How Democrats should play?

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Tuesday October 03, 2006 · 11:43 PM PDT

2006/10/03 · 23:43

What a game is this. In the political medium where public decency is supposed to be important, corruption and lies detestable, sexual hold of old men on teens unacceptable, we have the Republican party deeply in all sorts of problems that would make any other political body for ever irrelevant. Yet this Republican party can continue to stand for all viability it needs.

In the last days, it was revealed that Condoleezza Rice ignored Tenets' briefing of July 2001 on Al Qaeda's threat. Bill Frist called for bringing back Taliban in Afghanistan's government. The talking head Rush Limbaugh called for pulling back out of Iraq. A Republican congressman Mark Foley was forced to resign because of sexual approaches to teenager pages, while the Republican leadership was ignoring or covering up his indecent behaviour apparently for years. The Republicans should be fatally embarrased, according to the rules of "being strong on national security", "staying the course on the war on terror", "moral Christian values", "responsibility and leadership" they dilligently forced. Read More

The New Middle East

das monde

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Thursday August 24, 2006 · 7:39 PM PDT

2006/08/24 · 19:39

Are you interested in what an Egyptian democracy activist and professor of political sociology at the American University in Cairo has to say about the New emerging Middle East? Read Saad Eddin Ibrahim in Washington Post. Here are snippets from there:

President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may be quite right about a new Middle East being born. [But] it will not be exactly the baby they have longed for. [It] will be neither secular nor friendly to the United States.

The law of unintended consequences is very strong for violent meassures - as if no one had guessed that.
Read More

TNR likes Ann Coulter

das monde

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Tuesday August 15, 2006 · 9:28 PM PDT

2006/08/15 · 21:28

We should certainly forget the times when "The New Republic" was considered (quite widely) as a "liberal" counterpart to the conservative "National Review". Why else would a "liberal journal" would consider prospects of Repub hopefuls (such as McCain or Newt Gingrich) just as serious as the burning topics of today?

But this takes the top of the cake:

A defense of Ann Coulter
by Elspeth Reeve

Seriously?! Yeah! Read More

Capitalism the Virtuous?!

das monde

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Tuesday August 08, 2006 · 3:51 AM PDT

2006/08/08 · 03:51

Capitalism has made us better people - morally better. That is the core claim of the thick (over 500 pages) book

The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

by the economist prof. Deirdre N. McCloskey.

And that is only the first of the planned four books, where she is going to prove that all the "left and right intelligentsia" are wrong to criticize capitalism for corruption, social alienation and anti-cultural consumerism.

At best, we have another academic exercise in advocating a particular system to the highest philosophical, and even moral, grounds. How successful is Prof. McCloskey? How different is she from Karl Marx, for example? At worst, this book signals a neo-neo-calvinistic ideology for emerging David Brooksian class of "supermoral" lords, where all morality is decided lonely by the size of the bank account, regardless how the money is earned or spent. Read More

G. Palast: the Iraq Operation was accomplished!

das monde

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Tuesday March 21, 2006 · 8:31 PM PST

2006/03/21 · 20:31

Greg Palast is back as The Guardian columnist, hillariously.

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.
But don't kid yourself -- [Bush and Cheney] accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called,
"Operation
Iraqi
Liberation."
O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute.

das monde

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Thursday February 02, 2006 · 6:09 PM PST

2006/02/02 · 18:09

Tanker runs aground in Alaska, spills oil products
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Feb 2 (Reuters) - An oil tanker carrying nearly 5 million gallons of oil and gasoline was struck by an ice floe and ran aground while loading oil products at an Alaska refinery on Thursday, causing a spill, a state official and the refining company said.
"At this time we do not have an estimate as to the amount of product released," refinery owner Tesoro Corp. said in a statement.
The Tesoro-chartered double-hulled tanker, the Seabulk Pride, was loading heavy vacuum gas oil and unleaded gasoline from the refinery in Nikiski, Alaska, on the Cook Inlet, the company said.
It said the ice floe parted the mooring line and sent the 600-foot (183-meter) tanker adrift before it went aground about half a mile (800 metres) north of the dock, and that the vessel's tanks were secure.

Is Alaska a good recipe for the American oil addiction?
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Why do liberals love America?

das monde

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Wednesday January 25, 2006 · 7:59 AM PST

2006/01/25 · 07:59

Some say you can't make the world better than it is. They say you ought to be sceptical about human nature, yet they urge you not to question potentially abusive conduct of the powerful. They say you hate America if you want to give extra opportunities to the less fortunate. Conservativism is bigotry of low expectations.

But what drives us, liberals, to care not only about own well being, but about quality of life of others as well? Are we personally hurt by seeing injustice by abuse of political or economic power? Is it very satisfying to seek optimal social gains by collaboration? Are we concerned that uncurbed greed will have catastrophic consequences to everyone?

Do we think that America is the foremost developer of achievements of the Western Enlightenment? Are we certain that America's success had been assured by an effective balance of civil powers? Read More

The Dutch turned right?

das monde

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Tuesday January 10, 2006 · 4:00 AM PST

2006/01/10 · 04:00

One might say, The New Republic journal "the liberal counterpart" of the conservative National Review. If so, it is very Lieberman-lite liberalism at best.

Now the "liberal" New Republic has the article where the Netherlands is praised as a model for a conservative country!

[Read below the fold. Crossposted at European and Booman Tribunes.] Read More

Peak of conservativism

das monde

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Monday December 26, 2005 · 11:04 PM PST

2005/12/26 · 23:04

For one time, let us take Bob Novak seriously. (Despite easy ridicule and nomination for the Misinformer of the year title.) When he talks about conservative problems, he may be trustworthy. He writes in the last column:

Control of Senate may hinge on Lott

December 26, 2005

BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Trent Lott within the next week plans to decide between seeking a fourth term in the U.S. Senate from Mississippi or retiring from public life. That could determine whether Republicans keep control of the Senate in next year's elections. For the longer range, Lott's retirement and replacement could signal that Southern political realignment has peaked and now is receding.

Is it really so bad for the cons that their well being is dependant on retirement of a single Senator? Will we see the end of "moralize and moralize, scare and scare, elect and elect" conservativism soon?
Read More

How NRO's Derb predicted 2005

das monde

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Tuesday December 20, 2005 · 7:28 PM PST

2005/12/20 · 19:28

NRO's Derbyshire (yeah, the clown of NRO) evaluated his predictions for 2005 from a year ago. He was proud to agree with Philip Tetlock's quotation:

It is the somewhat gratifying lesson [that] people who make prediction their business — people who appear as experts on television, get quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses, and participate in punditry roundtables — are no better than the rest of us. When they're wrong, they're rarely held accountable, and they rarely admit it, either. They insist that they were just off on timing, or blindsided by an improbable event, or almost right, or wrong for the right reasons. They have the same repertoire of self-justifications that everyone has, and are no more inclined than anyone else to revise their beliefs about the way the world works, or ought to work, just because they made a mistake.

So true. Especially when the experts specifically work to assure only predictions that are comfortable for the "Great Leader".

But Derb is too modest with evaluating his own predictions... Read More

NRO admits the "culture of corruption"

das monde

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Tuesday December 13, 2005 · 6:15 PM PST

2005/12/13 · 18:15

This is something remarkable. The conservative NRO blog has an article which, up to a couple of sentences, would fit as a diary here at dKos. The author Rich Lowry, one of the National Review editors. Here is how the article goes:

Democrats complain of a "culture of corruption" in the Republican-controlled Congress, and they are right in one respect: The spending process has been so twisted by the Republican majority that it has become inherently dirty.

The instruments of this perversion are "earmarks," special provisions attached to spending bills that direct federal money to specific projects. Earmarks are how Congress diverts spending to pork-barrel local priorities and to other special interests. This practice has long existed, but Republicans have made it part of the fabric of their governing.

das monde

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Tuesday November 29, 2005 · 8:01 PM PST

2005/11/29 · 20:01

Guess who wrote this:

I'm against torture. [I'll go] along with some clever manipulation of a suspect's hopes and fears: But rubber truncheons? Electrodes? Pliers? Razor blades? Blocks of ice? Not in my name, no. Am I an absolutist on this? Yes, I am. Let's say we know, beyond reasonable doubt, that a large thermonuclear bomb, disguised as a refrigerator, has been installed on a high floor in a high building in a U.S. city. We don't know anything else - not even which city - but we have a guy in custody who could probably tell us all about it if he chose to. Why would we not use "extraordinary measures" to make him sing? On one side of the scales: a few hours of intense physical pain for a very evil person. On the other: millions of American lives. Why would we not torture the guy? Why is this not, for me, a no-brainer?

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How Democrats should play?

The New Middle East

TNR likes Ann Coulter

Capitalism the Virtuous?!

G. Palast: the Iraq Operation was accomplished!

Oops, dirty oil...

Why do liberals love America?

The Dutch turned right?

Peak of conservativism

How NRO's Derb predicted 2005

NRO admits the "culture of corruption"

Torture puzzle