Still deciding if I'm in or out

A few weeks ago Travis "came out" in support of gay marriage. See his original post here. I have to admit I'm not there yet - I am still getting the issues straight in my mind, and if I eventually get them into some coherent fashion I'll post about it.

In the meantime, I keep tossing around various ideas pro and con, one of which is that the "real" threat to marriage is not gay marriage but other factors which weaken the institution, such as (per Travis) the various quasi-marriage options like civil unions and (not per Travis) divorce. And on that note, see this AP article on the increasing rate of divorce among long-term marriages:

 No firm statistics are available, but experts say there is no doubt that breakups among couples married upward of 25 years are becoming more common, although they’re still less likely than divorce among younger couples.

I am not quite sure what to make of this trend, nor how to relate it to the debate over gay marriage. Arguably, it means that in the face of increasing assaults on marriage, we ought to reward those who intend to commit to each other, regardless of gender, which some argue would necessarily strengthen the institution (for example, this argument pops up in various forms in several Andrew Sullivan pieces, such as this one). Arguably, though, it means just the opposite: We need to draw the wagons ever tighter around the traditional conception of marriage to keep out these sorts of encroachments.

Or it may mean something entirely different - that marriage as an institution is outmoded and should be replacd entirely (people actually argue this - here's an entire web site devoted to promoting various versions of this idea). It seems to me that this might be the worst option. So I am with Travis on that, at least. Here's to incremental steps!
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:47 PM 0 comments

 
Sharks v. Fish

I am not quite sure what to make of this story, but it troubles me:

CAIRO, Egypt, Nov. 29 —  First came the fish bumper stickers, imported from the United States and pasted on cars by members of Egypt’s Coptic minority as a symbol of their Christianity. Before long, some Muslims responded with their own bumper stickers: fish-hungry sharks.

Standard and accurate caveat #1: Religious relations are complicated, especially in the MIddle East, and it is always wrong to draw broad inferences about a group from the behavior of a few. Standard and accurate caveat #2: I am not nearly smart or knowledgeable enough to parse what this means, assuming it means anything.

Still, notwithstanding the caveats, I find it troubling.
- posted by Anonymous @ 12:23 PM 0 comments

 
Yet another reason to shop online

Actual headline: "Woman Knocked Unconscious While Shopping". This is why I use Amazon, and since the trampling happened at Wal-Mart, the incident may also support Mrs. MSR's firm rule against Wal-Mart and in favor of their competitors.
- posted by Anonymous @ 12:20 PM 0 comments

 
For every great presidential move

There's a pack of braying asses lining up to criticize it. After Bush's brillant trip to Baghdad yesterday, the stooges olf the left have begun taking potshots. Thus, we have, among others:

Philip Taubman, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, whinging about not bringing more reporters: "In this day and age, there should have been a way to take more reporters. People are perfectly capable of maintaining a confidence for security reasons. It's a bad precedent." Yeah, making sure the New York Times, or Pravda, as Tom says, is along is the White House's first concern. never mind that everyone, even Joe Lockhart (see below) agrees there was no way to bring more people.

Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart, who sees through the sham to the President's manipulative ways: "This is a president who has been unwilling to provide his presence to the families who have suffered but thinks nothing of flying to Baghdad to use the troops there as a prop." Sorry to correct you, there, Joe, but he visited the familes of troops on Monday. But he didn't say he felt their pain so, you know, it doesn't count.

Clinton-worshiping author and former White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, carping "The message to the Iraqis is Bush doesn't think their country is secure. It underscores the insecurity, and it conveys insularity." (The quote is from the middle of this story, and for a good fisking of Blumenthal's book see here) Well, Sid, some Iraqis clearlyfeel that way, but to be frank, the country isn't secure. We're trying to do that now, but people like you--and Missus Clinton, who showed up in Baghdad today and called on the UN to come back--aren't helping.

There's nothing worse than seeing someone you hate do something good, is there fellas?
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:13 PM 0 comments

 
Bush in Baghdad

There's little to be said about the President's surprise visit to troops in Baghdad. Here's the main point: It was brillant. And, as Travis has pointed out, the President often speaks more eloquently than he's given credit for. And he did it again in Baghdad:

"We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost of casualties, defeat a ruthless dictator and liberate 25 million people, only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins. We will prevail. We will win because our cause is just."

Brillant. Absolutely brillant.
- posted by Anonymous @ 9:11 PM 0 comments

 
It's all about brining

Mrs. MSR and I finished Thanksgiving dinner a few hours ago, and I am still stuffed. I made the turkey again this year, and it turned out well. Here's the recipe I used, from Gourmet magazine. The key is to brine the bird - 14 hours or so in 8 quarts of water and 2 cups of salt. I had to buy a five gallon bucket and clear out the fridge, but it was worth it. I can't recommend it enough. So if you take nothing else away from the collective wisdom on offer at Remove All Doubt, know this: BRINE YOUR TURKEYS.
- posted by Anonymous @ 9:04 PM 0 comments

 
Religious pandering

The Washington Post carries a front page story this Thanksgiving morning on the difficulties the Democratic candidates are having figuring out how to talk about their faith. This is to be contrasted with the President, of course, who talks easily about what is by all accounts a deeply held and sincere faith. Voters like this, according to polls, but Democrats can't quite figure out what to do. Sharpton and Lieberman are candid about their faiths, but that actually angers the Democratic base, who are more concerned than Republicans about the blurring of church and state. Then we have Dean's generally dismissive attitude towards faith; despite claiming to have read the Bible and to pray "almost every day," he admits he only goes to church for campaign reasons and recently used this line at a rally: "We've got to stop voting on guns, gods, gays and school prayer."

I'll confess to a certain naivete: I wish politicians would talk about their faith only to the extent it is natural and honest for them to do so. Thus, Bush talks about it a lot, because he is a born-again evangelical who places faith at the center of his life. Dean, who seems to be contemptuous of faith as other than a set of platitudes mouthed by stupid people, should just shut up. I realize that's impossible - faith matters to Americans, and so candidates have to talk about it, even when it's dishonest or forced. Let me say this, though: More than any other issue, I think that people of faith can tell when candidates are lying or faking it.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:41 AM 0 comments

 
Dumbest. Panel. Ever.

There has GOT to be something better to worry about than this:

The panelists pointed out that many of the supposed benefits of gender-segregated bathrooms are in fact weaknesses of the system.

That has got to be the dumbest panel I've ever heard of. I mean, D-U-M, dumb.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 3:08 PM 0 comments

 
Who wants to marry a left leaning ventriloquist vegan presidential no-hoper?

Dennis Kucinich is drawing some attention thanks to his participation in an online effort by PoliticsNH.com to find him a wife. See the candidates here.

Somehow, I doubt Fox will pick this one up for the spring season.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:12 AM 0 comments

 
Life is GOOD: Arsenal 5 - 1 Inter Milan

On an entirely personal note, I am flying high because Arsenal, the world's greatest soccer team, thrashed Inter Milan 5-1 in Milan in first round Champions League play. This leaves Arsenal a chance to advcance if they can do the business next week. See a breathless match report from Arseweb, the top Arsenal blog, here and a more objective version from Soccernet, a solid soccer site, here.

But the best part for me is that it was on espn2, so I was able to watch it tonight, wearing my Arsenal jersey and scarf (I even convinced the long-suffering Mrs. MSR to wear my other scarf). I only get to see them about three times a year or so, and usually I have to get up early and go to Summers in Arlington and watch while eating breakfast. Somehow, the fact that I hardly ever get to see them actually increases my passion for the team, and makes the off espn2 game a true treat. And when they give me a performance like this, it's almost too much. Life truly is beautiful.
- posted by Anonymous @ 9:04 PM 0 comments

 
Back-handed compliment

In the midst of exorciating the Republican-led Senate for the new Medicare bill (and actually just for existing), EJ Dionne is moved to offer grudging (very grudging) praise: "The moral, yet again, is that Republicans are much tougher than Democrats and fight much harder to win."

I realize he doesn't mean it a a compliment, but I have only one response: Word.
- posted by Anonymous @ 9:01 PM 0 comments

 
How the other side "thinks"

Sometimes I like to link to some of the crazier leftist web sites, just for giggles. Here are some new ones that make you wonder how people make it through the day:

Bush Body Count has a list of people killed by the Bush family, including JFK and Olaf Palme.

Counterpunch has so much garbage I can't even pick a "highlight."

These sites courtesy of The Economist's Lexington column, which argues this week that this sort of virulent anti-Bushism will help the president in the election.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:54 PM 0 comments

 
Why preemption makes sense

The AP is reporting that almost every major terrorist attack since (and including) 9/11 have one thing in common: Those who did them trained in al Queda or affiliated camps in Afghanistan. The numbers are staggering:

Between 15,000 and 20,000 people are believed to have trained at Afghan camps since 1996, when bin Laden returned to Afghanistan from Sudan, said a U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Since the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, Rishkhor and other al-Qaida camps have mostly been reduced to rubble, but the men who trained in them — including, allegedly, the two Turkish suicide bombers who detonated last week's synagogue explosions — are still pursuing their legacy of death.

Those who argue against the Iraq war on the grounds that Hussein hadn't done anything yet, take note: Preemption is hardly an insane idea. A few dozen good sized missles into the aforementioned Afghan camps in 1998 might have prevented 9/11. There's no guarantee of that, of course, and we can't go around bombing everyone who looks sideways at us. But when we see a regime engaging in fangerous activity with the explicit goal of being able to kill as many Americans as possible, it hardly rewrites international relations to suggest we ought to do something about it. It seems to me that that is the lesson of 9/11, and I for one am glad Bush learned it. Now we just need to get everyone else on board, beginning perhaps with Kim Jung Il . . .
- posted by Anonymous @ 5:46 PM 0 comments

 
If you're in Washington

I recommend that you check out the National Gallery's exhibition of Romare Bearden (1911-88), an influential African-American artist. I stumbled into it the other week and was captivated. Bearden was a product of the Harlem Renaissance, and there are a lot of jazz resonances in his work, both explicitly (see here, here, and here) and implicitly (I'll leave a discussion of call-and-response themes in his work for smarter folks, but believe me when I say there's something there), which I love. He also constructed monumental collage and assemblage scenes, many of city streets, that are evocative and powerful (see, e.g., here). The Gallery's exhibiton is excellent, and well worth seeing.
- posted by Anonymous @ 9:21 PM 0 comments

 
Good news for the discerning animation fan

Tom recently sent me this good news: Family Guy may be returning to Fox. For those who don't know, it's a teriffically bizarre show, featuring a Rhode Island family in which the baby, who has an English accent, is looking to kill the mother and the dog talks to everyone. Good stuff.
- posted by Anonymous @ 7:35 PM 0 comments

 
I will never understand North Korea

And the latest proof is the following statement condemning Rumsfled as worse than Hitler after he criticized the regime:

"It is nothing surprising that Rumsfeld talked such nonsense as he put Hitler into the shade in man-killing and war hysteria. But we can never pardon him for malignantly slandering our dignified and inviolable political system whether he is a political dwarf, human scum or hysteric," the agency said.

Actually, "human dwarf, scum, or hysteic" more or less summarizes the options for the question, What is Kim Jong Il?
- posted by Anonymous @ 12:23 PM 0 comments

 
ENORMOUS tip o' the cap

To Lying in Ponds, a teriffic website that tries to quantify parisanship. It's a teriffic site, and one of the few smart eough to have linked to us at one point. So it was a pleasure to see it referred to by name in this Economist piece, unfortunately available only to subscribers, fisking Paul Krugman. Krugman scores through the roof at lyinginponds' partianship meter, and the Economist explains why:

A glance through his past columns reveals a growing tendency to attribute all the world's ills to George Bush. Regarding California's energy crisis, for example, he berated the Bush administration and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for not imposing price caps sooner—but found no room to mention Bill Clinton, who presided over a similarly inactive FERC for the first part of the crisis, nor to attack California's then Democratic governor Gray Davis for his disastrous refusal to allow consumer prices to rise. After Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia, recently gave an anti-Semitic speech, Mr Krugman argued that the Bush administration's ham-fisted foreign policy had forced Dr Mahathir to make the remarks in order to shore up domestic political support—most unlikely, given that he was about to step down.

Getting linked by the Economist - a new goal for Remove All Doubt.
- posted by Anonymous @ 10:46 AM 0 comments

 
One of Life's Great Mysteries Explained

We know now the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. You can also find out the capitol of Assyria.

Tip o' the hat to Volokh.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 6:50 AM 0 comments

 
Pop Star Professors

A friend of mine recently said that the academic life is the life of mental masturbation. Although he was wise enough to point out that masturbating can be fun, I think that his point was that academics do a lot of fun stuff (to them, at least) but don't contribute much. As a potential academic, I'd like to dismiss that critique out of hand, but I think it deserves some respect. There seems to me to be a good argument that at least some class of academics contribute next to nothing to society, and have talents that would be better applied elsewhere. Troll through some of the less prestigious journals of law or humanities if you doubt me. And its not like a lot of those folks are good teachers.

I'm not willing, or able, to fully engage that form of the argument. However, the claim that no academics contribute to society is far too strong. There are some who make remarkably important contributions, and are justly celebrated for it. Now, I'm not talking about these pop-star professors, like Alan Dershowitz, who seem to be mere media creations. I'm talking about folks like Ludwig Wittgenstein, who alter the direction of academic thought, and later popular thought. Here's testimony to Wittgenstein's influence, a philosopher who died more than 50 years ago:

Ludwig Wittgenstein's only known musical work had its world premiere last week in Cambridge. It is called, according to the title that he had pencilled above his two-line score, Leidenschaftlich (in English, "Passionate"). At four bars, it lasts less than 30 seconds and is little more than a powerful, fiery flourish.

Yet it brought an invited audience of 150 curious Wittgenstein enthusiasts

If I go the PhD route, I'm sure I will avoid being Dershowitz. But I hope I'm more like Wittgenstein, and less like the nameless, faceless masturbators.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 7:50 PM 0 comments

 
A Good Sign

The Democratic Presidential candidates are solidy to the left of the AARP on prescription drug coverage. This bodes well.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 7:20 AM 0 comments

 
Hmmm . . .

I am no an of the Bush administration's steel tariffs. I think they're shortsighted and inconsistent with free trade, which should be the country's posture. But I still find the EU's planned retaliation, which has been sanctioned by the WTO, a little troubling:

[The list of items on which Europe will smack sanctions] includes orange juice and other citrus products from Florida, where Mr Bush’s brother, Jeb, is governor. According to Joe Klein, a journalist, the list prompted Mr Bush to approach Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, at a summit and ask: “Why are you attacking my family?”

Could the Europeans be hoping to use this trade war to get an administration they would prefer? I can only imagine France loves the idea of a Howard Dean presidency, and maybe this will help them get it.
- posted by Anonymous @ 9:27 PM 0 comments

 
Big News

This is pretty big news: Massachusetts' top court ruled Tuesday that the state cannot deny gays the right to marry. I'm sure there'll be great political analysis here, and great legal analysis here, and all kinds of interesting pointers of both kinds here and here. Enjoy. If I can tear myself away from my other commitments long enough to read the opinion, I'll put my comments up. In any case, the most interesting question may well be whether the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the US Constitution requires other states to recognize the same-sex marriages of Massachusetts.

UPDATE: Here's the text of the opinion.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 10:16 AM 0 comments

 
Less Fun Than Blogging

Two things that I like less than blogging are working real hard and filling in PhD applications. And there's been too much of both in my life recently. I hope to be back to blogging soon.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 6:39 AM 0 comments

 
Anti-Semitism Moving From Right to Left?

An interesting look at Anti-semitism on the left from Foreign Policy::

Anti-Semitism is again on the rise. Why now? Blame the backlash against globalization. As public anxiety grows over lost jobs, shaky economies, and political and social upheaval, the Brownshirt and Birkenstock crowds are seeking solace in conspiracy theories. And in their search for the hidden hand that guides the new world order, modern anxieties are merging with old hatreds and the myths on which they rest.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 6:33 AM 0 comments

 
The laughs continue

According to this story from the Post, Iowa Ruckus, there are two separate Draft Hillary Clinton movements, and they hate each other. You have to love it.
- posted by Anonymous @ 7:09 AM 0 comments

 
For jazz lovers

I heartily recommend that you check out Dr. Horner's Classic Jazz Corner, which streams classic, straight ahead jazz 24 hours a day. The guy has a teriffic playlist drawn from some of the classic jazz milestones, and the site streams fairly smoothly, all things considered (at least it does on my cable modem).
- posted by Anonymous @ 10:45 AM 0 comments

 
Where there are rules . . .

The flood from my computer continues on Sunday morning. Mrs. MSR is working a day shift, so I'm here alone. She has the car, so I can't go anyplace. My knee still hurts, so I can't run. The Redskins don't come on for four hours, and I am desperate to avoid the pile of work I brought home. So, I blog.

There's an interesting piece in today's Washington post magazine on the PG-13 rating. The author's point is that movie studios are desperate to get the PG-13 rating, which allows them to admit everyone (unlike R) while still being fairly racy (unlike PG) This in turn lets them tap the lucrative young teen market. She reviews the history of the ratings system, especially how the PG-13 rating emerged as a central position between R and PG. Of course, this middle position has been abused, which she describes as "ironic":

Movie executives took note: Responding to the negative publicity, they promised never, ever to market an R-rated movie to a child again. What they began doing, instead, was making more PG-13 movies, which could then, legitimately, be marketed to the same demographic. In a supreme irony, it was public concern about violence and its effects on children that led to more violent movies that can be, and are, marketed to children.

Not to be too critical, but this is not ironic at all. Rather, it is the natural consequence of regulation. No one can write rules that deal with every situation, and it is impossible for regulators to keep ahead of business. If you don't believe that, glance at the Federal Register sometime.

The central point about these PG-13 movies is that they are complying with the regulation, notwithstanding how racy and violent they are. And they really are: This article makes the point that, as an adult, you take for granted that you can see any movie, and forget that some of the violent and racy movies you see are actively targeted to 13 year olds. So the current system deflects responsibility from everyone; parents can just let kids see what they want, trusting the regulators, and the producers can sneak some stuff by at the edges of the regulations.

This is why government is better off to regulate less, not more. Here, if there were no ratings at all, parents would be obligated to take some control. And if there were fewer ratings then, as the author ponts out, "films would have to rise and fall, once more, as PG or R."
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:36 AM 0 comments

 
They come through again

The Economist's opinion page comes through again with a well-crafted and nuanced analysis of Bush's speech on Middle Eastern democracy. It starts with the best summary of the speech I have yet read: "In Washington on November 6th George Bush made an excellent speech in which he said that Arabs were no less capable than other people of enjoying democracy and that helping them to do so should and would be part of American policy for decades to come."

It goes on to caution, though, that this job won't be easy and that it shouldn't be imposed by force, Iraq being a notable, one off exception.

Right, and right.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:20 AM 0 comments

 
To be or not to be

Has the time for blogs come and go? Are we sinking towards irrelevance? See the views of self-professed blog lover Jennifer Howard in the Washington Post, It's a Little Too Cozy in the Blogsphere. She writes,

What began as the ultimate outsider activity -- a way to break the newspaper and TV stranglehold on the gathering and dissemination of information -- is turning into the same insider's game played by the old establishment media the bloggerati love to critique. The more blogs you read and the more often you read them, the more obvious it is: They've fallen in love with themselves, each other and the beauty of what they're creating. The cult of media celebrity hasn't been broken by the Internet's democratic tendencies; it's just found new enabling technology.

She may be right, but since her thesis is that all this is driven by blogers whoget obsessed with how many readers they have, we at Remove All Doubt should be fairly safe. Our small but loyal readership can be assured we'll never give in and go Hollywood. You have our word on it.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:15 AM 0 comments

 
And now for something completely different

I have not blogged for a while, and today I come back with something light but funny. The sprawling mess that is the Washington Post Style section brings us this uncompromisingly silly analysis of the candidates' hair, and their general above the neck style. A summary:

Dean: "Dean's hair looks as though it was ordered from an old Sears catalogue."

Clark: "There's a certain Mayberry charm to Clark's barbershop cut. Yet who can linger over Clark's perfectly trimmed, supreme-Allied-commander hair when his taut profile is competing for attention?"

Braun: "a low-maintenance style that frees one from dependence on an aide with a large golf umbrella"

Sharpton: "[his] stunning James Brown flip is a triumph of chemicals and heat over nature."

Kucinich: "brushes his hair back away from his face and in that simple gesture manages to look looser and less prepackaged than the other candidates"

Lieberman: "Because his hairline begins at the same latitude as his ears, the vast expanse of furrowed frontage emphasizes that the senator could soon be in danger of perpetuating the comb-over"

Gephardt: "suffers because his strawberry blond hair is indistinguishable from his scalp. On television he tends to look like a lab mouse in a cluster of field mice."

Edwards: "parts his low on the right and a thick mane flops across his forehead like an inverted Nike Swoosh. It is an old man's haircut -- neither short nor rakishly long. Just unremarkably there."

Kerry: "thatch of hair that always looks as though it is one percentage point of humidity away from floating up and off his head . . . a thick, glamorous quality . . . It edges toward dashing, hints at vanity but steers clear of roguish."

I am glad that the paper in the nation's capital has the time to do this, and I am glad someone finally called Gerphardt a "lab mouse," even in this context.
- posted by Anonymous @ 7:09 AM 0 comments

 
No sympathy. None. I mean, absolutely none at all. Zero. Zilch. Zippo Sympathy.

A quick break from writing PhD application essays (lots to blog about there at a later time) to bring you this: MSNBC is reporting a serious problem:

TIVO’S BIG SELLING POINT for many customers was the idea that they no longer needed to live their lives according to the TV schedule. What many failed to realize is the entertainment glut that is created by saving so many favorite programs.

That's right, these morons are complaining because TIVO works TOO well. And, as a result, they are getting too much entertainment. Ack! Who will save these poor souls from such misery. Truly, they are America's forgotten victims, marooned in Hell's Third Circle with hours and hours of SHOWS THEY WANT TO WATCH AVAILABLE TO THEM AT ANY TIME. We can only be grateful that they don't have too much of other good stuff. Imagine if these folks, heaven forbid, won the lottery. Think of the horror of unlimited financial resources! The effects of the "resource glut" would be truly terrifying. How would they decide whether to visit friends in San Francisco, take a romantic weekend with the wife to the Paris, or get a luxury box at the super bowl. Terrifying.

Well, forgive me if I'm a little less than sympathetic. As for those of you who, like me, are not worried about an "entertainment glut" in your life, let me tell you, I have recently purchased a TIVO, and the thing is awesome. No more flipping channels. No more bad shows. No more commercials. Go out and get yourself one. NOW. Unless, of course, you don't want too much entertainment. Then, I guess, go find some paint you can watch dry, or whatever.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 5:50 PM 0 comments

 
I've been out for a while as my law firm has determined it is time to take their pound of flesh. Good to see that in my absence some of the orginal participants are back in the swing. Maybe now that baseball season is over, politics will be more on the mind.
- posted by Anonymous @ 9:20 AM 0 comments

 
There is a very interesting article in today's WSJ (front page left hand column) that explores why Jessica Lynch has become the media's folk hero while acts of true heroism and sacrifice in Iraq have gone underreported. The central question is this: why do we glorify victims rather than those who succeeded in their mission objectives? It is a good question and one that more of us should think about. After all, we are looking to win this war and it might be helpful if we recognize those moving that ball forward.

The article does a great job demonstrating how in WWII the country celebrated soldiers who killed a large number of the enemy (i.e., Sergeant York) and even made movies about these people. One "public relations" officer in the military said it did not even occur to him to publicize the exploits of successfull soldiers in Iraq, as he didn't think the public was comfortable with that. That guy needs to be reassigned. Please read the article as I am writing this from memory and am unable to provide the best of the quotes.

- posted by Anonymous @ 9:18 AM 0 comments

 
Dennis Kucinich: Vegan, ventriloquist, hopeless romantic

What makes Dennis Kucinich different than the other eight Democratic candiates? Well, for one thing, he's single (actually, so is Braun). But Dennis seems to be acting on it more aggressively. The web site PoliticsNH.com is running a "Who Wants to be a First Lady" contest to help Denny find a wife. And he is so smooth, I assume he'll be deluged with offers:

And I certainly want a dynamic, out-spoken woman who was fearless in her desire for peace in the world and for universal single-payer health care and a full employment economy. If you are out there call me.

"Fearless for single-payer health care" - why didn't I think of that line when I was dating?
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:09 AM 0 comments

 
Dean to have sense of irony evaluated by team of experts

OK, no, not really, but he should. He announced today he'll forego any public money for his campaign. As he explains it:

"We have supported public financing, but the unabashed actions of this president to undercut our Democratic process with floods of special interest money have forced us to abandon a broken system."

Of course, the Deanster managed to take time out this week from decrying Bush's reliance on special interests to accept several union nominations. There's no inconsistency in these positions, I suppose, since unions aren't really a special interest with a particular political agenda and millions of dollars and members to throw at candidates who promise them things.
- posted by Anonymous @ 4:34 PM 0 comments

 
Tip o' the cap

To my friend Paul Bibeau, a very funny author (and, following some prior blogs, recent finisher of the New York marathon) who has recently been named Capitalist Next Door by the great web site Capitalist Chicks. You're living right when women whose self-described mantra is that "Capitalism is the only moral and practical economic system" single you out for recognition.

N.B.: Paul's book, The Big Money and Other Stories, can be had on his website, Goblin Books, where you can read this excerpt from the main story.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:04 AM 0 comments

 
D-U-M dumb

I offer you E.J. Dionne's latest screed in The Washington Post, called "One Nation Deeply Divided". It slogs on for a standard column length, whining about how the country is deeply divided between nice democrats and evil republicans. He connects these divisions to a recent study of regional attitudes in America, which found that religious and conservative states tend to be republican, and many of them are southern.

The conclusion? Obviously, it's that we're about to have a war. And not a cultural war, for goodness sake, but possible another real Civil War:

It is 138 years since the Civil War ended. But in politics, the past isn't just history. In the Democratic presidential race, Howard Dean is under attack for talking kindly, sort of, about the guys with Confederate flags on their trucks. In Mississippi, Republican Barbour raised a defense of the Confederate flag to help himself win an election. Up in heaven, Abe Lincoln must be shaking his head in astonishment. The country he sought to keep united is pulling apart politically, and largely along the same lines that defined Honest Abe's election victory in 1860.

OK, so he didn't really mean we're going to have a war. He just meant that the south and the north are eternally incompatible because conservative southern Christians are stupid. Which is so much better.
- posted by Anonymous @ 8:10 PM 0 comments

 
I'll never understand this

Several of us have posted before about the relative insanity of some of the groups opposed to US policy in Iraq. Clearly, reasonable people can differ on this issue, and I would never be heard to say that all those who oppose the administration's policies is insane. But some are, like these guys, and these guys. And perhaps the clearest example I have yet seen is this remarkable brochure from the International ANSWER web site, entitled "Counter-revolution and Resistance in Iraq." It's a "history" of modern-day Iraq, seen through the prism of American and British colonialism. The concluding paragraphs must be quoted to be believed:

The counter-revolution in the Soviet Union paved the way for U.S. aggression and counter-revolution in Iraq, the negation of Iraq's sovereignty and the destruction of the structures that made it an independent state.

Having achieved their victory, however, the occupiers now confront a people who have a long and proud history of resistance. The anti-war movement here and around the world must give its unconditional support to the Iraqi anti-colonial resistance.

Of course, The Washington Post keeps reporting that (see, e.g., here), that the "anti-colonial resisters" are mainly "supporters of former president Saddam Hussein, Islamic militants and foreign guerrillas," by which one can understand al Queda.

So, the peace movement urges us to support the Baaths, who have employed nerve gas against the Kurds and perpetrated other atrocities (the the mass graves did not fill themselves>, and al Queda, who are responsible for all sort of things, not least 9/11.

I knew they were nuts, but can they mean this? Can they really mean that a rational reaction for those who opposed US action in Iraq is to root for al Queda types to kill as many US soldiers as possible? I suppose they do, but I'll never understand why.
- posted by Anonymous @ 7:08 PM 0 comments

 
So Apparently My Life Was NOT at Risk . . . Well, it sure felt like it

Disturbing new news for us long distance runners: There is significant doubt that Pheidippides actually ran 26 miles from the Battle of Marathon to Athens, announced victory, then died. The source for this news was concered with the question, why not just use a horse? (a question, I will admit, that is a good one. I mean, horses are fast over long distances - especially this one). I, on the other hand, have always been suspicious that the guy died right over the finish line. I didn't look into it too much, because it makes a marathon look even more macho. Now, however, I'm just going to have to let that go. Marathons are still tough, though. Really.

Tip o' the hat to The Volokh Conspiracy.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 8:14 AM 0 comments

 
I beg to differ

The Economist has an interesting piece this week on post-9/11 civil liberties in America. The author, Harold Hongju Koh, is a professor of international law at Yale, and he quite predictably rips the administration. Most interestingly, perhaps, he argues that, when considering the rights of detainees in the war on terror, the Supreme Court should strive to be more in tune with international law standards, as he urged in an amicus brief in Lawrence.

[W]hen the September 11th cases get to the Supreme Court, American human-rights lawyers can similarly argue that the legality of our policies must be evaluated by “values we [Americans] share with a wider civilisation”. Citing Lawrence, human-rights advocates can urge the court to decide whether the rights being asserted by detainees like Mr Hamdi, Mr Padilla and those on Guantánamo “have been accepted as an integral part of human freedom in many other countries” and can argue that our government has not demonstrated “that the governmental interest in circumscribing [these freedoms] is somehow more legitimate or ugent” in the United States than in other countries that have seen fit to forgo such legal restrictions.

Here's hoping the Court rejects this reasoning, but given that it accepted similar logic in Lawrence, I am not getting ahead of myself.
- posted by Anonymous @ 7:46 PM 0 comments

 
Mixed signals

The Washington post this morning reports, in breathless ffashion, that the nation is "deeply polarized" between those who like the president and those who don't. He has a 56% approval rating, and enjoys a 48-47 lead over the yet-to-be-determined democatic candidate see individual poll results, including head-to-head matchups, here.

But I have to wonder whether these numbers will change once we actually have a defined andidate, rather than an aggregate candidate, running against Bush. and on that note, a few things. First, as the head-to-head polls show, Bush has a bigger lead over each candidate than he does against the putative candidate. Second, the Post also reports that Democrats are split on whether to attack Bush or to compromise, suggsting divisions among the other side that migh doom whatever candidate emerges.

And finally, there is the hilarious flap over Dean's recent remark that he wanted to be the candidate for "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," and now the other candidates are lining up to rip him for it:

Kerry: "We don't need to be a party that says we need to be the candidacy of the NRA. We stand up against that."

Gephardt:  “I don’t want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks. I will win the Democratic nomination because I will be the candidate for guys with American flags in their pickup trucks.”

Sharpton:“If I said I wanted to be the candidate for people that ride around with helmets and swastikas, I would be asked to leave"

Edwards: “Some of the greatest civil rights leaders, white and black, have come from the South. To assume that southerners who drive trucks would embrace this symbol is offensive.”
       
Clark: “Every Democratic candidate for president needs to condemn the divisiveness the Confederate flag represents.”

Lieberman (from a spokesman): “It is irresponsible and reckless to loosely talk about one of the most divisive, hurtful symbols in American history.”

Good stuff, very good stuff. Have at it, gents: send a bloodied and weakened candidate up against Bush and see what happens. That 48-47 will disappear quickly, I would guess.
- posted by Anonymous @ 9:36 AM 0 comments