Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

People are complicated. Love is not.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Everybody saw this coming.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Let me file that under fuck it.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

The National Guard is not Batman.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

No one could have predicted…

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

The willow is too close to the house.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

White supremacy is terrorism.

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Archives for 2003

Jayson Blair

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One of the more damning assertions regarding the obviousness of Jayson Blair’s guilt prior to his recent discovery is the fact that the NY Times was forced to print 50 corrections over the past four years for Blair alone. This is surprising, particularly because the NY Times seems to HATE to issue corrections (you remember them misreporting the temperature increase and then dong everything they could to fudge the truth when it came time to print a correction).

In fact, they hate issuing corrections so much that some intrepid individuals decided to start another paper in the NY Region. I am sure my wise Balloon Juice readers have heard of the NY Sun and remember who started it and why…

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Rush Limbaugh

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I was driving in the car a moment ago,and Rush Limbaugh is trying to use the Jayson Blair scandal as a reason to end affirmative action.

Look- there may be a number of plausible and well-founded reasons to get rid of affirmative action. This is not one of them. This is a reason to get rid of lazy editors, disinterested middle management, and lazy fact-checkers at the NY Times. Period.

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How To Elect Democrats

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Via The Blogs of War, this interesting passage in Time:

There are futility metaphors aplenty here: The contrast between the swaggering President and the squabbling Dems. The nonargument over periphera. The absence of an audience. But then, the Democrats have excelled at futility for more than 30 years. They have elected two Presidents during that time, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Both were Governors of Southern states. Neither was a well-known party leader. Neither ran on what many Democrats would consider a traditional

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The NY Times

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Everyone seems to really have their knickers in a twist about the NY Times/Jayson Blair scandal, and there is some obvious schadenfreude from a number of sources. My opinion of the NY Times has lessened since the scandal, but not really because of it.

The way I see it, the NY Times got screwed by a con-man- it could happen to anyone. However, is that any more damning than the institutional bias that will continue on irrespective of this scandal? Think about it- what is worse? Having one rogue reporter who made up stories, or having an entire staff that knows the truth but refuses or is not allowed to print it? I’ll take the rogue reporter, thank you.

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Two Notes on Terror

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– I saw 60 Minutes frightening piece on Chem/Bio weapons in the former Soviet Union, and I realized half-way through it that someone, by tomorrow, will make the bad argument that we really shouldn’t have worried about Iraq, but we should be worrying about those old weapons labs in the former U.S.S.R. I am not sure who will make the argument first, but it is what is known as a false dichotomy. Personally, both situations scare the bejeesus out of me. At any rate, if we learned anything from the U.S.S.R., it was that treaties about this sort of stuff are worthless- Nixon negotiated and signed one with the Kremlin, they simply ignored the treaty and built the largest covert biological weapons program ever. Totalitarian regimes don’t negotiate in good faith- whether it be the North Koreans, Saddam Hussein, or the Soviets. That is a lesson we need to remember- these people lie more than our politicians, if that is fathomable.

– I am reading The Age of Sacred Terror by Daniel Benjamin and Steve Simon. This was actually recommended to me several months ago by Dave Neiwart, and he was right, it is a fascinating read. At any rate, one passage struck me as something that everyone who is bitching and moaning that “There have been no direct connections found between Iraq and Al Qaeda,” should be forced to read. The statement is annoying for several reasons, first because it is demonstrably false. Second, this passage in The Age of Sacred Terror makes clear that these connections aren’t as direct and clear-cut as many want (demand) them to be:

“There are two enduring misconceptions about Ramzi Yousef. The first is that he was a lone wolf, a solo operator who got a contract to do a job, or propelled by his own ambitions, simply set out to do it himself. True, he was not a card-carrying member of any renowned terrorist organization. But from the time he landed in the United States to the time he left, he was part of a constant triangular conversation. The phone in his apartment and the one in the home of the Blind Sheikh were frequently connected. And both of them regulalry called Pakistan: 810604, the number Rahman had dialed before Yousef’s arrival.” – The Age of Sacred terror, p. 8.

Terrorists don’t have business cards. They don’t have organizational flowcharts that they give to the public. Demanding direct connections that stand up to the strictes rules of evidence in a court of law in the United States will often be hard to get. I distrust the government as much as the next guy, and if you have read my ranting and raving on a number of issues, you will probably agree that I distrust the government more than your average joe. Some things, though, you have to just trust em, even if they often don’t deserve that trust. Terrorism is one area where I will give them the benefit of the doubt.

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Cat Blogging

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And now for something I really enjoy- my cats. Here are a few pics.

Oliver closeup.JPG

This is a close-up of Oliver, the newest addition to the household. He just had surgery 2-3 days ago (yep, guys- that one), and he has been sleepy and having second thoughts about me ever since. The vet says he is about 1 to 1 1/2 years old

oliver sleeping.JPG

Oliver doing what he does best.

Tunch posing.JPG

Tunch likes to pose like this until the very moment you actually intend to take a photo, at which time he moves. Luckily, I got this picture before he realized what I was doing.

Tunch and Oliver.JPG

One of the hardest things I have ever done was get a picture of the two of these guys together. They sleep close all the time, but every time I break out the camera, they scatter. Bastards.

Tunch and Oliver 2.JPG

For those of you interested, Tunch is named after Steeler lineman Tunch Ilkin. Oliver is named Oliver because I went to the pound and he looked at me, and the name just popped into my head, and I thought- “He does look like an Oliver.” So I took him home. Seems to be working out for us.

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