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    yeesh..., 2004-06-24 22:59:28 | Main | From the Department of Unexpected Announcements..., 2004-07-13 17:09:25

    what'd I miss:

    doesn't look like much, judging from Jim Henley's blog all I missed by taking a break was the Spider Man II premier - but that stands to reason, the only movie I've seen in the past month had Fred Astaire in it. Minus short glances at the occasional TV my news has all come from state-by-state variations of NPR, Christian talk and AM radio's gathering of conservative quackery. I think next time I'll fly.

    Two years ago or so when I spent that much time in rural Minnesota there was this long-haired hippy air that would hang about my head everytime I opened my fat mouth, presumably emanating from that same orifice, and, were I not in Minnesota and full of hotdish, may have lead to my being pounded by a few dozen drunken rednecks bent upon educating my soul good and proper. At this point the red regions seem to glow almost positively blue, per the American usage, which might have something to do with this.

    Anyway, I'm thoroughly out of the loop, and have only the barest grasp on what, if anything, has been happening. Whatever it is it sure seems to have everybody else irrate.

    To briefly review my hazy impressions of the last month: one of our most mediocre presidents died to the triumphant roar of his hagiographers, who somehow managed to make watching the news for the month of June a useless endeavor; I missed a movie everybody else in Chicago apparently saw, and while I did read the Hitchens review somebody else made note of his past exceptions to Moore's intentional creation of heat in preference to light:

    The success of Michael Moore's film about Roger Smith and General Motors has aroused an envious spirit of emulation in my breast. --Hitchens, in The London Review of Books, June 1990

    Hitch's statement that "down the years" he thought Moore "has no principles at all" apparently indicates what he wished to emulate 14 years ago, with, I think, much success.

    And the Senate Intelligence Committee came out with a report blasting the CIA and referring to poor WMD intelligence as a "global failure". Despite having refused to examine influence from the Whitehouse (a report on the Administration is due, magically, after the election), or usage of said intelligence, I understand it boldly declares the Administration free of any untoward behavior, such that it was not to blame for the "collective group think" among top level intelligence directors of the sort engineered by said Administration.

    Presumably the "global failure" it discusses had to do with the rest of the world, as well as much of the CIA, rejecting the poor accounting of Iraq's unilateral destruction of WMD as a pretext for an American invasion. Likewise the SIC discusses WMD programmes, apparently in loose disregard for the recent history of claims made in reference to stockpiles of WMD that was the pretext argued by the Administration for the war - claims resolutely called into question by Hans Blix, former and current US intelligence officers, and much of the international community, because there simply was no evidence of any stockpiles that lead to the discovery of any stockpiles.

    This is only irrelevant if you believe, as both Rumsfeld and Bush have declared, that Saddam hadn't allowed weapons inspectors back into the country three months prior to the war - or longer, had requests to bring inspectors back as of September 2002 not been refused by the administration.

    There's also a rebirthing of the defense for yellow cake claims that will probably shake out to be substanceless, but who I am to start having expectations. The defense of Wilson to note is here.

    Elsewhere the world is drownding in hellfire, just like I left it, soon to be renewed at a certain lever of global power by the steady hand of a particular Negroponte.


:: posted by buermann @ 2004-07-13 15:07:53 CST | link





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