I'm Lookin' For A New Direction

I once heard Brian Williams ask (and this was in the heat of the 2000 sillyness) "Where are the wise men?" Heh. Indeed. My answer at the time was: "Concentrate less on the eye makeup and more on the thinking and you might become one..." But that's just plain bitchy, no? Anyway, the question, even if out of context, remains worth asking. So I ask you, how's this for a start? Yes, it's the second link to something by Pat Lang in as many weeks, but here's the thing. Turns out that sensible people often have sensible ideas more often than less sensible people. Put another way, it's important to read the product of thinking that has less grounding in being a philosophy buff and more to do with observing the world and our potential positions in it. Not that there's anything wrong with being a philosophy buff. Just that being one doesn't really qualify you - in and of itself - as someone who should formulate national policy. Someone outta tell El Presindente'.

Now This Ain't Funky

This did not happen. Ok, it did. What an eff'ed up Christmas event. While it's perfectly evident that James was Not A Nice Man, I don't think I'd want to have existed in a world without this:

Also, something we almost embedded yesterday (the fact that it's Atomic TV is totally coincidental - it just happens to be the only YouTube that contains this song - you might want to skip ahead 2.5 minutes to get the, ahem, thematic content...):

Merry Christmas Everybody!!!

Something for El Presidente' Jorge Arbusto. No one likes to be left out on Christmas, and this is how we'll always remember you.

Garage life lifers....

Ray Davies is, along with certain fermentation processes, proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy.

About that "Surge" Thing....

I think this article by Pat Lang and Ray McGovern bears repeated reading. Never mind that, as they point out, it's a losing gambit. Instead, consider:

Analogies come to mind: the Bulge, Stalingrad, the Battle of Algiers. It will be total war with all the likelihood of excesses and mass casualties that come with total war.

To take up such a strategy and force our armed forces into it would be an immoral course of action, both for our troops and for the thousands more Iraqis bound to die.

Yeah, that's the money quote, but you'll have to "read the whole thing" to get the Bush/Nicholas II analogy.

Tags: Iraq, Surge

Seance in the Oval Office

Everyone caught on to Bush's pained candor at his press conference with Tony Blair: "It's bad in Iraq. How's that?"

But did you see this one?

"Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die."

He so doesn't want to be there. You can measure the degree to which he isolates himself by the degree to which his features withdraw to the center of his face. Seriously, look sometime. By 2009, there's just going to be a little black dot where his nose used to be.

Speaking Ill of the Dead

Pinochet is dead. Good riddance, you despicable effin' bastard.

One of the reasons I sort of tremble at the thought of our side embracing Kissingerian Realism is because I don't want to embrace policy that ends up actively creating "our bastards" such as Pinochet (or Hussein). There has to be a better alternative to Neo-conservatism.