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Saturday, May 10, 2003
babbling brook
brookings review: spring 2003
throw down
"NBC plans to air an entire installment of its "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" in stop-motion clay animation for next Thursday's broadcast of the show, the network said on Friday."
neo's matrix
"Strauss also emphasized that one of the great errors of modernity was the faith that human beings could, through an assertion of will, overcome nature and fortune; Strauss, while far from existentialism in most ways, shared in its insistence on human limitation. Strauss might therefore believe that the war on Iraq was morally justified – and I doubt he’d have had that much patience for talk of the legal authority of the UN – and the term ‘regime change’ might have been music to his ears, with it’s invocation of classical theories concerning the nature of regimes. However, I think Strauss would’ve been rather more cautious than some contemporary neo-con publicists. But this is, perhaps, the difference between a philosopher, and intellectuals or would-be statesmen."via matt yglesias
Friday, May 09, 2003
bloogle call
"Google is to create a search tool specifically for weblogs, most likely giving material generated by the self-publishing tools its own tab."
getting defensive
may have linked to this carlyle group page before but i just saw this book about them so........
cutting remarks
"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- After nine hours of deliberations, the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday night emerged with a tax bill that largely resembles the agreement reached a day earlier among committee Republicans.
In a 12-9 vote, primarily along party lines, the committee approved a 10-year, $438 billion tax bill. Arkansas Democrat Blanche Lincoln, up for re-election in 2004, voted with committee Republicans for final passage of the bill."
Thursday, May 08, 2003
iraq pax
"Mosul, IRAQ -- The U.S. Army issued orders for troops to seize this city's only television station, leading an officer here to raise questions about the Army's dedication to free speech in postwar Iraq, people familiar with the situation said. The officer refused the order and was relieved of duty."
delay tactics
"Coming out of the election, everyone thought impeachment was dead," Congressman King told me later. "I didn't hear anyone discuss impeachment. It was over. Then DeLay assumed control. In most districts in the country, a majority was against impeachment, maybe a majority of Republicans. But a majority who voted in Republican primaries was for impeachment. When you put individual members under the gun, a lot of them could get killed in a primary. That was the way he did it. I heard of Christian radio stations going after Republicans. Right-wing groups were stirring it up in parts of the country outside of the Northeast. Most of the pressure went through the Christian right network. It happened over a ten-day period. The whole world changed. I remember talking to people like Rick Lazio and Mike Forbes [both Republicans of New York] and they were saying this is nuts. Then suddenly they were holding news conferences saying their consciences were torn."
wondertwin powers
"ET - "So we're hanging out ... The Bushes were underage drinking at my house. When I checked outside, one of the Secret Service guys asked me if they'd be spending the night. I said no. And then I go upstairs to see another friend and I can smell the green wafting out under his door. I open the door, and there he is smoking out the Bush twins on his hookah."
wail of the century
"My novel, set at a fictitious magazine called The New Century, is called "The Fabulous New Century." It's been kept under such tight wraps that my publisher, HarperCollins, doesn't even know it exists. I've sent several bookstores hard-bound copies, each with a different byline and a different title, accompanied by a note reading "Don't tell anyone about this, or I'll kill you." I wrote the entire thing longhand, then typed it out, then copied it back out to longhand, then typed it out again. Man, it's a lot of work writing a novel about yourself!
Over the course of the next few days, or until I get bored, I'll present excerpts from this book, which serves both as my confession and my damnation. I'm sorry for all the terrible things I did at The New Republic, but I also curse the memory of those I knew there. They treated me so horribly, and they didn't even know how or why. Their names have been changed to protect them, but mine has remained the same to vindicate me."