From the Department of Weekend Reading

Now that the recession is over, can we go back to living on credit?

• The Air Force makes its men and women wear big dumb reflective belts that everyone hates -- there’s a Facebook protest.
• Held by the Taliban: a five-part recounting of how a journalist was kidnapped by a Taliban warlord he was trying to interview, and escaped.
• Though higher temperatures are already messing with their livelihoods, the farmers lobby is pushing hard against climate control bill. Good job taking the long view there, guys.
• Those naughty Tehranis: Iran shipping weapons to Shiite rebels in Yemen.
• Lindsey Graham, a rare voice of calm amid the Republican fury, tells off protestors: “We’re not going to be the party of angry white guys.”
• Now there’s an app (called Freedom, of course) that blocks your access to the Internet. For your own good, of course.
• An interesting fact about tiger moths: they evade bats by jamming their sonar.
• Why much of the backlash against circumcision is just plain stupid.
• Ten lessons from NBC screwing up with Leno (#1: He’s a lot more annoying earlier in the evening).
• Foreign Service officer Matthew How resigns to protest direction of Afghanistan war: “I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.” Read letter here.
• How the anodized Zach Braff sound is destroying music.
• Will Maureen Dowd just shut up? Please?!

From the Department of International Cuisine


So Iceland is losing its three McDonalds franchises due to the sharply rising costs of imports (fiscal crisis and all). It can safely be predicted that the country will likely survive this culinary crisis -- and not just because of their inarguably awesome hot dogs (like you can get at the Pylsur stand in downtown Reykjavik).

On this news, Foreign Policy was prompted to remember Thomas Friedman's glib-but-classic old formulation of the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention (here), which claimed that no two nations with McDonalds ever went to war with each other. They wondered whether comparatively defenseless Iceland -- with its lack of a standing army, and not much in the way of an American military presence anymore -- is now in danger from aggressive nations who can still get Big Macs.

It's all a moot point anyway, however, since last year's little spat between Russia and Georgia (both of whom still have access to Chicken Nuggets) disproved Friedman's theory once and for all. It took ten years for that to happen, though -- Friedman's column first ran in 1998 -- so the Pax Ronald McDonald had a decent run, all things considered.

From the Department of Natural Resources


Above is a photograph by Lorne Gill, which won the "Urban Wildlife" category of this year's British Wildlife Photography Awards.

You can also see a slideshow of some other winners at the British Times here.

From the Department of Realpolitik

Though they haven't even been out of the White House for even a year, it's sometimes easy to forget just how brazen Cheney and his cronies could be when it comes to rewriting reality to suit their needs. But the old veep keeps cropping up every few weeks from his foxhole to pop off another few rounds of untruth, whether it's brazenly claiming that his torture policies somehow worked (McCain responded, um, No they didn't) or more recently, calling out Barry for "dithering" over Afghanistan.

Now, one man's "dithering" is of course another man's careful reasoning. You can argue with the way in which Barry is leaving his options open with Afghanistan -- without a strong level of unequivocal support from the U.S., our allies in country aren't exactly going to be sticking their heads out to help us, after all -- but for the architect of Dubya's imbecile crusades to critique it is just staggering.

Over at the McClatchy papers' foreign policy blog, their correspondents put it more succinctly:

Do we smell a campaign of historic revisionism by those widely seen as primarily responsible for the disaster in Afghanistan that has prompted Army Gen. Stanley A. McCrystal's request for up to 80,000 more soldiers?

It was, after all, the Bush administration that failed in 2001 to deploy U.S. forces to stop Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahri, Mullah Mohammad Omar and thousands of their followers from escaping into Pakistan and then diverted U.S. troops, time, resources and energy to the 2003 invasion of Iraq before the al Qaida and Taliban threat was eliminated.

It was also the Bush administration that empowered the return of the warlords whose deprivations sparked the Taliban's formation in the early 1990s. And it was the Bush administration that helped bring to Afghanistan and maintain in power the corruption-rife government of Hamid Karzai.

Uncle Joe Biden (he just seems like a fun uncle, you know, where you never quite know what he's going to say) had a more succinct take on Cheney's opinion of Barry's foreign policy: "Who cares?"

So, in other words: sit down, Dick. The grownups are talking now.

From the Department of Weekend Reading

Who wants to vote for Karzai again? And again, and again…

• What China has learned from Hezbollah about (maybe) fighting America.
• Volcker wants something simple – banks should be just plain old banks again.
• Halliburton (and 30 GOP senators) doesn’t think female contractors have the right to file criminal charges after being sexually assaulted. Al Franken did something about it.
• Print and read: Dexter Filkins' superb feature on McChrystal and Afghanistan, could just convince you that not only is a (much) longer war inevitable, it's probably also the right thing.
  
• Mom has cancer. No insurance. So Dad joins the Army.
• Just because we want out of Afghanistan, doesn’t mean that Barry’s getting the right advice about it from his people.
• Who’s got the nukes? Fun weapons proliferation infographic.
• Millions in AIDS funding being wasted in D.C., while sufferers die on the street.
• Finding the right wholesome tween to drop into Disney’s star machine.
• Going Rogue -- two (really different) Sarah Palin books, one title.
• Watch the outstanding Frontline episode on Afghanistan, “Obama’s War,” here, and see why the administration has only a choice of lousy options.
• What’s so wrong with Superfreakonomics, anyway?
• R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis – so accurate to the source that some fundamentalists don’t dare read it.

From the Department of Spiritual Affairs



Figuring that they might as well go looking for new members among a constituency that has proven their affinity not only for ceremonial hooey but for homophobia and retrograde sexism, the Vatican decided to reach out to Anglicans frustrated by their church's decision to allow gay and female bishops.

Theoretically, Anglicans who aren't crazy about how darn ... nice and welcoming ... their church has been with the gays and the womenfolk, could now join the Catholic Church under groupings called personal ordinariates. Married Anglican priests could stay married, but they just couldn't become bishops. This would be the first concrete move to reunite the two churches since the big split in 1534.

While the eventual reunification of these entities makes sense and is long past overdue -- particularly since they're only really separate because Henry VIII wanted to get himself a divorce -- the ugly subtext behind it all is that God's Rottweiler appears to really be doing this simply because he thinks disaffected Anglicans share his preferred prejudices. Come, he may as well be saying, join us in our march to the past.

From the Department of Evil Media


There are a few choice moments from Jacob Weisberg's takedown of Fox News in the current Newsweek, most particularly where he analyzes what happened when the fair and balanced network reported that White House communications director Anita Dunn accused them of bias. In short, they scoffed and guffawed, while simultaneously proving the charge:

Consider Fox's Web story on the episode. It quotes five people. Two of them work for Fox. All of them assert that administration officials are either wrong in substance or politically foolish to criticize the network. No one is cited supporting Dunn's criticisms or saying that it could make sense for Obama to challenge the network's power. It's a textbook example of a biased journalism.

Not that this really surprises anyone. One does wonder whether the White House broadsides against Fox are worth anything in the end, though. It's one thing to refuse to show up there (why be a punching bag for Hannity and Beck?), but quite another to get down in the mud with the pigs who cheerleaded fascism for eight years before suddenly (supposedly) getting worried about the Constitution.

Everybody just gets dirty in the end -- and Fox loves it.