It’s been a while since I’ve gone on about U.S. economic policy and currency issues (although I’ve certainly talked about the currency thing enough over the years). Partly this is because the story isn’t changing: the value of U.S. currency keeps dropping–even against ours, which is so tightly integrated with it. Here’s the long term chart: (I’d like to take… Read more →
Category: Political
Old School
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Helen Thomas, who appears to be one of the two last journalists in AmericaThe other one is, of course, Seymour Hersh. Greg Palast might be one someday when he grows up–if he drops the shrill joking style.. Remember back in 2003 when no one in the White House press pool was asking any questions… Read more →
Connecting some dots…
So, an Administration official says Iran “could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days“. Well that sounds scary. Of course over in the reality-based community we can read that “Western nuclear analysts said yesterday that Tehran lacked the skills, materials and equipment to make good on its immediate nuclear ambitions“, and in particular that: The… Read more →
More Moyers
Last year my impression of Bill Moyers as a stately intellect was shattered when I discovered that he is actually a really intelligent rabblerouser. Well, this year he’s still rousing the rabble, this time about campaign finance and K Street corruption, and making a lot of sense while doing it. He starts out with a pithy summary of the problem,… Read more →
I Can Shoot Fire From My Hands!
You know who really talks with his hands? Donald Rumsfeld. It’s like he’s doing some kind of hand jive in every picture you see of him. And the one’s I’ve been seeing lately show a disturbing trend. First, he’s got this kind of “Look, nothing up my sleeve” pose, that just makes me think he’s trying to misdirect us from… Read more →
Yes, that is my wife. Yes, that is my daughter.
(Note: This is pretending to be about politics, but is really about MY WIFE and MY DAUGHTER being in the newspaper. So, if you don’t care about the political stuff, keep reading until you get to that part!) I know I go off a lot on American politics here, way more than I do about the homegrown kind, and there’s… Read more →
More head-shaking… but with an optimistic ending
Well, the news today on the Feingold thing is pretty amusing, in a “laugh so I don’t cry” way. Democrats are literally scampering for cover, and avoiding the question, in an attempt to avoid upsetting people. I know it’s been said almost to death, but they are never going to amount to anything until they stand for something. Here’s snippets… Read more →
Future generations will shake their heads…
That Ted Rall, he’s such a kidder. Oh. Wait. It appears he’s not, and we’re really in that retroactive legalization period. From the NYT, last week: Moving to tamp down Democratic calls for an investigation of the administration’s domestic eavesdropping program, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that they had reached agreement with the White House on proposed… Read more →
QOTD
From a friend, visiting the national capital: “so many bureaucrats, so little fire” Read more →
Impeachment Forum
Remember that post about the Lapham’s essay on impeachment, and the report, etc.? If you were interested in that, you should see SixThreeFive.com, which tells you how to do your bit for impeachment. It also hosts an audio and video that you can dowload of the recent Harper’s Forum on the subject of impeachment. The forum was entitled “Is There… Read more →
Things to listen to
Not music this time, but a bunch of things you can slap in your MP3 player and use to fill up some dead time. I’m going to assume you know what a podcast is, and have software to harvest them. (I use Doppler.) Let’s start with academics. Professor Courtney Brown, of the Political Science department at Emory University in Georgia… Read more →
SF Authors say smart things: Scalzi on the Judiciary
SF author John Scalzi is doing “reader request week” over at his popular blog Whatever, an annual event where he posts in response to reader requests (duh!). Today’s post is on the question of “activist” judges, and Scalzi’s response is great. I’ve noticed that my political opinions and Scalzi’s have some overlap but they certainly aren’t congruent; this piece is… Read more →
The Case for Impeachment
Have I mentioned my deep and abiding love for the essays of Lewis H. Lapham? They were (and sometimes are, now that he’s “editor emeritus”) the first thing I read in Harper’s every month, and I’ve bought a linear foot or two of books of his writings because of them. He’s more than a bit pretentious in style at times,… Read more →
This whole ports thing…
While I’m Bush-bashing, I should toss out at least some small comment on the whole ports thing. Look, I actually don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with the ports deal–I think most of the reaction to it has been ridiculously overblown. In fact, I think Kenton Kelly has some excellent points in his piece over at Reason Online: Beyond that,… Read more →
Implosions Make Me Happy
In my Firefox bookmarks, I have a “To Blog” folder, where I store links I want to come back to later and say something about. Inside that folder, there are some additional subfolders that break things down into rough categories. The most populous of these folders is the “Hate Bush” folder, with well over 125 bookmarks in it. I mention… Read more →
