Category: Edgewise

  • 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…