Category: long story short

There have been a lot of complaints that our system of color-coded terrorism alerts does not provide enough useful information. When Ridge or Ashcroft issues a new threat alert, they never specify the targets. Will it be kidnapped prisoners? Random bystanders? Home invasion sprees? Wedding parties in the desert? Well, give me a break! Obviously,…

Is A Housing Bubble About To Burst? Business Week “If 30-year fixed-rate mortgages rise just one percentage point, to 7.2% from their current 6.2% … house prices would have to fall 11% to keep new buyers’ monthly mortgage payments from rising. If fixed rates went to 8%, prices would need to fall 20% to keep…

Statling new evidence suggests that sugar-pills may be the answer to some of humankind’s most dreaded diseases, however scientists are at a loss to think of ways to rigorously test them.

Cheney as Grand Vizier (from Brad DeLong’s Webjournal) …lazy summer hammockblogging has apparently resumed now i just need a chron job to update the sidebar, plus maybe reorder a tad to reflect who updates most often.

Listening to the talking voices on McLehrer in my car today, discussing how Ken Lay is going to put all the blame for Enron’s failure on his CFO, Andrew Fastow (who has already pled guilty and turned state’s evidence, I believe), it occurred to me that perhaps Fastow is American for Faust.

This is one of the most critical issues facing our nation today — and few are paying much attention. The fact is, for all their talk about ‘security’ the Bush Administration has, in fact, made the US LESS secure in almost every possible way. They have alienated our allies and created hatred for us around…

At last, Vice President Cheney has had the guts to stick his neck out and move the flag-burning ammendment to the front burner. Facing up to the flag-burning crisis that is overwhelming our nation may not be popular or fashionable or “hep-cat,” but it is the right thing to do.

Well, my book shipped a week or so ago and the promotional effort begins now in earnest although the pub date isn’t till Sept 1. I had to unplug for a while and really minimize my online reading and blogging, catch up on sleep and other metabolic necessities, and so on. Plus, I’ve now started…

(The Reuters video in question) Mostly British and American, I suppose.

It has been widely reported and openly acknowledged that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld issued orders to employ “harsh interrogation techniques”–orders that were later rescinded. A similar sequence occurred later in Iraq, with respect to interrogation orders issued by General Sanchez. In both cases, the orders were reversed on legal advice that the techniques authorized looked…

I’ve noticed that right wingers seem to believe that Democrats and liberals must be “outed” as closet socialists. The fact that they are bandying the word socialist around this way makes me wonder if the word liberal itself is losing its sting. Do they need to remind people that that liberal = left = socialist…

Iran Is in Strong Position to Steer Iraq’s Political Future, NYT, 7/3/04 ….Already, the Iranian government has quietly strengthened its presence in Iraq by providing financial backing…and by flooding the country with intelligence agents, the officials say….Most worrisome to American officials are Iran’s close ties to powerful Shiite clerics like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani…and Moktada…

In March, I blog-worried about which of two questions about Bush and Terrorism would prevail: Our Question or his. I think now we know. [W]hich of two messages will end up as the net “take-away” …. –The weak one is that Bush didn’t care enough about terror: It’s mushy, vague, “who can know?”, etc. –The…

Marshall’s hypothetical: “‘[T]he bad actors’ … might well start trying to fight back, trying to gin up an alternative storyline to exculpate themselves….”

This was a Reuters headline today: Serb Vote Halts Feared Slide Back to Nationalism The AP story led with: A reformist politician defeated a nationalist ally of Slobodan Milosevic… I wonder, seriously wonder, what in the world we Americans do think about nationalism. Do we think that we are nationalistic? If so, do we take…

The statements on detainee treatment released by the Bush administration yesterday carefully keep all the options of torture and Geneva violations open. From today’s NYT (All italics are mine.) “[A] senior Justice Department official said the document [the already infamous 8/02 Justice Department memo] was ‘overbroad and irrelevant’ and was unnecessary because no one in…

I was listening to a review of this new kid’s movie, and I don’t get why there’s a law that a rowboat will not harm a human being!

When Cheney issued the shootdown orders on 9/11, he said Bush had “signed off on the concept.” Apparently Bush told him not to issue the order right away, when he got off the phone. It was more like: “Shoot down the planes, but only if someone asks.”

Despite the occasional charming spelling lapse, Andrew Northrup writes with the crisp biting wit of a Mencken or Swift. For example: Men of Principle No blockquote. Best read in toto. Another reason why bloggers rule and pundits drool: Northrup doesn’t have any access to power to worry about, just his eyes and his ears and…

Many of us saw this news item last week: Ex-C.I.A. Aides Say Iraq Leader Helped Agency in 90’s Attacks, NYT, 6/9/04, article “Iyad Allawi, now the designated prime minister of Iraq, ran an exile organization…that sent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990’s to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the…