Copyright © 2006 Frank Lynch.
Copyright © 2006 Frank Lynch.
Me: Frank Lynch Home These are my mundane daily ramblings. Email: |
More anti-Semites than you can shake a stick at. Here's a shocker: Horsefeathers reviews the Lieberman loss to Lamont as well as an analysis of the same from the New York Times' Adam Nagourney, and complains that Nagourney's analysis is weak because — get this — Nagourney fails to point out how anti-Semitic Lamont's supporters are. Rittenberg writes:
Well, duh, Stephen, maybe he didn't point it out because the charge doesn't stick? Notice that weird conflation? If you don't agree that war against Iraq is justified, you're an anti-Semite, and anything you say against supporters of the Iraq war is anti-Semitic. And then, Rittenberg drags out that tired canard that if you use the word "neocon" you're implicitly making a reference to some Jewish cabal. I guess Dr. Rittenberg needs us to unpack this neoconservative thing for him. Go to Google, and search on the phrase "Project For A New American Century." The search results are here in a new window, but please do NOT click the first link yet. Before you click I want to point something out. Under the link for "Project For A New American Century" is a bit of text, reading "A neoconservative organization supporting greater American militarization, challenging hostile government..." See that? The word "neoconservative" was not put there by some clever programmer at Google; it was put there by the Project For A New American Century themselves, when they wrote the html for their web page. So, apparently the Project For A New American Century seems to think that the word "neoconservative" is legitimate. And who is the PNAC? Why, they're the group that complained to President Clinton that peaceful efforts of containment weren't enough when it came to dealing with Iraq, we had to invade. I tell you no lie, you can read it in their Statement of Principles. And as I've pointed out before, names of the signers down at the bottom are diverse, and unless my jadar is out of whack, I didn't think Jeb Bush, Bill Bennett, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Gary Bauer, or Dan Quayle were Jews. But I could be wrong, Stephen, you tell me. You're awfully good at sounding alarms for anti-Semites we'd never have suspected, maybe you can help us find some Jews where we never thought, too. So, Dr. Rittenberg, we do use the word neoconservative, and we don't mean some "Jewish-cabal" as you claim: we mean a group of people with phantastic designs of changing the world, so out of touch with reality that they'd lead us into the wrong war at the wrong time against the wrong enemy. Seriously, it's genuinely sad to see an educated man trot out
this lame excuse for discounting others' opinions every time he
can't refute their validity. He did it in the lead up to the war,
and now that fewer and fewer people support his views, I suspect
he'll start to feel more and more isolated, surrounded by an
ever-growing anti-Semitic conspiracy. Is it growing? Of
course it is!! Look how many of them voted against
Lieberman!! Just look!!
Yes, five years ago... With the surprisingly quiet passing of yesterday's anniversary — five years since the President received the CIA's Presidential Daily Brief which announced that Bin Laden was determined to strike in the U.S., including information such as...
So: think there's anything in here that says, "move on folks, nothing to see here"? Apparently this memo was not a warning in any way, shape or form. We can see how little attention the Bush Administration paid to it by this exchange between a reporter and then press secretary Ari Fleischer on the afternoon of September 11:
No clever parsing of words here, just a flat-out "no
warnings." Nada, none, zero, zilch. And let's also note that
Fleischer doesn't seem in doubt here, as if he has to check with
anyone.
Beacon, NY. The summer's calendar basically worked out that this weekend would be the sole weekend where Ab and I could spend time together, with few obligations otherwise. Ab's need to visit her Mom wasn't going away, but aside from that, there was a Berlin Wall against any other encroachments. And so after some discussion as to what to do, yesterday we took a day trip up to Beacon, NY, an hour and 15 up the Hudson on Metro North. A fine escape from New York City, and we enjoyed our day completely. Beacon has all the marks of a community which will make the most of its opportunities. I don't know the chicken and egg history, but the Dia Art Foundation identified an old Nabisco plant where they printed boxes, and recognized that its wide spaces would allow for art exhibitions of large objects and large collections of a conceived set of objects that couldn't be displayed well in other spaces. So there is Dia: Beacon, dedicated to works of modern art which can't be adequately housed elsewhere. A suite of Warhols, or Sol Lewitt's exploration of the various ways to trace a line or build a cube. And of course, it's not just their exploration, it's also yours.
Ab and I are in agreement, that as special as the Dia: Beacon artistic opportunity is (we'll be candid, a room of white canvases was not to our taste — Emperor's New Clothes alert), Beacon's vibrancy is in the community itself. I know diddly about its history, but this is a community fighting hard, and that's always a good sign. They're working hard to re- invigorate their Main Street, and it's been populated with antique stores, art shops, cafes, coffee shops, and sundry boutiques. I don't think this is a case of "methinks she doth protest too much," because the area has a lot to offer: it's not so very far from Manhattan, the scenery is wonderful, and sure, it could get very cold in Winter, but I'd take that in a blink over Florida in the Summer. What I loved is the sense of community, and it came through in many ways. Walking from the Dia: Beacon to Main Street we passed a Reformed Church whose steeple we'd seen from the train station. Properly, it towered over the community, but it was clear that it needed some love. A sign said that one of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence had been buried there, and as the front door was open, well... We went to the stoop, and were invited in further by a couple members of the congregation who were there doing some advance cleaning for next weekend's BBQ to raise money for the steeple's restoration. We talked a bit, comparing reformation churches in Brooklyn and the Netherlands, and so on, but they were there with a mission: restore their steeple. And yet they took a moment aside to welcome a couple of dilettante tourists up from the City. (Won me over, I'm going to write a check.) And to follow up, there were at least three other places we passed where there were signs or reminders about the BBQ. On one occasion it was a yard sign, basically, nothing that looked organized. Elsewhere on Main Street, there were similar examples of community.
We also ventured off into the side streets, and looked at the
residences thereby. I admit you can't tell much from brief looks
like ours, but the gardens were all well kept, sidewalks were
fine and that. All in all, I think Beacon has a lot of signs to
suggest a complete revivification. It's not so far from
Manhattan, it's got a beautiful location on the Hudson River (and
a mountain with a great scenic view), and an active community
interest in perpetuating itself. This place believes in itself,
and has the raw materials to make it work.
Five Years Ago Today. So far as I can tell, there hasn't been much coverage of this, but it was five years ago today — and when I say the phrases "August 6, 2001" and "Presidential Daily Brief," that may be enough to jog your memory — but it was five years ago today, August 6 2001, that Bush was vacationing in his home in Crawford, that he received a briefing from the CIA regarding a terrorist threat. The most important stuff for the President to know was included in these briefs. This one had the headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S." What happened six weeks later, on September 11th, is better known and needs no elaboration. It would seem that the briefing didn't have its intended effect: testifying before the 9/11 Commission in 2003, Bush's National Security Director — I'm blanking on her name, give me a chance, but I remember there were lots of questions as to whether she would take an oath and promise to tell the truth — said they didn't think the word "determined" meant that the threat was of immediate concern:
OK, let's presume the President really did ask these questions, and this was the answer he got. Let's even characterize it the way Rice (oh, yeah, that's her name) did: we've known, historically, that Bin Laden wanted to strike in the U.S. Nothing new, so nothing to worry about: "this was not a warning." Oh, and by the way, the 9/11 Commission said it saw no
evidence of senior level meetings at the White House in response
to the August 6 PDB. Sad anniversary, really: they apparently did
nothing, although Richard Clarke was constantly warning and
George Tenet's hair was described as "being on fire" over the
threats that spring and summer. A lot of good it did; nothing
obviously, which is doubtless why so many Bush-defenders were
offended when Clarke opened his statement to the 9/11 Commission
with an apology to the victims and survivors of 9/11 that their
government had let them down: they weren't ready to accept the
idea that Bush and Rice and so on acted like slugs.
Technology breakdown. Bloglines, which
I use to mark articles for later reading and possibly referencing
here — allowing me to use an RSS link, which means you
generally don't have to register with a site to read it, and it
will be available longer — hasn't been treating me decently
recently. Items I've been marking aren't there when I go back
later. It makes it much more difficult to me (I now have to set
up a more elaborate bookmarking system for myself) and as for
you, doubtless you're coming back wondering where the fresh
content is. Working on a work-around here, sorry...
Larry the Lobster Lives!! On Wikipedia. Talk about your 15 minutes of fame... Something the Wikipedia article doesn't get into (and I guess
this means I should log in and edit) is that the running gag went
all night, and each time the numbers were read to "kill" or
"save" Larry, the actor betrayed a bias by speeding through the
number they didn't want you to call, while clearly enunciating
the number of the number they wanted you to call. Anyone
for bisque?
Time to revisit OBL. Just because I said so, and this is me writing the html here. The day after the 2004 Presidential election, I wrote about Osama Bin Laden's tape which had come out the weekend just before, and about the significant portions which the State Department didn't want released immediately. Basically, I saw it as gamesmanship on OBL's part: in the parts which State wanted suppressed, OBL argued about the stupidity of Bush's strategies in the Global War on Terror, and I reasoned that if the full text had been released, America would rally around Bush (how could you vote against someone OBL said bad things about??) It was my feeling at the time that OBL knew that Bush had been good for his business, infuriating extremists with the invasion of Iraq, and that OBL wanted the beat to go on, and was doing a head fake. Well, it seems as if the CIA also concluded that OBL was trying to get Bush re-elected. In Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine, that's their conclusion (page 336):
Some of the reasoning isn't the same as mine, but it's really too bad that America didn't know more about who was OBLs choice. Meanwhile, I'm on to lighter reading for what remains of the
summer. I finished Kevin Phillip's book, Ron Sukind's, and now
I'm onto a back catalog item, Russell Shorto's book on the Dutch
colonization of New York. (I swear, you probably can't walk five
blocks without encountering a street name or something related to
the Dutch. Hell, here in Brooklyn, the entire borough is
based on a Dutch word.
First Friday Rituals. I hope you received Holy Communion today, because that would be a Good Thing. The other ritual, the Department of Labor's release of last month's job statistics, was not: yet another disappointing figure, a mere 113,000. I'm happy for all those who got a job, but this isn't enough to keep up with population growth. Now, you may or may not have read an article in the New York Times earlier this week about men who are reluctant, at their life stages, to knuckle down and take a job which doesn't make much use of what they have to offer. Whether or not you agree that their inertia is justified, you'd have to recognize that they are of a class of "disaffected," and they don't show up in the denominator which is used to calculate the unemployment rate — that is, if they're not really looking for work. One of the interesting aspects I see in this article is how it reads in comparison to the 18th century. Samuel Johnson, a believer in the value of work, frequently wrote about a comfortable class of leisure which wasn't expected to work, for this reason or that. And he also wrote about other people who languished and let time pass while they were caught in indecision about what to do with their lives. (Heck, that's a lot of what Rasselas is about. Tell 'em I sent you.) But truth be told, the economy is not growing they way the
Bush administration has been claiming it is (at least, prior to a couple days ago).
Not listening. Bush, today, feting renovations in the press briefing room at the White House:
Cozy, huh? Meanwhile back at the ranch,
On another topic, does anyone know why Eric Boehlert title his
book on the way the press covers Bush "Lapdogs"? Just curious.
If you SEE something, SAY something.
Up periscope, U.S. I think there's something to be said for wanting a lasting solution between Israel and Lebanon before a fragile cease-fire is called and celebrated, and if that's the full motivation behind the White House stance, it's laudatory so long as the President is aware of all the nuances — something I've yet to see in the public positions he's taken on practically every other issue. (Unless you count Iraq: he seems to have painted himself into staying on the basis of a nuance of fairly flimsy weight.) But you wonder if Bush is fully aware of the lack of international support that's out there, and how, where it exists, it could quickly come tumbling down? Two reports from the BBC: one, that Blair's office rejected calls for a cease-fire from its own Foreign Office, and two, that the U.S. wo n't be refueling flights with bombs for Israel at commercial landing strips in the U.K., following criticism. We all know Bush has a tin ear, and we hope that he learns it sooner rather than later. (We [again with the Royal We!!] all remember Chuck Hagel's admonition in early 2003 that we were rushing too quickly into Iraq; basically, he'd said that the war on terror was going to be long, and we couldn't afford to lose our international standing so early. (See this essay I wrote at the time, surrounding a Johnson quote.) Bush has to remember that he's got an international
constituency to think about here (something well explained in Ron
Suskind's book The One Percent Doctrine), and leaders have fallen
or had to take drastically different paths according to the will
of the people. I'm not sure what Bush hopes to accomplish by
perpetually being the man out in the cold, but the possibilities
are discomforting.
We hope it's now amicable. Meat Loaf has decided to throw his hands up over trying to free the trademarked "Bat Out of Hell" from composer/pianist Jim Steinman. Let's be serious, Steinman wrote the music, and as Meat Loaf acknowledges,
After all, would "Rocky Horror" have been anything like the springboard which "Bat Out of Hell" was? "Bat Out of Hell" was, parenthetically, probably the best
album by another artist which Todd Rundgren ever produced.
(Couldn't resist mentioning his involvement in the project, which
was significant, seeing as how it's his guitar and his sidemen on
many of the cuts.) Was there a better one? Badfinger's "Straight
Up"? XTC's "Skylarking"? Hall and Oates "War Babies"? While I
read up on the news of the day for further lucid commentary, you
know how to comment...
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