Wherein We Gaze into Our Inerrant Crystal Ball and Espy a Deadly Rat
The mountains will be in labour; an absurd mouse will be born. -- HoraceSo many meetings of the war council! So much intense deliberation over so many months! So many knowledgeable experts training their finely honed minds on the problem of Afghanistan and Pakistan! So many challenges to conventional wisdom and the policies inherited from the reviled Bush administration! So much independence of thought, sober reflection, and careful calibration of the array of competing objectives and concerns!Truly, the operations of our government -- and if not of government generally, certainly of the Obama admi

Global Warming, Fantastic Hypocrites, and the Fatal Corporatist Problem
Part I: Bad-Faith Arguments and Highly Questionable ActorsI'll be addressing additional issues related to the discussion in Part I, as well as analyzing one very significant problem raised by the global warming debate, a problem that comes up in many different contexts. Before getting to all that, let's consider the case of Al Gore, not only with regard to his own history on environmental issues but with an eye to the broader principle of which Gore is a powerful example.We can

Bad-Faith Arguments and Highly Questionable Actors
As mentioned toward the conclusion of the previous post, I feel completely lousy these days. I'm very grateful for the donations that have come in -- thank you, kind people! -- but I don't yet have any kind of financial cushion for the coming month, let alone any of the money needed for even minimal medical care. So if what follows provides a mordant chuckle or two, please feel free to send a few coins my way. Perhaps your generosity will spare you from the galactic calamity that is about to engulf us!Since I feel like shit, we should consider a subject full of humor and with lo

Odds, and One Regrettable Usual End
This morning, I looked over the articles I've published between mid-October and today. I will be immodest and say that the output is...not bad. It includes nine or ten essays that I would call "major," by which I mean they deal with issues that won't be out of date in a week or a month, but will continue to have value in coming years (recognizing that others may well have a very different assessment). Among my personal favorites in this group are this piece and a related follow-up. I thought t

Hey, I Know! Let's Put On a Show Trial!
I've followed all the debatifying about the decision to prosecute five (ALLEGED!) 9/11 co-conspirators in federal court with weary, muffled resignation. Yes, I know "debatifying" isn't, like, a real word. Since almost everyone else is making shit up, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't. Thank God we have a new controversy, eh wot? All those earlier ones were getting mighty tired. Remember Roman Polanski? When I wrote about that (with great reluctance), I said:This exercise in denial and avoidance across every level of our culture, with regard to every issue, and seen now