TheNewKlan.Org

July 24, 2008

Oy. Last night Bill O'Reilly said: "It is not a stretch to say that MoveOn is the new Klan."

This kind of rhetoric crafted to marginalize MoveOn is a mainstay of the right:

For movement conservatives and establishment centrists alike, MoveOn is just a new name for an old foe. Bill O'Reilly has called it "vicious," "radical," full of "fanatical left-wingers" who are blackmailing the Democratic Party. John McCain, not to be outdone, responded to the "General Betray Us" ad by telling a Republican audience this past fall that MoveOn "ought to be thrown out of this country." Ostensibly mainstream voices like CNN's Campbell Brown have referred to MoveOn as "American insurgents," while Peter Beinart, in a 2004 cover essay in The New Republic, suggested that MoveOn be purged from the center left just as communists once were. Democrats have gotten in on the act as well: Hillary Clinton told donors at a private fundraiser that MoveOn had "intimidated" her supporters in the caucus states, and Barack Obama took a veiled swipe at the group in his recent speech on patriotism.

The Plight Of Iraq's Refugees

July 24, 2008

Conservatives had a tendency to attribute the all of the reduction of violence in Iraq to the increase in US troops. But one of the most overlooked stories of Iraq is the massive outflow of refugees, 4 million by the latest estimates. Basically Iraq has gone through its own Big Sort, whereby Sunni and Shia simply don't live near each other, hence a diminishing amount of sectarian violence. Bobby Allyn attended a hearing on Iraq's refugees and sent this missive:

The Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs held a hearing on the Iraq Refugee Crisis yesterday. Jonathan Finer, Washington Post correspondent, testified with former Washington Post interpreter Nasser Nouri about the plight of over two million Iraqi refugees who are struggling for permanent resettlement. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, over 4.7 million Iraqis have been displaced since the 2003 US invasion, with more than two million living in Syria and Jordan. The US has committed to accept 12,000 refugees by September. So far the US has only accepted 6,463, allowing three months for another 5,537. "The question isn't will the US meet the 12,000 mark; it's why only 12,000?" said Finer. "We took in several hundred thousand Southeast Asians after the Vietnam war, more than a hundred thousand Bosnians in the mid '90s, 12,000 doesn't seem like a very ambitious target."

Nasser Nouri told the harrowing story of how Al Qeada tried to capture his youngest daughter after word got out that he worked for The Washington Post, highlighting the dangers faced by Iraqi journalists who work for US news outlets. "In Iraq you don't tell people you work for the United States because your life then could be in danger," Nouri said. Finer told of how Nouri acted more than just an interpreter, helping him avoid death in many circumstances. "No journalism would come out of Iraqi if it weren't for the Iraqi staff," he said. "Their importance is only gonna grow. We're gonna be more reliant on people like Nasser."

John McCain's Private Language Problem

July 24, 2008

So John McCain now says the "surge" means all of the counter insurgency techniques deployed in Iraq and not just the increase (or "surge") in troops. This not only does violence to common sense (and insults the intelligence of voters), but, as Matt deftly alludes to here, puts him in direct opposition to one of my heroes, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who famously argued that the notion of a private language is incoherent.

As a committed content externalist, I am deeply offended.

Why Air Travel Sucks: An Explanation

July 23, 2008

So I've been on a bit of a jag about how awful flying is. I've flown four of the last eight weeks and every single return trip has had some very significant problems: three cancellations and one flight delayed long enough we would have missed our connection. What gives?

Megan McArdle made some good points on the general topic of complains about air travel, which Matt added to here.

I decided to email my super secret source inside a major air carrier, and I'm pasting in his response below, which I found pretty fascinating. The subject of my email to him was "Why does flying suck so hard?" His response:

"I Didn' Know I Hit Him"

July 23, 2008

More on Novak's hit and run:

Bono said that after being hit the pedestrian was "splayed up onto the windshield and hood." The driver then turned right onto the K Street service lane, and the body rolled left. Bono took off after the vehicle, yelling out his license plate -- BY9430 -- to other witnesses as he attempted to catch the car. Bono said he overtook the car just before 17th Street, on K Street. Bono said he pulled his bike in front of the car. The driver, still seated in the vehicle, asked: "What happened?"

Bono is a partner at a law firm who was biking to work when he witnessed the incident. If his account is accurate, Novak is in pretty deep trouble.

Irony Alert

July 23, 2008

Bush To Address GOP Convention On Labor Day

Wonder if he'll work in some praise for the Pinkertons.

"The Organizer is the Hero"

July 22, 2008

Reader CK writes in with some thoughts on MoveOn and organizing:

I just read your article about MoveOn, and remembered that I'd removed myself from their mailing list, as I have from so many, because I was fed up with so-called "online activism". I'd begun to think of it as civic engagement on the cheap – a way to quiet the voices of the better angels in our heads without ever actually engaging. That said, I have very strong memories of MoveOn's GOTV effort in 2004, for which I was a precinct captain here in Philly. Right after Kerry lost, I decided to write down some of the things I didn't want to forget amidst the tremendously painful disappointment. Here's a chunk of it:

On October 24th, I was walking door-to-door in the part of my neighborhood that's suffered more than the rest – lots of boarded up houses, extra locks on the doors, the kind of place where, out of fear, people oftentimes won't open the door to an unfamiliar face. But it was a beautiful day, and just about everybody who was home was opening their doors to me. There was one woman I'll never forget. When I asked her if she was planning to vote, she assured me that she'd be there bright and early. I asked her what issue was most important to her in making her decision about who to vote for in the presidential race. What she said knocked the wind out of me entirely. She told me that her nephew was in Iraq, and that most of her son's friends were there too. Her niece, she said, was just about to be deployed as well, when she was diagnosed with leukemia. I'll never forget the look on her face as she said, "We were relieved at first, because it meant she didn't have to go. Now, though, we're just praying for her to get well." I told her that both her nephew and her niece would be in my prayers (I hadn't prayed for seven years, since I lost my faith, but these days I've decided not to allow my doubt to deny those suffering in this world whatever comfort they might find in my prayers). As I walked away, the tears started streaming down my face. Did I really live in a world where being diagnosed with leukemia might save your life?

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Regime Change

July 21, 2008

According to the AP, Maliki's spokesperson essentially just reiterated (in English!) his support for Obama's timeline.

What's truly amazing about this turn of events is that it more and more looks like the Prime Minister of Iraq is going to help engineer regime change back in the US

Mistranslation?

July 21, 2008

Lots of others have commented on the absurd walkback of Maliki's explicit endorsement of Barack Obama's vision for a withdrawal timeline. But to me the most significant part of the interview is the fact that Maliki, totally unprompted went out of his way to mention Obama and his plan by name. And presumably the Iraqi arabic rendering of "Obama" is, just, you know, "Obama." So hard to see how we're dealing with a translation issue here.

MoveOn @ Ten

July 21, 2008

I'm back from Austin and will be posting some thoughts on Netroots Nation later today. In the meantime, I wanted to link to the cover story I wrote about MoveOn.

I had the somewhat surreal experience of having the story go up on the web on the first day of Netroots Nation, where many of the people interviewed and quoted in the piece were gathered. I've gotten some interesting feedback and a number of folks have pointed out some things I overlooked. I'm going to mention some of the criticisms in a subsequent post.

If you don't have a hard copy of the magazine, you can read the piece here.