Category: Edgewise

  • Shameless

    NYT “[In 2005] Amir Attaran, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and fiery advocate on malaria…testified that the American agency, the United States Agency for International Development, was too cozy with ‘the foreign aid industrial complex.’ “Only 1 percent of the agency’s 2004 malaria budget went for medicines, 1 percent for insecticides and…

  • Billmon explains the swiftboating of Kos

    I know the seven or eight readers of this site are not blog junkies and may not have been following the recent campaign against Markos Moulitsas Zúniga and his “minions” for… well, it’s confusing, but for an excellent summary slash analysis see Billmon’s The Swiftboating of Kos in his venerable Whiskey Bar. (Note: Even Atrios…

  • Will Iran Unanimity Turn Around to Bite Bush?

    President Bush has been basking in the unanimity he fashioned concerning Iran among the “Five plus One” countries: the five veto-wielding members of the Security Council (US, UK, France, Russia, and China) plus Germany. With this diplomatic triumph, Bush is shedding his image of “My way or the highway” unilateralism. But only at the cost…

  • Oops!

    You almost have to feel sorry for Tony Snow for how unbelievably off-the-charts wrong he was. Almost.

  • “Convinced that the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse”

    In case you missed it… In 2003, U.S. Spurned Iran’s Offer of Dialogue–Some Officials Lament Lost Opportunity By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, June 18, 2006; Page A16 Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces three years ago, an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the…

  • Trickle-up economics

    Larry Beinart has a good analysis at the HuffPost of how wrong Republican economics are for the U.S. (Bushenomics 102: Reality. One point I’d like to reinforce is this: If you want to cut taxes, cut it from the bottom up. The money will get spent, stimulating the economy. and the base of the tax…

  • They laughed at Edison

    And they laughed at Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy. Personally, I think its essential that the Democracts compete across the entire country and stop ceding entire regions to the Republicans. For one thing, Red State Democrats are some of the most dedicated supporters the party has. It’s *easy* to be a Democrat in San Francisco. It’s…

  • The Looming Pitched Battle for the City of Kirkuk

    I’ve been following the thread of the story of the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, and it seriously looks as if in late 2007 that city is going to move Iraq into a new, bloodier, level of warfare: pitched battle for territory, with full-scale armies on the attack. It is hard to believe, even for me:…

  • The Fine Print on Direct Talks

    NYT, 5/29/06 “To avert sanctions, Iran has hinted at readiness to limit the number of centrifuge machines producing enriched uranium…. “Diplomats…say that Iranian engineers stopped pouring a raw form of uranium, called UF6, into arrays of centrifuges after just 12 days….the Iranians kept the empty centrifuges spinning, as is standard practice because slowing the delicate…

  • Political spam

    I don’t know what to make of this spam. Registering to vote put me on this list? From: Voter Emailing Company To: xian Date: May 24 You are receiving this email as a registered voter. If you would prefer not to hear from us by e-mail, please click on the link at the bottom of…

  • If you like words and politics and history

    This may blow your mind.

  • Mr. Dylan on Mr. Cool J

    In case you missed mention of it, Bob Dylan is DJ on a weekly “Theme Time Radio Hour” on satellite radio. This was his intro to LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” on the show with a Mother’s Day theme. (II’ll put in some line breaks.) Here’s LL Cool J Don’t call it…

  • Why we resist direct talks with North Korea and Iran

    Why does the US resist direct talks with Iran and North Korea? This may be part of it: The Bush Doctrine had two basic tenets: Preemptive Force and Regime Change. The second has gotten relatively little notice, compared with the first. The idea behind regime change is that when a country poses a serious threat…

  • Alternate Reality #666

    Pertaining to nothing, ran into an article talking about the use of “666” in the marketing for The Omen remake, and it featured the following quote: “Normally, a marketer is going to be very, very wary about using the devil,” said Robert Thompson, professor of television at Syracuse University in New York state. “But 666…

  • The Mysterious Pyramid Coincidence

    Bosnian Hill an Ancient Pyramid, AP [Note: Joke, hopefully, ensues] So, we have yet another example of the mysteriously universal practice of pyramid building, which took hold at a certain time in every ancient human civilization, in every corner of the world. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. There was certainly no possible route of human-to-human…

  • You Can’t Have One, but You Can Have Them All

    “Can we get Person A’s phone records, without a warrant?” No. “Can we get everybody’s phone records, including Person A’s, without a warrant?” Sure. No problem. Can it really be so simple? It’s hard to see why not.

  • Help document this Presidency

    People for the American Way has created an interactive website called WikiThePresidency where anyone can help document the depradations of the Bush administration (or research the same).

  • We should think, before we don’t worry.

    “According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released yesterday, 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort.” Americans appear so far to have been soothed by government reassurances such as this: “The database… includ[es] called and calling…

  • i got the antediluvian de-stroyed de-brised de-scouraged homeland insecurity blues

    Sittin’ in a friend’s Uptown shotgun listening to Bobby Lounge bang the ivories singing “do not pass on by” while the dog sleeps and the mockingbirds sing on a softly humid Monday morning. The friends are workin’, a blessing in this post-Katrina, trauma-tized, water-marked, limpin’ and hurtin’ New Orleans. “We Back” says the spray paint…

  • Rove calling, again

    “Mr. Rove said he had forgotten the call, one of hundreds he participates in each day.” A repentant Karl Rove admitted yesterday to a grand jury investigator that he could not recall a conversation with a journalist in which he revealed the secret code to White House situation room “nuke” buttons. In a sixteen hour…

  • Kill it before it grows?

    No one knows exactly what “price gouging” is supposed to mean in a capitalist economy. Price fixing and collusion are a different matter, but that so far does not appear to be the issue currently with gasoline. There are some relevant things we do know. As traffic volume increases, private cars become less efficient: traffic…