I thought Wednesday afternoon about quick-posting about Obama's nomination of an ultra-cracker lawyer to be a U.S. attorney in Utah, then thought no (because yawn) and no (because I've these sillyass self-prescribing codes of blogging, and bleggalfuck me), but remembered the above story when I read this:
Mr. Obama and his chief of staff, William M. Daley, have been urging Mr. Geithner to stay, administration officials say, not only for continuity when the economy has weakened and to avoid an all-but-certain confirmation fight in the Senate over a successor, but also because Mr. Obama has developed a close rapport with Mr. Geithner...
I've said this before but here is my dream scenario: it's April 1, 2012, John Roberts has just been applesauced by a bus. Who does Obama nominate to replace him?
The remaining Obama faithful I know still play the SCOTUS card on me. They say going into the 2008 election I was saying SCOTUS is the most important reason for voting for Obama, and true that. If they say Sotomayor and Kagan are representative acts of Obama's true heart and I now say they were free squares on a BINGO card that cost Obama no capital, that doesn't deny that Obama made two choices to the left of anyone John McCain presumably would have chosen by the American political spectrum metrics I held as true in 2008. I've moved the goalposts, not Obama or Obama's faithful. Fair enough.
Wouldn't it be wonderful, in an election year America with Obama's political survival at stake in an America seven months shittier and seven months angrier and seven months crazier than today, to make that motherfucker make that choice?
For the record, I say he nominates Zombie Roberts.
Daily Gaddis:
In the fragment of sky which the buildings permitted above him flags were being lowered. For the full day they had floated, as much as the rain would allow, heraldic devices of marvelous power, far more impressive than a fiery cross or the six balls of the Medici. A great bell signaled a telephone company which was omnipotent. Three strokes of white lightening on a blue ground hailed an electric company which controlled the allegiances of an office force equal to the medieval duchy on Mantua. The whole scene was lit by electricity, escaping statically in incandescent bulbs and, in splendidly colored fluidity adding a not of metaphysical (Bergsonian) hilarity to the air or well-curbed excitement, in tubes of glass cleverly contorted to spell out cacophonous syllables of words from a coined language, and names spawned in the estaminets of Antwerp. Any natural light which fell in from the sky, pale in impotence, was charitably neglected; but that sky, as has been noted, was a safe distance away.
- On the above linked article on Geithner.
- A hybrid demotic-oligarchy.
- Our way to fall.
- Run, Hillary Run! Not a fucking chance, though I could see Obama throwing Biden away so HRC on the ticket as VPOTUS.
- There will be no defense cuts.
- Cratering.
- Cures.
- Six reasons the media hides the true cost of war includes this: Fourth, the political establishment, including the Democratic leadership, would not touch this issue, and the news media was left without an opposition voice. The implication of so many deaths, a large fraction by the hands of U.S. soldiers, was politically a third rail. For many reasons—not least the hunger for heroes in the aftermath of 9/11—the troops have been accorded nearly unprecedented adulation, and such heroes cannot be accused of excessive use of force. So politicians have steered clear, and the rare one who did raise a question, such as the late, pro-military congressman John Murtha, were mercilessly attacked.
- Obedience for dummies.
- Stockholm syndrome.
- Obama Comedy Hour.
- America's non-political political system.
- You know, no matter how much we're aware of the reasons for baiting motherfucking crackers, that doesn't change the reality that crackers are motherfuckers.
- Pastor Sanctimonious says, without a wink of irony: This use of religion in politics is a source of cynicism. It should raise alarms when the views of the Almighty conveniently match our most urgent political needs. A faith that conforms exactly to the contours of a political ideology has lost its independence. Churches become clubs of the politically like-minded. Political dialogue suffers, since opponents are viewed as heretics.
- Atheism and anarchism.
- Lateral time.
- The human face of type.
- Author venn diagram. Look where Gaddis is. Look where Joyce is. I read The Dead (and loved it) within the past year to help Planet with a paper, I hadn't thought of rereading Joyce before then in fifteen years before then, I haven't thought about rereading Joyce since. (I did a Joyce class with a great guy, shitty teacher - yes, sssh, you two say the same thing, he doesn't read this and I've told him anyway - who killed my love of Dubliners, and...)
- Nuclear Power (yes please).
WAR
Arthur Rimbaud
Translated by John Ashbery
In childhood, certain skies focused my seeing: all characters modulated my features. Phenomena were set in motion. -- Now, the eternal inflection of moments and the infinity of mathematics chase me across this world where I undergo every civil success, respected by strange childhood and abnormally large affections. -- I dream of a War of righteousness or force, whose logic will be quite unexpected.
It's as simple as a musical phrase.
