elfs | Brains, In the final throes... (Reply)

Joshua Landis' analysis of the attack on Syria: Syria has been eager to restart intelligence sharing which would help to reduce cross border violations, but it demands a price - that the US recognize Syria's assistance by returning an ambassador to Damascus. The White House has refused to do this, preferring to use sticks to force Syrian compliance. One must presume that the most recent killing of Syrians is designed to be just such a stick.

It will, of course, not force compliance, but the Bush administration must assume that an Obama victory on November 4 will force Syria to behave nicely in order to win favor with the new administration. Thus, White House analysts may assume that it can have a "freebee" — taking a bit of personal revenge on Syria without the US paying a price. Damascus may just have to write it off as a good bye salute from its friends in Washington.
The paranoia continues to run high!: Did I mention this man hates me? You and me? Yes he does. Why? Because he can. Yes He Can. Beneath that cool persona is a megalomaniac. Cool? Like Stalin after a purge, emotionally and sexually spent. Like Saddam after a torture session, dozing in his chair with someone's genitals curled in his fist. Like Pol Pot after a petit mal seizure, mumbling a litany of the dead. Cool that way.
(via Andrew Sullivan)
Obama gets direction from... SATAN!: James Pinkerton tells us that Barack Obama is winning in the polls because he learned how to be a "radical" reading the books of Saul Alinsky, who once wrote that though he may have been loathed throughout history, even Lucifer managed to wrest a kingdom away from God.
Nuclear Safety is for Wusses: Y'know, nuclear power is one of those macho, muscular technologies from the '50s that we've gotten far too wimpy about. We need to re-embrace the atom, use it profligately, and learn to live with the little crises it creates, like Chernobyl.
A Detective talks about how he extracted a false confession...: A fascinating, and frightening tale:
I've been a police officer for 25 years, and I never understood why someone would admit to a crime he or she didn't commit. Until I secured a false confession in a murder case. ...

Reviewing the tapes years later, I saw that we had fallen into a classic trap. We ignored evidence that our suspect might not have been guilty, and during the interrogation we inadvertently fed her details of the crime that she repeated back to us in her confession.
(via Radley Balko)
Ross Douthat on how Rush Limbaugh will separate the men from the boys, er, the "real" Republicans from the Rinos, come the bloodbath.: Man, all you need is two braincells to rub together to see how wrong Limbaugh's rant is:
Only John McCain can get moderates and independents and Democrats to join the Republican Party, "and we can't win," these intellectualoids said, "if that didn't happen." Well, the latest moderate Republican to abandon his party is William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts who today endorsed the Most Merciful Lord Barack Obama. He joins moderate Republican Colin Powell. He joins former Bush press spokesman Scott McClellan.

They're following their own self-interests, so I say fine. They have just admitted that Republican Party "big tent" philosophy didn't work. It was their philosophy; it was their idea. These are the people, once they steered the party to where it is, they are the ones that abandoned it.
This appeal to a "small tent" Republicanism, one cut loose of any intellectual appeal, only shores up Brad DeLong's assertion: "THERE ARE NO ATTRACTIVE MODERN CONSERVATIVES BECAUSE CONSERVATISM SIMPLY IS NOT ATTRACTIVE. DEAL WITH IT." (shouting in the original). I mean, McCain didn't try to make a case for a "conservatism" that wasn't just knee-jerk Christian Nationalism watered down just enough for the press not to call him on it.

McCain could have made a cogent argument for himself as a "maverick," could have argued based on his record. He could have argued that there are good (emphasis on that, boys and girls) traditions and precedents worthy of respect. He could have positioned himself opposite Barack Obama. Instead, he decided to go for the base and threw away any chance at winning the center. He declined to treat us as equal, sovereign. citizens. And that's why he's losing, and no other reason.