It's Low-hanging Fruit Season!
There was a time when it seemed almost a full-time occupation to dig up sufficient upbeat, knowledgeable, progressive, and well-written material in a day to counteract the newspaper headlines, Today show anti-interviews, the loathsome Chris Mathews, that Meet the Press show I've never been able to stomach, and the rest of it. I'm not ready to say we've turned a corner, but for the moment it is amazing what you can find with a relatively small investment in pursuing news and opinion rather than allowing it to come to you.
I've likely linked to Josh Marshall here more than any other single source, a mark of the esteem in which I hold his work. A recent cite at Talking Points Memo reverberated loudly with me, and I was interested to find it led to a NY Review of Books article on two books on Iraq, one of which ("Assassin's Gate") I recently enlisted my son in reading when I was overcommitted and the other Paul Bremer's memoir "My Year in Iraq," which I am ambivalent about but will queue up with Gate. Josh's terrific nugget in an altogether glittery and worthwhile review was one of the more succinct and damning depictions I can recall of the worst president ever. This is a quote from the review with Josh's comment following:
Peter Galbraith: "In his State of the Union address, President Bush told his Iraq critics, 'Hindsight is not wisdom and second-guessing is not a strategy.' His comments are understandable. Much of the Iraq fiasco can be directly attributed to Bush's shortcomings as a leader. Having decided to invade Iraq, he failed to make sure there was adequate planning for the postwar period. He never settled bitter policy disputes among his principal aides over how postwar Iraq would be governed; and he allowed competing elements of his administration to pursue diametrically opposed policies at nearly the same time. He used jobs in the Coalition Provisional Authority to reward political loyalists who lacked professional competence, regional expertise, language skills, and, in some cases, common sense. Most serious of all, he conducted his Iraq policy with an arrogance not matched by political will or military power."
A pretty crisp and concise description of a man who has been an utter failure as a leader, in almost every respect unimaginable. Hubris, ignorance, inability to lead or make hard decisions. The list is as bleak as it is long.
That's some of the more sublime concentrate I have come across recently. Big, tannic, and dark red, with a subtle hint of regime change, I'd call it. Enough of the rose swill the corporate press has been pouring.
The long-rumored Harpers cover article on the topic of Impeachment has made an appearance, and none too soon, to my taste. I don't think we can do less than buy a copy, can we? It's saying something when the first details appear on the weblog of that most admirable of Congressmen, the honorable John Conyers.
The Case for Impeachment - Harpers Magazine Cover Story
The March issue of Harper's Magazine has a great cover article by its editor Lewis H. Lapham explaining, "Why We Can No Longer Afford George W. Bush." Mr. Lapham spends a lot of his article discussing my work and the "The Constitution in Crisis." I would link to the story if there were an online version, but here is an excerpt from the article discussing the NSA warrantless wiretaps:
"We're at war," the President said on December 19, "we must protect America's secrets."No, the country isn't at war, and it's not America's secrets that the President seeks to protect. The country is threatened by free-booting terrorists unaligned with a foreign government or an enemy army; the secrets are those of the Bush Administration, chief among them its determination to replace a democratic republic with something more safely totalitarian. The fiction of permanent war allows it to seize, in the name of the national security, the instruments of tyranny.
[more...]
It is the business of the Congress to prevent the President from doing more damage than he's already done to the people, interests, health, well-being, safety, good name, and reputation of the United States - to cauterize the wound and stem the flows of money, stupidity, and blood.
The article is a must read. I highly recommend that you find a copy.
I'm back to reinforce and help with that last recommendation, courtesy of an update to Conyers' blog.. This link is to a good deal more of the article, but not the whole thing. Get thee to a newstand!
I've likely linked to Josh Marshall here more than any other single source, a mark of the esteem in which I hold his work. A recent cite at Talking Points Memo reverberated loudly with me, and I was interested to find it led to a NY Review of Books article on two books on Iraq, one of which ("Assassin's Gate") I recently enlisted my son in reading when I was overcommitted and the other Paul Bremer's memoir "My Year in Iraq," which I am ambivalent about but will queue up with Gate. Josh's terrific nugget in an altogether glittery and worthwhile review was one of the more succinct and damning depictions I can recall of the worst president ever. This is a quote from the review with Josh's comment following:
Peter Galbraith: "In his State of the Union address, President Bush told his Iraq critics, 'Hindsight is not wisdom and second-guessing is not a strategy.' His comments are understandable. Much of the Iraq fiasco can be directly attributed to Bush's shortcomings as a leader. Having decided to invade Iraq, he failed to make sure there was adequate planning for the postwar period. He never settled bitter policy disputes among his principal aides over how postwar Iraq would be governed; and he allowed competing elements of his administration to pursue diametrically opposed policies at nearly the same time. He used jobs in the Coalition Provisional Authority to reward political loyalists who lacked professional competence, regional expertise, language skills, and, in some cases, common sense. Most serious of all, he conducted his Iraq policy with an arrogance not matched by political will or military power."
A pretty crisp and concise description of a man who has been an utter failure as a leader, in almost every respect unimaginable. Hubris, ignorance, inability to lead or make hard decisions. The list is as bleak as it is long.
That's some of the more sublime concentrate I have come across recently. Big, tannic, and dark red, with a subtle hint of regime change, I'd call it. Enough of the rose swill the corporate press has been pouring.
The long-rumored Harpers cover article on the topic of Impeachment has made an appearance, and none too soon, to my taste. I don't think we can do less than buy a copy, can we? It's saying something when the first details appear on the weblog of that most admirable of Congressmen, the honorable John Conyers.
The Case for Impeachment - Harpers Magazine Cover Story
The March issue of Harper's Magazine has a great cover article by its editor Lewis H. Lapham explaining, "Why We Can No Longer Afford George W. Bush." Mr. Lapham spends a lot of his article discussing my work and the "The Constitution in Crisis." I would link to the story if there were an online version, but here is an excerpt from the article discussing the NSA warrantless wiretaps:
"We're at war," the President said on December 19, "we must protect America's secrets."No, the country isn't at war, and it's not America's secrets that the President seeks to protect. The country is threatened by free-booting terrorists unaligned with a foreign government or an enemy army; the secrets are those of the Bush Administration, chief among them its determination to replace a democratic republic with something more safely totalitarian. The fiction of permanent war allows it to seize, in the name of the national security, the instruments of tyranny.
[more...]
It is the business of the Congress to prevent the President from doing more damage than he's already done to the people, interests, health, well-being, safety, good name, and reputation of the United States - to cauterize the wound and stem the flows of money, stupidity, and blood.
The article is a must read. I highly recommend that you find a copy.
I'm back to reinforce and help with that last recommendation, courtesy of an update to Conyers' blog.. This link is to a good deal more of the article, but not the whole thing. Get thee to a newstand!
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:30 PM
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