Stand up for Wesley Clark

Wes Clark tonight stood by his statement that 'flying a fighter plane and being shot down is not a qualification to be president.'

Both Obama and the media have rejected his words...which in context are completely true.

I feel torn. I understand Obama's imperative and pragmatism, yet coupled with his sort of lackluster speech about patriotism/in response to the statement, I wish he hadn't completely left Wes Clark in the cold.

Response to Hersh's piece in the New Yorker

There are two issues I'd like to focus on regarding Seymour Hersh's latest must-read New Yorker piece. The first concerns a very relevant political discussion which needs to happen in the current campaign; the second, a serious accusation made by FP Passport, the blog for Foreign Policy.

First, politics: Hersh notes that the resignation of Admiral William Fallon from Central Command was "ironic" because his views on Iran were in many ways aligned with the Administration's. I'd go even further. It wasn't simply ironic, it was incredibly stupid and indicative of the Bush Administration's secrecy. That secrecy is, in a lot of respects, counterproductive to our interests and the cause of so much disaster in the past seven and a half years. Fallon agreed that Iran was a huge problem, that they were killing American soldiers in Iraq because they wanted us out and, most importantly, that the Iranian government was being uncooperative. He never ruled out military action against Iran, he simply favored negotiation and diplomacy. This minor disagreement was intensified by his "strong belief in the chain of command" and his wanting to remain informed about operations being planned in his jurisdiction as a military commander. This is absolutely ridiculous. An Admiral wanted to be let in on what was being planned in an area in which misinterpretation and ill-adivsed military actions have caused tremendous instability. I admit to being generally uninformed about the military, but that doesn't seem like a deal breaker at all; on the contrary, being informed should be, uh, important. It's ludicrous to even have to point that out.

The Bush Administration has yet again redefined "conservative" to mean "radical." Hersh mentions the Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, which articulated the chain of command:

from the President to the Secretary of Defense, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on to the various combatant commanders, who were put in charge of all aspects of military operations, including joint training and logistics. That authority, the act stated, was not to be shared with other echelons of command. But the Bush Administration, as part of its global war on terror, instituted new policies that undercut regional commanders-in-chief; for example, it gave Special Operations teams, at military commands around the world, the highest priority in terms of securing support and equipment. The degradation of the traditional chain of command in the past few years has been a point of tension between the White House and the uniformed military.

In a perfect world, this would be a central issue in the current presidential campaign. Democrats have long been maligned as weak on national security and I WOULD THINK that bringing up that you're not the party who has destroyed the chain of command could go a long way towards contradicting the public impression that the Republicans are the dominant party here. The argument on the other side would be that this shift of judgement is due to the nature of special operations. But that's clearly false. Command over an area of operation should be inviolable. Not to mention how radical a notion the Administration's revamping really is. Obama essentially has the same position as Fallon did. We shouldn't ignore that.

This piece has garnered a lot of deserved attention, most of it laudatory. Blake Hounshell, of FP Passport, is less praising. It's a two paragraph entry, so I'll quote it entirely.

By now, you may have already read Seymour Hersh's latest magnum opus, this time about the Bush administration's alleged "support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations" in order to stir up trouble for Iran. Hersh later explains that one such organization is Jundallah, a Sunni fundamentalist group in Baluchistan near the Pakistan border. "According to [former CIA case officer Robert] Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support," Hersh writes.

One of those press reports is probably this blog post from The Blotter, the ABC News blog that got in such trouble for employing Alexis Debat, a French counterterrorism analyst who misrepresented his resume and faked interviews with Barack Obama and several other public figures. ABC News insists that its reporting was solid, but as journalist Laura Rozen found, that's at least open to question. Pakistan, for one, sharply denied the ABC News story about Jundallah. I'm not sure what other reporting Hersh is citing, but let's just say that it's far from certain the United States is doing what he claims.

Well, Pakistan is slightly unreliable on this, I think. Also, Hounshell admits that it's possible Hersh used another source, so his point is weak on the surface. His last sentence doesn't make sense to me. It may be uncertain if we are funding the Jundallah specifically, but there are other things in the article which Hersh mentions that could corroborate that claim. Also, the revelation about Fallon v. Bush is certainly important. Hounshell shouldn't accuse Hersh of using discredited sources, nor should he claim that Hersh's overall point is simply OMG we're funding terrorists groups. Hersh presented his evidence at the end of the article, but I would argue that his central point is to draw a parallel between this buildup against Iran with the buildup to Iraq by articulating the implications of Fallon's dissent and dismissal and tying that into the known evidence of our involvement in Iran. The buildup to war in Iraq and the current rhetoric about Iran have involved a preset goal that isn't malleable in the face of informed counseling by relevant experts. It's really Hersh who's being cautious, at least for him, in outlying his position.

The bottom line is that it's an excellent article and hopefully will spark further debate.

You don't say?

Well, it's looking very likely that the Time story about a pregnancy pact is bogus.

Now, it's hindsight and all but read the original article. It's awful. The reporter deliberately obfuscates the most important information about the allegations, namely where they came from. It turns out that the principal of the school has gone back and forth about whether or not he even remembers who his original source was.

Aside from poor reporting, this whole story pisses me off because it's implied in the article that the reason for this rash of pregnancies was that the school had done too much to inform its students about sex and "embracing young mothers."

Not banishing and unnecessarily punishing young mothers; that's apparently a bad thing.

Neat Strategy Video from David Plouffe

Soccer vs. Culture in Austria

There's an incredibly snarky article in the International Herald Tribune today about how Euro 2008 is draining the revenues of Austria's venerated cultural institutions. The museums are empty, opera houses have cancelled performances.. The Kunsthistorisches Museum alone estimates its losses at around $150,000.

The deeper point isn't that this is a conflict between groups whom the article describes as "aesthetes and ruffians"

No, the situation points more toward an identity crisis.

Gerald Matt, the director of the Kunsthalle, where attendance has dropped by two-thirds during the tournament, explained the problem. "It's a very strange mixture between an inferiority complex and megalomania." He invoked the Córdoba syndrome, referring to what, for Austrians, was that glorious time 30 years ago when the national team beat Germany, 3-2, in Córdoba, Argentina, fanning eternal delusions of grandeur.

Austrian politicians don't seem to value the international reputation their country has as the cultural lynchpin of Central Europe. It's sad, I suppose, but both sides in this issue are being ridiculous. One person interviewed compared the situation to the Anschluss. Ok.

Nader's Noblesse Oblige

You know, I don't usually fume lately even when watching Senate Republicans on C-SPAN. But Nader's gaffe [blissful ignorance] today makes me mad in the way I cannot even put to words.

Here is part of Nader's statement, to give a sense of it (although I'm sure whoever reads this post is well aware of his words already):

There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American...Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We'll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.

I mean, first of all, the number one thing that a black American politician aspiring to the presidency should be is to candidly describe the plight of the poor, especially in the inner cities and the rural areas, and have a very detailed platform about how the poor is going to be defended by the law, is going to be protected by the law, and is going to be liberated by the law.

So, Matthew Yglesias responds to this all very well. He adds good links to show how Obama has talked specifically about each of Nader's uninformed quips.

It's about time Nader's spoken words truly reflected the reputation he's earned.

U.S. Sugar sells to Florida

Huge environmental news today out of Florida. US Sugar has agreed to sell to the state. The 187,000 acres of land will help make the dream of a restoring the Everglades more likely. The sugarcane fields south of Lake Okeechobee, along with farmland stretching down to the Everglades, will eventually be transformed into marshes, feeding the national park.

Charlie Crist, who is making some headway towards convincing some that there are sane Republicans out there, has recently taken heat from environmentalists for stating that offshore drilling in Florida is a possibility. As I mentioned the other day, that's political suicide in this state. But I don't think that there's anything political about it. Restoring the Everglades is so much more salient an environmental issues than offshore drilling, it's doubtful Crist is doing this for any reason other than it's the best decision.

Overall, this is wonderful news. There are some issues with regards to the workers, however. The Times reports that there is a lawsuit pending - some former employees allege they were screwed out of retirement money - and there are some concerns about Clewiston, the home of U.S. Sugar. The town's future could be in jeopardy. This needed to happen, though.

Dodd reacts angrily to suggestions of wrongdoing

Well, I knew there was a reason I didn't like Dodd during the primary. Reuters reported on Friday that an ethics panel is looking into whether or not Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT) had fees waived when they received mortgages from Countrywide.

In today's feed from Reuters, Conrad flat-out denied any wrongdoing. Dodd replied with typical, Alec Baldwin-playing-a-psycho fashion, saying that it was ridiculous and how dare we imply he'd do such a thing. It's not the right reaction.

It's not the right reaction because Dodd's involvement in this scandal is potentially devastating. He's chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a lot more high profile than Conrad. The Hartford Courant (Dodd's home paper) has ran a few op-eds about the Senator's involvement, mocking his status as a preferential VIP.

The details of the scandal are somewhat unimportant. Dodd is trying to push a housing relief bill through and any perception of impropriety won't be tolerated by Republicans looking to grab an advantage as the opinion polls seem to slip away from them. Again, this isn't an academic, confusing scandal. People will be able to relate to it easily and unless this gets taken care of quickly, it could dominate the headlines in a few months. It's a very dangerous scandal for any politician to be involved in right now. With one in eleven Mortgageholders facing foreclosure or having payments past due, getting fees waived is something that will piss off a lot of people and will not take a lot of spin from Republicans to get out of hand for the Democrats.

So, Dodd just needs to come out, apologize for it looking like he got preferential treatment and not be so defensive. His housing bill is too important to let it get sidetracked; not to mention the effects this could have if it stays a story.

Bob Graham for VP. Seriously.

Spa near Stavropol erects monument to enemas

I've been reluctant to post about Russia because I didn't want to think too much about the probable war in the Caucuses that's going to happen, and - to be honest - I have no idea how their political situation is working out right now.

But this can't be passed up.

The bronze monument depicts "three angel-like children, who raise above their heads a large bulb syringe," Alexander Kharchenko, director of the Mashuk Akva-Term sanatorium in the spa town of Zheleznovodsk, told Interfax.

As the article mentions, this is one of several bizarre monuments to pop up throughout the country. I can only hope the trend continues.

Florida Will Go Blue

If this talk of domestic drilling for oil continues to be a central issue in the campaign, then I think that Florida will go solidly for Obama. It won't even be close. I have no idea why the GOP thinks this is good politics.

Public Financing: Obama out, but McCain was in before he was out.

Obama officially opted out of public-financing today. I think that second to health-care, campaign financing is the most important undercurrent in American politics. That said, Obama's decision is a good one. Most Americans don't contribute to the public financing program. If Obama had opted in, he would have had about $75-$80 million at his disposal, resulting, oddly, in more of the same old campaign tactics -- swing states getting ALL the attention due to partisan competition and lack of funds to compete in all states.

Obama will now compete in more states, thereby contesting not only swing states but also the new tossups which in prior general elections were states that Republicans could take for granted.

The McCain reaction is strange on a couple of fronts. To begin with, McCain's strategy by constantly trying to get Obama to opt-into public financing was to tie Obama's hands into actually having to do so. This would result in McCain looking like a maverick individualist while still just relying on the RNC and 527's to ultimately get him elected. Second, McCain actually opted into public financing before he opted out...Yea.

During the primaries -- when otherwise McCain would have sat in his bus with no gas, money, and no support for much longer -- he publicly-financed and received a material benefit, only to opt-out in the general, without an FEC agreement.

I'm not really sure why the Obama surrogates aren't hammering this inconsistency to rebuke critics who think McCain is somehow riding high over this.

Is this for real?

I mean, really??

The ICC stumbles on first real case

Today's NYT reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) ordered all proceedings stopped on the trial of the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga. Mind you Lubanga spent three years after he was indicted and captured without a trial.

As the Times states, after difficult hearings the judges dismissed the case and ruled that the prosecution had withheld “significant” exculpatory evidence from the defense. As a result, they wrote, “the trial process has been ruptured to such a degree that it is now impossible to piece together the constituent elements of a fair trial.”

Right, the ICC is proving more and more how arrogant and ineffective they are. A couple things could be going on here.

The Court's mission is to try the “most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole.” Lubanga, however, is clearly a small-timer as Congolese warlords go. SInce the ICC HAS YET to try or convict anyone, it may be that they want an easy case to get the ball rolling. If this is the case, then they've just proved themselves and the rest of the international legal/political community wrong.

On the other hand, the ICC may have hoped that Lubanga could set an example for the bigger fish in Central Africa, since the fundamental goal of setting up an international justice system and the ICC specifically is that the prosecution of war criminals will deter and fight against impunity.

But, with the trial essentially gone, good luck with this point.

This is annoying for us idealists and pragmatists desiring a strong international justice system one day...

Rudy for VP?

If you're a liberal, I strongly suggest you read David Frum's article in The National Review which is very reassuring. In it, he suggests that McCain should pick Rudy Giuliani as his running mate. This would be wonderful, really. The evangelical wing of the Republican party, the people who helped Bush get elected, are already on the fence about McCain and nobody could further alienate them than Rudy.

I really don't understand why Frum would take this position. His article is awkwardly imbalanced. Dude devotes like everything but the last paragraph to the history of veep selections before mentioning Giuliani, and then doesn't give a convincing argument as to why McCain should select him. His point is that since choosing a vice president doesn't really determine an election's outcome, then Maverick should pick Rudy because people would see it as strengthening the image Republicans hold as strong on national security issues. I think that this would hilariously backfire. The Iraq war has opened the idea - long held by people who are not willfully obtuse to critical thinking - that the Republicans are not the best at issues of National Security. Franklin's quip that those who would sacrifice freedom in the pursuit of security has been mentioned often enough that people are listening to it. To have on the ticket two people who want us to stay in Iraq for an indefinite amount of time would be very good for people who want Obama in the White House.

Rudy Giuliani, in other words, could end up being one of the few vice presidential selections to be utterly disastrous for his running mate. One can only hope....

A little late, but....

I finally got around to reading Scalia's dissent today. It's kind of pathetic. Scalia is generally respected on both sides of the political spectrum, but this opinion is ridiculous in its hyperbole. There have been two excellent summaries of this case by Dahlia Lithwick - who only almost manages to make up for the fact that Slate publishes Hitchens - and Scott Lemieux, so I'll keep this pretty brief. But I'd like to repeat the most fantastically wrong thing that Scalia slips in his dissent:

In the long term, then, the Court’s decision today accomplishes little, except perhaps to reduce the well-being of enemy combatants that the Court ostensibly seeks to protect. In the short term, however, the decision is devastating. At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo Bay have returned to the battlefield.

If he wrote this himself, that's really puzzling. If one of his clerks put it in, he should be sacked because it was the Bush administration not the courts who released those 30 prisoners.

This is the third "devastating setback" to the Bush administration's war on terror, so I don't see too much cause to be optimistic that this will really deter crazy executive branches in the future; although, to be sure, this sets a good precedent that the United States can't indefinitely detain prisoners without habeas simply because they are being held outside of the country.

But, Scalia....really, I expect a lot better from him.

Mid-June Electoral Map Recap and Prediction: Obama 289/ McCain 249

*Here is what may be the first of a monthly electoral map recap and prediction. I hope it's somewhat interesting...I promise I will get better and more efficient at it....

Obama's 50 state strategy, while still in its infancy, is beginning to take shape. He has the money and the volunteer base to set up competitive operations, and he definitely has the polls on his side.

Obama's most recent spreads in national tracking ranges from +3 to +7, which he has more or less been sitting on since he clinched the nomination. An interesting [and extremely speculative] side to all this -- beyond the pundits that are quick to give McCain more credit and fidelity than he deserves -- is that given the raw number of turn-out in all the primaries, Obama could sit on a + 1 to -5 spread through November and simply roll out an election day turn-out that would dwarf McCain's... and seriously undermine the national trackings.

None the less, Obama can and will most likely win big in electoral votes. Skipping the solid blue and red states, and for the mean time skipping the leaning states, look at the pure toss ups -- CO, IN, NC, NH, NM, MI, MO, OH, VA (didn't pull these out of nowhere).

I've gone through collections of tracking polls for these states (pollster and rcp) looking at the head to head match up, and if a state either is of late clearly for a candidate, or if it is clearly trending, then I give it to the respective contender. Here are the states I consequently see going to each candidate, with the number being the sum of the electoral votes.

McCain = 42 (NV, IN, MI, NH, NC)
Obama = 58 (NM, CO, MO, OH, VA)

Ok. If we add-and-subtract these toss-ups into the 2004 Kerry/Bush map [which if anything is generous to McCain], the total electoral prediction is:

OBAMA 289/ McCAIN 249

Reminder, american exceptionalism is bitter

The U.S. is one of twelve countries that still bar entry to people with HIV. No Western democracies are on the list...and neither are strictly underdeveloped or fragile states the majority of the countries.

No, instead we share this despicable exceptionalism with Colombia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Sudan - to name a few.

Andrew Sullivan shares a surprisingly personal and almost heartbreaking first hand account of this policy.

Iowa

Flooding continues to be a problem for the midwest.

Second Thoughts

I'd like to retract my initial post about the Kozinski affair. It looks like the lawyer who discovered the offensive material on the judge's website, has long held a grudge against Kozinksi. Not to mention Sanai apparently hacked into the private directory onto which the pictures were posted.

It seem the situation is a little more complicated then I initially thought. Sure, in hindsight Kozinksi's decision to not completely make sure the server was private seems idiotic and short-sighted, but I really don't think he had the same kind of malicious intent as the defendant in the trial over which the judge is presiding.

No matter how offensive I think the "humor" inherent in the pictures is, this seems like kind of a witch hunt on Sanai's part. That makes me feel a little uncomfortable.

Handling the Pour

Holy shit, I love you, Christopher Hitchens.

This is the greatest piece of unintentional satire ever written since the last M. Night Shamalyan movie. Hitchypoo has a real big problem with waiters interrupting his - no doubt exhausting to have to feign interest in - stories by DARING to pour the bottle of wine into everyone's glasses. I quote:

The other night, I was having dinner with some friends in a fairly decent restaurant and was at the very peak of my form as a wit and raconteur. But just as, with infinite and exquisite tantalizations, I was approaching my punch line, the most incredible thing happened.....What he did instead was to interrupt the feast of reason and flow of soul that was our chat, lean across me, pick up the bottle of wine that was in the middle of the table, and pour it into everyone's glass. And what I want to know is this: How did such a barbaric custom get itself established, and why on earth do we put up with it?

Now, in accordance with the type of decency apparently reserved for us lesser folk, he should keep in mind that in the time it took him to write this, about a dozen neoconservative bloggers called for the immediate execution of every single prisoner in Gitmo as retaliation against the SCOTUS. So, let's try to keep the hyperbole re: barbarism in check, ok?


This is seriously the most laughably bourgeoisie complaint I have ever heard. Apparently, to cut off at the pass people like me who would criticize Hitchy of being the snob, The Most Articulate, Witty and Gallant Man on the Planet decries from the opposite end of the spectrum the audacity of these servants who usurp the manly art of inebriating one's date to steady her against the continuous buffeting of their senses from the dull gray waves of ones banal sense of self-satisfaction. You see, the distribution of alcohol by anyone other than the alpha male is yet another insidious plot of servers to pad the bill by expediting the intake of alcohol and therefore disrupting the delicate balance between drunk-enough-to-find-you-interesting and on the verge of unconciousness - which would, honestly, contradict the entire point Hitchens would have of getting anyone drunk: to offset the inevitable boredom anyone who is sober would experience on the receiving end of his opinions.

Ok.

Christopher Hitchens is a provocateur and should not be taken seriously. How is it that he has a job at Slate again? After being on the - obvious from the start - wrong side of one of the stupidest foreign policy moves in our nation's rich history of idiotic, self-delusional and messianic military adventures, how is that anyone takes him seriously??

With articles like these, though, it seems as if he's taunting his audience to fully realize the inanity of his intellect. What a fucking douche.

Tim Russert - dead of a heart attack aged 58

Too soon. I've complained about him a lot in the past year, but his reporting throughout his entire career has been so stellar that the expectations he raised in liberals were bound to fall short by a bit. That's not to undercut his integrity and the loss that will be felt in the journalism world by his death.

On a personal note, I remember that watching Meet the Press in high school was, with my forced-viewings of Newshour, the catalyst to my political awakening.

It's a slow day at work, ok?

While reading the NYT classical music blog, I came across this really bizarre bit of info about Blur frontman, Damon Albarn. He evidently has written an opera, titled Monkey: Journey to the West.

“Monkey,” which has been called a “circus opera,” had its premiere at the Manchester International Festival in England a year ago. Based on a traditional Chinese story, it features martial arts, acrobatics, singing, music and video projections. The composer is Damon Albarn, a leading light of 1990s Britpop who was in the band Blur and also a creator of Gorillaz, a confection of video characters, drum machines and synthesizers.

It sounds kind of amazing. I really wish I lived somewhere other than a city whose classical audience considers The Rite of Spring to be too radical to perform.

9th Circuit Judge Uploads Porn Images to Public Server

Alex Kozinski, one of the nation's highest ranking judges, apparently posted some disturbing pornographic images on a website. This comes during a time when the 9th Circuit (of which, Kozinksi is the chief judge) is hearing an obscenity case. Some of the pictures the judge posted were of women on all fours, painted to look like cows and a man traipsing about with an aroused farm animal.

Kozinski maintains that he thought he uploaded the images to a private site which couldn't be viewed by the public. Even if that's true, it displays a disturbing degree of negligence for a respected federal judge.

A blogger at Concurring Opinions brings up the good point that Kozinski's take of the explicit images as "funny" raises the question of how a judge's ruling (or opinion or whatever) on, let's say a harassment case or a rape case is perceived by the judge's public persona. If you were a woman in front of a judge who did something like Kozinski did, wouldn't you be especially concerned that he may view all women as cows or something equally misogynistic? That's not to say that Kozinski hates women. But, as the link I posted to points out, the accuracy of a perception like that isn't relevant. His actions have some pretty serious negative consequences for the judiciary as a whole.

Damn Straight

Boumediene v. Bush was decided today. The Court ruled that detainees at Guantanamo Bay can appeal in civilian courts. I don't have anything to add to Souter's concurrence, so I'll just quote a passage:

It is in fact the very lapse of four years from the time Rasul put everyone on notice that habeas process was available to Guantanamo prisoners, and the lapse of six years since some of these prisoners were captured and incarcerated, that stand at odds with the repeated suggestions of the dissenters that these cases should be seen as a judicial victory in a contest for power between the Court and the political branches. The several answers to the charge of triumphalism might start with a basic fact of Anglo-American constitutional history: that the power, first of the Crown and now of the Executive Branch of the United States, is necessarily limited by habeas corpus jurisdiction to enquire into the legality of executive detention. And one could explain that in this Court’s exercise of responsibility to preserve habeas corpus something much more significant is involved than pulling and hauling between the judicial and political branches. Instead, though, it is enough to repeat that some of these petitioners have spent six years behind bars. After six years of sustained executive detentions in Guantanamo, subject to habeas jurisdiction but without any actual habeas scrutiny,today’s decision is no judicial victory, but an act of perseverance in trying to make habeas review, and the obligation of the courts to provide it, mean something of value both to prisoners and to the Nation.

Maybe if I'm feeling particularly masochistic, I'll read Scalia's dissent this afternoon.

"The unicorn presents a briefing memo written in watercolored rebuses"

Since it's close to the beginning of summer, and I figure we should at least once turn conflicts into humor, I simply answer, I don't know, tell me Ken Saji, What would happen if a unicorn were on the National Security Council?

Excerpt to wet your appetite:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sternly opposes the unicorn's idea to airlift sunshine across the tribal areas of Afghanistan. He says something under his breath. "I heard that," says the unicorn. "Calling me just a horse with a horn is like calling Justin Timberlake just a singer or the secretary of state just a mannequin for Dress Barn suits."

To clear the air, the unicorn calls for a bathroom break. After a few minutes, it comes back and says how cool it is that the Sit Room bathroom has textured toilet paper. "Why is that?" asks the unicorn. "Because we're the government," says the secretary of defense. "Boy," says the unicorn, "I wish I used toilet paper." And everyone stares at the unicorn, and suddenly it wishes it hadn't said that. And then the unicorn wishes it were something else, like a monkey. One of those monkeys who use toilet paper. One of those wise, wise monkeys.

It's (twisted) good cop bad cop time

Yesterday's Matt Lauer interview with McCain is rightfully catching the ire of pundits for a quote he makes, basically asserting that it's unimportant to think about bringing troops home.

What I find more interesting is the way McCain framed the success of the surge. Blah blah, of course it's significant that he distances himself from Bush, but he did it in such a way that screams of coordinated messages between his campaign and the White House. Specifically, Bush will continue to simply be himself and push to make sure his predecessor will stay in Iraq, and McCain will draw subtle differences in policy yet continue to hold the same overall views and strategy...I mean it's almost hilarious how similar McCain's position is on foreign policy (Iraq) with that of Bush regardless of his theatrical "distancing" quotes.

So this delusional, warped good cop bad cop game is emerging with McCain and Bush, respectively. McCain gets to be the smarter, saner, more at-home-with-the-voters cop, and Bush gets to be that nasty, unwavering, jaded cowboy who's failed foreign policy doesn't need to be changed, it simply needs to be resurrected by a more capable Maverick type.

Huh

Charles Wuorinen is going to write an opera based on Brokeback Mountain.

This should be interesting. Wuorinen has recently (2001; staged in 2004) written an opera based on Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

I haven't heard much of his stuff aside from his Webern-esque string quartet, but this is definitely up on my dream list of performances I'd like to check out once I get a real job.

Interesting video

Ralph Stein, a professor at Pace Law School, has a regular TV show in New York. His latest episode is on gay marriage.

More problems for English-language Russian media

Well, it looks like The Exile might be in some trouble. Most other outlets seem to be correctly interpreting this as an indication that the proud Russian tradition of suppressing media is going to continue under Medvedev. Some are going a bit overboard, though. Joshua Keating, for example, states that "Moscow won't be the same without them." Which is certainly true, but at the same time, give me a break.

While the tabloid is sometimes entertaining, I for one don't really care all that much about their fate. Mark Ames is one of God's perfect assholes. That isn't to say that the paper should be shut down, necessarily, but to take this as more important than the fact that Russia has one of the worst rates of unsolved murders of journalists, indicates that priorities are a little out of whack. There are more pressing concerns with regards to Russian media than whether a bunch of Hunter S Thompson knock-offs getting drunk and trying to see which brand of Viagra sold in kiosks is the most potent are going to be shut down.

I would, uh, link to that particular feature but it appears to be down.

On Enjoying Difficult Music

Last night, I finished downloading the 2000 reissue of Pierre Boulez's DG recording of Complete Webern. Everything Webern published in his lifetime as well as his early, unpublished stuff and posthumous releases are packed onto 6 discs, totaling about 6 hours. All of his 31 published scores clock in at around 3 hours, the length of just one Mozart opera. That his influence on postwar music has been so pervasive is really amazing.

I had been interested in hearing more Webern after picking up a budget priced CD of his orchestral works. I liked that they were mostly about 3-6 minutes long and so could be easily digested or gone back to and listened again to catch what I inevitably would miss in these dense but sparse compositions. I'm really starting to like Webern; more than Schoenberg - another tough composer I felt I should get over my preconceptions about and just listen to. This is not easy listening music, that's for sure. Even his uber-romantic, Mahler-influenced romantic pieces (which are even tonal!) are tough to crack. But it's rewarding to hear how the melodic line jumps from instrument to instrument, and how everything really does fit together despite sounding chaotic. He has a reputation as an emotionless composer, but I hear quite a bit of emotion: there's the typical-for-atonal-music overwhelming terror and despair in, say, the 6 pieces for Orchestra, but there's some beauty, too, some really gorgeous and affecting shifts in volume in the way he ends some of his movements - I'm thinking, specifically, of the end of the first movement in his 5 pieces for string orchestra; there's also some humor, too. Hearing sarcasm, or anything remotely comedic, was a genuine surprise, but it's there. Especially in the piano pieces.

Anyway, if you're interested in getting some stuff that your friends will think your pretentious for trying to appreciate, or if you want to scare little children/roommates/whoever, then I would suggest picking up either of these Naxos recordings. If you like those, try and find the complete works.

In case there was any question about this...

Michael Mukasey is awful. In a speech he gave at Boston College Law School, the Attorney General defended John Yoo, David Attington, et al., only without explicitly naming any of them.

My favorite part? This little gem:

The difficulty and novelty of the legal questions these lawyers confronted is scarcely mentioned; indeed, the vast majority of the criticism is unaccompanied by any serious legal analysis. In addition, it is rarely acknowledged that those public servants were often working in an atmosphere of almost unimaginable pressure, without the academic luxury of endless time for debate. Equally ignored is the fact that, by all accounts I have seen or heard, including but not limited to Jack Goldsmith’s book, those lawyers reached their conclusions in good faith based upon their best judgments of what the law required.

If Yoo was under such immense pressure that he didn't have the time to bother with getting the advice of his colleagues, then how did he so assuredly dismantle the precedent - established let's keep in mind, by American lawyers - of post-war international law and the Geneva Convention? That right there is proof he didn't act in "good faith." Give me a break.

Inaugral Post

Well, it is almost three in the morning, I have to be at work in six hours and I am drunk. This seemed like a good time to finally usher in something I had wanted to do for a while. I had some other ideas about names, including "sober as carps in a bathtub" (it struck me as too ironic, too detached and reeking of the urge to appear self-nullifying) and "Dmitri Medvedev is 5'4" tall," but ultimately I decided on the title you see above. If any of the other (hopeful) contributors would like to alter this or give their feedback, my addled imagination would more than welcome it.

Because I'm unable to offer any original commentary at the moment, here is a really, really good rebuttal to the recent op-eds in the New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor about Obama's "apostasy" as someone with a Muslim father who was raised as a Christian.