Freyburg

Michael Lewis, the author of “The New, New Thing,” recently rented out the biggest mansion in New Orleans, a house he’d lusted after as a boy and found overwhleming once he moved in. He also found that being inside a house thats way beyond your means, even if you’re renting it, says a lot about both the American psyche and the subprime mess the US currently finds itself in.

Matt Taibbi (who usually writes for Rolling Stone) has posted a cynical, angry and heartfelt screed on Smirking Chimp about what Sarah Palin’s candidacy says about middle-class America’s love of image over substance and blind consumerism over thoughtful discourse. It’s certainly biased and bile-filled, but it’s also exceptionally well written and not without some truth.

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As seen above, Sarah Palin’s grasp of geopolitics leaves something to be desired. And there’s the outside chance she could be the President one day, so there’s that.

Rolling Stone has a great article up about how Bush, along with the Republican Party’s tendency to exploit and create polarity between Americans, has essentially ruined the party and flushed away a legacy that began with Reagan. It’s Rolling Stone, so it isn’t exactly the most unbiased source, but it’s a fascinating read.

For all the bluster and possible danger of Iran getting its hands on or building its own nuclear weapons, the country’s vast oil resources tend to be forgotten. High oil prices mean Iran can not only keep pursuing its nuclear ambitions with relative impunity, its also able to work around the sanctions thrown at it by the UN.

So, just when you thought Bush couldn’t screw things up any further, the push for biofuels has pushed the world into a food crisis. That’s just great.

Peter Bergen, who wrote the excellent Holy War, Inc., has penned a mammoth investigative report for the Independent that points to the possible decline of Al Queda as a force in the Middle East. Interestingly, it’s not American military pressure but Muslim religious leaders who are turning the tide away from extremism. Al Queda’s predilection for slaughtering plenty of innocent Muslims along with whoever else they have on their hit list isn’t going down too well, and opinion i turning against jihadism. It’s interesting that after pulling off the most spectacular terrorist attack in history and subsequently evading the American military for the better part of a decade, the one thing Bin Laden and Co. didn’t account for is human decency.

involving the C-word, so cover the ears of the young ‘uns and laugh. (NSFW)

CIA director Michael Hayden recently announced that Al Queda is on the ropes, a spent force, and that the group has failed to gain traction in Iraq. Well, not so fast. A recent editorial in the Guardian points out that mass uprisings may not be what Bin Laden has in mind when he calls for jihadist revolution, and more importantly, terrorists don’t even need mass support to achieve their goals. All they need is the loyalty of a hard-core group of supporters, and they can continue their operations indefinitely. Will the leaders of those die-hards be Al Queda? Maybe not, as recent intelligence has indicated some disillusionment with Bin Laden and Zawahiri. At any rate, the last time the United States took their eye off the ball, they ended up suffering the most devastating attack in the US history, invading Afghanistan and Iraq, and basically ruining their standing in the world. For their own sake, a little more vigilance and a lot less swagger might be a good idea.