Happy Birthday

Garland Perry "Hank" Cochran
born August 2, 1935

Do Tell

David Brooks, "Cease-Fire To Nowhere", July 30

We haven't chatted about David Brooks in a while, coinciding exactly with the backdoor entrance to Times Select being discovered and padlocked. The neighbor still tosses him over the backyard fence every Sunday, but the thought of actually typing out a string of Boboisms puts me off my feed.

I don't know if Brooks is the worst poker player among the punditocracy or not. I'm strictly a family-game, dealer's choice, penny-ante, Sunday nights around my Uncle Floyd's kitchen table guy (they let me join in when I turned 12), where Baseball and Night Baseball were favored games and bluffing was considered somewhat unChristian. I never learned the art of reading other players or making myself opaque. To this day I rely on sunglasses and the I Claudius defense.

But, sheesh, Brooks is so transparent you have to unfold the Op-Ed section completely and lay it out on a white background just to read him. The tell is often in the freakin' headline. even though someone else wrote it (and no, I don't mean the subject, but whatever trick he happens to be reaching for).

It takes three paragraphs this week, unless you stop reading at that headline, but only because Brooks is quoting someone else for the first two:

There are victory markers strewn across southern Lebanon commemorating the last time Israel withdrew from that land. While reporting a piece for The New Yorker a few years ago, Jeffrey Goldberg would come upon them by the roads. It was like seeing the battle markers at Gettysburg or Antietam, he wrote.

One brightly colored sign, written in both Arabic and (rough) English, marked the spot where “On Oct. 19, 1988 at 1:25 p.m. a martyr car that was body trapped with 500 kilograms of highly exploding materials transformed two Israeli troops into masses of fire and limbs.”

Busloads of tourists would take victory tours and stop at the prominent sights. Before the current war, there were gift shops and, in at least one place, a poster showing a Hezbollah fighter lifting a severed Israeli head. It all testified to the magnetism of a successful idea: that Muslim greatness can be restored through terrorism.

Restored through terrorism! It was worth all that retyping, I think. Lebanese killing Israeli soldiers inside Lebanon are engaging in terrorism (presumably because they don't do so from US-supplied bombers nor do they march out to face the enemy in Frederick the Great's infantry squares). Small wonder our peace efforts always fail.

Happy Birthday

Marcel Duchamp
July 28, 1887--October 2, 1968

Operation Purple Finger

Always interesting to see the continuing defense of Yellow Elephantiasis continuing to miss the point--the point now being "Why, other than a guilty conscience and no answer for the actual charges are you still concerned about being called a Chickenhawk?" Al Franken brought that up in 1996, fer chrissakes. A century ago!

I'd like to suggest that the political cowardice inherent in refusing to enact a military draft to either increase the numbers of available combat troops or to begin to repair the long-term damage inflicted on military manpower approaches the same level as the physical cowardice of those who intone about WWIII and the Clash of Civilizations but won't put their own mizzable carcasses on the line. Mr. Jacoby? Mr. May? Or is seeming to support conscription you know the administration and the Republican Congress will never enact just a bit too similar to your war records for comfort?

Then there's this other piece of calculated obtuseness, from Sully:

A reader wants to know what the silence is all about:

The radio silence on Lebanon from the left-wing blogosphere (i.e. Kos, Atrios) is fascinating, and your reader from the ' Liberal Blogs and Israel ' post had it about right. To sympathize with Hezbollah would expose these bloggers to a potentially career-damaging backlash. However, to take the mainstream Democratic line of say, Chuck Schumer, would be to seriously alienate a chunk of their readership.

And for sure, Hezbollah sympathizers do exist on the left. One only has to listen to KPFA, the 'free speech network' broadcast out of Berkeley to get a taste of unfiltered Hezbollah propaganda, in which Mullah Nasrallah is characterized as the new Che Guevara. The Weekly Standard might have done better to listen to some of these transcripts, rather than to desperately fish around the diaries on Kos.

Okay, one, I already knew the days when conservatives knew their Latin were over, although the idea that Atrios or Kos would fear to suffer, let alone could suffer, "career-damaging backlash" is perhaps looney enough that we should consider whether A. Reader really does imagine them to be the left-wing blogosphere. Ditto, of course, for the St. Vitus' dance that leads us to the Left end of the Left Coast and the Left-hand side of your radio dial, a spastic non-sequitur Sully leaves in...Why? For verisimilitude? Or out of nostalgia for the Good Ol' Days of Exposing Fifth Columnists?

At any rate--here's a shocker--having quoted the thing in full Sully's just sorta not sure what he makes of it quite:

I've actually been skeptical of beating up on Kos on this. But I just read the last three pages of posts on the main site , and there's only one even vaguely alluding to the crisis with Hezbollah. That's just plain weird. I know we're not supposed to notice silence on blogs - people are free to ignore all sorts of stories. But the silence can be instructive (hey, I studied with a Straussian).

Studied what, exactly? Prestidigitation? Talking out of both sides of your mouth? (I admit, either would have been a good choice).

This would make sense if there were no connections between Hezbollah and Iran and Iraq. Are lefties unable to grapple with complex regional wars? Nah. They're just wimping out. My reader gives one plausible reason why. Is there a more persuasive one?

Okay, lemme answer that quickly: No.

Because, frankly, unless Juan Cole and Billmon have neglected to pay their dues some of the best commentary on the war is coming from the Left, while the most predictable, uninformed and uncaring blather proceeds from the usual sources on the Right--unless you imagine that casting Hezbollah as Hitler of the Week, calling David Ignateus objectively pro-terrorist, or rewriting the whole business as David vs. Goliath II qualifies as clear-sighted, hard-hitting, let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may bloggy goodness. Meaning there's no argument at all, let alone a persuasive one.

Just a couple more things: one, this means the next time it's convenient to portray Alan Dershowitz or Joe Lieberman as "lefties" you can stuff it. And two, I'd like to know where exactly the right-wing blogosphere is taking on the sudden Total Disinterest in all things democratic and the Middle East in its own ranks. You're so all-fired eager to talk about wimping out, let's talk about how fast that indelible purple ink washed out.

Fun With Math, WWIII Edition

~ $2.2 Billion per annum US direct military aid to Israel (FY 2005)

+/- $3 Billion damage to Lebanon (per Finance Minister Jihad Azour), accomplished almost exclusively with that aid money
______________________________

= $30 Million in US "humanitarian" aid

Happy Birthday

Emmett Lewis Till
July 25, 1941--August 28, 1955

Lost

It started coming apart early last week, after Mom had gone over to my sister's for a few days. My sister starts a new job today, and wanted to get this week away from Mom-related stress.

It was becoming obvious that her clan--my brother-in-law in particular--were losing patience with Mom. That revelation hit my wife and me pretty hard. There's been a slow recognition that they're part of the problem. My sister relayed her husband's solution to the Mom Problem last week: just sit down at the table and tell her she was going to a home, get packed. Mission accomplished.

We've also come to realize, slowly, again, that my sister's medical plan was that we'd get Mom into assisted living, where they'd take care of it. Last week I finally said No, and No, she's not going back to your family doctor, the one who upset her with some flippant remarks. There's an appointment with a geriatric clinic next month, assuming we all live that long.

I've sworn there will be no open hostilities between me and my sister, and I'm keeping to it, but it's surprising just how easily people can get under your skin even when you're on guard. Last week she announced (I could hear the sound of her husband pulling the strings to make her dance) that each household needed to take her a full week at a time, and that Dad and The Girls would be at The Lake for a week's vacation, starting this (last) weekend. This just happened to coincide with my wife leaving town for a week-long class at a major university three hours to our north. I guess it hadn't occurred to them we might have things to do as well. So I got to be the beta-tester of the new One Week rule, and the going away party I'd planned for my wife had to go back in my shorts.

Okay, some people live through the truly horrible every day and come up punching, so I'd soldier on. But then Friday morning, while I was out, my Poor Wife gets a call from Mom. Agitated. Wants to talk to me. Informed I'm not there she say's I'd better be there to pick her up within the hour "or she's getting on a plane and flying back to Florida". Which, of course, is what she wants to do anyway. I get home, get the story, then get a call from my sister (who's left Mom in the care of her eleven-year-old, her informant). It turns out that they had decided Mom would go with them to The Lake for the weekend, then come to my place Sunday night. Only Mom didn't get the memo (neither did we) and is now refusing to go.

I said we'd be over to get her. My sister said, "Okay, I'll tell [my husband] he can stop arguing with her now."

That is also part of the plan, I guess. Argue the point with her until she sees the error of her Alzheimer's.

She was on the couch, weeping. The daughter was freaked. My sister was jumping out of her skin. Hubby and older daughter were gone, lakeward. Got Mom home and, as usual with these strong emotional episodes, she went right to sleep. I figured she'd be out for 24 hours, but she was up by dinner time, feeling chipper and acting like nothing had happened.

This went on for the next 36 hours--I'd already resolved not to bring up any unpleasantness until my wife left. Just after she did Mom fell asleep on the couch, so I went outside and washed the deck and tidied up the garden, then climbed the stairs to read awhile.

She was up when I came back down and I could sense there was trouble. She asked if I'd do her a favor. Sure thing, Mom, just name it. Take me to Florida tomorrow. You, mother dear, are out of your frickin' mind.

Which is not quite the way I put it. More like, "Why do you need to go to Florida?" in my best nurse's/Lite Rock DJ voice. Seems the bank had called her and she was needed there right away to handle some paperwork. I was not supposed to find it odd that her Florida bank called her at my house. On a Saturday afternoon. I was, in fact, Calling Her a Liar. I told her that my sister had all the finances under control, which I knew would let me in for a ten-minute tirade about how she's stealing Mom's money, and "made herself the attorney because that girl at the bank told her to." Girls at the Bank are incredibly powerful in Mom's universe. Like purses they are some sort of portal to the Inner Light. The waves kept coming and coming, and I just tried to remain upright. "You wouldn't have to stay. Just take me down there." "I'll just go by myself. You can just drive me to the airport. You don't have to tell anybody." Finally she asked for a phone book, as though I couldn't figure out what she was going to do with it.

Phone books, too, are a mysterious force in this strange galaxy of hers. She will pore over them endlessly, fall asleep with them on her lap, leave slips of paper to mark pages she can't possibly need. I let her have the thing. She's still at it this morning. She managed to find Airport Transportation in the Yellow Pages, but she can't figure out how to dial the phone, or where to tell them to come. She called a friend of hers in Florida for assistance, but left off the dial tone. I think she got somebody's answering machine, since she just said Hello a couple times and hung up.

What goes on in her head? Emotion reigns supreme; strong emotional scenes and the emotional attachments she puts on other, non-emotional events, trump everything else. Rational thought--not in the philosophical sense, but in the sense of acting in such a way as to not be run over by a bus while crossing the street--registers mostly as emotion. It's good to take your pills or see to the day's hygiene, when the subject comes up, but these aren't guiding principles. If the phone or the remote control do not work to her satisfaction she puts them down and later mumbles about how they aren't working, which seems merely to indicate her emotional relationship to them, not a plea for someone to do anything about it. I've let her wash some dishes, twice. She'll leave the water running in the wash sink as she rinses, and moving it while warning her it's about to overflow will do no good unless you maintain the vigilance; the faucet will be aimed back at the brimming sink within thirty seconds, aimed at the single sink of suburbs long since past, I suppose, since she's used nothing but dishwashers since 1968. She dries everything, but them gets sidetracked because she doesn't know where anything goes. Never checks any of the cupboards to find out.


The phone book is much in evidence again this morning, and she still imagines she's going back to Florida. She tried to convince me to drive her to the bank for funds. I'm letting it play out until this afternoon, when we'll sit down and have the same conversation about her future we've had five times before, and maybe I'll get her to agree to get an apartment up here. In which case I'll be driving her where she wants to go, as quickly as I can get her in the car.

Happy Birthday

George Clinton
born July 22, 1941

Black Market

Bush@NAACP [Kathryn Jean Lopez ] I was just talking to a crowd watcher about the president's speech today who noticed and noted: Whenever the President mentioned policies that could actually provide long-term benefits for blacks (school choice, home ownership initiatives, asset accumulation and protection)- silence or unenthusiastic applause. When he talked about the government spending money-louder applause. And when he talked about reauthorization of the VRA, which many in the crowd incorrectly think is necessary otherwise blacks won't be permitted to vote-wild applause. Conclusion: a reaffirmation that the NAACP remains stuck in the 1960s. Any wonder why younger blacks ignore it? Posted at 4:15 PM

Well, there's one thing we do know--it's not because they're flocking to the Republican Party.

You Can Observe a Lot Just by Watching

This, then, apart from the wide disparity in their values to society, would be the principal difference between Yogi Berra and the Washington Neocons: looked at in the proper light, Berra's utterances sort of make sense.

Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post: "Conservative Anger Grows Over Bush's Foreign Policy"

"It is Topic A of every single conversation," said Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has had strong influence in staffing the administration and shaping its ideas. "I don't have a friend in the administration, on Capitol Hill or any part of the conservative foreign policy establishment who is not beside themselves with fury at the administration."

"It" meaning the recognition that five years of unfettered application of "conservative" foreign policy has resulted in one colossal disaster after the next, fractured our military manpower and matériel, blackened the international reputation of the United States, and assured that we will, in fact, be less secure than formerly and for at least the next several generations? That "It"?

Well, no:

Conservatives complain that the United States is hunkered down in Iraq without enough troops or a strategy to crush the insurgency. They see autocrats in Egypt and Russia cracking down on dissenters with scant comment from Washington, North Korea firing missiles without consequence, and Iran playing for time to develop nuclear weapons while the Bush administration engages in fruitless diplomacy with European allies. They believe that a perception that the administration is weak and without options is emboldening Syria and Iran and the Hezbollah radicals they help sponsor in Lebanon.

So...the "conservative" critique is now that the results of a particular course of action is what determines its "conservatism", so that a foreign policy urged on the country by, oh, I dunno, 100% of so-called conservatives, supported by 100%, and still supported as it turned increasingly, obviously, undeniably to shit by 99.98...

as its failure made it clear that we did not have enough troops or a strategy to crush an insurgency in its last throes, or a "Conservative" Congress which would do anything but rubber stamp it and agree to hide the costs until after the elections, and as the expenditure in both dollars and manpower made it plain we could not confront the other Axes of Evil that policy had conveniently regarded as lesser threats, nor that, having been humiliated in a tenth-rate military power and barely able to maintain what we can assert as "control" of one of the poorest nations on earth...

somehow no longer belongs to a group of people whose index fingers still bear faint traces of purple ink.

Hey, the last rats to leave the ship get to taste rat ass and swallow copious amounts of salt water. It was plain from the start that we did not have enough troops to occupy Iraq. It was plain from the start that by doing so we reduced our ability to respond or threaten elsewhere, notably in North Korea, where we all we have available now is roughly 10% of the manpower Army protocol says would be needed to respond to an invasion. We know that. North Korea knows that. And they know that we know that they know.

It was clear at the time that unless things went according to the rosiest of rosy scenarios we would find ourselves in precisely this predicament, with no choice but to try to employ diplomacy having seriously weakened ourselves first. The international situation is not the result of a good plan hopelessly snagged by unforeseeable circumstances. It's the result of reckless and amateurish adventurism by a group which knows it's right, doubly so when everything is says turns out to be wrong.

No, Really

Nooners:

During the past week's heat wave--it hit 100 degrees in New York City Monday--I got thinking, again, of how sad and frustrating it is that the world's greatest scientists cannot gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, study meteorological patterns and temperature histories, and come to a believable conclusion on these questions: Is global warming real or not?

This woman wrote speeches for the most powerful man in the world. She has a column in a newspaper of national import. She publishes books. She was on Celebrity Jeopardy!, fer chrissakes, and she doesn't have the brains required to read the Sports section. Hold the phone:

If it is real, is it necessarily dangerous? What exactly are the dangers? Is global warming as dangerous as, say, global cooling would be? Are we better off with an Earth that is getting hotter or, what with the modern realities of heating homes and offices, and the world energy crisis, and the need to conserve, does global heating have, in fact, some potential side benefits, and can those benefits be broadened and deepened? Also, if global warning is real, what must--must--the inhabitants of the Earth do to meet its challenges? And then what should they do to meet them?

It is my sincere hope that the Great Minds of Science are meeting somewhere, determined to find a way that the first extinctions due to massive greenhouse-gas-induced climate change involve stupid people. Oops, that goddam bell's ringing again:

You would think the world's greatest scientists could do this, in good faith and with complete honesty and a rigorous desire to discover the truth. And yet they can't. Because science too, like other great institutions, is poisoned by politics. Scientists have ideologies. They are politicized.

Ronald Reagan, the Idiot who keeps on giving. Peggy Noonan is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University. Were I a trustee of Fairleigh Dickinson University this information would be enough for me to campaign, not just to change the name of the institution, and, assuredly, its admission standards, but to physically move the thing at least two time zones.

Fun With Math, Presidential Veto Edition

ZERO
Number of "Snowflake children" or reclaimed blastocysts left over from fertility treatments, brought to term and/or currently financially supported to age 18 by Katherine Jean Lopez.

ZERO
Number of blastocysts which will realize their potential as adopted children thanks to the veto.

ZERO
Actual amount of concern for those blastocysts in the White House, or Congress, or among the concerned humanitarians at The Corner.