progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital
Henny Youngman famously said that when he read about the evils of drinking he gave up reading.
That would explain Christopher Hitchens. You’d pretty much have to be both drunk and ignorant to support Bushie the way Hitchens does. He stretches his jaw-dropping cluelessness to the point of incredibility, however, in this interview with Hugh “Hack” Hewitt: (emphasis mine)
HH: Yeah. What is going here? Is it an attempt to write the end of the story before the story’s even remotely close to being over?
CH: Sean Wilentz is a guy…actually, he is a good historian, and some of his work on the founding, and on the revolution, especially a book called Chance Democratic, is very good. But I remember him appearing before the House Committee on Impeachment. They were taking advice on what the law and history of impeachment were, and giving testimony that so misled and annoyed them, that actually, many people think that they made them decide to vote for impeachment. By the way, I can’t say that I think that Mr. Bush at his worst is as bad as President Clinton was. That’s eight years down the American drain right there. The first eight, those post-Cold War years, thrown away by a narcissist and a crook. For the nomination of worst ever president, I can’t, I really, though I have many, many quarrels with President Bush, I cannot believe that people would say he was worse than Mr. Nixon or Mr. Carter, just to stay in modern times…or Kennedy.
HH: A line, though he writes, he writes, “History may ultimately hold Bush in the greatest contempt for expanding the powers of the presidency beyond the limits laid down by the U.S. Constitution.” That’s just ignorant of Constitutional law, but I do believe that’s part of the writ that is running against Bush at this point by Joe Klein and Sean Wilentz.
CH: I think Bush, as a matter of fact, did flirt with that with the NSA stuff, because he’s asking for an extraordinary power that you’d have to give to all other presidents, too, which is why I don’t like it. But you and I would probably have to differ about that.
HH: Yes.
Hitchens actually believes that people think that Clinton, much less Kennedy was a worse president than Bush? He feels okay about Bush spying on citizens, but wouldn’t support that for presidents in general? WTF?
I’ll just add that Steven Wright once observed: “24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?”
What Steven Wright might call a coincidence, Hitchens would call a lifestyle choice.
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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.
95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
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On a muggy Florida evening in 2008, I meet Iraq War veteran Forrest Fogarty in the Winghouse, a little bar-restaurant on the outskirts of Tampa, his favorite hangout. [Link]
The Labor Department announced this morning that new applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 542,000 last week. It also revised the figure from the previous week down to 515,000. [Link]
A team from IBM has spent the past several years constructing a virtual-world version of China's Forbidden City. [Link]
Following confirmation that Google intends to open its virtual world Lively to games developers, creative director Kevin Hanna has revealed the long-term goal is for the service to become an online games platform. [Link]
CHIBA, Japan (AP) -- Video game rivals Sony and Microsoft are going head-to-head in virtual worlds for their home consoles later this year. [Link]
a) He was paid by Dick Cheney's henchwoman Mary Matalin to write a book on Obama [Link]
One bunch of guys is getting up and saying, "we hafta." Another bunch of guys is getting up and saying, "nuh-uh." [Link]
To be able to say to folks, "You can keep what you have" is a big political selling point. [Link]
Here, based on 16 years experience watching Bill Clinton campaign — and interviews with a half-dozen veterans of his political teams — is a reasonably safe bet about his campaign advice to Barack Obama: [Link]
WASHINGTON — Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties improperly engaged in sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said Wednesday. [Link]
We are going to have a new administration. Do we want these policies continued or not? [Link]
You can try Counter Culture coffees at: - Baked and Wired, 1052 Thomas Jefferson St. NW, 202-333-2500; www.bakedandwired.com [Link]
In sum, we concluded that the evidence showed that Goodling violated both federal law and Department policy, and therefore committed misconduct... [Link]
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April 21st, 2006 at 3:55 pm
Not to stray too far into the arena of psycho babble (ok, maybe i will), but I think Hitchen’s apoplectia (is that a word?) over all things William Jefferson has more than a shadow of projection to it!
April 23rd, 2006 at 12:37 pm
“Henny Young”?
April 23rd, 2006 at 2:40 pm
You don’t remember Henny Young, half-cousin to Henny Youngman and Carl Jung? Had to be one of the funniest metaphysical stand-up comics ever.