As I eagerly await the kickoff of the Sun Bowl (Mizzou vs Oregon State, 1pm CST, CBS), I figured I had more than enough time to crank out my first blogroll post in a while. Hope everybody had a lovely Christmas holiday season...now it’s on to the blogs!
First off, I apparently missed Billmon’s farewell. Left Coaster caught me up. It’s hard to think of a blogger who was more right about everything for the last few years. Guess I’ll take his name off the blogroll. Eh, screw it. I’ll leave it up for a while. Just in case.
Well, the honeymoon is over. Screw the “bravest politician of our time” crap...Gerald Ford was a traitor! A slanderous traitor (Alicublog)!! How DARE a former president insult a current one! How uncouth (Atrios)!! Couldn’t he see how hard this president was working (AMERICAblog)??
President Bush worked nearly three hours at his Texas ranch on Thursday to design a new U.S. policy in Iraq, then emerged to say that he and his advisers need more time to craft the plan he'll announce in the new year.Nearly three whole hours? In a row? How does this great man do it??
(Not surprisingly, Attaturk has a take on this one as well.)
Then again, how bad could Jerry Ford be? I mean, he was Tricky Dick’s best friend (CorrenteWire)...that’s gotta count for something right? And he ran with Bob Dole...and we all know how classy that guy was (Digby), right? Yup, he was such a nice man (Susie Madrak).
Meanwhile, Mannion discusses Ford’s supposed “lack of ambition.” And Upyernoz shares his memories. And Will at Attytood makes berlin niebuhr happy and mentions 38’s actual biggest contribution to the United States: The single-bullet theory.
But on the bright side, Ford’s death gave Erik Loomis 5 down on his 2006 Death List (Alter Destiny)...so that’s something, right? (Seriously, 5 out of 10 ain’t bad...would really creep me out if I were on his ’07 list...you listening, Lady Bird Johnson? Honestly, I didn’t even know she was alive.)
Dubya: 25x worse than Lucifer (C&L).
Righties: Wrong about everything. Seriously. Absolutely everything (Greenwald). It’s awe-inspiring.
Meanwhile, as Dubya moves into Lame Duck territory with full force, Avedon points me to a Connecting.the.Dots post talking about another Lame Duck presidency. While it’s an interesting (and depressing) thought, I like this one better.
As for the next possile lame duck President, BooMan has a nice post discussing Hilary vs Obama vs Edwards. I don’t think Edwards has too much of a chance (he can feel free to prove me wrong), but I’m all for his entry into the race. And Christy at Firedoglake explains one of the main reasons why I’m for it. Paul from Gadflyer goes into detail about Edwards as well. Mercury Rising points out that his wife kicks quite a bit of ass too.
Meanwhile, David at Debate Link sucks it up and says something nice about each likely Republican candidate. Now it’s time for a righty to do the same about Dems. There’s actually a righty response in the comments to that post...any more takers?
(Oh, and I think John McCain will be way too busy keeping us in Iraq to be any sort of “principled character” that would represent anything positive, but that’s just me.)
"Great secretaries of state have compelling views of the world and/or are effective negotiators -- Secretary Rice has so far demonstrated neither” (First Draft). Ouch.
Demosthenes discusses Rahm Emanuel and his surprise DCCC replacement. I don’t know if this transfer of power is a good or bad thing, but considering how much I (dis)like Rahm, I’m leaning toward ‘good thing.’
Meanwhile, on the Weather Water Energy front, Dana B. takes on a term I haven’t heard since business school: Price Floors. I don’t know if this is a good idea or not—I’ll leave that to berlin niebuhr—but he makes an interesting case.
Via the Le in Lefarkins, I find that Matt Taibbi is taking on Friedman. It’s as gruesome as you would expect.
Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.Wow, Gay Kansans are feeling it might be safe to come out (Pandagon). I don’t know how to feel about that. Never thought I’d see the day.
And finally, Scientology takes its show on the road (Fired Up! Missouri)! Oh baby!!
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