Conservative Coffeehouse Serves Up Right Blend

I've never been all that bothered by the left-wing environment at Starbucks-style coffeehouses. I see a lot of diversity, new-age hippy types, and techno-sophisticates plugging away on Wi-Fi, and I sit happily in my buttoned-down attire (on weekday afternoons, at least), reading the Wall Street Journal or grading papers. A lot of the kids sitting nearby might as well be my students.

I like to think I'm hip while I sip my double-latte.

But a conservative coffee proprietor in Crown Point, Indiana, is having none of it:

From the moment customers enter the front door, A Conservative Cafe is serving up caffeinated doctrine.

Ann Coulter books sit stacked by the fireplace and a picture of President Reagan hangs on the wall. Fox News plays on all the televisions and stock market quotes scroll along an electronic ticker above the cash register.

Behind the counter, owner Dave Beckham smiled proudly in a T-shirt with the face of Uncle Sam on it that read "Zip It Hippie."

The T-shirt is for sale at the cafe. So are others, including one with a peace sign that says "Peace Through Superior Firepower."

"It's a change from the traditional liberal bastion coffeehouses," Beckham said. "No one is going to bad-mouth America in here."

Friends warned Beckham to stay away from the conservative theme before the cafe opened in October 2007. The former art teacher came up with the idea about five years ago, he said, after souring on Starbucks and other high-end coffee chains.

He didn't like piped-in folk music, specialty drinks with faux-Italian names or patrons who frittered the hours away on laptops or listening to iPods. The atmosphere, he said, seemed an affront to Midwestern values he learned growing up in northwest Indiana.

"Coffee shouldn't be about sitting in a cafe for 12 hours," Beckham said. "Coffee gets us through our workday. It's what we drink before we make steel for the rest of the country or head out into the fields."

His disdain for the coffee chains coincided with his fear of an erosion in national pride, so Beckham made plans to build an old-fashioned java joint near the Crown Point town square.

There were two Starbucks within three miles of the shop's location, but Beckham and his wife, Jill, were convinced his pro-U.S. decor and Indiana-roasted coffee would strike a chord with the community.

About six months after Beckham opened for business, Starbucks announced plans to close one of its Crown Point locations. Since then, Beckham has begun pondering franchise opportunities for his cafe.

He acknowledged that Starbucks' downturn stemmed from a sagging economy and the company's massive growth, but he thought his success proved that some people were turned off by traditional coffeehouse culture.

Crown Point resident Matthew McPhee is one of them.

McPhee doesn't feel comfortable in trendier coffeehouses, where he often doesn't agree with the political conversations. He prefers Beckham's cafe, where red, white and blue bunting hangs outside the brick building and patrons can buy T-shirts emblazoned with the face of Reagan that read, "Silly liberal . . . Paychecks are for Workers."

"I like it here," he said. "I don't have to worry about listening to beatnik poetry or some political ideology that makes me want to vomit."

McPhee usually orders a radical right blend, the cafe's strongest roast. The other blends are conservative, moderate and liberal -- the latter of which Beckham described as a "Colombian decaf with no substance."

That's too cool!

Democrats On Edge as Obamania Cools

The Democratic National Committee has announced that Michelle Obama will give the opening-night address to the party's Denver convention in two weeks.

The buzz also has it that Chelsea Clinton will introduce her mother, Hillary, when the New York Senator giver her address on the convention's second night (Chelsea will speak instead of her father, Bill, a switch approved by Barack Obama himself, perhaps as a matter more of relief than retribution).

While the national party conventions have been criticized in recent years as anti-climactic, the closeness and controversies surrounding election '08 have placed a premium on campaign choreography and candidate image. With the Democrats first to hold a nominating convention, and with Obama's novelty wearing thin, the totality of the events in Denver - both inside and outside the convention hall - could dramatically impact the Democrats' presidential prospects after Labor Day.

The Guardian provides a nice synopsis:

Before flying with his family for a week's holiday in Hawaii yesterday, Barack Obama expressed concern about taking a break in election year. "During the middle of a campaign you're always worried about taking some time off," he said.

He may have good reason to worry. He leaves behind a Democratic party that over the past fortnight has been showing signs for the first time of nervousness about the November 4 election.

For them, this is supposed to be the Democrats' year, an inevitable march towards the White House after the catastrophic defeats of 2000 and 2004. Almost everything seems to be going their way: unpopular president, disenchantment with the Iraq war, a faltering economy and an inspirational Democratic candidate.

What is worrying the Democrats, in spite of all these pluses, is that Obama's poll lead has remained stubbornly small. A tracking poll by RealClearPolitics published yesterday has Obama on 46.9% compared with John McCain's 43.3%.

"I think there are a lot of Democrats who are nervous," said Tad Devine, chief strategist for the Kerry White House bid in 2004. "I think they thought this election would fall into their laps."

Sarah Murray explains the thaw in Obamania:

Obama has bestrode the news cycle like a Colossus since he entered the presidential race a year and a half ago. Whenever he hit low points like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright debacle, Obama’s instinctive response was to deliver a stirring speech… But there comes in politics a moment where what was once exhilarating (a presidential nominee who is the hopeful embodiment of 21st century America) becomes predictable and commonplace.”

There’s still plenty of room to spice things up though and alleviate that boredom. “In the next month, Obama will have twin opportunities to restore a sense of surprise and wonder to his campaign. A pedestrian vice-presidential rollout (especially if it is a make-no-waves selection like Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh) and an eloquent-but-empty convention speech could signal trouble. Obama needs to give independents and loosely affiliated voters new reasons to vote for him, since he appears to have reached a temporary ceiling a bit shy of 50 percent in most public polls,” [Salon's Walter] Shapiro says. Before this the goal was to “dominate the news cycle” but “Obama may be a victim of too much too soon.” At any rate, it seems like a good time for that Hawaiian vacation, Shapiro notes.

Well, Obama better be rested and ready, as he's got a lot of work ahead. Today's Gallup poll showed the Illinois Senator just barely on the upside of a statistical tie, 46 to 43 percent over John McCain.

Related: Steven Warshawsky, "Why Barack Obama Will Not Win."

Where is NATO Intervention in Georgia?

One of the debate's surround the crisis in the Caucasus is the nature of the casus belli. Has Georgia launched a war on a militarily preponderant geopolitical rival, or has Moscow cracked down on a breakaway republic in a burst of new oil-back Russian revanchism?

Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez argue for the latter scenario:

As we write, reports are coming in that after a bombardment by Russia's aircraft, its tanks are advancing on the Georgian town of Gori - the birthplace of Iosif Djugashvili, better known as Stalin.

This throwback to the heyday of the Soviet Union is more than symbolic. Historical analogies are never perfect, but our sense of déjà vu was acute as we watched Moscow's Soviet-style move to reassert its domination of the USSR's former fief.

Moscow perceives a threat to its strategic interests from a small regional actor. It prods its neighboring clients to commit such provocations that the adversary is drawn into military action that "legitimizes" a massive, direct intervention to "defend the victims of aggression."

Svante Cornell makes a similar case in, "The War That Russia Wants":

For more on the origins of the conflict, see the analysis from political scientists Daniel Nexon and Charlie Carpenter.

Note, though, as the New York Times reports, Georgian soldiers on the ground feel betrayed by the United States, an ally of Georgia, the diplomatic delays, and the failure to mobilize a NATO riposte to Moscow's aggression:

In retreat, the Georgian soldiers were so tired they could not keep from stumbling. Their arms were loaded with rucksacks and ammunition boxes; they had dark circles under their eyes. Officers ran up and down the line, barking for them to go faster.

All along the road was grief. Old men pushed wheelbarrows loaded with bags or led cows by tethers. They drove tractors and rickety Ladas packed with suitcases and televisions.

As a column of soldiers passed through Gori, a black-robed priest came out of his church and made the sign of the cross again and again.

One soldier, his face a mask of exhaustion, cradled a Kalashnikov.

“We killed as many of them as we could,” he said. “But where are our friends?”

It was the question of the day. As Russian forces massed Sunday on two fronts, Georgians were heading south with whatever they could carry. When they met Western journalists, they all said the same thing: Where is the United States? When is NATO coming?

Since the conflict began, Western leaders have worked frantically to broker a cease-fire. But for Georgians — so boisterously pro-American that Tbilisi, the capital, has a George W. Bush Street — diplomacy fell far short of what they expected.

The logical answer here is the United States will not risk a great power conflict in Russia's backyard, a strategic area of Moscow's historic regional hegemony. But if alliance commitments and the NATO mission are to have continued relevance in its own theater of operation, the question of diplomatic inertia and NATO intransigence is troubling.

Michael van der Galien at PoliGazette indicates that NATO may still be relevant:

It could threaten with military action or, better, intervention and it could start talking to Russia actively to convince the Russians to stop their aggression. If this does not suffice, NATO countries can punish Russia by other means, and they can start the procedure to send peacekeepers to the region. Turkey, an important NATO ally, is located close to Georgia; Turkey’s territory can be used by NATO to push the Russian forces back into Russia. Such a threat alone would be suffice to push the Russians back into their own territory. My own estimation is that Putin and the country’s president have decided to attack Georgia because they believe that the West will sit by and do nothing. If the West would unite, they would take a step back immediately.

In other words, speak to Moscow in a language it understands: power politics.

Obscenities and the Left-Wing Blogosphere

A couple of weeks back I wrote a post examining the tendency toward profanity among leftist bloggers: "Obscenities in the Blogosphere."

I argued that crude vulgarity has become essentially the lingua franca of the hard-left blogosphere and commentocracy. Widespread profanity appears to provide leftists with some assumed heightened firepower with which to beat down opponents, who are demonized as fascist imperialists intent to exterminate racial minorities and the poor, among other things.

My observations derived from recent experience, as well as the debate surrounding profanty at last month's Netroots Nation conference in Texas.

Well it turns out that Matthew Sheffield at the Washington Times has performed a Google content analysis to determine the relative propensity to profanity between top left and right blog communities: "Profanity Greater on Liberal Blogs":

Are liberals more profane than conservatives? Online, the answer seems to be yes. Profanity, those taboo words banned from the broadcast airwaves, is a feature of many people's daily lives. It's much less so in the establishment media world. TV and radio broadcasts are legally prohibited from using it, most newspapers (including this one) have traditionally refrained from its usage.

That's not the case with the Web, where bloggers and readers face no such restrictions. That likely comes as no surprise; what may be surprising, however, is to what degree profanity seems to be a feature more common on one side of the political blogosphere than the other....

The top 10 liberal sites (Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Democratic Underground, Talking Points Memo, Crooks and Liars, Think Progress, Atrios, Greenwald, MyDD and Firedoglake) have a profanity quotient of 14.6.

The top 10 conservative sites (Free Republic, Hot Air, Little Green Footballs, Townhall, NewsBusters, Lucianne, Wizbang, Ace of Spades, Red State and Volokh Conspiracy) have a quotient of 1.17.

What explains this disparity?

Sheffield hypothesizes that Bush derangement is a precipitating factor. But beyond that, religious belief among conservatives inclines them less toward the use of profanity in their daily lives, and thus in blogging:

Conservatives, especially those who are more religious, are less likely to use profanity in their daily conversation.

This ties in pretty much with the my thesis on the left's secular demonology:

How might we explain all of this? Well, in my view, these folks are essentially Marxist, and at base, we might consider Marxist thought a doctrine of hatred, a secular demonology:

We hate those, whose existence urges us to reconsider our theories and our vocabularies. We hate what places a safe and irresponsible categorization of the world in jeopardy. We hate what threatens the purity and predictability of our perception of the world, our mode of discourse, and in effect, our mental security.

Thus, for the left, rather than consider that vulgarity has no proper place in the respectable exchange of ideas, crude language is a tool to beat down those who would challenge their way of seeing the world, especially those allegedly in the right-wing superstructure of greedy imperialistic designs.

See also, "The Obscenity of Spencer Ackerman," and "The Commentocracy of Hate."

Moral Clarity and the Crisis in Georgia

The fighting in the Caucasus region is providing a real-time leadership contrast between John McCain and Barack Obama. As president how would each respond to an international emergency?

Ben Smith suggested yesterday that the Georgian crisis was "3 a.m. moment" for the presidential campaigns, a reference to Hillary Clinton's argument from the Democratic primaries that she was more prepared to answer the red phone at 3am in the White House.

McCain and Obama have offered opposed positions, as Smith reports.

As I noted yesterday, Moscow has provoked a crisis in the south for months, "in a deliberate attempt to engage its small neighbor in military conflict."

McCain's response provides a powerful contrast in leadership style between himself and Obama on Russian revanchism.

As Smith noted yesterday, McCain's response "put him more closely in line with the moral clarity and American exceptionalism projected by President Bush’s first term."

This descriptive three-way combination has set tempers aflare. This is a neconservative epigram, and what better way for the left to prove that McCain represents Bush's third term than to hammer the GOP nominee as setting a course to U.S.-Russian Armageddon.

Steve Benen warned that McCain's statement is "scary," while Cernig at Newshoggers cowered with apocalyptic allusions:

If [McCain] was the one taking those 3am phone cals [sic] on this conflict, there would be American armed might on its way to Georgia to confront Russia right now and the world would be listening to the ticking clock of holocaust. That's far too dangerous a man to allow into the Oval Office.

This is fantasy. There's nothing in McCain's statement yesterday to suggest a McCain move to hair-trigging brinksmanship:

The government of Georgia has called for a cease-fire and for a resumption of direct talks on South Ossetia with international mediators. The U.S. should immediately convene an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to call on Russia to reverse course. The US should immediately work with the EU and the OSCE to put diplomatic pressure on Russia to reverse this perilous course it has chosen. We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council to assess Georgia’s security and review measures NATO can take to contribute to stabilizing this very dangerous situation. Finally, the international community needs to establish a truly independent and neutral peacekeeping force in South Ossetia.

Indeed, how much more "internationalist" a response could McCain have issued?

The left-wing liberal interationalist are all about ending the Bush administration's era of alleged "unilateral hubris," but when the GOP nominee issues a statement calling for a U.S. leadership of the U.N. Security Council, the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with the aim of crisis management and the establishment of an international peacekeeping force, the left goes haywire?

The reality is that, for Bush-McCain opponents, the lofty patina of internationalism gets thrown under the bus when the U.S. faces a true foreign policy crisis demanding unequivocal firmness and resolve. This is the kind of sheer hypocrisy emblematic of the left's Manichaean theology of relativism and appeasement: Do not stand tall, for risk of confrontation. Do not confront evil, for risk of moral grandstanding. And most of all, do not broach the possibility of the use of force.

So Obama supporters have painted themselves into a corner. No approach, neither a multilateral-institutionalist tack or a unilatateralist "war-fighting" move is acceptable.

In truth, this leaves inaction. In a crisis requiring moral clarity and quick action, Barack Obama and his left wing allies will be frozen like deer in the headlights.

Hindrocket at Powerline sums things up perfectly:

Barack Obama has been criticized for acting as though he is already President. That's natural, since the actions in question have been presumptuous: the pseudo-Presidential seal, the speech in Germany, and so on. Today, one might say that John McCain is acting as though he is already President, but in a substantive and positive way. In his response to Russia's invasion of Georgia, McCain is giving us a preview of what sort of President he would be.

McCain has strongly and unequivocally come out in support of our ally Georgia, while placing the onus for the war squarely where it belongs, on Russia. In this, he has aligned himself with our most loyal European allies. Obama, on the other hand, issued the sort of vapid statement that would ingratiate him with the State Department while not requiring any distraction from his Hawaii vacation. An interesting point, by the way: McCain is supposed to be the old guy, but Obama is the one who needs a vacation.

The choices in this election have never been clearer as today.

John McCain stands in the great tradition of American moral power and exceptionalism, while Barack Obama represents the foreign policy of Carteresque weakness and the sacrifice of American national interests in the name of a naïve idealism that will weaken American security and consign America's friends to the sharks of advancing worldwide despotism and postmodern capitulation to anti-Western attacks on world order.

**********

UPDATE: See also, Roger Kimball, "The Crisis in Georgia, 9/11, and the Lessons of Gratitude":

On 9/11 we were grateful to have a leader who could distinguish between friends and enemies and who was not so crippled by moral relativism that he believed that victims should be equated with their victimizers. In 2008, we have a choice between 1) a man who knows evil and repudiates it and 2) a man who believes that there is “fault on both sides” and that discredited “progressive” institutions like the United Nations are better equipped to deal with disputes among sovereign nations than the nations themselves.

Which would you choose?

Obama Throws Kenya Under the Bus!

Barack Obama has thrown Kenya under the bus!

Gateway Pundit is breaking the news in the blogosphere that Barack Obama holds dual citizenship in the United States and Kenya:

Apparently, The One has two ... Obama has Kenyan citizenship as well as U.S. citizenship.

Why the secret?

Isn't Obama's country of origin a big deal, considering the controversies over his qualifications for office, as well as the allegations that he's a "Kenyan jihadist." Is there any connection to the release of Obama's controversial "certificate of birth" published at Daily Kos, of all places (no anti-Americanism there, eh?). Markos must be in on something ...

Gateway Pundit includes a link to the Rocky Mountain News, which notes that Obama:

Holds both American and Kenyan (since 1963) citizenship.

Barack Obama's thrown a lot of folks under the bus so far, including his former rival John Edwards, when he said this morning that Edwards won't be at the Democratic National Convention, due to the Rielle Hunter scandal.

But now he's thrown an entire Third World country under the bus. He really does need a bigger wagon!

Russia's Correlation of Forces in the Caucasus

Has Russia invaded an American ally? What's the appropriate response from Washington?

Much of the political debate online has only peripherally addressed these issues.

One fundamental element of the current outbreak of war in the Caucasus is Moscow's growing assertion of sovereign national power. Russia, having grown stronger over the last couple years on the back of petro-ruble recycling, sees the current era of growing preeminence as a means of restoring the earlier eras of Sovet superpower status and great Russian nationalism.

There's some analysis focusing on the Georgian offensive, suggesting that it was a huge strategic mistake.

An interesting take is Neo-Neocon's where she admits no special expertise, but sees in Moscow's actions an effort to keep Georgia in its sphere of interest rather than straightforward allied assistance to the Ossetins:

... I’m more inclined towards the first point of view than the second. Perhaps they are not even mutually exclusive.

But as I was mulling over the situation, a quote from Winston Churchill came to mind. It seems as apropos today as it did when he first said it in an October 1939 radio broadcast:

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.

Perhaps Russia actions are difficult to discern or predict, but Svante Cornell offers some perspective:

For months, Moscow's successive provocations in Georgia have left observers suspecting that it was provoking a war in the Caucasus. It seems to have finally gotten what it wanted. The Kremlin's blatant aggression puts at stake not only the future of the most progressive state in the former Soviet Union, but the broader cause of European security.

In recent years, the Kremlin had escalated its interference in Georgia's territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia - bombing Georgian territory twice last year, illegally extending Russian citizenship to residents there, and appointing Russian security officers to their self-declared governments. South Ossetia's government in particular is practically under Moscow's direct control, with little if any ability to act independently.

But this flare-up is a direct consequence of Russia's deliberate and recent efforts to engage its small neighbor in military conflict. In April, Russia's President Vladimir Putin signed a decree effectively beginning to treat Abkhazia and South Ossetia as parts of the Russian Federation. This land grab was a particularly galling move because Russia is in charge of both the peacekeeping operations in the conflict zones, and the negotiations over their political resolution. The mediator had now clearly become a direct party to the conflict.

Moscow then sent paratroopers, heavy weapons and other troops into Abkhazia. Although these measures constituted military occupation of Georgian territory, Georgia failed to respond militarily. Instead, with European aspirations in mind, Georgian leaders listened to western calls for restraint, and put their faith in half-hearted western diplomatic initiatives.

Having failed to provoke Georgia to a war in Abkhazia, the Kremlin then tried in South Ossetia. Its proxies, the Ossetian separatist forces, escalated their attacks on Georgian posts and villages, making a response inevitable. Predictably, Moscow claimed a right to intervene, pouring Russian tanks into the area and bombing Georgian territory - including the country's capital. But why would Russia seek a war in the Caucasus, and why does it matter?

Cornell points to NATO's growing influence in the East, which is now encroaching in the historic Russian sphere of domination, and particularly Georgia' bid to join the Western alliance, as the precipitating factor in the current crisis. I’m intrigued by the timing of the confrontation, which has parallels in 20th-century Russian (Soviet) history.

The Soviets invaded Hungary in 1956, during the Suez,crisis, Czechoslovakia in 1968, as the U.S. was heavily engaged in Vietnam, and Afghanistan in 1979, after the Iranian Revolution and the seizure of American hostages by "students" in Tehran . Today's Russian leaders, of course, are not inattentive to the world correlation of forces. What better time to fight a war than when the world is focused on the “peace and goodwill” of the Beijing Olympics, and when American forces are deployed in two wars along the old Russian Empire's southern perimeter?

While "internationalist" foreign policy commentators have hypothesized a neocon raison d'guerre in the current crisis, a more sober analysis may indeed see this period as a genuine presidential testing ground finding John McCain in his element and Barack Obama over his head.

Socialism and Islam Against the West

In previous essays I've noted that Islam is a "religion of victory," and I've highlighted the alliance of socialism and Islam against the West. So, I'm always interested to see smart essays that pull these various strands together.

It turns out that Baron Bodissey, at Gates of Vienna, lays out an insightful manifesto on the mission of his blog in defending the values of Western liberty, progress, and rationalism against the growing politically-correct Muslim-multiculturalist onslaught:

The Left has recently become fairly monolithic in its alliance with and support for Islam. By adopting the time-honored anti-imperialist, anti-American, and anti-capitalist rhetoric of the Marxists, Muslims have managed to make common cause with Greens and Socialists across the entire Western world.

The Right, however, remains divided on the topic of Islam. Some traditional conservatives view orthodox Islam — which does, after all, display a notable moral rectitude — as less of a threat to the West than the native modern depravity of popular culture, with its emphasis on mass consumption, hedonism, promiscuity, homosexuality, and mindless self-gratification.

Such thinking, however, remains a minor strain among conservatives. The central argument on the Right is between those who believe that a “moderate Islam” exists, and those who think it is a mirage....

The jury is still out on this question, of course. But in four years of blogging it I haven’t seen any signs of a moderate form of Islam. There are plenty of Muslims who are moderates, of course — people who lead normal lives, don’t brutalize their families or kill apostates, and don’t strive to institute a new Caliphate through violence, intimidation, and deception. But they are “moderates” to the extent that they don’t practice their faith. They are MINOs (Muslims in Name Only), or unannounced apostates, or Muslims who pay very little attention to their religion.

The sad fact remains that there is no significant alternative within Islam to the “radical” version if one wants to be a practicing Muslim in a faith community. Any Muslim who turns to the roots of his faith in the Koran and the hadith finds a blueprint for violence, intolerance, and bestial treatment of women and non-Muslims. He discovers that his faith requires him to make war against non-Muslims until the entire world submits to Allah, or to die in the attempt. He learns that the precepts of Islam govern his life down to the minutest of details, including which shoe to put on first and in what direction to face when urinating.

There are a few Muslim scholars who would like to abandon the hadith entirely and re-interpret the Koran to edit out the violent and intolerant parts, in order to bring Islam into line with the modern world. But these courageous individuals face insurmountable obstacles — the tenets of Islam insist that the core scriptures are the immutable word of Allah, and may not be changed or interpreted. Not only that, anyone who dares to attempt such a project is the worst of heretics and deserves to be killed.

Needless to say, these conditions tend to put a damper on Islamic revisionism.

The essay continues, but the author turns away from extreme reactions to the Islamist wave, suggesting a pragmatic approach to assimilation and reform:

No American political figure of national stature is willing to go on record talking about the actualities of Islam. Not only would he face a full-bore media assault as a “racist” if he did, but Saudi money has been spread so widely and corrupted so deeply that our political structures are seriously damaged, perhaps irreparably. Members of the federal government are even officially forbidden to associate “Islam” and “jihad” with “terrorism”. That’s how bad it’s gotten....

I asserted above that none of the policies demanded by dedicated right-wingers — a halt to Muslim immigration, containment, mass deportation, the destruction of Mecca, etc. — are realizable in the current political climate.

But that climate can change at a moment’s notice. Mujahideen all over the world are desperate to get a suitcase nuke or a bucket of ricin into a major population center in the United States. Given the number of zealots who intend to do us harm, and the current sieve that we call our borders, it’s all but inevitable that a deadly catastrophe will eventually occur, devastating our economy and ushering in a brand new political climate within the space of a few short weeks.

At that point the situation becomes chaotic and unpredictable, and many of the stringent measures advocated by the Islamophobes — plus even more horrific ones — are likely to be implemented.

Baron Bodissey trails off here into a disussion of an authoritarian response to the creeping assualt of Islam on the West. Would the U.S. or the major European states welcome the "man on horseback," the strongman who concentrates despotic control with the backing of the muted masses to wipe out Islamo-fascism root and branch?

Well, not exactly, but the discussion ends inconclusively.

To me, it's not a question of capitulating to multicultural political correctness and the widespread acceptance of the banality of Muslim evil. Nor will we need to give up our freedoms to a populist dictatorship.

The United States will defeat radical Islam just like we've defeated other totalitarian threats in the past: with a combination of hard power in economic and military strength, and the soft power of enlightenment ideals of rationalism and forward movement.

There is a model that works, which is the American way. As long as we keep a focus on economic growth, international trade, and individual freedom, the nation will prevail in our current difficulties with our religious enemies worldwide.

This outcome is predicated, of course, on the acession to power in the United States of a leadership that sees the nature of our challenges clearly, and one which will not take the option of moderation to its malignant outgrowth of appeasement and capitulation.

If that does happen, perhaps as early as next year, with a victory for the Democrats in the fall, I'm less confident the American traditions of openness, reason, and tolerance will prevail.

The Presidential Scam of John and Elizabeth Edwards

I doubt there's much new insight I could add to the John Edwards sex scandal, but it's troubling that Elizabeth Edwards knew of her husband's infidelity in 2006.

Mrs. Edwards has written an essay asking the public to understand her family's trauma. What's most striking about her comments is the blame. She blames the media and the public for turning a "private" matter into a public scandal. She's lauds her husband's courage to admit his infidelity on camera, saying it shows "honesty in the face of shame." But then she excoriates the "hurtful" and "absurd lies" the tabloid press has inflicted on her family:

I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John’s conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time.

The "real harm"?

Isn't the real harm found in John Edwards' forsaking his vows to forsake all others? Isn't the real harm found in the purposeful family lie that was the foundation of the Edwards 2008 campaign for the presidency, in the collusion that's apparent between John and Elizabeth Edwards to foist this abject political dishonesty on the public?

Recall that the couple made the marriage bond, in sickness and in health, the basis for much of their political appeal. In this they played on the public's deep culture and respect for family - they pulled on the heartstrings of America for partisan gain.

Kristen Powers sums up the Edwards scam perfectly:

Normally, cheating on your spouse is a private matter. Many Americans wind up facing it; many families stay intact and recover. I hope that's so for the Edwards family.

But this is not a private matter: Following his affair, Edwards chose to run for president, using his family as a centerpiece for his campaign. In June of last year, he accepted the Father of the Year Award from Father's Day/Mother's Day Council. Shortly afterward, he renewed his vows with his wife and provided pictures to People magazine.

And in December, Katie Couric asked the candidates about the importance of marital fidelity in assessing a presidential candidate. True to form, Edwards said that it was a "fundamental" way to "judge people and human character" - but shouldn't be a "controlling factor" in choosing a president.

Unfortunately she didn't ask him what it would tell you about a politician if he used his family as a campaign prop and then lied to the public repeatedly about an affair.

This story's a genuine tragedy.

John Edwards very well could have become president of the United States. He's young, handsome, and smart, and his working class origins provide authenticity for upward mobility in America.

Yet, the Edwards family has always embodied the contradictions of Democratic power politics, especially in John Edwards' concern for the poor amid his ostentatious displays of wealth and privilege.

The Rielle Hunter scandal strips the mask of hypocrisy off it all. The Edwards family has the right to expect concern for their family's privacy. But they shouldn't be so quick to criticize the media for paying inordinate attention to the scandal. John and Elizabeth Edwards lived a scam. The fact that so much this evolved through tremendous physical and emotional pain makes it almost too much to think about.

John Edwards is a major political figure in Democratic Party politics, and may very well have been a top offical in a Barack Obama administration. This story's not off limits to the intense coverage it deserves.

The Edwards family nevertheless deserves our prayers for their personal recovery.

Partisan Extremes

I'm watching the Summer Olympics opening ceremonies, but I thought I'd check my comments and e-mails before bed, as well as what's happening online.

Recall, in last night's post, I noted that when I check Memeorandum many of the usual stories are fodder for scandal. Well, we've got scandal tonight, big time, in John Edwards' complete self-destruction, ethically, politically, and God only knows what else.

But what's really interesting is this story from Jon Ralston on the extreme partisanship of election '08:

I was unaware until this week that I possess a lisp and am a "satanic hack" and a "racist punk."

And then the real calumny began. I was labeled - hold your breath, dear readers - a "conservative political analyst" and a "conservative tool."

Such is the intelligence of the commentary flowing in the aftermath of a brief (five minutes) but far-reaching interview I conducted Tuesday on television with presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama (see YouTube to right). The reaction has stripped bare all that is wrong with politics in this country -- and to an extent, journalism, too -- as an exchange between an aggressive interviewer and a dexterous subject is treated as a spectacle with a Rashomon effect, viewed differently depending on your partisan-colored glasses.

You couldn't surf into the political blogosphere during the 24 hours following the satellite interview on KLAS-TV, Channel 8, without coming upon the equally misplaced vitriol from the left and hosannas from the right. From nonpartisan sites such as MSNBC's and Politico's to a vast array of partisan URLs to Rush Limbaugh and Hannity and Colmes, the sensation was both shocking and depressing.

The interview was nothing unusual for those who have seen "Face to Face." I asked pointed questions, often designed to provoke a revealing answer, sometimes dripping with sarcasm or leavened by humor. Obama handled it deftly, brushing aside my premises, needling me as a "John McCain proxy" and still managing to disgorge his energy policy talking points.

Some viewers saw it that way. But others -- too many others -- were driven to extremes, revealing the state of play in this contentious White House race and the undercurrent of ugliness coursing through the body politic.

Democrats are so desperate for a return to power and so disbelieving that Obama is not crushing McCain that anything other than deification is treated as blasphemy. Hence, the liberal bloggers assume I am a right-wing mouthpiece -- cue the laugh track, locals -- and continue to affix unmentionable monikers while Obamaites react as Maria Cardona did on "Hannity and Colmes," seemingly astonished that I would dare to interrupt Obama when I didn't think he was giving a straight answer. If Obama can't handle lil ol' me by now, my dear Democrats, I wonder how he would fare with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are so eager to find an outlet for the hatred they had hoped to vent on Hillary Clinton that they now sound like Clinton once did, sneering at Obama as "The Messiah" and insisting it is heretical for any journalist to ask him a tough question. Thanks to the reach of Limbaugh, I have been deluged with calls and e-mails making me sound like the second coming of Tim Russert -- come to think of it, perhaps they should be e-mailing and calling NBC News.

This kind of political myopia is utterly unproductive and polarizing. There is simply no ability or effort to see the other side.

There's more at the link. But this part is key:

The blogosphere often exacerbates this phenomenon. Many bloggers - although few posters - provide excellent, thoughtful information, often in an entertaining way. But too often, too many are more interested in seething at The Enemy, which can be clever and colorful but is more often just nasty.

Ralston adds that journalists feed the frenzy, like syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington, in "Memo to Obama: Moving to the Middle is for Losers."

I'm sure I'll have more on this topic as the election rolls along.

In the meantime, interested readers might check out Ronald Brownstein's recent book, The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America.

Explaining Media Hypocrisy in the Edwards Sex Scandal

I did just one post previously on John Edwards' sexual allegations, "Media Hypocrisy on John Edwards Love Child Shocker."

The reaction of many on the left was, "How dare you trust the National Enquirer?" But the tabloid had the goods, it turns out, as the former presidential candidated has copped to both the affair and his deception during this year's primaries.

I'm sure some will say that media hypocrisy rubs both ways, that Republicans also get a pass when sleazy allegations surface around a major political figure. Perhaps, although Mike's America laid down some pretty sweet stats on comparative media bias against John McCain, who was alleged to have had a compromising sexual dalliance with a lobbyist.

The Edwards story will be one of the bigger black-eyes on the press this campaign season. Byron York offers his explanation as to why the MSM dropped the ball:

I spent part of Thursday corresponding with people at major news organizations that have not reported the John Edwards “love child” story. Why haven’t they mentioned the scandal? Are they doing their own investigating of the National Enquirer’s allegations? Are they under management directives not to report it?

Most of the conversations — all of the revealing ones — were off the record; like anyone else, people in the press aren’t particularly eager to speak publicly about topics that make them uncomfortable. But from the exchanges, it’s possible to piece together some of the rationales journalists are using to continue not to report the Edwards story — and to see how the whole strange episode will end. So without quoting anyone or betraying any confidences, here is what appears to be going on:

First, the journalists don’t believe that news organizations should just uncritically pass on the reporting of the Enquirer. They have a point; the Enquirer has been quite accurate on some stories and inaccurate on others. One could argue that the tabloid’s reporting on this particular story contains a wealth of detail that remains un-denied by Edwards or anyone else. Still, there’s nothing wrong with news organizations being skeptical of the source.

But the question is not whether the news organizations should simply repeat the Enquirer’s reporting. It’s whether they are actively pursuing the story, doing their own reporting in an effort to confirm the basic allegations that Edwards had an affair with campaign staffer Rielle Hunter, and then had a baby with her, and is now covering it up. And here it appears — from this completely unscientific survey — that there is not a lot of independent reporting going on.

Instead, some big-time journalists seem to believe the Enquirer has nailed the story, and they are waiting for the tabloid to release the full results of its reporting. In the meantime, they are staying away from the story because it appeared in the Enquirer. In other words, they’re waiting for the Enquirer to fully report a story that they wouldn’t otherwise report… because it’s in the Enquirer.

That could have changed by this point. If news organizations had thrown a lot of resources at the story in an attempt to confirm (or disprove) the Enquirer’s allegations, it’s likely some of them would have come up with something in the two and a half weeks since the Enquirer reported the story on July 22. Instead, there has been nothing.

Is that the result of a group sentiment among journalists? Or have they been under explicit orders not to mention the story? We’ve heard about one such directive, at the Los Angeles Times website. But there are probably others out there. In today’s news environment, executives have to take more explicit steps than in the past if they want to rein in stories. Journalists have multiple platforms; they might mention a story in a newspaper article, a web piece, in a blog, on video, on television, or on radio. For news executives to make sure the Edwards story does not appear on any of an organization’s several platforms, they have to make sure that tight controls are in place. The Edwards story is not invisible by accident.

Nope, it's no accident. York's being diplomatic, but he does ask the right questions.

The New York Times did a hatchet job with the Vicki Iseman allegations, while in the Edwards case the major national dailies ignored the story, or in the case of the Los Angeles Times, put the chill on Edwards-related reporting, even among bloggers.

There's a double-standard a work, as I suggested in my orignal post.

See also, "Jack Shafer, "Why the Press Is Ignoring the Edwards 'Love Child' Story."

Protesters to 'Raise the Roof' at Democratic Convention

Last March, Glenn Spagnuolo, of the radical recreate 68 protest coaltion, threatened Denver's Democratic Convention planners, saying, "When things blow up because the police have to enforce a permit that the Democrats got, don’t blame us for that..."

Now with the convention quickly approaching, Democratic Party officials are working ferverishly to avoid conflict inside the halls of the meeting. Meanwhile, outside the convention, recreate 68 is hoping to "raise the roof" on the U.S Mint in Denver:

Convention protesters plan to raise the roof - and the rest of the United States Mint in Denver - later this month when the party convenes in Denver to nominate Sen. Barack Obama as its candidate for president.

Organizers of Recreate 68, which is affiliated with at least a dozen protest groups mobilizing for the DNC later this month, are planning to attempt a levitation of the U.S. Mint as a statement against the money being spent on the convention which activists feel would better be spent on the poor.

"It's time to redistribute the wealth," reads a statement at the Recreate68.org Web site.

"Between security and corporate payoffs, the DNC will cost over 100 million dollars for a party. We think the people deserve that money."

The statement goes on to say, "Join us as we encircle the Denver Mint...and use our collective power to raise the Mint building in the air and shake the money out of it for the people."

The attempted levitation is set for 5 p.m. Aug. 25, the first full day of the four-day convention....

The planned raising of the Mint is not without precedent. Thousands of anti-war protesters during the Vietnam conflict, on Oct. 21, 1967, massed at the Pentagon and, under the anarchic leadership of Yuppies including Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the poet Allen Ginsberg, attempted to levitate the nerve center of the American military in an effort "exorcise" the evil spirits they believed controlled it.

No reported levitation was observed by sober onlookers. But there was sporadic violence when some of the protesters managed briefly to get inside the facility, and there were a reported 680 arrests and some blood spilled before it was over.

The dates of the convention mark the anniversaries of Women's Equality Day and Martin Luther Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech."

It's also the 41st anniversary of the "Long Hot Summer" of deadly urban rioting across the nation, and the 40th anniversary of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, which culimnated in the violent police crackdown at the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968.

Let's hope this year protesters are satisfied with hippy-style levitiation.

The Sign of Hope and Responsibility

It's only been just over a month since Barack Obama had to junk his near-presidential campaign seal, so I'm a little surprised to see the latest iterations of Obama iconography:

The blogosphere's already erupting over Obama's "One Nation, Under a New Obama Salute:"

George Bush had his three-fingered W salute that supporters flashed when greeting him at presidential campaign events in 2000. And now, if a Los Angeles creative agency gets its way, Sen. Barack Obama will see fans meet him with his own salute like the one above. "Our goal is to see a crowd of 75,000 people at Obama's nomination speech holding their hands above their heads, fingers laced together in support of a new direction for this country, a renewed hope, and acceptance of responsibility for our future," says Rick Husong, owner of The Loyalty Inc. Husong tells me that he got the idea after seeing the famous Obama-Progress poster by artist Shepherd Fairey. "We wanted to get involved some way," he says. So, the agency came up with their own a symbol of hope and progress that also plays off Obama's name. "We thought, 'Let's try and start a movement where even while walking down the street, people would hold up the O and you would know that they were for Obama,' " says Husong.

Notice the loftiness: people holding their hands up in a salute to "renewed hope" and "acceptance of responsibilty for our future."

I've been critical of all the attacks on Obama as fascist, but his supporters just get too creepy sometimes with all of this messianic propaganda.

Image Credit: U.S. News

Tom Matzzie to Muzzle the Opposition

Readers may recall my essay from earlier this year, "Anti-McCain Mobilization Rooted in Hardline Anti-Iraq Constituencies."

The piece covered Tom Matzzie's failed antiwar media efforts, especially the collapse of Matzzie's "Fund For America," a failed financial front group for the radical left.

It turns out now that with Matzzie's own antiwar message failing miserably, he's turning his efforts to squelch the more successful efforts of conservative interest groups:

Nearly 10,000 of the biggest donors to Republican candidates and causes across the country will probably receive a foreboding “warning” letter in the mail next week.

The letter is an opening shot across the bow from an unusual new outside political group on the left that is poised to engage in hardball tactics to prevent similar groups on the right from getting off the ground this fall.

Led by Tom Matzzie, a liberal political operative who has been involved with some prominent left-wing efforts in recent years, the newly formed nonprofit group, Accountable America, is planning to confront donors to conservative groups, hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions.

“We want to stop the Swift Boating before it gets off the ground,” said Mr. Matzzie, who described his effort as “going for the jugular.”

The warning letter is intended as a first step, alerting donors who might be considering giving to right-wing groups to a variety of potential dangers, including legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives.

The group is also hoping to be able to respond if an outside conservative group broadcasts a television advertisement attacking Senator Barack Obama, or another Democratic candidate, by running commercials exposing the donors behind the advertisements.

Judd Legum, who was the research director for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, has signed on to play the same role for Accountable America.

The group has raised only $200,000, but Mr. Matzzie said he expected to collect more than $500,000 by next week, with an ultimate goal of $2 million.

Mr. Matzzie said he had decided to focus exclusively on conservative donors because such an effort could be done cheaply.

“It’s targeted,” Mr. Matzzie said. “We don’t need $25 million.”

Mr. Matzzie recently served as one of the leaders of Progressive Media U.S.A., a group that was intended to lead a left-wing media effort in the presidential election, but the group folded several months ago after it failed to raise enough money, partly because of signals from the Obama campaign that donors should not give to outside groups.

Mr. Obama and other Democratic officials have issued warnings about possible activities by outside groups like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which helped sink Senator John Kerry’s presidential bid in 2004. But activity among outside conservative groups has been decidedly low-level.

Still, Accountable America has singled out some major Republican donors, including Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino mogul, and Mel Sembler, a former ambassador and real estate magnate, both major donors to Freedom’s Watch, a conservative group.

Captain Ed comments on all of this, with the headline, "How to Anger Conservatives Into Action":

This sounds like another one of Mattzie’s ill-considered ventures. He blew $12 million in funding for his anti-war group last year, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, and showed nothing for his efforts. He also was involved in MoveOn’s preposterous General Betray-Us ad last September. The biggest surprise is that Mattzie still finds fools with money that need parting.

Jammie Wearing Fool takes it further:

These schmucks can only blame themselves when Obama loses, but of course they'll never do that. Instead, they'll blame some sinister forces that somehow managed to outsmart them.

Yeah, probably all of those backyard Nazis and pseudo-fascists, who think it's better to stay mum on plans to assassinate Barack Obama.

The Marginal Returns of Political Blogging

As readers know, I've been recently studying political demonization in the blogosphere.

In fact, I've developed something of a theory of secular demonology (by no means original), that hypothesizes a particular psychology of hatred that drives the leftosphere, which I've applied, for example, to "The Commentocracy of Hate." To be clear, I do not claim that conservatives are angels (there's a lot of right-wing extremism online, frequently defended by reference to strained notions of free political speech). Recent empirical history, however, demonstrates a powerful propensity among those on the left to mercilessly attack conservative partisans in government and online, going so far as mounting a political psychology of revenge.

I'm returning to this topic again after reading Jason Steck's outstanding essay on group think in the blogosphere.

Steck argues that blogging as a political medium has reached the point of diminishing marginal returns. Online partisans on both the left and right have no inclination toward objective critical analysis, and their respective commentocracies reward those blogs best able to demonize the other. Consequently, insightful, intellectual nuance and persusion get completely marginalized in the flaming haze of political battle:

Take a step back and review any political blog you like and you will immediately be struck by the sameness of the posts. They take the story of the day — invariably some substance-free “gaffe”, photo op, or partisan charge of corruption — and attach a laundry list of catastrophic impacts foretelling the end of the world if that candidate would be elected. Any reference to actual policy issues will be brief, insubstantial, and driven entirely by stereotypes. Comments threads will be infested by cut-and-paste repetitions of well-worn slogans and talking points, bereft of any engagement with the issues of the real world or any recognition that disagreement could indicate anything other than demonic possession. The scripts rule the day without any tolerance for deviation or criticism of any kind:

Mandatory Script #1: Obama is a “socialist” who is simultaneously too intellectually lightweight to be President yet a Machiavellian genius enough to be bamboozling everyone

Mandatory Script #2a: McCain is “McSame” seeking a third BushHilter term so that he can sell Social Security to Halliburton and bomb every country where brown people live in order to establish an American Empire that will revoke the Bill of Rights in order to establish a theocracy.

I'm getting a kick out of both of these "scripts," although if parsimony adds power, the brevity of Obama's script might provide a little value-added as the campaign moves forward.

Seriously though, Steck's onto something, although I don't think his resigned conclusion is completely warranted:

I care deeply about this election, but I find that writing about it publicly is pointless. Welcome to the brave new world of politics, where morons rule by rote.

I've been blogging for about a two-and-a-half years. Recently, when logging-on in the mornings, and especially when I check Memeorandum, I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. The most important stories on politics and public policy are often pushed to the side. Controversies serving as fodder for scandal rise to the top. The major bloggers weigh in with venomous attacks and snarky dismissals. One or two of these get picked up by the MSM, and then become "news" themselves. The White House or the major campaigns make a statement, and then it all starts over again in the morning.

I think there's more to it than that, however. I was introduced to the blogosphere by reading academic, high-brow blogs. I liked reading, for example, Daniel Drezner and Virginia Postrel. Folks like this are successful in their professions, and they've generated much of their readership trough their working reputations. Ann Althouse is a fabulous blogger as well (she also teaches law), and she's become something of a media sensation with her serious but stylistic online presence.

There are more examples like this, but what's happened with the partisan blogs is that they've become of the footsoldiers of the revolution, especially on the left. There's simply not going to be compromise when partisan bloggers and their communities see themselves in battle. It can get disgusting, as Steck notes in the comments:

Whenever ... a blog emerges that actually does attempt to provide balanced and/or mixed perspectives, they get shunned. To say that such blogs get "blacklisted" is not an exaggeration. They disappear from Memeorandum, are systematically denied links by the partisan blogs as punishment for their heresies, and are sometimes even subjected to campaigns designed to encourage other blogs to blacklist them. (For example, one blog owner I know of often disseminates orders to his co-bloggers instructing them not to link to other bloggers he doesn’t like or agree with and extends requests to the same effect to his other friends in the blogosphere, yet he claims publicly to welcome equally views from "left, right, and center".) There are more than a few commenters who do the exact same thing — trying to harass and defame any blog or writer who commits an act of heresy against their particular Mandatory Script....

For example, Newshoggers is an example of a blog that often [finds] stories that no one else is talking about at all. But they cancel out much of the value of that positive contribution by their relentless and abusive approach to blogs that they disagree with, usually ignoring contrary perspectives entirely but, when they do acknowledge them, often personally attacking the authors of those dissenting blogs or just lying about what those dissenters said in order to force-fit them into the pre-existing, demonized scripts. Glenn Greenwald is another exemplar of this tendency who has been rewarded massively for his hateful efforts as is FireDogLake. And those examples are in addition to the blog that I know for certain does outright blacklisting behind the scenes while publicly claiming to represent “left, right, and center”.

I'm betting that this "certain" blog is "The Moderate Voice" (aka "The Partisan Voice"), and I'd also note, interestingly, that the three blogs Steck mentions above are among the most prominent demonologists in the leftosphere.

Still, I too think folks should step back a bit, but my suggestion is for people to ask themselves what they hope to achieve by blogging? In my case, I visited many blogs years ago, and my comments at various sites became essay-length, so I thought I'd better get in the game.

It takes a while to find a niche. I started with a lot of cerebral posts, often unrelated to the headlines of the day, with very little partisan bite. I talked to more experienced bloggers who said they liked what they say, but recommended taking the gloves off. I have done that, while trying not to lose my academic side, with my style of lengthy, substantive posts of ranging ideas.

In any case, the blogging medium should be here to stay, or, at least until another platform comes along to replace the immediacy and potential impact of citizens' journalism. Most bloggers will not have a huge readership, but I'm confident that insight and intelligence are rewarded, and I'm frankly blown away sometimes at how awesome the blogosphere works as an alternative and competitor to traditional media.

All is not lost, for the moment at least. The returns of excellence in political blogging may have diminished some, but the ultimate output still carries substantial utility for politics.

Antiwar 2.0

Now that victory in Iraq has reached near-consensus, the antiwar press and netroots masses have turned their attention to the next stage of anti-Bush opposition.

The New York Times is leading the way, for example, with its editorial today mocking Salim Ahmed Hamdan's Guantanamo conviction as "Guilty as Ordered."

Andy McCarthy exposes the Times' allegations as tiresome liberal "bombast."

But that's not all. Today's paper includes a weepy front-pager attacking the administration's "good war": "500: Deadly U.S. Milestone in Afghan War"

Abe Greenwald notes the coming of Antiwar 2.0:

The New York Times, at a loss for bad news from Iraq, is mining Afghanistan for tragedy and defeat. Today’s front page bears the headline, “500: Deadly U.S. Milestone in Afghan War.” The piece, by Kirk Semple and Andrew W. Lehren, contains heart-wrenching stories of young life cut short, and the online edition contains interactive features with graphs showing casualty breakdowns and mini-bios of lost troops. With this bit of morbidity, the Times has sent out a signal to left-wing media outlets, progressive bloggers, and activists looking for a march: It’s time to switch from death in Iraq to death in Afghanistan.

Running tallies of American causalities in Afghanistan can now go up on websites; Digital collages of Americans killed by the Taliban arranged to form George W. Bush’s face are sure to follow.

The thing about the Times’ milestone is — it’s completely artificial. The casualty count for Americans in Afghanistan passed 500 months ago. The number now stands at 563. The “milestone” framework is just a pretense for the paper to shift its gruesome focus onto a new front.

The antiwar focus is also shifting to the end of the administration, and potential war crimes trials against President Bush and top officials alleged to have violated international law and "shredded the Geneva Conventions."

No doubt the Times will be leading that effort as well.