John & Belle Have A Blog

Political Compass

The missus and I are off to a Halloween party. But before I go I'll tag along with Leiter, Bertram, Yglesias and others by up and taking my political compass test. Here I am. Equal parts moderate lefty and libertarian. I think that's a bit off. I should be one notch more libertarian and one notch less lefty. And who figured the Dalai Lama for a libertarian on their little chart? Oh, well. Glad I'm not sitting next to Mugabe. On the other hand, I'm doomed to vote for Kucinich or Sharpton, a proposition subject to grave doubt. As Leiter observes - it's damn obvious - a substantial number of the questions are so ambiguous as to be worse than useless. It always surprises me when people put so much technical work into surveys or little tests like this then don't bother to iron out simple problems with word choice and phraseology that are bound to lead to bad data.

Kill Bill

Sorry guys. Making you look at David Gest's plastic head-substitute and then not blogging for three days? Is that the fine service you've come to expect from J&BB? I think not. John's having another week of hell with grading and I'm still moping around. Seems like a good time for our big announcement: I'm pregnant, due in May. Hence all the queasiness. I've been having that variant of morning sickness which in-the-know people call "the whole fucking day sickness". I don't recommend it. I've been eating fine, because I'm still hungry, just revoltingly nauseated. Don't tell me that doesn't make any sense, because I'm way ahead of you. Obviously it could be worse; some women can't keep food down at all. But, things could always be worse; I mean, someone could be making me watch that dying mom movie with Susan Sarandon and Julia Roberts, right? (Gives me the cold robbies, as Pogo would say.)

Instead, John and I snuck out to see Kill Bill last weekend. I really liked it, although it is a strange movie. I have zero patience for the people who bitch and whine about Tarantino and say he's a no-talent hack addicted to shock tactics and cheap thrills. There is such a being in Hollywood, and his name is Jerry Bruckheimer; I strongly recommend that those with spare opprobrium look there for a target. Tarantino is obviously a great director, the proof of this being that he has directed a number of great movies. He's also an annoying, hyper, nerd -- but so what? Just because everybody ripped him off badly and we got tired of third-hand pop culture-infected dialogue and casual, humorous violence is no reason to blame the man. And I find objections to his violence strange, anyway. He is fascinated by violence, to the point of what might be called directorial sadism. Granted. But is this fascination worse than the casual disregard for bodies displayed in the average action film? Kissing in front of a nuclear blast in True Lies? Leering at the tits on a female corpse in Bad Boys 2? Even people who were disgusted by Peckinpah's Wild Bunch had to look anew at the bloodless crumpling of a gunshot victim in an old-timey Western and see something false about it. People do awful things to each other, and when they do, blood gets everywhere. Which brings us to Kill Bill.

It was beautiful, and it was very funny, although less so than his other movies, simply because so much of thier humor came from the dialogue, of which there tends to be less when everyone is busy getting their heads cut off. It did suffer from the defect of not being about anything, but seemed to be making strenuous efforts to transvalue that into a virtue, in which it was partly sucessful, I think. John and I are divided about it in one respect: I am partially withholding judgment until the second half comes out, since we don't actually know what's going on yet, in some sense. John thinks it should retain the awful crystalline purity of just never telling us what the deal is and remain a unexplained revenge vehicle. We'll see. It's also true that I spent my formative years laughing my head off as Chow Yun-Fat shot fifty people in various ways in a single scene, and I love Japanese movies where the hero is posessed by a demon and becomes so deadly with the blade that in the end a mob has to drive him into a fire, since an infinite number of armed men have already been sliced to bits. Maybe, if you don't like that kind of thing, you won't like Kill Bill either.

Ideas That Can't Help But Creep Good People Out

The Times had an article this week about how China's economic boom has increased its energy consumption (much of it from heavily polluting coal) and thus brought closer the day of reckoning: should developing nations be brought into the Kyoto protocol? Their absence from the greenhouse gas calcuclus was one of Bush's -- you know, I was going to say pretexts, but it would be more accurate to say not wholly meritless objections -- to the Kyoto Accord. But I'd just like to give some unsolicited advice to environmental campaigners: don't ever, ever say things like this.

Environmental groups that once promoted China as a good example are now increasingly worried. "If they're seeing 6 and 7 percent growth, that is obviously a concern," said Dan Lashof, a climate change expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has done several studies of Chinese energy use.

That whole "wanting poor countries to stay poor" thing is supposed to be part of D^2's Globollocks Watch, i.e. a canard brought out by pro-globalizers to cariacature opponents' views, not something people actually say in earnest.

My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing!

Are you sitting down? Don't have a mouthful of chai or anything? Go look at this picture of David Gest's plastic head. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid to close my eyes now and I thought if I could force 12 other people to look at the hideous image I might be spared the torments of the damned.

Dr. Mahathir

An interesting retrospective in today's Straits Times, looking back on a quarter century of often bumpy relations with Malaysia's Dr. Mahathir.

UPDATE: And here's the latest from the New Straits Times, in response to the Wiesenthal Centre's call for a boycott on tourism and investment in Malaysia.

Adaptations

I saw three movies last weekend which have an obvious thematic link: two book-to-screen adaptations - one high, one lowbrow; and Adaptation, which I had already seen once, which is about book-to-screen adaptations, high and lowbrow.

Smile!

I just thought I would make a little demonstration to supplement last night's post. Pictures of Zoë, the first taken before she was aware the camera was there; the second when she knew it was time to SMILE!

Jack Kirby

So the Thing's Jewish! (Via Volokh.) And so were Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. (Poor Dr. Mahathir. Not only does he have democracy and such-like Jewish tricks to contend with; he's going toe-to-toe with the people who brought you Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Spider Man, the X-Men.)

And here is a page about Jacob "Jack Kirby" Kurtzberg, tough kid from the Lower East Side.

I'm a huge Jack Kirby fan, in case you haven't noticed. His comics just stunned me when I first discovered him in about the fifth grade. I got so wrapped up in comics then that my dad strictly forbade me to take drawing in junior high. (Worse, I was forced to play the French horn.) So I tried to teach myself drawing by copying Kirby's style, which - in my childish way - I didn't realize was a style, you see. I thought all human beings just naturally look like they have pots of ink pouring down their foreheads, among other disinguishing characteristics. (See here, for instance.) Which is why I find the subject of this issue so humorous.

And here are various interviews with comic artists and writers, talking about Kirby's influence on them. Here's Alex Ross; here's Kurt Busiek; here's Alan Moore; here's Will Eisner. You can poke around for yourself.

I got Belle to read some Kirby when she was pregnant with Zoë. The Forever People and The New Gods. Two of my favorites. I think it had a salutary effect. When she was one year old, the kid sort of looked like Modok. Now she looks more like Big Bear.

(NOTE: the kid smiles all the time, unless you tell her to smile. Then she looks like Big Bear. Also, those headphones aren't plugged into anything. She just likes to wander around wearing daddy's 'hear things'. I'm not blasting music in her ears to make her look this way or anything.)

Eisner Can't Be Faded

If you get tired of the blogospere-wide Easterbrook pity party, just visit the Antic Muse, here and here, for some bracing total lack of sympathy. As she puts it (alluding to Easterbrook's infamous "no doesn't always mean no" theory of consensual sexual encounters), "The real reason ESPN fired Gregg Easterbrook wasn't because he criticized his boss; it was because when he wrote "I'm sorry," what he actually meant was, "Please fuck me."... ESPN is already smoking the cigarette, I hope it was good for Gregg." Seriously, I think we've all learned an important lesson here: don't fuck with Michael Eisner. If Easterbrook isn't blogging about the horse's head in his bed tomorrow, it's only because he's too scared to mention it to anyone.

Gene Wolfe

I finally finished Gene Wolfe's four volume Book of the New Sun. And in recent months I've also read Peace, Fifth Head of Cerberus and Strange Travellers.

Wolfe is strikingly unlike other fantastic fiction writers. I am having a spot of trouble putting my finger on what makes him unique. Each book is a puzzle-box. Events in them are baffling to a truly unusual degree, and the books themselves are sliding-door, false-bottom architectonic affairs. And all very sober and serious in tone, while at the same time wildly original and imaginative. Like watching a skilled magician give a flawless and obviously endlessly rehearsed performance without once smiling at the audience, or at himself, or taking a bow when it's over. There's a sort of stern, vaguely theological chill always threatening to take hold, and often it does. Passionless but intense. Cerebral without really being about ideas. Psychologically gripping and convincing, but in a distorted, thin way. The protagonists tend to have oddly stipulative motives. We really don't know why they are doing what they are doing. Nor is this a failure of the author's capacity for characterization. A great many of the minor characters are as rich and fully developed as any one might hope to meet. But the main characters are - by craft and design - eerily hollowed-out, compelled ghosts, changlings, people who are not who they think they are. It's as though all the puzzle pieces are sort of somnambulating themselves into proper position, if only one could quite tell what part of the overall picture they are bound for.

There's also an odd, stately steadiness to the progress of the narrative. Thrilling things happens - especially in The Book of the New Sun. Anxious escapes and battles and tense encounters and monsters and sieges and such. This ought to cause the feel of the thing to speed up and slow down. But it doesn't. There is not much edge-of-the-seat 'how will Severian get out of this one?!' reader-response, because Severian (the protagonist) seems indifferent to Severian's fate. His eye is somehow always focussed on something in the distance. What grabs and holds one's attention, then, is the precision engineering of the characters and the setting, not warmth of identification with characters. Not a lot of warmth all around. (Here is a man who keeps writing books about the sun going cold, in fact.)

It's really impressive that the author is able to have a sword-and-sorcery hero - Severian is basically that, in The Book of the New Sun - wander through four volumes of adventures without really having a clear motivation. I don't mean he bounces around randomly or is impulsive. Nothing of the sort. And his incidental psychological characteristics are drawn very finely and clearly. But the core of his personality is a blank. This ought to get annoying or ridiculous after a while - or at least feel like a highly affected literary device. But it doesn't. Severian does not really seem to care that he does not really know why he's doing what he's doing. And, oddly, by steadily maintaining the audience's interest in the story - by somehow deflecting the demand that the hero's behavior make transparent psychological sense - Wolfe may actually manage to achieve a high degree of audience identification with his chilly hero.

Well, those are my tentative thoughts for the night. I know a few of our regular readers are Wolfe fans. Anyone want to add their thoughts about this fine author?

Winning Hearts and Minds

The New Straits Times imparts a different spin to Mahathir's anti-semitic outburst than it has received in much of the rest of the world. And here's another article from today's New Straits Times.

Sigh.

UPDATE: Bit of potential confusion for our non-local readers. The Straits Times is Singapore's major daily. The New Straits Times is Mayalsia's main English language daily. So the above links are to a Malaysian paper, not a Singaporean one. The Singaporean coverage of Mahathir's speech, and reactions to it, is interesting as well. Nothing until today, but today several pieces. I've linked the main one; there is a sidebar with interesting related links.

SECOND UPDATE: I missed this previous Straits Times coverage. I thought there had been none.

Pound Cake

I just thought I'd mention that John isn't dead or anything. He's just having a terrible week at work, involving writing exams, grading papers and an MA thesis, lecturing about J.S. Mill, etc. etc. But you won't miss him for a moment when you realize I'm giving you the best pound cake recipe ever. All my South Carolina heritage is coming into play here, people. I just made it yesterday and it's sooo good. I'm going to turn the leftovers into trifle in a few days. If there are any. (Yes, it's a modified 1-2-3-4 cake, basically).

Department of Late-Breaking News

Slate is currently running series of articles/travelogues by one Seth Stevenson on Japan. In a recent update, he rents anime porn and makes the shocking discovery that Japanese guys are 1) really into rape, 2) really into schoolgirls, and 3) really into raping schoolgirls. No way! You could knock me over with a feather, Seth! I submit that anyone who has been to Japan before, and has been there some time on his current visit, and is only now looking "at every Japanese man I know with suspicion that underneath that pleasant, placid exterior is a dude who likes watching schoolgirls get raped," is manifestly too stupid and unobservant to qualify as a travel writer of any kind. I propose that Slate send me to Japan forthwith so I can go shopping, eat sashimi, and further confirm my long-settled opinion that Japanese guys are perverts to a man.

That's The JOINT

Just this month, through the good graces of my friend Daniel, I learned about the Funky 4 + 1. (Daniel has reached the pinnacle of the record-loving, hipster pyramid: he is a manager at the LA Amoeba.) And if it weren't for him, I wouldn't know about the old-school wonder that is the Funky 4 + 1, even though their meisterstück "That's the Joint" is sampled so prominently in one of my favorite Beastie Boys songs: "Shake Your Rump" from Paul's Boutique. Of course, crazy Japanese people already knew. So, the Funky 4 + 1 were the first hip-hop group to have a female MC, Sha Rock. Where is she now? (Seattle, and she could still school you.) They were the first hip-hop group to perform on Saturday Night Live (Feb. 14, 1981, with host Debbie Harry). They recorded the longest-ever hip-hop track, "Rappin' and Rockin' the House" (What? Longer than Sugarhilll Gang's "Rapper's Delight"? Yes.) One of the early members left to become one of Grandmaster Flash's Furious Five. Sha Rock teamed up with fellow female MC's Lisa Lee and Debbie Dee to form US Girls. They are the band playing in the party scene from 1984's Beat Street. You want to watch that now, don't you? You want some of that sweet sweet Rae Dawn Chong love, don't you? (OMG she was briefly married to Soul Man co-star C. Thomas Howell. Fuck NO! That is seventy kinds of wrong.) You can buy a collection of Funky 4 + 1 here. They never released a full-length LP and broke up in '82. The Bronx mourned.

Mo' Better Puddin'

I was going to respond in the comments thread to Puddin' Update, but I figured I'll just post. As far as the Moorcock goes, it turns out that while Warlord of the Air was pretty cool, the other two are increasingly lame. Airships Ahoy! But Elric is still cool, Doug, and you can re-read him in safety (glad to hear we inspired you on the he/she images! Post a link!).

Update on the chocolate pudding itself; I think it's actually too chocolatey for little people. Zoë was overwhelmed by the bittersweetness. Plus, it's got hella caffeine. So, if toddlers will be eating it, I recommend leaving out the melted chocolate and sticking with the cocoa. (If you do this, just put the butter in when you add the warmed milk).

And Carlos--as a fellow butterscotch lover, your wish is my command:

1/2 c cornstarch
3 c milk, divided
2 large eggs
2 egg yolks
2 t vanilla extract
3/4 c lightly packed dark brown sugar
3 T unsalted butter
1 T bourbon

1. In a medium bowl, whisk the cornstarch into 1/2 cup of the milk. Let rest 1 minute, then whisk again. Whisk in the eggs, yolks, and vanilla.

2. In a medium saucepan, over medium heat, bring the brown sugar, butter, bourbon, and remaining 2 1/2 c milk just to the simmer (barely wiggling in the pot).

3. Whisking constantly, slowly drizzle the hot liquid into the egg mixture. Return the mixture to the saucepan and, while constantly whiskin and scraping the bottom of the pan, cook till thickened and tiny bubbles boil up. Remove from heat and strain. (Let this get maybe slightly thicker than the chocolate, since no melted chocolate will be added, but it will set up a lot in the fridge).

4. Divide among bowls or not, put plastic wrap on the top, let cool, then refrigerate till chilled. Butterscotchy! The bourbon makes it extra good (so true of many things.)

Puddin' Update

So, Zoë and I read The Poky Little Puppy today, in which dessert is withheld from naughty puppies. One of these was chocolate pudding, and she begged me to make her some. Who can resist that? Now, I know you're all thinking, woman, your husband doesn't like pudding! Cut the man some slack! Well, he likes chocolate pudding OK, and anyway he ate almost that whole chocolate cake I made a few days ago, so don't cry for John, Argentina.

Shake Your Cinnabon

This week Marc Brazeau, that multimedia Wobbly of Blogonaut, invited me to participate in a group blog on the topic of this dsico bootleg of Missy Elliot's "Workit" and Blondie's "Heart of Glass." (Dsico has a blog now, too, BTW.) You can read the lyrics to "Workit" here, and those to "Heart of Glass" here.

Neutral Milk Hotel

Sort of sad article about a damn fine band. Is there such a thing as SBS: Syd Barrett Syndrome? (Via Ftrain, whose refinement and essential humanity are always as plain as the nose on your face.)

Crime, Corruption, Murder

Our new template is taken from an old paperback edition of a classic mystery novel. Anyone want to impress us by knowing which one?

Worse Than I Thought

This truly disturbing pedophilia scandal in Portugal, which appears to involve men in the highest positions in Portugese society, and vast swathes of corruption, is evidence that J.G. Ballard may be right about everything, and I may be a naïve optimist about the human character. More's the pity.

Black Comedy

"He discovered that, unbeknownst to him, his grandparents had made a conscious decision back in Louisiana to not be white." This story is comic, though the reporter obviously feels obliged to narrate it earnestly, hence not fully logically, hence with an extra layer of absurdity on top.

The man, his aunt, his mother, his son - will all be great characters in the movie. I'm seeing Tom Hanks as the lead. In the opening scene he is watching Steve Martin in "The Jerk", laughing innocently while awaiting the results of his DNA test.

UPDATE: OK, that's too cruel. I'm sorry. I'm sure the guy is undergoing a genuine identity crisis. That's understandable. It's not like I think he should be able to shrug it off as no big deal. But, dammit, how else are we going to see the last of that "one drop" rule if we don't fall down laughing at its sheer stupidity? Seriously, I hope the guy writes a really good book about his weird family - especially his grandparents. I want several chapters about them. I think grandpa needs to be played by Eminem in the movie.

Election Results

Gary Coleman beat Bill Simon by almost a two-to-one margin. That's undignified.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Buttless Chaps

Philo Hagen has a great collection of pix from the Folsom Street Fair. Singapore could really use some of that love. Where are my guys in buttless chaps? The free sex shows in the upper windows? The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence? I remember when I first went to the fair, what really blew my mind was that place where you can check your clothes. How great is that? And where, may I ask, am I supposed to wear that sailor costume with the short shorts, and the thigh-high boots around here? I fucking miss San Francisco.

Blogging Charlie Kaufman

If you, like me, think Charlie Kaufman is a bit of a genius, you might enjoy reading his screenplays. I just finished "A Scanner Darkly". It's objectively well done as an adaptation of the famous Philip K. Dick novel, but apparently is not going to be produced. I'm not sure how much I regret that. It seems to me this particular vein of sic-fi paranoia has been so influential that the original feels mined out.

Last night I watched "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", which I thought was pretty good. "Adaptation" is his masterpiece. If you haven't seen it, you should.

I've been sort of meaning to write about Kaufman and the Coen brothers, who obviously have a lot in common. Masters of the screwball tragedy.

Throwing Good Money After Bad

I obviously don't understand the intricacies of intelligence work. This article claims that the FBI purposely sent Hamas $5,000 to see what they would do with it. There would seem to be only a few areas in which armchair reasoning about general facts will get results as good as empirical investigation, but this is one of them. (Hand in air--ooh, ooh, me! Um, kill Jewish people?). Then in some sort of ultimate jujitsu, Hamas goes and does what? "Abu Shanab distributed the money to Palestinian orphanages and health care facilities, he [now disgruntled former informer Ellen] said." That's the late Abu Shanab. Right. No doubt. I'm always forgetting about Hamas' charity wing.

Philosophy of History

As Napoleon said, 'do not give me a general who is good, give me one who is lucky.' As Aristotle Amadopolos said, 'do you have any idea which button you pushed?' As Homer replied, 'Sure. Moe.' As Plato writes:

S: Therefore, if it isn’t through knowledge, the only alternative is that it is through true opinion that statesmen settle on the right course for their cities. As regards knowledge, they are no different from seers and prophets. They too say many true things when the divine inspiration strikes them, but they don’t actually know what they are talking about.

M: That is probably so.

All of which by way of saying: this Bellona Times post is good.

Fair and Balanced

I had a post by this title but I accidentally deleted it, and now it doesn't seem to be worth recreating. It was rather a blatherly thing - about Fox News; which I don't actually know enough about to be writing about; perhaps it's better off dead.

UPDATE: through the magic of RSS, the lost is found. (Thanks to the redoubtable Ogged.) I don't actually think it's of much interest - not one of my finer moments - but here it is:

Faith-based Spying?

A number of bloggers have noted with dismay the WSJ's indifference to the significance of the Plame story. (We'll tap Calpundit as exemplary in this regard.) And now this. According to the WSJ:

The larger point here is that intelligence is supposed to be a tool for elected policy makers, not a restraint on their action.

What does 'intelligence' mean in this context? The next sentence explains:

CIA analysts ... are supposed to be collectors of facts and interpreters of often fragmentary evidence.

What analysts produce is intelligence. Ergo, intelligence = reasonable understandings of relevant facts.

The WSJ thinks that policy makers should not be restrained in their actions by reasonable understandings of relevant facts?

OK, its funny that they said it; they don't really mean it. But what do they mean?

HINT: the answer isn't 'they are mad at Tenet and Wilson.' Because the bit I quoted is a statement about relations between the CIA and elected officials in an ideal world. Obviously in such a world Tenet does not head the CIA, and Wilson is not permitted to work for it (according to the WSJ).

That's NOMICS

This has been pissing me off for a while now. Various neologisms have been coined on the model of economics, such as genomics, and proteomics. In response to this, I learn from Corante, there is a new science journal called, simply, Omics. Something has gone really wrong here. Economics, as everyone probably knows, comes from the ancient Greek for household management (oikonomia), which comes from home (oikos) plus the word for use, custom or law (nomos). I was willing to let genomics slide, because genonomics is sort of awkward; they just combined the 'n' from the end of gene (originally from genos, "race, stock, kin", one imagines) and the one from the start of nomos. Whatever. But proteome? Omics? Let me tell you, people, there are a couple of things the journal Omics could be about. It could be all about shoulders. OK, shoulders taken together with the upper arm (from ômos). Does that sound very interesting? I don't think so. Well, it could be for those raw food faddists, maybe, all about things that are raw, uncooked, crude, or possibly even savage and cruel (as such a diet would no doubt prove -- from a different ômos). But instead it's going to be about people trying to find various general laws. So, could be called Nomics, please? Then again, perhaps it's best not to think too philologically about this, since you might reasonably conclude the journal would better be called Logics. The regularities exhibited by the proteome are not merely customary, when you get right down to it. Oh well. Omics is still a really stupid name for a journal.

I Was Online With Some Homies

This is the first song ever written about Friendster. (Or, at least, the first one that's available online. Someone's aimless roommate probably wrote one and played it on that couch they found on Guerrero. But that doesn't count.) So, it's necessarily the first post-electroclash, would-be Men Without Hats song about Friendster. And it kicks ass. Via Gawker.

He's Heading For That Abandoned City!

Can't think of a thing to say. OK, the man's divorce art was not his best work. Well, nor was that.

Does Literary Studies Know Which End Is Up?

Chun the Unavoidable has written something very, very funny. And then he has this less profound but more serious post in which he requests a Leiter report for lit journals:

I'm curious to know what people think the top names are in literary and cultural studies. There's a book published by the MLA and available as an on-line index that lists reported acceptance rates and the like, but the figures are self-reported and suspiciously round. I'm not sure that acceptance rate is the best measure of the quality of a journal to begin with, though it's certainly something you have to consider.

I second the motion. As you probably know, I've posted lately about a little thing I've written in which I mock and refute 'theory' silliness. The part of my indictment that makes me queasy is the bit where I generalize about how things are in literary studies. Such generalizations are always moderately hopeless. One tells a vaguely Hegelian tale in which it is not quite clear whether the characters are people, or ideas, or cultures, or periods of history. ('There was New Criticism, and then there was Theory, and then . . . ) Truth is: there are 25,000 or more teachers of college English/literary studies, educated over a fifty year period. The 'logic' of the progress of Spirit, under such circumstances, is tectonic at best. But I digress. Here's what's nagging me:

Can I Get You a Glass of Something?

People used to have distinctly different ideas about what constitutes alcoholism. I love Simenon's Maigret novels, and am always struck by the amount the superintendant can put away, often starting with a nice glass of marc at 7 am. This really takes the cake, though. From Maigret and the Headless Corpse, originally published in 1955:

(The coroner is reporting on his examination)

"...I would describe him as thick-set, stocky rather than tubby, muscular rather than fat, though he did put on a bit of weight toward the end. The condition of the liver suggests a steady drinker, but I wouldn't say he was an alcoholic. More probably the sort who likes a glass of something, white wine mostly, every hour or even every half hour. I did, in fact, find traces of white wine in the stomach."

Right. How much did a French alcoholic drink in 1955, then?

Coal In My Stocking

Careful what you wish for ...

Last night I was still in the 'this gets better and better' phase of the scandal, comparing all the Josh Marshall posts that await me every morning - since I live on the opposite side of the globe - to X-Mas stocking toys. That changed with the Larry Johnson interview. (Well, it's been building. One of those tipping point thingies.) I've now moved on to 'this gets worse and worse'. Call me naive, but I was happy for the Bushies to suffer some richly-deserved exposure and embarrassment for their eternally Machiavellian ways. I didn't think it would turn out to be quite this utterly terribly appalling. I didn't think the Bushies were actually indifferent to the importance of national security, WMD's, things like that.

Last week Tom Friedman was joking about how the Bushies think the War on Terror is a hobby. I thought that was funny, a bit exaggerated. Who knew it would turn out to be an exaggeration in the other direction? Well, we'll see ...