Month: February 2007

A triumph of capitalism? Professor Bainbridge thinks so. Money quote:

These two yahoos look exactly like the sort of neo-hippie/anarchists that trashed Seattle back in 1999 and still engage in various forms of counter-culture street theater to this day. Yet, these guys do so not to advance a cause, but to make money advertising a stupid cartoon show on behalf of a major media corporation. The message these two thus are sending to all their counter-culture buddies on behalf of capitalist corporations is: "resistance is futile." As such, in an odd way, these guys validate my life’s work: They confirm that corporations rule the world and are therefore a worthy subject of study.

Is this the greatest tennis player of our lifetimes? Here he is – in balletic slow-mo:

Succinctly explained:

Is no one going to say that Robert Altman was a great pothead? Let me, then. Robert Altman was a great pothead. In the war on drugs, he won. To look at his work without thinking about marijuana’s specific gifts and poisons … umm … specific … What was I saying? Oh. Right. Altman. Robert Altman. I met him, did I tell you that already?

They lost the vote the first time for a blanket ban and so they’ve mellowed out a little on the rape and incest issues:

The "Women’s Health and Human Life Protection Act" would allow rape victims to have abortions if they report the crime to police within 50 days. Doctors would be required to confirm the report with authorities.

In cases of incest, a doctor would need to obtain the woman’s consent to report the crime – along with the identity of the alleged perpetrator – before an abortion could be performed. The physician would also have to inform the mother that counseling is available and give her the address of the nearest Social Services office.

The point holds about amateur YouTubes’ capacity to impact this election cycle. But the clip I cited was by a solid professional, Robert Greenwald. I suspect that many professionals might want to get in on the act – but a proliferation of cheap and easy attack ads online might cut into some political consultants’ fat checks. Here’s hoping anyway.

Loretta Sanchez isn’t the only one to notice sexism.

One misspelling would mean a typo. But Stanley Kurtz twice refers to Foucault as Michele. Is Stanley unconsciously projecting a feminine gender onto a gay man? Has he read Foucault? Let’s hope it’s just a typo. I’ve had a few myself lately.

Another monstrosity – from John Thune.

Another sign of the increasingly chaotic context of the war in Iraq: the instigators of one of the bloodiest and most daring attacks on American troops may hold senior positions in the U.S.-trained Iraqi National Army:

At least one of the Iraqi generals under suspicion for involvement or having advance word of the attack is said to be an intelligence officer, according to U.S. officials. If that’s proven to be the case, the involvement of Iraqi generals in an attack on American forces raises questions about the loyalty and trustworthiness of Iraqi military officers at the highest levels.

I fear we are both training and arming one side in a civil war, while also attempting to police it. It’s complete insanity as a strategy.

"Burke ever held, and held rightly that it can seldom be right … to sacrifice a present benefit for a doubtful advantage in the future … It is not wise to look too far ahead; our powers of prediction are slight, our command over results infinitesimal. It is therefore the happiness of our own contemporaries that is our main concern; we should be very weary of sacrificing large numbers of people for the sake of a contingent end, however advantageous that may appear…

We can never know enough to make the chance worth taking…

There is this further consideration that is often in need of emphasis: it is not sufficient that the state of affairs which we seek to promote should be better than the state of affairs which preceded it; it must be sufficiently better to make up for the evils of the transition," – John Maynard Keynes, Burke’s Timidity on Embarking on War (unpublished manuscript, ca. 1906) quoted in Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed (vol. 1).

(Thanks to a reader.)