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a berlin blog |
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Friday, August 29, 2003 Howard DeanThe momentum building behind Howard Dean surprises my friend Steve, who thinks the stocky doctor from Vermont is a "Democratic version of the unelectable core candidate." I think that's wrong. Dean is, if anything, a centrist, who comes across as a tough earnest liberal, free of the damp-eyed Clinton style that drove Republicans nuts. I like him. His record is more conservative than his wartime image, so he can make an honest change in tone.He grabbed San Francisco's attention last spring because he could afford to be critical of the war, noisy in a way Kerry and the other senators couldn't, since they voted to give Bush a blanket sanction. But he was no peace protester. He saw the point in toppling Saddam; he just didn't buy the hollow rhetoric from Washington. Like most of us at Radio Free Mike, he thought we should invade only with a U.N. mandate. "We may very well have to go into Iraq," he said on Face the Nation last September. "[But] what is the rush? Why can't we take the time to get our allies on board? Why do we have to do everything in a unilateral way? It's not good for the future of the foreign policy of this country to be the big bully on the block and tell people we're going to do what we want to do." Last September that was a jig-step to the right for Dean, a slight shift in tone. Now he's on record -- long before the invasion -- sounding prophetic. Dean also thinks we need to follow through in Iraq, using more troops, with U.N. help. Pulling out would be a disaster, he knows that. So the thin and puling arguments that Andrew Sullivan (for example) levels against Dean's stomach for a long-term commitment will blow away. In fact, Dean could raise U.N. support more effectively than Bush, since he has no crow to eat. And, as Sullivan himself argues, Dean is a fiscal conservative, who can and should beat up Bush on his irresponsible, government-bloating budget. Yes, he opened up Vermont for gay "partnerships." That puts him on the social left, beyond any other candidate. But remember it's not quite gay marriage: That would kill him in the South. Dean shuts down most of his right-wing critics by calling it, honestly, a simple matter of equal rights. I look forward to watching him trounce Bush in a debate. Dean can dance intelligently on both sides of a line, striking a liberal profile in rock-ribbed conservative language, allowing newspapers to call him a "peace candidate" without leaving a record to damn him if the war somehow turns out well: He's so good, in other words, at seeming one thing, and being another -- a talent his potential opponents lack -- that he just may be electable. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:53 PM Thursday, August 28, 2003 Martin L uther King, Jr.Here's a fascinating column on how King's most famous speech came about, forty years ago today. The powerful stuff was ad-libbed. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:25 PMWednesday, August 27, 2003 Does Iran have nuclear weapons?Well, they have traces of weapons-grade uranium. And connections to Hezbollah. But we won't topple Tehran for the same strategic reason we haven't gone after Pakistan or the Saudis. In fact, we seem to have invaded the one major Middle Eastern country with no evident weapons program or obvious links to terrorism.Keep in mind: I still think Saddam earned his war, at least from a bureaucratic, flouting-the-UN point of view. And to a cold strategist Iraq may have been the right place to invade. But the war wasn't sold that way to the public, or to Europe, whose armies would come in handy about now. Top link via Marc Levy, who for some reason doesn't run a blog. UPDATE: Josh Marshall, as usual, goes into more detail. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 5:49 AM The murky pastIn another lifetime our editor published a little college-pamphlet thingy called The Erratically, and while he was out of the country for a year, a reader named Greg Knauss took it over. Knauss published a (now unfortunately lost) story called "Ambrose Bierce is Dead in Cuernevaca," contributed by our editor from across the sea, which imagined the details of Bierce's fabled final days. (Carlos Fuentes did the same thing better in The Old Gringo.)Knauss, who has not vanished off the face of this earth but in fact has a wife and kids in Woodland Hills, now runs an elegant tribute to Bierce called The Devil's Dictionary 2.0, with snarky definitions of new English words like blog and (Instapundit perennial) indeed. The punch line? I found Greg through a random link on Textism. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 4:59 AM Sunday, August 24, 2003 Reviews!Too Much of Nothing is officially out. It's in stores and everything. Kirkus calls it a "prosperous beginning for San Francisco-based reporter and stage critic Moore," and "a first novel that deserved hardcover" treatment. Hmm. Black Book magazine says "Moore's fierce wit and vivid narrative deliver a heady cocktail of friendship, youth, and betrayal." Not bad. I have a rant about review coverage here, and all of my predictions have been wrong (so far). posted by Michael Scott Moore | 3:20 AMSaturday, August 23, 2003 Fair and Balanced 2Here's the Fox News story on Fox News' attempt to stop Al Franken from using the phrase "fair and balanced." The piece is -- as it would have to be -- a model of fairness and balance. Quote from the judge who denied the injunction: "It is ironic that a media company, which should be protecting the First Amendment, is seeking to undermine it."Indeed. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 3:04 AM Friday, August 22, 2003 Saudis in IraqJosh Marshall has a lengthy interview with Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc.. This half of it deals with the Saudi guerrillas flowing into Iraq. Bergen doesn't believe they're government-backed. This post of mine suggests otherwise, but what do I know? Lots of other good stuff in the interview, too. For example: "We speeded up history, right? Because we volunteered for this [war], we really didn't have to do it. There wasn't an imminent threat, you know there was no link to 9/11. Saddam's a horrible human being, but there are plenty of those around. So we volunteered essentially, and we basically sped history up."Not necessarily a good thing. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:44 PM Why California is so poorThe reason for our deficit, and the recall, has very little to do with runaway spending, according to a columnist at Forbes. Spending has gone up about 1% a year since 1990. Arnold won't raise taxes, which is awfully nice of him. But Cruz might try to reverse part of Proposition 13 (the bane of our school system) and ask businesses to pay a relevant property tax — along with some other strange contortions — which will cost him the election. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:37 AMSunday, August 17, 2003 VacationTime for a layabout in the redwoods. Here's a photo of a jackalope:
posted by Michael Scott Moore |
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Friday, August 15, 2003 Fair and BalancedNeal Pollack has declared August 15th Fair and Balanced Day on the Internet. I'm with him on this, of course.A Zen koan: If you're Fox News, and you copyright the phrase "fair and balanced," and somehow control what it means, and who can use it, can you really call yourself "fair and balanced" anymore? Or have you lost your balance completely? posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:17 AM Thursday, August 14, 2003 Fall of the House of Saud?The most positive thing you can say about Bush's hypocritical stance toward Riyadh — smiling and friendly, when both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan should have been invaded instantly for the "reasons" we used to invade Iraq — is that he waged a showy war of convenience on Saddam in order to undermine the House of Saud. Of course invading a Muslim theocracy like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan would be a public-relations disaster, a brilliant way to breed terrorism; so we've suspected for a while at Radio Free Mike that the Iraq invasion was partly a way to backstab the Saudis, drain their regional influence, and relax their grip on oil prices. Whether that was a good idea or not remains to be seen. But Winds of Change argues that the bleeding has started.If this (conservative) line of thinking is true, then the war was about oil. A comment on the Winds of Change piece adds: "If the restoration and expansion of Iraqi oil production means the Saudis get less money for their own oil, that means the Saudis have an incredible interest in making sure the U.S. gets bogged down in Iraq and the infrastructure there never gets repaired. Saudi funding of Al Qaeda and other anti-Western forces dovetails nicely with increased attacks on U.S. troops and engineers in Baghdad and elsewhere." posted by Michael Scott Moore | 4:37 AM Wednesday, August 13, 2003 Defending American Freedom Right Here At HomeWhat a joke. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:01 AMMonday, August 11, 2003 Baghdad Flashmob?Bear with me, this is good:A German blog called Flashmop reports "the first flashmob in Baghdad," and offers a photograph of the 100 or so locals who supposedly emerged out of nowhere to "execute a sort of oriental jazz gymnastics for approximately one and a half minutes," then called out, in chorus, "'Steigt der Erpel auf die Ente, zahlt der Kerl bald Alimente'*, applauded, and vanished again in to the crowd." 
* "The mallard who mounts the hen soon pays alimony." (If you're not sure just what a flashmob is, visit cheesebikini.com.) The thing about this Baghdad flashmob is that it never happened. Note that "Steigt der Erpel auf die Ente, zahlt der Kerl bald Alimente,"* most likely doesn't rhyme in Arabic; that the men in the photograph are clearly Shi'ite flagellants; and that Germans in general are so verrückt about the flashmob idea that someone in my strange mother country went to the trouble of inventing one in Baghdad. German flashmobbers are having a fine old laugh over this. Which in itself is hilarious. For the record, we're very much in favor of flashmobs. We even had advance word of one on Market Street awhile back. But ever since the Radio Free Mike megacomplex moved out to Ocean Beach we haven't been as mobile as we'd like to be. UPDATE: The San Francisco Chronicle outs the flashmob movement, and puts it in a local context: "The Bay Area has a history of impromptu performances in public spaces, from the Merry Pranksters and the San Francisco Mime Troupe to Survival Research Laboratories and the Cacophony Society." posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:49 PM Saturday, August 09, 2003 Ah, CaliforniaThis column on that idiotically-named new Fox melodrama about Orange County has an interesting quote from one of the producers:"That's why you have a band like Rage Against the Machine from Irvine," McG added. "It's one of the most politically significant bands in contemporary culture and they're a bunch of guys who grew up in middle-income communities right in the heart of Orange County." [Kids in Southern California] "become infatuated with the hip-hop cultures of New York and London and places that have a little more history than where the oldest building in town is done by a developer looking to make the most money possible on a minimall." "Politically significant"? Rage Against the Machine is shallow, posturing bullshit -- rather like The O.C. itself. Too Much of Nothing tries to make this point as powerfully as possible. The culture of Southern California is so strange that what passes for rebellion there is no less shallow than what passes for respectability. The same goes for state politics: West-coast Republicanism tends to be so blinkered that its self-conscious opposite, the San Francisco left, is bound to seem rather insane. Which accounts for the current carnival. First link via Matt Welch. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:42 AM Friday, August 08, 2003 State politics, (yawn)I should care about Schwarzenegger, but I don't. California politics are not really in the politicians' hands, so why shouldn't he be governor? At least he knows how to tweak the press. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 1:49 AMMonday, August 04, 2003 Sullivan Gets Dean Flat WrongAndrew Sullivan's new column on Howard Dean is a masterpiece of partisan fog that suggests a man who opposed Bush's rush to war in Iraq — which is all Dean really opposed — might "abandon" the reconstruction effort. But Dean has been pretty loud and clear about boosting reconstruction. He wants to send more troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan. Does that sound like "abandonment" to anyone besides Sullivan? posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:25 PMFriday, August 01, 2003 Oh thank GodPoindexter will resign. What was a man who ran the Reagan project of genuflecting to Iranian terrorists doing in government, anyway?And I know all the arguments in favor of Poindexter's terrorism futures market. Iconoclastic and weirdly brilliant, I know, I know. But setting up market pressure for terrorist acts (no matter how exclusive or well-regulated) seems to me like a splendid way to institutionalize them. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:38 AM | |
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