Category: long story short

I suspect that U.S. and allied forces must be closing in Saddam himself, given the cornering and destruction of his sons. No matter how reptilian Saddam may be personally, it’s hard to imagine him keeping his morale up after this, despite the apparent marginal success of the Stalingrad tactic (which Bill Safire recently all but…

Gah! Deadlines long rotting have risen and seized me with a righteous fury. A backlog of photos and banal observations should follow this latest ritual of purification, probably some time next week. now playing: “Cream Puff War (San Francisco 7-16-66)” by Grateful Dead [So Many Roads (1965-1995) Disc 1]

[via The Poison Kitchen]

Oliver Willis has summarized the recent history of the Democratic party, vis-a-vis the second Bush administration, in The Return Of The Democrats, noting how the tactical politicization of national security has made the opposition realize they cannot remain supine and fulfill their responsibilities as Democrats. Oliver talks about the whining from the right. I’ve noticed…

According to Capital Games (a Nation column), the White House may have punished Ambassador Joseph Wilson for undermining their deniability in the Yellowcakegate scandal: Soon after Wilson disclosed his trip in the media and made the White House look bad. the payback came. Novak’s July 14, 2003, column presented the back-story on Wilson’s mission and…

Howard Dean is the first serious candidate for national political office who seems to really “get” blogging, particularly its power to lower barriers between people and pop the bubble that so often surrounds high-powered candidates. Posting to his official Blog for America weblog, Dean writes: [O]one of you asked if there would be a White…

Tim Dunlop wonders if Bush’s latest blatant counterfactual untruth (“We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in”) – that’s a lie, son – was really just a hazing prank played Scott McClellan on the occasion of his succeeding Ari Fleischer, “one of the most accomplished liars on…

Adam Felber has a funny take on the spin or antispin from the comfort-the-comfortable sector of punditry online and off about Yellowcakegate in Bush Camp: Nothing to See Here, Folks, contrasting that with the feeding frenzy from the left (oh, and from the Democrats): My treasonous colleagues and I are sputtering with outrage. And they…

Maybe the Republicans shouldn’t have questioned war hero Max Cleland’s patriotism. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, whose panel he sits on, recently elicited this analysis from a professor at the Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore: Iraq war may have made terror threat worse.

Someone, I’ll have to look it up,* in the last century called politics “the art of the possible.” I want to focus on positive things that can be done or addressed, and not a project of demonizing 50% or more of America for being selfish or deluded or whatever. If anyone is deluded it’s the…

As soon as the import is done, this site will have comments, trackbacks, and other groovy MT features. The URL may change too, but if so there’ll be a redirect and no backward-breakage.

Sun, sea, salt and sand cured what ailed me today, out at Rodeo beach near the Marin Headlands. The weather cooperated. I even got my feet in the water. Good food, good companionship, good wine. Hours dozing with a hat shading my eyes. Birds overhead waiting to pick up after our picnic. It’s good to…

Hey, I’m headed to New York next week (after the 4th of July holiday). I arrive on Wednesday, July 9 and I’m returning to Oakland late on Wednesday, July 16. Before then, I have some brutal deadlines. While in New York I’ll do some work (mostly reviewing manuscript for my current book project and meeting…

IPFC, Inc. announces the launch of the Internet Pundit Fantasy Camp, and a chance to be among the presence of such luminaries as Jason Kottke, James Lileks, Doc Searls, Glenn Reynolds, Esther Dyson, Cory Doctorow, Christopher Locke, Clay Shirky, Xeni Jardin, Scott Rosenberg, Joi Ito, Marc Canter, John Dvorak, Dan Gillmor, Andrew Sullivan, Dave Winer,…

Acting legend Katharine Hepburn dies at 96

The Memory Hole > 5-Minute Video of George W. Bush on the Morning of 9/11

Sandler got married

Billmon, whose list of WMD-related quotations posted to his Whiskey Bar blog rocketed around the political web a month or so ago has tracked down a series of quotations from Senate leader Bill Frist that seem to contradict his more recent take on the reason we went to war with Iraq.

Those Harvard schmucks, they get the best graduation speakers. This year Will Ferrell serenaded them as “shiny little very smart pieces of dust.”

John Edwards takes the incumbent administration to task for its oligarchic, anticapitalistic policies (On Rewarding Work And Creating Opportunity).

Joshua Marshall is doing his usual bang-up job of covering every angle of the ongoing Tom DeLay scandal dealing with misuse of Homeland Security resources in the Texas redistricting conflict, and subsequent attempts to cover tracks.