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Every time I think the Washington Post may be capable of rational thought, there comes along something like this.
Of course, I may be being unfair; it's by the man who made bipartisanism into a synonym for "do what my party wants" while continuing to get tjhe respect he deserved when he used to do actual reporting. Even the infernal Ruth Marcus has had a glimmer of common sense; it may be that the rest of the page is shaping up.
And it is of course possible that this is an example of the new business model of the Post, I did log on to respond to it; others have done the same - the Post's advertisers are doubtless duly impressed, even though I didn't look at any ads, and would regard sponsorship of this column as a direcommendation.
To content:
After having outlined a substantive disagreement between the Ambassador to Afghanistan and the field commander, His Wisdom quotes Clark Clifford " a wrong decision was better than no decision at all." There are times when that is true; but if pausing about Afganistan for a month is one of them, we we've already made the worst decision 90 times or so; one more won't hurt.
But this is more than "get off the pot"; the decision the Fighting Keyboarder opposes would be worse than none:
Let's have a thousand words:
This is Dr. William Brydon, all that returned of the first European army that tried to govern Afghanistan. The Soviets did too, as even the press corps should recall. I do not think that that makes Obama's decision obvious; but tjhe Village Idiots think there is nothing to consider.
Of course, I may be being unfair; it's by the man who made bipartisanism into a synonym for "do what my party wants" while continuing to get tjhe respect he deserved when he used to do actual reporting. Even the infernal Ruth Marcus has had a glimmer of common sense; it may be that the rest of the page is shaping up.
And it is of course possible that this is an example of the new business model of the Post, I did log on to respond to it; others have done the same - the Post's advertisers are doubtless duly impressed, even though I didn't look at any ads, and would regard sponsorship of this column as a direcommendation.
To content:
After having outlined a substantive disagreement between the Ambassador to Afghanistan and the field commander, His Wisdom quotes Clark Clifford " a wrong decision was better than no decision at all." There are times when that is true; but if pausing about Afganistan for a month is one of them, we we've already made the worst decision 90 times or so; one more won't hurt.
But this is more than "get off the pot"; the decision the Fighting Keyboarder opposes would be worse than none:
I don't see how Obama can refuse to back up the commander he picked and the strategy he is recommending. It may not work if the country truly is ungovernable. But I think we have to gamble that security will bring political progress -- as it has done in Iraq.
in short, Obama should refuse (on a political question) to back up the Ambassador he picked, and abdicate civilian control of the military; all this on the gamble that Afghanistan is governable - by the armies of a foreign power. Let's have a thousand words:
This is Dr. William Brydon, all that returned of the first European army that tried to govern Afghanistan. The Soviets did too, as even the press corps should recall. I do not think that that makes Obama's decision obvious; but tjhe Village Idiots think there is nothing to consider.
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I'm not making this up; they are. h/t to Digby and Pandagon.
This link leads indirectly to a concert by the Chicago Symphony orchestra, containing
Bartók Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor
Pärt Symphony No. 4
Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor
Debussy La mer
Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor
As an encore:
Castellanos Santa Cruz de Pacairigua, Suite Sinfónica
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor
Nine Republican senators have joined to protest the idea of investigating deaths, waterboarding, and the rest of Darkness at Noon as reported by a CIA inspector general. After all, because Mukasey ignored torture, Holder must.
Among those signing this are
- John Kyl, minority whip
- Kit Bond, ranking member of the Intelligence Committee
- Jeff Sessions, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.
May Aceldama take them.
This is from the LA Times, almost a day ago; the Washington Post does not yet have it, although the Washington Times does (and, being what they are, supports the letter); nor does not the New York Times
Only 24% of North Carolina Republicans think Obama was born in the United States; then again, only 89% think Hawaii counts as in the United States. And yes, that last piece of ignorance correlates with party and with distance up into the hills (nobody in the northeast of the State said it wasn't; 10% of the Appalachian end did.)
I mentioned last time the War with Reason involved with Birtherism ; a fellow combatant points out the further absurdity:
Honolulu is 9000 miles from Mombasa, farther than any other US city (Jarvis Island may be further, but is uninhabited; the circle of further points is the vast emptiness between Hawaii and Mexico).
Honolulu is 9000 miles from Mombasa, farther than any other US city (Jarvis Island may be further, but is uninhabited; the circle of further points is the vast emptiness between Hawaii and Mexico).
My classmate, the Confederate Libertarian, sends me:
...this is PRECISELY why the birthers are so "into" the ACTUAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE. As you've probably verified by now, you were wrong about believing (as I used to do) that Obama was a citizen anyway due to his mom. Nope, and this is why Rachel Maddow et alius look like morons saying that "well, McCain's parents had HIM outside the country, so we KNOW what's really going on, it's RACISM" blah blah. Nope, McCain's parents were both citizens which is a big difference. Obama's parents WEREN'T BOTH citizens, only one of them, which is exactly WHY the ACTUAL birth certificate is important, and any kid with any street smarts damned well knows why. Let's say, purely hypothetically of course, that Obama's mom wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, went outside the country thinking her kid would "of course" have US Citizenship, etc., and then after having already laid the egg, is told by someone that, well, no her son is NOT a US Citizen. I think you can see that if Barack got plopped in what is today Kenya (it wasn't even a country yet!), that the closest place they could go to "pretend" he was born here would be Hawaii. So dad, mom with her baby, etc. get on a plane to Hawaii, dad bribes some apparatchik to say the kid was born in such and such a hospital, and voila, he's got a birth certificate.
Set aside the CAPITAL LETTERS, and the legal question (I don't know the answer, but I suspect it to be of a piece with the rest of this; John Adams' eldest grandson was the child of a British subject, born in Berlin; if he were not eligible to be President, would he have been named George Washington Adams?) On the rest of this:
It proposes that a 18-year old freshman, without resources or connections, managed this conspiracy to fool the INS, within hours (or the birth announcement would not have been in the Hawaii newspapers). Nice trick for "not the sharpest tool in the shed" (in the real world, she got a doctorate in anthropology) operating from Kenya in 1961. (Have you any idea of what international phone lines were like in 1961? Even to Europe, let alone Kenya.)
It is a conspiracy without visible motive, unless she somehow foresaw that a half-Kenyan child would be in a position to run for President. ([cue theremin] O-O-O-O) The child of an American citizen would have gotten a residence permit, and would have been able to apply for citizenship in due course, around 1975.
The immediate effect (and purpose) of this conspiracy would have been to secure the issuance of a Hawaii birth certificate in 1961. The physical evidence will therefore show, even if this pipe-dream is correct, that the birth certificate was issued in 1961, because it was.
(Even nonsense conspiracies should avoid nonsense details. If all this were true, they would have picked Hawaii for the obvious, if minor, reason, that the Dunhams were already living there; she'd met Obama Sr while studying at the University of Hawaii.)
I am duly grateful for the mental exercise, and the evidence that the Right is, as much as in the days of Alfred Dreyfus, at war with Reason.
Zoning doesn't always work:
Bill Thayer has an llustration of a papal inscription recording that His Holiness cleared out the square before the Pantheon of 'ignoble eateries" to secure the view of the monument.
It's now in a McDonald's.
Bill Thayer has an llustration of a papal inscription recording that His Holiness cleared out the square before the Pantheon of 'ignoble eateries" to secure the view of the monument.
It's now in a McDonald's.
The following notices on Nicomachusare from L'Annee Philologique.
Type de notice : article de revue
Auteur(s) : Kamerbeek J. C.
Titre(s) : De novo fragmento tragico
Fascicule : Mn 1938 VI
Pagination : 335-349
Résumé : Nouvelle lecture du fragment sur papyrus publié par E. Lobel, Mél. Murray p. 297, qui doit être attribué à une tragédie de l'époque hellénistique, de Sositheus ou de Nicomachus.
Notice n° : 13-02657
Type de notice : monographie
Titre(s) : TAPhS N.S., LIX,4 : Commentary to Nicomachus' Introduction to arithmetic / ed. with an introd. and notes by Tarán L.
Publication : Philadelphia : The American Philos. Soc., 1969
Description matérielle : 89 p.
Compte(s)-rendu(s) : AAHG XXVI 1973 61-63 Klein
Notice n° : 45-00560
Type de notice : article de revue
Auteur(s) : Clinton K.
Titre(s) : IG I 5, the Eleusinia and the Eleusinians
Fascicule : AJPh 1979 C
Pagination : 1-12
Résumé : IG I 5 describes sacrifices carried out at the Mysteria, the sacred precinct, but associated with the Eleusinia. The sacrifices and deities listed in the inscription appear also in the Law Code of Nicomachus. Reference to the hieropoioi of the Eleusinians in the text establishes their role in the Eleusinia as distinct from other religious officials. The Greater Eleusinia took place in the second year of the Olympiad with lesser celebrations in the other years.
Notice n° : 50-08530
Type de notice : article de recueil
Auteur(s) : Healey R. F.
Titre(s) : A gennetic sacrifice list in the Athenian state calendar
Recueil : Stud. pres. to S. Dow
Pagination : 135-141
Résumé : On the sacrifice list of an Athenian gens, contained in the state calendar of sacrifices, which was part of the revised law code of Solon, inscribed by Nicomachus in 410-399 B.C.
Notice n° : 55-00943
Record of the collection :
Type de notice : monographie
Titre(s) : Studies presented to Sterling Dow on his eightieth birthday / ed. by Rigsby K. J.
Publication : Durham, NC : Duke Univ. Pr., 1984
Description matérielle : xxxvi & 336 p.
Collection(s) : GRBS Suppl. ; X
Notice n° : 55-13390
Type de notice : monographie
Auteur(s) : Hedrick, Charles W.
Titre(s) : History and silence : purge and rehabilitation of memory in late antiquity
Publication : Austin (Tex.) : University of Texas Pr., 2000
Description matérielle : XXVI-338 p. ill. 2 index
Compte(s)-rendu(s) : Athenaeum 2003 91 (1) : 199-204 Giovanni Alberto Cecconi ; Gnomon 2003 75 (3) : 239-243 Joachim Szidat ; CR 2004 N. S. 54 (2) : 522-524 Mark Humphries ; HR 2003-2004 43 (4) : 339-341 Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Notice n° : 72-12078
Type de notice : article de revue
Auteur(s) : Amerise, Marilena
Titre(s) : « Mendacium Metrodori » : un particolare « casus belli »
Fascicule : Klio 2004 86 (1)
Pagination : 197-205
Résumé : Die Nachricht bei Ammianus Marcellinus (25, 4, 23-24), dass Konstantin für den Ausbruch des Perserkriegs verantwortlich sei, weil er « auidius » den « mendacia » Metrodors geglaubt habe, gibt Konstantin nicht nur die Schuld für den Krieg, sondern macht ihn dadurch, dass er ihn der truphe beschuldigt, zum Tyrannen. Die sonstige Überlieferung der Geschichte macht wahrscheinlich, dass sie auch in den « Annales » des Nicomachus Flavianus vorkam.
Notice n° : 75-00160
<a href="http://www.racialicious.com/2009/0
Some people just now they have to read something like this; others avoid it. I offer this for others like me.
Comments may follow
Some people just now they have to read something like this; others avoid it. I offer this for others like me.
Comments may follow
*Chapter 5: motto: Morris Berman Coming to our senses : body and spirit in the hidden history of the West BF161 .B475 1989
*204 I love all those who are as heavy drops, falling one by one out of the dark cloud that hangs over men: they herald the advent of lightning, and as heralds they perish" Nietzsche (Kaufmann): Zarathustra. p. 16
*262 Sweet infancy! O heavenly fire! O sacred light! How fair and bright! How great am I, Whom the
whole world doth magnify! Traherne, "The Rapture"
I posted yesterday on the Grey Poupon scandal. It is one of a class of conspiracy theories which share a common thread; another member is the Government conspiracy to blow up the World Trade Center. These postulate a Vast Conspiracy, which has two properties.
- It is engineered by some Mighty Organization (usually, the Gummint, but in this case, a network), and would deceive Everybody
- except that Anybody with a keyboard can see through it, if they are not the dupes or agents of the conspiracy.
Set aside the problem that it (like all Vast Conspiracies) violates Machiavelli's observation on conspiracies: unless a conspiracy has a small number of members, and acts without delay, somebody will rat it out to the target/the authorities before it goes off.
But the conditions themselves are incompatible: if the conspiracy wouldn't deceive Anybody, it has no hope of deceiving Everybody, and so has no real motive. There is no profit, even to the Evil Overlord, of a plot of this kind that doesn't work.
There are several possible accounts why this sort of nonsense spreads; one is that the Anybodies who see the plot are thereby demonstrating their superiority to Everybody. This is conventional, but it doesn't fit: they expect the rest of us to believe them, and they argue - interminably. Thus, like the children of Lake Wobegon, all of us Anybodies must be above average.
It may just be an inability to believe in innocent coincidence; in this case, that a network used two different takes of the same incident, for no particular reason. I am reminded of Avram Davidson's observations on Aleister Crowley.
I was tracing this absurd post (by a Cornell law professor; it's a real shame the Ivy League has taken to hiring the self-declared oppressed minority of White Male Conservatives) about the Great Grey Poupon Scandal. No, I'm not making this up - but he is.
I observe, however, that he proudly links to something even worse, and less logical. This piece of neoconservative apology for torture declares that Andrew Sullivan, because (apparently) he is a journalist, is a leftist loony partisan, and Obama is sensibly acting with the approval of such wise men as Boot, Kristol, and Goldfarb.
In the next post on the same blog, on the same day, Obama is a radical leftist, loved by the press.
Obama's behavior is a different, and far more serious, question; but it's clear that the Palinists are indeed a White Party - they even believe six impossible things before breakfast.
I observe, however, that he proudly links to something even worse, and less logical. This piece of neoconservative apology for torture declares that Andrew Sullivan, because (apparently) he is a journalist, is a leftist loony partisan, and Obama is sensibly acting with the approval of such wise men as Boot, Kristol, and Goldfarb.
In the next post on the same blog, on the same day, Obama is a radical leftist, loved by the press.
Obama's behavior is a different, and far more serious, question; but it's clear that the Palinists are indeed a White Party - they even believe six impossible things before breakfast.
Hilsoy, at Obsidian Wings, has more:
I'm focused on looking forward too. And as I gaze into my crystal ball, I see a world in which members of the executive branch take it for granted that they can do whatever they want with impunity. Why not break the law? Why not eavesdrop on Americans? Why not torture people? Why not detain citizens indefinitely without charges? Heck, why not impose martial law and make yourself dictator for life? There is nothing to stop the people who make these decisions. They have nothing to fear. Because once they've made them, their actions are back there, in the past that no one ever wants to look at.
I also see a world in which everyone takes it for granted that there are two kinds of people, as far as the law is concerned. If most people tried to make the case that prosecuting their criminal acts was just "looking backwards", or a sign that the prosecutor was motivated by a desire for retribution, they'd be laughed out of court. Imagine the likely reaction if your average crack dealer were to urge the judge not to dwell on the past, or if someone who used accounting fraud to flip houses told offered a prosecutor the chance to be "very Mandelalike in the sense [of] saying let the past be the past and let us move into the future", or if I were pulled over for speeding and, when asked if I knew how fast I was going, replied that "Some things in life need to be mysterious ... Sometimes you need to just keep walking." I don't think any of us would get very far.
Is there any response to this, other than using Karl Rove's position, that any investigation (even a completely independent one, by a Special Prosecutor, or a bipartisan committee of non-officeholders, which are what Gibbs is ruling out) is partisan?
That is a declaration, long implicit in the Party of Treason, that there is no such thing as objective justice, only Republican or Democratic justice. That is the cry of totalitarianism everywhere, since Thrasymachus in Plato declared justice to be the interest of the stronger; it is false, and must be ignored.
(And if it were true, what then? If we must choose between Republican and Democratic justice, I know which I choose.)
- Mood:
enraged
I tried to post this to the White House, but they seem to be down; I hope this is the torrent of protest. The story referred to is here: the Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, is performing his traditional duty of being a lightning rod for the President - if we put on enough pressure, he will be disavowed.
(note to self: if these links need fixing, they're AP and AFP, respectively.
I fully support an investigation, by whatever means will get it done, of the charges of torture at Guantanamo and elsewhere.
I hope that Robert Gibbs' remarks tonight in opposition to an independent commission of investigation do not represent the considered views of the Administration. To move on as the only response is to fail in the essential requirement of credible change: we must find out what happened if we are to make sure it doesn't happen again, under any President. To paraphrase Santayana: those who would ignore history are condemned to repeat it.;
As a lesser detail, leaving the matter uninvestigated leaves all those who served in the Bush administration under a cloud of suspicion, no matter how innocent (or even how courageous in opposition) they actually were. Secretary Gates appears to recognize this, even if Gibbs doesn't.
This does not mean, of course, that I regret voting for Obama in November; one of the chief pressures against investigation is John McCain of Arizona - may he be reminded hereafter why torture is a bad thing.(note to self: if these links need fixing, they're AP and AFP, respectively.
- Mood: infuriated
This kitten is much cuter than the news: Newt Gingrich converted to the Roman Church, to which his third wife belongs. Matt Yglesias suggests a limit of two divorces; like drunk driving, there should come a point where you don't get to try again.
He is just lucky not to be converting to an Orthodox Church, which does not allow a third marriage, period. (Of course, I know about this because of the example of the Emperor Leo Vi, four times married; but Its OK if You're the Emperor.)
I just had occasion to quote: There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and those who buy on price alone are that man's lawful prey.
In checking the wording, I found this site, which claims, apparently on good authority, that it isn't Ruskin. He would have agreed with it, whereas it is not clear to me that Burke would even have said All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
From the LATimes:
The writer is Chandler Family Professor of Geology at the California Institute of Technology
I think this speaks for itself; but Prof. Wernicke has my sympathy.
Now questioned by Alan Keyes, who is calling Obama a communist into the bargain. Keyes really should have mentioned this when he moved to Illinois in August 2004, to lose to Obama in November. (Does this mean I can call Keyes a reactionary carpet-bagger?)
With thanks to Talking Points Memo.
Pork. Unlike other Israeli (and American) governments, this is real pork, not the metaphor; he received indirect support from the party of the secular, ex-Russian, Israeli, who like non-kosher butchers. (Since he is also depending on support from the Orthodox parties, this should be fun; he's asking Kadima to form a government of national unity, and we'll see how well that works.
Thanks to Matthew Yglesias, who has a better illustration; but he repeats much of the article he comments on.
