Sunday, August 13, 2006
Terror in perspective
Great post by Kung fu Monkey, pointing out the irony of all these right wing punks relentlessly pimping a tenuous connection between our current circumstances and WW2 and then, unlike the stiff upper lip of those days, letting themselves run around like pantywaists. They are really contemptible losers. All these oh so brave and dramatic guys. Er, but join the military? No thanks. My British Grandfather was 40 when World War 2 started and he joined the Home Guard. That's what you did. Miserable cowards like the modern 101st Fighting Keyboardists? Not so much.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
What a fascist moron
My standards for Republicans are generally low. If they can form coherent sentences and advance an intelligent argument, I usually swoon like a teenage girl in front of Elvis. For some reason, I used to think that Peter King, soon to be ex Congressman from New York, was in the fairly intelligent and reasonable Republican category. Well....we lost another one. Sigh. Via Crooks and Liars which tells us that King's replacement is going to be Dave Mejias, a Cuban-American Democrat (and therefore one of my favorite people ever). Check out King foam at the mouth:
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Blogspot addresses unblocked in China!
Very interesting! Until recently you couldn't see any .blogspot.com adddresses in China, but now, wa-la, they all appear to be viewable! Excitement. No more need for proxies. Liberalization? Result of Google's deal with China? (Google owns Blogger.)It's good times regardless.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
The Reverend Jesse Jackson speaks the truth
I have been a Jackson skeptic at times in the past, but this video
shows a man with a perfect grasp of the stakes involved in the Lieberman-Lamont showdown. A new poll shows Lamont with a decisive 54-41 lead in the primary on August 8th. As I indicate in my post below (written before the poll was released--YES!), this will send a powerful message about the war and our national priorities. It will generate momementum leading into the November elections. And Democrats can point to the defeat of Cynthia McKinney as proof that the party remains moderate at heart. This will be a good year for correcting mistakes.
shows a man with a perfect grasp of the stakes involved in the Lieberman-Lamont showdown. A new poll shows Lamont with a decisive 54-41 lead in the primary on August 8th. As I indicate in my post below (written before the poll was released--YES!), this will send a powerful message about the war and our national priorities. It will generate momementum leading into the November elections. And Democrats can point to the defeat of Cynthia McKinney as proof that the party remains moderate at heart. This will be a good year for correcting mistakes.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Clearing the decks
Why getting rid of Joe Lieberman helps, not hurts Democrats in November
Joe Lieberman, charming and urbane within the beltway, brusque and tone-deaf to his constituents, is getting a lesson in democracy and how new media can erode the power of incumbency. Centrist democrats and pundits are concerned. Faux-mournful Republicans bemoan the loss of tolerance for other viewpoints in the Democratic party, a concern that somehow doesn’t extend to apostate Republican Lincoln Chafee’s tight primary race against a movement conservative opponent in Rhode Island. The anti-war left senses a epoch shifting moment.
Joe Lieberman’s defeat in the Connecticut Senate primary signals the consequences of defying the majority, not the wrath of militant leftists. The New York Times got it right by endorsing Ned Lamont in the contest, but only days earlier, it incorrectly reported that the country is more divided over the question of Iraq than it was over Vietnam. This is entirely incorrect. The same distinct minority of people continue to support the misguided war in Iraq and its dilettante architect, George W. Bush. The rest of the country has been convinced for months of its monstrous foolishness. Connecticut is simply a microcosm for the rest of the country. It will be a tough year for anyone who both supported the war and blithely insists that nothing is the matter with its execution. Among Democrats, Mr. Lieberman is not alone in voting for the war, and he is not alone in demanding that it be seen through to the end. But he is alone in suggesting that everything is going peachy over there.
Therefore, the removal of Bush apologist Lieberman does not threat Democratic electoral prospects, it heightens them. Disapproval of Bush and the Iraq war are consensus opinions. Because the anti-war movement has from the beginning embraced the troops and made a cornerstone of its opposition to the war abhorrence of American casualties, Vietnam era divisiveness has been avoided. The deranged minority is not anti-war, it is pro-war.
The perplexing thing is that the punditry has such a hard time seeing this. Perhaps it is generational. The desire to analogize Iraq to Vietnam is overpowering and, given the senselessness of the conflict and tragedy of dead and maimed soldiers, understandable. But the situations are different indeed and the positions of the parties different as well. When Jonathan Alter points to Nixon’s assent as being the result of over-eager and ideologically purist anti-war protesters, he only gets half the story. Yes, a divided Democratic party did not help matters. But Nixon was running against eight years of Democratic rule and the mismanagement of a failed war. He promised to end the war. And he surely benefited from his association with the eight years of prosperity under Eisenhower. In many ways, he deserved to win. (He benefited as well from white backlash to the Civil Rights Act.)
Democrats today, collectively, have much more in common with Nixon than Hubert Humphrey or the Democrats of ’68. They were callously tossed aside after a good eight years of prosperity and confront a party that squandered its majority in a failed war.
Perhaps the punditry sees something of itself in Lieberman. Beset by bloggers, held shockingly accountable for past mistakes, and their once comfortable position threatened by an ever shifting, amorphous, rude group of people with no respect for authority.
Because the conventional wisdom is wrong, pundits, leftwing activists, and Republicans risk taking the wrong messages from Lieberman's defeat. Pundits will decry the ascendancy of an intolerant fringe, leftwing activists will strut their new found muscle, believing that it harkens a mandate for a generally left agenda, and Republicans will decry the loss of diversity in the Democratic party. No of this is right. Lieberman’s defeat is a victory for the vital center, which agrees that the war in Iraq was a horrible mistake that should be remedied as best and as quickly as possible. That vital center has no time for politicians who live in a fantasy world.
Joe Lieberman, charming and urbane within the beltway, brusque and tone-deaf to his constituents, is getting a lesson in democracy and how new media can erode the power of incumbency. Centrist democrats and pundits are concerned. Faux-mournful Republicans bemoan the loss of tolerance for other viewpoints in the Democratic party, a concern that somehow doesn’t extend to apostate Republican Lincoln Chafee’s tight primary race against a movement conservative opponent in Rhode Island. The anti-war left senses a epoch shifting moment.
Joe Lieberman’s defeat in the Connecticut Senate primary signals the consequences of defying the majority, not the wrath of militant leftists. The New York Times got it right by endorsing Ned Lamont in the contest, but only days earlier, it incorrectly reported that the country is more divided over the question of Iraq than it was over Vietnam. This is entirely incorrect. The same distinct minority of people continue to support the misguided war in Iraq and its dilettante architect, George W. Bush. The rest of the country has been convinced for months of its monstrous foolishness. Connecticut is simply a microcosm for the rest of the country. It will be a tough year for anyone who both supported the war and blithely insists that nothing is the matter with its execution. Among Democrats, Mr. Lieberman is not alone in voting for the war, and he is not alone in demanding that it be seen through to the end. But he is alone in suggesting that everything is going peachy over there.
Therefore, the removal of Bush apologist Lieberman does not threat Democratic electoral prospects, it heightens them. Disapproval of Bush and the Iraq war are consensus opinions. Because the anti-war movement has from the beginning embraced the troops and made a cornerstone of its opposition to the war abhorrence of American casualties, Vietnam era divisiveness has been avoided. The deranged minority is not anti-war, it is pro-war.
The perplexing thing is that the punditry has such a hard time seeing this. Perhaps it is generational. The desire to analogize Iraq to Vietnam is overpowering and, given the senselessness of the conflict and tragedy of dead and maimed soldiers, understandable. But the situations are different indeed and the positions of the parties different as well. When Jonathan Alter points to Nixon’s assent as being the result of over-eager and ideologically purist anti-war protesters, he only gets half the story. Yes, a divided Democratic party did not help matters. But Nixon was running against eight years of Democratic rule and the mismanagement of a failed war. He promised to end the war. And he surely benefited from his association with the eight years of prosperity under Eisenhower. In many ways, he deserved to win. (He benefited as well from white backlash to the Civil Rights Act.)
Democrats today, collectively, have much more in common with Nixon than Hubert Humphrey or the Democrats of ’68. They were callously tossed aside after a good eight years of prosperity and confront a party that squandered its majority in a failed war.
Perhaps the punditry sees something of itself in Lieberman. Beset by bloggers, held shockingly accountable for past mistakes, and their once comfortable position threatened by an ever shifting, amorphous, rude group of people with no respect for authority.
Because the conventional wisdom is wrong, pundits, leftwing activists, and Republicans risk taking the wrong messages from Lieberman's defeat. Pundits will decry the ascendancy of an intolerant fringe, leftwing activists will strut their new found muscle, believing that it harkens a mandate for a generally left agenda, and Republicans will decry the loss of diversity in the Democratic party. No of this is right. Lieberman’s defeat is a victory for the vital center, which agrees that the war in Iraq was a horrible mistake that should be remedied as best and as quickly as possible. That vital center has no time for politicians who live in a fantasy world.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Fun times with ChinaLawBlog folks!
This past Saturday I had the good fortune to be able to meet up with the guys from ChinaLawBlog, Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson. They are also partners in Harris & Moure, which describes itself as "a boutique international law firm." They are both very experienced and savvy lawyers with a China preoccuption--like those t-shirts that say "Tallahassee--a drinking town with a football problem," well, they are China lawyers with an international problem--and so it was a tremendous priviledge to be able to spend some time with them. And it was a lot of fun! In what newspapers would describe as "a free-wheeling discussion," we chatted about the law in China, client problems, culture, politics, career advice, the whole nine yards. We ended up hanging out for about six hours and the guys even took me to dinner! I'm sure I overstayed my welcome, but I was having too much fun to care.
So a big thank you to Dan and Steve! And, if you're thinking of doing business in China, you can make your experience much more boring and profitable by talking with these guys first. Of course, if you like exciting times more than the bottom line. . .
So a big thank you to Dan and Steve! And, if you're thinking of doing business in China, you can make your experience much more boring and profitable by talking with these guys first. Of course, if you like exciting times more than the bottom line. . .
