Pawlenty polling weak; "The costs of golden theories will be paid for in the base coin of our interests"

Kind of a grab bag of stuff for the afternoon. We got posted as a City Pages MN blog o the day for Mordred's trip to Las Vegas yesterday. That is Teh Pimp. Thx to Mordred for a day of fame!

Kircher's Cat Piano is plainly the best thing ever. (via GM)

MN Governor Rasmussen Poll (via Kos). 2/20. Likely voters. MoE 4.5% (1/16 results in parens)

Pawlenty (R) 40 (47)
Hatch (DFL) 45 (44)

Pawlenty (R) 42 (46)
Kelley (DFL) 42 (37)

The January results were perhaps an outlier, and of course the third party factor is unknown. But it indicates Kelley is solid - and I keep thinking that Kelley is a better candidate than Hatch, despite the fact that the DFL heirarchy seems to believe that it's automatically Hatch's turn – the same stodgy thinking that got us the Moe candidacy last time. Maybe...

The network news still sucks. ABC' Elizabeth Vargas is a fine example. Thanks to MediaMatters for chipping away at the typical layers of garbage. Such great moments in history as these recent Fox News moments deserve to be recorded: "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" and "CIVIL WAR" IN IRAQ: MADE UP BY THE MEDIA?"

Random: A Rubik's Cube Prank and Mario Cookie from the infinite well-documented prank sphere of the Internet, a genre started by such great exploits as the 1994 Police Cruiser placed on MIT's Great Dome.

"Neo-Isolationists" take heart: 42% of Americans believed the US should "mind its own business" in a October 2005 poll. To the various warmongers of Washington, this is the 'dreaded isolationism' they fear -- or rather, its the natural inclination of the American people to step away from the tangled messes of Eurasia.

Just a third (34%) say Bush's calls for greater democracy in the region are a good idea that will succeed; 36% think it is a good idea that will not succeed; and 22% believe it is a bad idea. ..... Fully 71% say the Iraq war is a major reason that people around the world are unhappy with the U.S. And just 16% – the fewest in over a decade – are satisfied with the way things are going in the world.

Raimondo at Antiwar.com hails this as evidence that 'interventionism' is basically imposed by neo-cons and hawks upon the American public. Thus, Antiwar will keep holding the line. Moment of Truth and On the Road to Empire, indeed. Even Henry Hyde is warning against the arrogance of empire these days:

...by its very nature, the U.S. is a revolutionary power. Its foundational beliefs posit universal truths that permeate all of its actions and perceptions of the world. These have had, and continue to have, catalytic effects on other societies..... [but] Lashing our interests to the indiscriminate promotion of democracy is a tempting but unwarranted strategy, more a leap of faith than a sober calculation.

.....We can and have used democracy as a weapon to destabilize our avowed enemies and may do so again. But if we unleash revolutionary forces in the expectation that the result can only be beneficent, I believe we are making a profound and perhaps uncorrectable mistake. History teaches that revolutions are very dangerous things, more often destructive than benign, and uncontrollable by their very nature. Upending established order based on theory is far more likely to produce chaos than shining uplands.

.....We are well advanced into an unformed era in which new and unfamiliar enemies are gathering forces, where a phalanx of aspiring competitors must inevitably constrain and focus our options. In a world where the ratios of strength narrow, the consequences of miscalculation will become progressively more debilitating. The costs of golden theories will be paid for in the base coin of our interests.

There's even more but I think that gets the point. Seriously, what ever happened to the gruff conservatives of yore preaching caution? ... Tom Tomorrow predicts the future?

House Republicans sense a good time to retire. (Ten or 15 more?! wow) This could help us, of course.

Afghanistan: Opium still big-time as a Taliban spring offensive looms: Guardian: Four years after fall of Taliban, leader's power barely extends beyond the capital. WaPo: Growing Threat Seen In Afghan Insurgency: DIA Chief Cites Surging Violence in Homeland. Traditionally in Afghanistan, the fighters hunker down for the winter as snow closes off mountain valleys. In all likelihood, this spring will see the strongest Taliban offensives since 2001. Opium yields are slightly down this year, apparently because the market is flooded and prices have fallen. However, productivity per hectare is way up, and according to ABC News, a mere 200 hectares were actually shut down through NATO/Western political drug suppression efforts. About one in ten Afghans is directly employed by the opium industry, which makes up between 1/3 and 1/2 of GDP.

Thus, the Pentagon presides over probably the largest organized narcotics economy ever. Always remember that the Taliban's Tajik, Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Uzbek rivals only managed to finance their survival through exporting the raw material for heroin. These are the "good guys" who control the turf, and this is how they do it. The central government can only be a passive framework, at best, in this environment. As I noted earlier, over about 200 years they defeated the British two or three times, and the USSR's great Red Army. That's how they roll. The Kabul prison rebellion (now reportedly crushed) is just the overture for the first movement.

Freedom beckons for the Bluth family: Apparently the rumors were true and Arrested Development got picked up by Showtime, for another 26 episodes. I was watching the DVDs recently and really, it might have been the best comedy on network TV. FOX is dumb for replacing it with more garbage.

How to consider purchasing an LCD monitor: A subtle art: This AnandTech comparison of top-end 20" Apple and Dell LCD displays explains all the factors.

Indian nuclear plans: According to ArmsControlWonk, it appears that only about 65% of India's nuclear plants will be monitored as civilian operations by the IAEA. Why do Americans generally ignore the existence of Israel and India's nuclear weapons, try to forget about Pakistan's and Russia's? Is Iran, which has its own damn uranium mines, really that different? Then again, the 21st century will probably have a nuclear history that will make the 20th look like Daisy picking flowers.

Posted by HongPong at March 2, 2006 04:32 PM
Listed under Afghanistan , Campaign 2006 , Iraq , Media .