A Slight Delay

It’s now five years to the day since President Bush unilaterally declared an end to the Crusade War On Terror  Fight Against Global Extremism Glorious Struggle Against Islamofascism War in Iraq, which was meant to find Osama Bin Laden democratize the Middle East bring peace, prosperity, and democracy to Iraq  wait a minute. What in the hell are we doing there again? The names, faces, and rationales have shifted as if in a sandstorm, or have become lost in the fog of war; each promise, and each benchmark, has been broken, rationalized, and ultimately replaced, with the administration fervently hoping each time that nobody remembers the rationales of days gone by. (more…)

The Apostate ran a post today titled, simply enough, Sean Bell is Not A Feminist Issue. While I can’t find much to fault in the title, the substance of her essay is something else again. In it, she takes to task both Feministe and Feministing for framing the Bell shooting in feminist terms. Commence the disagreement. (more…)

 The second thing that crossed my mind upon hearing the verdict that was handed down in the Sean Bell case–the first had been simple disbelief–was a song lyric from the Clash:

You have the right not to be killed
Murder is a crime
Unless it was done by a policeman

Different lessons seem to have been drawn on both sides of the case. Black men have been reminded that it’s dangerous to leave their homes with their keys, wallets, or even candy bars (each of the preceding has resulted in the shooting death of a black man at the hands of the police)–to say nothing of their skin. The NYPD, on the other hand, has been reminded that for all intents and purposes, they have carte blance to use whatever degree of force they see fit, whether or not it’s proportionate to the threat–real or perceived–posed by their targets. (more…)

A few days ago, I overheard a conversation among a few coworkers who were wondering why the economy wasn’t in better shape, given that we’re at war. To quote Phil, I’m not terribly knowledgeable of this issue, but that won’t stop me from commenting. When people think of war “improving” the economy, they generally point to World War II helping to end the Great Depression. They’d be right about the WWII part, but not so much about any of the more recent wars.

See, the United States’ economy went on a wartime footing a short time before we entered the Second World War, and it’s never really left it since. There have been differences in the degree of intensity, certainly, but the military-industrial complex against which Eisenhower warned has been with us, in one form or another, and to one degree or another, for nearly three-quarters of a century now.

Economic fixes are a bit like drugs; that initial hit may give you a pretty intense high, but over time, if you keep using, you build up a tolerance. The initial “high,” if you will, from putting the American economy on a wartime footing lost its effect over time with repeated use. The economy has become so dependent on this that it would take a much higher dose, at a much higher intensity, to acheive the same effect, and it’s at best questionable (to put it kindly) whether the end result would be even remotely worth the cost.

Since the government seems to have realized, gradually and belatedly, that trying to scare the hell out of the populace with threats of terrorist attacks doesn’t have the same political effect that it used to, I’m thinking there’ll probably be a change in tactics for the ‘08 elections. With prices both of crude and of gasoline reaching all-time highs (and with gas prices here on the east coast projected to top $4.00/gallon in time for Memorial Day weekend), fuel prices have become a hot-button issue. My gut tells me we’ll see either some form of negotiated deal to drop prices, or a release from the strategic reserves, timed either for the Democratic convention, or some time around Labor Day weekend. I could be dead wrong here (lord knows it wouldn’t be the first time), but this administration has played politics with enough other issues that it wouldn’t take a hardened cynic to see the possibility.

We’ve been in a more or less constant election cycle since late 2003. We went from being in the run-up to the ‘04 election, to the election itself, to a protracted runup to the ‘06 election, to the run-up to the ‘08 election starting pretty much as soon as the polls closed in November ‘06. I don’t expect that will change; the only thing that will be different, I suspect, is a different opposition party doing the talking.

And there’s been no shortage of talk… the endless rounds of the Sunday talk shows, dozens of commercials (including 3 renditions of the “3am” ad, as of this writing), and 30 or so debates. (more…)

After reading Chris Hedges’ I Don’t Believe in Atheists and Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke (and Kurt Vonnegut’s Armageddon in Retrospect, which I’m reading now and will be taking up later this week), I seem to have pacifism on the brain lately. Something occurred to me: Pacifists, like generals, are always ready to fight the last war. Just the same as those who wage war need a degree of creativity and foresight to be effective, so too must the antiwar movement. It isn’t enough to do something because it worked in ‘68; we’re forty years on now, and the same old things aren’t going to be nearly as effective now as they were then.

Worst of all, it seems that so much of the antiwar movement is reactive rather than proactive. We seem to have waited ’til we were already well on the way to mobilization to try to sound the alarm, rather than realizing that the run-up to war, the war itself, and the means by which it’s conducted are all the product of a particular mindset. It seems to me that the odds of a good result would be higher if we’d address that mindset, rather than trying to change the tide this long after the fact.

The US Department of Justice has approved, in principle, the merger of XM Sattelite Radio and Sirius. Full approval from the DOJ is expected to come in a few weeks’ time, at which point the matter will be taken up by the FCC.

For all intents and purposes, this means that the merger is a done deal. According to Bloomberg:

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said last week that his agency would “go forward quickly” after the Justice Department ruled. Mary Diamond, a spokeswoman for the FCC, said yesterday the commission “is looking at” the transaction.

The FCC has not, historically, bucked the judgment of Justice, and is even less likely to do so given its more recent history of approving media mergers of all stripes.

Whether the Department, or the Commission, should approve the merger is still open to debate, not that it’s likely to be debated. Stocks of both companies at first traded up since news of the DOJ approval, only to fall soon thereafter; they’ll likely trade better still once the inevitable wave of layoffs follows the merger. The hundreds of employees likely to be put out of work completely aside (and no, that wasn’t intended to be as callous as it sounded), there are other factors which would tend to make this a lousy idea. (more…)

Nicholson Baker’s latest offering, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization traces the devolution of humanity and human nature as weaponry and tactics evolve. War has never been civilized business, but Baker shows the dizzying speed at which it took on ever more barbaric aspects in the first half of the last century.

There is the same attention to detail in evidence that’s characterized such earlier works as Vox, A Box of Matches, and The Size of Thoughts. Individuals are captured at very specific moments in time, their words and actions rendered in miniature, the better to illuminate the larger picture. Just as important, Baker is not content to simply rehash the same arguments, or perpetuate the same myths, that now pass for received wisdom. Much of the book’s impact derives from the fact that it thrusts generally ignored or forgotten figures like Stefan Zweig or Henry Fosdick into the spotlight, while also not shirking the faults of the narrative’s traditional “heroes,” like FDR and Winston Churchill.

The protagonists and antagonists here are as likely to be ideas as people. Pacifism is presented, more or less unquestioningly, as an a priori good, as are its proponents, among them Zweig, Charles Lindbergh, A.J. Muste, Jeanette Rankin (who has the distinction of being the only person to cast a dissenting vote against both World Wars), Christopher Isherwood, Muriel Lester, and Gandhi. (more…)

Slight shakeup over at MSNBC. Tucker Carlson’s eponymous show in the 6 PM slot is out, replaced by David Gregory’s Race For the White House. What difference will this have? Well, for one thing, Tucker packs up his bow tie and continues with the network as a correspondent-at-large. For another, David Gregory could now plausibly lay claim to the title of “Hardest-Working Man in News.” In addition to covering the White House for NBC, he’s anchoring the aforementioned show, and still making regular appearances on NBC’s Nightly News.

So, for practical purposes, what does it mean for the lineup from night to night? On one level, it does mean that the cable net is more tightly intertwined with its broadcast parent. This is especially clear on the nights of primaries and caucuses, when the likes of Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Tom Brokaw, and Gregory share airtime with the usual suspects. On another level, it replaces Carlson’s feisty conservative bent with Gregory’s more centrist presentation, drawing on the same cast of characters that tend to appear on the other programs: Air America’s Rachel Maddow, Eugene Robinson (associate editor and columnist for the Washington Post), NBC Political Director Chuck Todd, ex-Congressman/current MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, and Carlson. (more…)