Month: April 2009

A reader writes:

Please don’t post pictures like that on the site.  I have a thoroughly respectable office job and it doesn’t help me keep up appearances if I’m drooling while looking at the screen.

Liam Julian tries to figure out Obama's exquisite combination of openness to peace and willingness to use force.

Limbaugh's latest brilliant contribution to reviving conservatism as a governing philosophy. Look: I'm not against jokes, and I'm not going to deny Limbaugh's brilliance as an entertainer and the value of his occasional admirable resistance to tired MSM tropes. But underneath it all is a strain of anger and contempt that is not really about persuasion; it's about pandering and cocooning. And Steele was right: it's often ugly.

Yves Smith is wary of the auto plan:

…the notion of a "quick and surgical" bankruptcy for GM, and probably Chrysler too, is a fantasy. GM would be the most complicated bankruptcy ever. It simply isn't amenable to a prepack or a fast track variant. In fact, some bankruptcy experts think a Chapter 11 restructuring simply isn't possible and a filing would morph in the courthouse into a liquidation. That in turn would take out many suppliers, and many of the foreign transplants too.

…this looks like Lehman redux. The powers that be are getting bailout pushback, and aren't willing to take any financial perps out, so by default it's Big Auto. And if they miscalculated, the consequences will be catastrophic. It won't simply be GM and Chrysler, but the parts makers, and the transplants will take hits due to the loss of suppliers. GM and Chrysler are not isolated players, but major components in a large ecosystem. There are no good answeres here, but the Administration does not appear to have thought this out (how many balls does Geithner have in the air, including the G20?). A miscalculation here would have major repercussions.

The Israeli foreign minister tells the US to forget the Annapolis framework.

The aim of the Annapolis process, as it became known, was to agree on the framework for a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2008, a goal that was not achieved. Mr. Lieberman said that the Israeli government “never ratified Annapolis, nor did Parliament,” and it therefore “has no validity.”

So I'm guessing those West Bank settlements – where he lives – are not going anywhere any time soon.

This linomation, or hand-carved animation using Linoleum prints, was created using 296 individual pieces:

Yglesias on the shameless, unaccountable, relentless upward failure of the neocons in Washington:

In terms of Iraq, think about it this way. If things continue to be fairly calm for a few years, that will “prove” that the surge “worked” so we should be glad that the doves didn’t manage to ruin things back in 2007 and 2008. And if things don’t remain calm, that will also “prove” that the surge “worked” until the doves came along to ruin things in 2009 and 2010. If the military-industrial complex were to suddenly vanish over the next couple of years, or cease to be interested in subsidizing the generation of ideas that serve to justify maximalist levels of defense spending, then neocons might go away. But why would that happen?

Israel's threat to bomb Iran is real. A small question: if an ally launches a war that directly threatens precipitating a global conflict in which the US would be directly affected, and if that ally does so in defiance of the pleas of the US government, is it still an ally?

A reader writes:

I’m not surprised to hear people come out in support of legalizing pot. It has been shown to be pretty harmless, relative to other drugs, not to mention the potential economic benefits.

But, I am surprised that mature adults talk about it in such a favorable light. It is a drug, and it can be dangerous, much like alcohol is dangerous. The feeling of being high is fantastic, and that is precisely the problem; it is better than being sober; it is better than reality. When you are high, you are in a state of bliss, but you cannot function properly. When you are not high, you wish you were high to escape the doldrums and difficulties of everyday life. Even though it’s not physically addicting, it can be very psychologically addicting, causing people to lose motivation and desire to do anything else.

So, while I’m in favor of the legalization of pot and appreciate the fact that a lot of people partake, I am also acutely aware of its dangers and don’t think it should be promoted as a harmless activity.

It isn’t entirely harmless; just much less harmful than alcohol.

Enfin:

Twitter seems to be, first and foremost, an online haven where teenagers making drugs can telegraph secret code words to arrange gang fights and orgies.