The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Eddie Cochrane:

Ed Becerra wrote:
"I want the tribes of the Third World to think of Americans that way. I don't give a damn if they hate me, so long as they fear me. Fear me to the point of peace and quiet in the world."

Ah, the old phrase oderint dum metuant "Let them hate so long as they fear", a favourite saying of Caligula. I'm reminded of the line from the first season of The West Wing (pause to google) where Bartlett says, "Did you know that 2000 years ago, a Roman Citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation. He could walk across the earth unharmed, cloaked only in the protection of the words 'civus romanus': I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome universally understood as certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens ... Let the word ring forth from this time and this place. You kill an American, any American, we don’t come back with a proportional response, we come back with total disaster!"

He changed his mind later of course, but that was TV. So that is what you want for the USA, a new Roman Empire bringing the light of civilisation to a barbarian world through overwhelmingly superior firepower. How long before we can expect to see the road from Baghdad to Fallujah lined with crucified "insurgents"? Sadly for Bush he can't appoint senators, but he could always appoint his horse to the Supreme Court instead, though it would probably have to be a recess appointment.

Well I guess it worked for the Romans for five hundred years (I'm not counting the Byzantine Empire, because if Heraclius had kept a grip on the southern provinces we wouldn't have all these problems), but would you really be happy with America transforming itself into an empire? They are damned expensive things to run, and the foreign subjects can get stroppy when you try to impose a few reasonable taxes.

Now, now. DLC =/= DNC
Oh, I choose my TLAs carefully, but I was attempting to be ironic.

It sounds very much like the Excalibur Rapid Rebuttal system, that the Labour Party has been using here in the UK since 1995. The linked article explains how they borrowed the idea from US Democratic Party campaigners, so I assume it should still be around somewhere. Perhaps it is gathering dust under a sheet, or being jealously guarded by the DLC pending Al Gore's second coming. The company and product itself have changed names in the meantime, it's now Convera RetrievalWare.

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