The resignation of Karen P. Hughes as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy gives President Bush an opportunity to fix one of the most glaring blunders in his administration's response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- a failure to prioritize ideological warfare over public relations.Dear Bob,
-Robert Satloff talking serious-like
This seems like a bizarre way to argue. It's true, obviously, that the country was much more prosperous in 1912 than it had been in 1790, but it's grown far more prosperous still in the dread income tax era. Were the horse-and-buggy days really good enough for Mitchell? After all, without the need for paved roads we were able to keep the tax burden low, low, low. The near-total absence of useful medical technologies helped keep health care expenses low. And with the population ill-educated by contemporary standards and wage rates much lower than they are today, it was easy to run a school system on the cheap.Speaking of bizarre ways to argue. Less than 3% of the federal budget is spent on transportation, and the paving and maintenance of roads is up to states and municipalities. Medicine has gotten more expensive, in part due to advances in technology and the lengthening of lifespans, but come on. Ever seen the coding department in a hospital? Health care in America is so goddamn expensive in equal part due to spiraling administrative costs. As liberals are fond of pointing out--correctly, I should add, just so as to prove to younz that I'm no economic dogmatist--nationalized health systems in the EU spend substantially less per patient and per capita than does the "mixed" American system, with identical or superior health outcomes. As for education, it doesn't cost much anyway. Again, less than 3% of the federal budget. Most education is paid for by local property taxes. Bada bing, bada boom. You know what costs a lot of money, Matt? War and the service on debt incurred in pursuit of war. Man. It's almost as if giving up our overseas empire and foreswearing "responding to continencies" in this or that "region" would allow both a major reduction in individual tax burdens and a concurrent increase in spending on national infrastructure and health care and, fuck, education, should one be so inclined.
-Yglesias, in way, way, way over his head
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, said the veto override “sends an unmistakable message that Democrats both will continue to strengthen our environment and economy and will refuse to allow President Bush to block America’s real priorities for partisan reasons.”
“The Water Resources Development Act provides authority for essential new navigation projects and funds programs to combat flood and coastal-storm damage, restore ecosystems, and projects guided by the Army Corps of Engineers essential to protecting the people of the Gulf Coast region,” Mr. Reid said.
-Accoding to the Times
2:13 For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.I would like to claim a prophetic mantle, but the truth is that it requires a very modest perspicacity indeed always to be right about Democrats, and at last there is no more complicated answer to the question of how DailyKos and FireDogLake and MyDD and the rest of the Donkle-adoring Netrootsian crowd can be so consistently and completely wrong in their analyses and wrong in their hopes than that they are, at the root of it, idiots. There's no neater way to put it. People for whom the Democratic party represents even a sliver of hope or lesser of evils are morons.
2:14 Is Israel a servant? is he a homeborn slave? why is he spoiled? 2:15 The young lions roared upon him, and yelled, and they made his land waste: his cities are burned without inhabitant.
2:16 Also the children of Noph and Tahapanes have broken the crown of thy head.
2:17 Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, when he led thee by the way? 2:18 And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river? 2:19 Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
2:20 For of old time I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bands; and thou saidst, I will not transgress; when upon every high hill and under every green tree thou wanderest, playing the harlot.
-According to the Prophet Jeremiah
MASCOUTAH, Ill. - Two hugs equals two days of detention for 13-year-old Megan Coulter.As ever thus, onward:
The eighth-grader was punished for violating a school policy banning public displays of affection when she hugged two friends Friday.
“I feel it is crazy,” said Megan, who was to serve her second detention Tuesday after classes at Mascoutah Middle School.
“I was just giving them a hug goodbye for the weekend,” she said.
[...]
District Superintendent Sam McGowen said that he thinks the penalty is fair and that administrators in the school east of St. Louis were following policy in the student handbook.
It states: “Displays of affection should not occur on the school campus at any time. It is in poor taste, reflects poor judgment, and brings discredit to the school and to the persons involved.”
Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.
Hi, I'm Alan Dershowitz. Did you know I was the youngest professor ever at Harvard. Well, I was. Until they hired that little Brooklyn math bitch, who, let's face it, is basically just a Doogie Howser type or a little man Tate, and probably still a virgin. Anyway, full professer: Dershowitz: 28 years of age. Suck on that, Finklestein, you putz.
Some people have accused me of supporting torture, when I have plainly stated on numerous occasions that I am totally opposed to it in all cases, unless of course it's done in the manners which I prescribe and openly acknowledged afterward. For instance, I would be OK with the CIA sticking sterilized needles under some Arab's fingernails, as long as the President came out the next day and made a speech explaining that he'd just stuck sterilized needles under some Arab's fingernails. And just to prove how long and hard I've thought about this, here is a ticking time bomb scenario that will scare the kuck out of you:
Recently, Israeli security officials confronted a ticking-bomb situation. Several days before Yom Kippur, they received credible information that a suicide bomber was planning to blow himself up in a crowded synagogue on the holiest day of the Jewish year. After a gun battle in which an Israeli soldier was killed, the commander of the terrorist cell in Nablus was captured. Interrogation led to the location of the suicide bomb in a Tel Aviv apartment. Israel denies that it uses torture and I am aware of no evidence that it did so to extract life-saving information in this case.As you can see, torture was completely unnecessary in this case, which obviously goes to show just how necessary it would have been if it would have been necessary. That's the sort of thinking that gets you tenure at Harvard when you're only 28. Hard thinking. Fuck you, Chomsky, you faggot.
There is a fact that goes entirely unmentioned in David Ignatius' article about the Shah of Iran, the Islamic Revolution, and its pertinence to Pakistan today. Other than Jonathan Schwarz, who knows what it is?
It's really more a job for the fake Steve Jobs, but I'm going to talk about Tom Friedman's latest article. Here's the amuse-bouche:
Remember Y2K? That was the “millennium bug,” the software glitch that threatened to melt down millions of computers when their internal clocks tried to roll over on Jan. 1, 2000, because they were not designed to handle that new date.I'm not sure what they did to Friedman in India, but whatever it was, I think I want some. I imagine it involved some good Afghan opium and a lot of limber, undulating boys and girls painted blue. I mean, I'm kind of a Francophile, but I'm willing to admit that there are some long-term structural problems with the French lifestyle, at least where, you know, paying for it is concerned. Friedman's fixation on India knows no such caveats. Vast, under-literate rural population? Subpar medical system? Chronically underdeveloped infrastructure? Fuck it, dude, let's go bowling. Tom F. views all of India like a combination of the Wild West, Galt's Gulch, and Atlantis. It is the most immature and outlandish impression of a nation held by any human being alive in the world today, and that includes the view of Iraq held by Paul Wolfowitz and the view of Iran held by everyone who writes for The National Review. I am all for India. I know many lovely Indians of the sort that Friedman's got such a hard-on for. Doctors and techies, self-made millionaires, perfect anglophones, astonishly polite, generous, wonderful, brilliant, cosmopolitan people who make the lived experience of my everyday existence that much better. I do not imagine that this indicates India is entirely a nation of saintly Thomas Edisons.
And remember that the only country that had enough software programmers to adjust all these computers so they wouldn’t go haywire, and do it at a reasonable price, was India. And remember that it was this huge operation that launched the Indian outsourcing industry — which is why I have long felt that Y2K should be a national holiday in India.
Well, remember this: there is an even bigger opportunity for India than Y2K waiting around the corner. I call it “E2K.”
E2K stands, in my mind, for all the energy programming and monitoring that thousands of global companies are going to be undertaking in the early 21st century to either become carbon neutral or far more energy efficient than they are today. India is poised to get a lot of this work.
I first started thinking about this when I heard Michael Dell declare that Dell Inc. would become “carbon neutral” in its operations by the end of 2008. He said Dell would take inventory of its total greenhouse gas outputs and then develop plans to reduce, eliminate or offset those emissions.What kind of steaming moron believes this shit? Michael Dell delivers $700 personal computers to the OfficeMax grazers of the world by buying everything up from East-Asian toxic reconversion gulags where indentured Chinese make components and throw everything else into the oily black river out back. Wake up, Friedman, you looney-tune. Do you like cheap electronics? Cheap electronics are dirty. You think plastics grow on trees? You think chemical processing is part of the green revofuckinglution? Michael Dell can no more make Dell "carbon neutral"--whatever that means, by the way; even if he really wanted to, which he probably doesn't--than you or I can stop shitting and farting. It's a part of the nature of the organism. These are the inevitable byproducts of its existence.
Okay. So in Pakistan, Uncle Pervez has dissolved the Supreme Court, suspended the Constitution, imposed martial law, and shut down television broadcasting. The equivalent action in the US would have Johnny Roberts and the gang cooling their heels under house arrest; the park service officers who patrol the National Mall and monuments would be beating the hell out of Justice Department lawyers and any other random schmuck walking by in a suit--i.e., every random schmuck in Washington--today's state elections would be cancelled across the country and next year's nationals would be in serious doubt. CNN, MSNBC, Fox, all the cable stations, and all the networks would be off the air.
"What we think we ought to be doing is using our various forms of influence at this point in time to help a friend who we think has done something ill-advised to try and get back on a course [of] greater freedom, democracy in that country."
Awesome.
I think the failure to appreciate that only certain conclusions can be divined from logical constructs is largely attributable to uncritical optimism - something not altogether bad.About a decade ago, the World Trade Organization held talks in Seattle. A number of protesters, including some anarchist groups, blew that shit up. Oh, how the reasonable left, the people who have never changed anything nor ever will change anything, howled. Oh, how it pained them personally. It was irresponsible. It destroyed property. It inconvenienced people, ye gods. It was impolite. It was impolitic. It was immature. To this familiar litany add the even more specious calumnies that these were mere children, destructive brats who didn’t know what they were doing, who had chosen ineffectual methods of protest because they were naïve, abusive, horrible, no good, very bad youths with no respect for anything or anyone.
La_Rana
Look at these guys. They live in a fuck-all insane postcolonial schizopolis with a deeply insecure, nuclear-armed military dictatorship ruling as a brittle bulwark against the other likely scenario, which is a lot like Afghanistan under the Taliban, except instead of blowing up some Buddhas they'll lob a few A-bombs at Dehli just to show those Hindi BJP motherfuckers who's really got the biggest dicks. And yet there they are, getting the fuck beat out of em in the streets for the rule of law. Lawyers! You've got to admire the balls on them. They're going to lose, after all. Uncle Sam is so fucking scared of the nuclear Islamonazi scenario that he'll never stop shipping suitcases full of money, porno mags, and ammunition to Uncle Pervez, and these guys basically know it. Turn on NPR this evening listen to the lilting, perfect English of some Cambridge-educated Pakistani barrister telling you that the US must stand up for democracy and do what is right and not allow the people to be trampled by this little man with his big uniform and funny haircut and hard-on for power and delusions that he alone stands between the world and the Caliphate of the Islamofascisti forever and ever, amen. Do you hear the undertone of the music of his voice? That, my friends, is resignation and despair.
Nevertheless. Here in the good ol' US of A, the ongoing imposition of martial law under the aegis of the Commander-in-Chief, an imaginery title bestowed on an inadequate man, meets a lot of forcefully-worded editorializing from sinecured nonprofit drones and sinecured university drones and concerned lawyers who will take to the television studio and play their part in our choreographed "crazy plebiscitary dictatorship," to steal Yglesias' inspired turn of phrase. We have plenty of hand-wringing and the usual yammerings for mo-betta Democrats, the political equivalent of Tantalus inventing and implementing his own infamous punishment. Now I am on the record--and not, to be clear, reneging--as saying that street protests have as little chance here as there. Less, in fact. But honestly, wouldn't you like to see some Justice Department lawyers rioting for once rather than planting leaks with the press? Wouldn't you like to see some dissident JAG lawyer testifying before Congress spit on the floor every time a Congresscreature speaks? Wouldn't you like to see Abe Foxman worry less about whether or not Jimmy Carter made a face at his yarmulke and help put the remaining moral force--what hasn't been frittered away on the noble goal of neck-stomping Palestinians--of post-Holocaust Jewry behind the cause of rejecting arbitrary authority in America? Just, as they say, for good measure.
For the sake of all that is sexy and true, you've got Russ Feingold, whom you may remember as a quite recent avatar of Donkle hopes and dreams, the principled man who would really in truly bring 'em home, who along with the lady built like a Boxster is going to roll on the nebbish little Eichmann-for-AG because he's not as bad as he could be, a rubric by which I might as well go back to barebacking in the bathhouse because, fuck it, AIDS ain't as bad as Ebola. Might as well give it a shot. Maybe it won't be as bad as peole say.
Yesterday I recommended an article by George Will. It was . . . odd. Today, I recommend an article by Bob Novak. It is . . . less odd, but odd nevertheless. I have a certain affection for Novak. He is an old, foul, Chicago rivermonster. His reactionary politics are not my reactionary politics, but he isn't a phony, and I admire that. The article is about Carter, Israel, and Palestine, by the way.
You know, the cool thing about Pakistan is that they announce the suspension of the constitution. Tom Friedman should write an article on how America can learn from their forward-thinking successes in this industry.
I highly recommend George Will's piece in today's Post. It won't happen, needless to say.
In other news, I urge you to read the comments to Thoreau's recent post at UO, wherein a lot of people who are at least able to write in complete sentences display an astonishing, but familiar, inability to understand why political parties are called parties.
