[Previous entry: "Bush claims authority to open mail without a warrant"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "The intriguing challenge of boredom"]

01/05/2007 Archived Entry: "Miscellaneous musings"

A MISCELLANEOUS MORNING. The weather's the pits. My brain hasn't kicked in. Even the dogs don't want to stir off the bed. So, in the spirit of cold, rainy mornings everywhere, I offer some trivial pursuits.

The article's nothing special but I laughed at the subhead on this Newsweek piece (via Ernie Hancock's Freedom's Phoenix): "Negroponte's likely replacement makes civil libertarians nervous." Talk about stating the obvious! Is there any spy-master bureaucrat Bush appointee who wouldn't make civil libertarians nervous? Never mind that this McConnell dude was Admiral Pointyheaddexter's chosen deputy for implementing Total Information Awareness.

Jim Bovard was even better than his usual best the other day when he mused "What if Nixon had been hanged?" Yeah, maybe term limits (that is "one term in office and one in jail") isn't really enough, after all.

Speaking of predictions that came astoundingly true, McBlog today linked to this four-year-old Tom Tomorrow cartoon that reads like today's headlines.

Finally, you've probably read about "The Compact" -- the 10 friends from the Bay Area who made an agreement to buy no new items in 2006 (except for a handful of absolute essentials). SJ reminded me about them the other day. They aimed to obtain everything else they needed in the form of used, donated, scrounged, borrowed, bartered, and hand-made items.

You may not agree with their anti-consumerist viewpoint. But it's been an interesting experiment. One participant observed that they required a kind of resourcefulness "completely purged from modern life." Now there's some truth.

What's weird, though, is the anger some critics have directed at them. Simply for not spending money on Made-in-China doodads, they've been called unAmerican and ... wait for it ... "economic terrorists."

Is our nation's health really maintained only by our willingness to Buy New Stuff? Have we really gone so far downhill that refusing to buy new toys is unpatriotic and an attack on the nation? Yikes.

Posted by Claire @ 11:26 AM CST
Link