I Am Who I Am

I am: William Gibson The chief instigator of the "cyberpunk" wave of the 1980s, his razzle-dazzle futuristic intrigues were, for a while, the most imitated work in science fiction.

Which science fiction writer are you?

This is rather fascinating, since I discovered William Gibson some years ago via a book review of Mona Lisa Overdrive. I have been singing his praises ever since.

via Michael Froomkin

Descent Into Hell

Ed Kienholz

The Portable War Memorial
1968

{click image for larger view}

Tableau: plaster casts, tombstone, blackboard, flag,
poster, restaurant furniture, photographs, working
Coca-Cola machine, stuffed dog, wood, metal, and fiberglass
114 x 384 x 96 in. (289.6 x 975.4 x 243.8 cm)
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

The Age of War
by: Dark Wraith

The will to end a bad war is insufficient: war, once born, has a life of its own. Both those who embrace it and those who oppose it stand in the shadow of its thrall. Mr. Bush bids that we walk deeper into its consuming flames, and so we shall. What strength we have to turn away is insufficient compared to the weakness already within our leaders to fight the vortex pulling us deeper into the maw of that which will be our undoing.

Should the Democrats be unable in the months ahead to find the wherewithal to stop this madness, waste not every ounce of energy in rage at their impotence, but instead reserve a modicum for pity of their ignorance: when first they had their chance to draw a sword against the god of war, perhaps they truly believed that a "non-binding resolution" was a weapon.


The Dark Wraith welcomes America to a war without end that cannot be stopped by a leadership without courage.

Reality Bites

via Glenn Greenwald, guest poster Anonymous Liberal gets it down to the real nitty-gritty:

Iraq in a Nutshell

By Anonymous Liberal

“What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win,” he quoted the president as warning his commanders, “not how we’re going to leave.”


That's the reality. For two more years, we are stuck with a president who equates any exit strategy with defeat, a president who is "not interested in any ideas that would simply allow American forces to stabilize the violence." Bush is a man paralyzed by a need to salvage his own historical legacy, a man so personally invested in a failed policy that he cannot allow himself to see it for what it is, much less fix it.

It's time to stop proposing magical plans that Bush will never implement. It's time to stop coming up with ways of providing Bush "political cover" for leaving Iraq; he doesn't want it. It's time to start playing hardball. It's time to start holding hearings and exerting whatever leverage is available to put pressure on the White House. The only way significant change will occur is if Bush finds himself so politically isolated that those around him feel it necessary to stage some sort of intervention.