Unassailable

It's all over except the concession. The MSM pundits are finally recognizing the fact that Obama's lead is unassailable. I predict Clinton withdraws by early next week.

NC and Indiana

It looks like Obama has won North Carolina by a very large margin and that Clinton will likely take Indiana with a very small margin, giving Obama a net pickup of delegates. This should be the moment Clinton sees the writing on the wall, but who knows at this point. It would be wonderful if she announced her withdrawal by the end of the week. Time for the real campaign.

Ben Stein

It's not every day that I get to agree with John Derbyshire, but he's right that this exchange between Ben Stein and a fellow creationist is shameful and appalling:

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

Uni

In one fell swoop, BC suddenly has eleven universities. The new universities are Capilano University, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, University of the Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island University, and Kwantlen Polytechnic University. This seems like a great move to me, though somewhat at odds with educational funding cuts.

Shift Focus

I think this is a good strategy by the Obama team and probably should've been done earlier. Start targeting McCain, and leave Clinton to figure out that she can't win.

Saltbreakers

Though I'm a huge Laura Veirs fan, having seen her several times and owning three of her previous CDs, it's taken me this long to pick up Saltbreakers. My first impression is that it's very good - on par with the magnificient Carbon Glacier. She's in fine form. If anything, it might be even better than Carbon Glacier. While I love CG, it's pretty down-tempo and I have to be in the right mood. Saltbreakers has a groove that I didn't detect quite as much before.

Billy Gohl

This comic serial set in Grays Harbor, Washington seems kind of cool. Though I have to say, the author's introduction makes him seem like a bit of a poseur.

Superdelegates and Plain Old Delegates

Clinton:

We talk a lot about so-called pledged delegates, but every delegate is expected to exercise independent judgment.

In other words, Clinton is trying not only to woo superdelegates, but to convince all delegates that they should support her regardless of the vote counts in the states they represent. She really is trying to destroy the party.

Via.

My Nightmare Flight

Trans-Atlantic Ryanair:

And Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Ryanair, the Irish no-frills carrier, has said he plans to start a new airline that will fly from secondary European markets like Liverpool or Birmingham to a half-dozen American cities like Baltimore or Providence, R.I., for a base fare as low as 10 euros, or about $16 at $1.59 to the euro.

Canada and Sovereignty

There are a couple of interesting articles in today's Globe and Mail having to do with the Canadian Arctic. The first concerns possible sale of MDA's geospatial unit to a US company and the potential implications for Arctic sovereignty. In short, the company is responsible for the Radarsat-2 technology, which allows Canada to detect any intrusion into its Arctic waters by vessels larger than three meters. Considering that the US is one of the countries challenging Canada's sovereignty in its Arctic waters, selling the MDA unit to an American weapons maker doesn't seem the least bit sensible. Quote one:

"The Prime Minister talks about sovereignty - use it or lose it. And yet we have a tool that is excellent for Arctic surveillance, monitoring of our internal waters that are contested by the Americans and other countries, and now we're going to sell this asset to an American company," [former commander of the Northern Area] Mr. Leblanc said.

"The American government takes sovereignty very seriously, and when it's in their national interest to cut off access to information, they do it. So even though the company that's buying the system has pledged to continue to provide data from the satellite, if it was not in the national interest of the U.S. to provide that information at some point, you can bet a month's salary it won't be provided."

Quote two:

"In my view it's ridiculous," Prof. Huebert [of the University of Calgary] said. "We've never thought strategically and it just astonishes me that we're probably the only country that we know of with this type of technology, and we [don't] understand its significance," he said.

The second article is to do with Operation Nunalivut, part of Canada's mission to strongly assert its sovereignty in the North.

This year's Operation Nunalivut - Inuktitut for "the land is ours" - will send three patrols between the Eureka weather station about midway up the west coast of Ellesmere Island and CFB Alert on its upper tip, the most northerly habitation in the world. The patrols set off later this week and are scheduled to rendezvous back in Eureka on April 13.

All but a handful of the patrollers will be Canadian Rangers, a largely aboriginal reserve force skilled in the ways of the land that guides the regular forces through the treacherous sea ice and ever-shifting weather.

Here's a third G&M article that has nothing to do with the Arctic, but gives an interesting and frustrating example of Canadian companies being forced to break Canadian laws when using software tools including various Google services, due to draconian US anti-privacy legislation.

Typical Right Person

Even Fox News is sick of itself.

Via TPM.

Acceptance

I hope so.

It's Over for Clinton

Referring to this New York Times article on the extremely long shot Clinton now has, M.J. Rosenberg asks:

The New York Times has pretty much declared the battle for the nomination over. It analyzes the numbers and concludes that, barring some shocking turn of events, Obama will be nominated.

So why not just pull the plug on this thing after the next round of primaries. After all, if Clinton is going to turn this around, she has to do it in Pennsylvania, Oregon, North Carolina etc. If by some miracle, she actually pulls ahead in elected delegates and the popular vote, keep the battle going. If not (and the Times' makes clear that ain't going to happen) the super delegates should simply declare their choice and the nomination can be decided.

Rosenberg makes some points that I definitely dispute, such as the argument that a long nomination will hand the election to McCain. I think the primary advantage of Clinton staying in for the time being is that McCain is getting very little coverage. But for that Democratic lime-light strategy to work, Clinton is going to need to change tactics in the next few weeks - and already shows some signs of doing so. She seems to realize that the kitchen-sink approach was a big mistake, and hopefully she won't reprise that for Pennsylvania. She needs to start giving some subtle props to Obama, such as she did regarding his speech. In other words, she should stay in for now but subtly change her campaign from a Clinton campaign to a Democratic campaign.

The thing is, it's difficult to tell whether her campaign folks really understand that it's over. Judging from Mark Penn's quotes in the NYT article, they think that they're in a perfect position to clinch the nomination. And that's a scary type of delusion.

McCain's Gaffe

Apparently his Sunni/Shiite slip-up just proves how much foreign policy experience he has. That's how it works in media bizarro world:

BRZEZINSKI: Lieberman was there.

TODD: The thing is -- yeah, exactly. The thing is, this is the second time that he's done it. You know --

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.

TODD: -- this was not a one-time slip and so, you know, this just shows you how much bank -- how much of the foreign policy experience stuff he's got in the bank, because had Clinton or Obama done something like this, this would have been played on a loop, over and over, and would have absolutely hurt them politically.

Todd is, of course, correct that if Obama or Clinton had made this mix-up that it would be all over the media. But it sure doesn't indicate how great McCain is on foreign policy. It indicates that in our modern American media, Everything is Good for Republicans.

Obama's Speech

My first impression is that it's one of the most impressive and important speeches of our time. I've certainly never heard a speech from a politician, American or otherwise, dating from my lifetime, that is in this caliber. It's simple and forthright in the sense of being completely devoid of the condescension and pandering that characterize most speeches by American presidential candidates. But it's complex in the underlying issues and in the challenges Obama is laying out. He didn't choose the easy route, that's for sure. He could've repudiated Wright, distanced himself from the church, and gone out of his way to appeal to white voters while hoping he didn't alienate many black voters. But instead he said, in essence, "Not only do I not repudiate Wright as a man, but he's as close to me as my own grandmother," while making clear that he found many of Wright's views repugnant. It was bold, and he pulled it off. He also pointed out that Wright's anger is an anger worth understanding, and segued from that politically risky discussion into the passage that is, along with the passage about his grandmother, the rhetorical centerpiece of the speech:

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

This is brilliant. He takes the Wright issue, which was supposed to racially divisive and hurtful to his chances among white voters, and turns it in to something that middle- and lower-class white voters can understand and sympathize with. He takes that even further by pointing out Wright's essential conservatism:

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The reactions to the speech as a whole have been almost overwhelmingly positive in the liberal and conservative blogospheres, save for some crusty Cornerites like Derb and KLo who would gripe no matter what Obama said. You can almost sense people exhaling and thinking, "Alright, let's move on." Obama did exactly what he needed to do with this speech. Whether it will resonate with middle America, I don't know. But I'm glad this all happened in March, because November is a long way away.

If I have time later, I might gather up a sampling of the blogger reax. For now I just want to take issue with David Kurtz here:

The text is one thing. Delivery is another. And Obama doesn't seem to have his A game today.

Viewers who were expecting Obama's usual soaring rhetoric might have been disappointed. But that was very much necessary, and Obama played it exactly right: it was a dispassionate, candid discussion of race, religion and politics, which you don't often find from people of any race, creed or clique. It was a refreshing, heartening speech. And it was a great counterbalance to the rage and rhetoric of Wright.

Video highlights here.

Full transcript here.

Full video here:

Pelosi Wants Genocide, Says Rubin

Michael Rubin is a very Serious Thinker.

Obama on Wright

Required reading for anyone who thinks that Obama is an America-hating extremist Christian/Muslim/Zoroastrian. Pretty unequivocal stuff there. Your turn, Cornerites.

PS This whole thing is incredibly stupid.

Turn signal jacket for bikers

Nice.

Mona Charen is an Ass

Here:

One can have sympathy for his psychological predicament . But that sympathy certainly does not extend to electing him president of a country that I sincerely believe he does not love.

Extremist Muslim Christian!

First right-wingers (with the help of Clinton) were going on about Obama being a secret Muslim. Now they're going on about him belonging to an extremist Christian church. I wish they'd at least be consistent. I'd like to be the first to suggest that Obama is a secret extremist Jew.

Olbermann to Clinton

I second every bit of this special comment.

Marketing with Spitzer

Um, this is an interesting marketing tactic, to say the least.

The ad copy reads: “At Virgin Mobile, you’re more than just a number. When you call us we’ll treat you like a person, not a client. Whether you’re #9 or #900, you’ll get hooked up with somebody who’ll finally treat you just how you want to be treated.”

Virgin Mobile comparing itself to an expensive brothel. Hmm.

Via Wonkette.

BBN

BBN Technologies has been awarded a $13 million grant from DARPA for research on "rapidly processing information in foreign languages." It sounds like they'll primarily be working with Arabic text and speech as part of the ongoing GALE project. Their work includes distillation of text and speech, or automatic summarization, which is my particular passion and research interest.

Growing Liberal

It looks like the idea that people grow more conservative as they get older is just a myth, according to researchers at the University of Vermont. On several major issues, people even tend to become more liberal as they age, specifically regarding gender equality and tolerance of viewpoints such as atheism and communism. Areas in which people do tend to become more conservative are viewpoints concerning extramarital and premarital sex.

The study also acknowledges that some changes towards more liberal viewpoints can be attributed to older people starting from a more conservative position originally than young people today. For example, older people today have made much more dramatic changes in a liberal direction regarding race relations than have young people, because the older generations may have grown up under segregation and outmoded stereotypes.

This helps put to rest the view, common among many on the American right at least, that liberalism is a phase that is grown out of. One particularly loathsome cliche is "If you are a Republican when you're young, you don't have a heart. If you're a Democrat when you're old, you don't have a brain." It's clear many people find that experience and reflection help to liberalize their worldviews.

Ferraro

Not only does she not retract her offensive comments, she reiterates them and claims to be the victim of racism. The Politico does some research and finds that Ferraro made some very similar comments about Jesse Jackson in 1988.

Meanwhile, Clinton finally grudgingly distances herself from Ferraro's comments. If you had any doubts that the Clinton campaign is trying to make this about race, they should be erased now. If Nixon were here he'd be smiling to think that Democratic Party is using the Southern strategy on itself.

Obama takes Mississippi...

...in a primary split along race lines.

Spitzer

Obviously Eliot Spitzer acted very stupidly in all of this, but Jane Hamsher asks a lot of good questions about the investigation. Something is indeed very strange in all of this.

Cross-Border Meddling

With the NAFTAgate controversy in the rear-view mirror, it's interesting to read about occasions where the US interfered with Canadian elections. Unfortunately the article is behind a wall, but if you can pick up the G&M paper version before the end of the day it's an interesting, short read.

Clinton Talks Up McCain Some More

This is getting to be unbelievable.

“I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant’s bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

“I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,” she said.

Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a “distinguished man with a great history of service to our country,” Clinton said, “Both of us will be on that stage having crossed that threshold. That is a critical criterion for the next Democratic nominee to deal with.”

I can't remember anything like this before. So Clinton has obviously adopted a deliberate strategy of talking up the opposing party's candidate and talking down the other Dem nominee, quite clearly saying that if she doesn't get the nomination then she'll take the party down with her. I can't believe that no one in the DNC is stepping in to say anything. Absolutely shameful on the part of Clinton.

Via TPM.

Rich States, Poor States

Andrew Gelman has been doing some interesting analysis on correlating voting behaviour with income, and has a forthcoming book on the subject. This post on rich vs poor states and rich vs. poor voters is fascinating. The basic story is that if you look at rich states vs. poor states, the rich states tend to vote Democratic and the poor states tend to vote Republican. But if you look at individuals, rich individuals tend to vote Republican and poor individuals tend to vote Democratic. Also, within rich states the correlation tends to break down. So in a state like Connecticut, voting behaviour will be much less tied to income than it will be in Alabama.

NAFTAgate Revisited

Wow. Well, according to the Globe and Mail, NAFTAgate started with a comment by Harper chief of staff Ian Brodie, who remarked to a roomful of colleagues that a Clinton campaign member was telling the Canadians to take Clinton's anti-NAFTA rhetoric with a grain of salt. So...somehow this turned into an Obama scandal. I'm gonna enjoy hearing how that happened.

As Josh says, the moral of the story is that "friendly governments should not interfere in our elections".

This other G&M piece from Wednesday points out the harm this scandal could do to Canada. It should be obvious, but diplomacy requires discretion and Harper seems to surround himself with aides who lack that particular quality. This could most certainly damage Canadian relationships in the short-term, and most certainly in the long-term if, say, Obama is president and Harper remains PM.

Kitchen Sink

Contrary to a lot of the CW, I don't think a long drawn-out battle between Clinton and Obama is a bad thing in and of itself. There are plenty of precedents for the out party having a long nomination process and still doing well in the general. Plus, it gives the Dems lots of media attention at a time when the GOP side has sunk into the background a bit, what with McCain already clinching it. But Clinton's strategy is now quite clearly to either win the nomination or take the entire party down with her. Via Sullivan, I noticed James Fallows flagging this bit about Clinton's rhetoric:

In a live CNN interview just now, Sen. Clinton repeated, twice, the "Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience, I have a lifetime of experience, Sen. Obama has one speech in 2002" line. By what logic, exactly, does a member of the Democratic party include the "Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience" part of that sentence?

Is there any precedent for a serious candidate for party nomination to claim that a member of the opposing party would be a better candidate for president than would a member of their own party? Imagine Obama gets the nomination, which is still very likely even after Ohio and Texas. We now have Clinton, one of the powerhouses of the party, on record repeatedly stating that McCain is a better candidate. How can Howard Dean or others not step in at this point and admonish her?

Exits

Some surprising and encouraging exit polls for Texas and Ohio. And probably not reliable, though. Here's hoping.

It's in the LA Times

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: Why does Obama spend all this time talking about issues like healthcare when he should be talking about how he's an unapologetic liberal fascist terrorist?

Moveable Border

The citizens of Berwick-Upon-Tweed want to rejoin Scotland.

Broadway Bomber

Looks like they found him, in Surrey and with severe burns.

Somehow I managed to sleep through the explosion, despite being only six blocks away.

A Man for All Seasons

Last night I saw, with my wife and in-laws, Pacific Theatre's production of A Man for All Seasons, and I highly recommend it. I especially thought that Chris Humphreys and Ron Reed did great jobs as King Henry/Cromwell and Thomas More, respectively. The script was excellent - thought-provoking and powerful. The one strange conceit was updating it to the 1950s, but I thought it worked. It wasn't the kind of update where you tell the original story in a modern framework through modern characters (like Hamlet with gangstas or something), but rather offering the pretense that Henry VIII's reign and the Church schism, and all the surrounding relevant events, actually did happen in the 1950s. Somehow it was easy to believe.

This is the second production by Pacific that I've seen in the last couple of months, after Dan Amos's stellar one-man version of It's a Wonderful Life, so I think a subscription might be in order. Apparently they have a current deal where you can see four shows for $55, which is pretty amazing.

Endorsement

Regardless of whether there's an explicit endorsement, dropping out before Tuesday could be a tacit endorsement of Obama. Dana Goldstein:

Intuitively, it makes sense that Edwards supporters would trend toward Obama. Both candidates ran as the anti-Clinton. Edwards even spoke about his own affinity toward Obama's "change" message at the last New Hampshire debate.

The two candidates are far more similar to each other than either is to Clinton. But it's not clear how Edwards supporters will break:

But some polling suggests otherwise. A Jan. 24 Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg News poll found that nationally, Edwards voters prefer Clinton to Obama by a slight margin. She could have an edge among those who are attracted to Edwards' focus on the economy. "Hillary talks about the economy more than Obama, and she's connected to the Clinton presidency, which people view as successful on the economic front," Teixeira said.

Edwards

John Edwards should be making an announcement any time now (I'm not near a TV, so it could be happening). It'll be interesting to see if he makes an endorsement, but I'm skeptical that he will. I wouldn't be surprised if he waits until after Super Tuesday so as to be confident of the nominee, then aiming for a VP slot with the presumptive nominee.

First Canada Blogging

No revelations about Ron Paul's bigoted past could possibly convince the True Believers. Read the comments here. Either many of his followers are willfully ignorant or they're straight-up racists. Scary bunch.

Great News

John Howard's government has been defeated at the polls, and Kevin Rudd will be the next Prime Minister.

Rudd has named global warming as his top priority, and his signing of the Kyoto Protocol will leave the U.S. as the only industrialized country not to have joined it.

Rudd said he would withdraw Australia's 550 combat troops from Iraq, leaving twice that number in mostly security roles. Howard had said all the troops will stay as long as needed.

Good news for everyone, not just Australians.

Chris Hedges

Says The Corner:

Who is Chris Hedges? Not only was he a New York Times reporter for 15 years, he was its Middle East bureau chief in the 1990's. Yikes.

Adds Instapundit:

Yeah, kind of makes you wonder what's going on with their current reporting staff that we won't find out for years.

Yeah - for example, maybe we'll found out that Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper were neoconservatives working for the administration.

In general, I find it very funny when the Bush Right attack the NYT, as the Times has been such a friend of the hawks.

Kindle Sold Out

Apparently the Kindle sold out in less than six hours. This definitely seems like an intentional shortage, and Amazon isn't disclosing how many were actually prepared to sell as of the launch. But it seems unlikely that after three years of preparation they would inadvertently have a shortage immediately after the launch. My guess is that the engineered shortage is partly in response to all the negative coverage of the past few days. They're trying to change the optics and create a sense that it's a cool, must-have gadget.

Right-Wing Obsession

Via Eschaton and Sullivan, we see which Conservapedia pages are the most viewed:

Most viewed pages

1. Main Page‎ [1,903,406]
2. Homosexuality‎ [1,548,733]
3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [516,892]
4. Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [420,349]
5. Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [387,906]
6. Homosexuality and Domestic Violence‎ [354,376]
7. Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [346,289]
8. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [331,232]
9. Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [279,922]
10. Homosexuality and Syphilis‎ [265,186]

Amazon Kindle

Amazon has launched its e-book reader, Kindle. While the electronic-paper technology looks very cool, and the Sprint partnership sounds like an interesting way of delivering the content, I just can't believe how ugly the thing looks. It's been getting grief in a lot of corners for not accepting pdf formats and for being generally expensive, but I just can't believe that somebody would design it to look like this. Now, Amazon is not Apple and doesn't have much experience with designing products like this, but they spent enough time and money that they should have got it right. It looks like something from another era. A lot of people wouldn't think about paying such a steep price if it were a flashy piece of kit, but in the iPod and iPhone age it's just plain hideous.

Pipe Dream

To the three bagpipers playing on the castle esplanade at 8 AM this morning: what the bloody hell were you thinking?

Ron Paul and War

When John Derbyshire has become the voice of reason over at The Corner, you know things there have become pretty dire.

Phones

It sounds like a Google phone announcement is imminent.

I'm sure Google's announcement is deliberately timed to steal some fire from the UK iPhone launch this week. Speaking of which, The Guardian has a piece about UK hackers preparing to unlock the iPhone as soon as it's released. Even though the iPhone has garnered plenty of rave reviews, I can't help but think that Apple has badly misstepped by creating a dynamic where hackers and tech-heads are allied against them. I'm not sure they'll be able to go back to being the geek's favourite brand very easily, especially if the Google phone is a lot more open.

Double-Standard on Troops

It's interesting that right-wingers who insist that any mention of those US troops denigrating the armed forces via illegal and immoral acts is somehow unpatriotic are the same folks who believe that any illegal and immoral acts by UN peace-keepers reveal the UN to be an evil institution. Apparently Glenn Reynolds thinks it's okay to disparage the entire institution if the institution is the UN, but not if it's the US. If the peace-keepers had been American soldiers, you can bet he wouldn't have posted on it.

The Week in Clinton

It's been interesting to see the sort of slow-burning change in perceptions of Hillary Clinton's performance in the last debate over the course of this week. The immediate response among most analysts seemed to be that she performed well and that Obama and Edwards missed an opportunity to really market themselves as distinct alternatives, and that she may have tripped a bit on the immigration question, but that overall she should've been happy. As the week went on, that characterization gave way to her having received a beat-down by her opponents and really seriously stumbled in the debate. I think this was partly due to bloggers and MSM writers wanting to liven up the race by making it seem as if Clinton was really on the ropes rather than firmly in the lead, but possibly also due to a poor choice of response by Clinton's team: trying to make her seem the victim of her Democratic opponents.

Now the consensus is that Obama actually did very well and that his tone in the debate was well-received by viewers. Maybe that's true, but it's just strange that the story has fundamentally changed over the course of a few days.

Chatter

So this is the talk of the political blogosphere at the moment. Keep refreshing that LA Times website.

Update: I have no idea what the scandal involves, but if you want to do some detective work on Ron Rosenbaum's teasing post, you can start here, here, and here.

Update II: A lot of the rumours are about the Clintons. I'm very skeptical of these, as the Clintons would be extremely stupid to be involved in such behaviour with Hillary aiming for the presidency, especially after everything they went through in the Lewinsky affair.

A Comfortable Fight

Obama had one good line:

Barack Obama had his own take on the situation: "Part of the reason that Republicans I think are obsessed with you, Hillary, is because that is a fight they're very comfortable having."

Unfortunately, he seems not to have done enough last night. He could've made himself more distinct, he could've attacked the GOP, he could've appeared tougher. At this point, Clinton seems to have walked away with it. I think that was the last chance for Edwards and Obama to do something dramatic, and it didn't happen. It looks like the MSM might try to hammer this driver's license question a bit in order to hurt Clinton somehow, but that'll pass. I don't think anyone can touch her now.

The advantage of her getting the nomination, of course, is that she is masterful at these kinds of debates, and is tough as nails in a way that Obama and Edwards aren't. As much as I want to like Obama, I would cringe to see him in a debate against someone like Giuliani or Romney, because I think he would just pull his punches.

Don't Mention the Other Guys

The Dems continue to avoid the real fray

Mukasey

From The Wall Street Journal:

Just when you thought someone might be confirmed in Washington without a partisan fight, Senate Democrats are suggesting they may not approve Michael Mukasey as Attorney General after all. The judge's offense is that he's declined to declare "illegal" an interrogation technique in the war on terror that Congress itself has never specifically banned.

Yes, damn those pesky partisan Democrats, always interfering in our torture regime. No, the Republicans are never partisan, nevermind that the AG position itself has been turned into the president's own personal advocate. And if the Dems do indeed stand against Mukasey, it'll basically be the first time they've even shown any spine.

The cutest thing is that the WSJ editorial is titled "Torturing Mukasey," as if he is truly the victim in all this sordid mess. Sick.

The Tar Sands

Aida Edemariam has a really interesting piece in The Guardian today on the Canadian tar sands, the boomtown of Fort McMurray and the huge environmental cost of extracting crude from the sands.

How the Right Sees the Left

Rudy says:

"This is the world we live in. It's not this happy, romantic-like world where we'll negotiate with this one, or we'll negotiate with that one and there will be no preconditions, and we'll invite (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad to the White House, we'll invite Osama (bin Laden) to the White House," Giuliani said.

"Hillary and Obama are kind of debating whether to invite them to the inauguration or the inaugural ball," he added.

Via Sullivan. Which is kind of ironic, thinking back on Sullivan's infamous post-9/11 "fifth column" piece.

Then I read this from David Horowitz:

The week of October 22-26 witnessed the largest, most successful campus demonstrations by students not associated with the anti-American left in the history of campus protests. 114 college and university campuses participated in “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week...
In response, anti-American leftists and organizations supporting the Islamic jihad organized a national campaign of vitriol and hate that was almost unprecedented. This campaign revealed the lengths to which the anti-American left will go to prevent the public from discussing the nature of the holy war that has been declared on them.

High-profile Republicans are literally accusing the American left of supporting Muslim extremists. Is there anyone decent remaining on the right, and is there anyone with spine remaining on the left? Why don't Obama and Clinton take on Giuliani and his crew of neocon advisers? Why don't they point out that people like Horowitz, Podhoretz, and Pipes have been profoundly wrong about everything? Why don't they give Giuliani everything they've got? The far-right has begun framing the left as the enemy, and no one in power calls them on it. Disgraceful.

Krugman Book Club

Paul Krugman will be blogging all week at the TPM Bookclub regarding his new book, Conscience of a Liberal. Here's his first post.

The Fugitive

Rumsfeld is on the run:

Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of “ordering and authorizing” torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the US military’s detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.

US embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush’s “war on terror” for six years.

Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil.

Old Clam

Scientists find oldest animal ever, kill it.

Via here.

Red Sox, World Champions

So the Red Sox won in 4 games. I'm happy for 'em. I couldn't catch any of the games because I've been very busy and was in Dublin for the weekend (not to mention the first pitches are around 1:00 AM GMT), but it sounds like an awfully boring Series in terms of competitive match-ups.

Boylan

A bizarre email exchange between Glenn Greenwald and General Petraeus's spokesman, Steven Boylan.

New Edition

Goldberg gets hacked. The new title is snappy.

Contempt

Faint signs that the Do-Nothing Dems might be getting some spine.

Giuliani: So Awful that We Must Avoid Clinton at All Costs

This is weird. Jacob Sullum has a piece up on the Reason website concerning how secretive and power-hungry Giuliani was as mayor of New York.

Having lived in New York during most of Giuliani's two terms, I did not need to be persuaded of his authoritarian tendencies. But Morris' piece provides damning details I did not notice at the time, including Giuliani's sly use of city charter commissions, his attempts to undermine both the public advocate and the Independent Budget Office, and his resistance to releasing even the most innocuous information. "Once," she notes, "the city even denied a Freedom of Information request inquiring how many Freedom of Information requests had been denied."

It's pretty clear that Sullum dislikes Giuliani and agrees with Rachel Morris that Rudy would be likely to consolidate executive power even beyond what Bush was done. So this is how Sullum concludes his post:

Still, if it comes down to Giuliani vs. Clinton (as it does in my nightmares), the choice won't be hard. I'm not convinced Clinton would be any less power-hungry than Giuliani, and she would in all likelihood be abetted by a Democratic Congress. Keeping the executive and legislative branches in the hands of different parties seems like the best strategy for containing the megalomania chronicled by Morris.

Um, right. Sullum says that Giuliani is so dangerous and power-hungry that in the event of a Giuliani-Clinton matchup, he would vote for Giuliani because Clinton might have some of those similar characteristics. Not following you, Jacob.

And his position also rests on the assumption that Democrats will retain Congress, which is far from certain. Would he really like to see Giuliani as president with a Republican Congress?

Colbert

Stephen Colbert is taking his presidential run seriously enough that he's got a team of hotshot lawyers on the case. And he's outpolling Richardson.

Beauchamp Story Gets Very Interesting

Wow. Apparently the US Army and Drudge work hand-in-hand.

Vancouver and Urban Planning

Vancouver is pretty renowned for being a well-planned, livable city, and former city planner Larry Beasley has been part of that success. David Eaves overviews a keynote speech recently given by Beasley on the current challenges of the Vancouver housing market.

Affordable housing has become a significant issue in Calgary and Toronto, but in no city is the issue more problematic - or long running - than Vancouver. Beasley blamed this on a commonly understood fact - Vancouver has been blessed and cursed by its international stature. The property market in Vancouver is simply not restricted to the city’s population. For reasons of investment, political security, and sometimes just for a pad to crash, the whole world wishes to own a part of the city and it is driving up real estate costs. To fully grasp the magnitude of the problem, one developer informed me that up a 1/3 of some residential towers in downtown Vancouver sit empty. I’ve been unable to confirm this figure, but it is a startling number if true.

How can the city address this challenge?

Beasley's answers are 1) develop the False Creek Flats, 2) eco-density, and 3) learn from Madrid. The description of the third point in particular is worth reading.

Sox Hit Rox With Sock Full of Rocks

Looks like this series is gonna be a dud.

More Giuliani

So Josh Marshall and Kos have a different take on the "best GOP candidate" question:

This topic came up in my conversation with Markos of Daily Kos last week. And he was pretty clear that he thinks the Republicans' strongest candidate is Rudy Giuliani. But I'm having a hard time getting my head around this question.

Basically I agree. He's their strongest candidate. For all his problems of temperament, authoritarianism, ignorance and general ridiculousness, I know most people don't see him that way. The sheen of 9/11 is real for Rudy. And many otherwise sensible people see him as a generally moderate guy on social policy who couldn't be as stupid as Bush in managing the country's foreign policy but would still be ready to kick some ass to keep everyone safe.
...
So yes, he's their strongest candidate. Unless, that is, he splinters the Republican party and spawns a third-party social conservative protest candidate who siphons off numbers even in the high single digits and he gets crushed.

In the post below, it was generally agreed that Giuliani would be the worst president, though I argued he would be the best candidate in terms of allowing the Dems to win. I'm a bit taken aback that Josh and Kos both think he would actually make the best candidate of the bunch. Not only is he the one candidate who actually seems mentally unstable, his advising team includes Daniel Pipes and Norman Podhoretz, two of the most discredited neoconservatives around. A scary combo. Then we get into his cronyism and the culture of corruption surrounding him as mayor. And his decision to put the emergency command center in the WTC.

In Josh's defense, he does mention the potential disaster that nominating Giuliani could create for the GOP:

'm already repeatedly on record saying that I think it's ridiculous to believe that Rudy can win the Republican nomination with the burden of his social liberalism and personal profligacy.

I think that when average Republicans start looking at Rudy's personal life, that will be the clincher for them. Although with all the Republican sleaze scandals lately, maybe they just won't notice.

Anyway, it's interesting that this "best GOP candidate" meme has been making the liberal blog rounds the past few days. Are folks on the left getting bored with the Dem nomination, assuming Clinton has it sewn up now? It's also worth mentioning that some of the discussion is not exactly comparable. Matthew and Ezra are talking about which candidate they could potentially live with as a competent president, while Josh, Kos and I have been talking about which matchups work to the Dems' advantage or disadvantage.

GOP Picks

Matthew Yglesias picks Romney as the GOP candidate he would most want elected if he had to choose from that crowd. Ezra and others agree that he's the least bad GOP candidate.

Steve Clemons wants to see Giuliani get the nomination, though of course he's talking about the best GOP candidate in terms of giving Dems the edge. I agree with Steve that the Democrats are going to do well against Giuliani if he gets the nomination; he's completely unelectable and the American people won't take long to realize that. And of the crop of GOP candidates, he would truly make the nightmare president. Yglesias and others have predicted that he would be worse than Bush, and the crazy thing is that I can easily imagine that being true. Romney, as phony and slick as he is, looks sane and moderate in comparison.

I'd have to back away from my earlier reasons for wanting Giuliani to get the nomination. It's true that his nomination might cleave the Christian right from the GOP, but the only lesson that would be learned from this is that the GOP has to nominate an evangelical Christian in all future elections. It might all be a moot point. I really can't believe that Giuliani is going to remain the front-runner for long. As it gets closer to the first primaries, people are going to take a closer look at Rudy and the others, and I wouldn't be surprised if the GOP machine starts trying to push Romney or Huckabee as the safe choice. And like Steve, I think they would be formidable opponents for Clinton if she is the nominee.

Guardian America

The Guardian has launched a new US website, Guardian America. Michael Tomasky introduces the site.

Scottish Football Poetry

The poems they're reciting are collected here, along with many others.

The bit at the end of the video where everyone's screaming was filmed at the Ingram Bar in Glasgow when Scotland defeated Ukraine earlier this month, and I was standing near the back at that moment. An amazing scene.

World War III

So, Bush said this today:

But this -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.

So far, so crazy. Matthew says this:

This is inane. World War III? Against Iran? Really? Because Iran seems a lot like a medium-sized middle income country with few military capabilities rather than a near peer-competitor of the sort against which you might fight a world war.

Well no, war with Iran wouldn't constitute World War III...until you consider Putin's warning yesterday, that "We should not even think of making use of force in this region." It's quite clear what Bush is saying, and pretty damn terrifying.

Gore on Running for President

Gore told a Norwegian broadcaster, regarding his Nobel win and whether it would affect his political career:

"I don't have plans to be a candidate again so I don't really see it in that context at all.

So, he still won't use phrases like "I will not run," but anyway it's looking less and less likely.

Who Benefits from the LibDem Leadership Crisis

Michael White says:

Labour complaints about the Brownite teenagers' botched election have been dimmed by its unintended consequence: Sir Ming's decision to quit. That was not what either rival wanted: he was no threat.

I don't know if that's quite right. Obviously it would be giving Brown way too much credit to say that he foresaw Ming's departure as a consequence of not calling the election, but he did have much more to gain from that possibility. Campbell was a threat to Labour in the sense that his poor leadership led disaffected LibDems to the Tory camp. Labour has to feel pretty good about this, I would imagine.

On another note, it seems extremely odd to me that there's a large section of the electorate out there wavering betwen the LibDem and Tory camps. Not sure I understand that one.

US and Canadian Healthcare

Joe Paduda debunks right-wing scaremongering about Canadian-style healthcare.

Via Ezra Klein.

Sullivan on Clinton

Andrew Sullivan has long been irked by Hillary Clinton, and most of his posted thoughts about her boil down to the fact that she rubs him the wrong way or gives him the creeps or whatever. It's something fairly ill-defined, and he seems to recognize that it's a Clinton Derangement Syndrome. But today he cites a reader email and claims that it gives "one of the best rationales for Clinton's candidacy":

If worst comes to worst, we might get a president like Hillary, who is that girl nobody really likes but everyone wants in their project group anyways because they know she is smart and will do all the work.

So...advantages of Hillary: she's capable, smart and hard-working. Disadvantages: an icky girl. I see. Thanks for the astute political analysis, Andy.

Dept. of Backhanded Compliments

John Podhoretz on Al Gore:

I know this usually isn't the venue for a friendly discussion of the former vice president, but reading my new colleague Gary Rosen's cool-eyed blog post yesterday and David Brooks's emotional column today, I found myself feeling a strange sort of admiration for Al Gore. Doesn't it seem as though his 2000 loss, devastating though it must have been for Gore, was a huge liberation? As a politician, Gore never seemed comfortable in his own skin. The warmth and amused intelligence people insist he displays in private were never evident in public.
...
Since that concession, Gore has let himself loose in all kinds of ways. He no longer has to pretend, as all politicians most.

So far, so good. I agree that Gore has seemed much more natural and confident in the past seven years - less of a politician. And who is the real, unleashed Gore, according to Podhoretz?

He is clearly happiest and freest as an autodidact preaching populist pseudoscientist. And everything has gone his way.

I wonder, does the epithet "pseudoscientist" apply to every scientist researching climate change?

North

The Walrus has an interesting piece on Canadian sovereignty and the Arctic North from the Inuit perspective:

Luckily for Canada, the Inuit are always here. Without the Inuit, could we really claim to be masters of the Arctic house? Probably not. Ultimately, the Arctic sovereignty issue will depend on people, not ports or training facilities or military exercises. If Canada is to secure a long-standing and unimpeachable claim to the Arctic, it must be grounded in the daily realities of the Inuit and other Canadians who make this region their home. Why does Canada seem to forget that we are there each time a crisis looms?

Canada’s mistreatment of the Inuit in using them as human flagpoles to assert sovereignty was laid out with excruciating honesty during hearings convened by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in the early 1990s. A settlement was finally achieved and a semi-apology delivered. How ironic now for Canada to brandish the fact that Canadian citizens — Inuit — live in the Arctic in order to add legitimacy to its sovereignty claims.

And the proposal:

Surely some lessons have been learned. The time has come to listen to Arctic voices on the subject of integrating the region with mainstream Canada. Would not a better strategy be to make this bountiful and magnificent region a part of Canada’s daily experience? The millions spent on political posturing, tours and studies that go nowhere, and press releases could be better spent on lasting, community-oriented infrastructure. Inuit are well-organized politically — regionally, nationally, and on the international level. Together, we have developed an Inuit Action Plan, which was submitted to the federal government in February. We are in the post-land-claims era now, and this plan is a testament to that. It identifies the tangible, bricks-and-mortar projects that need doing, as well as the intangible but no less vital elements of our future: hope for our children, better relationships with the rest of Canada, etc.

I haven't seen the Inuit Action Plan, so am not sure what the details are for integrating the North with the rest of Canada, but it sounds interesting. Will seek it out.

Colbert, Op-Ed Writer

Stephen Colbert has mercifully replaced MoDo today:

I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)

By STEPHEN COLBERT

Surprised to see my byline here, aren’t you? I would be too, if I read The New York Times. But I don’t. So I’ll just have to take your word that this was published. Frankly, I prefer emoticons to the written word, and if you disagree :(

I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:

Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.

There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.

Gore Derangement Syndrome

Paul Krugman has a very good piece on Al Gore and, specifically, the Right's reactions to Gore. A few highlights:

What is it about Mr. Gore that drives right-wingers insane?

Partly it’s a reaction to what happened in 2000, when the American people chose Mr. Gore but his opponent somehow ended up in the White House. Both the personality cult the right tried to build around President Bush and the often hysterical denigration of Mr. Gore were, I believe, largely motivated by the desire to expunge the stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration.
...
The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the “ozone man,” but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, “the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam.” And so it has proved.

But Gore hatred is more than personal. When National Review decided to name its anti-environmental blog Planet Gore, it was trying to discredit the message as well as the messenger. For the truth Mr. Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the climate isn’t just inconvenient. For conservatives, it’s deeply threatening.
...
Which brings us to the biggest reason the right hates Mr. Gore: in his case the smear campaign has failed. He’s taken everything they could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever. And it drives them crazy.

World War IV

This Cliff May post is stupid on many levels:

This is what bothers me most about Al Gore getting the Nobel Prize. I know that sounds like a non sequitur but consider: Gore’s argument, endorsed by the Nobel Committee and the left in general, is that global warming is the most important crisis of the contemporary era.

By clear implication, the war being waged against us by the Islamists is a second tier issue.

This is the equivalent of political figures in the 1930s telling Churchill that the most critical problem of the day was not the rise of Nazi power but air pollution – and London had a lot of air pollution in the 1930s.

Right now, we are divided in America and in the West. As Norman Podhoretz writes in World War IV: “It is a war in which those of us who see Islamofascism as the latest mutation of the totalitarian threat to our civilization and who insist on the correlative necessity of meeting and defeating it, are pitted against those who think that the threat has been wildly exaggerated …”

One thing that strikes me is Podhoretz's wording in that last paragraph: note that in his conception, "World War IV" is a battle not against "Islamofacism," but against domestic enemies. Interesting phrasing.

This type of talk, from both Podhoretz and May, is of course just the latest in a never-ending series of attempts to equate the war on terror with World War II, the Good War. Silly Al Gore, fretting over London's air quality while Hitler is on the march! The following quote, from State Department official David Long following Clinton's cruise missile attacks on Afghan training camps in 1998, roughly sums up my view:

''This is, unfortunately, the war of the future,'' Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said.

Terrorism experts applauded the military action as a necessary quick response. But they said the notion of announcing a war against someone like Mr. bin Laden posed problems.

''It's unfortunate that she used the term war, because it's very misleading. Americans like their wars to be short, with no casualties, and then we kick back and watch the Super Bowl,'' said David Long, a former State Department official. ''Flu would be a better simile. Every year there's a new strain of flu, and every two or three years one is lethal. You manage it. You're not going to win the war on flu.'

I think the flu comparison is great. Once you cast this as a war, the only possibility is losing.

Right Reax

I mentioned Iain Murray's idiotic response to Gore receiving the Nobel below, but thought I would collect a few examples of pathetic and desperate right-wing reactions to the news.

Iain Murray redux:

Who Else Should Al Gore Share the Prize With? [Iain Murray]

How about that well known peace campaigner Osama Bin Laden, who implicitly endorsed Gore's stance - and that of the Nobel committee - in his September rant from the cave.

Rush Limbaugh:

On the same wave as Geraghty and Hanson today, Rush Limbaugh just called on Al Gore to hand over this prize to "genuine agents of peace: General Petraus, the U.S. military, and its commander-in-chief.

Kathryn Lopez:

Hey, Mr. Peace Prize Man [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Is that manmade carbon dioxide in your hands, escaping into the atmosphere? [A picture of the IPCC chairman opening a bottle of champagne]

North

Some absolutely amazing photographs of a polar bear and two huskies in the Canadian North.

Via Yglesias.

Climate Change Crowd

Shorter Iain Murray: "you might as well give that Nobel to bin Laden."

Nobel Peace Prize 2007

Al Gore and the UN IPCC have been jointly awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

In other news, Al Gore won the 2008 US presidential election.

See here for background.

The Best Around

Too Right for America

Slog has been tracking Seattle megachurch pastor Ken Hutcherson for a while now, particularly in regards to his homophobia and links to far-right Latvian homophobic groups. It turns out that the Lynnwood (North Seattle) Convention Center will be hosting a meeting later this month of a group calling themselves Watchmen on the Walls, a group consisting of Hutcherson and like-minded Latvian homophobes whose aims are to fight the "homosexual movement" and bring the USA into "full compliance with God's laws." Slog commenters have been arguing about whether to take protest action at this gathering, or even to do something such as inform the FBI that a terrorist group is meeting in Lynnwood to discuss how to wage war in the US.

But reading about Hutcherson's alignment with these far-right Latvian groups reminded me of something else. I couldn't help but think of Dinesh D'Souza aligning with anti-American Islamists in their condemnation of the West as immoral and decadent; essentially blaming the cultural left for 9/11. Hutcherson is doing much the same thing; alarmed at what he sees as immoral homosexual culture in the US, he is aligning with far-right Eastern European groups in an attempt to effect change in the States. This in turn reminded me of a third example, the socially conservative American Episcopalians who have aligned with far-right African Anglicans in order to gang up on what they see as an immoral American left within the Episcopal Church.

Three cases that are different in the details, but have one thing in common. They all feature far-right American social conservatives condemning mainstream American culture as decadent, immoral and too left-leaning and subsequently forming alliances or sympathies with foreign groups that are essentially anti-American.

Prime Minister's Questions

PMQs today were pretty fun (click on "video and audio news"). This link will probably age better.

Michael Forbes vs. the Billionaire

Here's the gist of it:

For 40 years, Michael Forbes has lived a quiet life netting salmon every summer like his father and grandfather before him. His rambling old farm nestles behind a rampart of vast sand dunes which protect his rusting tractors and ramshackle sheds from the winds that whip in from the North Sea.

But those dunes are coveted by the billionaire property developer Donald Trump, as the centrepiece of his plans to create the "world's greatest golf course" - a £500m project to plant an eight- storey five-star hotel, two championship golf courses and 950 timeshare holiday flats on the coast of Aberdeenshire.

So the basic story is that he won't sell and that his land sits smack dab in the middle of the resort. But this is the bit that stuck out at me:

Ever since he refused to sell his home, 13 miles north of Aberdeen, Mr Forbes claims he has had a series of visits: environmental health officers and animal cruelty inspectors have arrived to check on the animals, and the police have asked him about his alleged possession of an unlicensed shotgun - a weapon he does not own. He has also had lawyers' letters accusing him of damaging Mr Trump's property, which he denies. These visits could be a coincidence, he adds, but he believes the pressure to sell will intensify.

If true, this is absolutely outrageous. If the local authorities are that deep in Trump's pockets, this needs to be investigated by national authorities.

McConnell and the Frost Family

So it looks like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's office may have played a part in orchestrating the attacks on the Frosts.

Clinton, Giuliani, and 9/11

Yes, it is silly when media outlets portray any mention of 9/11 as "treading on Rudy's turf". He's certainly been somewhat successful in turning it into Rudy Day. But there's a more general issue here that's kind of interesting and which I haven't seen discussed, relating to the 2008 campaign. 9/11 is really all Rudy has up his sleeve, and so he's out there hawking it incessantly, but if a Rudy/Hillary match-up really happens, as most people are predicting, that wind is completely taken out of his sails. What do people think of when they think of our leaders on 9/11? Giuliani and Clinton walking side-by-side in Manhattan (and, less flatteringly, of Bush and Cheney's whereabouts). Unless he plans to somehow denigrate Clinton in regards to 9/11, he won't be able to get any more mileage out of the 9/11 mantra. And if anything, he's going to come under intense scrutiny about his decisions regarding the placement of the emergency response headquarters. Add this to the long list of reasons why the left is salivating for his nomination.

Right-Wing Road-Rage

This (via Atrios) follows on nicely from the previous post:

He goes into reverse and starts screaming at me. I can’t really hear it except for a lot of f-bombs until he gets close. I yell back, “Why were you tailgating me like that? I was already going well over the speed limit!”

He’s now right in front of my driveway. Older guy–55? 60? Big walrus mustache, grey hair, relatively slight build, but kind of tough-looking.

“BECAUSE YOU’RE A FUCKING FAGGOT, FUCKER! YOU FUCK! I SHOULD HAVE FUCKING HIT YOU! I SHOULD HIT YOU NOW!” He goes on in that vein for a bit.
...
He leans out to point at my car bumper. Which is entirely unadorned except for a Kerry-Edwards sticker from 2004.

“YOU FAGGOT YOU VOTED FOR THAT WAR CRIMINAL. I’M GOING TO BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU.” Guy is turning a shade of purple. I don’t think he’s just putting on a show. He actually sped up, nearly rammed with his car at high speed and is now seriously contemplating attacking me over a bumper sticker. I’m so astonished that I’m speechless. He looks at me, looks at the house, and I think he’s noticing that there’s another car there and therefore maybe someone who is going to call the cops if something happens.

All because of a Kerry 2004 bumpersticker.

I actually witnessed something very similar in my hometown, a very small community in rural Washington State. My brother and I were walking along the main street after getting a coffee or something, a couple years back, and we were at one of the main intersections in town. Suddenly we heard a man yelling and honking. There were a few vehicles waiting to turn left at the stoplight onto the main street, and a middle-aged man in a minivan was yelling and honking at the person in the vehicle in front of him, a 20-something young man in a pickup truck. The young man looked a bit hippyish, and I don't know if it was merely his appearance that set the older man off, or if the truck had an anti-war or anti-Bush sticker or what, but the older man was yelling at him to "go the hell back to Canada" and other nonsense I don't recall. The younger guy looked genuinely confused about what was going on. This guy was really worked up. In the couple of seconds that it took to suss the situation, my brother and I yelled back at the older man, telling him to fuck off and giving him the finger. He suddenly looked taken aback that other people were yelling at him, and as the light changed and he turned on to the main street he started yelling at us, and we just stood there bemused, giving him the finger. I genuinely wondered if he was gonna circle around and try to start something, but he just took off in his minivan.

It's just amazing that somebody could be so incensed by a bumpersticker, or by somebody's personal appearance, that they are on the verge of starting an altercation over it.

The Frost Family

When right-wingers first began attacking Graeme Frost, it was infuriating and pathetic that these critics failed to understand how middle-class families in America, let alone lower-class families, might be unable to afford health-care. They simply rejected the idea out of hand that the family might need SCHIP, ignoring the extremely unfortunate circumstances that led the family to this reliance (a car accident that severely injured two of their children), and concentrating instead on the supposed wealth of the family. That was low enough, but it got much, much worse:

By Monday, Rush Limbaugh was discussing the family's earnings and assets on the air, and the blogger Michelle Malkin was writing about her visit to Halsey Frost's East Baltimore warehouse and her drive past the family's Butchers Hill rowhouse. Liberal bloggers, meanwhile, were complaining that the Frosts were being "swift-boated."

"It's really frustrating," said Bonnie Frost, 41, who stated she is upset by the angry Internet posts, e-mails and telephone calls targeting the family. "The whole point of it for me was that this program helped my family, and I wanted it to help others. That's the message, and I can't believe the way the spotlight has been taken off of that."

When I read yesterday that Michelle Malkin had gone to the family's house and to the father's place of business, I was absolutely gobsmacked that these people would stoop so low to harass this family. Ezra nails it:

Something has gone wrong on the Right. Become sick and twisted and tumorous and ugly. To visit Michelle Malkin's cave is to see politics at its most savage, its most ferocious, its most rageful. They say they've spent the past week smearing a child and his family because that child was fair game -- he and his family spoke of their experience receiving health care through the State Children's Health Insurance Program. For this, right wingers travel to their home, insinuate that the family is engaged in large-scale fraud, make threatening phone calls to the family, interrogate the neighbors as to the family's character and financial state.

This is the politics of hate. Screaming, sobbing, inchoate, hate. It would never, not in a million years, occur to me to drive to the home of a Republican small business owner to see if he "really" needed that tax cut. It would never, not in a million years, occur to me to call his family and demand their personal information. It would never occur to me to interrogate his neighbors. It would never occur to me to his smear his children.

His entire post is worth reading. This episode is unbelievable, unsettling and infuriating.

The best that can come of this is the curtains are opened and reveal how millions of Americans live with tenuous access to healthcare, or none at all. Of course, the average American already knows that because they struggle with this every day, but some of the media elite are apparently all to happy to remain ignorant. But maybe there will be a Katrina moment, when people could no longer claim that they didn't realize there was poverty in America.

It's perfectly understandable how the Frosts came to rely on SCHIP. I have a cousin who pays more on her health insurance each month than on her rent, because of being diagnosed with cancer. Most Americans are just a single health crisis away from extreme debt or poverty. There are thousands of stories like the Frosts', and they can't all be Swift-boated.

Clinton the Polarizer

It takes a lot of nerve for somebody who's harbored a vague, undefined loathing of Hillary Clinton for years to ask the question "Has she really become a different person than the paranoid, polarizing co-president of the 1990s? Or has she merely learned how to disguise it better?" Sullivan has never offered any explanation other than that she gives him the creeps, and he admits as much. She undoubtedly is a polarizing figure, but I suspect no amount of change is going to affect the opinions of people who simply find her intimidating, shrill, or slick for reasons they can't explain. And it's ridiculous to claim that she bears the burden of the polarization of the 1990s, ignoring the anti-Clinton GOP machine of the era.

Eric Alterman

Andrew links to Brendan Nyhan's critique of this Eric Alterman quote about the SCHIP veto:

Bush's preference for allowing poor kids to get sick and die for his own ideological obsession is a fundamental fact of his presidency and of the Republican Party's guiding ideology.

Well, it's certainly strong stuff. Here's Brendan's bit:

Needless to say, Alterman does not know and certainly cannot prove that Bush has a "preference for allowing poor kids to get sick and die." He's describing his prediction of the veto's results as Bush's "preference." That's like saying Alterman's support for withdrawal from Iraq represents his "preference" for genocide or full-blown civil war (two of the worst possible outcomes that could result).

It might sound like Alterman is just being shrill, calling Bush a child-killer or something such, but actually his statement is completely right. When Bush announced his veto, he explained it by saying that he doesn't believe public healthcare is a good thing, and that privatized healthcare is the way to go. He is depriving children of healthcare due to his obsession with privatizing everything. You could certainly and truthfully characterize that as a preference for private healthcare at all costs. No, it doesn't mean that he desires that children get sick and die, but it does mean that privatized healthcare is more important to him.

Head On

Take One:


Take Two:

Krikorian Solves Darfur Crisis

Mark Krikorian says:

If people are really worried about the vulnerable women of Darfur, they ought to give each one of them an AK-47 and the training to use it. You'd be surprised how quickly the rapes stop.

Is there any problem that automatic weapons proliferation can't solve?

Sullivan on Cameron

Andrew asks:

Here's the kicker: an hour long, with no formal text and no Teleprompter. I'm proud of my roots. Could any American politician pull that off?

William Jefferson Clinton.

Threats from Rep. Issa

I don't know how else to characterize this:



Like Matthew says, there are really only two readings: if Waxman went to Iraq to investigate Blackwater, he would either receive no protection from Blackwater or else would be physically harmed by them.