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A brief follow up

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Just before I left for Vermont I noted in a post that the New York Times had failed to even mention Ron Suskind’s book, The Way of the World, or his charges that, among other things, the Bush-Cheneyites ordered the CIA to forge documents implicating Iraq in the events of 9/11.

While perusing the Times this morning I noted that the book was not reviewed this week, so I did another search, this time at the paper’s website, since the Times Reader only goes back one week. Here’s the result, which shows that the paper hasn’t mentioned Suskind since 2006.

I repeat, it is weird that the “paper of record” does not see fit to mention Suskind’s allegations. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a respected reporter. His reporting has proven true in the past. This is strange. Of course, the entire issue has now been consigned to the memory hole across the board. Alas, it appears that whoever wins in November, our response to our national shame, rather than exposing it to the light of day, will be to ignore it and let it fester.

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Back to Earth

Saturday, August 23, 2008

With much regret, I report that I am back in Connecticut. In many respects, I may just as well have spent the last two weeks in space. In fact, had I been in space I might have been more connected with events in the wider world, as I most likely would have had internet access. As it was I had only sporadic access to the net. I did have access to television, but I have grown so accustomed to not watching TV news (Daily Show and Colbert excepted) that it never entered my mind to turn to that medium for information, and it was too inconvenient to get newspapers to bother with them. So, I was more or less blissfully unaware of events in the wider world, though I have gleaned the following from random scraps of information.

First, the most serious crisis (according to John McCain) since the end of the cold war erupted in Georgia. It is now over, so far as I can see, with the Russians pretty much getting everything they wanted, except that the tacitly agreed not to say that they got everything they wanted. A week and a half ago we were all Georgians, but I understand we are now all back to being Americans, with some of us still more American than others.

Michael Phelps won eight gold medals, but I liked the little girl, Shawn Johnson, the gold medal winner in the balance beam, who showed up for her interview with the inevitable Brian Costas (is he the reincarnation of Dick Clark? He never gets old) wearing great big earrings with peace signs on them.

John McCain was unable to answer when asked how many houses he had. For some strange reason this caused the media to tumble to the fact that he is a very rich man with a very rich wife who is seriously out of touch with the world in which the rest of us live. Apparently, when it comes to Republicans, all the media needs to get clued in on this sort of thing is to be hit on the head with a two by four. Repeatedly.

Truth be told, given the number of houses McCain does own, it’s not clear that any answer was the right answer. If he’d known the answer the effect wouldn’t have been much better. In any event, it was a hard question, since all that can be known with certainty is that he owns between 7 and 11, depending on how you define “own” and how you define “house”.

Meanwhile, in a stunning development, the Democrats actually appear to be turning the issue to their advantage.

In more McCain news the myth that he prefers not to mention his POW experience appears to be dissolving. In fact, the press is now beginning to notice that he prefers to mention it at every opportunity, and uses it as a universal excuse for every screw up, and an all purpose credential for the presidency.

Finally, we can all stop holding our breath. Joe Biden is the vice presidential nominee. I’m underwhelmed, but I honestly can’t think of anyone who would have whelmed me.

I’m sure other things have happened, but I’m ignorant of them. I realize that as an all purpose pundit I have to get back in the flow and will be attempting to do so in the next few days as the reality of being back in the workaday world sinks in.

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More from Vermont

Monday, August 18, 2008

A brooding quiet has descended upon Ludlow, VT. Like New Orleans after Mardi Gras, a sense of exhaustion permeates the populace. A period of wanton celebration has come to an end.

The Zucchini Fest is over.

This legendary celebration, covering two days of revels, takes place on the town green, covering a broad expanse of nearly one tenth of an acre. Zucchini (large, bread, cake, etc.) of all sorts strut their stuff. We have learned from past years that we can’t bear the excitement, so we did not attend this year, but nonetheless, as I sit here in the Ludlow library I can sense the preternatural quiet following he end of the bacchanal.

Herewith a few pictures of VT that I took as we escaped the excitement, up in the hills. You can get larger images by successively clicking any particular picture. I like the one of the horses especially.

Horse Farm
Barn
Landgrove 2
Chums
Hapgood
Landgrove
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McSame

Saturday, August 16, 2008

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBfngOsvmA0[/youtube]

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Meanwhile, back in Vermont

Friday, August 15, 2008

A few pictures from the beautiful state of Vermont. Click on any one for a full size view.

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Impeach him now

Friday, August 15, 2008

We have had no access to the net, and we haven’t read the papers much, since we got her to VT. A couple of days ago we gathered from the front page of a newspaper that Bush was planning on sending troops to Georgia. It seems we have critical interests there, as we do in every godforsaken corner of the earth. I find today that my alarm was premature, since idiot that he is, it never occurred to Bush that even the president of the United States doesn’t control everything.

President Bush Wednesday promised that U.S. naval forces would deliver humanitarian aid to war-torn Georgia before his administration had received approval from Turkey, which controls naval access to the Black Sea, or the Pentagon had planned a seaborne operation, U.S. officials said Thursday.

As of late Thursday, Ankara, a NATO ally, hadn’t cleared any U.S. naval vessels to steam to Georgia through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, the narrow straits that connect the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, the officials said. Under the 1936 Montreaux Convention, countries must notify Turkey before sending warships through the straits.

Pentagon officials told McClatchy that they were increasingly dubious that any U.S. Navy vessels would join the aid operation, in large part because the U.S.-based hospital ships likely to go, the USNS Comfort and the USNS Mercy, would take weeks to arrive.

“The president was writing checks to the Georgians without knowing what he had in the bank,” said a senior administration official.

Still, Bush’s eagerness to confront the Russians, sans Congressional input, is deserving of yet another impeachment count. Putting our people there is, if not tantamount to a declaration of war, a deliberate provocation designed to start one.

I remember that Nixon had a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam war. By some accounts, part of the plan consisted of trying to convince the Vietnamese that he was so crazy he would use nuclear weapons against them. It didn’t work, probably because they concluded he was not that crazy. If Bush succeeds in sending military personnel to Georgia, we can only hope that the Russians will conclude, as so many Americans have, that he really is that crazy.

I haven’t had the benefit of the much access to news, so I don’t know how this threat of his is being perceived. I suspect that there is more than a bit of presidential politics involved. Apparently, John McCain has interjected himself into the process in an unseemly fashion.

These people will do anything to win, and that includes inciting a war with Russia.

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Greetings from Vermont

Monday, August 11, 2008

I write from beautiful Vermont, where at the moment it is pouring rain. I care not. It’s nice to have a couple of hundred miles between me and Norwich, Connecticut, with two work free weeks ahead of me.

Unfortunately, life is full of minor disappointments, even on vacation. In years past the tenant who occupied the upstairs apartment in the house we rent has, albeit unknowingly, provided free wireless to us. It was sketchy at times, since we didn’t always get good reception, but it was still a great convenience. Unfortunately, she moved away. We were told the new tenant is a newspaper reporter, so we hoped he’d also have wireless, maybe with a stronger signal, but alas, it was not to be.

For every cloud, etc. The lack of internet access means we can remain blissfully unaware of the doings in the world, which at the moment I am, though it came to my attention that the Russians and the Georgians have started a war while we weren’t looking. More good news.

Herewith a couple of pictures of our first guests. My wife’s nephew came to visit with a formerly abused dog named “Smokey”, which they’ve adopted. He was the sweetest dog in the world and he had a wonderful time in the pond.

A new set of relatives arrived shortly thereafter, and the kids all got along great immediately. Feeding the ducks is a favorite pastime:

Into each life some rain must fall. In our case, the rain is both literal (see above) and figurative. We are at a coffee shop, in which we have to pay for internet access. I can live with that, but it keeps cutting off, which is a bit much. At least I’ve refreshed my RSS feeds, so I can catch up on the world a bit later.

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Friday Night Music-Steppenwolf

Friday, August 8, 2008

Born to Be Wild, (1972 performance)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUt8fQS9qEM[/youtube]

Free Bonus: The Pusher, a 2004 performance. It’s hard to believe they’re still around, looking pretty good too.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7CjoaCFYP4[/youtube]

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I’m out of here starting tomorrow

Friday, August 8, 2008

Tomorrow we make our annual trek to Vermont. It can’t come soon enough for me. Two weeks without looking at a legal file, or making the trek to Norwich.

Blogging will be infrequent, and may be heavily weighted toward pretty pictures of beautiful Vermont.

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Nice rant

Friday, August 8, 2008

The following rant (and I don’t use that word pejoratively, good rants are valuable things) was passed on to me by a correspondent, and I eventually got permission from the author (who shall remain unnamed) to reprint it. I thought it was good. I’ve modified it slightly by adding some introductory words and embedding the referenced videos:

Regarding the Celebrity Commercial:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHXYsw_ZDXg[/youtube]

Leadership can pretty much be aptly defined as the ability to make people follow voluntarily. The charge that Obama is not a leader, but rather a celebrity is coming from a man who has been having trouble filling high school gymnasiums for town hall meetings while his opponent has been speaking in front of crowds upwards of 70,000. McCain also,……also has appeared on more (non-political or apolitical )TV shows such as The View, SNL and Jay Leno since 2000 than any other politician (over 50 times). Not to mention, Kathy Hilton, the woman who spawned that demon seed known as Paris and raised her with those values donated $4600.00 (max. amount) to the McCain campaign.

Shouldn’t the question be turned back towards McCain in a manner of “Hey asshole, after 10 appearances on Leno, 2 hosting duties on SNL, 2 times on The View and 2 times on Entertainment Tonight, plus 8 stops at Letterman, and 3 at Conan O’Brien, and one stop on the fucking Tony Danza Show since the year 2000 alone, plus 26 years in the United States Senate why is it you’re having such a difficult time leading more than a few dozen blue hairs together at one time and place all over this great land to hear you speak? Does that say something about your leadership abilities?”

The One Commercial:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUpM42X-DCs[/youtube]

You know something, I’ve never understood the American aversion to certain types of elitism. A large percentage of Americans hate people like Liam Gallagher, Bill Hicks and Bill Maher (whom all I love strictly for their elitism alone) but love the late Jerry Fallwell or Sean Hannity (whom I hate primarily due to their elitist attitudes of defining what is and is not American)? I tend to consider myself a fairly well tuned armchair psychologist/sociologist and I’ve never even come close to understanding this phenomena in our culture.

Elitism can be defined as the belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority. I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like every single hyper religious, close minded, extreme right wing assclown I’ve ever met. And it is the bitters of Nebrahoma to whom this commercial is geared. The people who believe in the rapture for instance (which I don’t think can be debated as anything but the most elitist belief ever held) are the people he’s speaking to.

Then,……factor in Obama lost like 9 points in the polls after both of these insanely transparently hypocritical commercials aired. As in they kind of worked (who knows about polls, it’s August and most young people only use cell phones now.), but still?

Then,…..factor in the real kicker, many of the delusional liberal talking heads and columnists have criticized the commercials for their ‘subliminal messages’ of race and white women/black man sexual connotations. As if face value bullshit was too hard or easy to call, let’s go for the black hawk helicopter subliminal theories. Brilliant.

November can’t come soon enough.

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