Month: November 2008

It’s hard for Kristol to top himself, but in Orwellian terms, offering a Medal of Freedom for torture may be a career high:

One last thing: Bush should consider pardoning–and should at least be vociferously praising–everyone who served in good faith in the war on terror, but whose deeds may now be susceptible to demagogic or politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political points. The lawyers can work out if such general or specific preemptive pardons are possible; it may be that the best Bush can or should do is to warn publicly against any such harassment or prosecution. But the idea is this: The CIA agents who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the NSA officials who listened in on phone calls from Pakistan, should not have to worry about legal bills or public defamation. In fact, Bush might want to give some of these public servants the Medal of Freedom at the same time he bestows the honor on Generals Petraeus and Odierno. They deserve it.

Torturers should not have to worry about "public defamation"? We are to be forbidden from even criticizing war criminals in the Schmittian order Kristol idolizes? But, of course, this is all a classic piece of disinformation. There is no "witch-hunt" for CIA staffers ordered by their superiors to commit war crimes. There is a vital, public need to hold the president and those at the very top accountable for the war crimes they illegally authorized and even now deny. And to hold accountable in the court of public opinion those people in the public square who were not only cognizant of the war crimes being committed, but egging them on.

One more thing: why did Kristol write this in the Weekly Standard and not the NYT?

New York has plucked out some highlights from the profiles of TheAtlasphere.com users, a dating site for Ayn Rand fans. I particularly like this one:

You should contact me if you are a skinny woman. If your words are a meaningful progression of concepts rather than a series of vocalizations induced by your spinal cord for the purpose of complementing my tone of voice. If you’ve seen the meatbot, the walking automaton, the pod-people, the dense, glazy-eyed substrate through which living organisms such as myself must escape to reach air and sunlight. If you’ve realized that if speech is to be regarded as a cognitive function, technically they aren’t speaking, and you don’t have to listen.

Ah, the enduring charm of objectivism.

"Something big is happening. What started out as a series of pragmatic ad hoc responses by governments and central banks is moving the boundary between state and market. Politicians are now overlaying expediency with ideology. Government is no longer a term of abuse.

Things could move still faster in the months ahead. With their myriad rescue schemes and loan guarantees, the US and British governments have nationalised their respective banking systems in all but name. The banks pretend they are still answerable to their shareholders, but it is a charade. They survive only with the explicit financial guarantee of the state.

Still, the markets remain frozen, starving business of the oxygen of credit. Unless things change soon, the politicians will have little choice but to take direct control, and quite possibly, ownership, of the banks. Nationalisation could be the first act of an Obama presidency. That at least would put some substance into all those loose analogies with FDR," – Philip Stevens, FT.

A man evacuated from Mumbai following the attacks hugs a woman upon his arrival on November 28, 2008 at the military airport of Torrejon, near Madrid. Sixty Spanish citizens who were in Mumbai when the attacks erupted in the Indian city were expected back in Madrid Friday on a Spanish air force plane. By Pedro Armestre/AFP/Getty.

Plumer explains:

The story goes like this: Back in 1992, Congress passed a law requiring all federal agencies to buy alternative-fuel vehicles for 75 percent of their light-duty fleet. The catch was that, while the agencies had to buy the cars, they didn’t actually have to use the alternative fuel. So a lot of agencies ended up purchasing cars that could run on propane, compressed natural gas, or E85 (an 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline blend), and them shipped them to areas that didn’t actually have any alternative fueling stations—the infrastructure just wasn’t in place. Fewer than 0.1 percent of fueling stations in the United States even offer E85. That meant most flex-fuel cars were running on plain old gasoline, and, since these vehicles generally have larger-than-average engines, they actually end up using more oil and emitting more carbon dioxide. The Postal Service used 1.5 million additional gallons of gas last year because only 1 percent of its 37,000 flex-fuel vans were actually running on ethanol.

The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation & Marie Antoinette reduced to their respective color schemes:

A description of the project:

Curious to see if there were any stark similarities or contrasts within particular films, Pie aims to create an incredibly simple and concise baseline of comparison of films trough one particular trait: colour. This project was also the result of my first explorations into processing. The outcome is a number of triptychs comparing various films of particular trilogies, directors or genres. A program written in processing captures each frame of each movie and essentially creates a ‘pie chart’ of the colours contained within each film producing a simplistic and abstracted representation. Each poster includes the film title, year, director, cinematographer, running time and occasionally, various surprising/unsurprising similarities.

A Clockwork Orange after the jump:

(Hat tip: Today and Tomorrow)

A week at work:

(Hat tip: Cooper)

Dahlia states the obvious:

It’s sweet and fanciful to think that with a grant of immunity and a hot cup of chai, Bush-administration officials who have scoffed at congressional subpoenas and court dates will sit down and unburden themselves to a truth commission about their role in the U.S. attorney firings.

I do think that a Truth Commission remains our best bet. But it cannot be set up as a way to give Bush officials legal immunity for war crimes. It must be the preliminary. And Dahlia seems to me too willing to believe that we already know most of it. With Cheney and Addington, the worst probably remains hidden from view. Let’s expose it and see what the public thinks we should do with these people when the true extent of their crimes is in the full light of day.

The depression is officially here:

You know times are tough when the rich start cutting costs on their mistresses. According to a new survey by Prince & Assoc., more than 80% of multimillionaires who had extra-marital lovers planned to cut back on their gifts and allowances. Still, only 12% of the multimillionaire cheaters said they plan to give up on their lovers altogether for financial reasons.

(Hat tip: Mankiw)

Ross explains.