Snow Art
Avedon Carol directs us to this beautifully composed snow picture. Notice how it clings so prettily to the trees.
To an Alaskan however, snow is abstract art, smashing all the conventions and everything in its way.
copyright1999-2002 by the very talented Alaskan art photographer, Kate Salisbury Wool
Our ships must all sail in the same direction. Otherwise, who can say how long your stay with us will last. It’s not personal, it’s only business. You should know, Godfather”
Bush Message Is That a War Is Inevitable, Diplomats Say
As it launches an all-out lobbying campaign to gain United Nations approval, the Bush administration has begun to characterize the decision facing the Security Council not as whether there will be war against Iraq, but whether council members are willing to irrevocably destroy the world body’s legitimacy by failing to follow the U.S. lead, senior U.S. and diplomatic sources said.
In meetings yesterday with senior officials in Moscow, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton told the Russian government that “we’re going ahead,” whether the council agrees or not, a senior administration official said. “The council’s unity is at stake here.”
A senior diplomat from another council member said his government had heard a similar message and was told not to anguish over whether to vote for war.
“You are not going to decide whether there is war in Iraq or not,” the diplomat said U.S. officials told him. “That decision is ours, and we have already made it. It is already final. The only question now is whether the council will go along with it or not.”
They figure that everyone is like a moderate Republican or a battered liberal. Do as we say or it’ll only get worse for you. They assume that everyone will fall into line once they thwack their meaty virility on the table with a big huge thump. Maybe so. But, trust and esteem are destroyed and all you have left is force.
The fallout from this could be enormous.
UPDATE: Chris at Interesting Times has a great series of posts and links on the issue of Bush’s credibility gap and how it affects our “diplomatic” efforts.
Federalist Society Star
Ashcroft said the defendants are alleged to have knowingly and intentionally sold the items for use with illegal narcotics. Many of the items were disguised as common objects like lipsticks or hi-lighter pens, used by students to elude detection as drug paraphernalia.
The defendants face a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
He said sellers of drug paraphernalia were just as responsible as others for the illegal drug trade. “They are as much a part of drug trafficking as silencers are a part of criminal homicide,” Brown said.
But…silencers are legal.
The Dauphin and his Advisors
John Judis provides a clear, succinct rundown of the screw-up otherwwise known as the Bush administration Iraq policy and strategy.
Again. This would be much less likely to happen if the person actually charged with making the decisions weren’t an empty slogan in a suit. Everybody thought it would be a great idea to have a presidency run by a committee of grown-ups, just like say…Enron.
As ye sow and all that jazz.
Passing Thought
Scott Rosenberg in Salon says of Al-Arian/Rove-gate:
In the meantime, the strange saga of Al-Arian should remind us all that defining terrorism is a far more complex problem than our current president’s blunt moral compass allows. After all, Bush’s own most trusted advisors, with all their intelligence resources, embraced the same Al-Arian whom they now seek to convict. Should Rove now show up on an FBI watch list for consorting with known terrorists? (And can anyone doubt that if 9/11 hadn’t happened, Rove would still be courting the Al-Arian vote?)
Picture if you will the same story circa 1996. Would the words “resignation” not be in the frenzied headlines by the second day?
Lethal Technicalities
The other day I wrote a post asking people to suport the Innocence Protection Act. I wrote, “Whether or not you believe in the death penalty, I think it’s fair to say that nobody believes in executing innocent people.”
I was completely wrong.
Please, law and order types, please spare me any more whining about somebody getting off on a technicality. You live by technicalities, whether it’s conflicting deadlines for counting votes or arbitrary cut-off dates for claims of actual innocence. And worse, you do it in the name of efficiency. At least the laws protecting defendents are in place to keep the country from turning into a lawless police state. You guys just want to make the trains run on time.
Sick, amoral and unjust. What is happening to this country?
Public Relations War
For months both major U.S. cable news networks have acted as if the decision to invade Iraq has already been made, and have in effect seen it as their job to prepare the American public for the coming war.(Paul Krugman)
And how is this done, exactly? How is a population made to believe that war is inevitable, the enemy implacable, the government a source of unerring wisdom and might? Let us count the ways:
o The news programs with their zingy, multi-colored, eye-snagging graphics: “Target Iraq; “Countdown Baghdad” etc, as though war were comparable to a Monday night football game or an upcoming TV mini-series.
o The seemingly endless rounds of interviews with miscellaneous generals and preening pundits who discuss in lascivious detail the mechanics of war, i.e., the capacity of American missiles, the ideal weather for infantry attacks, the armaments of the Iraqi Republican Guard, as though questions of “why” and “whether” were irrelevant and all that remained were “how” and “when.”
o The demonization of the enemy into a single malevolent personality—quick, who has the trendier one-word name these days, “Shaq,” “Kobe,” or “Saddam”?—who serves as a cartoon figure that forestalls more complicated discussions of history, politics, and economics. (What happened to “Osama,” by the way? He’s off the “A-list,” at least for now.)
o The relentless assaults on talk radio against the patriotism, character, morality, and mental stability of those who dare to oppose the war. You are either with us or you are morally defective.
The good folks at Political Research Associates have done a nice job of cataloging some of these antics as they have taken place on the covers of the conservative publication, The Weekly Standard in 2001-2002. The covers, when you consider them together, offer a fine example of how citizens are prepared to accept war as inevitable, their leaders as noble, and their enemies as vile, terrifying characters who deserve pretty much whatever they’ve got coming to them. Here’s the visual gallery, with a few of my own comments underneath each image:
Go see the gallery. It’s amazing.
Wish I’d Said That
Kevin at Lean Left cuts to the chase of the Bell Curve debate:
The larger point is that it does not matter. Even if there was a strong correlation between race and “intelligence” (defined as you wish), it does not matter. It has no practical effect, other than the spread of racism. Why? Because the individual range is so obviously great.
Try it this way. Duke Ellington is a genius. Dr. Carver is a genius. John Rocker is a moron. History demonstrates that all races are capable of producing genius, and all races are capable of producing people so stupid you wonder if they will forget how to breathe, and of producing both in large numbers. In both “races”, history shows us that genius is rare but not unknown, stupidity is less rare, and the vast majority muddle along in the middle. From a practical stand point, it does not matter if the median white is dumber than the median black. As a society, you must allow for the geniuses of both groups to flower, and build institutions to contain the damage the morons of both groups could do. To do otherwise would be to doom your society, in the long run.
Yep.
Shock Jockying For Power
I was going to write a long piece dissecting Slate’s assertion that shock jocks are the voice of liberal radio. There are some aspects of that thesis with which I agree, but the larger point is that they are not explicitly political, and more importantly, they are not consciously aligned with the Democratic Party in the same way the right-wing talkers blatently work hand in glove with the Republicans. To the extent shock jocks are political, they are like Ross Perot or Jesse Ventura — they represent the male yahoo anti-vote. They are certainly not the answer to the imbalance on the AM dial.
However, Yuval Rubenstein at Groupthink Centraldoes such a thorough job of refuting the central theme of the article that I am going no further. Just go read it.
