A friend of mine recently began writing a “three-dot” column, one of those exercises in stringing together otherwise unrelated items of gossip, celebrity spotting and local news. Washington Post reporter/columnist/man about town Dana Milbank has recently taken up a three-dot column at Slate, although he has so far refused to acknowledge the inherent dottiness of it. It occurs to me that this ethereal and short-attention-span format lends itself to coverage of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress as no other can, which is probably why the institutional press have covertly adopted it.
So we’re going with the flow and inaugurating a new weekly column, “Three Dots Over Washington.” Enjoy.
Three Dots Over Washington
File under “political football”: Senate majority “leader” Bill Frist threatened to run with the ball on the Dubai port deal but punted instead …
Former neocon darling Francis Fukuyama celebrates the return of history with a divorce and a test-drive in his shiny new Slate-mobile, but political scientists Keir Lieber and Darryl Press tell us in Foreign Affairs magazine that neoconservatism is still Da Bomb … literally …
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, she of the legs that just won’t quit, is globetrotting again, telling Arab leaders that democracy is the shizzle except when it izzlen’t, and that the recent bloodbath in Iraq is nothing more than the birthing pains of a nascent democracy. But Rami Khouri of Lebanon’s Daily Star sez, “Not so fast, mama,” to Rice and fellow Bush gal Karen Hughes, whose own public diplomacy Motherhood Tour hasn’t been going so well …
Spotted in Washington: US president George W. Bush, freshly returned from forty years of leading his people toward energy independence, or leading his people toward energy independence in forty years. The tour may not have done much to bolster his credentials on the issue, but it did provide an opportunity to showcase his compassionate conservatism when he took time out to personally fix a “budget mixup” that temporarily cost some workers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory their jobs. Meanwhile, sez the prez about solving our energy problems, “I gave a speech that did just that.” Sounds about right …
The New Math: The Pentagon reports that after a year of intensive training, the Iraqi army is less prepared to take over the country’s defense than it was a year ago. We say”stop now,” before we train them completely out of existence. Why does $200 billion plus $100 billion add up to zero? Easy: “Satan controls our schools.” Now you know …
Slate magazine has traded professional driftwood Bill Saletan and Supreme Court groupie Dahlia Lithwick to the Washington Post for Post political gossiper Dana Milbank and a wanker TBNL. Anchors aweigh …
Finally, file under “I’ve got a secret”: Secrecy maven Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists reports that an early victim of the push to reclassify previously declassified information was a 1958 Pentagon handbook on surviving nuclear war, the “Emergency Plans Book.” But, he says, prospective readers willing to go the extra mile and risk the wrath of the Feds can still track down a copy— on Amazon, disguised as “The Doomsday Scenario.” See you next week …
=========================
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The “three dot” theory of governance …
A friend of mine recently began writing a “three-dot” column, one of those exercises in stringing together otherwise unrelated items of gossip, celebrity spotting and local news. Washington Post reporter/columnist/man about town Dana Milbank has recently taken up a three-dot column at Slate, although he has so far refused to acknowledge the inherent dottiness of it. It occurs to me that this ethereal and short-attention-span format lends itself to coverage of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress as no other can, which is probably why the institutional press have covertly adopted it.
So we’re going with the flow and inaugurating a new weekly column, “Three Dots Over Washington.” Enjoy.
File under “political football”: Senate majority “leader” Bill Frist threatened to run with the ball on the Dubai port deal but punted instead …
Former neocon darling Francis Fukuyama celebrates the return of history with a divorce and a test-drive in his shiny new Slate-mobile, but political scientists Keir Lieber and Darryl Press tell us in Foreign Affairs magazine that neoconservatism is still Da Bomb … literally …
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, she of the legs that just won’t quit, is globetrotting again, telling Arab leaders that democracy is the shizzle except when it izzlen’t, and that the recent bloodbath in Iraq is nothing more than the birthing pains of a nascent democracy. But Rami Khouri of Lebanon’s Daily Star sez, “Not so fast, mama,” to Rice and fellow Bush gal Karen Hughes, whose own public diplomacy Motherhood Tour hasn’t been going so well …
Spotted in Washington: US president George W. Bush, freshly returned from forty years of leading his people toward energy independence, or leading his people toward energy independence in forty years. The tour may not have done much to bolster his credentials on the issue, but it did provide an opportunity to showcase his compassionate conservatism when he took time out to personally fix a “budget mixup” that temporarily cost some workers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory their jobs. Meanwhile, sez the prez about solving our energy problems, “I gave a speech that did just that.” Sounds about right …
The New Math: The Pentagon reports that after a year of intensive training, the Iraqi army is less prepared to take over the country’s defense than it was a year ago. We say”stop now,” before we train them completely out of existence. Why does $200 billion plus $100 billion add up to zero? Easy: “Satan controls our schools.” Now you know …
Slate magazine has traded professional driftwood Bill Saletan and Supreme Court groupie Dahlia Lithwick to the Washington Post for Post political gossiper Dana Milbank and a wanker TBNL. Anchors aweigh …
Finally, file under “I’ve got a secret”: Secrecy maven Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists reports that an early victim of the push to reclassify previously declassified information was a 1958 Pentagon handbook on surviving nuclear war, the “Emergency Plans Book.” But, he says, prospective readers willing to go the extra mile and risk the wrath of the Feds can still track down a copy— on Amazon, disguised as “The Doomsday Scenario.” See you next week …
=========================
If you like the site, please consider donating a few dollars through the PayPal link at the head of the page.