Using Bees To Effect Vengeance |
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I get to be as self-indulgent as I want without wasting anyone's time. Guilt-free solipsism -- excellent!
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Wednesday, March 31, 2004
INTEL DUMP is a blog written by an ex-Army officer who provides superbly insightful analysis into military affairs. It's been a great source of on-the-ground context for the news stories coming out of Iraq, Afghanistan and anywhere else American soldiers are in harm's way. Highly recommended. | Treasury Used to Attack Kerry. More inappropriate and illegal usage of the civil service for explicitly political projects...and as Kautilyan reminds us in his/her post, Bush/Cheney had Treasury do the same when Howard Dean appeared on Meet the Press. | Monday, March 29, 2004
I'm reading Richard Clarke's book. It's very good, particularly his riveting play-by-play of 9/11 inside the White House. It does come off as a bit self-serving, but then multiple corroborative reports paint him as the voice in the wilderness warning about terrorist threats well before 2001, so I suppose he's earned the right to a bit of told-you-so. In any event, it should be quite obvious, even to those disposed to defend the Bush administration, that the only logical reason for Bush/Cheney '04 to focus on Clarke's motives for coming forward rather than rebutting the substance of his recollections is if they cannot rebut the substance of his recollections. Furthermore (there is a point here, I assure you), as you may know, Bill Frist conjured the spectre of perjury by claiming that Clarke's classified Congressional testimony in 2002 contradicted his testimony from last week...and then conceded later that he didn't even know what was in Clarke's 2002 testimony...but that it should be declassified anyway, just in case. Clarke called his bluff and called for *all* of his 2002 testimony to be declassified -- not just those select portions which, cleverly shorn of context, could make him out a scoundrel. Which brings us to...this post from Josh Marshall. It focuses on the following chilling paragraph from an NBC story: U.S. officials told NBC News that the full record of Clarke’s testimony two years ago would not be declassified. They said that at the request of the White House, however, the CIA was going through the transcript to see what could be declassified, with an eye toward pointing out contradictions. This is a truly shocking admission. I thought I was getting inured to the endless outrages, but apparently there was still a smidgen of idealism left to be violated. Marshall's analysis is a must read, but his closing paragraph more or less sums it up: We're moving on to dangerous enough ground when the White House starts using the nation's intelligence agencies for explicitly domestic political purposes. But you know we're really in trouble when they don't even try to hide it. | Thursday, March 25, 2004
To build on Tim's recap of SXSW, the hipster trend I noticed was people wearing their damn Cub Scouts paraphenalia: the blue shirts, yellow neckerchiefs, Webelos baseball caps....it was bizarre. 
I must have seen 10+ people in this getup, and they weren't all in the same band or anything like that. Maybe they've been wearing them in Williamsburg for six months, but it's the first I'd heard of it. | Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Your life will not be the same after hearing The Darkness cover Radiohead's Street Spirit. Brilliant and yes, rocking in a not-entirely-ironic way. But now -- now -- the joke has been taken to its logical conclusion, and I no longer feel the need to listen to them. Well, I might play this one a few more times. [via teaching the indie kids to dance again] | Monday, March 22, 2004
Friday, March 19, 2004
Thursday shows: Madeleine Peyroux: A delightful set of intimate, swinging jazz vocals, with the crown jewels being a beautifully nuanced take on Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" and a stunning rejiggering (!) of Elliott Smith's "Between The Bars". When Lady Pey wrapped her pipes around that tune and guitarist Anthony Wilson and bassist David Piltch got stuck into the changes, ravishing new harmonies emerged, and the song was transformed into a lost Billie and Lester tune. It'll probably be on her upcoming summer release, so I look forward to getting reacquainted with it then. The Natural History: OK, some clear debts to Spoon and to a lesser extent Costello and Davies, but who isn't in debt these days? The drummer was pounding away, the guitar was taut and rifftastic, and the bass-playing was staccatolicious. Scrubbed away any post-Peyroux dreaminess. Gingersol: Big tunes, big rock. They really do seem to have everything -- thoughtful lyrics, a real way with melody, a willingness to play with conventions without getting precious or self-conscious...but don't take my word for it. Have to go, so I'll tell you about the amazing Montreal band The Dears some other time.... | Saturday, March 13, 2004
Friday, March 12, 2004
I have to call attention to one particular MP3 blog that I've come across lately -- soul sides. This is down-home goodness, folks. To wit -- a jaw-droppingly great cover of "Jealous Guy" by Donny Hathaway and a total reinvention of "Julia" by Ramsey Lewis (do not miss the drumming on this track). Plus Aretha doing "Skylark", etc....can't wait for the next post. Bravo. | I know y'all boob tube boffins will have much to add to this catalogue of "TV Tropes, Idioms and Devices". It's a wiki, so don't be afraid to add your refined input by editing the pages. One common plot device that I've long lamented: the Three's Company. *Every* *single* *episode* used this structure...drove me nuts, even as a 10 year old. | Tuesday, March 09, 2004
I became a liberal in 8th grade, although not before supporting George Bush in the '88 election (side note: my support for Bush was strengthened by my nakedly partisan Dukakis-supporting history teacher...I decided I needed to be a counterweight to his inappropriate evangelizing. I'm a contrarian that way). Anyway, the catalyst for my conversion was Texas v. Johnson, a.k.a the flag-burning case. Or more specifically, the right-wing reaction to that landmark case, which was to propose an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting flag desecration. The folly -- and bitter irony -- of protecting a symbol of free expression by undermining free speech itself was not lost on me. The brave men and women who died fighting to defend America were not fighting for the flag; they were fighting for the freedoms the flag represents. Taking away those freedoms does not honor their sacrifice, but instead renders it pointless. Free expression is the most profound natural right, and the necessary precondition for a legitimate society. An insufficient respect for that fact gets a candidate automatically disqualified from Using Bees consideration (it's probably the only issue on which I have a litmus test -- as General Clark, for one, knows). The profoundly misguided and unAmerican idea of the flag burning amendment regains currency every few years, and sure enough, it's back now. I hope you will join me (and Colin Powell) in affirming the principles enshrined in the 1st Amendment -- oppose the flag desecration amendment. | Another reason to be proud of West Ham -- supporters like these. Note the subtle, dispassionate quality of The Sun's journalism. | While Using Bees will occasionally deign to post an MP3 of the Time Increment, there are quite a few blogs that are a lot more diligent. Here's a nice list of MP3 blogs -- bookmark your favorites and enjoy all the new music (I'm a daily visitor to fluxblog and largehearted boy and am looking forward to checking out the rest). | ELIJAH TAKES ON SOCCER HOOLIGANISM: Hollywood hunks ELIJAH WOOD and CHARLIE HUNNAM are the surprise choices to lead the cast of a new movie about the violent world of soccer hooliganism in England. LORD OF THE RINGS star Wood and COLD MOUNTAIN actor Hunnam will join Scottish GLADIATOR actor TOMMY FLANAGAN in HOOLIGAN - about the notorious rivalry between rival London clubs MILLWALL and WEST HAM UNITED. According to reports, Hunnam will play a fan who introduces Wood's character to the world of soccer violence. Hollywood Hunks in Movie Casting Shock! Who else would have snared the leads, Ray Winstone and the bloke off of Ground Force? West Ham and Milwall have rarely been in the same division in recent years -- they are this year thanks to WHU's relegation -- so I wonder in which time period this is set. Either way, West Ham will be known around the world as the team with all them hooligans.... | Sunday, March 07, 2004
From MSNBC: accusations that the Bush administration twice opted not to strike at bona-fide terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (who is the leading suspect in some of the recent, horrific attacks in Baghdad and Kerbala) because it would screw up their plan to invade Iraq. "Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe. The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq. “People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey." Josh Marshall's speculation is that "pre-empting" Zarqawi would have been inconvenient since he was operating out of Northern (i.e. non-Saddam-controlled) Iraq. I don't how much merit this story has -- but it's a very serious charge and deserves further investigation. | Thursday, March 04, 2004
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
When we move house, I'll be able to send the missus into a room with a laptop and this site and save myself some aggro. | Good point made by a commenter on a Calpundit thread about Bush's new campaign ads: Just a week ago, the prez told us he could only spare 60 minutes to meet with the 9/11 commission, but yesterday he could squeeze in 80 minutes to chat with reporters in the oval office. Politics always comes first with this administration. I'm glad that the 9/11 commission is not putting up with that crap. | Tuesday, March 02, 2004
I was disturbed to read about the assassination of Arafat's human rights deputy. He sounds like a good man, and the obvious suspects would be Palestinians threatened by the existence of such a person. An excerpt from the NYT's article that made me shake my head in disgust: "The cabinet meeting in Ramallah produced an agreement on one long-debated reform for the security forces, according to the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei. Mr. Arafat agreed that Palestinian security forces would have their pay deposited directly into their bank accounts, Mr. Qurei said. That system will replace an arrangement under which security chiefs received large bundles of cash to distribute individually to officers on payday." Unbelievable. The EU donors had been satisfied with this level of transparency? | Monday, March 01, 2004
Christopher Caldwell has written a beautiful article about the phenomenon of too much choice, moving with admirable ease from the mundane sense of consumer paralysis we all feel to the larger, more profound questions of directionlessness(nesslessless) that seem to plague me and many of my privileged "cohort". Caldwell's final paragraph -- he builds up to it beautifully -- resonates with me at the moment: Strangely, we lose sight of our human resilience when we make big choices. People are consistently puzzled that so many things they had dreaded—from getting fired to being ditched by a spouse—“turned out for the best.” Gilbert and Wilson even speculate (in a diplomatic way) that our inability to forecast this adaptive capacity spurs some people to a belief in God. “Because people are largely unaware that their internal dynamics promote such positive change,” they write, “they look outward for an explanation.” A tendency to overestimate the joy we’ll get from buying baubles and winning honors is only half of a complex predisposition. The other half is our enormous capacity for happiness, even in the absence of such things. The surprise isn’t how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us. Lately I've been starting to feel like maybe I don't need to agonize so much. The missus and I have been through our share of tsuris lately, and there's plenty still on the horizon...but we've weathered things pretty well. For my part, I don't know how I'm going to handle it all, but I'm starting to have faith that I will handle it. It feels like a growth spurt, and it's a welcome one. | Great link via Atrios about a fundamentalist Michigan legislator who favors civil unions. Some excerpts: "I kept quiet when African-Americans were facing discrimination," he said. "There have been too many people who have been discriminated against in my lifetime, and this time I'm not going to sit quietly while somebody is being mistreated. "This is a matter of conscience. There's nothing in it for me." He offers quotes from the Bible to support his point that the Scripture is even more condemning of divorce than homosexuality. Yet divorced and remarried couples are now welcomed at even fundamentalist churches, he said. Likewise, he said, many denominations, including Christian Reformed, have moved beyond the Biblical teaching against women speaking in church. While he supports the new role of women in the church and greater acceptance of divorce, he said, it shows how "we Christians have decided that parts of the Bible don't apply to us anymore." "So if we can put aside the teachings on women, on divorce, on the Sabbath -- and those are all things that we choose -- then why not on homosexuality, when we don't choose our sexual orientation?" Wenke said. "Why can't we be as kind and generous in interpreting the Bible for homosexuals as we are for ourselves?" What a remarkably...Christian attitude. | Christopher Hitchens has a go at Mel Gibson. I have not seen the film, so I cannot comment with any credibility whatsoever -- but having followed the controversy over the film carefully and having read salient excerpts from Gibson's interviews, I would endorse Hitchens' interpretation. Or, in my own words [clears throat]: Mel Gibson is a nutcase. | Calpundit links to this reminder that with all the bad news coming out of Iraq, there's some good news as well. Nice to read. | |
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