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Thursday, Mar 27, 2003

looks like gibsons been mucking around the blogs (and his referrer log) lately. yesterday he gave shoutouts to agonist and salam pax, and im guessing today he is stealing links from hesiod, unless hes a drudger outright. in other news, this is funny.

"Umm Qasr is a town similar to Southampton", UK Defence Minister Geoff Hoon told the House of Commons yesterday. "He's either never been to Southampton, or he's never been to Umm Qasr", said one British soldier, informed of this while on patrol in Umm Qasr. Another added: "There's no beer, no prostitutes, and people are shooting at us. It's more like Portsmouth."

i thought i was going to be clever and say he had a case of Blogorrhea but apparently thats been appropriated for other maladies.



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am i josh or not?

has josh marshall come fool circle?

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Wednesday, Mar 26, 2003

cheers and jazeeras

wow. pbs just cut off a bbc world news feed about a report on al-jazeera. im guessing because they deemed the images too imflammatory. somebody forgot to tell the brits about our fair and balanced journalistic standards. meanwhile, the english version of al-jazeera online remains unreachable due to denial of service attacks.

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bread lines

"IS HALF A LOAF worse than none? That's the question posed by the surprise Senate vote yesterday in favor of a measure that would cap President Bush's proposed $726 billion tax cut at $350 billion, and the answer, apparently, is no. While this country is fighting a war of unknown duration, while overall tax revenue is down thanks to recession, while hundreds of thousands of people risk losing their health insurance because of state fiscal crises and proposed Medicaid cuts, it is irresponsible of Congress even to consider passing a tax cut worth $350 billion -- let alone $726 billion -- over 10 years, thereby creating a vast budget deficit for the next decade and possibly beyond."

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judtment of history

"What is missing in recent American commentary is not so much an appreciation of history—there has been too much of that, with "Munich" invoked at every turn. What is lacking is a sense of the tragic. If the US has had such a long run of foreign policy successes in the modern age, it is in large measure because, as Dean Acheson once put it, "we were fortunate in our opponents." This may not last. We were also fortunate in our leaders. This has certainly not lasted. There is much confident talk of the coming American century; but one hundred years ago many thought it was Germany that held the keys to the new era—and they had good reasons for thinking it. As Raymond Aron once remarked, the twentieth century could have been the German century."

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pnac sack

another pnac article from asia times.

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shock tropes

"The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation"

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watch tower

couple of warblogging resources --inteldump and yahoos list of blogs of warwatchers.

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Tuesday, Mar 25, 2003

mustard gas

"THE ONLY THING FRENCH ABOUT FRENCH’S® MUSTARD IS THE NAME!"

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wonder bread

"This plan, in the form of a budget resolution tied to a firm tax-cut mandate, is moving forward on Capitol Hill even as lawmakers' boilerplate speeches resound with calls for shared wartime sacrifice by all Americans. How an average $90,000 tax cut for each millionaire counts as sacrifice is only one of many unexplained mysteries as Republican leaders fiercely protect President Bush's second wave of tax cuts. The gallant troops in Iraq who are being invoked daily in speeches by members of Congress might be interested to know that the array of cuts includes an estimated $14 billion reduction in military veterans' programs."

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