Gore Vidal muses on his “drunken shit” of a mother, a possible love child, death, the Bush administration, and his titanium knee. Oh, and there are some classic descriptions of his many literary nemeses:
“Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house.”
Newt Gingrich, discussing his book, Days of Infamy:
This is … one of the great tragedies of the Bush administration. The more successful they’ve been at intercepting and stopping bad guys, the less proof there is that we’re in danger. And therefore, the better they’ve done at making sure there isn’t an attack, the easier it is to say, “Well, there never was going to be an attack anyway.” And it’s almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us.
We’re so good at keeping you safe that you think we suck; so, we’ll let a few people get blown up just to prove that you’re wrong.
Speaking of Newts.
Of all the news I read today, this is the most awesome:
MINNEAPOLIS—A convicted felon who became a motivational speaker — and used his life experiences to warn teens about the dangers of drugs and crime — is accused of going on a bender, threatening to kill his girlfriend and her son, and smashing a former prison buddy in the face with a statue of John Wayne.
And he was just getting started . . .
Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe’s token voice of the unhinged right wing, chastises George Bush and his administration in his latest column. Interestingly, he chastises Bush for not being Bushy enough.
(And the the timing of JJ’s column is just delicious, given today’s news).
To his credit, I guess, Jacoby makes the sound, if obvious point that the United States should do a better job of supporting brave dissidents who stand up to authoritarian regimes.
The rest of the column reads like the author’s application letter to an insane asylum.
The point? We need more Bush Doctrine, not less. More Iraqs, not fewer.
Bush was the leader who pledged at his second inauguration to support “democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” He let it be known that the truculence of rogues and dictators would not be indulged. “Some,” he said pointedly, “have unwisely chosen to test America’s resolve - and have found it firm.”
Whatever became of him? The president who in the wake of Sept. 11 posed a stark choice to the sponsors of jihadist violence - “You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists” - where is he now? And, more important, where is the foreign policy he once stood for?
For some time now it has been apparent that the Bush Doctrine - with the single exception of Iraq - didn’t survive the Bush presidency
So, let’s see then. The one place where the Bush Doctrine has been applied is Iraq. And what we need to do is to be more consistent in applying the Bush doctrine. Got it.
Then we can print up some more of these, and have some more of this and this, presumably.
As usual, JJ is dy-no-mite!
These are not care-free times. Recession is in the air. Americans face not only soaring gas prices and foreclosures, but also a generalized sense of economic uncertainty.
And the startling growth in economic inequality in America is alarming. Like, you know, it’s eve-of-the-Great-Depression kind of alarming. Some of the trends:
The top one percent of households received 21.8 percent of all pre-tax income in 2005, more than double what that figure was in the 1970s. (The top one percent’s share of total income bottomed out at 8.9 percent in 1976.) This is the greatest concentration of income since 1928, when 23.9 percent of all income went to the richest one percent.
And:
Between 1979 and 2005, the top five percent of American families saw their real incomes increase 81 percent. Over the same period, the lowest-income fifth saw their real incomes decline 1 percent.
But this is no time to be a gloomy Gus! Why not focus on the good news?
From the Boston Globe:
The recession gripping the country has left a broad swath of Americans agonizing over $60 gas fill-ups, ballooning grocery bills, and homes lost to foreclosure. But for the region’s class of superrich, downtimes have made for a bonanza of deals on luxurious pleasures, from sports cars and yachts to pieds-a-terre and airplanes.
At the Rolls-Royce dealership in Wayland, the Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead is sold out into next year, and orders are still rolling in. Ferrari Maserati of New England in Foxborough notched more sales in April than in any of the previous 14 months. Boston Yacht Sales of Weymouth last week closed on three boats valued at a total of $1.6 million, helping to push business up by 9 percent over last year. Business has been so brisk at Shoreline Aviation in Marshfield that the wait time to purchase a sleek Cessna Citation jet is two years. Million-dollar condo sales, far from stalling like some other sectors of the real estate market, have continued at a pace about like last year’s.
How long before we actually become Brazil?
A few days ago, Andrew Sullivan described the Clintons as being “riddled with narcissism and pathology,” running an “ugly,” “feckless,” loser of a campaign.
With those words in mind, I am detecting a new tactic from the Clinton campaign. It seems the new idea is to convince all those suggestible, uneducated citizens who comprise their base that an evil conspiracy has formed to dupe them into giving up on Team Clinton. While the rest of us are just media-fed zombies who think that Barack Obama has an unassailable delegate lead, Bill knows the truth. While campaigning in the “boutique” state of South Dakota, Bill Clinton is reported to have said this about his wife and Barack Obama:
Oh, this is so terrible: The people they want her. Oh, this is so terrible: She is winning the general election, and he is not. Oh my goodness, we have to cover this up.
Ok, this is the “general election” that happens in November, right? Six months from now? Just checking.
This next part is completely crazy:
She is winning the general election today and he is not, according to all the evidence.
If you notice, there hasn’t been a lot of publicity on these polls I just told you about. It is the first time you’ve heard it? Why do you think that is? Why do you think? Don’t you think if the polls were the reverse and he was winning the Electoral College against Senator McCain and Hillary was losing it, it would be blasted on every television station?
You would know it wouldn’t you? It wouldn’t be a little secret. And there is another Electoral College poll that I saw yesterday had her over 300 electoral votes. … She will win the general election if you nominate her. They’re just trying to make sure you don’t.
Definitely a conspiracy here, just like the “suicide” of Vince Foster. Or the Whitewater deal. Except this conspiracy is vast and involves virtually every media organ in our nation–including FOX! It’s diabolical! Hillary Clinton is actually winning the election that won’t happen for half a year; if it weren’t for this evil, meddling cabal, we’d all know the truth!
Seriously, how much contempt for your supporters must you have to shovel this horseshit at them?
Images from the phoenix lander are now coming in. The craft landed just before 8pm EST this evening and will look for signs of water on the planet Mars. I don’t know why, but this blows my mind every time.
Of course, there is this reality back here on planet Earth:
The human tragedy wrought by the global drinking water crisis is profound, but has not been enough to move the world to solve what is perhaps its worst health problem. More than 1 billion people on the globe lack access to safe drinking water, more than 2 billion lack sanitation. Most troubling, 2 million to 10 million people — mostly children — die every year from contaminated water. That’s more than 5,000 children who die daily.
Today’s Washington Post contained this little gem:
[T]he next day, with renewed vigor, Clinton compared her effort to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan to the abolition of slavery . . . .
Just when you thought it couldn’t get more insane. It was hard enough to stomach the fact that Clinton had initially supported the disenfranchisement of Florida and Michigan voters and then–when it became politically expedient–suddenly became their most strident defender.
But now she’s making metaphors about the abolition of slavery where she magically transforms from Simon Legree into Frederick Douglass. Poof! And let’s not forget that a black man, who won the delegate math for the nomination several months ago, has to put up with this shit from a white, millionaire, former first lady.
I’m sure the Clinton speech writers are already workshopping her July 4th speech:
This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a woman in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon her to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!”
To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.
My subject, then, fellow citizens, is “Counting the Votes in Florida and Michigan.” I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.
Expect another dazzling performance of oratory, like this one:
Sorry for the brief posting hiatus here at IHWYJS. We’re back!
In Dublin, diplomats are meeting to discuss a treaty banning cluster bombs.
Guess who isn’t going to show up? Right. But even though the Bush Administration doesn’t feel the need to join over 100 other nations in discussing this matter of life and death, apparently the United States is still making its presence felt. By “bullying” our allies into gutting the treaty.
Cluster bombs and the effort to eradicate them don’t get much press coverage in the U.S. But because of the way they operate, they are strongly opposed by international human rights and peace activists. Here is the problem, in brief:
Cluster munitions are large weapons which are deployed from the air and from the ground and release dozens or hundreds of smaller submunitions. Submunitions released by air-dropped cluster bombs are most often called “bomblets,” while those delivered from the ground by artillery or rockets are usually referred to as “grenades.”
Air-dropped or ground-launched, they cause two major humanitarian problems and risks to civilians. First, their widespread dispersal means they cannot distinguish between military targets and civilians so the humanitarian impact can be extreme, especially when the weapon is used in or near populated areas.
Many submunitions fail to detonate on impact and become de facto antipersonnel mines killing and maiming people long after the conflict has ended. These duds are more lethal than antipersonnel mines; incidents involving submunition duds are much more likely to cause death than injury.
To make matters even more horrific, since the bomblets are small and often brightly-colored, they tend to attract the attention of children. So the use of cluster bombs results in large areas of the earth being covered in small, brightly-colored de facto land mines. As a result, cluster bombs have been a major cause of civilian casualties from Vietnam to Kosovo to Iraq and beyond.
Jody Williams, who won the Nobel Prize for her efforts to ban land mines, weighs in on the Globe opinion page.
Taken by themselves, the administration’s effort to undermine the cluster bomb ban, and its refusal to attend the conference are quite regrettable. (And seriously - they could have at least found one eager, young, low-level D-Bag in the administration, armed with a Pepperdine degree and a brief case, and sent him to Dublin. You know - show up!)
But given how this matter fits into the larger picture, it is difficult to fathom how the United States can have any credibility on the world stage in matters of war and peace and arms control. For instance, when the United States rails against the potential development of nuclear weapons by Iran and North Korea, what does the rest of the world see?
The rest of the world sees the country that invented nuclear weapons. It sees the country that spent much of the second half of the twentieth century stockpiling nuclear weapons. It sees the only country (and this seems a significant point, does it not?) that has ever used nuclear weapons.
The rest of the world sees the country that tried to undermine the 1997 land mine treaty. The rest of the world sees the country that can’t even be bothered to worry about the civilian impact of cluster bombs. The rest of the world sees the country that is one of the few nations on earth that has developed and stockpiled chemical weapons.
And while the U.S. has nuclear and chemical weapons*, and has used the former, the rest of the world also sees America as the country that launched a disastrous preemptive war based on false claims about those same kinds of weapons.
And just to make matters worse, the United States decided to use cluster bombs.
*(Thank you to commenter Mr. Hand for pointing this out: it should be said that the United States has been in the process of destroying chemical weapons, according to its treaty obligations).
