- Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.—Gravity’s Rainbow
‘Is it about a bicycle?’ he asked.—The Third Policeman
Monthly Archives: May 2006
Pugilist
Since his campaign headquarters is on the same block as my illustrious place of daytime employ, James Webb’s thumbnail self-characterization is constantly popping up during my periodic escapes from the asylum.* The former Assistant Secretary of Defense (under Reagan) is running for Senate as a Democrat, and just about every car on the block has [...]
Diacritic
Gmork is a fictional villain, while Gmörk is a decent white wine from Austria. What a difference an umlaut makes.
Meatrix
Just a link. Discuss quietly amongst yourselves.
Boonies
Salon has passed on a wire service report about a Russian journalist arrested for making fun of Vladimir Putin:
The article was published by Vladimir Rakhmankov, editor of the online newspaper Kursiv in the central city of Ivanovo, said Andrei Galchenko of the regional prosecutor’s office.
The piece poked fun at Putin’s recent state of the nation [...]
Solutions
Molly Ivins writes:
Last week, Bush visited Yuma, Ariz., to tour a portion of the U.S.-Mexico border by Border Patrol buggy. Maybe Jorge was doing a little measuring for the $3.2-million-a-mile fence the Senate recently approved, which I guarantee will be really helpful.
Are they insane? As Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano observes, “Show me a 50-foot wall, [...]
Shattered
Even Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor at large at Sun Myung-Moon’s Washington Times and United Press International, thinks the Putin-bashing is excessive:
Beating up on Russia’s shrinking democracy has become a geopolitical blood sport from Vice President Dick Cheney down to unreconstructed cold warriors who gleefully say, “I told you so.” They see no contradiction in berating [...]
Beer
Make that “water filtered through a horse”:
[German soccer fans] are furious that Budweiser will be the official tipple for the World Cup, which starts next month. The American lager has secured a near-monopoly of beer sales inside World Cup stadiums and within a 500m radius of the grounds, supplanting more than 1,270 domestic breweries.
A Bavarian [...]
Standstill
Man, you can’t say anything nowadays without people actually remembering it.
Take Tom Friedman. New York Times wise man. The go-to guy for pithy analysis of a complex world. The person for whom “six months from now” never arrives:
On a recent episode of MSNBC’s Hardball (5/11/06), for example, Friedman boiled down the intricacies of the Iraq situation [...]
Hummer
H1 down, H2 and H3 to go.
Katrina vanden Heuvel over at The Nation isn’t optimistic:
The good news out of Detroit is that the largest version of the Hummer—the 10,000 pound, less than 10 mpg, $150,000 Hummer H1—is being scrapped by General Motors due to lagging sales.
But, on the flip side, sales for the entire Hummer [...]
Phages