blackshoeswhitesocks

What a stunning week.

It’s a bit early to start talking about the ebbing of American power. Far too early. And I don’t think that Mr Keller has it right that somehow ‘now’ we are seeing a resurgence of authoritarianism; or that this is somehow springtime for Hitler.

And while freakish apologists for Russian expansionism like Dimitry Rogozin aren’t worth their weight in dirt, the man does have a point:

the United States and NATO can use brute force where they want to, and Russia has to abstain from it even if it has to look at thousands of its own citizens being shot? If [that]’s not hypocrisy, then what IS hypocrisy?

International Herald Tribune

(Rogozin, by the way, was pretty chummy with that butcher Mladic, back in the day.)

The insanity of last week’s escalation is still not easy to digest; clearly, the Russians were anticipating something of the kind -

In fact, Pentagon and military officials say Russia held a major ground exercise in July just north of Georgia’s border, called Caucasus 2008, that played out a chain of events like the one carried out over recent days.

New York Times

(I can’t believe Saakashvili didn’t have access to that intelligence; it probably provoked him into taking some kind of action, thinking Putin was trying to bully him. But man, those Russians just completely dominated; nothing could withstand them.)

And so in the midst of that carnage, with the State Department waving its ominous and provacative agreement with the Poles and our idiot President playing nice with the thuggish Chinese government, who among us could not sit shame-faced, wondering who bears the torch - or even a candle - for liberty and democracy? Who can sit and be proud of the blundering, myopic, insipid and craven pile of lies and half-thoughts that our government has passed off as ‘foreign policy’?

Oh, I’m sure there are plenty who can actually. But not me; not me.

Recently I’ve had a few moments of surreality, each of which left me thinking I had been transported to some astonishing future-time: walking back from Mo’s in Yerba Buena Garden in San Francisco; a documentary on mag-lev trains; and today, a black-and-white front-page photo of Obama.

1. The decent from the upper level down to Howard from the Yerba Buena/Moscone complex looks like something out of Logan’s Run. The heterogenous complex of buildings and the panoply of the city beyond - I stopped just before the walkway bridging Howard and stared. I thought, not unhappily, of Trantor.
2. Then the other night some hitler channel show on trains and a long segment on the maglevs. I remember reading about these, as ideas, when I was in high school, in ‘Science Digest’. (I once got beat-up for reading that. Good times.) In excess of 25 MPH the entire train is no longer touching the ground. I still can’t really get my head around that, even with a good appreciation of thermodynamics.
3. And now today, Obama. A black american man is poised to become the President of the United States, the most powerful nation-state human society has ever produced. I know there has been a lot written about that versus the first woman president; Senator Clinton (who I do not admire) aside, I just don’t feel like that is such a big deal. Really. Western democracies have had Thatcher and others, and there are numerous women who have been prime ministers and such in the rest of the world.

   But a non-white American president? It still boggles my mind. Perhaps I’m just too cynical about race and thus easily amazed? (The New York Times’ photo was certainly intentionally black-and-white. Perhaps to evoke a connection with Kennedy? The Sunday Times is usually in color, but maybe I have that wrong.)

from the Agence France-Presse, US troops from 9th Cavalry Regiment are not reacting too well to the extension of their tours:

“Bush can come fight here. He can take my 1,000 dollars a month and I’ll go home.”

How is this different from American companies (general motors, IBM) supplying Nazi germany with materials prior to the declaration of war?

I recall her from the judith miller affair; this is a good summary of her, courtesy of media matters.

just watched her now on pbs’s news hour and she was breath-taking in her incoherence. I mean, need-the-transcript incoherent. its all she can do to shill for libby & co. ‘no crime has been committed’, almost like a chant she repeated it half-a-dozen times.

her main contention appears to be that prosecutors have to be very careful about what they consider ‘lying’ in a grand jury.

also, she thought bizarre the notion that a juror would ask ‘where’s karl rove?’. the level of her discourse is the same as her buddy bob novak, and really just a hair above that of convicted narcotics felon rush limbaugh.

He’s 19, shot through the head. he and the petty officer who saved him both took bullets through their helmets, detailed in a very nice nytimes article.

Corporal Smith, sitting in that wheelchair next to his mom, looks about 12.

wrong about enron, wrong about energy market manipulation, wrong about iraq, wrong about bin laden. wrong wrong wrong. or, as very well said by Mr Marshall:

Why complain about anything Dick Cheney says? The man is simply too big a fool to hold any job of responsibility in the national government. Think of his history of failure, terrible judgment, reckless endangerment of the country. It’s hard to imagine that there’s anyone in this country not under active federal surveillance who has done more to advance the al Qaeda agenda than Dick Cheney.

I hope pelosi just starts hitting back rather than complaining; forget about calling Mr President, just start swinging for god’s sake!

Let’s get this straight. Lying about a blow job is an impeachable offense. But lying about the leak of a covert agent’s secret identity is silliness?

I don’t know why the Journal even has an editorial page, they never really seem to say anything sensical. but it’s nice to see them skewered; thank you Mr Johnson.

I think the thing that burns me up about the Journal article the most is the the use of quotation marks around the word ‘covert’. Plame was not a “covert” operative. She was a COVERT OPERATIVE. In some ways I suppose they are laughing at us, talking about the Red Queen (is this the 19th century?) in order to give substance to their Red Herring.

in some ways, this college republican prank at NYU is heartening: the right remains so bereft of intellectual capital they are resorting to allegorical lynching, a predictable kind of thing.

when I was a young soldier for the revolution, we had more than a few run-ins with the right on our college campus. I used to work on CISPES, amnesty, food not bombs, and misc other projects. the right wingers were annoying, but not really a threat in any way. it did draw some clear lines for me though, and I was pretty set, for a long while, on having my immigration number tattooed to my arm so I’d never forget what I am.

then bush the senior said ‘this will not stand’ and we went to war to defend the kuwaiti throne. the gloves came off, though for us this mainly amounted to ugly counter-chanting by the Young Republicans or the occasional racially charged leaflet. (I have fond memories of a rally during the first week of the air war, a sizable compliment of students chanting ‘USA USA’ trying to drown out the speaker. the speaker — I think it was gerald horne — tried to speak over them and then started a counter chant: ‘go enlist go enlist’. storke plaza — ucsb — filled with thousands chanting ‘go enlist’. the republicans then packed up and slithered away, as the going had gotten a little tough.)

but in the final analysis, these young collegians carry the torch of their predecessors with panache: vacuous, knee-jerk, uncritical, and largely illiterate. this is not generally a good thing, but at least we can say we know well the devil we have.

(I never got the tattoo, but I’ve not forgotten who I am, even though now I am a real red-blooded citizen.)

Iraq Troop Boost Erodes Readiness, General Says - washingtonpost.com: “Outgoing Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said yesterday that the increase of 17,500 Army combat troops in Iraq represents only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ and will potentially require thousands of additional support troops and trainers, as well as equipment — further eroding the Army’s readiness to respond to other world contingencies.”

The next step, after we get over the growing downed helicopter count, will be daily enemy body counts, which should start to shore up morale at home…. oh wait, we’ve already passed that point, sometime in late 2005:

The revival of body counts, a practice discredited during the Vietnam War, has apparently come without formal guidance from the Pentagon’s leadership. Military spokesmen in Washington and Baghdad said they knew of no written directive detailing the circumstances under which such figures should be released or the steps that should be taken to ensure accuracy.