the ladybug and the lion

From Fox News:

Here’s what one interested in making America stronger can reasonably conclude—psychologically—from Mr. Gingrich’s behavior during his three marriages:

1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.

2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married. 

3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible. 

Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.

Full story here (yes, there is more). I can't help but wonder whether the author, Dr. Keith Ablow, is making an underhanded comment about the intelligence of women. 

Eat Up.

(via Ted McCagg)

Merit Badges For GOP Candidates.

(via Ted McCagg)

The Supreme Court.

If you had to write a help-wanted ad for the position of Supreme Court justice, what would you include in the job description?

It would start with: Those who went to Harvard or Yale Law School need not apply. Every sitting justice went to Harvard or Yale. That tells you something about the very narrow bandwidth from which the members of the court are coming. And it’s not just the law school they went to – more and more nominees worked for the executive branch. Everybody who is on the court right now, with the exception of Justice Elena Kagan, came off the bench. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the only one on the court who was a civil rights attorney. Back in the day, we used to have people like Sandra Day O’Connor and Earl Warren, who served in elected office. Now none of those people could get confirmed. There is a narrowing in the backgrounds of nominees when what we need is diversity – diversity of voice, of belief, of career and of experience.

Dahlia Lithwick at FiveBooks. 

The GOP War On Voting.

This is infuriating.

All told, a dozen states have approved new obstacles to voting. Kansas and Alabama now require would-be voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering. Florida and Texas made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register new voters. Maine repealed Election Day voter registration, which had been on the books since 1973. Five states – Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia – cut short their early voting periods. Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from the polls, disenfranchising thousands of previously eligible voters. And six states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures – Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – will require voters to produce a government-issued ID before casting ballots. More than 10 percent of U.S. citizens lack such identification, and the numbers are even higher among constituencies that traditionally lean Democratic – including 18 percent of young voters and 25 percent of African-Americans.

Taken together, such measures could significantly dampen the Democratic turnout next year – perhaps enough to shift the outcome in favor of the GOP. "One of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time," Bill Clinton told a group of student activists in July. "Why is all of this going on? This is not rocket science. They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate than the 2008 electorate" – a reference to the dominance of the Tea Party last year, compared to the millions of students and minorities who turned out for Obama. "There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today."

Full story from Rolling Stone.

US Foreign Policy.

French foreign policy – like many other European countries’ – essentially has a logic, a raison d’état that is alien to Americans. They may act in very cynical ways at times, but the American state came into being at the very same time as the American ideology, the American creedal belief and passion. The idea of America preceded the state. There’s always been this belief in America that the institutions of the state should live up to the ideals of the American political experiment. We see the compromises we make with our ideals as unfortunate or temporary, compromises we would prefer to shed.

 As a result, for America, the friendly tyrant – when you have a local thug who is serving your interests in the short term, but whom you find unsavoury and difficult – is a real problem. It really does pose an incredibly difficult dilemma, especially if that thug comes under attack from some kind of democratic revolution. We just don’t know what to do. So in the case of [the former Egyptian president, Hosni] Mubarak, after his decades of service as a loyal client in the Middle East, serving American interests, we kicked him to the kerb – almost with a “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” The Saudis are furious with us for that. Even as we’re backing the Saudis, they’re thinking, “Wait, if you’re backing us, why did you get rid of Mubarak? Are you going to get rid of us too?”

Gideon Rose at FiveBooks.

Stymied Rage.

There is nothing “entertaining” about all this. For all its depressing comedy, Weinergate is American politics at its most serious, and its most intense. Just as a blocked libidinal drive creates a neurotic symptom, so too does stymied political rage create a ceaseless appetite for therapeutic scandals. The question is: how long can America’s democratic energies stay repressed before American society has, as it were, a complete nervous breakdown?

Full story from the Economist.

Is It Really Arrogance?

Those people claiming Weiner was subconsciously sabotaging his career are little different from those who keep saying they feel "lied to" by men who have cheated on someone other than them. They ascribe motives that were never there on any meaningful level. Ooh, but it's the arrogance, they say. It's his arrogance in thinking he wouldn't get caught. Is arrogance really the right term? Surely "temporary suspension of disbelief in the possession of an erection" is fairer? It's less catchy, and makes it sound less of a two-fingers to you and me, but it's a more realistic explanation.

Full story from the Guardian.

Power Index.

Thank you, Ted McCagg.

Osama.

Between the Arab Spring and the death of bin Laden, it is hard to imagine greater blows to al-Qaeda's ideology and organization. President Barack Obama has characterized al-Qaeda and its affiliates as "small men on the wrong side of history." For al-Qaeda, that history just sped up, as bin Laden's body floated down into the ocean deeps and its proper place in the unmarked grave of discarded lies.

From Peter Bergen at the New America Foundation. Worth reading.

(via The Browser)