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Saturday, Jan 03, 2004
defensive posture
"There are two very large inferences that can be drawn from comments like these and, more broadly, from the current debate over national security issues in policy institutes, academia and professional journals. One is that the Bush administration stands very, very far from the foreign-policy mainstream: liberal Democrats, conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans have more in common with one another than any of them have with the Bush administration. The other conclusion is that the administration's claim that 9/11 represents such a decisive break with the past that many of the old principles no longer apply is right -- but the new principles need not be the ones the administration has advanced. A different administration could have adapted to 9/11 in a very different way. And this is why national security should be, at least potentially, such a rich target of opportunity for a Democratic candidate."
Friday, Jan 02, 2004
affairgate
"I actually think it's likely that the original source didn't know that Plame was a "NOC," because I actually don't believe that the people around Bush would have been sufficiently unpatriotic to burn a NOC, and all of her assets, in such a petty act of revenge and damage control. That was my first take on this story, and I haven't yet seen adequate reason to change it. I think that some of my Democratic friends are so taken with the general horribleness of the Bush Administration as to have lost sight of that fact that these people aren't Snidely Whipsnade melodrama villains, self-consciously revelling in the evil they do. In their own minds, they're good people, and above all, patriots. So it's much more likely that whoever called Novak would have had only a hazy impression of Plame's actual status than that he would have been deliberately revealing a still highly secret identity."
the unhappy recap
arod untrade wrapup.
bubble rap
george soros: the bubble of american supremacy
Thursday, Jan 01, 2004
graph paper
"If the threat of taking boring pix hangs over every photographer of ambition, Diane Arbus was perhaps more conscious of it than any other photographer. Her photographs relentlessly tell us how interesting they are; they dare us to look away from them. If our favorite thing in the world is not to look at pictures of freaks and transvestites and nudists and mentally retarded people, this cuts no ice with Arbus. She forces us to acknowledge that these are no ordinary unpleasant pictures of society's discards. They are photographs only Diane Arbus could have taken. The question of whether they are also great works of photography remains undetermined thirty years after her death. Arbus is not universally beloved the way, say, Walker Evans is. Interestingly (and fittingly), she herself did not love Evans. Of the 1971 Evans retrospective at MOMA she wrote: "First I was totally whammied by it. Like THERE is a photographer, it was so endless and pristine. Then by the third time I saw it I realized how it really bores me. Can't bear most of what he photographs.""
narcosphere
narco news relaunches.
Wednesday, Dec 31, 2003
the weight im in
"Hence, the weight in the Senate is about to shift, to those Senators who can provide a wide bandwidth message that their partisans will not merely repeat, but amplify by finding new arguments in its favor. The internet is finally the place where main street America comes - indeed, it is witnessing the rebirth of Main Street America - a place which does not merely put thumbs up or thumbs down - but which takes information from a diverse array of sources, and funnels them through context - that is done by linking - and community - which is done by commenting, either on the original web site, or in the text around the link. In short, instead of a public life that consists of push down and push back - public life is going to be centered around campaigns and organizations - like Dean's campaign, and like Moveon.org - that can pull people in, and pull people together. The definition of this moment is when people in a movement begin talking to each other, and making distant connections."
pressing information
"Press think has terms of art, and one of them is "master narrative," borrowed from literary critics. I use it to describe a part of the press that too easily eludes attention: the big story, sometimes the back story, often a fragment of a narrative, that generates all the other stories, which are smaller pieces."
man united
"Hallin's device helps us grasp the tension between someone like Krugman and others in the press. For he actually places the current Administration in the sphere of deviance. Or rather, he argues that Bush and company have tried to take policies from beyond the pale straight into "consensus" without being forced through the space of legitmate controversy. This, he thinks, cannot be done without the acquiescence of journalists who patrol these boundaries."
Monday, Dec 29, 2003
its his fault/my teeth hurt
man, that was a funny rant. lost down the memory, whole. just between me and the key lime pie. i say/blame steve.