1. Via Allah, national embarrassment Jimmy Carter once again shows off his foreign policy acumen by arguing that “the pre-eminent obstacle to peace is Israel’s colonisation of Palestine.” So far, this piece has appeared only on Tom Paine and Pakistani papers, but, well, every little bit helps, Jimmy.
Seriously. Just throw up a few houses and all will be forgiven.
2. Via Ed Hirsch and The Corner, a William Saletan article from Slate that addresses certain strains of modern feminism as they manifested themselves at a recent feminist pro-choice conference. Writes Saletan:
I knew I’d get flak for using the word “bad.” But I was amazed at the group’s reaction to the word “responsibility,” which was the subject of the next panel. “Responsibility is to me a code word that has a lot of racial and class … implications,” said one participant. “I don’t like the word ‘responsibility,’ “ said another. “I don’t want to talk about responsibility unless we’re talking about the government taking responsibility,” said a third. Hoping to bring the discussion back to earth, the moderator
suggested, “Is there a way for us to reclaim the idea of responsibility?” The answer was a chorus of rejection, punctuated by a “No way!” She retreated apologetically.
3. Robert Hayes proffers a 14th Amendment argument on abortion rights and why and why it means that the courts ought to withdraw from the abortion question. Robert welcomes your reactions, both pro and con. Or maybe he doesn’t. He didn’t really say in his email.
4. Novelist Robert Ferrigno (whose new novel, Prayers for the Assassin is a great read, by the way), emails to remind me that Joaquin Phoenix fans shouldn’t forget about Clay Pigeons. I vaguely remember it—Vince Vaughn co-stars—but I’ll give it another go on his recommendation.
5. Via Tom Pechinski, Artists try not to offend Muslims as satire festival treads softly. (see Rantburg for more)
6. James Taranto raises an interesting point about “anti-Muslim bias” as fallout from the doomed Dubai port deal:
Our sense is that the media’s antiwar bias is feeding the public’s anti-Muslim bias. By relentlessly focusing on the bad news in Iraq and playing down the good, journalists perpetuate an image of the Muslim world as a hostile, uncivilized place.
Of course, anti-war folks will say Bush’s constant reminder about the terror threat is responsible for the mood of Americans; but Bush’s rhetorical strategy has always been to separate out Islamists from moderate Muslims.
For their part, many Democrats have reminded us on a number of occasions how the terrorist threat has been overhyped by this administration for “political gain.’ Right up until they went batshit crazy over a port deal they knew posed no real security risk, but which they framed (along with grandstanding Republicans) as a “handing over of control of our ports to Arabs.” Evidently, all the talk about reaching out to the Other stops in the run up to elections…
(h/t Terry Hastings)
As for #6:
Needless to say, no one in the salons of the NYT or Post, etc. will bring this up come election time. Down the memory hole.
I am still cringing at the reaction of opportunist Congressional swine (from both parties) in my part of the country. Gah.
More of the famous Carter clarity, this time on Iraq:
If only they’d followed the example of Palestine and elected someone named Hitler, the democracy they’ve already got might have been good enough to satisfy His Nibs.
James Earl must have been too busy sawing cross beams to have noticed those three vote thingies the Iraqis had…
I welcome worshipful adoration.
Jeff,
Clay Pigeons is phenomenal. Vince Vaughan playing Vince Vaughan on speed. A deputy sheriff named Barney. Janine Garafolo as an FBI agent. Good times.
“Barney, would you please not poke the dead body with a stick?”
’Carter Denies Israel’s Right to Exist’
Dont think we’ll be seeing that headline anywhere in the MSM in the near future…
Of course it all depends on exactly what you consider Palestine, but from the context of Jimmah’s statement it’s pretty clear who he was trying to shine up.
Re: #5
“A lesson in manners puntuated with a punch in the nose tends to stick with you.”
Can’t remember who – either Robert Heinlein or my old man.
The only answer to violent protests of innocuous cartoons and/or giant puppets SHOULD BE to beat the living crap out of the protestors. Purely as a lesson in free speech rights.
“Say what you like – but if you hit anybody, I kick your Islamofascist ass into next week. Comprende?”
Can Carter please run for President again in 2008? I was only 10 in 1980, and didn’t get a chance to vote against him.
I have hit my fucking limit.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/opinion/20herbert.html
For this of you not subscribed to the TimeSelect service (the New York Times subscription upgrade) what Bob Herbert’s writing about is the Maher Arar case—the Syrian-born Canadian software engineer who was kidnapped at Kennedy Airport by the US government and flown to Syria, where he was held (and tortured) for 10 months in a rat-infested underground cell the size of a grave.
At which point he was released, because (even under torture) nobody could find any evidence he had any link to terrorists.
So Arar, as the resident of a Western democracy and a believer in due process, sought the kind of legal remedy a law-abiding citizen should: he went to court, seeking redress for the illegal and unconstitutional abuse of his person.
His lawsuit was dismissed yesterday.
Not because it was without merit. That’s the thing. Exactly the opposite.
The judge who dismissed it threw the case out because discovery might have, for example, uncovered the Canadian Goverment’s complicity in this illegal action, and thus precipitated an international incident . . .
Basically, the judge admits the US Government acted illegally. And that there’s nothing the judicial branch can do about it, because revealing the details of this illegal activity might harm US international relations.
You get it?
This federal judge says THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION CAN DETAIN AND TORTURE INNOCENT PEOPLE OPENLY AND AT WILL, AND THERE’S NOTHING ANYONE CAN DO ABOUT IT.
Except whine.
And vote the cocksuckers out of office this year.
Yeah: I’m talking the 2006 Congressional election.
Because if the Democrats can take back Congress, we can impeach the fuckers.
Do it.
Now, finally, I’m a Democrat. Why?
BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT THE FUCKING REPUBLICANS.
More here… http://mattstover.blogspot.com/2006/02/i-have-hit-my-fucking-limit.html
T/W: able … to comprehend? Nah!
Cain,
I bet your Che T-shirt doubles as a jiz rag.
I thought Jeff closed the gate to the asylum on the way out for the afternoon? Guess not…
Cain?….Hmmmmm, still got that mark?
Cain:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt – a Democrat – operated ten ‘relocation camps’ within our borders and held hundreds of thousands of US citizens for years. Entire families, little kids, old women. Hundreds of thousands.
Yet under similar circumstances (wartime) a couple of dozen people under a Republican administration are held for interrogation and you suddenly find that reprehensible?
Cain reprising Stalin: “A single rendition is a tragedy, a million renditions is a statistic.”
The Democrats have clean hands with regard to human rights how, again?
I thought that “the pre-eminent obstacle to peace” was the refusal by the entire population of Israel to kindly walk into the sea and drown themselves. From what I can tell that is the only thing that the Arab world wants from the Jews.
Cain- I think you should type in CAPS all the time.
As a noted scholar once put it (or maybe it was Jefferson…I like mis-attributing quotes to Jefferson, and it’s a hip thing to do I understand): CAPS LOCK IS LIKE THE CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME.
Cain and his ilk are so far from persepctive that we can’t even adequately discuss the word.
Yeah, Cain, I went to your blog. I read the discussion. You, and your like-minded posters have both a very broken view of the world (as in the details are frequently wrong) and a visceral response to events that overwhelms the context of a case to force it into a certain mold.
Which all leads back to Dr. Sanity’s “Daddy Issues” with the “imperfect parent.” There are dozens of reasons why a person might spend all their time criticizing the best and ignoring the worst, none of those reasons are good enough.
I guess if you feel alienated, everyone else has to be alienated too.
Racial profiling “accepted” in the US? Surveillance society, every move watched? Theocracy? WTF planet do you live on? NONE of that is even remotely true, and the more you insist on that jibber-jabber, the more people will ignore you, especially in the US, where we can see what’s going on around us and that ain’t it.
In any large and complex system there are miscarriages of justice, pretty much every day. From incompetent public defenders who take advantage of th ignorance of their clients, to spiteful juries, stupidly constructed laws, and cases that are tried so thoroughly in the press that fairness is virtually impossible.
And this would appear to be a case like that. Life sucks badly, I hope he gets another chance.
But the larger issue is that life is a nasty, grubby bitch, and most people in the West are so comfortable we’ve forgotten about it. In the Mideast, they haven’t forgotten it, which is one of the reasons the culture we’ve squared off against still exists.
Study a little history. We live in one of the best places at one of the best times, and we bitch incessantly about it. That says some unpleasant things about our future.
Hell, maybe we’ll pass through some intergalactic chill-potion cloud and all have a break where we can get some perspective. I’m guessing we’re going to have to work at it, though.
And right now I have to disagree with your prescription. For the last five years, the left has grown more and more deranged, and I don’t think they can handle power right now. Too much anger, too much bullshit.
If they’d stick to real differences, real abuses, real problems, and stop the damned hyperbole, then maybe. But not now.
I don’t suppose that we could agree on a non-binding resolution stating that “BU$H IS TEH SUXOR” could we? I think we could sweeten the deal by agreeing to throw in a couple of doses of rectal thorazine. For the kids.
I have no words. I’m going to curl up and cry, now.
Oh, and on the whole “responsibility” thing, I have no problem with the radicals disavowing responsibility.
I speak from personal experience when I say that when you give up on responsibility, your task, your movement, and your life will disintegrate.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.
Sounds like the Katrina Battlecry to me.
As for Carter.
You’d think being among the most incompetent Presidents in our history would be enough, but this clown’s been obviously hanging out in the hot sunny peanut fields far too much since his forced retirement. I mean he’s already reached a Dean level of nuttery and is close to achieving Hollywood levels. Yeesh.
To me, the striking thing about the responsibility quote was that it was, in essence (ha, Sartre humor! I kill me!) a rebuke of a major historic root of feminism- namely Sartrian existentialism.
Older models of feminism relied on a concept of Sartre’s radical freedom to demonstrate their rights and influence on the world. But explicit with that model of freedom was the understanding that total freedom was in essence total ethical self-responsibility.
Now responsibility is a power-word, ala Foucalt.
Just seemed weird.
Some Guy in Chicago just said the F-word.
Man, I hate that twit. (The F-word, not Some Guy in Chicago).
Yes! Yes! Unfortunately, feminism has since devolved into goddess-worship and vagina-fetishism, and feminists think it’s somehow an expression of their freedom to ‘take back’ the old enslaving patriarchal stereotypes of ‘the female’ as self-less, passive, etc. etc. and start to insist that these are *really* somehow positive and desirable qualities.
For example–according to the ‘second-wave’ feminist, apparently women don’t fear death as men do (Hey, I’ll take your word for it, sister. I must be *even more* falsely conscious than I already thought I was!), because *they aren’t decieved into thinking of themselves as separate individuals* as men are. Hey, it’s just like the Bhagavad-Gita–without any of the, you know, transcendent religious meaning attached, but hey–who needs that? (Yes, Arjuna, said Sri Krishna–the nature of reality can wait. It’s all a social construction of the patriarchy, anyway. Now, let’s talk about your vagina.)
To be clear- my readings of “F” are very minimal…just as my readings of Derrida (shall I call him “D”?) are as well. The center-points of my (limited) philosophic training focuses on Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.
Part of what draws me to proteinwisdom is that Jeff’s thoughts on post-modernism parallel, IMO, the exact same problems F and D brought to Continental Philosophy. For all of the various failings the continentals had in their theories pre- Post-Structuralism, there was a sense that rationality was at the core of the world, that a unified ontology could be discovered and that there was some concept of freedom and ethics.
F turned thought and rationality into corrupting power games, while D took a hammer to coherent reality. While both provided sexy, damaging criticisms to the previous continental tradtions…they couldn’t replace them with anything of substance. As opposed to the malaise of western liberalism, you have the maliase of Continental philosophy.
But I’ll try to use the F from now on
tw: family, as in Family Matters stared the cop from Die Hard as…a cop.
I think CAIN would be a great dem candidate in ‘06. Hell, maybe ‘08 for the big seat. So much anger, baby.
Continental Philosophy has long been obsessed with its own consumption. Nihilism. “Deconstructionism.”
They’re a bunch of whiners. But the societies are prosperous enough to support a number of amoral whiners. So they survive, even prosper, where in a place where survival depended on productivity they would change or perish.
Compassion, the desire for comfort, the desire to support noble ideals like charity and the university where controversial ideas are discussed… all perverted by self-serving nihilists, socialists, and, well, jerks.
Liberty is a wonderful thing. So many strive and die for it that I don’t blush at calling it essential.
But it isn’t really self-protecting. You have to be aware of and counter threats, and that kind of structure doesn’t naturally suit itself to free societies. So it’s mostly volunteer, people like us having conversations. Watching. Talking.
Hope it’s enough.
WHAT I SAID WAS: CAPS LOCK ARE TEH HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTISM, NOOB!!!!111!!!
Merovign-
ouch…you kind of kicked my pet philosophy in the dick.
(<—note: that seemed the most appropriate smiley for dick kicking, but I didn’t put much time into a through review of all choices). I’ll certainly admit the continentals have had more than a fair share of blithering dolts- and both F and D managed to take Nietzsche as a central source for their thinking while still leading the whole tradition down the road to nihilism…I think there are some positive elements to be pulled from the wreckage (but maybe that’s just my opinion). I sometimes wonder what reaction I’d get if I were back at the old U of I and turned in a paper titled “Sartre: Neo-Con Bu$hco Whore!”…
Alex-
I remember taking a theatre studies class where something similar came up. We were discussing arrangements of time in theatrical productions, and the TA had listed in her notes that the three more common arrangements were linear, episodic, and circular. As we came to the class lecture, the TA explained that the circular timing technique was most common to plays performed or developed from the feminist tradition. Not wanting to start a discussion of feminism in a theater class (if there is anything worse than listening to, say political science students discuss politcal issues, it’s listening to college actors discussing those same issues) I didn’t raise the issue, but I thought “Are women stuck in circular time? are they all in a really bad Star Trek episode?”
Yea, verily, constantly listening to artists talk political philosophy might just be the reason why those second-wave feminists started to think death might not be so bad, after all.
The whole ‘women stuck in circular time’ thing apparently derives from the idea that bleeding out the (cough) once a month somehow fundamentally alters your perception of reality (Kristeva, how I hate you you tedious pretentious bitch).
Still, I’d rather listen to actors discussing politics than listen to them discussing acting. (I had a theater major roommate one year.)
I wonder how many people’s comment sections Cain has pasted that into today. I saw the same rant word for word over on this thread at ace’s place earlier this evening.
Please, can we call Jhimmi an antisemite now?
Finally, a coherent federal Judge.
Watch out for those black vans, Cain.
BECAUSE OF THE FUCKING REPUBLICANS !!!
Jimmy Carter?
Didn’t he exchange himself for the Tehran Embassy hostages and go down in history as America’s greatest president? No wait, he rescued them and rode an overwhelming wave of popularity to re-election? I guess that’s his reality.
The embarrassment who got run out of the presidency in a landslide is back offering free advice. Well, sometimes we do get what we pay for.
Mojo: Suggestion tempting but unworkable. Punitive measures guaranteed to fail against enemy who will not understand them.
We find selves in no-win situation. Do not respond, enemy sees signs of weakness and opportunity for timely attack utilizing all possible force. Respond appropriately, enemy infuriated by perceived repression and responds with timely attack utilizing all available force.
Nature of our response irrelevant. For enemy, any excuse will suffice to inspire action; only goal, after all, is to exterminate infidel.
You obviously don’t watch enough late-night network talk shows…
That’s a bit of an exaggeration. Swimming would be allowed.
If any of you criticizing Cain’s apparent drive-by had bothered to check, you’d find that his assessment of the Maher Arar thing is pretty much factually on target. Although ISTR that the case was dismissed a couple of weeks ago.
There’s a whole category of posts on this topic over at Obsidian Wings, mostly written by Katherine and hilzoy. On this topic they’ve built as close to an unassailable case as it’s possible to build.
Anyone want to open up discussion on that topic without polluting Jeff’s space, I’d be glad to open you up a thread over there. For serious discussion only, mind you.
So the Tipton Three frequented the Binori madrassa in Pakistan, al-Masri was formerly an admitted radical with horrible luck when it comes to names and this guy from Canada took out a loan with a known radical? Well, here’s to hoping you can guys can somehow fit them all on a bumpersticker. Aside from that what should I take from this? That you want infallability in government? Approx. 36 out of “thousands” is nearing it if you asked anyone older than 12 who didn’t have an axe to grind.
I don’t expect infallibility; I do have some expectation that my government will have some concern about…I dunno…outsourcing torturing, for one.
Yeah, I know that Clinton indulged in a little rendition, himself. Is that the standard we want to use?
“Outsourcing torture” Now that I know will fit on a bumpersticker. So it’s not that you want no mistakes made. It’s just that these mistakes serve your greater cause. Thanks for clearing that one up.
Clinton? And I thought only the reactionary right reflexively brought him into any conversation……………………..
I’d actually prefer that we make as few mistakes as possible. And that the rate of repeated mistakes of the same kind would decrease over time.
If this is a conversation betweem you and…you, I’m out of here.
As opposed to…where do you think I stand, politically? I guarantee you that whatever you were thinking when you wrote this, you were wrong.
So set the bar. If ~36 out of “thousands” is intolerable tell everyone where the threshold is. Because I know where I’m betting it is.
Talking to myself? Should I have fallen for the attempted Clinton diversion?
Hey, you’re the one who pulled Clinton out of the clear blue sky. If you don’t want people presuming things based on what you post it’d be best if you stuck to the topics at hand.