There's hope for me yet. In addition to my continuing ability to be shocked, even in the face of the daily outrage that is BushCo, this account of now-NY Governor David Paterson's swearing-in has me all choked up.
Ah, a crisp fine March Monday and New York is reeling: not just under the weight of the hordes of drunken suburban teens poised to descend upon us for the St. Patrick's Day Parade (and yes, this NYT guide to NY's Irish bars really is penned by one "Seth Kugel"); not only due to a collapsed construction crane and the lives and buildings it destroyed; and not only from the demise of Bear Stearns and the 14,000 jobs soon to be left in its wake. We're also still reeling because of sex, specifically all that had by our soon-to-be (1:40 and counting) ex-governor, the illustrious and, apparently, prodigiously appetited Mr. Spitzer, who will make way for soon-to-be Governor Paterson shortly.
So long, Eliot. We hardly knew ye (really). In honor of your desultory slink away from Albany, Paul Slansky's got a new quiz up at the New Yorker. This one's about that perennial and timeliest of topic of s-e-x. A taste:
Match the sum with what it represents. 20. $20,000. 21. $1,600. 22. $40. (a) The credit left in Eliot Spitzer’s account with the Emperors Club V.I.P. (b) The amount that Buz Lukens paid a sixteen-year-old Columbus, Ohio, girl to have sex with him. (c) The amount that President Warren Harding’s mistress, Carrie Phillips, took in hush money from the R.N.C.
Answer -- and the rest of the quiz here. Happy Monday, people.
And these are the conflicting pictures of what $12 billion a month, hundreds of thousands dead, and the worst strategic disaster in 150 years will get you:
March 17, 2008, the man who once declared immediate victory. (AFP/Paul J. Richards)
March 3, 2008, same place, observe the real victor. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani (IRAQ)
I can't believe I watched that whole first two hours of 'John Adams' and got nothing.
Laura Linney's a great actress and all but you can't tell me if that was Julianne Moore playing Abigail Adams instead we would not have learned that the founders knew how to trim a hedge too!
(I'm starting to figure out those parts of the American psyche that elect George W. Bush...or allow him to be selected...I blame the Founders)
High gasoline prices and prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal headline Vice President Dick Cheney's trip to the Mideast, but fears about Iran's rising influence will be a key topic of his private talks at each stop.
Cheney loves him some anniversary tours.
I believe the 5th Anniversary is traditionally celebrated with exploding MOABs right?
Congrats America, the ménage à lame is traveling on your dime.
"If people here and in the Middle East were reassured that McCain isn't sort of itching for another war, that would be an important step," said Walter Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "When someone is one of the two finalists to be president of the United States, everybody wants to take a closer look."
They will get their chance during the seven-day, taxpayer-funded trip, which includes Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), two of McCain's closest colleagues.
They are also going back to visit Iraq and buy more rugs. The best thing for them is we already know what they'll say. So get your cutting & pasting ready!
Lieberman's WaPo & Wall Street Journal Editorial coming in May & June...see earlier editorials and hold them in abeyance until then.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Friday he fears that al Qaeda or another extremist group might attempt spectacular attacks in Iraq to try to tilt the U.S. election against him.
Okay:
1. If FoxNoise has taught us anything, terrorists statements and actions are always "good news for Republicans".
2. And most importantly, I guess I'd be more worried about the FUCKING VICTIMS OF AN ATTACK then I would about my chances in the election.
But then, I'm not a delusional self-centered asshole...well a lesser one...like John McCain.
When I was a mere youth...as opposed to a strapping overweight balding middle-aged man at the height of his rather inconsiderable powers...I went to a black church in Minneapolis with a friend whose mother belonged to the congregation.
In my college years, as in the years since, I was not a church goer, I was raised in the bland and rather non-controversial realm of small town upper Midwest Methodism. A time and denomination I would describe as "Unitarians with a fear of non-commitment"
The sermons and services I grew up with were comforting banana pudding, we all left feeling marginally better about ourselves, mostly that the thing was over, but not too good -- that would require effort.
So walking into Urban Black Baptist Church was more than just going to say I've been there, it was a fascinating cultural experience -- and rather awkward. I was raised not to show strong emotions and here I was surrounded by people actively taking part in a church service, and actually singing, as opposed to mouthing the words or singing the female registers because I couldn't read music to save my life.
But I also heard the preacher talk about repression and other grievances at the injustice of the world -- caused quite clearly though impliedly (and with good reason) -- by passive-aggressive white people like me. It's not white guilt, it's reality.
Now, this was a bit disconcerting and my friend sort of apologized in a way because he could tell it was a mild shock to my sheltered middle-class sensibilities -- though at the same time I felt sort of sorry too because there was much of the preacher's anger that was quite justified and we all know it, whether we want to think about it or not.
Later, in an effort to be profound as all aspiring intellectuals of that age try to be, he summoned up his distillation of the whole thing:
"You see, White Baptists spent hundreds of years in this country justifying why the Bible, and Jesus have given them the blessing of being better than the black people they lord over, often those they owned. At the same time, they thought they were bettering us by forcing their religion upon us.
On the other hand, we accepted it gladly because we feel like we saw the truth within it of love and ultimate equality. Plus there was the benefit of "judgment" and we all knew how the people in the white church were going to be judged, and the black church service serves as the preview of coming attractions."
There was anger in the presentation that did not really exist in the reality (i.e. people were nice to me, not angry at me), what for me and most who went to my church was a one hour burden, was for much of that congregation a one-hour unburdening. Then we all went back to our usual lives of moderate sanity.
While we've poured the bulk of our troops and money and equipment into Iraq, where the real al Qaida isn’t, we've starved the effort to secure and rebuild and strengthen Afghanistan and bet all our chips on the wrong guy in Pakistan — two places where the real al Qaida and the real Taliban are growing stronger and more dangerous.
Benign neglect of your sworn enemies in a place such as Afghanistan calls for a combination of arrogance and ignorance that's not just risky, but also truly dangerous. These are the people who really did attack our country and kill thousands of innocent people on 9/11; these are the people who sheltered the real terrorists and defied us to do anything about it.
We let most of them and their leaders escape across the border into the wildest parts of Pakistan, where they've burrowed in, regrouped and are enjoying a recruiting boom that's sparked largely by the hatred born of our actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. Now they pose a threat to Pakistan itself, a nation that has a hundred or more real nuclear weapons, unlike Iraq, whose nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction existed only in the fevered minds of a frightened president and his arrogant accomplices.
The next time that we Americans start thinking about maybe electing someone with no known talent, limited useful experience and an IQ that's barely equal to his body temperature, what say we just leave the presidency vacant and the White House shuttered for eight years or so?
All blogs are now insane and run by incredible incompetents and hacks.
Except this one of course (and by that I mean "ME").
I knew in the end, those who create horrible MS-Paint versions of bad photoshops; have horrible usage and editing skills; and write when they should be sleeping it off would come to be seen as the best bloggers ever!
Toward the end of [October 1920], hundreds of thousands of voters all across the country found in their mailboxes or slipped beneath the front door a circular addressed TO THE MEN AND WOMEN OF AMERICA -- AN OPEN LETTER. It was signed by Dr. W.E. Chancellor, a negrophobic history professor who had devoted months to demonstrating to his own satisfaction that [GOP Nominee Warren] Harding was "not a White man ... not a creole ... not a mulatto, [but] a mestizo," whose election must be stopped in order "save America from international shame and ... domestic ruin." - Geoffrey Ward, A First Class Temperament, p. 547.
By the way Hillary Clinton's middle name is... "DIANE"
There's hope for me yet. In addition to my continuing ability to be shocked, even in the face of the daily outrage that is BushCo, this account of now-NY Governor David Paterson's swearing-in has me all choked up.
Click on the picture to enlarge. 
Rising Hegemon
