The optimist's blog on politics, culture and the media.
Proud member of the reality-based community.
Or the round up:
The always informative and amusing Bull Moose has a very good post on Republican bickering after the election. Check it.
Digby got his hands on what appears to be George and Laura Bush's christmas card. Nevermind. It's a joke card--and I feel devoid of all humor as well as observational ability.
And Frank Rich is on a roll.
It's going to be a busy day for me so blogging will be slow. I'm going to leave most of the posting to our new contributor, Alfred Soto. Alfred teaches English at Florida International University and is also the assistant director of student media--needless to say, his views do not reflect the university's... thankfully--and a close and valued friend. We're lucky to have him here at A Grand Illusion.
I'm working on having a profile section on the side bar for all Illusionites, as well as redesigned and fancier nameplate, but they won't be up for a couple of days.
Also, I'd like to remind you to visit Left2Right and support them by participitating in their debates and so on.
Well, the book is finally out. I'll have to read it myself, I guess. But casually using the word "gay" and "homosexual" to describe a mode of behavior or pathology that didn't exist in the mid nineteenth century is reductive. Even more reductive is the banal assertion by Jean Baker in today's NYT story:
Ms. Baker said that his outsider status would explain his independence and his ability to take anti-Establishment positions like the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. As a homosexual, she said, "he would be on the margins of tradition."That Lincoln may have had same-sex escapades as a young man is likely: most young men, then and now, did too. But the eagerness by homosexual activists (like Larry Kramer) to turn this this theorizing into a lament for what the Republican party has become strikes this homosexual as overheated. Kramer's comment has to be read to be believed.
From NYT:
Adding insult to injury might be the ineluctable Oliver Stone movie.Because about one million American troops have served so far in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Pentagon figures, some experts predict that the number eventually requiring mental health treatment could exceed 100,000.
What happened? Zell Miller didn't want to pass up on the big bucks he's going to be making over at Fox. Considering this is as close to the White House as his ever going to get, maybe Lieberman is not that big of a Putz after all:
The Cabinet vacancy at the Department of Homeland Security was the subject of the latest overture, according to congressional and other government sources. Those sources said the earlier overture was to see whether Lieberman might be interested in becoming the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
It appears Lynne Cheney wrote a lesbian romance novel--recently adapted for the stage in the East Village--in 1981, which I didn't know. I think everyone should own a copy of the book but it's out of print. (Amazon is selling one used copy for a whopping $500!) I hereby declare that A Grand Illusion is starting a petition to bring back this poignant epic of woman on woman action in the American frontier.
Bill Kristol, a neocon in good standing, has been a consistent thorn in the Bush administraton's side (and not just this Bush; he didn't get along very well with Pappy either). Check out the bitchslap he gives Rumsfeld in today's WP.
Visit Left2Right for a nice discussion on the media and its responsibilities in educating society--especially in our society which seems to be ripe with pandemic ignorance. Anyhow my argument is that it's probably asking a lot of "the media," without resorting to some Habermas type model of deliberative democracy where EVERYONE shares the burden of this critical review.
Read this intelligent dichotomy on It's a Wonderful Life and The Dead by Amanda Marcotte of Mouse Words fame.
http://cnn.aimtoday.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?&idq=/ff/story/0002%2F20041214%2F0801587608.htm&photoid=20041026LON99
I say it's between that and McCain saying he has no faith in Rumsfeld. It's a tough one.
From Al Sabaah:
If only our system were this civil.The moral level for the elections requires averting enraging, defamation, charging and relying on external factors away of political operation in addition to averting drawing the electoral process and misleading voters into other issues.
An edict from Raul Castro, published in today's Granma, declaring the commencement of some sort of military exercise:
For many years our principal proposition has been to avoid war while being aware that the only way to prevent aggression is by making it patent that, in such a case, Cuba will become an enormous wasps’ nest that no aggressor will be able to resist, however powerful that enemy might be. In the end it will have to withdraw, bloodied and defeated, because this would be a War of All the People.Ah yes, perpetual war for perpetual peace indeed. My favorite paragraph however is the following:
The quality of work previously carried out make it possible to affirm that the conditions have been created so that this important exercise can take place. Now it the time to work with maximum efficiency and creativity.Apparently maximum efficiency and creativity do not carry over to Raul's writing.
You're lucky I've had an exceptionally productive writing day.
For those who read presidential biographies, I direct you to Jean Edward Smith's "Grant," an exceptionally thorough defense of one of the greatest generals in modern warfare and putatively one of our worst presidents. Smith's pedantic approach is oftennumbing: the chapters dealing with Grant's great victories (Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg) lack any dramatic interest; compare Smith to Grant's own written accounts and you'll note the difference between descriptoin and evocation.
Smith also fails to address Grant's drinking. He's too quick to dismiss some of the more famous stories (falling off horses, etc) as apocryphal, and I just don't buy it: some of those rumours just had to be true. Smith is so obsessed with emphasizing Grant's heroic qualities that he too rarely rebukes him for his obvious character flaws. Granite-like intensity and sureness of mind are awesome virtues, but as president these qualities produced questionable Cabinet secretaries whose corruption was so shameless that Grant's name was forever sullied by historians.
All that said, he does a marvelous job rehabilitating Grant's presidency. The record is astonishing. In so many instances Grant's prescience astounds: his genuine concern for Native Americans; willingness to use Federal power (and more adeptly than Eisenhower would later do) to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; his understanding of how inflation would deflate an exploding American economy. Most fascinating, he and Secretary of State Hamilton Fish brokered the Treaty of Washington, which, among other things, was resposnible for the Anglo-American friendship which persists today. And if you consider how selflessly Grant would lobby for all these things himself – protocol be damned – you have a Chief Executive of first-rate character.
gore Vidal and Edmund wilson had already whetted my appetite for Grant's "Personal Memoirs" (Gertrude Stein said it was one of her favorite books). Smith has now compelled me to purchase an early Christmas present.
It's Koufax time! Do they have one for most obscure blog? 'Cause I got that one in the bag.
What the fuck is wrong with Mickey Kaus?
Here's an instance where the convenient case for public figure privacy in matters of sex--made most conveniently by Clinton himself, but also by Jeffrey Toobin,*** Andrew Sullivan, etc.--completely breaks down. It turns out to be fairly important whether Clinton was or wasn't not having sexual relations with Denise Rich, Marc's glamorous ex-wife, who lobbied for the pardon... Someday some historian will focus on this interpersonal causal chain and win a National Book Award for his provocative thesis--as Philip Weiss memorably put it, "Follow the nookie." But if reporters had been more irresponsible in reporting on Clinton's personal life--and less cowed by the Stephanopouloses and Carvilles--actual voters would have had this highly relevant information in real time when they made their decision in 1992. ... P.S.: Do Democrats really want to elect the woman who let all this happen under her nose? Just asking!I love the implication that someone in the future is going to win the National Book Award because of his nonsensical idea that Clinton was having sex with Rich's wife and that's why he pardoned him. Now, if you're having an affair with someone's wife, wouldn't you want to keep that person far far away? You know, just asking!
From NYT:
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- Gen. Augusto Pinochet was indicted Monday for the kidnapping of nine dissidents and the killing of one of them during his 1973-90 regime, and the former dictator was placed under house arrest.
This definitely challenges the schadenfreude I felt after Castro took a nosedive.
Sic semper tyrannis! Well, not to Lincoln but... you know what I mean. Hopefully.I definitely need all the blogging advice I can get since my hit numbers aren't what you would call flattering. WP article by Mike Peed on starting a successful blog. As Roger Ailes says, I can't wait to read Mike's blog.
I found this (realclimate.org/) on Josh Marshall's blog. (He posted about it at 3:42 a.m. at which time the subject must have seemed exhilarating.)
Regardless, the site is interesting enough to merit a mention and permanent link.
On an unrelated note: I should get some lunch.
I thought it was funny to find this on a Philly blog. I think Miami residents in general are happy that Bill Kamal is going to jail for attempted child molestation--especially those who are already in jail waiting for him to arrive. Maybe I should stop reading Wonkette lest I turn every post into a treatise on sodomy.
Good column by Frank Rich:
Ms. Wood was being asked about that on "Crossfire" because a new Congressional report, spearheaded by the California Democrat Henry Waxman, shows that various fictions of junk science (AIDS is spread by tears and sweat, for instance) have turned up as dogma in abstinence-only sex education programs into which American taxpayers have sunk some $900 million in five years. Right now this is the only kind of sex education that our government supports, even though science says that abstinence-only programs don't work - or may be counterproductive. A recent Columbia University study found that teens who make "virginity pledges" to delay sex until marriage still have premarital sex at a high rate (88 percent) rivaling those that don't, but are less likely to use contraception once they do. It's California, a huge blue state that refuses to accept federal funding for abstinence-only curriculums, that has a 40 percent falloff in teenage pregnancy over the past decade, second only to Alaska.
Is that Bill Safire a schmuck or what? In today's NYT, he extolls Bush for this quote:
"Achieving peace in the Holy Land is not just a matter of pressuring one side or the other on the shape of a border or the site of a settlement. This approach has been tried before without success. As we negotiate the details of peace, we must look to the heart of the matter, which is the need for a Palestinian democracy."Of course this is rhetorical wink wink nudge nudge, for Israel has something close to carte blanche--if not the thing itself--and the Palestinians need to pick a leader who will take the best deal Israel is willing to offer which is usually no deal at all. Oh yes, we're on a road to nowhere. Also, what Bush and Safire fail to mention is that Arafat, horrible as he was, was democratically elected in 1996.
From NYT:
"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.
Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.
"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson said after asking again.
Rumsfeld replied that troops should make the best of the conditions they face and said the Army was pushing manufacturers of vehicle armor to produce it as fast as
humanly possible.
And, the defense chief added, armor is not always a savior in the kind of combat U.S. troops face in Iraq, where the insurgents' weapon of choice is the roadside bomb, or improvised explosive device that has killed and maimed hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops since the summer of 2003.
"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still)
be blown up," Rumsfeld said.
Bull Moose ponders the question "is it possible to believe that the war in Iraq was unwise and remain a hawk?" this morning. And offers this answer:
The short answer, of course it is. But nevertheless, much of the left is weak on the question of the over-all war against Islamist jihadism. The prime example of an anti-war hawk, however, is retiring Senator Bob Graham of Florida. Indeed, Senator Graham was a prophet about much of what transpired in this war. From the beginning, he did not believe that Iraq was the menace of the Administration's claims.
But, Graham is far from a dove. He has argued that the main threat in this war comes from two primary sources - Saudi funding of extremists and Iran along with their allies in Hezbollah. Ironically, Iran may emerge as the big winner in the war as they extend their influence over the Shia majority in Iraq.
They're right. Graham has had an almost eerie prescience throughout this whole affair. It's a little saddening that he couldn't make that work for him in the primaries.
