Sunday, March 23, 2003

Reading and working (plus that bastard Ralph)

Haven’t been able to write anything here over the weekend, what with all the information crashing down all around.  Tough to make out what it all means or where it’s really going.  I’ve been thinking about a take-a-step-back sort of theme, but it hasn’t coalesced into words yet.

And it may never see the light of day at all.  Right now, I’m trying to put together a brief talk that I’m giving in Pittsburgh next weekend as part of a Festschrift honoring the chair of my grad school department as he steps aside after 30-plus years at the helm.  He was my dissertation advisor, so it’s a really special event for me. 

Which doesn’t mean that the PowerPoint slides are flowing easily.  Procrastinator that I am, I’m taking it right down to the wire.  Hey, there’s always the laptop during my plane trip…

In the meantime, just a short rant about that sadsack Ralph Nader.  As reported in Sunday’s Seattle Times, Ralph still refuses to take an iota of the blame for Dubya and the Bushmen, while simultaneously bemoaning the actions and operations of the current administration:

Instead, he said Friday, the war in Iraq developed from: “A messianic militaristic determination turned by a closed mind, facilitated by a cowering Congress and opposition Democrat Party and undeterred by a ‘probing’ press.”

President Bush is acting “in effect as a selected dictator,” Nader said. The president has not listened to any of the many retired admirals, generals and foreign-policy experts who have warned against the war, Nader said. And the stated reasons for going to war “have either been disproved or greatly distorted."

Ralph’s stupidest ploy this time around is to try to shift the blame onto someone else:

But it’s not his fault. In fact, Nader said, people just as easily could blame David McReynolds, the Socialist Party candidate in 2000, for giving the key state of Florida to Bush. McReynolds polled 622 votes, and Democratic Vice President Al Gore lost by 537 votes. Nader received 97,488 votes in the state.

Yeah, right.  “Doesn’t pass the laugh test” doesn’t come close to describing the self-aggrandizing, self-righteous, priggish smarminess of such a statement.  Hey Ralph, at least Michael Moore admits that he screwed up big-time by supporting you.