Mother Jones and Sarah Palin

Here's the new cover of Mother Jones:

I don't like it. Hey, I get it: Sarah Palin's an attractive woman. I even think so. But I'm trying to think how folks on the left would react to, say, a National Review cover with Hillary Clinton or Kathleen Sebelius in a bikini top, engorged with rage and lust. I think Sarah Palin is a destructive force in American politics, but I hate to see ostensible feminists resort to objectification just because it's somebody on the other side.

Somewhere, Fans of 'Rambo III" Weep Gently To Themselves

Who honestly thinks this is a good idea?: "Russia's military could return to Afghanistan for the first time since the Red Army was forcibly expelled by US-backed mujahideen fighters in 1989. The proposal is part of plans now being discussed by Nato officials ahead of a landmark alliance summit next month, to be attended by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev."

I know things aren't going well in Afghanistan. But if a big part of our problem there is that we're seen as occupiers -- and it is -- then maybe inviting in the occupiers we once helped kick out of the country sends the wrong damn message. This war is making our leaders stupider and stupider.

Cato: Let's Cut the Defense Budget

I know the Cato Institute is just a "glorified PR firm for Koch Industries," but this paper defies easy labeling as lockstep Republicanism. Benjamin Friedman and Christopher Preble make the case for reducing defense spending by $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

They write: "Concern about deficits has prompted greater scrutiny of all federal spending. But the cuts here would be prudent even in an era of surpluses. The United States does not need to spend $700 billion a year — nearly half of global military spending — to preserve its security. By capitalizing on our geopolitical fortune, we can safely spend far less."

That's deficit-busting I can handle!

Gay Marriage and Activist Judging

Reason's Jacob Sullum offers the strict-constitutionalist case for gay marriage: "I realize opponents of same-sex marriage think they have good reasons for denying gay couples the rights and privileges that straight couples enjoy, and they would argue that homosexuals and heterosexuals are not “similarly situated.” But you know what? Screw them. I am tired of defending the constitutional principles that social conservatives use to restrict liberty, because they so rarely return the favor by supporting those same principles when the effect is to expand liberty. When a supposedly principled originalist like Antonin Scalia can endorse a ridiculously broad reading of the Commerce Clause because the case involves pot, why should I stick my neck out by arguing that the original understanding of equal protection precludes its use in gay marriage cases?"

America's Failure in Iraq

Today's editorial in The Guardian: "Many attempts were made to justify the invasion of Iraq, but one of the most frequently and cynically used was that, irrespective of the absence of weapons of mass destruction, putting an end to the barbarities of Saddam Hussein's regime was a moral imperative. Well, now there is chapter and verse, from ringside seats, on the systematic use of torture by the Iraqi government that the US installed in Saddam's place. The worst practices of Saddam's regime did not apparently die with him, and whereas numerous logs show members of the coalition making genuine attempts to stop torture in Iraqi custody, it is clear their efforts were both patchy and half-hearted. In the worst incidents, one can only reasonably conclude that one set of torturers and thugs has been replaced by another."

Abe Greenwald and Jonathan Franzen's Failure of Imagination?

Abe Greenwald admits that he hasn't read Jonathan Franzen's novel, "Freedom," but that doesn't stop him from offering a review of Franzen's artistry based on an interview the author gave to The Guardian. It was too filled with liberal pieties for Greenwald's taste:

"Franzen’s failure is ultimately not political but artistic. His realm is the creative, and in parroting those of the most meager imaginations, he has reversed the artist’s aim. Liberalism doesn’t only encroach upon things like opportunity and standard of living. It’s what it does to the self that’s most dangerous and pernicious. It pushes out the individual imagination and replaces it with wooden convictions. Before that wreaks havoc on a polity, it has its way with a mind. For a novelist, this is fatal. And so Franzen, a writer of copious narrative and descriptive gifts, ends up sounding like a 14-year-old who broke up his usual Daily Kos with his first read through Howard Zinn."

I suppose it would be churlish of me to ask that Greenwald actually engage Franzen's art before declaring him an artistic failure? Nah. Liberals fail because they're liberals. Seems like Commentary could use its own version of Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The Last Flight of the Shuttle Discovery

...is Nov. 1, and it makes me a bit wistful. By the time I was born, humans had already walked on the moon for the last time. But I became a space buff thanks to the Skylab missions -- why did they seem so romantic to me? And when the Shuttle Columbia launched in 1981, it seemed possible to me that having a career in space would be just another option when I grew up.

That didn't turn out to be the case, of course, and as an adult I've come to believe that manned space flight is probably an unnecessary government activity. But I'd love, still, to float weightless someday. I know it's never going to happen. And the passing of the shuttles from the scene, without replacement craft ready to go, makes me feel a little older, a little more disconnected from my youth.