We are very sorry that we have not posted here. And by “we”, we mean the sole person on the editorial staff of Xenesog. Actually, is anyone reading this? Probably not.
We’re going to come out and say this: flag lapel pins are kitschy. Making an American flag out of a cheap piece of metal debases it, and wearing one is a very hollow display of patriotism. If you want to show your love for this country, we recommend actually doing something to help it, such as volunteering at your local food bank.
And we think it’s a shame that ABC News wasted the first forty minutes of the last debate on crap like flag pins, especially considering the words climate and carbon appear nowhere in the debate transcript.
The New York Times examines rickrolling.
Oh, and in this article, lolcats are mentioned.
Does anyone else find this amazing?
Instead of starting a blog, we here at xenesog wonder if we should have adopted this hobby instead.
We here at xenesog feel little sympathy for Democrats in Michigan and Florida. Living in a state with a late primary, our primary vote has never played a role in the nomination process. The last round, we voted for Dennis Kucinich as a protest, but it was clear that John Kerry would get the nomination.
Yet, we’ve not heard once the mainstream media fret about how the residents of our state have been disenfranchised. Never once has our lack of influence the nomination process sparked national handwringing and anguish, accompanied by urgent cries to remedy the situation. We don’t understand what makes the residents of Michigan and Florida so special.
Of course, you could retort that our state could move up its primary earlier if it wants its residents’ votes to influence the nomination process. And we would agree with you. No sympathy should be extended to a state–such as ours–that chooses to hold such a late primary. But along the same lines, Michigan and Florida could (and should) have pushed its nominating contests later to comply with party rules if it wanted its residents’ votes to influence the nomination process. Both major parties have every right to make rules governing their nomination processes, and Michigan and Florida disregarded those rules, knowing what the consequences would be. We don’t think you should extend much sympathy to them, either.
Ross Douthat of the Atlantic contrasts Sen. Obama’s rhetoric on the Iraq war with that of Sen. McCain. While Sen. Obama stresses the war’s mounting costs (in money and lives), Sen. McCain cites a American “moral obligation” to bring stablility there. Opines Mr. Douthat:
To a war-weary nation, Obama’s cool pragmatism has obvious appeal, but on a fundamental level McCain’s calculus is the right one. America’s responsibility for the current stability and future prospects of Iraq–a poor, tyrannized nation that our policies have plunged into bloody chaos–can’t be waved away by pointing out that we could be spending those billions on ourselves instead. If Obama wants to claim the moral as well as the political high ground, he can’t just make the case that Americans will be better off if the United States withdraws from Iraq; he needs to mount a persuasive argument that Iraqis will be better off as well.
We here at xenesog completely agree. We are also tired of Americans only thinking of their own interests when considering what to do with Iraq. We believe, to some extent, in the so-called (and misnamed) Pottery Barn rule. The moment the U.S. invaded Iraq, we took on some responsibility for the future of the Iraqi people. So, to a great extent, we appreciate Sen. McCain’s reminder of our “moral obligation”.
Nevertheless, we are extremely skeptical that it’s possible for the U.S. to fulfill that moral obligation. The current policy won’t work. True, the surge coincided with a temporary reprieve in violence–but it’s not clear whether that reprieve was due to the surge, or the cease-fire with the militias that is now crumbling. Besides, the surge was never sustainable given current troop levels.
We think Sen. Obama should argue that the current nature of our presence in Iraq only undermines the government (by making them appear as a puppet government of the United States) and will never lead to long-term stability. An American withdrawal from Iraq is the politically feasible policy option that is in the best interests of both the American and Iraqi people.
CC-BY photo by Flickr user elleinad.
It’s not surprising that Americans have become war-weary, because they were never properly prepared for the war. The administration sold the war to the American people by promising it would be short and cheap; “We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon,” Paul Wolfowitz told Congress in March 2003. The president did little to prepare Americans for the sacrifices of a decades-long conflict–with perhaps a draft–if that what turned out to be necessary (as it has) to fulfill our “moral obligation”.
It’s clear to us why the administration failed in this regard. To prepare Americans for the possibility of extended sacrifice, the president would have had to admit that a long, grueling occupation was possible–and this certainly would have made it more difficult to obtain authorization for the invasion. (The administration has demonstrated this sort of myopic thinking in many other areas, including a fiscal policy that has seen the national debt almost double.)
Sen. McCain would burnish his reputation as a straight-talker if he would acknowledge this failure on the part of the Bush administration.
There’s been enough written about Sen. Clinton’s 3 a.m. ad that we here at xenesog are reluctant to add to the discourse. We were, however, amused to learn of a parody of this advertisement run by one Laurinda Calongne, a Republican running for Congress in Louisiana. In the ad, Sen. Clinton has been elected president and Ms. Calongne is revealed to be the source of the nocturnal phone calls; she is calling to admonish Clinton for “running up the deficit with wasteful spending and putting it on the backs of our children.” Here is a YouTube video of the ad.
This advertisement raises two questions with us here at xenesog: First, we don’t see why Louisiana voters need to elect Ms. Calongne for her to harass a Democratic president at 3 a.m. In fact, if she is elected, she probably will be asleep at 3 a.m., since last time we checked, Congress generally conducts its business during the day. We think it would be better for Ms. Calongne to seek employment at a 24-hour grocery store, preferably during swing shift, so that way she can be well-rested to make her 3 a.m. phone calls.
Second, using a convenient tool provided by the Treasury Department, we see that since President Bush took office, the national debt has increased from $5.7 trillion to $9.4 trillion. The budget hasn’t been balanced since the (Bill) Clinton administration.
We here at xenesog don’t understand why Ms. Calongne has to wait until Sen. Clinton becomes president to direct complaints about large deficits to the White House. We challenge to Ms. Calongne to start making her 3 a.m. phone calls today. In case Ms. Calongne is reading this (which we admit is rather unlikely), the phone number for the White House switchboard is 202-456-1414.
The editorial staff of xenesog recently registered this domain, installed WordPress, and customized it so that it wouldn’t have the default we-just-started-this-WordPress-blog look. And no we’d like to welcome you to xenesog. Well, except since this site is brand-new, there probably isn’t anyone reading, with the exception of a few spam-bots who are eagerly awaiting my pressing the “Publish” button so they can tell everyone about the miracle of Viagra. However, the editorial staff of xenesog (which, at the moment, and for the foreseeable future, comprises a single person) has a habit of talking to himself when nobody else is listening (sometimes even when nobody else is in earshot), so this does not seem terribly out of the ordinary.
We here at xenesog promise to post some actual content soon. Stay tuned.