Month: August 2008

Rupert Cornwell visits his relatives in Nebraska City.

"I’m a libertarian. I’d be an anarchist, but frankly, I like money too much," – Catwoman, at Comic-Con.

Well, it was on January 7:

"A JMC/Obama campaign would be good for the country, one conducted between two men who respect each other and respect the opinions of the voters. Republicans would welcome such a campaign rich in ideas and poor in rancor. The two men respect each other.

Do not sell JMC short in such a campaign. He represents an integrity and heroism that simply cannot be denied."

I now deny it.

How sad that so many never see the heavens:

In his book "Nightwatch," the well-known Canadian astronomer Terrence Dickinson comments that in the aftermath of the predawn 1994 Northridge, California earthquake, electrical power was knocked out over a wide area. Tens of thousands of people in southern California rushed out of their homes looked up and perhaps for the first time in their lives saw a dark, starry sky. In the days and weeks that followed, radio stations and observatories in the Los Angeles area received countless numbers of phone calls from concerned people who wondered whether the sudden brightening of the stars and the appearance of an eerie silvery cloud (the Milky Way) might have caused the quake.

"Such reaction," notes Dickinson, "can come only from people who have never seen the night sky away from city lights."

More on this here.

He really brought into focus the reason for the Britney Spears ad – and accompanying personal onslaught on Obama:

[N]otwithstanding his celebrity status, is Barack Obama ready to lead? And my answer is no, that Barack Obama is a gifted, eloquent, young man who can and I hope will give great leadership to America in the years ahead. But the question is who’s ready to be president on January 20th, 2009 with the economy in a crisis and facing dangerous enemies abroad. It’s clearly John McCain. We only have two choices here: John McCain, Barack Obama. John McCain is ready to lead.

But surely Obama’s foreign trip demonstrated his readiness to lead, his diplomatic skills and the kind of soft power this country hasn’t had in six years. So what do you do when a first term senator reveals fewer gaffes, more polish and greater theater than McCain ever has in his foreign excursions? You compare Obama to Britney. You insinuate, as Lieberman did, that Obama is the foreign candidate – with bigger crowds in Berlin than Portland.

Lieberman, from his scripted talking points on drilling for oil to his endorsement of the Hilton-Spears ads, is now a Republican party hack. In the end, the netroots drove him over the cliff, didn’t they?

In my vacation, I stopped short in a Charles Krauthammer column:

McCain, like George Bush, envisions the United States seizing the fruits of victory from a bloody and costly war by establishing an extensive strategic relationship that would not only make the new Iraq a strong ally in the war on terror but would also provide the U.S. with the infrastructure and freedom of action to project American power regionally, as do U.S. forces in Germany, Japan and South Korea.

For example, we might want to retain an air base to deter Iran, protect regional allies and relieve our naval forces, which today carry much of the burden of protecting the Persian Gulf region, thus allowing redeployment elsewhere.

If president Bush had asked the country to invade and occupy Iraq in order to add "infrastructure and freedom of action to project American power regionally," do you think he would have persuaded anyone? More to the point: do you think he should have?

When it comes to torture, rendition and and prisoner treatment, the Bush administration lies to everyone. What else can it do? Show up at the Hague and turn themselves in? Humiliating the British foreign secretary, and lying to him repeatedly, is what Dick Cheney thinks of as alliance-building.

A spherical computer.

Every now and again, you realize how far we’ve come:

The policies state that officers may "detain" laptops "for a reasonable period of time" to "review and analyze information." This may take place "absent individualized suspicion."

The policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as ‘pocket trash’ or ‘pocket litter.’ "

We don’t live in a police state yet in our every day lives. At the border, it’s another story.

The Christianists prepare for the final battle in California.