Put this on my fucking tombstone: "It's not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It's because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live."
I'm going to append this righteously eviscerating account of Rumsfeld the public figure with a gentler account per my dad of the man in retirement...at least compared to Dick Cheney.
This involves Chicken Hawks in retirement on the Eastern Shore, lets go.
So Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld both had homes ~St. Michaels MD, which is about 2 hrs away from DC, and where my Dad also lived. (Paul Wolfowitz, also nearby. And David Bradley! But anyway.)
Rumsfeld vs Cheney as public figures, I defer to Packer and others.
Rumsfeld vs Cheney as private neighbors? No fucking contest. Cheney was seen as a total monster, Rumsfeld as an ok guy. (To be clear, my dad reviled both their politics.)
There is no one I’d rather read a scathing obit of Rumsfeld than from George Packer—one of the best chroniclers of the Iraq War—and this does not disappoint. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
“ Wherever the government contemplated a wrong turn, Rumsfeld was there first with his hard smile—squinting, mocking the cautious, shoving his country deeper into a hole. His fatal judgment was equaled only by his absolute self-assurance. He lacked the courage to doubt himself. “
“Rumsfeld started being wrong within hours of the attacks and never stopped. He argued that the attacks proved the need for the missile-defense shield that he’d long advocated. He thought that the American war in Afghanistan meant the end of the Taliban….”
2/ Deep in the source credits comes this: "Axios created five groups of publishers based on assessments of their news bias, in consultation with news bias ranking service NewsGuard." But NewsGuard specifically categorizes us as "left-leaning", not "far left"
3/ I mean, I'd quibble with the one ding Newsguard gave us but if Axios is going to use their sorting methodology, then you don't get to arbitrarily reassign us to "far left" just because it better fits your bullet points thesis.
Yes, the obvious intoxication/incoherence is probably more important but:
*barn door over empty bookcase
*everything is beige
*terrible horse art
*beige stone accent wall, with mounted TV (NO!)
*ubiquitous HGTV carriage light fixture
*fake beams
*divorced dad mega mansion vibe
why does a bookcase need a barn door? it does not. barn doors should be used incredibly sparingly, like when there's utterly no room for swing or, far more rarely than people realize, there's a coherent aesthetic at play.
"Rudy Giuliani is a loose cannon, rolling around the Oval Office with another loose cannon, namely the president, and chaos is developing," --Rep. Garamendi motherjones.com/politics/2021/…
Who made it into the mission of this music promoter who was (is?) attempting to track down the music of old college bands and digitize them: wsj.com/articles/SB100…
Columbia! I hear I was listening to them at Carleton. That's kind of amazing, given the tech/comms of the day.