The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Samantha Joy:

James@21, thank you for the pointer to that thread. I had already seen that one; it was the lack of reaction to the "can you just get past it now" statement that surprised me.

Don@16 and Dave@25, yes, I understand your points.

To everyone else who responded: I was surprised. I expressed surprise in an open thread, which I believed to be the appropriate place to do so. I did not chastise anyone, I wasn't chewing anyone out, and I wasn't rude. I really didn't deserve the dogpile.

Graydon (#11) -- Yes, everyone is agreeing that the system is broken.

But unless you include the tort killers "reformers", I also don't see alternatives being offered.

#23 Patrick -

My post was not meant to imply that I think that Kinky is the best candidate for governor, or that I support his candidacy in any way. I generally think he's a loud mouthed know-all, a very entertaining person from a distance, someone who mistakes aphorisms for wisdom. The fact that he's even in this race is amusing the hell out of me; the idea that other candidates think that what he says or does might influence the outcome significantly is testament to what a group of twits we have in the running this time around.

That all said, the fact that his opponents are creating ad campaigns to discredit him is funny; the fact that they're digging as far back as a 25 year old comedy routine that wasn't funny even at the time is just Hy-larious.

Aaaahhh, Texas politics. One of the ways in which we manage to be bigger--no, wait, that's not the word--better--no, not that one--ah, here it is--kookier than just 'bout any other state.

You missed some of the real homur happening in this election cycle, and that's the vitriol being spewed in the race for the incredibly-weak position of Governor.

Chris Bell, the Democratic candidate for governor, has decided that his best chance to win is if the Independent candidate Kinky Friedman (former front man for the country western group Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, detective novelist, comedian, B-movie star and general Texas icon) gracefully steps out of the race and throws some support Bell's way.

Kinky politely declined. I believe his exact words were "We don't negotiate with terrorists, so we're not going to meet with Chris Bell."

In response, a bunch of Democrats have created an ad campaign casting Kinky as a racist; they're using material from Kinky's comedy routines from two and a half decades ago to prove their point. Because, lord knows, anyone who has ever used the word "nigger" in any context is clearly a racist.

"He did say it," Mr. West said. "A lot of people always say it's satire. I take it seriously, and a lot of the good people of Texas take it seriously."

I do love my state. The antics here can keep me entertained for months on end, especially when the Legislature is in session. Be nice to me, and some time I'll tell you about the time the Texas Lege outlawed the sale of the Louisiana-made Blackened Voodoo Lager on the ostensible grounds that it promoted witchcraft and Satanic rituals--its outselling Texas Lone Star had nothing to do with it. The Legislature of Louisiana promptly outlawed the sale of Lone Star Beer on the grounds that the Texas Legislature is a pack of fools--oh, wait, no, they said that the beer sports a pentagram on the label.

The default for Word page numbering is to start with 1. Do you remember what you did to make it start with 0 in the first place?

#10 - Your quibble is correct; Lovelock merely produced the data upon which Rowland and Molina built their hypothesis.

In other (related) news, James Lovelock says it's already past "too late."

Within the next decade or two, Lovelock forecasts, Gaia will hike her thermostat by at least 10 degrees. Earth, he predicts, will be hotter than at any time since the Eocene Age 55 million years ago, when crocodiles swam in the Arctic Ocean.
"There's no realization of how quickly and irreversibly the planet is changing," Lovelock says. "Maybe 200 million people will migrate close to the Arctic and survive this. Even if we took extraordinary steps, it would take the world 1,000 years to recover."

It's tempting to dismiss Mr. Lovelock as a kook, and it's been done before, but some of his other kooky theories (ike the time he predicted that chlorofluorocarbons in the stratosphere would develop holes in the ozone layer, exposing the earth's surface to ultraviolet radiation) have been borne out.

And the Saudi Royal Family are worried that the money will stop flowing.

I think they're on the wrong track, there.

#88 - Yes, the US does have a plan to invade Canada. I wouldn't worry much about it, though; read more here and even here if you'd like more information.

#6 - In that very same speech, the President repeatedly urged people to invest in a "conservative mix of bonds and stocks", even though Treasury bonds are the "IOUs [...] stacked in a filing cabinet" that he excoriated in the first part of the speech.

That's when I turned it off.

I'm glad you've returned to political blogging.

Here's something new for you to get outraged about, though I'm fairly certain you've already seen it.

My favorite sentence is "The committee report, written by a single Republican staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA and other agencies for not providing evidence to back assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons."

The more things change . . . but it appears that the IAEA is standing up for itself and occassionally willing to kick back.

In case anyone hasn't seen this yet:

An image of a neuron vs. an image of the universe

File under "Separated at Birth?"

Nancy--I think that Shoelimpy has addressed the basic issue for you, but it has nothing to do with either sadism or legality. The folks to whom you are referring aren't necessarily all sadists; they are tribalists who do firmly believe in the rule of law.

The problem is that "the rule of law" has as its necessary corollary the concept of the outlaw, the person who does not abide by the law and is therefore not entitled to the law's protection.

The idea you express ("defining some people as outside the bounds of entitlement to decent treatment") is much, much older than the relatively recent and utterly revolutionary idea that all people are entitled to equal protection under the law.

The law is intended to protect societies, and once you've accepted that premise, you must ask from whom societies need to be protected--sometimes the answer is "foreigners bent on waging war", but more often it's from the internal elements, the outlaws, those who do not conform.

I think you're going to have a difficult time framing the issue as "sadism" because I don't think that sadism really has anything to do with it.

Re-read what Shoelimpy said, and consider it from this point of view.

Dmcrcy xsts wth th rl f lw. TRRRSTS r nt prt f dmcrcy. Thy RJCT dmcrcy nd ll tht t stnds fr. Thy r nt sldrs, thy r nt crmnls, thy r nt cvlns, thy r s sd bfr smthng cmpltly nd ttlly dffrnt nd shld b trtd s sch. Th Sprm Crt hd n d wht t ws dng whn t md ths dcsn. PRD!

Why dn't w jst gv ll f th nmts t Gntnm CTZNSHP n th ntd Stts f mrc? Thy r HMN BNGS ftr ll, shldn't thy gt Mdcr? Scl Scrty? Shldn't thy b prtctd ndr th bsc rghts nd frdm w ll njy?

HLL N! Thy wld dstry vry sngl rght nd frdm f thy wr gvn th chnc! Tht s why thy r TRRRSTS!!!!

--Shlmpy

I have a link here that you may be interested in, if you haven't seen it already. It relates to the present conversation if only because we're trying to decipher what the man means, right?

'Bush Speak' A Sophisticated 'Deception'

Mike, I like the concept of Splatterdeutsch.

Oooohhhhhh, now I know what the M. stands for.

I'll be returning to lurker mode now . . .

Wait a minute, I'm confused . . .

Have we always been at war with Oceana or with Eurasia?

Dare I ask what happens when folks get various other orifices clogged?

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