Monday, January 26, 2009
I Love William Kristol
William Kristol's final column on the NYT op-ed page is a sad day. After the demise of the great republican liars of note, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, Rice, Hadley, Feith, and the top, self-professed, liar, GWB, Kristol could always be counted on to fill the void.
I mean all the really good liars are gone. Rove still lies loudly and unashamedly, but that's his job, and his character. We know that by now. He's been a sneaky little pig since his college republican days.
Richard Perle is malevolent. You can tell he's lying just by looking at his face. No need to hear the words.
Cheney is a caricature, a melding of Daddy Warbucks and Mr. Potter, the evil banker. No fun there.
Rush Limbaugh was forced to control his outright lies by Al Franken and other fact-checkers. Now he just bloviates in general terms about the democrat party and libs etc etc. You can tune in Rush once a week or once a month, and never feel like you've missed anything.
Coulter and Malkin, although they only occasionaly approach the truth, are so disconnected from reality, that their lies don't matter so much as the delivery. We want them to go away where they can be cared for, even humanely.
The speechwriters, Frum and Noonan, don't qulify as first-rate liars. Their craft is the weasel word. You can see the pride they take in misleading without actually lying.
Which is why I like Kristol. In plain boring prose, week after week, he has just served up lies and wrong and stupid with consistency and equinamity. He was an inspiration to bloggers all over the left. Grab a coffee, click on the NYT link, and boom, you've got 500 words without breaking a sweat. He could always be counted on for a little more ammo, a little less self-doubt, and a hell of a lot more commitment to change.
That's why I'll miss him. I suppose we can still turn to Tony Blankely.He's always good for a clanger or two, but Tony seems like a truly decent guy who believes what he says. Even though he writes for Rev. Moon's paper.
I mean all the really good liars are gone. Rove still lies loudly and unashamedly, but that's his job, and his character. We know that by now. He's been a sneaky little pig since his college republican days.
Richard Perle is malevolent. You can tell he's lying just by looking at his face. No need to hear the words.
Cheney is a caricature, a melding of Daddy Warbucks and Mr. Potter, the evil banker. No fun there.
Rush Limbaugh was forced to control his outright lies by Al Franken and other fact-checkers. Now he just bloviates in general terms about the democrat party and libs etc etc. You can tune in Rush once a week or once a month, and never feel like you've missed anything.
Coulter and Malkin, although they only occasionaly approach the truth, are so disconnected from reality, that their lies don't matter so much as the delivery. We want them to go away where they can be cared for, even humanely.
The speechwriters, Frum and Noonan, don't qulify as first-rate liars. Their craft is the weasel word. You can see the pride they take in misleading without actually lying.
Which is why I like Kristol. In plain boring prose, week after week, he has just served up lies and wrong and stupid with consistency and equinamity. He was an inspiration to bloggers all over the left. Grab a coffee, click on the NYT link, and boom, you've got 500 words without breaking a sweat. He could always be counted on for a little more ammo, a little less self-doubt, and a hell of a lot more commitment to change.
That's why I'll miss him. I suppose we can still turn to Tony Blankely.He's always good for a clanger or two, but Tony seems like a truly decent guy who believes what he says. Even though he writes for Rev. Moon's paper.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Attitude Really Is Everything
My friend, Cindi, brought this to my attention. It is a quote from Margaret Salinger, JD Salinger's daughter.
"It's hard work to find the proper balance, the point of equinox for oneself. My friend Jacobo Timerman told me something nearly 20 years ago, when he was newly released from torture in a clandestine jail in Argentina. To this day, it remains the single most useful thing anyone has ever said to me. I can't recreate the elegance of a lifelong journalist's language, but the gist of what he said is as follows. He asked me why I had such sad eyes. I didn't have an answer; that was part of the problem. I felt like an idiot for having sad eyes: I'd not been in jail, I'd not been tortured by the military. He said, It is a very hard thing to find happiness. Hundreds and thousands of examples exist of how to be miserable, and they are everywhere you look, for you to copy. It is _easy_ to be miserable, he said, millions can show you the way. It requires no thought or creativity of your own, just following. To be happy is hard, because no one can show you, it is something you have to work out, create for yourself. No one can give you a model to copy, though many will volunteer, because happiness is not off the rack, one size fits all, it is something each of us has to tailor-make fo rhimself or her self.
"Up until that point, I had felt ashamed of myself, as well as sad. He took the shame away. When I saw him off at the airport, he gave me a painting of a pasture, surrounded by barbed wire, in the highlands of Argentina. On the back of the painting he wrote, "Animo! Margarita" (which translates loosely as grab some life, fill yourself with life; it's a cry that urges you on, all that and more). "
"It's hard work to find the proper balance, the point of equinox for oneself. My friend Jacobo Timerman told me something nearly 20 years ago, when he was newly released from torture in a clandestine jail in Argentina. To this day, it remains the single most useful thing anyone has ever said to me. I can't recreate the elegance of a lifelong journalist's language, but the gist of what he said is as follows. He asked me why I had such sad eyes. I didn't have an answer; that was part of the problem. I felt like an idiot for having sad eyes: I'd not been in jail, I'd not been tortured by the military. He said, It is a very hard thing to find happiness. Hundreds and thousands of examples exist of how to be miserable, and they are everywhere you look, for you to copy. It is _easy_ to be miserable, he said, millions can show you the way. It requires no thought or creativity of your own, just following. To be happy is hard, because no one can show you, it is something you have to work out, create for yourself. No one can give you a model to copy, though many will volunteer, because happiness is not off the rack, one size fits all, it is something each of us has to tailor-make fo rhimself or her self.
"Up until that point, I had felt ashamed of myself, as well as sad. He took the shame away. When I saw him off at the airport, he gave me a painting of a pasture, surrounded by barbed wire, in the highlands of Argentina. On the back of the painting he wrote, "Animo! Margarita" (which translates loosely as grab some life, fill yourself with life; it's a cry that urges you on, all that and more). "
Sunday, January 11, 2009
leaders and Leaders
Some days the enormity of the debacle that was George Bush's presidency is overwhelming. But just as Obama has given us hope there are others like him, true leaders. Some are in the military.
We sometimes forget that our generals cannot decide what wars to fight, or when. That would be a military dictatorship. Rather, they must do as they are instructed the best they can, as McArthur said, "As God gives them the light to see it."
Many of us hated and despised this war in Iraq. We correctly saw that it was a fruitless, colonial adventure with lies as it's rationale. But no one, or at least no one I know, ever blamed our military. It was clear they were trying to do the best they could. As they said about the British army in World War I: They are "Lions led by donkeys."
One factoid of this war has always stood out to me. When our marines knocked down that statue of Sadaam Hussein, it was reported that they first wrapped an American flag around the statue's head. That particular flag had flown over the World Trade Center. These Marines were fueled by the fury of revenge.
Reading this, my heart sank. These poor bastards are over there fighting, killing and dying with every ounce of strength and bravery they have. They were told, these are the people who attacked us. And this is payback. Problem is, none of it was true. There was no connection. There was no meeting in Prague. There was no Al Qaida in Iraq. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the Muslim world knew that this never made any sense. But we are insulated from world facts over here. We didn't know. Or at least those boys didn't know.
But all this is old news. No need to rehash it. I bring it up just to illustrate this point:The way to honor our troops is to give them an honorable mission, and to honor them by being truthful.
An extraordinary juxtaposition brings this to mind today, two items from the blogosphere.
BlueGirl on the blog, Theygaveusarepublic.com cites a piece from Stars & Stripes about PTSD and related difficulties. US Army Europe commander General Carter Ham is featured. Ham talks about his tour in Iraq.
"By far the most terrible, gruesome event was the suicide bombing in a mess tent under Ham’s command shortly before his tour ended. Twenty-two people, 14 of them U.S. troops, were killed in the Dec. 21, 2004, attack on the dining hall at Forward Operating Base Marez near Mosul.
It was devastating to Ham, the worst day of his life, and he said he has thought about it every day since.
But that wasn’t the only thing. It was also simply the burden of command. “It was the consequences every commander lives with: You issue orders that put soldiers in harm’s way,” Ham said, “and some end up killed.”
I read this today directly after reading the following report from the Washington Monthly blog:
PRESSURE'S ON.... George W. Bush's two terms haven't been successful, but they have been eventful. The president has faced daunting challenges and striking crises, some of his own making.
And given what we've seen, statements like these are just painful.
Asked by People magazine what moments from the last eight years he revisited most often, W. talked passionately about the pitch he threw out at the World Series in 2001: "I never felt that anxious any other time during my presidency, curiously enough."
Specifically, People asked, "Which moments from the last eight years do you revisit most often?" Bush, after talking about meeting with families of fallen soldiers, replied, "I think about throwing out that pitch at the World Series on [Oct. 30] 2001. My heart was racing when I got to the mound. Didn't want to bounce it. Didn't want to let the fans down. My heart was pumping so hard, I wasn't sure if I could lift my arm. I never felt that anxious any other time during my presidency, curiously enough."
"Curiously enough." Bush knows it's a bizarre thing to say, but in this case, he was simply telling the truth -- when he reflects on his presidency, the real anxiety came when he had to throw a baseball 60 feet.
Not on Sept. 11, not when sending troops into Iraq, not when he was told we might lose an American city to a hurricane. Not when the economy collapsed, not when anthrax starting killing people through the mail, not when he was told about what had happened at Abu Ghraib, not in the midst of crises in Israel, Afghanistan, Georgia, India, North Korea, or Pakistan.
There was a cartoon a few years ago in which two alien creatures are being led from their flying saucer to where George W. Bush is waiting. "That's your Leader? one of the aliens asks.
We sometimes forget that our generals cannot decide what wars to fight, or when. That would be a military dictatorship. Rather, they must do as they are instructed the best they can, as McArthur said, "As God gives them the light to see it."
Many of us hated and despised this war in Iraq. We correctly saw that it was a fruitless, colonial adventure with lies as it's rationale. But no one, or at least no one I know, ever blamed our military. It was clear they were trying to do the best they could. As they said about the British army in World War I: They are "Lions led by donkeys."
One factoid of this war has always stood out to me. When our marines knocked down that statue of Sadaam Hussein, it was reported that they first wrapped an American flag around the statue's head. That particular flag had flown over the World Trade Center. These Marines were fueled by the fury of revenge.
Reading this, my heart sank. These poor bastards are over there fighting, killing and dying with every ounce of strength and bravery they have. They were told, these are the people who attacked us. And this is payback. Problem is, none of it was true. There was no connection. There was no meeting in Prague. There was no Al Qaida in Iraq. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the Muslim world knew that this never made any sense. But we are insulated from world facts over here. We didn't know. Or at least those boys didn't know.
But all this is old news. No need to rehash it. I bring it up just to illustrate this point:The way to honor our troops is to give them an honorable mission, and to honor them by being truthful.
An extraordinary juxtaposition brings this to mind today, two items from the blogosphere.
BlueGirl on the blog, Theygaveusarepublic.com cites a piece from Stars & Stripes about PTSD and related difficulties. US Army Europe commander General Carter Ham is featured. Ham talks about his tour in Iraq.
"By far the most terrible, gruesome event was the suicide bombing in a mess tent under Ham’s command shortly before his tour ended. Twenty-two people, 14 of them U.S. troops, were killed in the Dec. 21, 2004, attack on the dining hall at Forward Operating Base Marez near Mosul.
It was devastating to Ham, the worst day of his life, and he said he has thought about it every day since.
But that wasn’t the only thing. It was also simply the burden of command. “It was the consequences every commander lives with: You issue orders that put soldiers in harm’s way,” Ham said, “and some end up killed.”
I read this today directly after reading the following report from the Washington Monthly blog:
PRESSURE'S ON.... George W. Bush's two terms haven't been successful, but they have been eventful. The president has faced daunting challenges and striking crises, some of his own making.
And given what we've seen, statements like these are just painful.
Asked by People magazine what moments from the last eight years he revisited most often, W. talked passionately about the pitch he threw out at the World Series in 2001: "I never felt that anxious any other time during my presidency, curiously enough."
Specifically, People asked, "Which moments from the last eight years do you revisit most often?" Bush, after talking about meeting with families of fallen soldiers, replied, "I think about throwing out that pitch at the World Series on [Oct. 30] 2001. My heart was racing when I got to the mound. Didn't want to bounce it. Didn't want to let the fans down. My heart was pumping so hard, I wasn't sure if I could lift my arm. I never felt that anxious any other time during my presidency, curiously enough."
"Curiously enough." Bush knows it's a bizarre thing to say, but in this case, he was simply telling the truth -- when he reflects on his presidency, the real anxiety came when he had to throw a baseball 60 feet.
Not on Sept. 11, not when sending troops into Iraq, not when he was told we might lose an American city to a hurricane. Not when the economy collapsed, not when anthrax starting killing people through the mail, not when he was told about what had happened at Abu Ghraib, not in the midst of crises in Israel, Afghanistan, Georgia, India, North Korea, or Pakistan.
There was a cartoon a few years ago in which two alien creatures are being led from their flying saucer to where George W. Bush is waiting. "That's your Leader? one of the aliens asks.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Kidding aside, let's remember the facts as they were.
Joe Klein suggests this image as an appropriate monument to George W, Bush:
"This is not the America I know," President George W. Bush said after the first, horrifying pictures of U.S. troops torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq surfaced in April 2004. The President was not telling the truth. "This" was the America he had authorized on Feb. 7, 2002, when he signed a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention -- the one regarding the treatment of enemy prisoners taken in wartime -- did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. That signature led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. It was his single most callous and despicable act. It stands at the heart of the national embarrassment that was his presidency. ...
That's Joe Klein. Bob Cesca thinks a more telling image to capture the essence of the man is this, the video of his response to being told the country was under attack, on 9/11/2001.
This 10 minute video says all we need to know about GW Bush as a "leader".
It is essential that we not allow the truth of the worst presidency in our history to become muddled by partisan hacks and radio clowns. They will continue to blame Clinton. They're already trying to blame Obama, and now they're trotting out Roosevelt to blame for all our troubles.
If we can't face the truth, we'll never be able to fix anything. We cannot let this kind of thing happen again.
"This is not the America I know," President George W. Bush said after the first, horrifying pictures of U.S. troops torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq surfaced in April 2004. The President was not telling the truth. "This" was the America he had authorized on Feb. 7, 2002, when he signed a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention -- the one regarding the treatment of enemy prisoners taken in wartime -- did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. That signature led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. It was his single most callous and despicable act. It stands at the heart of the national embarrassment that was his presidency. ...
That's Joe Klein. Bob Cesca thinks a more telling image to capture the essence of the man is this, the video of his response to being told the country was under attack, on 9/11/2001.
This 10 minute video says all we need to know about GW Bush as a "leader".
It is essential that we not allow the truth of the worst presidency in our history to become muddled by partisan hacks and radio clowns. They will continue to blame Clinton. They're already trying to blame Obama, and now they're trotting out Roosevelt to blame for all our troubles.
If we can't face the truth, we'll never be able to fix anything. We cannot let this kind of thing happen again.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Robert Graham RIP
The sculptor, Robert Graham was buried today in Los Angeles. The ceremony, a traditional Catholic funeral with the full medieval trappings, was held in the Cathedral, presided over by our pedophile-enabler-in-chief, Roger Mahoney.
One of those odd, only in LA kind of crowds, show business bigs mixing with Venice artists, and our humble civil servants, Bratton and Villaragosa. But I suppose artists are stars too, in LA. Graham had designed the large bronze doors to the cathedral. Ed Ruscha and David Hockney were there. Can't deny their stardom.
Old artists have the most fascinating faces of anyone. Every crease was earned, every pain felt, all the confusion of the years sits there defying still the entire world who has been telling them no through their lifetime. The torment of trying to comprehend life for the rest of us, while we go to the mall.
Hollywood faces, of course, have been all twisted, pulled, cranked, filled and sanded so that if there was any life lived, any soul in residence,it is impossible to tell.
Everyone was posing, but the artists win, hands down. They are just cooler.
Graham's widow, Anjelica Huston, is white as snow. She hurts so much, it radiates off her. Jack Nicholson, who has fucked her in all senses of the word lends his unwelcome support.
Seeing the pain in her face, I am reminded of a film she made with her father of James Joyce's "The Dead." Joyce wrote, "...the snow falls upon all the living and the dead." In that film her memories were of a dead lover. Her face was the same face I saw today.
One of those odd, only in LA kind of crowds, show business bigs mixing with Venice artists, and our humble civil servants, Bratton and Villaragosa. But I suppose artists are stars too, in LA. Graham had designed the large bronze doors to the cathedral. Ed Ruscha and David Hockney were there. Can't deny their stardom.
Old artists have the most fascinating faces of anyone. Every crease was earned, every pain felt, all the confusion of the years sits there defying still the entire world who has been telling them no through their lifetime. The torment of trying to comprehend life for the rest of us, while we go to the mall.
Hollywood faces, of course, have been all twisted, pulled, cranked, filled and sanded so that if there was any life lived, any soul in residence,it is impossible to tell.
Everyone was posing, but the artists win, hands down. They are just cooler.
Graham's widow, Anjelica Huston, is white as snow. She hurts so much, it radiates off her. Jack Nicholson, who has fucked her in all senses of the word lends his unwelcome support.
Seeing the pain in her face, I am reminded of a film she made with her father of James Joyce's "The Dead." Joyce wrote, "...the snow falls upon all the living and the dead." In that film her memories were of a dead lover. Her face was the same face I saw today.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Only one 9-11 on my watch!
Only one 9-11 on my watch!
And other Bush accomplishments
I don’t see why people call the Bush presidency a failure. I started thinking about it, and off the top of my head I came up with 25 indisputable successes.
1 Killed the man who tried to kill his daddy.
2 Delivered our public policy from the tyranny of facts.
3 Created enough chaos in the Middle East to drive the oil companies’ profits to unimaginable levels.
4 Kept foreign terrorist attacks on the US to only one, just one more than in all of Clinton’s years.
5 Jump-started the urban renewal and gentrification process in New Orleans.
6 Cut down Americans’ viewing of sex and violence on TV by providing sex and violence in Iraqi prisons.
7 Enriched his friends by doing away with thousands of pesky government regulations, and by appointing de-regulators to regulatory positions.
8 Enriched the banks by eliminating the “fresh start” concept in our bankruptcy laws…only for individuals, though. Corporations, fortunately for business, still maintain this right.
9 Enriched the drug companies at taxpayer expense, under the guise of helping retirees.
10 Enriched the weapons dealers under the guise of eliminating threats to peace and stability.
11 Enriched standardized testing companies, like the one his brother, Neil, owns with the passage of mandated, unfunded testing, under the guise of improving education.
12 Enriched friendly companies in the business of rebuilding what our military has destroyed.
13 Enriched a lot of people by shipping pallets of $100 bills to Iraq, and not accounting for them.
14 Ensured the continued prosperity of weapons dealers by bullying, alienating and frightening the rest of the world.
15 Provided full employment and opportunity to the group of neo-cons and PNAC folks who previously couldn’t get work, because everyone in government called them, “the crazies”.
16 Increased employment and raised the standard of living in Bangalore.
17 Gave new hope to ventriloquists, a dying breed, by lip-syncing his presidential debates.
18 Found a cure for the divisiveness of our democratic system by signing thousands of laws with his fingers crossed.
19 Proved once and for all that the Vice-presidency is indeed worth more than a bucket of shit. In fact, the VP could pretty much run the country.
20 Sheparded the economy through the final stages of the Reagan revolution. At the beginning, George HW Bush called it “voodoo economics”. Son, George W. had the honor of sweeping up the shards of the capitalist system.
21 Held firm against the onslaught of third world countries, the UN, and Al Gore attempting to stifle growth and hamstring business with phony stories of global climate change.
22 Acted decisively against terrorists, terrorist suspects, and persons of interest by virtue of having a Muslim name, and assorted unlucky Afghans by repealing the Magna Carta.
23 Achieved a new relationship with Russia by looking Putin in the eye, and by reviving old Joe Stalin’s technique of disappearing people.
24 Demonstrated that anyone, even if you’re from Connecticut, and went to Groton, Harvard and Yale, can talk like an uneducated Texas roughneck.
25 Proved to all American children of inferior intellect and limited curiosity, that you not only could become Attorney General, or even nominated for the Supreme Court, you could even become the Big Kahuna himself.
And other Bush accomplishments
I don’t see why people call the Bush presidency a failure. I started thinking about it, and off the top of my head I came up with 25 indisputable successes.
1 Killed the man who tried to kill his daddy.
2 Delivered our public policy from the tyranny of facts.
3 Created enough chaos in the Middle East to drive the oil companies’ profits to unimaginable levels.
4 Kept foreign terrorist attacks on the US to only one, just one more than in all of Clinton’s years.
5 Jump-started the urban renewal and gentrification process in New Orleans.
6 Cut down Americans’ viewing of sex and violence on TV by providing sex and violence in Iraqi prisons.
7 Enriched his friends by doing away with thousands of pesky government regulations, and by appointing de-regulators to regulatory positions.
8 Enriched the banks by eliminating the “fresh start” concept in our bankruptcy laws…only for individuals, though. Corporations, fortunately for business, still maintain this right.
9 Enriched the drug companies at taxpayer expense, under the guise of helping retirees.
10 Enriched the weapons dealers under the guise of eliminating threats to peace and stability.
11 Enriched standardized testing companies, like the one his brother, Neil, owns with the passage of mandated, unfunded testing, under the guise of improving education.
12 Enriched friendly companies in the business of rebuilding what our military has destroyed.
13 Enriched a lot of people by shipping pallets of $100 bills to Iraq, and not accounting for them.
14 Ensured the continued prosperity of weapons dealers by bullying, alienating and frightening the rest of the world.
15 Provided full employment and opportunity to the group of neo-cons and PNAC folks who previously couldn’t get work, because everyone in government called them, “the crazies”.
16 Increased employment and raised the standard of living in Bangalore.
17 Gave new hope to ventriloquists, a dying breed, by lip-syncing his presidential debates.
18 Found a cure for the divisiveness of our democratic system by signing thousands of laws with his fingers crossed.
19 Proved once and for all that the Vice-presidency is indeed worth more than a bucket of shit. In fact, the VP could pretty much run the country.
20 Sheparded the economy through the final stages of the Reagan revolution. At the beginning, George HW Bush called it “voodoo economics”. Son, George W. had the honor of sweeping up the shards of the capitalist system.
21 Held firm against the onslaught of third world countries, the UN, and Al Gore attempting to stifle growth and hamstring business with phony stories of global climate change.
22 Acted decisively against terrorists, terrorist suspects, and persons of interest by virtue of having a Muslim name, and assorted unlucky Afghans by repealing the Magna Carta.
23 Achieved a new relationship with Russia by looking Putin in the eye, and by reviving old Joe Stalin’s technique of disappearing people.
24 Demonstrated that anyone, even if you’re from Connecticut, and went to Groton, Harvard and Yale, can talk like an uneducated Texas roughneck.
25 Proved to all American children of inferior intellect and limited curiosity, that you not only could become Attorney General, or even nominated for the Supreme Court, you could even become the Big Kahuna himself.
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