soldier dies, Laci Peterson gets bumped from the front page to the, I don't know, Obituaries. (In the meantime Juan Cole does a fantastic job each day of describing pressing events in Iraq per region.)
And of course if you know any Washington journalists, you know these editorial apologies are complete bullshit—these guys didn't just wake up from a spell of group think one day (though that excuse evidently passes for the nation's $30 intelligence industry) and realize they'd been shuffling stories aside and still not fire anyone. I don't think it's too much to ask that one person in this nation, somewhere, be fired over the Iraq war debacle.
Atrios lists no fewer than 30 examples of the "four months" talking point creeping into every mention of Kerry, where relevant or not. I don't know if you could really say it's relevant at all, since John Kerry actually served from fall of 1966 through early 1970, much of that time spent training for the short four months we went on to spend in combat.
Maybe none of these pundits have veterans in their family, but four months is not an unusual period for a combat tour. (At least, for the time; the backdoor draft has extended contemporary combat tours.) Actual combat engagement is different from the many other contributing roles that servicepeople play in the military, even and especially during war; there are more supportive roles than combat ones, and they make for longer tours.
So, again, maybe if he'd been shot more often, maybe if he had some amputations to show for it, maybe if he'd requested yet another tour through active combat and asked to stay longe, he'd be hardcore, like Bush, who occasionally flew at night in Texas under dubious weather conditions. (You know that dangerous Texas weather.)
"You got served" doesn't quite capture the justice of the come-uppance that Lousiana Representative Rodney Alexander has apparently brought down on his head. You've heard about him: He's the Democratic Congressman who, at 30 minutes before the final filing deadline, flipped loyalties from Dem to GOP so that no actual Democrat could run against him. The GOP, doing its part, thereafter abandoned its own candidate (former state Rep. Jock Scott) in order to support Alexander.
As it turns out, not only did Alexander's entire Democratic staff resign the next day, with his consultants following suit the day after, but Alexander's bait-and-switch is in apparent violation of the law:
Politicsla.com columnist Jim Brown reports that a resident of the 5th district, encouraged by the Louisiana Democratic Party, in the past hour, has filed a lawsuit in East Baton Rouge Parish challenging the qualifications of Congressman Rodney Alexander to run for re-election . . . . The lawsuit sites the Louisiana Election code which prohibits a candidate from changing parties once he has qualified initially. By qualifying a second time, the lawsuit claims Alexander forfeited his right to run at all.Everyone ought to feel good about this. Much as it burned me when Zell Miller turned to the dark side, it A) wasn't much of a surprise, and B) didn't suspend Georgia's right to an informed, open choice. Rodney Alexander asked for and received money from the Democratic Party (which, the DCCC reports, they want back) and then tried to game the race to exclude Dems from consideration. I'm simply impressed that Lousiana law was prepared for this sort of eventuality. (I always kind of thought they were Texas's ugly step-state.)
MyDD has a great deal more, but it sounds open and shut to me.
Confession time. I can't shake it and I can't fight it. I found Maureen Dowd incredibly attractive, dead sexy even, on The Daily Show night before last. I gave myself a day to return to normal, consoling myself: "Okay, you know, you thought MoDo was hot for a second but that doesn't mean you're 'into' her columns or anything, I mean, everyone has passing thoughts . . . ." But I can't get rid of these thoughts. Something about her in that cardigan warmed me up. . . and seeing her breathlessly whisper a pop culture analogy to the Bush administration, it all seemed so . . . delicate.
(My God. I want the healing to begin.)
I forget to write that often enough. Anatel Leiven of the Carnegie Endowment reminds me:
We all knew of the bitter divisions between Colin Powell and the state department, and Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others over whether and how to go to war, but [Bob] Woodward provides detail, and a few genuine revelations, such as the extraordinary access of the Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar and his countrymen to the planning process. And the secret diversion of congressionally mandated funds for the Afghan operation to preparation for the war in Iraq, which Woodward exposes, would be grounds for impeachment in a properly functioning US system. [emphasis added]I remember this item and I'd certainly like to see more said about it than a muted sigh. But we probably won't, what with war raging in Vietnam . . . .
We're all breathlessly waiting to hear what liberals have to say about Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia, aren't we? How will liberals defend the most craven coward of his generation, who lied repeatedly about exactly which side of the shit he fought in?
My short version:
That's what Jon Stewart called Bob Novak last night on The Daily Show. I find myself less often laughing during the program and more likely nodding my head in assent, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, agreed . . .
On the new Plame turns: I'm not a journalist and I don't frankly see myself facing time for what I write on the ol' G.p, so I'm probably not qualified to speak to the ethical boundaries between journalistic integrity and national security. But this being a blog and therefore a terrible bastardization of the principles of journalism from the start, I will anyway. I think it's important to note, as Josh Marshall does, that our system works in spite of the recognized conflict that arises between government having secrets and journalists knowing them. We've got Time's noble Matt Cooper, cowardly Tim Russert, and prick Bob Novak (whose lawyer won't even comment as to whether he was subpoenaed), three different cases in which the government is pinching journalists—yet newspapers will be open all month and Meet the Press will be waiting on Sunday. No big clamp down, no journalists choosing sides (no matter what Atrios tells you)—it's a system that works. Like everyone else, I am awed nearly to the point of arousal by Matt Cooper's willingness to protect the people who have done the nation wrong for the sake of confidentiality alone, and I am equally turned off by the fact that Tim Russert was standing on principle right up until the bad cop started asking the questions. But I'm mostly left with a feeling of greater admiration for our system.
The less than inspiring side of this story, of course, is that the pressure didn't have to fall on the journalists—Bush could've settled this question long ago, and even now he could order the responsible party to waive his confidentiality with his journalistic contacts. Bush wasn't and isn't willing to pursue this investigation with the power of his office, though, and that's ultimately more important than whether Tim Russert is an unqualified weiner.
The warrants for the Chalabi brothers' arrests strike me as pretty damned convenient. Juan Cole puts it succinctly:
The Chalabis are corrupt con men whose lies helped embroil the US in the Iraq quagmire, and the charges are not implausible. But Ahmad Chalabi is also a powerful rival to his distant cousin, Iyad Allawi. Allawi favors rehabilitating the ex-Baathists. Chalabi favors purging them. Allawi deeply distrusts Iran. Chalabi has a strong Iranian connection. Allawi wants to crack down on the militias of the religious Shiite parties. Chalabi has increasingly allied himself with the religious Shiite leadership, despite being a secularist himself.I'm not going to put counterfeit past Ahmed Chalabi—he is after all a well-documented forger. But it's hardly satisfying to know that Chalabi's arrest will make Allawi stronger and that, in fact, might be motivating the arrest.Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord is not much of a political party, and mainly groups ex-Baath officers who broke with Saddam and decided to try to overthrow him. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress groups several important expatriate Iraqi political factions. Although Chalabi himself was never popular on the Iraqi street, he has proven himself as a skilfull political broker and might well have found a way to get into parliament and become influential in the forthcoming elections. He manages to have good relations with the Kurds, Sistani, Muqtada al-Sadr, and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim all at once. On the other hand, the Sunni Arabs blame him for his attempts to exclude ex-Baathists from civil and political society.
Given the fact that Iraq has reinstated captial punishment (as a pentaly for 114 offenses) but has not established a firm judiciary, it's certainly bad news for Salem Chalabi, who is charged with murder. I don't know whether one of the 114 grave offenses is one for which Ahmed has been charged, but if it is, is there any doubt he'd stay in Iran?
UPDATE: I feel like I should clarify: I'm really not fond of Chalabi and hope that someone eventually piles all the ills on his head that he deserves. But I am very fond of liberal democracy, and I would hate to think that it was being stifled in Iraq so that Allawi could trash the competition. Now that no one in the US is (actively) buying Chalabi's horseshit, he's sort of off the radar in my opinion, and Allawi would be better served focusing on the problems at hand. But, yes, it would be better in due time to have him off the map entirely and best if Iraq can do so in a liberally democratic manner. Spencer Ackerman says that one way for Iraq to do so would be to extradite him to Jordan, where the charges are nonpoliticized and longstanding, and simply wash their hands of him.
More on the outing of Pak double agent Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. Courtesy of Juan Cole, from a transcript of CNN's Late Edition:
BLITZER: Let's talk about some of the people who have been picked up, mostly in Pakistan, over the last few weeks. In mid-July, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. There is some suggestion that by releasing his identity here in the United States, you compromised a Pakistani intelligence sting operation, because he was effectively being used by the Pakistanis to try to find other al Qaeda operatives. Is that true?So what Condi will tell us is that she can't tell us what we all now know about the double agent whose name we should never have been told by Condolleeza Rice in the first place. Does she care that Pak's interior minister says that a prolonged collaboration with Khan might have led to bin Laden? Or did she just not know what was going on? Regardless I will be quite happy when she no longer has her job.RICE: Well, I don't know what might have been going on in Pakistan. I will say this, that we did not, of course, publicly disclose his name. One of them...
BLITZER: He was disclosed in Washington on background.
RICE: On background. And the problem is that when you're trying to strike a balance between giving enough information to the public so that they know that you're dealing with a specific, credible, different kind of threat than you've dealt with in the past, you're always weighing that against kind of operational considerations. We've tried to strike a balance. We think for the most part, we've struck a balance, but it's indeed a very difficult balance to strike.
BLITZER: Had he been flipped, in the vernacular, was he cooperating with Pakistani intelligence after he was arrested?
RICE: I don't know the answer to that question, as to whether or not he was cooperating with them.
Douglas Jehl and David Rohde wrote in the article published Monday, Aug. 2, "The unannounced capture of a figure from Al Qaeda in Pakistan several weeks ago led the Central Intelligence Agency to the rich lode of information that prompted the terror alert on Sunday, according to senior American officials. The figure, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, was described by a Pakistani intelligence official as a 25-year-old computer engineer, arrested July 13, who had used and helped to operate a secret Qaeda communications system where information was transferred via coded messages." Reuters seems to say that the first, early morning edition of the article just identified the figure as "Khan."It's hard to say. Gross incompetence? No overriding interest in prosecuting al Qaeda? This is unfortunately the sort of story that's hard to filter to the American public; it's hardly inside baseball, but it's just too easy for the conservative column to obfuscate what's happening here. We've had a recent rash of examples of Bush politicizing intelligence and giving al Qaeda easy outs and yet we're publicly fixated on whether John Kerry and Hanoi Jane made out or whatever thirty years ago.[. . .]
nyway, Khan had been secretly apprehended by Pakistani military intelligence in mid-July, and had been turned into a double agent. He was actively helping investigators penetrate further into al-Qaeda cells and activities via computer, and was still cooperating when the "senior Bush administration" figure told Jehl about him.
[. . .]
The announcement of Khan's name forced the British to arrest 12 members of an al-Qaeda cell prematurely, before they had finished gathering the necessary evidence against them via Khan. Apparently they feared that the cell members would scatter as soon as they saw that Khan had been compromised. (They would have known he was a double agent, since they got emails from him Sunday and Monday!) One of the twelve has already had to be released for lack of evidence, a further fall-out of the Bush SNAFU. It would be interesting to know if other cell members managed to flee.
Why in the world would Bush administration officials out a double agent working for Pakistan and the US against al-Qaeda?
Reading over the military prerequisites for the Purple Heart, it strikes me as obvious that this debate about whether Kerry "earned" his medal is really about our misunderstanding of the award. It's clear that the military created an umbrella award in the form of the Purple Heart in order to avoid graduated honors for sacrifice. The extent of the injury has no bearing on whether or not you get the medal; you don't have to be bleeding. Maybe we overestimate the valor implied by a Purple Heart—I don't think so—but John Kerry didn't do the Purple Heart any wrong but not getting injured hard enough.
One thing has become abundantly clear over the last few days: John Kerry served in the Vietnam War. Will the candidate acknowledge this important revelation?
Turns out that Jerome Corsi, coauthor of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, writes under the nom de plume "jrlc" for FreeRepublic.com. As you might expect, some of the views he's expressed on that august forum are, shall we say, less considered:
• Corsi on "John F*ing Commie Kerry": "After he married TerRAHsa, didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?"Read on here—quite brash for a Harvard political science Ph.D., but I suppose you need not expose anti-Semitism isn't always going to come up in the dissertation defense.• Corsi on Islam: "a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion"
• Corsi on Catholicism: "Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press"
• Corsi on Muslims: "RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together"
I've heard from right-leaning elements of the 'sphere that it's OK that SBVT are acting on political impulses so long as we evaluate the merits of their argument within the proper context. I'm in agreement. That proper context is lunatic and I will be surprised if this book ushers a single fact into the world. As the Wall Street Journal editorial page did to Clinton in 1998, the goal of SBVT is not to justify its baseless screeds against John Kerry but slur him by forcing him to defend himself. The goal is to reframe the debate in absolutely ludicrous terms. Did Bill Clinton murder Vince Foster? Did John Kerry get a Silver Star for shooting a wounded villager in the back? Why are they afraid to answer—what are they hiding?
Link courtesy of Laura Rozen.
Bush's promise to "never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people"
=
Kerry's promise to fight "a . . . more sensitive war on terror"
Anyone who reads here often will note that the porn label is one of my favorite critical condemnations to toss around. Sappy, weepy, pandering—porn! By my descriptions you'd guess that Steven Spielberg was Ron Jeremy. Regardless I was warmed by Timothy Noah's dismissal of Nicholson Baker's new novella, Checkpoint, a one-act meditation on the assassination of George W. Bush, as being pornographic, though I'm disappointed that the book fails on the grounds that Noah describes.
I'm anxious to read it because on the face of it Nicholson Baker manifests a tense nuevo literary strategy that I think is very interesting, what I'd call "factional" literature. W. G. Sebald remains the exemplar of this form; his novels weave individual biographical narratives together with actual photos from their lives in order to create a larger text that, while factually correct, is as allegorically imbued as any purely fictional novel. (I've been told that in the UK his work is filed under WWII history, whereas you'll find it under fiction in the States.) More popularly, Michael Chabon invented a detailed history of a comic series called The Escapist to lay the historical groundwork for his heartwarming The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay; not only is the fabricated history of The Escapist buffeted by the barely altered actual history of comic books, it now is an actual comic series. Or consider Bernard-Henri Levi's Who Killed Daniel Pearl? which is a disquieting novel-as-investigative journalism. Or vice-versa.
There are many examples of the contemporary realist fuzzying between truth and fiction; Nicholson Baker's take intrigued me because his characters actually live in the political world, complete with actual punditry and weblogs like Kos and TalkingPointsMemo and all the rest. The realism enhances the contemplation of the crime, blurs the line between author and narrator, and even bolsters (or diminishes, depending on how you see it) the credibility of the protagonist since the world he assess is actually ours and not his. Very interesting stuff (for porn).
UPDATE: Oxblogger Patrick Belton decries a BBC reaction to a historical television program—in which the BBC reviewer suggests that the program's portrayal of a first-century Briton revolt against Roman rulers mirrored the UK's problems in Iraq—as "pornographic fantasies." See how easy?
Giblets of Fafblog! explains what the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth need you to know about John Kerry—who served under Giblets in Viet Nam:
GIBLETS: Kerry get down here immediately this is Giblets! We are bein attacked by... monkeys! Viet Cong cyborg monkeys! An we need your help!Read on. The truth is out there.
JOHN KERRY: "I'm John Kerry, blah blah blah! I cannot help you Giblets because I am too busy gettin intentionally shot in the arm so I can get out of Vietnam!"
GIBLETS: Damn you Kerry that is like desertion from duty! Like way worse than say skippin out of your service in the Alabama National Guard!
JOHN KERRY: "Well screw you Giblets and screw America too! Now I will smoke pot and commit atrocities and plan for a day when I can raise taxes on everybody!"
GIBLETS: Nooo! Daaamn youuu Kerry!
FAFNIR: Giblets why are you talkin to a picture of John Kerry taped to a Barbie doll?
GIBLETS: Goway Fafnir you are messin everythin up!
"New rule, starting today. If someone you know sells a weapon to a rogue notion that then reverse engineers the weapon in order to develop even more powerful devices to which they can affix WMD—say, for shits-and-giggles, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Russian missile submarines, North Korea, ICBMs, and nuclear warheads—that person is totally out of the running for Humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent. Seriously: dis-effing-qualified."
Developing . . .
The other night I watched Bill Maher hammer some Republican about whether or not President Bush reacted immediately enough after September 11. People who've seen F9/11 (I still have not) will have seen some video of this, but President Bush was apparently stunned upon hearing the news and did not react for a few minutes. I'm sorry to see John Kerry pick up on this refrain that Bush somehow acted inappropriately—I hope the comment was just a one-off.
The president is not an action figure. Leader of the free world or no, it's a bit much to expect him to have adrenaline, spit, or castor oil pumping through his veins at all hours. Flipping on the TV and seeing those images put me in a stupor that lasted all the way to my Bulgakov class later that morning, where my typically America-hating professor thumped the desk and cursed our enemies. Everyone was off their game that morning. What's evident is that Bush recovered his wits quickly and led the nation appropriately just after 9/11. What's important is that most of the decisions he made from that point forward were appalling.
So let's not lose sight here. But for clarity's sake, maybe someone who's seen the footage can help me out here: Bill Maher kept asserting that someone went up to Bush while he was reading to the kids and said, "Mr. President, the nation is under attack." I understood that someone did walk up to him but told him that the Twin Towers had been struck by airplanes. The two seem very different to me, and if the first call can be heard on video then I think his response was paltry indeed. Otherwise I'm forgiving a lot that immediately followed the clusterfuck that morning.
Don't end your day without thumbing through the "Portraits" slideshow from this NYT obituary. His photographs are stunning.
Following up on this post about Michell Malkin's book, A Defense of Internment. First, everything Wonkette says. Second, I've heard in comments and read other places that Michelle Malkin doesn't explicitly call for the internment of Muslims.
Well. I don't know how subjective a leap I'm making in saying that she is advocating exactly that when there is a contemporary photo of an Arab alongside a 40s photo of a Japanese prisoner on the cover. Perhaps I'm misreading her subtitle ("The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror"). But I'll acknowledge the factual point that she apparently does not call outright for a 2004 policy of Arab ghettos. I don't plan on reading her book to uncover the true nature of her extremely subtle subtext.
Again, for Christ's sake, Michelle Malkin needs to calm her ass down. She lives an hour outside DC in a swank suburb and she's petrified and totally obsessed with her fear. She could use to listen to Susan.
Oh lord—Conde Nast is going to launch a contemporary art magazine. The part of me that thinks that efforts to democratize contemporary art lead to a better place sees a sweet chariot comin' forth to carry us home. The part of me that would pluck out my eyeballs before reading Lucky shudders that John Currin could soon become just another avenue for Gucci ads. Read more about it here. I'm terrified. (I'm subscribing.)
Fun summer game courtesy of Modern Kicks: Name ten favorite artists and briefly describe the why. I'm going to assume this works like Wheel of Fortune where they give you R,S,T,L,N, and E—so Matisse, Calder, Chagall, you know, those guys are covered. Like Tyler Green [who started the game to stave off summer art blogger boredom —ed] we'll keep our list nice and modern, and we'll similarly limit our effuse to a couple of pointed words. In reverse chronological order:
I think it's kind of cheap to just list them in no order. I'm going to step it up a notch and see how these artists rate on Artfacts.net, the most ridiculous Web site you'll see today. The site ranks artists against each other, I kid you not, and charts each artist's historical performance on a graph (complete with a mapped rate-of-change derivative). Based on what empirical criteria, you ask? On "data available to Artfacts," of course. (Could any explanation really make a difference?)
Roman score is final 2003 rank; bold score is current:
I'm stunned that while both Halliburton and Enron can enter into the American (if not global) lexicon as synonyms for corporate evil, and while the Vice President of the United States is intimately tied to both and even considered responsible for the malfeasance of the former, not a ray of public light has come to rest on the range of his involvement with either. It is just motherfucking impressive that there isn't a legion of independent special prosecutors dogging him at every hour of his day, with the press wagging just moments behind. It's almost unfortunate that women won't have sex with this man; were he a lothario, we might by dint of those investigations come to a revelation. But this much I know: The man who goes with Halliburton and Enron as a snake goes with an apple and a fall, the man on whose face wickedness has frozen into a perpetual snarl, will never debate John Edwards. Not a chance.
Dick Cheney must have some very powerful people on his side. I'm impressed. See Josh Marshall if you haven't read about Cheney's amazing grace in dozens of other pages by now.
Security Mom ne plus ultra Michelle Malkin won't disappear. If you haven't heard, "security mom" is the bullshit demographese she invented for her unique brand of lunacy. Though she lives in a cozy suburb a solid hour outside Washington, DC, she constantly perceives an immediate, very real threat from terrorists—so much so that Osama and Saddam play the boogiemen for her children. She's written a new book called In Defense of Internment, which—although you'd rather not believe such a thing is possible in 2004—is a defense of 1940s internment camps and a call for their establishment for Muslims today. She's a total whackjob with a nearly erotic fetish for war, weaponry, and violence. This is what happens when you take in too much of that Saving Private Ryan/"American Dreams"/Greatest Generation bullshit, move to the suburbs, and set up an altar to the Second Amendment.
CONFESSION: So this post is more or less a placeholder for the title. But to contribute some substance to the debate between whackjobs and non-whackjobs, I'll note that Malkin outlines in the NYPost four ways to battle terrorism that aren't internment camps: tracking trucks, profiling hazmat drivers, monitoring ammonium nitrate sales, and tightening border security. Though she applauds Chuck Schumer for championing the first item on her laundry list, she explains him as an exception to the security rule of the Republicans; all the other shortcomings she blames on John Kerry, who, last time I checked, did not control both houses of Congress and the White House.
But Michelle Malkin, allow me to bump thee—I think we really ought to track nuclear weapons. And it's President Bush who doesn't want to. Explain that one to your kids when you're scaring them to bed.
MORE: Here.
Lawrence Wright offers a fascinating piece in last week's New Yorker on the 5/11 attacks in Spain: how they are alternately regarded as a centuries-delayed effort to recapture Al Andalus (Muslim Moorish Spain) or as a surgical strike to eliminate an allied presence in Iraq, further isolating the United States. Though there were al Qaeda claims of the latter reasoning following the attack, the evidence suggests the former:
One of the most sobering pieces of information to come out of the investigation of the March 11th bombings is that the planning for the attacks may have begun nearly a year before 9/11. In October, 2000, several of the suspects met in Istanbul with Amer Azizi, who had taken the nom de guerre Othman Al Andalusi—Othman of Al Andalus. Azizi later gave the conspirators permission to act in the name of Al Qaeda, although it is unclear whether he authorized money or other assistance—or, indeed, whether Al Qaeda had much support to offer. In June, Italian police released a surveillance tape of one of the alleged planners of the train bombings, an Egyptian housepainter named Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, who said that the operation “took me two and a half years.” Ahmed had served as an explosives expert in the Egyptian Army. It appears that some kind of attack would have happened even if Spain had not joined the Coalition—or if the invasion of Iraq had never occurred.The withdrawal of Spanish troops did not prevent al Qaeda from attacking Spain again on April 2.
What does it mean that there are several strains of al Qaeda with widely varying goals? On one hand, it doesn't mean much: To the extent they were ever centralized, their mission statement was to not depend much on hierarchy. They're called "the Base," after all. Once we scattered the Taliban, al Qaeda became the world's most shadowy franchise. Wright seems to identy two categorizable versions of al Qaeda. The original al Qaeda sees a historical continuum between today and a damned long time ago and is hell-bent on revisiting those battles. This is the al Qaeda that wants to restore the Caliphate, retake the realms of the Moors and Ottoman empire, spill rivers of blood of Westerners—dogs and cats, living together. AQ v2.0 is both better and less defined: Like other contemporary terrorist organizations, it has political g
