Quick Rudy Update!

What a great way to follow up yesterday’s post! The big political news coming out of New York today is that Rudy Giuliani is not running for Governor of New York in 2010 as was previously speculated. Instead, sources tell the New York Daily News that Giuliani will run for Hillary Clinton’s old Senate seat, to which Governor Paterson famously appointed Kristen Gillibrand earlier this year. This would set him up better for a possible 2012 Presidential run—oh, if wishing made it so!—since New York state is pretty much ungovernable right now.

This is all good and juicy, but more important than the politics, doesn’t this just feel right?

After all, the primary job of a US Senator is to be a hugely pompous blowhard. Who better than Rudy?

Rudy Giuliani and the Deep Unseriousness of the Right on National Security

With Sarah Palin on a national media blitz, the amount of false reality out there naturally increases by a huge amount. Palin lives in her own little impenetrable world; she’s the commensurate victim. Why anyone believes a word she says is beyond me.

(An aside: I don’t think Palin expects to be a credible conservative leader—she’d rather be a popular conservative celebrity. As Ana Marie Cox said on Rachel Maddow on Tuesday night, you don’t write a book taking revenge on staffers if you want to build a campaign in the future. Likewise, you don’t quit your only major elected office if you want to be seen as a qualified presidential candidate. So let’s agree, for now, that Palin’s lies are those of someone craving the spotlight as an ends, not a means.)

But this post isn’t about Sarah Palin’s false realities. It’s about Rudy Giuliani’s, and those of the right’s “experts” on national security, which I think are far more dangerous.

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The Prisoner (on AMC)

Yes, I’m aware it’s a remake. (My mother loves the original.) And yes, I’m aware it stars the guy who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ. But you really should be watching. The production is spectacular and, more importantly, the politics are fascinating. Highly recommended.

New Adventures in Republican Hypocrisy

This is just hilarious. But I’m glad it’s so.

Walking Straight Into the Echo Chamber, or Why Sarah Palin Gets Away With It

It’s too easy to anger the mind.

I was catching up on my growing pile of New Yorkers this weekend when I came across a book review by Elizabeth Kolbert that got me to thinking about Sarah Palin and her whole phony “death panels” meme, which she reiterated on Saturday on her Facebook page. (Screw the MSM!)

First thought: I can’t believe I just went to Sarah Palin’s Facebook page.

Second thought: Anger. People believe this?

The occasion for Palin’s screed, of course, was the House vote on the health care reform bill. “What’s in this bill?” she “wrote.” “The ‘death panel’ provision is in it.”

Needless to say, this is still not what end-of-life counseling means. It has never meant what Palin claims it means. “Death panels” is a nefarious phrase—willfully misleading, politically expedient, morally repugnant. It’s a retreat to the cowardice of empty polemic. In other words: vintage Palin.

But why do so many people believe her? Why does she continue to get away with it?

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The Wall

I know that as a nascent political blogger and history buff I probably should have had something meaningful to say about the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, but I don’t really have anything. I was five years old!

Fort Hood

It’s hard to know what to think, except what a tragedy it is. We still know very few details, but everyone’s already got an opinion. I tend to agree with James Fallows when it comes to events like this:

In the saturation coverage right after the events, the “expert” talking heads are compelled to offer theories about the causes and consequences. In the following days and weeks, newspapers and magazine will have their theories too. Looking back, we can see that all such efforts are futile. The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre “mean”? A decade later, do we “know” anything about Columbine? There is chaos and evil in life. Some people go crazy. In America, they do so with guns; in many countries, with knives; in Japan, sometimes poison.

We know the emptiness of these events in retrospect, though we suppress that knowledge when the violence erupts as it is doing now. The cable-news platoons tonight are offering all their theories and thought-drops. They’ve got to fill time. I wish they could stop. As the Vietnam-era saying went, Don’t mean nothing.

RIP.

Jason Zengerle makes what I think is the appropriate counterpoint:

[I]t’s difficult not to see the Fort Hood shootings as different from Austin and Columbine and Paducah. The fact that they occurred on an Army base; the fact that the shooter was Muslim officer; the fact that we’re currently fighting wars in two Muslim countries–they all add up to make the meaning of this more apparent than the others. Rather than Columbine, think of Oklahoma City as a more appropriate historical precedent.

If you’re interested in what they’re saying around the web, Andrew has, as usual, a good roundup. Chilling stuff.

Election Reax

I think I’ve written enough about yesterday’s elections, so here’s some of what the Internet is saying:

• Over at the Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan compiles diverse election reactions from around the web, here and here. He also has some final thoughts on the pain in Maine after last night’s disappointing result. It wasn’t all bad news for the gays, though. “Everything-but-marriage” domestic partnerships survived a referendum in Washington state, and Chapel Hill—yes, the one in North Carolina, really!—elected a gay mayor.

• Alex Pareene has characteristically sensible and witty takes on yesterday’s elections, Maine, and Michael Bloomberg at Gawker.

• At the New Republic, Jonathan Chait dissects the national spin and Michael Crowley articulates what ought to become the conventional wisdom on Mayor Mike: “I’m glad Bloomberg got some comeuppance, but I’m also glad he won.”

• Brian Beutler makes a meaningful point about the elections and health insurance reform: a bill will now be easier to pass in the House.

• Reactions at NRO’s The Corner are predictably smug and self-serving. Jonah Goldberg thinks yesterday was a “very, very bad day for Democrats.” We’ll see. Mark Steyn tries to downplay Hoffman’s loss in NY-23. (Would shoulda coulda!) Never mind, of course, that the Dems actually picked up a seat in the House overall. And finally, slimy Maggie Gallagher is “so happy” about the conservative victory in Maine. (Too bad it didn’t go her way in Washington!)

In actual news, today is the 30th anniversary of the start of the Tehran hostage crisis, and protests there continue for various reasons.

Big Whoop

The media will spin tonight’s election results as huge political news, but really there’s little of note. Sure, the GOP swept the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, and may still win in NY-23 (although as I write Bill Owens, the Democrat, has a lead of just over 3,000 votes with 69% reporting).

Big whoop.

Lest we forget, in 2001 the Virginia and New Jersey statehouses switched parties—from Republican to Democrat. This is what they do—and have done for decades—when new presidents are elected. It’s called reactionary voting, and it’s especially to be expected when the economy sucks. People aren’t happy: get rid of the politicians.

As for NY-23, it’s one of the most conservative districts in New York state. This shouldn’t be a difficult win for the right. But it might well be a loss. And everyone seems to be forgetting that a special election in California’s 10th Congressional District, for the seat that Ellen Tauscher gave up to become Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, is almost certainly going to go to the Democratic candidate, John Garamendi, who, according to Nate Silver, should be significantly more liberal than his predecessor.

Far more interesting are the Maine same-sex marriage question, worryingly too close to call as I write, and the small margin—only 5%!—by which Michael Bloomberg is going to win in NYC. I’ll have more on all of this at some point tomorrow, but 2009 in general: Eh.

2 + 2 = 4

Have you ever wondered why there are two Dakotas?

I hadn’t, really, but tonight I learned (via Matt Yglesias) that the GOP made the Dakota territory into two states in 1889 because electoral conditions there would yield them, you guessed it, four senators. Here’s a fascinating story of daylight corruption and the omnibus bill that brought Montana, Washington and both Dakotas into the Union.