Tuesday Night Updates

Posted: September 24, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: open thread | Tags: , , , , | 11 Comments

Just thought I’d put a few of the day’s significant news stories up.  One story is pure theatre.  The other one is actually significant because it’s a signal that the whacko birdsU.S. and Iran may approach their relationship differently from now on out.  The Iranian President portrays himself as a moderate and the Obama Administration is encouraging the change!

President Barack Obama’s speech Tuesday to the United Nations was his most significant foreign policy statement since becoming president. It showed he had clearly learned something from the recent “red line” fiasco in Syria. The speech also displayed what has always been the most attractive feature of Obama’s foreign policy, one that clearly sets him off from his predecessor—his willingness to court erstwhile enemies and adversaries, or to put it in negative terms, his not possessing what my former colleague Peter Scoblic called an “us versus them” view of the world.

The speech was a departure in one very obvious way. Two years ago, the Obama administration had announced a “pivot to Asia” in its foreign policy, but Obama’s speech to the U.N. was almost entirely devoted to the greater Middle East with a footnote here or there to Africa. Obama mentioned China only once—as one of the nations engaged in nuclear weapons talks with Iran—and didn’t mention Japan or South Korea at all. That reflects the way the world is: The Middle East is oil—still the lifeblood of the global economy—and the Middle East continues to suffer from tectonic fault lines created by the Age of Empire in Europe.

There were specific departures in the speech from positions that Obama has taken in the past. The one that will get the most attention, and rightly so, is American policy toward Iran, but the speech also included departures in American policy toward Syria, Israel and the Palestinians, and Egypt and the Arab Spring.

Obama declared his willingness to pursue a diplomatic solution with Iran over its nuclear program. Of course, he had done that before, but it was usually punctuated by a threat of military action if Iran did develop a nuclear weapon. That threat lingered in the background in his speech; in the foreground, he acknowledged Iranian fears of the United States, dating from our helping to overthrow Iran’s government in 1953; he welcomed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s overtures to the United States; and he said he was instructing Secretary of State John Kerry to meet with Iran’s foreign minister—the first such meeting between the country’s leading diplomats since 2007. The White House has also said it is “keeping the door open” to a meeting between Obama and Rouhani.

The thaw in relations was not subtle but it also wasn’t substantive.

Obama said that if the UN security council failed to pass a strong resolution enforcing the dismantling of the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons arsenal, then the institution would show itself “incapable of enforcing the most basic of international laws”.

However, in his UN speech Obama made clear that the US saw the Iranian nuclear programme as a much more immediate and serious threat to its core interests, and he responded to the overtures of the newly-elected leadership in Tehran by putting Kerry in charge of the coming critical weeks of intense negotiations.

“Given President Rouhani’s stated commitment to reach an agreement, I am directing John Kerry to pursue this effort with the Iranian government, in close coordination with the European Union, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China,” the president said.

The move mirrored Rouhani’s decision to put his own foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, in charge of the talks, breaking from the practice of the past eight years of abortive negotiations of assigning them to senior officials. The foreign ministers of all seven countries are due to meet for the first time at the UN on Thursday.

“Directing Secretary Kerry to lead this signals that the negotiations may be elevated to the foreign minister level, which would be very good news,” said Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council, and the author of a book on US-Iranian negotiations, A Single Roll of the Dice.

“This means that far greater political will is being invested into the diplomatic process, which in turn increases the cost of failure. That is exactly what is needed to overcome the political obstacles to a deal.”

Obama acknowledged the difficulties ahead. “The roadblocks may prove to be too great, but I firmly believe a diplomatic path must be tested,” he said.

The theatrical news came from a weird show in the US that was supposed to pass for a filibuster on the funding of the Affordable Health Care Act by Ted Cruz and the other notorious Senate Republican Whacko Birds.  There were some seriously comical and crazy moments.  Let me just say that none of these idiots are Wendy Davis!

During a floor speech Tuesday aimed at reviving the already-dim prospects for his effort to defund Obamacare, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) likened his doubters to Nazi appeasers.

“If you go to the 1940s, Nazi Germany,” Cruz said. “Look, we saw in Britain, Neville Chamberlain, who told the British people, ‘Accept the Nazis. Yes, they’ll dominate the continent of Europe but that’s not our problem. Let’s appease them. Why? Because it can’t be done. We can’t possibly stand against them.'”

“And in America there were voices that listened to that,” he continued. “I suspect those same pundits who say it can’t be done, if it had been in the 1940s we would have been listening to them. Then they would have made television. They would have gotten beyond carrier pigeons and beyond letters and they would have been on tv and they would have been saying, ‘You cannot defeat the Germans.'”

Cruz said at the outset that he intends to speak until he is “no longer able to stand” in an effort to force Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to agree to a 60-vote threshold for any motion that removes the defunding language from the House-passed continuing resolution.

But because Senate procedure limits how long he may speak before the initial vote to invoke cloture on Wednesday, Cruz is actually not staging a filibuster.

New Island Pakistan_0Just one further story that shows the power of Mother Nature.  There was a deadly earthquake in Pakistan that has killed many people and produced a new island.

It struck at 16:29 local time (11:29 GMT) at a depth of 20km (13 miles), 66km north-east of Awaran in Balochistan province, the United States Geological Survey said.

It was felt as far away as Karachi, Hyderabad, and India’s capital, Delhi.

Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest but least populated province.

The quake was huge.

A major earthquake hit a remote part of western Pakistan on Tuesday, killing at least 45 people and prompting a new island to rise from the sea just off the country’s southern coast.

Tremors were felt as far away as the Indian capital of New Delhi, hundreds of miles to the east, where buildings shook, as well as the sprawling port city of Karachi in Pakistan.

The United States Geological Survey said the 7.8 magnitude quake struck 145 miles southeast of Dalbandin in Pakistan’s quake-prone province of Baluchistan, which borders Iran.

The earthquake was so powerful that it caused the seabed to rise and create a small, mountain-like island about 600 meters (yards) off Pakistan’s Gwadar coastline in the Arabian Sea.

Television channels showed images of a stretch of rocky terrain rising above the sea level, with a crowd of bewildered people gathering on the shore to witness the rare phenomenon.

So, the real earth-shattering news was not made by Senator Cruz even though he probably thinks he was the big deal of the day.

Tuesday Reads: Horses and Bayonets

Posted: October 23, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 64 Comments

President Obama temporarily wipes the smirk off Mitt Romney’s face.

Good Morning!!

The reviews are in: President Obama clearly won the third presidential debate. Now we’ll see if that is reflected in the polls. I’m going to give you a few quick links with reactions to the debate. I’m writing this at 11:30 Monday, so I know there will be lots more in the morning.

Washington Post: Obama keeps Romney on his heels in last debate

President Obama seemed to use the authority of his office to put Republican challenger Mitt Romney on his heels in their final presidential debate Monday night, telling Romney he didn’t understand foreign-policy problems as well as he does.

That idea underlay some of the night’s harshest lines from Obama. He scoffed at Romney’s assertion that Russia remained the country’s chief geopolitical foe: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

And, when Romney asserted that the United States had fewer naval ships than decades ago, Obama retorted that his opponent didn’t understand the modern navy. There were fewer ships, he said, but also fewer “horses and bayonets.”

“We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on ‘em,” Obama said. ” “The question is not a game of battleship, where we’re counting ships.”

Romney: “Hey, no fair! You sank my battleship!”

Chris Cillizza names the winners and losers in the debate. According to Cillizza, Barack Obama and Bob Shieffer were winners. Mitt Romney was a loser.

The New York Times: Obama and Romney Bristle from Start

Talking Points Memo: In Foreign Policy Debate, Obama Uses Romney’s Past Positions Against Him

Throughout Monday night’s presidential debate on foreign policy, President Obama used past positions that Mitt Romney has taken over the course of the campaign to depict him as the wrong candidate to run U.S. foreign policy.

Obama used the tactic both to defend his own initiatives — particularly his Libya policy — and to characterize Romney as an untrained foreign policy hand who has been wobbly and inconsistent.

“I know you haven’t been in a position to execute foreign policy,” Obama said, in summarizing his theme of attack, “but every time you have offered an opinion, you have been wrong.”

Specifics at the link.

The Daily Beast reviewed Michelle Obama’s and Ann Romney’s dresses.

Perhaps it’s a symbol of the Recession: Michelle Obama didn’t wear a brand new designer dress. She didn’t wear a blinding pink suit either. No, at the fourth Presidential debate in Florida on Monday night, she recycled a dress.

Michelle Obama appeared in the crowd in the same black and grey Thom Browne dress that she had worn on the second night of the Democratic National Convention in early September. It was an interesting choice for debate night — a night when the candidates’ wives traditionally have chosen to stand out from the crowd in bright designs….

Ann Romney, on the other hand, wore a silk green top and cream and green silk skirt to the debate on Monday. Typically, it was not as fashion-forward as Obama’s choice, but it was adventurous for her, and it demonstrated the ease and facility with which she is now styled on the trail; a creative assembly of different items to acheive a polished look. But it was also throwback: a bell skirt and helmet of blonde hair defiantly recalled the look of a 1950s housewife. She has finally grown more confident with her style: she’s been told she has to dress like a First Lady, and maybe, just maybe, does she finally look the part.

In other news,

Efraim Halevy, a former Mossad chief discussed Iran and Mitt Romney with Laura Rozen at AL Monitor. He’s not a fan of the Mittster. Here’s a quote:

Obama has placed emphasis on negotiations. In this current election for the US presidency, his hands are tied. He cannot proceed, because he cannot appear soft on Israel’s security.

Negotiating with Iran is perceived as a sign of beginning to forsake Israel. That is where I think the basic difference is between Romney and Obama. What Romney is doing is mortally destroying any chance of a resolution without war. Therefore when [he recently] said, he doesn’t think there should be a war with Iran, this does not ring true. It is not consistent with other things he has said. […]

Obama does think there is still room for negotiations. It’s a very courageous thing to say in this atmosphere.

In the end, this is what I think: Making foreign policy on Iran a serious issue in the US elections — what Romney has done, in itself — is a heavy blow to the ultimate interests of the United States and Israel.

It is not as if, if he wins the election, and gets into the White House, he can back up. The Iranians are listening attentively to what he says. When he says, he would arm the opposition in Iran. They understand.

From the Boston Phoenix, a really creepy story about Romney’s sense of entitlement: Gold Star Mother: Romney Skipped Funeral, Left “Bullying” Messages.

Remember when Ann Romney claimed on The View that Mitt had attended every funeral of a soldier from Massachusetts who lost his or her life in Iraq or Afghanistan? Not according ot one grieving mother, Stephany Kern. She says that Romney, like other politicians called and left messages for her, but she was too broken up to respond. Kerry and Kennedy contacted other family members to find out when would be a good time to try again. But Romney called repeatedly, leaving insensitive messages indicating that he was insulted by the lack of a return call.

“I can’t believe you haven’t returned my call,” Romney said on one of the voice mail messages, according to Stephany Kern, speaking at her Westerly, Rhode Island home this past Saturday. “Here I am making a second call; I haven’t heard from you.” ….

Kern’s son, Marine Lance Corporal Nickolas Schiavoni, was killed by an IED explosion in Iraq on November 15, 2005. He was born and lived his entire life in the Haverhill, Massachusetts, area, and his funeral took place in Haverhill on November 26. His grandfather, David Swartz — Kern’s father — was a well-known attorney, prosecutor, and city councilor in that city.

Romney didn’t go to Schiavoni’s wake or funeral.

Mrs. Kern says that many officials, including Romney and Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, left messages for her the day after her son died. She felt unable to speak to anyone in those initial days. “I didn’t listen to any of the calls,” she says.

Only Romney, she says, complained in a second message that she had not called back.

“He was completely unable to understand that a mom was not going to return his phone call, and that it wasn’t a priority for me,” she says. “I wasn’t being disrespectful. I was being a mom who was greeting the casket of her son coming home from war.”

And Romney called a third time, even more annoyed:

Steve Kern, who has been married to Stephany Kern since prior to Schiavoni enlisting in 2002, says that he heard Romney’s second and third messages.

He recalls Romney saying in one: “I’m a busy man.” He describes Romney’s tone as “disrespectful,” “antagonistic,” and “absolutely inappropriate to use on a Gold Star mother.”

Some weeks later, Kern says, someone from Romney’s office called her to say that Romney intended to visit Sciavoni’s gravesite. Kern asked that he not do so if he intended to have his photograph taken there; she does not know whether Romney visited or not.

The Kerns didn’t save the answering machine tapes, but that sure sounds like Mitt Romney.

This is interesting. Although the media constantly reports that the military supports Romney, Open Secrets reports that in terms of donations: Armed Forces Show Overwhelming Support for Obama

Update, Oct. 21: Fundraising numbers for the month of September show Obama continuing to dominate when it comes to contributions from the military. The new data, which came in after the story below was published Oct. 15, show he raised $142,197, just a shade less than he collected in August, his strongest month with this set of donors. Romney brought in $111,015 for his best month ever with military donors, but that was still 22 percent less than Obama received.

The new numbers bring Obama’s total from military donors to $678,611, and Romney’s to $398,450.

The Italian judiciary system might be even worse than ours. Check this out: Italian experts convicted of manslaughter over deadly 2009 quake

Defying assertions that earthquakes cannot be predicted, an Italian court convicted seven scientists and experts of manslaughter Monday for failing to adequately warn residents before a temblor struck central Italy in 2009 and killed more than 300 people.

The court in L’Aquila also sentenced the defendants to six years each in prison. All are members of the national Great Risks Commission, and several are prominent scientists or geological and disaster experts.
Scientists had decried the trial as ridiculous, contending that science has no reliable way of predicting earthquakes. So news of the verdict shook the tightknit community of earthquake experts worldwide.

“It’s a sad day for science,” said seismologist Susan Hough, of the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s unsettling.” That fellow seismic experts in Italy were singled out in the case “hits you in the gut,” Hough added.

The war on science is international, apparently.

That’s all I’ve got for today. What are you reading and blogging about today?

Open Thread: Hillary in India

Posted: May 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: open thread, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , | 24 Comments

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) watches a girl do karate during an anti-human trafficking event in Kolkata May 6, 2012.

[Click on the photo to see more pictures of Hillary Clinton in India.]

This is just going to be a link and photo dump, because I know absolutely nothing about Indian politics.

From the NY Daily News:

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, hoped to narrow a gap with India over Iran on Monday as she tried to throw a spotlight on issues dear to her heart such as the fight against sex trafficking.

Mrs Clinton was paying the first visit by a top US official to the eastern metropolis Kolkata and will then meet in New Delhi with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, amid concern that the growing US-India partnership has been drifting….

On Sunday, Mrs Clinton sought to draw attention to sex trafficking in India, where forced prostitution of women and girls is one of the largest illicit businesses.

Mrs Clinton appeared visibly moved as she watched a dance by former victims of sex trafficking, who recounted their plight in a synchronised performance designed as a form of therapy by the local group Kolkata Sanved.

Mrs Clinton called the recital “mesmerising” and thanked each of the six dancers, telling them she was proud of them. She was shown quilts which former trafficking victims sew as a way to give them new livelihoods.

“What you’re doing is so important to try to not only help yourselves but to help other young girls,” Mrs Clinton said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (2nd L) holds a sari during an anti-human trafficking event in Kolkata May 6, 2012.

Here’s another article on the anti-trafficking event: Hillary’s date with history
She’s cheerleader in trafficking crusade

To them, she was “US ka bahut bara neta….Bill Clinton ki biwi (a top leader of the US….Bill Clinton’s wife)”. To her, they were the faces of a movement close to her heart.

When Poonam Khatoon, 16, and Uma Das, 19, finally found themselves face to face with Hillary Clinton at the Rabindranath Tagore Centre of the ICCR on Sunday afternoon, all it needed was a smile to break down the barriers.

“Aami bhabtei parini onar shamne darate parbo. Uni amader lorai-tey shamil hoyechhen, sheta ekta boro byapar (I couldn’t imagine I would be standing in front of her. She has joined our crusade, that’s a big thing),” Uma told Metro of her meeting with the US secretary of state.

Community worker Uma and Poonam, a student of Class IX, are daughters of women in prostitution involved with Apne Aap Women Worldwide, a grassroots movement to end sex trafficking. The duo took turns escorting Hillary through a pictorial journey of a trafficked girl.

At the end of the event, Hillary told the women she was their “cheerleader” and that she would “stand by” them. They asked her to talk publicly about human trafficking as much as she could.

The secretary of state’s keepsake from the Sunday afternoon rendezvous was a green wristband with the words: “Cool Men Don’t Buy Sex”.

Hillary not only wore the band immediately, she insisted that members of her entourage sport one each as well. “She was also gifted a T-shirt that read: ‘Together we can end sex trafficking’.

Another photo from the trafficking event

From the Washington Post:

NEW DELHI — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in India’s capital Monday with a clear message for the country’s leaders: Cooperate with us on with Iran.

Yet less than a mile from her meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, there was another group meeting with Indian leaders. An Iranian trade delegation is in New Delhi, overlapping with Clinton’s trip and potentially undermining one of its main purposes.

The Obama administration is turning up the pressure on India to join international sanctions against Iran that would choke off funds for the country’s nuclear program. India, which relies on Iran for about 12 percent of its oil imports, has so far been unwilling to go along.

“This is a regime that has a history of aggressive behavior,” Clinton warned of Iran during a town hall-style meeting Monday morning in Kolkata, her first stop in a three-day swing through India. “And I don’t think you deal with aggressors by giving in to them. … Our goal is resolve this peacefully and diplomatically, and that’s why we need India to be part of the international effort.”

Finally, a report from India on Hillary’s meeting with the prime minister:

New Delhi: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Hillary and the Prime Minister discussed several issues related to Indo-US relations. She also urged India to speed up the civil nuclear deal and cut oil imports from Iran….

Before her meeting with the Prime Minister, Hillary met Mamata Banerjee earlier on Monday and promised more US investment in West Bengal….

According to a US consulate statement, the top US diplomat, who had an hour-long meeting with Banerjee, discussed a range of issues including stepping up US investments in the state, according to a US consulate statement.

“Touching on issues, ranging from increasing US investment in West Bengal, including in the retail sector, US-India relations, regional affairs and strong people-to-people connections, the Secretary reaffirmed to the chief minister the US desire to work with India and West Bengal to deepen and broaden our partnership,” it said.

Thursday Reads

Posted: March 8, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Politics, War on Women | Tags: , , , , , , , | 47 Comments

Good Morning!!

I just love the New Yorker cover with Rick Santorum riding in the dog carrier on top of Mitt Romney’s car. Isn’t it great? Santorum has been “dogging” Romney’s footsteps around the country, nipping at his heels, so to speak. I hope he won’t have an “accident” up there on Romney’s car roof.

I read some interesting analysis of the Super Tuesday results at The Daily Beast yesterday. You may have read the same articles already, but I still think they are worth discussing.

Michelle Goldberg explains why comparing Romney to John Kerry doesn’t quite work.

Yes, both are rich, socially maladroit, and from Massachusetts. Both have a history of being less than steadfast on important issues. But if Democrats weren’t ecstatic about Kerry in 2004, most still found him broadly acceptable. He had a history as a dashing liberal hero, returning from Vietnam to become a leading voice against that hated war. Certainly, he disappointed liberals by voting for the Iraq invasion, but he otherwise shared their values.

Romney, by contrast, is limping toward the Republican nomination despite being rejected, over and over again, by the Republican base. In this respect, he’s more like Joe Lieberman, who was despised by his party’s grassroots even before he endorsed John McCain for president….[I]t’s hard to recall the last time either party nominated someone so far out of step with its basic ethos. What this means is, should Romney lose to Obama, our politics will get even more poisonous, as activist conservatives blame their party’s perceived moderation for its failure.

Which is why I wish Rick Santorum would win the nomination. It would be a disaster of Goldwater proportions, and maybe the party would begin to understand that they are completely out of sync with most Americans.

Michael Tomasky had some advice for Mitt Romney:

Romney eked it out in Ohio, but he still managed to emerge bruised from Super Tuesday. He won Massachusetts. Big woop. Vermont, ditto. In Virginia, he won, but he won in as embarrassing a fashion as it’s possible to win something. With only him and cranky Ron Paul on the ballot, Romney managed just 59 percent of the vote to Paul’s 41. When Ron Paul is winning 41 percent of the vote, it’s time to stop and smell the rotting roses. And then Romney won some caucuses in some who-cares states that would vote red in November if Rush Limbaugh’s hamster was on the ballot, and that in any case have about as many electoral votes as Baltic Street has value in Monopoly. Who cares?

But, says Tomasky, Romney doesn’t seem to get that no one really likes him and he’s only winning because people think maybe he has a better chance in the general election than the other wingnut candidates. According to Tomasky, on Tuesday night Romney just gave his regular stump speech–which hasn’t been revised even though the economy has been improving and Obama has been doing much better in the polls.

He just seems to think that he can outspend these absurdly underfinanced opponents, bury them, these doorstep foundlings, these third-raters, pound them into submission with attack ads, and move on to the next quarry….

Romney has to do something dramatic to change the narrative, says Tomasky.

But everything we’ve seen from the guy shows that he’s completely incapable. He’ll keep grinding out just the number of wins he needs, by just the margins he needs. Remember Mario Cuomo’s famous and brilliant quote, about how a politician campaigns in poetry but governs in prose? Romney campaigns in prose. And dull prose. He’s the James Fennimore Cooper of the hustings. Makes you wonder how he’d govern, but fortunately, it seems we’ll never know.

I love that! “The James Fennimore Cooper of the hustings.” It’s so true. Romney is dull as dirt.

But the Romney camp is claiming it’s all over, despite their candidate’s weak showing in Ohio.

Mitt Romney’s campaign gathered the national press corps in their campaign war room this morning to deliver a simple message: It would take an “act of God” for any candidate not named Mitt Romney to win the Republican nomination.

The Boston-based campaign projected confidence in Romney’s ability to win the nomination given the emerging delegate math in the campaign following last night’s Super Tuesday contests. “We will get to 1,144 whether it’s on someone else’s timeline, or on our timeline,” said one top Romney aide. “We will get to 1,144 and be the Republican nominee.”

It kind of reminds me of 2008, when the Obama crowd kept yakking about “the math” and screaming “why won’t the stupid bitch quit?” Somehow I don’t think Santorum is going to quit after he trounced Romney in Tennessee and came within one percentage point of beating him in Ohio. The next few primaries will be in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Kansas–not friendly territory for Romney.

On Tuesday, I wrote a post about the irresponsible speeches the Republican candidates made to AIPAC that morning.

Most irresponsible of all was the speech by Mitt Romney, in which he claimed in the face of strong evidence to the contrary that the Iranians “are making rapid progress” toward building nuclear weapons. He basically called the current Secretary of Defense and the President liars. He has also been going around the country claiming that if Barack Obama is reelected there will definitely be nuclear war. I can’t believe he’s been getting away with it for so long.

I’m glad to report that John Kerry has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post in which he counters Romney’s irresponsible lies. Kerry writes:

While wise Republicans stress the perils of loose war talk and the value of engagement to isolate Iran, Romney seeks to create political division with an attack on the Obama administration’s Iran policy that is as inaccurate as it is aggressive.

I join this debate because the nuclear issue with Iran is deadly serious business. It should invite sobriety and thoughtfulness, not sloganeering and sound bites. The stakes are far too high for it to become just another applause line on the stump. Idle talk of war only helps Iran by spooking the tight oil market and increasing the price of the Iranian crude that pays for its nuclear program.

Creating false differences with President Obama to score political points does nothing to move Iran off a dangerous nuclear course. Worse, Romney does not even do Americans the courtesy of describing how he would do anything different from what the Obama administration has already done.

Kerry provides specific examples of Romney’s “wrongheaded” statements, so go read the whole thing if you can. Thank goodness one senior Democrat has finally slapped Romney down.

Charlie Pierce has a post on the “respectable” pundits who are now defending Rush Limbaugh. First it was Bill Maher, and yesterday Michael Kinsley chimed in. Here’s Pierce’s takedown of former New Republic editor Kinsley:

And then there is Michael Kinsley, a man who has dedicated his life to bringing Olympian insufferability to an art form. Kinsley is what you’d get if you infused David Brooks with the madcap humor you find around the doughnut cart at The New Republic. You see, says Michael, everybody involved in this is just a big fake because nobody really believes anything anyway, and oxen are always being gored, and it’s all a silly stupid game, so suck it up, Sandra. Tell your folks about the marketplace of ideas:

Nevertheless, the self-righteous parade out the door by Limbaugh’s advertisers is hard to stomach. Had they never listened to Rush before, in all the years they had been paying for commercials on his show? His sliming of a barely known law student may be a new low — even after what he’s said about Nancy Pelosi and Michelle Obama — but it’s not a huge gap.

This is Kinsley being deliberately stupid, probably because he figures that’s the only thing the lesser orders out here understand. We can’t do the right thing now because we didn’t do the right thing then? We couldn’t criticize George Wallace for being a racist in 1963 because we didn’t criticize James Vardaman for being one in 1918? Murrow’s broadcast on Joe McCarthy was somehow illegitimate because he hadn’t been doing one a week for the previous three years? Watergate doesn’t count because LBJ bugged Nixon’s plane? The concept of critical mass is just another “insincere” function of our politics? And, I am sorry, but what he did to “a barely known law student” is the whole goddamn point. Kinsley’s imperial disdain has led him into a cul de sac of glibly arrogant misanthropy.

Go read the rest. It’s brilliant!

In other news, The New York Times has an article on a scientist who has developed a machine that will dramatically bring down the cost of gene sequencing and pave the way for medical advances.

In Silicon Valley, the line between computing and biology has begun to blur in a way that could have enormous consequences for human longevity.

Bill Banyai, an optical physicist at Complete Genomics, has helped make that happen. When he began developing a gene sequencing machine, he relied heavily on his background at two computer networking start-up companies. His digital expertise was essential in designing a factory that automated and greatly lowered the cost of mapping the three billion base pairs that form the human genome.

The promise is that low-cost gene sequencing will lead to a new era of personalized medicine, yielding new approaches for treating cancers and other serious diseases.

Pretty exciting.

There’s a scary article at Alternet on “The Religious Right’s Plot To Take Control Of Our Public Schools.” It’s a review of a book by Katherine Stewart, “The Good News Club: The Stealth Assault on America’s Children.” Here’s the teaser line:

The people who brought you “Jesus Camp” are moving into your neighborhood school. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

Yikes! Go check it out.

Those are my recommendations for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

Iran and nukes

Posted: January 22, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, U.S. Politics | Tags: , | 15 Comments

I agree. Iran should not have nuclear weapons.

Neither should China, Russia, North Korea, Britain, France, the US, India, Pakistan, or Israel.

Hello? Those things are either bad, or they aren’t. What kind of quadruple standard are we using here? And don’t tell me that it’s different when sensible countries, who would never actually use mass death against civilians, have them.

Only one country has used nuclear weapons to mass murder civilians. And it currently has more of the things than anyone else and shows no sign of thinking that’s a bad idea.

Could we just tell the truth? Nobody wants Iran to get more power. Iran, on the other hand, does want more power. If you want to stop them, just say so. Enough of this sanctimonious dogwash.

Crossposted from Acid Test

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