The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Total:

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Posted on entry Palin and McCain ::: August 29, 2008, 04:02 PM:
Actually, it just clicked. I don't know what McCain may be thinking, but I think for the rest of the party it's really damn simple. They don't expect her to draw any votes. She's a scapegoat, a sacrificial lamb.Actually, it just clicked. I don't know what McCain may be thinking, but I think for the rest of the party it's really damn simple. They don't expect her to draw any votes. She's a scapegoat, a sacrificial lamb.

No, she's really not. As others have already pointed out, she helps McCain with the right wing of the party, she helps in the West, she makes a play at reducing the gender gap for the GOP, she's got blue-collar credentials, etc.



Posted on entry Palin and McCain ::: August 29, 2008, 02:14 PM:
It's actually a pretty solid pick, worryingly enough. It shores McCain up with the insane right-wing of the Republican party while putting forward a blue-collar woman candidate with a vague background.
Posted on entry Iran again ::: August 05, 2008, 10:24 AM:
but the obvious Iranian reaction is to shut down the Gulf of Hormuz to shipping, which would cripple the world's oil production. They've been reminding everyone of that fact recently.

Which of course people had already mentioned. Oops.
Posted on entry Iran again ::: August 05, 2008, 10:19 AM:
TNH @ 72:

An air assault's possible, but the obvious Iranian reaction is to shut down the Gulf of Hormuz to shipping, which would cripple the world's oil production. They've been reminding everyone of that fact recently.
Posted on entry Iran again ::: August 04, 2008, 09:11 AM:
We're not going to invade Iran, certainly not at anywhere near the level of forces we did Iraq. Why? Because nearly the entire combat capability of the Army is tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can't just turn them around and send them into Iran. To repurpose from a occupying/counterinsurgency force to a conventional invasion force would require pulling them out of Iraq/Afghanistan, re-equipping and retraining, and then staging back into theater. There's simply not time before the Bush administration ends.

Now, an air assault is definitely possible.
Posted on entry Mindreading ::: August 03, 2008, 09:30 AM:
Brown jackal from Djibouti
Posted on entry Ars Technica on recounting New Hampshire ::: January 13, 2008, 08:29 AM:
"physical ballot is not a safeguard unless it is actually counted by hand."

Uh, and not even then.
Posted on entry Ars Technica on recounting New Hampshire ::: January 12, 2008, 07:31 PM:
Elections got stolen long before the arrival of electronic voting machines. This is not to say that there shouldn't be accountability and paper trails, but the electronic machines should not be the only focus. There's a reason Harry Truman was known as the "Senator from Pendergast"
Posted on entry SFWA: The Suicide Note ::: December 05, 2007, 12:01 PM:
"Hmmm... When a thread mentions Nader, is that a sign that it's about to implode?"

I think we might have a parallel to Godwin's law here.
Posted on entry SFWA: The Suicide Note ::: December 04, 2007, 03:55 PM:
You have to be consciously ignorant to claim there's no difference between the parties.

[snark]
Or a Nader supporter...oh, I'm sorry, that was implied.
[/snark]
Posted on entry Remembering the Great War, 2007 ::: November 11, 2007, 05:21 PM:
57,000 casualties on the first day of the Somme; 23,000 dead.
Posted on entry Retreat Along the Wabash ::: November 05, 2007, 07:06 AM:
1. St. Clair was, actually, a bumbler. He was the commander who bugged out of Fort Ticonderoga (northern New York) early in the Revolutionary War, allowing "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne to occupy it without firing a shot and head off to Albany. That one could have cost the U.S. the Revolution.

http://www.fort-ticonderoga.org/history/timeline1700.htm

2. D-Day was certainly a victory, not a defeat. By comparison, the number killed at D-Day for the American Army was the *average* number of Soviets killed per day from 1941-45.
Posted on entry SFWA: DMCA abusers ::: September 04, 2007, 04:16 PM:
"Greg, you're insisting on talking about how people romanticize copyright as if it is durable, permanent ownership. That's fine, but Kelly and C.E. Petit are talking about something different: all the interesting ways in which property really isn't durable or permanently ownable. I don't think they are disagreeing with you, I think they are talking about something in addition to your point"

C.E., at least, was holding his arguments up _as if_ they were countering Greg's, though.
Posted on entry *SPOILERS* What's Wrong With Veronica Mars? *SPOILERS* ::: August 26, 2007, 08:19 PM:
Bruce @41. Agreed about Weevil, and the other characters. One of the things about the first season was that Veronica didn't necessarily seem like the center of the universe to the other characters (ie. they didn't seem solely to exist for her convenience). That was a lot less true of S2 and S3.


Posted on entry *SPOILERS* What's Wrong With Veronica Mars? *SPOILERS* ::: August 25, 2007, 10:52 AM:
One of the things that I found interesting about the first season (which, as everyone has already pointed out), was that it was one of the few American shows that had a distinctly class-warfare edge to it (as opposed to race or gender warfare). And it wasn't the "poor kid taken in by rich family, fish out of water class warfare" as in "The OC" and "Fresh Prince" (I suspect that those two shows have never ever been used as examples in the same sentence before). The class warfare in S1 was nasty and uncompromising and the rich kids were genuinely quite unpleasant.
Posted on entry Just a thought ::: September 02, 2005, 01:47 PM:
CNN: Gay marriages occurring at New Orleans convention center.

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