2 P.M.

Steve Clemons advocating the citizens' arrest of Ahmed Chalabi is one of the most brilliant things I've heard in a while.

Select

Hooray for the NYT's bold venture into irrelevance!

What Would Philip Do?

Philip Pullman, author of the great His Dark Materials series, has an op-ed piece in The Guardian today about how the UK Conservative party can regain power by revisiting some old conservative ideas which have no manifestation in modern conservatism. This seems very relevant to the post-Katrina debate about conservative social policy in the US.

Similarly, it's a conservative idea that provision of such things as healthcare and education should not be the subject of trading in the marketplace. The old-fashioned idea here is that looking after the sick and educating the young are matters of charity, not of business: you do them because they are good things to do, not because you can see profits to be made.

I would be curious to find out if anyone has written extensively on how so many conservatives and especially Christian conservatives became associated with you're-on-your-own social darwinism and market determinism.

Anyway, we'll see if the Tories take heed of Pullman's advice. Of course, he doesn't mention this, but a truly ascendant party would also have a magical knife that would allow them to visit multiple universes at will.

Heckuva

As the countdown begins to Brownie's Medal of Freedom and eventual replacement of Sandra Day O'Connor on the bench, I wonder why I keep expecting Ahmed Chalabi to be named as the new FEMA director. It fits some sort of pattern, though I can't figure out what that is. Spectactularly defying expectations, I guess. Ah, no - W's blind loyalty to the most discredited and slimy of his friends. Yeah, that's it.

Public Service

Simon Schama in the (new Berliner!) Guardian today, on helpful humane government:

Historians ought not to be in the prophecy business but I'll venture this one: Katrina will be seen as a watershed in the public and political life of the US, because it has put back into play the profound question of American government. Ever since Ronald Reagan proclaimed that government was not the answer but the problem, conservatism has stigmatised public service as parasitically unpatriotic, an anomaly in the robust self-sufficiency of American life. For the most part, Democrats have been too supine, too embarrassed and too inarticulate to fight back with a coherent defence of the legitimacy of democratic government. Now, if ever, is their moment; not to revive the New Deal or the Great Society (though unapologetically preserving social security might be a start) but to stake a claim to being the party that delivers competent, humane, responsive government, the party of public trust.

Clueless, Compassionless Conservatism

From the Houston Chronicle blog via The Washington Note, this shocking Tom DeLay anecdote:

DeLay to evacuees: 'Is this kind of fun?' U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's visit to Reliant Park this morning offered him a glimpse of what it's like to be living in shelter.
While on the tour with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.

The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"

They nodded yes, but looked perplexed.

Yes, Mr. DeLay, we're learning outdoor skills!

Survival

Cornel West in the Observer today, on the nature of conservative social policy.

Katrina

I was preparing to go to Lisbon and was in Lisbon during the hurricane and its immediate aftermath and that's why there hasn't been a post on it up till now. There is a massive amount of things to comment on, many of which have already been commented on more eloquently than I can muster at the moment. The onset of flooding and descent into chaos was horrifying, made more so by the obvious lack of governmental intervention during the first days. The lack of both short-term and long-term preparations is beyond baffling, it is infuriating. Both in Edinburgh and Lisbon I had conversations with people asking why my government was so slow to move, and all I could tell them was that most Americans were asking the same questions and being increasingly strident in demanding answers as the hours and days went by. Such a shameful episode for America, to fail our most vulnerable people this profoundly.

From my perspective, there are two major failures. The first one is a governmental organizational failure, and that is obvious enough and has been commented on everywhere. There was lack of communication, lack of preparation, lack of mobilization, and no over-arching game-plan agreed on between various levels of government. But the second failure is an ideological one, and is a kind of rot that has been setting in in our country. It's this large-scale shift to the right, in which the gospel of small government, gutted infrastructure, tax cuts for the wealthy, reduced social spending, social darwinism, opposition to equal opportunity measures, denial of affordable health care, and massively expensive (not to mention horrendously misguided and dangerous) foreign policy has been pushed forth repeatedly. Like David Wessel wrote in the Wall Street Journal (article subscription only), Katrina ended the era of small government. Note that this opinion is coming from the conservative opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. Even they can apparently see the writing on the wall, that it is desirable and the right thing to do to have a strong government that looks after its people, can respond to crises, can make sure that no one falls through the cracks as hard as the poorest residents of New Orleans did. This doesn't necessitate massive, bloated bureaucracy. The Grover Norquists of the world had their day and blew it big time, dragging our country down with them. Look at what even the conservative Friedman has to say to the despicable and massively influential GOP guru Norquist. Theirs is a failed ideology.

One silver lining was the performance of the media, who did brilliantly and refused to play nice with the administration, and other local and state officials, when the incompetence became painfully obvious (e.g. FEMA head Michael Brown commenting on Thursday that he had only just found out that people were stranded in the Superdome). So you had people like Anderson Cooper, Aaron Brown, Tim Russert, Ted Koppel, even Shephard Smith at Fox, asking for accountability and generally tearing Michael Brown a new one. Eric Alterman commends them here and here.

There had better be soul-searching long into the future with regards to both of the types of failure mentioned above, because there is a hell of a lot of rot in our country. I think Katrina could cause a shift in our national consciousness much more profound than even 9/11 did, and I so strongly hope that the introspection over time leads our country to a more compassionate, socially just and fair society. I can't tell you how much this episode has soured my view of the current state of the US.

All of the Daily Show hurricane segments are worth watching, and I thought Brian Williams's interview was particularly good.

Fukuyama's Regret

Francis Fukuyama, perhaps the foremost conservative thinker of the past 20 years, has a fairly scathing opinion piece on the folly of Bush's foreign policy. I expect this will make pretty big waves in conservative discussion circles over the next few days. Who will be the first stooge at The Corner to argue that Fukuyama has lost his conservative credentials?

Oh, Jonah

He did it! Godwin's law has been upheld yet again. Jonah Goldberg took the Cindy Sheehan discussion to a predictable conclusion, and realized along the way that he had dug himself quite a hole. Watch him backtrack here and here.

A very weird aspect of his latter post is where he decries the left doing guilt-by-assocation with groups such as the so-called "Minuteman" (the border vigilantes), when that is precisely what he's trying to do with Sheehan. It seems that his own follow-up point argues against his original post. I emailed him with that point and he promptly responded:

not really. the point is that when the left does it, as in that example, it's
unfair.

So, to summarize Jonah: implying that a grieving war mother is in cahoots with Nazis is okay, but questioning the motives of border vigilantes is crossing the line. Or, a more concise summary: it's only wrong if you're on the left.

Jonah is actually one of my favorite conservative writers, along with Andrew Sullivan, but like Sullivan he feels obliged to make at least one bat-shit crazy post per year.

Sheehan

I haven't commented on this story about Cindy Sheehan and her son Casey, partly because it has been so grotesquely used by pundits and bloggers on the far right and left. Juan Cole calls her a media whore and Michelle Malkin employs the improbable phrase "grief pimps" to describe Sheehan's supporters, while the likes of Michael Moore try to capitalize on the Sheehan family's misfortune. But I support her very strongly and find it very distressing to see the amount of vitriol hurled at her from the Right. I found Walter Kirn's passing comment on the matter to be a simple and profound summary:

...a war that can't survive a mourning mother shouldn't be going on at all.

What does it say about the uneasiness of the few remaining war supporters, that even the act of a mother mourning her dead son amounts to treason in their eyes?

Some Candor on the Right

The administration is losing its own party members as this war goes on:

Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska on Thursday said the United States is "getting more and more bogged down" in Iraq and stood by his comments that the White House is disconnected from reality and losing the war.

The longer U.S. forces remain in Iraq, he said, the more it begins to resemble the Vietnam war.

Hagel mocked Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion in June that the insurgency in Iraq was in its "last throes," saying the U.S. death toll has risen amid insurgent attacks.

"Maybe the vice president can explain the increase in casualties we're taking," the Nebraskan told CNN.

"If that's winning, then he's got a different definition of winning than I do."

Savage Blogging

Hooray for Dan Savage guest-blogging over at Andrew Sullivan's site for the week.

Worst Advice Ever

Michael Lind suggests that, in order to regain the majority, Democrats must become socially conservative and economically liberal. Seriously, is this guy a plant? That's the exact opposite of what a party seeking centrist votes should offer. There are a lot of what Andrew Sullivan dubs "Eagles" -- socially liberal, fiscally conservative, fairly hawkish on defense -- out there, and very few, I imagine, social conservatives with leanings towards liberal economics.

State's Rights

I was watching some Daily Show clips and came across the recent interview with the despicable Senator Rick Santorum, wherein he discussed his new book on virtues with Jon. My biggest impression from the interview regards a comment he made that is very surprising coming from a conservative of his ilk. Jon asked about virtues today compared with virtues of the segregation era, and part of Santorum's reply was that we had needed a strong federal government to eradicate segregation. This comment may not seem particularly interesting until you consider that most people in his region of the far right use "state's rights" and "local government" as codewords for segregation, in order to woo certain white Southern votes. I think it's no small matter for a uber-conservative like Santorum to admit that strong federal authority was the cure for that ill. The Southern strategy that has stretched from Nixon to Reagan to George W. is one of the most disgusting political tactics of our time, and Santorum is right not to play into it.

From Your Lips to Goss's Ear

This cracked me up. Maybe I'm wrong, but the current CNN QuickVote survey seems like a sharp jab at the CIA:

If U.S. intelligence officials have an ‘excellent idea’ where Osama bin Laden is, should they go get him?

No prizes for guessing how the responders weighed in. It's currently up at the CNN main page.

Titular

British televison documentaries always have titles which are perfectly descriptive of the content, in a way that for some reason I find quite funny: The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off, Sleeping with the Au Pair, The Secretary Who Stole 4 Million Pounds, and tonight...She Stole My Foetus. Seriously, it's on Channel 5 tonight. Just hearing the name I feel that I know all there is to know. Which is to say, too much.

Live 8

Nice to hear from you, Jeff, though I have no idea what that post meant. Boy, it's been a while since I've posted...stretch...

This just in: Bob Geldof encourages every Briton to build a homemade rocket and "fly to the moon against poverty." I laud Geldof for all the reasons he should be lauded, but encouraging amateur British sailors and rowers to re-stage Dunkirk, combined with encouraging a million protesters to converge on Edinburgh before planning or consulting with the city, sounds like a lot of potential disaster. I'm glad I'll be gone for July.

Bolton...

Perhaps the US's own Michael Bolton could help out in the U.K.? I mean, he does a mean cover of "Sittin' on the dock of the bay". Really, someone should look into this.

Howard

So maybe the Southern strategy doesn't fly over here. They've been showing these Tory commercials the past few days in which Michael Howard refers to Britain's "forgotten majority." What with Labour having staked out the middle-ground, the Conservatives are starting to look a bit like the BNP.