Crush 'em
Several people have been getting under my skin lately. Some of 'em I daren't mention in a public forum (even one as vastly ignored as this) but here are a couple I will:
1. My boss. Look, I understand that I'm underemployed and that nothing I'll ever be asked to do here requires my copious skill, talent, and intelligence. But for fuck's sake, man -- you're paying me close to 30 grand a year. Get someone with less real work on his plate to do your fucking customer callbacks! Hire a frickin' temp! Quit wasting my time with this bullshit.
2. Gregg Easterbrook. First thing: I like reading Gregg's columns in TNR, because we only agree about half the time. He has a way of keeping me honest, and bringing up stuff I hadn't considered. But when he's wrong about shit, he's really wrong.
Lately he's been bitching about how it's so [Church Lady voice] conveeeeeenient that Richard Clarke is suddenly coming off all anti-Iraq war, when -- and here's the direct quote, so you can see how squirrelly his logic is: Clarke...should have resigned from the National Security Council before the attack began [which he did] and issued public criticism. Had the president's own chief terrorism adviser resigned and publicly warned against the Iraq attack, this might have had tremendous impact on U.S. policy.
(Emphasis above is mine.)
What exactly are you smoking, Easterbrook? Considering that the entire premise of Clarke's book (and, to be fair, my raging anti-Bush bias) is that the Bushies were going into Iraq no matter who said what, how exactly would Clarke's criticisms have had any effect on U.S. policy?
Look at the record of how Bush's administration deals with those who stray from the talking points. Those that work for him are publicly slapped down. Those that don't work for him, but have friends who do, get assaulted on that front. And those who never worked for him are by turns ignored and/or savaged by the right-wing media (and, until lately, the mainstream media too.) What they don't do is change their minds about anything, no matter who is telling them or what they're saying.
Oh, but since Mr. Clarke now has a book to push (which he wanted to publish back in December, but the slow readers at the White House held it up), and the political winds have shifted, it's somehow dishonest of him to come forward? What the gibbering fuck?! When you have something important to say about a war that's coming no matter what happens, why the hell shouldn't you wait until the administration that prosecuted it is vulnerable enough -- through its own sheer hubris and fatuous hopes -- for those words to have the maximum impact?
There was no chance of preventing the march to Gulf War II, and if anybody knew that, it was Clarke. (And so, by the way, does Easterbrook. He's not an idiot, but he was in favor of the Iraq war for what counts as "good and liberal reasons" on TNR, so he feels the need to thread the needle between defending the war and defending the President.) So Clarke had one bullet in his gun. He waited for an appropriate time to use it, instead of firing wildly into the air as soon as he'd cleared out his desk. Good for him.
--- Ajax.
1. My boss. Look, I understand that I'm underemployed and that nothing I'll ever be asked to do here requires my copious skill, talent, and intelligence. But for fuck's sake, man -- you're paying me close to 30 grand a year. Get someone with less real work on his plate to do your fucking customer callbacks! Hire a frickin' temp! Quit wasting my time with this bullshit.
2. Gregg Easterbrook. First thing: I like reading Gregg's columns in TNR, because we only agree about half the time. He has a way of keeping me honest, and bringing up stuff I hadn't considered. But when he's wrong about shit, he's really wrong.
Lately he's been bitching about how it's so [Church Lady voice] conveeeeeenient that Richard Clarke is suddenly coming off all anti-Iraq war, when -- and here's the direct quote, so you can see how squirrelly his logic is: Clarke...should have resigned from the National Security Council before the attack began [which he did] and issued public criticism. Had the president's own chief terrorism adviser resigned and publicly warned against the Iraq attack, this might have had tremendous impact on U.S. policy.
(Emphasis above is mine.)
What exactly are you smoking, Easterbrook? Considering that the entire premise of Clarke's book (and, to be fair, my raging anti-Bush bias) is that the Bushies were going into Iraq no matter who said what, how exactly would Clarke's criticisms have had any effect on U.S. policy?
Look at the record of how Bush's administration deals with those who stray from the talking points. Those that work for him are publicly slapped down. Those that don't work for him, but have friends who do, get assaulted on that front. And those who never worked for him are by turns ignored and/or savaged by the right-wing media (and, until lately, the mainstream media too.) What they don't do is change their minds about anything, no matter who is telling them or what they're saying.
Oh, but since Mr. Clarke now has a book to push (which he wanted to publish back in December, but the slow readers at the White House held it up), and the political winds have shifted, it's somehow dishonest of him to come forward? What the gibbering fuck?! When you have something important to say about a war that's coming no matter what happens, why the hell shouldn't you wait until the administration that prosecuted it is vulnerable enough -- through its own sheer hubris and fatuous hopes -- for those words to have the maximum impact?
There was no chance of preventing the march to Gulf War II, and if anybody knew that, it was Clarke. (And so, by the way, does Easterbrook. He's not an idiot, but he was in favor of the Iraq war for what counts as "good and liberal reasons" on TNR, so he feels the need to thread the needle between defending the war and defending the President.) So Clarke had one bullet in his gun. He waited for an appropriate time to use it, instead of firing wildly into the air as soon as he'd cleared out his desk. Good for him.
--- Ajax.