I'm going to have to shutter the shop for a while, indefinitely, maybe permanently, at least until the demands of work (and more pleasantly the demands of children and love and obligations social and personal to numerous and tedious to mention) allow me more time to support this project with any minimal regularity of attention.

Thank you to every one who supported this little effort with visits and the occasional kind note. And a special thanks to those of you who sent me finely constructed and elegantly delivered hate, no, opposition mail. Keep up your good, albeit evil, work. I state this honestly and without sarcasm. Robust democracy necessitates vigorous and intense discourse to survive and for civilization to progress. Those 97lb weakling liberals who whine for a more "civility" in political conversation deserve a right wing dominated media. Those who whine for "bipartisanship" and "moderation" deserve the political paralysis that entrenches and enriches the elites already and always in power. Revolutionary change isn't instigated and can't be sustained by linguistic pacifists. So I have a soft spot for the ferocious rightists who filled my mailbox with passionate denunciations that always brought a smile to my face and a spring to my step, despite the deranged logic masked. Now as for the incoherent and obviously intoxicated paleo-hominids who cost me precious seconds of my life scanning and deleting their ever mispelled, lexically confused, and grammatically inappropriate words, well, I'm not even going to waste a perfectly good "fuck you" on them.

I encourage daily visits to the consistently excellent Follow me Here. I don't understand how Eliot Gelwan maintains a medical practice, raises children, and carries on a life while daily pounding out a wonderful weblog. Also you must, I said must, visit Wood S Lot. Mark Woods manages to blog more fantastic material than I can even read in a day. I have an ever growing bookmark folder of Woods endorsed material that I consider required reading, but that sadly I'll realistically not ever get to. If you need to monitor the Perpetual War, there are no better perches than Brian Lamb's Blowback (and see also his fine Scribbler)and Steve Perry's Cursor. And of course the best news is Unknown News. And don't forget the generous Menlo and the mind-blowing Abuddhas Memes Just visit everyone on the left of this page. They are all fantastic. Thanks again from the bottom of my heart to all and I hope to return soon. If not here, surely somewhere.

Kissinger confesses, sort of

Henry Kissinger, today admitted... it was possible that "mistakes were made" by the US administrations he served in.

But the former secretary of state questioned whether a court was the right place to examine them, saying it would be impossible to recall every one of thousands of cases.

But whaaaaa? Apparently Kissinger believes he should be immune to prosecution because the sheer enormity of his crimes would overwhelm the judicial systems of the civilized world.

Lucid Robert Young Pelton

I caught this guy's t.v. show, Dangerous Places or something like that, on cable once and I didn't think much of him. But he offers some pretty cogent analysis of the current unpleasantness in this Salon interview.

Robert Fisk: Fear and Learning in America

Yes, Osama bin Laden told me he thought Americans didn't understand the Middle East. Maybe he was right then. But not any more.

The George Lucas-Joseph Campbell-Bill Moyers Axis of Banality

[via AKMA]

Frankfurt School scholar and critical theorist Douglas Kellner gets his own blog

[via phil agre]