L'armée des ombres

Yggie's commenters are correct to note that the transcript pretty seriously misquotes Chuckles Schumer in the first paragraph, but I am curious about

In contrast to his proposed remedies, Schumer’s critique of Hamas policy is sound.

I didn't hear any critique of any "policy" of Hamas, but just to be clear, Hamas twofold platform is basically the provision of human services to Palestinians and armed resistance to a foreign occupying power.

Routines

Can the Obama administration just retire the notion of "Grand Bargains" please? That sort of thing simply cannot work when you are dealing with a polarized electorate and an opposition party which has declared all out legislative war. To think they will negotiate in good faith is just ridiculous beyond belief

This article about Rahm's strategy for the climate change legislation is fascinating. I continue to believe these guys get way, way too fine with this stuff and it just won't work against political thugs who are committed using the hard, blunt instrument of obstruction. I don't know what it's going to take for them to get this.

-La Digs

This dazzling prose comes from a woman who just a few posts prior was yucking it up over Glenn Beck's new potboiler. That's a telling bit of self-unawareness, isn't it?

Her bosom heaved as he revealed his hard, blunt instrument . . .

As for the analysis . . .

At every instance of cooperation and collusion between our governing factions, the Donk concludes that someone--Obama, Emmanuel, Schumer, whomever--"got punk'd," whereas whenever some minor congresscreature raises a lonely voice against, say, the perpetual sacrifice of virgins to the death-god Molech, that is supposed to represent the true form and nature of the Democratic party. Obviously this is essentially backward. The actual apparatus of government isn't "polarized" at all. War and big business are shared endeavors. The expansion of the surveillance state, the destruction of privacy, the erosion of individual human autonomy, the destruction of the rights of the accused, the essentially superlegal status of police and military forces, and the project to create a population of placid, uninformed instruction-followers via a carefully designed program of national mediocrity are all joint endeavors.

But, well, uh, I mean, I guess there are still plenty of schmoes who can't figure out that the good cop and the bad cop are on the same fucking team.

Bookthumping

It seems to me that in our effort to affix blame and responsibility, to reassure ourselves that the Deepwater Horizon incident represents something incidental rather than fundamental to our civilization, we engage in a grave and ridiculous misapprehension about the nature of the world we've made for ourselves. Does it ever strike you as odd that the extraction of a toxic and flammable organic substance from deep beneath the crust of our planet is our society's most essential activity, that without it we couldn't support our numbers--grow our food, power our industry, make our construction materials, travel, etc. etc.? It strikes me as a little odd. The fact that we've "spilled"--isn't released a better word?--enough of this stuff to remake ecosystems just doesn't suggest to me that we have a problem with BP, or a problem with the Coast Guard, or a problem with the Obama Administration, but rather that we have a problem with industrial civilization, namely, and I hate to repeat myself, that its most basic and necessary activity involves poking holes in the Earth to get at this stuff in the first place. I know that environmental types like a story in which technology and moderation first stem and ultimately reverse the changes we have wrought, but--those of you in recovery can bear me out--addicts cannot moderately imbibe. So what does that tell you about "reducing your carbon footprint", mes potes?

Out to Lunch

Hey, uh, by dah way: Monsieur IOZ will be out of the office this week and will be returning next Monday. Although he will have intermitent access to the electronic worldmind, he will not be able to give a shit until he returns. Please do not leave him a message, as he will only claim that it "must've got caught in the spam filter, because I definitely never got that." In the case of a true emergency, you are basically SOL, because he hasn't got any colleagues for you to contact, unless you are between the ages of 16 and 24, between the heights of 5'8" and 6'1", and maintain a body fat percentage of less than 6%, in which case, please email your name, vital statistics, and a professional head shot to monsieur underscore ioz at hotmail dot com.