Suspicious al-Qaeda "Letter" in the UK Telegraph
Back in August BooMan noted along with Ron Suskind that a certain reporter at the UK Telegraph was rather consistently on the receiving end of CIA disinformation. Ron Suskind has a new book coming out...
View ArticleWho Would've Thought, It Figures
Last month, the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading on BearingPoint because its stock price had fallen too low. Yesterday the price was 3.45 cents a share. Alejandro Lazo writes in today's...
View ArticleOn Sunsets
Among the zanier aspects of Americans' intermittent attempts to bring democracy to America is that of the two major political parties we've settled on -- thinking they must be the correct parties to...
View ArticleGates and the National Defense Strategy
For what have been described as reasons of "continuity," President-elect Obama has chosen to retain Robert Gates as his Secretary of Defense, at least for the short term. It's of no small interest,...
View ArticleFrom Sunday Talk: Blair and Obama on Terrorism
This exchange between Wolf Blitzer and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair on CNN's "Late Edition" Sunday was a perfect, just perfect, example of the problem with the rhetoric that surrounds and...
View ArticleCan Video Games be Art?
One of my occasional musings: do video games, or could they, count as art in the same way that painting, poetry, music, theater, film, and so on, do? If so, what are the aesthetic criteria of video...
View ArticleSpecter Wants to Slow Holder Nomination
Zachary Roth at TPM Muckraker catches a story in The Hill. Specter wants to delay the Holder nomination for Attorney General. In a speech on the Senate floor today, reports The Hill, Specter...
View ArticleWorld's Coral Reefs Dying
We can add another tale to the growing list of truly alarming environment stories that would have seemed like science fiction twenty years ago, but nowadays often elicit a "ho hum" as our capacity for...
View ArticleThe Day the Dearth Stood Still
In the January issue of Harper's Magazine (not online yet), Linda J. Bilmes, lecturer in public finance at Harvard's Kennedy School, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics...
View ArticleCheney Gives Middle Finger to Levin, Senate, U.S., World
GlowNZ has a diary on the rec list about Vice President Cheney's vile interview with Johnathon Karl at ABC today, but I'd like to emphasize another aspect of the interview: its timing. The rare Cheney...
View ArticleThanks, But No Thanks
From the New York Times:Bush Prepares Crisis Briefings to Aid ObamaBy PETER BAKER Published: December 16, 2008WASHINGTON — The White House has prepared more than a dozen contingency plans to help guide...
View ArticleA Sign of a Free Society
On Sunday, Bush offered an opinion about Muntadhar al-Zeidi's shoe-throwing that was consistent with his long-held, somewhat idiosyncratic views on the nature of freedom and democracy.Martha Raddatz:...
View ArticleNYT Editorial Board Calls for Torture Prosecutor
The New York Times editorial board calls for the appointment of a prosecutor to investigate possible illegalities by members of the Pentagon and others responsible for approving policies that led to...
View ArticleHeckuva Job, Downie
The occasion of Mark Felt's -- also known as Deep Throat's -- passing has occasioned a number of pieces in the Washington Post. One is by Leonard Downie, Jr., executive editor of the Post from 1991...
View ArticleThe Uses of Afghanistan
In August of this year, Jane Mayer was doing interviews to promote her book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. During an interview with...
View ArticleSarah Chayes on Afghanistan
On Sunday, I argued that the US presence in Afghanistan was inextricably entwined with a set of disastrous foreign and domestic policies favored by right-wing ideologues and dubbed, as a whole, "The...
View ArticleOf ICBMs, Sesame Street, and Arrogance
On Dec. 24, Tom Partiff at the Guardian reported that Russia was implenting plans to build 70 new nuclear ICBMs with multiple warheads over the next 3 years. According to Ruben Sergeev, an expert...
View ArticleHits and Misses: 2008
I've been blogging since 2005; making me a relative newcomer but, I suppose, not a novice anymore. What I've noticed is that each year seems to bring with it unique challenges and lessons. The...
View ArticleFriday Night at the Best and Worst Movies of 2008 (EVER!!!)
According to Roger Ebert, 2008 was an unusually good year for film. In making his best-of list for the past year, Ebert found it necessary to double the usual length of the list:I am violating the...
View ArticleMidday Open Thread
Louis Braille was born 200 years ago today. There don't seem to be many tributes about it, but the Australian has a nice one: The Frenchman, who lost his sight when he was four after an accident in his...
View ArticleOn Israel, Palestine, and the U.S.
In the following I make three claims, which I will state upfront in exaggerated terms, both to get the point across and so my errors are more visible. (1) The United States (or factions in it) has more...
View ArticleMidday Open Thread
Scott Horton is very pleased with Obama's choices for director of the CIA (Leon Panetta) and national intelligence director (Admiral Dennis Blair). mcjoan notes that Mother Jones also has a positive...
View ArticleCheney vs. Congress
A quick two-point timeline:Dec. 11, 2008: The Senate Armed Services Committee released a report laying responsibility for the development of torture techniques at the feet of senior Administration...
View ArticleIraq's Provincial Elections
The long-awaited Iraqi provincial elections will take place on January 31st, just a week-and-a-half after President-elect Obama takes office. These are not elections for seats in the Iraqi parliament...
View ArticleNewsweek Remains the Greatest Magazine of All Time
I guess Newsweek is trolling for readers. On their cover this week:What Would Dick Do?Why Obama may soon find virtue in Cheney's vision of powerTrolling for readers with outrageous cover stories is one...
View ArticleMidday Open Thread
You can watch the Obama Inaugural Celebration at HBO's website. AmbroseBurnside has a liveblog going, and check out BarbinMD's Inaugural Guide. (h/t juliewolf and Lady Libertine)As noted by Kula2316 in...
View ArticleAdmit It: You're Gasping for Relevance
Give Peter Beinart credit for originality. The Editor-at-Large of the New Republic has invented, in a column in Sunday's Washington Post, a whole new reason for liberals to admit that liberals are...
View ArticleFart Jokes and War
I've been trying to find a way of stating what I think of President Bush, now that all is said and done. It's been surprisingly difficult. I guess can start with this: certain images keep coming back...
View ArticleKeep Away From My Stash!
The introduction of a President-elect who, unlike the previous occupant of the White House, is smarter than the average Village talking head and who is actually responsive -- to an as-yet-unknown but...
View ArticleA Good Thing Obama Did on Friday
As Meteor Blades posted yesterday, President Obama on Friday ended the Bush (and previous Republican administrations') policy of denying monetary aid to non-governmental organizations that provide...
View ArticleWeekly Standard: The Weekly Standard Sucks
The new Weekly Standard is hilarious. William Kristol, in the editorial, opines that current Republican ideas all suck so bad that uniting behind them would lead straight to disaster:Where's the...
View ArticleAbout That Kid in Omelas
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a short story by Ursula K. LeGuin, first published in 1973. Clocking in at four pages, it is one of shortest truly great short stories I am aware of. Finding,...
View ArticleFriday Night at the Movies: 2008 Oscar Nominations Thread #1
Tonight's edition of Friday Night at the Movies was written by chingchongchinaman. Among the 2008 Oscar nominations are these in the 4 acting categories:Best Actor: Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon), Sean...
View ArticleIf This Were an M. Night Shyamalan Movie I'd Walk Out
In an earlier post, SusanG quoted Josh Marshall at TPM to the effect that the Republican's theatrical bellyaching about the stimulus package is over, in sum, "maybe one or two percent of the program...
View ArticleThe Alternative Minimum Tax and the Stimulus Package
Haley Edwards at the Columbia Journalism Review points out a big part of why the Senate version of stimulus bill was more expensive than the House version and so "needed" to be cut back by scrapping...
View ArticleThe Iraqi Provincial Elections
The Iraqi provincial elections were held on Jan. 31; final results will be known in a few weeks. What seems to be clear so far is that Prime Minister al-Maliki is one wiley sumbitch; Iran, despite...
View ArticleBagram Prison
Warren Richey at the Christian Science Monitor described the legal showdown over Bagram Prison in Afghanistan on Feb. 11:At the height of its operation, the terror detention camp at Guantánamo was...
View ArticleNYT Front Page: The D-Word
From an article by Peter Goodman at the top of the home page of the NYT:The fortunes of the American economy have grown so alarming and the pace of the decline so swift that economists are now...
View ArticleThe Kids Are Alright
Ron Charles, an op-ed columnist at the Washington Post, penned a strangely pessimistic column about the lack of political activism in college-age kids for Sunday's edition. His primary complaint is...
View ArticleTwenty Four
The Fox television show "24" premiered on November 6, 2001. It quickly became the ideological lighthouse for the right, both among the populace and in more rarified venues. Last year, Dahlia Lithwick...
View ArticleOld Reliable Sticks Foot in Mouth Again
Important Pundit number 2,435 has decided to come forward and take a brave stand against the prosecution of officials who authorized the torture of detainees. This time it is Thomas Friedman, and as...
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Gwadar, China, the U.S., and the Great Game
Ever heard of the city of Gwadar, in a region of Pakistan called Balochistan? I haven't. For reference, Balochistan is (1) on the map to the right; the Swat Valley, where much of the recent news has...
View ArticleOur Once-Expanded Hearts
I'd like to quote a passage from an essay by Breyten Breytenbach, that he wrote about a visit to Senegal. It appeared in the March Harper's Readings (subscription link.)After that I will muse a...
View ArticleOutrage Over the Publication of Rumsfeld's Christian War
Dear all Important Pundits who think the new torture photos should not be released because doing so would endanger the troops.I look forward to your expressions of outrage at the publication in GQ of...
View ArticleRightwing Radio Hosts Across the Nation Make Discovery
In one of the more bizarre culture trends in recent memory, all across the nation white male politically right-wing pundits and radio talk show hosts are voluntarily having themselves shot in the foot...
View ArticleThe Jihad-O-P and the President's National Security Speech
Earlier today I printed out the text of President Obama’s May 21 speech on national security and American values. I had previously listened to the speech live and skimmed the text online, but I had not...
View ArticleTwitterature
According to a story in The Guardian, Two Freshman students at the University of Chicago are writing a book called "Twitterature," in which they try to summarize the world's classics in twenty "tweets"...
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Notes on Force Feeding
An article in the current issue of Harper's Magazine, which I will get to in section III, led me to look into the practice and history of force feeding prisoners.I.Warren Lilly was arrested in 2002 for...
View ArticleObama Admin Working to Restore President of Honduras
From the New York Times, this is stunning: By Sunday night, officials in Washington said they had spoken with Mr. Zelaya and were working for his return to power in Honduras, despite relations with Mr....
View ArticleFriday Night at the Movies: Ron Howard
The format for tonight's Friday Night at the Movies will be a little different than usual, focusing on the work of a single filmmaker. I'll try to say things provacative enough (or at least stupid...
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