Politics
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Second to None
Former USAF lieutenant colonel William Astore has a good piece on how Americans have come increasingly to accept the militarization of their society: But here’s the question to ponder: At what price virtuosity? In World War I and World War II, the Germans were the best soldiers because they had trained and fought the most,
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Quote of the Day: Mark Steel
. . .most of America will be run by the same people no matter who wins the election — the oil companies, WalMart, Murdoch etc. And Obama has set out not to disrupt their rule but to manage it. But the hope he’s unleashed may not be so easily controlled, because change does not happen
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Quote of the Day: Jon Swift (Updated)
Regarding the now notorious New Yorker cover: Although liberals are often unfairly accused of being humorless, the truth is that they are so knowledgable about what makes something funny that they rarely find humor that meets their very tough standards. They are like connoisseurs of fine wine who are unable to drink anything that is
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Of Rigged Systems
On July 1 I wrote here: Reading Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland will educate those of you who didn’t live through it and remind those of us who did why the new lefties of the sixties provoked the backlash that justified such a movement in the minds of many Americans. It’s not that the Left was wrong
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Jesse Helms As the Future
Michael Lind makes the case in Salon this morning that Helms is no troglodyte who somehow survived while the rest of his cave-dwelling species died out, but he represents the the evolutionary strain in American politics that dominates now and will continue to dominate: Today we take it for granted that American conservatism is defined
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Last Two Weeks Summed Up
Frank Rich: For all the hyperventilation on the left about Mr. Obama’s rush to the center — some warranted, some not — what’s more alarming is how small-bore and defensive his campaign has become. Whether he’s reaffirming his long-held belief in faith-based programs or fudging his core convictions about government snooping, he is drifting away
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Quote of the Day: American Conservative on FISA
In real reality as opposed to Beltway media reality, opposing telecom immunity is not an issue of the left. It’s an issue for anybody with principles: One of the most disturbing things about “mainstream” reaction to Obama’s reversals, particularly the reversal regarding the FISA legislation, is the idea that defending the Fourth Amendment against egregious,
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Who’s Getting Swiftboated? (Updated)
Not John McCain, that’s for sure. You might make the case that Wes Clark is. Watch this clip put together by TPM. It’s rather amazing how viral idiocy can be: Give the Republicans credit; they know how to defend themselves. Push them even a little and they’ll hit back hard. They know McCain cannot afford
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The Sixties
Obama is taking some flak for distancing himself from the MoveOn mentality and toward the faith-based mentality, and I thought I'd make an attempt to explain why I think it's probably a good idea. It is insofar as it is part of a longer-term strategy to explode the left/right/center media narrative that has developed since
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Governing from the Center II
Obama’s the move to the center continues with his disavowal of Wes Clark’s sensible comment that getting shot down and spending years as a POW does not make you a foreign policy expert. I think that the Obama campaign is very aware of the sixties/seventies baggage that the Democrats carry, and it is trying as