drat fink

al for one

"By my count, the 36 days following the Nov. 7, 2000, presidential election generated not less than 36 books and one Ph.D. dissertation, plus countless articles and essays. To examine and understand the historic Florida vote count, however, no reasonable person is going to read all this material, excepting perhaps another Ph.D. dissertator. Nonetheless, being an election junkie, I was sufficiently interested to read almost half of them."

khan newman

hamid and his capes are the talk of the town. talking points considers poll tested presidentially proffered nicknames for the raffish one. dratfink has adopted 'Karsai' as an eponymous teeth-gritting epithet.

all the way to the bank

"The President of the U.S. is a very popular guy and he simply slayed the VIPs at the Alfalfa Dinner the other night, hosted by the famous Washington, D.C., club. These worthies included the cream of U.S. commerce, industry, politics and anyone else you can think of who counts.

The prez said he had good news and bad news from Saddam Hussein. "The good news is he is willing to let us inspect his biological and chemical warfare installations. The bad news is that he insists Arthur Andersen do the inspection!" . . . Speaking of Congressman John Dingell of Michigan, who was stopped by security at Reagan Airport and made to remove most of his clothes, the prez noted Dingell hadn't taken everything off. "Thank God," said George W. "that it wasn't Bob Dole!"

At one point someone said during the program: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce President Bush, former President Bush and former President Dick Cheney." This got a big laugh."

business as usual

talking points wonders why the florida pension fund invested heavily in enron once it was already tanking.

toy guitar gods

pretty amazing White Stripes legomation video

a conservative viewpoint

"The Enron executives, who professed a love of free market capitalism, kept their love pure by never applying it. They are the enemies of the free market. If, as you say, the Republicans decide that their real allies in this are the plutocrats, then they are going to destroy themselves. But if they decide their real duty is to protect free competition, then they have a big progressive-conservative agenda ahead of them, which will be widely popular and could recast domestic politics."

of fiction

"Deceit as a way of life is ubiquitous. Animals hide, mimic, change color, play dead to avoid predators; people disguise themselves, hallucinate, dream, forget and lie to avoid reality, but unlike animals they also lie to themselves. That writers are liars is a commonplace, but the truly achieved writers (or artists) are the ones one who deceive themselves so well that they can pursue a lie that becomes true in spite of its implacable falsity: Picasso's revisionist version of the human face; Joyce's belief in the incomprehensible dream language in "Finnegans Wake" and so on."

face dances

"Daniel was having so much fun," partygoer John Gillman said.

"We all thought he loved being in that gal's chest.

"Who could have known that when he was waving his hands around, he was signaling for help?"

casting call

"Our special issue is dedicated to trying to make sense of modern celebrity, of its oddities and pleasures. Whether we like it or not (and we often do), nothing much now happens without celebrity's imprint."

end run

"Enron is not a political scandal in the sense of gotcha-gotcha-now-resign. But it has exposed the administration's sleazy corporatism and underlined its relative indifference to the market principles that form the Republican Party's more attractive side. The folks at the White House tolerate the free-trade efforts of the trade czar, Bob Zoellick, but they don't really like him. They hired a free marketeer to run the office overseeing regulation, but they won't necessarily back him up. Their agriculture secretary says the right things on market-distorting farm subsidies, but they don't have the stomach to fight Congress on this issue. They won't even stand up for school vouchers, despite Bush's emphasis on education. What the White House team really cares about is cutting taxes, which has less to do with market principle than with rewarding backers."