Grindin'

(from the Lent Blog)

It's been a more than week since anyone has posted and since I don't want this to completely die, I guess I should put down some of my thoughts.

Lent had been going fine. I am sad to say, however, that I broke down a few weeks ago. I was down in North Carolina visiting my girlfriend- we went to go visit one of her friends. His parents were in town, and since they were from Louisiana they decided to make some gumbo for all of his friends. I didn't want to seem ungrateful, so I had some. And man was it good! But the thing is, it wasn't like I forgot about what I'd given up. I made a conscious decision, and I should suffer some kind of consequence. So, I will try my best to go an extra week without beef, pork, or chicken. And if I foul up again, I'll make it an extra two weeks.

Other news? I flat out failed when it came to reading, again, no excuse for that either. I didn't expand myself culturally either, unless going out to bars to have a beer and commiserate counts as taking advantage of living in New York. The only thing I can say in my defense is that work has been extremely hectic lately. At times it's been stressful and when it hasn't been stressful it's been numbing. Not in the sense of being boring, I actually enjoy the work I do very much. No, what I mean is that I invest so much of my mind at work that I don't want to have to think about anything when I get home. It's a weird feeling, wanting to be mindless. I guess this has been my first feeling of going through "the grind."

Young men, especially those steeped in "hip-hop" lingo, love to talk about how much they grind, how hard the grind, I definitely loved to talk about it while I was in college and working. But, it's an all together different feeling now that I'm working for a living rather than going to school. Having to go to work when I had a paper due put a nervousness in my stomach that bordered on fear. It wasn't tedious by any means. But for work, though, it's sloshing through a project, which, you enjoy in the abstract, but which also consists of a bunch of tedious number crunching that ultimately gets you to your ultimate goal at some distant point in time. Sometimes it's two weeks, sometimes it's a month, sometimes your project withers up and dies because your boss wants to go in a different direction. The minuteness can be compared to the busy work you received in school, but it's ultimately much more necessary. But, since sometimes in a single day, or even a single week you don't feel that you've produced much, it feels just like you're spinning your wheels, inching forward as slowly as the ocean encroaching on an island. That's what the grind is, nothing exciting, nothing physical, there's no sweat involved. In other words, coke dealers don't grind, office workers do.

Quickly on Chaz Freeman

Although it's just now getting mainstream coverage, I've been following the story of Charles Freeman for a little while now. Retired Navy Admiral David Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, appointed Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council. It's an important post, probably more important now after the debacle of intelligence gathering which led us to the Iraq War. But ultimately, it's rather inconsequential as far as newsworthiness. It's not a Senate confirmed appointment, most of the time the nominee flies through quite effortlessly. But not this time, because Freeman crossed AIPAC, the Israel lobby The fight went on for about a week, but ultimately Freeman voluntarily withdrew his name.

I hate to say this, but the Obama adminstration went out like a bunch of ho's. How do you think David Blair feels, having to fight for his appointment with no back up from the adminstration he works for. Now AIPAC and their roster of political thugs that holler "anti-Semetic" anytime someone does something they don't like know that they will continue to control the debate, just like they've done in the past. Perhaps the administration thought the fight for a relatively minor post was not worth the effort, but if you blink once....

Now, Freeman did have some other issues. He's a Kissinger-lite style realpolitiker; which bugs the hell out of human rights activists, and justifiably so. Some of his statements on China and Saudi Arabia have caused some alarm, not nearly as much as his statements on the Israel/Palestine conflict, but they do provide good cover for those that oppose him. But honestly, I don't see too much that is controversial. His views on China and Saudi Arabia are pretty much in line with everyone elses, if we were to judge our government on its actions rather than words. We may bloviate on Chinese human rights atrocities at certain times to try and maintain our moral superiority, but a) we don't have as much leverage since they're bankrolling our deficit spending and have been for some time, and b) we, as a country, don't actually care about Chinese human rights. Yeah it'd be nice if they'd stop arresting people for political reasons, freed Tibet, cleaned up their air, and opened up their internet. But it'd be a lot better if they continued to buy up all of our T-bills and continued to churn out low cost products to ship to our Wal-Marts. And as far as Saudi Arabia is concerned- just substitute oil in for T-bills and low cost goods. I'm not doubting that It's important that people who are in intelligence posts to deal with the world how it is now how they want it to be and leave the lofty optimistic goals to the elected administration. It goes back to the Wilson vs. Jefferson debate; those who have to deal with the details of advancing to our lofty goals have to have a much more realistic frame of mind than those who set up the grand vision. It wouldn't be his job to set up policy, rather he would be interpreting the data collected for the policymakers to act on. Furthermore, Freeman, as an avowed contrarian would help to curtail the dangerous group-think that can infect any organization. Overall, every person that knew Freeman and commented on his aptitude and qualifications for the job said that he was the right man, even if they disagreed with some of his conclusions. Shame that he won't get a chance to serve.

PS- One more thing. I've read some comments on blogs that I frequent that talk about a "conspiracy theory" when it comes to the Israel lobby, saying that it doesn't actually exist. As Andrew Sullivan said, there is no conspiracy. There is an Israel lobby. And there's nothing wrong with having an Israel lobby, all foreign governments have some kind of lobby. There are plenty of firms that specialize in lobbying for dictatorships. I'm not saying that there's some nefarious plot where Israel actually runs our government. Like all lobbying groups they present their case, lean on officials that owe them favors, and spend their political and social capital as best they see fit in order to implement their agenda. And I'm not saying that the Israel lobby shouldn't carry more weight in the American government than say, the government of Azerbijan. I just personally think the lobby carries a little too much weight, and that our interests don't always align with Israel's the way that some people say they do.