Discuss amongst yourselves
Not last!
Hoorah! And, second.
Third! Dang!
(And still w/o a heads up from Journal Space.)
Congratulations, Cathy, on winning despite the list's blatant East Coast establishment bias.
Sure you don't want to apply Groucho's dictum to this group?
I have to admit, way down at the bottom
But good enough to have at least rated above those in the "honorable mention" category.
Wow! Last place in the Right Wing Blog's Best Blogger as Voted by Other Right Wing Bloggers Who Nobody's Ever Heard Of contest!
You've really hit the big time. Your family must be so proud. And I mean that in all sincerity.
BAHAHAHAHA!
And that was a nice touch at the end, thanking the little people for voting, even if you couldn't be bothered to do it yourself.
BAHAHAHA!
Ha! Little people my ass. It's bloggers doing the voting and they are the elite.
What?
The Lilliputians are honored to help you out.
"And a big thanks to everyone who voted for me. Especially since I was far too lazy to vote for anyone, not even myself. "
This is why you are one slick chick -smarts, generous humility, and blissful laziness. You've got it all!
Wow! Last place in the Right Wing Blog's Best Blogger as Voted by Other Right Wing Bloggers Who Nobody's Ever Heard Of contest!
Well it sure beats the hell out of a fake Pulitzer.
Hey, congrats on beating Stossel!
It's funny that a Marxist like Hitchens rates so high. Did they read what he wrote when Reagan died?
thanking the little people for voting
I suspect they have enough sense to not vote for something as foolish as what the wonderful liberals in Sacramento have done.
BTW, can a person be both gay and a lesbian? Or if a person is gay, then does that mean he isn't a lesbian? Or if a lesbian is gay, then he or she is no longer a lesbian?
Or how about bisexuals? Can they be gay? Can they be both gay and lesbian? Can the transgendered be gay, lesbian and bisexual? And what about transvestites? Shouldn't they be included? But what if they like wearing dresses but not lipstick, except on Monday nights?
LA Times:
Saying more role models could help reduce the social estrangement and high suicide rates of gay and lesbian students, the state Senate voted Thursday to require that the historical contributions of homosexuals in the United States be taught in California schools....If passed, the textbook bill could have national implications. California is a huge portion of the textbook market, where it often sets trends, and many publishers put out a specific edition for the state that others can also use.
Textbooks meeting the bill's requirements would not be incorporated into California classrooms until 2012. Social science courses would then include "an age-appropriate study" of the "role and contributions" that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have made to the "economic political and social development" of California and the United States.
Uhh......It's nice to be noticed, but I'm not so sure that this is all that prestigious an award. You sure are sure in there with a lot of smart people, however, as you deserve to be. I wonder too about the inclusion of Hitchens in this list; he can make a great case for going to war in Iraq, then he can turn around and support John Kerry for President. It's hard to figure him out.
Just finished a quick check of the LA Times web site. Does anyone think that this story:
State Senate Endorses Teaching of Gays' Historical Achievements has anything to do with this story ?
Families Turn Out for Charter Lottery
No.
Hey, it's an honor just to be nominated. Seriously, there are some pretty big names on that list.
"Just finished a quick check of the LA Times web site. Does anyone think that this story:
State Senate Endorses Teaching of Gays' Historical Achievements has anything to do with this story ?
Families Turn Out for Charter Lottery"
"No."
Well, that settles that. No one sees a connection because Davey says so.
I don't have a problem with including other groups, but I do have a problem when this kind of thing crowds out more important subjects. When high school graduates can correctly identify Harriet Tubman but not Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis, or Anne Frank but not Winston Churchill, we have a problem. Let's get the kids literate and numerate before we worry about whether they can name the major players in the Stonewall Riot.
"Well, that settles that. No one sees a connection because Davey says so. "
So glad you've seen reason, ody.
"I don't have a problem with including other groups, but I do have a problem when this kind of thing crowds out more important subjects."
Damn! Gonna have to take that back.
"When high school graduates can correctly identify Harriet Tubman but not Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis, or Anne Frank but not Winston Churchill, we have a problem. Let's get the kids literate and numerate before we worry about whether they can name the major players in the Stonewall Riot."
Stonewall "won't be on the final," ody.
But have you ever heard of Willa Cather?
"It's funny that a Marxist like Hitchens rates so high..."
Um, I don't think you can really describe Hitchens by that moniker anymore - particularly since his excellent book on Orwell came out.
He hasn't repudiated all of his past screeds, but his break with his proletariat brothers and sisters at The Nation seems to be a permanent one. Listening to Studs Terkel (whom I admire quite a bit) rant about Hitchens is one of the funniest things I've heard in quite awhile. Hell hath no fury like a Marxist scorned.
David jerked that knee pretty neatly, I'd say. With a 50% drop-out rate in LAUSD, my private school tuition seems a good investment. Too bad the days of Boston Latin School and other famous public schools are gone.
I was quizzing my daughter for her World War II test as we drove to school yesterday. Sample questions:
What was the "Phony War"?
What were Iwo Jima, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Okinawa, Philippines ?
She had to know about Kamikazis (I filled her in about the origin of the term) and "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" plus a lot of Europe war questions such as "Battle of the Bulge." We won't get to the Ardennes Forest this summer but we will go to Omaha Beach and the Arnhem bridge.
I'm going to make the kids watch "The Longest Day" before we go.
I also think she picked up about gays from her rap music. It's interesting that these kids use "gay" as a derogatory term (as in "that's so gay !"). I wonder why ?
Maybe overexposure.
Hitchens' Orwell book prompted me to get Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia." Summer reading.
Stonewall "won't be on the final," ody.
If they do a gay history curriculum, I'd be surprised if it wasn't on the final. It was a seminal event (no pun intended) in gay activism. It can't all be show tunes and softball.
"But have you ever heard of Willa Cather?"
My mother taught English in the NYC school system for 30 years. I've heard of Will Cather.
"David jerked that knee pretty neatly, I'd say."
That was his knee? Whew!
I'm going to make the kids watch "The Longest Day" before we go."
The Longest Day is a great movie, but if you have the time, throw in Band of Brothers (it's ten hours of some of the best TV ever).
I read Homage to Catalonia a few years ago. Orwell had no illusions about the Communists by the time he left Spain, and I consider Hitchens his ideological heir among the non-communist left.
"The Longest Day is a great movie, but if you have the time, throw in Band of Brothers (it's ten hours of some of the best TV ever). "
Band of Brothers was great as a book and TV but Longest Day has the geography of Normandy. I've been there several times and the village of San Mer Eglise has a dummy of the paratrooper hanging from the church steeple. There are still German pillboxes at Omaha Beach and a museum at Utah Beach.
We'll do other things than the war but kids are visual and they will get more out of it having seen the movie. In quizzing my daughter yesterday for her test, we came to the battleship Missouri as the spot where the surrender was signed. I reminded her that she stood on the exact spot four years ago when we were in Hawaii. Blank look. Can't expect too much.
We're also going to Giverney to Monet's garden. I'll try to get them to see one of the paintings before we go. I don't think LAMA has one but will check.
When we went to Alaska 13 years ago (Four kids and a motorhome) I insisted they all read Michener's "Alaska." I doubt they finished it but at least made a gesture.
LACMA currently has five Monets in its collection, four on public display.
http://collectionsonline.lacma.o...=24682&
type=101
Sorry, make that four, all on display. The fifth is a charcoal portrait of the artist by someone else.
Hey, I know who Willa Cather was, David. Along with James Thurber she is one of my favorite American authors. I think in most literary cirles she is considered one of the finest American writers. She was also a lesbian who came up with different ways of disguising that in her books.
I like Sheila Kuehl, she's a smart and effective legislator. Don't care for this particular bill, however. It smacks of "official" history, which is a bad idea, whether the inspiration is liberal or conservative.
Just the same, I find it hard to see how homophobic attitudes survive a good knowledge of history.
It's interesting that these kids use "gay" as a derogatory term (as in "that's so gay !").
And so have some of the characters on the sitcom "Will and Grace," in spite of those characters being either gay or very libertine (or both), and a few of the writers of those scripts being homosexual themselves.
The left doesn't like to admit there are innate biases, in themselves included, that do make homosexuality seem peculiar, if not outright objectionable. More important, since some of those liberals encompass the legislators in Sacramento who want to include "bisexual" people in their social-political agenda, they can't claim the only folks they're getting teary eyed over have absolutely no free will in the choices (particularly bad ones) they make in life.
"Hey, I know who Willa Cather was, David...She was also a lesbian who came up with different ways of disguising that in her books."
But does that mean that everyone has to read her? In a conventional literature class (as opposed to a GLBTSEtc. class), she might rate one book on the reading list, maybe, if there's time when they finish with Shakespeare or Orwell, who actually had some impact on the culture. I'm not saying that she shouldn't be read, but historically marginal figures don't rate the same scrutiny regardless of how much "pride" they engender in their tribe.
Anyone else having trouble logging on to journalspace pages today? I've had no luck all day, from two different computers and two different browsers.
Anyone else having trouble logging on to journalspace pages today? I've had no luck all day, from two different computers and two different browsers.
I can't get on Journalspace at all. I am only posting this thorugh Haloscan.
What is your Internet provider? Mine is Cox Communications.
Hi, Bradley. it's me, using my wife's scomputer. This one has Comcast with Safari, the other Yahoo DSL with IE. Does not look good. Further proof that you get what you pay for, I guess.
I have visions of everything I've posted on my own js blog vanishing into the ozone. Not a great loss to anyone but me, but still...
If you hear anything, post it here? I'll do likewise,
http://www.laobserved.com/
archiv..._day_at_jo.html
Sez here it was back by 7 p.m. Couldn't prove it by me. Of course it also says users were waened in advance...
Still out. Funny. I was upset with the Blogger problems this week and toying with the idea of moving my blog. Now this . . .
My bad. Note date and time on the LA Observed item: March 7, 2004 02:28 PM.
David C,
Have you seen any stories or references to this outage? I haven't.
I've been able to access the home page briefly; saw my blog apparently untrashed; lots of complaints on the "bug hunt" discussion page about vanishing comments. But many jumps still seem to be broken.
LA Observed in real time: http://www.laobserved.com/
archiv...space_down.html
This feels rather like one of those old '70s end of the world movies. The last remnents of civilization huddling in the burned out buildings. My favorite was always The Last Man on Earth, with Vincent Price, based on the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. (The recent 28 Days was a pale imitation of both that film and Day of the Triffids. The curse of a long memory.)
Blogging at the beginning was a good stimulus in a period when I no longer felt motivated to write much. Just public enough to be less like wanking that writing in a note book with colored inks. And then when the infrastructure collapses we revert to cannibalism.
This feels rather like one of those old '70s end of the world movies. The last remnents of civilization huddling in the burned out buildings. My favorite was always The Last Man on Earth, with Vincent Price, based on the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. (The recent 28 Days was a pale imitation of both that film and Day of the Triffids. The curse of a long memory.)
Blogging at the beginning was a good stimulus in a period when I no longer felt motivated to write much. Just public enough to be less like wanking that writing in a note book with colored inks. And then when the infrastructure collapses we revert to cannibalism.
I was able to log into JS for a few minutes today, add an entry to my blog, and then it went down again.
On an unrelated note: Anne Thompson, you're an absolutely terrific writer. I always love your stuff and read anything where I see your byline.
You described our plight exactly. Ody, David E. Mike K., Crid, Californio, Mark, Soupy and all the rest are gone, and only the fortunate few to plumb the mysteries of Haloscan are left.
All alone here, with none to record the end of the disaster . . except us.
PS - the only thing I know about triffids is the lyric from Rocky Horror. Must see . . . triffid movie.
Where's Ody? I'm so glad to hear he made it. One of my favorites.
Now who knows how to build a fire?
And does Cathy know how to monitor this thread? Of course she does . . . D'oh! Maybe Cathy can post something here for us to talk about while we wait for Journalspace to revive.
Triffids from a novel of the same name by John Wyndham. Walking trees that kill. All but a handful of humans are blinded by (if I remember correctly) a metor shower: the exact set up of 28 Days. A let down, War of the World style ending, and very scrappy special effects; made around 1960.
Triffids from a novel of the same name by John Wyndham. Walking trees that kill. All but a handful of humans are blinded by (if I remember correctly) a metor shower: the exact set up of 28 Days. A let down, War of the World style ending, and very scrappy special effects; made around 1960.
This feels rather like one of those old '70s end of the world movies. The last remnents of civilization huddling in the burned out buildings. My favorite was always The Last Man on Earth, with Vincent Price, based on the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend.
My favorite take-off of I Am Legend is Charlton Heston's The Omega Man. In addition to Heston's portrayal of Dr. Robert Neville, there's Anthony Zerbe's memorable performance as the evil Matthias.
And does Cathy know how to monitor this thread? Of course she does . . .
I found my way here through the link at L.A. Observed.
Sounds like Little Shop of Horrors . . .
Howdy Mike in S.A.!
Welcome to our little club. Now how to get the word out to the others?
Now how to get the word out to the others?
Some commenters have their e-mail addresses posted. Aside from direct e-mails, nothing else comes to mind.
Quiet, quiet. Someone is tapping from the outside. Look, they're breking through! it's Soupy!
He's come to rescue us. All hail Soupy!
I just thought of that, and emailed Ody, David E. and Mike K. If this is to be a long outage, we must find a workaround for blog withdrawal . . .
This is an exceedingly long time for a blog outage. JournalSpace must be really SNAFUd. Well, I'll call it a night and check in the morning.
Yeah, it's getting pretty late here (1:39pm in San Antonio). Good night.
Sleep tight.
Sleep tight.
I like Sheila Kuehl, she's a smart and effective legislator.
Sheila Kuehl is a man-hating harpie, who should be left outside in stocks for a month for blocking paternity law reform. See Matt Welch's excellent Reason Mag piece on paternity fraud for more info on that:
http://www.reason.com/0402/
fe.mw...injustice.shtml
Kuehl, a former family law attorney who cosponsored a law that reworked California’s child support system in 1999, has been the single biggest opponent of paternity-related reform bills in the state, to the point where activists like James and Phillips refer to her as "Sheila Cruel" and are planning demonstrations outside her office. Kuehl refused repeated requests to comment for this article. "She says it’s not her issue," a spokeswoman told me. "She’s not interested to talk about it."
Wright, who considers Kuehl a friend, says he tried several times to sway her with individual stories of innocent victims who’d been trampled by the current system. "Sheila said to me one day in a hearing room: ‘You know, I understand that, through the convergence of science and thousand-year-old common law, we have to work toward a kind of balance. And I side with the kids; I don’t really care about this guy.’" Wright chalks it up to the prevailing poli-tical winds. "If this was a case where women could be charged similarly," he says, "Sheila would be all over this like a cheap suit. It’s really a case where it becomes a guy vs. a child. So it’s like, ‘Well, screw the guy.’"
^ Various abuses, if not outright corruption----where common sense ends up beaten and frayed----within the political system are far likelier to occur when ideologically nonsensical people like Kuehl are allowed to dominate the executive, legislative and judicial branches.
Even many (or enough) Californians somehow, someway got this realization into their thick skulls when former Governor Gray Davis coupled with the liberal-dominated state legislature resulted in the first gubernatorial recall in recent history.
And it needs to be noted that when people's "hearts bleed" (particularly in the case of government bureaucrats, who love taxes, taxes, taxes, fees, fees, fees!!), the result often is a severe shortage of 2+2=4 reasoning and logic:
Unlike capital murder convictions, which are being overturned around the country because of DNA evidence, family court cases typically hew to the "finality of judgment" principle to prevent disruptions in children’s lives. Or, in the words of former California legislator Rod Wright, "It ain’t your kid, you can prove it ain’t your kid, and they say, ‘So what?’"
That’s how a man like Taron James could be slapped with a support bill for thousands of dollars from Los Angeles County in 2002, and continue to be barred from using his notary public license, even after producing convincing DNA evidence and notarized testimony from the mother that her 11-year-old son....is not his child and that she no longer seeks his support......the court was unimpressed with his tale of woe, and he has since coughed up $14,000 in child support via liens and garnishments.
"I contact Child Support Services, and their whole thing is, ‘Take us to court. You don’t like what we’re doing, take us to court,’" he says. "Whether or not you’re the biological father doesn’t matter -- if someone’s got your name, and you’ve...failed to participate in the court date, then you have an obligation to pay child support, period."
Needless to say, taking DCSS to court is expensive (James says he’s already run up legal bills of $4,000), and success isn’t likely. To add insult to injury, even if you win, you won’t get any of your money back.
State bureaucrats say their hearts bleed, but rules are rules. "We are obligated by law to enforce the order," says California DCSS’s Gerhenzon.
"What makes a father?" California state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) said in an August 2002 interview with the Los Angeles Times, explaining why she was voting against Rod Wright’s latest reform bill. "This bill says the donation of genetic material makes a father. I don’t agree."
Well, this is disturbing. JournalSpace is still not working. Even worse, the pages now load, but they're totally blank.
Is this what everyone else is seeing?
"But does that mean that everyone has to read her?"
Everyone has for years."Paul's Case" has been taught in High School english classes since it was written back in 1905. As Cather was a high school teacher this is clear example of the Gay Agenda at work.
Surely "Paul's Case" (a very obviously gay story) must be banned lest it corrupt future generations the way it has in the past!
"Sheila Kuehl is a man-hating harpie, who should be left outside in stocks for a month for blocking paternity law reform."
Don't hold back, Amy. Tell me what you really think.
Have you ever actually met Sheila?
Welcome to our post-JournalSpace apocalypse thread, David E. I've emailed a couple other regulars, and perhaps the notice on LA Observed will bring in a few others.
Welch's story doesn't put Kuehl in a good light. Kuehl voted against what appears to be a reasonable reform on paternity law, then wouldn't discuss the reasons for her vote.
Bradley, Yes the pages are blank!
The Homepage and the other blogs I tried.
Blank white pages!
A danish JS-member
This
No journalspace thing sucks.
I just don't kniw waht to do.
"what appears to be a reasonable reform on paternity law"
If somebody held a gun to my head and told me I had to have sex with either man-hating harpie Sheila Kuehl and horrifying shemale Amy Alkon, I'd go with Sheila every time.
Soupy is in the maybe unique position of having met both. In fact, there was this time at a very swanky hotel in Santa Monica where Soupy was playing the piano at the bar and, well, kids might be reading this.
"It's just gone!" David C. said. "How can this be?
But there was no way of getting around the reality: All of JournalSpace had vanished into the bit bucket. We who has sailed the S.S. Seipp in proud dialogue/ranting/kibitzing, were now crowding into the rickty escape craft haloscan.com/comments/cathyseipp/788.
Everywhere else on JournalSpace . . . nothing. The ocean was thankfully placid, but no sun could be seen in the overcast sky. Not even any seagulls or c*A[i$ spammers. And absolutely no ethereal wind.
It was unnaturally timeless. This could be a brief outage, or it could be . . . forever?
Bling!
Mike in S.A. appeared on deck, looking relieved. David C and Bradley waved hello.
"We should be okay. Kevin Roderick has given the distress call at LA Observed. Someone's gotta hear it. JournalSpace can't be out for too much longer," said Mike in S.A.
Bling!
Smiling his sardonic grin, Soupy materialized. Then he vanished.
Bling!
Leaning right, Mark appeared on the starboard side of the stern, script denouncing Sheila Kuelh and 10,000 other liberals in hand.
The escape craft Haloscan juddered to the right.
Bling!
A strong scent of patchouli wafted through the boat as David E. materialized. Bedecked in iridescent gauze, wearing a huge silver peace medallion, he held a huge tome of Ginsburg's works. The craft sloshed violently leftwards.
"I've S.O.S'ed Ody and Mike K. as well," Bradley said. "Mike K. might rescue us on his yacht, and as for Ody, well, he's got the entire D.O.D. armamentum to draw upon . . ."
David E. began to declaim:
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night . . ."
Voice rising, Mark countered:
"The United Nations (financed by American taxpayers!) has long been a safe harbor for terrorist and oppressive regimes which target America as the enemy.
"Even more alarming, the United Nations is beginning to take aim at the God-given rights enjoyed by Americans since our great nation was founded. The right to self defense, use your own property, or even the right to have children may all be trampled if the United Nations is allowed to have the power it seeks. . ."
It was going to be an interesting ride. . .
Now the JS people says Hello
One word
Hello
Like in space
Early Friday morning, a hard drive in the main server that hosts the live Journalspace site experienced a hardware failure. We have worked around the clock to fix the problem, and restore our members' data from a recent backup. However, due to the nature of this failure, some of our backup was also corrupted. Some recent data as well as sporadic older data may be lost. We are still working to restore every bit of data we can. Please bear with us as we attempt to bring journalspace back to normal.
Please check this page for updates. We can't respond to inquiry emails at the moment, as our only priority is getting journalspace back online.
Oops. Forgot to mention, that's the message you get on JS now.
JS home page sez: "Early Friday morning, a hard drive in the main server that hosts the live Journalspace site experienced a hardware failure. We have worked around the clock to fix the problem, and restore our members' data from a recent backup. However, due to the nature of this failure, some of our backup was also corrupted. Some recent data as well as sporadic older data may be lost. We are still working to restore every bit of data we can. Please bear with us as we attempt to bring journalspace back to normal.
Please check this page for updates. We can't respond to inquiry emails at the moment, as our only priority is getting journalspace back online."
Blogspot, anyone?
JournalSpace's explanation is totally inadequate. Not just that it had a hard drive failure, nor just that some of the backup data was corrupted, but that it took a friggin' day for JS to even put its acknowledgement on its Web site. How difficult could that have been to do?
This makes any problems I've had with Blogger seem trivial. At least Google has the resources and the brains to make proper backups.
If JournalSpace can't recover its data, at least Cathy can recover her entries from Google's cache and the Wayback Machine -- and lucky for her that she used Haloscan for comments.
Trying to imagine Soupy as a cocktail lounge pianist: "Just the simple classics -- 'Wait Til You See Her,' "Lazy Afternoon," and 'I Get the Neck of the Chicken.' "
New note on JS home page: "
Journalspace member 'westy' has set up an unofficial forum for journalspace members to get in touch with each other. We won't be able to participate in the forum, as our only priority is getting journalspace back online."
Ha!
This is because of the preponderance here of self-relient libertarian types who set up their own shelters without waiting for the National Guard to come and help them out.
If JournalSpace can't recover its data, at least Cathy can recover her entries from Google's cache and the Wayback Machine
Does this mean we all can? Call me clueless but this is the first inclining I've had of such a miracle.
If JournalSpace can't recover its data, at least Cathy can recover her entries from Google's cache and the Wayback Machine
Does this mean we all can? Call me clueless but this is the first inclining I've had of such a miracle.
I found out what really happened to journalspace. A Pulitzer does have its advantages.
Anyway, it seems that so many people came to her blog after reading that she 16th (tied for 16th actually) in the Unknown Conservative Pundit contest tht Jspace couldn't handle all the traffic. They blew a gasket.
Chicken neck, huh? Let's leave our penises out of this.
"everything" is saved on Google's cache.
I hope?
I found some of my old entries there, one month ago, when JS had their first downtime.
Can't get into Matt Welch's blog either.
I wouldn't think that everything is saved in Googles cache, but hopefully the information that you are hoping to recover will be there.
It is ironic that just last week I spent several hours backing my entire two years worth of journal entries up. Thank goodness I did.
Thanks to Bradley for alerting me to the lifeboat. It's funny but I suspect there are more comments since the outage than there would have been in normal circumstances. The end of the world musings reminds me of one of my favorite science fiction stories.
It was called "Mr Adam" and was about a horrible nuclear accident that sterilized every man in the world. It didn't do anything else but the realization that there would be no more babies brought all sorts of changes in behavior. It was written a long time ago and the author would probably be surprised to learn that most of what he predicted about such a situation has taken place anyway, probably a consequence of "the pill."
Anyway, about a year after this catastrophe a baby is born in some little town in West Virginia or a similar rural spot. It turns out this guy was in a lead mine when the big accident happened. He is the only man in the world who is not sterile. Then there is a hilarious series of events as women from all over the world want to have sex with him so they can get pregnant.
Anyway, it was a pretty funny story although the present "culture" of Paris Hilton, et al, resembles the plot.
I thought the outage was a DOS attack but the long time suggests that they are not very adept at running a server.
Like I said last week, Wizz.
You are blessed!
Like I said last week, Wizz.
You are blessed!
"I get the neck of the chicken
I get the rumble seat ride
I get the leaky umbrella
Everyone shoves me aside
When I jump in my shower each morn'
Sure as fate,
I'm too late,
All the hot water is gone
I get the neck of the chicken
I get that burnt piece of toast
I get that seat in the movies
Smacko! in back of the post
That's why I can't get over this dream that came true
If I get the neck of the chicken
How did I ever get you?
I get the neck of the chicken
That's how they give me the bird
And in the family snapshot
Mine is the face that's all blurred
When morning paper comes to the door
Sure as fate,
I'm too late
And they're mine long about four
I get the neck of the chicken
I get the plate with the crack
I get those evenings with Granma
Everyone else can relax
That's why I can't get over this fine howdy-do
If I get the neck of the chicken
How did I ever get you?"
-- Frank Loesser and Jimmy McHughfrom Seven Days Leave (where it was first sung by the ineffable Ginny Simms)
Everything on Google cache? I wouldn't swear to it, but certainly many of Cathy's entries would be preserved on Google Cache. Combined with the Wayback Machine, this should go a long way toward getting Cathy's material restored.
Perhaps some readers have saved some of her entries as well. And as David C. has noted, the spirit of John Galt lives on.
Well, I was looking for a subject for my next sci/tech column. With the JournalSpace fiasco, I've got one.
---------------------------
"Ship ahoy!"
We all turned to look at the magnificent yacht fast approaching from the west.
Bradley turned to the Morse transmitter:
"Mayday! Mayday!"
The yacht steered toward the lifeboat, and we clambered on. A gentleman wearing a khaki hat and pants and Hawaiian shirt waved us on board with his left hand. In his right hand, a reddish drink with a mini-umbrella in it.
Well, if we were going to be waiting for rescue, at least it would be a comfortable wait. . .
I am blessed indeed Elin.
Hope you are having a wonderful Saturday!
Man-Hating Lesbian Profiled in the NYT
Regardless of Kuehl's personal virtues and vices, the bill she's sponsoring is utter crap. It's another attempt to impose a politically motivated topic onto the educational curriculum.
The Democrats in the Legislature are prone to such ridiculous feel-good measures. It would be a full-time job writing about them all. (While Republicans can also write nonsense legislation, their minority status in the Legislature ensures it won't go anywhere).
Of course I checked my own first, but then:
Wayback Machine
"Robots.txt Query Exclusion.
We're sorry, access to http://cathyseipp.journalspace.com/* has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt.
Read more about robots.txt
Try another request or click here to search for all pages on cathyseipp.journalspace.com/
See the FAQs for more info and help, or contact us."
According to the faq Robot.txt allows thoughtful site owners to "instruct automated sytems not to crawl their sites."
"Regardless of Kuehl's personal virtues and vices, the bill she's sponsoring is utter crap. It's another attempt to impose a politically motivated topic onto the educational curriculum."
As if the eductional curricuumaspresently constituted were free of politcal motivation. LOL!
Meanwhile in "politically unmotivated" America --
A New Broom Rapes Clean!
As if the eductional curricuumaspresently constituted were free of politcal motivation. LOL!
So you're justifying bad behavior by citing other supposed bad behavior? That doesn't strengthen your argument, you know.
> Ody, David E. Mike K., Crid,
> Californio, Mark, Soupy and
> all the rest are gone
Genuine obsessive are undeterred by natural disaster... But it does feel like candlelight in here.
> This feels rather like one
> of those old '70s end of
> the world movies.
Fellow commenters, please cast the following roles: Cathy; Maia; Lewis; Ody; Luke; Soupy; etc.
> Have you ever actually
> met Sheila?
For the love of Christ, should she HAVE to? The woman's a politician, not a jogging buddy. Have you ever met Nixon?
> Soupy is in the maybe unique
> position of having met both.
The resultant collapse of his facade of masculinity forced him into a life of anonymity, a wretchedness salvaged only in moments when he could pretentiously refer to himself in the third person without having people laugh in his face.
"As if the eductional curricuum as presently constituted were free of politcal motivation. LOL!"
Of course not, David E. It's one more piece of politically motivated legislation, one more barnacle on the ship of education.
Ewwwww, about the Archive.org crawling being blocked. I can't believe Cathy would do that on her own, so it must be JournalSpace's policy. Why would JournalSpace do that?
Jspace was down for two days once a yr or two ago, then back up with no problems, so I'm not too worried about this outage. OK, a little worried. Frankly, I depend on my blog enormously as an online notebook, and often use the search function to find things I've written about various subjects for future articles. It would be a huge loss to me if Jspace isn't fixed. But I did get an email from the site owner yesterday that he's working on it, and he didn't sound too panicked.
I do print out my blog every week on paper and keep it in a binder for reference, but haven't backed up anything on the computer. Hope I don't have to ask for help getting the layout etc from Google cache if I have to go with another server.
Ironically, the idea of a truly liberal education is a foreign concept to most "liberals."
BTW, it's official: Seipp's blog has been down a full calendar day and it's STILL getting more hits than Ehrenstein. So he posts his links here, just as a Ford dealer in Cleveland might imagine he could sell another Focus or two if he could just park them on the Toyota lot, next to those shiny Tercels...
I tried it with a couple of other js blogs and got the same result.
If it indeed turns out that js has set things up so that in the event of a disaster little can be recovered, we should light our torches and storm the castle. With or without Vincent Price.
Bling!
A flash near the crow's nest. On the deck, necks strained upwards. The figure of a bald-headed woman could be discerned. Sigourney Weaver?!
"Here, put it on!" a boy's voice cried out, unseen.
The woman bent down, and placed on her head what looked to be the head of a mop, with yellow yarn running down the sides in ungainly dredlocks.
"Yes, Jonah, the hat you made is lovely. I won't scare anybody now."
"I wanna sit down."
"No, it's my seat. Now climb down the ladder and say hello to the nice people below."
"I'm TELLLLLLLLLLLLLING!!!!!"
"For the love of Christ, should she HAVE to?"
She was making ad hominem attacks, Bradley. It's therefore a perfectly reasonale question.
"The woman's a politician, not a jogging buddy. Have you ever met Nixon?"
Have you ever met Saddam Hussein? Osama Bin Ladin? Grover Norquist?
You obvioulsy ignore my links, Crid. They're very rarely to my blog.
David E,
"She was making ad hominem attacks, Bradley. It's therefore a perfectly reasonale question."
You mistook one of Crid's statments for mine.
> She was making ad hominem
Again, Kuehl is a paid POLITICIAN being judged on her (loathsome) performance. "Ad hominem" simply doesn't apply. Seeing you use Latin is, as George Will once put it, "like watching a child play with a Steuben vase."
> attacks, Bradley
That was me.
> Hussein? Osama Bin Ladin?
> Grover Norquist?
That's the point, these people are known for their works, not cocktail party chat.
> You obvioulsy ignore my links, Crid.
Everybody does.
You obvioulsy ignore my links, Crid.
Ignoring David E. would be even better, but that's like ignoring a train wreck.
"Again, Kuehl is a paid POLITICIAN being judged on her (loathsome) performance. "Ad hominem" simply doesn't apply."
You haven't been paying much attention to current events.
"That's the point, these people are known for their works, not cocktail party chat."
Ask Dubbya about those cocktail parties.
"The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval. We are not trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans."
However --
“Telecommunications giant Qwest refused to provide the government with access to telephone records of its 15 million customers after deciding the request violated privacy law, a lawyer for a former company executive said Friday.
In a written statement, the attorney for Joseph Nacchio, the former Qwest chief executive officer, said the government approached the company in the fall of 2001 seeking access to the phone records of Qwest customers, with neither a warrant nor approval from a special court established to handle surveillance matters.”
So who are ya gonna believe -- Our Beloved Chosen-by-God-Himself leader or the Islamofascists of Qwest?
Then there is a hilarious series of events as women from all over the world want to have sex with him so they can get pregnant.
I bet even a stereotypical show-tune spouting gay like David E could comply, certainly if he's similar to those two characters in "Brokeback Mountain." Of course, most liberal activists don't want that point emphasized since in their mind it's impossible for people to modify their behavior. Then again, folks like Sheila Kuehl do seem to be quite content including bisexuality into their agenda.
>Joseph Nacchio
I have to wonder if this is baloney and just spin to make robber barron Nacchio look good. After all, this is the same Nacchio who is under a 42-count indictment for insider trading and just plea bargained on a big SEC case, plus is on the losing end of a whopping $400,000,000 fraud class action suit.
And let's not forget Nacchio is a good friend of Dubya, who appointed him to two federal telecommunications boards. Nacchio gave heap-o-bucks to Dubya and is a good buddy to Philip Anschutz, another Friend of Dubya and fellow Qwest robber barron.
>Now who knows how to build a fire?
It's Lost -- The Journalspace Edition!
Some background reading:
On March 15, 2005, Nacchio and six other former Qwest executives were sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. They were accused of a "massive" $3 billion financial fraud between 1999 and 2002 and of benefiting from an inflated stock price.
Since his departure from Qwest in June 2002, Nacchio has been the source of a Department of Justice investigation. Sources firmiliar with the investigation have pointed to Spring 2001 when Nacchio sold stock. On November 21, 2005, The Wall Street Journal reported that Nacchio "believed Qwest was doing well because it was getting lucrative secret national-security-related work from the federal government."
During the period in question Nacchio was serving on two federal advisory panels that dealt with such issues — the Network Reliability and Interoperability Council and the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee. He was Chairman of the latter and was given a TOP SECRET security clearance in the late 1990's.
Nacchio was indicted on December 20, 2005 on insider trading charges in Denver, Colorado. He was forced to surrender his passport for fear that he would flee the country.
The indictment against Nacchio charges him with 42 counts of insider trading. Each count carries a potential 10-year jail term and corresponds to a sale of Qwest shares, including a flurry in April-May 2001, when Nacchio sold almost $39 million in stock. At the time, Qwest was trading between $41.12 and $38.31.
The stock began a sharp decline in May 2001, falling below $2 by July 2002.
What happened to the whole blog thing? I still have television, so I trust the MSM is not simply suppressing the news of some earthquake or other that has killed journalspace.
How did you get started on Zelda? Soupy is going on about who would be better in the sack, her or Amy Alkon? How quickly it gets down to dog eat dog without the beneficent oversight of Cathy.
Please make it all come back.
"Soupy is going on about who would be better in the sack, her or Amy Alkon? How quickly it gets down to dog eat dog..."
Exactly. Couldn't have put it better myself.
This is kinda weird...
I bet even a stereotypical show-tune spouting gay like David E could comply, certainly if he's similar to those two characters in "Brokeback Mountain."
I'm a Kinsey 6, Mark. Where do you fit on the scale?
You volunteer not a jot of personal information, though you make pronouncements about "in my experience" all the time. From the looks of you BLASTFAXES you may well be L. Brent Bozell himself.
Bling!
Bling!
Bling!
In the preternatural stillness of JournalSpace's outage, the yacht's growing crowd took on a festive cheer. Raucous flame-fests picked up, and the scene took on its usual air of abnormality.
"MEEEEEEEEEEM -RRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"
The earsplitting shriek from below decks tempoarily overpowered all conversation.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
"They're giving a pig a rough time of it in there," said Crid, blocking his ears.
Hush," said Cathy, twirling her lavender and rose-print muu-muu, and a voice rose in song, filling the guests with a vague sense of nausea.
"A Unicef clearasil
Gibberish 'n' drivel
O Mennen mylar muriel
With a hey derry turn gardol
O Yuban necco glamorene?
Enden nytol, vaseline!
Sing hey nonny nembutal."
"What's that . . . omigawd!" Mike K. yelled. "He's gotten into the liquor cabinet!"
"Where's Mark? I just saw him - -" Cathy asked.
"Gawd blesh Americar- . . ."
". . . You don't think . .?"
Mike K. gingerly set foot down the stairs, then looked up as a dazzling iridescent light glared.
"EEEEEEEES, MAY BE BEAUTIFUL AND YE-ET WHAT'S TOOO PAINFUL TO REMEEE--EMBEEEEER . . "
Jaw dropping to the floor, Mike K. just stared. The sound came from the iridescently attired frame of David E., microphone in one hand, bottle of single-malt scotch in the other.
Next to him, lurching to the right then regaining posture, a figure arrayed in Uncle Sam red, white and blue, holding another microphone -- Mark!
His best booze!! His prize kareoke system!!
The sound stopped momentarily.
"Yesh, you leeeeeeen to the left, but fer a leftisht yer not sho bad," Mark said.
"The Divine Miss M could not looksh better," David E. laughed. "Have shome more of this, baby! . . ."
Mark took the bottle and greedily guzzled, a stream of the precious booze falling onto his Uncle Sam shirt.
"Good buddy . . . "
Eyes rolling, Mike K. hastily climbed back, narrowly missing his head on the low ceiling.
^ That imagery will cause some nightmares!
It's Lost -- The Journalspace Edition!
Who would be our equivalent of the show's main characters? I most resemble John Locke, except I have a full head of hair, my father is still alive, and my weapon of choice is the .38 Special (as opposed to Locke's hunting and throwing knife collection).
>It's Lost -- The Journalspace
>Edition!
>
>Who would be our equivalent
>of the show's main characters?
I frequently am mistaken for Ian Somerhalder, who played Boone. But we all know what happened to him.
Whoever is Evangeline Lilly, a.k.a. Kate, I want her number. :)
"Drunk" is a very tired meme.
"I frequently am mistaken for Ian Somerhalder, who played Boone. But we all know what happened to him."
Everyone on the show hated him so he was written out.
Evangaline Lily is (or was) Dominic Monaghan's girlfriend.
Danger Will Robinson. Danger.
"Frequently mistaken" by whom? Who knows you? Who sees you? What do you do for a living? Where do you live? How old are you? Where were you educated? What's you religious affiliation, if any? Do you belong to any ethnic or racial minority?
Who are you?
David, you're talking to a different "Mark."
David, you're talking to a different "Mark."
There are two of them?
This is getting really confusing.
Will the "Marks" please differentiate themselves from one another.
If possible.
One of the Marks had a Jspace home page...
Ominous use of past tense.
> Ominous use of past tense.
Haloscan is still up, maybe they should go into the blog business. They may already be handling more throughput than the blogs they service (though Seipp's is probably atypical).
Years ago this kind of chatter used to happen on local BBS systems. By the time those systems had been overwhelmed by the web, there were several flavors of chat and message board software that REALLY rocked... The whole experience was just faster. And it would keep track of message stacks with comments you hadn't read yet, so conversations could live and die naturally. It's surprising that weblogs haven't had a shakeout for that kind of software.
It was better when function keys were on the left, too.
Well here's something interesting to discuss: Karl Rove has been indicted and will resign.
And to answer your questions:
>"Frequently mistaken" by whom?
Random passersby and strangers in bars.
>Who knows you?
Is that an existential question?
>Who sees you?
Okay, now it's peekaboo.
>What do you do for a living?
I'm a writer.
>Where do you live?
Metro LA.
>How old are you?
Twenty-nine.
>Where were you educated?
Georgetown BA, UCLA MFA.
>What's you religious affiliation,
>if any?
Presbyterian.
>Do you belong to any ethnic
>or racial minority?
Half Slovakian, half Welsh.
I have been able to save 20 entries (the top page as of May 9) from my blog as source code, using Google cache. No comments, though, and a gap wider than I care to contemplate between this chunk and the last batch I saved in Archive View.
One of my favorite pieces of recent years (though not that recent anymore) was about the writer Bruce Sterling's Dead Media Project, an archive devoted to defunct communications devices,
the discarded "killer apps" of past decades and even past centuries. Hundreds of deceased devices are divided into categories like "Dead Preliterate Media" ("string- and yarn-based mnemonic knot systems"), "Dead Data-Retrieval Devices and Systems" ("card catalogs"), and "Dead Multiple-Image, Persistence-of-Vision Sound Technologies"-- moribund forms of cinema like Anschutz's Electro-Tachyscope, Armat's Vitascope, Rudge's Biophantascope and Acre's Kineopticon.There are very few areas of human life that so convincingly undercut the notion that progress is continuous and inevitable; that newer is always better. To put it bluntly, there are messages carved into blocks of stone 3,000 years ago that can still be read, and texts stored on obsolete plastic-slab storage media using retired word processing programs that likely will never be readable again.
Part of the fun of the archive is the sheer dusty-secondhand-store specificity of all those eccentric product names and half-baked disastrous notions. The section on "Dead Physical Transfer Networks" includes the French "balloon post" system (1870s), an aborted American plan of the late 1950s for "guided-missile mail" ("Incoming!"), and the mysterious "Tongan floating tin-can mail" -- not to mention close to a dozen forms of pneumatic-tube message delivery. (That last isn't quite stone-dead: A citywide tube network is still up and running in Prague.) These gadgets have an antique Rube Goldberg charm; the future as it was imagined in the past, then cobbled together (in both a physical and an intellectual sense) out of available materials.
I'm looking into available sources of vellum...
J-Mark... Um, is this, like, true? Googlenews can't find anyone who belives it who doesn't want it very, very badly.
Crid, did you click the link I provided? You'll have to ask Jason Leopold if it's true (you can email him by following the story link I provided). I'm only passing along the message.
> did you click the link I provided?
Yes, hence the question... What sort of operation is that? Let's ask wikipedia:
"TruthOut.org started in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election hoping to reach a few people, have some small impact on the dialogue, and maybe try to restore a little integrity."
Anyone describing themselves in an encyclopedia with such aw-shucks modesty is probably pulling a con.
(crickets chirping)
Anyone describing themselves in an encyclopedia with such aw-shucks modesty is probably pulling a con.
Yep.
>Anyone describing themselves
>in an encyclopedia
We don't know TruthOut submitted that material to Wikipedia.
Jason Leopold, who wrote the Rove story, is a well respected journalist who used to work for Dow Jones and has well documented connections to the intelligence community. He's not exactly some kid in his mom's basement cranking out stuff.
Time will tell if this story has legs.
Leopold's bio:
Jason Leopold is former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron’s downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron President Jeffrey Skilling following Enron’s bankruptcy filing in December 2001.
Leopold’s work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Salon, The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous other national and international publications. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country. Leopold currently writes about foreign and domestic policy online for the publications Truthout, CounterPunch, Raw Story, and Z Magazine.
> We don't know TruthOut submitted
> that material to Wikipedia.
Opuh.
"...and maybe try to restore a little integrity."
Opuh-LEEZE.
> Time will tell if
> this story has legs.
Two silly clichés in one 8-word evasion. Jmark, welcome to Seipp's comments. You're among fellows, and there's a place for you here.
Crid, you seem to be assigning dark motives to my posts. I have no idea if the Leopold story is true or not, and I was quite candid about that, so I don't think I can be accused of "evasion." I was just posting the link for discussion purposes. It sounds plausible to me. Time will tell.
And, you seem to place an awful lot of faith in Wikipedia, where anyone can post anything at any time. I could make an entry in Wikipedia in three minutes saying you are the King of Pasadena, and three minutes later someone could come along and change that to say I was the K of P.
As to whether what I posted are cliches, well, I guess that's in the eye of the beholder. ;)
True, plausible... Whatever.
Take anything Jason Leopold writes with more than a few grains of salt. His coverage of the electricity crisis had some serious errors. He wrote a story for Salon that the Web zine retracted:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp...4-
2005Mar8.html
Damn, Bradley, you beat me to it
Sorry, Crid. I just had to raise a big honkin' red flag about this guy. Leopold has SERIOUS credibility problems. Of course, Leopold could be right about Rove, but it would probably be a lucky guess. His record of scoops falls apart upon close, impartial examination.
A reporter friend of mine who covered the energy beat several years ago at first marvelled at Leopold's tireless work ethic, breaking scoop after scoop. But when he tried to follow up, he found that many of these alleged scoops were simply wrong.
I see no sign Leopold has come clean about his inaccuracies. He absurdly blamed some vast right-wing conspiracy for his own bad reputation. His self-congratulatory bio gives no hint that Leopold has done any soul-searching about his errors. In short, Leopold has given no reason why we should trust his reporting.
Caveat lector.
Jane Hamsher at Firedoglike, who has been tracking all things Fitz with bulldog tenacity, hasn't said word one about Leopold. Obviously Rove is going to get indicted very soon, but how that indictment will read is another story, as Fitz's real target is quite obviously Cheney.
Here is Salon.com's account of their experience with Leopold, and Leopold's reply: http://tinyurl.com/qmmjy
>as Fitz's real target is
>quite obviously Cheney.
I don't think Fitzgerald is "targeting" anyone. He's investigating and goes where the investigation takes him.
Interesting stuff about Leopold. I didn't know that. So either this puts him back on the credibility track -- if the story is true -- or it puts him on the tinfoil track if it's not.
Let's not forget that the whole Monica story was exposed on the internet by Matt Drudge, who wasn't the paragon of accuracy, either. Drudge had some whoppers that proved to be false, but he was right on the money about Monica, the blue dress, and that whole enchilada.
I put my picture up in Photobucket, so you can decide whether you think I look like Ian Somerhalder.
Click here for my picture.
The dull thumping from above grew louder as Mike K. climbed up from the cabin to the deck of his yacht.
"Thumm-pa-thumm-pa -- thummpa-thummpa-thumpa ...
Thumppa thumpa thump!!
As his head reached deck level, Mike K.'s first glimpse was of the absurd fluorescent yellow yarn spinning around Cathy's paper-mache hat. A few more steps, and he could see Cathy was dancing in a circle with the other members, artfully swirling her muu-muu. The thumping sound was their feet.
He heard a tambourine, and saw Jonah slamming it madly.
The shuffling stopped, as did the tambourine.
In the circle's center, a teenaged girl he recognized as Maia. He listened in the sudden silence.
"Okay, let's try again," Maia said.
She started to sing:
"Tzena, tzena, tzena, tzena, tzena ha-b’not u-r’eina Chayalim ba-moshava . . ."
Leopold is jumping the gun. We'll likely see what happens with Rove early in the week.
Drudge was just a ventriloquist's dummy for Lucianne
WOOO! Journalspace Mark is a hottie!!!
Leopold is a worthless hack and the Rove indictment story is BS. Book it.
Leopold is a worthless hack and the Rove indictment story is BS. Book it.
Why does HaloScan keep posting things twice?!? That's the second time it's done that to me.
Mike in S.A.
HaloScan can be tricky. If it's already posting but not finished, and you click a second time, that might be the reason.
Anyway, the emphasis this time was not in excess. Leopold long ago lost credibility as a journalist. He is playing to the paranoid fringers who are more concerned with reinforcing their own fantasies rather than such trivial details as factuality.
Leopold could still be right about Rove, but it wouldn't mean anything. It would be just a hunch based on the work of other reporters.
I don't think Journalspace Mark looks like Ian. I agree he's a hottie tho.
(P.S., I'm Mark's girlfriend.)
HaloScan can be tricky. If it's already posting but not finished, and you click a second time, that might be the reason.
I hit the "Refresh" button not long after the first post, so perhaps somehow that caused HaloScan to do a double-posting.
What a lousy day. Cathy's website is off-line, I spent all day grading final exams, and the Spurs lost tonight. Better luck tomorrow, hopefully. Goodnight, y'all.
> Rove is going to get indicted
> very soon
That's very Dan Rather of you... 'No one has proved the negative of my unsubstantiated allegation!' And we know what happened to Danny... Texas' Favorite Failed Marine is dancing to a whole new frequency, Kenneth!
> Fitz's real target is
> quite obviously Cheney.
Day after day, hours spin across the clock as you argue that all the insight in the world is plainly obvious, but you alone have the character, dignity and cleverness to grasp it.
What world are you from? What is your planet like? How come no mere mortal can hear these thundering truths? Were your parents blessed too, or were you born under a shimmering star?
> I didn't know that.
We could tell.
> Let's not forget...
What is the core theme of your belief? That long shots come to pass? Or that, like, WHATEVER, man, BUSHITLER is goin' DOWN!!!(?)
> It would be just a hunch based
> on the work of other reporters.
Exactly. A clever guy said "A broken clock is correct twice a day." A cleverer guy replied, "It is nonetheless useless."
Rove may be indicted. If he is, the charge will be legalistic, the distinction of his guilt will be wordy, and the response of the broad voting public will be disinterest. Bush serves until January 2009, as I am prepared to wager heavily.
As a conservative voting Democrat, the tension over this matter is just not that great.
Besides, if Rove went down in the flaming tornado of your most furious masturbatory fantasy, would you not think that the damage has already been done? It's May 13, 2006.
> the Spurs lost tonight.
What's the deal on Ginobili? That HURT to watch.
> (P.S., I'm Mark's girlfriend.)
Don't come cryin' to us.
I don't think Fitzgerald is "targeting" anyone.
Especially since you lean left.
Journalspace Mark is a hottie!!!
Well, he does have liberal biases, so there's a slightly greater possibility he's also a bit of a flake when it comes to sexual matters----over 80% of homosexuals, after all, are liberals/Democrats. Maybe you can hook up with him, David E.
If we're making Lost analogies, Mark reminds me a lot of Arzt from season 1. Remember him? The guy who kept lecturing everybody else about their foolishness and cliqueishness and inability to handle dynamite, then got blown up when he tried to demonstrate the correct way.
Sawyer...well, let's just say Lewis Fein wishes.
Jack the doctor is a little more amiable than Mike K., but close enough.
Then there's Sayid, who always mentions how he fought in Iraq and is a trained killer...hmmm, who could that be?
No idea who I'd be...I'm not short enough to be Charlie (wannabe rock star), or fat enough to be Hurley (geek with addictive personality). I'm gonna say Desmond, because most of my days are spent holed up inside my own "hatch" entering articles into a computer, and it makes me nuts.
C'mon, someone...there has to be an interactive quiz somewhere online entitled "Which LOST character are you?"
Find it, cuz I can't be bothered to.
Here you are, LYT. http://www.okcupid.com/tests/
tak...228135609532493
Soupy twisted some entirely innocent comment of mine earlier into an insult to Zelda and Amy. From the photo on her website Amy appears quite fetching actually. (It's there, Soupy, keep looking)
"Day after day, hours spin across the clock as you argue that all the insight in the world is plainly obvious, but you alone have the character, dignity and cleverness to grasp it."
Step away from the pocket mirror and nobody gets hurt.
"Cheney the Focus of CIA Leak Court Filing By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 12 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - In a new court filing, the prosecutor in the CIA leak case revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney made handwritten references to CIA officer Valerie Plame — albeit not by name — before her identity was publicly exposed.
The new court filing is the second in little more than a month by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald mentioning Cheney as being closely focused with his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, on Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, who is married to Plame.
With the two court filings, Fitzgerald has pointed to an important role for the vice president in the weeks leading up to the leaking of Plame's identity.
In the latest court filing late Friday, Fitzgerald said he intends to introduce at Libby's trial in January a copy of Wilson's op-ed article in The New York Times "bearing handwritten notations by the vice president." The article was published on July 6, 2003, eight days before Plame's identity was exposed by conservative columnist Bob Novak.
The notations "support the proposition that publication of the Wilson Op Ed acutely focused the attention of the vice president and the defendant — his chief of staff — on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in the article and on responding to those assertions."
The article containing Cheney's notes "reflects the contemporaneous reaction of the vice president to Mr. Wilson's Op Ed article," the prosecutor said. "This is relevant to establishing some of the facts that were viewed as important by the defendant's immediate superior, including whether Mr. Wilson's wife had 'sent him on a junket,' the filing states.
The reference is to the fact that the CIA sent Wilson on a trip to Africa in 2002 to check out a report that Iraq had made attempts to acquire uranium yellowcake from Niger.
Wilson concluded that it was highly doubtful an agreement to purchase uranium had been made.
The Bush administration used the intelligence on supposed efforts by Iraq to acquire uranium from Africa to bolster its case for going to war.
After the invasion, with the Bush White House under pressure because no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, Wilson wrote the op ed piece for The Times. In it, he accused the Bush administration of exaggerating prewar intelligence to exaggerate an Iraqi threat from weapons of mass destruction.
Defending the administration against Wilson's accusations, Libby and presidential adviser Karl Rove promoted the idea that Wilson's wife, Plame, had sent him on the trip to Africa. Administration critics have said such a move was an attempt to undercut Wilson's credibility.
The prosecution's court papers also stated that Cheney told Libby around June 12, 2003, that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, a month before her identity was outed."
"The Democrats in the Legislature are prone to such ridiculous feel-good measures. It would be a full-time job writing about them all. (While Republicans can also write nonsense legislation, their minority status in the Legislature ensures it won't go anywhere).
Bradley J. Fikes"
This behavior is proof that, for some people anyway, the responsibility of governing doesn't bring responsible action. These guys (including Kuehl) act as though they have a money tree. That's why I am slowly edging toward Arizona. As rich as Califonria is, it can't afford decades of Democrats writing this stuff.
I suspect that Pelosi, et all, would be no more responsible if the Republicans managed to lose control of the House next fall.
My ear drums are still ringing from my daughter's "sweet 16" birthday party last night. Ye gods ! 100 kids plus loud music. A few party crashers but pretty well behaved, all told. As expected, the bad behavior, such as it was, was from kids who were not invited and who crashed or came as dates. We had four older boys ready to boot out the uninvited but my daughter was too soft hearted (or worried about retribution next week) so some of them got in.
A couple of wallets or purses stolen. Annie's new cell phone gone. We had disposable cameras on the tables and one ended up on a nearby boat (It was at the yacht club) so the cellphone may have been tossed in the water.
Somebody said, "If that's her 16th birthday party, what is her wedding going to look like?" I'm hoping she runs away.
The Rove story sounds like wishful thinking run amok. There was a massive amount of misinformation in the energy crisis stories in California. The Fitzgerald thing is one more skirmish in the war between the CIA and Bush. The CIA won a big one when Goss resigned. I think at this point the CIA will have to be shut down. It's doing more harm than good. I think Rumsfeld agrees and is building his own intel apparatus at Defense.
So oyu're calling for a coup d'etat, Mike?
Typical
I think at this point the CIA will have to be shut down. It's doing more harm than good.
The CIA has become little more than a government-sponsored country club - it's members more interested in their own careers than the well-being of the country. It should be disbanded as soon as possible.
So oyu're calling for a coup d'etat, Mike?
Typical
What are you talking about?
As for the Lost quiz:
You are Jack. You are compassionate, heroic, and a bit of a martyr. You are brave and a natural leader. However, you shouldn't keep so much bottled up inside.
Strange - as stated before, I've always identified more with Locke.
"What are you talking about?"
Typical.
"An open letter to William P. Leahy, SJ, president of Boston College.
DEAR Father Leahy,
I am writing to resign my post as an adjunct professor of English at Boston College.
I am doing so -- after five years at BC, and with tremendous regret -- as a direct result of your decision to invite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be the commencement speaker at this year's graduation.
Many members of the faculty and student body already have voiced their objection to the invitation, arguing that Rice's actions as secretary of state are inconsistent with the broader humanistic values of the university and the Catholic and Jesuit traditions from which those values derive.
But I am not writing this letter simply because of an objection to the war against Iraq. My concern is more fundamental. Simply put, Rice is a liar.
She has lied to the American people knowingly, repeatedly, often extravagantly over the past five years, in an effort to justify a pathologically misguided foreign policy.
The public record of her deceits is extensive. During the ramp-up to the Iraq war, she made 29 false or misleading public statements concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, according to a congressional investigation by the House Committee on Government Reform.
To cite one example:
In an effort to build the case for war, then-National Security Adviser Rice repeatedly asserted that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapon, and specifically seeking uranium in Africa.
In July of 2003, after these claims were disproved, Rice said: ''Now if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence . . . those doubts were not communicated to the president, the vice president, or to me."
Rice's own deputy, Stephen Hadley, later admitted that the CIA had sent her a memo eight months earlier warning against the use of this claim.
In the three years since the war began, Rice has continued to misrepresent or simply ignore the truth about our deadly adventure in Iraq.
Like the president whom she serves so faithfully, she refuses to recognize her errors or the tragic consequences of those errors to the young soldiers and civilians dying in Iraq. She is a diplomat whose central allegiance is not to the democratic cause of this nation, but absolute power.
This is the woman to whom you will be bestowing an honorary degree, along with the privilege of addressing the graduating class of 2006.
It is this last notion I find most reprehensible: that Boston College would entrust to Rice the role of moral exemplar.
To be clear: I am not questioning her intellectual gifts or academic accomplishments. Nor her potentially inspiring role as a powerful woman of color.
But these are not the factors by which a commencement speaker should be judged. It is the content of one's character that matters here -- the reverence for truth and knowledge that Boston College purports to champion.
Rice does not personify these values; she repudiates them. Whatever inspiring rhetoric she might present to the graduating class, her actions as a citizen and politician tell a different story.
Honestly, Father Leahy, what lessons do you expect her to impart to impressionable seniors?
That hard work in the corporate sector might gain them a spot on the board of Chevron? That they, too, might someday have an oil tanker named after them? That it is acceptable to lie to the American people for political gain?
Given the widespread objection to inviting Rice, I would like to think you will rescind the offer. But that is clearly not going to happen.
Like the administration in Washington, you appear too proud to admit to your mistake. Instead, you will mouth a bunch of platitudes, all of which boil down to: You don't want to lose face.
In this sense, you leave me no choice.
I cannot, in good conscience, exhort my students to pursue truth and knowledge, then collect a paycheck from an institution that displays such flagrant disregard for both.
I would like to apologize to my students and prospective students. I would also urge them to investigate the words and actions of Rice, and to exercise their own First Amendment rights at her speech."
-- Steve Almond
the charge will be legalistic
It's amazing to me that the same Bush apologists -- who so vilified Clinton over perjury -- try to trivialize perjury when Libby is involved (and possibly Rove). When Clinton lied under oath about oral sex, it's serious. When Libby lied under oath about national security, it's "legalistic."
Perjury and obstruction of justice are serious charges, not "legalistic" trivialities.
(And for that matter, all criminal charges are "legalistic." It's an empty spin word.)
"My ear drums are still ringing from my daughter's "sweet 16" birthday party last night. Ye gods ! 100 kids plus loud music."
Congratulations on surviving!
"These guys (including Kuehl) act as though they have a money tree. That's why I am slowly edging toward Arizona. As rich as Califonria is, it can't afford decades of Democrats writing this stuff."
For now at least, Arnold stands in the way of budget-busting legislation.
One of California's problems is its heavily reliance on the personal income tax. We get a boom and bust effect in revenue collection. Right now, we're in a boom: http://tinyurl.com/nmjwq
"Wealthy high-tech investors, profitable oil companies and homeowners who reaped capital gains from selling multimillion dollar mansions were the major contributors to an estimated $7.5 billion revenue surplus -- and to Schwarzenegger's instantly improved political health.
"The cash enabled Schwarzenegger to roll out a revised budget Friday that he characterized as a ``golden moment.'' The surplus will allow him to pay down $3 billion in debt, sock away $1.6 billion in the state's reserve, and placate his most implacable foe, the powerful teachers union, with $2.9 billion to pay off a 2-year-old education debt, along with an additional $2.8 billion in mandated funding.
"Of the $7.5 billion surplus, nearly $6.1 billion is coming from personal income tax increases, and state finance officials say that is being fueled in great part by stock options. And a good chunk of that is believed to be from Google employees."
the charge will be legalistic
It's amazing to be that the same Bush apologists -- who so vilified Clinton over perjury -- try to trivialize perjury when Libby is involved (and possibly Rove). When Clinton lied under oath about oral sex, it's serious. When Libby lied under oath about national security, it's "legalistic."
Perjury and obstruction of justice are serious charges, not "legalistic" trivialities.
I don't think Fitzgerald is "targeting" anyone.
Especially since you lean left.
Ah yes, the new mantra of the Bush apologists: Fitzgerald is an out-of-control closet-lefty nutball on a personal witch hunt. He's not married, either, so could he be (snicker snicker)... gay!?!?
This conveniently ignores the fact that Fitzgerald is a conservative Republican who has held appointments made by the Bush Administration. (It also overlooks the fact that their former saint Libby is now turning against the Administration that apparently his screwing him big-time.)
America is not fooled any longer by the Bush apologists, so why waste your breath? Bush's 29 percent approval ratings -- reaching Nixonian lows -- are proof of that.
Two other points on Kollyfoahneah's economy:
1: Our state's top-notch scientific research establishment and talent pool is a strong incentive for technology-oriented companies to operate here. Google is a great example.
On cost terms alone, a state like Arizona wins hands down over California. Cheaper land, lower taxes, etc. That's good for low-tech companies, but California has the advantage in technological infrastructure and employees. For a firm like Google or Genentech, that's critical.
2: Arizona is more limited in its nautical recreation.
California Uber Alles!
I see we have another Bushhitler troll.
David, did you check copyright before you posted someone's letter ? Your posts are diminishing in interest. If you're not posting a link to a porno picture, you are engaged in conspiracy theories.
Condoleezza Rice is one of the most accomplished people ever to serve as Secrretary of State and there has been a distinguished list to compare her to. She is a concert pianist of professional quality, an expert in foreign affairs and a dignified lady who deserves better than she gets from the chipmunk squad.
I know a number of people with small high tech businesses who have relocated out of California because of the tax rates. Arizona has cheaper land and is 7 hours from the ocean by car but it does have its advantages. My wife and I spend every other weekend, long weekends, there. Southwest has nonstop service from San Diego and advance purchase fare is $59. One tank of gas.
I don't credit Arnold with much gumption in stopping the idiots. He lost the referendum last fall and pretty much surrendered to the teachers' union. They spent 56 million dollars on that initiative. In a few years, California will largely be peopled with illegal immigrants with 3rd grade educations and retired rich people who live in gated communities.
The school system is imploding and the Keuhl bill is part of the problem. My accountant moved to New Mexico last year. He bought a house and has a partnership in a thriving firm. Doctors can no longer afford to live here. It is becoming a serious issue in recruiting. I know a woman surgeon in San Francisco who said there is no surgeon under age 50 practicing there. I'm not talking about living in the city, just working there. That is a huge medical center but it may not survive the trend.
The inflation tax on young people is appalling. I can help my kids but millions can't. It's no wonder they are living with parents until their 30s.
"From the photo on her website Amy appears quite fetching."
You mean like a tennis ball?
BAHAHHA!
Mike K,
The trends you point out in California's economy are indeed disturbing. I saw them when I was a business reporter before moving over to health care. I'm still dubious that we'll get the Blade Runner future you envision. Some doctors are going to be needed to treat all those tech millionaires, after all ;-)
The economy of San Diego County, that part of the state I am most familiar with, is in pretty decent shape. Since the late 1990s, unemployment in San Diego County has consistently been lower than the state or even national average. In April, for example, San Diego County had a 3.9 percent unadjusted unemployment rate, compared to unadjusted unemployment rates of 5.0 for California and 4.8 for the nation as a whole. The stats are from the state Employment Development Department.
Granted, we have troubles educating enough trained people for the workforce. Genentech and other technology companies are working in San Diego area schools and colleges to develop curricula to meet that need.
Considering the downsides and upsides, I am optimistic that San Diego will pull through. There is huge investment in commercial real estate here, and the pharmaceutical industry has become only more interested in San Diego with time. Pfizer has enormous resources dedicated here, for one example. And there's Qualcomm. This is a dynamic economy, not just a place to retire. Maia will certainly see this at UCSD.
A friend of mine has the half-serious hope that people will do what you're contemplating and leave. Less crowded freeways, etc. He's even willing to take a bath on his house's value for that to happen.
Somehow, I don't think he'll get his semi-wish.
Here's an idea for Cathy to consider:
Since the JournalSpace outage is now in its third day, make a workaround for your hungry fans. Donner Party, anyone?
Post something today on Haloscan (Perhaps the next thread over, since this one is getting crowded). Then we can have at it. And so on.
Getting the word out of this temporary fix is the main problem. Perhaps the National Review folks, and other sites, will post the Haloscan URL for the discussion, just as LA Observed did for this one. You could even do this on Cathyseipp.net if the outage lingers much longer.
Then find another place for your blog. I have a sneaking suspicion that JournalSpace is having more problems than it's letting on. There was speculation in another JS group that the "outage" was actually the result of a Homeland Security operation that confiscated the hard drives of certain Internet sites. Sheer unconfirmed speculation, of course.
But one thing is for sure -- the longer this outage continues, the more you need to consider moving. In the Internet world, hours are days, days are weeks and weeks are eons.
> Step away from the pocket mirror
You used that same line last week, and it was non-responsive then too. We'd all like to know the source of your precious insight and compelling righteousness (presuming you could share it without a backhanded insinuation that the little people couldn't handle the truth). The only source of energy you seem ready to credit is long-dead Broadway balladeers. Is it a surprise that the Odys of the world are unconvinced?
> Typical.
Why provoke arguments you won't answer?
> Especially since you lean left.
> Well, he does have liberal biases
Mark, you appear to be singing along with a Sesame Street song that only you can hear. 'One-of these-things is NOT-like the-others...' Knowing the difference between conservatives and liberalism can be useful, but on its own it doesn't move things forward much. People can and should resent being cleaved into teams. Everyone has textured views. What do you want our response to be when you do this?
> Simply put, Rice is a liar.
Oh, no! An English teacher's out of work! Ah well, he prolly wasn't tenure-track anyway. Can I have his sportscoat? The one with the elbow patches? Dibs!
> Bush apologists --
Nay...
> who so vilified Clinton
> over perjury
And nay. Dubya's a weak president, but I believe in the war. Clinton's problem wasn't perjury, it was getting blown by profoundly subordinate bimbos while on the phone to Congress discussing new troop deployments in Europe. That boy was not in control of his mojo.
> Libby lied under oath about
> national security
Overheated. A political functionary responded to ratfucking dishonesty with more ratfucking. I personally weigh Libby's responsive RFing as being more secretive but less dishonest than Wilson's misconduct which prompted it.
> criminal charges are "legalistic."
Review the weepy, teenage-sincere letter from academe posted above by Errantstein. Think of all the paperwork that comes across her desk. But because someone has sent one contradictory memo, her whole outlook is expected to change... Such an argument is legalistic. And naive.
> It's an empty spin word
I'm not spinning, I'm predicting: Indicted or not and convicted or not, NO ONE IS GOING TO CARE but the most drooling of Dems, whose obsessions haven't done anything for anyone in the last few elections.
> the CIA will have to be shut down.
> It's doing more harm than good.
Yes! Yes! Yes! The best thing ever written in here.
I believe in the war
Do you believe in the war the way that Bush and Rumsfeld have so badly bungled it? Or do you mean do you believe in the war as a matter of principal. I think an argument could be made that a regime change in Iraq wasn't a bad idea; however, the Bush Admin has so badly bungled the whole debacle that the US took five steps back for every step forward.
NO ONE IS GOING TO CARE
Bush's 29 percent approval rating shows that far more people care than you've noticed. They realize they've been sold a whole lot of snake oil which isn't even good oil at that.
(I am a registered Republican, BTW, but I was never a Bush supporter. His disastrous and incompetent presidency, his reckless borrowing, his massive big government have shown me I was not wrong in my initial assessment of Bush.)
The Libby case will become a nightmare for newspapers who sicced on the prosecution in their joint venture with the CIA to reverse the 2000 election.
I doubt Rove will be indicted although Fitzgerald, who appears increasingly to have developed a Captain Ahab mentality, would love to do so. Those who supported him as a non-political appointee have gotten wiser.
If the case goes to trial, look for some major newspaper folks to be called as hostile witnesses. They will get their heads handed to them. If Fitzgerald is stubborn enough to go to trial, this will be another CAIR libel case. The CAIR people sued and then, when the defense subpeonaed their financial records, the CAIR people moved to dismiss their own case with prejudice. A more abject surrender I cannot imagine. The NY Times will make that look courageous. I feel for Libby financially but I will look forward to seeing Pinch Sulzberger under oath in court.
"You used that same line last week, and it was non-responsive then too."
So you're responding now. Gee, thanks.
" We'd all like to know the source of your precious insight and compelling righteousness (presuming you could share it without a backhanded insinuation that the little people couldn't handle the truth)."
Karl Kraus, Maureen Watkins, Walter Benjamin, Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Edgar Morin, Noam Chomsky. (Watch Mike go bonkers over Chomsky folks. It's SO entertaining.)
"Why provoke arguments you won't answer?"
It's you who won't answer.
"Review the weepy, teenage-sincere letter from academe posted above by Errantstein. Think of all the paperwork that comes across her desk. But because someone has sent one contradictory memo, her whole outlook is expected to change... "
It was written by a man.
When did you first discover your hatred of women, Mike?
"(I am a registered Republican, BTW, but I was never a Bush supporter. "
That is part of the script that all these programmed callers use when calling talk radio. I am a Republican but, blah, blah, blah...
Trollsville
Bradley, I agree that San Diego is doing fine now. I'm concerned about what happens when the public employee union pensions come due. The politicos have been buying votes for decades with goodies from the public trough. Money doesn't grow on trees.
I give it 10 years.
"Bradley, I agree that San Diego is doing fine now. I'm concerned about what happens when the public employee union pensions come due."
Indeed, and that gives me pause. Restoring long-term fiscal balance to the budget should be the top concern of San Diego city government. Unfortunately, Mayor Jerry Sanders is taking his eye off the ball with his fixation on keeping the cross on top of Mt. Soledad. Whatever one might think of the merits of the cross case, the fiscal issues are vastly more important to San Diegans' quality of life.
"Condoleezza Rice is one of the most accomplished people ever to serve as Secrretary of State and there has been a distinguished list to compare her to. She is a concert pianist of professional quality, an expert in foreign affairs and a dignified lady who deserves better than she gets from the chipmunk squad."
You forgot to mention her superb taste in shoes.
Senator Patrick Leahy just told Leslie --
"Every time this administration screws up, whether it's with homeland security, after Katrina, a massive failure even though they spent billions of dollars to make sure that thing wouldn't happen, when they screw up along the border, when they get caught doing illegal surveillance of Americans, they say, well, but 9/11, 9/11.
Well, I'd remind them 9/11 happened on their watch. I think Americans are getting fed up with simply using an excuse for your mistakes and classify everything else so that you can't talk about it."
Clearly Leahy is an Al Queda operative. Right Mike?
As rich as Califonria is, it can't afford decades of Democrats writing this stuff.
The Democrats in Sacramento have the motto "if Californians can't go to Euro-socialized France (or Mexico), we'll bring Euro-Socialized France (or Mexico) to Californians."
Well, I'd remind them 9/11 happened on their watch.
And who was president when Bion Laden was offered to us on a silver platter? Cheney was right about what Leahy can go do with himself.
"What are you talking about?"
Typical.
Brain-dead response. Typical.
Clearly Leahy is an Al Queda operative. Right Mike?
Leahy is a Kool-Aid drinking Fifth Columnist.
Unfortunately, Mayor Jerry Sanders is taking his eye off the ball with his fixation on keeping the cross on top of Mt. Soledad.
I bet you'd wouldn't be fretting over the idea that the mayor and his agenda can't walk and chew gum at the same time if he were gunning for the removal of that cross.
> Watch Mike go bonkers over Chomsky
Mike's the only one who cares enough. Your list is telling; Effete, petulent, bloodless, apple-polishing wordsmiths. Posner twists the knife:
"The academic is not oriented toward writing for a general audience; unlike an Orwell, he doesn’t depend for a living on being able to interest the general public in what he writes. But the more interesting point is that academics are not tuned to political reality either. They tend to be unworldly. They are, most of them anyway, the people who have never left school. Their milieu is postadolescent. Because they are tenured and work mostly by themselves rather than with others (though this is changing), they don’t have to get along with colleagues; some of them don’t get along well with anybody. People who live this way have difficulty grasping the distinctive and essential constituents of political morality, comprising the qualities necessary in a statesman or other leader."
> It was written by a man.
RICE's desk, David. Try to keep up.
> they've been sold a whole lot
> of snake oil
TWICE. And if you'll recall, the first transaction almost collapsed. Nonetheless, they came back to buy another can four years later.
Can someone explain why polls matter? What exactly do people think a low opinion rating means for a president after election day?
Karl Kraus, Maureen Watkins, Walter Benjamin, Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Edgar Morin, Noam Chomsky.
Well that explains a lot.
And ditto what Crid posted about the majority of academics. That explanation is 100% accurate.
(I am a registered Republican, BTW
Yea, maybe a left-leaning Republican, certainly if you also write something like....
It's amazing to be that the same Bush apologists -- who so vilified Clinton over perjury --
...where I can sense your desire to push moral equivalence and benefit of the doubt so that everyone can therefore proclaim, hey, Bill Clinton wasn't so scuzzy after all!
And I'm assuming that you, "Dogman Dave," at least really aren't the alter ego of "Journalspace Mark."
Bad news for Bushitler trolls.
Cathy,
I've found Google caches for your site going back to April 20, 2004: http://tinyurl.com/m8bxh
No layout, but at least you can search these. If JournalSpace doesn't come up soon, I'd advise going into Google cache and saving them as fast as you can. Even if JournalSpace comes up again with everything intact, you never know when it will go down again -- possible on deadline. Since these caches eventually expire, good to get started on it while they're still up.
Mike in S.A.:
Be extremely careful about using just one poll to make judgments. You have to compare apples to apples, for one thing. Polls usually differ somewhat.
Wait for a couple of polls showing an trend before making a conclusion. It will be interesting to see what the polls say after Bush's speech tomorrow.
Kraus, Watkins and Benjamun were not academics. Bataille was a librarian.
35? Break out the champagne! And cancel the 2008 election.
He's PRESIDENT FOR LIFE!
Never forget 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11!!!!
They're all of only academic interest, David. You've worked to build a viewpoint away from the rough-and-tumble of life, and it's worked. You can't be surprised that no one cares. No more tears and snark from you.
Ever go to a Kings game?
Kraus, Watkins and Benjamun were not academics.
I didn't say they were nor did Crid. My own comment about academics was a response to the quote that Crid posted.
He's PRESIDENT FOR LIFE!
No, that would be your buddy Hugo Chavez.
Be extremely careful about using just one poll to make judgments. You have to compare apples to apples, for one thing. Polls usually differ somewhat.
I know. I just posted that link to rattle the cages of the Hate Bush crowd.....and it worked.
> Bush Admin has so badly
> bungled the whole debacle
A bungled debacle?
Anyway, point taken. This may turn out badly.
But this invasion was never about practicality or any sort of Kissingerian realpolitik... That's what we had when we SUPPORTED Saddam. This war is an unsophisticated appeal to justice and democratic impulse. I ache terribly for the soldiers who're coming back dead and maimed; but it was an honorable thing to try. The bloodshed from Saddam's mass graves weighs on the heart as well.
April 9, 2003 contends with July 21, 1969 as the day I've been proudest to be American. As that statue came down, I imagined every mundane valley warlord, syphilitic village big man, and petty-ante dictator in the world... And don't kid yourself, guys like that rule most of the globe. But on that one morning, each of them clutched his balls and thought 'Holy Shit, these fuckers mean BUSINESS! They could come for ME next!'
Karl Kraus, Maureen Watkins, Walter Benjamin, Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Edgar Morin, Noam Chomsky.
This pretty much explains it all: Three of the Four Horseman of the Apoclypse of Nihilistic Moderism (minus Foucault; slip your mind?), plus a couple of light-weight also-rans. And you say you're not religious!
If we examine the gurus of the new university establishment, those whose works are most often cited in the endless stream of articles devoted to debunking Western culture, we discover that they are all opponents of objective truth. Nietzsche is a favorite, since he made the point explicitly: "There are no truths," he wrote, "only interpretations." Now, either what Nietzsche said is true—in which case it is not true, since there are no truths—or it is false. Enough said, you might imagine. But no: the point can be stated less brusquely, and the paradox concealed. This explains the appeal of those later thinkers—Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty—who owe their intellectual eminence not to their arguments (of which they have precious few) but to their role in giving authority to the rejection of authority, and to their absolute commitment to the impossibility of absolute commitments. In each of them you find the view that truth, objectivity, value, and meaning are chimerical, and that all we can have, and all we need to have, is the warm security of our own opinion.
It is vain to argue against these gurus. No argument, however rational, can counter the massive will to believe that endears them to their normal readers. After all, a rational argument assumes precisely what they put in question—namely, the possibility of rational argument. At least one of them—Michel Foucault—has been the subject of a hagiography, Saint Foucault by David Halperin, on account of the liberating message contained in his assault on structured thinking. But each of them owes his reputation to a new species of religious faith: faith in the relativity of all opinions, including this one.
So, like, it's another beautiful Sunday afternoon along the coast and I'm feeling bad about how David E's friend Steve Almond had to quit his job because of Condi Rice, y'know? But it's the second Sunday, and that means brunch with wine and salmon benedict over the LA Times. And I realize that this same Steve Almond is writing pieces in the Book Review section! And he's already published four books, one in each of the last four years. So basically he's a writer who's started to gel anyway... It's not like he *needed* an adjunct professor gig.
So maybe he wasn't a paragon of courageous principle in resigning from Boston College. I bused tables until I started working in TV, and made about as much money as an adjunct professor, and enobled about as many young minds; it was no big deal.
David C., follow this link for more clues:
http://tinyurl.com/4ptww
OK, upon reflection, that day that I quit washing dishes at the Choo-Chew Cafe & Deli in Bloomington, Indiana (off the town square by the railroad tracks)? I wasn't just getting on with life. I was speaking truth to power, man!
Great minds, Crid. A brain trust in the making.
I love the fact that Scruton has a monthly column in the glossy royalist UK magazine Country Life. As if Lord Emsworth were to take a break from slopping The Empress to rag on Derrida.
Foucault didn't "slip my mind" at all. Do you remember what drove me to produce this list?
Dollars to doughnuts you've never heard of Maureen Watkins, have now Mr. Chute.
I would also add A,J. Liebling and Gore Vidal.
The only way to win is... How does that go again?
Gore Vidal has actually written some excellent novels and a nice guide to Venice. Of course, you must know quite a bit of history when you read them (like "Burr" for instance) so you know what is BS and what is truth. Still, he is entertaining.
The rest of David E's list is an exercise in boredom.
Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" arrived and I plan to spend next weekend in Tucson reading it and Mark Bowden's new book "Guests of the Ayatollah." After I'm finished, David, I'll let you borrow them if you ask nicely.
Of course, that would be a first.
http://www.george-orwell.org/
Hom...ge_to_Catalonia
Free!
Orwell is so five minutes ago.
Among Gore's novels I favor Myra Brekinridge, Myron, Live From Golgotha and The Smithsonian Institution. As an essayist he's at the tip-top of the class. I'm terribly superfond of "Pink Triangle and Yellow Star" (it's in several anthologies of his writigns) as I figure in it tangentially.
I've only read two of Vidal's books, Lincoln and Creation. It was interesting to compare the former with Safire's book, which came out at the same time. One great and complex historical figure, two widely different treatments.
Have you read City of the Pillow-Biters Bradley?
You should. And Paimpsest too.
Myra Brekinridge received its highest accolades in Playboy. Need I say more ?
I was referring to "Lincoln" and "Burr." "Burr" in particular added some information that I had not known. Ron Chernow's Hamilton is far more reliable about Burr.
Myra Brekinridge received its highest accolades in Playboy. Need I say more ?
Yes. A lot more. To begin with have you actually read it?
"The only way to win is... How does that go again?"
Terminate With Extreme Prejudice
This individual should be terminated posthaste.
We've gotten off LOST, but in case anyone still cares, the test says I'm Hurley.
I'm not fat though.
Thanks for the reading suggestions, David E. You're a pillar of information.
Mike in S.A.:
Of all the problems the U.S. has in the world, Chavez is down the list somewhere. Sure, he's a repulsive autocrat who says a lot of irritating things. And his oil wealth gives him power that needs to be watched. But he's not taking over other countries. And personally targeting a foreign head of state is questionable, because it can be reciprocated. One of the strikes against Saddam was his violation of that unspoken rule.
One problem with the Lost test is that it doesn't include any second season characters. It says I'm Jack when Mr. Eko is obviously the correct choice.
And our hostess could only be...
One problem with the Lost test is that it doesn't include any second season characters. It says I'm Jack when Mr. Eko is obviously the correct choice.
And our hostess could only be...
As yet another day ended with JournalSpace down, the HaloScan refugees contented themselves on Mike K.'s yacht. Mike K. lectured on the medical problems of Lawrence O'Donnell's furiously throbbing neck veins. Crid tried to make a server from a coconut. Amy Alkon dished out advice along with killer margaritas. Lewis Fein kept running for his life from a rampaging herd of Jonah clones. And we wondered when Californio and Ody would show up.
The festivities continued into the gloaming. The Davids managed the hora dance with matching vocals: "Ha-va nagila, ha-va tequila . . ."
And the yacht sailed off into the night.
"(I am a registered Republican, BTW, but I was never a Bush supporter. "
That is part of the script that all these programmed callers use when calling talk radio. I am a Republican but, blah, blah, blah...
Trollsville
Um, Mike. Get ready for a nice big dish of hot-from-the-oven crow pie.
I just emailed you a copy of by Republican voter registration card.
of by Republican
Should be of my...
maybe a left-leaning Republican
Not by any means. I loathed Clinton.
Perjury is perjury is perjury. I just can't understand blind apologists who say perjury is a grave crime when it involves someone they oppose, but unimportant when it involves someone they support. If Libby and/or Rove perjured themselves, then they should be punished. There's no such critter as "perjury lite."
It would've been correct for you to say I wasn't a blindly loyal Republican. I think Bush is a disaster. He's LBJ all over again but only worse. He's a mess and in way over his head.
So I don't blindly support any Republican just because I'm a lifelong-registered Republican. I voted for Bush in 2000. I did not vote for him in 2004. Why? Because I believed Bush turned out to be a very poor president and the badly flawed Kerry would be some kind of improvement.
That notwithstanding, I embrace all traditional Republican values: less government, no deficit, balanced budget, states rights, isolationist foreign policy, a strong dollar, government out of my business, etc. It's a shame Bush has turned his back on all of those fundamental Republican values.
I always ask the question: what kind of real Republican can support someone like Bush?
La cucaracha,
La cucaracha,
Ya no puede caminar.
Porque no tiene,
Porque le falta,
Marijuana que fumar.
So I don't blindly support any Republican just because I'm a lifelong-registered Republican. I voted for Bush in 2000. I did not vote for him in 2004. Why? Because I believed Bush turned out to be a very poor president and the badly flawed Kerry would be some kind of improvement.
That notwithstanding, I embrace all traditional Republican values: less government, no deficit, balanced budget, states rights, isolationist foreign policy, a strong dollar, government out of my business, etc. It's a shame Bush has turned his back on all of those fundamental Republican values.
I always ask the question: what kind of real Republican can support someone like Bush?
Callete el ocico.
Hey Chihuahua, if you had used your real email addy, I would've sent a copy of my Republican registration to you, too.
I know it's just so hard for the die-hard Bush apologists to actually get their heads around the idea that not every real Republican loves Bush.
But the way I look at it, I'm much more of a Republican than Bush is.
Here's an interesting article, which I'll excerpt and then link below...
Republican Right Abandoning Bush
Angry conservatives are driving down the approval ratings of Bush and the GOP-led Congress to dismal new lows, according to an AP-Ipsos poll that underscores why Republicans fear an Election Day massacre this November.
The intensity of conservative opposition to Bush and Congress has risen sharply, along with the percentage of Americans who believe the nation is on the wrong track.
The AP-Ipsos poll also suggests that Democratic voters are far more motivated than Republicans. Elections in the middle of a president’s term traditionally favor the party whose core supporters are the most energized.
A majority of Americans say they want Democrats rather than Republicans to control Congress (51 percent to 34 percent). That’s the largest gap recorded by AP-Ipsos since Bush took office. Even 31 percent of conservatives want Republicans out of power.
Full story here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12643666/
With the breakdown of authority, this place has turned into the god damn Superdome. I'm heading to metaphorical Baton Rouge until this blows over.
We can only hope for the imminent return of sanity and Cathy.
Still no Journalspace?? Monkeys!
The obvious question: Typepad or Blogger?
The obvious question: Typepad or Blogger?
the badly flawed Kerry would be some kind of improvement.
Your conservative biases must be pretty shallow if you'd say something as foolish as that. However, I'll take your word that you are who you claim to be, referring to your voting record. Nonetheless, when you're willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a leftist like Kerry, I do wonder whether you're either a chameleon (or perhaps a "Sybil") or an outright phony.
I did not vote for him in 2004.
Now that I've re-read your post, I realize you're suggesting you voted for Kerry. If so, yep, Dogman, you're a conservative all right----in the context of someone who's living in the middle of, say, San Francisco or Paris.
Now journalspace is offering an estimated restart date of Tuesday. This is indeed getting to seem like Lost. I tested as Jack. Too bad as Sawyer clearly has all the good lines.
Dogman: "I just can't understand blind apologists who say perjury is a grave crime when it involves someone they oppose, but unimportant when it involves someone they support."
I haven't yet heard repubs making excuses for perjury. Who is excusing perjury and where is the quote?
I haven't gotten that e-mail yet. I suspect that a troll could come with all sorts of bogus documents since he (you are a he, aren't you ?) goes to the trouble of broadcasting anti-Bush blather.
I used to spend a lot of time on the Tom Clancy newsgroup but was driven away by a troll who spammed the list with hundreds of lunatic posts that purported to support Bush. It was a little like Groucho Marx who said he wouldn't want to join any club that would have him. If Bush had ever seen those posts he probably would have resigned and gone home to Texas.
Maybe it's time for me to check out alt.books.tom_clancy again.
I am very unhappy with Bush on a lot of subjects and have a lot of concern that he's going to blow it tonight with this speech. Still, there are idiots that I would cross the street to avoid who say they agree.
Anybody who would vote for Kerry is off my invitation list. Permanently.
"I haven't yet heard repubs making excuses for perjury. "
I haven't yet heard repubs admit BushCo lies.
"I haven't yet heard repubs admit BushCo lies."
I haven't yet seen a quote of a lie from BushCo. I've got problems with Bush, but it should be easy enough to find a single quote of his that is a purposely false statement (i.e., a lie).
As of 6:30am
246 comments
bradley 39
david e 39
david c 29
mike in sa 28
mark 17
crid 17
dogman 9
etc
"Anybody who would vote for Kerry is off my invitation list. Permanently."
That seems a bit narrow-minded, Mike K. For my part, I have friends who voted for Kerry, Bush and a few Libertarians. Unless someone is way out on the fringes, it seems rather self-limiting to make such judgments on politics.
When JournalSpace is running again (or when Cathy moves to another blog host), things should settle down. The trolls will eventually move on, and the core members will stay. Or, start your own blog and be master of your Internet domain.
David may actually be a machine. He seems to produce these silly comments. sort of like the plastic animals that emit a noise when squeezed. It doesn't take any intelligence to squeak out "Bush lied, people died !" every time he is stimulated.
I used to have one of those boxes that had a switch on the front. If you flipped the switch, the box would slowly open, a hand would come out and reach down to turn the switch off. Then the hand would go back into the box and the lid would close.
I think its name was David.
> That seems a bit narrow-minded
And even if it's not, there's no point. Politics is about getting needs met, not expressing our deep personal hurt towards strangers. (These comments notwithstanding.)
There's no reason to set up artificial boundaries between people; it's only a matter of time before real ones appear.
Besides, Kerry was just not much worse than Bush.
I haven't gotten that e-mail yet.
That's curious, because my email program returned a receipt showing you opened it. But just so there's no doubt, here's a direct link to my voter registration:
http://home.earthlink.net/
~david...egistration.jpg
That's verifiable through the LA Registrar of Voters.
goes to the trouble of broadcasting anti-Bush blather.
You have your head in the sand, my friend. As I posted in the MSNBC link, lots of Republicans are disgusted by Bush. You're afraid to engage on the subject, so that's why you're resorting to desperate ad hominems about trolls and blather etc. You can't address the real issue -- a sizable percentage of Republicans are now opposed to Bush -- so you're desperately trying to turn the focus to me and to trivialize me. It's a failed debate strategy, my friend.
Here's a new story today about "Starbucks Republicans" abandoning Bush: http://www.newsobserver.com/102/...ory/
439585.html
The evidence continue to pile up: Republicans increasingly are abandoning Bush. They see his presidency as a failure.
Anybody who would vote for Kerry is off my invitation list. Permanently.
You are what I would call a "blind loyalist," my friend. You apparently take great pride in this. One is not a "real Republican" in your book unless one votes blindly Republican. I think that's very unfortunate and what's so wrong with this country. 30 percent of the left and 30 percent of the right blindly vote for their party, no matter what. It's up to us 40 percent in the middle to keep the country on track.
Who is excusing perjury
It was done in this very thread with the "the charge will be legalistic" comment. And, I've heard plenty of Bush apologists use this excuse repeatedly. Clinton apologists have resorted to the same tactics to try to wiggle out of the fact that their boy committed a crime with all their handwringing about sex and privacy. The issue in Monicagate was the president committed perjury.
you're willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a leftist like Kerry
Hate to say it, my friend, but Bush leans very left on many issues. He may call himself a conservative and a Republican, but his big-government, deficit-financed, weak-dollar, nation-building policies are straight out of LBJ's playbook.
From the Journalspace home page:
Monday, 0700 GMT: Down, But Not Out...
The journals and blogs hosted by journalspace.com are temporarily unavailable. Journalspace experienced a hardware failure on Friday. We are making upgrades to help ensure that this problem does not happen again. The process of upgrading the hardware and restoring the data is, by necessity, a long and complex one.
We really appreciate your patience. We know how much you love reading the blogs and journals hosted on journalspace, and we're working to make them available as soon as we can. Cathy, Ellen, Robert, Shane, Natalie, Joe, and the rest will be back soon.
The current estimate for the return of journalspace is Tuesday. We will update this page if there are any changes.
From today's New York Times:
Some of President Bush's most influential conservative Christian allies are becoming openly critical of the White House and Republicans in Congress, warning that they will withhold their support in the midterm elections unless Congress does more to oppose same-sex marriage, obscenity and abortion.
"There is a growing feeling among conservatives that the only way to cure the problem is for Republicans to lose the Congressional elections this fall," said Richard Viguerie, a conservative direct-mail pioneer.
Mr. Viguerie also cited dissatisfaction with government spending, the war in Iraq and the immigration-policy debate, which Mr. Bush is scheduled to address in a televised speech on Monday night.
"I can't tell you how much anger there is at the Republican leadership," Mr. Viguerie said. "I have never seen anything like it."
Story continues here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/
1...agewanted=print
Dogman obviously has a point. I hardly qualify as a spohitica political observer (I like to think I have better things to do) but you only have to listen to KABC for a few hours to pick up on the sense of betrayal coming off McIntire, Rantell, Elder, and company in waves. The border and spending are key areas of frustration. One line among populist/libertarians seesms to that Bush is a "corporatist" who cares only about his rich pals. They have come from the opposite side to a position remarkably like some of the things liberals have been saying all along
The trolls will eventually move on
Don't count on it. The true troll is like an obnoxious party guest who never leaves no matter how many hints are dropped. As a blogger who would have loved to have been successful enough to attract any, I'm half-inclined to consider trolls a status symbol. The sincerist form of flattery. But I've also seen them do real damage. Two good discussion forums in my experience were all but destroyed: Hindu fudamentalists eventually shut down a usenet group about Bollywood, and anti-smoking obssessives demolished a pipe smoking board. Where the natural human impulse is to gravitate toward the like-minded, these folks did just the opposite. They reveled in forcing discussions off track, distracting people, dissipating productive energy. Dogman clearly doesn't qualify.
Arguably, though even more damage was done by users who couldn't resist responding and who succeeded only in multplying the effect many times over. I plead guilty on that score. My mom always used to say, about pre-Internet forms of bullying, "Just ignore them and they will get bored and go away." Maybe when I grow up I will finally learn how to do that.
"...sophisticated." Yuck.
here's a direct link to my voter registration:
http://home.earthlink.net/ ~david...egistration.jpg
That's verifiable through the LA Registrar of Voters.
I don't know how things work in California regarding voter registration, but in Texas it is largely meaningless outside the context of primary elections.
For example, my father, a long-time Republican who lives in heavily-Democratic Laredo, registers as a Democrat so as to actually have candidates to vote for (or against) during the primaries. He hasn't voted for a Democrat in a general election since 1960, yet officially he is one.
David C,
Okay, you're right about the truly persistent trolls. But remember, Cathy still has her veto power. Since it is exercised through HaloScan, that power should not be affected by the JS outage.
"One line among populist/libertarians seesms to that Bush is a "corporatist" who cares only about his rich pals. They have come from the opposite side to a position remarkably like some of the things liberals have been saying all along>"
There's nothing more bracing than the Truth.
Bradley,
You're right, of course. In spite of the persistant rumor that Cathy keeps certain trolls as pets. Like my sister's iguana.
Bradley,
You're right, of course. In spite of the persistant rumor that Cathy keeps certain trolls as pets. Like my sister's iguana.
There's nothing more bracing than the Truth.
Indeed.
but in Texas it is largely meaningless outside the context of primary elections.
The same would be true for most any state.
Let's make it even more clear; here's my voting record on presidents (since I was eligible to vote): Ford (76), Reagan (80), Reagan (84), Bush (88), Bush (92), Dole (96), Bush (00), Kerry (04). I'm a Republican who votes Republican about 80 percent of the time (since LA races are non-partisan, it's often Dem-Dem). I voted to dump Gray Davis. I voted for Tom McClintock, not Arnold, to replace him. I've worked for several prominent Republicans in their campaigns, including McClintock, John McCain, Pete Wilson, Dick Riordan, and George Deukmejian.
Sorry to insist on trying to pull you out of your state of denial, Mike in S.A., but the cold, hard reality is: Real Republicans by increasing numbers are not supporting Bush. And some hard-core, bedrock, red-blooded Republicans never supported him.
On an unreleated note, on my Republican sample ballot this morning, I noticed a candidate named John Lower Taxes Loew.
Hate to say it, my friend, but Bush leans very left on many issues.
I don't disagree with that, but for you to therefore conclude that John Kerry would've been a better or preferable occupant of the Oval Office indicates you're either simpleminded or, again, more liberal than you're letting on.
Mark, why? Why do you do this?
but Bush leans very left on many issues.
EDIT: Actually I don't agree with Dogman on his one comment (and I'm still assuming----because he's shown up here with such gusto----that he's not really "Journalspace Mark" under a different screen name, since the latter has receeded into the ether).
George Bush leans somewhat left on illegal immigration and healthcare benefits for seniors and, at the very least, has been a pushover or enabler when it comes to bloated Congressional budgets. But other than his foolish choice of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, I breathe a sigh of relief that Bush is the one who's been choosing people for the judiciary instead of a fool like John Kerry. And for you, Dogman, to not realize that----or appreciate such a crucial difference----indicates your outlook is far too simpleminded.
I've worked for several prominent Republicans in their campaigns, including...John McCain
McCain is kind of an idiot when it comes to the issue of illegal immigration, perhaps even worse than Bush is. However, neither one of them is as nonsensical as many (or most) Democrats are, since a good number of them wouldn't mind sending chauffer-driving limousines to the southern border to bring in people, legal or otherwise.
I breathe a sigh of relief that Bush is the one who's been choosing people for the judiciary
Amen.
I breathe a sigh of relief that Bush is the one who's been choosing people for the judiciary
Amen.
indicates your outlook is far too simpleminded.
you're either simpleminded
Unfortunately, Mark, you've decided to slip into ad hominem territory. That, indeed, is unfortunate. I enjoy engaging in constructive, adult debate, not opponent-bashing and name-calling. I realize that other people have different points of view than I do; however, I do not label them as "simpleminded."
It seems your most important litmus test of a president is judicial appointments. While I think that is important, in the 2004 election, it was not the most important criteria, and was rather far down on the list, actually.
In my opinion, the choice in 2004 was about management and economics. I felt that George Bush was a dangerous failure. The war in Iraq had seriously weakened America, as had his reckless borrowing and his weak-dollar policies. As well, he had done little to protect America against terrorist attacks. I think we'll see a horrible inflationary period in the next decade as a result of the Bush presidency, an inflationary swell much worse than the one that followed LBJ's disastrous presidency (an administration which, alarmingly, had many of the same failed policies as the present one).
So for me, management and economics were my litmus tests in 2004, not the judiciary, which seems to have been your litmus test. A president only has so much control over the judiciary; let's not forget that David Souter and Harry Black were both appointed by Republicans.
Bush badly failed the management and economics tests, but, indeed, Kerry was a choice of "anyone but Bush" for me.
because he's shown up here with such gusto
I was a commenter on Cathy's blog way, way back. I got into a dustup with her about mastiffs. Her blog fell off my radar for a while, but when Kevin Roderick linked it on his blog over the weekend, I wandered back in.
(Apparently Luke Ford was voted off the island in my absence.)
I do not label them as "simpleminded."
I don't know how else to define a person who perceives Bush as having a mostly liberal philosophy, and criticizes him for that, and then, to make matters more ridiculous, says he therefore voted for leftwing John Kerry in 2004.
A president only has so much control over the judiciary; let's not forget that David Souter and Harry Black were both appointed by Republicans.
And I can only imagine (and shudder at) the ridiculously misguided people we'd have occupying the judiciary today were your choice for 2004 sitting in the White House. And for you to bemoan Bush because of his economic or military policymaking (or whatever) loses traction with me when you apparently believe John Kerry----cut from the same cloth as those who, for example, have made social-political liberalism, or leftism, so pervasive in places like France, northern Europe or the San Francisco Bay Area----would've made a better alternative.
McCain is kind of an idiot when it comes to the issue of illegal immigration, perhaps even worse than Bush is
I think John McCain would've made a far better president than George W. Bush. That's why I supported John when he ran in 2000.
I don't know if I'll support him in 2008. He's trying to remold himself to appeal to the far right, and I think that's a mistake.
I live in California, where we've seen all the problems with illegal immigration for a good 20-30 years or even longer. The horse was stolen very long ago, so all the handwringing now about plans for the new barn door seem downright silly. No one has proposed a viable solution yet, in my opinion.
I think Bush's guest-worker plan is a disaster-in-the-making. It's copying the European model, and the recent riots in France underscore what a farce that has been. Many people think it will mean a lot more Mexicans will come to work in America under a guest-worker plan, but the reality is that it will let in more people from Islamic countries like Indonesia. Mexican wages are fairly high in the third world, so a guest worker plan would attract workers from low-wage nations in Asia.
who perceives Bush as having a mostly liberal philosophy
As noted, that's not why I no longer support him. Bush's quasi-liberal neo-conservatism is problematic, but not the reason why I voted against him -- as stated, it was "anybody but Bush." (It seems your litmus test was "anybody but Kerry.")
Had Kerry won in 2004 and Congress was still controlled by the GOP, Kerry would've been fairly constrained. So I don't think that would've been a great problem.
Post-election, I think Bush has been even more of a disaster. He's an increasingly weak lame duck who, fortunately, some Republicans in Congress now are refusing to follow.
Katrina, for me, only underscored what a failure the Bush Administration is. America is not prepared for another 9/11 -- Katrina demonstrated that. So who Bush nominates for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals just isn't a priority to me, in all candor. America is still very vulnerable, and Mr. Bush hasn't made us any safer. Arguably, he's put us at a greater risk.
"There's nothing more bracing than the Truth.
Indeed.
Mike in S.A. "
That is a very interesting article. I've stood in the window of the School Book Depository and it was an easy shot.
I agree that the left lost its way in the years following. I don't know if Kennedy would have been so clumsy in Vietnam. He did approve the Diem assassination so he is not the saint that the left tries to make him. Johnson staggered in there and fumbled it away. There is a reason why a certain part of the male anatomy is still called a "Johnson" in the military today.
Nagl's book has convinced me of why we lost that war.
The test for me of serious criticism of Bush begins with Iraq. The trolls who pretend to be Republicans don't have any alternative plan for Saddam. That was Kerry's weakness although he, himself, was the reason I could not vote for him.
I'm unhappy with a number of things Bush has done. He is NOT responsible for spending. That is Congress. He is responsible for failing to veto spending.
His approach to immigration is going to get some people beaten this fall unless they abandon him, which they may.
It is not ad hominem to point out that someone does not make sense. If I said he didn't make sense because his head was up his ass, that would be ad hominem. Since I can't see him, or his voter registration card, I can't say that.
The whole thing still sounds like those programmed calls to Rush Limbaugh.
"I've stood in the window of the School Book Depository and it was an easy shot."
So have I and you're absolutely right.
"Oswald did it and he acted alone" is without question the most "politically incorrect" thing anyone can possible say no matter which side of the political divide they stand on.
I was visiting Dallas with this dude.
Todd went to college with JFK Jr. Says he was a Big Dumb Jock.
Sorry, Mike K, but you just seem to be in an advanced state of denial. I provide proof I'm a Republican, which can be verified, and you continue to call me a troll, because that's easier than embracing the reality: Republican support of George Bush is slipping away. You just can't accept the fact that real Republicans think Bush is a failure, so it's easier just to talk about trolls. (You don't even seem to understand what a troll is, for that matter, but that's a different issue.)
The trolls who pretend to be Republicans don't have any alternative plan for Saddam.
Saddam is and was unimportant. He was a non-issue. The neocons tried to make him into an issue, but the emperor still had no clothes. I am reminded of that article about the Iraqis standing knee-deep in raw sewage, and some Bush admin official kept babbling away to them about how much better off they were without Saddam.
Quite honestly, I don't give a sh*t about Iraq. Never did. Never will. It's not part of America. It's not the United States of the Middle East. It's the United States of America. I'm an old-school isolationist Republican. Let's worry about our country, not running around playing World Police.
America has serious problems, and Saddam was not one of them. We were attacked on September 11 and are still very vulnerable. That serious, number-one problem has not been addressed. Osama is still at large, nearly all cargo containers come into the United States unchecked, the infrastructure is still vulnerable, and Katrina and the anthrax attack showed Washington really can't protect America.
But even if Iraq was important, the Bush Administration's war was a disaster. Failing to disarm the standing Iraqi army is only one of many examples of how badly Iraq was mishandled. Failing to secure millions of tons of explosives was another.
I'm unhappy with a number of things Bush has done. He is NOT responsible for spending.
Of course he is. The president submits the budget to Congress. The president also has asked repeatedly for supplemental appropriations for Iraq.
To say Bush is not responsible for spending is like saying my wife isn't responsible for running her credit card over the maximum, simply because I happen to pay the bill.
A prime example of our vulnerability was Katrina. There was warning They could have planned for it. Nothing was done .
Nothing continues to be done.
The Weather Bureau has just reported that this season three major hurricanes are expected to hit the U.S.
My definition of a troll is someone who tries to take over a web site comments section by repeating extreme statements and misrepresenting himself. You might fit the definition of Pat Buchanon but he quit being a Republican years ago.
Most of your verbiage is straight out of the left wing Democrat script.
Now I will ignore you and suggest others do likewise.
Bradley, you should take a look at this John Fund column today. Look at the last paragraph and the role of public employee unions in the voter revolt.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/di...y/?
id=110008378
OK, Mike K., I am now looking at Fund's piece, just to take a break from reading about sonic hedgehog homolog.
> To say Bush is not responsible for
> spending is like saying my wife isn't
> responsible for running her credit card
> over the maximum, simply because I
> happen to pay the bill.
That's not a bad metaphor. But it's still going to be very difficult to hold him accountable when these bills come due. He didn't ask us to spend all that money or install all those entitlements.
> They could have planned for it.
YOU could have planned for it. Everyone in the country could have planned for it. No one was surprised; those of us with the most casual appreciation of the region's natural history knew it was coming. Cosh put it best:
http://tinyurl.com/ok9vz
Money shot: "The Dutch don't have any choice but to protect what they've got from the elements. The U.S. does."
The truth is that nobody cares. Viewed widely, our economy took the punch without wincing... Gas prices are a little high, but it's not a freakout.
The sad irony about this blog is that Cathy's never-ending shtick is to go into den of liberals nd elicit gasps by saying something un-PC or calling someone a girl or whatever she does. She's forever upsetting Hollywood liberals by merely showing up nd being conservative.
Frankly, I don't believe a word of it because I'm WAY more obnoxious than she is and nobody EVER clutches their pearls when I go out in public.
In any case, she has this collection of adoring syncophnts (just read a few of the posts in this comment string. "We love you Cathy. We miss you Cathy. We can't live without you Cathy. You're light in the darkness Cathy" Etc. The day I realized that Cathy didn't try to put the kibosh on this hero worship was the day I realized she had no admirable qualities)
But look what happens when someone arrives and tries to engage in the exact same activity Cathy is so applauded for by her boy toys. "Go away troll! I shall ignore you henceforth."
I've seen more than one well-meaning person bolt from here after they dare disagree with Republicn dogma.
Many here claim they want debate and an exchnge of ideas(I don't include myself in that because I just like to rile the hoi polloi), what they really come here for is affirmation of their own small-minded world view and pats on the back.
Instead of engaging Dogman Dave in a meaningful discussion, they waste their time calling him pretend Rebublican, as if who he votes for has any bearing on what he's trying to say.
And you people get all snippy with me when I call you the morons that you are.
"The truth is that nobody cares."
Include me out of that "nobody." I have neither the money nor the power to repair levees or build homes or provide jobs.
He's trying to remold himself to appeal to the far right
Comments like that (uh-huh, "far right" as defined by some in 2006, or in the context of, say, a Republican or "conservative" in San Francisco or Massachusetts), in tandem with your belief Kerry would've been better than Bush (and, again, never mind the the horrible decisionmaking coming out of Kerry appointees to the Supreme Court----in which justices occupy the bench for a lifetime), makes me believe you're more liberal than you let on.
Both of those seem to be about people insisting that daddy gummint save us from ourselves.
Whereas you pump for Daddy Dubbya.
Or Mary Cheney's Daddy.
Mike K.
Off politics, what do you think of this guy? Have you heard of him?:
http://www.stoneagedoc.com
A press release about him just landed on my desk.
Mike K.
Off politics, what do you think of this guy? Have you heard of him?:
http://www.stoneagedoc.com
A press release about him just landed on my desk.
I'm not sure the thread background but if it is New Orleans, that was the fault of locals almost completely.
I went to NO in October of 2004, right after Hurricane Ivan made a very near miss to hit Pensacola and Mobile Bay. I was going to a meeting and wasn't sure if it would be cancelled. At the last moment, Ivan zigged east and missed. I arrived the next day. I saw absolutely NO preparation for a hurricane. There were no boarded windows or any other sign of activity.
There was a huge amount of misleading press about the whole thing, right up to and including the recent story about him being warned about storm surge overtopping, but not breaching, levees.
Bush could have done a better job but, as in most instances, his failure was in PR, not execution. Blanco did not communicate with the feds when they tried to. I'm not impressed with FEMA but most of the Bush-bashing was uncalled for. He could have done a better job defending himself, Barry Goldwater's problem in '64, but that is not the same thing.
The real cause of the disaster is the MRGO channel which led the storm surge right into the city. That was an army corps of engineers boondoggle that has never been used as expected.
That "both" comment was about the taxes & levees.
> I have neither the money nor the power
> to repair levees
Exactly, poor little lonesome me, Mama Hillary has to stir my porridge. There's nothing admirable about spending other people's money. Did you ever mention the levees before 25aug05? To anyone? Such a sensitive and well read young man as yourself MUST have known what was going on down there. David, why did you feel no compassion for the people of New Orleans?
> makes me believe you're more liberal
Mark, it's a joke. You're kidding, right?
> (I don't include myself in that because
> I just like to rile the hoi polloi)
Little fella, this stack is 300 messages long. Anyone who takes time to comment at this point can't pretend to be an outsider. And by the way, what "liberal dens" does Cathy frequent? As a registered Dem, I'll want a ticket.
The horse was stolen very long ago, so all the handwringing now about plans for the new barn door seem downright silly.
who Bush nominates for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals just isn't a priority to me, in all candor
Oh, so you're implying a tougher approach to illegal immigration in today's era would be too mean and heartless? Pffft----to show you how times have changed, back in the 1950s, branches of the state and federal government forcibly removed (inadvertantly, of course) even legal citizens of Mexican ancestry from the US.
Moreover, you don't think the ridiculous yet very influential impact of liberal judges on society and the government is very important? If so, then again, I'm observing tinges of either naivete or liberalism, or both, in your ideology.
And you people get all snippy with me when I call you the morons that you are.
Just keep in mind that your liberal biases makes you neither more humane nor certainly more down-to-earth or sensible than the average person. 0 and 2.
> liberal judges, naivete or liberalism,
> liberal biases...
Stop it! Stop it! Aaarrrrrrghhhhh.....
someone who tries to take over a web site comments section
Since when am I trying to "take over" the comments? And your definition of "troll" is not the standard. A troll is someone who throws out a bombshell simply to rile people up and then disappears, e.g. "Hillary should be executed."
by repeating extreme statements
What exactly is "extreme" about what I've stated? That Bush is a failure? Heavens, a majority of the country now believes that by more than a two-to-one majority. It therefore is more "extreme" not to believe that.
and misrepresenting himself
Since you don't know me, how am I misrepresenting myself? I'm a Republican -- that's a provable fact. So apparently you think I'm a secret Bush supporter who's just saying I don't support him?
Now I will ignore you
No, my friend, you can't understand that logical people may actually have an honest opinion different than yours. So, like a small child, you poke your fingers in your ears and sing "la la la la la."
That won't change the reality that George W. Bush is one of the most unpopular presidents in the last hundred years. A great majority of Americans -- Republicans, Democrats, and Independents -- believe he is a failure.
I have started a new temporary blog at cathyseipp.typepad.com until Journalspace gets back up -- which is supposed to be Tuesday. Yes, it has comments. Feel free to go there and try it out.
that was the fault of locals almost completely
FEMA isn't under the control of the locals.
Sure, the locals were corrupt and unprepared. But that doesn't disguise the fact that the federal government was unprepared, too.
And, if the federal government is unprepared for a natural disaster, it's also unprepared for a major terrorist hit.
Katrina was not Bush's fault. But the federal response to Katrina was Bush's fault.
I'm a Republican -- that's a provable fact.
Your party registration is of secondary importance. The big question is whether your philosophy or ideology really is interwoven with a lot of left-leaning biases. I sense some interesting ambiguity or contradictions in where you're coming from.
Stop it! Stop it!
I don't know how else to analyze what makes a person tick, certainly when he all too easily and happily criticizes Bush for being too liberal and yet gives the benefit of the doubt to John Kerry----or frets that John McCain now is catering to far rightists, whatever that means.
Something is wrong with that picture.
you're implying a tougher approach to illegal immigration in today's era would be too mean and heartless?
I said nothing of the sort, Mark. So let's not put words in my mouth. Horses have been stolen for decades, so when someone runs into the village square years later and shouts out, "my God, horses are being stolen, we've got to do something," I have to ask, "where were you years ago?"
Bush has been President for more than five years. During that period, millions of illegal aliens have come into the country. So why the panic today? The address tonight? Why not five years ago?
What's going to be done about the millions of illegals already here? Apparently little to nothing. So much for this "solution."
you don't think the ridiculous yet very influential impact of liberal judges on society and the government
Mark, I have a JD (although I do not practice law). The idea of "liberal judges" or "conservative judges" is rather silly and uninformed. The bench is not partisan like politics. Yes, there is an ideological spectrum, but it's not as cut and dry as "liberal" or "conservative." Let's not forget that Scalia and Ginsberg agree on opinions more than 90 percent of the time.
That's why Republicans end up appointing justices who turn out "liberal," and Democrats end up appointing justices who turn out "conservative." The "conservative" Byron White was appointed by a Democrat, and he was a far better justice than some Republican appointees.
With that said, if the country is facing a possible terrorist attack, it really doesn't matter who's sitting on the bench when the whole city has been destroyed by a dirty bomb.
Therein lie my priorities: keeping America safe is more important than judicial litmus tests. Yes, I'd like a John Roberts over a Ruth Ginsberg, but neither of them have anything to do with protecting America against terrorist attacks. So therein lie my priorities. If America is attacked by dirty bombs, John Roberts sitting on the Supreme Court won't matter a whit.
Mark, I think it's pretty clear I'm somewhere in the middle of the road. I'm a Republican, but not a conservative. I prefer candidates in the middle. I prefer traditional Republican values like a balanced budget, smaller government, strong dollar, etc., which Bush no longer supports.
Bush has rejected so many fundamentals of the Republican party under Ronald Reagan.
Yet you continue to mischaracterize my opposition to Bush. I don't oppose Bush on his politics but because of his incompetence.
I wouldn't be so worried about his big-government, big-deficit, quasi-LBJ approach if he was achieving results. But he's not.
He's a failure at nearly everything he does.
I always get a private chuckle about people who so blindly support Bush yet wail about "liberals" like Clinton. Yet, in many ways, Clinton was more Republican than Bush -- he had a pro-business, hands-off economic policy and the economy went like gangbusters during his administration. Yes, he was a moral-less scoundrel, but were we better off in the Clinton years or the Bush years?
Mark, how do you grade if someone is a Republican or a Democrat, liberal or conservative?
I support:
--balanced budget
--smaller federal government
--strong dollar
--isolationist foreign policy
--states rights
--reduced taxes
--localized, smaller government
--nonintrusive government
--dismantling welfare state
All Republican values. So how am I this alleged "liberal"?
Soupy is obviously right about the churlish treatment of Dogman. If about very little else.
Meanwhile: I don’t disagree with
...I don’t disagree with this piece, but at some point we need to go a little deeper.
I'm a Republican, but not a conservative. I prefer candidates in the middle.
I knew it----I got your number correct.
And to be a "moderate" or "centrist" or "non-conservative" in today's era means a person probably is quite liberal by the standards of over 40 years ago. IOW, a person to be classified as a liberal in the 1950s had to be against things like anti-miscegenation or rigid anti-abortion laws. Nowadays, to be a good Democrat/liberal, one has to be in favor of same-sex marriages and codes that ban the sale of fois gras (because such products are mean and heartless to little ducks) or smoking (of tobacco) outdoors.
Therefore, I guess a "moderate" in 2006 merely has to have, at most, mixed emotions about such controversies.
Consequently, it's not too surprising when so-called centrists in today's era believe it's perfectly sensible to vote for a John Kerry on one hand while on the other claiming that doesn't necessarily make them too liberal or leftwing.
So why the panic today? The address tonight? Why not five years ago?
So you're saying that Bush should remain squishy about illegal immigration? The more I pick away at your biases, the more I suspect your reaction would be one of "damn that Bush, he's becoming too mean and heartless towards the sad souls of Mexican society."
I sense that type of response to an even greater degree when you make a comment like the following----which reminds me of all the reporters and editors (in which over 80% of them are Democrats/liberals) who claim the media isn't full of liberals and left-leaning bias:
I have a JD (although I do not practice law). The idea of "liberal judges" or "conservative judges" is rather silly and uninformed.
and the economy went like gangbusters during his administration.
Yep, another indication to me that your biases do lean left, not just because you happily don't give the benefit of the doubt to George Bush, but because you give a ton of exactly that to dot-com-boom Bill Clinton.
" the economy went like gangbusters during his administration."
I'm not really following this thread but, if this refers to Clinton, you might want to look at a graphic representation fo the economy or stock market. You will note, if you do, that the rise began with the 1994 election of the Republican Congress.
Bill Cinton rules, George W. Bush sucks. Got it.
Yep, Dogman is definitely a "real" Republican. Hey, I'm selling some ocean-front property in Missoula, Montana. Interested?
I could see facets of Dogman's biases coming through louder and louder with each new posting. However, I still trust that he at least isn't "Journalspace Mark" under another screen name, whose blog did give me a general sense of his philosophy, which isn't too different from Dogman's.
"It is one of the ironies of the era that many young people who in 1963 reacted with profound grief to Kennedy’s death would, just a few years later, come to champion a version of the left-wing doctrines that had motivated his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald."
What about those of us who weren't all that upset that Kennedy was shot?
The sad part is, they think you're joking.
If we've pegged David E's age correctly, his bookreadin' ass was almost evaporated by JFK during the missile crisis. He may not be kidding.
Next time someone says Bush is the werst presidint evar, remember that.
Now, let's all turn to Cathy's new blog at
http://cathyseipp.typepad.com/
You'll remember where you were the day JS went out.
"But does that mean that everyone has to read her? In a conventional literature class (as opposed to a GLBTSEtc. class), she might rate one book on the reading list, maybe, if there's time when they finish with Shakespeare or Orwell, who actually had some impact on the culture. I'm not saying that she shouldn't be read, but historically marginal figures don't rate the same scrutiny regardless of how much "pride" they engender in their tribe. Odysseus"
Since this is 314 or something, you probably won't see this, Ody, but I was just telling David I knew who Willa Cather was. Willa Cather wasn't a marginal figure, and the fact that she was a lesbian has nothing to do with the importance of her work. She was an important American author and influential American Author; her sexual preference has nothing to do with it. As far as studying people who make an impact on the culture go, you mention Shakespeare. Well, by your logic, we need to put the Beatles right up there with Shakespeare. I love the Beatles and they were a huge influence on the culture, but I would hardly put them on the level of Shakespeare.
Well here is Journalspace back up with (it looks like) all the archives intact.
Good work.
Maybe Cathy will post a reaction to the weak speech on immigration last night.
Welcome back all.
peace
Man, this thing looked a little like Lord of the Flies over the weekend. Hope y'all had fun with it.
"Dogman" looks to be another type who curiously neglects to register an actual e - mail address, so of course we just have to take his word that he's not a trolly.
Can anyone say "sucker's bet?" Sure, ah knew you could.
"If we've pegged David E's age correctly, his bookreadin' ass was almost evaporated by JFK during the missile crisis. He may not be kidding."
1947 and never kidding.
"Next time someone says Bush is the werst presidint evar, remember that."
You mean wurst president evah.
Kennedy had definite ideas of his won and the resolve to act upon them -- "Ill-advised" and poorly planned (ie. the Bay of Pigs) as many of them were.
Dubbya is just a tool.
"The CIA has become little more than a government-sponsored country club - it's members more interested in their own careers than the well-being of the country. It should be disbanded as soon as possible."
The CIA has become exactly what it is put in place to fix. The Coordinator of Information (Donovan's title prior to the OSS stand-up) was supposed to look at the data collected by the various intel services (Military Intelligence, Office of Naval Intelligence, FBI, etc.) and, working without the provincial biases of each agency, determine proper courses of action. It soon became apparent that he also needed an operational wing. Now, the CIA is the intelligence establishment but, unlike MI, ONI and FBI, its agenda dominates it to the point where it deliberately undermines policies of elected officials. It needs to go.
George Shultz described his struggles with the CIA in his biography, Turmoil and Triumph. Shultz said the CIA erred by not keeping a strict division between operations and analysis. Officials responsible for operations had a role in writing the reports on those operations. A fairly basic violation of church and state.
Still waiting for Hollywood to come out with the bio on "Wild Bill." The guy actually had a workable plan to kidnap the Kaiser during WWI (before the OSS) - but we'd probably see something about illegal prisoner gulags and torture instead.
"Wild Bill" sounds like a natural for Robert Altman. Work up a script and send it to him, Dmac.
"Willa Cather wasn't a marginal figure, and the fact that she was a lesbian has nothing to do with the importance of her work."
OH YES IT DOES! But that's a larger discussion that I know ody doesn't want to get into.
Now, the CIA is the intelligence establishment but, unlike MI, ONI and FBI, its agenda dominates it to the point where it deliberately undermines policies of elected officials. It needs to go.
Yes, and that of course leads to a larger discussion that David E. doesn't want to get into - about how political correctness and micromanagement from leftist politicians destroyed what was once a fine, competent intelligence agency.
Maybe Cathy will post a reaction to the weak speech on immigration last night.
It was a very disappointing speech. The idea of a third party for 2008 keeps looking better and better.
> Kennedy had definite ideas of
> his won
Not at that point... He was rolling along on Dulles & Bissell's enthusiasm. See Wyden's "The Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story." The missile crisis was a fuckup he could call his own.
> It needs to go.
Yes!
Crid, you're right about BoP. It soured him on CIA by the way but a lot of it was his own fault because the plan had air support and he cancelled it.
I thought Bush's immigration speech was a good start -- if he really means it. We need a carrot, a stick, and a fence. What Bush is suggesting seems quite reasonable. The trouble, of course, is we've seen lots of reasonable plans before that never amounted to anything.
Operation Gatekeeper has certainly worked in San Diego. That's evidence something can be done if the will is there.
A former colleague of mine had emigrated from Cuba with his parents, right after Castro took over. He was recruited into the CIA for the invasion task force, at the age of 17. When the air cover failed to materialize, he was imprisoned with 18 others in a 12 x 12 cell, with a hole in the middle functioning as a latrine.
After 6 months in jail, he was released to the US, in exchange for a tractor. Strange days, indeed.
"OH YES IT DOES! But that's a larger discussion that I know ody doesn't want to get into."
No, it doesn't. Her work has to stand on its own. Who she slept with during her writer's block isn't important, unless it's the only criteria that you have for judging work.
"Yes, and that of course leads to a larger discussion that David E. doesn't want to get into - about how political correctness and micromanagement from leftist politicians destroyed what was once a fine, competent intelligence agency."
It wasn't simply PC and micromanagement. Any successful entity will eventually become a bureaucracy. This was exacerbated by being put under the State Department, which meant that diplomats would control the CIA agenda through management and recruiting (Georgetown grads instead of infantry types). The first generation of managers were Wild Bill's maverick society buddies (hence the nickname, "Oh So Social"). They were accomplished men and women who were extremely effective. State Dept. recruiting emphasisized credentials over experience, resulting in the hiring of booksmart kids out of Georgetown with limited or no operational experience. The Church Committee hearings were the final nail in the coffin.
"OH YES IT DOES!"
It doesn't matter to me, David. As you know, I'm straight, and I still don't marginilize Willa Cather because she's a lesbian. As Ody, says, her work speaks for itself.
Gosh, I took issue with David and Odysseus on the same day. I'm living on the edge.
"OH YES IT DOES!"
No it doesn't! Its just going to muck up the beauty of her work (which does speak for itself), by pulling readers into the some political slop.
I'm just old enough to have actually "lived through' some of what Hitchens has known in his past. I find him a very credible observer of both past and present events.
Christopher Hitchens can quite easily be attacked, but one should bear in mind that he doesn't "belong" to anyone in the way of political agendas...
Regarding Bush's speech:
Any government that cannot defend its borders is available to invasion of one type or another. What's truly disgraceful (at best) is that many who live along the border are commonly, frequentlty, subjected to crimes ranging from small to large by intruders.
Beyond that, the very idea of Homeland Security is laughable once the public is aware that our present government won't enforce laws already in place.
"Gosh, I took issue with David and Odysseus on the same day. I'm living on the edge."
Okay, you asked for it. Should illegal immigrants who've read Willa Cather translated into Spanish in the LAUSD Bilingual Education classes be allowed legalized same-sex marriage or domestic partner status?
"Wild Bill" sounds like a natural for Robert Altman. Work up a script and send it to him, Dmac.
Robert Altman is the most overrated director in Hollywood.
Look Serious and ready to fight.
Do whatever you can to save humanity! GO...
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