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Showing posts from September, 2003
Listening to the new Strokes cd . Yeah, I got it from... somewhere. At any rate, it's good, if not exactly a huge step in some new, amazing direction. It sounds like the Strokes. Some of it is quite funny. However, it evokes a world of parties and 40-ouncers and young people trying to find their way, something I'm pretty removed from (as in the lyric "We could go and get 40s/Fuck the Winterland party/Oh really your folks are away now?/Alright let's go, you convinced me").
This is becoming a bit of a story. At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday. At first I didn't give it much currency; it seemed like a minor thing to me. But apparently someone senior -- very senior -- in the Bush administration wanted revenge. How Nixonian. Could Bush be another popular president, fighting an unpopular war, who has become his own worst enemy?
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We missed the county fair this year. Then again, I really stopped enjoying it after the early nineties. Taking kids to the fair is not as much fun as enjoying the freakishness with other adults. Last time I spent a lot of time encouraging my daughter to not be afraid of all the weirdness. Like mulleted, Raiders-jerseyed adults hooting while playing first-person-shooter video games. Or the fact that 4H auctions were invented for the purpose of sending that cute pig to slaughter. Or the sadder truth that the plastic-bear honey container, filled with strata of varicolored sand, is a ripoff at any price, not just the $9.99 they are asking. Even when the bear wears a pink felt cowboy hat.
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Bill Moyers made a clearheaded editorial on NOW , about the American and French soldiers who died together at Marne. Read it and realize that idiots like Tom Friedman should not be listened to. The more history I learn, the more convinced I am that the conservative lame-os currently occupying the White House are wrong, and they don't even know they are wrong because they are ignorant.
The Unsexy List has a couple of good entries: 32. Tongue Rings. You having a tongue ring in 2003 is like us prancing around in eight-ball jackets. After four drinks you'll slur that it makes oral sex feel amazing. It doesn't! 33. Lower-back tattooes. Lately, it seems that if there's no faux-Celtic design between your low-rise jeans and your baby tee, something's missing. Recently, we've been seeing girls with their names in thug font in that place. Must save a lot of awkwardness.
My pirate name is Red William Cash . "Passion is a big part of your life, which makes sense for a pirate. You're musical, and you've got a certain style if not flair. You'll do just fine. Arr!"
Arrrrrrr. Shiver me timbers.
Writing specs should get easier, but the older I get the harder they are to write. I think it's harder for me to live with the "not knowing" state that specs require. You have to surrender to it, to not knowing the answer. And that's hard.
You mean Cheney lied? He never does that! Well, yeah, I guess he does. Here's the Washington Post on just a piece of the all-spin zone called BushCo: An FBI investigation concluded that Atta was apparently in Florida at the time of the alleged meeting [with Iraqi intelligence five months before 9/11], and the CIA has always doubted it took place. Czech authorities, who first mentioned the alleged meeting in October 2001 to U.S. officials, have since said they no longer are certain the individual in the video of the supposed meeting was Atta. Meanwhile, in July, the U.S. military captured the Iraqi intelligence officer who was supposed to have met Atta and has not obtained confirmation from him. - Bush Team Stands Firm on Iraq Policy (washingtonpost.com) And on and on and on! As evidence that Hussein had "reconstituted" his nuclear weapons program, as Cheney had said before the war, the vice president cited Hussein's prewar possession of "500 tons
Handy index of current neoconservative thinkers , courtesy of the CSMonitor. Helps to understand what they're trying to do us.
Strategists in both parties agree that the memory of the attacks has served a powerful purpose for Bush, but the political landscape may be shifting. A spate of recent polls has shown voters becoming more concerned about the economy than about terrorism. Bush's earlier popularity for his handling of the attacks' aftermath never translated to approval for his domestic policies, and now his overall approval rating is receding. -- Bush Cites 9/11 On All Manner Of Questions . [titled as if WaPo were suprised; via Kottke ]
What your president has done in the last couple of years.
Jesus louise-us, the Pixies are going on tour!
In the latest Paul Krugman , the Krug gets all medieval on Dubya's ass: If Mr. Bush had admitted from the start that the postwar occupation might cost this much, he would never have gotten that last tax cut. Now he says, 'We will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary. . . .' What does he mean, 'we'? Is he prepared to roll back some of those tax cuts, now that the costs of war loom so large? Is he even willing to stop urging Congress to make the 2001 tax cut permanent? Of course not.
Mission Creep - Bush's perversion of the "war on terror," a biting piece of work from Saletan in Slate: To justify this burden, Bush tells us it's still about 9/11. He tells us terrorists are trying to 'inflict harm on Americans' to make us 'run from a challenge' in Iraq. He tells us we must be 'resolute in our own defense.' He tells us we must 'spend what is necessary to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror.' He conflates enemies. He spins circular logic. He appeals to our pride. He continues to misrepresent the terrorist connections on the basis of which he justified the Iraq invasion, and he expands the definition of the 'war on terror' so that Iraq can be crammed into it anyway, along with dozens of other countries. Two years after 9/11, he has so thoroughly twisted the meaning of what happened that day that, in effect, he has forgotten what it was.
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Sen. Clinton to Block Bush EPA Nominee Good on ya Hillary. So I'm reading the new Al Franken book and though it's a little thin in the middle, damned if I'm not laughing on every page. And I was also embarrased to say that I bought all the GOP bullshit about the Wellstone memorial last year. So shame on me. Thanks, Al. I really wish I could have been there when you pissed Wolfowitz off.
This is good: TicketSatan will now auction concert tickets to highest bidders . "[T]here would be no limit on how high prices could go - it would be simply a matter of how much people were willing to pay." Sort of a program to help disadvantaged Eddie-Bauer-clad 50-year olds buy their Eagles tickets.
What a freaky headline: SCO bills first 1,000 Linux users.
It happened today: I got a Howard Dean email from a friend: This next month is critical to our campaign. During the next 29 days, we are going to prove the staying power of the grassroots- prove that you have the power to change the way politics is done in our country-- and we are going to create the September to Remember. Who writes that stuff? The September to Remember?
The gawker folks mention the The New Sincerity: Kidults thing in the NYT this last weekend . (I love that NYT sociological tone-of-gravity thing: "Most have busy lives with adult responsibilities, respectable jobs and children of their own. They are not stunted adolescents. They are something else: grown-ups who cultivate juvenile tastes in products and entertainment. Call them rejuveniles.") I know people who collect kidstuff, but they've been collecting for a while, not all of a sudden. Recall the lunchbox girls with Bettie Page bangs, who collected Pee Wee Herman stuff? Or the housemate in college who had the Scoobie Doo crap in his room? (If anything sharpened the consumer desire for kidstuff, it was ebay, right?) I think it's funny how marketing creeps into smaller and smaller subcultures. Soon there won't be subcultures, just markets. Or is it the other way around? Is a subculture nothing but an immature market?