In lieu of a real post

I'm afraid I've gotten too busy to keep up with this like I used to--I keep catching things I want to post about and never getting around to posting them. So here we'll have a link dump, but first I wanted to mention:

I AM THIS HIPSTER PUPPY:

don’t use the term “world music” around thurston unless you want a 20 minute lecture

It's true. I will give a lecture about the problematic nature of "world music" to most anyone. Maybe not a full 20 minutes, though.

Anyhoodle, here are some things I've been meaning to post about:

Kate Harding on Kevin Smith's Southwest experience and the perils of flying while fat.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on how we define terrorism, who is a terrorist and who is not, and the lessons we have failed to learn from our national history of domestic race terrorism.

Finally, this article on depression and what it does to your brain--and what it may do for your brain--struck a chord with me.

Also links

Connectivity ftw:

Some people are crazy:

Though the Obama media have been ballyhooing her brilliance -- No. 1 in high school, No. 1 at Princeton, editor of Yale Law Review -- her academic career appears to have been a fraud from beginning to end, a testament to Ivy League corruption.

One of them is Pat Buchanan.

Really cool interactive word cloud of Iranian opposition on Twitter.

Sullivan on why Iran matters

Gotta go!

Some beautiful posts

Go. Read them in their entirety. To excerpt them would be to mangle their integrity.

Hilzoy on Dr. George Tiller

One of Sullivan's readers on torture.

It's that time again

Link dump!

First off, Marc Ambinder brings us this graphic from Pew on party ID:


I think this is great news. The two-party system is moribund and the lesser its hold on the voting population, the better.

Next: Kevin Drum meditates on torture. An excerpt:

The whole point of civilization is as much moral advancement as it is physical and technological advancement. But that moral progress comes slowly and very, very tenuously. In the United States alone, it took centuries to decide that slavery was evil, that children shouldn't be allowed to work 12-hour days on power looms, and that police shouldn't be allowed to beat confessions out of suspects.

On other things there's no consensus yet. Like it or not, we still make war, and so does the rest of the world. But at least until recently, there was a consensus that torture is wrong. Full stop. It was the practice of tyrants and barbarians. But like all moral progress, the consensus on torture is tenuous, and the only way to hold on to it — the only way to expand it — is by insisting absolutely and without exception that we not allow ourselves to backslide. Human nature being what it is — savage, vengeful, and tribal — the temptations are just too great. Small exceptions will inevitably grow into big ones, big ones into routine ones, and the progress of centuries is undone in an eyeblink.

Whether the point of civilization really is as much moral advancement as physical (what does that mean, concretely?) and technological advancement is, if you ask me, up for debate. But the liberal political project (and I mean liberal not in the American political sense but in the philosophical sense that includes both Rousseau and Burke) certainly argues that it is. Without that presumption the entire structure of liberalism is undone. The American democratic structure is deeply predicated on that framework, and so while I think from a realistic, anthropological, and even historical viewpoint Drum's assertion may be questionable, I think it's useful in terms of this discussion.

Finally: I've been a bit curious about John Huntsman, Governor of Utah, since he revealed that he supports civil unions--who wouldn't be? Utah is about as solidly red as a state can get, and that redness is very cultural. He himself is a Mormon. Finally, as it's starting to seem that he'll run for President, I got myself over to his Wikipedia page and I must say the man holds my interest. I think he falls under that category of politicians whom I like and respect and want to see do well--but not so well that I'd vote for them. I have the feeling that I'm diametrically opposed to Huntsman on most fiscal and economic policy, but I respect the independent thinking (or, potentially, political brilliance) that his social heterodoxy would seem to represent.

It's midterms week here, and I've had two tests, two papers, a B.A. thesis proposal, and the nervewracking act of asking an important professor to be my thesis advisor to handle--and it's only Wednesday night!--so that's all I got. Time now for my brain to be allowed to shut off.

Randoms: this is what happens when I take a study break

I have slept something like twelve hours in the last 66; midterms are killer this quarter. I just finished a bear of a paper and I'm about to do my Arabic homework before class at 10:30, so this won't be much of a post, but I needed to take a second and just consume some information in between bouts of producing it.

The Rep. Armey/Joan Walsh ridiculousness is several days old, but I only just watched the video instead of reading a transcript, and it's truly heinous:

The impact of the video over and above the transcript is partly just the sheer disgusting condescension on his part, but it's also the way he dismisses her on at least vaguely relevant terms up until that misogynistic bolt from the blue. He went on not taking her seriously, viewing this segment as a conversation between him and his boy Chris Matthews plus some annoying girl, until he couldn't run from her logic anymore, and then bam.

I find the fact that she started addressing him as "sir" after that wifey comment fascinating. It's not that she's submitting to his ridiculousness, no, not at all. I'm trying to decide what it means. I can see it as one part distancing--"you're no friend of mine, sir" kind of deal--and one part heightening the contradictions--you just utterly deprived me of respect and so I am going to address you in terms of respect as a near-sarcastic marker of how completely despicable what you just did was. I feel like there's some third thing there that I'm not getting, but I don't know what it is.

Some other stuff:

Klein and Coates on centrism
Tannenhaus and Sullivan via Coates on conservatism
Hilzoy: The Market Case for Nationalizing the Banks
Hamas continues to fight for allegiance in Gaza--now by stealing from the U.N.!
Whaddaya know, Sadly, No! is still funny. “Americans are angry at Democrats” explained a liberal-leaning liberal. “Muuuuuh” added bipartisan analyst Zombie Ronald Reagan" cracked my shit up.

Okay, I'm going to finish my bibliography, make myself some food, and get cracking again. People actually miss student life?

Linking

Is all I really have the energy for right now. School during Chicago wintertime is enough by itself. So here we go:

Ezra Klein reports that China is moving on universal healthcare and may get there before the U.S. It's a particularly interesting case because their incentives are almost precisely opposite to ours.

Sullivan posts a reader email on the unsung profundity of the changes Obama has already made since taking office.

Bob Reich has some thoughts on what Keynesianism means in today's world. Interesting and probably quite politically controversial; I need to think a bit before I can formulate an opinion about it. I'm not qualified to say whether the economics makes sense on a level any more detailed than the very general layman's language Reich used.

A very interesting and detailed examination from the WSJ of how Israel might have contributed to Hamas's rise.

It would appear that Congressional Republicans are throwing up roadblocks to the stimulus bill over...federal aid to state budgets. Really? Steve Benen has the logic, such as it is.

The more predictable Republican objection to the stimulus plan: $200 million for family planning.

Finally, if you're interested in what I'm listening to, I've made a playlist here. Not sure if that will work or not--this is one of the more confusing websites I've ever dealt with.

Link dump

Hillary arrives at Foggy Bottom to a very warm welcome:



A thoroughly depressing report on an area of Pakistan that has spent the last ten years descending into Wahhabism and violence, plus some thoughts on girls' education.

From Abu Muqawama ("a blog dedicated to following issues related to contemporary insurgencies as well as counterinsurgency tactics and strategy"; a new discovery that I owe to Andrew Sullivan), a dead-on take on the current struggle between Hamas and Fatah over who gets to rescue the starving Gazans:

So this is the fight to watch next. Pay close attention to who rebuilds Gaza -- and how Hamas will seek to get credit for every bit of aid that is delivered to the people. That fight will help determine the long-term strategic effects of this latest spasm of violence.

Glenn Greenwald is pleased with Obama's first few days, and I have to say, when Greenwald lays it all out like that, so am I.

One of Andrew Sullivan's ever-astute readers wrote in about another reason to close Gitmo and a reframing of the question "but then what do we do with the prisoners?" It's a useful perspective I haven't seen before. In the same vein, Chris Brodenner wrote at Sullivan's place that while politicians may be adopting a NIMBY stance toward relocating Gitmo detainees to U.S. soil, the actual consitutents who live on that soil don't seem to feel that way.

Just to be clear, stopping the military tribunals at Guantánamo is one of the things Greenwald (me, too!) is happy about. More positive moves by Obama here. In a last bit of Yay Habeas Corpus fawning, dday writes:

Obama is really setting a bad precedent of keeping campaign promises and abiding by the rule of law. It's like the oath of office reboot, setting the horrible precedent of acknowledging mistakes and seeking to rectify them. Who does this guy think he is?

Some links

One of Obama's first acts on his first day was to call President Mubarak of Egypt, Olmert of Israel, Abbas of the PA, and King Abdullah of Jordan. It's nice to see the President caring about the Middle East.

From DipNote (already, I know), an update on the international response to piracy off Somalia.

Advocates for the Geneva Conventions and the rule of law, as well as anybody who doesn't like crazy detention and torture policy, should be happy to see Neal Katyal Principal Deputy Solicitor General.

A linguistic analysis of racial dialect in Obama's inaugural. I can't decide if this piece is a total trainwreck of unnecessarily racialized horror, a well-meaning attempt that ends up trying for too many reaches, or legitimately interesting. I think there are some aspects of all three. The last paragraph definitely makes me unhappy, though:

So: The son of an African immigrant picks up a sonority of speaking from the descendants of slaves brought here from Africa centuries before--and then uses it to help seduce a nation full of descendants of slaveholders into making him their master. Linguistically as in so many ways, Obama embodies the extent to which we are all more "fellow citizens"--as he opened his oration--than we might think.

I mean, "master"? Really? That's not only a heavily laden term in this context, it's the kind of thing you'd read over at The Corner written by people who were expecting the inauguration to feature him lighting Abe Lincoln's Bible on fire, producing a turban from under his jacket, and screaming "FARRAKHAN 4EVAHZ YO!" before demonstrating the proper application of jihad by beheading Justice Stevens to the accompaniment of an illegally immigrated mariachi band and Bill Ayers on the banjo.

Plus, it's not like nobody noticed the topsy-turviness of a black man being elected President, you know? Stick to linguistics.

Link dump

This edition is going to be NYT-heavy. I got my daily headlines last night and wanted to read basically everything.

Eesh. Incredible story from the NYT about unbelievably widespread and blatant corruption in the Afghani government.

Control of the Green Zone in Baghdad was handed off from U.S. to Iraqi control yesterday, although apparently no one cared.

The ash spill in Tennessee just keeps getting worse. I can't figure out why the state or doesn't seem to be moved to do anything about it. They haven't even made public the results of tests of the water supply. Luckily, other groups are doing it anyway.

Originally under the TARP bailout plan, Treasury was supposed to buy up bad mortgages; Paulson decided to just give the banks the money instead. So the Fed has gone ahead and done what Treasury has not, and TPM's Josh Marshall revealed the other day that they've hired four major financial firms to purchase and manage about $400 billion worth of toxic assets. Today, we learn that all four firms--some of which have already received TARP money--refuse to discuss how much they're being paid for the gig.

U.S. manufacturing is at its lowest level in 28 years. For an in-depth look, check out this NYT piece about the domestic steel industry.

The Department of the Interior is in a sorry state post-Bushies, like, it seems, every other department.

The now-familiar move by Russia to cut off Ukraine's gas supply is playing out in a more subtle and interesting dance than usual. It will be very interesting to see how Russia's policies evolve as it becomes more and more cash-strapped as a result of low energy prices.

Where did this obsession with Iran come from? Apparently there are still people in the U.S. political world who think that now would be a great time to go to war with Iran. Unfortunately, those people include former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton in their ranks.

On a fluffier note as we head into the opinion pieces, I had to hand it to Blago: the Burris appointment was politically brilliant if what you want to do is thumb your nose at the world. Unfortunately, it seems to have prompted some backlash: IL lawmakers have moved up their plans for impeachment proceedings. Also at that link: if appointee Roland Burris tries to enter the Senate floor, armed police officers will detain him. This political drama is so delicious it must be bad for me.

The lefty blogosphere and intellectual infrastructurecontinues to pwn the right-wing equivalents.

Krugman on how the Republican Party built a strategy, a party, and a platform out of racial divisions, and (FINALLY, THANK YOU DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS AND PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION) backed themselves into a corner with it.

Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.

Larison is still discussing Israel-Palestine at his place, and today he takes on the notion of collective responsibility--that the Palestinians are responsible for the last few years and must take the consequences because they voted Hamas in democratically. Larison completely implodes this idea in its stupidity, and the piece is important reading in its entirety. The thing that bothers me, though, is this: Hamas won a legislative election. They formed a government, yes, but the President was still Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah. While the embargo on Gaza had already begun, what kicked it into its present high gear was the ARMED COUP Hamas perpetrated to completely take over Gaza. Why does no one remember that--or are all Gazans responsible for that too?

I wouldn't say this David Brooks piece is particularly worth reading in its entirety--it's a bit disjointed and I'm not entirely sure what the point is, if he has one--but this bit at the end (paraphrasing someone else, natch) caught my eye--it's been something I've been conceptually groping around for nine months or so.

In the March 12 issue of The New Republic, John Judis gave us an early, brilliant explanation of the Barack Obama phenomenon. America has always had an Adamic tradition, Judis noted, a desire to begin anew. As D. H. Lawrence wrote, America “starts old, old, wrinkled and writhing in an old skin. And there is a gradual sloughing of the old skin, towards a new youth.”

Judis showed how this desire has played out in American literature, from Melville’s Billy Budd to Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, and in politics, from Jackson to Kennedy to Obama. He showed how Obama unconsciously played on the Adamic chords. He concluded on a hopeful but nervous note: “The American instinct to continuously remake ourselves in the image of Adam — to achieve a decisive and final break with history — has periodically proven seductive to voters. And, sometimes, this instinct can produce important, transformative results. Yet the past — in the form of race or war or deeply held partisan animosities — has a way of lingering around.”

Phew. So much to share, so little time.

Link dump

I have a bunch of links I've been meaning to write up and I haven't gotten around to it, so here they all are. I promise they're all interesting.

CNN declared that Susan Rice, Obama's Envoy to the U.N., had been the Assistant Secretary of State for African-American Affairs. Whoopsie--there is no such thing (no shit, Sherlock). Actually it was African affairs. Oof.

Seems Bush was warned about the prospect of a financial crisis and even received a few suggestions on how to avoid such a catastrophe--and ignored all that. Sounds eerily like the backstory on 9/11 to me.

A former leading interrogator in Iraq says he has a way better interrogation method than torture: treat 'em like human beings and they'll talk to you. This is how the U.S. got the information that allowed it to take out a leading Al-Qaeda commander-type. Whaddayaknow?

Some very interesting thoughts on who exactly perpetrated the Mumbai attacks.

More on Mumbai's attackers. Some interesting specifics on the Pakistani government's control or lack thereof here, as well as a discussion of methodology--comparing these attackers to a group that people seem to be heading towards crediting with the attacks.

I think this is pretty dumb: apparently we should be worrying about world obesity more than world hunger. Perhaps if we had the global food supply in better order both problems would be addressed, but really? My straw man alert is going off, LOUDLY. For some reasons to doubt whether we should even be that worried about teh fatties and their OMG HEALTH, see here, or read Gina Kolata's Rethinking Thin.


There you have it. Now I have to figure out whether I have history class tomorrow.