Dick Morris is one of the most interesting characters from the Clinton era. I do not believe Clinton would have been reelected in 1996 if it weren't for Dick Morris who is, in my opinion and his, a political genius. The combination of Clinton and Morris was deadly to the bumbling, incompetent Republicans in those days. Because of his influence on Clinton during that period, Dick Morris, I believe, had a profound effect on the politics and the history of the US. I will read that book. With more than a few grains of salt of course.

"The problem with being avant-garde is knowing who's putting on who." — Calvin

Well, Dick Morris' book sounds like an incredible bore (even with the oral sex); I DO want to read about that rug merchant's daughter though...

Saw Dick Morris pimping his book on the Daily Show a little while back. An astoundingly self-aggrandizing prick. Not many people make me want to throw the TV out the window, but he is in that select minority now.

I do not believe Clinton would have been reelected in 1996 if it weren't for Dick Morris who is, in my opinion and his, a political genius.

Clinton would have lost to Bob Dole?? Or did Morris arrange his nomination, too?

If Morris is such a genius, what level of genius explains the toe-sucking incident?

Explaining political results by defining someone as a genius is such an easy explanation. Asking two Canadians, on separate occasions, why Joe Clark lost the 1980 election, I got two explanations: one consisted of a description of the government's clumsy handling of the budget; the other consisted of the statement "Pierre Trudeau is an evil genius."

I... I just don't know what to say...

... except that I can't wait to pick up a copy of "Heisenburg's Accordian". Appearing at a bookstore near you. Briefly. Maybe.

One of the problems with living five time zones away from you guys is that sometimes it's hard to tell satire from factual reportage ...

Charlie Stross:

Time zones are irrelevant, believe me.

Daily Kos had a thread today based on an Onion piece about Gray Davis. Many of the commentators noted how the Onion and the Daily Show seem to be more reliable news sources these days than the NY Times.

Re the 1980 election in Canada: Joe Clark was elected PM in 1979 to a minority government on a promise to cut taxes. He discovered that Canada was in a fiscal mess, announced bravely that he was going to govern "as if he had a majority" (ie, he wasn't going to listen to either the NDP or the SoCreds, who held the balance of power), brought forward a budget with a bunch of austerity measures including a sharp increase in federal gasoline taxes, predictably lost the support of both minority parties and was defeated, and went into the election of 1980 committed to implement the defeated budget.

You can't quite call Trudeau evil, or a genius, for taking advantage of all this blundering about to win the election. Of course, once he got into office with a majority government, he promptly raised the gasoline taxes... thereby proving that he was at least 'genius' enough to grasp the basic fact of the parliamentary system: that wishing doesn't make it so, and it's a lot easier to govern like a majority if you've actually got a majority. And he certainly didn't give the impression during the election that he was going to raise the tax... one might characterize that as evil, I suppose.

So you could say both your Canadian friends were right. But the one that put it down to Tory mistakes was closer to the truth.

Facts, Charlie?

The US seems to have lurched into the "print the legend" stage.

I'm looking forward to the publication of the new John Norman--Ann Coulter collaboration--"Traitors of Gor" Tarl Cabot roots out communists on the counter-earth!

Teresa's stopped the End Construction Thread, so I'll take this space to thank Patrick for the awesome link to Pauline Baynes' original map of middle earth (which he added to the Sidelight section).

Highly recommend downloading it for desktop backgrounds.

Cheers.

Back in my "cover the walls of my high-school dorm with posters" phase, I retired my copy of Pauline Baynes' map Middle Earth when I found a really cool map that had all the place names indicated in Tengwar. That is what Middle Earth really looks like.

Alan,

Hot damn! Is that available online somewhere?

I doubt it; but I think I still have my copy in a trunk in the basement....