Thereâs a terrific discussion going on over at the TPMCafe Book Club about Michelle Goldbergâs provocative new book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. As Jeff Sharlet observes:
We often produce smart, sometimes difficult books but not often smart books that are also short, pithy, and two-fisted. We need both — the dense works of theory and history and the brave books such as this, rooted in reporting that attempts to understand fundamentalism on its own terms rather than dismissing it with either hysteria or condescension. Fundamentalism is real, and it’s too popular to simply loathe it away — that would mean loathing a significant portion of the nation.
I noted this in an update to my earlier post, but a good deal of the work on the bogus yellow star story has been done by Taylor Marsh as you can see here on her site. As she says, the question still remains: “Who started the Iranian badge story?”
Doug Feith is apparently having some trouble fitting in on the Georgetown faculty. I don’t really understand why you would hire the single most discredited official from an administration full of discredited officials. Maybe the idea was that at least Feith excels as something.
Time for another blogger ethics panel?
Two days ago, TownHall.com published a column by Elliot Peace supporting Ralph Norman’s campaign against Democratic Rep. John Spratt in the South Carolina fifth. Peace is identified as “a Townhall.com political reporter and a Project Manager for Starboard Communications, a conservative political marketing and strategy firm in Lexington, South Carolina.”
Laurin Manning points out that they don’t tell you about the 13 grand the Norman campaign has paid to Starboard.
I’m in some ways not an objective source, but the new issue of The American Prospect has a fantastic story about Iran 2003 diplomatic initiative toward the United States in which they made a very favorable offer and expressed willingness to at least talk about anything in exchange, basically, for the United States agreeing to halt various efforts to overthrow the Iranian government or impoverish the country. Needless to say, the administration rejected the opening.
As Jim Henley observes, “If the United States goes to war with Iran, it will be because the White House really wants a war with Iran.”
It’s still not clear exactly what the White House does want, but Charles Krauthammer most certainly does want a war with Iran. One thing that’s notable, I think, is that Krauthammer’s wracking up a real record of misleading his readers on the Iran question. Consequently, while it’s obvious to me that he wants a war, I genuinely can’t tell why he wants one. The arguments he offers all depend on falseholds at crucial steps.
That whole thing about Hastert being investigated by the FBI? It could “wash out” and “be nothing,” says ABC News’ Brian Ross, who broke the story. Ross isn’t a lesbian — but the radio personality who interviewed Rep. Bob Ney’s (R-OH) Democratic challenger is, and Ney wants the world to know. This and more, in today’s Daily Muck.
In the spirit of self-promotion, I have a new (and short) BloggingHeads.tv segment up here talking with Julian Sanchez about immigration and network neutrality.
Excellent. Krugman to the rescue! Some people have been understanding me as trying to make an anti-environmentalist point about global warming, arguing that it’s no big deal or something. On the contrary, what I’ve been trying to say is that while global warming is a big deal, taking action on carbon emissions would actually be significantly less costly than most people seem to think. But don’t take it from me — listen to Paul Krugman: “There’s some dispute among economists over how forcefully we should act to curb greenhouse gases, but there’s broad consensus that even a very strong program to reduce emissions would have only modest effects on economic growth. At worst, G.D.P. growth might be, say, one-tenth or two-tenths of a percentage point lower over the next 20 years.”
That’s not nothing. One tenth of a percentage point of growth over 20 years adds up to a lot of money. But it’s not a crushing burden, either. People 20 years from now would still be significantly wealthier than people today. And it’s not as if our current policies are perfectly growth-maximizing anyway, so doing better on other fronts (health care, say) could easily pick up the slack caused by the negative growth effects of tackling global warming. What’s more, the economic consequences of warming itself could be extremely dire and even under optmistic scenarios would cause at least some costly problems so it’s not as if there’s some free ride alternative option.
Karl Zinmeister, until recently editor of The American Enterprise magazine and just hired as a White House domestic policy advisory caught doctoring his own quotes.
Congress v. FBI, Round 2…. Despite Bush’s intervention yesterday, it looks like this is a fight that’s going to go on for a while.