The Tiger at Home

I think that something has got to go wrong soon.  For my life is going far too well right now…

Supreme Court Chief John Roberts:

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Viz.:

Today’s Washington Post kicks off a series on Senate President Dick Cheney, who apparently has also exercised some influence in recent years within the Executive Branch. …

The Washington Post article really is a must-read, although on reading it closely I realize that the title of my post is inaccurate. According to the Post article, Cheney’s counsel believes that the Vice-Presidency is neither in the executive branch nor in the legislative branch. Last I checked, the federal government only had three branches, so by process of elimination the Office of the Vice President must be in the judicial branch.

Or dead cat bounce for the Republicans?

Update, 9:10 PM: I think Cohen might be on to something…

Update, 9:12 PM:  Or not.

In order to stave off growing questions in own mind as to whether one is the creepy guy who never leaves school (or the vicinity thereof), have started intensified the job-hunting process. Meeting with the programs officer in mid-July, heading to DC at the end of July, and am taking freelance writing jobs as they roll in from family friends.

We’ll see where this goes.

Update, 7:30 PM:

Self-reassuring second thoughts –

1. Have not been on a date with an undergraduate or undergraduate-aged female since I was a 22 year-old first-year law student.
2. Have a very hip twenty-something female apartmentmate who is three years older than self.
3. Somervilleians are a wide range of ages, and am almost certainly well below the median and average ages. Very different from still living in Cambridge.

Whatever I may be — a twenty-something wastrel, a member of the ranks of the unemployed, a drain on the body politic — I’ve got a few years left before I can officially become “creepy”. Can start achieving before that point, I am quite sure.

But these are healthy fears to have. Preventative ones, so to speak.

Hitchens hits the nail on the head with this piece, of course:

If you follow the link, you will be treated to some scenes from the strenuous life of a professional Muslim protester in the Kashmiri city of Srinagar. Over the last few years, there have been innumerable opportunities for him to demonstrate his piety and his pissed-offness. And the cameras have been there for him every time. Is it a fatwah? Is it a copy of the Quran allegedly down the gurgler at Guantanamo? Is it some cartoon in Denmark? Time for Rage Boy to step in and for his visage to impress the rest of the world with the depth and strength of Islamist emotion.

Last week, there was another go-round of this now-formulaic story, when Salman Rushdie accepted a knighthood from her majesty the queen, and the whole cycle of hysteria started up again. …

Rage Boy keenly looks forward to anger, while we worriedly anticipate trouble, and fret about etiquette, and prepare the next retreat. If taken to its logical conclusion, this would mean living at the pleasure of Rage Boy, and that I am not prepared to do.

That’s an argument that we’re all familiar with, and which we either immediately agree with (as I do) or not (as altogether too many ‘thinking people’ nowadays do).

No, it was a throwaway line that spurred a passing thought in me:

Effigies and flags burned (is there some special factory in Karachi that churns out the flags of democratic countries for occasions like this?), wounded screams from religious nut bags, bounties raised to suborn murder, and solemn resolutions passed by notional bodies such as the Pakistani “parliament.” (Emphasis added.)

Here it is: given what we believe about liberal democracy and individual freedoms and whatnot, was the condition of the individual not measurably better when the flag that is being burned, the Union Flag, was not just not being burnt but flew as the emblem of the government, over in what is now Pakistan?

There was a time when Queen Elizabeth II reigned not only over Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a number of postage-stamp other realms, but also over Pakistan.

That one can look back to the British Empire as a bastion of freedom and liberty has got to be profoundly depressing, whatever one thinks of the Empire in the abstract. For those who admired it, depressing in that it was abandoned so quickly and so off-handedly; for those who deplored its ethos and worked to end it, depressing in that so many of its successor states have regressed from conditions so sharply (and accurately) decried as unjust.

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Oh well. At least India is a functioning (and ever-improving) liberal democracy — our best hope for a like-minded partner among the rising powers of the 21st century.

Interesting article here.

The second, and more significant, challenge emanates from the rise of nondemocratic great powers: the West’s old Cold War rivals China and Russia, now operating under authoritarian capitalist, rather than communist, regimes. Authoritarian capitalist great powers played a leading role in the international system up until 1945. They have been absent since then. But today, they seem poised for a comeback. …
(more…)

I may buy one of these t-shirts:

[via Sullivan]

That old Keith’s slogan gets trotted out a lot about Prime Minister Harper, but I think that it must be applied to Rudy Giuliani, too.

Viz.:

After watching Rudy Giuliani in action, giving his pitch to a room of 600 or so well-to-do donors, I’ve come to the following conclusion: For certain Republicans, Rudy will always be untouchable — be it his stands on abortion, gay marriage, or gun control, or his messy marriages, or his in-your-face abrasive leadership style, etc.

But…

…when Rudy gets going on an issue you agree with him on… he’s really, really good. Maybe unequaled. And it’s possible to imagine him, in some future debate, mopping the floor with a liberal challenger the way Reagan obliterated Carter and Mondale.
(more…)

Hammers solve everything, don’t you know? [Via the comments over at Gen X at 40.]

About the substance of the post — just get your passports, people. It really isn’t all that hard.

Well, actually, it’s hard to get a Canadian passport, and they don’t last long enough. Sucks for you. But take that up with the Passport Agency.  (The Americans have sensible renewal rules…)

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But yes, I have issues with the RF tag thing for US passports — it’s like sticking a big tracker on every US citizen. Wait, it is sticking a big tracker on every US citizen. Terrorists, here we are! Come kill us!

Idiots.

[Fortunately, my American passport isn't up for renewal until 2012.]

Judy Miller?

Say what you will, Bloggingheads.tv finds itself some interesting guests…

Go have a look at the Hillary Clinton video over here. It’s very clever, actually. (I might note that the “no onion rings” exchange reflects why a good chunk of the country can’t stand La Clinton.)

Anyway, just wanted to say that I think that the Journey song is much better than what Hillary ended up picking.

Still, whatever. She’s still the odds-on favourite for the Democrat nomination, and the Democrat nominee is odds-on favourite to take the general. So on a balance of probabilities, she’s more likely than the others to be our next president.

At least my mom will be happy. (She’s a big Clinton supporter.) And I’ll probably help her vote absentee, too. (I did so in the 2004 campaign, even though she was voting for the guy I wasn’t supporting.)

Update, June 25th: Funny to see what the American lefties are saying about it… (Not happy.)

But yes, as an Air Canada ad campaign it was very cute.

[And there's something about Democrats and Canada. ;-)]

I say, whatever. I’m actually coming around on it a bit. I rather like Air Canada, though I like Virgin Atlantic and Czechair more if I’m heading across the pond.

***

But I really like the new Terminal 1 in Toronto (which stars in the video) — flew out of there on Sunday. Very cool place. Much nicer than most of the American airports I’ve flown from.

Actually, this is great political imagery — I’ll associate the squeaky-clean new(ish) terminal in TO and the new airliners with HRC.  Already the heart softens towards her presidency (if it happens; I’m still a Rudy supporter, and almost certainly voting Republican regardless of which of the ten candidates win).

One reaction:

Conservative MP Stewart Jackson, chairman of the all-party group on Pakistan, said: “Salman Rushdie was subjected to one of the most famous death sentences in the 20th Century.

“If the senior officers of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office were not able to use their knowledge of the Islamic world to consider the likely ramifications of this decision, then I’m extremely concerned.”

He believes the decision will exacerbate tensions with the Pakistani government at a time when it is struggling to deal with political uncertainty and terrorism. …

“There’s no question that we can rescind the award, it would make us look weak and it’s not for Britain to kow-tow to extremists but perhaps it would be appropriate for Salman Rushdie to make the decision not to accept this award,” said Mr Jackson.

That seems unlikely given Sir Salman’s initial reaction that was he “thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour”.

My reaction:

If this is a true representation of the views of the Conservative Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on Rushdie’s knighthood, I’m extremely concerned.

I’m extremely concerned that it seems like Lady Thatcher’s party is in control of a bunch of douchebags who can’t be bothered to stand up for any dissident voices whatsoever — even when those voices are part of the British literary establishment, and the death sentences are issued from Tehran.

I rather like this suggestion, myself… [via Ghost of a Flea]

Update:

This is good –

The Home Secretary said some Christians were upset when John Cleese made the Life of Brian and some Jewish people were upset when Mel Gibson made films.

“We have to be sensitive, but I think that we take the approach that in the long-run the protection of the right to express opinions in literature, argument and politics is of over-riding value to our society,” he said.

Hear, hear!

I am trying to decide whether this is inspirational or profoundly depressing:

MONTREAL — Anti-war protesters will confront Afghanistan-bound troops on Friday in Quebec City as a sign of the tension in Canada’s most anti-war province.

Organizers of the protest plan a counter-march to oppose what is intended to be a high-profile send-off parade by the Royal 22nd Regiment at Canadian Forces Base Valcartier. …

For some, the conflict is personal. Francis Dupuis-Déri, a political science professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, will be on the protesters’ side of the barricades. His younger sister, Capt. Catherine Déri, will be marching with her regiment on the other side.

“I love my sister, so I’m very troubled and worried that she’s being deployed to Afghanistan, even if it’s her personal choice,” Prof. Dupuis-Déri said in an interview yesterday. “My sister will be on the other side of the police line on Friday.”

The professor calls the Afghan mission an “unjust war” and says he believes Canada is doing the bidding of the White House by sending troops. He wrote an open letter to his sister in Quebec newspapers last week, asking her – and other Canadian soldiers – how many would return home in coffins.

The Friday event “is to make the soldiers look like family men and sympathetic people, while they’re going over to make the situation worse. Their presence will cause deaths and support a corrupt regime. We want to counter the army’s marketing operation,” he said.

Capt. Déri, for her part, says she respects her brother’s viewpoint but supports the Canadian mission’s goals.

“I’m all for difference of opinion and my brother sharing his views. It’s very democratic, and Canadians are flying around the world so that others have the same freedom,” Capt. Déri said in an interview.

Well, Captain Déri has a good head on her shoulders, anyway. That’s something to feel good about. Professor Dupuis-Déri, on the other hand… well, freedom includes the freedom to make an ass of yourself, I’m sure.

I have a weakness for productions that look like people just plain old had a lot of fun making them.

So the 1980s parody “Pop Goes My Heart” from the film “Music and Lyrics” got me smiling.  (It’s actually pretty good.)

And then when Drew Barrymore pulls her awkward girl act, well…

[Think I really liked the movie because it's able to laugh at the music industry.]

Pithiness is key.

Shall try to train myself to write less, say more.

Update: Why? This is why.

It’s said that anonymity encourages slovenly reasoning and writing. Consider this an attempt to do battle with said tendency.

The Tiger in Somerville is a new version of an old concept — a collection of the personal and political writings of a twenty-something former law student and former graduate student, Benjamin Sharma.

I have been doing this off-and-on since the summer after I graduated from college — since late July 2003. However, I have tended to purge my archives periodically and to try to keep it anonymous. This will now change.

Expect a mish-mash of semi-serious commentaries and link-fests, mixed with the occasional serious piece. I am not yet into a career path, but I do believe that freelance writing will take up a part of it.

I do also have a topical weblog, Notes from Russia, which I keep with a friend of mine from the graduate program I just finished. There you will find translations from the Russian press as well as our own analysis of their significance, along with other posts about Russian politics and culture.

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It may take some time before my posting really gets going here, but I just wanted to fix up the template and put a post of my own up.

See you when I see you!
Ben