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| Thursday, July 3, 2003 |
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Backing the Front 
| | "Uh-huh. Well, all you really need to know is that it¹s fucked. The pockets of resistance get bigger all the time. Of course the press is obsessed with WMD, Iraq and tax-cuts. They don¹t give a shit about us guys bleeding in Afghanistan. Nor do the politicians. They got us into this crap and they aren¹t giving us the tools to fix it. We CAN solve this problem," he said, as he slammed his drink onto the bar. |
| | "Gimme another rum and coke," he asked the bartender. |
| | Bonus Link: The New York Times Magazine a couple weeks back had a cover story (shown here) called "Warlordistan," by Barry Bearak. Under a different title, here it is. A sample: |
| | A year and a half has now passed since American bombers changed the course of this nation's civil war, a year and a half since the Taliban were forced from their commanding perches to lurk now in hideaways; a year since President George W. Bush pledged something akin to a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan. The reconstruction was to be a mammoth effort in the spirit of American generosity to Europe after World War II, he said, a way to ''give the Afghan people the means to achieve their own aspirations.'' |
| | It would be nice to report that Ismail Khan's industriousness typifies a nationwide revival. But the rebuilding of Afghanistan -- among the world's poorest countries even before it suffered 23 years of war -- has so far been a sputtering, disappointing enterprise, short of results, short of strategy, short, most would say, of money. As for the emir, rather than a lead character in the restoration, he is actually a foremost symbol of its affliction. |
| | Nation-building, scorned by George Bush the presidential candidate, has now become the avowed obligation of George Bush the global liberator. The problem is that nations, like so many Humpty Dumpties, are troublesome to put back together again. The challenge -- whether in Afghanistan or Iraq -- is more than brick and mortar, more than airwaves and phone lines; this is not the kind of carpentry required after a hurricane. |
| | A few more tax cuts oughta cover it, doncha think? |
How about Upster?
Probing the shortest distance between cause and effect
Still, not bad for answering email in public
| | I'm with Marc. This can't be right. Where are Daily Dish, Scripting News and Instapundit? This blog generally runs at under 3,000 reads per day (and has been for most of the last two years). I'm sure there are others that get exponentially more than that. And more inbound links too. |
| | During the past week, I had the pleasure of meeting with quite a few senior executives -- mostly CIOs -- of major corporations. They were all familiar to varying degrees with WiFi but not one had even heard of blogging . One said, "blobbing?". |
| | Need to add that "blobbing" thing to the list below. |
As if we didn't need to sound more like CB radio
| | Nice effort, but there seems to be a lot missing... |
| | And hey: Because he's the funniest fuck on the Web, I'll also point to RageBoy, because I'm sure he's coined something that blongs in there. And if he hasn't, he'll blarf up something that's bletter anyway. |
The short answer is yes. The longer answer is maybe.
| | The deeper question about Dean is whether he will be the candidate that kills the Democrats in the short-term but positions them for a sustainable majority down the road. A la Goldwater for the Republicans. Goldwater's 1964 campaign galvanized conservatives, and set in motion the creation of infrastructure, such as think tanks and talk radio, that formed the basis of a powerful mass movement. Reagan's election in 1980 and Gingrich's Congressional triumph in 1994 put the conservative ideology in control of American government. Movement conservatism doesn't represent the majority of Americans, which is why Bill Clinton was elected and Al Gore won the popular vote. Yet it dominates our discourse and shapes our policies... |
Holidaze
| | Headed to Utah tomorrow for the weekend. Visiting friends. Taking in geologies I've only seen from airplanes -- or whatever we can do in short day trips from Park City. |
| | Anyway, expect light blogging. |
Talk about permalinking
Aw, I was just taking up blace
| | I'm not down on Doc by any means. In fact I believe he has just coined a great term: BLARG - being tired of blogging. I'm pretty sure his sentiment is that he's not happy that marketers are moving into the blogosphere. Marketing can ruin just about anything decent yet thankfully that is not always the case. |
A new angle on the insects-taking-over thing
| | A political party ideally would be a living expression of anthill-community-ism. I mean, anthill communities are communities of purpose, and what's more purpose driven than getting your guy elected? |
| | However, over the last fifty or sixty years we've seen this type of party activity disappear in the United States. Parties today are really nothing more than funnels to route money, either to officeholders or to people who want to be officeholders. |
| | Don't believe me? Try this -- ask your friends if they are registered members of a political party. Odds are that many of them are. Now ask them when the last time was that they went to a party meeting. For that matter, when the last time was that their party asked them to do anything except give money and vote on election day. |
| | Parties were born as ways to harness the power of grass roots; today, though, the grass roots have dried up and politics has become a game of the elite, by the elite, for the elite. |
| | It's looking more and more, though, like Dean is succeeding in building an insurgency within the Democratic Party, fueled by party members' desire to have a say in the future of their own party. Regardless of whether or not you think he's a good candidate, he's definitely energizing the ants on the left like nobody else is. |
| | So get down on all six legs and blog your damn candidate. |
| | - Gratuitous spending (This is Bush's weak point: the damage he has done and continues to do to this country's fiscal health. - Andrew Sullivan),
- Personal liberty bashing (...the possibility that Republicans would, yet again, prove tactically stupid. That stupidity would be widespread adoption of Santorunism-- trying to argue in favor of sodomy laws themselves, trying to keep this fight alive instead of letting it die. - Jacob Levy), and
- Theocratic pandering (The Presbyterian senator would, thus, impose on us all via the Constitution an understanding of marriage which is held only by his Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and some Anglican constituents. God save his Moslem, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and agnostic constituents, for whom the very word "sacrament" has no meaning. - Ralph Luker).
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| | The Dean campaign is being real smart about the Net and for the right reasons, I believe: they're viewing the Internet not as a cheap way to reach the masses but as a way to let us talk together. And self-organize. Plus, I love the real voices of the staffers who write the campaign blog. |
discuss
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