Category: Edgewise

  • Secrets and lies

    I’m starting to get a queasy feeling about Jeff “so-called” Gannon‘s access to sensitive information in the White House. Is Jim-Jeff Guckert-Gannon gonna be Monica Lewinsky this time around? Whose ox is gored now, whose cover has been blown?

  • Shamefully Truncated Abstinence Programs

    The Bush administration is now funding a sexual abstinence program as part of its contribution to fighting AIDS in Africa. Abstinence is also a mainstay of its efforts against both youth pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases within the US. So that is consistent. But there are rumors that backsliders in the administration want to restrict…

  • Chris Nolan has had enough

    The best blog commentary I’ve read this year is Oh. Him. by Chris Nolan at Politics from Left to Right. I don’t want to quote it or summarize. Just go read it. It’s absolutely essential. I’m serious. I just (finally) put Nolan’s weblog at the top of the syndicated headlines on the Edgewise home page.…

  • Republicans against torture

    I’ve been wondering when we’d hear an actual conservative take a principled position against torture instead of the subject-changing, excuse-making, or moral relativism we’ve mostly seen from the right on this issue. Sebastian Holsclaw, who described himself as a conservative blogger with a mostly liberal audience (he used to be a regular commentator on a…

  • Proverbs for Paranoids, 3

    Hit this quote today in Pynchon’s amazing Gravity’s Rainbow that summed up our current political situation way too perfectly: Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers. Which leads back to the query my brain just can’t shake: Prince Charles and his flowering…

  • Iran-Iraq: maybe, maybe not

    Take 2… Cecil was wondering whether we have just created “the perfect opening for an oil-rich anti-western Iran-Iraq alliance”. I happen to think the two countries will become very tight, and posted a line about the Anschluss of the Mullahs on my blog. My friend Mark Lew, who knows more about world politics and history…

  • Can anyone explain to me…

    …without diving into conspiracy (already got that covered — thanks…) why it might be that the election results in Iraq are getting close to zero media attention? A week ago this was the election of the century. Anybody remember purple fingers? I get that they must still be counting the votes, but in this 24-hour…

  • Quote of the year

    I did not like fascists when I fought them as a diplomat for 23 years and I don’t like them now in my own country. From Ambassador Wilson, in an excellent interview posted on ye olde DailyKos.

  • Zack Exley’s advice to Dean

    Zack Exley advises Howard Dean to use his e-bully pulpit to communicate directly to wired Democratic activists his first day on the job. p.s.: Pete I’m sorry but I accidentally allowed the URLs to be stripped from your comment on the previous post here. Please feel free to re-post them in a main entry.

  • Is this the week Iran won the Iran-Iraq war?

    I read the news today and got a cold feeling inside. Have we just spent all this blood and treasure to create the perfect opening for an oil-rich anti-western Iran-Iraq alliance, complete with US-trained and armed troops? And will Bush’s great purple-stained success this week turn out to be yet another naive move by wide-eyed,…

  • Yeeagh!

    MyDD :: Democratic party just committed suicide! This MyDD diarist points out that the conventional wisdom on Dean and what he stands for is dead wrong. This is good. The Democrats have to stop being so transparent with the media. Atrios has been pointing out that the Republicans have gotten in bed with media elites…

  • private? personal? it’s all partisan

    Since the Shrub administration is parsing terms these days, I’d like to suggest some additional euphemisms… Private parts shall now be personal parts. There is no more privation–it’s providence. Privileged? No. Preselected. Will the SSS become the Social Securities System? The Republicons who gave us the Death Tax are primed to pitch young against old…

  • Iraqi elections are a good thing

    That should go without saying. Opposing the war, thinking the opportunity costs weren’t weighed properly, despairing of U.S. leadership – none of that constitutes opposition to democratic elections. While I may have my doubts and pessimism about the entire operation and I may worry about how it will all come out, I don’t see any…

  • Truth and consequences

    Good discussion in the comment thread for a recent post at Max Sawicky’s weblog (MaxSpeak, You Listen!): That Hussein and the Ba’athist government of Iraq no longer seek a nuclear weapon is good, but if one had given me $200 billion and authorization to get up to 1400 Americans killed and ten thousand wounded to…

  • Life, Death, and Entertainment Culture

    Like the old Bill Murray character on SNL, I haven’t actually seen this year’s nominee, but I’m going to write about it anyway. According to this piece from Chicago Reader, Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby apparently endorses its main character’s assisted suicide after she becomes paralyzed (and takes some implausible-sounding plotting to get to that…

  • What are they thinking?

    According to the State Department report, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq assisted Saddam in “suppressing opposition within Iraq, and performed internal security for the Iraqi regime.”

  • We oppose Gonzales

    We are against torture. The Gonzales nomination may be ineluctable but we would like to go on record as opposing it. In the future we want people to know that not everyone in the U.S. made excuses for atrocities. Quoting from No on Gonzales: Unprecedented times call for unprecedented actions. In this case, we, the…

  • Beautiful losers

    Fire the Consultants by Amy Sullivan at the WashMon asks the musical question, “Why do Democrats promote campaign advisors who lose races?”

  • Wishing the President Well

    Gary Hart’s op-ed “The restoration of a mythical golden age” concludes by striking just the right balance between the degree of respect that any president is due ex officio and that which this president has actually earned: “Despite all this, people of goodwill must wish George Bush well and hope that his hubris will be…

  • The Sad Death of Spencer Dryden

    I’m old enough to remember when the Airplane ruled San Francisco and rocked my adolescent world, but I confess I barely noticed Spencer Dryden’s drumming between the trebly distortion of Jorma’s guitar and Grace’s Icy Bitch Goddess persona. But this post isn’t about my taste in popular music. Reading through the fan tributes in the…

  • St. Francis of the slots

    Our bay of St. Francis is primed to become the Monte Carlo of the West by the looks of all the recent casino proposals, a result of both intentional and unintended actions of legislators, disenfranchised tribes, and savvy money men who could smell the profits from three time zones away. In effect, the Bureau of…