Oh, if it were true...

Funny stuff.

Via the always wonderful Ezra Klein.

Pandering with Palin

I disagree with this completely.

Sarah Palin may be one of the smartest tactical moves made by the McCain Campaign and the Democrats should be very careful in their line of attack against her. Depending on how she is defined at the Republican Convention she could be a game changer.

Palin was not a smart tactical decision, by any stretch of a normal, rational person's imagination. While it's true that sexism (check out the google hits for VPILF and Matthews' "sexy librarian" comment) in attacking Palin makes me want to vomit in my own mouth, and while there may be some legitimate concern that Biden could utter a gaffe that would exacerbate this, I don't think that the Obama campaign's current line of attack (that she's inexperienced and was a cynical pick made to pander to disgruntled Clinton supporters) is in any danger of backfiring.

Barack Obama is underperforming among female voters in the key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin in our polling. In these states he is only leading John McCain by 2% to 3% among females where traditionally there has been a double digit lead for Democrats. If Palin can help keep these voters in play and then energize base Republican voters, these states have the potential to flip.

Except that Palin won't bring these voters into play. C'mon! Give me a goddamn break. Clinton is an incredibly smart, incredibly successful politician who is both articulate, witty and knows stuff about the position for which she was running. Palin, by contrast, stated a few months ago that she didn't even know what the VP office does. Clinton is pro-choice; Palin anti-choice. Palin is an extreme conservative who doesn't believe global warming is influenced by humans and she's a freaking creationist. Do you know many Clinton supporters that believe that? This is such a ridiculous debate that we have to have now! I know several Clinton supporters in my office, who in turn know dozens of Clinton supporters - all of whom are insulted by this pandering bullshit.

Finally, by attacking Palin as being inexperienced the Obama Campaign may actually help bolster McCain's own arguments of inexperience against Obama. If Palin is inexperienced to be Vice President based upon her record in Alaska, how can Democrats argue that Obama is experienced to be President based upon his record.

This has to be trolling. Let's see, Palin has been governor for less time than McCain has been a presidential hopeful. Obama has sponsored or co-sponsored hundreds of pieces of legislation. Inexperienced, now? I don't understand how this could possibly "bolster" McCain's statements about Obama's supposed lack of experience. This indicates that McCain's judgement is suspect if he's putting someone with no understanding of the position to which he will presumptively appoint her to and then if McCain's health were to make him incapable of governing, she would take over. Does that make sense to anyone? Does that even compare to a ticket that combines someone who has had years of grassroots organizing and legislating under his resume with one of the Senate's most experienced foreign policy experts?

The answer is no. And the answer to the question of whether this was a smart tactical pick is no.

During the lull between meetings this morning....

Want to get back to what I'm sure will be the main focus of the blog for the immediate future, Russia and its relationship with the West.

Yulia Latynina, arguably the one Russian journalist most capable of picking up the mantle left by Anna Politkovskaya, has an excellent op-ed in The Moscow Times about what most in the Russian press are dubbing The Olympics War. There's an implicit message in it that the "blame game" over who started the war is utterly trivial: Sakaashvili's decision to send troops into South Ossetia was a colossal mistake, a tragic underestimation of Russia's response and a naive reliance upon American support. This is the kind of middle of the road take she's espoused countless times over the past week on her radio show on Ekho Moskvy. I don't have direct sources, so you'll have to take me on faith, but there are very few people in the Russian media - even the decimated "liberal" stations and those journalists who aren't government apologists - who are taking a similar stance; very few who are willing to admit the tragedy of it. Most journalists of this ilk are simply astonished by Sakaashvili's idiotic decision to invade and very few of them want to be aligned with Putin so they're taking the equally ridiculous position that the invasion of Georgia is on par with the invasions committed by atrocious men from the last century with ridiculous mustaches.

I don't know why there are so few people who are capable of sensing that the tragedy of this war was that it was so completely unavoidable, there's nobody to single out for blame, just a number of poorly thought out, easy to ridicule decisions.

RIP

Del Martin died.

Four years ago, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed marriage licenses to be issued to gay and lesbian couples in San Francisco in defiance of state law, Ms. Martin and Lyon were the first of some 4,000 same-sex couples to wed. Those marriages were later nullified by the state's high court but paved the way for the successful legal challenge.

"We would never have marriage equality in California if it weren't for Del and Phyllis," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat. "They fought and triumphed in many battles, beginning when they first bought a home together in San Francisco in 1955."

Oh Toobin

Jeffery Toobin is a goddamn idiot. He said on CNN that Biden fumbled his "best" lines - hard to believe as sincere from a man who stumbled trying to get the accusation of stumbling out of his froth-filled, half-agape mouth - and that it had no thematic union. You know, no thematic unity except for the repeated phrases indicating the massive difference between the two candidates' policy positions and the fact that one of those candidates has been consistently proven correct - well, except for that there was nothing of substance, at all, in the speech. Sure.

From the Convention

Gov. Ted Strickland (D-OH), in reference to an old joke about George H.W. Bush having been born on third base and thinking he'd hit a triple:

Well, George W. Bush was born on third base and stole second.

Hey, I kind of like that!

What the hell is wrong with Sakaashvili?

Not good news for fans of stability in the Caucuses.

“We had a choice here,” he said. “We could turn this country into Chechnya — we had enough people and equipment to do that — or we had to do nothing and stay a modern European country.”

He added: “Eventually we would have chased them away, but we would have had to go to the mountains and grow beards. That would have been a tremendous national philosophical and emotional burden.”

That line, at the end of the NYT's account of Sakaashvili's response to the terms of the peace agreement with Russia, is certainly funny. But it's also reflective of just how delusional the Georgian president is. His army was crushed, territory was lost, and their chances to join NATO are shot. Yet, he's going to go back to the same policy that existed prior to his instigation of the current conflict. He even stated that Abkhazia and South Ossetia would be "forever as always" a part of Georgia's territory.

That is absolutely insane.

Russian stocks fall as NATO severely criticizes

Could Putin have underestimated his country's recent domination of Georgia?

Tuesday's sell-off on the Russian equity market comes at a time when investor sentiment has already been damaged by the military conflict between Russia and Georgia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's recent call for an investigation of steel company Mechel, which wiped out billions of dollars of its market capitalization, as well as by the ongoing dispute between BP PLC and their Russian partners in their joint venture TNK-BP.

On top of all of those concerns, the prices of Russia's key commodity exports -- such as oil, natural gas and metals -- have fallen steeply in recent weeks.
Russian equities have fallen on a "combination of geopolitical disruption and state interference [in the economy] that many people don't feel comfortable with," said Jack Dzierwa, global strategist and co-manager of the Global MegaTrends Fund at U.S. Global Investors.

Nobody ever expects a boom - even one predicated on the notoriously inconsistent prices of a commodity like crude oil - to end, I guess.

Dobbs and Remnick weigh in on South Ossetia

Two Russian experts weighed in on the conflict today and both articles contain some of the best commentary that I've read.

First, Michael Dobbs gives a concise summary in the Washington Post of the three principles in the conflict, the US, Russia and Georgia, and he apportions some of the blame onto the Bush administration's foreign policy. This is the final paragraph:

Instead of speaking softly and wielding a big stick, as Teddy Roosevelt recommended, the American policeman has been loudly lecturing the rest of the world while waving an increasingly unimpressive baton. The events of the past few days serve as a reminder that our ideological ambitions have greatly exceeded our military reach, particularly in areas such as the Caucasus, which is of only peripheral importance to the United States but of vital interest to Russia.

That pretty much sums it up, folks. What's also mentioned in the article, and is something we really should be hearing more about, is that our positions on Kosovo and South Ossetia are blatantly hypocritical. It's hard to say that Putin wasn't correct when he stated that Kosovo set a dangerous precedent.

In the New Yorker, David Remnick has a great comment. There are a number of stand out quotes and you should really check it out (it's only a page), but I've got to quote this in full:

Taken individually, the West’s actions since the collapse of the Soviet Union—from the inclusion of the Baltic and the Central European states in NATO to the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state—can be rationalized on strategic and moral grounds. But taken together these actions were bound to engender deep-seated feelings of national resentment among Russians, especially as, through the nineteen-nineties, they suffered an unprecedentedly rapid downward spiral. Even ordinary Russians find it mightily trying to be lectured on questions of sovereignty and moral diplomacy by the West, particularly the United States, which, even before Iraq, had a long history of foreign intervention, overt and covert—politics by other means. After the exposure of the Bush Administration’s behavior prior to the invasion of Iraq and its unapologetic use of torture, why would any leader, much less Putin, respond to moral suasion from Washington? That is America’s tragedy, and the world’s.

This will be a top story for some time, it seems. It's been definitive proof that Putin remains in charge. I'm still not sure if Medvedev is a puppet or is getting pushed out of any chance of wielding influence in the Kremlin or what's going on.

Next up to keep an eye on is whether Sakaashvili is done. For the sake of peace, I hope that Putin is smart enough to realize that the Georgians will eventually grow tired of their president and that Moscow doesn't need to forcibly depose him.

Then there's Ukraine. I wonder what this means for them? August wars have had a tendency to expand into broader conflicts and this needs to be resolved immediately.

There's been a number of things I wanted to mention, focusing mostly on the media's coverage of this and, more specifically, the conservatives' baffling rhetoric towards Russia. I'll try to post more tomorrow as I've the day off.

Damn

Malcolm Lowry was awesome. This Harper's article contains Lowry's response to a scathing, unfairly degrading review of his masterpiece, Under the Volcano:

At all events I am now writing another book, you will be uninterested to learn, dealing roughly speaking with the peculiar punishment meted out to people who lack the sense of humour to write books like Under the Volcano. So far, I am pretty convinced that nothing like it has been written, but you can be sure that just as I am finishing it–

Sans blague. One wishes to learn, one wishes to learn, to be a better writer, to think better, and one wishes to learn, period. In spite of some kind of so-called higher education (Cambridge, Eng.) I have just arrived at that state where I realized I know nothing at all. A cargo ship, to paraphrase Melville, was my real Yale and Harvard too. Doubtless I have absorbed many of the wrong things. But instinct leads the good artist (which I feel myself to be, though I say it myself) to what he wants. So if, instead of ending this letter “may Christ send you sorrow and a serious illness,” I were to end it by saying instead that I would be tremendously grateful if one day you would throw your gown out of the window and address some remarks in this direction upon the reading of history, and even in regard to the question of writing and the world in general. I hope you won’t take it amiss. You won’t do it, but never mind.

With best wishes, yours sincerely,
Malcolm Lowry

The book is terrific and often hysterical. I'd recommend to anyone who likes Hemingway but who dislikes his hyper-inflated machismo bullshit.

More of the South Ossetian War

Great video from Reuters:



Read the article here.

Also, I'm hopeing this isn't related but I highly doubt it's not, but I was listening to Echo Moskvy - the only remaining liberal radio station that broadcasts internationally that I'm aware of - and on the air were a lot of comments about how Russians were pissed at the apparent confusion in their government's response to the crises. Essentially, they were unsure of who to listen to: Putin or Medvedev. This has been repeated in a few of the articles I've read today on the subject, most notably in the NYT's four page summary published today.

Well, now it's not on the air. At all. I can only hear static. There's been nothing in the news about it, but I'd be curious to know if it's not broadcasting in Russia either, or if their international or internet feed is down.

South Ossetia - A Sad History

I had initially been made aware of the situation in South Ossetia early this morning while I was watching CNN's coverage, shortly before I left for Sarasota. They, uh, neglected to mention that Georgia initiated the conflict by invading the region. Then they stopped covering it altogether, apparently, and switched to the unbelievable news that the National Enquirer turned out to be dead on about something. Luckily, there have been a number of people following this story all day and there's a lot of information available now.

Turns out that the timing of Georgia's incursion - to coincide with the opening of the Beijing Olympics - was not coincidental.

Naturally then, it's not nearly so clean cut as McCain would like it to be. We can't just put all the blame on Moscow. That's not to say that their reaction isn't tragic and avoidable, but like the vast majority of military conflicts there are vast shades of grey.

For those of you unfamiliar with the background to the story, I'll use the rest of this post to summarize what has been a long-standing, complicated and volatile situation.

The South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast (Russian word for "region") was established by the Soviet Union in 1922, shortly after the invasion of and occupation of Georgia. Aside from some outbursts towards and immediately after the end of the First World War, the Georgians and the Ossetians co-existed. However, by the late 80s a sweeping nationalist trend, influenced by the Soviet Union's imminent collapse and other nationalist movements in Eastern Europe, pushed both the Ossetians and the Georgians toward outright hostility. The South Ossetians wanted to be united with the North Ossetians and have a separate oblast recognized by Moscow, effectively making them no longer a part of Georgia. Georgian nationalists, led by a man with a wonderfully easy for Western media to ignore name, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, marched to the de facto capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali - where the majority of the fighting took place today - and blocked roadways, eventually forcing Soviet tanks to intervene.

This next bit is really important: after the break up of the Soviet Union, we recognized the legitimacy of the borders established before the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1933, meaning that we regarded as independent the Baltic States, but regarded the territory disputes of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia as internal Soviet problems.

The conflict lasted on and off until a cease fire was agreed upon in 1996. This was in the middle of Russia's First Chechen War. Enter Eduard Shevardnadze - an opportunist and corrupt prick who would eventually be denounced by the international community in 2003 for rampant election fraud - who was receiving massive amounts of money from the US. Moscow accused his government of hiding Chechen rebels. This accusation, whether legitimate or not - we're dealing with two very suspicious and notoriously manipulative regimes, here - added to the tension caused by Shevy's cozy relationship with the West.

The aftermath of the peace agreements were a disaster. The region, lacking a strong and organized government, collapsed and became a hotbed for organized crime, specifically drugs and smuggling.

In 2004, Gerogia got a new president, with a name less inclined to be appropriated in a Dubya-esque nickname, Mikheil Saakashvili. He turned out to have a flair for violent, incendiary language and the inability to tolerate others' disagreements with him. He also quickly addressed the South Ossetian problem by closing a market which was a hub for tax-free good from Russia. Tensions mounted, the Ossetians closed a road from Russia to Georgia and some Georgian soldiers were captured and eventually released. The Duma that same year also passed a resolution recognizing South Ossetia's right to secede. Some fighting took place for a few days in mid August before Saakashvili agreed to remove all non peace-keeping forces. Later in November, an effort to demilitarize the zone was agreed to.

Georgia looked to Europe to help solve the problem and both the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, endorsed the Georgian peace plan, which granted Autonomy to the region, and agreed to give Ossetia a voice in the national government. In addition, Saakashvili would also propose to improve the social and economic conditions in South Ossetia and offered a three year proposal to integrate the Ossetian police and armed forces into the united Georgian Armed Forces.

In 2006, an attack on a helicopter, accusations from South Ossetia that the Georgians hired Chechens, armed them, and sent them into the region to carry out terrorist attacks and finally some good old fashion election scandals would escalate tensions. The next year, a stricter conflict resolution would be pushed by Georgia, specifically outlining the region's status within Georgia. The authorities in Tskhinvali were outraged at this.

Another bad thing that happened in '07 was that the Georgians accused the Russians of firing a missile into Tsitelubani, north of the capital, Tiblisi. NATO confirmed that the jet entered Georgian airspace from Russia, but Russia denied having anything to do with it.

This brings us to this summer. Most sites are giving August 1st as the beginning of the "War in South Ossetia", citing the eruption of intense gun battles which left numerous civilians dead, and reports of Georgia moving tanks and artillery into the area. Yesterday, overnight, Georgia began a full-fledged invasion to restore order in the region and attacked a Russian base in Tskhinvali. Georgia accuses the Russian peacekeepers of not being a neutral force and demanded their removal, prompting the Russian's response.

A very important post by Nathan Hodge asserts that Georgia has also been on the receiving end of US military support, receiving arms, uniforms and armor.

So, in summary: this is the Caucasus, people. This region is ethnically diverse, with borders that do not recognize this diversity, and it has a long, long history of brutal colonial oppression. It's been a war zone since the USSR fell. This time, sadly, it could last a long while.

Russia at war?

Russian tanks entered Georgian territory, apparently. I don't have access to the internet for half a day and this shit happens?

Saakashvili's probably exaggerating a bit and his pleas for American intervention are somewhat naive. But whether provoked or not, Russian military aggression right now is just bad.

Hopefully more information will be forthcoming today or tomorrow.

Uh....

Hamdan - bin Laden's driver - was sentenced to five years and six months in prison. Well, sort of:

The military judge, Capt. Keith J. Allred of the Navy, had already said that he planned to give Mr. Hamdan credit for the 61 months he had been held, meaning that Mr. Hamdan could complete his criminal sentence in five months. After that his fate is unclear, because the Bush administration says that it can hold detainees here until the end of the war on terror.

That italicized portion is incredible. It is a statement which is completely impervious to parody or satire. It's the equivalent of a little boy, cheeks red, pounding his fists on the table and telling his parents he'll clean as room as soon as he beats Morrowind.

Links

I might resort to doing more of these over the next few weeks as I move (once again) and continue to earnestly seek gainful employment with a political campaign.


Lopez Lomong, a Sudanese refugee, was chosen to be the flag bearer at the Beijing Olympics. China's relationship with Sudan has been, to put it mildly, criticized.

President Musharraf is on the way out, possibly.

Anonymous Liberal (a blog everyone should check out) does a marvelous job of detailing how the GOP's threat to shut down the government over off shore oil drilling is a perfect opportunity for them to galvanize their supporters with the insane zealotry that makes them oh so very special.

There's an excellent interview with David Skaggs and Porter Goss - of the newly formed Office of Congressional Ethics - up at the American Prospect website.

The University of North Dakota's most recent Law Review contained six - out of seven - articles devoted to attacks on same-sex marriages. A local paper rightly took them to task for it, stating that they used "dubious" scholarship and questioning the appropriateness of devoting an entire issue to one side of an argument. Another interesting fact mentioned in the In-Forum article is that, in its 2009 session, North Dakota's legislature will seek to amend the North Dakota Human Rights and Fair Housing Acts to include sexual orientation and gender identity. (I could find nothing else that mentions this on a quick google search.)

Finally, for those of you that don't have the time to watch C-SPAN all day, Rep. Louise Slaughter sums up her testimony about the Department of Defense's attempts to circumvent congressional oversight of sexual assault allegations.

Incredible

I love this picture so very much.

The Straight Talk Express was trying to get out of a left-only lane and lost control after merging right without checking its blind spot.

I realize everyone else IN THE WORLD is making this exact same joke, but, yeah, you know.

The Miami Times has the story here

"They take pride in being ignorant"

See, this is a good response. It's not dirty politics to point out that someone's criticisms of your statements are not grounded in reality.

Now, if only the television media can start actually calling certain individuals out on getting their opponents policy positions completely wrong, or actually using facts to contradict spin without worrying about being perceived as "biased", then we might have an honest to God political debate leading up to this thing in November. Of course, if that's the case, we'll win by a landslide.

You've got to be kidding me

The Bush administration wants to define the pill and IUD as abortion.

This is unbelievable, especially for a lame duck administration. If you'd like - and I strongly encourage you to do so - please take a few minutes to fill out Planned Parenthood's open letter. Or, you can contact the following organizations.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201
Telephone: 202-619-0257
Toll Free: 1-877-696-6775

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt
Office Phone: 202-690-7000 or 202-205-4708
Email: mike.leavitt@hhs.gov
Fax: 202-690-7203
Correspondence Secretary: 202-690-6392

1918-2008

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn died yesterday of either a heart attack or a stroke. The article linked to is probably the most comprehensive obit in English I've come across.

I am so glad that this man died of natural causes. Hopefully his legacy will inspire for generations to come.