Globalization and politics

Yep. Failure in American politics only means you could probably get a job somewhere else, like the Ukraine, as a senior aide for Bob Dole found:

But Mr. Yanukovich has not done it all on his own. From an anonymous office off Kiev’s main square, a seasoned American political strategist who was once a senior aide in Senator Bob Dole’s Republican presidential campaign has labored for months on a Yanukovich makeover.

Though the strategist, Paul J. Manafort, has sought to remain behind the scenes, his handiwork has been evident in Mr. Yanukovich’s tightly organized campaign events, in his pointed speeches and in how he has presented himself to the world.

Mr. Manafort is by no means the only well-known American strategist lured to Kiev by the prospect of sizable fees and the chance to shape the course of a young and tumultuous democracy.

President Yushchenko’s party, Our Ukraine, has received advice from the firm run by Bill Clinton’s pollster, Stan Greenberg; from Stephen E. Schmidt, campaign manager for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California; and from Neil Newhouse, a pollster who worked for Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, when he was Massachusetts governor.

Okay, so it's not only failures, which is probably good news 'cause it means endless retirement options for aging political hitmen. Any Bahamian candidates looking for a communications director?

Khruschev and Ahmadinejad

Rick Perlstein gives us good juxtaposition:

Here's a big question that I want to start addressing in upcoming posts: what is conservative rule doing to our nation's soul? How is it rewiring our hearts and minds? What kind of damage are they doing to the American character? And can we ever recover?

So: what is the American character? Hard to say, of course. But I daresay we know it when we see it. Let me put before you an illustrative example: one week in September of 1959, when, much like one week in September of 2007, American soil supported a visit by what many, if not most Americans agreed was the most evil and dangerous man on the planet.

Nikita Khrushchev disembarked from his plane at Andrews Air Force Base to a 21-gun salute and a receiving line of 63 officials and bureaucrats, ending with President Eisenhower. He rode 13 miles with Ike in an open limousine to his guest quarters across from the White House. Then he met for two hours with Ike and his foreign policy team. Then came a white-tie state dinner. (The Soviets then put one on at the embassy for Ike.) He joshed with the CIA chief about pooling their intelligence data, since it probably all came from the same people—then was ushered upstairs to the East Wing for a leisurely gander at the Eisenhowers' family quarters. Visited the Agriculture Department's 12,000 acre research station ("If you didn't give a turkey a passport you couldn't tell the difference between a Communist and capitalist turkey"), spoke to the National Press Club, toured Manhattan, San Francisco (where he debated Walter Reuther on Stalin's crimes before a retinue of AFL-CIO leaders, or in K's words, "capitalist lackeys"), and Los Angeles (there he supped at the 20th Century Fox commissary, visited the set of the Frank Sinatra picture Can Can but to his great disappointment did not get to visit Disneyland), and sat down one more with the president, at Camp David. Mrs. K did the ladies-who-lunch circuit, with Pat Nixon as guide. Eleanor Roosevelt toured them through Hyde Park. It's not like it was all hearts and flowers. He bellowed that America, as Time magazine reported, "must close down its worldwide deterrent bases and disarm." Reporters asked him what he'd been doing during Stalin's blood purges, and the 1956 invasion of Hungary. A banquet of 27 industrialists tried to impress upon him the merits of capitalism. Nelson Rockefeller rapped with him about the Bible.

Had America suddenly succumbed to a fever of weak-kneed appeasement? Had the general running the country—the man who had faced down Hitler!—proven himself what the John Birch Society claimed he was: a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy?

No. Nikita Khrushchev simply visited a nation that had character. That was mature, well-adjusted. A nation confident we were great. We had our neuroses, to be sure—plenty of them.

But look now what we have lost. Now when a bad guy crosses our threshhold, America becomes a pants-piddling mess.

How a nation so great succumbs so easily to pettiness I'll never understand.

Et tu, Spacey?

C'mon now.

CARACAS, Venezuela - Actor Kevin Spacey met privately Monday with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, one of Washington's most outspoken critics in Latin America.

Who'd have thought so many people want to sit through this ugly fuck's speeches?

Yes

The downside of having a dog

A bittersweet--okay, just sweet--anecdote (with picture) over at Feministing.

As the ex-owner of a very mischievous dog, Oliver Wendell Holmes III (below), who even as a puppy was a big dolt of a dog with a massive, cinder-block head, I sympathize.

I'm not dead

No one regrets the dormant state of AGI more than yours truly. Things have been unexpectedly hectic lately, but we should be back to our regularly scheduled programming in about a week. In the meantime, enjoy Diana Krall covering Joni Mitchell.

Viva Cuba libre! Viva el ron Habana Club!

Orishas are playing Bayfront Park on Oct. 6.

Morning

Send lawyers, guns, and money...

Oh well

For the Things Don't Change file: Charles Dickens describing the House of Representatives in American Notes:

I saw in them, the wheels that move the meanest perversion of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought. Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers; shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered, is, that every day and week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal types, which are the dragon's teeth of yore, in everything but sharpness; aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular mind;, and artful suppressions of all tis good influences; such things as these, and in a word, Dishonest Faction in its most depraved and most unblushing form, stared out from every corner of the crowded hall.

(crosslisted with Humanizing The Vacuum)

He serves at the pleasure of his wallet

Remember when people served at the pleasure of the president? Not Tony Snow. He serves at the pleasure of the president until he can't make due with his $160,000 salary anymore.

"I've already made it clear I'm not going to be able to go the distance, but that's primarily for financial reasons," Snow said on conservative radio program "The Hugh Hewitt Show."

"I've told people when my money runs out, then I've got to go."

You have to wonder how in the world this administration dares question anyone's patriotism.

While you were fighting AQI

Russia's getting back in the game.

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin said Friday that he had ordered the military to resume regular long-range flights of strategic bombers, news agencies reported, returning to a practice that ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Speaking as Russian and Chinese forces held major war games exercises for the first time on Russian territory, Putin said a halt in long-range bombers' flights after the Soviet collapse had affected Russia's security as other nations had continued such missions — an oblique reference to the United States.

More here.

Bend it like Beckham

The Red Bulls' Jozy Altidore has a great post over at the NYT's soccer blog on the subtle, underapreciated strengths of David Beckham's as well as his limitations in promoting the MLS.

He’s not a guy who’s going to break you down on the dribble with a bunch of moves like Ronaldinho. But he’s going to hit a good cross 9 out of 10 times. And if there’s a free kick near the area you better start biting your nails because he’s going to whip it in. He’s not really a flashy player, but when it’s his turn, he steps up and does the job.

I think it’s easy for people to underestimate him as a player. I think people want to see a flashy-type player who scores flashy-type goals and makes flashy-type moves. They are always the best and are very hard to find. But I think the guys who play it simple are best.

That's absolutely true. Beckham's not as entertaining to watch as Ronaldinho or Zidane, but he's a player that can turn a game around by mastering the basic skills. I totally agree with Altidore, the fact that he doesn't show off on the pitch and shows off a little too much off it, is the reason why he's often dismissed and underestimated as a player. Well, that and the fact that he can't do shit with his left leg, which Altidore doesn't mentioned. (But he makes up for it, and then some, with the right.)

Altidore is right again on the degree to which Beckham will help expand the MLS,

I think, for sure, he will put people in the seats, for sure. We’ve already seen it in every city he goes to, it’s sold out. In terms of really elevating the game, one player can’t elevate every team. He can elevate his team, but as for all the others, they are still the same. Maybe when they play against Los Angeles the stakes are a little higher, but really it’s all the same — one player can’t change the whole league. He can help it, but there’s 12 other teams and he can only do so much. But I think it’s great to have a name like that in the league. It gives us exposure, brings more money, it benefits nearly everybody in the process.

Beckham will help the MLS tremendously, but don't for a second think he's the Christ figure of American soccer. At one point, the novelty will wear off and people will grow weary of his dominance on the league. What the MLS needs is another marquis player, who's already had a stellar career in Europe, someone like a Zidane or a Ronaldo, for a juicy rivalry which will keep seats filled long enough to establish a growing fan base.

And now, I leave you with the artist at work.

WHAT THE FUCK?!

From Bloomberg:

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas, U.S. officials said.

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.

And these people are running a war? Clemenceau must be turning in his grave.

Talk of the nation

It is a sad, self-fulfilling prophecy when two respected scholars from two of the country's top universities can't give talks on the book they've coauthored because it is "too controversial."

Happy birthday, AGI

A Grand Illusion, one of the oldest--though not most frequently updated--Miami blogs, turns three today. You can read my inaugural post here, a pissed off reaction to Chavez winning the 2004 referendum.

Today is a great day for Bolivarian movements. According to The New York Times, Chavez won the revocatory referendum. Chavez, in true Bolivarian fashion, gave a speech clad in ridiculous red—the representative color of his retrograde movement and a horrible color for a dress shirt—in which he cited the old Roman adage, “vox populi vox Dei.” If this is indeed true, God is some sort of asshole and he surely hates Venezuelans.

On other news, today, as searching for normalcy reminds us with a video, is the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Presley's death.

leave the car, take the beer

If you're ever trying to elude cops chasing you 'cause they suspect you're driving drunk, remember not to leave any evidence behind:

A man in Orange County suspected of driving drunk was captured Tuesday night after he jumped out of a vehicle and ran from officers still holding a beer in his hand, according to the sheriff's deputies.

Local 6 has more, including video.

Tuesday night

Hastert Planning to Retire at End of 2008

Looks like the rumors were right.

Bergman's best obituary

Woody Allen on Ingmar Bergman:

I’ve said it before to people who have a romanticized view of the artist and hold creation sacred: In the end, your art doesn’t save you. No matter what sublime works you fabricate (and Bergman gave us a menu of amazing movie masterpieces) they don’t shield you from the fateful knocking at the door that interrupted the knight and his friends at the end of “The Seventh Seal.” And so, on a summer’s day in July, Bergman, the great cinematic poet of mortality, couldn’t prolong his own inevitable checkmate, and the finest filmmaker of my lifetime was gone.

I have joked about art being the intellectual’s Catholicism, that is, a wishful belief in an afterlife. Better than to live on in the hearts and minds of the public is to live on in one’s apartment, is how I put it. And certainly Bergman’s movies will live on and will be viewed at museums and on TV and sold on DVDs, but knowing him, this was meager compensation, and I am sure he would have been only too glad to barter each one of his films for an additional year of life.

The NYT has more.

the face of Lincoln

A story moved by the AP late last night confirms what anyone who's ever seen a picture of Lincoln could already discern, there was something seriously wrong with his face.

CHICAGO - Artists, sculptors and photographers knew Abraham Lincoln's face had a good side. Now it's confirmed by science. Laser scans of two life masks, made from plaster casts of Lincoln's face, reveal the 16th president's unusual degree of facial asymmetry, according to a new study.

The left side of Lincoln's face was much smaller than the right, an aberration called cranial facial microsomia. The defect joins a long list of ailments — including smallpox, heart illness and depression — that modern doctors have diagnosed in Lincoln.

Nobody was more aware of this than Lincoln, who often poked fun at his own lack of physical beauty. One of these jokes is one of my favorite Lincoln anecdotes:

Abraham Lincoln was once accused of being two-faced. "If I were two-faced," he retorted, "would I be wearing this one?"

we have to wonder

What the fuck is wrong with Alabama?

You can keep'em

Andy and I have quarreled mildly over my dedicated contrarianism, but even he, a sincere liberal, must be devastated at the ease with which the Democrats have folded since their victory last November. Sure, they got the power to start investigations, but, as Alexander Cockburn remarks in this devastating critique, what good is this power when you vote to give the President the warrant-less wiretapping he sought by a comfortable margin? With the exception of Senator Russ Feingold, who's been pretty good in the last several months and a consistent critic of the Bush administration for years, it's been business as usual. No, worse:

The Democrats control the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have stopped the bill in its tracks if she’d really wanted to. But she didn’t. The Democrats’ game is to go along with the White House agenda while stirring up dust storms to blind the base about to their failure to bring the troops home or restore constitutional government.

The row over the U.S. attorneys and the conduct of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has always been something of a typhoon in a teaspoon. The Democrats love it since they imagine it portrays them to the public as resolute guardians of the impartial administration of justice, a concept whose credibility most Americans sensibly deride. The Democrats now plan to track Gonzales’s firing of the US attorneys back to that comic opera villain of the Bush era, Karl Rove, another great provoker of dust storms.

Democrats I know are sanguine about their party's presidential prospects next year, but there's little to gloat about. When the prospects are not-a-liberal-bone-in-her-body Hillary Clinton, grotesque Reagan parody Mitt Romney, and a genial gay-loving, ferret-hating fascist like Rudy Giulani, they're mighty grim indeed. Is it any wonder that the genuinely weird Ron Paul -- a bizarre fusion of Arthur Vandenberg and Ross Perot -- has generated so much excitement? It's so simple that, of course, our elected representatives don't get it:

A war people hate, Gitmo, Bush’s police -state executive orders of July 17 -- the Democrats have signed the White House dance card on all of them, and guess what, their poll numbers are gong down. Bush’s, on the other hand, are going up by five points in Gullup from early July. People are beginning to think the surge is working, courtesy of The New York Times. So, are we better or worse off since the Democrats won back Congress?

Speaking of the Gray Old Lady, there was no greater demonstration of the way in which our national press fawns over those in power than the wet, dreary obits written for the long, happy political life of Karl Rove. The tone of most of the coverage emitted a barely suppressed nostalgia for the days when Shitflower snapped his fingers and the Republican hordes threatened to hold the three branches of government forever (Rove, no fool, was even making William McKinley allusions). As usual, the Washington press understands just thing: who's in power and who's not. The Democrats mattered in 2006 because they won the Congressional elections and the GOP did not. Thus, the narrative required that the evil genius moniker that Rove wore rather better than his jackets be stripped from him.

I told a student, a potential MoveOn.org recruit, last week: "Harry Reid doesn't give a fuck about you." This was a couple of days before the House voted 227-183 to give the President the powers he sought. Cynicism is an ugly thing.

EDIT: Jane Dark is even more blunt.

Freedom's on the march

All that liberatin' has finally made its way to Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe just signed into law a new bill which would... well, why don't I let Voice of America tell the story:

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday signed into law the controversial Interception of Communications Bill, which gives his government the authority to eavesdrop on phone and Internet communications and read physical mail.

Clearly, there is no modern precedent for this blanket intrusion into a population's civil liberties, and the developed nations of the world will surely issue a stern... oh wait.

But Communications Minister Christopher Mushowe said Zimbabwe is not unique in the world in passing such legislation, citing electronic eavesdropping programs in the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa, among other countries.

Well, at least America's still an example to the rest of the world when it comes to something.

homeward bound

Live from the Padilla trial

Want to read a narrow, but relatively in-depth account of the Padilla trial? Jared Beck, who doesn't want you to forget he graduated from Harvard Law, has this insightful bit of legal journalism.

lest we forget

Meet Cecilia Sarkozy

Her name is Cecilia, she is smoking hot, and she's selective when it comes to the company she keeps:

PARIS (AFP) - Cecilia Sarkozy's decision to bow out of a picnic with the president of the United States this weekend is the latest proof of the French first lady's unpredictable, even rebellious take on her new role.

President Nicolas Sarkozy travelled alone to meet George W. Bush and his family at their Atlantic holiday home after Cecilia -- staying just an hour away at a US lakeside resort -- bowed out due to a throat ailment.

The US leader said he was "disappointed" but understanding after Cecilia called Laura Bush at the last minute to excuse herself, but the change of plan sounded a false note in what was billed as a rare personal get-together.

She was photographed later Sunday taking a stroll in town with two friends.

I think I'm in love.

Department of Sinking Ships

From AP:

WASHINGTON - Karl Rove, President Bush's close friend and chief political strategist, plans to leave the White House at the end of August, joining a lengthening line of senior officials heading for the exits in the final 1 1/2 years of the administration.