Bob linked to Doonesbury the other day and said it was brilliant. While that one was rather good, Bob was a day early. The subsequent ones have been outstanding.
Hey - just go read them yourself. Here’s the one Bob liked. Just click next to see the rest.
Read What a year:celebrating 2006. It’s funny.
Meanwhile in the Middle East, tension mounts still higher when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces that Iran has successfully produced enriched uranium, although he claims that his nation plans to use it only for peaceful purposes, “such as cooking.” In Iraq, there is good news and bad news for the Bush administration: The good news is that rival Iraqi leaders have finally agreed on a new prime minister. The bad news is that it is Nancy Pelosi.
I was a regular reader of Viz for several years when it first came out (it’s a bit like Mad Magazine wearing bovver boots) . I haven’t seen it for about 20 years and was happy to find that it still makes me laugh out loud.
I used to love to own books. Everytime I went to the bookshop, I would buy 4 or 5. I can’t bear to throw them or give them away - even the crap ones. I have no space in my house for any more books. Georgina doesn’t see the point. She goes to the library to get books and takes them back when she has read them.
A couple of years ago, I signed up for BookCrossing. The idea is that when you are done with a book you set it free - you just leave it in some public place and put a note on the web site (Bleak House. 3rd bench on the left, Liberty Park, My Town). I never actually set any books free because I couldn’t let go. The will to own them was too great to overcome.
With movies, the opposite is true. I have very little desire to own them; I rent them on PPV or through Netflix instead. They cost about the same as books and the reading/viewing frequency is about the same for books/movies. Why do I want to own books but not movies? Makes no sense to me.
Anyway, in my life so far I have always wanted to own music. With the switch from vinyl to CD, I felt a little bit cheated that the old format was obsolete but I ploughed on anyway. The final straw was when my old car died and I was left with a bunch of cassettes that I could no longer play.
My friends tell me I could transfer all those old songs to some new-fangled format. If they were proper friends they would know why that is not gonna happen. Other friends tell me I could I buy them again in some other proprietary format but that was probably before they read the previous paragaph.
As of today, I no longer want to own music. I am going to rent it.
I just bought a Sansa Rhapsody and from henceforth, I will listen to all the music in the world for $15/month.
The only problem I have now is what to do with all those CDs and LPs cluttering up my living room. Perhaps I will keep them as a reminder of how we used to own music back in the 20th century.
One day, the president should just kill the stupid thing right there in front of the cameras and the girl scouts and the PETA people. Then it would be worthy of being front page news in the New York Times - or page B7 at the very least.
About 4 years ago, I said to Julio that as soon as they start burning books, it’ll be time to man the barricades. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the first book they burned was Fahrenheit 451 (which, by a strange coincidence, I read a couple of weeks ago).
Alton Verm filed a “Request for Reconsideration of Instructional Materials” Thursday with the district regarding “Fahrenheit 451,” written by Ray Bradbury and published in 1953. He wants the district to remove the book from the curriculum. “It’s just all kinds of filth,” said Alton Verm, adding that he had not read “Fahrenheit 451.” “The words don’t need to be brought out in class. I want to get the book taken out of the class.”
It’s so clearly ridiculous that someone would want to ban a book about banning books that there must be a better explanation. Here are a few that Dan and I considered:
It’s pretty funny though. Except it’s not.
When a selection of prominent conservatives pen articles like these and Washington Monthly prints them…
What a wrench it must be for him to pick up his paper every morning and read the now-daily debate about whether his son is officially the worst president in U.S. history.
As a conservative who’s interested in the long-term health of both my country and the Republican Party, I have a suggestion for the GOP in 2006: lose.
This must all be shocking to my Republican friends who still believe our country would be a better place if our party controlled every branch of government as well as every news network, movie studio, and mid-American pulpit. But evidence suggests that divided government may be what Washington needs the most.
Bush soon employed such monarchial power to detain a few citizens and to frighten would-be dissenters, and Republicans in Congress either cheered or fiddled like Nero while the Constitution burned.
In 200 years of U.S. history, every one of our conflicts involving more than a week of ground combat has been initiated by a unified government.
As Bush’s ideology leads from one disaster to another, one might ask: How far can it go? It has already brought us to Baghdad, an adventure so hopeless that Buckley recently mused, “If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we’ve experienced, it would be expected that he would retire or resign.” The more we learn about what happened behind the scenes in the months leading up to the war in Iraq, the more apparent it becomes that evidence was twisted to fit preconceived notions. Those who produced evidence undermining the case for war were ignored or even punished. It was zealotry at its most calamitous.
Conservatives are as angry as I have seen them in my nearly five decades in politics. Right now, I would guess that 40 percent of conservatives are ambivalent about the November election or want the Republicans to lose.
…it’s time to start wondering whether the permanent republican majority might be a little less than permanent.
A couple of days after 9/11, I was listening to NPR on the way to work and they had a story about how Clear Channel, the largest owner of radio stations in the United States, had distributed a list of songs that it would be inappropriate to play after such a terrible tragedy.
At the end of the story, the reporter said
…and now, here is number 7 on that list. Louis Armstrong’s “It’s a Wonderful World”.
With the top down, a lump in my throat and tears streaming down my face, I turned the radio up as loud as it would go and sang with all my heart.
For the last few years, the Biased Liberal Media have found themselves in a bit of a dilemma. Many of the political stories since early 2003 have been of the form
[prominent republican leader] said yesterday that “the democrats say we should [outright distortion]“. [A senior democrat] said “No we didn’t”. [Another senior republican] said “yes they did”.
I have noticed a very subtle shift in the last week or so. My two main sources of biased liberal news are the NPR and the New York Times and they have both started saying things like this
[prominent republican leader] said yesterday that “the democrats say we should [outright distortion]“. Here are some facts that demonstrate [prominent republican leader]’s distortions. [fact one] [fact two] [fact three]
Here’s an example from today’s Times
“It is foolish to think you can negotiate with them,” Mr. Bush said. No one in either major party has suggested negotiating with terrorists, although many Democrats and some Republicans have criticized the conduct of the war in Iraq. Some critics have called for a phased withdrawal of American troops from the country.
I have wanted to say something like this for a long while, but this letter to the NYTimes editor says it perfectly.
As a longtime peace activist who was opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning, I deeply resent Thomas L. Friedman’s reference to us as “antiwar activists who haven’t thought a whit about the larger struggle we’re in.”
We were bitterly opposed to the notion of pre-emptive war and to a devastating attack on a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. But one of our major arguments against this ill-planned, ill-executed tragic war was that it would distract energy and resources from a truly effective attack against terrorism and Muslim extremism.
This is exactly what has happened.
The Iraq war (and sadly, now the war in Lebanon) has only strengthened the terrorists, worsened hatred toward us and rendered us less rather than more capable of fighting terrorism.
Ann Edelman
Los Angeles, Aug. 16, 2006
I stopped my subscription to TimesSelect a while ago so I don’t know what Ann is replying to (maybe its time to renew?). It’s good news that the likes of George Will, Thomas Friedman, Andrew Sullivan etc etc etc et al are finally starting to ask the question “What was it all for?” but why do they feel such a strong need to malign the motives of those of us who asked the same question four years ago?
I hasten to add that I have no idea what comes next. I broadly agreed with Kerry’s prescription back in 2004 but it’s not 2004 any more, sadly. Staying will be a disaster, leaving will be a disaster. I hope there will finally be an honest debate and less of the debate-only-encourages-the-terrorists nonsense that Cheney and Bush (and, now, Lieberman) are STILL coming out with.
