A quick word (two, really) for liberals incensed that other liberals and leftists are attracted to the anti-imperialist, anti-authoritarian soundings of Ron Paul: fuck off. If you don’t like that people are praising a guy they would otherwise regard as just another demented freak filling out the field of demented freaks (and the one . . . → Read More: Why panicked liberals hate Ron Paul
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They’re wondering whether modern standards of fairness and objectivity permit them to note when a source is full of shit, or whether they should make readers read a story about the story in which the full-of-shit source went unchallenged. For the record, I’ve taken everything I read in the Times with a grain . . . → Read More: The New York Times asks readers: “Is it bad that we lie to you?” A blogger in Philadelphia catches what nobody else has: Barack Obama finally, finally owned up to being a Socialist.
I know I missed it, and I’m attuned to these things. I guess I can relax now: the general election more than ever looks like Obama’s to lose, as the Republicans variously gnaw upon one another’s nether regions or collapse weeping by the roadside, so come January 21 of 2013, the workers paradise awaits us all. Meanwhile, what can you say about Mitch McConnell? The latest scam spam in my inbox is a letter from a high-ranking official of the International Monetary Fund telling me to deal only with him in recovering my money from Nigeria. What is it with Nigeria? Okay, so the war in Iraq is over, according to Obama. This is because the Iraqis rejected his energetic pleas to let him keep some troops in the country—”Okay, not 30,000. How about 10,000? 5? 3500? Okay, fine, we’re leaving, but don’t blame me if we have to come back in with guns a-blazing …”—rather than observing the exit plan humorously agreed upon by the Bush administration. But even with that we’re not leaving, not if you count the 16,000-strong crowd manning the murder holes in the State Department’s gigantic downtown Baghdad bunker. By way of comparison, that’s almost as many people as staff every other US embassy in the world combined, minus Afghanistan. In recent years, both the civilian government and the military leadership have made a serious effort to elevate the cultural station of military personnel from that of citizen soldiers to the loftier and more separatist “warrior.” They’re all warriors now, and heroes. The end result is that both soldiers and civilians increasingly view the former as a breed apart. That’s not a good thing. For obvious democratic reasons, one wants the military to identify and empathize with the populations whence they spring. Identifying common experiences is one way to do that, and one experience a lot of military personnel have in common with a lot of civilians is that they’re making crap money and the people signing their paychecks don’t seem to care much about them. Another is that if they lose their jobs, they’re in deep trouble almost instantly. I ran across a couple of items yesterday that suggest an avenue for amplifying the Occupy protests within the U.S. by involving military personnel. One was a comment by my pal Schmutzie over at his place about a plan announced by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain to inflict some serious Bad upon veterans benefits, and the other was the first truly useful Twitter message I’ve received during my limited relationship with the service. Updated 9/24 Jacob Weisberg, who runs the parent company of online slapstick factory Slate magazine, regularly features himself in a Slate column called The Big Idea (The Thinking Behind The News). The last time I read The Big Idea, Weisberg impressively managed to discuss health insurance reform without a single mention of single-payer universal health care. This time, he tears into Ron Suskind and Suskind’s new, not especially flattering book about the Obama administration. The assault begins on an awkward note and gets worse, fast.
Houston, we have a problem. All of your woes can be traced to that one moment of missed opportunity. President Obama said the day of the 9/11 anniversary that in the decade following the 9/11 attacks, Americans have preserved our values and our character. He’s right. America’s history is of a whiny, over-privileged, self-aggrandizing and self-victimizing bully, and the decade since 9/11 has been clarifying. Americans Elect, the new internet-based plutocrat-powered political party, is calling for delegates to help determine the issues around which the party’s candidates will be selected. In theory this allows Everybody to participate because You debate among yourselves to determine the party Platform and then You choose a presidential candidate from the pool “certified by an [I]ndependent [C]ommittee to meet a set of standard qualification criteria such as background checks.” Who chooses the Independent Committee? I dunno. Maybe another Independent Committee. Or God. Somebody centrist, in any event, so New Testament God rather than Rip Your Lungs Out On A Whim God. Tom Friedman has endorsed the idea. He’s well known to be insane. Run. Continue reading Calling all Greens, Reds, Pinkos, Paulites and Anonymi: Help fuck this up Before he was Dr. House, when he was still English and a comedian, Hugh Laurie had a fabulously successful career with fellow comic and raconteur Stephen Fry. Among their ventures was a show called “A Bit of Fry & Laurie.” Through fabulous happenstance I found myself watching the first episode of their final series this evening and there at the end of it was a wonderful little riff on “It’s A Wonderful Life,” featuring Hugh Laurie as a certain Australian press baron lately in the news. Continue reading Dr. House goes postal on the Wonderful Lizard of Oz “Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.” Max Boot is my favorite neoconservative. He is completely unfamiliar with the concept of shame and like the rest of his clan he won’t ever flinch when it comes time to put somebody else’s life on the line. Anyone whose conscience survives initiation into that club soon gets voted out. Where Max really shines is as a polemicist. He’s a good writer. He can turn a juicy phrase like few others. That one above, his juiciest ever—and I know writers, I know he looked at it and thought to himself, “damn, I am good …”—went into a piece he wrote for the Weekly Standard not long after September 11. |
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