JUSIPER
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Jury notes in the Libby trial
Sometimes the trivia of democracy can bring a tear to your eye.
11:56 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thank you Eighth Circuit!
Remember when Madonna asked Dick Tracy whether he wants to frisk her? There's a whole lot more of that coming.
11:52 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sad
The return of Jimmy Fallon. Jimmy Kimmel must be ecstatic.
3:41 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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The owls are not what they seem
Alito is assumed to be an utter ideologue, but people really wonder about Roberts, one of the Bush's primary attorneys in the Florida post-election in 2000. His vote in the Phillip Morris case makes Douglas Kmiec of Slate fear that there may be much worse to come:
Philip Morris is notable for reasons beyond its clear unclarity. Consider how the court split. Before this opinion, no one knew where Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito would line up on this issue. Limits on punitive damages may be a sound idea, but it is a bedrock conservative principle that legislatures, not judges, make these policy calls. For originalists who look to the Constitution's text, the discovery of limits on punitive damages in the due process clause is of dubious pedigree. Due process, after all, is not due substance. It might have been supposed that advocates of judicial restraint—er, umpires hoping not to be noticed during a ballgame—would be uncomfortable signing onto this judicially inventive enterprise, no matter how good an idea punitive damage limits are as a matter of policy.
Yet Roberts and Alito were in the limits-imposing majority (along with Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter). One small consolation, perhaps, is that the majority opinion proclaims that it is not actually deciding whether the award against Philip Morris "is 'grossly excessive,' " but only that the Constitution's procedural limits were not observed. This is of course a legal fig leaf, but hey, that's what fig leafs are for.
Meanwhile, the court's diehard originalists, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, dissented, as did the more liberally minded Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ginsburg—who should be made an honorary member of the Federalist Society for her dissent—wanted to accord "more respectful treatment to the proceedings and dispositions of state courts." Thomas (but curiously not Scalia) emphasized that the Constitution as written (if not as interpreted) does not constrain the size of punitive-damage awards. [...]
Is it disappointing that in this instance Roberts and Alito boarded the Constitution-can-mean-anything train? Yes. Every disregard of principle here is likely to be played back elsewhere. Well, at least neither Roberts nor Alito actually wrote for the majority. And nearly $80 million in punitive damages was an absurd sum, even for what Stevens described as "a campaign of deceit in distributing a poisonous and addictive substance to thousands." Stevens, of course, was referring to big tobacco, not the majority's ill-considered, but equally deceptive, extra-constitutional rationale.
1:11 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, February 21, 2007
How to charm a blogger
Ask Bill Richardson. He's got retail politics down cold. Too bad he doesn't come across nearly as well on television.
4:25 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Bush for sodomy after all!
It's actually not contrary to his philosophy. The president is above the law, and rich Americans have always been permitted to sin in foreign countries.
12:31 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Seminary professor: Jesus wouldn't vote for Rudy
Very true, Matt Friedman of Wesley Biblican Seminary!
So tell us you'll nominate the likes of Scalia, Roberts, and Alito to the Supreme Court, and we will line up behind you no matter your substantial views that run counter to the Judeo-Christian ethic, he and his handlers are undoubtedly thinking.
Well, I won't.
And I bet I speak for hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions when I say that I cannot in good conscience vote for a man with significant moral problems in his personal life, a radically wrong view of abortion (against it personally, but for women making their own pro-abortion choice), and oh-so-very Times Square and Hollywood on the issues of homosexual rights and guns (for and against, respectively).
Can't vote for him, even if his opponent is Hillary Rodham Clinton? No, I cannot.
Aw, c'mon, Team Republican says, nobody who purports to be socially conservative, evangelical, or who voted twice for Ronald Reagan will be able to muster a vote for Hillary over Rudy.
Probably right. But voting for her isn't the only option. When the electorate isn't excited about the candidates, they are capable of staying home -- particularly those who don't much care to think political thoughts 24/7 and are not enthused about the choices.
Land actually makes a very important point. Electing a non-homophobic (but possibly racist and definitely fascist) Catholic like Giuliani could do the country a lot more good than electing Clinton, because it would flush the evangelicals from the Republican Party's decisionmaking bodies. Republicans would likely lose governorships, congressman and senators in 2010, allowing Democrats to control redistricting for 2012 and beyond.
Electing Clinton, on the other hand, could cause an electoral bloodbath in 2010. Furthermore, her re-election is hardly assured and Clintonian politics have resulted in few real policy advances for the left (Welfare reform? Crime bill? DOMA? NAFTA?).
Isn't it worth some pain to have a legitimate two party system free from evangelical excess? A respectable argument can be made that it's more important to reform the dysfunctional GOP than elect a conservative Democrat.
And if Rudy won without evangelical support, he wouldn't have to pick those nutty judges either.
4:55 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Hillary goes to South Carolina
And is a huge hit with black voters. Who knew that putting so many African Americans people in prison would turn out to be such an electoral boondoggle?
2:59 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Aging whore speaks out against abortion
But no one believes her.
2:50 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Cosmic confirmation
Richard Mellon Sciafe, Mr. Vast Right Wing Conspiracy himself, now thinks Clinton wasn't that bad after all.
2:47 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Technical difficulties
Posting is low of late because of the horrendous "new" blogger, which is out of beta but shouldn't be.
12:10 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tancredo: I'm pro-life
So long as your unborn baby isn't Mexican. One of the wonderful things about his candidacy is that, if he plays his cards right, he will get enough of the white evangelical vote that Hispanic evangelicals may end up thinking twice about whatever remaining Republican affiliation they thought they had.
Go Tommy, go!
12:07 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thursday, February 15, 2007
Conservatives ditch the GOP
They're busy writing requiems for Reagan conservativism in order to separate themselves from the Bush presidency they supported vociferously just months ago.
2:46 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Thank you, Mitt Romney
For forcing the Southern Baptist Convention and evangelicals to publicly condemn Mormons for their apostasy. Since evangelicals run the Republican Party, will they force at least some Mormons to rethink their allegiances to the party?
Rob Bowman, manager of the apologetics and interfaith evangelism department of the SBC's North American Mission Board (NAMB), thinks Christians would be wise to take an even closer look at the Mormons, lest any be deceived about the nature and tenets of that religious group. He says although the Mormon Church wages an expensive public relations campaign, using terms familiar to appeal to evangelicals, the core teachings of the church do not line up with scripture and are inconsistent with evangelical Christianity.
Bowman doesn't stop there. He goes right after the founder:
For example, Bowman notes, "In 15 short years, [Mormon Church founder] Joseph Smith went from being a thoroughgoing monotheist, a believer in one god, to a thoroughgoing polytheist, teaching the existence of many gods." Also, he points out, the Latter-day Saints teach that humans can achieve godhood by joining the church and taking part in specific deeds and ceremonies.
And finally, the bottom line: Mormons are not Christians.
Such divergent beliefs are among the reasons, the NAMB official asserts, why Christians must know the Bible, so as not to be fooled by non-biblical Mormon teachings. As for the Mormon Church members themselves, he adds, "Our concern is that they don't really know the God of the Bible. So we're concerned for their salvation."
The concern of Bible-believing Christians is that Mormons do not know the real Jesus of scripture, Bowman explains. The SBC's desire, he says, is not only to see evangelicals learn about the differences between Mormonism and Christianity but also to see Mormons come to know Jesus and have an authentic relationship with Him.
6:14 PM | Post or Read Comments (2)
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Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Rudy's "weirdness factor"
It's not me but his own 1993 campaign strategists.
The campaign study was obtained by The Village Voice's Wayne Barrett in the course of preparing "Rudy!," an investigative biography of Giuliani. In its preface, the study notes that it is "tough and hard-hitting. It pulls no punches." Perhaps that is why Giuliani, as Barrett reported, ordered copies of the vulnerability study destroyed shortly after it was circulated to top campaign aides. He surely could not have been pleased to read that his "personal life raises questions about a 'weirdness factor.'" That weirdness, aides reported, stemmed from Giuliani's 14-year marriage to his second cousin, a union that he got annulled by claiming to have never received proper dispensation from the Catholic Church for the unorthodox nuptials. "When asked about his personal life, Giuliani gives a wide array of conflicting answers," the campaign report stated. "All of this brings the soundness of his judgement into question--and the veracity of his answers." The internal study also addresses prospective charges that Giuliani dodged the Vietnam draft and was a "man without convictions" because of his transformation from George McGovern voter to a Reagan-era Justice Department appointee. "In many ways Rudy Giuliani is a political contradiction...He doesn't really fit with the Republicans.
More entertainment:
"The Giuliani campaign should emphasize its candidate's independence from traditional national Republican policies." The final six words of that sentence are underlined in the study. Additionally, the Giuliani report noted that the candidate needed to make it clear to voters that he was "pretty good on most issues of concern to gay and lesbian New Yorkers" and was pro-choice and supported public funding for abortion. "He will continue city funding for abortions at city hospitals. Nothing more, nothing less." Giuliani's stance on these issues, of course, may leave him vulnerable today with an entirely different electorate.
8:47 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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Religious right defends Condoleeza over lesbianism
Don't ask don't tell.
8:30 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Heartbreaking
South Carolina state senator Robert Ford's reason for backing Clinton over Obama:
Two key black political leaders in South Carolina who backed John Edwards in 2004 said Tuesday they are supporting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
State Sens. Robert Ford and Darrell Jackson told The Associated Press they believe Clinton is the only Democrat who can win the presidency. Both said they had been courted by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama; Ford said Obama winning the primary would drag down the rest of the party.
"Then everybody else on the ballot is doomed," Ford said. "Every Democratic candidate running on that ticket would lose because he's black and he's at the top of the ticket — we'd lose the House, the Senate and the governors and everything."
Meanwhile, some very, very bad news for Edwards... confirming our earlier predictions that Edwards chances in the South would depend almost entirely on a) the white vote, and b) a split in the African American vote. It's not too hard to see why Clark's entry into the race could destroy his candidacy.
Jackson, who also is the minister of a large church in the state's capital city, said Edwards — a South Carolina native who won the state's Democratic primary three years ago — had his chance.
"I feel as if he's had his opportunity," Jackson said.
The endorsements come just days before Obama and Clinton campaign in the state for the first time as 2008 candidates.
Support from black voters is key in South Carolina, where 49 percent of the Democratic presidential primary vote came from blacks in 2004. The state will host the first Southern primaries for both the GOP and Democrats in 2008.
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Monday, February 12, 2007
Nebraska Senate pickup?
Good news. If Hagel runs for President or leaves politics altogether, Democrats may have a real shot at this one.
11:55 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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Best Obama piece I've read thus far
Here's an excerpt, but read the whole thing:
Didn't the people appreciate the sacrifices he'd made? To grind out a voter registration drive when he could have been earning $200K a year at a white-shoe firm? They didn't. On Primary Day, Obama received 31 percent of the vote. He didn't lose because he was "too white." He lost because he was a presumptuous young man challenging a popular incumbent. If anything, his whiteness spared him a bigger beating. He ran strongly in Beverly, an enclave of Irish cops who had never forgiven Rush for his Black Panther past.
Trotter, who is plenty black, got 7 percent. In fact, Obama may be lucky he didn't win. It's harder to get to the U.S. Senate -- or the cover of Men's Vogue, or the drawing rooms of Manhattan donors -- from a black-majority district. [...]
Obama may have been testy because he did have a reputation as an ineffectual legislator -- for many of the same reasons he was tanking as a campaigner. Some of his colleagues saw him as a self-righteous goo-goo who thought he was too cool for the chamber and who disdained the hard work of digging up votes.
"Barack is a very intelligent man," Rich Miller, publisher of Capitol Fax, a statehouse news service, told me in 2000. "He hasn't had a lot of success here, and it could be because he places himself above everybody. He likes people to know he went to Harvard." [...]
I'd thought Obama had campaigned like an ass, but I expected him to run for the U.S. Senate. And I expected him to win. His white upbringing would appeal to suburbanites, while South Siders might figure that Obama was as black a senator as they were going to get, after the Carol Moseley Braun debacle. His braininess, his haughtiness, his sense of entitlement -- they could only be pluses in a Senate campaign. They don't call that place Ego Mountain for nothing.
3:58 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Rothenberg: Dems could have 60 Senate seats by 2011
I doubt it. That said, whatever chances Democrats have of achieving a filibuster-proof majority depend on the Clintons not moving into the White House.
2010 is arguably more important to the future of the Democratic party as 2008, since voters will elect the governors and state legislators who will redistrict House races through 2023.
The Democratic Party has a very good chance of controlling the House, Senate and Presidency after the next elections. But electing a moderare-right Clinton four four years is simply not worth losing a genuinely liberal legislative branch for a decade. A Rudy presidency with a filibuster-proof Democratic majority and favorable redistricting might well be preferable.
5:04 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thursday, February 08, 2007
The real McCain
Beatable. Very beatable. America will get off the Doubletalk Express, and what a pleasure it will be to watch that old whore burn.
5:50 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Latest unfortunate space theme in astronaut piece
From the New York Post:
Nowak blasted off into bizarro world on Monday, when she raced 950 miles to Florida nonstop from Houston — wearing a black wig, dark glasses and a brown trench coat so she could abduct Shipman, police said.
5:28 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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It's sweeps month!
And that means Fox and CNN are all-astronaut and all-Anna Nicole... all day.
5:25 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Obama skips Nevada debate
The state is crucial because the caucuses will fall between Iowa and New Hampshire. Edwards and Clinton will be attending.
4:55 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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GOP civil war over Rudy "The Shitzu" Giuliani
Fun, fun, fun.
4:40 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Gerald Baker: Edwards is the new McGovern
Bring it on, conservatives. George McGovern would carry 30-40 states against George W. Bush if an election were held right now. And things are not likely to be a whole lot better in Iraq next year.
4:38 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Republican senators see the light
Now they claim to want debate on the anti-surge resolution. After they voted against it. Who are they?
John Warner of Virginia, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Gordon Smith of Oregon, and George V. Voinovich of Ohio.
Collins, Coleman and Smith are up for re-election in 2008 from very blue states (so is New Hampshire's Sununu, who at least had the guts to vote his pro-Bush convictions). Warner may not run again, and Hagel is positioning himself for a presidential run.
A lot of guts these guys have.
4:14 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Time to vote
For the worst album title of the year so far. Choices #1 and #2 are so-bad-they're-good. So I would have to go with #4, out of respect for John Waite's "Missing You."
3:21 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, February 07, 2007
The latest salvo
Too clever by a half, but still very interesting.
An initiative filed by proponents of same-sex marriage would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriage annulled.
Initiative 957 was filed by the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance. That group was formed last summer after the state Supreme Court upheld Washington's ban on same-sex marriage.
Under the initiative, marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children in order to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children within three years, their marriage would be subject to annulment.
All other marriages would be defined as "unrecognized" and people in those marriages would be ineligible to receive any marriage benefits.
“For many years, social conservatives have claimed that marriage exists solely for the purpose of procreation ... The time has come for these conservatives to be dosed with their own medicine," said WA-DOMA organizer Gregory Gadow in a printed statement. “If same-sex couples should be barred from marriage because they can not have children together, it follows that all couples who cannot or will not have children together should equally be barred from marriage."
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"Next time she'll marry a tranny"
Justine Henin gets divorced.
12:55 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Jennifer Hudson on her post-Idol life
From Foxes on Idol:
Three years ago, when I interviewed her, Jenny (which she insisted I call her) Hudson was trying to make sense of a shattered dream. She could not have known that she would later tour with Barry Manilow, who, when introducing her, consistently referred to her dismissal on American Idol as a “travesty.” She was just hoping another door would open.
We also talked about the massive storms over Chicago the night of the voting that resulted in lost power and downed phone lines, and whether there was prophecy in this. She said, “That storm was a sign from God! It was like he spoke and said it is time to remove you from this place! I think I did what I was meant to do, whatever that may be.”
10:47 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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McCain and Kerry
John Kerry was a true liberal but never perceived as such by the left-wing blogosphere, for whom the more important thing was how a candidate made them feel. Hence left wingers thought him moderate, while right wing advertising made moderates find him liberal...but not in a good way.
Entertainingly, something similar is happening to John McCain, according to Rasmussen:
Over the past month, ideological perceptions of John McCain have shifted somewhat. Today, 28% of American voters view the Arizona Senator as politically conservative. That’s up from 16% in December. However, that shift is not helping McCain in the GOP competition because most of the change has come from Democrats and unaffiliated voters who are now more likely to see McCain as politically conservative than moderate.
In fact, while a plurality of Democrats and unaffiliated voters see McCain as conservative, a majority of Republicans see the Senator as politically moderate.
Hatred for McCain is driving Republicans into the lap of Rudy Giuliani, whose who was once married to his cousin and whose last roomies were two gay men and their shitzu. Could America be any luckier?
5:12 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Isn't it funny...
How the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy now calls the Clintons centrists after spending nine figures tagging them as liberals?
4:33 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Pity the Village Voice
With Robert Christgau out, the music section has gone to hell. There are high school newspapers with better concert reviews than this piece of fanmail.
4:14 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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Governator: Republicans are the new East Germans
More transcript gold. The release of those private conversations looks like a political winner.
Recordings of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reveal the Republican comparing his post-World War II upbringing in Austria with plans to build a border fence with Mexico, a proposal he has opposed.
"We had the Berlin Wall; we had walls everywhere. But we always looked at the wall as kind of like the outside of the wall is the enemy," he said. "Are we looking at Mexico as the enemy? No, it's not. These are our trading partners."
And this won't be a political loser either:
While expressing sympathy for Mexican immigrants, he also criticized those who fail to assimilate, hanging on to their native language and creating separate shopping areas. He said, for example, that protesting is acceptable, but not with the Mexican flag.
"We love Mexico and we go there on vacation ... yes, everything. We love to hear the Mariachi music, all this stuff," Schwarzenegger said. "But up here, for us to feel sympathetic towards you, you have to carry the American flag and you have to say, 'We want to be part of you. We love you."'
Still more:
On the tapes, he said that the federal government's 1986 amnesty program "has (expletive) the American people" because border protection is lax and people who hire illegal immigrants aren't punished.
The governor later said that "now, it's almost odd to throw them out, because you say, `Wait a minute, their kids are born here. You can't split up families.' So you have no choice anymore."
Schwarzenegger also contends that "farmers have the cheap labor, and they're laughing all the way to the bank, and then we are paying their health care. Is that the right thing to do?"
So what would the governor do about illegal immigrants? "I would find a way, a legal way so they can earn their visas, so they can work here and they can stay here, because it's not really realistic to send them back."
4:00 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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You can't take the ____ out of the German
I know what you were thinking. Shame on you! The answer is: driver.
From the cache of Schwarzenegger transcripts:
And finally, something totally off the wall. In a March 1, 2006 discussion about traffic woes in California, the governor seems to long for the German Autobahn.
"On a freeway in Germany, there is no road rage, because people go 180 miles an hour... And this is why no one ever falls asleep [on the road] in Germany, because you drive too fast and that raises the blood pressure and you can't fall asleep this way."
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Reaganites turn on the neocons
There may be more of this in the runup to the presidential election, and even more in its aftermath should the Republicans lose.
Interestingly, many "friends" of Reagan have turned into ex-friends. One such is the prominent neoconservative Norman Podhoretz. As early as 1983, he accused Reagan of "appeasement by any other name" - this being the same year that Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative.
But the neocons have their specific reason for disliking Reagan: They accuse him of being weak in the Middle East. The clearest statement of this view has come from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said back in 2003, "The terrorists declared war on America ... many years before Sept. 11, 2001." She cited, among other incidents, "the attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, the bombing of Pan Am 103 in 1988" - all of which occurred during the Reagan presidency. Yet, Rice continued, until the George W. Bush administration, "the terrorists faced no sustained, systematic and global response."
These days, of course, the wisdom of the Bush administration's "response" to terrorism - specifically, the Iraq war - is under, shall we say, close scrutiny. And so maybe Reagan's response doesn't look so bad in comparison. Nobody thinks of his Marine mission to Lebanon as a success, but at least the Gipper knew when to cut his losses.
So happy birthday, Mr. President. You've gone up to that Great Ranch in the Sky, leaving liberals to like you more and some conservatives to like you less. But this onetime staffer of yours - and forever an admirer - sees you as the gold standard for presidents.
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"He needs to get somewhere he can get the wound healed"
The jokes write themselves.
One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is ''completely heterosexual.''
Haggard also said his sexual contact with men was limited to the former male prostitute who came forward with sexual allegations, the Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur told The Denver Post for a story in Tuesday's edition.
''He is completely heterosexual,'' Ralph said. ''That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing.''
Ralph said the board spoke with people close to Haggard while investigating his claim that his only extramarital sexual contact happened with Mike Jones. The board found no evidence to the contrary. [...]
Haggard said in an e-mail Sunday, his first communication in three months to church members, that he and his wife, Gayle, plan to pursue master's degrees in psychology. The e-mail said the family hasn't decided where to move but that they were considering Missouri and Iowa.
Another oversight board member, the Rev. Mike Ware of Westminster, said the group recommended the move out of town and the Haggards agreed.
''This is a good place for Ted,'' Ware said. ''It's hard to heal in Colorado Springs right now. It's like an open wound. He needs to get somewhere he can get the wound healed.''
It was also the oversight board that strongly urged Haggard to go into secular work.
2:25 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Monday, February 05, 2007
Four years ago
Colin Powell destroyed his reputation forever. Little could he have imagined that his reward, less than two years later, would be unemployment. What a loser.
6:39 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Prince
Says reader Faster over at the Idolator:
Have we heard from Dave Grohl? Is he alive after hearing The Paisley Prince cover him or did he have a heart attack? Damn. So effing dope!
Reader MosH8ed responds:
Does anybody think that the cover of "Best of You" was in response to the Foos cover of "Darling Nikki" in 2003?
I've heard that Prince was pretty displeased about their cover, saying that people should "make their own music" and the he'd "like to shoot them in the head."
I guess Dave publicly asked for the song to stop being played on the radio to appease our royal highness.
So, now for the real question: has Prince gotten the best of Dave Grohl by playing a FF song (better than the foos, may I add) at the friggin' Super Bowl?
Video here. Outrageous press conference here.
6:28 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Ali Ansari
From an interview in Foreign Policy:
FP: Bush said, “Shiite and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat…. They have the same wicked purposes.” Just how similar are Shiite and Sunni extremist groups?
AA: There’s no doubt that all extremists share some characteristics. But there are obviously some quite interesting differences. Shiites do not tend to engage in the sorts of suicide bombings that the Sunnis tend to engage in. And you certainly don’t see, by and large, Shiites beheading their opponents.
The nihilistic global domination argument that some of the more radical Sunni groups have is not something that you see expressed on a wide scale among Shiites. They have fairly specific political ambitions. With his speech, Bush is heading down the route of saying they’re basically all the same and they all hate us, which is an awkward argument to make. It’s going to lead to more problems.
FP: Bush claimed that if U.S. forces step back before Baghdad is secure, we can expect an “epic battle” between Shiite extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda. The entire region could be drawn into the conflict. How likely is that scenario?
AA: The language is a bit excitable in some ways, but the premise of what he says is true. There’s a vacuum there, and the neighboring powers will get involved. One thing he misses: He says, “Shiite extremists backed by Iran and Sunni extremists backed by al Qaeda,” but “Sunni extremists backed by Saudi Arabia” is what he really wants to say.
In Iran, the more sober voices are saying they’d actually like it much better if the Americans stayed and provided a much more stable structure, rather than leaving, creating a vacuum, and letting Iraq disintegrate into a sort of non-state in the middle of the Middle East. And you’d have the Syrians, Turks, Iranians, Jordanians and Saudis all seeking to influence the outcome of any struggle there. I think it’ll be fairly vicious. Whether it’s an epic battle on the scale Bush is saying is a different matter.
FP: Does Iran want sectarian warfare in Iraq—a cleavage between Sunnis and Shiites?
AA: The collapse of the Taliban and the removal of Saddam Hussein allowed the Iranians to imagine themselves in a different environment. Suddenly, things became possible that otherwise would have been impossible. The Iranians clearly see themselves as the regional arbiter, if not the regional hegemon. Iran’s argument is: “We will inherit Iraq. At the very least, Iraq will be our neighbor. At the most, we can exert a far greater influence in this area than we hitherto thought possible.”
So Iran would rather have stability and order. At the moment, Iran has this slightly incoherent strategy, but the broad thrust of it is, “We can irritate the Americans enough to get them out, but we don’t want them to go too quickly—not until they’ve given us a bit more stability. It’s in our interests to have a peaceful western border and not to allow the Saudis, Jordanians, Syrians and perhaps others to move in a big way.”
FP: Bush said, “We are working with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Gulf States to increase support for Iraq’s government.” Absent from that list of countries was Iran. Do you think the United States would ever move to direct talks with Iran as part of an effort to stabilize Iraq?
AA: Ultimately, the United States is going to have to get to grips with the reality of Iran. Whether talks will happen in the future or not is another matter, but I don’t see it happening in the near term. It’s a great pity. The United States missed a great opportunity with the Iraq Study Group’s report. At the moment it seems that, given a choice between a simple roundtable and ignoring Iran, the United States has opted for the choice of ignoring Iran. And it’s a great pity, because it’s going to make life more difficult.
5:15 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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The Stop Murphy campaign
May have unwitting help:
There’s more Murphy hate brewing out there – Radar has been foaming at the mouth about him (maybe they should spend some of that passion on keeping the magazine afloat), but the reality is that these people won’t kill Murphy’s Oscar chances. Only Eddie Murphy can do that. Specifically Eddie Murphy in a giant fat suit.
If you live in one of the major media markets – especially LA or New York, where most of the Academy make their homes – you have seen ads or billboards for Norbit, the latest sub-Jerry Lewis piece of shit Murphy has turned out where he plays multiple roles for seemingly no reason beyond a latex fetish. These “wacky” family movies are usually big hits, and they’re Murphy’s bread and butter at this point in his career (which, by the way, makes his Dreamgirls performance, full of nuance and emotion, all the more impressive). Norbit won't screen for critics, of course, but that won't stop it from making a bunch of money, which is what it's designed to do. But why the hell is this movie coming out now? Academy voters will be inundated with advertising for this movie that reminds them of the worst stuff Murphy has been doing for the last few years, and that can only hurt him. What’s especially strange is that Paramount is releasing Norbit – the same company (with Dreamworks) that put out Dreamgirls. Even people I’ve talked to inside of Paramount are dismayed at the decision to pollute the Oscar campaign with Norbit. 'Have you ever made a really big mistake?' the Norbit tagline asks. Paramount may soon be saying yes.
3:28 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Michigan poll
Hillary clobbers the competition, riding a 3-1 lead among African Americans. But Edwards is strongest against the Republicans. Romney tanking in his daddy's home state.
12:40 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Saturday, February 03, 2007
How long do we have to owe the Clintons?
The nomination may depend on the answer.
The comments by Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr., which he confirmed Saturday, angered Clinton backers and deepened a sharp rift among African-American political activists. [...]
Jones spoke after the DNC's chief of staff, Leah Daughtry, told the group that she and the DNC would remain neutral in the 2008 presidential nominating contests.
"This is no time for neutrality," Jones said in an interview Saturday. "We have a well qualified candidate, and I urged them to get behind his candidacy."
"I didn't mention Clinton by name," he said.
But the remarks by one of Obama's longtime political mentors in Illinois - was widely taken to refer to a debt felt in the black political community to Bill Clinton, who enjoyed deep black support in the White House and rewarded black allies. [...]
Jones concluded his speech with a reference to the jobs and appointments Bill Clinton had given blacks, including many people in the room, and asked when they would stop owing the Clintons for that patronage, attendees said.
"You could hear a pin drop," said one person in the room who doesn't currently support either Obama or Clinton. "It was one of those moments when you say, 'I can't believe he just said that.'"
11:50 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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McCain-Pawlenty
A smart move for the GOP to make MN/WI/IA competitive; these states are the Democrats' Achilles heel. Even winning Ohio would not make up for their loss. But a Southern presidential contender like Edwards could then put Florida in play: a Republican nightmare.
9:53 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Romney: I turned pro-life in 2004
The best part is that it was stem cells that did it.
"Massachusetts became center stage for the most important social issues of our time," he said, detailing his efforts to limit stem cell research, thwart same-sex marriage and curb abortion rights.
At the end of his governorship, the man who ran supporting abortion rights and some gay rights said he'd undergone a transition.
"This fiscal conservative became a social conservative as well," he said.
After reporters were shooed out of the hotel ballroom, the Republicans asked Romney to elaborate on his abortion views.
According to one who remained in the room, Romney used a familiar anecdote to describe his change on the issue.
Romney, recounting a meeting with Harvard University scientists in 2004, recalled how they nonchalantly explained their cloning of embryos. That, Romney notes, was the moment when he first realized how the sanctity of life had become so cheapened.
8:12 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Friday, February 02, 2007
Your source for all things Idol
Rickey.org, where you'll also the most disturbing image of Harry Potter ever.
1:54 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thursday, February 01, 2007
Jeb Bush is gone
So now there can be fair elections in Florida. Let's hope non-Bush Republican Charlie Crist brings some fairness back to elections there.
8:01 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Another remembrance of Father Drinan
A great congressman, and yet another fine priest whose good deeds had to come to an end with the advent of John Paul II.
1:57 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Clark may run
A very interesting development, if true. Hard to know exactly what impact it would have on the field. He is far more credible in terms of political appeal than Biden or Dodd. On foreign policy, meanwhile, beats Clinton, Edwards and Obama. He will hurt Hillary among those who want a candidate with strong security credentials, but he may hurt Edwards among those who think only a white male Southerner can win the nomination. And every point Edwards loses in Iowa helps Hillary in a big, big way.
3:19 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Romney: Anti-kosher
Interesting:
Now that he's in full presidential campaign mode, Romney may be wishing he hadn't vetoed a budget provision in 2003 that would have reimbursed nursing homes in Massachusetts that provided kosher meals to Jewish residents on Medicaid. The measure promised to pay an extra $5 a day per kosher diner. The state legislature overrode Romney's veto.
Nathan Diament, director of public policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, said that his organization was disappointed about the veto. "Access to kosher food is a critical aspect of Jewish observance," he said. "From our perspective, it's a religious liberty issue."
Charles Glick was the government affairs specialist in 2003 for the Boston-area Jewish Community Relations Council, which backed the measure. He said Romney's decision came as a shock.
"The Jewish community had what they thought was a good relationship with the governor," he said. "We knew of his ambitions and his outreach to the community in terms of raising money. So it was a bit of a puzzle."
Romney spok