Welcome to your St. Patrick’s Day open thread. First of all, Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Who’s drinking green beer and eating corned beef and cabbage tonight? At my house, Free Radical made his own corned beef and we’re going celebrate home-cooked style. What are your plans?
By graymalkn (Flickr.com) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
One thing I find amazing right now is how many people from both the left and the right are talking about intervention in Libya. Supporting regime change in another country, what could possibly go wrong? That’s why this blog post from Tom Ricks (author of Fiasco) really resonated with me:
Contrary to many of this blog’s readers, I do think the United States should intervene to help Libya’s rebels. But I also think that invading Iraq in 2003 was a disastrous move for the United States, one that will cost us for decades to come. So it was with very mixed feelings that I read a letter urging President Obama to act, and saw it signed by so many of those people who urged us into Iraq:
Stephen E. Biegun William Inboden Danielle Pletka Bruce Pitcairn Jackson
John Podhoretz Ellen Bork Ash Jain Randy Scheunemann Paul Bremer
Robert Kagan Gary J. Schmitt Scott Carpenter David Kramer Dan Senor
Elizabeth Cheney Irina Krasovskaya William Taft Eliot Cohen William Kristol
Marc Thiessen Seth Cropsey Tod Lindberg Daniel Twining Thomas Donnelly
Ann Marlowe Ken Weinstein Michele Dunne Cliff May Leon Wieseltier
Eric Edelman Joshua Muravchik Rich Williamson Jamie Fly Michael O’Hanlon
Damon Wilson Reuel Marc Gerecht Martin Peretz
Yep, pretty much. If that group thinks it’s a good idea, it’s a terrible idea. I sympathize with the rebels in Libya but military intervention is not the answer.
I’m pretty amazed, but it appears that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is serious about running for president. He’ll have a lot of obstacles to overcome – he looks like Boss Hogg and sounds like Foghorn Leghorn. He also has a Google problem.
A whopping seven of the nine results center on race-related flaps that Barbour has been involved in over the years. Google’s autocomplete feature draws on factors including the popularity of search terms. To explain what each of these searches refers to:
Haley Barbour racist: This one is self-explanatory
Haley Barbour civil rights: Ditto.
Haley Barbour citizens council: This is a reference to comments made by Barbour to a reporter last year praising the White Citizens Councils of the 1950s and 1960s. In Barbour’s account of his hometown of Yazoo City, they were actually a check on the KKK. Critics quickly pointed out that the groups were formed to push an ugly white supremacist platform, and Barbour had to issue a clarification.
…
Haley Barbour license plate: Last month, Barbour was asked at a press conference about the proposal by a Confederate group to issue a state license plate commemorating Confederate hero and KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest. He responded: “I don’t go around denouncing people. That’s not going to happen.” After another outcry, he subsequently promised he would veto the effort if it passed the Legislature.
Haley Barbour and watermelon: This refers to a recently resurfaced New York Times article from 1982 that reported:
But the racial sensitivity at Barbour headquarters was suggested by an exchange between the candidate and an aide who complained that there would be ”coons” at a campaign stop at the state fair. Embarrassed that a reporter heard this, Mr. Barbour warned that if the aide persisted in racist remarks, he would be reincarnated as a watermelon and placed at the mercy of blacks.
An old-time Southern governor against the first black president? Personally I think he’ll lose worse than Sarah Palin.