Now THAT was ENTERTAINMENT!

This whole evening at the Oscars has been a snoozer.  Steve Martin is usually more charismatic than the stuffed, over-starched shirt he's been all evening. 

I'm awake now, though, after that bit of rant from Michael Moore!  Appropriate or inappropriate, everyone in attendance woke up!

What did you think?

10:21:42 PM    comment []

Don’t quit your day job…

At least not until the contracts are awarded, Mr. Cheney. 

If I was completely Republican, or maybe totally immoral, I’d look into buying Halliburton (HAL) for a short-term hold.

But I can’t bring myself to do such a dreadful thing, capitalize on the misfortune of the Iraqi people's loss of infrastructure and the advantage of political connection which Halliburton possesses.

I guess I’m never going to truly make it into the ranks of the rich thinking like this, damnitall.

9:38:44 PM    comment []

Axis of Evil title determined outcome

After hearing General Tommy Franks’ state that the Administration and US military had been planning for over a year for all “what-ifs” of action in Iraq, I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for other references to timing.

It’s been obvious to many of us the intent of the Bush Administration all along was a “regime change” in Iraq.  Repeated comments across the press (like this one at MSNBC) tying planning of current military action to Bush’s naming Iraq as one of the Axis of Evil will make it difficult for Bush to claim his only intent was for disarmament:

Generals and their political masters have been trying, and usually failing, to control the course of war for eons. They make grand plans that dissolve in fog and friction, but they keep on trying. Few men have tried harder than General Franks or his boss Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. For about a year, they wrestled over a war plan designed to remove Saddam from power at the lowest possible cost of life. This was to be a revolutionary plan. The American way of war has always been to overwhelm the enemy with superior firepower—more, bigger and better guns, ships, planes and tanks. (It was often said that World War II was won in the factories of Detroit.) But the Rumsfeld-Franks plan would rely on flexibility, surprise and superior intelligence; it would do more with less.

Disarmament did not require the unilateral, pre-emptive military action of the U.S.; disarmament by a multilateral coalition would not require a year for planning.

Unilateral invasion and occupation, on the other hand, probably would require a year to coordinate.  While planning and organizing, why not throw a few diplomats out there in front to preoccupy everyone else.  What an easy subterfuge, a sleight-of-hand.

Let’s just dispense with all the trickery, leger de main, the pretty words, the pretense that this was anything else.  It was regime change, pure and simple, all along.  (I won’t even discuss the motivations; they’re probably as simple, although certainly not pure.)

But if this was supposed to be a “revolutionary plan”, why not think more holistically, think bigger, think more expansively?  Why does the US have to expend 100 billion dollars and untold lives to remove Saddam Hussein?  Not even to mention the lost opportunity costs invested by pissing off nearly every political ally we’ve had in the world.  That’s hardly revolutionary.

If this was a business transaction in the private sector, isn’t it possible we could have found a better, faster way to do this with far less investment?

I guess if this had been handled as a business initiative, we would have gotten a better qualified CEO to run this business – instead of a guy with a pile of failed businesses behind him.  And we shareholders would have expected better board members than guys who cut ethical corners and flout the law.

5:15:38 PM    comment []

Thanks, Joe

Joe Conason cited an essay by Paul Craig Roberts, published in the Washington Times.  Roberts likened Bush’s actions to those of Hitler, including the following excerpt in the essay:

     We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.
     — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, U.S. representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, Aug. 12, 1945.

Thanks, Joe; if you had not shared this essay, I would in turn have missed this.  It says a lot when conservatives like Roberts find the Bush Administration’s actions objectionable.

10:44:55 AM    comment []

Dinner conversation

We went to dinner with friends last night.  They’re another couple close to the same age as my husband and me, of similar education, second marriage, similar economic circumstances prior to my loss of employment and the other husband’s loss of employment.  (Yeah, not one but two of those white-collar-educated-unemployed people you read so much about, at the same table.)

The topic drifted to war, of course, as virtually every conversation does these days.  The other wife says she doesn’t understand all those young people protesting the war; don’t they get it?  I say, I’m a protester, I understand...you can imagine the eyebrows raising at this point…

This got too close, in a restaurant packed (cheek and jowl, literally) with people.  We didn’t get too much further, but my position was clear.  There was a better way than the path we’re on.

We can’t talk much about politics or religion whenever we get together with this couple because the other wife and I are diametrically opposed in almost every way.  She looks like the girl next door, but I feel like I’m talking with Margaret Thatcher or the Pope when we get into politics or religion. 

Puzzles me, because as couples go we are so similar in socio-economic circumstances. But there it is, we’re completely polar opposites.

I’m not certain how this happens, this kind of schism.  I wish I knew, could see where the split occurred so I could make some sort of appeal to the person at that point of split.

Since the gap of politics and religion isn’t likely to be bridged soon, we stick to safe, common ground in the mean time.  It’s a pretty narrow strip of land to traverse.

10:37:48 AM    comment []