Category: Paleoblogs

  • “I’ll give you these concessions, but then I’m going to shoot you.”

    Three Bush Foreign-Policy Hypotheses I won’t undertake to substantiate these, just to offer them as hypotheses. 1. We (i.e., the Bush administration) are refusing talks with Syria and Iran, because we are afraid the talks would succeed. 2. We are afraid of the talks succeeding, because we’d have to renounce regime-change. (It is diplomatically untenable…

  • The Future Now

    I love the headline up on msnbc.com right now: Doesn’t this look just like one of those fantasy headlines of some more perfect world? You know — the kind we daydream about while listening to Nancy Grace drone on about the latest unsolved horror…? This one could only be better if the headline made mention…

  • Farewell, Princess Winter Spring Summer Fall

    I didn’t know Leslie Harpold very well. We corresponded briefly in the early pre-blog days of the web when I was doing Enterzone and she was Smug (and later Hoopla). Smug was everything I wanted ezone to be: beautifully designed, cleverly written, artistic. Leslie was always involved in all the coolest leading-edge web creative projects…

  • No Magic Bullet

    Barak Obama is, among other things, a unique personal phenomenon, a political happenstance. And that is frightening in a way, because America is a country where, as with both of the Kennedys, you can kill an idea.

  • I’m not afraid to say it

    “This documentary visits Ingmar Bergman, one of the 20th century’s greatest film directors…” http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1167037-bergman_island/about.php Only the 20th century! I’m not afraid to say it–I think he was one of the greatest film directors of all time!

  • Catching up with NAN

    Hey, I’m only a month late on congratulating Jay Rosen on the launch of NewAssignment.Net (“an experiment in open-source reporting”). My excuse is I was finishing a novel and working full time, but what about the blogs, Christian? And who will think of the children? Here’s some tidbits from Jay’s update of the time, which…

  • Splendid Isolation

    “The administration also does not plan to alter its strategy of isolating adversaries Iran and Syria, despite mounting pressure…” —NYT, 12/1/06 DKo: We are very close to standing alone, as we isolate Iran, Syria and, in effect, the entire world.

  • So, that was the mistake.

    We really need to go invade a better country! Washington Post, 11/29/06: “As Iraq Deteriorates, Iraqis Get More Blame”

  • Two Headline-Writer Roommates

    “Want to garner a DVD tonight? We could nab a good one.” “I’ll mull it, but don’t get roiled if I don’t. I’m not inking anything.”

  • Only in the Torah? Abraham challenges God.

    And now for something completely different… In this week’s synagogue Torah reading, Genesis 18:1 – 22:24, God tells Abraham that Sodom and Gomorrah are to be destroyed, and Abraham challenges the morality of this decision. He morally challenges God. And God accepts. “Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty? What if there…

  • Republicanists

    If the Republicans (and, increasingly, the media) get to keep calling us the “Democrat Party” instead of the “Democratic Party,” because they think it subliminally emphasizes the word “rat,” can we start calling them “Republicanists”? As in “What my Republicanist colleague forgets to mention is…” It would make people think “pianist” every time they thought…

  • California “here we come”

    The barbarians are at the gates, and Washington, D.C. may never be the same. If American voters thought the war in Iraq was the most pressing issue of the day, Barbara Boxer may soon be disabusing them of that notion. Likely to be the next chair of the Senate Environment committee, Boxer is ecstatically planning…

  • It’s Morning in America

    for reals.

  • Bush may find he is a President out of the loop..

    While both the President and the Democrats have promised to seek new approaches on Iraq, pundits have noted that new approaches may just not be available. In particular, they say not to expect something new to be discovered by the Baker commission. But, the Baker mandate (report due at the end of the year) may…

  • the golden grate

    Talk about diversity…here in the golden state we’ve managed to reach new heights of mixedness, all-over-the-mapness, and plain ol’ voter confusion as the results of the Caulifornia mid-term and governatorious elections illuminate the collective mind of the Left Coasters. We voted for a Republican Hollywood muscleman who lifted himself out of the political toilet by…

  • An appreciation, and some electoral arithmetic.

    Thanks and congratulations to our own Christian Crumlish and Cecil Vortex, who epitomized for us the heart and soul of the committed Long Haul. And thank you to Howard Dean, whose controversial decision to spend on party-building in all 50 states, not just limited battleground states, has been well vindicated by the competitive races and…

  • Congratulations, Jerry McNerney and staff!

    Victory is sweet. While other Democratic politicians in the state of California were making nice to Schwarzenegger, abandoning Angelides and risking the rest of the state ticket, an army of grassroots supporters, many of them veterans of the Dean insurgency, backed McNerney early and worked their hearts out to get him elected, upsetting the complacent…

  • Army recruiters tell students war in Iraq is over

    ABC News: Army Recruiters Accused of Misleading Students to Get Them to Enlist: But if they study hard they won’t get stuck in Iraq.

  • 21st Century Lou

    Here’s a swank new version of Walk on the Wild Side, from Lou “Mr.” Reed, with updated lyrics for this modern world. Worth a listen….

  • Great article on McNerney’s race to unseat Pombo in CA-11 from the UK Independent

    The coverage in this article makes the McNerney-Pombo race seem like a bellwether. To me, this is the money quote: >He has put family members on his congressional payroll at salaries so high that two years ago they outstripped the entire campaign budget of his Democratic Party challenger. And now he is pushing to build…

  • What’s wrong with John Kerry?

    It wasn’t enough that he lost the 2004 election for us; now he wants to lose the 2006 election, too? Why on Earth would he open his mouth and give the Republicans a piece of red meat like this? Kerry says sorry for “botched joke” Johnny: Much respect for all you’ve done for your country.…