Herself hopped back in the hamster wheel today, leaving Your Humble Narrator more or less at large, so I designated today Me, Myself and I Day.
The first rule of MM&I Day is: Do no work. So I didn’t. I spent the morning hiking and the afternoon biking, and if you overlook the 25-to-50-mph winds it was all pretty damn’ fine.
I ran across a few mountain bikers during the two-wheeled leg and they roundly congratulated me for being stupid enough to ride 700c wheels on single-track. Happily, they didn’t see how badly I was doing it. I managed to clean a couple simple bits just as they spotted me. Then I waited for them to roll off before I got back to spazzing out.
Once I tired of failing to impress myself with my mad skillz I rolled home to check on our baby war, which has many fathers but no daddy. The Euros’ are pissing all over each others’ shoes, the Arab League seems to think that creating a no-fly zone means politely asking Gadaffy to park his air force, and the prez sez that once we’ve popped off a few thousand half-million-smacker cruise missiles we’ll just step the fuck off and let someone else do the heavy lifting. The Republicans, natch, are calling him a pansy.
Like watching the sun rise in the east, that is. Obama couldn’t make that lot happy if he promised them free blowjobs and beer for eternity. “Mind the teeth, and we’d like a hoppier IPA!” Jesus wept. But at least they’ve shut the fuck up about the deficit for a nanosecond. Jillions for bombs, but not one rusty penny for butter. If the lottery were as predictable I’d be able to buy Washington, D.C., and evict all these pompous peckerheads.
Mad Blog Media 
Consistency and integrity have never been problems that have bothered the far right. I was rather confused the other day at the local dead tree bookstore. The reimaginations of the Iraq war by Rummy and Wolfie were filed in the non-fiction stacks, instead of with the works they most resemble, like Alice inWonderland or the Star-Bellied Sneetches.
Meanwhile, in The Big Apple, they fight existential space wars over bike lanes. Go figure.
http://labikes.blogspot.com/2011/03/twit-of-year-award-or-much-ado-about-my.html
We started two useless wars and now that a real use for military might may be upon us, we’re kinda tired of it – especially when it comes to paying for it. I wonder what’s going to happen when the next US-friendly regimes face revolutions? Will we be suddenly pro-democracy after so many years of propping up these ruthless dictators whose sole attribute is selling us oil, or letting us station our military stuff in their country? Obama needs to tell the right-wing to cram it and actually DO the stuff we so often only pay lip-service to…time to show true leadership Barry!
There is only one logical way to end this latest adventure, and that’s with regime change. But that is also the elephant in the room. Moreover, according to an NPR story this morning, we know little about the opposition.
So I dunno, Larry. Quaddafi is an asshole and a dangerous one, but he leaves quite a power vacuum in his wake when he goes. Shades of Saddam or Tito all over again?
Gents, this is the problem with pushing over the Thug of the Week. While he goes out the door someone worse often comes in the window.
We pulled the carpet out from under the Taliban in Afghanistan and wound up with Hamid Karzai, otherwise known as “The Mayor of Kabul.” And none of us knows what the hell is gonna happen in Iraq when we leave.
I’d love to know what the strategic thinking is behind this Libya deal. Hell, I’d like to know the tactical thinking. It seems a fairly strange enterprise. Didn’t we didn’t learn from Vietnam that air power is not a magic bullet? Sooner or later it’s boots on the ground and blood on the camo’.
“Quaddafi is an asshole and a dangerous one”. Really? Imagine that! Remember Lockerbie?
Jeeze, Duncan, I do remember Lockerbie.
Been a while, but I recall greeting Geology Prof. John Mahoney as he got back to the U of H and we just kinda looked at each other as if to say “damn, nice to see you again”.
I was barely into my second year of a real job as a supertech/postdoc after finishing grad school. My friend and faculty mentor at the Univ. of Hawaii was wait-listed on Pan Am Flight 103 and finally gave up and left the airport for his hotel, exhausted. John woke up to find out he had dodged a pretty big bullet. Whatever good luck one has for being Irish, John cashed in that day. I did too. I credit John, along with my own advisor, for a lot of what I have been able to accomplish since then.
But then again, blowing a plane out of the sky isn’t the worst outcome. We actually blew an Iranian jumbo out of the sky by mistake. Just as many dead people.
Remember post-Tito Yugoslavia and post-Saddam Iraq? Sometimes, one is better with the asshole one knows. At least for the mid term, i.e., ten years or so. Eventually, all dictators, who are usually too insecure to deal with succession planning, bite the dust and then the shit hits the fan. Managing the brown rain is the interesting part. We have rarely been good at that. Few are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
At least that one was truly an accident.