So my own hope is that -- if the American people do not find a way to choose democracy over empire -- at least our imperial venture will end not with a nuclear bang but a financial whimper. From the present vantage point, it certainly seems a daunting challenge for any President (or Congress) from either party even to begin the task of dismantling the military-industrial complex, ending the pall of "national security" secrecy and the "black budgets" that make public oversight of what our government does impossible, and bringing the president's secret army, the CIA, under democratic control. It's evident that Nemesis -- in Greek mythology the goddess of vengeance, the punisher of hubris and arrogance -- is already a visitor in our country, simply biding her time before she makes her presence known.

Yikes

Can a bottle of wine really be worth $700? Slate's Mike Steinberger this so:

What a nose—hazelnut, oatmeal, sweet white fruit, smoke, spice, and a touch of nutmeg. Stirring nose. Ripe, spicy, sublime, succulent grapefruit, pear. Perfect balance. Holy shit.

i was looking for something to recommend watching season 2 of extras on hbo but this interview by ricky gervais of christopher guest will have to do.

sarah silverman has a new show on comedy central thursday at 1030. tv squad is hoping she can transcend her schtick but they dont seem too confident.

To call someone by something other than the name he wishes to be called by is rude. To make a mistake is forgivable, but to persist -- deliberately -- in declining to use your adversary's proper name is rude and insulting. It's not a big deal unless you take standing up for yourself to be a big deal. When Democrats go on TV and let a conservative get away with the phrase "Democrat Party" it's signaling that Democrats are weak. They're too weak to stand up for themselves. They're too weak to have a sense of group solidarity or party loyalty. They're inclined to let things slide. They don't want to make a scene. They don't like to have a fight. They're weak. Is a political party that can't even protect its own name really going to keep America safe?

im not following this latest attempt to embarass hillary for taking a slight jab at her hubby. but theres a great clip of her whining to the press which was just on the daily show. basically she said first they (the press) want her to lighten up and then they want to psychoanalyze her offhand remark. she actually came off as very human in her demeanor. it was sort of like ive tried everything to be what you want to be and its never enough for you sort of remark. almost made me like her.

The view of America as advocated by George Bush and his followers is as antithetical as can be even to the views of the individuals to whom they claim allegiance. They exploit historical events and iconic individuals as tawdry props, and they neither understand them nor actually care about their meaning. They turn them into cheap cartoons -- Churchill! Lincoln! America! -- drained of their actual substance and converted into impoverished, degraded symbols used to promote ideas that are the exact opposite of what they actually embody.

Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III

This is a national conceit that is the comprehensible result of the religious beliefs of the early New England colonists (Calvinist religious dissenters, moved by millenarian expectations and theocratic ideas), which convinced them that their austere settlements in the wilderness represented a new start in humanity's story. However, the earlier Virginia settlements were commercial, as were those of the Dutch, and the proprietary colonies in Pennsylvania and Maryland were Quaker and Catholic, and had no such ideas. Nor did the earliest colonies, the Spanish in Florida and the Southwest, and the French on the Great Lakes and the Mississippi.

The nobility of the colonies' constitutional deliberations following the War of Independence, and the expression of the new thought of the Enlightenment in the institutions of government they created, contributed to this belief in national uniqueness. Thomas Paine wrote that

the case and circumstances of America present themselves as in the beginning of the world.... We have no occasion to roam for information into the obscure field of antiquity, nor hazard ourselves upon conjecture. We are...as if we had lived in the beginning of time.

Even Francis Fukuyama, a recovering neoconservative, acknowledges in a recent book that American economic and political policies today rest on an unearned claim to privilege, the American "belief in American exceptionalism that most non-Americans simply find not credible." Nor, he adds, is the claim tenable, since "it presupposes an extremely high level of competence" which the country does not demonstrate.[2]

Verizon Said No to Apple's iPhone Two Years Ago

Mr. Kuhner said, “Our report on this opposition research activity is completely accurate,” and he argued that all major news organizations relied on anonymous sources. Mr. Kuhner, in an editor’s note on Insight, said the Web site could not afford to “send correspondents to places like Jakarta to check out every fact in a story.”The Web site pays up to $800 for an article.


Mr. Kuhner said he was not yet convinced by reports from officials of the elementary school that Mr. Obama attended in Indonesia about its secular history. “To simply take the word of a deputy headmaster about what was the religious curriculum of a school 35 years ago does not satisfy our standards for aggressive investigative reporting,” he wrote.

might just be typical recommendation-type exaggeration but this is quite an endorsement.

Quote of the Day
"I can't pretend that I had any idea then that he would be a serious presidential candidate -- that would have been a crazy thing for anyone to project at that stage of a career -- but he was certainly the most all-around impressive student I had seen in decades."

-- Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, quoted by the AP, about his former research assistant, Barack Obama.

happy birthday, ernst lubitsch!

2057

this is exactly how I feel, love this article, I am a flexitarian (with a vegan slant)

Kar Wai Wong is doing a remake of Orson Welles' Lady From Shanghai.

The last? very old new Dick

Get Skinny #3

2nd colonic today and I feel tired (cant eat much today so that could be part), but gotta rally for tonight/tommorow's party......

6pm: Epsom Salt Drink
8pm: Epsom Salt Drink
10pm: 4oz Olive Oil + 6oz Grapefruit Juice
6am: Epsom Salt Drink
8am: Epsom Salt Drink

batfink: worst cartoon ever?

moses reconsidered

just caught a few minutes of diane lanes first film, a little romance. nice to costar with laurence olivier on your first go round. if my memory serves, the first thing i saw her in was six-pack starring kenny rogers. somehow i suspect she learned less on that set, except possibly when exactly is the proper time to holdém as opposed to foldém.

It's almost like nothing matters at this point, but this documentary looks pretty powerful: Iraq For Sale.

For instance, check out this clip about the Halliburton run water purification plants.

I've taken to reading the NY Post during my Cup and Saucer breakfast routine. I love the op-ed page. It's filled with incredibly improbable ideas that make, say, Tom Friedman look sane. Take this beautiful one from today by Arthur Herman: How to fight Iran. LOL.

It's so simple - why didn't I think of that? Just take out all the missile launchers on the entire Iranian Persian Gulf coast. Genius. (No doubt his plan for how to actually do this was edited out for space reasons.) Then seize the entire Iranian oil sector (yes, with Marines securing the oil platforms, refineries, etc...) and then just continue to sell the oil on the world market (presumably pocketing the money so the entire operation just pays for itself!) Once we do this (along with knocking out electricity and telecommunications in the entire country) the Iranian population will - wait for it! - look to us as liberators and turn against the Mullahs. And even better, Iranian terrorist proxies in Lebanon and Palestine (who never liked Iran anyway) will see this as a cue, not to launch all out war on Israel, but to "head for the nearest exit."

I used to like to complain about the Times, but it turns out that was just because I sometimes read it. But they got nothin' on the NYP. "Real men go to Tehran." Indeed. I'm back to thinking we're doomed.

Farewell DRM?