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July 28, 2005

Battered By Plame Investigation, Bush Forced To Push Through Laws He Favors, Celebrate Successes

Good catch of a sarcastic bit from ABC's The Note, where annoyed liberal reporters pine for a Democratic Party with an agenda greater than "Karl Rove should be in jail.

Not that I expect liberals to listen, but I will repeat: This is exactly how Republicans fell out of favor in the late nineties. Our "politics" became obsessive about bringing a few odious personalities before the bar of justice and we neglected real policy questions.

It's odd. The public, I'd guess, doesn't really know if CAFTA is a good or bad agreement, while they do have gut-level opinions about the Plame matter. Just the same they had gut-level opinions about Clinton but probably weren't certain that bombing Serbia was in America's best interest.

So you might expect them to be more animated about the stuff they understand (because, heck, it's simple) and care less about the stuff they don't know enough about to form a strong opinion. But I don't think they do. While they might know more about Rove and Clinton than CAFTA and Serbia, they also know that CAFTA and Serbia are more important, and they don't trust politicians who seem dedicated to pursuing trivial personal paybacks.

The fact that CAFTA and Serbia are complex matters doesn't mean they don't appreciate politicians "doing something about" those issues, right or wrong; indeed, the whole point of democracy is to vote people into office to work on issues that are too difficult for the average guy, holding a full time job, to fully research and form a coherent opinion on.

Another one of Clinton's lessons the raging reactionaries on the left have forgotten.

posted by Ace at 01:35 PM

Comments

But by the same token, it's difficult, if not impossible, to use those important, nebulous and often boring topics as leverage to swing your party back into power.

They follow the path of less resistance.

Posted by: Knemon on July 28, 2005 01:52 PM

This is exactly how Republicans fell out of favor in the late nineties.

Ummm... Didn't the Repubs come to control both the Congress and the WH immediately after this purported fall from favor? I'm not sure that your example actually argues against the Dems following the same failed strategy.

Posted by: vonKreedon on July 28, 2005 02:02 PM

"Our "politics" became obsessive about bringing a few odious personalities before the bar of justice and we neglected real policy questions."

What's fascinating to me is that the Democrats seem completely incapable of seeing any resemblance between themselves today and 1990s Republicans. Bring up the similarities, and they'll sputter angrily, "That was completely different... Halliburton!!! Abu Ghraib!!! PLASTIC TURKEY!!!!"

Never realizing that the above one-word condemnations not only are not slam-dunks that will make people say "Why yes! Now I'm convinced! We must impeach Bushitler!", they actually make the average voter scratch her head and say "The Halli-what, now?"

Just as sputtering "Rose Law Firm! Whitewater! SOCKS THE CAT PAYOLA!!!!" didn't convince many of the unconverted.

And I'm just talking *tactics*, by the way. Even assuming (for the sake of argument) the entirety of the Democratic Chimpy McHitlerburton worldview as true, the problem is, consistently harping on it just plain isn't working. The average voter doesn't believe in this worldview, and increasing the volume and stridency of the shrieking doesn't help much.

Posted by: David C on July 28, 2005 02:03 PM

Didn't the Repubs come to control both the Congress and the WH immediately after this purported fall from favor? I'm not sure that your example actually argues against the Dems following the same failed strategy.

Bush didn't pursue this failed strategy. You couldn't get him to comment on Clinton.

Posted by: ace on July 28, 2005 02:04 PM

For a few months now, I've tried to figure out whether The Note is conservative or liberal leaning. I don't think today's post from The Note is from a trio of frustrated liberal reporters, Ace. While I think they attempt to be unbiased, more often than not, the writers direct their sarcasm- and disdain- at liberals, IMO, simply because they disagree strongly with them, not out of frustration.

Posted by: ChrisG on July 28, 2005 02:07 PM

CAFTA and Serbia are complex matters

The whole Balkan fiasco was Islam against Christianity. After a hundred years of Moslem trouble, the Christians finally killed or expelled 90% of the Moslem Menace from their lands. Bill Clinton, needing something to divert attention away from the gathering story that he'd sold nuclear secrets to the Chicoms, decided it was time to stop this "ethnic cleansing" and started our involvement there. He put back the Moslems and both have been in a state of permanent siege ever since, and someday it will blow wide open again. And perhaps the next time it'll be the Moslems who win.

Posted by: 72 Moslems on July 28, 2005 02:07 PM

Ummm... Didn't the Repubs come to control both the Congress and the WH immediately after this purported fall from favor?

Apparently you missed the meetings, vonK. Republicans are still out of favor. They only came to control both the Congress and the White House only by controlling their buddies (via a powerful cabal of Rove, Zionist Joos and Freemasons) on the Supreme Court to steal the election from the Dems.

Posted by: Rocketeer on July 28, 2005 02:15 PM

72 Titos, uh-uh-uh-uh-UH-uh. Milosevic was a nasty little "national communist," Saddam on a budget. We intervened in an idiotic way, but the KLA was about as "Moslem Menace"-y as the Washington Generals.

Posted by: Knemon on July 28, 2005 02:21 PM

Yeah, there's a lot going on in the Balkans, but not much of it is religion-based (at least not pre-9/11, and I'm not sure how different it is now.)

P.J. O'Rourke had a good line on the ex-Yugoslavia wars, something like "It's a fight between the Croats, who don't go to Sunday Mass, versus the Serbs, who don't go to Orthodox services, versus the Bosnians, who don't go to the mosque."

Posted by: David C on July 28, 2005 03:25 PM

Even now I get so steamed that Bill Clinton's intervention there was brought on by the fact that the WSJ had almost caught up with him over the Chicom scandal, that the details elude me. However, I do remember that 90% of the Moslems had been killed or expelled, and if we had not intervened the other 10% would be gone and there'd be relative peace there now. Sometimes the world should stand by and let war happen if it is the only way to settle endless grievences that have gone for decades or centuries. Sometimes it is best for all concerned (especially us) if we: just give war a chance.

PS - His "accidental" bombing of the Chinese embassy there to confuse the world about his involvement with the Chicoms was as dirty, low down, and cynical a trick as I've ever seen. And the fact that it all worked still gets me steamed!

Posted by: 72 MANIACS on July 28, 2005 04:50 PM

Here's one piece of geopolitical brilliance the Clinton Administration did pull off during the Balkan cluster-fox: rather than denouncing the UN arms embargo and using their superior diplomatic skills to get it repealed -- or starting a "covert" US program to arm the Bosnians, they instead let the Iranians run the guns into Bosnia -- along with Revolutionary Guardsmen to organize and recruit jihadis.

BTW 72 Whatevers, Clinton wasn't picking the individual targets in Belgrade ala LBJ.

Posted by: Simon Oliver Lockwood on July 28, 2005 07:54 PM

The Serbians never got anywhere near to 90% of Muslims "cleansed" from either Bosnia or Kosovo.

I'm not saying the Muslims were 100% blameless, but the Serbs (and if any Serb apologists are around, have away) were way outta line.

Posted by: Knemon on July 28, 2005 08:00 PM

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Classic Rock Mystery Click
This is super-obscure and I only barely remember it. Given that, I'll give you the hint that it's by the Red Rocker.
And I guess you think you've got it made
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Of anything that you've left behind
Oh, but it's alright with me now
'Cause I'll get back up somehow
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Now twenty people will tell me it's not obscure, it was huge in their hometown and played at their prom. That's how it usually goes. When I linked Donnie Iris's "Love is Like a Rock," everyone said they knew that one and that his other song (which I didn't know at all) Ah Leah! was huge in their area.

Sarah Longwell spotting

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David French just posted:

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In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
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Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
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Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]

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