committee of the judiciary v. miers

the bush administration loses yet another case about executive power, and loses big.

i guess that whole "making up new privilege claims out of thin air strategy" doesn't work after all.

unseasonal conventions

it is true that kerry picked edwards as his VP on july 6th, but the democratic national convention that year started on july 26th. this year, the convention is a whole month later, starting on august 25th. if obama sticks to the kerry schedule of announcing his pick 20 days or so before the convention, the announcement will come next week. (but there's no reason to believe he will stick to that schedule)

the reason why this year's convention is so much later is because of the olympic games in beijing. usually the first party convention is held at the end of july and the second shortly thereafter. by tradition, the party who doesn't have the white house goes first. but if they followed the traditional calendar that would put the republican convention competing for media attention with the opening ceremonies. the republicans are well aware which media spectacle would win out in the war for ratings. so they wanted to schedule their convention after the games were over. the democrats didn't want to cede the month of august as republican convention anticipation month, so they moved their convention back until after the games too, leaving a week or so after the games end for the excitement (and headlines) to die down. that puts the democrats at the end of august and the republicans at the beginning of september and leaves a short two months for the post-convention election season.

the only thing i don't understand is why the olympic games only mucked up things this year. the summer olympics are every four years, putting them on exactly the same schedule as the american presidential election. you'd think the same logic that pushed both conventions way back this year would have applied every other presidential election year.

i'm actually relieved to be flying useless air

i think luftansa was once an option for our upcoming trip.

veep

the interesting thing about the democratic veepstakes is that liberal bloggers seem to have ruled out all of the possible contenders, at least all of the contenders that keep floating around by the media. who knows if they're actually what obama has in mind. the candidate himself has kept his thoughts on the issue a closely-guarded secret. even the campaign aids interviewed by the NYT admitted that they were "not sure" if obama was actually considering them.

meanwhile, aside from the few that i have a particular beef with (e.g. nunn, biden, and webb, in particular), i really don't feel like the race is as important as it is built up to be. i remain doubtful that the VP choice makes much difference at all in the long-term. for the last 8 years, we've been living in the cheney era, the era with perhaps the most influential vice president in the history of the country. but that's really a product of the extreme disinterest president bush seems to display in actual issues or policy making. it's unlikely to happen again under the next president. instead, obama or mccain's veep is likely to be a figurehead, presiding over the senate, but otherwise just waiting for the president to delegate something for him/her to do. you can argue that mccain's choice would be more important because he's older than dirt and could die in office, but when it comes to obama, i'm really not worried about him not surviving the term.

i've also long doubted the theory that a vice presidential choice can deliver a state to a ticket. if someone preferred mccain over obama, can you actually imagine that person switching to obama because his vice presidential nominee happens to come from the same state? likewise, i'm for obama even if mccain picked rick santorum or arlen spector as his running mate. it's hard to see how the home state could actually get me, or anyone i know, to switch. maybe i'm not typical. but is there any statistical study showing that the veep choice gives an advantage in the VP's home state?

anyway, in an attempt to nail down the possible electoral effects of a VP choice nate compares the contenders using their home state approval ratings as a benchmark (and then factoring in partisan ID for the state). it's an interesting idea, presuming that once people from other states get to know the candidate, their opinions will roughly match the people in the home state.

but i'm not sure if it's valid. there are still regional differences in this country. a personality that plays well in kansas might not do as well elsewhere. and it's not like the american public will be educated about the unknown VP nominee in any fair objective way. instead, the coverage will be filtered through the same crappy media we have for everything else. legislative and political accomplishments will take a back seat to stories about their family, their speaking style, what they wear (or don't wear), or something stupid they once said on camera.

but putting my objections to nate's assumptions aside, it is interesting that according to his ranking the strongest candidates for both parties are women. also the cross-party veep nomination that the media loves so much (hagel for obama, lieberman for mccain) turns out to be the worst choice for both candidate.

liar's paradox

my posting has dropped off a bit. it's basically a combination of lack of inspiration and extreme busyness (which tends to happen in the days before i leave the country for a couple of weeks).

of course, i'm also notoriously bad at predicting the frequency of my future posts. in my first year of blogging every time i did a blogging forecast it ended up being completely wrong. if i predicted sparse posting ahead, i'd get a burst of inspiration and somehow make the time for several new posts. or if i predicted posting as usual, i would not get around to posting for a few days. i don't write those predictions anymore. but i still think about them. and sometimes my thinking about the forecast slips out if you read a post closely enough. but even then they end up being completely wrong.

so now i'm gaming the system, suggesting that i probably won't blog as much in the first paragraph and then telling you that i'm always wrong about such things in the second. this time i can't lose! or maybe i can only lose.

bush on the big screen

i predict that everyone will be pissed off by the upcoming oliver stone bush bio pic.

but didn't that same movie already come out several years ago?

remember to wear a diaper when you go to a cheney speech

vice president cheney says no bathroom breaks for disabled veterans. so the disabled veterans cancel cheney's speech.

overstepping his bounds?

um, it's not petraeus' job to determine whether u.s. forces withdraw from iraq. we have civilian control of the military in this country (which is a good thing). that means the president tells the military what the goal is and the military carries those goals out. the commander in chief sets the overall strategy. members of the military decide how best to carry it out.

right now we have a commander-in-chief who seems to have the strategy of staying in iraq at all costs. but down the road, we may have a commander-in-chief with a different strategic vision. it seems likely that the next president will have the a goal of withdrawing all combat forces from iraq (minus some vaguely defined "residual force"). if that happens the military's only role would be to tell the president what is the best (least costly, safest, most practical, etc.) way to achieve that goal. general petraeus, and all the other generals and members of the military don't get to decide if the goal of leaving is a good or bad idea, except to the extent that they have their single vote in the presidential race like everyone else.

i guess petraeus' remarks could be read as critical of the idea of an inflexible timetable, not withdrawal as a goal. but no one is actually proposing a rigid schedule. obama has long called for a "responsible and phased" withdrawal which will be "directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government." if petraeus is trying to react to the obama plan, really he's just reacting to the media caricature of the plan rather than the plan itself.

UPDATE: a few hours after this post went up, i realized i forgot to put the link to the article i was commenting on in the first paragraph. the link is there now. i'm sorry for any confusion.

coming soon

with all the plug-in chargeable things people travel with these days (phones, laptops, music players) and rising energy prices, i wonder how long it will be before hotels start charging for energy usage. and, for that matter, how long will it be before cafes start charging for using their outlets?

transative

could mccain's position on iraq be any more contradictory? as atrios summarized it:

Maliki likes Obama's timeline.

McCain likes Maliki's timeline.

McCain thinks Obama's timeline will cause the destruction of America as we know it.

and this is on the issue that the guy is making the centerpiece of his campaign!

five

take that frank!

bush is batman!

wow. the wall street journal really will publish any crazy argument so long as it comes down in favor of george w. bush.

on the other hand...



(video via mithras. though i had to dig up the embed myself. so let's call it a draw)

pardon question

this comment did raise a good question. does the president have to name the person he pardons? with all the talk of bush issuing blanket pardons for the torture committed under his administration, wouldn't he have to out the anonymous CIA and military personnel who have done the torturing?

on the other hand, it's probably more likely that bush would just pardon the people in his administration who authorized the torture and ignore the lower-level people who carried out the order. the higher ups are always the one who get the parachute.

but even with a pardon, if i were a bush administration policy maker, i wouldn't be planning any foreign vacations after january 20th.

obama abroad

obama's trip to germany, actually his entire trip abroad, is just not that interesting to me. the trip is nothing but a campaign event. i don't think obama having many real (i.e. not completely contrived) interactions with people on these trips. nor do i think that getting the red carpet treatment as you travel in a VIP bubble is any way to learn anything about the local conditions in a region.

this really isn't about obama getting new foreign policy experience, it's about making him look presidential and countering the charges of the mccain campaign that his lack of foreign visits obama less knowledgeable. the charge is laughable, IMHO. if anything, i think mccain's ignorance of the situation in iraq, his lack of knowledge about the history of the surge and the anbar awakening, his inability to distinguish between sunni and shia, his lack of awareness of who iran supports and opposes in the region, etc., all probably stems from his own trips in a VIP bubble. trips in which he is surrounded by aids and yes-men, meeting only with people who already agree with him, or the military's political liaisons, intent on keeping their senatorial visitors supportive of the military's efforts.

the only thing about obama's trip that i find at all interesting is mccain's lame-ass attempts to respond to the trip this week. it's kind of funny when you think about it. for weeks mccain was slamming obama for his lack of visits to iraq, building that fact up as if it were some kind of major deal. so then when obama calls his bluff and schedules the very trip that mccain had been demanding he take, mccain is left to whine about how much attention obama is getting on his trip. well maybe if the mccain campaign hadn't built up an iraq visit as such an important thing, people wouldn't have been paying as much attention to this visit. it's funny to see mccain's ridiculous obama-sucks-because-he-doesn't-visit-iraq attack turn around and bite him in the ass like this. mccain's stupid argument from weeks ago has yielded his opponent a solid week of positive news coverage.

u.s. expanding program to admit iraqis who worked for the u.s.

this is really good news. one of the many shameful things about the way the u.s. has conducted the iraq war is it's treatment of iraqi refugees. the american invasion created one of the biggest refugee crises in the world, and yet for years the bush administration refused to permit any but a small handful of iraqi refugees into the united states. the bush administration resisted taking in iraqi refugees, i think, because they didn't want to admit the scope of the crisis they created.

but the administration's resistance was even more inexcusable when you consider the case of iraqis who assist the american effort. thousands of iraqis help americans in iraq every day, many working as translators. the u.s. depends upon them and those iraqis often risk their lives and the lives of their families just by doing their job. a lot of them have been forced to flee the country because of their connection to the u.s. and, until this announcement, the u.s. has largely turned these iraqi allies away.

the current reversal is not perfect. the program is capped at 5,000 "iraqi ally" refugees a year (although the number counts the iraqis who worked for the u.s. the refugee visa would allow them to bring their families. which means that the 5,000 number could result in a much higher in terms of the number of people). it's not clear to me why we have to turn away any iraqi who has worked for the u.s. government or american contractors working in iraq, and who has to flee the country because of that work. if they stick their neck out for this country, the least we can do is try to protect them. and i say that as a person who doesn't approve of a lot of stuff the u.s. is currently doing in iraq. i still think we owe it to them.

anyway, i might as well take this opportunity to plug the list project. long time readers of this blog might remember kirk, who is both the founder and director of the list project. TLP has appeared in my "plugs" links on the right for several months now. but if you're a blogger (or use any social networking site like facebook or myspace), you can joint the netroots section of the list project to help support their efforts.

the poor guy just can't seem to get a break

d'oh!

kansas never looked so good

(via)

and speaking of using the surge in ways that don't make sense...

i'm not surprised that mccain doesn't know a fairly basic fact about the surge and the anbar awakening, but shame on CBS for editing its interview to bury mccain's cluelessness. that really is inexcusable.

surge protection

i was going to write a post about the surge, more specifically how the right seems to be using "the surge" in a way that ultimately doesn't make much sense. but before i could get my thoughts together matthew yglesias goes ahead and writes a post that encapsulates what i was thinking far more coherently than i ever could.

irony

as NPR has pointed out, the offenses that salim hamdan has been charged with (aiding terrorist and conspiracy) are being called "war crimes" by the u.s. government. but they do not constitute "war crimes" under the geneva conventions. (if they did, every mafia trial would be a war crimes tribunal). oddly, the people who held hamdan seem to be the ones who committed war crimes if you're looking at the international standards the u.s. championed during the nuremberg trials.

spinning what maliki wants

in case you've lost track of the maliki-endorsing-obama's-withdrawal-timetable kerfuffle, here's what happened:

over the weekend der spiegel published an interview with iraqi prime minister nouri al-maliki in which the magazine recounts as follows:

When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded "as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned." He then continued: "US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

thereafter, centcom (i.e. the u.s. military's central command for the region) issued a statement from ali dabbagh denying that maliki endorsed obama's 16-month timetable.

some used that statement to claim that maliki had backed away from his prior remarks, but really maliki hadn't said anything at all. instead, the american military got one of maliki's spokespersons to claim that the comment was incorrect. note the statement didn't say how it was incorrect, or what an accurate translation would be. as ben smith said "It's almost a convention of politics that when a politician says he was misquoted, but doesn't detail the misquote or offer an alternative, he's really saying he wishes he hadn't said what he did, or that he needs to issue a pro-forma denial to please someone."

but then it gets a little more complicated. der spiegel stood by its account of the conversation. indeed, it had a recording of the entire interview in arabic. spiegel released an interview transcript and gave copies of the original recording to the new york times. although the times buried the revelation in the 16th paragraph of a long article on iraq, it did print it's own independent translation of the maliki statement:

"Obama's remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq....Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.

which makes it rather clear that the iraqi prime minister thinks that obama's plan is "suitable" for the situation in iraq. indeed, that last sentence looks like a pretty classic arabic turn of phrase. starting a sentence with "who wants" really means "he who wants" (or more colloquially "anyone who wants") what maliki seemed to be saying is whoever wants to remove foreign forces the quickest has the best assessment of the situation in iraq. that's not just an endorsement of obama's plan. it can also be read as saying that obama displays a better understanding of the situation in iraq by virtue of his plan to withdraw u.s. forces.

but it gets even better. remember ali dabbagh, that maliki spokesperson used by the u.s. military to claim that maliki's remarks were translated wrong? check out what he told AP:

Iraq's government spokesman is hopeful that U.S. combat forces could be out of the country by 2010.

Ali al-Dabbagh made the comments following a meeting in Baghdad on Monday between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama, who arrived in Iraq earlier in the day.

under obama's plan, the 16 months starts in january 2009. count that out yourself and you'll find 2010 happens to be the year that the obama-ordered withdrawal would end. so even the spokesperson who denied the accuracy of maliki's endorsement is now stating that the prime minister endorses a plan that, at the very least, comes within a few months of it.

handy tip

if you're trying to negotiate legal immunity for your armed forces with a foreign government, make those armed forces stop killing the relatives of members of that government.

last month, u.s. forces accidentally killed maliki's cousin, now this. i can only imagine how maliki's reaction was to the immunity proposal just after that happened.

cool jerusalem

months ago, when i first told people we were going to israel in august, the response was often: august? it's going to be really hot.

but for the last month or so I've been checking
the weather in jerusalem every day. with only a few exceptions, it has generally been hotter in philly than in j'lem. today, for example, it's 97F/34C in philly with swamp-level humidity. my iphone reports that the high today was 29C, which translates to 84F. when i first started my weather-checks i had to remind myself that our arrival date was still a ways away. but now we're down to two weeks and even the extended forecast consistently shows al-quds at or below the local temperature.

i'm not saying the weather will be comfortable there. but it still is looking like a step up from this swamp.

maliki approves of obama plan

like marc ambinder, i am curious to see how the mccain campaign deals with the fact that maliki endorsed obama's withdrawal plan.

their first crack at it is that maliki's "domestic politics require him to be for us getting out." but that just begs the question why iraqi domestic politics could require maliki to take that position? that almost sounds like an admission that the vast majority of iraqis want a rapid u.s. withdrawal. and even if maliki is only taking that position for political reasons, is mccain now rejecting the bush administration's position that the u.s. is in iraq only at the invitation of its democratically elected government?

dr. horrible's sing-a-long blog

doctor horrible is here!

more info is here, or just skip the info and watch the first episode. it's joss-freakin'-whedon, you know.

(via dave)

god has told us we're like an electrified pickle?

i didn't realize that being a christian makes you glow red and let off smoke.

(via)

all about oil

laura rozen has a post about something i've been mulling over all day. could the bush administration's sudden decision to send a high-ranking diplomat to a meeting with an iranian representative and to open a diplomatic office in tehran be explained by the high oil prices?

a lot of different things are contributing to recent rise in oil, but one clear factor is the market's fear of an attack on iran and the iranian response. i mentioned before, one of the few ways that american politicians can help lower oil prices is to stop talking about an attack against iran. could it be that the bush administration is doing not just that, but also going further, making signs of rapprochement to try to sooth the market? in the few days since the news of this new diplomatic stance came out, the price of oil fell about $18 a barrel. does that mean it's working?

how 'bout that?

i can actually applaud something the bush administration is doing with regards to iran. it never made sense why there could be an american interest section in havana but there couldn't be one in tehran.

the trade

i must admit, i don't understand why israel would trade live prisoners for dead bodies. i realize that hezbollah didn't reveal that they were dead until they showed up at the border with the coffins, but couldn't the israeli government demand proof that the soldiers were alive as part of the negotiations? or make the whole deal contingent on the soldiers being alive?

in any case, the deal is just another reminder that israel's decision to attack lebanon in 2006 was just a tragic waste of life. right from the start, it was obvious that the attack couldn't possibly accomplish its goals while costing the lives of hundreds of people. meanwhile, israel probably could have had the same deal it got yesterday in july 2006. the only difference is that mr. goldwasser and regev may have still been alive back then.

drinking liberally

i think i missed posting the plug last week. i really hope i remember to do it this week.

sound mind

if i ever get around to writing a will, i think i'm going to request that the westboro baptist church protest my funeral. it seems like they'll protest just about anyone. if they're not yelling at mourners on the street outside my funeral, i'd probably feel left out.

or at least i would if i weren't dead.

the quest for the missing piece

at dan's suggestion i saw the quest for the missing piece (imdb) at the PIGLFF yesterday.

"quest" is a documentary presented like a fairy tale. it's the tale of oded lotan, a gay israeli living in europe, who examines the practice of circumcision. lotan speaks to his family, quizzing his mother why she had him circumcised and his sister about why she decided to have it done on his nephews. he speaks with a russian immigrant to israel, now a soldier in the israeli army, who decides to get circumcised as an adult. and he visits an israeli support group for people who decided not to have their sons circumcised. he talks to psychologists and rabbis, attends a muslim circumcision ceremony, and talks to jews married to gentiles about their decision. lotan also tries to track down his own moyel, the man who circumcised him when he was an infant and then tries to find the spot where his foreskin was buried.

it's a pretty personal film with a fairly light heart (and mercifully is not very graphic). even though it raises the question of why so many people do it, the film doesn't preach for or against the practice of circumcision. one of the other people leaving my screening complained that the film "wasn't fair" because it didn't discuss the health benefits of circumcision. but it also didn't discuss the allegations that circumcision cuts down (heh) on sexual pleasure either. i don't think the movie was trying to be an examination of the pros and cons of the practice, it was more about lotan's attempts to find out why people choose to do it. the way that this strange practice is associated with a feeling of belonging and tradition, and also how social pressure in israel perpetuates the practice even among reluctant parents. for the film maker, the real issue was what business he has being circumcised if it means bonding himself to a tradition that ultimately rejects homosexuals such as himself.

SOFA dream dies

so the bush-era SOFA is officially dead. the current mandate for u.s. troops to in iraq expires the end of the year. so technically, they need to negotiate something if american forces are to stay beyond december 31, 2008. it's going to be hard to get even a temporary extension past the iraqi parliament unless it also includes a timetable for withdrawal, something the bush administration won't do.

of course, this is pretty much where we were last year. but the troops are still there. how did they do it? easy, maliki agreed to an extension but he never submitted it to parliament for ratification. which means that the current mandate is invalid under the iraq constitution (you know the one that this country wrote) and the presence of u.s. troops is already illegal. but aside from a bunch of pissed off iraqi M.P.s, everyone else has just ignored the issue and instead pretends that next year is the big problem. i expect by the end of the year, the legalities of the american mandate will once again be swept under the rug.

with the death of bush's SOFA dream and given my last post, does this now mean that an israeli attack on iran is now going to happen? i still don't think it will. but it does make it a little more likely.

an israeli strike against iran and the SOFA

another factor cutting against an israeli attack against iran is the bush administration's efforts to secure a status of forces agreement with iraq.

as i've said before, israel can't attack iran without american acquiescence because the israeli planes would have to cross through iraqi airspace to reach iran, airspace that the u.s. currently controls. but right now the bush administration is trying to arm-twist the iraqi government to agree to a status of forces agreement. the SOFA under negotiation deals with a lot of issues, including whether the american military will continue to have "iraqi permission" to control iraq's airspace. an attack on iran is not a popular idea with the maliki government, a government that has close ties to tehran. and having israeli warplanes fly across iraq to bomb another muslim country isn't popular with the general iraqi population either. and this year is an election year in iraq, with an iraqi public solidly against the american presence in the country. which is why iraqi officials are quick to deny rumors that israelis already are practicing in iraqi airspace. even the suggestion that they might be helping the israelis attack iran is politically toxic.

so if israel did go ahead and attack iran, it would further damage the bush administration's chances of getting a SOFA with iraq. which is yet another reason why the u.s. would be reluctant to give the okay for such an attack. at least until a SOFA is completed.

maybe that's why the bush administration wanted the SOFA to be done by the end of july. but given how badly the negotiations have gone for the bush administration, i don't think they'll finish before the iraqi elections.

mccain's top economic advisor speaks about the economy

collapsing housing market? lost your job? unable to keep up with rising oil prices? unable to buy food?

shut up whiners!

red cross finds war crimes

as i've said before, if i were a high-ranking bush administration official, i wouldn't be planning to take any trips abroad after bush leaves office.

sucks

when we went out to minnesota for the 4th of july, we flew useless air. it was a three hour flight and they didn't give us any food. nothing. nada. at least i didn't see any. they used to give us bags of pretzels, but for years the pretzel packages have been shrinking. each time i fly, the pretzel bag got a little lighter. so perhaps they did give us pretzels, it's just the pretzels have finally gotten so small they're no longer visible to the naked eye. maybe they sprayed us with a fine pretzel mist.

the lack of apparent pretzels was in addition to the signs we saw about the new fee-for-checked-luggage policy. and the pretzels themselves were a change from the older tradition of getting an entire meal. then they were selling meals. now you can't even buy one. at least you couldn't on our flight. maybe they sprayed us with a snack box mist as well.

so what's my point? flying with american carriers sucks, and useless air seems to be the suckiest of the sucks. oh, and with rising fuel costs, the suck is getting worse.

obama/galactus '08!

medium lobster profiles the contenders in the democratic party veepstakes.

"apparently digitally altered"

i'm guessing that missile #3 (or rather, missile #2, reading from right to left) failed to fire--you can see the launcher with unlaunched missile in the bottom picture. the iranians didn't want to admit that their test was anything but a total success, so they turned to photoshop.

i knew it!

over is right. and science proves the simpsons to be wrong.

(via sir oolius)

FISA obama and consultants

yesterday the senate voted to cover up approximately four hundred felonies committed by president bush. obama voted for the cover up. clinton, much to her credit, voted against it.

what this actually made me think about is the pernicious effects of campaign consultants. last february, when a similar FISA bill came before congress, both clinton and obama were campaigning in the DC area as part of the "potomac primary." obama made a big show of taking a few hour-long break from his campaigning to go and vote against the FISA measure (to his credit, IMHO). clinton, on the other hand, skipped the vote. at the time, the official narrative was that clinton was still viewing herself as the front-runner and was trying to position herself for the general election whereas obama was trying to knock down her presumed lead by playing to the base of the party. i don't know whether the narrative was true, but it had "political consultant" written all over it.

so fast forward to this week. clinton's no longer running for president, she doesn't have those consultants whispering in her ear. and so, i'm guessing, yesterday's vote reflects what she really thinks. obama, on the other hand, has clinched the nomination and is still under the consultants' spell. that's what i think his vote was, a simple political calculation based on what so-called "experts" keep telling him.

the big problem is that i have no respect for the judgment of these "experts." it was probably on their advice that clinton voted for the iraq war in 2002. they urged her to vote for the war to keep herself viable, to avoid the burn felt by politicians who voted against the gulf war in 1991 after that war ended quickly and became extremely popular with the public. that's why every senator with aspirations for the presidency voted for the iraq war. but instead the war vote ended up being a liability. the consultants don't necessarily reflect any deep insights about politics. they just reflect the common wisdom among wonks in washington that i think is deeply out of touch with the mood of the country right now.

if obama had voted against the FISA bill, if he had supported a filibuster as he promised he would, or if he went further and spoke out against the bill, i don't think he would have lost any votes. a lot of the public is only vaguely aware of the FISA thing. the potential obama voters who are following this tend to be the ones who most hate the bill. indeed, at least two of my friends now say that obama has lost their vote.

i'm not going that far, there's never been a candidate that i've supported 100%. it's always the lesser of two evils for me. even after this FISA sellout obama is still clearly better than mccain (who publicly supports the FISA bill, but skipped yesterday's vote), and so it still won't be hard for me to vote for obama. while i wonder if brendan and richard will really follow through with their threat if the polls are close in early november, i do think that obama made a stupid choice on a purely political level.

though i never saw obama as anything but a flawed politician who i happen to prefer over some other flawed politicians, one of the reasons that i wanted him to win the presidency is because i was hoping his election would help to discredit political consultants. as i mentioned above, i really do think that clinton voted in favor of the 2002 authorization to use military force because her consultants told her that she had to if she ever wanted to be president. to have someone who spoke out against the iraq war and made his opposition to the war the centerpiece of his campaign beat her and then go on to win the presidency would illustrate that the consultants are wrong and should not be listened to. his election not only would get a democrat in the white house, but also would show the consultant class to be the fools that they are.

of course, that hope was always kind of naive. the consultant class is never discredited. no matter how much bad advice they give politicians still give them a ton of money for more bad advice. but maybe it would have at least broken the prevailing wisdom among consultants that a democrat has to go right on national security issues in order to remain viable, that's the kind of advice that leads to stupid destructive wars. obama's FISA vote yesterday completely undermines that hope of mine. when he's elected, the consultants can now point to the FISA vote and claim it "neutralized" his anti-war stance.

which is why, even if you put aside the fact that this new law undermines the fourth amendment and effectively covers up president bush's criminal behavior, i am still terribly disappointed in barack.

the obvious solution

clinton donors are reluctant to donate to obama and obama donors are reluctant to donate to pay clinton's debt.

maybe clinton donors should pay off clinton's debt and obama supporters should just donate to obama. it may not do anything about reconciliation and it doesn't answer my question about why anyone would want to contribute to pay off the debt of a politician who is no longer in the race, but it seems like the obvious solution here.

free at last

jonah's right. i remember my days of bondage that summer that i working at a school for autistic children as part of my high school's service requirement. then, a year or two later, i got myself enslaved again, working at a school for the deaf in the last month of my senior year.

i guess in jonah's mind it must be a crime to go to a quaker high school. at least those dark days are finally behind me.

sign the petition

health care for america now is pushing for universal health care in the u.s. neither presidential candidate is proposing a truly universal health plan in this election (though obama's health care plan is closer than mccain's), so we need to pressure the powers that be to do the right thing.

sign up to help.

(via susie with a nod to levana)

checkmated itself

robert kaplan on why an israeli strike against iran is unlikely to happen before inauguration day.

(via laura rozen)

the crazy man

a handy chart to illustrate why joe lieberman is talking like a complete lunatic these days.

but they do probably have more inflatable dingies in the persian gulf than us. quick! we must start a crash program to close the inflatable dingies gap!!!

statics and tactegy

i kind of missed all the hubbub about obama's alleged flip-flop on iraq because i was traveling when it happened. after both reading and seeing the video of the "refining" comment, it's quite a spin to call it a flip-flop. "refining" a policy is not the same thing as scrapping it. i basically share obama's puzzlement over the reaction to his remarks. while obama has definitely changed positions on other things (e.g. FISA and campaign financing), his statements from the last week are completely consistent with his other statements about iraq over the past few months: that he is committed to withdrawing all combat troops from iraq, that he will start the withdrawal immediately upon taking office, and that the withdrawal will continue as quickly as is possible for a safe pullout.

nevertheless john mccain is seizing on this and running with it, even if it means lying about what obama really said. and the media has mostly gone alone with it.

but the interesting that is that mccain's interpretation of obama's remarks depends upon his inability to tell strategy (the goal of withdrawing from iraq) from tactics (how to carry out that withdrawal). for all of mccain's vaunted military experience, it's remarkable that he doesn't understand such a basic distinction.

funny

i got new glasses today that are slightly different from my old glasses. very slightly, slightly enough that the others in my office haven't visibly noticed. but it's new to me which means that for the next few weeks i'll think that i look funny. of course, i always look funny. but that was the old funny. i was used to the old funny. today there's a new funny and it freaks me out every time i walk past a mirror.

in a few days, of course, i'll get used to it. the new funny will become the old funny, like a well-broken-in shoe funny. and so it won't seem funny anymore.

then a few months from now, i'll see a photo of myself in yesterday's glasses and think "i looked funny back then."

reducing the deficit with fairy dust

this really represents a new level of cluelessness by the mccain campaign. if you define "victory" in iraq as "not leaving" then there is no "victory savings," there's a "victory cost"--the cost of keeping thousands of troops in a country despite the wishes of the people who live there.

i guess that's what mccain means when he says he doesn't know much about economics.

projet de vanité

it's really hard for me to see this union of the mediterranean as anything but a vanity project for nicolas sarkozy. there doesn't seem to be a pressing need for such an organization. it's just a way to give turkey membership in a union that isn't the european union, the membership the turks actually want, and to cut out the U.K. and germany from a new international organization.

sarkozy says those two countries have to be excluded because they just don't seem to border the mediterranean. don't blame sarzoky, blame geography. except that the U.K. is technically a mediterranean power because it still has sovereignty over gibraltar. also, sarkozy wants to include jordan, which doesn't border the mediterranean.

but jordan has to be included, because sarkozy really wants to use the MU to solve the israeli-palestinian conflict. proving once again that the I/P issue is the #1 source for presidential vanity projects.

don't mess with the maha

maha and khalid finally make the big time!

actually, i thought the pollak piece was pretty far off the mark. it's quite a stretch to call al-kitaab, part one "arabic propaganda." a lot of pollak's criticisms of the book and his course are almost laughable. for example, pollak writes:

The DVD that comes with "Al-Kitaab" includes footage of Nasser's mass rallies in Cairo -- including slogans in Arabic and French such as "Brother Nations in Struggle, We Are By Your Side." These scenes of totalitarian rage are fondly described by the narrator as "dreams of his youth."

it's been a few years since i saw the video (in my day it was on VHS, not DVD), but if i remember correctly the bit he is describing is when khalid's father is talking about his past. note that khalid's father is one of the characters. he's not a "narrator" in the sense that he's has the voice of objectivity. he's just a character telling his story as he sees it.

anyway, at one point abu khalid does talk about the "dreams of his youth" and there is a cut to a nasser rally from the 1960s. what apparently went over pollak's head is the sense that the character is reminiscing about the naive dreams of his youth. when i heard the remark it seemed to be about the disappointment that followed after nasser came to power, despite all the promise that khalid's dad saw in him when he was a young supporter of the revolution. and, in any case, it's really hard to see that brief scene and conclude that the book is trying to indoctrinate a new generation of nasserites.

other parts of his critique aren't much stronger. pollak says "Most maps of the Middle East in 'Al-Kitaab' do not include Israel, though a substantial minority of Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, are native Arabic speakers" actually, i think there's only one map in that entire book that covers that part of the middle east and the country names are not labeled. in a nearby page, there is a list of the names of "all arab countries" which does list "palestine" but not israel. then again, the list also doesn't include, turkey, iran, chad, or michigan, all places with a "substantial minority" of arabic-speakers.

really the only place in "al-kitaab, part one" where they address the israeli-palestinian situation at all is in the last chapter. but pollak says his class skipped that one. what kind of a secret indoctrination program is that!?!?

in any case, the skipped chapter, chapter 20, tells the story of maha's mother, who was a palestinian refugee during the 1967 war. it's worth noting that "al-kitaab" is designed to teach students arabic so that they can go out and read stuff beyond the story of maha and khalid. if you're going to prepare students for that, you need to deal with the israeli-palestinian situation somehow--"al-kitaab chose to do that through the life story of maha's mother. and yet, political reality makes that extremely difficult. there's really no way they could do it without having someone criticize them for whatever they say or don't say.

pollak's piece is a case-in-point. first pollak criticizes the book because the palestinian refugee character says "My childhood was taken from me!" but what else did pollak want her to say? a lot of refugees did have their childhood taken from them. if you leave out that element, it would look like a whitewash and you'd have other people criticizing the book for minimizing the suffering of a displaced people.

next pollak writes: "Over mournful music on the DVD, she talks about returning to Jerusalem, as if she were a refugee, but the images suggest that she left voluntarily after the Six-Day War" first, the story makes it pretty clear that she was forced out, as a lot of people were. pollak seems to be confusing the stock period footage on the video with the actual story. second, even if her family left voluntarily in 1967, they wouldn't be able to return now. only the people who stayed were given citizenship. why is it propaganda for a woman who spent her childhood in jerusalem and who now cannot return to speak longingly about that city? if she spoke differently, wouldn't that be propaganda? it seems to me that most palestinians who left, voluntarily or not, want to return, but can't. ignoring that would be a lot closer to propaganda.

pollak continues: "The fact that Israel also claims Jerusalem as its capital is ignored." that's true. it's also irrelevant to the story. maha's mother didn't mention the fact that the palestinian authority wants east jerusalem to be its capital either. nor, for that matter, did she name the capital cities of jordan or syria. the piece wasn't about capital cities of the middle east, it was about one woman's childhood experience.

pollak also criticizes the three films shown to his class. i've seen two of he films he mentions: west beirut and destiny.

west beirut is a coming of age story set in the midst of the lebanese civil war. the film doesn't take any side in the conflict, nor does it even get into the politics behind it. it's all from the point of view of a small boy who is trying to make his way across a town divided by sectarian militias. none of those militias are portrayed as heroes. nevertheless, pollak claims it "cast christians as the prime bad guys." actually, it doesn't. the only "bad guy" in "west beirut" is the war itself.

pollak's critique of "destiny" is even more flimsy. that film is a musical about the philosopher averroes, an arab philosopher who lived in 12th century andolusia. "destiny" is a thin metaphor for the struggle against islamists in the modern arab world as it portrays averroes' clashes with the fundamentalists of his time. you'd think this film would be right up pollak's alley. if anything it is anti-islamic fundamentalists propaganda. but while he acknowledges that the film is "nuanced" he nevertheless concludes that it is is all part of an anti-western indoctrination campaign because "the film omitted the fact that it was only through the Hebrew transcription of Averroes's writings by Jewish scholars in Egypt that his works were preserved for posterity." yes, that's right, because the film didn't mention an event involving jews, it should not be shown in university classrooms. never mind that the event in question (the preservation of averroes' writings) took place after the events depicted in the film. no doubt pollak has issues with "raiders of the lost ark" because it makes no mention of the shoah.

(via)

joe franken

turkey flight

welcome to cold turkey day! the transition week preceding my caffeine-free month ends this morning, which means no more caffeine for me at all until i board that plane for tel aviv.

to celebrate both cold turkey day and independence day, i'm flying to beautiful st. peter, minnesota, the cradle of decaffeinated liberty. my last few trips to MN have been in the winter. this time i'll be in the land of 10,00 mosquito breeding pools during a season that we can go outside!

and so the blogging forecast for the next few days is: awesome. the important thing is to keep checking back here to keep my hit numbers inflated. remember to space your visits out, leaving more than 20 minutes between them, so that sitemeter treats you as a new "unique visitor." i'm not sure why i'm supposed to care about hit counts, i don't advertise here so there's no payola involved. but bloggers are all obsessed with hit counts. and hey, i'm a blogger! Q.E.D.

in any case, if you're a united statesian have a happy holiday weekend. if not, enjoy the regular work week, suckers!

upyernoz really might have nabbed the unibomber

i happened to be in the same country as ted kaczynski when he was captured, so i must have had something to do with catching him.

dammit!

outed by the dabbler.

silencio

as you've probably noticed, haloscan (the service i use for my comments) is down. so let me take this opportunity to have my first ever open thread.

this exclusive open thread offer will expire whenever haloscan starts working again.

the price of threatening iran

others have said it before, but it's worth saying again: if you really want to do something concrete to stop the rising price of oil, stop threatening to attack iran. there's already a premium on the price of oil just based on the fear that israel or the u.s. will attack that country. the fact that israel was practicing a long distance bombing last week helped push the price up to a new record.

any politician who really gives a shit about the people who can't afford to drive to work anymore should stop being so irresponsible.

going down the list

the kerfuffle over wesley clark's "attack" on mccain's war record is a perfect example of how mindlessly stupid the media's coverage of this race is. but the attack wasn't just driven by the press. it was there because the mccain campaign kept pushing it. i think digby's right that this vastly reduces the chances that clark will be obama's VP.

and now the mccain campaign is trying the same trick on jim webb. are they just going down obama's short list, trying to tar each one with this flimsy "scandal"? would anyone be surprised if they try to pin it on kathleen sebelius tomorrow?

drinking liberally

there i'll be. everyone's invited.

tonight mithras is buying. just tell the waitress you're on his tab and slip out before he notices.

war crime?

why is an attack on a war ship a war crime? i'm not saying that i approve of the cole attack. i don't at all. but a "war crime" is something that violates the conventions of war. the terms usually refers to attacks against civilians or abuse of prisoners, neither of which were involved in the cole attack. if you make an attack on a warship a war crime, you're essentially criminalizing war.

not that i would particularly mind if war were criminalized. except that it would mean a lot of stuff that the u.s. does right now would be a war crime too. if blowing up a warship is a war crime? why isn't "shock and awe"?

waiting it out

this is how an election is stolen.

last march, there was an election in zimbabwe. exit polls suggested that the opposition, led by morgan tsvangirai, received over 50% of the votes. the government of robert mugabe stalled for a while. first they didn't comment, then they claimed that tsvangirai had received more votes than mugabe, but less than 50%, so there had to be a runoff. however, they took over a month to release the "official" results. during that time the ballots were under the exclusive control of mugabe's government. it wasn't all that surprising that when the official tally was announced in early may, tsvangirai ended up with only 48% of the vote so the government could schedule a run-off.

as expected, the run-off happened last week and was a total sham. but what really surprised me was reading this line in this morning's new york times:

Mr. Tsvangirai won 48 percent of the vote to Mr. Mugabe’s 43 percent in the first round of the presidential election on March 29.

two months ago, when the 48% number was first announced, newspapers would report the number only in the larger context of the dispute over those numbers. indeed when the nytimes first reported about the official numbers, it noted that those figures were contested and that the opposition claimed an outright victory. now, in this follow-up story months later, the old controversy has fallen away. previous doubts aside, the 48% figure is now reported as fact.

mugabe got a lot of heat for the suspicious late announcement of the march election results. he's getting a lot of heat now about the run-off, where he banned tsvangirai from engaging in any electioneering activities, caused him to flee the country during the campaign period, had government thugs maim and kill opposition supporters and their families, and generally made things so bad that tsvangirai dropped out just days before the run-off election. but the lesson of the first round is that mugabe just has to wait it out. today's article notes the criticism's that mugabe's victory last week "fell short" and "did not represent the will of the people of Zimbabwe." but a few months from now, we'll probably just read an article saying that mugabe won a democratic election with 85% of the vote.