Big Daddy Conservative goes out on a limb in stating the obvious, and it is news because of who he is, with a pseudo-intellectual named William Kristol being paid as an editor of Big Daddy’s hallowed National Review, and all the discredit that is festering within from too much cheer leading over the years combined with close to zero self-reflection on the part of many, who now collectively are managing to attach the publication to a sinking ship, playing their instruments the entire time, oblivious to the woeful situation they are helping to exacerbate. I suppose it’s what separates the bona-fide from the shill, though in Buckley’s case, I’d be reluctant to simply hand him the virtuous stamp of approval over all this (perhaps a “spirit award” would be more appropriate), though it does earn him a place in my heart, as this is the paramount issue of these times we are living through right now. The first paragraph of his column follows:
“The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue. The opinion polls are savagely decisive on the Iraq question. About 60 percent of Americans wish the war ended — wish at least a timetable for orderly withdrawal. What is going on in Congress is in the nature of accompaniment. The vote in Congress is simply another salient in the war against war in Iraq. Republican forces, with a couple of exceptions, held fast against the Democrats’ attempt to force Bush out of Iraq even if it required fiddling with the Constitution. President Bush will of course veto the bill, but its impact is critically important in the consolidation of public opinion. It can now accurately be said that the legislature, which writes the people’s laws, opposes the war…”
(“The Waning of the GOP“, Buckley, 4/28/07)
Note:Below the fold I will be posting some of my favorite clips of Buckley off of YouTube, I just have to seek all of them out. And FYI, I’m working to have a plugin installed that will allow readers using IE to view what is posted. Once that goes up and I’ve tested it, I’ll have a portion of my most cherished clips to share.Read the rest of this entry
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video, Words at 9:22 PM GMT+4
Adalius Thomas, Donte Stallworth, Wes Welker and Randy Moss are the veterans Belichick has brought in for the 2007-08 Super Bowl run, and for a moment today I wasn’t too sure it could be THAT easy to lock up the last name on that list…a 4th round pick for Randy Moss is about the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Remember for a moment that the Pats got a 1st round pick for Deion Branch, so the market for Moss was at least on par with Branch, right? Wrong…because you have to factor in the state of Al Davis’ mind, which at this point doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing a Raiders fan likes hearing about, let alone having it running through their own minds every game that following year and the next. Because it’s not like Randy Moss just got bad all of a sudden, and even though the situation in Oakland is as bad as it gets, the man who used to be lumped in alongside Terrell Owens cannot be considered as such. Randy wiped his ass on the goal post in Green Bay, whereas Owens called out the franchise player (he had plenty of reasons for being pissed at McNabb, but…) and carried on like he had his own reality TV show for a while, leading to his being kicked off of the island.
I know I’m understating the history here, but it is my policy to never talk bad about a hometown athlete unless they talk bad about me first. Aside from the insults I had to endure from Drew Bledsoe, that type of thing hardly ever happens. Dominick Barbara, my attorney, went through all the documents, and as it turns out I didn’t start bashing Drew publicly until he was ruining good teams in Buffalo, so I currently occupy the high ground and always will. He insists that I still owe Trot Nixon an apology, but that one is pending an apology I am still waiting for from Dan Duquette, who has been ducking deadissue’s staff for years now.
Back to the matter at hand though – there are too few hours in the day to waltz down memory lane, especially in the condition it’s in – there’s something about the playoff run from this past year that troubled me, and it was always about how they came out with these formations of 5 wide, 4 + Faulk, instead of lining up and pounding it up the middle. In the game versus the Colts, I thought they favored the pass when they didn’t really have to in the second half. This was my complaint even back when they were running Antwain Smith 20+ times a game and Charlie Weis was calling plays, but I have to assume that they know more about it than I do. It’s just what they want to do, and as long as that’s the case, coming into this year they’ll have the weapons to go with the plays. Aside from Moss and Stallworth, this guy Wes Welker is a gamer, and a hell of a return man. I’ll delve into defense later on…one thing I will point out though, is that they franchised Asante Samuel, meaning he’s going to hold out this training camp. Bill Simmons on the Patriots
Tony has a gambling problem, which isn’t too hard to pick out, as he placed three large bets prior to his meeting with Little Carmine, and during a call to Hesch in the last episode, he let us know that he lost all three and wanted a loan for some more bets that weekend. A flashback during a previous season had him as a little boy watching his father and uncle Junior break a guy’s arm, and also cut off Mr. Satrielli’s (sp?) pinkie finger, both over gambling debts. His father was sleeping in a chair when Tony went to get him for dinner. In the short conversation that followed, his father told him to never ever gamble.
I feel that the entire show has been based around the fact that Tony is the most talented for what he does, but deep down he’s never wanted to do it for a living. The panic attacks come from that, with that first blackout he had that very same night his father told him never to gamble. His mother had cooked the standing roast from Satrielli’s that he then realized was free because of the debt the man had piled up to his father. His self-destructive behavior as of late is a sort of shifting from what used to be his major vice, having a woman on the side, to something new.
T: “Perhaps the rationale for why we lost is already in the works, with liberals, the media, UN and most likely the Iraqis themselves ending up responsible in the end when a right-winger tells the story to their sons and daughters. Judging by President Bush’s explanation of why his social policy has gone nowhere thus far, blaming everyone but himself, this will be exactly what happens. There will always be those among us who represent the game jersey of their team, with or without the logic to support their beliefs, and they know that.” (deadissue 6/30/05)
R: “Tillman was killed on April 22, 2004. By the next day top officers knew he had not been killed by enemy fire. On April 29, a top special operations commander sent a memo to John Abizaid, among other generals, suggesting that the White House be warned off making specific public claims about how Tillman died. Simultaneously, according to an e-mail that surfaced last week, a White House speechwriter contacted the Pentagon to gather information about Tillman for use at the correspondents’ dinner. When President Bush spoke at the dinner at week’s end, he followed his jokes with a eulogy about Tillman’s sacrifice. But he kept the circumstances of Tillman’s death vague, no doubt because the White House did indeed get the message that the Pentagon’s press release about Tillman’s losing his life in battle was fiction. Yet it would be four more weeks before Pat Tillman’s own family was let in on the truth.” (Frank Rich 4/29/07)
F: “Naomi Wolf has a great must-read piece in the Guardian about the steps needed to create fascism in a country, and how these steps have been followed by the Bush administration since 9/11.” (Indigent A-hole 4/27/07)
How to sum all of this up best? I’m sure my namesake can help out:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video, Words at 2:28 AM GMT+4
“But then, Dowd is part of our dumbest professional cohort—she’s one of our millionaire pundits. She’s vastly overpaid and over-praised—and she’s dumb as a bunch of old rocks.” (Daily Howler)
M: More important than that though, we’ve got some problems with this military of ours. It’s a very sad thing, how people who enlist are sometimes forced to replace rodents and chimpanzees for stuff like this:
The Pentagon resumed its controversial mandatory anthrax vaccinations program for selected troops last week despite the fact that its own doctors are quietly conducting research into adverse effects of the vaccine, a RAW STORY investigation has found. In the May 2006 report, the GAO said the “vaccine has not been adequately tested on humans; no studies have been done to determine the optimum number of doses; the long-term safety has not been studied and data on short-term reactions are limited.”Dr. Waytes (manufacturer’s spokesperson) asserted that the majority of soldiers’ claims that the vaccine causes autoimmune disorders and serious illnesses are “in people’s minds.”
Dr. Nass (an ethical doctor) disagrees. “We really don’t know about long-term safety,” Nass said, noting that the majority of studies are focused on short-term effects. “The data just doesn’t exist.”
I: Juking the stats, suddenly Bush’s people aren’t counting car bombings in Iraq as part of the death toll…so they did achieve some progress, in a ‘using a cheat code on a video game’ sort of way:
Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn’t include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. “If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory,” he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose. (McClatchy)
So does this mean that by committing suicide, you can still be a winner? Or is he setting the stage for the next move, to stop counting our own dead and wounded?
O: Anyways…at least you can always count on Omar having a plan:
(Hootsbuddy hasn’t been able to view this, so can everyone do me a favor and indicate in a comment whether you can view this video or not and what type of browser you’re using for the internet? Thanks!) This was the trial run, with much more to come. Figured it was fitting to start off with one that truly defies just about every ethical standard imaginable, and in the scope of this war, highlights perfectly the lack of honesty within this administration since day one…does anyone actually believe that Rumsfeld and the White House were not knowingly complicit in the shameful, dishonest exploitation of Pat Tillman’s death? (New video from Tillman/Lynch hearing posted after the fold)
In the spirit of this conservative movement that is thankfully careening towards a period of hibernation, we have another state-level temper tantrum or I suppose you could call it a “freedom fries moment” in the south, only this time it’s Virginia. ‘The Richmond Democrat‘ pulls a story off of the internets that is titled “Virginia gun giveaway to go ahead despite massacre”. A taste:
They are calling it the “Bloomberg Gun GiveAway”…The draw has been devised as an act of defiance against the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, who is suing two Virginia gun shops, including Bob Moates, as well as 25 stores in other states, for allegedly selling guns too freely and thus fueling violent crime. In a sting operation last year, Mr Bloomberg sent a team of undercover investigators into Bob Moates and other stores to expose how regulations on sales were being openly flouted.
I’ve used my last essay on straw purchases as the weekly post on two other blogs I contribute to, and a few others, with a first impression of the fact that there’s an extreme level of incoherence on the left and the right in terms of what “gun control” is actually about in the first place. I’ll elaborate on this in the future when I have some more time to dedicate to it in a proper way, but the one fact I find myself typing out repeatedly is that 3/4 of the states would have to approve the overturning of the 2nd amendment. So there’s more of a chance that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays win the championship this year than that EVER happening, and yet that seems to be the launching point for the debate most times.
It is the equivalent of someone who believes in evolution, starting out every debate on the topic by pointing out that some fundamentalist Christians “want to” have it taken out of science books entirely. Maybe from there it can break down into something about the personality of someone who would advocate such a thing, which is precisely what the NRA wants to have happen. It takes the debate out of the realm of political science and into the daytime television talk show zone, where nothing comes out alive.
As much as I hate to refer to or promote cable “news”, these Special Comments from Keith Olbermann’s show are as patriotic and historically poignant as anything I’ve ever witnessed in the public speaking arena. It’s a slice of Howard Beale without the dementia. Download this installment at Crooks and Liars.
Rudi Giuliani: America will be safer with a Republican president…the Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us…never, ever again will this country be on defense, waiting for terrorists to attack us, if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense. (Campaign Speech)
Keith Olbermann: There is no room for this. This is terrorism itself, dressed up as counterterrorism. It is not warning, but bullying, substituted for the political discourse now absolutely essential to this country‘s survival and the freedom of its people. No Democrat has said words like these. None has ever campaigned on the Republicans‘ flat-footedness of September 11, 2001. None has the requisite irresponsible, all-consuming ambition. None is willing to say, “I accuse,” rather than recognize that, to some degree, all of us share responsibility for our collective stupor.
And if it is somehow insufficient that it is morally, spiritually, and politically wrong to screech as Mr. Giuliani has screeched, there is also this: that gaping hole in Mr. Giuliani‘s argument of “Republicans equal life, Democrats equal death.” Not only have the Republicans not lived up to their babbling on this subject, but, last fall, the electorate called them on it, as doubtless they would call you on it, Mr. Giuliani. Repeat: Go beyond Mr. Bush‘s rhetorical calamities of 2006. Become the candidate who runs on the “Vote for me or die” platform. Do a Joe McCarthy. Do a Lyndon Johnson. Do a Robespierre. Only, if you choose so to do, do not come back surprised, nor remorseful, if the voters remind you that terror is not just a matter of casualties. It is just as certainly a matter of the promulgation of fear.
Claim a difference between the parties on the voters‘ chances of survival and you do Osama bin Laden‘s work for him. (Transcript)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 12:41 PM GMT+4
Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich is obviously feeling put upon by all this attention being paid to how one of his soldiers died a couple years ago. The family just keeps asking questions, asking questions, asking questions, and now it has taken on a life of its own, with fine upstanding officers being confronted by civilians demanding answers. Rank being the grand potato masher on the inside, it takes some getting used to, all this ate-up weakness being celebrated out here like it matters, with a nonstop peddling of grievances that could make a soldier feel like one of them desk jockeys answering questions on the phone all day about why their lights won’t go on anymore.
It’s because you didn’t pay your bill! And neither did this soldier or his family, and if you want to know why they’re embarrassing themselves out in front of the cameras day after day, Lt. Col. Kauzlarich can easily take a step out of the uniform…”in spirit” of course, since the job is one that frowns upon what he’s about to say…though considering who we’ve got in the White House, it isn’t something he has to worry about. So here it goes:
“When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don’t believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more — that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don’t know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough.” -Are the Tillmans’ religious beliefs a factor in the ongoing investigation?- “I think so. There is not a whole lot of trust in the system or faith in the system [by the Tillmans]. So that is my personal opinion, knowing what I know.”
Nice, huh? Kind of sums it all up…this unwillingness to simply shut up and go away when you’re told…it’s a testament to the general level of dysfunction known to run the brain of your average civilian heathen into the ground, most often taking as many innocent Christian soldiers down with them as they can. See, the man volunteered to serve his country, and what his country needed him to do was die, be celebrated, disappear. The Army realized he’d be more useful to recruit with dead than in a wheelchair babbling about how the war wasn’t legal…and convincing people to join wasn’t easy, so they decided to…eh…whatever, it’s not important. What’s important is that everyone understand that this is a real bummer for Lt. Col. Kauzlarich, his family and the other officers who were told to say or do something, and ever since then have been worried about a negative bullet point on their Officer Evaluation Report if they don’t keep saying it like the bosses want.
So he’s trying to help the Tillman’s out here, and in faith he figures the one thing they’d benefit most from would be to hear about what makes him feel better when his son dies in a war. To look up that chain of command and know in his heart that whatever happened is none of his business, and that his Officer Evaluation Report hung in the balance if he got to asking questions like a jerk, so he doesn’t. He has FAITH! The Tillmans don’t have an Officer Evaluation Report of their own, neither do they have a promotion to strive towards. And it’s so sad to think that once this entire charade is all over, they’ll have nothing to look forward to…whereas Lt. Col. Kauzlarich has another Officer Evaluation Report to look forward to next year and the year after that and so on…
The beltway’s reaction to president Carter’s book ‘Palestine Piece Not Apartheid‘ was overly insulting to both him and the topic he was writing about. My knowledge of the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wasn’t half of what it is today after having finished the book yesterday. I highly recommend every American with an opinion on this, or the desire to learn about it from a Nobel Peace Prize winning author. President Jimmy Carter is deserving of the world’s gratitude, and in spite of the irrational response given initially to its publication, this book will go a long way towards one day achieving peace in the Middle East. Here is an excerpt (p. 208-210):
The overriding problem is that, for more than a quarter century, the actions of some Israeli leaders have been in direct conflict with the official policies of the United States, the international community, and their own negotiated agreements. Regardless of whether Palestinians had no formalized government, one headed by Yasir Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas, or one with Abbas as president and Hamas controlling the parliament and cabinet, Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land. In order to perpetuate the occupation, Israeli forces have deprived their unwilling subjects of basic human rights. No objective person could personally observe existing conditions in the West Bank and dispute these statements.
Two other interrelated factors have contributed to the perpetuation of violence and regional upheaval: the conditioning of illegal Israeli actions from a submissive White House and U.S. Congress during recent years, and the deference with which other international leaders permit this unofficial U.S. policy in the Middle East to prevail. There are constant and vehement political and media debates in Israel concerning its policies in the West Bank, but because of powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the United States, Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate in our media, and most American citizens are unaware of circumstances in the occupied territories. At the same time, political leaders and news media in Europe are highly critical of Israeli policies, affecting public attitudes. Americans were surprised and angered by an opinion poll, published by the International Herald Tribune in October 2003, of 7,500 citizens in fifteen European nations, indicating that Israel was considered to be the top thread to world peace, ahead of North Korea, Iran, or Afghanistan.
The United States has used its U.N. Security Council veto more than forty times to block resolutions critical of Israel. Some of these vetoes have brought international discredit on the United States, and there is little doubt that the lack of a persistent effort to resolve the Palestinian issue is a major source of anti-American sentiment and terrorist activity throughout the Middle East and the Islamic world.
A new factor in the region is that the Palestinian election of January 2006 gave Hamas members control of the parliament and cabinet headed by the prime minister. Israel and the United States reacted by announcing a policy of isolating and destabilizing the new government. Elected officials are denied travel permits to participate in parliamentary affairs, denied travel permits to participate in parliamentary affairs, Gaza is effectively isolated, and every effort is made to block humanitarian funds to Palestinians, to prevent their right to employment or commercial trade, and to deny the access to Israel and the outside world.
In order to achieve its goals, Israel has decided to avoid any peace negotiations and to escape even the mild restraints of the United States by taking unilateral action called “convergence” or “realignment,” to carve out for itself the choice portions of the West Bank, leaving Palestinians destitute withing a small and fragmented remnant of their own land. The holding of almost 10,000 Arab prisoners and the destructive military response to the capture of three Israeli soldiers have aroused global concern about the hair-trigger possibility of a regional war being launched.
Posted by Al Swearengen as History at 1:54 PM GMT+4
Harry Reid is earning respect in mass quantities these past two weeks. I’ve been critical – Is Harry Reid a Gamer? – but he’s shaking things up in DC right now. Some quotes:
In his remarks, Reid criticized Bush and called Vice President Dick Cheney the president’s “chief attack dog,” lacking in credibility. He likened the president to Lyndon Johnson, saying the former president ordered troop escalations in Vietnam in an attempt “to save his political legacy,” only to watch U.S. casualties climb steadily. (Source)
“I believe … that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week,” Reid told journalists. (Source)
“This is a view Reid shares with Henry Kissinger and any number of generals, doubtless including some of the four who have turned down the albatross of being the White House’s “war czar.” It’s also the view of a clear majority of the American public according to recent polls (51% in a poll published on April 16 in a newspaper that Broder evidently doesn’t read, the Washington Post.)” Harpers
VIDEO – Courtesy of AMERICAblog (Reid speaking to the press)
So here we go again – I posted the following at Control Congress on 3/19/07:
Straw Purchases – The second amendment allows for rednecks to open up gun depots in states allowing on demand background checks and firearms to criminals who use locals with clean records for the buys, and from there the guns head north to cities like DC, Philly, Baltimore and NYC. Once having arrived, they are sold to criminals in the drug trade, used for murders and promptly thrown down storm drains or gotten rid of some other way. If you’ve got the cash, there is a straw-purchase waiting for payoff…but let’s not get bogged down in reality here, because the Pace Picante sauce folks out there have a problem with the mayor of NYC pointing fingers at his neighbors down south. Sure, folks in Virginia make a healthy profit off of murder in cities up north, but that’s “market forces” doing their thing more often than not. Truth is, if you handed a gun to every person in America, we’d be more safe. As it stands now, we’ve got plenty of guns, but we’re not safe…
For a blogger like me, there’s nothing else out there really, besides having written about a problem, seen everyone ignore it as well as the logic you based the words on, only to have the obvious take place and then the equally obvious knee-jerk reaction from political opponents be so easy to telegraph. “Truth is, if you handed a gun to every person in America, we’d be more safe”…wasn’t it something like half a nanosecond after the shooting hit the wire, that right-wing talkers and writers were all saying the same thing? If only the students had been allowed to carry guns, this would have never happened.
Arm the frat boys! All those young adults away from home for the first time, experimenting with drugs and alcohol, apparently constitute the right-wing’s version of when the state knows better than the college, and should pass a law allowing students to pack heat in the classroom. When the rates of successful homicides and suicides spike, they’ll be the ones blaming the media and secular society, but the guns won’t have anything to do with it.
Clearly, for the NRA and their Republican concubines, the ONLY point that needs making following a mass murder like the one at Michael Vick’s alma mater, is “we need to sell more guns”. Break it down however you want, but the bottom line is still the bottom line, whether the body count is 32, 50 or 150. In this instance it is even more simple than others, as the school can be blamed, the students themselves can be blamed for cowardice, and in the midst of all that rabble, the sales pitch slips right in there.
And if you ever wanted a clear-cut reason why Republicans constantly go with the line about government not being the answer for anything, it is for times like this when the system fails on their account, they can point at the failure and say, “that’s government for you.” Indeed, the systems that should have worked to prevent this guy from purchasing his guns legally, either weren’t part of the law or were and the government either failed or looked the other way. Difficult to pin down, this anti-government “Chewbacca defense“, but since it was a failure of computer systems to update and report correctly on data pertaining to citizens and gun sales, in this instance we have a very good place to start.
I present to you language from the Tiahrt Amendment, proposed by a Republican Congressman, passed by a Republican House and Senate, and signed into law by our Republican President in 2006:
…no funds appropriated under this or any other Act with respect to any fiscal year may be used to disclose part or all of the contents of the Firearms Trace System database maintained by the National Trace Center of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or any information required to be kept by licensees…or required to be reported…to anyone other than a Federal, State, or local law enforcement agency or a prosecutor solely in connection with and for use in a bona fide criminal investigation or prosecution and then only such information as pertains to the geographic jurisdiction of the law enforcement agency requesting the disclosure and not for use in any civil action or proceeding…and all such data shall be immune from legal process and shall not be subject to subpoena or other discovery, shall be inadmissible in evidence, and shall not be used, relied on, or disclosed in any manner, nor shall testimony or other evidence be permitted based upon such data, in any civil action pending on or filed after the effective date of this act in any State (including the District of Columbia) or Federal court or in any administrative proceeding other than a proceeding commenced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives…
This takes the publics’ database of gun sales, confiscation, use in crimes, origin…the history of this firearm that was used in a murder, and it makes it illegal for the public to compare the data on that firearm with that of others that have been used to commit crimes. Why this is necessary for the gun manufacturers is the fact that out of all the gun sellers in the country, a 2000 study showed that approximately 1% of them provided 57% of the guns that are used in crimes. To the police these particular gun dealers are a cancer, but to the gun manufacturers they are an asset.
The Tiahrt Amendment makes it impossible for law enforcement to identify these dealers and run sting operations to prove they are operating illegally. The murder rates in cities across the country are rising, and what can law enforcement do to combat it? In this instance, Republicans purposely made it more difficult for them to answer that question. The chief of police in a city cannot send ATF a spreadsheet with every murder weapon confiscated as evidence in the past couple years, and receive data back on each one. If the gun was purchased out of state, the chief cannot have it, and even when the dealer is local, this amendment makes it illegal for them to the use that data to go after them.
It’s a deadissue, whether or not Republicans actually believe in the idea of a government agency like the ATF…they don’t. Since it would be political suicide to disband an agency that the public perceives as vital, what they do instead is create legislative subsidies for business, while cutting authority and resources. If you think I’m wrong, then be my guest and attempt to match up the effect of the Tiahrt Amendment with the ATF’s mission statement:
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is a principal law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice dedicated to preventing terrorism, reducing violent crime, and protecting our Nation. The men and women of ATF perform the dual responsibilities of enforcing Federal criminal laws and regulating the firearms and explosives industries. We are committed to working directly, and through partnerships, to investigate and reduce crime involving firearms and explosives, acts of arson, and illegal trafficking of alcohol and tobacco products.
What makes the Virginia Tech massacre so critically poignant in regards to all of this, is that the state of Virginia is the “Straw Purchase Capitol of the East Coast” Read the rest of this entry
Gingrich after Columbine: “I want to say to the elite of this country – the elite news media, the liberal academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton…of being afraid to talk about the mess you have made, and being afraid to take responsibility for things you have done, and instead foisting upon the rest of us pathetic banalities because you don’t have the courage to look at the world you have created.” (Source)
My ears are ringing, because I’ve heard this all before from a couple of “SEND ME YOUR MONEY” evangelicals, known to follow the Gingrich-method in this regard, always eager to strike while the iron’s hot:
Pat Robertson after 9/11: “I therefore believe that that created an environment which possibly has caused God to lift the veil of protection which has allowed no one to attack America on our soil since 1812.”
Jerry Falwell after 9/11: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians…the ACLU…all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.” (Source)
On ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked Gingrich if he would apply those same words to the Virginia Tech tragedy. Gingrich said “yes”. (Source)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 12:38 AM GMT+4
Larry Johnson from No Quarter tells George Tenet (hoping to cash in on a book) to give his Medal of Freedom back. Being an ex-CIA agent, Larry’s take on this is great.
The Osterley Times is on top of the scandal that may mean the end of Tony Blair: “Cash-for-honours: Blair aides await fates as inquiry ends”
Docstrangelove with a great rundown of especially “subhuman” right-wing words following the Virginia Tech massacre
Welcome to Pottersville with my weekly Saturday night fix – Frank Rich: Iraq Is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac
Blue Hampshire covers John Sununu’s bullshit vote on stem cell research…the one that prevents an override of Bush’s veto…keep in mind that this was the guy who was elected thanks to the RNC engaging in phone-jamming
US Army Reserves Colonel (Retired) Ann Wright:
Rohrabacher said if European countries did not cooperate with the United States and go along with whatever the Bush administration wanted, they were condemning their countrymen to death by not using extralegal methods to imprison terrorist suspects…Then, much to the shock and disbelief of everyone in the hearing room, Rohrabacher said to those who had expressed displeasure at his statements: “I hope it’s your family members that die when terrorists strike.” (at a House Committee Hearing!)
He was driving 77 in a 45, with a piece under his seat, one which his friend riding shotgun failed to claim, so who knows if some work was put in with it before the owner broke into Telfair’s whip and stashed it without him knowing…like some territory was occupied by this fierce soldier named Lester James, aka Ball Peen, with iron stashed in six spots near where the lookouts can get a grip on the key to their rise up from there to the stash, then the money, and who knows…but Ball Peen caught one in the shoulder this day about six months back, and who knows what takes down all the top earners in the end besides time ticking lost in a daydream they thought was real life.
Youngin’ looking around for a hot minute, and ends up with two he’s got to make it back home with, so it’s up the back of the school and into the woods until po-po’s done and it’s safe to try getting the two 9s home without any hassle, which he does, but the crew that took over don’t need anyone, so he’s got nothing to do and no money to spend…see, this is Telfair’s story right here, and to know him for a minute is to know what kind of danger he’s in every single day of his life. Waking up and going to the bathroom in the morning could mean his life ending via hollow-point.
That’s the street-cred back story, but the ten grand he forwarded me to write that and a few pages more is (already spent on booze and scratch tickets) not going to be enough if he’s ever going to live down this last episode where he’s pulled over and doesn’t get in the cop’s face, no profanity…nothing. Once word of this gets out, Telfair won’t be able to live it down. No straight-up thug goes all quiet like that unless they’re not what they say they are. So I figured that while on the clock, I’d burn a copy of ‘Straight Outta Compton’ and send it along, with a note to spend a lot of time on track #3…and if there’s any time left, improve his jump shot. (Source)
This thread will be an open diary on Gonzo’s testimony in front of the Senate…so far I’ve been able to catch a collection of idiots holding up signs in the hearing room, and right now Orin Hatch is stimulating the chicken, lining it up for Gonzo to go to work on. They’ve certainly terrorized a coop or two together before now…that’s obvious. The bird is wishing it were dead, with the attorney general having his way as Senator Hatch holds it in place, wide eyes and a sick grin on his face, every once in a while slapping Gonzo’s ass and barking encouragement.
1PM – From what I can tell, Gonzo had to make love to that chicken on his own once Hatch’s time was up, and without the old man’s farmly expertise and steady hand, the attorney general couldn’t figure out where to put it, and from start to finish it was a sloppy Sanjaya with a side of Sizemore. He is so full of shit, and it is so obvious, that if he doesn’t choose to either flee or cut his own tongue out during the lunch recess, he’s a fool.
4/20 – Gonzo runs point on this whole thing, falls on his sword, leaves in disgrace and the entire thing is over with, except when it comes to whether or not the US attorneys are reinstated, and except for the “No” from Bush that follows such a request/demand (for no other reason besides the fact that he can), the new Attorney General Orin Hatch is nominated and confirmed, the world keeps turning. THAT IS THE ONLY SMART PLAY HERE! There is zero upside for the GOP in Gonzales remaining in charge of the Justice Dept, and besides the ability to obstruct investigations from that post, there’s no correlative upside for the White House either. Read the rest of this entry
I’ve got a feeling of dread right now…knowing how they like to jump right on the big story. In the “going too far” category, I don’t know of any show or entertainer that does it as often as they do, with the consistent comedy requirement needed to get away with it. Howard Stern certainly tops South Park in this regard over the long haul, but over the past 2 seasons, Trey Parker has been on another planet.
Kind of like Trey Anastasio on some nights, you can almost picture the spirit swell within the virtuoso, understanding the entire time that the blessing of your appreciation constitutes one of those pings of the tuning fork, and as it reverberates, the sensation is what reassures your soul, soothes your mind and makes up for what the body will always lack – more as it withers old age – in a moment you’re mesmerized or laughing in whoops like an idiot…the sustenance of temporary tombstone inscriptions telling the cosmos you understood something and that you were here, awestruck satisfaction provided by the great ones who just knew what the hell they were doing.
This makes the fact that there’s no more Phish tour, no more Phil Lesh & Friends with the Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, John Molo and Rob Baracco lineup…shit, no more nothing that takes place outside of this house entertainment-wise, but there is South Park and it continues to kick me in the ear often enough that I’d actually worry about something like all the kids sitting in the classroom with sidearms…Timmy with a grenade…self defense, since the shootings taught everyone who lived in the town that in order to survive, they’d need a lot more bullets in a lot more guns, safeties off, in the hands of everyone old enough to squeeze the trigger. If they did go there…
What the hell am I worried about? They could pull off anything at this point. Right?
Update: Wow – I was way off. The homeless…very very very wrong.
Original Post – The incident yesterday made me think about the abundance of words I’ve got squirreled away somewhere within the depths of various Google Groups (my outlet for many years prior to starting deadissue), but before all that is found, this one from the “birth pangs” period of this site in 2004 will get the ball rolling:
Nature has been racking up a significant body count recently in the form of hurricanes, but with the new rapid-fire bullet propulsion toys about to hit the streets, I have no doubt that humans will be on top again before too long. Thinking back to Columbine and the DC sniper attacks, it would be a stretch to say that either one of them led to as much overall damage as the hurricanes have in recent days, but it’s always been a trait of the American spirit to push through and overcome adversity. It won’t be long now before the ban, which just lapsed on assault weapons, allows us to experience another bullet-riddled tragedy to bring us all together once more.
The amount of these mass shootings within our own borders has seemed to have been in decline, which has left us uninspired and confused, but soon enough that will be rectified. The effect they have on us is astounding. There’s rarely a machine-gun massacre in a local human resources office that doesn’t make you realize how precious this life of ours truly is, and how unimportant most of the stuff we worry about can be. Even if the body count doesn’t get above two or three, there’s a collective period of recollection and self-examination that takes place, to which many of us can attest major changes in our lives to over the years. The tragedies make us stronger, they unite us. There’s wisdom at play here.
Our leadership understands this, and they also understand that tragedies aren’t just going to happen on their own! If the attacker doesn’t have a weapon capable of taking out at least a couple of bodies before they’re in custody, the news probably won’t send but a single reporter to the scene. In times of struggle and hardship, our leaders understand the importance of larger body counts, and larger front page headlines. They know that without the tragedies being juicy enough, we won’t be able to experience the kind of self-reflection needed to gain a true understanding of who we are in this life, and why we may even exist in the first place.
This administration is looking out for our souls, as I’ve grown to understand in the past few years. They’re looking at the glass as neither half empty nor half full, but simply too peaceful to be of any use to us. Tranquility is the root of all evil. If we just went through life without tragedies to shake things up, then what would we ever learn? The tradition of tragedies due to gun violence in America is being embraced by our president, and it will be because of him that one day we’ll all get to feel warm and fuzzy about one another over hearing about a kid somewhere who got his hands on one of these new rifles and brought it to the mall (Utah 2/2007). It will shock and sadden us, and it will make us appreciate life and the people we are blessed to share it with that much more.
The evil tree hugging left will attempt to fill your heads this week with the ‘danger’ associated with these weapons and call it a bad thing, but don’t forget how you felt the days following Columbine or 9/11. Understand that the wisdom behind the decisions made by our president is beyond our capacity to comprehend, and in the end, it’s the majority he’s looking out for. If a tragedy takes place, a handful of people die, but thousands are provided a moment of inner reflection over it, then he’s done his job well. In the name of continued tragedies bringing America together, I salute President Bush and his continued fight to inspire all of us. Assault weapons truly do hold the key to inner peace, and I’m glad that our president understands that.
Since right-wingers are focusing on repeating over and over that the security situation within Iraq is improving, I’m quite sure that Democrats will continue to repeat over and over that a political solution is necessary to achieve any positive result. The President hasn’t taken a word of it to heart, hasn’t seemed to have learned anything along the way, and so we’re in a spot where there’s no viable strategy we can employ besides somehow evoking Muhammad himself, along with all his nephews, brothers, cousins, whoever he may have had relations with that some of these Flinstone cocksuckers may have idolized and killed their neighbors in the name of, to come back to earth and tell everyone to calm down, put down the guns, give the oil leases to the nice white men who went through all this trouble on your behalf, and don’t let me catch you carrying on like this ever again.
Indeed, they should be ashamed of themselves, and not playing partisan politics like Moktada al-Sadr, who yesterday made news by pulling his 6 cabinet members out of the government, leaving 30 parliament members remaining, but certainly letting Maliki and the rest of this puppet regime know he was serious about lighting a match, burning the whole fucking place down if he had to, if they didn’t succumb to his will and the will of the majority of Iraqis who are still there in demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops. Echoing a similar sentiment here in the United States, al-Sadr has apparently been reading up on some of Augustus Caesar’s greatest schemes, perhaps fine-tuning his rhetoric and actions to coincide with some sort of buildup over the next month or two, in concert with the gullible, permissive nature of the occupiers who carry big guns and kick in many doors, yet allow his people to demonstrate freely and organize against their efforts, even go so far as to declare Iraq as one country with one enemy, whose continued presence makes all Iraqis brothers in arms, if only for a short time.
Pay close attention to the coverage of this most recent shooting-spree in Virgina, as the witnesses are interviewed, the tears brand our brains permanent in puffs of smoke and agony, like the “bad news” from Iraq never seems to accomplish. Consider the irony of what is about to become the most horrific mass murder to be blitzed with every ounce of news media in our lifetimes, and how this scene differs from an average Monday in Iraq, only lesser in size and the fact that the perpetrator is not free to strike again, nor is he still breathing. In contrast with what takes place in Iraq every day, the victims in Virginia already enjoy the small (perhaps irrelevant) comfort of knowing their attacker isn’t going to hurt anyone else. Trial coverage in the United States rightly makes the crucial element of justice for the victim an important aspect in deciding whether or not the person found guilty was given an appropriate sentence. Justice is the diluted ideal that leaves us empty and fierce when not served up nicely by the system. This murderer in Virginia, having accomplished his goal before being mowed down, will never be made to provide any satisfaction along these lines, not to the victims or their families, not to the public who suffers along with.
Capture that helpless emotion as it fluctuates between anger and sadness, to keep in a bottle for observation. This is humanity, what it evokes within each of us, totally unscripted and uncontrollable, these real sensations that on their own manage to represent the single spiritual likeness that exists between you, me, and every other human being alive on this planet. Take a moment and realize that a day like this for us is but a minuscule sliver of a taste of what our influence created in Iraq. Every single day there is mass murder in Iraq, much more than we’ve experienced today in America…so what exactly is our President, our media, our populace so “horrified” by all of a sudden? Based on this reaction, you’d think this sort of thing wasn’t happening everyday, even though it has been for years already.
The correction from last month, along with a significant drop in the value of NTES, has led to some stress with these two, but resisting the urge to overplay and reading up on what’s happening over the past few weeks has calmed my nerves considerably. Some added transactions are listed below, and I’ve also posted spreadsheets detailing positions, gains, losses, etc. The news with NTES involves the Chinese government installing a policy where players of internet games are limited to a certain amount of hours per week. How this impacts the company’s earnings in the short/long term remain to be seen, but under $18 was where I felt the bottom was, having decided this weekend to buy another big chunk and lower my cost per share in hopes of dumping about 60% of it within the next week or so if it should go back above $19.
As for the rest of the $1 million portfolio, a number of my small cap plays have done very well, and a couple not so much. Thus far I’m right at break-even, but once the transaction costs and taxes (short sells) are factored in, I’ll still have some room to catch up. With $180K in hand at this point, I’m carefully considering a couple buys, but right now it depends on a few target price triggers that haven’t been close within the past 10 sessions. Even with the overall lack of productivity, I’m going to hold of on additions as I have the past couple months, as earnings data is out all this week along with consumer spending numbers that I think will either lead to a steady rise or something like the correction that took place in February. PBR (PetroBrazil) was my #1 play from the end of February/beginning of March, and it continues to kick ass in spite of the drop in oil prices since the UK sailors were released. Almost 10% of my entire portfolio is in this one stock, and while I’ll admit that my overzealous aproach to NTES was illadvised, at least I learned something from it…mainly that a country like China cannot be trusted to regulate in the market’s favor all the time…who knew?
Senator Arlen Specter made statements on Sunday, ahead of tomorrow’s hearing to determine whether or not Attorney General Alberto Gonzales can remember his lines, suggesting that the fired US Attorneys who were let go without proper cause be reinstated. We’ve seen this movie before, with the former judiciary committee chairman ramping up into something involving the Bush administration like a man who has the republic’s best interests at heart, only to then back off and allow whatever sham initiative his party favors take over. It happened with warrantless wiretapping, the decision to not make Gonzo take the oath prior to testimony (this incident sparking an argument with Senator Feingold in front of everyone), signing statements, torture, habeas corpus…the Senator will talk tough in the days leading up to the showdown, and then fold like a lawn chair once its time to back up his words with action.
He retains a certain amount of respect from everyone for supposedly standing up for what’s right, but a close look at his record clearly indicates that he is indeed, a hack. Not a shameless hack like the people he provides political cover to so often, simply because his ability to know right from wrong is obvious based on his tough talk leading up to historical moments in Congress, but that only makes him worse in my opinion. At least when a hack like Gonzales is speaking, everyone (including himself) knows that what’s being said is complete bullshit. When Specter comes out a day or two before Gonzo is about to testify with a statement like, “(paraphrasing) questions hanging over the dismissals are sufficiently large that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should consider reinstating the eight”, you know he’s merely paying lip service to that voice inside of him, the one that urges him to stand up and defend his principles for the sake of what’s right, and perhaps even do something that would qualify his mention in a postscript in a future reprinting of JFK’s ‘Profiles in Courage’.
That ship has sailed. His moment came and went, and he was a hack throughout. As welcome a development his becoming an honorable man at this point would certainly be, until he actually follows up his words with action, he’s still a hack in my book. Right there in the same category as Orin Hatch and Jeff Sessions, Senator Arlen Specter will most likely go on being the con artist he is and hope that historians aren’t as wise as his contemporaries are. (Source: McClatchy, Privacy and Security Law Blog,
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 12:47 PM GMT+4
Protests in the United States have been easier to ignore in the age of oblivion, with more than enough channels and free pornography out there to keep the majority busy, background checks prior to getting hired for a dream job, and of course the prerequisite for rioting in this country has been resigned to when sports teams win championships, a seriously troublesome swing of the ‘when to riot’ pendulum from outrage to drunken celebration. Thousands of Americans were detained for a couple days in cages somewhere within NYC during the GOP convention in 2004, apparently for being alive outside of a designated zone, but outside of the apple it hasn’t been all that rowdy from what I can tell.
To ‘go Moscow’ on someone, is a phrase I created to describe a powerful entity going hard on someone who is little, not only to punish them for their transgressions of thought against ‘the leader’ or ‘management’, but to set an example that will convince other like-minded little ones to shut up and do what they’re told. China had Tiananmen Square, the United States had 6 years of Nixon, and Russia is open for business 7 days a week, 52 weeks each year, with enough clubs, poison and pressure hoses to last from now until there’s no water left. Vladimir Putin and his top-notch thug apparatus is good at killing the disloyal, and perhaps even better at pummeling the shit out of protesters.
One of these protesters I’ve been reading about more and more over the past couple years is a man named Gary Kasparov. Meaningful to me, in that he was the world chess champion during the years I was playing in tournaments as a kid, now even more that he’s the most recognizable face amongst the hundreds and sometimes thousands of protesters calling out Putin’s government on a regular basis. His words are crafted in a way that gets me excited, and his profile is that of a national hero to Russians because of how well he represented the country playing chess.
Kasparov, upon his release from prison, seemingly unfazed by his detention, stood atop the courthouse steps said, “It is no longer a country…where the government tries to pretend it is playing by the letter and spirit of the law. We now stand somewhere between Belarus and Zimbabwe…”
Important to note that he is not protesting the government via satellite from somewhere nice, he wasn’t wearing a pink t-shirt, or doing it exclusively through editorials and a blog, but instead is right there in the thick of it, getting his skull thumped and thrown in jail with the rest of them. It makes a former and current chess geek like yours truly happy to know that leadership and bravery are still vital ingredients in the formula of greatness, and in the face of Moscow, someone like Kasparov defines what this means in the sort of way our treasured “founding fathers” might have.
When will one of our national heroes build up the courage to not only stand atop a platform and say something at a permitted rally, but put feet on the ground and become a real unassailable thorn in the sides of our own Putins? Spit in the face of whichever right-winger carries out a Cindy Sheehan (little becoming big) attack on them, and most importantly, be willing to go down with the ship along with the little people as well. An agent and publicist’s nightmare…a nation’s dream. (Sources: AP, NYTimes)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 11:29 PM GMT+4
“By the end of 2006, there were almost two million Iraqis living as refugees outside their country—most of them in Syria and Jordan…American policy held that these Iraqis were not refugees, that they would go back to their country as soon as it was stabilized. The U.S. Embassies in Damascus and Amman continued to turn down almost all visa applications from Iraqis. So the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world remained hidden.” – ‘Betrayed‘ by George Packer, The New Yorker
Take this essay to the right-winger who laments over how much of a humanitarian crisis would ensue if we were to leave Iraq. Chances are they won’t be all that moved by it, and think this way because of what I heard about our own refugees from New Orleans after Katrina struck. To expect a white right-winger in this country to shine a spotlight on murder and injustice in far away lands, you’d really have to assume that the politicians they voted for were responsible for creating the problem in the first place. Otherwise, it’s likely to be a cold day in hell before any story like the one I linked to above gets a second of airtime in right-wing world. The entire premise of the piece is offensive to these folks, as our gift of freedom provided by the liberator, should not be used to bad mouth the liberator. “You’ve got problems? I had to pay an extra 15 cents for gas this week, Hispanics are buying up another house two blocks from where I live, and now I can’t even hear Imus on my way to work in the morning…so you see, we’ve all got problems, and if you can’t go back to Iraq, then simply pull yourself up by your sandal-straps and find 2nd and 3rd jobs like the illegals here do.”
This is a small excerpt from an article in Harpers from 1895 that has to do with a period of history I’ve been trying to study up on lately, the insurgent Arabs in Algeria who were living under French imperial rule:
“Can you trust these Turcos and Spahis in case of war?” I asked him. To this he replied by telling a story. That he had once been in the position here he was able to save a great Arab chief from disgrace and beggary. That chief had been friendly with him for many years, and was so overwhelmed by gratitude that he brought the general costly present. “I never accept presents from natives,” said the general, in parenthesis. “Whoever accepts a present from an Arab loses his authority at once.” The chief was very much chagrined at the general’s determination, and sought in vain to alter it. Finally, in a fit of uncontrollable emotion, and with a choking voice, he raised his hand solemnly and said:
“General, you have saved me from dishonor. I owe you all I have. Let me make you a gift more valuable to you than any precious stone. It is one word of advice: Never trust an Arab – not one-not even ME!” With which strange, not to say paradoxical, warning the chief disappeared. That happened several years ago,”said the general, “but each day I realize more fully the value of that strange gift. The Arab has his nature, which is not YOUR’s or mine. He may live twenty years with you; respect and admire you; serve you faithfully; even spill his blood for you–but all that counts for nothing. The next year he may cut your throat.” I asked him if he was not satisfied with the progress made towards converting the Arabs to French ways. “I have never heard of a real Arab converted to Christianity or French civilization. In fact, the Arab remains Arab in spite of all the missionaries in Africa. It makes me smile when I hear of societies organized to convert Jews and Arabs.” “But then,” I said, “what is to become of this great Franco-African colony if the Arabs are to remain hopelessly hostile?”
“The locomotive and the telegraph are our best allies here. Look at that map; you see our rail way policy—our military policy. We must cut the desert at right angles with the coast; cut off one tribe of Arabs from the other; make their combinations difficult; make ours easy. “The Arab does not love us – but he is no fool. When he sees a train of cars running daily through his territory he knows that French troops can be massed at any point on that line much more quickly than his own. Where we have railways we have no insurrection.” I remarked that rail ways in the desert could hardly be a profitable investment.
“Investment!” said he, with emphasis. “Who cares for the cost when it is a question of national prestige!’ And this is the last word on the subject of colonial expansion. France has an annual deficit on account of her colony here of many millions of francs; she has costly railways climbing through barren mountain passes and terminating in fields of sand; there is no immediate prospect of improvement…
Readers of deadissue know how I loved this guy. My heart goes out to his family, friends, fans and every character to escape from his mind onto the pages upon pages upon pages of timeless thoughts and words all destined to outlive everyone.
I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.” – Vonnegut in a 2003 interview
“The White House is looking into creating a higher profile position that would have the single, full time focus on implementing and executing the recently completed strategic reviews for both Iraq and Afghanistan,” Johndroe said.
Translation…“The White House is looking into somehow circumventing the information dissemination process in place today, to hopefully reduce the negative impact that non-Rumsfeld-tainted Pentagon reviews are increasingly having, and to ultimately minimize the amount of added stress being felt by our increasingly weary corps of propaganda catapult operators.”
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 12:37 PM GMT+4
“…When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years. I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: “Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that.” I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. “That’ll do it,” the man said…”
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 10:54 PM GMT+4
Big Daddy Conservative goes out on a limb in stating the obvious, and it is news because of who he is, with a pseudo-intellectual named William Kristol being paid as an editor of Big Daddy’s hallowed National Review, and all the discredit that is festering within from too much cheer leading over the years combined with close to zero self-reflection on the part of many, who now collectively are managing to attach the publication to a sinking ship, playing their instruments the entire time, oblivious to the woeful situation they are helping to exacerbate. I suppose it’s what separates the bona-fide from the shill, though in Buckley’s case, I’d be reluctant to simply hand him the virtuous stamp of approval over all this (perhaps a “spirit award” would be more appropriate), though it does earn him a place in my heart, as this is the paramount issue of these times we are living through right now. The first paragraph of his column follows:
