I have no time for this.

Right now, I am the southernmost person in the continental...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:49:57 -0500

Right now, I am the southernmost person in the continental United States. So there’s that.

Just arrived in Key West last night. In a little while...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:01:16 -0500

Just arrived in Key West last night. In a little while we’re visiting Southern Command’s task force here that monitors suspicious trafficking flights and boats coming out of Latin America.

More meetings tomorrow at Southcom headquarters in Miami. Which means I’m leaving Key West later today, after way less than 24 hours here. Which means I’m a fucking idiot.

Last April during the Summit of the Americas, President Barack Obama shook hands with...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:57:26 -0500

Last April during the Summit of the Americas, President Barack Obama shook hands with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Their greet-and-grip photo op had that street-smart flair — hooked thumbs, hip dude grins, brothers in populist cool.

“Hey,” the defenders of this particular example of self-proclaimed “smart diplomacy” argued, “the Summit’s going down in Trinidad, off Venezuela’s coast, man, so Barry’s in Hugo’s ‘hood, on his turf? And Barry O. — truly spherical — he’s resettin’ all these foreign relations damaged by that jackboot jive suit George Bush. Swallow it, you warmongerin’ stuffed shirts. High fivin’ Hugo is a step towards peace in our time — “

Ah, yes, peace in our time. Neville Chamberlain coined that phrase in 1938, after Munich, didn’t he?

Rightwinger Austin Bay on the rightwing “Strategy Page” website.

I reblog only because I love it when someone invents a straw man, and then uses the straw man’s own invented words against him. Aw, snap!

Our counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, explained in one...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:27:54 -0500

Our counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, explained in one PowerPoint slide. From Democracy Arsenal.

Percentage of Americans who believe in angels: 55 Percentage of Americans who believe in evolution:...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:05:00 -0500

Percentage of Americans who believe in angels: 55

Percentage of Americans who believe in evolution: 39

Percentage of Americans who believe in anthropogenic global warming: 36

Percentage of Americans who believe in ghosts: 34

Percentage of Americans who believe in UFOs: 34

- Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy.

This is my lunch. I’m about to eat it. I have only a few...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:22:13 -0500

This is my lunch. I’m about to eat it. I have only a few minutes till my next meeting, so I can’t go out anywhere. And our nearest cafeteria - the Brookings Institution 2 doors down - is closed because President Obama is giving a speech there.

That’s right: this pathetic lunch isn’t the latest product of my own poor life choices. It’s Obama’s fault.

Alert Glenn Beck.

"[F]or a Cuban blogger to get to the mythical Ithaca that is the Internet, they must first navigate..."

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:35:06 -0500

“

[F]or a Cuban blogger to get to the mythical Ithaca that is the Internet, they must first navigate an odyssey of obstacles. First, there is the scandalous cost of connecting, which in just a couple of hours can swallow an average monthly salary ($15 to $20 U.S.). Then there are the Paleolithic browsing speeds (usually less than 50 Kbps). And finally, of course, there is the ministry-level apartheid that prohibits Cuban nationals from opening a web account with ETECSA, the national telephone company—whereas any foreign resident can do so with a simple bureaucratic application accompanied by hard currency.

Nonetheless, whether through tricks or under-the-table payments, information in Cuba today travels with unprecedented speed. Some people use online computers at diplomatic compounds, like the U.S. Special Interest Section, and thus are attacked as “dissidents” by official spokespersons. Many occasionally log on from hotels to upload and download all their material for the week—or the month. (Sometimes Cuban nationals are allowed to do this openly, other times they’re banned from the cyber cafes at hotels that cater to foreigners; it’s always a mystery what will happen at any given hotel on any given day.) Others don’t upload or download their texts and images themselves, but send them instead, as e-mail attachments, to a collaborator who will do them the favor from abroad. This is also how many blogs publish in different languages.

”

- Good article in In These Times.

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-12-6)

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:08:01 -0500

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-12-6):

Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz

"After a stunned silence, Hollywood’s response to the war on terror became the dullest and most..."

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:50:08 -0500

“After a stunned silence, Hollywood’s response to the war on terror became the dullest and most exasperating sort imaginable: what I call the Dawk – dove plus hawk. These were liberal-patriot fence-straddlers: well-meaning movies that seemed co-scripted by Josh and Toby from The West Wing, such as Robert Redford’s Lions For Lambs (2007), Gavin Hood’s Rendition (2007), Peter Berg’s The Kingdom (2007) and Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana (2005). Actually, the best war on terror movie was the least anti-war and most pro-military: Kathryn Bigelow’s gut-wrenching The Hurt Locker (2008).”

- Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.

Am I the only one unable to understand Dean's farewell message at favrd?

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 09:08:49 -0500

Am I the only one unable to understand Dean's farewell message at favrd?:

Take-out menus? Finding “clever and funny things” by following sources I already follow? I’m clearly not smart enough to know what Dean is talking about.

I got my first-ever @ reply from the Favrd chicken a year ago. It was a revelation to find so much humor, and witty people, in the same place, and to know that my own posts weren’t going out into a vacuum.

Dean’s message seems to indicate that this thriving site has somehow managed to tie itself in horrible knots. I missed that completely; it seemed just as vital as it did the day I followed the link in that @ reply.

Well anyway. I wrote this back in March, and even without Favrd it will remain the way I hope to use my @adamisacson Twitter account. As an outlet.

Here’s an idea: when you think of something funny, take a moment out of your busy day and many responsibilities, and post it on Twitter. Use all the fucking hashtags you want if that’s your thing. ~~If people think it’s funny, then enjoy the reaction from total strangers on Favrd.~~ ~~If they don’t, at least~~ you wrote something that you found genuinely amusing.

Then go do something more important. Which is just about anything, really.

(327 characters)

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 09:28:36 -0500

“Sorry, kid. Crunch Berries are for tired, middle-aged grownups like Daddy with only small pleasures like this to look forward to amid physical decline, long hours of work and ever-more-imminent death. You’ve got no responsibilities and your whole life ahead of you. Eat your damn bran flakes.”

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Bolivia has elections on Sunday. This Evo Morales balloon is so...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:01:34 -0500

Bolivia has elections on Sunday. This Evo Morales balloon is so adorable, it’s hard to picture it fulminating against Yanqui imperialist terrorism.

Said the Gramophone's 75 best songs of 2009

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:41:17 -0500

Said the Gramophone's 75 best songs of 2009:

Some good ones here. Check it out before the RIAA seizes all of their assets.

Check out this website for an elite Bolivian police unit accused of many human rights abuses, including the shooting and beating of journalists last week

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:27:27 -0500

Check out this website for an elite Bolivian police unit accused of many human rights abuses, including the shooting and beating of journalists last week:

But make sure your computer’s volume is turned down.

We just put out a 44-page, 22,000-word report at work, about U.S.-aided counterinsurgency /...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:53:11 -0500

We just put out a 44-page, 22,000-word report at work, about U.S.-aided counterinsurgency / nation-building programs in Colombia. It’s the product of months of research (including some of my travel to Colombia earlier in the year) and many, many late nights of writing and editing.

There’s already an article about it on the website of Colombia’s largest newspaper.

It feels awfully good to actually finish something.

moltz: adamisacson: He said that he would not oppose war in general, but dumb wars. On that...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:00:17 -0500

moltz:

adamisacson:

He said that he would not oppose war in general, but dumb wars. On that basis, we went for him. And now he betrays us. Although he talked of a larger commitment to Afghanistan during his campaign, he has now officially adopted his very own war, one with all the disqualifications that he attacked in the Iraq engagement. This war too is a dumb one.

- Garry Wills in the NY Review of Books.

Bzzzt.

Sorry. Read that again in reverse. “He talked of a larger commitment to Afghanistan and now he betrays us.” It makes no sense. The man campaigned on it and he’s delivering. If Wills was too pie-in-the-sky to see that Obama was never the left wing firebrand many wanted him to be, that’s his problem. There are so many things to fault Obama for - terrible choices to lead his economic team, failing to be a vocal supporter of a public health care option, continuing some of the Bush administration’s terrible violations of civil liberties, failing to stand up for gays - but this one we voted for.

Respectfully disagree. Wills spells it out poorly, but Obama had two ways to go here:

The limited mission of dismantling al Qaeda and its support networks in Aghanistan and Pakistan, which he promised in the campaign, and which Biden continued to advocate in the internal debate; or
An ambitious nation-building / counterinsurgency mission determined to leave behind a functioning Afghan government, win the population’s support for Kabul, and expand the territory under Afghan government control.

(2) is what Obama chose, and I agree with Wills that it’s not what most Obama supporters signed up for.

Of those 2 choices, it’s easy to see why (2) is a far more desirable goal, and it certainly fits in with all the “smart power” and Petraeus-inspired “civilian surge” language that’s very much in fashion in the Beltway right now. But I just can’t see how you’re going to do that with only 30,000 more troops, and begin withdrawing in 18 months.

I did not think he would lose me so soon—sooner than Bill Clinton did. Like many people, I was...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:36:18 -0500

I did not think he would lose me so soon—sooner than Bill Clinton did. Like many people, I was deeply invested in the success of our first African-American president. I had written op-ed pieces and articles to support him in The New York Times and The New York Review of Books. My wife and I had maxed out in donations for him. Our children had been ardent for his cause.

Others I respect have given up on him before now. I can see why. His backtracking on the treatment of torture (and photographs of torture), his hesitations to give up on rendition, on detentions, on military commissions, and on signing statements, are disheartening continuations of George W. Bush’s heritage. But I kept hoping that he was using these concessions to buy leeway for his most important position, for the ground on which his presidential bid was predicated.

There was only one thing that brought him to the attention of the nation as a future president. It was opposition to the Iraq war. None of his serious rivals for the Democratic nomination had that credential—not Hillary Clinton, not Joseph Biden, not John Edwards. It set him apart. He put in clarion terms the truth about that war—that it was a dumb war, that it went after an enemy where he was not hiding, that it had no indigenous base of support, that it had no sensible goal and no foreseeable cutoff point.

He said that he would not oppose war in general, but dumb wars. On that basis, we went for him. And now he betrays us. Although he talked of a larger commitment to Afghanistan during his campaign, he has now officially adopted his very own war, one with all the disqualifications that he attacked in the Iraq engagement. This war too is a dumb one.

- Garry Wills in the NY Review of Books.

Just recorded an episode of “Agenda Washington” at the Univisión studios. If...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:24:47 -0500

Just recorded an episode of “Agenda Washington” at the Univisión studios. If you’re in the States and awake Sunday morning, tune in to hear me speaking Spanish with a New Jersey accent.

From Chinese television, here’s a CGI animation of Tiger...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:16:39 -0500

From Chinese television, here’s a CGI animation of Tiger Woods being chased by his golf club-wielding wife and crashing his car. Guaranteed to ruin your day.

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-11-29)

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:25:36 -0500

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-11-29):

Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz