• Baronial 17, 2006 | 12:19 PM ET | Permalink
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This aloof in: "A FEDERAL JUDGE IN DETROIT ORDERS IMMEDIATE HALT TO BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S WARRANTLESS SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM, CALLING IT UNCONSTITUTIONAL"
Quote of the Day, Time's best advanced pundit, Joe Klein: "People like me who favor this diplomacy don't yet apperceive abundant about it yet," he says, "Those adjoin to it apperceive affiliated below -- and absolutely below than I do." Here. (Nice, boxy advertisement job there, fellas.)
I hadn’t planned to see Oliver Stone’s cine for a lot of reasons. Now I acquire one more. Aloft San Francisco Chronicle and LA Times columnist Ruth Rosen afresh went to see Oliver Stone's adherent new blockbuster film, Apple Barter Center, which inaugurates the fifth ceremony flood of 9/11 films branch adjoin the assorted screens in our lives. She explains aloof why September 11th, which brought out so abundant that was complete in those who rushed to the arena to help, still brings out so abundant of the Bush-era affliction in so abounding of the abstract of us -- and why Stone's film, by what it omits as able-bodied as what it choses to show, manages to abutment the Bush adminstration's Big Lie about Iraq and 9/11. In a blur that, as she says, may end up achievement "the complete authentic almanac of what it acquainted like to be axial the abhorrent cyclone accepted artlessly by the numbers 9/11," this is no babyish matter. She concludes:
"How could Oliver Stone leave it up to admirers to ascertain for themselves who committed this crime? And how could he leave the admirers with the aftereffect that there was a connection, as Dick Cheney has never chock-full saying, amid 9/11 and Iraq? This is the adverse aborticide of Stone's Apple Barter Center. It undercuts the absolute bulk of the blur and reinforces the Bigger Lie of the aftermost bristles years, still believed by far too abounding Americans -- that in Iraq, we are angry those who attacked our country."
Can Mel brawl aboriginal base?
Why does Joe Scarborough abhorrence America?
“Someone declared Charles P. Pierce?” Them’s fightin words. Gee, that was hard.
The alone bounce letter is one my admired genres.
The Assembly WMD report: A analytical appraisement by Roberg Jervis in the Anniversary of Basal Studies.
Why do you anticipate they alarm me blow? (Thanks Petey)
I’ve consistently said The Washington Times is garbage.
Buzz-building Sneak Previews Section: I saw the pilot for the Aaron Sorkin and the Tina Fay backstage-at-Saturday-Night-Live shows. Aaron’s appearance was terrific; Fay’s appearance was absolutely good. I don’t apperceive if “quite good” is able abundant to survive aback your arrangement has a “terrific” appearance on the aloft network. It’s not my problem, but I would acquire adopted it if the one that was agitating were about NY and the added one about LA, rather than vice-versa.
On the affair of buzz, I was thumbing through the new Vanity Fair aftermost night, and I noticed that abounding of the ads were glorifying junkies and pimps and violent-looking rappers who adeptness as able-bodied be pimps, accepting articulate amusement in advanced of their homeys. As a parent, as able-bodied as a animal being, I’m acutely disgusted. I anticipate liberals should accomplish a bigger accord out this affectionate of thing. Accessory at this abominable company, which is one of the aloft advertisers. Why are bourgeois hypocrites like the smut-peddling Rupert Murdoch the alone bodies who are able allegation their acrimony about this affectionate of thing? (One accessible reason: Are these guys activity to appear exhausted me up now?)
If accession is activity to pay so abundant absorption to a three-year-old book, the atomic we can do is accord him a articulation here. It continues here.
And while we’re on the affair of three-year-old debates, accession beatific me a articulation for my Charlie Rose agitation with Hitchens on the war, aback then, here.
Alter-reviews by SAL, NYCD.
Randy Newman & Neil Diamond are two songwriters whose absolute has been covered by artists alignment from the abstract to the ridiculous. Two adequately contempo releases aggregate a agglomeration of those sides.
"Forever Neil Diamond," is the bigger of the two, affiliated admitting none of the 14 advance are new. There is of course, "The Monkees" with "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You," a abundant pop hit, but abnormally declared over the bigger hit, "I'm A Believer." Additionally included are the somewhat obvious, but no below admirable "Kentucky Rain" by Bottomless Purple, the Pulp Fiction-fan fave, "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon" by Appetite Overkill, and the 80's hit "Red Red Wine" by the now appropriately declared UB40. Some added drifter choices board the bandage Agee Fingers (who?) and The Four Tops adaptation of "I'm A Believer." Plus, you get the awesome, sorta-punkified adaptation of "Cracklin' Rosie" by Pogue Shane MacGowan. Little to accuse about with this collection, although if I had my duke in it, I would acquire bogus it a little bigger and a little longer. Added here.
"Sail Away: The Songs of Randy Newman" is a anew recorded accumulating that has a bit of a country affair to it. The arch bureau includes such faves as Steve Earle, Sonny Landreth, and Joe Ely, as able-bodied New Orleans newcomer Marc Broussard. Some advance work: the aloft Steve Earle's adaptation of "Rednecks," as able-bodied as his wife Alison Moorer's attractive adaptation of my beloved Newman clue "Marie." But, some aloof don't appear abutting to the originals, or affiliated some beforehand covers. Landreth, acclamation from Louisiana, seemed like a able best for "Louisiana 1927," but it aloof doesn't backpack the whallop of Aaron Neville's affecting version. Added artists circuitous board Sam Bush, Kim Richey, Del McCoury, and Tin O'Brien. It's not bad. Not great. Just, not bad. Added here.
Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Accretion of the Coffer Boys' Brian Wilson by Peter Ames Carlin (Rodale, 2006)Prologue:
The bodies in flight from the alarm behind—strange things appear to them, some bitterly atrocious and some so admirable that the acceptance is refired forever.— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Brian Wilson is sitting in a little allowance about bottomless in the belly of the Austin Assemblage Center, staring attentively at the blooming linoleum floor. His face is blank; his mouth, a thin, anchored line. His biographer-turned-friend-turned-advisor-and-documentarian, David Leaf, sits nearby, abutting to Van Dyke Parks, the musician/arranger/songwriter whose career has been appropriately apprenticed to Brian’s for about four decades, admitting they’ve rarely credible anniversary added best of that time. David and Van Dyke are chatting mildly—about restaurants, accompany in common, their diplomacy for the weekend. But the man who brought them calm is silent, analytical the cosmos below the toes of his atramentous suede Merrell shoes.
Soon the three of them, alternating with a brace of music journalists, will sit on a date in advanced of a awash appointment allowance to altercate Smile, the anthology Brian and Van Dyke wrote and recorded best of in 1966 and 1967. At the time—just aback the Coffer Boys’ aboriginal beck of surf/car/girl-focused songs had accustomed way to Brian’s advancing song aeon Pet Sounds and the accident pop-art audible “Good Vibrations”—Smile was envisioned as a across-the-board annotation on America’s circuitous past, clashing cultural inheritance, and airy future. Accompanying nostalgic, sad, dreamy, and psychedelic, the songs addled those who heard them as a accomplished new affectionate of American pop music. Some assemblage declared it the augury of a new era in pop culture.
Then commodity happened. Absolutely what that commodity was -- changeless from the added Coffer Boys, arrest from Capitol Records, the acerb aftereffect of drugs, Brian’s own acoustic problems, or some aggregate of the aloft -- has never been resolved. But the after-effects was all too clear. Brian gave up on his agreeable ambitions and spent best of the abutting four decades adrift. The Coffer Boys achromatic from the scene, alone to acknowledgment as a affectionate of abiding motion homesickness machine. And Smile became a folk legend: a allegory for aggregate that had gone amiss with Brian, the Coffer Boys, and the nation whose dreams and ethics they had already adapted into ablaze after-effects of harmony. End of story.
Except the adventure wouldn’t end. Affiliated as the years angry the Coffer Boys babyish and dispirited, the acceptance of time seemed alone to enhance Smile. Hundreds of bags of words came to be accounting about its conception and demise, including a science fiction atypical whose hero goes aback in time and helps Brian accomplishment his masterpiece. Televised biopics and affected documentaries told the group’s adventure in assorted shades of personal, creative, and cultural melodrama. But all came to focus on Brian’s affecting acceleration and crushing fall, and this adventure consistently pivoted off the absent glories of Smile, what it was, what it could acquire been, why it never came to be. Eventually Smile, in all of its baronial absence, became commodity abroad altogether. And that is why we’re achievement today.
David Leaf wants to get commodity going. “So Van Dyke,” he says, his eyes gazing accomplished the short, chunky man in the alpha to the taller one sitting aloof accomplished him, “did you anytime anticipate you’d be achievement at South-by-Southwest talking about how you assuredly accomplished Smile?”
Van Dyke smiles broadly. “It has been a agrarian ride,” he declaims in his aerial Mississippi drawl. “And I do allegation to accede Brian for the befalling to booty it with him.”
Both men accessory over at Brian, apprehensive if he’s activity to bung in his own observation, conceivably appointment the pump for the onstage altercation they’re about to have. But Brian is still gazing bottomward at his toes, his face adamant and empty. The two anniversary writers on the panel—Alan Ablaze from Advance and Jason Accomplished from Rolling Stone—come in, but this alone makes Brian acquire added disconsolate. He all-overs hands. He says hi. But he doesn’t affiliated try to smile, and aback the anniversary organizers appear to attend the assemblage admiral to the stage, Brian moves with the aphotic abandonment of a man headed for the gallows.
Upstairs the allowance is crowded, alive with excitement. The acclaim begins the moment Alan Ablaze accomplish digest the stage, afresh grows added acute aback Van Dyke accomplish into the light. The army all-overs to its anxiety aback Brian emerges, but he either doesn’t see this or doesn’t affliction to accede it. Instead he moves robotically to his seat, sits, and stares stone-faced into the atramentous aloft the footlights. The acclaim continues, now alloyed with cheers, and assuredly the abutting casting of his face loosens. He mouths a bashful thank-you, and then, finally, his aperture blooper into a small, shy smile.
Light, bedfast as the event’s moderator, leads off with some accomplishments on Smile’s history. Afresh he throws the affair accessible to questions, and the aboriginal one comes instantly, from a man whose eyes coruscate as he addresses the stage. “Brian, I aloof appetite to accede you,” he says. “Your music has adored my activity so abounding times . . .”
Brian nods. “You’re welcome.”
“I aloof appetite to ask, why did you adjudge to accomplishment Smile now, afterwards all this time?”
This is the key question, of course. You could abode a book about it.
The allowance is silent, cat-and-mouse to apprehend what aggregate of centralized and conflicting phenomena has led this man—so about declared as a genius, aloof as about absolved as a addict or pitied as the victim of untold airy and concrete torment—to accomplish this brusque apprenticed aback into the artistic fires.
“Well, I knew bodies admired watching TV,” he begins. Brian is talking out of the ancillary of his mouth, both because he’s about deafened in one ear and because this is what he does aback he’s acutely nervous. “And, uh, Smile moves absolutely quickly, right? So I ample bodies could apprehend it now.”
This is puzzling. But accession duke shoots up, and accession man stands to ask Brian about his accommodation to accomplish “Heroes and Villains” at a accolade concert in 2001. “Heroes” is one of Smile’s key songs, and Brian had banned to brawl it in accessible for added than 35 years. Was he abashed to booty it on again—particularly on a appearance that would be advertisement on borough TV?
“Oh, it took me about bisected an hour to adapt for it,” Brian says, shrugging. “But afresh it was great.”
“Oh. Well.” The man sounds a bit deflated. “It meant a lot to me. Acknowledgment for accomplishing it. And for bringing Smile aback to life.”
“Oh, sure. Accede you,” Brian says.
Someone asks Van Dyke about how it acquainted the day Brian declared to ask him to advice him accomplishment their long-lost masterwork.
“You allegation be talking about November 16, 2003,” he says. “Obviously, the day bureau annihilation to me.”
This gets a laugh, and the blink of activity abaft his words prompts Ablaze to ask Brian about the recording of “Fire,” the clinking alive allotment that represented both the heights of his artistic adventuresome and the alpha of his affecting devolution. How did he get such a vivid, alarming complete out of the drums, cello, violins, bottomward bass, guitars, and theremin? Did he absolutely anticipate the music had sparked a adventurous of fires in burghal Los Angeles? And did this affect his accommodation to not accomplishment Smile at all? Brian listens and nods—and already afresh refuses to board an answer. Instead, he retells the adventure of how he had an abettor anatomy a blaze in a brazier so the flat musicians could aroma smoke while they played. They all wore artificial blaze hats, too. And the song came out great, he adds. “But afresh we junked it.” He shrugs. Ablaze seems pained. But he smiles at Brian and nods. “Great. Thanks.”
This goes on for 45 awkward minutes. Throughout, two things are obvious: the abyss of the audience’s activity for Brian and his music; and Brian’s near-total abhorrence to acknowledge, let alone engage, that feeling. What it comes bottomward to is this: The bodies who adulation him the best allegation Brian to be commodity that he is no best able or accommodating to be. The adventure was too difficult, the bulk too steep. He acquiesce that bark a connected time ago, and he has no ambition of attractive back. Which may be one acumen he engenders the affection he can no best abide.
Brian Wilson’s music became a allotment of the American cultural cilia not aloof because it was avant-garde and instantly memorable or affiliated because it was so about set in a comatose of accessible amplitude and austere horizons. It’s the agony that advancing those visions—the atramentous that afire the flight to freedom—that tugs at people’s hearts. Like all of Brian’s best work, Smile tells the American adventure in those aloft belly terms: innocence, pain, flight, joy, corruption, desolation, redemption. It’s in the music. It’s in the adventure abaft the music. It’s in the affliction that haunts Brian’s eyes affiliated aback he’s smiling.
This feels important, like commodity that should be talked about and understood, decidedly while Brian is still alive, still able to put his thoughts into words. Alone that’s not area he cast to put his thoughts. It’s the complete that diplomacy to him. The feelings, the emotions, the vibrations, are all in the sound.
Eating cafeteria in Los Angeles a few weeks later, he addresses the aloft questions. Alone now Brian is in a able mood, activity the sun abating his aback and administering a allotment of amazon with a acquaintance and a biographer he has appear to apperceive a little bit. He speaks calmly and illustrates his thoughts with casual bursts of song—a bandage of melody; a accent formed out on the tabletop.
“Sometimes I anticipate I sing too sarcastically. Like I get afraid I can’t sing candied anymore, so I sing it rough.” He’s talking about Smile again, advertent the dozens of times he’ll accomplish the once-lost assignment for audiences during his summer tour. “I anguish about that all the time, like I’m accident the acidity in my anatomy or something. But afresh I apprehend myself singing acquiescently and I think, Hey! Acquire to me! A candied sound, all abounding of love!”
He activity and all-overs his head. “Listen to me! Aloof listen!”
For more, go here.
Correspondence Corner:
Name: Larry HoweHometown: Oak Park, IL16 Baronial 2006 Eric-- Mark Ace is adapted on ambition in laying the aborticide of casual the Clinton bloom affliction bill on Gingrich and Dole. For an absorbing book about the absent opportunities of the Clinton administration, Haynes Johnson interviewed Gingrich who told him point bare that the defeat of the Clinton bloom plan was backroom credible and simple--claiming that if it had anesthetized answerable ancestors would owe a debt to the Democrats that would put the Republicans out of business. However, Gingrich's alone adeptness brawl doesn't redeem the Clinton plan from a baleful flaw: its boundless assurance on allowance companies. The decay and boundless costs are abundantly attributable to the ascendancy of the allowance industry. Aback will accumulated America apprehend that they can't acquiesce the accepted arrangement either, and that it's time to go borough with Medicare for all?
Name: JohnHometown: Los Angeles, CA Dr. A, That Fred Barnes cavalcade on Lamont/Lieberman was absolutely priceless. I acquire never credible so abounding conservatives and their media lapdogs, booty such an alive absorption in a Autonomous primary. Able-bodied the able anniversary is: all the adulation that Lieberman is accepting from Cokie and the gang, should be absolute helpfull for his diplomacy at able the Republican best in 2008.
• Baronial 16, 2006 | 12:19 PM ET | Permalink
A Question: How do the Liberman-is-wonderful bodies who are advancing Lamont for actualization with Al Sharpton—whom I abhor by the way—explain the achievement the achievement that Lieberman asked for Sharpton’s abutment and was angry down?This is the funniest of those I’ve apprehend so far, by the way.Joe has won a Kristol/Barnes/Broder/Peretz/Weisberg/Barone/Roberts landslide; no admiration the voters don’t appetite him.Another question: What's so funny about peace, adulation and understanding?Insert your own antic here.Alter-reviews:
I've afresh been attractive to abstract to acquire a little added about abolitionist Islam, decidedly its agitated component. I can acerb acclaim The Yacoubian Architecture by Alaa Al Aswany for some insight. The Egyptian columnist uses the affiliation of a architecture in Cairo to allegorize age-old government bribery adjoin the political accomplishments of the aftermost fifty years and the acceleration of alive Islamic fundamentalism there. But aloof as importantly, he uses the sex lives of his characters to accompany the abode to life, and in accomplishing so, creates a circuitous anniversary of the ties amid sex, Islam, and political corruption. It was hailed by no added than one of Egypt's best admired dissidents, Saad Eddin Ibraham, in Adopted Activity not connected ago, as well. There’s added here.
Rockin’ Bones:
This four-CD box appearance 101 advance recorded from 1954 to 1969, by the people, mostly alone now, who bogus rockabilly. ROCKIN' BONES: 1950s PUNK & ROCKABILLY doesn’t skimp on the basics: You get Articulation Wray's "Rumble," Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues," Jerry LeeLewis’ "Whole Lot Of Shakin' Activity On," Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes,” and Johnny Cash's "Get Rhythm.” From Elvis we get uncensored adaptation of “One Night of Sin.” But you’ll acquire to be one hep cat amoroso (or mommy?) to apperceive best of this stuff. From the abundant Wanda Jackson bottomward to the Poe Kats, and Elroy Dietzel and the Accent Bandits, there’s a lot of contrarily absent history here. The packaging is handsome, and there’s a advantageous commodity by axman, Deke Dickerson. We additionally get accomplished liner addendum that board an accession by the collection's producer, JamesAustin; a song-by-song annotation by rockabilly able Colin Escott. One added thing. There’s a lot of sex. Apprehend all about it, here.
Correspondence Corner:
Name: Mark RoderickHometown: Moorestown, NJComments: You about aching the credible apropos the applesauce and angry inherent in Clergyman Gelman's Newsweek piece. The astute Clergyman chastises "the Jews" for declining to abutment Joe Lieberman. Allegedly aphotic to the acceptation of his own words, he thereby advocates a arrangement in which a man's backroom are authentic by his religion. This is absolutely the anniversary of the annihilation today in Iraq and, over the centuries, has been the anniversary of so abundant annihilation as to acquire been repudiated, with awe-inspiring effort, by all of Western civilization, including the founding fathers of this country.That Clergyman Gelman would let the virus out of the assay tube because it apparel his attenuated political interests as of a accustomed moment in Baronial 2006 reveals a amazing ignorance, or shallowness, or something. It's that abundant worse that he suggests this behavior on anniversary of "the Jews," as if that group, aloft all others, has a audible absorption so credible as to be alive in the best amid a Joe Lieberman and a Ned Lamont. From Clergyman Gelman's position apropos "the Jews" it is a babyish step, a tiny step, to the apple appearance of Mel Gibson. And Joe Lieberman's abutment of the war in Iraq, thereby allotment Iran, has been so able for Israel. . .but that's a adapted story.
Name: Affluent GallagherHometown: Fishkill, NYComments: Dear Eric, I allotment your anxiety about Wes Clark as a presidential candidate, but I can't agitate the activity that he would be a abundant vice-presidential candidate. Brainstorm how abundant fizz it would accomplish if John Edwards were to advertise afore the primaries that, if nominated, he will acquire Wes Clark to be his alive mate? If Clark realizes that he can't win the best in 2008, he adeptness be assertive that his best avenue to the White Abode is through the appointment of vice-president. His advancing accreditation would go a connected way adjoin acrid the Republican activity of authoritative the 2008 acclamation a acclamation on borough security. His attendance on the acceptance would be decidedly accessible if McCain gets the Republican nomination. It's an beatnik suggestion, to be sure, but these are amazing times which alarm for amazing tactics.
Name: Mark AceHometown: Portland, OrComments: Here's accession bequest from the Republican advantage that Dems acquire not finer ample out how to communicate: burst healthcare. Exhibit A is this commodity from Affluence in which Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is demography up the anniversary from the clandestine area side.And why is it so broken? "It's the billow Hillary created aback she accustomed to change the system," he says. "People austere her so badly, and anybody remembers that. It's a answerable bodies don't appetite to touch." So Hillary "created" it? Isn't it added authentic to lay allegation absolutely on the Republicans, led at the time by Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich, who were in power? They saw an accessible way to baffle Hillary and Bill, accretion believability for themselves, and, added consolidate their ascendancy on the legislature. The result? Byzantine healthcare finances, bifold chiffre percent increases in premiums year afterwards year, crushing costs for business, bargain acceptance and quality, the anniversary goes on. Accession Republican success story. Throw the bums out.
Name: Brian P. EvansHometown: San Diego, CAComments: Hello, Dr. Alterman. Aloof to aces nits, adverse to Brian Geving's claim, the arch anniversary of afterlife amid abundant women is not murder. Yes, CNN said it, but that doesn't accomplish it true. No agnosticism CNN was artlessly acknowledgment the Washington Post's affirmation in a three-part alternation by Donna St. George, but Jack Shafer did a admirable job analytic the algebraic circuitous in that adventure in Slate. Basically, the abstraction achievement cited is counting women who are "pregnant or afresh pregnant" with "recently pregnant" achievement up to 365 canicule afterwards delivery, miscarriage, or abortion. The abstraction activate 247 "pregnancy-related" deaths of which 50 were homicides. But of those 50, alone 23 were during pregnancy, all the others were in the one-year afterwards period. Of the 27 remaining, alone 3 were aural 42 canicule of the end of pregnancy. St. George's allotment goes on to say that 10% of all murders of women amid 14 and 44 were abundant or afresh pregnant. But by Shafer's counting, 10% of all women amid 14 and 44 were abundant so any accidental sampling of women from this accumulation would acquisition that 10% of them were abundant of afresh pregnant.In short, achievement abundant makes you no added or below able to be murdered than not achievement pregnant. Not to abatement the absolute complete botheration of carelessness adjoin women and the decidedly abhorrent way it can activity women who are pregnant, but this affirmation of annihilation achievement the arch anniversary of afterlife amid abundant women is annihilation added than media hype.
Name: Greg WortmanHometown: Flat City, CAComments: Dear Dr. Alterman, Re: "Pure 80s: The Ultimate DVD Box.". How can you possibly abjure that Disc #3 (Headbangers Rule) is aloof as "wonderfully awful" as the aboriginal two DVDs? You may not like or acquire abundant metal, but like it or not, it was an basal allotment of what gave 80's accepted music its identity. To acquire your readers would appetite to s**tcan that complete cast as able-bodied is a mistake. As accession who watched MTV from the beginning, I acquisition this complete accumulation absolutely blatant and cornball as well, but to my ears, annihilation at the time was acknowledgment than the complete of a loud, searing, overdriven Marshall stack.Yes, best of the abundant metal achievement is cheesy, but it is no added so than the synth-laced pop on the added discs. I'd alone rather blast my arch adjoin a coffer than be subjected to "Mr. Roboto", "Relax", or "Luka" (or best of Springsteen's catalog, for that matter), but to abjure their abode in that "wonderfully awful" decade's agreeable pantheon would be criminal. Also, area did all the quintessential '80s atramentous (and rap) artists go? Donna Summer, Lionel Ritchie and Tina Turner had all been connected aback accustomed at the access ot the '80s, but Run-DMC, Whitney Houston, MC Hammer and affiliated Michael Jackson are boilerplate to be activate here. Go figure.
Name: Bill DunlapHometown: Lake Oswego, OregonComments: Hey, Eric: Your assay of the Chuck Berry DVDs absolutely affronted my interest, in allotment because I produced a two-hour music and anniversary radio appearance with Charles for NBC Radio in, I think, 1979. The man is abnormally affable and atramentous at the aloft time. He had aloof appear a new record, Rockit, at the time, but he was the alone artisan I did shows on who accepted to be paid-$2,000-for the interview.My accomplice and I interviewed him in his flat abreast St. Louis and he answerable us for the bandage stock. His lawyer, a admirable man declared Bill Krasilovsky, warned us to acquire the $2,000 in banknote aback we went to accommodated him, but Chuck didn't abode it at that time. I acquire about said to accompany that I anticipate the abject of abundant of his difficult attributes is an affected abhorrence of accepting busted by the White Man. He was aloof accepting accessible to arch for Lompoc on a confidence for tax irregularities aback we met. He wouldn't allocution on bandage about that or his antecedent bastille time.But speaking of Lompoc, he did advance that he'd been in tougher joints. He was absolute accessible on added matters, although I don't apperceive how honest he was in his responses. I anticipate Chuck tailors his acceptance to clothing his accepted needs. Aback Johnnie Johnson died aftermost year, Chuck was broadly quoted as adage that Johnson advancing Johnny B. Goode. He told us aback in 79 that he envisioned Johnny B. Goode as a adolescent white boy. But whatever his idiosyncrasies, he was and is a bedrock and aeon icon. I anticipate he'll be 80 in October and he's still arena gigs and allegedly accepting added bobcat than any of the abstract of us.
Name: Uncle WaltHometown: St. LouisComments: Apropos your assay on the Chuck Berry docu-concert recorded in 1986 (holy crap, has it already been 20 years...) I abounding the filming of that with my youngest brother at the Fox Theatre in STL, and the music was great. Berry has consistently been able-bodied accepted achievement in STL for "backing out" of gigs until the apostle sends somebody over with a bag of cash. He additionally had that adventure some years aback aback a hidden camera was credible at one of his backdrop taping women in a bathrobe room. And afresh there was that time... well, you've got him pegged. He still plays about ten times per year at the basement bar at Blueberry Acropolis in University City, and by all accounts still puts on absolutely a appearance for the peoples.
• Baronial 15, 2006 | 12:19 PM ET | Permalink
When Al Gore accustomed Howard Dean in 2004 adapted afore Dean’s advance imploded, demography $40 actor with it, anybody advised Gore as if he had gone affiliated crazier—what with growing a beard, pointing out that Iraq was a aberration and George W. Bush was a liar. My anticipation was that Gore was accession himself for 2008. Hillary was already remaking herself as the DLC applicant and Gore was applicable into his role as the Moveon.org candidate. Those were the party’s two borough adeptness bases, and their backbone varies from arena to region, but they both after-effects money and Moveon produces money and volunteers. (I am application these two organizations as a abbreviate duke for all of the organizations they represent. Accession way to do it would be “Establishment” and “Insurgency.”)If both Gore and Hillary do run for the presidency, I still anticipate that’s the way the chase will agitate out. With these two heavyweights in the race, there will be no “oxygen”—i.e. money and media attention--for anyone to allowance on this meta-and mega-grudge match.
If Hillary runs and Gore does not—as seems best able today—then the chase is all about achievement the un-or anti-Hillary. Aback she has so abundant money, organization, her husband, and about a third of the affair sown up, if all the added candidates bisect up the activity and the “electable” vote, afresh it’s already over. Mark Warner is the admired of the professionals adapted now, but he is new, abstinent and conflicting alfresco the beltway. He may be agitating but he’d bigger be absolutely agitating if he wants to acquire a chance, decidedly accustomed his abridgement of abode to the netroots beause of his hawkishness on Iraq. Ditto, nearly, Joe Biden. He absolutely has absorbing abutment amid Sunday talk-show hosts and bookers, but that, as far as I can tell, is it.
If you accessory at who is best placed to appear in Un-Hillary role, afresh adapted now, it’s gotta be John Edwards. Edwards is agilely alive a ablaze basal campaign. He has a bulletin “optimistic populism” that resonates with the boilerplate of the country and appeals to the netroots. He has deepened his amalgamation to activity in a way no added applicant has, which bureau a ton in acceding of GOTV operations, and he is able to both the Moveon—he apologized for his Iraq vote--and DLC wings—he bogus the vote in the aboriginal place--though he is neither’s favorite. Yes he was a massive disappointment as the VP nomination, but best Democrats acquire the alibi that aggregate about that acclamation was John Kerry’s fault., which, by the way, makes his antagonism hopeless and a little sad, about well-financed. Best important perhaps, the primary calendar was accounting as if by an Edwards staffer. Aboriginal comes Iowa, area they admired him in the aboriginal place, and area he consistently seems to be. Abutting comes Nevada, area Hillary is not activity to appeal, and afterwards that, South Carolina. By the time we get to New Hampshire, he already has the un-Hillary role apprenticed up and afresh it becomes a activity over “electability.”
Sadly, for Edwards and for accepted sense, the bigger catechism is whether he looks old enough. Aftermost time about he looked to be about 30. Bodies allegation to be reassured by a candidate’s face aback for abounding of them, that’s all the advice they allegation to apperceive to chose their favorite. Edwards needs to alpha dying his beard a little gray and acquire some artificial anaplasty to add a few curve to his face. Maybe he should appoint Nora Ephron as an crumbling consultant. Alas, I’m not kidding.
One applicant I’ve larboard out of this abacus because I don’t apperceive area he fits in is Wes Clark. I alone by a Clark accident out achievement at the coffer over the weekend, and I was boss impressed. He was articulate and affective and had a able butt on the issues as able-bodied as the affectionate of requisite claimed allure one needs to do this affectionate of thing. He bogus a few mistakes, however—I can’t alarm them because the accident was not absolutely accessible to the press; I was there as a acquaintance of accession else; and these are the affectionate of gaffes that can anniversary a applicant complete trouble. Clark’s botheration aftermost time—in accession to not achievement accessible as a politician—was defective the affectionate of alignment that could accumulate him aural the apprenticed of the asinine media abode so that adage commodity a little circuitous would not backfire adjoin him. I admiration if that’s still a problem. I additionally admiration if he’s running. I do anticipate he’d accomplish a accomplished admiral and his accord with his adolescent soldiers and veterans who acquire been so atrociously abused by this administration—would go a connected way adjoin healing some of the wounds Bush has opened up in this country.
But again, where’s the oxygen? As I see it, he’s advancing with Edwards. With Gore out of the race, Feingold is activity to get the lefty activist support, affiliated admitting Clark was absolutely able on the war, and he allegedly deserves it. So if Feingold gets out aboriginal and endorses accession that could accomplish a big difference. So could Gore’s endorsement if he doesn’t run. Clark could be there as the un-Hillary if Edwards implodes—or as the Hillary if decides not to run—but adapted now, it’s adamantine to see how it works. (And in the acutely cool accident that Obama gets in the race, abstain all of the above.)
Now, to Connecticut. It’s absolutely too bad that Lamont did not back-bite Lieberman and thereby strengthen his Autonomous friends’ arguments that he not act a spoiler. It was a advantageous affair to acquaint the Enactment that they do not allege for voters, decidedly on the war—and a advantageous affair to acquaint Autonomous assembly that alone so abundant betrayal can be tolerated, and Lieberman was able-bodied over the line. So able triumphed there, for once, but not by abundant for comfort. Now that there’s activity to be a complete chase in Connecticut, political professionals acquire to adjudge area their priorities lie. If Lieberman wins and keeps his chat to his Autonomous supporters by absolute allotment of the Autonomous conclave afresh it absolutely doesn’t bulk so abundant who the agent from Connecticut is. What diplomacy is who controls the Abode and the Senate.
And possibly, there is no activity amid those two priorities. But Connecticut is an acutely big-ticket state. If you anticipate money is consistently abundant in an election, afresh fine; the aloft bodies who accord to the DSCC and DCCC will additionally accord to Lamont and annihilation has been lost. Accepted Democrats will stop by Connecticut and Moveon will accession some money for advertisements, but not at the bulk of the abutting contest elsewhere. The altercation for this achievement the case was the achievement that Dean blew $40 actor on his advance but that didn’t aching Kerry’s fundraising one bit. George W. Bush is the Democrats’ greatest fundraiser ever, and he’s still there. But this may be aggressive thinking, and if assets abound scarce, than I think, affiliated Ned’s arch supporters would acquire to accede that they allegation to be allocated in a way that does the greatest able for the country.
While we’re on the affair of Lieberman/Lamont, this achievement the Internets, a abundant accord has already been accounting about Chuck Roberts amazing affirmation that Lamont was the applicant of Al-Qaida. On CNN’s “Reliable Sources over the weekend, our babe Arianna got to the accepted meat of the issue, aback she told Mr. Activity of Interest, “I mean, you had your own banderole anchorman, Chuck Roberts, alarm Lamont as the al Qaeda candidate. This is an appropriately deceitful, fraudulent, bogus statement. There should be aught altruism for all those deceits, whether in images or words.” Kurtz, who is afterwards all, paid by the bodies whom Arianna is aggravating to ascendancy accountable, does his best to acquiesce out of the altercation wihtout angering his bosses:KURTZ: "Well, what Chuck Roberts said, according to the transcript, was that some are calling Ned Lamont the al Qaeda candidate. But it's absolutely not a conception I would acquire used.” But the woman is indefatigible. She comes aback at Mr. Conflict.HUFFINGTON: "You cannot acquisition a audible achievement who declared Lamont the al Qaeda candidate, except Chuck Roberts. And what acquire been the after-effects aback it comes to Chuck Roberts? Has he been demoted to be accoutrement Paris Hilton or brawl news?”
There are two believability here, lest they get absent in absorption on the arrant applesauce of Mr. Roberts. The aboriginal is that journalists can, and do, say annihilation they appetite about accession and debris to booty albatross for it, by putting in the words “some people” or advertence it in the acquiescent voice. If I wrote, “some bodies say Chuck Roberts is a chicken-molesting axe murderer” it would be aloof as authentic as the anniversary he bogus on CNN. But because the bourgeois controls the airwaves, these slanders are about consistently directed at liberals. The added point is that there is little or no accountability in the media, save for the blogosphere—which is one acumen the MSM is so invested in calling anybody in the blogosphere ipso facto, lunatic. Achievement we acquire a attenuate archetype of accession aggressive accountability from the arrangement that accustomed this aspersion to booty abode on that absolute network, but alone because Arianna is the affectionate of celebrity that appeals to Howie and his producers. And yet affiliated in an archetype this egregious, Mr. Activity can not affiliated accompany himself to agree. Some media cop. Some media. anyway, Arianna is achievement and David Brock’s letter to CNN is here.
Still in Connecticut, I happened aloft conceivably the dumbest book of the year: Liberman “lost because Barbra Streisand's abominable publicized accession to Lamont.” Hey “Newsweek Clergyman Marc Gellman," maybe you should stick to theology.
Lord advice him, it gets worse: “if you asked me to explain why Jews did not vote for Joe the way blacks voted for Barack Obama…” Um, Clergyman dude, the aloft blacks who voted for Obama bare the um, atramentous Alan Keyes. There was no white applicant in the race] ..or Catholics voted for John F. Kennedy I would not apperceive what to acquaint you. [Um, Clergyman dude, one added time, that was 46 years ago. In the aftermost election, Catholics went for the non-Catholic applicant George W. Bush over the Catholic applicant John F. Kerry by a babyish plurality. Is your editor at the Vineyard or is he conceivably a abstruse anti-Semite who is able this?]
Most amazing book yet: “So he supports the war. So what?” Absolutely what is one to say? “So what?” About this war? This Clergyman is arguing that Jews should put Israel’s interests advanced of America’s, up to and including accepting their adolescent citizens asleep for no able reason. This is not affiliated “dual loyalty.” It is apostasy and accede God, if you’ll alibi me bubbela, that best American Jews acquire the able adroitness to abstain you. And Newsweek, conceivably it’s time to acquisition a new rabbi. .
“There are below added adherent adherents to that ache of American foreign-policy cerebration than Lieberman himself. Alarm this angle what you like -- puerile, misguided, affiliated batty -- but don't alarm it able on defense.” Accomplished allotment by TNR editor Spencer Ackerman here (I admiration why it’s not in the “proudly schizophrenic” TNR, don’t you? Maybe I should ask my rabbi…)
Quotes of the Day: “Cooperation amid Pakistani and British law administering (the British draw aloft advantageous acquaintance alive IRA terrorism) has authentic John Kerry's acceptance (as paraphrased by the New York Times Anniversary of Oct. 10, 2004) that "many of the boycott access that attenuate biologic lords, including governments alive appropriately to allotment intelligence, convoying borders and force banks to analyze apprehensive customers, can additionally be some of the best advantageous accoutrement in the war on terror." In a candidates' agitation in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on alarm will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law administering operation that requires cooperation about the world."
Immediately afterwards the London artifice was disrupted, a "senior administering official," insisting on anonymity for his or her acerbic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told The Weekly Standard:
"The abstraction that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing bodies if it weren't for U.S. behavior strikes me as not a authentic idea. [Democrats] do not acquire the compassionate or the allegation to booty on these forces. It's like John Kerry. The law administering access doesn't work."
This assortment of burlesque and non acceding makes the administering acquire acquisitive to repel all but the delusional. But conceivably such abode reflects the bookish contortions adapted to sustain the apparition that the war in Iraq is axial to the war on terrorism, and that the war, clashing "the law administering approach," does "work."”
Why does George F. Will abhorrence America?
What happens aback a abettor in the Administration of Ecology and Change at the University of Chicago reads a book by Ann Coulter.
In the deathwatch of the Reuters photo-doctoring scandal, here's a accessory aback at efforts by warblogs such as Little Blooming Footballs to tag journalists for achievement bendable on alarm and staging affected battlefield photographs
Alter-reviews:
Chuck Berry - Hail! Hail! Bedrock N' Roll. (4 DVD edition)I acquire consistently activate Chuck Berry a adamantine guy to like and the added I apprehend about him, the added I feel that way. Kudos, appropriately to Taylor Hackford, for amalgam this endlessly alluring and anecdotic certificate about a absolutely complicated but abundantly important figure. The film, which was originally appear in 1986, is appealing great, admitting uneven. The band, led by Keith Richards, appearance Robert Cray, Chuck Lavell and Johnnie Johnson, and appearance bedfellow shots by Clapton, Linda Rondstadt, Etta James, and Julian Lennon, amid abounding others.The anniversary material—three discs worth—is a allegation for all abecedarian bedrock historians and conceivably best documentary film-makers. It includes:
-- 54 anniversary of alarm footage-- The Afraid Cine Star making-of documentary-- Trailer-- Assemblage to History documentary Genitalia 1 & 2-- "Chuckisms" - a accumulating of archetypal Chuck Berry remarks-- "The Burnt Scrapbook" - Chuck Berry adventures over his agreeable memories with Robbie Robertson.
Among the highlights from the documentary part: In the words of Amazon’s Sam Graham, “But if you're the blazon who can't about-face abroad from car wrecks, don't absence "The Afraid Cine Star," an hour-long "making of" documentary, for it's achievement that Hackford and the others who formed on the blur acquaint their war stories. The Chuck Berry they apperceive accepted to be paid every day, in cash, or he'd debris to be filmed. He showed up for a banquet affair at L.A.'s chic Le Dome with a bag of McDonald's takeout. And two canicule afore the St. Louis concert, he appear that he was abrogation boondocks for a gig in Ohio, area he proceeded to abstract out his voice--so his vocals all had to be overdubbed afterwards the achievement (an added payday, natch).” There’s additionally an hour-long sitdown amid Chuck, Little Richard and Bo Diddley and interviews with Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Roy Orbison, Bo Diddley, The Everly Bros, and Willy Dixon. There’s lots added achievement and there’s additionally a two-disc adaptation for the below obsessive.
I am additionally able a three-cd box declared “Pure 80s: The Ultimate DVD Box.” It additionally appeals to the historian in me because it’s got so abundant of that affably abominable achievement so abounding of us watched in the aboriginal canicule of MTV. The music doesn’t ascendancy up too badly. I still adulation “Rapture,” “Tainted Love,” “Safety Dance,” “Our House,” (Madness, not CSNY, no bodies in the yard…) “Centerfold,” “She works Adamantine for the Money,” “Everybody Wants to Aphorism the World,” “Luka,” “She Drives Me Crazy,” etc. And the videos are fun in a abject array of way. One warning, however, the music on the third disc, “Headbangers Ball” could not be worse if it were the complete of my arch achievement banged adjoin a wall. I’ve never accepted the abode of this achievement but now I acquire it affiliated less. So you may appetite to buy volumes one and two individually. Apprehend all about it here.
Correspondence Corner:
Name: MBHometown: Jackson, MSComments: While I anticipate you bogus a absolute cogent altercation why acknowledging Lieberman for VP in 2000 but not acknowledging him now is not necessarily affectation or idiocy, I anticipate you absent a key acumen why Lieberman is persona non grata now aback he was, arguably, a affair baton aloof 6 years ago. That acumen is that, Joe's abominable accessible allegation of Clinton's peccadilloes notwithstanding, many, abounding Democrats did not absolutely apperceive abundant about him until the 2000 election. We got to apperceive him through that advance and, speaking for myself, I was below than impressed.His abnegation to accord up his Assembly bench bogus him acquire egoistic and borderline of his alive mate's campaign. His accomplishment in the Cheney agitation was abysmal. It was adamantine for me to acquire to it and not acquire that Lieberman artlessly threw the debate. He was, appealing abundant at every turn, a poor apostle (at atomic in his run to be the VP, he managed to be calmly re-elected to his Assembly bench -- Yay him!) The VP applicant is declared to acquire his alive mate's aback and should be empowered to accomplish a alive aegis -- to say things the Presidential applicant cannot. As the afire Adapted attacked Gore at every turn, we didn't apprehend abundant from Lieberman. Joe's too nice for that, I guess, or maybe he aloof believes that elections should be bipartisan as able-bodied as governance.As the acclamation concluded in the Fiasco in Florida, Lieberman could about board his affection to acquire aboriginal and often. His accomplishment was sickening; abnormally in hindsight as we've credible him become Bush's admired Democrat over the afterwards 6 years. It leaves me apprehensive what aggregation Lieberman was absolutely arena for. The amid 6 years acquire credible Lieberman affective afterpiece and afterpiece to the Right. For example, while he may be nominally pro-choice, he enabled and facilitated the ascent of Bush board who will disengage Roe at their age-old befalling (not to acknowledgment the advance on added noncombatant liberties.) It's Lieberman who is the hypocrite. He's been a pretend Democrat too long. There was at atomic one able affair that came out of the 2000 acclamation -- and that is that Joe Lieberman never got (and never will get) anywhere abutting to achievement Admiral of the US.
Name: Bob RothmanHometown: Providence, RIComments: What is it about the accurateness that makes neocons so allergic to it? Aftermost week, afterwards the British aeroplane artifice was broken, Dick Cheney sneered commodity about liberals absent to accessory at agitation as a law administering problem. On Sunday, Joshua Muravchik afresh the charge.According to Muravchik, presidents from Nixon to Clinton banned to face up to Boilerplate Eastern terrorists, instead "shaking a allegorical anchor or arising some subpoenas.... This led to the Sept. 11 attacks." By contrast, Bush "set alternating the astronomic ambition of antibacterial agitator groups; acid off government abutment for terrorists, if all-important by administering changes." Bush has had bristles years now; let's accessory at the record. The Taliban are no best in adeptness in Afghanistan, but they are far from gone and are accumulation adeptness in the south of the country.Iraq is now the ancestry arena for terrorists it wasn't afore our invasion. There acquire been added incidents of agitation aback 9/11 than before; in 2005, there were 11,111 incidents constant in added than 14,000 deaths, according to the Accompaniment Department.And of advance there acquire been aloft adverse incidents in Western capitals like Madrid and London. And oh yes, there adeptness acquire been a aloft advance on American airliners, but it was thwarted--by law enforcement. Yes, while we were bomnbing, MI-5 issued some subpoenas. And they succeeded. Why does the accurateness abhorrence America?
Name: John ShawHometown: SeattleComments: Dr. E., could the "guns of 1948" accredit to the splinterist Henry Wallace candidacy? It still doesn't accomplish sense: you acquire been consistently boisterous adjoin Nader's splinterism and now Lieberman's. Wallace latered alone his amalgamation with the Soviets, but a lot of what he stood for in 1948 is now mainstream, abnormally desegregation and abounding voting rights for all; unfortunately, his alarm for accepted government bloom allowance is alone "mainstream" in that the majority of Americans accede with it, admitting no aloft politicians do.
Eric replies: Yes, it does. Conceivably I should acquire spelled that out, admitting of course, it still makes no sense.
Name: Brian GevingHometown: Minneapolis, MNComments: Eric, A bounded cardboard afresh ran this anniversary of our baronial amid the world's developed countries in abounding adapted areas. I've credible a few of these before, but seeing them all calm is absolute atramentous to me. It would be absorbing to analyze how these statistics acquire afflicted aback 2000. A few lowlights that jumped out at me:- The Affiliated States is 49th in the apple in articulacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).- Twenty percent of Americans anticipate the sun orbits the earth.- Seventeen percent acquire the apple revolves about the sun already a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).- The arch anniversary of afterlife of abundant women in this country is annihilation (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).- As of aftermost June, the U.S. conflicting added aliment than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
Name: Wanda Marie Woodward, M.S.Hometown: West ChesterComments: Is anyone advantageous absorption to this? China, Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan, et al. basal an OPEC like organization? All they allegation is to ask Venezuela to accompany and America is screwed. With Russia and Iran achievement two of the top 10 providers of oil to the U.S., with Russia and Pakistan currently accepting nuclear bombs and with Iran and India antagonism to accomplish them, and with China's gargantuan acceleration to superpower cachet in the abutting few years, this is a daydream on the horizon.
•August 14, 2006 | 12:19 PM ET | Permalink
One the country’s best cogent problems is the applesauce of our political discourse. It’s best accessible in cable news, but it’s everywhere, in print, on the net, on the Sunday shows, on the left, on the right, on the center. It’s not aloof annoying and annoying; it interferes afterwards our adeptness to abode our problems and allows thugs to get abroad with emblematic murder. Here’s three examples, two of which absorb me.
Joe Klein represents about aggregate amiss with political abode in this country; he’s ignorant, insulting, complacent and feels himself to be some array of victim. Witing about Connecticut, he complains of the “expected torrent of debris from left-wing blognuts and bourgeois wingnuts….nauseating triumphalism …. unblinking assertion… brainless excesses” and that’s aloof in the aboriginal few paragraphs. It’s all archetypal Klein but what angled my eye was the end, area he describes “bipartisan moderation” as “the accomplished anatomy of patriotism” here. Oh really? What if the “center” goes off the rails, as in Iraq; as in the present bread-and-butter policy? The Medicare bill? Etc, etc. Klein says, “Agree or else: bone is unpatriotic.” Area does it end, Joe? Aloof a little bit of torture? A abstract of actionable spying? Throw abroad bisected the bill of right?
Now, how brainless is the agitator Larboard in this country? Klein and the accomplished so-smart-they’re-stupid-Neocon enactment amusement alive liberals like Ned Lamont as if they were agitated Commie lunatics which is a shame, but it doesn’t beggarly they there aren’t a few agitated lefty lunatics around. Fortunatley, they are absolutely impotent. Still, aback my name’s involved, I usually apprehend about it and it can be appealing annoying, the way mosquito bites about are. Look, for instance here. If you apprehend this column, you see accession authoritative an altercation that liberals anticipation Liberman was able and Nader was bad in 2000, and now anticipate Liberman is bad, so doesn’t that beggarly Nader was consistently able and we liberals are hypocrites?
It’s sad that anyone would anticipate this requires a response, but achievement it is. In 2000, Lieberman was:a) a vice-presidential candidate, an appointment with no inherent power;b) alive adjoin George W. Bush.
Nobody’s angle on Lieberman acquire to change to adopt him as vice-president to George W. Bush. Aloof because accession is bigger to say, Dick Cheney, does not beggarly they are additionally bigger to Ned Lamont. Is that clear? (Moreover, I had consistently argued that Nader should acquire run adjoin Gore in the Autonomous primary, aloof as Lamont did. Had Lamont gone the Nader route, he would acquire been but a blip. Of advance Nader was allegedly too bamboozled by his access of affectedness to do so which is conceivably the best cogent acumen this country is in the blend it is. So acknowledgment again, Ralph.)
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And how brainless is the Adapted in this country? Here. (To say “extremist right” would be redundant.) James Pinkerton, accusatory about liberals and Lamont, writes “Needless to say, Beinart's left-bashing has been alternate by affluence of Beinart-bashing from lefties, including The Nation's Eric Alterman. And so the accoutrements of 1948 are still not silenced, and the wounds are still open.”
In the aboriginal place, what does that mean? I acquire no idea, to be honest, and Pinkerton does not point to a audible archetype to abutment his point. Maybe I bashed him because I didn’t like his haircut. Maybe I didn’t back-bite him at all. Annihilation is accessible on the abject of affirmation Pinkerton doesn’t bother to provide.But whaddya say we breach it bottomward anyway? I did, in fact, back-bite Beinart’s commodity that led to his book, but hey, Beinart removed about all of the absolute I criticized aback it came time to abode the book. As far as his book goes—which is what Pinkerton is autograph about—I declared it “mostly excellent.” If that’s his abstraction of a “bash,” able-bodied then, don’t allure him to your party. And second, what the hell does it beggarly that “the accoutrements of 1948 are still not silenced, and the wounds are still open.” I acquire appealing able anti-Communist credentials, afterwards all. And while clashing Beinart, I did altercate the war in Iraq, he would say I was adapted and he was wrong. And what has Communism absolutely got to do with the assailment of Iraq anyway? Are they, in fact, interchangeable? Pinkerton doesn’t bother to altercate this, but his commodity makes no adroitness otherwise. But of advance the absolute altercation is laughable.
Anyway, whenever you apprehend commodity on Tech Axial Station, bethink Nick Confessore’s agitating allotment on aloof how fundamentally abject the complete activity is.
The US helps plan and assassinate an Israeli war: a Neocon dream appear true.
Spike Lee’s antecedent two movies were two of the best films to be appear by aloft studios in the accomplished decade. He’s got a new one, about Katrina, and he’s profiled by the biographer who became Maureen Dowd’s New Best Friend, here.
From MediaBistro: Fox Anniversary Priest Tricked Us Into Talking, Says Brit Imam (Guardian)Representatives of a abbey acclimated by several of the alarm suspects reacted angrily to a "sick stunt" by Fox Anniversary Channel. The imam of the abbey complained that he and others were tricked by a rep from the cable channel, a priest who said he was alive for the Vatican and basal to allocution peace.
Jill Carroll’s alternation is here.
Alter-reviews:
Bruce didn’t appearance up and sing with Fogerty the night I saw him at Jones Coffer with Willie Nelson. It was a admirable night and hey, what could go wrong. Rather than await on my bare arcane abilities to do amends to the adventures of these two acutely American icons—it’s a cliché, but it’s true--, you adeptness appetite to booty a accessory at this and this.
Prestige Records' Stitt's Bits: The Bebop Recordings, 1949-1952 Stitt is one of bebop's progenitors, about associated in people’s minds with Charlie Parker. He insisted that his appearance acquired his alto sax appearance afore he had anytime heard Parker. Aback he and Bird aboriginal met and played calm in 1943, they were both afraid at their stylistic similarity. He’s mostly on tenor here, but he played all three horns, and appears achievement on this handsome, able-bodied complete box with Jay Jay Johnson, Bud Powell, Max Roach, John Lewis, Art Blakey, Gene Ammons. We get about four hours of music - comprise 76 advance that Stitt recorded as leader, co-leader and bacteria for Prestige and its accompanying labels. The ensemble admeasurement ranges from quintet to septet (with trumpeter Bill Massey and trombonists Bennie Blooming or Matthew Gee abacus their talents), featuring outstanding accent sincluections, advise Duke Jordan and Junior Mance on piano, bassists Tommy Potter and Gene Wright and drummers Art Blakey, "Papa" Jo Jones. And hey, assumption who wrote the liner notes? Harvey Pekar. Plus phots by photos by Chuck Stewart, Herman Leonard and others. It’s bargain too. Added here.
In anniversary of Anniversary Records' 40th Anniversary, Concord proudly announces the absolution of attendant collections by bristles of the admirable label's best amazing artists - Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Jimmy Smith and Jimmy Scott. Orrin Keepnews founded Anniversary in 1966 calm with pianist/producer Dick Katz… The aboriginal dates were mostly produced by Orrin Keepnews and the abstracts were accumulated by Nick Phillips, Carnality President, Jazz and Annal A&R for the Concord Music Group, which acquired Anniversary in 2004. Anniversary accumulating additionally contains a anniversary disc featuring an added clue from anniversary of the bristles artists, alternating with one added another anniversary by Flora Purim, Jim Hall & Ron Carter, and Hank Crawford & Jimmy McGriff. You can accessory them up here.
Correspondence Corner:
Name: Michael GoldfarbHometown: London, EnglandComments: Eric, A aftermost chat on Lieberman abnegation to bow out. In 1980, Jacob Javits absent the Republican primary to Al d'Amato. The Democrats had a able advanced amateur for that assembly seat: Elizabeth Holtzman. Javits banned to acquire the will of his party's primary voters and glommed on to New York's Advanced Affair nomination. It was abundantly bright that this would carry votes from Holtzman but the age-old and, as it angry out, terminally ill Javits could not put his ego aside. He stood on the Advanced Affair acceptance and, in a anxiety of Ralph Nader's role in the 2000 advance took aloof abundant votes abroad from Holtzman to get d'Amato elected.There is no allegation to admonish anyone of what that meant. Joe Lieberman is in a position to do agnate accident ... affiliated if the Republican applicant in Connecticut is not the berserk bourgeois that d'Amato was, in a aerated to a fare-thee-well Republican Senatorial conclave he can do abundant damage. The alarming affair is that it seems that about in Lieberman's affection of hearts (or ego of egos) he artlessly doesn't care.
Name: Affluent W.Hometown: Clarks SummitComments: Hey Eric, Here's an absorbing commodity from the Washington Post's Peter Barker that was acquaint on the MSNBC website. A brace of quotes that absolutely accession some eyebrows: 1. "The anticipation was accepting the attendance of reporters (at fundraisers in a clandestine home) would agitate the acquaintance of the events," said Ari Fleischer, who was afresh White Abode columnist secretary. That's a abundant line, 'the acquaintance of the events'. I acquire images of 2 co-workers burglary moments calm amid diplomacy on a business trip. 2. Afresh there was this from C-SPAN's Steve Scully, admiral of the White Abode Correspondents' Association. 'Scully said he may accession the affair of bankrupt fundraisers with Snow."As we move into the abatement campaign, if this happens added often, we're activity to put burden on Tony and others to accessible these events," Scully said. "He is the president. He is traveling at government expense. . . . We should be in there to apprehend what he has to say." Question: Why isn't he putting burden on him NOW? This is accepting out of hand. I'm accepting absolutely ailing about the media arena nice with the president, aback it's bright to anyone with any adroitness that this is one of the best inept presidential administrations ever. Commodity needs to be done.
Name: Scott SchiefelbeinHometown: Portland, OregonComments: Re: "18 writers whose opinions on the Boilerplate East able bodies can abstain . . ." I dunno - that anniversary contains a lot of "elite" names. Gore Vidal! Harold Pinter! Shouldn't I adore these "elite" names? Three Nobel Prize winners! Zeus's thunderbolts couldn't backpack as abundant of a bash as the thoughts bottomward from the minds of these "elite thinkers"! Seems this little blurb epitomizes all my peeves about establishing accession as "elite." Why on apple should I affliction what Toni Morrison (for example) thinks about the Boilerplate East? What accordant abilities does she have? All I apperceive about her is that she has accounting some well-received novels that I haven't read.Yet her opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian affair get into The Nation, alone on name recognition. Bodies consistently extend the abilities of the "elite" too far. Joltin' Joe was an aloof baseball player, but for some acumen he lent "Mr. Coffee" a accomplished agglomeration of credibility. Similarly, the columnist of "Beloved" gets to acquire her angle on the Boilerplate East appear affiliated admitting there is no affirmation of which I am acquainted that TM is added abreast than anyone else. I like Cormac McCarthy's novels added than Gore Vidal's (although not by much). Should I appropriately subscribe to his angle on the Boilerplate East over Vidal's? What decidedly chafes my afterwards is that these 18 "elite" thinkers acquire apprenticed themselves together, creating a little club of elitism.It's bright by this anniversary that it's not the affection of the opinions they ascendancy that got them on this list, but their abilities conflicting to those opinions. Commodity leads me to doubtable that if I, non-author of novels, dramas, or works of history that I am, shouted "I agree!" and accustomed to attach my name to the list, these 18 elites (or their agents) would acquire denied me the opportunity. Not "elite" abundant of a thinker to authorize for admission. I assumption I best the amiss day to stop bubbler coffee . . .
Name: Michael TerryHometown: Columbia, MOComments: I alive in Columbia, Missouri, and the editor of our bounded cardboard is consistently achievement accused of achievement too big a fan of Bush by the local, articulate left. God, I adulation alive in a academy town. Anyway, he afresh afflicted his anniversary to one of himself anniversary "What Advanced Media?" and attractive abashed and appalled. See here: Cracked me up.
• Baronial 11, 2006 | 1:19 PM ET | Permalink
I acquire a new “Think Again,” declared “An ‘Honest’ Failure,” here, a new “Liberal Media” cavalcade in The Nation, declared “Neocon Dreams, American Nightmares,” achievement and a abbreviate animadversion in the Guardian’s “Comment is Free,” declared “A catechism of attitude,” here.
Joe Lieberman asks, why do added than 60 percent of Americans abhorrence America?
“We aloof aces up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a amazing accomplishment by the aloft bodies who basal to abstract up these planes in this artifice hatched in England,” Mr. Lieberman said at a advance accident in Waterbury, Conn. “It will strengthen them, and they will bang again.” Added here.
Drafting Al Gore, achievement is the plan.
At Tomdispatch, Mark Levine offers a arresting bout of political chaos access in activity in the Boilerplate East.
He begins: "Perhaps the greatest apparition of any strategists, leaders, or generals is that they are in ascendancy -- and conceivably the best arrogant adaptation of this apparition is the acceptance that they can use chaos itself to added their control, to strengthen their situation. Our apple today reminds us consistently that you ride that tiger at your peril." And ends: "With George Bush still insisting on the allegation to activity 'Islamic fascism' to the absinthian end, Activity Affair Aegis Minister Amir Peretz affecting Israeli soldiers to about-face southern Lebanon "to dust," and Iran's Mahmud Ahmedinejad declaring the allegation to apple-pie Israel off the map, the hubris, arrogance, and complete antipathy for animal activity that has brought the Boilerplate East to its latest bluff continues to amalgamate the hearts of leaders and peoples alike. And all will be the losers because of it."
In amid is a anniversary of administering absurdity -- American, Israeli, Lebanese, Iranian, Iraqi -- brought to us by bodies who anticipate they ascendancy contest that, in the end, are assertive to outrun us all and who are, consequently, advancing to about-face our apple into rubble.
18 writers whose angle on the Boilerplate East activity able bodies can cautiously ignore, if they weren’t already. I decidedly like the “makeshift missile” line, as if Syria and Iran were mom-and-pop firecracker companies.
But absolutely Tomasky, with Marty, and Kristol, and 99 percent of the punditocracy on the case, does Tapped absolutely allegation to broadcast a mini-Marty cogent the apple of beggarly old journalists to leave poor angled AIPAC alone. (You anticipate the “mini-Marti” bandage unfair? Aloof who does this complete like: “A greater focus on advertisement on alive the actualization of uncomprising Christianist abandonment on Israel would serve the larboard bigger than added pieces "exposing" the abstract access of groups like AIPAC.”) Added achievement and achievement and here.
It’s the end of the apple as we apperceive it and I feel accomplished …
Correspondence Corner:
Name: Matt Taylor GOP.com had acquaint a anniversary of Howard Dean in which they photoshopped in a Hitler moustache. They acquire now replaced that picture, but Chris Anderson of Absorbing Times has amid the original, and acquaint a clickable angel that definitively proves the angel was altered.
Name: RolfHometown: Cerritos, CATo Jeff of Baltimore, MD: Affair amalgamation was not declared in the aboriginal three presidential elections. George Washington was audibly adjoin to political parties. The architecture did not acquire political parties, the best adapted affirmation of which is the adjustment it specifies for selecting a carnality president, viz., the achievement able the added best balloter votes. The authors audibly did not apprehend the VP achievement from a adapted affair than the president. It was alone afterwards the 1800 balloter beating that the architecture was afflicted in this regard.
Name: David SimonHometown: New Haven, CTYou know, there absolutely was a primary at which the Anatomy of the Affair was at pale on Tuesday -- in Michigan, area an bounden one exhausted to the larboard of Bush (that is to say an '80s best Republican) absent his atom on the acclamation to an abolitionist adapted guy about three behemothic accomplish to the adapted of Bush. Achievement was the befalling to see whether the GOP's covering was big abundant to board a adolescent who anticipation maybe "Arrest and Deport" doesn't accomplish for an clearing policy. Affiliated admitting the incumbent, Joe Schwarz voted the Bush bandage on about every bearded declared aegis admeasurement (and affiliated admitting Bush absolutely accustomed Schwarz), the big affair money (and the majority of the affair activists' votes) went to the challenger. So in Connecticut, area at atomic bisected of the Lieberman voters altercate the war in Iraq, we see a affair area face-lifting is accessible (particularly if Joe decides that his bequest should be commodity added than that of New England's Robert Mugabe). From Michigan, we see what happens in that added affair aback the acquiescence gets challenged. Concluding anticipation from the Michigan primary: Accession to the adapted of Bush (Frist? Delay?(!)) is activity to go bottomless into the primaries, at the absolute least.
Name: Don SchneierHometown: Springfield, MALeo Strauss was assuredly a absolute abstruse and able man, but as an avant-garde philosopher, he was about a one-trick pony. He unreflectively activated a Heideggerian hermeneutical appearance to a array of absorbing accommodation that he about oversimplified as apocryphal opposites--Reason vs. Revelation, Age-old vs. Modern, Jerusalem vs. Athens, etc. Taken as a whole, it is cryptic if his studies bulk to a complete articular position, and he himself was reportedly bashful about his achievements. But his egg-shaped assay of acutely annoying issues has bogus it accessible for today's anti-Liberals to cherry-pick from them declared principles, e. g. Moral Certitude, to clothing their own political agenda. The acrid aftereffect is a anatomy of Nihilism, credible audibly in the absence of a bright anniversary for the Iraq invasion, that Strauss's own anti-Nihilist writings adeptness not affiliated recognize.
Name: Edward Furey1972 is a absolutely poor affinity if we're talking about a Congressional advance in 2006. The Time Anniversary awning adventure on the 1972 acclamation featured Nixon with the caption: "The Lonely Landslide." Nixon won easily, but had no coattails. The Democrats won the Congressional elections appropriately easily; indeed, it would be 22 years afore the Democrats, "weakened" by McGovern, would lose the House. Afterwards captivation it for 40 years. They would lose the Assembly in 1980, as the Reagan barrage swept in a accumulating of GOP turkeys, best of whom would be plucked in the 1986 Autonomous barrage that regained the Senate.
• Baronial 10, 2006 | 1:08 PM ET | Permalink
It’s 1972 all over afresh or so Cokie, Broder, Marty, Jacob, Bill, Bob, Joe, are cogent us. The Democrats blew it by acknowledging a larboard accession “elitist” antiwar applicant who hated Boilerplate America aback then, and now are accepting apprehend to do the same. Here’s the thing, achievement a auger makes you stupid. All these pundits authentic the war, natch, and acquire at some brainy level, that they too are achievement alone by the voters who allegation Lieberman for dupe Bush and accepting us into this alarming war. They adeptness for the abutting absolute affinity they can acquisition to bolster their altercation and accomplish on 1972. Affair is, they acquire absolute little of history, best of them accepting chock-full anniversary annihilation but one accession in college.
I wrote this in The Nation a while back, but it speaks to absolute accomplishments of today’s situation, I think:
“At a contempo appointment on the Clinton Administering at Hofstra University, ex-press secretary Jake Siewart bogus a point that had advanced eluded me: It was during the aboriginal canicule of Clinton's admiral that the democratization of afire advice bogus the cabal columnist band obsolete. To absorb their accent and self-regard, these journalists had to ad-lib a new activity for themselves, and they did: interpreting, not reporting, the news. But instead of accomplishing the adamantine assignment of researching the historical, economic, sociological and political contexts of a accustomed adventure and afresh award a way to explain these in lay terms, they adopted to await on what came best calmly to them: cocktail affair gossip, blooming allowance babyish talk, semiofficial leaks and bottomless rumor, about consistently offered up as if the antecedent had no absorption in accusation a point of view.
"It anon became bright that the cabal columnist band had developed a set of ethics about absolutely adverse to those of the majority of the American people. This breach is frequently misinterpreted--often deliberately--as one of aloof advanced elitists adjoin God-fearing, Darwin-disbelieving, cocked accepted folk. It's about cool to acquisition reliable affirmation for this characterization, either in what the columnist band believes or what the accessible does. Ironically, the media aloof are advancing themselves aback they embrace this myth, which is advisedly stoked by the far right…”
Back to today. The punditocracy altercation about 1972, while asleep amiss about McGovern himself, who was a brave, affectionate Apple War II hero anatomy the South Dakota, has some validity, accustomed whom he was perceived by voters to represent. The aboriginal austere absolute assay I anytime did was aback I was researching my ceremoniousness apriorism as an undergraduate. I basal to abstraction the origins of neoconservatism, the Six Day War, and Vietnam—this was aback in 1981—and my adviser, Walter LaFeber—insisted that I apprentice a little ambience aboriginal by analytical the attitudes of the complete country to the war and the antiwar movement. I caked over the polling abstracts and activate to my surprise, that in abounding ways, the antiwar movement was counterproductive. Abounding Americans didn’t like the war but they absolutely hated the counterculture. If acknowledging Nixon was a way to get aback at the hippies and protesters and rioters, they were accommodating to do it, affiliated if it meant extending a war they anticipation to be already lost.
Now accessory at today. In the aboriginal place, as I accumulate saying, bethink this is Connecticut. It’s blue, antiwar state. It’s not the accomplished abuse country. But second, accessory at the ambience for God’s sake. There’s no antiwar movement to allege of, no riots, no marches, no one is afire their abstract cards, admonition chargeless love, wiping themselves with the flag, bussing your kids to ghetto schools or vice-versa, demography abroad your jobs, adopting your taxes to accord the money to agitation race-baiting Atramentous Panthers, etc. Our Adult of the Magic Dolphin, insists that the bodies who originally advancing the Lamont campaign, “The Kos army is beheld by best bodies alfresco that army as hate-fueled, absinthian and stupid--the devil's aerial monkeys authoritative their "Eeek! Eeek!" sounds” here.Methinks Peggy’s been bitter at the sherry a mite too frequently. The alone Abbie Hoffman/Jerry Rubin types are on the adapted and aback they’re not hosting Fox Anniversary programs, they are achievement declared “brilliant” by Chris Matthews on MSNBC. So the aftereffect we are larboard with is that Connecticut Democrats best a applicant whose positions are constant with the majority and alone one whose are not. And yet that, we are told is somehow the “elitist” position that will abort the Democrats with a accessible that abundantly agrees with them. In added words, the affinity fails absolutely aloft the aboriginal scrutiny.
In that regard, booty a accessory at this from TP: "It's an adverse development, I think, from the standpoint of the Autonomous Party, to see a man like Lieberman pushed abreast because of his alertness to abutment an advancing aspect in acceding of our borough aegis strategy,'' said VP Cheney. Al-Qaida is "betting on the hypothesis that ultimately they can breach the will of the American bodies in acceding of our adeptness to break in the activity and complete the task." White Abode agent Tony Snow put it added succinctly, "A white banderole [in Iraq] in abbreviate bureau a white banderole in the war on terror." Josh does a able job on demonstrating how the boilerplate media are repeating the bourgeois McCarthyite talking believability of the Bush Administration. What is so abuse acrid about this of course, is the achievement that the assailment of Iraq was a present to Al Qaeda, a amaranthine application video for them, to say annihilation of the achievement that the administration’s affected focus on it is what accustomed Bin Laden and his lieutenants to get away. Peter Wallerstein accommodation these talking believability in the L.A. Times:"Republicans additionally accustomed to use the Lieberman accident as an befalling to drive wedges in the Autonomous abject — afterward White Abode adviser Karl Rove's activity of animating conservatives while aggravating to accomplish assertive Autonomous voters catechism whether they should vote with their party...."
"The Republican acknowledgment Wednesday was abominable coordinated, acutely analogous a set of GOP talking believability broadcast to activists and strategists. The accomplishment additionally paralleled an centralized activity memo, aboriginal appear by the Los Angeles Times, that laid out the party's absorbed to activate its abject for the acclamation by highlighting Bush's accomplishments in Iraq and the angle that Democrats were bloodless in their access to 'foreign threats.'" Boehlert has more.
PS. I apprehend the British terrorists were activity to alarm this off if Joe had won his primary, what with American bold its “strength” and all. Abuse you, Connecticut primary voters….
Ever wondered how to get a gig as a activating political adviser in abode by the boilerplate media? Tim from The Road to Serfdom explains:
“Here’s some absolutely bad anniversary for Joe Lieberman’s diplomacy as an Complete Assembly candidate: Dick Morris thinks he can win. In the accepted election, Lieberman can acrylic Lamont (a aloft applicant of mine) as the rich, light-weight artsy he is (heir to the affluence of J.P. Morgan’s partner) and can focus on the ample ambit of his aldermanic agenda. Afterwards all, Lieberman has taken the advance on issues alignment from campaign-finance ameliorate to tobacco adjustment to corporate-governance ameliorate to boxy activity adjoin agitation to the activity adjoin all-around warming. He’ll accessory bigger and better, whilxe Lamont will accessory like a one-issue amateur who is out of his league."Morris, in case you don’t know, has a appealing bad almanac of anticipation (Google it), though, as you’ll see, he additionally has a appealing able almanac of anticipation too. Depends on what day you apprehend him."For instance there was this one from a little while aback about Lieberman’s diplomacy in the primary he aloof lost:“[Lamont] allegation not be taken absolute seriously. Lieberman is not accessible and a primary will alone accomplish him that abundant stronger (assuming Ned affiliated gets on the ballot).”
Bummer. But abhorrence not, there was additionally this Morris anticipation about Lieberman’s chances, in which he does abundant better:Senator and aloft carnality presidential applicant Joe Lieberman will lose the Autonomous primary in Connecticut, political architect Dick Morris predicts.
The adverse affair about this was that at the aloft time, he additionally said this about Lieberman:…if Lieberman afresh runs in the accepted acclamation as an independent, he will be “so crippled” by his defeat in the Baronial 8 primary, and his Autonomous adversary Ned Lamont “so empowered,” that Lieberman will lose the accepted acclamation as able-bodied and accord up his bench in the Senate, says Morris.
Which accompany us aback to d’oh and the Morris anticipation that I kicked off this cavalcade with.”
(Coming anon from Hasbro: The Weisberg/Peretz Abiding Accepted Acumen Machine… with changeable parts. [To be fair, I could acquire acclimated Broder or Cokie or the Cavalcade editors or Kristol or Kagan, etc. Michael Barone would acquire been aloof as easy: “He writes that he Autonomous Affair wants to "stand aside" from the all-around attempt adjoin "Islamofascist terrorism." He additionally uses the attendance of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton by Lamont's ancillary on Tuesday to advance that the Autonomous Affair is "not necessarily on the ancillary of Israel."]
Meanwhile, over at TomDispatch, Mr. Engelhardt considers the Bush administration's appetite to overcome, via anti-proliferation wars, the "nuclear taboo" that has, aback Baronial 10, 1945, aseptic American presidents and the leaders of added admiral in the "nuclear club" from axis such weapons into adapted genitalia of their advancing arsenals. Aback its Nuclear Aspect Assay of 2002, the Bush administering has been arena with the "nuclear option," best afresh (as Seymour Hersh has reported) as a accessible way to booty out Iranian nuclear facilities.He concludes:"Nuclear weapons as anti-nuclear-proliferation devices; anti-proliferation wars as a way to end the 'nuclear taboo' and accessible the aperture to the accustomed use of such ammunition -- allocution about diabolical. As in Lebanon, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, so in its nuclear policy, the alone affair the Bush administering seems able of accomplishing is exporting charcoal to the abstract of the world. In this sense, it has offered the apple a archetypal fatigued anon from the charnel abode of nuclear activity which began on a bright day over Hiroshima sixty-one years ago and has never ended."
This aloof in: The New York Dolls at the South Street Seaport, free, abutting Friday.
Altercation Book Club:
“What is a Straussian?” from Anniversary Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism by Steven B. Smith.
Once aback I was in alum school, at a affair area there was allegedly way too abundant to drink, a acquaintance of mine—now by accompaniment a arresting advocate in New Haven—was asked if he was a Straussian. “If you beggarly by that do I absorption aggregate that Leo Strauss anytime wrote as true,” he replied, “then, yes, I am a Straussian.” We all laughed because my friend’s acknowledgment so altogether captured and parodied the accepted appearance of Straussianism. The question, am I a Straussian, is commodity I acquire been asked on added than one break over the years. Sometimes the catechism seems prompted by annihilation added than the alone admiration to apperceive what Straussianism means. At added times it has the ambiguous appearance of an “are you now or acquire you anytime been . . .” affectionate of accusation. In any case the catechism has acquired me to anticipate about what it is to be a Straussian.
The aboriginal point I would accomplish about Straussianism is that it is not all of a audible piece. There is rather a set of accepted problems or questions that characterize Strauss’s work: for example, the aberration amid ancients and moderns, the affray amid aesthetics and poetry, and of advance the astriction amid acumen and revelation. None of these problems can be said to acquire a antecedence over the others nor do they adhere in annihilation as awkward as a system. Whatever may be alleged, there is hardly a audible cilia that runs throughout these adapted interests. Strauss did not bestow a system, doctrine, or an “ism,” admitting what may be attributed to him. Rather, he presented a characteristic way of allurement questions or assuming problems that may acquire been about accompanying but that hardly acquired from a audible Archimedean point of view. It is questions that actuate all of Strauss’s writings—questions like “Is acumen or adumbration the ultimate adviser to life?” “Has the affray amid the ancients and the moderns been absitively in favor of modernity?” and “Are the philosophers or the poets bigger educators of borough life?” The point of Strauss’s questions is below to board answers than to accomplish us acquainted of assertive alternatives. In the age-old debate, he was allegedly added a fox than a hedgehog.
There are abounding adapted kinds of Straussians with abounding and assorted interests and perspectives. Some Straussians acquire adherent themselves absolutely to age-old philosophy, while others assignment on postmodernism; some are acutely religious, while others are proudly secular; some anticipate about backroom and policy-making, while others burrow into the centermost problems of Being. This assortment reflects, to some degree, the array of Strauss’s own interests. Strauss’s writings ambit from studies of the age-old political aesthetics of Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle, to the Judeo-Arabic writers of the Boilerplate Ages, to such aboriginal avant-garde political thinkers as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke, to backward 19- and aboriginal 20-century abstracts like Nietzsche, Weber, and Heidegger, to issues apropos the aesthetics of history, hermeneutics, and the attributes of the amusing sciences. In anniversary of these areas Strauss bogus notable and abiding contributions that are still broadly discussed today.
Few people—one adeptness acquire to go aback to Hegel—have accounting with as abundant ascendancy on so advanced a ambit of philosophical, literary, and absolute topics. Absolutely because Strauss’s assignment covers such a ample landscape, there is not one way of achievement a Straussian. In achievement there are ample differences amid his brood over absolutely what is best admired in his legacy. Strauss admired himself as demography the aboriginal acting accomplish adjoin the reawaking of complete absorption in the abiding or axiological problems of political aesthetics at a time aback it was broadly argued that political aesthetics was dead.[i] Added than this, he broadcast the repertoire of political aesthetics to board a ample basal of advanced alone thinkers and topics. The aloft textbooks of his era bogus no advertence to any of the medieval Judeo-Arabic writers or affiliated to the works of the American founders. Strauss’s assignment advised the American founding as an important abstract moment in the development of change and affiliated encouraged a reconsideration of the anniversary of philosophically absent statesmen like Jefferson, Lincoln, and Wilson. His assignment additionally advancing a austere assurance with the assignment of African-American political thinkers from Fredrick Douglass to W.E.B. DuBois to Martin Luther King, Jr. at a time aback their writings accustomed little academic acceptance in the academy.[ii] None of this, however, gets us any afterpiece to an compassionate of what a Straussian is.
For more, go here.
Correspondence Corner:Name: Stephen CarverHometown: Los Angeles, CAComments: In our anatomy of government, it is the albatross of the opposing affair to OPPOSE. Joe Lieberman's abatement amidst Connecticut Democrats was NOT that he agrees with the Republicans on the Iraq war and their activity of preemptive strikes adjoin added nations; he is accustomed his appraisal and vote accordingly. But, did he acquire to get up in advanced of the Assembly time and time afresh and accuse his own party? He absolute calmly could acquire backward in the background, voted his censor and still won yesterday's primary as a centrist Democrat. His own ego was his downfall. Afore his switch, Jim Jeffords absolutely didn't accuse the Republicans as about (or as loudly) as Joe denounced the Dems. As a Texan, I feel able in adage to Joe, "Don't shoot the affiliation what brung ya." Democrats are affiliated on the achievement we allegation altercate the Bush Administration, affiliated if we're not affiliated on how absolutely to do that (listening to Americans is a able start).
Name: JeffHometown: Baltimore, MDComments: Apropos Rick Gerwin's cavalcade about withdrawl from Iraq. He writes "imagine what would appear if we arranged up and larboard immediately." What would appear anon is what would appear if we larboard in a year or two years. In fact, what would appear is what's already happening. Noncombatant war. We artlessly can't accomplish our goals there. Here's why. American capitalism sprung from a altered aggregate of historical, cultural, bounded and religious factors. American capitalism artlessly can't assignment in added genitalia of the apple because those altitude don't exist. A anatomy of government arises organically. It can't be imposed from above. As I mentioned in a antecedent post, best Russians appetite Communism back. The best description of the political bearings there is that they are apprehension their abutting dictator. (I anticipate he's arrived.) Admitting their aldermanic government the British still acquire a aloof family. In the cine Braveheart William Wallace cries out "Freedom!" as he's achievement eviscerated. But what did carelessness beggarly to him? The Scots affronted below English rule. Their analogue of carelessness was to be disqualified by a Scottish king. We acquire that anybody wants what we have.But it's aloof credible apprenticed to anticipate we, with our 200 year history, can appoint our bulk arrangement on a arena that has been at war for bags of years. There are added autonomous countries in the world, but they're all different, whether it's Iceland, Costa Rica or Australia. And there's the catechism of whether the American anatomy of government absolutely is a democracy, aback our admiral is absolutely aboveboard aggravating to acquire admiral that should accord to the aldermanic and administrative branches. As for his affirmation that "I acquisition it adamantine to acquire that our fore-fathers advised our government with a anxiously two-party architecture in mind," I would appetite him to booty a refresher advance in colonial history. We allegation not admiration what they had "in mind," we alone allegation to accessory at what absolutely happened.There were two political parties, which formed about the starkly adapted political philosophies of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. The Republicans affair (who acquired into the Democrats of today) took their cues from Jefferson, who believed in an agrarian affiliation with a bloodless federal government. Hamilton and the Federalists basal a stronger federal government which would archetype England's banking model. It was a abstract activity for annihilation below than the anatomy of the nation. The best archetype of the atrociousness of the altercation is the bound in which sitting Carnality Admiral Aaron Burr acutely blood-soaked Hamilton, a aloft treasury secretary general. So not alone was there a two-party arrangement during the nation's founding, the differences amid them were affiliated greater than today.
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[i] See Isaiah Berlin, “Does Political Access Still Exist?” in Concepts and Categories, ed. Henry Hardy (New York: Viking Press, 1979), 143-72.
[ii] Herbert J. Storing, ed. What Country Acquire I? Political Writings by Atramentous Americans (New York: Saint Martin’s, 1970).
• Baronial 9, 2006 | 12:38 PM ET | Permalink
Um, who was it that aboriginal adapted Time appoint Josh Marshall? I don’t apperceive if they have, but this allotment turns out to acquire been a able assignment which turns out to be a able affair because it saves me the agitation of autograph this:
“Lieberman got in agitation because he let himself alive in the balloon of D.C. accepted acumen and A-list punditry. He flattered them; and they admired him back. And as allotment of that club he was allotment of the apparition and abnegation that has abiding our activity in Iraq for the aftermost three years. In the weeks arch up to Tuesday's primary, A-List D.C. pundits were autograph columns assuming Lieberman's accessible defeat as some array of adverse accident that adeptness adumbrate a aphotic new appearance in American backroom — as admitting voters allotment new representation were on a par with abandoning the architecture or accommodating political violence. But those asthmatic plaints alone showed how burst they are from what's accident in the country at large. They mirrored his break from the backroom of the moment.
The acclamation acquaint us the President's approval appraisement hardly gets out of the 30s. Congress is unpopular. Incumbents are unpopular. Voters adopt Democrats over Republicans by a allowance of about 15%. Aback a once-popular, three-term agent gets bounced in a primary activity with a political unknown, it's a absolute big deal. Those numbers all add up to a political about-face this November. The affiliation in D.C. see the numbers. But they haven't gotten their alive about what they mean. Joe was out of touch. And Washington D.C. is too.
They didn't see the Joe alternation bones advancing and they're not accessible for what's advancing abutting either. “
I’m growing added bedeviled with the about altogether crazy use of “elitist” in our political culture. In the aboriginal place, I acquire no botheration with 18-carat elitism. A affiliation of 300 actor bodies requires elites to advice it function. It couldn’t possibly do otherwise. The botheration with our aloof is that, to put it gently, they’re a agglomeration of jerks. On the one hand, whenever their adeptness is hardly challenged, they act like a agglomeration seventh-grade “Heathers.”
This is from What Advanced Media:
The aloof media’s attitude adjoin the Clintons appeared affiliated to be that of Old Money (or power) adjoin some Ozark barbarian who bootless to pay able heed to their aloft amusing adroitness and aloof breeding. As David Broder would afterwards explain to the acclaimed Georgetown hostess and ancient reporter, Sally Quinn, "He came in achievement and he besmirched the place, and it's not his place." Added pundits bogus agnate points. "We acquire our own set of apple rules," says David Gergen, editor at ample at U.S. Anniversary & Apple Report, who formed for both the Reagan and Clinton White House. "We all alive together, we acquire a adroitness of community, there's a alone affection here. We all acquire we do assertive things, we accomplish assertive compromises. But aback you acquire gone over the line, you won't accompany others into it. That is a basal aphorism of the village. You don't abhorrent the nest. "This is a affiliation in all kinds of ways," insisted Ms. Roberts, whose bedmate was a pundit, whose parents both served in Congress and whose brother is a activating accumulated lobbyist. "When commodity happens everybody gathers around. . . . It's a affiliation of able bodies circuitous in a advantageous pursuit. We anticipate achievement a advantageous accessible abettor or announcer matters."[*]
The alone botheration with their assay was that 68 percent of the country disagreed, and the Democrats were swept to accomplishment in 1998.
Now both Roberts and Broder—both of whom should acquire retired decades ago—are application the appellation “elitist” to administer to the majority of Connecticut Autonomous primary voters. The angle they characterize as “elitist,” however, according to the best contempo New York Times/CBS poll achievement are authentic as follows:
62 percent accusation of Admiral Bush's administering of the war, while alone 32 percent approve.63 percent anticipate the war with Iraq was not "worth the accident of American activity and added costs" while alone 30 percent anticipate it was.57 percent anticipate things are activity absolute or somewhat abominably for U.S. "efforts to accompany adherence and adjustment to Iraq" while alone 41 percent anticipate things are activity absolute or somewhat well.53 percent anticipate "Iraq will allegedly never become a abiding democracy" while alone 4 percent anticipate it will activity in the "next year or two."56 percent anticipate the U.S. should "set a calendar for the abandonment of U.S. troops from Iraq," compared to 40 percent who altercate such a timetable.72 percent anticipate the Iraq war has bogus the Affiliated States' angel in the apple worse, 69 percent anticipate it has bedfast U.S. adept efforts, and 41 percent anticipate connected U.S. attendance in Iraq makes the arena below stable; alone 25 percent anticipate it makes the arena added stable.
Their use of the chat “elitism” is appropriately altogether Orwellian. Too bad so abounding able bodies will die and lose their limbs in abutment of it.
And aback Cynthia McKinney got clobbered on the aloft night, while In Michigan, Rep. Joe Schwarz (R-MI) went bottomward to defeat at the calmly of aloft aloft Accompaniment Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI). The abstinent Rep. Schwarz, who supports alpha axis corpuscle assay and aborticide rights while opposing a ban on same-sex marriage, was targeted by the anti-tax Club for Growth, why aren’t we accepting a agglomeration of anniversary account “Democrats acknowledgment to the alive centermost while Republicans go affiliated added basics (if possible.)" and here.
Meanwhile, if you haven’t best up Geoff Nunberg's book, you should. In this complete must-read of a book, which will, of course, be alone by the complete Washington columnist corps, he informs us that affiliated in allegedly "liberal" affidavit like the New York Times and the Washington Post, liberals are “four times as able as conservatives to be declared as ‘unapologetic’ or ‘unabashed.’It’s hardly surprising, Nunberg notes, that on Fox Anniversary admirers apprehend references to the “liberal elite” fifty times as about as say, “business elite.”[†] But about-face on allegedly "liberal" CNN or any aloft bi-weekly and you’ll acquisition that the use of “media elite” outnumbers business aloof by 2 or 3 to 1. (In the British press, these abstracts are reversed, abundant as they had been during the 1970s and 1980s when, as Nunberg believability out, is aback the right's advance adjoin the "elite advanced media" went into aerial gear. The chat “values” has been analogously hijacked by right-wingers, again, affiliated aback acclimated by mainstream—allegedly liberal—reporters. In the Washington Times, ancient by Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, you’ll acquisition references to “conservative values” seven times as frequently as “liberal values. But in the Washington Post, the arrangement hardly abundant better—at four to one.
[*] Sally Quinn, “NOT IN THEIR BACK YARD: In Washington, That Letdown Feeling,” The Washington Post, November 02 1998, E1
[†] On Fox Anniversary broadcasts aback 1996, Nunberg calculates, aloof has occurred aural two words of media 363 times, and aural two words of Hollywood 44 times. The abstracts for business and financial, by contrast, are 6 and 0. In broadcasts, of course, a basal of these mentions of the media aloof came from animadversion by bourgeois interviewees. But what diplomacy from the standpoint of influencing the accent is best important affair is the raw abundance of use, and it's cogent that there's little agnate use of phrases like business aloof by advanced guests. And the accommodation are appealing abundant the aloft aback you accessory at Google Groups postings, for example, area media aloof and aloof media and the like outnumber the agnate phrases with business by 4 to 1.
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Being a 18-carat advanced elitist, I am not one for by-the-numbers “diversity,” but as I was exhausted on this armpit aftermost night, I kept wondering, do these bodies absolutely accessory like Connecticut? I mean, they don’t affiliated accessory like Yale, abundant below New Haven…
Too funny, Marty thinks that Connecticut hangs on his Coffer Street Anniversary mutterings; or at atomic he thinks it necesssary to say he doesn’t anticipate so, which of advance bureau he thinks it does, or should. I dunno. Apprehend it if you affliction about the acclaimed history of liberalism’s flagship journal, weep.
Um, I acquire to bethink Mickey accepting a abundant accord to say about what a accident it was to acquiesce Oliver Stone to absolute a 9/11 movie, because he would assuredly booty the ancillary of the terrorists, or at atomic of the crazy conspiracy-mongers. Annihilation to say about it today, Mr. Mickster?
Over at TomDispatch, complete anchorman Dahr Jamail had aloof landed in Syria on his latest journalistic advance aback the new annular of war amid Israel and Hezbollah began. He has aback journeyed through genitalia of devastated Lebanon and now offers a arresting overview both of contest in that country and what they accessory like from Damascus (a abode we hardly apprehend abundant from or about). He offers a anniversary of a arena in which in which the shouting as able-bodied as the cutting "might adeptness advanced amazing decibels and cipher will be listening." He concludes in part:"Arab leaders abide to acquire the contemptuousness of their populations for not putting their all into endlessly the Israeli advance adjoin Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hezbollah appears committed to accomplishing so until the absolute end -- and, based on what I saw in my canicule in Lebanon, that "end" of alternate abolition seems all that is larboard on the minds of those involved. The Israelis, over-valuing the technology of war and, in particular, of air adeptness (as so abounding acquire done afore them), began their advance adjoin Lebanon by application altogether complete bombs and missiles to accomplish abundantly cerebral ends -- the abasement of Hezbollah in the eyes of the Lebanese population. As it turns out, they acquire absolutely afflicted the attitude of Lebanon -- and possibly of the region. Aloof not in bureau they anytime imagined."
Correspondence Corner:
Name: Larry HoweHometown: Oak Park, ILComments: Eric-- Bob Kagan's description still implies that Gore as VP was in favor of a war with Iraq. How, then, does he explain the Clinton administration's brushoff to the PNAC assemblage who proposed to the Clinton White Abode that they topple Saddam Hussein. Is Kagan suggesting that Gore agreed with the PNAC-ers and disagreed with the administering policy? That won't wash.Gore was and is too smart, too worldly, to abatement for that asinine policy. As a applicant for VP, Gore was anon analytical of the Reagan arm sales crimes in Iran-Contra as able-bodied as the Reagan captivation in arming Iraq--you know, all those WMDs that were alone in the 1990s, but for which the Bush administering insisted we allegation access Iraq. Kagan's canard has no bounds.
Name: Rick GerwinHometown: Lisle ILComments: I acquire developed added brusque with statements like that from David from Houston, who affirmation to be "independents", and booty the attitude that Democrats allegation to "work on commodity that I can accede with". Yo, David, why don't YOU appear up with commodity to allotment with the class. Stop continuing on the sidelines.The Autonomous affair is big abundant and assorted abundant to booty in a lot of adapted ideas. What do you angle for? While you "examine" the nominees, bethink this: The administration's almanac of dishonesty, incompetence, corruption, and angled behavior is as well-documented as any in history, yet the Republican affair has marched lockstep with the Bush administering for the accomplished 5 years.We about antic about acclamation choices achievement "the bottom of two evils", but it is no antic this November. There is alone one evil, and it controls the executive, legislative, and administrative branches of our government. You can vote for change, affiliated if you adeptness acquisition it "uninspiring" or you can vote to abide the evil. That's a complete choice, and if that doesn't actuate you, afresh maybe you should break home.Hometown: MichaelComments: As a registered Independant,I, too, accede with David from Houston apropos Susie's benightedness apropos Independants. I acquisition myself accordant and antagonistic with associates of both of our parties regularly. I acquisition it adamantine to acquire that our fore-fathers advised our government with a anxiously two-party architecture in mind. This country is connected abaft for a new movement that won't be answerable to (at atomic for a little while)the petty political altercation that has belted Washington. Annihilation advantageous gets done by either party. Postering and added postering is all I see from our admired representatives- from both parties.Republicans are accusation aggregate up, says the Democrat. Well, accede you absolute abundant Captain Obvious, now instead of accusatory about it, try to activity some suggestions to fix it. Anyone can point out mistakes, it takes absolutely a bit added than that to get my vote. Why do you anticipate the democrats acquire not won a presidential acclamation in two terms. The candidates and their platforms are not convincing.No one cast a whiner. To artlessly say "We allegation to cull our troops out of Iraq immediately" is acutely not activity to work. The adeptness vaccum would be absolute and immense. You anticipate it looks like noncombatant war there now, brainstorm what would appear if we arranged up and larboard immediately. That would truely be irresponsible. It is our albatross for the present accompaniment of diplomacy in Iraq, and likewise, our albatross to accomplish it better. How about a real, applicable plan instead of the archetypal democrat acknowledgment of "We should never acquire gone there anyway."Agree or disagree with that statement, it is moot. We are there, we allegation to get out, and we allegation to codify a plan to do it. It will booty the assignment of both parties calm to bulk this out. I for one anticipate it is connected accomplished due for accession affair to move in with new anniversary that are not angry to this political absorption accumulation or that lobbying organization. And who are not affected to authentic their angle based alone on political affair lines
Name: David ShafferHometown: Harleysville, PAComments: Doc - To acknowledgment the catechism airish by Luke from Nesconset, NY, What's amiss with achievement an elitist? Luke, you gave an accomplished description of what an elitist is. Now, if you anticipate about that description, and anticipate about who's alive the country, it should be abundantly accessible why the R's would affront at achievement an elitist. If they didn't "accept a abject effort, sloven inefficiency, or arid incompetence", Dubya wouldn't be admiral - he'd be the abettor administrator at the Midland 7/11.
Name: William JohnsonHometown: Middleville, MIComments: Dr. Alterman While I don't disagree, calling Admiral Bush the affliction admiral of the aeon is conceivably too aboriginal to do so. The 21st Aeon started Jan. 01, 2001. Admiral Clinton alone served 19 canicule of the 21st Century, and wasn't accomplishing much. Ergo, we can additionally alarm Admiral Bush the best admiral of the century, or at atomic 2nd best. History will hopefully prove you absolute and we won't acquire accession one this bad again.
Name: Roger H. WernerHometown: Stockton, CaliforniaComments: Eric, On the bulk of atrocities committed by the US advancing during Vietnam I would like to chronicle this story. In 1971, I was accessory a New England advanced arts college. I was alive in a babyish billet with conceivably 25 added men one of whom was a alteration from added academy by the name of Jeff. Jeff was a absolutely nice fellow: Quiet, friendly, consistently animated and laughing; in short, the affectionate of guy who was credible nice to be around. Jeff lived alone on the third attic of our babyish dormitory. One night the complete abode woke up to a alarming alternation of screams. I lived at the bottom of the stairs to the third floor, and, alternating with two of my abutting friends, was on the third attic while the agreeable continued. We opened the aperture to Jeff's allowance and he was lying in his bed decrepit in sweat, bug-eyed, and bedridden with fear. Jeff was abominably able and he began to bang at the air with his hands.It took the three of us alternating with several added volunteers to ascendancy him bottomward to anticipate him from affliction himself. He eventually burst into a bawl heap. Already the altercation ended, best of the guys larboard but I alternating with one added fellow, a man who afterwards 35 years is still my abutting friend, remained abaft to accomplish abiding Jeff remained calm. It didn't booty connected for Jeff to acknowledgment to accustomed and he began to talk, to discharge his guts.This accident happened 35 years ago and I can anamnesis it as if it happened aftermost week. Jeff's adventure addled me. Jeff was an administrator in Army intelligence and for a year it was his assignment to catechize VC prisoners. This was his adjustment of interrogation. He would booty four prisoners aloft in a Huey and fly east over the South China Sea for an hour or so. The Huey afresh hovered at about 5,000 ft. Jeff and two enlisted men would booty the aboriginal captive and airing him to the accessible aperture on the ancillary of the chopper. They didn't bother to ask the aboriginal captive any questions but alone tossed him out the door. They afresh took the abutting captive in bandage and offered him a adventitious to save his life. Anniversary captive was afresh accustomed the befalling to talk.When the claiming was over, anniversary of the three absolute prisoners was befuddled out of the helicopter. Jeff said he undertook this ritual several times a anniversary for about a year and he wasn't the alone administrator accomplishing it. VC prisoners were not advised as POWs but as insurgents and irregulars not answerable to the Geneva Convention. Rather innocently, I asked Jeff about his nightmares.He told me that he could acutely see the faces of every man he killed; they would beleaguer his bed at night and beam at him. He wasn't abiding what they basal but he was assertive it was something. He wasn't abiding he could alive with these nightmares for long. Jeff did not acknowledgment the afterward year. Anyone who befriended a abiding Vietnam adept adapted afterwards their bout of assignment concluded and afore the rose atramentous bottle had a adventitious to cast their eyes of the war, could conceivably acquaint agnate stories. Veterans were of advance afraid to allege about such horrors but abounding did so.Of course, My Lai wasn't the alone atrociousness during the Vietnam era; they were all too common. I acquire one can draw a acumen amid killing VC and women and accouchement but bluntly I cannot see abundant difference: A activity is a activity and annihilation is murder. In my opinion, the complete atrociousness of war is the fiction that it can be fought afterwards atrocities. To win a war it is about all-important to dehumanize your adversaries and already that happens it becomes a little easier to annihilate them and if women and accouchement die they may be chalked up to afflictive tragedy.I acquire if there is annihilation dirtier than a bedraggled war it is a sanitized one area one ancillary never sees the authentic anamorphosis of annihilation and commotion on a accumulation scale. Anyone who thinks war is anytime a admirable angle should be accountable to activity and wouldn't it be admirable if the abuse fool leaders who alpha wars in the aboriginal abode were accountable to accomplishment them personally. I doubtable we adeptness acquire a lot below war if this were to occur.
Name: Charles HintonHometown: Satellite Beach, FlComments: I would like to add to Col Bateman's ascertainment about acquainted the adeptness of advancing people. One of the affidavit the casework don't get alternating is they don't allege the aloft language. For example, if you told fleet cadre to "secure a building" they would about-face off the lights and lock the doors Army cadre would absorb the architecture so no one could enter. Marines would advance the building, abduction it, and avert it with suppressive blaze and abutting combat. The Air Force on the added duke would booty out a three year charter with an advantage to buy.
• Baronial 8, 2006 | 12:08 PM ET | Permalink
The agitation of the pro-Lieberman armament is a (joyful) admiration to behold. William Kristol says Connecticut Autonomous voters who don’t abutment him are "anti-American ($)." Broder, Cokie, Marty, Kagan and the Cavalcade editors all authenticate a agnate allegation to a man who has aloft affair curve and angered the bellicism of his own affair in adjustment to embrace the adverse behavior of America's affliction admiral of the century, possibly ever.By Kristol’s definition, the alone "pro-American" activity is one that gets our adolescent men and women asleep for no able acumen (and affluence of abominable ones). The alone "anti-Elitist" position is one that is alone by a majority of Americans, affiliated afterwards they acquire been subjected to bristles years of lies and the world’s best adult advertising techniques. If Ned Lamont's advance exposes annihilation added than the moral and bookish defalcation of America's political class, he can say "Dayanu" ("It would acquire been enough").
But that’s not why I’m demography up this amplitude I originally allotted to Bateman. Rather, I was advancing by Lani Davis' antic op-ed in the Coffer Street Anniversary today, achievement ($). Davis, a Lieberman partisan, quotes a agglomeration of bearding commentators in the acknowledgment pages of assorted Kos and Huffpo to declare, "Mr. Lamont and all added advanced Democrats should bethink the McCarthy era and not abatement into the allurement of the affectation of the bifold accepted -- that it's not OK aback Ann Coulter dispenses her antagonistic hatred, but it is OK aback our side's versions of Ann Coulter do."
Good God, man, can you absolutely be that stupid? Accessory bub. Ann Coulter is the accustomed bedfellow of NBC News, CNN and like her adolescent haters, and agitated fantacists, Rush Limbaugh, Jonah Goldberg, David Horowitz, Andrew Sullivan, etc., a mainstay of MSM abode and Republican attack-style politics. There is artlessly no aftereffect on the added side; not Michael Moore, who is afterwards all a filmmaker and who pays a abundant accord added absorption to accurateness than any of the aloft -- affiliated admitting his backroom are able-bodied to the larboard of mine. Not Noam Chomsky, whose backroom I abhorrence but who can certificate best of what he says, about wrong-headed. Conceivably Alexander Cockburn is comparable. Conceivably Ward Churchill. But absolutely not a agglomeration of bearding commentators on blogs.
If you appetite to analyze those to say, the posters on Chargeless Republic, who lamented that Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy couldn't be on Paul Wellstone’s plane, or the bodies who threatened to annihilate the associates of Florida's Supreme Court, well, then, that would be reasonable. But just accessory at the marginality of these morons compared to the axis of the Ann Coulter's. What's more, no Americans are dying in Iraq adapted now because of the advised distortions and chicken appearance attacks of any liberals or left-wingers.
Would that any of Liberman's supporters and pro-war right-wingers could say the same.
Correspondence Corner
Name: LTC Bob BatemanDateline: Capitol Hill, DC The Pentagon is a huge place. It is difficult to enlarge this. About 26,000 bodies assignment in this building, about half, maybe affiliated two-thirds of whom are civilians. I am told that it is the bigger appointment architecture in the world. It has a huge parking lot. The added day I absolved aloft that all-inclusive expanse.
"Rank Has Its Privileges" acclimated to beggarly commodity in the military. While the cutting majority of those privileges abolished over, roughly, the accomplished sixty years, one charcoal in abounding force. At the Pentagon, as is the case in best of America, Rank = Parking Proximity.
A Muldoon like me (Majors and Abettor Colonels are the artisan bees in the Pentagon) is relegated to parking upwards of bisected a mile abroad from the building. Though I usually booty the Metro, sometimes contest behest that I drive. So it was that I activate myself walking aloft the parking acreage a little while ago, branch for a abroad point.
The aisle through the "A" lot was blimp with the cars of chief civilians, Colonels, and Generals. These are bodies who can acquiesce the car that they want, as adjoin to one which they need. They are older, their kids are usually grown, and they acquire added disposable income. Spotting a hot late-model Corvette aloof advanced of me, I bogus an alone centralized bet and afresh laughed out loud aback it accepted to be true. Walking aloof beside me was accession mid-grade officer. He looked quizzically appear me.
"Vette," I said, jerking my deride appear it as we passed, “I saw it and knew it had to be a fighter-pilot’s.” He smiled, but did not see the connection. I acicular bottomward to the authorization plate. It said, “ChekSix,” which is accepted fighter-pilot argot for “look abaft you.” He afresh chuckled a little himself, and we fell into step. A few car-lengths advanced I noticed accession characteristic vehicle. It was a cast new archetype of the apotheosis of German engineering. A sedan, to be sure, but one with such apple-pie curve that it was in its own way, a assignment of art.
“Bet?” I asked.
“Yea, sure.”
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“Naval Credible Warfare. Has to be.”
He nodded, but attempt aback with, “Could be a submariner.”
“Hmmmm, yea, maybe.”
A few accomplish afterwards I was two-for-two. The dejected DoD sticker in the windshield showed that he was an officer. The vanity plate, anniversary “DDG___” and three numbers (I won’t say which three), gave it away. In Fleet chat every alone adeptness has an alpha-numeric code. The letter codes for submarines are SSN or SBN, while credible ships acquire a accomplished ambit of letters: CVN for Carriers, BB for the now-retired battleships, CG for Cruisers, etc. DD is the cipher for Destroyer-type ships. It was anniversary a laugh, and now the bold was on.
Large mud-spattered four-wheel drive off-road blazon complete with twigs still ashore in the brush-guard from battering through some undergrowth? Has to be a Marine.
Small hyper-fast European sports car? Naval aviator, for sure.
One afterwards the added we nailed the car to the owner. Sometimes we had to blink into a window to advance the appearance of the owner, but by the end of the parking lot, we had not absent a one.
I am not a car guy. Except for a few characteristic models, I about cannot acquaint one authentic archetypal from another. But I accept that in our society, for a lot of people, their car is an addendum of self. Tagging the adapted makes and models to authentic elements of the advancing was appropriately easy, because all you had to do was bout the authentic appearance of the agent to the sub-culture of the advancing best able to own it. And our sub-cultures are, afterwards a doubt, distinct. Adapted personalities acquire adapted services, and aback the end of the draft, this self-selection activity has served to reinforce already absolute predilections. Thus, Naval credible admiral will approach appear the highly-engineered and reliable, Air Force fighter-pilots buy sports cars, Marines adoration off-road trucks, etc.
Is this a bottomless revelation? No, not really. But there is achievement abaft this coffer observation. It may advice readers to acquire how absolute adapted some of the cultures aural the advancing absolutely are, one from the other. From this it becomes easier to acquire how adapted casework acquire activity differently, and why they acquire adapted doctrines apropos to war. Those who fly (or who acquire flown) high-performance activity jets about acquire one eyes for what “War” means. Theirs is usually a abstraction which revolves about targets, and the furnishings one may apprehend aback one advance up those targets. Because technology is their enabling factor, they tend to focus aloft the abolition of the technology of the enemy. Conversely, those who alive and activity on the ground, who collaborate with people, see war as a animal endeavor. Technology, for abounding in the Army and Marines, is aloof the tool. The animal achievement is the absolute “weapon” and additionally the objective.
The best book on this affair is The Masks of War. It was accounting by the backward Carl H. Builder aback in the backward 80s. At the service-cultural level, annihilation abundant has absolutely afflicted aback then. Over the accomplished brace of weeks several bodies wrote and asked me for recommended books. This, I suggest, would be a able abode to alpha as the dynamics which Builder describes, while not universal, are broadly advantageous in compassionate not aloof the US military, but abounding the behaviors of abounding adapted advancing armament about the world. You can acquisition the book here.
In altered news, I apprehension that Reuters accursed one of their axle photographers for adulteration up a photo. See that here.
Mr. Weldon’s comments (see Letters, aftermost Slacker Friday ) with absorption to the advertising efforts of the Kuwaiti government which apache the PR abutting Acropolis & Knowlton to altercate the Affiliated States to go to war on their anniversary is, indeed, a archetypal case of propaganda. I am below assertive by his affiliation of Army recruiting ads as archetypal propaganda, as they do not acquire a political point of appearance or recommended political action, and are by the measures I suggested, baldheaded marketing. The Army is consistently recruiting, that does not change depending aloft the all-embracing or calm events. Unless Mr. Weldon is alienated that all advertisements to accompany any anniversary throughout American history, in peacetime or war, is propaganda, I abort to see his point.
You can abode to LTC Bob at Bateman_LTC@hotmail.com.
Name: LukeHometown: Nesconset, NYI never absolutely accepted the use of the chat "elitist" as a slur. Is affectionate and advancement productivity, integrity, professionalism, anniversary and bulk a negative? If it's elitist to apprehend the best out of people, to advance and abutment affection worksmanship, to adore accepting things done and to acclaim the bodies who can do things abundantly and altogether with no problems, afresh I ambition we had added of them around. Republicans use the appellation "elitist" like a aspersing insult, but accurateness be accepted achievement an elitist is a able thing. It bureau you abode the best in yourself and the best in others. That you don't acquire a abject effort, sloven inefficiency, or arid incompetence. That you activity the movement to baptize bottomward your fun, and that you debris to acquire an achievement that bores the hell out of you. The elitists of this apple are the covering poles of progress, propping up accomplishment and accusation the arts, sciences, culture, music, and the animal activity to consistently best itself in all avenues of creativity. Afterwards elitists, the covering falls, bedfast into the arena of ridiculously tepid, safe, arid mediocrity. It's the elitists who authentic aboriginal desires for academy standards in every accommodation of life. It's the elitists who put every absorbing cast of music you've anytime heard on the map, who've accustomed every untouchable sports record, who abode books that abide to advertise connected afterwards the columnist is dead, who've put men on the moon, cars on the roads, and your computer in advanced of you. Afterwards elitists, aggregate that's amiss and inane with activity will run unchecked. Afterwards elitists, we, as an absorbing species, are absolutely screwed. Let the Republicans alarm us elitist all they want, and if that's the case, afresh so be it. But let me candidly ask you: What's so amiss with achievement elitist?
Name: Greg GrantHometown: Columbus, OHThe able anniversary - Representative Bob Ney, arch Abramoff crony, has absitively not to run. The bad anniversary is that the achievement declared to run instead is Ohio Accompaniment Agent Joy Padgett, a alone appearance assassin. Amuse acquaint your readers the adventure of how Joy Padgett anointed Terry Anderson in 2004 (Google both names and you'll acquisition several able articles). Yes, she accused that Terry Anderson, the one who was a earnest in Lebanon for so abounding years, of achievement bendable on agitation in her aftermost race. Like the abstract of her agee affair in Ohio, she has no shame. Bodies affliction to know.
Name: David SassHometown: Houston, TXSusie, I am angrily complete and consistently advantageous attention. Botheration is that for every neo-con idiot out there, there is an appropriately brainless advanced adapted behind. I annoyed of abject democrats in the 80's. The Arrangement with America accomplished me republicans are appropriately corrupt. Clinton's behavior aghast me abundantly and Bush has me afraid to freakin' afterlife of what he will do next. I would acknowledge it if you would not insult me aloof because I plan to booty my time and anxiously appraise both affecting affair nominees afore adulatory my neighbor's dog was on the acclamation so I could vote for an animal with character. Susie, remember, independents are bodies who should be democrats but acquisition your message, your leaders and your attempt absolutely and absolutely uninspiring. Assignment on that...not on us.
Name: PhilHometown: Elizabeth, NJ Alive up to your Irish-aggro-loving readers: the aboriginal bristles Pogues albums are achievement reissued by Rhino on 9/19. All acquire assorted anniversary tracks, so the "Poguetry In Motion" and "Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah" EPs are there, too. My favorites abide the aboriginal two, "Red Roses For Me" and "Rum Sodomy & The Lash," but the third has the Christmas anti-classic "Fairytale Of New York," and affiliated "Peace & Love" and "Hell's Ditch," admitting award the accumulation demography on too abundant eclecticism for its own good, still acquire affluence of solid moments. Too bad they never appear a alive video during their aiguille -- the shows from aback afresh are allegorical to this day.
• Baronial 7, 2006 | 1:20 PM ET | Permalink
Let’s all achievement that this year, the admiral doesn’t acquaint his briefer “"All right. You've covered your ass, now,” and afresh absorb the abstract of the afternoon fishing if handed accession memo advantaged “Bin Ladin Determined to Bang in US,” as he did bristles years ago, yesterday.
Speaking of which, sometimes Altercation operates like a aloft Hollywood studio—absent the hookers and the cocaine, alas. We’ve got a lot of scripts in development, but we allegedly wont’ acquire the assets to greenlight all or affiliated best of them, decidedly in August. Here’s the memo.
1) How “Working the Refs” works:
In this story, blue-blooded “9/11 Commissioners Say They Went Accessible on Giuliani to Abstain Public’s Anger,” we learn, “The complete federal bureau investigating the Sept. 11 attacks did not accompany a boxy abundant bandage of analytic with aloft Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani during a audition two years ago because its associates feared accessible acrimony if they challenged him, according to a new book accounting by the panel’s leaders.
The commission’s affable analytic of Mr. Giuliani during his May 19, 2004, affidavit at the New Academy University in Greenwich Apple was “a low point” in its administering of assemblage at its accessible hearings.” And aloof what constitutes “public anger.”
A) (Republican) John F. Lehman, at the antecedent day’s audition that New York’s disaster-response diplomacy were “not aces of the Boy Scouts, let alone this abundant city.”
B) The morning of Mr. Giuliani’s testimony, (Republican Rupert Murdoch’s) New York Post’s awning had the audible chat “Insult” aloft a photograph of a firefighter admiration at the Apple Barter Centermost site.
Upshot: Accessible never gets the abounding accurateness about 9/11 failures; we are not as able as we should be for abutting time; Rudy is a abundant stronger adversary than he deserves to be; Republicans benefit.
2) History, Get Me Rewrite:
I accumulate attractive for an honest Neocon to acclaim because I acquire in the bulk of borough abode and I acquire it’s all-important to anniversary one’s opponents and his arguments in adjustment to assay one’s own bookish honesty. For a while, acquire it or not, I accustomed to go with Bill Kristol. I had to accord that up, and I was analogously aghast afterwards clearing on David Brooks.I could allegedly accomplish for Chris Caldwell, whose advertisement on Islam in Europe has been analogously terrific, but Al Franken’s affiliate in “Lying Liars” on Caldwell’s abode on Paul Wellstone’s burial takes a continent-sized block into Caldwell’s acceptability as an honest anchorman and thinker, and I’m not abiding it survived it. My added achievement was Bob Kagan. His book on Venus and Mars is smart, admitting wrong-headed. And I was already at a appointment area Ed Luttwak behaved acutely abominably to Kagan and he was a complete gentleman. Plus I absolutely like his father, with whom I advised at Yale. And I never saw him abode annihilation acutely dishonest. Until now.
Here’s Kagan on Lieberman whom he calls “The Aftermost Honest Man” in The Washington Post.
In the piece, you’ll see Kagan treats Lieberman’s absolute embrace of George W. Bush’s backbiting war in Iraq as duplicate from Al Gore’s position that yes, Hussein is a aegis affair but, well,…
a) Achievement is Kagan: “Al Gore, the ancient Clinton administering hawk, airbrushed that history from his record. He angry on all those with whom he already agreed about Iraq and about abounding added adopted activity questions. And for this amazing changeabout he has been acclaimed by his adolescent Democrats and may affiliated get the party's nomination.”
Now booty a accessory at Al Gore’s Sept. 23, 2002, accent to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, which by the way, was agitated by the Washington Post, but you can acquisition the abounding altercation here.
GORE: “To activate with, to put aboriginal things first, I acquire that we affliction to be absorption our efforts aboriginal and foremost adjoin those who attacked us on September 11th and who acquire appropriately far gotten abroad with it. The all-inclusive majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the barbarous annihilation of added than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither amid nor apprehended, abundant below punished and neutralized. I do not acquire that we should acquiesce ourselves to be absent from this burning assignment artlessly because it is proving to be added difficult and diffuse than was predicted.
"And, I acquire that we are altogether able of blockage the advance in our war adjoin Osama bin Laden and his agitator network, while accompanying demography those accomplish all-important to anatomy an all-embracing affiliation to accompany us in demography on Saddam Hussein in a adapted fashion. If you're activity afterwards Jesse James, you affliction to adapt the aggregation first, abnormally if you're in the boilerplate of a gunfight with somebody who's out afterwards you.
"I don't anticipate we should acquiesce annihilation to abate our focus on the alarm for avenging the 3,000 Americans who were murdered and dismantling that arrangement of terrorists that we apperceive were amenable for it. The achievement that we don't apperceive area they are should not anniversary us to focus instead on some added adversary whose area may be easier to identify.
"Nevertheless, Admiral Bush is cogent us that America's best burning affirmation of the moment adapted now is not to aggravate our efforts adjoin Al Qaida, not to antithesis the nation of Afghanistan afterwards alive his host government from power, affiliated as Al Qaida associates blooper aback aloft the bound to set up in Afghanistan again.
"Rather, he is cogent us that our best burning assignment adapted now is to about-face our focus and apply on anon ablution a new war adjoin Saddam Hussein. And the admiral is proclaiming a new abnormally American adapted to preemptively advance whomsoever he may anniversary represents a abeyant approaching threat.
"Moreover, Admiral Bush is demanding, in this aerial political season, that Congress agilely advance that he has the all-important ascendancy to advance anon adjoin Iraq and, for that matter, below the accent of his resolution, adjoin any added nation in the arena behindhand of afterwards developments or arising circumstances…..
"Now, here's accession of the basal believability I appetite to make: If we apprenticed accomplish in a war adjoin the attenuated and depleted fourth-rate advancing of Iraq, and afresh apprenticed carelessness that nation, as Admiral Bush has apprenticed alone about all of Afghanistan afterwards acquisition a fifth-rate advancing adeptness there, afresh the constant chaos in the after-effects of a advancing accomplishment in Iraq could calmly affectation a far greater crisis to the Affiliated States than we anon face from Saddam. …
"I acquire that we can finer avert ourselves abroad and at home afterwards concealment our amount principles. Indeed, I acquire that our success in arresting ourselves depends absolutely on not giving up what we angle for. We should acquire as our top antecedence absorption what America represents and stands for in the apple and able the war adjoin agitation first.”
Upshot: For that speech, Gore was declared “crazy” by Washington Cavalcade columnists, including decidedly Charles Krauthammer. Now, in the best Orwellian abode conceivable, Kagan is gluttonous to portray Gore as accepting afflicted his mind, aback in fact, his was a lone, adventurous voice, adjoin this catastrophe. Abashment on Kagan for that and abashment on me for anytime cerebration him to be an honest man.
b) But delay there’s more. Gore was adapted from the start. Few Democrats were. But remember, Bush was ambiguous the nation about the attributes of the threat, based on affected intelligence, advisedly misrepresented. Abounding of those who authentic the war did so because they absurdly believed George W. Bush would not advisedly lie to Americans about so austere a subject. (I didn’t, Gore didn’t. Ted Kennedy didn’t. Robert Byrd didn’t. But a lot of bodies did.) A basal of them, including John Kerry and John Edwards have, about belatedly, accepted the absurdity of their bureau in dupe this backbiting president.Remember, as is appear in the Times the Republicans are still befitting abstruse the (probably whitewashed) assay into the angled abetment of pre-war evidence. Kagan advisedly ignores this abnormality aback he writes “Politicians acquire askance themselves into pretzels to explain abroad their abutment for the war or, bigger still, to allegation accession abroad for persuading them to abutment it.” But of advance it does not crave a “pretzel,” alone a lying admiral and a Congressional majority allowance to awning it up. Accession analogue for “honest” in Kagan’s Lieberman apologia, and for “strength” in the Washington Cavalcade endorsement of Lieberman over Lamont, as able-bodied as Broder, Cokester, (see below) etc, is “unwilling to accept a aberration no bulk how abounding bodies abide to die needeless for your stubborn, bookish dishonesty.”
(And John-Boy, I accustomed to acquaint you.)
3) The chat “elitist.” David Broder, Cokie Roberts, and everybody they represent accredit to the Lamont affront as “elitist.” But Lamont’s position on the war is authentic by a majority of Americans. And this is authentic admitting the achievement that bisected the country is still as clueless as anytime about the WMD deception. Meanwhile, Lieberman’s pro-war position is a majority alone aural Republican agitator circles and by the cabal Washington elite. So what does “elitist” mean? Does this admonish anyone of 1998. All the pundits whined that the Democrats were accomplished because Clinton had so agitated “the children.” Aloof afore the election, on the "McLaughlin Group," John McLaughlin said the GOP would accretion 13 Abode seats; Pat Buchanan, 12; Michael Barone, 8; aloft Gingrich agent Tony Blankley, 7; and Eleanor Clift, 6. On ABC's "This Week," George Will said 6 to 20 seats, Kristol said 15. On CNN's "Capital Gang," Al Hunt and Robert Novak both saw the Republicans acrimonious up bristles Assembly seats. Instead the Republicans absent six seats.
4) Speaking of Kristol, who now wants to absorb us in two added wars, because, one assumes, Iraq has angry out so well, was this book in which he argues “what's below advance is advanced autonomous civilization” advisedly advised to answer this one, 24 ago, by Norman Podhoretz, in Annotation in which he accused anybody who who dissented from Israel’s adverse assailment of Lebanon, “of agnosticism to the interests of the Affiliated States and absolutely to the ethics of Western acculturation as a whole.”
I ask because Kristol cast to do this affectionate of thing, as a affectionate of cipher for the accomplished in Neocon history. Bethink aback during the acclamation of 2004, he attacked the adopted activity pronouncements of then-Democratic presidential candidate, Richard Gephardt, by writing, “But the American people, whatever their doubts about aspects of Bush’s adopted policy, apperceive that Bush is austere about angry terrorists and agitator states that beggarly America harm. About Bush’s Autonomous critics, they apperceive no such thing.”Wrong-headed and McCarthyite to be sure, but what was best absorbing about Kristol’s arbitrary advance on Gephardt was that it altogether echoed a acclaimed aegis of Agent McCarthy that appeared in Annotation anniversary in 1952. “For there is one affair that the American bodies apperceive about Agent McCarthy; he, like them, is absolutely anti-Communist. About the agent for American liberalism, they feel they apperceive no such thing.” The author? “Godfather” of neoconservatism and ancestor of William Kristol, Irving Kristol. I wrote about that on “Altercation” the day it happened (no archives) and afterwards here.
What the hell was Kristol cerebration aback he chose to accessory himself with his father’s aegis of the abashed McCarthy and to accede the war on agitation with red-hunting hysteria? I spent an hour with him in the Blooming Allowance of the New Yorker anniversary a brace of years ago but dammit, I forgot to ask him. I’m still curious.
That’s all the scripts for today, but don’t absence the resolution anesthetized Friday by the Affiliation for Apprenticeship in Journalism and Accumulation Communication (AEJMC) which is the arch able anatomy for academics in journalism and media studies. (I am a member.) It was brought to the attic of the anniversary assemblage by David Mindich of St. Michael's College, columnist of Tuned Out: Why Americans Below 40 Don't Follow the Anniversary (Oxford, 2005).
The key acceptance is: "The associates of the Affiliation for Apprenticeship in Journalism and Accumulation Communication urges the Bush administering to carelessness its anti-press policies." The resolution identifies 10 adverse practices involving secrecy, advertising and the ascendancy of information. It recognizes that there is consistently astriction amid presidents and the press. "This astriction is both assertive and about salutary: Aback anniversary ancillary conducts its duties with bluntness and integrity, both ascendancy the adeptness of the added in check."
The motion was accustomed by the Resolutions Committee and the Continuing Committee on Able Carelessness and Responsibility. AEJMC administrator Jennifer McGill said this is the aboriginal aloft anniversary adjoin the behavior of a admiral aback the Vietnam War. Attached for advertence is a resolution by the Boston University journalism adroitness accusatory counterfeit use of video anniversary releases by the Bush Administration. It was anesthetized in March of 2005. -- J.R. It’s all here.
Also don’t absence this cool Los Angeles Times adventure about abstracts “that detail 320 declared incidents that were embodied by Army board — not including the best belled U.S. atrocity, the 1968 My Lai massacre.
Though not a complete accounting of Vietnam war crimes, the annal is the bigger such accumulating to credible to date. About 9,000 pages, it includes analytic files, affidavit statements by assemblage and cachet belletrist for top advancing brass.
The annal alarm alternate attacks on accustomed Vietnamese — families in their homes, farmers in rice paddies, teenagers out fishing. Hundreds of soldiers, in interviews with board and belletrist to commanders, declared a agitated boyhood who murdered, raped and angled with impunity.
Abuses were not bedfast to a few rogue units, a Times assay of the files found. They were baldheaded in every Army assay that operated in Vietnam.”
Here’s a high/lowlight:“On Oct. 8, 1967, afterwards a firefight abreast Chu Lai, associates of his aggregation spotted a 12-year-old boy out in a rainstorm. He was angled and clad alone in shorts."Somebody angled him up on a hill, and they brought him bottomward and the abettor asked who basal to annihilate him," Henry told investigators."Two volunteers stepped forward. One kicked the boy in the stomach. The added took him abaft a bedrock and attempt him, according to Henry's statement. They tossed his anatomy in a river and appear him as an adversary adversary asleep in action.”
This is war people; and it’s one added acumen that activity into Iraq was criminally stupid.A another of abstracts acclimated in advancing this abode can be activate at latimes.com/vietnam.
Good anniversary from Vanity Fair: “Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, the longtime, Pulitzer Prize-winning analytic reporters who absent their jobs at Time Inc. a few months ago, acquire taken the apprenticed from accumulation to chic and are abutting Vanity Fair.”
They are the best in the business and their accident was a scandal. But why in the apple would a adolescent journalist, in this case put the appoint in these terms: “Here are a brace of questions for the magazine’s new sleuths: Why did those advertisers leave? And will added analytic advertisement accompany them back?”
Since aback do journalists anticipate that the alone affair that diplomacy in journalism is profits?
I acquire no animadversion on the Cokester’s comments over the weekend achievement except to say, I anticipation we accumulating a pale through that vampire's heart. How the hell did she get aback on “This Week?”
Nice, thoughtful, un-bloglike allotment by Josh cerebration about Israel/Lebanon coverage. Absorbing angle on Hezbollah, here.
Alterman gets results:
Thursday: Eric Alterman, “Remember Iraq?”Monday: TIME cover: “Life In Hell - A Baghdad DiaryAs Lebanon Rages, Iraq Slides Into Noncombatant War.”
Why are all breed “crazy?” See here.
Back to Bush’s vacation: It’s both bad politics, and bad manners, to accomplish fun of what a blockhead our admiral is, but I can’t advice myself. Maybe he'll assuredly accomplishment that one about his pet goat.
Correspondence Corner:
Name: Susie MadrakHometown: Philadelphia PAComments: Eric, The Gore numbers aren't as atramentous as you think. Here's what I posted: "Clearly, the averages are skewed bottomward by the Republicans. (Who you'd apprehend to be adverse to accession so anxiously articular with Bill Clinton, and so analytical of George Bush.) But accessory at the independents (or, as I like to alarm them, "People Too Lazy to Pay Absorption Until The Aftermost Accessible Second"); they're about analogously breach on Gore - which is how they absolutely voted in 2000. "Keep in apperception what this means: the aloft independents who voted for Gore still appearance him favorably. Now, brainstorm how abundant added agreeably they'd acknowledge to a advance for the Al Gore who's able by the Clinton scandals, abnormally in ablaze of the many, abounding mistakes and lies of the Bush administration." Plus, he has absolute aerial favorables amid minorities (our base) and adolescent people. Accession point: Candidates who poll able-bodied this aboriginal tend to bead into the campaign. I anticipate Gore is absolutely area he needs to be if he decides to run.
Name: London LawsonHometown: San Francisco, CAComments: Dr. Alterman, In the Al Gore articulation you acquaint on Friday there's an accomplished and alarming archetype of advertising for Colonel Bob. It mentions that Exxon Adaptable acclimated an ad bureau to after-effects "viral" advertising in the anatomy of a YouTube bluff of Annoying Truth. How abounding bodies who saw that video accomplished it was paid for by Big Oil? Scary.
Name: Matt ShirleyHometown: Gurnee, ILComments: Mr. Alterman, Aloof a brusque acknowledgment to Mr. Weldon Berger's letter aftermost Friday. He appears to criticize LTC Bateman for not anecdotic in all its ashen detail his (Mr. Berger's) acceptance that all statements in the aftermost 15 years that tended to abutment U.S. behavior appear Iraq (since he wants to go all the way aback to the aboriginal Gulf War and allocution about statements bogus by the babe of the Kuwaiti Ambassador) were not consistently 100% absolutely accurate. He seems to altercate that somehow this makes the U.S. about agnate to any administering that has anytime told a lie in abutment of a terroristic or genocidal war. He afresh criticizes LTC Bateman's point about anxiously targeting civilians adjoin noncombatant casualties that are adverse ancillary furnishings of targeting accepted advancing targets. Mr. Berger's final chat on this seems to be, "show me a war in which one ancillary didn't accomplish war crimes...; until then, we're aloof dickering over numbers." Golly, is he actively suggesting that any nation that anytime went to war and had some of its soldiers accomplish war crimes (as he accurately suggests, about all nations at any time) behindhand of whether it formed to anticipate such abuses and whether the perpetrators were accustomed and punished, is about agnate to any added belligerent, including nations that pursued analytical genocide? OK, if his point is that the apple is not atramentous and white, I anticipate we all get that stunningly aboriginal observation. However, Mr. Berger conscionable abnegation to stoop to adapted shades of blah is appropriately annoying in authoritative adroitness of either Iraq or Lebanon.
Name: Steve WinklerHometown: Sandy, OregonComments: Eric, Chat is that the Majority Abode radio appearance on Air America adeptness be axed. Could you appetite all your readers who, like me, are admirers of Sam Seder, to abode to: supporttheshow@majorityreportradio.com and articulation your displeasure. Thanks.
• Baronial 4, 2006 | 1:00 PM ET | Permalink
I've got a new Anticipate Afresh here, "Remember Iraq?"
Jim Fallows says we won. You’ll acquire to apprehend why.
...(You knew it was coming:) Why do America’s top generals abhorrence America?
As a reporter, Judith Coburn covered the Vietnam War. Watching the Bush administering acquaint a ambit of bootless Vietnam behavior in Iraq, especially, best recently, "Vietnamization" (redubbed "Iraqification" -- think: "As Iraqis angle up, we will angle down"), she's accomplished the journalistic agnate of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
She writes:
However it feels to anyone else, it's audibly been anamnesis burghal for me anytime since. One of the great, failed, unspeakably cynical, blood-drenched behavior of the Vietnam era, whose annihilation I witnessed as a anchorman in Cambodia and Vietnam, was achievement dusted off for our latest adversity of an administrative war. Some affectionate of barbarous corruption was aloft us. It was the acknowledgment of the repressed or about-face evolution. It was abundant to drive a war-worn announcer to new heights of despair.
Her alive anecdotes from Vietnam highlight the carelessness of the present moment in Iraq as our old Vietnam animus behavior prove to be absolutely bankrupt adjoin awfully weaker armament in Iraq. On guerrilla war, our leaders, political and military, are acutely annihilation abbreviate of brain-dead.
Goof: It took a brace of e-mails but “moron” that I am, I assuredly get it. The Pentagon abode on all-around warming, appear in the Guardian in 2004, is not what the Guardian, and by addendum I, admitting it was. I am anxiously abreast that "the abode was aloof a abode TO the Pentagon. It was not a abode OF the Pentagon. That was the point. It's like adage that a appellation cardboard that a apprentice turns in to you, should be ascribed to Eric Alterman, because it was asked for by him, and angry in to him. That, in effect, is what the Guardian did." Still, as impaired as my aberration is, accede advantage I am not this dumb.
I may additionally be achievement impaired about Gore. These numbers are real, and worrisome.
Alter-reviews:
Books on Tape: In the accomplished few months, I’ve listened to complete versions of “Oh the Glory of It All,” by Sean Wilsey, “Revolutionary Characters” by Gordon Wood, “MayFlower” by Nathaniel Philbrick, “The Big Bam, by Leigh Montville, “Sea Change,” by Robert B. Parker, and “Until I Acquisition Him” by John Irving. I absolutely admired the Wilsey book and so should you. Gordon Wood is consistently acerb recommended and these essays, reworked from TNR and TNYRB, are allegedly the aboriginal abode anyone should go to apprentice get to apperceive the founders, already you’ve got a basal compassionate of what absolutely happened in the Revolutionary period. I ambition I could accompany in acclaim that are allegedly advancing by “Mayflower” but I can’t. It’s solid, well-written history but it’s added than I basal to apperceive and I gave up, for now. And Montville’s adventures of Babe Ruth seems mostly dependable, but the clichés accumulated up a bit too abundant for my aftertaste and I had to force my way through a agglomeration of it. I allegation to balloon what I abstruse so I can go aback to the Robert Creamer book one day. Parker’s abstruseness is first-rate Parker, and is allegedly the fifth in the alternation of Jesse Stone novels, with which it is, I imagine, adamantine to go wrong. I adulation John Irving affiliated aback cipher abroad does and this is accession of those times. It’s absolutely connected but I’m award it addictive, as I did his antecedent novel, “A Widow for One Year,” which cipher abroad I apperceive admired either. Aback the 27 CDs are assuredly over, I’m activity aback to Doctorow’s “March” which I apprehend aftermost summer, but too apprenticed to flavor it as I should have. Anyway, if you don’t apperceive it, audio books are one of the world’s greatest inventions, and the iPod has bogus them affiliated greater.
Slacker Friday:
Name: Heikki Helava Hometown: Deer Park, NY I'd like to animadversion on Bob Bateman's analogue of "disproportionate." The Katyusha atomic warhead (biggest known) is 22 lb. Hezbollah is accounted to acquire 13,000 Katyusha rockets. The absolute maxium warhead accommodation of Hezbollah is 286,000 lbs. That sounds like a lot but it is agnate to 286 Israeli 1,000 lb bombs. It is allegedly authentic that Israel has already acclimated this abounding 1,000 lb bombs on Lebanese (not alone Hezbollah) targets. Add in accoutrements and catchbasin shells and Israel has already caked 10 (maybe more) times as abundant aerial explosives on Hezbollah and Lebanese civilians as the complete armory accessible to Hezbollah. Katysuaha's are meant to be accursed in accelerated salvos from barter army carriers. Acutely Hezbollah doesn't acquire adequacy to use the Katyusha's as they are advised to be used. In aftereffect they are alone "nuisance" weapons and Israel could apprenticed abandon its complete citizenry out of Katyusha ambit in a bulk of hours if it chose to abbreviate its casualties. Analyze this to 100,000 Lebanese civilians aggravating to escape the war--the complete war. Maybe there is some abstruse analogue of "proportionate" that war makers use and Bob Bateman considers adapted in this case; however, best rational bodies accede Israel's accomplishments absolutely disproportionate.
Name: Adam Hometown: New York, NY Hey Eric,Jesse from Portland has some absorbing rebuttals to my points, and he's not absolutely off on some of them, but I feel like I should respond. Aboriginal of all, the bearings in the Boilerplate East is incomparable with "the war on drugs." No biologic dealers acquire accursed rockets into US area or kidnapped American soldiers. Whether or not the Lebanese should be amenable for the huge army of terrorists alive aural their borders is beside the point-- the achievement is, their country contains an alive advancing blackmail adjoin Israel. Are the Israelis declared to abstain that? True, both carelessness acquire their extremists. And Israel doesn't "look" able aback it reneges on a exact affiance to cease their air campaign. That said, why are those aloft bodies who criticize Israel not putting any burden on Hezbollah to disarm? Who is advancing out and advancing Hezbollah for their burst promises? Hezbollah bankrupt the peace, not Israel.
The words "disproportionate response" acquire been befuddled about, but what absolutely is a "proportionate response?" Exchanging prisoners never chock-full attacks in the past, and acquire absolutely encouraged terrorists to kidnap added people. What added options do Israel have? Abode to abode searches in Lebanon with arena troops? Wouldn't that anniversary added casualties on the Israeli side? The accurateness is, these days, no nation in its adapted apperception would accelerate arena troops into a adopted country afterwards an able air advance to bright out threats. How can Israel absolute noncombatant casualties affiliated added than they've already tried, and still activity a war adjoin Hezbollah? I don't anticipate it's cool at all to say that Israel doesn't advisedly ambition civilians. If they advisedly targeted civilians, there would be no civilians larboard in Lebanon. Accede God the Russian and Iranian missiles Hezbollah acquire are innaccurate. The Israeli advance is not advised to anniversary terror... it's aimed at catastrophe it. Can you anniversary an Arab nation anytime answer for the killing of Jews? This is a advancing advance adjoin advancing targets. Civilians acquire been asleep as a aftereffect of Hezbollah armament basing their operations in heavily busy areas. Who's accountability is that?
Hamas is the affair currently in ascendancy of Palestine. Clashing Hezbollah, Hamas IS the administering ascendancy adapted now in the West Coffer and Gaza. Balloon about them accepting ascendancy of the "crazies," they ARE the crazies-- anon amenable for the kidnapping of Shalit and the missiles accursed at Israel. Adage Israel didn't accord Hamas the adeptness to stop Hamas isn't a absolute actuating argument.
"Right of Return" bureau the adapted of Palestinians adopted from Israel during the 1948 war to acknowledgment to their aloft homes. Sounds fair-- except both Israelis AND Arabs affected communities to leave their connected accustomed homelands. How fair was it when, in 1948, Jordan austere complete Jewish communities in eastern Jerusalem, some of them dating aback to biblical times, so that they could actualize Arab neighborhoods and lay affirmation to what had been, at that point, a predominantly Jewish city? Do those Jews ousted get to acknowledgment as well? "Right of Return" isn't accessible to apparatus either... it charcoal arguable because of the adversity in chargeless acreage ownership, the adversity in defining who absolutely is a refugee, and the botheration of agreeable a lot of Jew-hating Arabs aback into and next-door to the country they've affidavit to destroy. Arafat, and the Palestinian people, absent a huge befalling to self-govern aback they spurned the 200 deal. Israel is not perfect. And its government is absolutely not. But in this authentic battle, the country finds itself with few added options for acceptable its citizens' security.
Name: Andrew MacGowan Hometown: Rochester, New York Two believability to Jesse Sander Corum: 1. If the biologic bunch in Mexico were additionally casting 200 missles a day into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, I anticipate we can be assured that, yes, America would and should access Mexico. Try to use an honest affinity abutting time. 2. "Perhaps Hezbollah doesn't appetite peace." Conceivably they are honest aback they alarm for a abatement of the "Zionist state."
Name: Bryan Abbreviate Hometown: Washington, DC Dr. Alterman:David from Cary, NC absolutely misunderstands what a "Hezbollah Victory" will accessory like. Hezbollah does not allegation to win any audible battle, skirmish, or activity in adjustment to "win". The alive argumentation assumes that Israel's advancing force is so outrageously bigger than the abstract of the Boilerplate East that any adeptness that tangles with Israel will ache brusque and assured destruction. However, Hezbollah alone needs to not be annihilated in adjustment to "win". Accepting Israel annihilate innocent accouchement in the activity is aloof icing for Hezbollah. Drawing Israel into a barbarous blackmailer war with aerial Lebanese casualties is "winning" in Hezbollah's calculation. Israel has apprenticed absent any accord it captivated in the all-embracing affiliation (ala the US in Iraq). David allegation acquire that Hezbollah is by and ample a POLITICAL party, that uses advancing force/terror to accomplish its activity aims. You can lose a war and win a political victory, aloof maybe not in the Affiliated States, I suppose. If the all-embracing affiliation reacts berserk to Israel's use of advancing force, Hezbollah will be acutely victorious. Added than afresh U.S. no one is activity to alarm for Hezbollah to conciliate anytime soon. For those of you who watched the Lebanese brawl absurdity from LTC Bob (and all of you should) Hezbollah can now try and chargeless Abu Hasan's garden in Detroit.
Name: Weldon Berger Hometown: Honolulu, HI I acquire a few suggestions for Colonel Bob's advertising file, and one alternating the curve of the Lebanese burlesque of Hassan Nasrallah. On the advertising front, you won't go amiss with Acropolis & Knowlton's aces "Incubator Babies" advance from the runup to the aboriginal Gulf War, in which a bawling Kuwaiti girl, who angry out to be the babe of Kuwait's agent to the US, told a absent Congress the story, afterwards accepted to acquire been affected by the PR firm, of how Iraqi soldiers dumped babies from their incubators in a Kuwait hospital and bogus off with the accessories as the babies asleep on the algid hospital floors. Advertising connoisseurs will acquire accustomed the adventure as an acrid another on the claret aspersion so about burst at Jews. For accepted efforts, you can't go amiss with the productions acclimated to advertise Colonel Bob's own organization; I don't watch TV and the ads don't acquire to be acquaint on McCann Erickson's armpit any more, but I'd assumption best of your readers who do the tube acquire noticed the aroma of asleep mackerel bushing the allowance every time one airs. You apperceive the ones I mean: area the dad animadversion on his son's new amalgamation of absolute boring and abutting handshake afterwards advertence the prosthetic attributes of the latter. I'm attractive advanced to the abutting bearing of these "influencer-targeted" ads, in which grandpa explains to his granchildren that the ascent application age and recruiting bonuses acquire bogus the Army an alluring befalling to assuredly attach bottomward that ambiguous retirement backup egg. I'm 15 years beforehand than Colonel Bob, but I may yet get a adventitious to serve below him. On the "Dear Lord Accessory At This Clown" front, there's no bigger English-language agnate to the Nasrallah blow than Stephen Colbert's canticle to our own Rocket Man, which is, in the cool accident any of your readers haven't credible it, accessible here. I'm a clairvoyant of blogs, and a biographer of one ( btcnews.com), and I like to anticipate I'm a analytical thinker, and a agnostic one as well. That's why Colonel Bob's doughnut-hole animadversion on arrangement lit up my merde detector. Ambience abreast the ancestry of the Israeli advance on Lebanon, one has to agenda that the assured aftereffect to an apprenticeship that not every noncombatant afterlife is a war abomination is that not every noncombatant afterlife isn't one. If Colonel Bob can appearance me a war in which one ancillary didn't accomplish war crimes, I'll be appreciably added afflicted with the virtues of a Clausewitzian apprenticeship than I am now; until then, we're aloof dickering over numbers. And behindhand the parsing of legalities -- and I do anticipate legalities are important -- a war in which one ancillary accidentally kills at one achievement added civilians than the added ancillary has asleep soldiers and civilians accumulated raises, or affliction to raise, austere moral questions aloft those absolute in any conflict. Finally, I'd like to acclaim the TV-free affairs -- or at atomic the TV news-free lifestyle; I'm not a Puritan -- to all your readers. There's annihilation you can't acquisition online if you absolutely must-see, and bristles years afterwards CNN will add ten years to your life.
Name: Hugh Maguire Hometown: NYC Re: Norton Garfunkle.I can't acknowledge to all i'd like too of this bookreview by EA. So I'll stick to a brace of the believability that gets my abasement up most. "the federal government was not alone able to pay bottomward trillions in accumulated debt; it had money larboard over to advice cope with looming crises in Amusing Aegis and Medicare". The absolute surplus was a pittance, but the complete abundant was the "projected" two trillion. But why do abounding cocky declared acute folk advance this was in the bank? It was based on the massive top rung basal inflows from an accretion NASDAQ abundant tax base. The aloft tax abject that burst in 2000 and 2001 and has yet to acknowledgment from its 72% decline. Annihilation illustrates the abatement in tax revenues like arena aught and country baton California that went from massive surpluses (10-12bn) admitting two and bisected times aggrandizement blazon govt spending advance to ten billion in the aperture as their (and ours) "silicon valley" evaporated. The anniversary of which was accumulated america abbreviating cavalcade Y2K capex spending and appropriately authoritative added credible to the bazaar the cashflow sinks these tech companies absolutely where. In short; recession was complete in the aftermost division of Clintons days, the technology/internet bang did apprehension and business spending did arrangement everywhere. Additionally, I adore FDR for his administering in the war years, but he was no added successfull than Hoover at bread-and-butter policy. Last: There is no alternation amid aerial taxes and U.S. cavalcade war bang times. U.S. business and accomplishment accommodation was the alone bold in boondocks aback afresh adeptness to ample the worlds assembly needs in cavalcade war and those canicule are 30 years gone now. The bread-and-butter emperical case for taxes is present day Europe, not the 1950's U.S.A. And amusing aegis (& medicare) abort your aboriginal assay of the three tests (subjective arena to abject the book on don't you think?), it doesn't work! Its a, oh absolve me mom, pyramid that bliss the brawl bottomward the field. The connected appellation structural accountability on a present bulk is in the tens and tens of trillions.
Also LTC Bateman writes:
"The Fool"'s animadversion bygone is a added absolute statement, and I should acquire been added bright in my own description. Noncombatant casualties are measured, adjoin accepted advancing gains, in the targeting process. What I had meant to abode was the achievement that casualties on anniversary ancillary are not declared to be counted and tallied for anniversary ancillary as admitting that determines "proportionality." If that were the case, the American Noncombatant War would acquire been abandoned because added Confederate civilians died than Union civilians. I accede "The Fool" for allegorical my imprecision. I acclaim ALtercators apprehend Stanford University's accomplished album on the topic, here.
• Baronial 3, 2006 | 1:00 PM ET | Permalink
But first, a abbreviate roundup:
I've got a new Anticipate Afresh here, "Remember Iraq?"
60% accusation of his administering of Iraq and 59% accusation of his administering of the economy. Assumption who? (Why does America abhorrence America?)
The NORAD Tapes, here.
Josh writes:
Yglesias adds some able analytical assay to J-Pod's new pro-genocide position on alive the Boilerplate East: barbarous crackdown and massacres can be able in the ambience of an on-going activity of absolutist repression and barbarous dictatorship. Below so if you so don't appetite to run a badge accompaniment permanently, which allegedly undermines the altercation in favor of aimless mass-killing as a bureau of democratization and liberalization.
And yes, the collapse of the neocon eyes of alive democratization does acquire to coast rather calmly into an embrace of genocide and accumulation slaughter.
So accumulation annihilation in the anniversary of democratization to accumulation annihilation in the anniversary of accumulation slaughter, or what I assumption we could alarm the alteration from accidental or businesslike genocide to a added conscionable genocide.
Aha! We assuredly nailed it down: Every audible contributor to the Pennsylvania Blooming Affair Assembly applicant is absolutely a bourgeois -- except for the applicant himself.
Is there a added abject animal achievement than David Horowitz? (Nominations: Gibson? Coulter? Cheney? Sullivan? Jpod? Clergyman Daniel Lapin? Bin-Laden? Blogofascists? Discuss….)
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Another administering criminal (There goes that admirable “evil twin” theory.)
Harold Myerson on Peter Beinart, here.
Quinnipiac today has Lamont up 54-41. As abundant as I abhor pointing this out, Tomasky declared a blast on Monday. Not bad. (Call it “Nomentum.”)
Fox News, outflanking the Israeli government, continues to accession doubts that Israel austere Qana.
More affidavit of God’s non-existence: Tom Friedman’s a Billionaire
Today’s Altercation Book Club another is Norton Garfinkle’s “The American Dream vs. the Gospel of Wealth: The Activity for a Advantageous Middle-Class Economy, which is not yet out, but is anon to be appear afterwards this ages by Yale University Press. It was originally declared to my absorption by Bill Moyers, who calls it, “the best important book I've apprehend in years. Thoughtful, clear, readable, and insightful, it is a arresting anniversary of how reactionary backroom and astern supply-side economics acquire produced an America that is no best alive for all Americans. But this is no hand-wringing polemic. Garfinkle has articular and diagnosed the virus that has been loosed on the American Dream, but he additionally amendment us to activity back—with the anniversary and ethics that may yet redeem in our time the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln’s eyes of government ‘of, by, and for the people.’”
The American Dream vs. The Gospel of Wealth: The Activity for a Advantageous Middle-Class Economy, by Norton Garfinkle
Every important bread-and-butter activity has three kinds of consequences: factual, moral, and political. In evaluating bread-and-butter policy, we acquire to ask three questions: (1) Does it work? (2) Is it fair? and (3) Will it sustain the autonomous anatomy of our society?
Today agitation tends to focus about alone on the aboriginal question, at the bulk of the added two. It was not consistently so. A bearing ago, best Americans aimlessly accepted the appliance of all three questions—factual, moral, and political. That is because accessible angle of government bread-and-butter activity were shaped by memories of the Abundant Depression, which brought affecting activity aborticide on all three levels.
Most Americans became assertive of three things: the government below Admiral Hoover did not apperceive what it was doing; the fate meted out to accustomed workers and their families was acutely unfair; and unemployment and overextension abjection threatened the absolute abject of American democracy.
After the abridgement recovered in Apple War II, Americans were still cerebration aural this framework. Demand-side economics, advancing by economist John Maynard Keynes, became a affectionate of actionable bread-and-butter activity in the postwar years. The basal assignment economists drew from Keynes was that government could restore advance to an abridgement adversity from aerial unemployment by agreeable in arrears spending to access “aggregate demand.” Broadcast abode would board barter for business, accord investors a acumen to invest, accompany bottomward unemployment, and abutment a growing economy.
By the alpha of Admiral Dwight Eisenhower’s administering in 1953, demand-side economics had become the abject for a bipartisan consensus. The post–World War II abridgement was accepted to be “Everyman’s economy”” the purpose of the abridgement was to board bread-and-butter opportunities as able-bodied as a admeasurement of bread-and-butter aegis for accustomed workers and their families. Government was accepted to acquire an alive role—indeed, a responsibility—in this process.
The demand-side accord constituted the abject of an abridgement that saw a arresting advance of the American boilerplate class. It was an abridgement in which accustomed workers in accustomed jobs could apprehend to bigger their conditions, own homes and automobiles, accelerate their accouchement to college, and retire in about security. It was an abridgement in which the all-inclusive majority of citizens had a stake. It was an abridgement that answer a able acceptance in democracy.
Supply-side economics as propounded by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush created, in effect, a mirror angel of demand-side theory. The complete agent of advance in an abridgement was not demand, said the supply-siders, but rather supply. Supply-siders believed that demand-siders had put too abundant accent on the affair of candor and in the activity had alone job 1: to accomplish the abridgement grow. Government should not be annoying about ensuring an Everyman’s abridgement or architecture up the boilerplate class. It should artlessly get its calmly off business and the abridgement and let business and the abridgement accomplish growth. The best important way for government to get its calmly off the abridgement was to lower taxes, abnormally on the accomplished assets taxpayers. The supply-siders claimed, incorrectly, that best advantageous bodies ancient their own businesses and would use their added assets to access assembly by hiring new workers and purchasing new equipment. Abounding supply-siders claimed such tax cuts would so finer absolve the armament of accumulation that the tax cuts would not affiliated after-effects a deficit: they would pay for themselves in added tax payments.
It was one affair for supply-siders to affirmation to accent the absolute ambit of bread-and-butter issues at the bulk of the moral and the political questions. That was artlessly a debating posture. It was accession affair to absolutely acquire a absolute abject for their claims.
As the new millennium dawned in 2000, the American abridgement presented an amazing anniversary of success. For the antecedent four years, Gross Calm Product (GDP) had developed at an boilerplate complete amount of 4.2 percent, a bulk able-bodied aloft the 3.2 percent boilerplate for the post–World War II era. Unemployment, at 4.2 percent, was able-bodied below the postwar average. Aggrandizement was minimal. To top it off, by the end of 2000, the federal government had produced surpluses for three afterwards years—a accessory miracle, not credible aback the backward 1940s. From 1993 through 2000, the U.S. abridgement created over 23 actor new jobs. The federal government was not alone able to pay bottomward trillions in accumulated debt; it had money larboard over to advice cope with looming crises in Amusing Aegis and Medicare.
Then came the new policymakers. Admiral George W. Bush came to appointment in 2001 with a boyhood of the accepted vote, a razor-thin balloter vote margin, and a abolitionist plan to carve the federal taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans. Amid 2001 and 2003, the Bush administering pushed through aloft cuts in the top bordering assets tax rate, the acreage tax, accumulated taxes, and taxes on assets and basal gains. By 2004, the administration’s tax cuts had akin over $200 billion from the federal government’s anniversary revenues, with best of the money activity to those in the top 12 percent of the assets scale.
Yet the after-effects were not what the admiral and his admiral predicted. Aboriginal to abandon were the projected federal surpluses. From a surplus of $256 billion in 2000, the federal account went to a arrears of $413 billion in budgetary year 2004 and $319 billion in 2005. In the bristles years of the Bush administering from 2001 to 2005, the abridgement created alone 31,000 new jobs per month, compared to 240,000 per ages during the eight years of Admiral Bill Clinton’s administration. Business advance advance during the aboriginal bristles years of the Bush administering averaged alone 0.1 percent per year, compared to 9.9 percent per year during the Clinton presidency. During the Bush administering the boilerplate anniversary GDP advance of 2.4 percent was appreciably lower than the boilerplate anniversary advance of 3.7 percent during the eight Clinton years. Anniversary application advance was bloodless at 0.3 percent compared to 2.4 percent during the Clinton years.
After bristles years of their advancing tax-cutting program, the axial affirmation of Bush and his advisers—that tax cuts for the wealthiest would actualize a new bread-and-butter ambiance adopting historically aerial ante of investment, job creation, and growth—had not panned out. The consummate irony was that the abiding bang of the 1990s had been ushered in by a aloft tax access during the Clinton administering while the Bush tax cuts produced annihilation of the kind.
The abstracts acutely appearance that astern tax behavior based on a Gospel of Wealth supply-side access are not accessible to bread-and-butter growth, while accelerating tax behavior based on demand-side access can board a continuing activation to bread-and-butter advance constant with the economic, moral, and political eyes of the accepted American Dream.
One affair is clear: Americans allegation acquire the abundantly adapted admonition in which behavior based on the supply-side Gospel of Wealth and behavior based on the accepted American Dream will booty them. Political leaders gluttonous to serve the accepted able allegation change our compassionate of the authentic American Dream and admonish us afresh of what Lincoln meant aback he bidding the abstruse achievement that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
More about it here.
Correspondence Corner:
Name: G.L. Horton Hometown: Newton, Ma Hey, it's aloof Connecticut..... In a 8/2/06 Boston Globe assay of "Academic Carelessness Afterwards September 11" ed. by Beshara Doumani, Neve Gordon says the book recounts that "immediately afterwards Sept. 11, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), founded by Lynne Cheney and Agent Joseph Lieberman, appear a abode accusing universities of achievement the bloodless articulation in the war adjoin alarm and a abeyant fifth column. As if the accepted adumbration at crime were not enough, an addendum to the abode listed the names of added than 100 "un-American" professors, agents members, and students, and the abaft statements they had made.... A few months afterwards ACTA's abstraction was disseminated, Daniel Pipes, the administrator of a anticipate catchbasin declared Boilerplate East Forum, launched an Internet armpit declared Campus Watch, which publishes dossiers on advisers who criticize US activity in the Boilerplate East or Israel's assay of Palestinians. On the website, one finds a 'Keep Us Informed' section, area Pipes encourages acceptance to acquaint on any abettor who deviates from 'correct conduct.'" That Joe Lieberman abutting with Cheney to advance an advance on chargeless accent and the best basal autonomous attempt of pubic agitation and articular bone is, by itself, acceptable anniversary for his abatement from office. The senator's accomplishments in the primary advance allegorize that Lieberman believes that he "owns" his office, and that his incumbency gives him the adapted to ascertain the banned of agitation and "correct conduct." Aback associates of his affair and his own his constituency disagree with him on basic issues of achievement and of policy, his acknowledgment is not to abnegate their arguments point by point, but to try to abolish them. He accuses opponents of achievement "un-American" and giving abundance to the enemy. But challenge, bone and activity are how the trial/error/correction activity of autonomous government is declared to work.
Name: Jesse Zander Corum Hometown: Portland, OR I'm alone a accustomed observer, but Adam from NY's ammo anniversary advancing me to acknowledge point by point:
Name: Robert Earle Hometown: Torrance, CA At one point in the video blow acicular to by LTC. Bateman, the Israeli backer refers to the CNN anchorman as 'Rosemary'. So, in acknowledgment to Bateman's allurement who the CNN anchorman is, I did a chase for CNN All-embracing reporters declared Rosemary. I came up with Rosemary Church, here.
Name: The Fool Hometown: Foolsville, USA I beatific an beforehand added all-encompassing e-mail but it seemed to get absent in an absurdity aback I beatific it. Aloof in case you absent it, your boy Bateman bogus a audacious absurdity about Aloof War access aback he said: "In short, absolutely short, the basal of casualties is not declared to be measured, the bureau and ends are. Thus, if you advisedly ambition civilians, to no purpose, that is amiss according to the UN and Geneva. If you strive to abstain civilians, but they are asleep anyhow during a afterward of a accepted advancing target, this is not advised a allotment of the equation." This is absolutely wrong. In short, Aloof War access prescribes what is about a amount anniversary analysis. Any accessory noncombatant deaths acquire to be added than outweighed by a analytic assertive and beyond benefit. It is absolutely apocryphal to say that the noncombatant deaths aren't counted in the equation.
Name: David Hometown: Cary, NC Isn't it funny how 1.5 billion Muslims allegation their problems on 15 actor Jews? If the Islamofascists were acknowledged in antibacterial Israel, they would still abridgement education, infrastructure, honest government, bearing control, animal equality, tolerance, the adeptness to digest with the avant-garde world, and a antecedent of assets added than oil and backing litter. It's time for the apple to assuredly get it - Islamic alarm is a blight that allegation be removed. Problems in the Arab apple are abundantly their own doing, and assailment adjoin the U.S. and Israel will artlessly advance to the absolute abolition of country afterwards country until there's no one larboard to fight. Isn't it additionally funny how Hezbollah is claiming victory? There are about 800,000 abandoned bodies in Lebanon, at atomic 300 Hezbollah killed, added injured, their weapons systems destroyed, and hundreds of innocent Lebanese asleep and afflicted as accessory damage. The accomplished basement of Lebanon is in ruins. And what did Hezbollah accomplish? They kidnapped a few soldiers? They launched a ton of missiles and rockets at innocent people, and alone one in a hundred was effective? The complete apple saw them adumbrate abaft civilians? I assumption their accomplishment was to see Israel apologize for accepting to annihilate innocents in a architecture from which Hezbollah launched rockets adjoin Israel. In added words, the alone complete accretion is that Israel feels sorry, and the apple is upset, that Israel had to hit a advancing ambition anxiously set up adjoining to civilians. Well, aback the apple has consistently sided adjoin Israel, affiliated that isn't a complete victory. It's aloof added of the same. The Lebanese should booty up accoutrements and booty out Hezbollah themselves. But they'd bigger hurry, because if they delay too long, there won't be anyone larboard to annihilate - Israel is on the move in Lebanon.
Name: Luke Wilson Hometown: Sacramento, CA Jon Carroll, with a abundant accord of advice from a blogger has the angst of the Democrats ample out here.
Name: Tim Friedline Hometown: Agoura Hills, CA I saw Crosby, Stills, Nash and Adolescent at the Hollywood Bowl aftermost night. Wow! What a concert! They played for about 4 hours and I spent the accomplished night with my either my jaw alone accessible in admiration or singing alternating with the songs. Stills articulation may be activity aloof a little bit, but not his guitar or keyboard skills! The others sing like they were 25, and the admirable afterpiece 'Keep on rockin in the chargeless world' is commodity I will never forget. According their agenda they will be in NYC on 8/27. If you see ANY concert this summer, see this one. Oh and P.S. Let's do accuse the president.
Eric replies: And at Jones Coffer on 8/22, aback I may acquire to dump my tickets, I haven’t absitively yet, because Rosanne, Jackson B, Steve E and Nancy Griffiths are accomplishing a anniversary for John Hall at Boondocks Hall that night too. And by the way, they (CSNY) do allegation way too much.
• Baronial 2, 2006 | 11:12 AM ET | Permalink
Name: LTC Bob BatemanDateline: Newport, Rhode Island
Knowledge is Adeptness II
Last anniversary I allowable Altercators to apprehend added history, accurately advancing history, and lamented the about aberration of those who had absolutely apprehend Clausewitz. I was, in fact, bedfast up a beeline bandage for my host. He passed, so, dammit, I will blow on him. Although not his aboriginal appear article, way aback in 1987 Eric Alterman, in ‘pre-Doc’ cachet at the time, appear an commodity entitled, “The Uses and Abuses of Clausewitz" in the arch able anniversary of the US Army, Parameters, (for those absolutely interested, it appeared in v.XVII, no.2 (Summer 1987), and can be activate cited in best aloft bibliographies of Clausewitzian assay such as that activate on Clausewitz.com here.
But there was added to my abode than this abode that associates of the American acceding seek to acquire war. There was, unstated, a abode for analytical cerebration to be accompanying with the new knowledge. I doubtable that aloof about anybody who reads blogs considers themselves a analytical thinker who is accessible to added opinions and positions and who weighs anxiously the antithesis of the evidence. What sometimes stuns me is the adumbrated antipathy for those who went afore us (historically speaking that is) which about accompanies these sentiments. Of course, aloft occasion, I acquire been accusable of the same.
One of the aboriginal images of war which imprinted itself into my apperception as a adolescent was that of a Confederate soldier. I was about eight years old. At that time my ancestors would consistently drive from our home in Ohio to Manhasset, on Connected Island, area my grandmother lived. In my own house, at that time, there were no books of history nor any books with annihilation affiliated accidentally accompanying to a advancing theme. (Yeah, go figure.) My ancestor was afresh a physicist specializing in optical coatings, and mom’s affection is cooking, so what we had were a abundant basal of books on those topics, but annihilation abundant else. At Grandma’s house, however, there were a brace of coffee-table books of American History, and one of these independent what is about advised one of the best iconic photos to appear from the Noncombatant War. You acquire allegedly credible it in your Aerial Academy history books.
The angel is one of a Confederate soldier, asleep and sprawled in what was declared as a “sniper’s position” in the “Devil’s Den” at a abode declared Gettysburg. At the age of eight I had no abstraction what any of those three things were, but the angel was as starkly arresting to me in the aboriginal 1970s as it had allegedly been to those who aboriginal saw the photo. It was one of the aboriginal anytime taken of asleep soldiers aloft a battlefield and aback it aboriginal appeared in 1863, it acquired absolutely a stir. It was alone decades afterwards that I abstruse the truth. The soldier apparent in the photo, a man who fought advantageously for his ancillary (however abominable his ancillary was), had been asleep elsewhere, and the awful photographer, in an accomplishment to actualize a added arresting and emotionally loaded photo, had confused the anatomy and placed it in a added “dramatic” location. You can apprehend about it here. A agnate situation, on the aloft battlefield, is here.
This assay was one of my aboriginal awakenings to the adeptness of propaganda. Subsequently, I looked into the affair whenever it accidentally appeared on my bookish alarm screen. One of the added alluring capacity which I already researched was the British advertising accomplishment in Apple War One. Now, obviously, this was in ample allotment advised for calm British consumption. But there was a significant, coordinated, and advised basal of this accomplishment which focused on the Affiliated States. Accurately the British put advanced the angel and abstraction that war was all blithe able fun, a adapted claiming that any antic lad should experience, and which was, all in all, not that bad. That fact, the algid achievement or their manipulation, came to my absorption alone in alum school, aback a able acquaintance (and huge cine buff) declared Mitch McNaylor showed a accumulation of us a video archetype of the 1916 British movie, The Somme.
Now, if you apperceive any advancing history (uh, hint, hint) you are able-bodied acquainted that this multiple-month connected activity was amid the best atrocious contest in advancing history. On aloof the absolute aboriginal day of the advance by the British armament adjoin the Germans (1 July 1916), the advancing British absent about 20,000 dead, and (depending aloft your source) some 40,000 ( ) wounded. That was the aboriginal day. The. First. Day. It got worse. The accursed abomination lasted until NOVEMBER! But you allegation to apperceive that, and apperceive a little about the infantry experience, to see why the 1916 cine was so about abhorrent seventy years later. Yeah. They bogus this abomination accessory fun.
In the movie, animated Tommies move out appear the advanced line. “Heroic” Tommies billow “Over the Top” area a few are seen, anonymously, “falling dead” afterwards a few accomplish while the abstract move on into the mist. Added “compassionate” Tommies allotment cigarettes with captured Germans. All the wounds are apple-pie and dressed. Well, you get the picture. Maybe I am overestimating your outrage. But to a able grunt, an infantryman, this burlesque is obscene. If you appetite to see it yourself, achievement is the video. Here is an appraisal of some of the footage.
The British broadcast the cine world-wide, but decidedly targeted the US already they accomplished what a “smash” they had. It was allotment of an all-embracing accomplishment to allurement the US into the War on the British side. A few links, because this is important: Achievement is the British borough athenaeum listings on British advertising efforts; and achievement is a semi-scholarly cardboard presented to the NY Advancing Diplomacy Affiliation on the efforts by both carelessness in WWI (NYMAS is able people); and achievement is historian Thomas Fleming on the “Sell-Out” of a historian in the anniversary of this British effort. Of course, there was a backfire afterwards WWI. Amid added things it contributed to an acute anti-British and anti-Military affect in the US during the interwar period. That alone meant that the British were a little added attentive aback they accustomed the aloft affair twenty years later. This is a appropriate book on that accomplishment to amplitude our opinion.
(Oh, in the absorption of absolute accuracy, the US did the aloft domestically afterwards we entered the war. The Creel Committee is a adventure unto itself. But you can assay that yourself.)
All of this occurred to me as accordant afresh because of a assemblage of inputs. Every already in a while bodies agnosticism that I am, in reality, either animal or aloof who I acquire to be. This, obviously, would abruptness my mother, but I usually let it go. (Theories acquire ranged from acceptance that I am absolutely a bunch of angry PR geniuses in the belly of the Pentagon, to one which posited that I am Karl Rove, assuming as a able soldier, to somehow attenuate the Accelerating movement. Cipher has speculated that I am an alien, yet, but I acquire acceptance that it’s alone a bulk of time.) Apparently, admitting the achievement that I anniversary my e-mail, Altercation (I afresh learned) gets a accustomed flood of this bits as well. In any event, that person’s doubt, accompanying with some things I’ve been anniversary about the Boilerplate East accumulated in my apperception and bogus me anticipate about advertising again.
To absolutely get the abounding effect, you allegation to browse all of these sites. They appear from both sides, and represent a appealing absorbing collection, in juxtaposition.
This aboriginal one is pro-Palestinian, aimed at the West (and decidedly the Affiliated States) and uses conventions which are accustomed to Americans. It contains nominal experts, articular discussion, and commodity approximating a History Access documentary. The video is here. I’ve watched the accomplished thing, but be warned, it is 79 anniversary long. According to the site, “Peace, Advertising & the Promised Acreage anxiously analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli activity of the West Coffer and Gaza charcoal hidden in the anniversary media, and Israeli colonization of the active territories appears to be a arresting move rather than an abhorrent one.”
Using a agnate apartment of techniques is this site. It too uses academics, but is created for the net. (It is additionally abundant shorter.) Two videos, in accession to all the raw absolute activity into the documentary, are here. They are an assay of Al Durah and “Pallywood.” The closing is absorbing for its deconstruction of France 2 television and their cameraman and editing.
In 2001, the backward Edward Said wrote this essay, advertence (in part) that the Palestinians allegation accomplish a concerted accomplishment at Accessible Advice (which, he notes, aback Israel does it, is “propaganda”). Although added than bristles years old now, it is absorbing nonetheless. Apprehend this commodity here.
Which is followed by this British citizen’s (apparently Libertarian) assay of images. Frankly, this one absolutely disturbs me, not the atomic because of comparisons with the Noncombatant War images I acclaimed at the beginning. “Time Stamps” are answerable to some dispute, aback if you apperceive how newswires work, you apperceive that the “dateline” time is not necessarily the aloft as the time the angel was taken, which this guy seems to think. But the point this assay makes about the basal achievement in the images wearing, literally, adapted clothes in some of the adapted images (while the victim charcoal the same) suggests that the assay of the time-stamps may be authentic in concept. WARNING: GRAPHIC NEWS IMAGES. Here. I think, perhaps, this one agitated me the most. Application the bodies of children, that is aloof wrong.
But there is a development occurring aural the technology which applies to advertising which I do not anticipate has been advancing absolute well. Aback at atomic the time of the British efforts to attract the US into WWI, the conception of advertising was absolute deliberate, some was bogus for centralized use, some for conflicting efforts. Never the brace shall meet. Well, YouTube.com, the new alive video armpit which takes advantage of the high-capacity internet access which are added available, mixes the two. Advertising for internal-only consumption, and advertising for conflicting use.
Here is an absorbing blow from Palestinian television.
While this one is advised to accomplish what Edward Said asks, admitting I acquisition the arrant babyish overdub to be, well, clumsy. There are GRAPHIC IMAGES achievement as well.
And this one, if authentic and authentic (which it appears it may be) is absolutely disturbing. (from Palestinian television).
This one is a blow of a CNN anchorman giving an Israeli agent a adamantine time. I allegation some comments here. It is adapted for journalists to ask adamantine questions, and on arch I am in favor of reporters not giving spokesmen a chargeless ride. Any spokesman. In fact, except for what I am about to explain, I absolutely acclaim this reporter. The alone botheration is that she is apprenticed on a brace of issues. (This is about 2:45 into the 4 min video) My specific abhorrence comes from aback the militarily apprenticed anchorman says,
“But they’re awkward rockets, aren’t they, and afterwards all, their appulse has been basal compared to the appulse of Israeli strikes on Lebanon. Explain commodity to us, why would you not try to be cutting these missiles, these Katyushan missiles, or rockets we should say, they’re not missiles at all, they’re rockets, why would Israel not be aggravating to shoot them out of the sky? Hizbolla rockets from the sky? They acquire the adequacy to do that…”
See it here.
Well that is aloof dumb, and a absolute able archetype of why I bogus my appeal aftermost anniversary for bodies to apprentice added about advancing issues. This anchorman is apprenticed on three issues, and achievement is my complete media criticism, because this matters.
First, nobody, not affiliated us, can shoot a blast of missiles like the Katyusha, out of the sky. We (in the US) acquire a bound adequacy to shoot a low-flying (compared to a SCUD for example) armament like this, one at a time, aural a few hundred yards. But that is on our ships, and uses a arrangement declared a Phalanx, which is about a high-tech Gatling-gun. (Look it up.) She is ambagious the adeptness to shoot bottomward commodity which flies into the blast (like a SCUD), which a Patriot (Block III, if you appetite to get technical) or the Israeli “Arrow” can do, with cutting commodity which is absolutely different. She is advertisement on a war for a huge anniversary agency, and aloof advance commodity which is not authentic by advertence it as fact.
Next, she conflates the acknowledged affair of “proportionality.” I adjure you to appraise Aloof War access for this one. My recommended assignment is Michael Walzer’s, Aloof and Unjust Wars, which includes a area on this topic. In short, absolutely short, the basal of casualties is not declared to be measured, the bureau and ends are. Thus, if you advisedly ambition civilians, to no purpose, that is amiss according to the UN and Geneva. If you strive to abstain civilians, but they are asleep anyhow during a afterward of a accepted advancing target, this is not advised a allotment of the equation. Oh cripes, there is so abundant more, but you allegation to apprehend it for yourself. That is hard, but that is what the UN and Geneva say. You’re not advantaged to your own facts. No bulk what Wikipedia says. And no bulk how far the truthiness exhausted is pegged, the aloft applies to journalists who are advertisement on war. You do not get to accomplish up truths. (Now, if somebody believes that the Israelis advisedly ambition the bodies in that architecture because they are civilians, that would be different.)
Finally, and this absolutely austere me, the anchorman attempted to authorize quasi-intellectual referent ascendancy over the idiot Israeli spokesperson. (She was an idiot, in my opinion, because she herself was little bigger able to abode these issues.) With her little, “these Katyshan missiles, or rockets we should say, they’re not missiles at all, they’re rockets” she accustomed that A. She is a fool and B. She was grandstanding, ignorantly, to try and advance some array of Alpha Male-type ascendancy over her “subject.” Abuse I abhorrence that.
Yes, ask adamantine questions. Yes, exhausted the hell out of official spokesmen for any ascendancy group. Aback Ms Kate Turner, a alum apprentice at the Johns Hopkins University Academy of Advanced All-embracing Studies, did this to the President, she was allegorical my point. See here. Yes, if you acquire specialized adeptness (and fer arrant out loud, the adult on CNN is a anchorman advertisement on a accursed WAR, she affliction to apperceive what she is talking about), use it. But don’t affected it. That destroys the accomplished point of your interaction. Does anybody apperceive who this anchorman is, or how to acquaintance her?
Finally, a absolutely absorbing old blow from Lebanese television. It is old, it should be noted, but if this array of affair is apocalyptic of what appeared on a brawl appearance in Lebanon, it adeptness accord some insights into what the “popular” Lebanese depictions of Hizbulla were above-mentioned to Israel’s actions. See this one here. (The chastity of authoritative fun of rockets is a adapted kettle of angle entirely, which I leave abreast for now.)
Wars, all wars, arm-twist this array of thing. One could adequately calmly accomplish a case that Thucydides, in autograph on the Peloponnesian War, was creating propaganda. But as with my abode for added anniversary about war (last week) amid citizens of our borough acceding in democracy, I anticipate that acceptable a agnostic is important as well. I would agenda that “skeptic” is not the aloft as “cynic,” but your breadth may vary.
By the way, I accustomed adamantine to accomplish this a counterbalanced list. Any affection is unintentional. But the affair fascinates me. If anyone has examples (links) of agnate advertising from Israeli television, or British or French or German, amuse accelerate it along. Columnist releases, columnist conferences, official denials, etc., don’t count. We all apprehend “spin” and that, while accompanying in theme, is not the same.
On an altered note, or conceivably it is not, I agenda this tidbit of anniversary from aftermost week. I do not endorse any politician. I do able those who accompany me in uniform. The two are not related. Unfortunately, as the commodity notes, alone 1% of our assembly in Congress acquire ancestors in service. Some 32, however, are allegedly affiliated to lobbyists. See the adventure here.
NEWPORT WITHIN EARSHOT:
Kate is still in India accomplishing assay on Sunni-Shia relations in the bigger capitalism on Earth. That she abstruse Hindi (over the accomplished year and more) while enroute to this abstraction alone increases my admiration appear this amazing woman I married. Abuse I absence alum school.
My boilerplate babe Ryann, an affiliated added avid clairvoyant than her father, became amorous of a new cast of books which did not abide aback I was a child: First-person absolute fiction (where the protagonists are consistently pre-teens or aboriginal teens). Now she wants to abode a book of this blazon with me. How air-conditioned is that? We are ambience it in Washington, D.C., in 1932, during the Anniversary March. I am one absurdly blessed father.
I will be in New York City, tonight, Wednesday the 2nd of August. Alive aback to D.C. from achievement (Newport, RI), I anticipation I’d stop in what affiliated I, aloft in semi-rural Ohio, call, “The City.” I will acquire banquet and drinks with some accompany aboriginal on, but if any Altercators in NYC or bound would like to actuate for themselves the achievement of my achievement (given the aloft cited doubts)…come by the White Horse Tavern in the Apple at about 8pm. I’ll be the big baldheaded guy. (Oh damn, accustomed that this is the Village, that adeptness not be enough.) OK, I’ll be the big baldheaded guy who answers aback somebody yells, “Colonel Bob?!” How’s that? Added than blessed to angle one, and acquire a accommodating “Altercation” with anyone who’d like to appearance up. If you don’t apperceive the White Horse, blazon in “Dylan Thomas Jack Kerouac Whitehorse asleep at 39” in Google and the abode will pop adapted up in one of the links. It is alone a accompaniment that I angry 39 in April.
You can abode to LTC Bob at Bateman_LTC@hotmail.com.
• Baronial 1, 2006 | 2:56 PM ET | Permalink
Eric will be on Larry Baron tonight, discussing American Jews and Israel.
• Baronial 1, 2006 | 11:38 AM ET | Permalink
Hey, it’s aloof Connecticut…
Today’s WSJ advanced folio affection is about MoveOn and the lefty takeover of the Autonomous Party, achievement ($). Similarly, in The Nation, John Nichols quotes the DLC’s Marshall Wittman adage of the Lieberman/Lamont primary, "This is a activity for the anatomy of the Autonomous Party.” Here. This echoes David Broder’s asinine Sunday column, in which he refers to majority positions as “elitist” and about aggregate one reads both in the punditocracy and the blogosphere. This is in part, a aftereffect of the achievement that bodies who assignment in and abode about backroom allegation to accomplish as big a accord about aggregate as they can in adjustment to accomplish themselves feel important. Occasionally they’re right, but not often. The achievement is, the chase is demography abode in the advanced accompaniment of Connecticut, area Bush and the war acquire about no support, and area “Kansas” appearance backroom acquire no hold. No one of aftereffect is arguing that Ned Lamont should run there or that anyone in the affair should be purged if they do not abutment the affair line—whatever that adeptness be—on every affair in bourgeois genitalia of the country. But this is a blue, bluey, bluish state. If Connecticut Autonomous Primary voters anticipate Lieberman has been a bad agent and will able abide to be so, they should vote him out of office. The achievement that he continues to acquire that advancing Iraq was a able idea, that creating a Administration of Homeland Aegis was a able idea, that abandoning Terri Schiavo’s ancestors was a able idea, that abutting in the Republican vendetta adjoin Bill Clinton was a able idea, well, that argues that what you’ve gotten from the man in the accomplished is able what you’ll get in the future. Bodies like Broder, the Washington Cavalcade beat page, Lani Davis and Al Hunt acquire to anticipate there’s commodity arbitrary in bodies voting their autonomous preferences in their own primary’s party. We’ll see.
Greg Rodriquez has some absorbing things to say about Democrats and religion.
Old Anniversary is Not Anniversary [ permalink ]
One of the problems with the chat “news” is that it contains the chat “new.” If commodity is not “news” it’s “history” and deserves to be alone until it can be forgotten. All you’ve got to do if that’s in your absorption is delay out the anniversary cycle. Bigger yet, if no anniversary aeon anytime emerges. I was reminded all this while alive on my book aback I came aloft this adventure from February 2004 in the Guardian. Titled, “Now the Pentagon tells Bush: altitude change will abort us,” it tells of a secret, suppressed Pentagon abstraction admonishing that “warns that aloft European cities will be sunk below ascent seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' altitude by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, dearth and boundless agitation will appear aloft the world.
The certificate predicts that brusque altitude change could accompany the planet to the bend of chaos as countries advance a nuclear blackmail to avert and defended abbreviating food, baptize and activity supplies. The blackmail to all-around adherence awfully eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts buried to its contents.
"'Disruption and activity will be age-old appearance of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would ascertain animal life.'"
What is the Bush Administering accomplishing to assure you from this massive blackmail predicted by its own Administration of Defense?
It’s suppressing the news, acquisitive you don’t acquisition out; advancing those who present agnate warnings, and, as in about all cases, abdicating its Constitutional albatross to board for the accepted defense. Area are the declared advanced media? You acquaint me.
Could Mel get a job on Fox?
"The complaint claimed Chillemi, during a administration altercation about bigotry in the workplace, said that aback allotment amid hiring a man or a woman, "of advance I'd aces the man. The woman would best able get abundant and leave."
In October 2004, Fox Anniversary allocution appearance host Bill O'Reilly acclimatized a animal aggravation clothing filed adjoin him by his aloft agent Andrea Mackris, hours afore a appointed cloister showdown over audiotapes believed to be at the affection of the case.
What Ben Adler misses in his balmy aegis of AIPAC achievement is that the complete estate/construction PACs do not ambition any affiliate who defies them for political destruction, which is why affiliated admitting they accord added money, they are not as politically alarming as AIPAC. He additionally misses the irony of commendation Henry Siegman the “the aloft arch of the American Jewish Congress, who disagrees with AIPAC.” That chat “former” is there for a reason, bubela…. Can you acquisition me any abreast alive of aloft Jewish organizations accommodating to go on almanac criticizing AIPAC? My assumption is that they’d be “former” alive appealing quick as well. And finally, why the apocryphal choice? There’s lots of bodies in the columnist corps. Why not “a greater focus on advertisement on alive the actualization of uncompromising Christianist abandonment on Israel” as able-bodied as “more pieces ‘exposing’ the [still-misunderstood] … access of groups like AIPAC?” And not of “groups like…” The botheration is AIPAC itself.
A linguistic anniversary of a banderole for MSNBC.com, achievement . (Thanks Petey)
Frida Berrigan, an able on the U.S. all-around accoutrements trade, considers what our apple adeptness be like if the top two best-known American exports — Hollywood's articles and the ones the Pentagon peddles — traded media places. What if, she asks, E! became A! (as in "A! Today in the Accoutrements Trade") and Bodies anniversary became Adeptness magazine?
"What if," she wonders, "American girls grew up anniversary Jane's Defence Weekly instead of (or in accession to) JANE? What if Vince Vaughn and Colin Farrel affected on their adeptness in basic obscurity, while Cameron Diaz and Scarlett Johansson did their own laundry afterwards a adamantine about-face on the blur set? What if the absorption these stars now get went to the accoutrements trade? Then, Jeffrey Kohler and Robert Joseph would be domiciliary names, their every move tracked by a avid media."
Alter-reviews
There’s a new Richard Thompson CD/DVD accumulating declared 1000 Years of Accepted Music. It absolutely is, array of. The music, recorded during shows on two afterwards nights, February 2nd and 3rd, 2005, was filmed for this DVD absolution as a affectionate of a dare. According to the admired Mr. Thompson, admirable to be included in this awe-inspiring but baronial aggregation are Squeeze’s “Tempted,” and whatshername’s “Oops! I Did it Again!” He additionally does admirable versions of “Cry Me a River,” and the Kinks’ “See my Friends.”
How did it happen? Thompson explains,
For this show, which has been performed occasionally, and will hopefully accept a few added airings. The abstraction is that Accepted Music comes in abounding forms, through abounding ages, and as beforehand forms get superseded, sometimes the babyish is befuddled out with the bathwater - abundant ideas, tunes, rhythms, styles, get larboard in the dust of history, so let's acquire a accessory at what's aback there, and see if still does the trick. I am amateur to sing 98% of the absolute here, but me accepting a go could be advised allotment of the fun. Also, aggravating to cede an Arthur Sullivan chart with acoustic guitar and allurement boom is appealing atrocious stuff, but may, at a stretch, be anticipation "charming." What appears on this CD is a performance, rather than a chronological, beverage of several adapted shows - appropriately some gaps in the 17th and 18th centuries, and too abundant weight on Music Hall and Bedrock & Aeon - we aloof acquainted that some performances weren't absolutely captured.
It’s all achievement at his site.
And if you haven’t heard it yet, the new Johnny Cash, American V: A Hundred Highways absolutely is as able as anybody is adage it is; possibly affiliated the best of this agitating series. It’s produced by Rick Rubin afresh and is on Absent Highway. It’s about cool to accomplish the cliché a “fitting epitaph” for a man like Cash, but this comes appealing abuse close.
Short-takes: I’ve alone had a few listens but I am absolutely able Dave Insley’s Achievement with You Tonight, here. An Amazon analyst says of his aboriginal record, “Always axial to the affairs are Insley’s amazing vocals, a deep, affluent baritone, the absolute bout to his altered songwriting. From his aboriginal canicule with cowpunks Chaingang and Backroom or Pontiacs, in the mid 80’s, thru his added contempo assignment with newgrassers The Nitpickers & hell-raisers Trophy Husbands, Insley has matriculated into a absolute Americana artist.” Also, he sounds a bit like Willie Nelson. Additionally absolutely able is So Abundant Added by Bret Dennen, here, which doesn’t accessory to be advancing out until September, so let’s all apprehend about him here. I accede with the Paul Simon comparison.
Correspondence Corner:
Name: Brian Kresge Hometown: Lancaster, PA Dear Dr. Alterman,I'm not the agog apprentice of advancing history that Aloft Bateman is, admitting I've been an infantryman about as connected in one anatomy or another. I feel somewhat abashed that my activity on Israel's advance of southern Lebanon is shaped below by achievement a Jew and added by my "considered" advancing acumen (to borrow from a peer). Qana closed the accord for me. I've never fathomed how the commotion inflicted by air strikes necessarily "sends a message" to the enemy, any added than rockets on Haifa accelerate a bulletin to Israel. As is accepted advancing practice, those who blaze rockets don't amble connected in the abode they accursed from. If Israel absolutely wants to absolutely eradicate the blackmail airish by Hezbollah, it seems to me that they'll acquire to use the aggregate of house-to-house, intelligence on the arena and eyes in the sky, and infantry / activity architect units to do so. I will not be annoyed in the acceptance that 2000 years of adversity does not absolve anarchic a noncombatant population. Ordinarily, I would say "let Israel adjudge its own advance of action," but it's all too accessible for us in Diaspora to end up achievement targets, so by default, that has to accord us a say. Aloof as you feel, we shouldn't acquire to crop up abiding abutment for what added seems like a bad advance of action. I've heard it bandied about by abounding pundits, that Israel is not authoritative any affectionate of basal decisions with commendations to this accepted action. I anticipate both American Jews and the abstract of America should be proposing a added able advancing band-aid at worst, a aggregate diplomatic/military one at best. One has to admiration if the Admiral adeptness be pandering to the abject that is adapted now angrily masturbating to the looming rapture and apocalypse, accustomed his accepted advance of inaction. Maybe it's a bagatelle unfair, but it aloof seems like we, too, could burden bigger solutions than we are currently. Acknowledgment for accepting the adventuresomeness to put this forth. It feels too about like American Jews are ashore in the boilerplate of ardent/blind abutment of Israel or aboveboard peaceniks.
Name: Adam Hunter Hometown: New York, NY Dear Eric,I adore your astute assay of the accepted bearings in Israel and Lebanon. I acquire that Israel's acknowledgment is justified, and here's why.
Name: John Hometown: Los Angeles, CA Dr. A, couldn't accede added with you on the Boilerplate East. Both carelessness acquire affluence of allegation over the years, and both carelessness would abundantly anniversary from assuredly implementing a 2-state solution. The extremists on both carelessness will still allegation and moan, but it seems like the flammability of the blaze in that airy arena would be abundantly choleric by a reasonable compromise. As Yglesias so poignantly added, it would additionally cut the legs out from below Hezbolla. Like a action bout area there is no bright champ and never will be, it's time to alarm it a draw afore the amphitheater burns down.
P.S. Ann Coulter comparing herself to Jesus is about the best cool affair I've anytime read. But it could accomplish a abundant SAT advancing game: Ann Coulter is to Jesus, as ___ is to ___.
Name: Justin Hometown: Atlanta, GA Dr. Alterman,You abode this today on your blog about the Israel/Palestine problem: ". the Palestinians acquire accustomed the Israeli accessible no adumbration at all that they are accessible to alive ancillary by ancillary with Israel. And if you abstain that, you're blank the body of the problem." In backward June of this year, Hamas, pushed by Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas, accustomed to a two accompaniment band-aid which around accustomed the accompaniment of Israel. Hamas was initially reticent, but below burden of a accepted referendum, which would acquire passed, they agreed to it. Chris McGreal commented in the Guardian, "Hamas has bogus a aloft political climbdown by accordant to sections of a certificate that recognise Israel's adapted to abide and a adjourned two-state solution. If [Hamas] formally approves the complete document, it will represent a cogent about-face from its founding ambition of replacing Israel with an Islamic accompaniment and its added contempo position of accordant a abiding ceasefire, over a bearing or more, if a Palestinian accompaniment is formed on the active territories but afterwards formally acquainted the Jewish state." A few canicule later, June 24, the IDF kidnapped two Palestinian brothers, one a doctor, in Gaza. On June 25th, Hamas kidnapped Gilad Shalit. Does this collective acceding from Hamas and Fatah, agreed to by Hamas in allotment because Abbas threatened to ascendancy a acclamation and Hamas knew it would acquire passed, to accept Israel's achievement authorize as "no adumbration at all that" Palestinians "are accessible to alive ancillary by ancillary with Israel"? It seems to me your anniversary is inaccurate. McGreal, Chris. "Climbdown as Hamas agrees to Israeli State."________The Guardian, 22 June 2006 Ilene R. Prusher. "Moderate choir vie for ascendancy aural Hamas."Christian Science Monitor, 19 May 2006 Barzak, Ibrahim.Associated Press, 27 June 2006 Staff. "Israel Captures Pair in Gaza Raid."BBC News, 24 June 2006
Name: Mike Sinsheimer Hometown: Charlotte, NC Brainless questions - What would you do if Rockets were battlefront into your adjacency killing your citizens with no apologies? What would you do if your enemies had declared abounding times that their alone ambition was your destruction? What would you do aback your adversary doesn't affliction about their own civilians and surrounds them with rockets finer putting calm a noncombatant shield? Israel has alone flyers announcement to noncombatant in targeted areas that they'll be activity afterwards and clashing their enemies if innocent activity is taken, they accept it, alarm it a tragedy and apologize. I admiration what your decree is - this is absolute abundant a accursed if you do and a accursed if you don't situation. You could acquiesce the attacks on your citizenry to abide and lose the war or you can activity aback and lose the PR battle. Israel seems to acquire declared the bottom of two evils. The Apple for the best allotment hates Israel already so I'm not abiding that accident the PR activity is so important abnormally aback the another is destruction. It's accessible to be an armchair quarterback in this region, but not so accessible aback rockets are aerial overhead.
© 2013 MSNBC Interactive
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