20 January 2002
Arafat, Broder, More Bloggery
This BBC article suggests that Israel has essentially placed Yasser Arafat under house arrest. They quote Ariel Sharon:
"He opens the windows of his Ramallah offices, he sees our tanks and knows he has nowhere to go."
This should come as no surprise to old readers of this website, as we linked to this prescient article when it first appeared in early December in the weblog.
It's hard to say whether Israel's is a good strategy, but the nation does seem intent on removing all of Arafat's trappings of statehood, the latest being his Voice of Palestine radio station.
* * * *
I've always thought David Broder was everyone's favorite liberal -- the sort of inoffensive columnist who prospers because he simply repeats (liberal) conventional wisdom without ever really becoming incendiary. I've also always thought him to be phony as hell, because of the air of objectivity he tries to present. His latest column is classic! But before linking to it, may I suggest reading this column first? May I further suggest keeping in mind the figure $1.79 trillion, the revised 10-year U.S. budget surplus prediction?
Now, go read Broder's "Time For Honest Budget Debate." Note that Broder does not once mention that revised 10-year figure. He does raise the issue of 10-year estimates in his eighth paragraph, but only to assail the honesty of the Bush Administration (rather than considering an economic slowdown unanticipated by members of either party). And then he goes on to do what he often does -- which is to advocate a preferred policy after slanting the facts (in this case, by omission of a key figure). And all under the guise of honesty! Well done.
And done so cleverly and politely, you'll never see him become a target of conservatives like, say, a similarly slanted personality, the decrepit Helen Thomas.
* * * *
I ought to start keeping track of favorite terms used by political bloggers. I know I tend to use "outstanding" a fair amount. And I've already noted the term "takedown" (unrelated to wrestling). "Interesting" also seems to be getting a lot of play lately. I'm not so sure I should have said anything nice about that Cavanaugh column. Yeah, parts of his caricature were funny, but the truth is, we political bloggers are kind of easy to caricature. And now I'm overusing the term "caricature." Ha!
* * * *
I had good intentions this weekend of finishing the dissertation lit review/dissertation, but a nasty bit of writer's block postponed it. I did do the intro to it tonight (intro to the intro -- what does one call that?), and that was the hardest part anyway. The rest is just a short summary of the chapters to introduce the literature and controversies and place the dissertation within those. As familiar (sick to death, actually!) as I am with the literature, that's going to be fairly easy.
* * * *
Reductio Ad Absurdum is off to a splendid start, if I must say so myself. The feedback I've gotten has been excellent, with the exception of one correspondent who preferred the old format (to clarify -- while it was negative feedback, this person's comments were excellent -- but the person just doesn't like the new format, which I can understand). It's forcing me to read a bit more carefully and think a bit more critically about writing that I blog. The old one-liners allowed for less discrimination. I'm probably only linking (not covering) to about 40% as much stuff these days, but I'm really pleased with the quality. The net is truly amazing.
* * * *
I need to make this journal the default front page of this site now, but I've run out of time tonight, and it's a little convoluted (because the weblog archives need still to be accessible). Lesson boys and girls: don't play with your .htaccess files and other SSI files when you are tired. Bad things can happen.
[Posted @ 11:51 PM CST]
