Whoa, Inky, Slow Down!

I think I get some of the processes involved here, but it's still weird to see the Philadelphia Inquirer's "Too Bad the Phillies Lost" editorial a whopping four days after the season ended. Not everybody has moved on, I understand, but it still seems less than real timely. If you can't say it within two days, Inky, maybe you want to move on quietly. This just makes you look old and slow.

Enough With The Rand Paul Stomping Already

I was shocked at the video of a Rand Paul supporter stomping on a MoveOn supporter -- but, weirdly, I think we're making too big a deal of it. If there was a small army of Rand Paul supporters marching through Kentucky, stomping on the necks of sign-holding liberals, I'd be concerned. But one incident doesn't tell us anything, really, about the underlying dynamics of a candidate or the ideology he shares with his followers. I got tired of conservatives smearing "SEIU thugs" based on one incident last year; I'm already tired of this.

My Small, Car-less World

I took a train the the Philly suburbs on Saturday to watch the (damnit) concluding game of the NLCS, passing by a lot of interesting little Philadelphia sub-communities that I probably would've explored by now ... if I had a car. So I relate to Atrios' thoughts on what car-lessness does to your world:

"Obviously cars are useful things in that they let you basically go 'anywhere' at relatively low perceived marginal cost (one problem with the way we pay for cars is that a lot of things which are really marginal costs are perceived as fixed costs by people). I think I've been car free for about 6 years now, and where I can go reasonably is dictated by where I can walk, where there's decent public transportation access, where is accessible by a cab ride I'm willing to pay for, or what's accessible by a carshare car that I'm willing to pay for. While there isn't a perfect mapping, carshare costs make perceived fixed costs (insurance, maintenance, car payments) into marginal costs to some degree. All that makes the accessible world quite a bit smaller."

This is all true. I live in Center City, and 95 percent of what I do in town is generally in Center City. That's not all bad: There's lots to do in Center City! I like my neighborhood, and I like the neighborhoods that I can walk to in 20 minutes or less -- which is quite a huge chunk of town. But it is limited. I mostly enjoy living without the car -- and I really appreciate not having the expenses -- but the limits of my travel sometimes make me wonder if living in a big East Coast city has made me more provincial than when I was living in Kansas.

SEIU Thugs in Action!

Sorry. Wrong thugs!

Victor Davis Hanson is Wrong About Wikileaks

Hanson: "We are engaged in a great experiment to see whether the U.S. military can still persist in a conflict when it knows that any and all of its private communications can become public — and will be selectively aired and hyped by people with a preconceived bias against it. Had the public known in real time from periodic media leaks about operational disasters surrounding the planning for the D-Day landings, intelligence failures at the Bulge or Okinawa, or G.I. treatment of some German and Japanese prisoners, the story of World War II might have been somewhat different."

Perhaps, but the release of the the Afghanistan and Iraq documents by Wikileaks has been done in something less than real time. Is there a D-Day operation that has been compromised by the leaks? Not that's been publicly demonstrated, at least. Learning about things years later is not the same as "real time."

And the United States at least had a clearly defined mission in World War II. We knew who we were fighting, what a victory would mean and what a loss would mean. We're nearly a decade post-9/11, having meandered through a pair of quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, the only thing we really know is that we're supposed to keep fighting. The Wikileaks documents bring some clarity, at least, to the question of the results of that fighting.

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.

All Those Political Attack Ads

We don't have a TV, but I got exposed to the current state of affairs by watching Phillies games with friends during the NLCS. The onslaught of political ads was a little bit nauseating. The Inky reports:

"G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College, said he had no doubt 'that the commercials are more negative and that there are more of them than we've seen in maybe forever here.'

With a U.S. Senate seat, the governor's mansion and several key U.S. House seats in play, Madonna said, 'there is probably more being spent on TV in Pennsylvania in this cycle than even in the presidential elections.'"

Of course, it seems like we see this story nearly every cycle: More money, and more negative attacks. These stories were being written back in 1994, when the Gingrich Republicans first took Congress. I have no doubt they were being written decades before that. It's annoying -- I'm grateful we don't have a TV -- but it's not new.

LeBron's Self-Pitying New Ad

Interesting how LeBron takes self-pity and casts it as defiance:



Maybe I'm older, but the reference to the old Charles Barkley commercial is instructive. That 30 seconds wasn't about self-justification for signing a $110 million contract -- and if Barkley's commercial also reeked of Nike myth-making, it was at least genuinely provocative at the time. Nike and LeBron have decided to embrace the whole anti-hero thing here, and more power to them, but it feels (as Bill Simmons would probably point out) like a moment from a pro wrestling script: Hulk Hogan has turned heel! It's an interesting story, but it doesn't mean anything.

The Mob Ain't Like the Movies

The Inky reports on the upcoming sentencing of reputed mob leader Andrew Merola:

"One of the more audacious schemes outlined in a 30-count indictment handed up in May 2008 involved the creation of counterfeit bar codes that Merola and his associates used to purchase high-priced items from stores like Lowe's, Home Depot, and Circuit City.

The defendants placed the phony bar codes over the bar codes of expensive merchandise before checking out, according to authorities.

They then sold the items at close to market value on the street, or peeled off the counterfeit bar codes and returned the items for full store credit.

Examples cited were a bar code for a vacuum cleaner priced at $49.97 used to buy a Dyson vacuum that listed for $549.99; a bar code from a chain saw that sold for $44.97 used to buy a saw valued at $374; and a bar code for a welding machine worth $58 used to buy a machine that sold for $669."

Sounds pretty petty. Hard to see a "Goodfellas" sequel made out of the great Dyson caper.

Clearly I Need To Kill More People in Order To be A Real Man

The Wall Street Journal reviews Peter McAllister's "Manthropology": "For Mr. McAllister one measure of manhood is the willingness to face an enemy and mete out punishment without flinching. Today our conduct in war is governed by a handbook of careful rules. Mr. McAllister, for contrast, points to the 17th-century Native American practice of not only scalping victims alive but also 'heaping hot coals onto their scalped heads.' Which is nothing compared with the attentions lavished by the Romans on a Christian named Apphianus, who was racked for 24 hours and scourged so hard that 'his ribs and spine showed.'"

I haven't read the book, but assuming the review accurately conveys the tone, well, what silly, juvenile crap. People who view the ability to inflict death and torture as a prime measure of manhood aren't macho, they're psychotic.

I Need To Be More Like Ta-Nehisi Coates

I'm guilty of this sometimes:: "I am a liberal. But I can not spend every single thread using whatever I'm reading as evidence for the evils of the Tea Party, or the shortcomings of Barack Obama. It just so predictable and easy. There will be more Malcolm threads this week. The lens to apply is literary, not policy. If you're only here to gather evidence for a facebook fight with your conservative or liberal relatives, do yourself a favor and have a beer while reading a Rasmussen poll."

Karzai Rails Against America

Seriously: Why are we still there?

Those Poor Elites

Slate observes: "It's sure a bad week to be an elite." No it's not. It's never, ever a bad week to be elite. That's what being elite is all about. It's only bad if you lose it.

Why NPR Will Keep Its Funding

A reader at Commentary breaks down the radio network's funding: "A lot has been written about how the network only gets a couple million from taxpayers. This is very misleading … actually wrong. CPB gives scores of millions of dollars to NPR affiliates which, in turn, use that money to purchase NPR programming such as Morning Edition, All Things Considered, etc. …"

And that's why attempts to doom NPR will probably fail. It's one thing to say you're going to yank funding from that New York-based radio network. But who wants to be the villain who pulled dollars from High Plains Public Radio? Stations out in the Oklahoma panhandle could never be self-sufficient, but they provide a valuable public service nonetheless -- and their constituents would raise holy hell if they were lost.