Alas…

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…while Fables of the Reconstruction has a link up to Bally’s Pain in the Butt (extremely mild) BDSM workout program (yes, kids, you too can combine alternative sexuality and improved cardiovascular activity!*), the Quicktime video won’t load properly on my site – making me actually interested now in seeing said video. Which is kind of … Read more

Googlebombing Ninjas… (And an endorsement)

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Seeing as I have been told that googlebombing is benign, I have decided to start one of my very own. From now on, Senator Joseph Lieberman will only be spoken of here by me as the Ninja*, mostly because a less Ninja-like person is hard to contemplate. Besides, it’s quirky, not ideological, so maybe people will actually do it or something.

In other news, The New Republic is endorsing the Ninja for President, with a predictable reaction.

UPDATE: Rastenfracken Howard Dean gets into everything. He’s worse than ferrets, let me tell you.

ANOTHER UPDATE: BAH! and FIE! People are linking to this (which, by the way, is my secret weakness), so let it be a night of a million billion Ninja!!!!!

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Two points on the Junior Senator from NY.

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1) Slantpost, while in the process of hammering away at the entire Hitler-in-discourse thing, helpfully points out that said Senator gets slammed with this kind of crap all the fragging time. Just a reminder to people on both sides: it is not particularly consistent to condemn Bush being equated to Hitler and favor Hillary Clinton … Read more

Pre-emption and the PLA

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More “ripped from the classroom” blogging. I’m going to make an analogy between the Bush doctrine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict–and the U.S. gets compared to a side you will not like. So let me be clear : I am not making a moral or historical parallel between Bush and Arafat, let alone our military and … Read more

Just Iraq, now.

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Approximately thirty-five wounded in a motar attack today, with at least one possible death. It ain’t over yet, folks, and it ain’t yet won. More troops — and they stay until the job is done, not the next election cycle. We ask our troops to risk their lives; we don’t ask them to risk their … Read more

Club for Growth–update

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I, and the Washington Times, have misrepresented the Club for Growth . According to this LA Times article (free registration required), Dean not content to sip lattes (he actually doesn’t drink coffee which is much more disturbing), read the NY Times, drive a Volvo (actually a Jeep–again, much worse in my eyes but it is … Read more

Iraq and Terrorism

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The Washington Post reports that the Iraqi WMD program was strong on paper, but not much on substance. This will surely be spun by others, so let me be the first: Pre-war, all available evidence and all intelligence estimates (including those by war opponents, such as France and Germany) indicated the existence of Iraqi WMDs. … Read more

Busy Day Today

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And I’m just testing the system to see whether those automatic pings to blo.gs and weblogs.com are going to work and all, so don’t mind me.

My Prediction for ’08

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Matthew Stinson had the unmitigated gall to read my mind about why a Democrat is likely to win the Presidency in 2008 and put it in the comments section of a post not even about said election:

JKC, I think the GOP is likely to run out of steam by 2008 for two reasons: first, there is no heir apparent to Bush in the party. Many of the high-profile GOP governors from last decade wound up taking low-profile cabinet positions in the current Bush administration; once exception would be Jeb Bush but I can’t see the public electing Bushes back-to-back. The second reason I expect a Democratic win in 2008 is the likelihood that the public will have the kind of domestic priorities that favor Democrats by that time — while the war on terror and containment of rogue regimes won’t be over by a long shot, the distance from 9/11 will be sufficiently great that doubts about Democrats and national security will probably be diminished.

I shall thus be forced to instead expound on these two thoughts.

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Katherine’s Blogroll At War!

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Well, two denizens of it, at least: Dan Drezner and Brad DeLong, over – who else? – Dan’s comments about Paul Krugman. Great, now I’m going to have to separate the two: I should have never have put them right next to each other on the blogroll… (pause) What, you want a substantive comment? Sorry, … Read more

My Own David Brooks Post

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Now, of course, I would never compare the clever* Katherine to Donald Luskin, obsessed fellow that he is. And I myself find it amusing that Brook’s Op-Ed is guilty of the same mass generalizations that he’s complaining about. But I do want to note something he said that may get lost in the shouting:

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9/11 Memorial Follow Up

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They’ve chosen the design. Times article here, and you can view some of the images here (note that those don’t reflect a recent re-design to conform to Libeskind’s plan–the new design will be unveiled next week). It will probably be impossible to do this right, and even more impossible to please everyone, especially this soon … Read more

EXTRA, EXTRA: Stupid Guy Says Something Stupid!

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But this time the stupid guy* is a NY Times columnist, so it’s blogworthy. Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall, titans of the liberal blogosphere that they are, do a very good job summing up what’s wrong with Brooks’ piece. And Marshall neatly summarizes the problem with, not only Brooks’ op-ed, but a huge proportion of … Read more

Dammit, another Clark post.

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This is my last freakin’ one.

As foretold by the Prophecies of Aberjian,* the Democratic field must reduce to two contenders: the DEAN and the NOT DEAN. These two shall then battle, Thunderdome-style, to the death. Tina Turner will officiate. Thus has it been foretold, thus shall it be.

Now, we know who the DEAN is. (Or at least think we do.) But who shall be the NOT DEAN?

Perhaps we shall soon have our answer. The latest New Hampshire tracking poll shows Clark pulling even with Kerry in New Hampshire. Josh Marshall, reading the tea leaves, prepares the ritual oil to annoint Clark as the NOT DEAN. (Kaus, checking his file, agrees.) Kos, on the other hand, previously reviewed the bones and believes that the Thunderdome-method may be the wrong way to go. He hopes to pull off the difficult task of merging Dean and Clark, Voltron-Style.

As for me, well: Kerry had a recent surge in the nationwide polls, but he’s nearly kaput. Clark’s statements that he won’t be Dean’s running mate seem to foreclose Kos’s hope. And if Gephardt doesn’t win convincingly in Iowa . . . .

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Exquisite in Its Simplicity

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Via Pandagon, from the new Club for Growth ads in Iowa: a farmer says he thinks that “Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading …” before the farmer’s wife then finishes the sentence: “… Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs.” (here’s a link to the … Read more

“One Man’s Terrorist Is Another Man’s Freedom Fighter”

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(this is the first of what’s likely to be many posts on my “Terrorism in the 21st Century” class, which I’m taking for three hours a day for most of the month of January.)

The quotation in the headline is:
1) A popular cliche, whose original author or speaker is hard to pin down.

2) An example, for many people, of everything that is wrong with The Left.

3) A gross oversimplification. There are many terrorists who are manifestly not freedom fighters (obvious example: Osama bin Laden). There are also many freedom fighters who are manifestly not terrorists. (obvious examples: Vaclav Havel, Martin Luther King, George Washington.) Ignoring that, and implying that it’s all relative, is a great way to make people you think terrorism is okay and obscure a worthwile point.

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Post Of The Week*

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I don’t agree with everything Ezra Klein says here, not nearly. Nevertheless, I liked it so much that I’m going to break two of my blogging commandments** and tell you to read the whole thing. It’s one of the most original, thought-provoking, and snappiest pieces of writing on the overall U.S. political situation, that I’ve … Read more

Equal Time For Slapdowns.

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I’ve been waiting for Katherine to blog this (she’s the one of our triumvirate who found it first, after all), but I guess that she isn’t and I’m already starting to see grumblings that the Right isn’t jumping on this one en masse, so we might as well get going: Godwinization is Godwinization, folks. Ralph … Read more

You Gotta Believe

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Sad news in the world of sports: Tug McGraw, a relief pitcher for the Mets and Phillies, died yesterday of brain cancer. He was only 59. McGraw was before my time–I started watching in ’86, so I only know him from interviews and one of the Mets history videos I own (yes, I am a … Read more

Terror. Fear. Horror.

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Ed Schultz, proud knight of [insert nonjudgemental noun meaning “less conservative than Moe” here]ism, has gone national today in his quest to defeat the awful dragon of Right Wing Talk Radio: Longtime listeners, first-time players: Dems find radio voice (Registration requires an email but is otherwise free: go here for the guy’s website). No doubt … Read more

Ah, So That’s Why Zell’s Considered An Apostate.

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I have to admit, if I were a Democrat and I woke up this morning to discover that a sitting Democratic Senator had written an article for the Wall Street Journal that had the title Memo To Terry McAwful (registration required, but free), I’d be pretty pissed off, too. Miller’s retiring, sure, but that’s still just plain rude (not exactly dignified, either) – especially when the article’s supposedly trying to give advice to Miller’s nominal party. I suspect that it’s going to become a good deal more nominal, assuming that it hasn’t hit negative numbers yet.

Which is a shame, because there was something very interesting (and not particularly offensive) about one of his comments about Dean.

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Forty-Foot Jesus In Tulsa! Watch

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That’s the category that I’ve decided to file dumb-ass statements by religious types who should know better under. In this case statements like Pat Robertson’s that God is most assuredly letting him know that George W Bush is going to be re-elected by wide margins in November. It’d be worth a close election (as long … Read more

It is getting more interesting.

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This is probably more Katherine‘s purview, but the race for the Democratic nomination is getting tighter. Via Kos (who provides further analysis), a nationwide poll shows Dean to be at 22% (down from 26% in December) and Clark to be at 13% (up from 11%). The big winner, however, is Kerry, who has bounded from … Read more

Passing it on, Part Three.

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UPDATE: See also co-blogger Katherine‘s post, below.

Eugene Volohk has an excellent article on the First Amendment over at NROnline. (Also discussed at the Volohk Conspiracy here and here.) Kevin Drum sums up Volohk’s argument, and then adds his own thoughts:

Eugene’s argument about why judges have to interpret the First Amendment — it’s too vague and absolute to make sense in the real world — seems to me to apply to the entire strict construction school of constitutional law. The entire constitution is deliberately vague and assumes a broad societal consensus about its interpretation that the framers felt it was unnecessary to spell out in the document itself. Relying on black letter text just doesn’t work if the text itself has been deliberately left incomplete.

Well, not entirely. It’s true that the language of the U.S. Constitution is deliberately vague in some areas, but, by and large, the Constitution is not as hopelessly indeterminate as Kevin seems to suggest. It’s not all throwing bones and examining entrails, so long as one examines each passage in its historical context. . . .

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Libertarian Law Prof Makes Good

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Eugene Volokh strikes a blow for sensible argument and historical perspective, which liberals and conservatives alike could use more of these days….I don’t have much to add; it’s not so often that I can recommend something in the National Review without qualification.

Passing it along, Part Two

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Michael Totten tries his hand at political taxidermy, separating the “liberals” from the “leftists.” It’s an interesting piece, and worth reading (Matthew Stintson provides his take on Mr. Totten’s piece — also very much worth reading — here.)

Although I’d quibble with some of the particulars,* I think that Mr. Totten is correct when he argues that there’s a difference in kind, not merely degree, between, say, the DLC (“liberals,” in his view) and the folks at ANSWER (“leftists”). These people do not share the same worldview — indeed, in many ways the gulf is even greater than that between so-called neo- and paleo- conservatives. It’s a mistake to suggest otherwise by falsely placing them on a right-left (or, in this case, left-lefter) continuum.

von

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Passing it along

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The Guardian reports that the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, anticipates having British troops in Basra until “2006/2007.”

The Coalition’s occupation of Basra has thus far been a relative success. The British, who have 10,000 troops in Basra, suffered their last KIA in late August; the region is relatively untouched by the insurgency; and there are hopes among Iraqis that Basra will soon return to being Iraq’s Riviera. There are difficulties, certainly, and criticisms by the Shia majority, but, all in all, Basra is doing about as well as one could expect.

What does this mean? Well, if the British anticipate being in relatively-peaceful Basra for the next 2-3 years, it’s logical to assume that the Americans should* be in Iraq for at least that long — if not longer. Beware of Presidential candidates who won’t expressly concede as much, or who claim otherwise.

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Jessica’s Well Gives A Topic for Discussion:

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Resolved: This House (OK, this Blog) believes that the collective knowledge of the blogosphere is greater than the collective knowledge of professional journalists regardless of the subject. For my own part, I noted that I was pretty much in agreement with what poster Al said in comments, but I should note here that I don’t … Read more

They decided to change those names…

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… in that Muslim football tournament. For the record, I never particularly cared one way or the other if young people want to call their sports teams “Soldiers of Allah” or “Moujahideen” (in much the same way that I don’t particularly care if they wanted to call a team, say, the “Crusaders”); “Intifada” bothered me … Read more

Finally Saw Return of the King.

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What did I think of it? And in that very moment, away in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn. And as if in … Read more

It’s all about the Russ

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General Clark had a strong interview on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning. Key exchange on Iraq’s reconstruction: MR. RUSSERT: In terms of Iraq, you said this the other day. “When I am president, I will go over to Iraq and it won’t be to deliver turkeys in the middle of the night.” What does … Read more

This should go well.

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The Washington Post reports that “the United States this week will formally launch the handover of power to Iraq with the final game plan still not fully in place.” No problemo. I mean, “[b]esides figuring out who will rule in Saddam Hussein’s wake,” all the Iraqis will have to do during the next few months … Read more

Proselytizing

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While we’re on the subject of food, I thought I would mention that this is the world’s best cookbook. Cambodian food has a lot of similarities to Thai and Vietnamese but I think it’s better than either. The recipes are surprisingly easy, and surprisingly similar to the ones at the Boston restaurant that publishes the cookbook. I’ve bought three copies so far–one for myself, two as gifts–and 1/3 to 1/4 of the meals my husband and I cook regularly are now Cambodian. (Our friends make fun of us for this, but they like eating the results. And the Irish and Jewish traditions aren’t exactly known for their food.)

The main problem is finding some of the more obscure ingredients–you can substitute ginger for galangal, and regular soy sauce for mushroom soy sauce, easily enough, but it’s hard to get started if you can’t find lemongrass and impossible if you can’t find fish sauce. I’ve located almost everything in Boston and found the rest in New York, but if you live in a more suburban or rural place it might be harder. (And in some cases we just got lucky–the local ice cream parlor, of all places, stocks kaffir lime leaves. Bizarre.)

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