January 1st

In no particular order, I celebrated New Year's Day by reading away my hangover with the following:

Alexander Cockburn looking back at 2003 and forward to 2004.

Robert Fiskhas two articles about the occupation in Iraq. Both are worth looking at.

Fanatical Apathy once again makes me laugh out loud with posts on a "Democratic Debate" and Mad Cow disease.

Via TalkLeft and Steve Perry (actually Mark Gisleson writing at Perry's site), I found A Tale of Two Cities by Christopher Lydon.

This one hits close to home: Mary Landrieu (and Steve Vitter, of all people) are fighting against the practice of dumping foreign shrimp in the US market. Admission: I consider shrimp the food of the gods, and have guiltily consumed what must have been imported shrimp in the past, although lately I've been careful to read the label before making a purchase. That said, I still buy from the market, and not from roadside vendors--my mom got ripped off pretty badly once, and I'd like to think I learned from her lesson.

Also via TalkLeft: Dubya spent New Year's Day shootin' quail (or was it Quayle)? Either way, he took the time to chow down on some unspecified form and quantity of beef--for lunch--I don't know if "It's What's for Dinner" tonight at the Crawford ranch. Bush might be one of the few people who has nothing to worry about from Creutzfeldt-Jakobs disease. Hell, in his case, it might be an improvement.

And--to conclude for now--I began last evening with a book: Nickel and Dimed to Death, by Barbara Ehrenreich. Meant to start with just the opening chapter, but two hours later I still couldn't put it down. Finally did so just after ten o'clock, having pored over slightly more than half the volume. My fondest wish would be to see Barbara Ehrenreich and Molly Ivins as president and vice-president--I'll let them decide which would be which. Now that I've got a few extra nickels, Ehrenreich will be at the top of my reading list. She has one of the best writing styles I've ever had the pleasure to read.

Finally, I came across this via google news: a New York Times article saying that a declassified British document alleges that Nixon was ready to seize Middle East oil fields by force in 1973, during the embargo. Nixon had what he called "the madman theory" to end the Vietnam War. Sounds like he had a madman theory for the Middle East too.

Here's to an interesting 2004. I hope Blogger doesn't eat this one, but I've already copied it--in case the evil "internal server error" arises again.