How to pay for all of Junior's wars and deficits and Leave-No-CEO-Behind programs. A small but stylish European country collects a unique form of luxury tax, with no apparent harm to its citizens' health or well-being. It has also seen a dramatic uptick in tourism and related private and public revenues – nearly $2.5 billion. Job creation? You betcha! "It's a cash cow for everyone involved."

Impossible? A miracle? Too good to be true? Not at all! Read about it here.

Via World Events.

{ 2:51 PM }

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Stop obsessing about Iraq. Defy the media gods who want to pummel you with messages of inevitability.

Instead, turn off the television. Put the blog on hold. Ignore the ringing telephone.

Go out tonight and look at some constellations.

Feel like a human on earth instead of a consumer/constituent/statistic.

{Courtesy of the invaluable and indefatigable Plep.}

{ 2:31 PM }

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Preston Sturges' golden rules for successful comedy:

"A pretty girl is better than a plain one
A leg is better than an arm
A bedroom is better than a living room
An arrival is better that a departure
A birth is better than a death
A chase is better than a chat
A dog is better than a landscape
A kitten is better than a dog
A baby is better than a kitten
A kiss is better than a baby
A pratfall is better than anything."

Swiped from Danisms / Quotes / Etc.

{ 6:26 PM }

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Edward Said in Al-Ahram Weekly, in an article entitled "Europe versus America." A few quotes:

...I know no other country where the adjective "un" is used with the nationality as a way of designating the common enemy. No one says unSpanish or unChinese: these are uniquely American confections that claim to prove that we all "love" our country. How can one actually "love" something so abstract and imponderable as a country anyway?

...what is most odd is the vast number of Christian fanatics in the US, who form the core of George Bush's support and at 60 million strong represent the single most powerful voting block in US history. Whereas church attendance is down dramatically in England it has never been higher in the United States whose strange fundamentalist Christian sects are, in my opinion, a menace to the world and furnish Bush's government with its rationale for punishing evil while righteously condemning whole populations to submission and poverty.

No wonder then that America has never had an organised Left or real opposition party as has been the case in every European country. The substance of American discourse is that it is divided into black and white, evil and good, ours and theirs.

{ 5:32 PM }

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"Word got around the department that I was a good Arabic translator who did a great Saddam imitation," recalls the Harvard grad student. "Eventually, someone phoned me, asking if I wanted to help change the course of Iraq policy."

So twice a week, for US$3,000 a month, the Iraqi student says, under condition of anonymity, that he took a taxi from his campus apartment to a Boston-area recording studio rented by the Rendon Group, a DC-based public relations firm with close ties to the US government. His job: translate and dub spoofed Saddam Hussein speeches and tongue-in-cheek newscasts for broadcast throughout Iraq.

Read the full story here, courtesy of the watchful eyes of Steven Baum at Ethel.

{ 12:54 PM }

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Black ninja quiz. Who said, "It would scare the (expletive) out of al-Qaida if suddenly a bunch of black ninjas rappelled out of helicopters in to the middle of their camp. It would get us an enormous deterrence and show those guys we're not afraid"?

A. Condoleeza Rice in 2002
B. Donald Rumsfeld in 2001
C. Bill Clinton in 1998

You score 100 points if you selected answer C.

{ 12:11 PM }

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Everybody's tired. In addition to Media Whores Online, The Rittenhouse Review takes a break too.

{ 12:01 PM }

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Boston gets the 2004 Dem convention! This development is sure to make for a more liberal televisual feast.

Via You Know It's True.

{ 6:46 PM }

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The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence is a show that recently opened at The Art Institute of Chicago. It looks more promising than the usual impressionist blockbuster-wannabe. Overview (with emphasis added):

In collaboration with the Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici in Florence and the Detroit Institute of Arts, The Art Institute of Chicago has organized this major international exhibition of approximately 180 paintings, sculptures, graphics, porcelain, tapestries, costumes, and other works of art. The exhibition provides a detailed survey of the art and culture of Florence between 1537, the election of Cosimo I de’ Medici as Duke of Tuscany, and 1631, the death of his grandson, Cosimo II de’ Medici. Featured are sculptures and drawings by Michelangelo from the period of the artist’s early association with Cosimo I, as well as important works by other artists employed by the Medici, such as painters Bronzino, Pontormo, and Salviati, and sculptors Cellini and Giambologna. Many of the objects, including some of the most celebrated sculptures from the Boboli Gardens and works from the Studiolo (vaultroom) of Francesco I de’ Medici in the Palazzo Vechhio, have never before traveled out of Florence.

Apologies to Ralphie of The Sopranos.

{ 6:32 PM }

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Media Whores Online is taking the rest of the year off. I can understand the impulse – this is a dispiriting time for the left-leaning. After 11 days away from a computer, I have barely been back in town 48 hours and am still reeling from the aftershocks of last week's debacle. With a long winter on the way, hibernation may be a natural reaction.

But it's the wrong reaction. We clearly need new leadership and a set of new strategies to restore what Joe Klein calls (in this week's print New Yorker) the "larger themes" to the public agenda. With ideas like compassion, education, prescription drugs, and the like co-opted by the death-tax Texans, the Democrats have lost this round of the political branding game.

If anything, we need to turn up the volume. Opinion cauldrons such as blogs should talk more about strategy. We need more statistical ammunition. We need new marketing tactics. We should find our common ground, coordinate our efforts, and reach out more.

George W. Bush succeeded because he is nobody. The man with the greatest nuclear power on earth cannot even pronounce the word. As a tabula rasa, Rove and Cheney and the other "advisers" were able to pour the daily message into his ear and have it come out his mouth intact.

First 9/11 and now this. American power must be wielded responsibly – and that means a viable opposition party. The American left must grow up already and start to play hardball. As the American electorate (possibly) unwittingly welcomes World War III, the stakes could hardly be higher. We need new forms of organization, communication, and action.

{ 5:03 PM }

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Pissed. After a nice bit of time off it's bad enough to come home, which is naturally depressing in itself, but to top it off with the depressing election results and a forty-degree Chicago November rain... well, the combination could be motivation enough to empty a bottle of bourbon. So I think I will.

Arizona was beautiful. November 5 was ugly.

{ 4:19 PM }

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