What day is it?

Oh, right, it must be Monday as I'm up at an ungodly hour. On the plus side, though, daylight savings saved my life today. No way I could've dragged myself out of bed at 7 without my body beliving it was actually an hour later. On the plus side I haven't had any trouble sleeping lately, I do believe my insomnia is cured.

Many thanks to ravenmb for keeping me up to date on LJ happenings while I was away. I owe you so much email today it isn't even funny, hon.

Dropped the sisters off at the train station so they can go do their mad shopping spree in the city. I swear those two got all the shopping genes in the family. Personally I'm far too lazy to enjoy it, if I can't buy something online I figure I don't really need it that badly. On the other hand the shopping expedition yesterday did net me three Xmas gifts, and of course shopping in Vegas netted me a few as well. So I'm making progress, but not nearly enough given how late in the year it is already. Gods I feel so behind.

Let's see if I can keep this short, Vegas was fun but I've come to the conclusion that a long weekend is about as much time as I want to spend in that city. Loved the Star Trek Experience, as always, and Ka was amazing. Even J- was impressed, and he doesn't impress easily. I think I've done more walking in the past week than I have in the past year, and physically I'm just exhausted. On the plus side my job requires me to do very little more than sit and type so it's all good.

The drive there and back was quite painless, and we made excellent time on the return trip. Stopped at Vegetarian House for an exquisite meal, then back to my place to collapse. Saturday was pretty lazy, which was good as I felt awful for most of it. Did get to Baji's for brunch, which was lovely, though. Sunday was better and busy as we headed up to SF. Started in Chinatown and managed to find a place that does vegetarian dim sum! I had this tomato and tofu dish that you wouldn't think would work, but everybody who tried a tomato was astonished at how good it was. We wandered over to Lush then did a bit of shopping in the Mission before heading back. Swung by PA and grabbed dinner at Jing Jing's, which was superb, before driving back to my place to again collapse. Today I'll just meet up with them after work and do dinner, beyond that I don't think we have any particular plans for this evening...thank the gods. So tired...but a good kind of tired so I don't mind so much. Fortunately I have one more day before I can even think about cleaning my apartment, being a vacation slob is kind of nice :)

Yes, yes and oh my god yes

Preach it, brother Krugman:

Let me be frank: it has been a long political nightmare. For some of us, daily life has remained safe and comfortable, so the nightmare has merely been intellectual: we realized early on that this administration was cynical, dishonest and incompetent, but spent a long time unable to get others to see the obvious. For others - above all, of course, those Americans risking their lives in a war whose real rationale has never been explained - the nightmare has been all too concrete.

[...]

So the Bush administration has lost the myths that sustained its mojo, and with them much of its power to do harm. But the nightmare won't be fully over until two things happen.

First, politicians will have to admit that they were misled. Second, the news media will have to face up to their role in allowing incompetents to pose as leaders and political apparatchiks to pose as patriots.

It's a sad commentary on the timidity of most Democrats that even now, with Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, telling us how policy was "hijacked" by the Cheney-Rumsfeld "cabal," it's hard to get leading figures to admit that they were misled into supporting the Iraq war. Kudos to John Kerry for finally saying just that last week.

And as for the media: these days, there is much harsh, justified criticism of the failure of major news organizations, this one included, to exert due diligence on rationales for the war. But the failures that made the long nightmare possible began much earlier, during the weeks after 9/11, when the media eagerly helped our political leaders build up a completely false picture of who they were.

So the long nightmare won't really be over until journalists ask themselves: what did we know, when did we know it, and why didn't we tell the public?