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Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Can you fucking believe it...I'm in the middle of writing the most important paper on privatization, ever, and today is the day that Merriam-Webster decides to start charging for their online dictionary.
Right while I'm checking the meaning of "attrit." Alanis, take notes.
Bartleby provides an excellent dictionary here, if you need a replacement.
Heads will attrit for this, I promise.
Kevin 10:51 PM
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Serious posts ahead.
*cough*
Kevin 9:40 PM
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Gratuitous Wankette material posted.
The beaut on the right, of course, is the most infamous Washingtonienne. Those of you OSU PPM graduates going on to D.C. may find her sort of behavior...utilitarian to your career.
Congrats to the recent graduates! Perhaps I'll be among their ranks...one day...
Kevin 9:27 PM
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Comment-functionality added to the blog.
Kevin 9:26 PM
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Thursday, May 27, 2004
Wow! What happened to this guy?...I'd given up on Friedman after realizing this parody really was an improvement to his typical 800 words...but today was a welcome change! (I've actually stopped reading the Times editorials altogether the past few months, so maybe this is nothing new...)
But check out them money quotes!:
"We would take all the money the Bush team has wasted on P.R. campaigns directed at the Arab-Muslim world and put it into three programs: a huge expansion of U.S. embassy libraries around the world, which have been cut in recent years (you'd be amazed at how many young people abroad had their first contact with America through an embassy library), a huge expansion of scholarships for foreign students to study in America, and a huge expansion of our immigration service so it can quickly figure out who should get visas to study or work in America and who shouldn't."
[...]
"We would adopt a 50-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax, the Patriot Tax (along with my wife's proposal: free public parking anywhere in America for any hybrid or other car getting more than 35 m.p.g.)."
[...]
"We have to connect all of the above dots to strengthen Arab-Muslim moderates, because only they can take on their extremists. Unfortunately, the Bush team reacted to 9/11 as if all the old rules and methods had to go. I believe 9/11 was gigantic. But the old rule book — emphasizing allies, the Geneva Conventions, self-sacrifice, economic development, education, Arab-Israeli diplomacy — was and remains our greatest source of strength in the effort to promote gradual reform in the regions most likely to breed threats to our open society."
I don't agree 100% with everything said in the column, but only a few Friedmanisms(*) sprinkled throughout! Policy, policy, policy elsewhere! I love it!
(*) Frie-dma-n-ism. Function: noun
Etymology: French fréemondippy
1 : an expression both evoking and confusing globalisation, American low culture, and empty platitudes
2 : very bad fortune cookie
Kevin 12:11 PM
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Monday, May 24, 2004
Gah. Life in an airport has one solace: The Economist. That and wireless. Maybe also peanuts.
This is possibly one of the grimmest articles (on the state of Sudan) I've read in the Economist, but had some oddly humorous passages. Naturally, I quote the latter:
"Elsewhere, workers can be seen hacking through thorny scrub. They are clearing a path for a road, heading for a large rock in the wilderness known as Ramciel, or 'the place where the rhinos meet'. [...] Charles Deng, the assistant foreman, has big dreams for the place. 'First we will finish the road,' he says. 'Then we will build skyscrapers and ponds, better than London or maybe even as good as Nairobi.'"
[...]
"Since President George Bush is widely seen as the architect of peace, he is perhaps more popular in southern Sudan than anywhere else on earth. At the Rumbek sub-chief's election one young warrior called Thuapon leaps frenetically in the air, proudly waving a white Barbie-doll in a pink dress. 'This is a new wife for President Bush. May God grant him many fertile women with firm bodies and an election victory without problems in Florida.'"
Seems like the GOP has to tap into some demographics, yet.
Kevin 10:38 PM
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Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Ouch. It's kinda true. Almost makes you miss the moronisms - mormonisms? - the fuck-ups.
Man, that Kaus is contagious!
Kevin 5:52 PM
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Monday, May 17, 2004
HelllOOOO Mr. President's daughter! Two more reasons to go Dem this fall.
Sorry - but the twentieth penis joke put me over the edge...
Kevin 10:23 PM
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From the Times, federal data-mining has little legal safeguards for citizens. I commented on this recently, here.
From the article: "Some of these [data-mining] activities, it said, resemble the Pentagon program initially known as Total Information Awareness, which was intended to catch terrorists before they struck, by monitoring e-mail messages and databases of financial, medical and travel information. [...] The Pentagon program, later renamed Terrorism Information Awareness, was flawed from the start, though its goal was worthwhile, the panel said. 'Our nation should use information technology and the power to search digital data to fight terrorism, but should protect privacy while doing so,' it concluded. 'In developing and using data mining tools, the government can and must protect privacy.'"
In other privacy news, I spotted a traffic camera at Northwest Blvd and Lane Ave today, for those who like to run reds. An anonymous City of Columbus official recently told me these devices will be popping up all over town soon. [Okay, he probably doesn't care about the anonymity - but when am I going to get to say that again?]
I always wanted a big brother.
Kevin 1:28 PM
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Everything you need to know about the current state of the Iraq occupation. From Sir Jeremy Greenstock, in the Economist.
Kevin 12:44 PM
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Sunday, May 09, 2004
Via TPM, Fareed has an excellent article in Newsweek, "The Price of Arrogance:"
"The events at Abu Ghraib are part of a larger breakdown in American policy over the past two years. And it has been perpetrated by a small number of people at the highest levels of government. [...] Leave process aside: the results are plain. On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world. [...] Whether he wins or loses in November, George W. Bush's legacy is now clear: the creation of a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe."
This is the first article I've seen from Fareed - who I think is reasonably non-partisan and rational in his analyses - to (without reserve) dub New Iraq a failure, not to mention place the blame so squarely with Bush's administration.
Here's another, similar passage from America Unbound, which I managed to finish on the plane last week. Yes, it's from Brookings, but I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking a relatively objective look at Bush's first term in terms of foreign policy (it's much more academic than Woodward's latest). Here's a snippet from the concluding chapter:
"Throughout the cold war, international institutions were a crucial means to exert America's authority. They bound everyone else into a U.S.-run world order. They in effect constituted what a British journalist called 'America's secret empire.' Bush preferred to build his empire on American power alone rather than on the greater power that comes with working with friends and allies. His reliance on American military power proved extraordinarily effective in defeating foes, but far less effective in building a lasting basis for peace and prosperity. [...] Bush's wars demonstrated the importance of basing American foreign policy on a blend of power and cooperation." (197)
I have to admit I'm a little "partisan" on this issue and happen to think international institutions are much more valuable than Fox News would like them to be. Even Congress, despite the plethora of interest groups, is a cornerstone of government; the United Nations no less.
But Bush's foreign policy stances - Daalder and Lindsay have this right - were exciting in a fashion; there was a clear purpose (though it appears now to have lacked evidence) in the aggressive handling of a corrupt dictator, and a decisive application (well, decisive if predicated on the former point) of force to address that purpose.
Which only brings Bush's inability to deal with the consequences of his offense into sharper relief. My expectations have eroded so far over the past year...it will take a lot of talent, if nothing else, to recover this situation.
All to ensure that the US receives the largest slice of credit?
Why? What does that give us?
Kevin 10:28 PM
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Saturday, May 08, 2004
Some notes (and a haiku) on Tucson, AZ, where I spent the past week:
Lots of sun makes people smile a lot.
Traffic light arrows:
Why are you not using them?
I need to turn left.
People in AZ can identify you quickly by your dress. If you are dumb enough to wear long sleeves and tie in 100 degree weather, it is a shoe-in you are from Ohio. 40% of all strangers correctly identified my home state.
Green arrows, people.
Kevin 10:18 PM
Monday, May 03, 2004
For the motherfuckers at Sinclair who think they have a right to censor Nightline's recent show, check out this count of Iraq Coalition casualties, including names, cause of death, nationality, etc.
Kevin 11:26 PM
Sunday, May 02, 2004
"Mr. Affleck delighted the Rumsfelds for hours with his chin, which the Secretary of Defense described as 'having considerable more meat and character than J-Lo's gadonkadonk,' of which he is also reportedly a fan."
Think I read that in WaPo.
Kevin 4:23 PM
From Mark Schmitt:
"This is the country's future. [...] If I were Kerry, I would devote every breakfast, lunch and dinner to meeting with every Republican who's willing to break bread with him, from the true moderates like Lincoln Chafee and Olympia Snowe through the old-timers like John Warner and Pete Domenici and the mavericks McCain and Hagel, and asking every one of them, 'We don't have to agree, but are we here to govern this country, or wage ideological warfare?' And slowly, as they all understand the long-term fiscal crisis and the consequences of the Bush mania, just enough of them will decide they're here to govern and begin to work with Kerry. The solutions won't be to everyone's liking. [...] It will feel a lot more like the first Bush Administration, with endless, unsatisfying budget summits at Andrews Air Force base. But they just might ward off disaster and make it possible to do something more constructive with government in the future.
And, possibly, just as in Virginia, they just might destroy the Republican Party. That's the choice these Republicans will face as they decide whether to align with the Republican Party or the anti-tax Republican Party. (Or, as I would call them, the Conservative Party or the Nihilist Party.) If they join the effort to find a compromise, they will find the Club for Growth, slowly prying their fingers away from the brink of their own party, as it almost did to Specter and will now do to some Virginia legislators. But if they join the Nihilist Party, what will they have to show for it?
And if the Virginia moment doesn't happen in 2005, it will come soon enough. The seeds of a political party or ideology's demise are always sown at its moment of seeming invincibility."
I initially jumped out of my seat on reading this, saying, "that's right!," but actually the post is a bit overstated. I think the immediate fallout from Bush's first term, beginning to really gel now, will be a fracture in the GOP along the lines Mark describes above (although in my opinion, that will only be temporary). Bush, instead of being the popular-vote loser who would "put politics behind us and work together," pushed along ideological lines as far as he could go. So, of course, the tensions within conservative ideology are going to manifest.
If Kerry can convert his flip-flopping image into a Third-Wayer who will successfully compromise with Republican figures on certain issues, much political capital would be reapable...
Kevin 3:33 PM
I think this one will speak for itself.
Kevin 2:36 PM
Check this one out
http://www.theembassyvfx.com/tetra_w_movie.html
Aaron me 1:37 PM
Friday, April 30, 2004
Ohio tax dollars at work, thanks to the Highway Patrol.
Kevin 8:49 PM
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Fantastic post on Arizona politics from Mark Schmitt.
This guy is just solid gold.
Kevin 6:55 PM
Political subversion in your clothes! Not even the CIA has ever been this chic!
Kevin 6:22 PM
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