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From Mar 12th:
Letter № 46:
Recursion
From Mar 12th:
Reciprocation
Just so I get this straight: One man lies, dissembles, cheats, connives and conspires to mislead his country into war. Nevermind the military targets, this war costs the lives of tens of thousands of civilians in that country. For his service, he will be given a “pension” of right about a million dollars of taxpayer money a year.
Another man, a citizen of the beaten and invaded country, beset with sorrow for “the widows, the orphans and those who were killed,” takes off his shoes and throws them, one by one, at the warmonger. For this he is given three years in prison. Paid for, of course, by his own war-ravaged country.
Did I get that right? Just checkin’.
From Mar 8th:
A Country that No Longer Exists
From the March 8 issue of Newsweek, an excellent essay from David Frum called Why Rush is Wrong. Frum is apparently reviled among the hardened core of the GOP as a “RINO” (Republican in name only), despite the fact that he volunteered for Reagan, supported the impeachment of Bill Clinton, wrote speeches for GW Bush, and voted McCain/Palin. The reason for their ire? He refuses to join the dittoheads.
Frum describes Limbaugh as
A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence [...]
Of the GOP’s position at the moment, he says
At the peak of the Bush boom in 2007, the typical American worker was earning barely more after inflation than the typical American worker had earned in 2000. Out of those flat earnings, that worker was paying more for food, energy and out-of-pocket costs of health care. Political parties that do not deliver economic improvement for the typical person do not get reelected. We Republicans and conservatives were not delivering. The reasons for our failure are complex and controversial, but the consequences are not.
It’s a shame that more Republicans aren’t like Frum. He seems to be an entirely level-headed, contemplative and reasonable guy. Unlike virtually every other modern conservative of which I am aware, he went on for four pages without saying anything extreme, obscene, insane, or even objectionable. Of course, he’s dead wrong here and there, (particularly toward the end, where he dismisses the severity of the climate crisis and lets it slip that he harbors some delusions about the perceptions of the average voter) but overall, he’s, well, absofuckinglutely sensible.
After reading this bit of praise you might be surprised to learn that I found reading this essay almost unbearable. I arrived at the end of the essay despondent; here is a Republican with whom collaboration, compromise, and yes, even consensus are possible. But, seemingly, Frum one of very few.
From Feb 5th:
Bill Gates, the TED Conference, and a jar of mosquitoes.
Those are not the elements of a Joke
Bill Gates did something this week that’s a far sight more endearing than shaking his tuckus in a parking lot with Jerry Seinfeld. He was giving a talk at the TED Conference about the persistent threat of Malaria in the third world. Speaking of the lack of interest and funding available to fight the disease, he said:
“There is more money put into baldness drugs than into malaria. Now, baldness is a terrible thing and rich men are afflicted. That is why that priority has been set.”
Then, the awesomeness happened
He took out a jar, removed the lid, shook its contents out over the front rows of the audience, and said:
“Malaria is spread by mosquitoes. I brought some here. I’ll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected.“
Despite the fact that he hastened to add that the mosquitoes in question were Malaria-free, this might well be the coolest, and, well, most egalitarian, goddamned thing he’s done in, like, a decade. Almost makes up for leaving a baboon in charge of Microsoft.
From Jan 22nd:
Sam should stay.
Because he’s still Sam
As is always the case with scandals of this sort, Sam Adams is still the man Portland elected. Whether or not a relationship he had in the past was a sexual one matters not one whit, so long as it was legal, which, by all accounts, it was.
Because he lied.
And we’re all disappointed. But the fact that he chose to lie says a great deal about his percipiency. He was quite right, after all, in his estimation that many people would not have believed him when he said that his relationship with Beau Breedlove was not sexual until after Breedlove reached the age of consent. Had Sam acknowledged the relationship during the election he would have been subject to the court of public opinion. Portland is progressive enough to elect an innovative and capable gay man to office, but that does not mean that blood in the water will not bring sharks.
Sam did exactly the right thing.
Because he told the truth.
Of his own volition Sam came forth with the truth. Fully cognizant, I hasten to add, of the shitstorm that would follow, as evidenced by time he chose to do so: amid the brouhaha of Obama’s election. Shrewd timing not withstanding, it shows that the truth is important to Sam, and that he understands that it is always better to come forth on your own that to be found out. Further, the official “investigation” that has begun will discover the truth, the empirical truth, and Sam will only have to content with what Portland thinks of what he did, not what Portland thinks he did.
