> Two (at least) interesting developments in the rollout of Obama 2012: the Justice Dept will stop defending DOMA against constitutional challenges (yay, gay people, and lesbian people, and straight people, and bi-people, and trans- and cis-gendered persons of all kinds!), AND is distancing itself from defending the individuals (as opposed to the government) responsible for denying Jose Padilla his rights as a citizen and a person. I'm talking about Rumsfeld, John Yoo, others of that ilk. Firedoglake. If I love Firedoglake that much, I should just go and marry it, and maybe someday I will.
> One of the things that people get wrong about Rumsfeld is that his distinctive patterns of speech produce nonsense. They are actually rigorously logical. The famous "known unknowns" quotation is an accurate and sober elaboration of 19th-century military strategist Helmut von Moltke's dictum, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." What offends me in Rumsfeld's speech is that it is weaponized against his domestic critics, his fellow Americans, either to display an unmatchable complexity of mind ("the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence") or belittle our tiny concerns ("Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war").
They also remind me of the lists of possibilities and their impossibility that Samuel Beckett compiled, esp in his early fictions. No reference on hand, but I'm sure I first saw them singled out by Hugh Kenner.
> It is always a good thing to read anything by Hugh Kenner. Here's a randomly chosen appreciation of his work.
> Oh yeah, I was writing about Ohbama. I imagine his moves away from DOMA and torture (slightly) are intended to make voting for him in 2012 more palatable to much of his former base. And on nothing else.
> One of the things that people get wrong about Rumsfeld is that his distinctive patterns of speech produce nonsense. They are actually rigorously logical. The famous "known unknowns" quotation is an accurate and sober elaboration of 19th-century military strategist Helmut von Moltke's dictum, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." What offends me in Rumsfeld's speech is that it is weaponized against his domestic critics, his fellow Americans, either to display an unmatchable complexity of mind ("the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence") or belittle our tiny concerns ("Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war").
They also remind me of the lists of possibilities and their impossibility that Samuel Beckett compiled, esp in his early fictions. No reference on hand, but I'm sure I first saw them singled out by Hugh Kenner.
> It is always a good thing to read anything by Hugh Kenner. Here's a randomly chosen appreciation of his work.
> Oh yeah, I was writing about Ohbama. I imagine his moves away from DOMA and torture (slightly) are intended to make voting for him in 2012 more palatable to much of his former base. And on nothing else.
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