Turkeys in the Oven

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

-The Times

There was also a certain bent appeal in the notion of running a savage burn on one Las Vegas Hotel and then—instead of becoming a doomed fugitive on the highway to L.A.—just wheeling across town, trading in the red Chevy convertible for a white Cadillac and checking into another Vegas hotel, with press credentials to mingle with a thousand ranking cops from all over America, while they harangued each other about the Drug Problem.

-Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Old father, old artificer, stand me now and forever in good stead.

-James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

I am right now imagining the strangled sounds choking out of Barry Obama's clenched throat when they brought him the news that the guy they thought was the enemy's second in command was in fact a mere goldbricker. "Now let me be clear . . ." Not only do we not know what we're doing in Afghanistan, we do not know to whom we're doing it. This suggests a level of imperial decrepitude that I was not yet prepared to hope for. It's gonna be a great Thanksgiving.