You Forget They are Killers
Ah yes, another picture! Who is abducting them??
I woke up yesterday to mouse carnage. Suddenly, this toy is not so cute anymore. I hate the mouse-killing thing because I love mice. Usually I rescue the mouse before any damage is done, and take it outside. But apparently I slept through this one, which is hard the fathom. Books and papers everywhere, the house looked like WWIII. Very sad. And you know how they torture them.
Anyway. A couple of things. If, like me, you are sometimes embarrassed by your lack of education or knowledge, I found a great website called Three Quarks Daily. Howard had to explain to me what the name meant and I’ve already forgotten. It’s a literary reference. They post interesting articles about interesting things and God, if you took the word “interesting” away from me, I’d be left speechless.
The other day they had a great post titled, Shia and Sunni, A Ludicrously Short Primer, which delivered exactly that, and was interesting (intriguing? engaging? sucks you in? the opposite of boring?) and said something nice about us at the end.
The other thing is Molly Ivins. Someone showed me a tribute about her in the Times. I was just so blown away by what the writer pointed out that I have to share it. I hope I don’t get in trouble with the Times. But look at what she said and when she said it. We’ve lost a freaking national treasure.
Molly never lost sight of two eternal truths: rulers lie, and the times when people are most afraid to challenge authority are also the times when it’s most important to do just that. And the fact that she remembered these truths explains something I haven’t seen pointed out in any of the tributes: her extraordinary prescience on the central political issue of our time.
I’ve been going through Molly’s columns from 2002 and 2003, the period when most of the wise men of the press cheered as Our Leader took us to war on false pretenses, then dismissed as ”Bush haters” anyone who complained about the absence of W.M.D. or warned that the victory celebrations were premature. Here are a few selections:
Nov. 19, 2002: ”The greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now.”
Jan. 16, 2003: ”I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. The country is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, ‘Horrible three-way civil war?’ ”
Oct. 7, 2003: ”Good thing we won the war, because the peace sure looks like a quagmire.
”I’ve got an even-money bet out that says more Americans will be killed in the peace than in the war, and more Iraqis will be killed by Americans in the peace than in the war. Not the first time I’ve had a bet out that I hoped I’d lose.’
It just made me think, I’m sorry I didn’t speak up more before, but that stops now.
I want Al Gore to run again (a do-over!) and wouldn’t it be kinda perfect if Hillary was his running mate? But I don’t see that working so Barack Obama, who would be president after Gore serves two terms.
This is what I see when I walk downtown along the Hudson River. The World Trade Center used to be in there somewhere, but for the life of me, I cannot remember just where the towers stood. If you look at the tallest building on the left, the next tallest building immediately to the right of that is the first new building on the site, so somewhere near there.
I was just talking in December about the fact that Gian-Carlo Menotti was still alive, and sadly, he died today. Sigh.