or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
April 08, 2009
You Know You're An Empire When...
...your wars keep dropping...:
"Afghanistan has already dropped off the radar screen," Senator Joseph Biden (Democrat, Delaware) said on February 26 [2002], at a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that was addressed by President Karzai.
...off the radar:
U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Iraq on Tuesday returned the spotlight to a war that has all but dropped off the news radar screen in the United States, which is preoccupied by its economic crisis.
Television news, chat shows and other media are dominated by reports of massive job losses, home foreclosures, collapsed banks and automakers on the verge of bankruptcy.
I'm guessing there's no one in either Afghanistan or Iraq for whom the U.S. war against them has "dropped off the radar screen." But if it does ever temporarily slip their minds, they have the roar of F-16s and the night terrors of their one-legged children to remind them.
Posted at April 8, 2009 12:31 PMyup...
Posted by: a-doy at April 8, 2009 04:58 PMWait, whut? There's a war? Where?
Posted by: AlanSmithee at April 8, 2009 05:01 PMoff topic but important and urgent: blogger Laila Al-Hadad (Raising Yousuf and Noor) is being detained in the Cairo airport with her two U.S.-born kids. They won't let her get through, to go to Gaza - but she can't get back to the U.S., because her visa has expired.
She's running out of diapers. Her only crime: she's a Palestinian trying to go home.
Please consider sending a Twitter message to the State Department on her behalf. (She's @Gazamom on Twitter).
Thanks!
Posted by: Dena Shunra at April 9, 2009 12:23 AMI've written about this, had a post "Past is prologue, again," over at Dead Horse.
We have two choices to explain the continuation of the policies instituted under Bush (the NSA spying, the wars, etc.): either Obama has the same policies as Bush; or, he's not in charge.
To presume that Obama's choice to run the DOD would be, out of all people in America, Bob Gates, is a hard stretch for me. That's why presuming some character fault or philosophical fault with Obama is generally worthless analysis.
It's bigger than Obama. It was all bigger than Bush, both of them. This country is being by people higher in the power structure than Obama.
Posted by: Bob In Pacifica at April 9, 2009 10:06 AMBob in Pacifica (I love Pacifica! I'm in Berkeley),
I generally find your posts informative and daring. This last one, though, just smacks of the conspiracy theorizing of Alex Jones. Of course Obama has masters, but if one-tenth of all the baby-boomers marched on Washington the way they did in Argentina a few years back, Obama would be very able to stand-up to those masters. I, as a pround Gen-Xer, cannot wait for him to go after Social Security, because I think that may be the only thing that will get the Me Generation Boomers off their asses and banging pots.
(And I don't find it hard to believe at all that Obama is following Bush's policies...politics in America is branding, pure and simple, for the rubes.)
Posted by: Solar Hero at April 9, 2009 12:56 PMSolar Hero: EXACTLY!
Posted by: Mike Meyer at April 9, 2009 09:35 PMJohn,
You've been very good lately. Very good.
Update: Leila was deported from Egypt to the U.S.
Posted by: Dena Shunra at April 11, 2009 12:30 AMOne good thing about the coming American decline: We won't have to ignore our foreign involvements and the fatigue they bring on because we won't be playing world police and social engineers for assorted special interests abroad.
Posted by: Randall Parker at April 12, 2009 03:58 PM
