Newt World Odor

I actually agree with Richard Cohen about something.

Well, that isn't that crazy. He's one of those people that makes me nuts by often making sense but just as often being a complete nitwit. (Which, of course, is another way of saying that I agree with him half of the time. You know how that works.)

Anyway, he often blindly defends the Israeli government/military in a manner that I find off-putting. But he's making a play for tolerance here, which is buying him a few benefit-of-the-doubt points in my carefully maintained ledger.

The big issue here is the election-year xenophobia and downright racism being trotted out to get cheap airtime and press and to secure the votes of xenophobes, racists, racist xenophobes and xenophobic racists.

I'll find you some dumb letters about this soon, but New Gingrich is dumb enough for everybody. Well, that's not true. He isn't dumb. He's very smart. Which means that he's lying most of the time. Because he says the same things the dumb people say.

Cohen's column, from the WaPo, is here. One of my favorite bits is how he calls out the use of the scary and ill-defined "they". You know who "they" are. Well, you don't, really. But you do know that "they" are out to getcha. And they will, unless you help to get them first. Or at least vote Republican. You can read that bit for yourself, but here's a nice bit about cultural relativism.

Gingrich noted that there "are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia." True enough. However, it is not the government of Saudi Arabia that seeks to open a mosque in Lower Manhattan, but a private group. In addition, and just for the record, Saudi Arabia does not represent all of Islam and, also just for the record, the al-Qaeda terrorists who murdered nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, would gladly have added the vast Saudi royal family to the list of victims. In recompense, the Saudis would just as gladly apply some dull swords to the necks of al-Qaeda's leaders. It is the way of the desert, or something like that.

I would also note that women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. Applying Gingrichian logic, it follows that no Muslim women should be allowed to drive in the United States and its possessions and territories -- or, for that matter, use a BlackBerry, since the United Arab Emirates is about to block some of its key functions. I'm sure Gingrich would agree.

The truth here is not that some racist and/or xenophobic people ("they", perhaps?) are afraid of The Terrorists opening up shop near Ground Zero. It's that they're afraid that a center which is meant to promote dialogue and understanding will actually do so. They're afraid that once we see that they are just like us (only, like, different) that we won't be able to call them "they". We need "they" because we are defined by having enemies. And if we don't, then they won't have anything with which to frighten people into doing Newt Gingrich's bidding.

PYSBRIoM: Doug Glanville

I was cool to this guy's blog at first. Who needs another ex-jock yapping about a game that he never was a superstar at in the first place? I can be judgmental. This is where I am deficient. To my credit, I did come back and read it every now and then. I like to give people a reasonable opportunity to win me over. This is where I am not deficient. Glad I did.

Doug Glanville knows the game and he knows how to write. Just as importantly, he's the rare smart jock whose intelligence and interests range well outside of the foul lines. I've been watching baseball (and reading about baseball) for many years. But there are very few writers who can hold my interest on the topic. There is the occasional Roger Angell, who isn't really a baseball writer but a writer who happens to write about baseball. Or revolutionary stat geek like Bill James.

But Glanville has won me over with his clear-headed and informative bits about baseball culture and the real struggles and concerns of the human beings that play the game. His current piece is about why players should bother showing up when their team is clearly going nowhere. Believe it or not, they should. And Glanville will tell you why. He gives even longtime fans new things to think about.

PYSBRIoM: E.J. Dionne and the Gun Lobby

E.J. Dionne writes a column for the Washington Post. He's not earth-shattering or strident. He's just a decent, common-sensical, somewhat liberal columnist. He also pops up on NPR periodically to debate something or other with the NYT's David Brooks. Dionne usually makes more sense.

On the tenth anniversary of the Columbine massacre, it's a fine idea to contemplate just how much sway the gun lobby holds in our country.

Dionne puts it in some perspective here.

Try to imagine that hundreds or thousands of guns, including assault weapons, were pouring across the Mexican border into Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California, arming criminal gangs who were killing American law enforcement officials and other U.S. citizens.

Then imagine the Mexican president saying, "Well, we would really like to do something about this, but our political system makes helping you very difficult." Wouldn't Mexico's usual critics attack that country's political system for corruption and ineptitude and ask: "Why can't they stop this lawlessness?"

That, in reverse, is the position President Obama was in last week when he visited
Mexico. The Mexican gangs are able to use guns purchased in the United States because of our insanely permissive gun regulations, and Obama had to make [an] unbelievably clotted, apologetic statement at a news conference withMexicanPresident Felipe Calderón.

BO's statement, and more, at the link.

PYSBRIoM: The Explainer

I love The Explainer. He/she/it takes an item from the news and poses a question that you didn't realize you wanted answered. Then, of course, they answer it.

You may have seen this amusing tidbit about a genius who decided to smuggle cocaine in his leg cast. That is, the cast was made out of cocaine. No, this is not a Cheech and Chong movie. It actually happened.

You may have expected The Explainer to teach you how to make your own cast out of the white stuff. You'd be wrong. He/she/it takes a serious, but far more interesting, left turn. Because the person's leg was actually broken and authorities are currently investigating whether that was by design, The Explainer helps you solve the vexing problem, "How would I go about breaking my own leg?"

Don't have lunch first.

P.S. I fibbed a little. At the end, they do tell you how to make the coke cast. Good luck with that.

PYSBRIoM: Olivia Judson

Olivia Judson writes semi-regularly in the NYT Op-Ed section. She's an evolutionary biologist who contributes to and curates The Wild Side for the NYT's online edition.

Today being Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, Ms. Judson is the perfect candidate to bring us this brief appreciation of the man and his work.

Good stuff concerning not just science but his social values.

"[W]hile many of his contemporaries approved of slavery, Darwin did not. He came from a family of ardent abolitionists, and he was revolted by what he saw in slave countries: 'Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have stayed in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal .... It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.'"

A swell guy, that Chuck.

If you want something funny, go to the unwittingly hilarious Conservapedia, which compares Darwin to Hitler on its current homepage (scroll down; it's on the left, a few notches below the item crowing about how fewer people in America believe in evolution now than in 1985). They'll tell you what the liberal media don't want you to know.

PYSBRIoM: Eugene Robinson

Eugene Robinson is a regular columnist at the Washington Post. He's also a regular on MSNBC, where he pals around with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. Me likes him.

I'm bringing him up specifically today because, contrary to this blog's subheading, I'll take an ego stroke where I can get it. Today's column by Robinson echoes my post from yesterday about BO's closing of Gitmo. (Not that I had any real original insights into it.) But what I really like about this one is how he echoes a previous post of mine that referenced "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns" at its tail end. Yes yes, Gene, I used that Rumsfeld reference already.

Okay, also probably not a terribly original concept, but still.

Don't read him because he agrees with me. Read him because he's good. And check out Olbermann and Maddow, while you're at it, if you don't already. (And if you read this, you probably do.) He'll show up.

PYSBRIoM: Dan Froomkin

Your one-stop shopping for media news and commentary is right here in White House Watch by the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin.

Dan comments on the day's news, he excerpts and comments other people's comments, and he comments on his own comments. It's a very informative roundup of what's happening and who's saying what about it. And it's copiously hyperlinked. Some bloggers can be a bit lazy with their linking (I admit it. Sometimes I'm not in the mood.) Froomkin always gives you the link to the source material. He'll usually toss in the link to his last column(s) discussing the matter too. And he always ends with a roundup of political cartoons.

He posts Monday-Friday, usually about 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Yesterday he gave a succinct roundup of Bush administration failures and debunked the nonsensical idea that the verdict of history won't be in for a long time.

"President Bush famously asserts that history's verdict on his presidency won't come until he's long dead. But far from waiting until his corpse is cold, the verdict is largely in before he's even left the building.

Some things just aren't gonna change, no matter how much time passes."

Good stuff follows.

Blind Love, American Style

Joel Stein, occasionally funny, occasionally annoying, very occasionally enlightening, has one of the latter in today's LA Times.

This is something that's always bugged me about a certain brand of conservative. The "love" that they have seems arbitrary and tribal. It's uninterested in improvement. What we have is perfect and to hell with anyone who says otherwise. That's not love, it's infatuation. And laziness.

One of my favorite responses from conservatives whenever I dare to criticize anything our best-nation-in-the-history-of-the-universe does is to compare us to Saddam Hussein. "At least we don't have someone like Saddam Hussein here!" Excuse me for daring to point this out, but when you speak with such hyperbole about a country's greatness don't you think the bar should be set a little higher than one of the worst leaders on the planet? Listen, conservatives. Pointing out that we are better than a stinking corrupt dictatorship is not exactly a ringing endorsement. "Best" is the not the same as "not quite as bad as the worst".

"Jimmy, why did you knock over that liquor store?"

"At least I'm not Bobby. He killed the liquor store manager."

"Oh, Jimmy, you're the best boy on earth!"

PYSBRIoM: Harold Meyerson

The Wall Street bailout currently being discussed in (i.e. ramrodded through) congress is unbelievably gross. The biggest red flag, discounting (if such a thing is possible) the $700 billion price tag, is the proposed provision that no decisions made by the Treasury Secretary would be reviewable by any court or agency. This is about as blatantly unconstitutional as it gets. Which hasn't stopped it from being inserted into other sham laws like the Military Commissions Act. ("Hey, dad! Can I have the keys to the car? And, uh, $700 billion?" "What are you going to do with it?" "None of your business." "Oh, okay." "Yoink!")

But another gigantic problem with the proposal is the idea that we should be forking over gazillions of dollars to the people who screwed up in the first place but that we should not have any stake in any profits once (if) the market's strength returns.

Which brings me to American Prospect executive editor and Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson. He's smart and cogent and he's top notch on economic issues. His piece today in the W-Post runs through exactly why this is such a bad idea and questions why we should be socializing Wall Street's debts but explicitly not socializing its profits.

PYSBRIoM: Glenn Greenwald

No! Not another freaking acronym! Okay, here's what it stands for: People You Should Be Reading Instead of Me. (And yes, it's an acronym, not just an abbreviation, because you can pronounce it as a word. Pizzbreeom! Let's review. FEMA, NASCAR, FISA: acronyms. NFL, NRA, USSR: not acronyms.)

Anyway...

If you never have, you owe it to yourself to read a blog by Glenn Greenwald. According to his own bio, he's a former constitutional law and civil rights litigator. Now he writes stuff. He blogs for Salon but he's published some books too. He continually debunks right-wing myths and beltway conventional "wisdom". His relentless criticism of the media and its relationship to our government is devastating. And he was one of the first media persons to raise an eyebrow at the FBI's (not an acronym) flimsy and possibly fraudulent case against Bruce Ivins.

We need Glenn Greenwald now more than ever. Worth reading every day.