Thursday, May 26, 2005

I'm not sure "compromise" translates well here

So there's been a lot of talk about the social-security compromise. Liberal Oasis being fairly representative of those on the left who felt it was less than wise, Kos having the most clearly delinated argument I've seen for why this was a win for us.

I'd like to think we did well, and of course, nothing makes one feel better than watching Frist-Dobson Theocracy Ltd. scream bloody murder that they've been horribly betrayed. But I have a doubt.

Kos says that with the filibuster un-nuked Bush can't send a Focus-on-the-(homophbic)Family brand judge to the supreme court. I'm less than convinced. If George were a rational man, he might hesitate to resurrect the nuclear option mess. If George were a rational man, he might decide discretion is the better part of valor and make a safe choice for the court since Republican moderates have voiced hesitance at firing on the filibuster.

But George ain't no rational man. That's what got us in the mess in the first place.

So here's to hoping we won something here, but man I have this sinking feeling Dubya's gonna flip the moderates the bird, send the sort of fella who can't even pronounce seperation of church-and-state up for the Supreme Court and read the "compromise" as meaning "Reid can't get the 51 votes to defeat the nuclear option."

It pretty much had to happen sometime

There, I broke down and did it. Are you happy now, world? I went and got my own blog, like everybody else.

So then the question becomes: what to do with it? I've named this little scrap of cyber-real-estate "The Great Concavity" after the post-apocalyptic waste dump the Northeast US becomes in David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest". I guess its a sort of dumping ground for observations on politics, books, TV, the internet, etc. Imagine the illegitimate love-child of Atrios and Heather Havlarski... if everything goes really well.

If everything goes only moderately well, imagine semi-literate rants about the emergent net culture, and quasi-coherent rage fests at the contemperary political situation.

If everything goes poorly.... imagine this template. This soothing, empty template with its loving, earth-tone colors.