on the up side…

at least someone still cares about the “news” part of “fox news.”

now, i don’t have cable, and even when i did, i couldn’t stand to watch fox news, so i’ve never seen smith’s show. but every article i’ve read–from both liberal bloggers and from outlets like the relatively conservative NYT, as here–seems to paint him as an actual rational conservative, someone who doesn’t let ideology completely determine his worldview, to the exclusion of common sense or basic human decency. which is what sets him apart from the rest of the FN on-air personalities.

AAAUGH

I moved recently. My new apartment’s totally sweet: nice trees and stuff to look at out the windows, lots of space, dishwasheromg! and everything.  What I wasn’t prepared for was an additional, undocumented feature: the kid downstairs who apparently wants to be a drummer.  I’m all about encouraging the youth and whatnot but there has to be a better solution than letting him out in the backyard to beat on shit with sticks for hours on end.

Oh and did I mention that he also seems to be trying to learn to sing?

…

1989 redux: will it be tiananmen or bucharest?

i don’t really have anything to contribute on the situation in iran right now, except that it’s fascinating to watch history unfold this way. the situation is so tenuous, it could go either way. 

a troubled week in iran over at the big picture.

i am practically gleeful

(if only to keep from being outraged. again. some more.)

so here’s the deal: 

Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm’s 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.

i think this might be the breaking point, the point where i literally stop having any faith at all in the government. this whole financial meltdown has been so badly mishandled, and obviously nothing has changed. no one has been held accountable. and reading this, i really couldn’t summon up more than an eye roll. 

on the other hand, i’m with the cajun boy in being excited to hear what taibbi is going to say about this:

The only bright spot in all of this is that Matt Taibbi is going to be so pissed about it, and we kind of like it when Taibbi is pissed off about something.

It Isn’t All So Simple

Hey-lo. Haven’t had much to say… heard Dennis Miller on the radio on my way to/from the grocery store just now and he changed that. Basically his point was that international relations is like being on the playground in elementary school. Obama’s a pussy, Bush was a hardass, the rest of the world (or at least Kim Jong-il, Ahmanamejokegoesherenejad, etc) are bullies, and so forth, and what we need to do is go out and give someone a black eye to show them we’re not to be trifled with.

Look that’s appealing and simplistic and all but it just isn’t true.  In the schoolyard we know who the aggressors are- they shake us down for our lunch money or actively rough us up for unspecified reasons ‘cuz they’re just those special kinda dicks.  There’s a framework involved here- if shit gets too crazy out on the lawn then we’re getting called in to the principle’s office. If we get too dinged up we visit the nurse. And if shit really gets out of hand the cops get called and that’s generally the last word as far as someone exerting authority.  It just doesn’t get much more hardass than having the cops called on you at age 8 right?

Well in international relations there is no schoolyard, no cops, no parents, no teachers, no framework of any sort other than each country’s individual viewpoint, based on their own bias etc, of who is and is not the aggressor.  There’s no higher authority (other than perhaps the hated UN) to appeal to if shit gets out of hand and the reality of these kinds of stakes is you don’t know who’s gunning for you until they strike and if you give the wrong person a black eye you’re going to kill people, you’re going to empty the treasury and you’re going to foster a whole generation of people that want to kill you. This isn’t a fucking game. This isn’t about compensating for the way I wish I would’ve acted in high school. This is real life.

he’s looking more like strangelove every day

le sigh.

remember when cheney was living in some underground bunker somewhere and no one saw him or heard from him for months on end? can we go back to that?

although i guess it’s better to have him where we can keep an eye on him. kind of like a toddler…

just…wow

so this is old, and i haven’t even read the book the review is about, but i honestly don’t give a damn. this, my friends, is how you tear a book apart and still sound intelligent. this is not the “shut up!” “no, you shut up!” back and forth that so frequently passes for critique and argument among our punditry-obsessed media these days. this is an intellectual TKO.

just thought you should know.

hatin’ on cheney (again, some more)

so i was reading this, about iran/contra, and found an awesome little section that should frighten and appall (but not shock or surprise) you:

But some members of the Iran-contra committee denounced the committee majority for reaching “hysterical conclusions” about a “grand conspiracy.” No such conspiracy existed, the minority said; instead, the president had just shown a “compassionate, but disproportionate” concern for American citizens held captive in Lebanon. And, in any event, the president was the nation’s “foreign policy leader,” and if he wanted to sell arms to terrorists and never tell Congress about it, well, then, they saluted him. In the future, the president should be more “robust” in defending his “constitutional powers.”

The minority report was signed by a Wyoming representative named Richard Cheney. This was the same Cheney who, as chief of staff in the Ford administration, had tried to obstruct the Church Committee investigation; who believed that presidency must regain the powers it supposedly lost after Watergate.

when i read stuff like this, i obviously get all irate and rant about dick cheney being evil and fascist and whatnot. but sometimes, i think about other things, like the ways in which people try to rationalize and defend their own desire to stay in power. and i don’t just mean cheney – i mean people in general. i’m sure there were many conservative americans in 1987 who totally agreed with cheney, and i’m equally sure those same people (including ol’ dick) would have been outraged – OUTRAGED, i tell you! – had anything of the sort come from a democrat. and i’m sure the reverse is true for some on the left. it’s all about power and holding on to it.

none of this is news, of course. just something i was thinking about…