tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-148927762011-12-22T21:46:34.886-05:00Wonks are killing me.Brad Rickmannoreply@blogger.comBlogger271100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-79673669698004825922008-03-19T07:21:00.007-04:002008-03-19T08:00:10.017-04:00

Barack Obama yesterday gave the bravest, most honest, most comprehensive and accurate explication of contemporary racial politics I have heard any politician give in my lifetime.First, let's acknowledge that it's a little absurd and disappointing that the candidate felt a need to speak at all. I understand the desire to publicly distance himself from Jeremiah Wright, but it's disgraceful that

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-82396837657140004942008-03-08T02:59:00.003-05:002008-03-08T03:26:16.808-05:00

Yes, Samantha Power made headlines today by resigning from her position as an adviser to the Obama campaign in the wake of an interview in which she called Hillary Clinton a "monster." And that's all a little shocking and a little silly and a little schoolgirl-crush-ish of her. But real, substantive campaign news of the day came from another Obama advisor, John Brennan, who gave an interview of

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-89836737236138270322008-03-07T13:45:00.003-05:002008-03-08T03:34:15.333-05:00

I don't generally read David Brooks because I don't generally find his bland, sophomoric, self-serving and self-satisfied version of upper-middle-class conservatism revelatory. But today's column on the shift in the Democratic primary campaign is, if not revelatory, at least as concise a description of Obama's dilemma as I've yet seen.It's a prisoner's dilemma, that: if the lesson of Clinton's

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-70361349963736232932008-03-06T01:23:00.005-05:002008-03-06T01:50:48.314-05:00

Listening to a discussion on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" program on Monday about the childishly named "Protect America Act," I am reminded of the contempt in which the current US government holds its citizens. The subject is the law, currently under consideration in both the house and the senate, which would provide immunity from prosecution for those telecommunications companies that provided

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-85094969176675623852008-02-24T08:50:00.005-05:002008-02-25T11:16:17.753-05:00

Another thrashing of the Clinton campaign by Frank Rich in today's Times. Like many an Obama supporter, Rich has always given the curious impression not of being motivated by love for Obama or Obama's ideas (assuming there are any, and assuming he'd divulge them if there were) but by pointed distaste for Clinton. It's a thin form of evangelism, but it's fair enough, I suppose, given that Rich's

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-65225888560863300812008-02-16T13:08:00.006-05:002008-02-24T08:49:47.132-05:00

This week, The New Yorker's George Packer joins the chorus of concern over the nature of the public's engagement with the Obama campaign. Packer represents a faction of the liberal community (of which I'd consider myself also a member) that you might call cautious or pragmatic progressivism. Or you might just call them rationalists. Like others, including Paul Krugman and Stanley Fish of the New

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-63603070727284573482007-11-14T08:59:00.000-05:002007-11-14T09:04:29.826-05:00

Max Boot's op-ed piece today in the Times utterly misses the point. We are not at war in Iraq because of the failure of our diplomatic corp. The diplomatic crisis, such as it became, was manufactured by the Executive branch over the objections of State. A beefed-up State would have changed nothing. A beefed-up CIA might have, but when the Executive is determined to get its war, and determined to

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-40451758623630969822007-10-26T11:42:00.000-04:002007-10-26T12:05:43.417-04:00

For an interesting spectacle in the fantasy gymnastics of morality, read Andrew Sullivan's triple reacharound to Dick Cheney in his blog at the Atlantic. Sullivan is the highbrow manifestation of the Log Cabin Republican spirit, the avatar of a sometimes admirably contrarian group that wishes it had a tent to crawl into and so will not admit that the pillars of said tent have for more than twenty

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1159900223534733712006-10-03T13:28:00.000-04:002006-10-03T16:10:33.426-04:00

Or, Is That Sulfur I Smell?One of the juicier tidbits to come out of the advance notes on Bob Woodward's new book has been the revelation of Henry Kissinger's tendency to lurk about the Bush White House. He's more than welcome, it seems, and not only seen but well heard. Naturally, he's a big fan of "staying the course" in Iraq.This doesn't frankly come as much of a surprise. But it does offer

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1159446307010137872006-09-28T08:13:00.000-04:002006-09-28T12:08:14.550-04:00

Ingredients:1 NY Times editorial1 comedy sketch of indeterminate realism1 foreign poll1 domestic pollBring a large saucepan to temperature over medium heat.Skim comedy sketch of actual performance; discard, keeping only audience reaction. If audience reaction is staged, discard. If audience reaction is not staged, add to saucepan. (Do you really think it didn't, or couldn't, happen?)Add meat and

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1157655374349201182006-09-07T14:39:00.000-04:002006-09-07T14:56:14.396-04:00

More on "Paths to 9/11":> A brief Salon Review and commentary(Note that in order to read you may have to watch a brief ad, or join Salon.)In passing, I will note that while no one in his (or her) right mind will dispute the fabulousness of oral sex, one really must wonder, really, just why conservatives remain so, er, worked up over it. Seriously. Why, I mean, it seems to loom so largely -- even

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1157649348804791532006-09-07T12:22:00.000-04:002006-09-07T13:15:48.903-04:00

In an effort to act more like a real blogger (you know: peripatetic, short-attention-spanned, unable to entertain complex thoughts and possessed of a mile-deep stash of weirdly inappropriate, semi-articulate bile), I am following yesterday's micro-post with another.If you haven't clued in to the kerfuffle over ABC's upcoming "docudrama" (a nicely dodgy neologism that nudges aside tired old "

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1157581634112201222006-09-06T18:21:00.000-04:002006-09-06T18:27:14.186-04:00

Though I can't verify this or determine corroboration, it seems worth mentioning as a rather strange -- but not altogether unpredictable -- follow-up on Connecticut:http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Lieberman2.htmShortly and sweetly: enough of this clown. I will gladly contribute to a fund for the purpose of printing this headline on giant billboards and posting them across

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1155310149173574652006-08-11T11:14:00.000-04:002006-08-11T11:29:09.213-04:00

Am I the only one who sees the recently uncovered airline plot in Britain as yet more evidence of the poverty of our adminstration's strategy? And who sees, by the same light, Joe Lieberman's use of it to whip his victorious opponent in the Connecticut primary (and to threaten those who made that victory possible), as symptomatic of the disease that plagues American government?We've heard it over

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1149466159990045302006-06-04T19:53:00.000-04:002006-06-04T21:27:33.786-04:00

Matthew Stewart has an amusing piece in this month's Atlantic on consultants, MBA programs, and pointlessly obtuse and thus impressive sounding jargon. It's available here to those with Atlantic subscriptions; otherwise, you may be consigned to the newsstand. Stewart's commentary — part confession, part satirical wince — pairs nicely with my own (also semi-confessional) notes on acronyms from May

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1148673193323762712006-05-26T15:37:00.001-04:002006-06-04T20:16:05.133-04:00

Add this to the list of found objects of note: from an article in last Thursday's Times, entitled "The Check is Not in the Mail" and subtitled, more helpfully, "Late Payment of Medical Claims Adds to the Cost of Health Care." Do you really need an article after that? I don't. I've seen it. I've screamed about it, even (see this crosspost by way of evidence). And yet examples are always a help. To

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1148662444635296182006-05-26T12:33:00.000-04:002006-05-26T15:36:39.886-04:00

Here's a cute little report in the Washington Post today: turns out not too many industry members are volunteering for the administration's voluntary pollution reduction programs, and thus not much pollution reduction is taking place. Surprising? Of course not. That was the point, after all, wasn't it? But it's discouraging all the same. And it's yet more proof that the one constant to this

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1139639944033074442006-02-11T01:33:00.000-05:002006-02-11T01:41:05.803-05:00

One of the recurrent pillars of the Bush administration's defense of its various infringements on constitutionally protected corners of American life is the theory of the so-called wartime presidency. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales cited this repeatedly in his recent congressional, uh, testimony. ("Testimony" is loose here: Gonzales refused to be placed under oath — gotta wonder why, don't you

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1139591963683962242006-02-10T12:12:00.000-05:002006-02-10T17:06:50.136-05:00

It's getting harder and harder to see how the beast will soldier on. The front page of the Times has begun to look like some experiment in extreme storytelling, each day taking the narrative of our national leadership deeper into unknown territories of fantasy, science fiction, criminality — and at increasing speeds. Plot twists are piling up quicker than in anything ABC or HBO could cook up.

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1139352629476169872006-02-07T17:45:00.000-05:002006-02-08T00:48:59.900-05:00

It's worth noting that the protests flaring through the near East and Europe — now riots, many of them — are in some measure the fruits of Bush's and Blair's labors. Certainly not directly: neither man is a cartoonist. But the Iraq war to which both stubbornly, ineptly cling has provided angry sectors of the Arab world with ammunition and a glaring target.Ineptly: it's important to understand

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1139249134386380342006-02-06T13:00:00.000-05:002006-02-06T21:55:39.560-05:00

The chorus, in the aftermath of vociferous and even violent protests by Muslims across the Western and near-Eastern world in the last few days, is that free speech must have our support, but that it also must have its limits. No one has yet said what those limits are, but it seems safe to assume they fall in the vicinity of religious figures. Maybe people envision a summit meeting between

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1125288363864233362005-08-28T23:58:00.000-04:002005-08-30T09:18:41.676-04:00

So, David Brooks finally rolled out of the cave, took a stretch, and looked around. And saw, according to his Aug. 28 column in the Times, which regards the Pentagon's approach to Iraq, that "The answers have been disturbing. There is no clear strategy. There are no clear metrics."First of all: welcome to the party, Dave. Nice of you to show. Even nicer of you to have finally doffed the

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1123856195487900792005-08-12T10:16:00.000-04:002005-08-12T10:32:47.606-04:00

The headlines might as well read, "Bush succumbs completely to hallucinatory foreign-policy fantasies." Troop levels, it was announced yesterday, will stay the same. And by the way, it's still called the Global War on Terror, not G-WAVE.For the second week in a row, Bush woke up from a nap, stepped onto a nearby lawn, and proceeded to contradict what his own aides had been saying for the previous

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1123156939000056152005-08-03T21:58:00.000-04:002005-08-04T08:02:53.246-04:00

Eugene F. Kranz, in the Times today, is "disgusted" with the reluctance of NASA managers to, as he sees it, take risks with the lives of its astronauts. Appropriate risks, one assumes he must mean. Progress must be made, says Mr Kranz; America's future competitiveness is at stake.I don't altogether disagree, at least as far as the lives of astronauts are concerned. Astronauts are adults. They're

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1122609929478419752005-07-28T23:55:00.000-04:002005-07-29T00:05:29.486-04:00

A day of more shuttle news: official tally comes in at $1 billion. Yes, $1 billion, for one launch whose stated purpose was to "test new safety equipment" and deliver "supplies" to the space station. Kind of an expensive test-the-brakes-and-pick-up-some-beer run. For a commentary that's amusingly on the money, check out this segment of Ed Gordon's show.Here's the part where the

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1122551537907508372005-07-26T19:49:00.000-04:002005-07-28T07:52:17.910-04:00

The only trouble with Seymour Hersh's recent exposé in the New Yorker (July 25) is just how unsurprising it really is. Last week, hersh reported on allegations that the United States engaged in a covert operation to funnel money and logistical support to certain candidates' factions during the Iraqi elections last January, thus showing a favoritism it had not only vowed to forego but that might

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14892776.post-1122550973033516902005-07-20T22:42:00.000-04:002005-07-28T07:48:37.723-04:00

Two fascinating articles in the Times this week which taken together ought to form a solid indictment not only of the execution of this fool's errand (I mean the US excursion in Iraq) but of the theory behind it — namely, that it's a fine idea to attempt the violent imposition of a political culture. In the first article we find a jarring tally of Iraqi civilian deaths resulting from the invasion

B Rickmannoreply@blogger.com0