I play rochambeau with ghosts, take photos of space, and ride my bike in the bus lane.
Manhattan real estate is still kind of tight I guess. I hope the bastids don’t sweep the happy couple out for “health” reasons. Speaking of “health,” someone told me America is the only country in the world where pharmacies sell cigarettes.
This has got to be the fad gadget of Summer 08.
I also saw some great art at the Jonathan Levine gallery last week. The Date Farmers installation feels like an incredibly hip Mexican taco stand and the surrealistic Alex Gross displays some impressive new stuff that might have been — probably was — ripped out the pages of Juxtapoz.
I definitely have bones to pick with stupid people — my own stupid form of elitism — and this blowup over Obama’s “bitter” “elitist” remark is moronic. Do I really have to listen to Hillary Clinton, George Will, Tim Russert, and Brit Hume tell me what elitism is? An administration that shreds the constitution, tortures people, ignores all polls, steals elections, funnels taxpayer money to cronies in the mercenary military, oil, and healthcare industries while neglecting infrastructure and disaster needs — that’s elitism and “out of touch.” Before I bust a vein over this, I’ll point you to the three best blogs I’ve seen about it: Roy 1 and Roy2, Josh Marshall’s, and Jay Rosen at Huffpo about the breaking of the story. Bring on the class war!
“Barack Obama is a terrorist. And all of his followers are terrorists. And his grandmother who he threw under the bus is a terrorist. And by the way, Michelle? Terrorist. All the priests he knows are racist. And terrorists. But we conservatives could never be sneering racists like those leftist terrorists.”
My sister worships this guy and I have yet to see him excoriated by anyone. Maybe I’m not looking in the right places.
Roy has one of the best rejoinders for this sort of nonsense here.
Petraus didn’t have the plumage to make the circus today. Or is the gap between the House and the Senate that vast?
I’ll have hula hoop pix up but I’ll prolly put em up on the myspace thing cuz that’s my Ding Dong blog.
I watched Under the Volcano. While Albert Finney rocks this sort of drinking and drugs kamikaze movie (e.g. The Dresser, Leaving Las Vegas, Hurly Burly, Boogie Nights, Requiem for a Dream), I’m tired of them. The Day of the Dead (the Mexican holiday) footage is nice. On the other hand, Resident Evil: Extinction is a much more satisfying clusterfuck with its numerous homages to itself and several other horror and sci-fi classics. Plus it’s totally believable.
I’ve been following the protests over the Olympic torch. The media attention is extraordinary and yet, last week, it was confirmed that the USA is yet another country that officially ytortures and the administration literally conjured up legal excuses for it. As it turns out, Jack Bauer and Fox’s 24 provided some of the inspiration. I’m sure a lot of us are outraged (also for finding out we were lied to again). Where is the media on this one? Oh, I see… it’s U.S. you’re talking about….
I’m trying out taking pairs (or more) of pictures with the camera in the same spot but a changed angle. The top one is all about the negative space.
Holy cow, it is so nice to be off of myspace. I can link to whatever the hell I want! I can put a few ads up! Yes, they’re probably coming as soon as I can figure it out. I need another column in the blog design… I don’t know if I like how links are capped. Hmm. Hmm. Anyway, if you’re a new reader, thanks for checking me out and you should be aware my topics can jump around sometimes in a serious way and sometimes in a half-assed way.
Very excited that some of the Bang on a Can Marathon program has been released. Now, I understand that this kind of music isn’t for everyone. But please don’t tell us you’d rather “chew on shit” than listen to it. I’ll bet you’d happily stew to Steve Reich’s “Daniel Variations” rather than masticate on shit. If I’m wrong, you’re probably not going to live very long.
So General Betray Us® is coming to testify again. What’s missing from this debate is the usual reality check. Via Digby and Spencer Ackerman, ajunior officer in Iraq puts it like this:
In my opinion, what everyone fails to realize is that this is not a counterinsurgency. If we wanted to stay in Iraq, then it would be a counterinsurgency. But it is clear that our goal is to turn over power and pull out. So, in building our strategic endstate, it’s pointless to set goals that relate to our presence in Iraq. If the “insurgency” is a function of our being there, then it is not an insurgency in terms of our endstate. For example, if one of our goals is to stop IED attacks on US forces, that is pointless. When we leave, there will be no more IED attacks on us forces. So our endstate needs to be different. We need to ask “if we left tomorrow, what would happen in Iraq?” and from there, we need to determine which of those anticipated results are unacceptable to us. Then we must aim our efforts on making sure those unacceptable results do not occur.
When I look at the problem that way, it becomes almost impossible to find a purpose in what we do. Regardless of what we do, the Shia are going to take control. They have completely infiltrated all the security forces. The only kind of leader who could keep them in check was a tyrant like Saddam. And when the Shia take control, as soon as we leave, they are going to be as brutal as they like against the Sunni and there will be little we can do about it. That is what will happen whether we leave tomorrow or in ten years. As far as the foreign fighters, they will leave Iraq when we do. So what are we trying to accomplish here? Train the Iraqi forces? History shows that training forces in the Middle East can backfire. Any training we offer these people will find its way to our terrorist enemies.
Does everyone forget Osama Bin Laden probably received training and guns from the U.S. in Afghanistan?
Hello everybody! This blog is a continuation of my blog on myspace. The restrictions of myspace got rather tiresome… so here I am. I’ll be adding stuff over the next few weeks.
I’m going to do my laundry and then try to work the internet by clicking on stuff.