The Viability of Obama (It’s the Sanity, Stupid)
Monday, April 16th, 2007 Posted in Essays, Obama, Politics | 3 Comments »I've been trying to convince friends that yes, Obama can get votes from white Americans. That's because American race relations, even when they are antagonistic, are more complicated than their typical portrayal in the media. Andrew Sullivan offers one telling ...
Brooks: Is it Safe? (”Security Leads to Freedom”)
Friday, March 30th, 2007 Posted in Authoritarianism, Brooks, Essays, Right Wing | No Comments »[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG5Qk-jB0D4] There are legitimate conservative arguments to be made, but David Brooks' latest column does not make them. In fact, the basic point of the column is that if Republicans need to jettison every value they've ever stood for in order to ...
Skepticism, Conservatism, and War
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 Posted in Conservatism, Essays, Skepticism | No Comments »Andrew Sullivan is right that passion and skepticism are by no means at odds. The point of skepticism is not that we should vacate (we can't anway) our passions and the irrationality that grounds, at least in part, our most ...
Exactly What Christopher Hitchens Means to Say
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 Posted in Essays, Hitchens, Iraq | 5 Comments »What courageous humility is exemplified by Christopher Hitchens, who ... strike that, reverse it, I misread his recent article in Slate. To revive a different motif: what a sack of shit is Hitchens, who now trots out his anemic debate ...
This is a Wahr! (A Tale, Told by an Idiot, Full of Shock and Awe ….)
Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 Posted in Essays, Iraq, War on Terror | 1 Comment »Another Washington Journal moment: "This is a Wahr," the old woman reminded us. "This" -- not two wars, the war on terror and the war in Iraq, the first a made-up fantasy and the second elective folly. The first not ...
You’re a Democrat and it Shows
Friday, March 2nd, 2007 Posted in Essays, Partisanship | 2 Comments »I wake up to Washington Journal in the morning because the irritation I immediately feel prevents me from going back to sleep. There's nothing like the application of senility to politics. More and more frequently the elderly callers on the Republican ...
Dick Cheney’s Assasination - Sick, but I Understand
Friday, March 2nd, 2007 Posted in Cheney, Essays, Iraq | No Comments »Andrew Sullivan on the fact that some commenters on Huffington Post took delight int he Cheney Assassination attempt: I think some Huffposters' desire to see the vice-president assassinated is repulsive on every level, and indicative of real sickness on the far ...
Pan’s Labyrinth on the Art of Torture
Monday, February 12th, 2007 Posted in Essays, Torture | No Comments »In Bomber Harris' description of the effect of aerial power on Kurds, and Barry Lando's comparison to Guernica, I am reminded of the recent film by Guillermo Del Toro which has its setting in Franco's Spain. Pan's Labyrinth is about torture, ...
Air Power and “Them”
Monday, February 12th, 2007 Posted in Essays | No Comments »To revisit Bomber Harris' description of use of airpower to supress rebellion: it describes an approach to war that might be called cowardly. Most surprising is his glee over four or five machines which offer them no real target, no ...
Design by Force: The New Intelligence
Friday, May 12th, 2006 Posted in Essays | No Comments »And so Bush appoints a be-medaled, NSA domestic spy program-defending, active-duty officer to head the CIA. Appointing an officer is not unprecedented, but this one is not free of that banana republic feeling. An emblazoned, heavy yes-man. In government, uniforms are a ...
