Here a fascist, there a fascist, everywhere a fascist fascist

This is just delicious. Much to the chagrin of David Horowitz and the Islamo-Fascist Awareness Brigade, the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom invited Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, to speak on campus at the same time. Hilarity ensues as people desperately try to differentiate the true "fascists" involved.

Woodstuck+Torture=Uproarious Laughter -- Or, the Passion of John McCain

John McCain's latest campaign has attracted a bit of attention recently. According to TPM, Fox News is singling McCain out for using footage of the Fox Republican Debate. I don't really care at all about the political machinations of Fox News, but I do think it's worth mentioning that John McCain's new ad is really weird. Let's watch and count the ways:



1. The Austin Powers-esque one million dollars for a Woodstock museum. Wow! As though nobody’s counting that one trillion dollars being spent on other kinds of shock and awe social experiments.

2. The standing ovation, raucous cheers, and merry laughter (particularly Giuliani’s) that follow the line “I wasn’t there…. I was tied up at the time” being tortured.

3. That anyone who would dare propose spending one million dollars to commemorate a “cultural and pharmaceutical event” that occurred while John McCain was being tortured (ha! ha!) should not be able to run for the office of President of the United States.

I myself think a Woodstock Concert Museum is a great idea, and I’m pleased to see that it’s going to happen with or without John McCain’s approval. Nevertheless, this is just a really stupid ad, focusing on a really small amount of money, which in addition in some weird way is trying to equate Woodstock with approval of torture. No politician would ever wittingly condone torture in this country for fear of being immediately voted out of office, so I’m particularly shocked that McCain himself hasn’t retracted this ad, and is instead waiting for the pious torture-haters at Fox News to do so.

Freedom of Depressed

So I guess we all know about FEMA's fake press conference? I like the righteous indignation that you can smell in the quotes by other administration officials because I'm convinced that it's in part out of fear. After all the talk we've heard about Bush's incredibly controlled and self-selected press conferences, maybe this stunt just hits too close to home and brings out the "truth" of all of the rest of the regime's media management. This time, it was just too sloppy and too blatant.


WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE.

Speaking of california fires, I think Mike Davis (prophetically) said it best: Let Malibu Burn

The Liquidity Party is Over: Merge My Fist To Your Face

High salaries, models, and bottles. Kiss it goodbye you investment banking fuck, and acquire a new job, because you're fired. Investment banking is soooo passee.

I can hear you scream "Oh, please give me shelter, I spent my after-tax 72,000 compensation cause they told me the party would go on forever!" That's cause you didn't take a history class you suck ass.

"I'm an investment banker though, I am at the top of the food chain, I make the most money out of college, and they told me they wont fire me." Good, I am glad your still being paid a base salary of 60,000 to work 100 hour weeks. "But I get a bonus" Wrong, now you don't.

In case you didn't notice, I am absolutely ecstatic about the prospective of bonus' being parred down and investment bankers potentially losing their jobs. These pieces of shit don't deserve as much money as they receive or their elitist attitude. Now they won't have it. 3,000 investment bankers were just fired from Bank of America. Merrill Lynch just wrote down 10 billion dollars in losses today. That is as much as they made in all of 2006. In 3 months they lost as much as they made in an entire year. The guys we know there are fucked in so many ways.

A quick review of the Wash U careers website reveals that NO financial companies are hiring for investment banking positions. NONE. This time last year there were hundreds of postings and scores of on campus interviews. You cant find a posting anywhere for entry-level positions.

Yes, the crash. We are in a recession. And this is gonna go on for a long time. I think people will turn within themselves and ask, 'What did I just do?'

As one banker put it, "my entire value as a person was linked to making more money for people." The fucker didn't realize it until the night he was "terminated", sitting at his kitchen table with pasta cooking. I brought the booze. He wanted to save money.

Judis' take on neo-imperialism

You know, I tend to like John B. Judis (in the sense that I sort of like a lot of people I have a hard time distinguishing at The New Republic -- Christopher Orr, Josh Patashnik, Jason Zengerle, Isaac Chotiner), but this article in the American Prospect about Bush's "neo-imperialism" strikes me as a bit lacking. The central argument is that the Bush administration's aggressive, even imperialist foreign policy is a "rejection" of America's century-old, Wilsonian "liberal internationalism." There are factors within the argument itself that make this a shaky thesis, but I will try to inject some of my own interpretations as well.

First of all, I should point out that any article running several thousand words but with no footnotes makes me nervous. Whose interpretation of history is this? Whose consensus? Ah, well. Let's take Judis at his word for the moment.

After an introduction drawing parallels with British colonial involvement in Egypt, Judis lays it out like this: America briefly flirted with traditional European-style imperialism at the turn of the century, under Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt. Note that Judis distinguishes between two kinds of imperialism:

Direct, where the colonial power assigned an administrator -- a viceroy or proconsul -- who ran the country directly; and indirect, where the colonial power used its financial and military power to prop up a native administration that did its bidding and to prevent the rise of governments that did not.

Okay. We'll get to that second, indirect form in a moment. Meanwhile, in a short, rather impoverished (historiographically) paragraph, Judis lays much of the blame for World Wars 1 and 2 and the Cold War on traditional imperialism.

Then there's a weird segment where America's resolve to dissolve traditional European imperialism after WWII is "blunted" because the USSR supported anti-imperialist movements. Thus the U.S. "sided with the former colonial powers." This is supposed to explain our involvement in Vietnam, which was an "outgrowth of American support for French colonialism." Eh, I don't know about that. This interpretation makes it sound as though American foreign policy was beholden to European colonialism in the postwar period. I just don't see how that could be true. (Western) Europe was America's plaything after WWII. Its army was for all intents and purposes NATO forces under American leadership. It was absolutely indebted to America for the latter's Marshall Plan lending and general economic recuperation. So rather than view the Vietnam War as "support" for French colonialism, which suggests a subordinate role, it seems to me like we should look for more hegemonic, purposeful causes behind America's involvement.

Anyway, then there's this:

Some political scientists in the United States and Europe claimed that America remained an imperial power because of its worldwide system of military bases and its clout in international financial institutions, but while America was capable of influencing governments, it could no longer exercise a veto over critical regimes coming to power. The invasion of Panama in 1989 appeared to be the last gasp of America's indirect imperialism.

1989! So much for a century of liberal internationalism. There are obviously many instances other than Panama we could list here. As for the notion that America wasn't an empire, not even an indirect one, despite the fact that it "influenced" governments with its military and economic power, well -- that is basically the definition Judis gave earlier for "indirect imperialism"! As for its not being able to exercise a "veto", I'd like some evidence here. Plus, doesn't Judis' next sentence, that the "last gasp" of American indirect imperialism occurred in 1989, somewhat undermine the assertion in the previous one?

The next paragraph sings the praises of the 1990s, the "high water mark of liberal internationalism." The first Gulf War was waged by America, with a "coalition through the U.N.," but the NATO bombings in the Balkans only "built a coalition." If one conceives of NATO as an "international" coalition then perhaps the argument has some force, but it's hard from this angle to see it as anything other than a moment of American unipolarity. (Perry Anderson has a good article about these events, and left liberal political philosophers' reactions to them, here.) There's no doubt that these actions had more international legitimacy than Gulf War II, but there's such a thin sliver separating "internationalism" from "indirect imperialism" at this point that I'm not sure the argument has much purchase. Again, if all "internationalism" means is "getting our European friends to sign on," friends we have systematically insured must remain subordinate to us militarily, then it's all six/one half-dozen. Better to either give up this line of argument, or else pursue it to the logical conclusion of saying U.S. indirect imperialism, with a patina of approval from our European friends, is okay.

But the article instead is a polemic, intended to bring out the differences between good liberal internationalists (all Democrats -- Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Clinton) and naughty Republicans (McKinley, Roosevelt, George W. Bush). Also, I just don't see how much Judis' post-Bush policy proposals will change things. He says that "none of this will be easy," and when it comes to Iraq I suppose it won't be, but most of his suggestions are largely symbolic (a series of "reaffirmations" of US support for UN institutions) and easily attainable -- they could be accomplished on Hillary Clinton's first day as President.

It comes down to a couple of things, I guess. One, whether the tradition of "liberal internationalism" is really all that distinct from U.S. indirect imperialism. And two, whether the status quo ante is in fact a desirable state of affairs. Judis seems to think it is, but there are a number of issues -- the Middle East peace process, denuclearization, U.S. peace-time arms spending, foreign military bases -- that it never resolved, nor looked to be interested in resolving. Unless you think all our problems stem from Bush's presidency -- and I would say they don't; they have a history that extends back more than eight years -- there is still plenty left to grapple with. Judis is about as left-liberal as The New Republic gets, and he's not afraid to bring up oil (complete with Greenspan quote!), American Middle East meddling, and, of course, the dreaded word "imperialism." But I would say his critique does not go far enough. Thoughts? Questions concerning my historical narrative? A lot of my analysis stems from a quirky little book I just read by a paleoconservative realist, Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions. There's a long, long, long draft of a book review sitting in the Huffy Crew archives. Maybe I should bring it out.

Materialists Rejoice!

What a relief I felt this morning to learn that pitcher Paul Byrd's success since his 2002 shoulder surgery is not due to God being his Pitching Coach. Or, to put it differently, that even God thought Paul Byrd wasn't going to amount to shit unless he started taking a fuck-load of steroids.

Broing to the MAX

Oh what delicious indulgence! What pleasure! Not only is the world full of such trinkets as wristwatches, personal organizers, digital camerae, opera glasses, and choco-crispies, but it appears that the young madman has taken up residence online. Heaven take us b4 we are trapped in hedonism!

"... the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success."

For a concise view of the Open Door Thesis applied to Iraq, do read Jim Holt's piece in the London Review of Books. It remains a bit too conspiratorial for my interests, but I'm happy as hell that at least somebody is talking about what the former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve of the United States recently stated: that "the Iraq war is largely about oil." This interpretation will and should gain more popularity as the calender pages and general elections continue to come and go with American troops still in Iraq.

More on Hitch

Since Robot's recent Hitchens post has disappeared beneath this month's interesting output, I will link here to something that caught my eye at Lenin's Tomb. This is a first-hand account of the annual Freedom from Religion Convention, with guest speaker (you guessed it) Christopher Hitchens. The account is unhelpfully in indirect discourse so I don't know if these words are precisely what Hitch said, but here's a smattering:

"Along the way he told us who his choice for president was right now — Rudy Giuliani — and that Obama was a fool, Clinton was a pandering closet fundamentalist, and that he was less than thrilled about all the support among the FFRF for the Democratic party."

"The way to win the war is to kill so many Moslems that they begin to question whether they can bear the mounting casualties."

"[He] said that it was obvious that every Moslem you kill means there is one less Moslem to fight you..."

"Basically, what Hitchens was proposing is genocide. Or, at least, wholesale execution of the population of the Moslem world until they are sufficiently cowed and frightened and depleted that they are unable to resist us in any way, ever again."

As for Hitchens' supposed internal agony over the young man who went to war and died due in part to Hitchens' influence (which article I found retch-inducing):

"He accused the audience of being soft on Islam, of being the kind of vague atheists who refuse to see the threat for what it was, a clash of civilizations, and of being too weak to do what was necessary, which was to spill blood to defeat the enemy."

Can there be any doubt that Hitchens is more than willing to marshal as many young people as is "necessary" to "spill blood to defeat the enemy"? Not that he is actually issuing any orders from any position of authority (thank the stars), but honestly, what an unhinged ghoul.

BOOM!!!

BOOM, HE RAISED HIS HAND OVER HIS HAND LIKE AN INDIAN GREETING. "HOW" HE SAID IN HIS DEEP MASCULINE VOICE. HE SAID IT TO THE FEMALE APE IN FRONT OF HIM, AND THIS WAS THE BIRTH OF SPEECH.

TERROR - PEOPLE CALLED IT TERROR. THE PEOPLE WHO PERPETRATED TERROR WERE TERRORISTS. BUT TERROR WAS ORIGINALLY DEFINED AS POWER PREVENTING SPEECH, A LOGIC, OR A THOUGHT PROCESS FROM ENTERING A DISCOURSE. WE COMMIT THE LOGICAL TERROR....THEY INSPIRE FEAR BECAUSE OF OUR TERROR. EMOTIONAL TERROR.

THE BOY PUT DOWN THE WATERING CAN OUTSIDE OF HIS ADOBE HUT IN CENTRAL FALLUJAH. THE CITY HAD BEEN RANSACKED BY LOOTERS LAST NIGHT. LOOTERS/GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS. HIS FACE WAS BLACK FROM THE EXHAUST OF PASSING BY OF TANKS AND THE SCORCHING SUN. HIS HAIR WAS BLACK. HE WAS SWEATY BUT STILL, THE LOOK IN THAT BOY'S EYES WAS ONE OF WONDER. PROBABLY WONDERING WHERE HIS FATHER HAS BEEN IN THE LAST THREE MONTHS. OR AT ALL THAT IS GOING ON AROUND HIM. WILL HE GROW UP IN A NEW DEMOCRACY? PICTURES OF ABU GHARIB RIPPED FROM THE CONCERETE WALL ACROSS THE STREET. HE WAS LIVING ON US FOOD RATIONS AND THE CANDY THE SOLDIERS PASSED OUT AS THEY PATROLLED THE STREETS WITH HELICOPTER BACKUP AND THE FUTURE COMBAT SYSTEM READY AT A MOMENTS NOTICE. SGT. TOM HAD JESUS WRAPPED IN THE AMERICAN FLAG ON HIS MONSTEROUS BICEP.


IN NEW YORK, THE ONLY RESPONSIBILITY WAS TO NUMBER ONE. . THE FRAGILE I. THE YOUNG WALL STREETER EXPLAINED THAT ONLY AFTER YOU STRUCK IT RICH COULD YOU BE A PILLAR AND DO GOOD THINGS. "I AGREE" SAID THE CHINESE-EDUCATED ANALYST. "BUT ITS DIFFERENT IN CHINA", "WE NEED EACH OTHER" "HERE YOU DONT"

THE RELATIONSHIP WAS ROCKY FROM THE START. SHE NEVER REALLY LIKED HIM. SHE JUST DIDNT CARE. HE LOVED HER TO DEATH. OR MAYBE HE DIDNT CARE , SO HE LET HIMSELF LOVE HER. HE SPENT MOST OF HIS NIGHTS PRETENDING TO BE BIG TIME WHILE MASTURBATING FURIOUSLY INTO THE WEE HOURS OF THE NIGHT. SOMETIMES HE WENT TO THE GYM.

A MACRO HEDGE FUND IS A TOP DOWN ANALYSIS. FROM THE BIG TO THE SMALL.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

I love 7 people on this blog.

Keep the love on the blog guys...it's so nice for friends to live in peace. I wish everyone was

BOOOOM!

... and Stephen Colbert's opening sentences in the New York Times are pure genius:

From today:

Surprised to see my byline here, aren’t you? I would be too, if I read The New York Times. But I don’t. So I’ll just have to take your word that this was published. Frankly, I prefer emoticons to the written word, and if you disagree :(

I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:

Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.

There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.

What hath History in Store for Radiohead?

Having paid my one British Pound and fully expected to be disappointed with the new Radiohead album -- in part due to Thom York's lackluster solo effort of last year -- I am struck by how much this band refuses to suck. Ever. Although I don't claim to be as rabid a fan as many, I can say without any hint of irony that they are equivalent in ingenuity and sweetness as The Rolling Stones. Yet, as often as I hear that they are "our" Beatles, or something, I get the impression that they won't be remembered with even close to the same devotion and interest. Why is that? Is it because they aren't "mainstream" enough? Am I wrong?

Bush Economics

The idea of the laffer curve talking hold in reality is probably true. But it entirely depends on the taxable revenue generated by firms. The idea behind the laffer curve is that a cut in taxes, spurs growth, and that the resulting substantial revenue is taxed. His curve shows that there is an optimal point of taxation. For example, 0 percent taxation leads to no government revenue, and 100 percent taxation leads to none.

The problem with Republican economics is that the laffer curve is often used as an excuse to cut taxes...and they usually do it too much. Their optimum point always leads to deficits.

This is highlighted by Bush's attempt to make tax-cuts permanent(by tax-cuts I also mean the elimination of some taxes altogether), a ridiculously unsound and risky policy. This would in effect make the optimal point of taxation constant and permanent, unadjustable, and too reliant on the health of firms, whose profitability is likely to oscillate over time. Must our social services also be put in jeopardy through reliance on big banks?

If the expected substantial growth spurred by tax cuts dips at all, then an unbalanced and inflexible tax policy puts the entire government in jeopardy. This is no exaggeration. The U.S. Treasury is about to auction off more bonds, the first time since 2003, because the credit crunch has lowered taxable income. The increase in outstanding bonds is not small either, the expected number is that it will increase 50 percent. Being so dependent on firms means we place our own government in jeopardy - when they get in trouble, we need to issue more debt, and if it gets worse, sales of bonds will increase again.

An economic slowdown should not mean a large social service slowdown, and if we didn't issue more debt, this would certainly occur. But we can't keep issuing more debt, because as any 1st grader knows, debt is bad.

While the government and social services are always dependent to a degree of our President's choosing, the degree to which a more substantial economic slowdown than the most recent one will harm the economy is compounded by the fact that a working deficit would balloon during such a time. Bailouts are less likely. There would be major repercussions across our social services infrastructure. Bush's mindless cutting of taxes(I bet he would have 0% taxes if he could, not realizing it would mean no government), and unsound economic policy, is a threat to our future. I echo Greenspan's comments in his new book on the matter.

We are predicted to be the only generation in American history who will have less money than our parents. This is not because of competition from abroad; free trade and competition is better for everybody without fail on a macroeconomic level. Rather, our growth rates are predicted to slow in the coming scores due to...government debts and deficit.

To put this in perspective. When Bush arrived in office the National Deficit was 5 trillion. Today, it is over 9 trillion dollars. Congress just raised the deficit level to something above that. If they didn't, the US Treasury would have to default on all its loans, for the first time in its history. In order to pay back our loans on time, we needed to borrow more. The congressional increase in the deficit limit occurred only one month ago because of the credit crunch. At the end of the fiscal year, there were not enough revenues as expected by Bush's economic plan and optimal taxation...which we all know is now rooted in faith, not reason....self-interest, not well-being.

Back to us having less money than our parents. The US government debt is proportional to its deficit. Every year we are in the hole, we are adding that to our deficit. The debt level is increasing(indicated by the sale of the Treasury bonds) and, as measured relative to yearly GDP, is on track to surpass it, especially when Social Security and Medicaid begin to pay for the babyboomers. These are conditions for default. This situation was also the topic of the book "The Generational Storm" by an MIT Economist. The risk of material default of the government...and major adverse consequences, spurred by a major economic slowdown, is becoming more and more likely.

We will have less money than our parents because of these massive deficits, again 9 trillion in all, a 100% increase since 2003. Under the conventional view, ongoing budget deficits decrease national saving, which reduces domestic investment and increases borrowing from abroad. This has already happened under Bush. Interest rates play a key role in how the economy adjusts. The reduction in national saving raises domestic interest rates, which dampens investment and attracts capital from abroad. This results in a loss of confidence as well, so the theory goes. It also throw our GDP to the shitter. Simply, GDP would be bigger in the future if there were no budget deficits now.

I wish I could sit Bush down and explain to him what he has done. What the hell happened to these people, do they not have souls, empathy, and the ability to think? How could this of happened?

Wow

Not sure if this is Islamofascist propaganda or not, but it's worth watching.

Clinton's latest fan: Chuck Krauthammer

A return to good, old-fashioned contemporary politics here, at the risk of lapsing into a "104th Fighting Keyboarders" moment.

Charles Krauthammer has a column in today's Post about the "liveability" of a Clinton presidency. For once, let me say that I agree with Krauthammer on a few key points: namely, that Clinton's political strategy is "flexible, disciplined, calculated, triangulated" (although I'm not sure how one squares "disciplined" with "flexible") and that she, like her husband, is "careful, always calibrated, always leaving room for expediency over ideology." The logical followup question, of course, is how this pattern deviates from any other serious would-be contender for the Presidency, but I digress.

Krauthammer says, "I could never vote for her, but I (and others of my ideological ilk) could live with her -- precisely because she is so liberated from principle." Here he is also substantially correct. Out of all the Democratic candidates, Clinton is the one most open and adaptable to the conservative agenda. Krauthammer explains that she "always leaves open the possibility that she would do the right thing for the blessedly wrong (i.e., self-interested, ambition-serving, politically expedient) reason." I'll get back to those descriptors in a moment.

What exactly are the "right thing(s)"? For one, Iraq: Clinton "knows she may soon be commander in chief and will need room to maneuver in order to achieve whatever success might be possible," and she "has emphatically refused to give assurances that she would get us out of Iraq during her first term." So, in Krauthammer's coded or not-so-coded language, Hillary will retain the strong Executive position charted out by Bush (and all the secretive signing statements and warrantless spying that goes along with it) and keep us in Iraq.

Point two: Iran. Clinton voted in favor of labeling the Revolutionary Guard Corps a "terrorist organization." Krauthammer claims that this Senate resolution ultimately means nothing, but we should, I think, infer from this that he has confidence that Clinton could conceivably order an attack on Iran. Her "no option should be left off the table" comments generally support this inference. She has said recently that the President cannot authorize a military strike on Iran without Congressional approval, but this doesn't, of course, rule out an Iran attack per se. (And she certainly signed the original 2003 bill authorizing Bush to use force against Iraq.) I stand to be corrected here if I've left out any important facts, but that seems to be the situation on the ground.

Point three: Government-subsidized personal retirement account. Krauthammer objects to the whole "government" part of this move but says that "a universal, portable, personal retirement account (though without the government subsidy) is something conservatives have long and devoutly sought."

Fourth, and this is the most disheartening "right thing," Krauthammer says that Clinton's comments on Presidential approval of torture have been "elegantly phrased to imply an implacable opposition to torture and yet leave open the possibility that in extreme circumstances a president would do what she had to do, i.e., authorize torture, regardless of the express policy." This is pretty bald-faced, even for Krauthammer, who doesn't bother to dress up "torture," which is certainly what it is, with innuendos like "necessarily harsh but lawful techniques," etc. His comment "regardless of the express policy" further reveals what an authoritarian stooge he is, but this is already public knowledge.

Endless war, expanded military operations against Iran, complete privatization of benefits, torture: This is roughly what Krauthammer is calling for in this piece, and most importantly he is saying that there's a good chance that Clinton will follow through with it. This should be extremely disheartening to Democrats and progressives, although there's probably not enough Post readership (and more importantly, enough money) to realize this and prevent Clinton from winning the nomination. My friend who works in DC for Republican Jon Kyl says that there is a certain "inevitability factor" around Clinton these days, that prospects are looking dim for the Reps in the Senate, House, and White House, and that the Republican party is more or less on defensive damage control. At this point I too am leaning towards a Clinton presidency as a fait accompli. And I'm not looking forward to it, or if I am, only in the most minimalist, "let's not endure a Giuliani quasi-fascist dictatorship, shall we?" sort of way.

But let's return to Krauthammer's point about Hillary doing the "right thing" for the "blessedly wrong reason." Whose right thing? And whose wrong reason? All the "right things" Krauthammer lists are incredibly unpopular with the public. If they are, then how could Clinton, in executing them against popular opinion, be either "self-serving" or "politically expedient"? Who will reward her for such actions and thus serve her interest? Whose political criteria will she fulfill and thus cash in on this expediency? This is left unclear by Krauthammer, and with good reason. It's not difficult, however, to see that the only possible answer to the "who" question would be something like the economic and political elites who manage the American system. Clinton talks a lot of feel-good progressive rhetoric around the Democratic party base (and this is what Krauthammer means by her "no-principles liberalism"), but she appears to be deep in the pockets of the business interests already. A glance at the Center for Responsive Politics' "open secrets" website reveals that Clinton has the largest amount of funding raised so far and that she far outpaces the other candidates in "Lobbying" donations (with 150% of the funding of the runner up, McCain). The big industries are smelling a winner, methinks.

The joke is that Krauthammer would even attempt the pretense that Republicans choose these "right things" for "the right reasons," sub specie bonae fidis, as opposed to the very same sorts of charges he imputes to Clinton: currying favor with the economic elite, expansion of power, etc. As if the Republican party were not, to paraphrase an older commentator, "but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole corporate world," with the Democrats fulfilling this role whenever the Republicans manage to monumentally fuck up as much as they have during the Bush years. For more on this connection, there is Timothy Noah's piece in Slate on Christopher DeMuth, who has just stepped down as head of the American Enterprise Institute and has commemorated his tenure with an auto-encomium in the Opinion Journal, with a quote apropos of Krauthammer's piece: "I predict that if Sen. Clinton is elected president the corporate income tax will be further reduced during her tenure." I knew the AEI was bad (my 94-year-old grandmother, I trust, could detect their hackery in an instant), but I was unaware that earlier this year they offered $10,000 apiece to scholars to discredit a UN finding on global warming. As the Guardian article points out, former Exxon-Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, he of 400 million dollar waddle, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of directors. (It will be remembered that five years ago Exxon-Mobil gave Stanford $100 million for its Global Climate and Energy Project.)

Just to squeeze in some other relevant current events, this all comes as the Wall Street Journal is reporting that "the richest Americans' share of national income has hit a postwar record, ... [with] the wealthiest 1% of Americans earn[ing] 21.2% of all income in 2005, ... up sharply from 19% in 2004." Of course, President Bush assures us that this is because "skill gaps yield income gaps," as if lack of skills was the only thing leading to such gross appropriations of wealth by the privileged, and furthermore as if the economic and political elite had not fought long and hard to restrain the benefits flowing to the lower and middle classes to the tiniest, barest modicum of acceptability.

Is this really the best we can do? Are we to throw up our hands, hope for the best, and condemn the critique of the takeover of our democracy by entrenched, unaccountable elites as so much "political determinism"?

Best old duo of the young century

In what is sure to excite certain members of our community, I attended a public "conversation" Monday night between Philip Glass and Leonard Cohen. Glass has set certain of Cohen's poems from his Book of Longing collection to music and they were answering questions about their relationship, artistic methods, etc. in anticipation of a performance Tuesday night (missed it).

It was a very interesting display. When I had arrived and was scrambling to a seat I somehow mistook Philip Glass for Leonard Cohen when I glanced at the stage. "God, he looks bad these days," I thought. Well, this was in fact Glass of course, and he was slouched over in his chair, with his head sort of in his hands, wearing what looked like a raincoat (neither famous nor blue). I think it was actually just a long jacket, but he was still pretty shlubby. He kept fidgeting throughout the interview and fiddling with his hands (perhaps a pianist's natural inclination). I thought he would be all thin and turtleneck-bedecked and artsy but in fact he was quite portly. Perhaps every picture I've seen of him has been from 30 years ago. He was very funny, though, and delivered his answers in a neurotic, Woody Allen-ish way. He was also startlingly immodest, although one realized this only gradually and indirectly. For example, he talked about how in awe he was of photography and how some (skilled) photographers can just snap pictures effortlessly and produce masterpieces. Then you realized that he was drawing a parallel to himself and music-writing, which he said should come automatically.

Cohen was really magnificent. He looked very dapper, dressed in a grey suit and poised throughout the interview like a zen master -- probably from all that Buddhist meditation or whatever the hell it was he did for years. I don't think he ever moved his feet throughout the whole ordeal. He has a beautiful silver head of hair. His speaking voice, which has increasingly become his singing voice over the years, was very soothing; he and Glass both have a sort of Sylvester the cat lisp going on, which nevertheless isn't grating. Neither man seemed capable of formulating logical responses, but at least all of Cohen's thoughts were delivered in a half-poetic flow. He was also very modest and tended to play down his own accomplishments; for example, when the interviewer asked him his "favorite cover of a Leonard Cohen song," he gave pride of place to Judy Collins, who made "Suzanne" famous. He also said that he was still waiting for the day when he realized he'd "made it," another interviewer question.

Indeed, as much as they were pretty facile and annoying, the interviewer's questions at least got to the heart of things you've always secretly wanted to know about the two. For example: Who is your favorite living composer (for Glass)? A: Ravi Shankar, Ornette Coleman. Who is your favorite Canadian songwriter (for Cohen)? A: Joni Mitchell. Favorite American songwriter? A: Dylan, Tom Waits, and Van Morrison (shockingly straightforward). Favorite dead composer (for Glass)? A: Schubert, but also Bach.

Long live the Glass/Cohen connection, I say!

Crank That, Indeed!

Not sure why this wasn't posted sooner.

A new theory of history

This looks interesting.

Please Diagnosis This For Me, Pretty Please

I am on stage with the President. He turns to shake my hand. I throw a pie in his face. The secret service shoots me...dozens of times. The excuse on the evening news: "Well, what do you expect when you throw a pie at the President?" "It could of been anything, a chemical weapon, who knows"


No, not the dream. Why is it acceptable to be shot by the secret service for throwing a pie in the President's face?

Keep the Streak Going, Baltimore!

As many of you Baltimore fans out there know, the Chrm City is not averse to streaks. Most obvious was Cal Ripken's incredible 2632 consecutive Major League Baseball games plays streak. A streak I imagine you haven't yet heard of is the one week without a homicide streak (the Baltimore Sun's stop story).

As much as I'd love for this to become some sort of Hollywood plot, where the whole city gets behind the streak, surpassing the famous 2632 days, I highly doubt it will last much longer. I'll keep y'all informed, though. As some of the fine bloggers here know well, strange things have been known to happen in Ball-more.

Emotional Harm

will result from reading the following:

Order, Supreme Court, Bronx County (John Barone, J.), entered on or about February 22, 2001, which denied so much of defendant Millar Elevator Industries' motion for summary judgment dismissing the complaint as it pertains to plaintiff Castro, unanimously reversed, on the law, without costs, and the motion granted. The Clerk is directed to enter judgment in favor of defendant-appellant dismissing the complaint as against it.

Plaintiffs Julia Pizarro and Maricela Castro witnessed an elevator malfunction that resulted in the decapitation of nonparty James Chenault, who was not previously known to either plaintiff. Supreme Court dismissed the complaint as it pertained to plaintiff Pizarro on the ground that she was not in the elevator at the time of the incident. However, the court declined to dismiss the claim of plaintiff Castro, reasoning that, as one of the five passengers in the faulty elevator, she was within the zone of danger.

At her deposition, Ms. Castro testified that, after she boarded the elevator on the main floor, it began descending while a woman was still getting on. The elevator then reversed direction and, as it moved upwards with the doors still open, she saw that the man subsequently identified as James Chenault was standing in the door frame. As the top of the elevator hit the top of his head, plaintiff turned away. When she heard a woman scream, she looked down and saw Mr. Chenault's head next to her feet. After a rapid ascent, the elevator subsequently descended very quickly, slowing down only when it reached the third floor and eventually stopping on the first floor. Although physically unharmed, plaintiff Castro was treated for shock. The complaint alleges that she continues to suffer psychological symptoms as a result of her experience.

The horrific nature of this accident is self-evident. However, as defendant contended on the motion, the complaint should have been dismissed because plaintiff Castro was not closely related to the decedent.

My textbook informs me that the decedent's headphones remained attached to his head.

War and the Intellectuals (Round 437)

Hitchens' newest piece for Vanity Fair is pretty intense stuff, no doubt a product of his honest attempt to memorialize someone.

There's a lot going on this essay, and yet, there's a lot not going on, too. After a rather astonishing outset that draws the connection between him and his subject -- his subject went to war in Iraq partly inspired by the pro-war writing of Hitchens, and was killed there -- he is remarkably silent in the rest of the piece on the most essay's most pressing issue: the influence of intellectuals on human fate. Note Hitchens' list of possible causes for Daily's death, and note what is missing:

So, was Mark Daily killed by the Ba'thist and bin Ladenist riffraff who place bombs where they will do the most harm? Or by the Rumsfeld doctrine, which sent American soldiers to Iraq in insufficient numbers and with inadequate equipment? Or by the Bush administration, which thought Iraq would be easily pacified? Or by the previous Bush administration, which left Saddam Hussein in power in 1991 and fatally postponed the time of reckoning?

No mention of intellectuals like Hitchens. No mention of ideology. Having so vociferously fought the "domestic war" -- as Podhoretz and others like to call the battle of ideas between the two sides on the Iraq War -- for so long, and trumped up its importance to the spread of freedom, it is now nowhere to be seen. The human tragedy is all there, the intellectual one totally absent.

What amazes me is that after spending so much on Orwell, Hitchens just isn't asking the right kinds of questions of his idol. Whether or not the Spanish Civil War was the "just war" or not, to support it in retrospect is to undermine the very things Orwell said about the war: that its justness was demonstrably overwhelmed by its injustice. Not the injustice of "goons and thugs," as Hitchens puts it, but much larger things like nation-states, and armies, and technology, and the business sector, and ideologies.

To support the Spanish Civil War in the present, in the form of Iraq, is to have committed an equally astonishing error in judgment: even an army of George Orwells or Mark Dailys doesn't change the fact that wars are not fought by individuals but, to reiterate, by nation-states, and armies, and technology, and the business sector, and ideologies that dismiss these kinds of factors. The ideologies forwarded by people like Christopher Hitchens.

Parry is a Terrorist!

Subsequent research: Police ransack British Internet worker's home
The Guardian (UK), Thursday, May 28th, 1998

PALESTINIAN police ransacked the home of a British Internet expert working at a West Bank university, writes Our Correspondent. The Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG) said that on Monday afternoon, members of the paramilitary Preventative Security Service stormed into a house in Ramallah rented by Nigel Parry, employed by Birzeit University to run the campus website.

Mr Parry said he believed the raid may have been sparked by a tenancy dispute with his landlady. But the PHRMG said it could be linked to Mr Parry's work, as he has given access on his website to a variety of student political groups, including Islamic militants.

Think ur Tech-Savvy?

Think Again.