John hasn’t contacted me today so we have to assume that he’s still feeling pretty bad. In lieu of any medically-relevant advice, which I’m sure that he’s getting right now from his doctor, all I can offer is this (marginally work-safe). Post your own salacious links, humor and whatever else you think might make him feel better in the comments.
If you want to do something more tangible I would suggest the tip jar. I’m strictly a guest blogger so all the money goes to him.
Sean
Might I suggest a new post Tim F. Discrepencies in electronic voting machines in Forida ’04
Some machines were modified after the last official audit/checkup and befor the polls open. I am resisting the urge to go tin-foil-hat over this, but DAMN!
Krista
Alrighty. Naked self-portraits are on the way to John.
Krista
Kidding.
neil
Sean, I’m not sure that post tells us anything that couldn’t be guessed based on the fact that the machines run Windows.
Capriccio
I don’t want to cause JC to have a relapse, but when he gets back I’d love to see him address this:
Neocon architect says: ‘Pull it down’
ALEX MASSIE IN WASHINGTON
NEOCONSERVATISM has failed the United States and needs to be replaced by a more realistic foreign policy agenda, according to one of its prime architects.
Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the best-selling book The End of History and was a member of the neoconservative project, now says that, both as a political symbol and a body of thought, it has “evolved into something I can no longer support”. He says it should be discarded on to history’s pile of discredited ideologies.
In an extract from his forthcoming book, America at the Crossroads, Mr Fukuyama declares that the doctrine “is now in shambles” and that its failure has demonstrated “the danger of good intentions carried to extremes”.
In its narrowest form, neoconservatism advocates the use of military force, unilaterally if necessary, to replace autocratic regimes with democratic ones.
Mr Fukuyama once supported regime change in Iraq and was a signatory to a 1998 letter sent by the Project for a New American Century to the then president, Bill Clinton, urging the US to step up its efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power. It was also signed by neoconservative intellectuals, such as Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and political figures Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the current defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
However, Mr Fukuyama now thinks the war in Iraq is the wrong sort of war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
“The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism,” he argues.
“Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally.”
Mr Fukuyama, one of the US’s most influential public intellectuals, [!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!] concludes that “it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention [in Iraq] itself or the ideas animating it kindly”.
Going further, he says the movements’ advocates are Leninists who “believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practised by the United States”.
Although Mr Fukuyama still supports the idea of democratic reform – complete with establishing the institutions of liberal modernity – in the Middle East, he warns that this process alone will not immediately reduce the threats and dangers the US faces. “Radical Islamism is a by-product of modernisation itself, arising from the loss of identity that accompanies the transition to a modern, pluralist society. More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalisation and – yes, unfortunately – terrorism,” he says.
“By definition, outsiders can’t ‘impose’ democracy on a country that doesn’t want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective.”
This article: http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=266122006
ppGaz
Too bad … I was about to say “I am feeling a little poorly myself ….”
{ cough } { groan }
Bob In Pacifica
Krista, you too? I think he’ll be particularly enthralled of my self-portrait in my all with a copy of Wilhelm Reich’s THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF FASCISM strategically located.
Tom
♫ Get well, get well soon. We all hope you get well soon.. ♬
Krista
Bob – that sounds lovely.
ppGaz – nice try, you incorrigable flirt.
JWeidner
Dang, you beat me to it Tom.
Now if I can just find a 60 year old slice of wedding cake worth $25,000…either that or an Entemann’s…they have a display case at the end of the aisle.