. . . why Obama isn't all over the fact that the Iraqi government has basically endorsed his pullout timetable plans? When this hit the news a couple months ago, I took a little baby step toward thinking the election was in the bag. After all, hadn't Maliki just taken the central plank of McCain's campaign away from him? And it could quite easily be argued that it was pressure from the Obama campaign that brought the withdrawal-timetable narrative to the fore. It didn't require "negative" campaigning to say that McCain's "if it takes 100 years" ideas ran counter to what the Iraqis themsevles wanted, which was quite close to what Obama has proposed. But it seems to me that by now this opportunity has pretty much been squandered.
Setting aside the Dem candidate wars, it's hard to know whom to root for among the GOOPers, no?
I believe that there is a strong element of Christian end-times theology within the religious right, and that that element is present in the current administration. The Christian right scares me more than anything else, and to see that faction defeated would be a hopeful sign.
OTOH, I think the title of Ed Koch's book "Nasty Man" sums Giuliani up. And I think he might well be the toughest candidate to beat. He'd have strong appeal to white ethnics in swing states. He's a good talker and an experienced politician, and I'm sure if he got nominated he'd arrange some kind of summit meeting with Dobson et al., and emerge smelling like a rose in the eyes of the wingnuts.
Just one, mind you. But he took some flak several years ago for bringing up the topic of illicit athletic drugs in the State of the Union address. The idea, I guess, was that this wasn't an affair of state with sufficient gravity to warrant space in that forum. But he (or whoever inserted it in the speech in front of his barely comprehending eyes) had the right idea.
... for Kos's statement that protest marches are "useless, obsolete artifacts of a bygone era" in view of the GOP leadership's abandonment of felony penalties for illegal immigrants, and, indeed, in view of the way in which the Latino immigrant marches of the last few weeks have completely redefined the immigration debate.
These marches have been a great source of personal inspiration for me, for reasons that go beyond the immigration debate--although goodness knows that issue is important enough on its own. It's just extremely stirring to see hundreds of thousands of people in the street, standing up for ideals that go beyond the Republican moral dead end of self-interest. These marches tell me that whatever is coming, decent people aren't going down without a fight.
There's always a lot of talk here about the crazies at Freeperville, and lots of mutual monitoring (and even occasional cooperation) between this site and Redstate. But how about moderate blogs? Are there any that readers here would recommend?
I ask for several reasons. The biggest is just that I like to read material from all persepctives, and I haven't found a centrist blog voice that does much for me. I've looked at some. The Moderate Voice seems to just link repeatedly among its various posts. Ann Althouse is a decent writer, but her blog is sort of scattershot in the topics it addresses. Instapundit is sometimes listed as a moderate, but he's really a snarky, somewhat libertarian conservative.
Beyond my personal reading habits, it might be worth paying attention to moderate blogs to see how left talking points are playing with those in the center. What's the biggest one? the best? I mean, we're not going to convince the Freepers of anything, but the moderates are the ones we have a shot at.
Hey, Salon has a fairly substantial story up questioning what happened last month when sensors around Washington detected airborne tularemia bacteria during the antiwar march on the Mall last month.
Testimony from various experts suggests that there's no way it was a natural occurrence, as the government is claiming. The writer also points out that the same line was put out in the early days of the anthrax scare.
Frankly, the article raises more questions than it answers. If this bacterium was detected, shouldn't there be a process in place to test it and identify the strain and its origins, as was eventually done with the anthrax? Oh yeah ... forgot ... we're dealing with total freaking incompetents.
They interview various people reporting symptoms similar to what we heard about here. Worth reading, anyhow.
Guess who's back? Roy Moore, of Ten Commandments fame, has just announced that he's running for governor of Alabama. This will set up a primary against incumbent Gov. Bob Riley, who has already riled the right for suggesting that taxes should be raised to fund vital state programs. I'm pleased to see a sudden chance for a gubernatorial pickup in a state that isn't strong for us, and to see the angry outlaw face of Roy Moore in Republican politics. Democratic candidates are former Gov. Don Siegelman, whom I remember as a rather uninspiring guy, and Lucy Baxley. Anyone down that way care to predict how this might shake out?
For the record, I think they're leeches, and potentially dangerous ones at that. But I keep reading here that if you turned on C-SPAN, what you saw were the ANSWER signs. The political-junkie qualities of this community have never been more abundantly on display. Trust me, most Americans were not sitting at home watching the march on C-SPAN.
The Associated Press story, which ran in most Sunday newspapers, did not mention ANSWER at all.
has sort of gotten lost in the Rita hullaballoo and the Roberts hoo-ha, but it's worth noting.
1) The flu vaccine doesn't work as well as we thought, and the antivirals don't either--resistance to the antivirals is developing as flu viruses rapidly evolve. Between 70 and 75 percent of influenza A viruses tested in Hong Kong in 2004 showed resistance to Amantadine; in South Korea it was only 15 percent, but these figures are all up from zero in 2000.
And 2), 115 people who visited a zoo in Jakarta have sought treatment at a hospital for flu symptoms. There are already rampant animal cases at the zoo and several confirmed human cases.
It's tough getting a clear picture of what's happening in Indonesia. The Jakarta Post (thejakartapost.com) is often unenlightening. There could be various reasons for the mass hospital visits Recombinomics describes; I'd bet the grapevine is really humming in Jakarta. But clearly both these situations bear watching.
Say, there've been sighs of relief in Houston media that Rita is now aimed toward the sparsely populated Matagorda area on the central Texas coast. But I notice that Matagorda County is home to the 2,500-megawatt South Texas Project nuclear power plant. Any ideas on what would happen if that were hit by a Category 4 storm? Their FAQ does not address the issue (natch).
Heads up, y'all, the dungstorm from the right will be kicking up once more. I personally couldn't be happier, but I fear it will distract attention from King George and his many misdeeds. From the first stories, it's not clear what the appeals process will be and how this case will dovetail with the one that the SCOTUS punted a couple years back.
Nolan Finley, Detroit News columnist and editorial page editor, in today's column on Hurricane Katrina.
"... the conservative movement's principles have given way to partisanship. The words 'conservative' and 'Republican' are now interchangeable, and it's more important to protect the party than to hew to core values."
"I don't see anything particularly conservative in the bumbling going on in Washington. If that's what conservative looks like, count me out."
Straight from the bastion of pure, reflexively antigovernment, antitax Midwestern Republicanism. He uses the idea that no private executive who did what Brown did would survive; maybe that's a good talking point to use against Bush himself.
<<Meanwhile, the city is confiscating firearms from civilians, including legally registered weapons, Mr. Compass said. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said.</p>
But that order apparently does not apply to the hundreds of security guards whom hotels and some wealthy individuals have hired to protect their property. The guards, who work for private security firms like Blackwater, are openly carrying M-16's and other assault rifles.>>
are the Democrats? We can post all the examples of Katrina malfeasance that we want to, but if you get beyond the left blogosphere cocoon you find that Bush, once again under the masterly hand of Karl Rove, is controlling the news cycle right now. Maybe it's unseemly for the leadership to be partisan at a time like this, but that's what lower-down pit bulls are for. Americans have very short memories, and if they keep seeing Bush on TV, looking sympathetic at Red Cross stations, they'll forget about all the bad decisions. Katrina is already off the front page, replaced by Rehnquist. What rocked Bush back on his heels in the first place was Nagin and Broussard getting in his face. Somebody needs to keep asking him the kind of hard questions that get on the news and in the papers!
George Weeks in the Detroit News today discusses the Rev. Keith Butler's U.S. Senate candidacy, picking up steam as Jack Kemp and J.C. Watts have signed on as fundraisers. Apparently he's been hitting the hustings in the rural counties, making friends, and claiming that he can divide the vote in Detroit, where he used to be a city councilman. He's probably right about that. Which would be bad news for Debbie Stabenow, already suffering from an anti-incumbent mood due to the continuing lousy economy here. What think you, MI Kossacks? Will the hard-core Hollanders of Michigan Republicanism nominate an African American? I worry that a) it might be a smart move for them, and b) that they might shake off their stolid dullness long enough to realize it.
This from the Washington Post story on Eric Rudolph's sentencing in the Birmingham abortion clinic bombing:
<<[Clinic nurse Emily] Lyons was wounded by flying nails and other shrapnel [from Rudolph's bomb]. She has undergone 21 operations, lost her left eye and has scars on her arms and legs. She is no longer able to work.
But she said Rudolph failed to deter her or the work of the women's clinic.
"I faced five pounds of dynamite and hundreds of nails yet I survived," she said. "Do I look afraid? You damaged my body, but you did not create the fear you sought.">>
One of these days, we're all going to have to stand up and be counted as she was. May I find the same level of courage.
I noticed that RedState entries are showing up in Google News searches and was annoyed. A quick search confirmed that Dailykos, which we might consider the nearest analogue to Redstate on the progressive side, has not received the same preferred treatment. The other leading progressive blogs, with the exception of Alternet, don't seem to be there, either, and there are a few very right-leaning sites that show up all the time on the front page (like the execrable Bayou Buzz). Certainly there are progressive non-blog outlets that are included (Salon, to name one), but my impression is that the blogosphere representation is decidedly tilted to the right.
Has anyone studied this more systematically? (I might take a shot at it myself but thought I'd ask first.) Is it worth kicking up a fuss? And how would one kick up a fuss with such a monolith?
With the Terri Schiavo controversy a couple of months behind us, I'm wondering how it's affected the thinking of those on this list when it comes to the abortion and euthanasia issues. Here's one pro-choicer's opinion. Up to now, I've been pretty much in line with Kos in thinking that the Democratic party has to keep a big tent up; the Republicans manage to do it quite successfully, and so must we. I still feel that way, basically. I think Harry Reid is doing a stupendous job; I think Casey would be a vast improvement over Rick Santorum, etc.
But I have to say that the despicable conduct of pro-lifers during the Schiavo affair has definitely soured me on the idea of compromising with them. I might have liked Hillary Clinton's attempts to move to the center on abortion, but I'm a lot less favorably inclined toward them now. If there had been major pro-life voices speaking out against government intervention in what was patently a private matter, I'd feel better, but they were in mighty short supply.
I don't know. Like others here, I struggle with this one. Do others find that the Schiavo controversy affected their thinking?
