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Rudy rejected by business readers

As if being publicly slammed this month by the Firefighters Union for "egregious acts" wasn't bad enough, Rudy Giuliani was roundly rejected as would-be Presidential material by the readers of New York's business weekly, Crain's New York Business.

Of the 1,303 respondents to a Crain's online poll 68% voted that Rudy was "too abrasive and does not work well with others." Short of even 1 in 3 respondents--only 32%--thought Rudy's "style would translate well to the White House."

And this from the business community? Regarding a Republican candidate?

Ouch.

NYS Assembly discretionary $ for LGBT services at risk of cuts

New York resident? Then heads-up: From ESPA --

We need a strong, final push in these last hours of budget negotiations to make sure that the Assembly puts discretionary money into the budget for LGBT Health and Human Services.

Call Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver now at (518) 455-3791.  Thank him for the leadership the Assembly Majority has shown through the years in providing funding for LGBT health and human services, and ask him to continue that leadership by including discretionary funds in this year’s budget.

Matt Titone wins on State Island

From the Empire State Pride Agenda:

[On March 27,] Matt Titone beat two other candidates in a Special Election on Staten Island to become New York’s fourth openly LGBT member of the New York State Legislature [and] the first openly gay man to ever win an election on Staten Island.

Matt’s historic victory for an Assembly seat will strengthen our community’s voice in Albany during a time when critical issues like our ability to legally marry, non-discrimination protections based upon gender identity and expression and safe schools for LGBT youth are being debated. 

Kanan Makiya in The NYT

How people become attached to a nation, to the concept of a particular nation--how your nation can become a huge part of your identity, and just what your nation represents to you (ideals? comforts and conveniences?)--is a complex thing.

An admission: Shhh. Don't tell anyone, but basically...well...I'm an idiot. (What, you mean that's not a secret?) I'm an Ameri-Anglo-centric monoglot Midwest-born New Yorker Protestant white middle-class (lower-middle-class by Manhattan standards) male with a non-terminal academic degree. I've lived in only 3 of this republic's 50 states, and at the end of the day probably enjoy reading about the past slightly more than I enjoy interacting with even friends in the present. So, it's little wonder politics, current affairs, and lots of other things baffle me. I was intrigued, inexplicably annoyed, and baffled upon reading The New York Times' profile of Iraqi-American writer, Kanan Makiya. The profile's sub-title is, "Critic of Hussein Grapples With Horrors of Post-Invasion Iraq."

If I could speak with Mr. Makiya, I would ask him, "What is Iraq?" I'm too ignorant of the facts of Iraq's demographics and history to be able to understand just what Iraq has ever been beyond something of an accidental nation created mostly by administrators of the British Empire as their interest in the region arguably began to wane. I presume Iraq will fragment like Yugoslavia did. And here's all this effort to reshape it, tear it apart, or preserve this or that part of it, depending on which faction you're in--which is not to suggest that everyone in Iraq cares terribly one way or the other so long as daily life just starts to improve! I wouldn't know. But, as for those who do care, they leave me simply awed, I guess, by the investment in it. Maybe I'm just more temperamentally apathetic than I realize.

So, I admittedly don't understand it, but there seem to be Iraqis--middle- and upper-class Iraqis mostly, I assume, but not only such Iraqis (right?)--who genuinely have some form of nationalism in the best sense of the term--the 19th-century sense when nationalism and liberalism in Europe went hand-in-hand in contradistinction to forces like monarchism, conservatism, and [Roman Catholic] clericalism. (For more on that, hear the BBC Radio 4 In Our Time episode this week concerning Bismark.)

Still, I don't get it. I suppose maybe there's nothing more to "get" than there is anything to "get" about the Roman Empire or even Persia: they were, from a certain simplistic point of view, also just cobbled-together mixtures of tribes and groups. But somehow, especially for Rome, something emerged greater than the sum of its parts. Has that ever been the case for most Iraqis, that there's this concept of Iraq that looms in the mind as a greater source of identity than, say, Sunni, or Shia, or rich, or poor, or Kurdish, or Baathist, or secular, or something else? Of course.... But I still find it a bit mystifying.

(Postscript: check out this Iraq Culture Smart Card, a reference publication. Also, the flag shown above is the flag national adopted as of June 2004. The flag's been basically the same since 1963. Currently, the law of Iraq's official Kurdish region forbids the flying of not only the above flag, but any of the similar post-1963 designs.)

Dismissiveness

Glenn Greenwald on opinion-givers' detestable dismissiveness demonstrated on Chris Matthews Show this past Sunday:

Here are several of our media elites from our nation's most influential journalistic outlets -- including from Time, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, and NBC News -- all sitting around on the Chris Matthew Show giggling for three and a half minutes straight about the silly U.S. attorneys scandal. The whole thing is just a fun game for them, and it's ludicrous to them that anyone could take things like this seriously.

And what is most notable is that they express outrage at one part, and one part only, in this story -- namely, they are furious over the fact that the foolish, unfair Democrats would even dare to try to force Karl Rove to testify. Why, firing U.S. attorneys and lying to Congress and the country about it is all fair game, but that -- trying to get Rove to answer questions -- is really beyond the pale.

National Leadership Award baloney

The Republican fund-raising machine is back to some old tricks: the bogus, telemarketed "National Leadership Award" pitch/scam dating back to at least 2002 and ethically-challenged former Congressman Tom DeLay.

A friend of mine in the corporate world received this voice mail in mid-March 2007, as related to him by e-mail from his administrative assistant:

Heather Yolan from Congressman Tom Cole’s office called and said they would like to recognize you with a National Leadership Award, and would like to talk to you about a press release ASAP…their number is 1-877-213-0603.

I love the ASAP bit.

So, the calls are now associated with the likes of Republican Congressman Tom Cole...and Tom Reynolds, as well. Here's another recent example. And here. And here.

The blogger behind Disregard Evil Tongues summarizes the pitch he received:

I was promised a suitable plaque to proudly display in my office to show my workers how I support the President and his policies. I would get a fine wooden gavel for my desk. (The better to hit my co-workers who are not impressed by the plaque) I would be invited to the President's dinner in Washington where I would be able to voice my opinions on the problems impacting small business....I would be named an Honorary Chairman of the Small Business Leadership Committee....

But the catch: the Baloney Leadership Committee and all the rest of it can be yours only for the price of a contribution to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

That is right, for a mere $500.00 I could help the NRCC spread the word of their support of small business, and the NRCC was certain my name would carry a lot of weight in the [community] and would I be willing to send the money in two easy payments.

Rudy Giuliani realism via Crain's

Rudy Giuliani left New York City with a huge budget hole.

In "Rudy the candidate gets religion," Erik Engquist & Anne Michaud of Crain's New York Business remind readers of this, and also the fact that Rudy's engaging in some revisionist self-congratulation regarding the state of the City's finances when he arrived:

The former mayor....says that he turned "a deficit"--it was actually a projected shortfall--"into a multibillion-dollar surplus." Economists say a late '90s Wall Street boom powered the financial turnaround, but a recession began early in Mr. Giuliani's final year, before Sept. 11.

After he left, the city raised property, income and sales taxes to plug a massive budget hole.

"With You" showing in London

The documentary, With You, is showing in London this month.

I'm happy to report that the Gotham Knights' win-loss record improved markedly in subsequent seasons. ;)

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, champion from the top of the world

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit and activist and champion for human rights, has been nominated for a Nobel prize.

From the Guardian article, via TruthOut:

Sheila Watt-Cloutier would be a very happy woman indeed because her people are, "defending the right to be cold".

As it is, the Canadian activist, who lives in a remote community up above the Arctic circle, is thrilled to have her name put forward as one of the 181 nominees for this year's accolade from the Nobel committee.

Read the rest and see the video here.

As I've written on this blog before, and as others have said before me, Canada makes me proud to be a North American. :)

The less indispensable nation

That the US is the most powerful nation on the planet and that it continues to wane as a world power are not mutually exclusive realities. Few great world powers go from zenith to nadir overnight. Diminution takes time.

One of things that makes histories of great world powers interesting is how their leaders' mistakes--often born of hubris, self-deception, and myopia--as much as any other influence (human or natural) accelerate change and loss of power. Historians try to note such decline objectivity, as an amoral reality, while at the same time honestly assessing the sometimes bewilderingly interconnected consequences of--to use the term very broadly--"imperial" decline.

It is presumptuous of me to suggest this, but I think a relatively small percentage of Americans now alive have ever had a sense of the USA in decline as a major world influence. A challenged world power, yes, even one facing dire exitential threat--from the USSR, for instance. The percentage is increased now due to news coverage about the situation in Iraq and the continuing rise of other forces--e.g., India and China, global warming, the European Union, globalization/corporatization. And the number of professional observers discussing all of this is also rising, though to be sure, some, like Gore Vidal, have written about America's "last days of Empire" for decades.

In "Disaster: From Suez to Iraq," in the March 29 New York Review of Books, Brian Urquhart reviews
Wm. Roger Louis' Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez and Decolonization, and David M. Malone's The International Struggle over Iraq: Politics in the UN Security Council, 1980–2005. Urquhart gives a sharp summation of US geopolitical decline as it relates in part to international organizations and other nations.

Since the Second World War international organizations, which were mostly founded on the initiative of the United States, as well as a large majority of the world's governments, have depended on the United States for international leadership and much else. In spite of aberrations like the Vietnam War, it was almost taken for granted that the US would sponsor essential new undertakings, lead and provide resources in times of crisis, continue to provide vital economic aid, and send large-scale and urgent relief in time of trouble. During the cold war it was also taken for granted that the umbrella of United States armed strength would cover other countries if they were threatened. In the United Nations it was generally accepted that strong US support was essential for any serious action. Madeleine Albright was not far off the mark in the early 1990s when she called her country the "indispensable nation."

The policies and actions of the George W. Bush administration, and especially the disaster in Iraq, have put the future possibility of this kind of world leadership in serious questions. They have accelerated a process of historical change that was already in place after the end of the cold war with the rise of other economic and political powers and with other less tangible forces, including the new accessibility of information and communication, and the spread of fundamentalist religion... Perhaps the conventional concept of world leadership itself is now also outmoded. One thing is sure; like the [Anglo-French-Israeli] Suez adventure in 1956, the occupation of Iraq has become an unintended historical turning point, with far wider consequences than its authors ever had in mind.