The Only Thing That Could Have Made It Better....

A speech by Spiro Agnew?

The New York Times dragged William Safire out of his rocking chair to give us... well, the same thing he's been giving us since the days when he penned those Agnew speeches. In Safire's analysis of the conventions, you'll be shocked to know, Lieberman was stellar and Emperor Obama had no clothes... as it turns out, because McCain stole them.

About the only member of the punditariat who agreed that this season’s emperor of oratory was short on clothes that night was David Broder of The Washington Post, who had the unfair advantage of being objective.

(You're not objective, after all, unless you agree with Safire.)

[I]n choosing an exciting new running mate even as Obama was splashing about in the news media adulation of his smoothly delivered acceptance extravaganza, McCain stiffly stole the clothes of change.

What, you thought I was making that part up? ;-)

What's this about?

Then the St. Paul convention was hit by Hurricane Sarah and her admirable family.

I must have missed something. Either that, or it's admirable for family members to simply show up at a convention?

Safire closes, scarily, with

We can hope that the winners in tomorrow’s alliteration wars will be the pleasant Pollyannas of positivism.

Let's hope that contribution to the "alliteration wars" doesn't stick....

When You're A Maverick, Everything's Mavericky!

The best thing about being a maverick is that everything you do is 100% mavericky. Take, for example, your choice of Vice President. Choose a male Orthodox Jew, pro-choice, supportive of gay civil unions, concerned about global warming, against drilling in ANWR, pro-gun control, tons of Washington experience... Not acceptable to your party? Then choose a female evangelical Christian pro-life extremist, opposed to civil unions and domestic partner benefits, unconcerned about global warming, in favor of drilling everywhere, anti-gun control, no Washington experience and no discernible interest in national or international affairs.... And you're still a maverick. The fact that you can flip-flop like that only goes to prove how exceptionally mavericky you are.

It's good to be a maverick.

It Only Seems Fair....

Joe Lieberman writes,

[Chancellor of D.C. public schools, Michelle Rhee] seeks to reward teachers for good performance. While this is common, indeed intuitive, in most professions, it is considered a revolutionary concept in public education. Most union-negotiated teacher contracts base compensation on seniority. While this approach offers job security, it does not reward teachers for inspiring enthusiasm or promoting achievement in the classroom.

Fair enough. So when can we expect Joe to ask Senator Harry Reid to strip him of his seniority, and to introduce legislation authorizing recall votes against U.S. Senators and tying Senate salaries to the extent to which Senators "inspire enthusiasm" or "promote achievement"?

Contempt For Free Speech

The Times editorializes in relation to Joseph Lieberman's attempts to coerce Google into deleting "videos produced by Islamist terrorist organizations or their supporters" from YouTube, and his apparent anger that they only removed videos that were not consistent with their terms of service,

While it is fortunate that Mr. Lieberman does not have the power to tell YouTube that it must remove videos, it is profoundly disturbing that an influential senator would even consider telling a media company to shut down constitutionally protected speech. The American Civil Liberties Union has warned that the “Homegrown Terrorism” bill and related efforts “could be a precursor to proposals to censor and regulate speech on the Internet.”

Not only do these efforts contradict fundamental American values, it is not clear if they would help fight terrorism. Even if YouTube pulled down every video Mr. Lieberman did not like, radical groups could post the same videos on their own Web sites. Trying to restrain the Internet is a game of “whack-a-mole” that cannot be won, says John Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology. Having the videos on YouTube may even be a good thing, because it makes it easier for law enforcement officials, the media and the public to monitor the groups and their messages.

The Times seems to be missing the forest for the trees. The issue here probably isn't so much Lieberman's fear of terrorism. It's likely more a manifestation of Lieberman's ignorance of and contempt for the First Amendment.

Our Village Has Two Idiots

One... Two... Three if you count this guy. How did we get so lucky.
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Update: As by now you know, McCain endorsed talking to Hamas as recently as two years ago. For McCain it's not about honesty, honor or good foreign policy. It's about getting elected. That's no different from most other politicians, you say? Exactly.

Evolving Right-Wing Smears Against Obama

I can barely keep track... One day, Obama's a secret Muslim reared in a radical Islamic madrassa, and is plotting to take over the country. The next day, he's a wild-eyed black man enthralled by a radical preacher whose teachings "aren't Biblical". Now it seems he's a Christian, which means the Muslim world wants him dead. Really, that's the argument of Edward N. Luttwack in today's New York Times, where he was granted space for an editorial despite what appears to be a complete lack of credentials on religious matters, let alone Islamic law. (Insight into the flaws in Luttwack's interpretation of Islam may be found here and here.)

One of the glories of writing an editorial, of course, is that you're not fact-checked, but that doesn't stop various right-wing hacks and haters from trying to suggest that Luttwack's position has somehow been endorsed by the Times. The smear piece relates this history:

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

Perhaps "most Americans" understand that Obama is not a Muslim because he wasn't raised as a Muslim, has never been a Muslim, and... is a Christian. The phrasing here seems intended to suggest that Obama was once Muslim and converted to Christianity - that's consistent with a right-wing smear piece, but it's completely at odds with the facts. As for the "apostasy" claim, Luttwack claims,

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings.

For all adults? So in Luttwack's fevered imagination, when Obama was born and his parents chose not to raise him as a Muslim, the newborn baby Obama was an adult who chose not to be a Muslim? This is the best he can do to sustain his smear?

More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House.

Because in Luttwack's mind, Muslims are really, really stupid and thus, despite international coverage of the campaign and the "Rev. Wright" pseudo-scandal, have no idea that Obama is a Christian.

This smear is bizarre. First and foremost, who cares what the Muslim world thinks of Obama? Isn't "being hated by the Muslim world" a bragging point for G.W.? Isn't the notion that Islamic extremists will "fear" him a cornerstone of John McCain's campaign? Second, if the test of who we want for President is "hope that [the President] would decisively improve relations with the world’s Muslims", assuming the worst of Luttwack's smear piece to be true, how does that distinguish Obama from McCain? As for the possibility that there might be Islamic radicals who would like to kill the President, again the difference between McCain and Obama would be... what?

Meanwhile, in his increasingly loathsome manner, Joe Lieberman is advancing a related smear against Obama, suggesting that Hamas will be happy if he wins. (Where was Luttwack during Lieberman's Presidential run, to "warn" us that the Islamic world may not be thrilled with the idea of a President who is also an Orthodox Jew?) Yes, this is the same Joe Lieberman who solicited Obama's endorsement against Lamont, after losing the Democratic primary for his Senate seat. Perhaps eventually these attacks will become coherent, as if you combine Lieberman's smear with Luttwack's you're left with the near-psychotic notion that Hamas is eager for an Obama victory so that they can condemn him, refuse to cooperate with him, and try to kill him.

If you took all the neurons in Luttwack's head and banged them against all the neurons in Lieberman's head, would you generate enough energy to create a spark? Meanwhile, considering the origins of this particular smear, one wonders why the Times thought it was "fit to print".

Lieberman's False Accusations Against Lamont

You know this by now - the FBI has concluded that the Lamont campaign was not responsible for attacks on Lieberman's website. If you followed the issue at the time, you probably expected that outcome. As I stated back then,

It gives me no confidence in the Lieberman campaign staff, or their accusations of sabotage, that they seem to think that their website is served from a magic box which can only fail in the event of the malicious acts of others.

The FBI's determination as to the cause? Lieberman's magic box server was misconfigured.

According to the FBI memo, the site crashed because Lieberman officials continually exceeded a configured limit of 100 e-mails per hour the night before the primary.

"The system administrator misinterpreted the root cause," the memo stated. "The system administrator finally declared the server was being attacked and the Lieberman campaign accused the Ned Lamont campaign. The news reported this on Aug. 8, 2006, causing additional Web traffic to visit the site.

"The additional Web traffic then overwhelmed the Web server. . . . Web traffic pattern analysis reports and Web logging that was available did not demonstrate traffic that was indicative of a denial of service attack."

Has Lieberman apologized yet? He should.

Big Mistakes By Politicians

When politicians talk about things they supposedly know about, and make colossal mistakes, what are we supposed to think? I will grant that some politicians are pretty dense, but most are above average in intelligence. So they're capable of grasping basic facts. So I'm left thinking that the primary problem is one of two forms of disinterest:

1. They don't actually care about the subject that they are discussing, or
2. They are unable to break out of their pre-existing constructs about the subject.

Perhaps both.

If we take the Lieberman/McCain Iraq War tag team, first we have Lieberman correcting McCain, that the Iranians are not training al-Qaeda. Now we have Lieberman making a similar gaffe,

If we did what Sen. Obama wanted us to do last year, Al-Qaeda in Iran would be in control of Iraq today.

My impression of McCain is that he just doesn't care about the subtleties. Arab, Persian, Sunni, Shiite, whatever. An insurgent is an insurgent is a terrorist, and to support one is to support them all.

Lieberman, on the other hand, has never failed to surprise me with how little he knows about the Middle East, or pretty much anything else he chooses to discuss, sometimes to the point of being a buffoon. He seems to have tried to brush up on his foreign policy credentials when he thought he could be President, but to demonstrate the acumen of a bored college freshman. Iran? Iraq? We know from his correction of McCain that he knows the difference between Sunni and Shiite, but we can't really expect him to stay on top of the terminology for stuff that was on "last month's test", can we?

But answer this: How ignorant do you have to be of Iraq and its various factions to believe that "Al Qaeda in Iraq" would find a welcome home if we pulled out, rather than being extirpated at the hands of the Shiite majority? "Al Qaeda in Iraq" isn't even popular with Iraqi Sunnis.

Lieberman leaves me wondering if he cares about anything other than reelection, or perhaps scoring a Cabinet post in a McCain Administration.
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Update: On a similar note:

[General Odom] blasted the hawks who want to expand the war to Iran, noting that such people are actually seeking to fulfill a key Al Qaeda strategic aim. “One need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign... they implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy the apostate Shiite regime. As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.”

Pretty good stuff. Over to you, Dick Cheney, Senator Lieberman, Senator McCain: why are you aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran?

You can have valid reasons for not liking the Iranian government, or wanting to replace it, but... pause for a moment and think?