A blog by Dan Brooks
With a head full of memories and a lung full of unidentified pathogens, Combat! blog returns to Montana today. There is no post to speak of, so how about you read the Personal History that Willy mentioned yesterday? It’s words are like ashes in my mouth, if you kept eating ashes just to figure out what it was that made them so ashy. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links, plus probably some kind of upper respiratory infection.
By the time you read this, I will be winging my way to New York for the wedding of Miracle Mike Sebba. There is no Combat! blog to speak of today, so why don’t you fitfully amuse yourself by/after reading my column in the Missoula Independent? A lot of you have been writing in to ask about Governor Bullock’s proposed $400 property tax rebates for owners, and whether it would just be better to cut property taxes for corporations and individuals across the board. In terms of sheer number of reader emails, that subject is second only to requests for more drank rap. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links and probably drank rap.
Attorney General Eric Holder is more likable if you refer to him as Crime Dog Eric Holder.
Yesterday, Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee that there is an airtight legal justification for using drone strikes to kill American citizens abroad, but it’s secret. Also, the Obama administration might use drones domestically. Holder was understandably reticent about when that second scenario might happen, prompting Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) to pose two hypotheticals. Suspected terrorist “sitting in a cafe?” No, Holder believes that in that situation, a domestic drone strike would be unconstitutional. Suspected terrorist “pointing a bazooka at the Pentagon?” Yeah, Holder would light that dude up. It is fun that Ted Cruz maybe thinks of the Pentagon as the seat of US government. Otherwise, this exchange was dispiriting in the extreme.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0Y39QnwRvY
There is no Combat! blog today, because I have several deadlines and slept about an hour last night. I went to bed around 10:30, which is the same time my downstairs neighbor, [redacted], turned on his stereo. He left it on until dawn, presumably to create a baseline of noise so that his punctuated shouting would not startle his friends. [Redacted] wakes me up a lot. I had the best studio apartment in Missoula until he moved in; now I have a dorm room with good light. Anyway, I will be working at the coffee shop while he sleeps listens to the above song on repeat via my own fairly powerful stereo. If you are reading this because you Googled “[redacted]”—or if you are, yourself, [redacted]—know that he is inconsiderate. I’ll be back tomorrow with less focused indignation.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLw-9dpHtcU
Oh, man. I have watched this video of a spider maybe a dozen times now, and I still laugh at the end. Hypothesis: spiders are creepy because we think of them as smart. If we think of them as dumb but thrilled by their own cleverness, they immediately become likable again. This and other unsubstantiated theories will have to wait for tomorrow, because I have had to choose this morning between money and Combat! blog. Guess which one I went for.