pedantic peasant @ 10:
I first heard the Iran story on Countdown with Olberman, and all I could think of was Polk and the Mexican American war.
Then with your post, the Bay of Pigs.
[Still Waiting for the inevitable comparison to the Gulf of Tonkin]
Seth @ 268: Here's some of the most-read blogs around posting attacks on him, without asking him or the MBA's lawyer about the accuracy of third-party charges or their own charges
I shouldn't post a comment to a blog without consulting a lawyer first?
Otherwise, what Michael Roberts said.
Nobody reads comments (sigh, that last sentence is in conversation English which includes slight hyperbole and is not meant to be read as a strictly literal statement because it is obviously then self-refuting).
Then what's your point, Mr. Comment 268?
There's a difference between "criticism" and "hatchet-job".
Then goes on to define the difference as, whatever he points to when he says "hatchet-job."
Liza @ 295: I haven't seen the proprietors standing in a line waiting to sign the AP's praises over any of this.
Teresa @ 57: I like Paula's idea: denying the AP the right to quote anything you've written or said unless they pay you for it -- say, $12.50 per five words.
Especially if they can't demonstrate you used their words on your website without quoting your website.
Lee @ 87: W hasn't even waited until just before he leaves office before granting mysterious pardons, of course. Aside from that Scooter guy, he pardoned two guys from here in Colorado who'd been convicted of selling mounted migratory birds.
dcb @ 46: I still owe the hospital $1400 for five minutes' use of their laser to zap my right eye. That wasn't the total cost of five minutes' use of their laser, mind you, just my share after my insurance company paid the bulk of it.
Today's paper has a rather disgustingly jingoistic editorial cartoon in which a circle of Republicans gleefully egg on an American soldier who has some Middle Eastern fellow on the ground and is pounding away at him with his fists. These are the good guys, as you can plainly see by the contrast with the wimpy Democrats in the next panel.
Terry Karney @ 8: Alito's decision this week on retaliation shows a startling respect for precedent over agenda, so we'll just have to see how that plays out.
albatross @ 17: Not sure how those presidents would have done under these circumstances (or Presidents Gore, Kerry, Buchanan or Nader), but there's a good chance any one of them wouldn't have hurtled headfirst into a misadventure in Iraq; some might even have acknowledged the case for climate change a few years earlier.
Bruce Cohen @ 14:
"re-entry"?
I'm surprised they don't adopt the slogan which was once, however briefly, used by SoCal Gas:
"Serves you right."
I gave up on TIME back in the 1980's, when I saw them buy the journalism of a colleague of mine at the El Paso Times, and had it rewritten by someone who transparently knew nothing about either El Paso or Ciudad Juarez, starting with their respective sizes.
I hate to say anything bad about a magazine that gave Noreascon 3 such a great write-up, but, Jesus.
touchstone @ 93: I'll suggest one explanation, at least: at this particular time and in the United States, 'armed, violent nutcase extremist' is a concept we associate with the right wing. In the public imagination at the moment, violent left-wing extremists start riots and lead protests that clash with police. Violent right-wing extremists congregate in rural areas with piles of weapons and plot to blow things up or shoot people. So it's not surprising it's easier to picture a right-wing assassination attempt; it fits better with the image.
And if they determine McCain isn't sufficiently extremist for their tastes? If they listen to Dobson, who says he'd refuse to ever vote for him? If they listen to Coulter, who says she'd vote for Clinton first?
Neil Willcox @ 29:
even if it meant they scanted or ignored the Secret Service’s other assigned duties?
Good news for counterfeiters I imagine.
And this startling news: A federal agency caught skimping on the job. Which one? We'll tell you after this break.
Melinda @ 50: The situation in which the Clinton campaign finds itself really does remind me of that old saw that "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy". Apparently they planned for wrapping up the nomination on Super Duper, Duper Tuesday, and when that didn't happen they had no fall back position.
Gee...who else's battle plan does that remind me of?
That can't be a good sign.
Xopher @ 210: Lee 208: Yeah! Like that! That's pretty much what I was trying for, except that the nativist position is more complex (though no less repugnant) than simple racism. It certainly INCLUDES racism, but they don't want "white" Eastern Europeans, either.
"Okay, we'll take the [n-word]'s and the [Chinese]. But we DON'T WANT THE IRISH!" -- Mel Brooks et. al., Blazing Saddles
(bowdlerized)
Terry Karney @ 212: People who don't subscribe to those ideas are less than complete people, and so need to be kept away, lest they dilute the real people of the world (by outnumbering them, inter-breeding, or contaminating with foreign ideas).
The Wogs start at Ellis Island.
John Mark Ockerbloom @ 218: There was a time in the US where Italians (and Irish, and various others) were "races" by this definition, and indeed at that time you'd often hear talk of the "Irish race".
"But we DON'T WANT THE IRISH!"
(See also Gangs of New York.)
Mycroft W @ 257: I had believed it was almost impossible for that to occur in the current North American media, with it being so much easier to put a negative in a 90-second spot than a positive. Realize that had Lincoln given the Gettysburg Address today, it would have been excerpted, because it is too long for a news spot.
As someone who did TV news for five years, I just wanted to chime in that this was absolutely true 23 years ago; I shudder to think what's considered an adequate story length in these times.
Mary Dell @ 314: Yes, Al Gore has been tireless in his work for the environment. Perhaps, had he had greater charisma, he might have won the presidency.
Mary, you should mount this and hang it on your wall.
albatross @ 134: Just as an aside, is there some strong reason why it's a good policy, in general, to define anyone born on your soil as a citizen?
I dunno. But let me ask every U.S. citizen here: What are your qualifications for citizenship?
If you were born in another country, you had to pass an exam demonstrating your knowledge of this country's ways of governing itself. What did any of the rest of you do to earn it?
Answer: We were born here. And yet if someone's parents were from another country, for some reason people are all upset over the fact that they meet the only eligiblity requirement that most of the rest of us had to bother with: Being lucky enough to be born in the right place.
As asked above: What would you replace it with? One of your parents had to be born here? Both? Both of their parents? Both of their parents' parents'? You have to be carrying a U.S. passport, the price of which is just now being raised to $100? You have to pass a literacy exam? In English? You have to pay a tax for the privilege of being a citizen?
Don't tell me anyone would ever suggest any one of the requirements I've just stated, when there already have been, and are now, laws making those requirements before you can vote, or enter this country. If the privilege of voting isn't almost a definition of citizenship, or the right to be in your own place of birth, then what is?
John Chu at 132: (Clinton has to walk the same line, but I don't think she's doing it as well at this point. I also can't decide if it's poor strategy or lack of money that's made her not run a 50 state strategy. e.g, she's put very little effort in small states, and states where she thinks Obama will win anyway.)
She's the Anti-Dean! (Or Giuliani's evil twin?)
(Dean was ridiculed, if that's the word, by some in the party by putting so much effort last election into states considered excessively monochromatic by his colleagues, but, to take just one example, if the caucus numbers were any indication, it might have been a huge mistake to write off Colorado.)
BSD @ 26: I don't think this is a tragedy. This is a fight that will end with handshakes and (likely) her stumping for him or (unlikely) him stumping for her.
Considering the unspeakable things that Rove and Bush did to McCain in South Carolina, and that he still ended up campaigning for the guy...yeah.
(Sandra Bernhard did a show here last week and really ripped McCain a new one for being that shameless in his pursuit of the conservative electorate.)
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 50 |
| 2007 | 94 |
| 2006 | 9 |
| 2005 | 9 |
| 2004 | 9 |
| 2003 | 5 |
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