Neo-Con Artists: Tired and Shagged Out Following a Prolonged Squawk

William Kristol and Bob Kagan's Project for a New American Century was an unfailing coin-op card shoe for the POTUS cabal's "War on Terror" house of cards. Apparently, they stopped having anything relevant (or believable) to say about the war they advocated after 2005, though:

PNAC Mideast/Iraq Articles
PNAC Global Issues

Think that was also when the cash infusions dried up? I'm going to go with "no." Fattest welfare teat in human history, that (see "Pinching Pennies," below).

It gets better: PNAC hasn't published a Mideast article from Kristol's Weekly Standard agit-prop rag in 2 years, either. And he owns it.

Putting the "What's New" back in New Conservative, baby. In their own words.

My favorite neo-con assessment, from December's BBC article:

"Neo-conservatism has gone for a generation, if in fact it ever returns," says one of the movement's critics, David Rothkopf, currently at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, and a former official in the Clinton administration.

"Their signal enterprise was the invasion of Iraq and their failure to produce results is clear. Precisely the opposite has happened," he says.

"The US use of force has been seen as doing wrong and as inflaming a region that has been less than susceptible to democracy.

"Their plan has fallen on hard times. There were flaws in the conception and horrendously bad execution. The neo-cons have been undone by their own ideas and the incompetence of the Bush administration.

"George Bush is about the last neo-conservative standing, Cheney as well, maybe. Bush is not an analytical person, so he just adopted the neo-cons' philosophy.

"It fitted into his Manichean, his black and white view of the world. After all, he gave up his dissolute youth and was born again as a new man, so it appealed to his character."

Here's to the death of the new conservative American century;
98 years early;
2 years too long.

Pinching Pennies 'til Abe Cries 'War'

I'm looking forward to this film (Austin Chron review here).

The best part of their web site is the running tally at the top
of the page: "The Cost of the War in Iraq."
$364 billion, baby.
If I gave you $1000 a day, you'd have a million dollars in about 3 years.
For a billion dollars you'd have to wait 3 thousand years.

What would you do if the Treasury handed you, in cash, 250 million dollars a day, for four years?

I decided I'd use it to fill the retirement accounts of presidential puppet masters. Everybody's doing it!


Know Your War Profiteers

Molly Ivins, Rest in Peace

Molly Ivins spoke at a Lloyd Doggett fund raiser thrown by my friends, the Mehtas, about 15 years ago. She was the flame-headed metapresence swaying through the room, tall as I am, with a half-smile on her face and a beer in her hand. Her speech was essentially one of her columns, and she was funny in an acerbic, curmudgeonly way. I was in awe of her, and too shy to go up and tell her, which I'll always wince at myself for. I've done what I can to read everything she's written, since I moved to Texas in the late 80s, and I will miss her.

From her last column, January 11, 2007:
"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there."

Three of my favorites:
"The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with our children's blood."

"One function of the income gap is that the people at the top of the heap have a hard time even seeing those at the bottom. They practically need a telescope. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt probably didn't waste a lot of time thinking about the people who built their pyramids, either. OK, so it's not that bad yet -- but it's getting that bad."

"I still believe in Hope - mostly because there's no such place as Fingers Crossed, Arkansas."

Grandma and Grandpa at Music Class

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Mom and Dad took the grandkids to Ms. Petra's class at the Austin Lyric Opera.

Flight of the Conchords' Lyrics are Bottomless

Rhymenocerous vs. HipHopoppotumus!

(hum to self) The Simp - Sons....

My brother, Shannon, sent me this.
What a perfect arrangement - that theme is FULL of string!
(my favorite parts: the dissonance at 1.06, and the bent Train Whistle
notes at 0.39)

Wow. Surreal. Tasty. MMMM!

Check out his "Toys and Other Oddities," too. I lobe eet!

Texas Highways Review of Fire in the Water, Earth in the Air

"Oglesby’s book shines a warm, bright light on these fascinating Texans
and their perspectives on West Texas’ shaping of their art and ambition."

And the Chronicle bestowed an honorary UT professorship to him:

"...In slightly more academic terms, University of Texas professor Christopher
Oglesby addresses similar misconceptions in Fire in the Water, Earth in the Air."

Awesome. Rock the hell on, you Texas press darling.

What Do You Get When You Cross a Madrassah with a HoJo's Ball Room?

Matt Taibi's take on Thomas Friedman's role in the Iraq debacle.

'You get a whole nation full of people who spend 99 percent of their free time worrying about their lawns or their short iron game, you convince them that they know something about something they actually know nothing about, and next thing you know, they're blundering into a 1,000-year blood feud between rival Islamic groups, shooting things left and right in a panic, and thinking that they can make it all right and correct each successive f****up by "keeping our noses to the grindstone" and "making lemons out of lemonade." '

Heh. I about fell out on page two; every time I see Friedman on DTC, I think, "Nice mustache, a**hole."

Counting Down the Bush Regime

Although, if I were a betting man, I'd put money on the whole fiasco going Nixon on us.
This administration is a face waiting to get shot in.

What I'm Listening to Right Now

Leonard Cohen and Anjani collaboration. Also, Lyrics and Clips.

It's Snowing

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After Scout and Mommy's walk, we made some hot chocolate.

I Need a New Wine Rack

My father-in-law is a cabinet maker and woodworker extraordinaire. I'm thinking of ordering one of these from him. I'm willing to pay ten thousand dollars.

Ignis Aurum Probat, Miseria Fortes Viros

B-Dot invited people over to his house last night to build penny alcohol stoves. It was all fun and drinking games until someone got hurt. Here's some actual footage of the event:

OK, now imagine Cleb's arm in that wedge of flame. We had an actual "stop, drop and roll" incident on our hands. Melted his shirt into his flesh. 1st and 2nd degree burns. Brazil wax effect from elbow to shoulder. Caleb, if you're still able to type, drop us a line. We're worried.

Senseless Waste of Company Time

This cracked me up. At Harcourt we used Lotus Notes, and it just about killed me (70 reasons LotusNotes sucks.com).

Perfect blend of Python nerd and tech geek jargonoff. Glayven!


The Export Shop Sketch (a parody)
(by Ben Langhinrichs, with thanks and apologies to Monty Python)


(a customer walks in the door.)

Customer: Good Morning.
Owner: Good morning, Sir. Welcome to the IBM Lotus Notes Export Facility!
Customer: Ah, thank you, my good man.
Owner: What can I do for you, Sir?
C: Well, I was, uh, sitting in the Beach Club lobby just now, skimming through the "Lotus Notes and Domino 6 Programming Bible" by Brian Benz and Rocky Oliver, and I suddenly came over all timorous.
O: Timorous, sir?
C: Weak-kneed, spineless, panicky, mostly about whether I could get my multitudinous highly formatted documents out of Lotus Notes without data loss.
O: Eh?
C: 'Ee, Ah got the willies cuz I wanna get lots of stuff outa Notes widout it lookin loike shite!
O: Ah, indeed, sir!
C: So, then, bring on the fine export formats please, my good man.
O: (lustily) Certainly, sir. What would you like?
C: Well, eh, how about a nice flexible Open Document Format.
O: I'm, a-fraid we're fresh out of ODF, sir.
C: Oh, never mind, how are you on StarWriter 5.0?
O: I'm afraid we never have that at the end of the week, sir, we get it
fresh on Monday.
C: Tish tish. No matter. Well, stout yeoman, serve up a portion of XHTML, if
you please.
O: Ah! It's been on order, sir, for two weeks. Was expecting it this
morning.
C: 'T's Not my lucky day, is it? Aah, ordinary HTML 4.0?
O: Sorry, sir.
C: Works 6.0 or 7.0?
O: Normally, sir, yes. Today the van broke down.
C: Ah. Lotus WordPro?
O: Sorry.
C: Outlook Express .EML?
O: No.
C: Any Internet Explorer Web Archive .MHT, per chance?
O: No.
C: Word 97?
O: No.
C: Word 95?
O: No.
C: Microsoft RTF, perhaps?
O: Ah! We have Microsoft RTF, yessir.
C: (suprised) You do! Excellent.
O: Yessir. It's..ah,.....it's a bit rummy...
C: Oh, I like it rummy.
O: Well,.. It's very rummy, actually, sir.
C: No matter. Fetch hither le plus bas dénominateur commun ! Mmmwah!
O: I...think it's a bit rummier than you'll like it, sir.
C: I don't care how f***ing rummy it is. Hand it over with all speed.
O: Oooooooooohhh........!
C: What now?
O: It doesn't actually handle images, sir. They all turn grey. And bullets disappear.
C: Do they?
(pause)
C: You...do *have* some export filters that maintain fidelity, don't you?
O: (brightly) Of course, sir. It's a export filters facility, sir. We've got--
C: No no... don't tell me. I'm keen to guess.

Keep going...