Without expressing any opinion about Ron Paul, let me just remind the world that the "wackos" are the ones who suggested Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, that he possessed weapons of mass destruction, that he was in any way a threat to the United States, that invading the country with 130,000 troops would be a walk in the park, etc...
The fact that substantial numbers of our elite media and political industrial complexes are members of this group of Wackos does not render the term inappropriate, it simply serves to remind us of just how fucked up our elites are and just how large a problem we face.
I think Chris is overthinking this. I didn't endorse anyone in '04, though I would've described myself as a "Dean sympathizer." In '04 the issues were Iraq and getting rid of Bush before he did all the things we imagined he'd do. So you had support for Dean and Clark (Iraq issue) and to a lesser extent Kerry (he's the most electable one).
Of all the reasons Chris lists for people not endorsing any presidential candidates, "divided community" is the only one that probably has any real legitimacy for me, and I felt the same way in '04.
But most importantly, who cares what I think? I certainly express opinions about the candidates, and those opinions might carry some weight with some readers, but I don't imagine that aggregating all of that into an "endorsement" of one candidate would really sway people. More than that, I don't see myself as the Voice Of Authority as editorial boards have forever.
If I woke up one day and really had a strong sense of which candidate I favored, I'd probably say so as more of a transparency issue, but I still wouldn't think of it as an endorsement.
Besides, I only go to dive bars to hang out with dirty fucking hippie bloggers. Otherwise it's only the finest restaurants for me!
AWAITING WORD ON PRES. BUSH'S CONDITION FOLLOWING COLONOSCOPY
As I wrote earlier, I understand that the state of the president's health is of genuine interest to the country, but does CNN really need to be running with that chyron for hours?
I mean, if he'd had a health event or something I'd understand. You know, "following heart attack" or whatever. A colonoscopy is fairly common diagnostic procedure that those of us with health insurance are encouraged to get at some point in our lives.
One of the (numerous) extraordinarily ignored events was when, last Spring, Bush kept saying that the failure of Democrats to pass a spending bill quickly enough was going to cause longer deployment times for troops. This, of course, didn't make any sense at all, but as it goes these days it didn't stop the press from reporting it as if it made sense.
And then, of course, someone in the Pentagon leaked the fact that the plan was to... extend troop deployments.
If you can reconstitute those neighborhoods and the surge does succeed in Baghdad, then it will look very different in four months. If it doesn't succeed, if we continue chaos, than this vote won't matter.
A long time ago I used to believe that a lot of these people were just talking over my head, their discourse too lofty for a regular guy like myself. But that isn't true. They're just stupid.
Part of the problem we face is that too many people fail to understand this. A lot of our elite scribblers and chatters are just truly and profoundly stupid.
"Senator Obama is wrong if he thinks science-based sex education has any place in kindergarten," Romney told some 150 people at a restaurant in the northern part of the state. "We should be working to clean up the filthy waters our kids are swimming in."
Obama, campaigning in New Hampshire, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that Romney was only trying to "score cheap political points." He said he was noting in his comments that he supported laws in Massachusetts and New Hampshire in which local communities and parents can decide how to provide children with information about sexual predators. .......... Romney's campaign later released a statement touting himself and criticizing Obama. The headline on the statement: "A record of promoting abstinence, not sex education for kindergartners."
While governor of Massachusetts, Romney funded abstinence education over family planning and abortion services. But in 2002, he also checked "yes" in a Planned Parenthood questionnaire that asked: "Do you support the teaching of responsible, age-appropriate, factually accurate health and sexuality education, including information about both abstinence and contraception, in public schools?"
Earlier this week, Obama told a Planned Parenthood forum that he considers sex education for kindergartners appropriate if it is geared to their age level.
Obama also recalled being lambasted for his position during his 2004 Senate race against GOP opponent Alan Keyes. Obama said then _ and repeated to the Planned Parenthood supporters _ that the type of health education he supports is, for example, warning young children about inappropriate touching.
They managed to get all the bobbleheads to agree that June was the real no we're not kidding you this time we mean it beginning of the surge.
WASHINGTON, July 20 (Reuters) - Attacks in Iraq last month reached their highest daily average since May 2003, showing a surge in violence as President George W. Bush completed a buildup of U.S. troops, Pentagon statistics show.
The data, obtained by Reuters from the Defense Department, showed an upward trend in daily attacks over the past four months, when U.S. and Iraqi forces were ramping up operations against insurgents and militants, including al Qaeda, in Iraq.
Pentagon officials were not immediately available to comment on the statistics.
The June numbers showed 5,335 attacks against coalition troops, Iraqi security forces, civilians and infrastructure.
June's total was 2.5 percent below an October 2006 peak of 5,472 attacks and slightly lower than the 5,365 attacks in May.
But because June has only 30 days, the average daily number of attacks was 177.8, higher than the 176.5 last October and 173.1 in May.
This cannot be true, as our very serious media has provided a platform for four score and seven Kagans to tell me that the surge was working...even before it began!
This is the blog post version of an argument, which is to say short and relatively uninformed (though not entirely), but I'm not sure why there's an implied tension between these two approaches. Certainly there have been policies in place which have led to the concentration of poverty, which has been to some degree a bad thing. There have been other policies in place (as well as overall changing employment composition and other issues) which have led to certain types of jobs not being located near those concentrations of poverty. I see no inherent contradiction between policies which encourage a reduction in poverty concentration (especially by changing those policies which probably help cause it) and those which help revitalize those areas by helping to bring back the jobs.
However, where in hell do we go with that last passage there, about how the haircuts matter because "a healthy chunk of the political press corps" doesn't like Edwards, and how they're staying away from a sauce-for-the-goose position on Mitt Romney's makeovers because of their own private calculations of the relative electability of the two candidates. OK, here's the deal. Every member of that "healthy chunk" of the press corps should be fired. Today. This minute. Without pay or recompense. Let them all walk back inside the Beltway from Cedar Rapids if they have to. I value what I do. I value the work of the people in my business who do it correctly. But, holy mother of god, these people do not do what I do. It's OK to sneer at a candidate if you don't like him? It's OK to create a destructive narrative out of unmitigated piffle because he doesn't kiss your ass with the regularity you think you deserve, or because his press buses don't run on time, or because one of his staffers was late with the Danish in Keene? I watched a roomful of them boo Al Gore seven years ago, behavior that would have gotten them run out of any press box in the major leagues. Do you think one of these jamokes -- or jamokettes -- is thinking, "Maybe we should lay off the haircut thing because of what we all did to Gore in 2000, and look how well that worked out." Please.
Here's what I think -- the majority of people who cover national politics believe that history is whatever happened in the MSNBC Green Room 15 minutes earlier. I believe the campaign is covered by people with a completely unjustified sense of their own superiority, since not many of them understand or ever care about most of the issues, much less the horrendous bills that are going to come due upon whichever of these poor sods winds up with the job. I believe these people care more about their reputation around the bar at the Wayfarer in Manchester than they do about the interests of the people they purportedly serve. And, were I an editor, and someone brought me a story about John Edwards' hair or Mitt Romney's skin, that person would do it once. The second time, the lazy bastard would find himself typing bowling agate on Wednesday night.
At least here in PA it seems that the legislature has finally passed a funding plan which will, at least in the medium term, ease the perennial funding woes of SEPTA, our transit authority.
Still, there's not yet any money to "think big." There are limits to how much desirable gentrification can happen without improved intra-city transit links.
I was going to post that while I appreciate that the president's health is of interest to the nation, that a "routine colonoscopy" could've just been described as a "routine health exam."
Then I realized that the real news is that Cheney's in charge for a bit.
BAGHDAD: If the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq is reversed before the the middle of 2008, the military will risk giving up the security gains it has achieved at a cost of hundreds of American lives over the past six months, the commander of U.S. forces south of Baghdad said Friday.
Maj. Gen. Richard Lynch, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, mentioned none of the proposals in Congress for beginning to withdraw U.S. troops as soon as September. all. But he made clear in an interview that in his area of responsibility south of Baghdad, it will take many more months to consolidate recent gains.
"It's going to take through (this) summer, into the fall, to defeat the extremists in my battle space, and it's going to take me into next spring and summer to generate this sustained security presence," he said, referring to an Iraqi capability to hold gains made by U.S. forces.
It's true that pretty much everyone who reads liberal blogs thinks Tom Friedman is a complete buffoon, but as this commenter says Friedman is indeed a Very Serious Person to many people of a certain class and station in this country.
I've long wondered why even careful historical comparisons being actions of a government and events in 1930s Germany, when made by a liberal, are the Worst Thing Evah, while the branding of hundreds of thousands of average citizens as Nazis is a-ok. Well, no, I don't really wonder.
Still, it's pretty funny that Susan Collins' guy has thrown his lot in with Falafel Boy, he of the alleged multi-million dollar sexual harassment suit. And he, like good Catholic Bill, still doesn't know that the pope is indeed a proud Primate.
Collins' opponent, Tom Allen, released a statement:
Senator Susan Collins’ internet director and blogger Lance Dutson of the Maine Web Report has joined Bill O’Reilly’s smear campaign against the progressive online movement calling it “hateful.” Wrote Dutson of the positive relationship Congressman Tom Allen shares with the community, “Tom Allen has shown a breathtaking lack of judgment.”
Tom Allen believes otherwise. "I appreciate the millions of Americans, especially those from Maine, who participate in the online community. The internet has opened up new ways for us all to communicate, and put the power of information back where it belongs, with the people. I welcome the support that I have received from the online community. And look forward to continuing to have a dialog with the people of Maine and America online,” he said.
Not bad, but should go further and suggest that Collins isn't too wise to tap dance to Papa Bear's tune. Remember what happened when she tangoed with Joe?
What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, "Which part of this sentence don't you understand?"
You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna to let it grow?
Well, Suck. On. This.
Okay.
That Charlie was what this war was about. We could've hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.
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