I’ve written a lot about the alleged financial crisis afflicting the country, by which is meant Wall Street and investors, but I don’t really care about it beyond the very considerable entertainment value. Some real pain attaches to it, but by the time we hear about that the revolution will be here and the . . . → Read More: In which Gerrard Winstanley Rescues Me And You
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The only fair way to score the debates is to watch them without audio. That way one doesn’t get distracted by what the candidates say, which anyway has only a minor relationship with reality. The important thing is how they looked. Did McCain smirk? Did Obama get that pinched, schoolmarm-ish look? Did either man . . . → Read More: In which we watch the first presidential debate with the sound off Due to the theft of my computer I wasn’t able to comment in more or less real time on the much larger if less meaningful to me theft of $700 billion $1 trillion from the US Treasury. Yes, it was an inside job. In fact, everyone is on the inside except me and, maybe, . . . → Read More: Bush Administration + $1 Trillion + Broad Powers = Bad, Bad Idea  Trillion + Broad Powers = Bad, Bad Idea">3 comments  Bush Administration, Democrats, Eat the Press, Capital Crimes, Weldon's Page First, our anti-spam device has just passed the 500,000 served milestone, meaning that it has caught more than 500,000 spam messages from scum and robots purporting to be legitimate commenters. And second, some lowlife scum stole my computer from the Santa Monica library yesterday during the two minutes I had my back turned. . . . → Read More: And in other news, many people suck Astute readers may have noticed during the past seven-plus years that the government has spent way more money than it has appropriated. That’s not intrinsically a bad thing, but it’s pretty bad when it’s done mostly so that people with a lot of money can have a lot more, and to finance wars, investments . . . → Read More: In which we posit that the sinkhole is bigger than the money We wrote recently about the regrettable tendency of New York Times finance writers to predict events inversely; when they say something bad might not happen, it inevitably does; when they say something bad might happen within a few weeks, it seems to happen within a few days. Much of today’s Times business section . . . → Read More: In which money market funds get the NY Times kiss of death The New York Times business desk reporters and editors work hard to be objective and calm in their coverage of events. That’s why they’ve been consistently behind the curve lately, and why readers who mistake what amounts to Charge of the Light Brigade bravado as cutting edge financial journalism are similarly dragging ass behind . . . → Read More: Armageddon, or, How to read the New York Times business pages Continuing from where we left off, which was with the explanation that however poorly you may think of politicians, you are, unless burdened with a constant and absolutely crushing sense of impending doom, nowhere near the awful truth. The reason politicians get away with what they do is that recognizing what they do is . . . → Read More: In which we confess our love of uplift and the bright future Despite my constant exhortation to readers, it’s very likely, to the point of a lock, that voters will not choose to bring on the revolution by electing John McCain and precipitating the simultaneous onsets of facism and the worst depression since the best one. Almost as certain is that among president Obama’s first orders . . . → Read More: Many a slip twixt cup and (apoca)lips, or why Obama pardoned Bush A People’s History of American Empire, by Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, and Paul Buhle My reading theme this month has been the American imperial project, which seems appropriate enough this season as I consider a vote for whether or not I want my foreign bombing done to the heady harmonies of the Beach Boys. I had wanted to pull out Greene’s opus on its own merits for a while anyway, and for this series, I wanted to find some companions that took a global historical perspective. It’s not like the U.S. is new at this game, or that we’re the first at it, although when it comes to exceptionalism, we do have our own personalized flair. American Empire isn’t the version of Zinn’s work I’d rather have read–it’s literally the comic book version–but it’s interesting on its merits. There was a third book intended in this bundle as well, but it didn’t turn out to be any sort of policy critique. I’ll roll that one into the next series of reviews. [Also, the discussion of The Quiet American contains spoilers, if you're the kind of person who cares.] |
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