meta-roj

it sounds good when you say it out loud, doesn’t it?

president george w. bush [2006.01.10]

Compromise and consensus and power sharing are the only path to national unity and lasting democracy

tyranny on the home front while we bomb democracy into those silly foreigners.

an interesting statement that floated into my brain…

Bush signs bills but keeps his fingers crossed [btc news]

Bush doesn’t veto bills because in his view, he doesn’t have to; he can simply ignore the ones he doesn’t like.

congress makes laws, but they only apply to the executive branch when they are convenient. and i only get access to the courts if i’m not designated an unlawful combatant or shipped offshore to a camp. from the “conservative” party, no less. i’m sure the people that wrote the constitution felt that it was more of a guideline than a rule.

i just have to nod to jaron for the use of brobdingnagian in an essay.

hopefully that’s enough to focus your valuable attention over there for a few moments…

myspace got popular, and then it got bought, and now, apparently, it’s being pruned by the new owners…

Get out of MySpace, bloggers rage at Murdoch [independent, 8 jan 2006]

The 38 million subscribers to MySpace, which News Corp bought for $629m (£355m) last July, discovered that when they wrote to each other about rival video-swapping site YouTube, the words were automatically deleted, and attempts to download video images from YouTube led to blank screens.

…

A spokesman for MySpace said it would not explain how the blocking of YouTube came about, nor how it was resolved, nor whether in future it would continue to block links to rival websites or censor messages between MySpace customers.

sounds like one of those determinism things to me.

since i can’t quote without permission, i’ll just cut to the simple math (someone else has done the hard math).

an economist with some street cred among economists has published an estimate of the cost of war in iraq as high as $2 trillion.

visiting the population clock gives a current us population of 297, 869, 425 (give or take).

$2,000,000,000,000 / 297,869,425 = $6714 and change.

that is not entirely fair, since a good portion of the cost is being borne by non-us citizens, and i’m using the high estimate from the paper as opposed to the low estimate.

but, let’s put this in an historical context…

White House Cuts Estimate of Cost of War With Iraq[NY Times via The Iraq Foundation, 2 jan, 2003]

The administration’s top budget official estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion

in case you’re keeping track of the zeroes, that’s a little more than 33 times the white house estimate. 16 if you’re feeling conservative.

so much for the end-of-season

les paul, hangin’ with vh1

i don’t care what they do, just come on up [to the] stage and we’ll do the best we can and make them a star

walt whitman, leaves of grass

That you are here-that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

i can’t take any credit for this one, but it’s a brilliant idea…

Read it here first: The Multiplex Under Siege [the big picture, barry ritholtz]

Here’s my gift to the theater owners: Before each movie, stage some guerilla theater. Roll a fake preview clip, and then 30 seconds into it, have an audience plant cell phone ring LOUDLY in the theater. Stop the clip, partially raise the house lights, and then put a spotlight on the offender. Have two ushers confront the guy out — he’s wearing makeup and a corny outfit (i.e, zoot suit), so it looks real campy — but have the goons drag him out, kicking and screaming. It should be both theatrical and real looking.

People would talk about this for months.

and i know just the right kind of people to do it….

when you’re ready, mr. multiplex, have your people call my people.

or, to put it another way….

Fear destroys what bin Laden could not [miami herald, 2005.12.26]

I evidently have a lot poorer insight regarding America’s character than I once believed, because I would have expected such actions to provoke — speaking metaphorically now — mobs with pitchforks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threat could send this country into spasms of despair and fright so profound that we’d follow a leader who considers the law a nuisance and perfidy a privilege.

i, too, have no insight into america’s character.