Category Archives: politics

The Pentagon Papers and Rumsfeldian song

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A very sobering article titled The Pentagon Papers. An insiders view of the war planning and unprecedented overhauling of institutional knowledge within the intelligence and defense parts of the administration. By Karen Kwiatkowski on Salon.com

To balance off that outrageousness, there was lighter news recently on NPR, last year’s book The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, which my mother bought me, but enjoyed so much never gave to me, has been set to music. Any you must hear it!

One of the classic Rumdfeldianisms below. Jon Stewart had fun with it when it happened. And BBC-4’s great collection of Rumsfeld Soundbites of course has the original quote.

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

Department of Defense news briefing
Feb. 12, 2002

the theme to both: we don’t know,
-b

liberal media

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On Meet the Press, Bob Novac whines about the liberal media making “the conservatives” uphappy with George W’s unconservativity.

The host says, “Bob Novac, with his syndicated column,… his own TV show,… and it’s the liberal media.”

I smiled.

-b

Mallard Fillmore

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Dear Diary,
Today, er… i mean Wednesday,… Mallard Fillmore actually hinted that President George W. Bush is perhaps something less than an entirely capable first executive. I would have gone outside to see if the world had stopped spinning about its axis, but Bruce Tinsley was unable to pull the trigger without making it a joke about Democratic fiscal irresponsibility.

Mallard Filmore Feb 25 2004
As if W wasn’t the most fiscally irresponsible president we’ve ever had. At least when Democrats are spending more (on social services), they’re also raising taxes.

Up may be down, but the world is still spinning.

-b

Bill White’s victory party

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a week ago saturday (election day), there was a small snippit about it in today’s City & State section (full story)

But in a nod to his name and his race — thought to be a liability before he managed to win supporters from Houston’s three main ethnic groups — the campaign cranked up an unlikely song: Wild Cherry’s Play That Funky Music (White Boy).

Andrea Greer was a coordinator of the gathering and lobbied against using this song (I agree with her), but she was outvoted.

The Dec. 6 gala had all the makings of the party of the year. The crowd wore everything from dashikis to feather boas, business suits to baseball caps. The unifying elements were the Bill White-heads — paper hats, of sorts, that mocked White’s bald head.Music was provided by the hip local lounge band The El Orbits, who eschewed the White-heads in favor of Santa hats.

-b

Voting: Do It, and Vote NO

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We (in Texas) have an off-cycle election Saturday.

22 Texas Constitutional amendments.

My Theory on Amendments. Vote NO.  Unless you’ve heard a lot of reasoned debate of the issue and agree to the yes vote, vote NO.  The Texas constitution is ridiculous. Why else would be be voting on 22 issues (only three you’ve likely heard of IF you’ve been paying attention).

This time particularly, vote NO on 12.  It’s horribly worded and will do ill if passed. The only others I’ve heard discussed were 6 and 16, and they couldn’t reasonably explain what they mean.   (They are both about reverse mortgages, which are already legal in Texas, but they “add something special”) The discussion I heard about them was unintelligible (and I’m a smart guy).   So, vote NO.

If you haven’t figured my opinion yet,

Vote NO

(and then get on with your saturday)
-b