Anyone who gets the Sundance Channel should check out the Documentary “With God on Our Side,” showing at 7pm ET this evening. I haven’t seen it yet (nor do I get Sundance) – but I feel confident in recommending it, as it’s produced by David Van Taylor, who was responsible for “A Perfect Candidate”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/review96/perfectcandidatehowe.htm, the best documentary on American politics that I’ve ever seen.
From the monthly archives:
October 2004
“Lexington” of the _Economist_ can sometimes be pretty weird, but his most recent column is more than weird – it’s somewhere out there in the “Gamma Quadrant”:http://www.google.com/search?as_q=gamma+quadrant&num=10&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=www.j-bradford-delong.net&safe=images.
UPDATE: Apparently it’s a dud. In fact, John Quiggin defused it last month. Well, that’s a bit silly not to read my very own weblog. (I knew it was a bit suspicious, what with it being good news and all. What a world, what a world.)
I’ll tuck what now looks to be nonsense under the fold, for the curious. Comments are quite interesting below. And Tim Lambert has an interesting post up in response to the general question. Turns out this is a newer model than Quiggin discussed before.
An interesting, if disturbing, post from Phil Carter of Intel Dump; the Army is deploying the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment to Iraq. This regiment usually serves as the opposition force in training exercises intended to toughen new soldiers. He links to this LA Times article, but comments:
The article misses the most important point: deploying the OPFOR is like eating your seed corn. This unit is responsible for training other units and raising their level of expertise and combat readiness. The 11th ACR is being replaced by a National Guard unit. That’s like replacing the Dodgers with a high school baseball team. Sure, they can both play baseball and wear the uniform — but one is a whole lot more proficient and experienced at its job. The OPFOR has a reputation as a tough enemy, and that’s a good thing because it forces units training at the NTC to become better themselves. By replacing this unit with National Guard troops, the Army has hurt its ability to produce good units for Iraq in the future. Suffice to say, National Guard and active units that go through Fort Irwin aren’t going to get the same tough experience they would have with the Blackhorse regiment as OPFOR — and that means they’ll be less ready for combat when they get to Iraq. This is a desperation measure, and I think the Army will come to regret it.
Remind me again about how the best way to ensure we don’t have a draft is to vote for Bush?
Former (?) liberal hawk Michael Ignatieff “reviews”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/books/review/17IGNATIE.html Sy Hersh’s _Chain of Command_ in the New York Times:
bq. The war on terror began as a defense of international law, giving America allies and friends. It soon became a war in defiance of law. In a secret order dated Feb. 7, 2002, President Bush declared, as Hersh puts it, that ”when it came to Al Qaeda the Geneva Conventions were applicable only at his discretion.” Based on memorandums from the Defense and Justice Departments and the White House legal office that, in Anthony Lewis’s apt words, ”read like the advice of a mob lawyer to a mafia don on how to . . . stay out of prison,” Bush unilaterally withdrew the war on terror from the international legal regime that sets the standards for treatment and interrogation of prisoners. Abu Ghraib was not the work of a few bad apples, but the direct consequence, Hersh says, of ”the reliance of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld on secret operations and the use of coercion — and eye-for-an-eye retribution — in fighting terrorism.”
David Bernstein “in lofty principle”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_10_14.shtml#1098045981:
bq. Maybe I’m a little old-fashioned, but aren’t universities supposed to stand for the pursuit of truth, “even unto its innermost parts” (Brandeis’s motto). Will a faculty member who pursues such truth get hired to teach Women’s Studies? Will a student who pursues such truth get a good grade?
David Bernstein “in empirical practice”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_10_14.shtml#1098045981, one paragraph earlier:
bq. EVER HEAR OF “REVEALED PREFERENCES”? An article in my alma mater’s (Brandeis University) newspaper, _The Justice_ explains that two Brandeis Women’s Studies professors argue that (surprise!) what most of us think of as gender (or, some would say, “sex”) differences are actually mere stereotypes. Maybe it’s unfair for me to comment without reading the professors’ entire book, not to mention the numerous studies on which they claim to rely.
Maybe I’m a little old-fashioned, but would it really be too much effort to do a bit of reading beyond the alumni magazine before blandly dismissing something as lefty claptrap just because it contradicts “revealed preferences that seem blatantly obvious” to you? Especially when one believes in, you know, pursuing the truth unto its innermost wotsits? The preferences revealed in this case suggest the answer is “Yes.”
I’d just like to point out that the best album of 2002, The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, is fully audible on the band’s homepage. (Click ‘music’, then ‘album audio player’.) This is particularly notable in light of the recent inclusion of a bonus track, “Thank You Jack White”. I would also like to mention that the artwork for the album is lovely, and the videos are all worth watching. And all good Christians, I trust, trust that 2005 will be the year “Christmas On Mars” finally enoys some sort of cinematic release, so we can stop just watching the trailer.
Via John B at “Shot by Both Sides”:http://www.stalinism.com/shot-by-both-sides/ , I see that US citizens or permanent residents who buy Cuban cigars abroad (say in the UK) and consume them there, are liable to criminal penalties of up to $250,000 and up to 10 years in prison and civil penalties of up to $65,000. So my British-based American friends who amble down to the local tobacconists and buy one of Havana’s best to smoke in their own living room will be in jeopardy of arrest on their next trip back home (if suitably denounced). [1]
From the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s “Cuban Cigar Update (pdf)”:http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/sanctions/ccigar2.pdf :
bq. The question is often asked whether United States citizens or permanent resident aliens of the United States may legally purchase Cuban origin goods, including tobacco and alcohol products, in a third country for personal use
outside the United States. The answer is no. The Regulations prohibit persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States from purchasing, transporting, importing, or otherwise dealing in or engaging in any transactions with respect to any merchandise outside the United States if such merchandise (1) is of Cuban origin; or (2) is or has been located in or transported from or through Cuba; or (3) is made or derived in whole or in part of any article which is the growth, produce or manufacture of Cuba. Thus, in the case of cigars, the prohibition extends to cigars manufactured in Cuba and sold in a third country and to cigars manufactured in a third country from tobacco grown in Cuba.
Here’s what to do if you spot an American having an illicit puff:
bq. Suspected embargo violations may be reported telephonically to OFAC’s Enforcement Division at (202)622-2430 or via facsimile at 202 622-1657.
fn1. Since the ban also hits permanent residents, Henry, Harry, Brian and Kieran had better be careful on _their_ trips home!
A month ago John Quiggin posted about his basically happy experience downloading from Amazon an e-copy (PDF) of China Miéville’s new novel, Iron Council. Let me offer my own happy Amazon/China Miéville’s new novel-related tale.
Brad DeLong “notices a relationship”:http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000394.html between the PSAT tests and the magazines lying around his home:
Dubbed… declaimed… reflexive… inquisitive… sustenance… enumerated… demeaned…harangue… munificent… straitened… divestment… sinecure… corollary… culmination… manifestation… constellation… amalgam… embodies… sanguine… impudent… reiterating… carapace… antennae…
[I]t’s hard to avoid noticing something about the vocabulary that they are testing. It’s not, by and large, science or engineering vocabulary. It’s not financial or commercial vocabulary. It’s not political or quantitative vocabulary. What they are testing is the high humanistic vocabulary of the Sunday New York Times Arts and Leisure section, of the New Yorker, of the New York Review of Books.
Now we get all three of these publications. And my children thus get an extra edge through this testing process. But is this really what we want to allocate resources based on–whether people’s parents have the NYRoB lying around and whether their children pick it up and read it?
“Cultural capital”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_capital is indeed a vital factor governing resource allocation in contemporary societies. For more information on what might happen to his fourteen-year-old in the near future, Brad should consider reading an oldie-but-goodie article from “Paul DiMaggio”:http://www.princeton.edu/~dimaggio, 1982, “Cultural Capital and School Success: The Impact of Status Culture Participation on the Grades of U.S. High School Students” (American Sociological Review, 47: 189-201). And for longer-term prospects, there’s Paul DiMaggio and “John Mohr”:http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/mohr.htm, 1985, “Cultural Capital, Educational Attainment, and Marital Selection” (American Journal of Sociology 90: 1231-61).
“Ted”:http://instapundit.com/archives/018438.php beat me to this, mostly. But I wanted to say this: I’m sure if we trawl through our 1990s archives we’ll find that the “high-minded”:http://instapundit.com/archives/018438.php and their lofty correspondents
bq. Reader Keith Rempel gets at the heart of what’s wrong here, and articulates what I couldn’t: “Kerry was using Cheney’s daughter to harm her father. … ANOTHER UPDATE: “More thoughts “here”:http://thoughtsonline.blogspot.com/2004/10/james-taranto-and-others-may-be-right.html: ‘thou shall NOT speak of another’s kid in any way that could POSSIBLY be construed as negative’ … MORE: … James Somers emails: “Kerry crassly exploited Cheney’s daughter for use against Bush and thus, by extension, Cheney. Perhaps you have to be a parent to understand what that means.”
were _right out there on the front lines_ defending Chelsea Clinton from anything that might have been “construed”:http://blog.radioleft.com/blog/_archives/2004/9/4/135257.html as “insulting”:http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire021501.shtml at the time. (We can leave aside — as perhaps too complex to grasp — the point that it is not actually an insult to mention that someone who has worked in various professional and political contexts doing outreach work with the gay community is, in fact, gay.) I’m waiting to see if the parallel to Chelsea strikes any of the “people”:http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_10_10_corner-archive.asp#042735 over at “The Corner”:http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner who are “waving”:http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_10_10_corner-archive.asp#042700 the “flag”:http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_10_10_corner-archive.asp#042692 of “‘common decency'”:http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_10_10_corner-archive.asp#042748 in defence of Mary Cheney at the moment. But, of course, I forget: when _they’re_ insulted it’s an offense to common decency and “civility”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001227.html, but when _we’re_ insulted it’s just more political correctness and evidence that the left is “too sensitive”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/000214.html and has no sense of humor.
I’ve got to quote Andrew Sullivan again:
Some of the subtler arguments I’ve heard overnight say the following: it’s not that homosexuality is wrong; it’s just that many people believe that and Kerry therefore exploited their homophobia to gain a point. I don’t buy it, but let’s assume the worst in Kerry’s motives for the sake of argument. What these emailers are saying is that Kerry should hedge what he says in order to cater to the homophobia of Bush’s base. Why on earth should he?
The truth here is obvious: Bush and Cheney are closet tolerants. They have no problem with gay people personally; but they use hostility to gay people for political purposes, even if it means attacking members of their own families. What they are currently objecting to is the fact that their hypocrisy has been exposed. To which the only answer is: if you don’t want to be exposed as a hypocrite, don’t be one.
There are at least two bloggers (Jason Kuznicki at Positive Liberty and John Cole) whose disapproving reaction to this little tempest isn’t blatant opportunism. I’m sure that there are more.
I’d just like to draw a little Venn diagram, if I could.
A: Outraged Kerry-bashers who think that they feel insults to gay dignity more keenly than Andrew Sullivan or the Log Cabin Republicans.
B: Giggly Kerry-bashers who write posts like this or this (search for “When do they kiss?”)
OVERLAP: People I see no reason to take seriously.
The 9-11 Commission bill is going to conference, where Senators and Representatives will negotiate the differences between the two bills to come up with a final version to send to the White House. Katherine has a good post about the language re: outsourcing torture in the House bill.
We will have an opportunity to contact the members of conference committee to politely let our concerns be heard. Here they are; we’ll have more about this later.
House Democrats:
House Republicans:
David Drier (CA)
Pete Hoekstra (MI)
Henry Hyde (IL)
James Sensenbrenner (WI)
Duncan Hunter (CA)
Senate Democrats
Joe Lieberman (CT)
Carl Levin (MI)
Dick Durbin (IL)
Jay Rockefeller (WV)
Bob Graham (FL)
Frank Lautenberg (NJ)
Senate Republicans
Susan Collins (ME)
George Voinovich (OH)
Norm Coleman (MN)
John Sununu (NH)
Pat Roberts (KS)
Mike DeWine (OH)
Trent Lott (MS)
“Read and learn”:http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/10/index.html#004459. The old “pig-fucker strategy”:http://www.methree.net/archives/December/grueterthompson1.html emerges for the last month of the campaign, with the added twist of getting the party operatives to plant fake evidence.
I’m plagued by an evil SpyWare problem at the moment, which neither SpyBot S&D nor AdAware detects. (Norton AV also says I’m virus free.) The problem is an occasional launch of an Internet Explorer window, linking to this site or that site. Perhaps installing XP SP2 would solve this, but my last attempt just hung my system mid-install (and I needed to do a lot to recover). I’m tempted just to rename the IE exe file so that the program won’t run, but since evil Microsoft may have programmed in all kinds of subterranean connections between the browser and the OS, I’m wary of doing so. Any advice? (Advice of the form “You should buy a Mac” will not improve my immediate situation or mood.)