Came across this moment of synchronicity on the Washington Post’s website this morning, and just had to capture it for posterity:
When the story matches the ad…
Came across this moment of synchronicity on the Washington Post’s website this morning, and just had to capture it for posterity:
Airlines mix up luggage all the time, especially when said luggage is a nondescript black duffle bag. I returned from my Laotian vacation the other day, all rested and tanned. On the long subway ride home from SFO, I got bored, so I opened my duffle bag in search of my i-Pod. I was surprised to find, instead, what’s apparently a manuscript for some sort of academic journal. This is of no use to me. A manuscript can’t play Gnarles Barkley’s “Crazy,” or Shuggie Otis’s “Sweet Thang” while I close my eyes and pretend that’s only water on the seat across from me. I want my i-Pod back. I couldn’t find an address or phone number anywhere in this duffle bag, so I’ll post an excerpt from the manuscript here. If you recognize yourself as the author of this treatise, please contact me and I’ll return the bag to you in exchange for my i-Pod shuffle.
Histury Lessens, an academick paper I have learned as a nation, many lessens from the war in Vietnam. Chief amonst them are that we succeed in wars, unless we quit. Also chief amongst them are that Vietnam was worth fighting because if we had cut and run there, well then the dominoe effect tells you the scourge of Communism would have swept across the globe, hurting folks’ economies. Free markets everywhere would fall under the knuckles of of those who hate freedom.The first casualties of a cut and run policy are business and initiative. And I told the Vietnaminians that at their Stock Exchange today. At a lunch with a bunch of foreign investors, I told every businessman there that if America had only stayed in Vietnam and kept our promise to help them fight for freedom, maybe they would know the sweet love of entrepreneurialship. At the airport when I was leaving to go to Indonesia, I saw folks handing each other business cards and talking on cell phones. I think they got my message.And it made me muse back to the 1970s, when I was a fighter pilot during the war protecting our homefront: How much faster would they have gotten my message if we hadn’t given up on that war? And how many freedom-loving Vietnaminian women and children would be alive and safe today if we were still there to this day, shooting into the jungles and rice pattees to keep Vietnam safe for freedom?And how many nations today would be free and libertied if we hadn’t cut and runned and Vietnam hadn’t become the homebase from where Communism spread across the world and snuffed out the flame of freedom, just as Rummy and Dick and other foresighted people said it would back in the ’70s? And that is why we must stay in Iraq indefinitely, so that what happened to Vietnam and Asia in the decades since we cut and runned, would never happen to Iraq and the Middle East. For me, it’s a lessen lurned.
I miss my Shuffle, so whoever you are, I hope you see this.In a totally unrelated subject, Keith Olberman gave another interesting “special comment” the other day:
Occasionally, Candorville features Reverend Wilfred, a Black minister who suddenly became a firebrand Republican Bush-endorser after receiving half a million dollars from the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. As time goes on, and more evidence emerges to corroborate what Candorville has been saying since 2004, fewer and fewer people write to me to challenge the character. In the latest in the recent parade of unsurprising surprises, a new book by a White House insider details how the Bush White House manipulated and mocked religious conservatives and used the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives as a political machine. Keith Olberman covers the book, in two parts.Part One
Part Two
There are times when being right makes you the happiest person in the world, and then there are the times it makes you crap your pants. Guess which one of those times this is. I want every angry, slogan-spouting flag-waiver who’s ever written in ordering me to “leave the President alone, he’s making us safer” to take a second, put down your copy of the National Review (the one with the Sean Hannity centerfold), and write to me again. Write to me and explain why our intelligence agencies now say the Iraq occupation has increased the threat of terror.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology. The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article, and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document. The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts. These officials discussed some of the document’s general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified.Officials with knowledge of the intelligence estimate said it avoided specific judgments about the likelihood that terrorists would once again strike on United States soil. The relationship between the Iraq war and terrorism, and the question of whether the United States is safer, have been subjects of persistent debate since the war began in 2003.National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.More…
Will Ferrell‘s got nothing on this Bush impersonator. It is an impersonator, right? Please tell me this is a joke:
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