Did I mention...

...that I am thoroughly in love with Leslie Feist?

If you have not heard her cover of Ron Sexsmith's Secret Heart, I highly recommend it.

If you ever read this, Leslie, I would love to talk riffs and music and whatever the hell you want to talk about, sometime. But, mostly, I'd just love to know what those sexy little lips of yours feel like.

A little decency and wisdom from Bill Bradley

Andrew Sullivan offers us this wise observation by the last really decent man fucked over by the Clintons.

"The bigger the lie, the better the chance they think they’ve got. That’s been their whole approach. She’s going to lose a whole generation of people who got involved in politics believing it could be something different,"

- Bill Bradley on the Clintons.

What happens to people that they start to think about the world in this way? What happens to us to that we get so wrapped up in our own bullshit about ourselves that we'll sacrafice any honest principle in the name of that bullshit, and, in Hillary Clinton's case, in the name of power?

Who was the original guy, obsessed with power and with force as some kind of governing philosophy, who reasoned that the Big Lie was the one most likely to be believed and secure power? I bet you know. If you don't, you should.

Here's his psychological profile from the U.S. Office of Strategic Services:

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it. [3]"

What happens in the hearts of people who lose track of themselves like this?

How incredibly sad for us. Especially for folks like Ms. Clinton. But, really, for all of us.

War is not the answer

Unless everyone is as big an asshole as you are.



Been there. Done that.

That pretty much sums it up. A bunch of fuckin' assholes.

I'm pretty sure we could do better.

Getting a little more honest with ourselves might help.

Holy shit

NY Gov Spitzer admits links to prostitution ring

I think this is the first time in my life that I have had some level of sympathy for Elliot Spitzer, who has otherwise seemed like an A-one asshole to me.

I would say live by the sword, die by the sword. Except I don't believe in most of the swords Elliot has either lived or died by. And I actually feel kind of sorry for the guy. I've made my share of mistakes in my life. So I know what it's like to be an asshole.

And his case certainly reflects the bankruptcy of regarding the law as a more solid foundation for determining good and bad in the world than it really is.

You know what? There has got to be hope in this world full of assholes. Because we're the only ones we got. And its the whole lot of us. No matter how much we may bullshit otherwise on this one.

Let's hope people cut this guy some slack.

How low can we go?

The era of ugly campaigning must come to an end.

Righteous clamor

Samantha Powers and Morton Abramowitz, of the Century Foundation, seem to have a confidence in "righteous clamor" that I lack.

A Broken System

From their column:

"The international system is broken, at least when it comes to Africa. The Darfur death toll may as yet pale when compared with Rwanda's, but if 800,000 Darfurians were to be murdered next week, neither the states individually nor the Security Council as a whole would be prepared to muster a speedy and robust response. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a crisis in Africa -- no matter how heavy the prospective death toll -- that would generate the consensus needed not merely to feed civilians but to save them.

There is a moral and political void in the world when it comes to coping with catastrophes in Africa -- a void that will not be filled by reforming the Security Council. The problem is the states that make up the council. Darfur shows that dedicated advocacy can move democracies to denounce atrocities and provide generous humanitarian help. What the earnest advocacy rarely does is propel the powerful to stop the killing. For that to happen, righteous clamor must reach a high enough pitch that politicians in democratic states are persuaded to do a difficult thing: take domestic political risks in pursuit of polices that do not serve their immediate interests, that can be financially costly and that provide no clear - cut exit strategies."

Part of this problem is political will. But, largely, this is a problem of an American government and American people that have now been burned by humanitarian adventures in foreign lands and a world community more gun-shy for the whole experience. The whole adventure, as illustrated by the coordination of the U.N. intervention in Lebanon, was already going to be a logistical nightmare. When people have to put the lives of their countrymen and women on the line, they need some assurances that it's not a suicide mission, that others are going to shoulder the burden with them, and that the people being saved are going to be somewhat grateful and support their efforts rather than the protracted mess we face in Iraq, today.

The truth is that folks of the West always want their cake and eat it too. Iraq is a terrible war for oil, liberals argue, but trust us when we say that intervening in Sudan is all about the people.

Yeah, cynicism kind of cuts both ways. You spend 5 years tearing down the motivations of people intervening in Iraq, kind of puts you in a tough spot when you're looking for support on Sudan.

I guess that's what really fucks us up in the West.

We spend so much time taking for granted each other and our mutual efforts necessary to tackle important problems like Iraq and Sudan, that when we fuck it all up with all of our bullshitting and pressuring and manipulating and otherwise fucking each other over, we look up from all of that dust and say stupidly to ourselves:

"Why doesn't anyone want to help me?"

Maybe it's because we're such fuckin' assholes, you think?

Yeah, I think.

And being assholes is not something that righteous clamor is going to get us over.

Getting honest with ourselves is the only real option.

Either that or get used to genocide, assholes. In fact, look forward to one once you pull our troops out of Iraq, righteous clamoring ones.

Your choice.

Oh the nobility of it all. It just about breaks my heart.

I'm so sorry

I am so tired of the bullshit apologies meant to cover for the frail, bullshit feelings of some weak-hearted bully trying to be the fuckin' Commander-in-Chief, for goodness fuckin' sakes. If this is some kind of bullshit tactic by the Obama campaign to generate sympathy, I'm going to join a nunnery.

Hillary Clinton is both that tough and that frail, apparently.

Or that just that full of shit.

I vote for full of shit.

It's the only consisent explanation given the entirety of her campaign. Oh, and we're electing her because George Bush is such a big fuckin' liar, remember?

Can I ask something here?

Is there any way that I could elect someone who isn't full of shit to be President of the United States?

Oh, wait, there is. I could elect Barack Obama or John McCain. And even then, I have to deal with a whole other load of horse manure, just less of it.

As it turns out, if you take Hillary's campaign seriously, there really is only one other alternative to Mr. Obama. And it isn't Hillary Clinton.

You know why this process is so difficult? Because we're such fuckin' assholes. Who can't have an honest fuckin' conversation if it fuckin' hit us in our big fuckin' heads. And why can't we have an honest conversation? Because we're such fuckin' assholes to one another. And why won't we stop being such fuckin' assholes? Because we keep pretending like the world will fall apart if we start getting more honest and stop being such fuckin' assholes.

And Hillary Clinton is our queen.

The question is, will we be so fuckin' stupid to make her our President?