October 17, 2005
The Colbert Report
First episode: strong.
Second episode: inspired.
Posted by: annika at
11:52 PM
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What's a Colbert Report?
Posted by: Victor at October 18, 2005 06:30 AM (L3qPK)
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Obviously there's nothing to it.
Posted by: Casca at October 18, 2005 07:53 AM (qBTBH)
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I googled it; apparently it's something on The Comedy Channel. What's really surprising is annika is a law student who seems to have tons of time to watch TV, when I can hardly squeeze in the extra hour to watch "House."
Posted by: Victor at October 18, 2005 08:17 AM (L3qPK)
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it's all a matter of priorities, my friend. for instance, i could possibly make time to watch House if every other tv show had suddenly been cancelled, and my sock drawer was in perfect order.
Posted by: annika at October 18, 2005 08:37 AM (apQ+O)
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Actually, priorities and technology. I'm a first-year associate at a major law firm and still religiously watch a good ten TV shows a week. I heart my TiVo.
Posted by: The Law Fairy at October 18, 2005 11:03 AM (XUsiG)
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Well hell V, if you'd give up cruising gay bars, you'd have all the time in the world, ya freakin' felcher.
Posted by: Casca at October 18, 2005 11:13 AM (qBTBH)
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annika, you have no idea what you're missing. truly. and I suspect you'd play in your shoe closet before straightening up your sock drawer.
Law Fairy, even with TiVO that saves you...what? 15-18 minutes of commercials/hour you don't have to watch?
Well hell, Casca, if you'd quit followin' me into them and...uhhh...
Dang, there's not really a good retort to that one. Damn you, Casca!
Posted by: Victor at October 18, 2005 12:27 PM (L3qPK)
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Victor -- it's not so much about the time saved from not watching commercials (I can always multitask during commercials anyway) but the ability to watch the shows after I get home from work late. And being able to rewind them if I pass out from fatigue while I'm trying to watch. Mmmmm, TiVo.
Posted by: The Law Fairy at October 18, 2005 04:20 PM (XUsiG)
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Ah--an important distinction. I know a lot of attorneys where I work get in relatively late--between 9 & 10--plus they can afford housing in DC (no hour+ commutes). I also suspect a lot of them (and possibly you and annika) can get by on less sleep than I (my father was fine on 3 hrs a night). Me? I get up at 5AM every day, plus I need at least 8 hours each night, which means I get seven if I'm lucky.
Posted by: Victor at October 18, 2005 04:35 PM (l+W8Z)
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I missed the first episode, but I'm about to catch the second one. I'm expecting good things...
Posted by: Rick at October 18, 2005 08:09 PM (+NYYS)
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Rick, the opening monologue was so funny, i wish is had written it.
Victor, i get by with about 5-6 hours.
Posted by: annika at October 18, 2005 08:30 PM (zP0rM)
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i get by with about 5-6 hours.
That helps 'splain it. Wish I could...
Posted by: Victor at October 19, 2005 06:15 AM (L3qPK)
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"I think about the news so you don't have to." Isn't that YOUR job?
Posted by: Casca at October 22, 2005 09:51 PM (qBTBH)
Monster Name
Via Bobo Blogger
Posted by: annika at
09:11 AM
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D-ROD: Deadly Ravenous Ogre of Derangement
Posted by: d-rod at October 17, 2005 09:30 AM (ooYm7)
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C.A.S.C.A.: Cursed Anthropologist-Snatching Creature from the Abbey
Posted by: Casca at October 17, 2005 10:52 AM (qBTBH)
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annie, you've got a pretty bad case of beal, don't you?
We all get it, kid.
Posted by: Victor at October 17, 2005 11:43 AM (L3qPK)
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Victor: Vile Ignorant Cretin Taking Orders from Rats
Posted by: Victor at October 17, 2005 01:03 PM (qBTBH)
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MARK:
Malevolent Abomination from the Ruined Kingdom
Posted by: Mark at October 17, 2005 03:11 PM (Vg0tt)
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Killer from the Yellow Ledgenday Earth sort of sucks.
Posted by: Kyle N at October 17, 2005 03:23 PM (bIwsS)
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Jogger-Injuring Maiden-Lacerating Ogre from the Vile Earth
BTW - your Raiders are going down next week :~(
Posted by: jimlove at October 18, 2005 05:01 AM (FJ2Bh)
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Haha!
R.A.I.D.E.R.: Ravenous Abhorrent Investigator-Devouring Enigma of Rage
Posted by: d-rod at October 23, 2005 06:05 PM (BzMOd)
October 14, 2005
Second Term Stumbling Block
Clinton had Monica, Reagan had Iran-Contra, Nixon had Watergate. Eisenhower had, uh i don't know, golf i guess. Second terms always contain a stumbling block, either real or imagined. When the history books are written, what will they say about Bush's second term?
Posted by: annika at
07:24 AM
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I picked Miers as the "stumbling block" because I think she was the last straw for Bush's relatively patient base. The Miers nomination might cause the conservative base to stay at home or cease campaigning heavily during the 2006 elections. The GOP might lose control of at least one house of Congress and the Dems will make sure Bush is a lame duck from then on.
Posted by: reagan80 at October 14, 2005 08:04 AM (bCo8k)
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Since the first history books will be written by dirty rotten stinking commie fag pinko junkies...the only thing most people will say will be "all of the above."
My choice, tho, would be Miers. That's the first thing he did that made me go, "oh, shit, that idiot," for a reason I've heard but that hasn't gotten lots of airplay. To me, the nomination of Miers seemed like outright crony-ism to me, and I find that absolutely abhorrent.
Posted by: Victor at October 14, 2005 08:12 AM (L3qPK)
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if we lose a house, it would be very hard not to blame the miers nomination. Not sure if it would be accurate, but i think that will be the conventional wisdom.
However, we will NOT lose a house.
Will we?
Posted by: annika at October 14, 2005 09:16 AM (zAOEU)
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Children, children, history will say that he presided over a country in the throws of the death thrash, and wimper of the MSM.
Posted by: Casca at October 14, 2005 09:37 AM (qBTBH)
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As an independent, I will say it is all the above, plus WMD/Iraq, Energy policy, and a slew of other matters.
Posted by: will at October 14, 2005 11:25 AM (GzvlQ)
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No no, you have to pick one. And the question is what do you think the history books will say. Not what you think. Plus, i would agree that WMD/Iraq is going to be the focus of any historical survey of the Bush presidency, but i didn't include it in my choices, because that's an issue that began in the first term.
Posted by: annika at October 14, 2005 11:32 AM (zAOEU)
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Everything you have listed is an MSM gotcha over an imagined Bush slight. Real historians see past that to bigger issues.
Posted by: Casca at October 14, 2005 01:22 PM (qBTBH)
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The problem is that history isn't written by real historians. At least, not the history that the vast majority of Americans will see. It's written by liberal producers of television news magazines like 48 Hours and 60 Minutes.
WMD's / Iraq will be the main focus of most retellings of the Bush presidency (in short, it will read "He lied"), but the stumbling block for his second term will definitely be Harriet Miers.
Posted by: Charlie Gordon at October 14, 2005 02:27 PM (D3+20)
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I vote for miers, and as everyone has commented, his presidency rises or falls on the Iraq situation. Which bodes rather well for his future, because, don't look now, but I think we will be succesful in establishing a pluralistic government in two nations that had no history of anything but despotism, and that will pay big dividends to the free world in the future.
Posted by: Kyle N at October 14, 2005 02:39 PM (mSqh8)
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I thought it would be the whining of Kerry and Gore. Doesn't everyone love sore losers?
Posted by: MarkD at October 14, 2005 02:43 PM (X9njN)
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Sheen will be credited with announcing decline in support for the destruction of Iraq.
Katrina was the most telling of the incompetence resulting from the rampant cronyism that started on day one of the first term and has continued unabated.
Plamegate is going to be the petard that sticks this shuffle and lie administration with its own nasty vindictive nature.
Miers is still to hot to taste. It looks like a reward for her years of unrequited love mixed in with his religious psychosis. Did you read David Brooks on Oct 13? Just frightening.
What hasn't happened yet is the complete breakdown of order in iraq and the unrelenting ineptitude and inadequacy of our response to a completly misguided mission.
History will not be kind to the chimp. AMerica's slide into a gutter match with radial elements of Islam will be lain at Bush's feet. 911 will be put in perspectiive as an assult by a few men on a mission from Allah and the Bush response will look both misconstrued and inept once the smoke is allowed to clear. The lies of the run up to the conflict will become irrefutable to everyone and Iraq will slip into a never ending bloodbath of internecine warfare that will require an American presence for decades. Bush will only be remembered for getting us into Iraq, and for the most egregious tax cuts during a period of immense spending, debt accumulation and the begining of a serious inflation. He will become one of the least important( his father will still be less important) presidents in recent history certainly not requiring a library for his papers since he has not written a postcard.
Posted by: Strawman at October 14, 2005 02:50 PM (0ZdtC)
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Quick! Somebody please throw me a rope! I'm drowning in Strawman's pessimism!
Jesus, why do all liberals think it is the end of the world?
Posted by: Rob at October 14, 2005 03:42 PM (d9klv)
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Why do you even bother posting here? Let me clue you in, Neither I, nor Casca, nor Victor, nor Shelly, Nor Annika herself, or anyone else here is impressed with reflexive, bile spitting, bush hatred. We have heard it all before, and we just think yoiu are stupid.
Futhermore, some of us are old enough to remember you lefties said EXACTLY the same things about Ronald Reagan, but history has been kind to him. I am not saying Bush is another Reagan, but I still see no reason to support any of your idiotic opinions.
Posted by: Kyle N at October 14, 2005 03:47 PM (mSqh8)
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I think President Bush said it best: , ‘History, we don’t know. We’ll all be dead.’
Posted by: dawn summers at October 14, 2005 03:47 PM (SOf9N)
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obviously, that was not meant for you Rob
Posted by: Kyle N at October 14, 2005 03:48 PM (mSqh8)
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Hey Kyle,
Go fuck yourself. Read my posts, comment or move on. I'm not here to impress you. You read what I write, shake your head from side to side, spit, I don't give a voles ass. Either refute or as I said above gfy. When I am taking up space on your blog, block my IP until then last time I looked you were just one more balustrade knee jerking yourself into place in Anika's porch rail.
Rob, it ain't the end of the world just another episode in AMerica's never ending attempt to fuck things up killing a bunch along the way.
I voted against RR twice and think he is a mental giant compared to this dimwit and he was not a great intellect. But history has ignored him as well as it will GB.
Posted by: Strawman at October 14, 2005 04:27 PM (0ZdtC)
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Straw, u r so fucking far out there, I'm sure that in whatever feverswamp your claque haunts, that you're considered some kind of genius, but to the rest of America, which the folks here are probably a pretty good cross-section of, let's just say, you'd be voted off the island before anyone knew your name. So STFU, buy a vowel, and try to figure out why we think the way we do, instead of knee jerking yourself as a balustrade into place in Move-on-dot-org's porch rail. Annika aint got no porch dickhead.
Posted by: Casca at October 14, 2005 05:22 PM (qBTBH)
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"and for the most egregious tax cuts during a period of immense spending, debt accumulation"
Hmm, that sounds like Reaganomics. Bush deserves blame for the debt and spending, but Reagan didn't since he never had control of both houses of Congress to get his budget cuts enacted.
Anyway, it's time for an encore of my defense of the Bush economy. I love comparing "the chimp" to the Left's great hero and watching the haters swallow their tongues.
[The US unemployment rate in August was at 4.9 percent. Let's put this into perspective again shall we?
Unemployment trend under Bush since his re-election:
Year / Month / Unemployment Rate
2004 / 11 / 5.4
2004 / 12 / 5.4
2005 / 01 / 5.2
2005 / 02 / 5.4
2005 / 03 / 5.2
2005 / 04 / 5.2
2005 / 05 / 5.1
2005 / 06 / 5.0
2005 / 07 / 5.0
2005 / 08 / 4.9
Unemployment trend under Clinton since his re-election:
Year / Month / Unemployment Rate
1996 / 11 / 5.4
1996 / 12 / 5.4
1997 / 01 / 5.3
1997 / 02 / 5.2
1997 / 03 / 5.2
1997 / 04 / 5.1
1997 / 05 / 4.9
1997 / 06 / 5.0
1997 / 07 / 4.9
1997 / 08 / 4.8
1997 / 09 / 4.9
Now, Bush needs to contain the energy crisis and he needs to accelerate the post-Katrina reconstruction efforts so that we can keep up the positive economic developments over here. If only we could get the situation in Iraq under control, he'd be one of the greatest prez's since Reagan right now.]
Luckily for the Bush-haters, hurricane Katrina left thousands of people jobless so the unemployment rate rose to 5.1 percent last month.
Posted by: reagan80 at October 14, 2005 05:55 PM (K9tdw)
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Strawman! Strawman, Strawman, Strawman. The proper phrase at annika's place is, "I don't give one of Victor's rats asses..." unless I say it in which it's, "I don't give one of my rats asses..."
Posted by: Victor at October 14, 2005 06:43 PM (l+W8Z)
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Strawman is trying to make a mountain out of a vole-hill.
seriously, i'll save my opinions for later when i do my poll result wrapup.
Posted by: annika at October 14, 2005 06:59 PM (0JhSy)
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Actually, Eisenhower had Sherman Adams, a pretty bad recession and the U2 incident in his second term.
And I think history will remember "all of the above" as being the President's weak spots in his second term. I supported the crazy bastard for re-election - not heartily, mind you, I don't much like pretend conservatives - but I did support him. I did this thinking that at least he'd be better than Kerry. I'm re-evaluating that position right now.
Even more disheartening than pointing out everything that Bush has done wrong in the last year is looking for the things he did right. Other than Chief Justice Roberts , can anyone name three?
I remember a time when being a Republican used to mean something. Under presidents like Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and the first Bush, it meant a coherant foreign policy and some attempt at fiscal restraint. Now it means spending money at a rate that people like Henry Wallace would frantically masturbate dreaming about, winging it in Iraq and opposing gay marriage more than they had to.
Let's put it this way, anyone who suggests that the greastest theat to the Republic is gay marriage SHOULD be destroyed in electoral politics. That the '04 cycle ended up hinging on the issue demonstrates that most people aren't serious about much of anything.
The only reason that the Republicans have anything at all at this point is that the Democrats are so inconsequential. With an unpopular president, a House majority leader under indictment and a Senate majority leader looking at the same prospect, the Democrats STILL can't crack 32% approval.
But if I were a Republican strtegist right now, I wouldn't be hanging my fortunes on the retardation of my opponents. Not only is it possible, but it's likely that the Republicans will lose the House next year. Given both the geography and the size of the majority, I'd say that the Senate is safe for now. But I'm not as confident of that as I was even six weeks ago.
If I HAVE to choose just one, I'd say Miers. But only because it summarizes a much deeper and more serious problem in the Republican Party - the fragmentation of the conservative movement.
The conservative movement has had an uneasy alliance for over a decade now. The social conservatives and fiscal conservatives have always mistrusted each other far more than either has the Democrats, but they banded together to win. And it worked, for a time.
Fiscal conservatives have long loathed the President, who, let's be frank, has been the single greatest socialist in his spending priorities since FDR's first term. And that would be fine if he delivered for his social conservative base. He hasn't. What has he done for them? A constitutional amendment on gay marriage? Nope. Renewed the importance of the family in American life? No. "Nominated justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas"? He didn't even try to do that.
Fiscal conservatives will someday look back at the jackalope, evil Clinton administration fondly and the social conservatives will realize that they've been screwed yet again. This is important for two reasons. President Bush as president IS the Republican Party to most people. His betrayal of the Jesus crowd will be seen as the Party's betrayal. It is also important to remember that the Jesus crowd were Democrats not too long ago. They bolted one party en masse, who's to say they won't bolt another.
No matter what happens, next year will not be kind to the Republicans. There will be loses, and very probably heavy ones. Bt '08 is much scarier. The 2008 Republican convention is going to look at lot more like the 1948 Democratic convention than anyone now suspects. I think that if a Bush clone is nominated, the fiscal conservatives will leave. If the nominate someone like Giuliani or McCain, the social conservatives split. The 2008 convention is going to be a lot of things, but pretty ain't going to be one of them.
I'm hardly a liberal. In fact, I loathe the Democrats with every fiber of my being. They actually sicken me physically. But that should not be taken to mean that the Republicans have given me a long list of reasons to like them very much. You can only spend so much energy on dopey things like gay marriage and Terri Schiavo before serious people stop taking you seriously. The last ten months have made me stop taking the Republican Party seriously.
I should think that there are millions of Republicans who think as I do and are distraught by the direction of the Party. Perhaps a serious third party movement might be in order soon.
Sorry to waste so much of your bandwidth, Annika. But I think these are issues that conservatives should debate seriously before its too late.
Posted by: skippystalin at October 15, 2005 07:46 AM (+L2kz)
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"Nixon, Ford, Reagan and the first Bush"
I protest grouping those names together. One of those guys didn't want the Soviet Union to break apart and presided over "Bay of Pigs II". Another one was as worse as LBJ when it came to spending. And, the last one didn't think there was any Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. 3 out of those four listed were mediocre presidents. I'll let you guess which one isn't one of them.
Posted by: reagan80 at October 15, 2005 09:20 AM (K9tdw)
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no prob, skippy. you make many good points. 2008 is scary right now. will a hero rise? i don't see him (or her) now. condi doesn't want it. and i dont think she's the savior dick morris thinks she is, much as i like her, i don't know that she's executive material. right now i'm thinking about Newt. Don't laugh. i know he's got negatives, but he's a movement coservative (as much as anyone can be these days) plus he's got the "fire in the belly" that Powell lacked, and he's articulate and smart enoigh to take on hillary.
Posted by: annika at October 15, 2005 09:26 AM (ruWbY)
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Gingrich is a conservative idea factory. He also engineered the balanced budget that led to the federal surplus under Clinton. He would be a good prez.
I don't know why, but I used to hate Gingrich and Republicans as a kid even though my parents loathed Clinton. Oh nevermind, I remember why.......
http://www.bwallartjknxyz.com/print-detail-asp/id-9582/from-Search/TIME_Magazine-Newt_Gingrich_as_Uncle_Scrooge.htm
I remember when my parents got that shitty propaganda in the mail. Now, I know why they always had that cover face down on the coffee table.
Posted by: reagan80 at October 15, 2005 09:50 AM (K9tdw)
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Annika,
As much as Newt is intellectually interesting, he has a common problem among smart people - he has no idea when to stop talking, and consequently says marvellously stupid things. I give you his stand on women in combat as just one example. There are several strategic and proper reasons to oppose it. But what did Gingrich cite? That women "get infections." I have no doubt that he would continue this trend and get annhiliated by virtually anyone. There's also the fact that he's no longer Speaker because he was shivved by his own caucus. How well that translates into a primary campaign isn't much of a guess. Frankly, I'll be stunned if Gingrich raises enough money to make it to New Hampshire. He's an intellectual Quayle, politically.
Everyone is looking at Hillary as the nominee, which I think is a mistake. I seriously doubt that she'll get the nod, Gore will. I think that he's been seriously considering the prospects of a Nixon-like ressurrection. If he runs, he'll destroy Senator Clinton. Everything she can do, he can do better. He can raise more money and give a better speech (which, granted, isn't saying a lot) and he can remind people that he actually beat George Bush in the popular vote, which Clinton had no hope of doing and probably couldn't now.
Republicans are making a disasterous mistake in planning soley on running against Hillary. The Democrats are very different from the Republicans, their early front-runner almost NEVER wins the nomination. Remember Symington in '60? McCarthy in '68? Muskie in '72? Hart in '84 and '88? How about Tsongas in '92? While Republicans usually have an annoited one, Democrats don't. That's why they lose so often.
And if anyone thinks the Miers nomination is bad, just wait until the White House openly backs McCain in 2008. If the President has any of his father's good qualities (and I admire his father greatly), hopefully loyalty is one of them. Senator McCain was offered half of the United States government to be on Kerry's ticket last year. Instead, he turned it down and campained hard for a guy he has any number of problems with. It's also no secret that Karl Rove has been meeting with McCain's Chief of Staff, Mark Salter.
Current polling has McCain annhiliating everyone in the Democratic field, except, stupidly, Gore who isn't included. The White House would not only be disloyal, but stupid to not to get behind McCain. And because backing McCain is smart, it'll drive social conservatives crazy.
There are currently only two Republicans who have any chance of beating Clinton OR Gore. Those are McCain and Rudy Giuliani.. Anyone who believes differently is living in a fantasyland. Maybe Warner can, but I don't know enough about him to make an informed decision about that yet.
Posted by: skippystalin at October 15, 2005 10:50 AM (+L2kz)
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Reagan80 (if that IS your real name),
So of the last half century of Republican presidents, you only have any use for two. That clarifies a number of things for me.
You like Presidents Reagan and the current President. I fail to see any corraltion between the two. In fact, other than the most superficial, mainstream media nonsense, they couldn't be more different.
Let's look at the records, shall we? Reagan did increase defense spending by about 37%. He also tried to cut non-descretionary domestic spending to offset the defense increase, but was stymied by a Democratic Congress. That lead to a record deficiet (which I vaugely remember Republicans being against) which consequently - coupled with the first Bush's monumentally bad political skills and Ross Perot hammering him from the RIGHT - lead to the election of President Clinton.
President Bush, on the other hand, is capable of not spending money on bullshit. His increases in non-discretionary domestic spending have far surpassed his defense spending increses. Non -defense, non-discretionary domestic spnding has gone up by .....37% during President Bush's tenure.
Where, oh where do you think that money's coming from? I'll tell you. The People's Republic of China is where. They are currently the single largest holder of T-bonds out there. During the Reagan years, most of the debt was held by either domestic banks, or other democracies, like Japan. That's not the case now.
Of course, this directly impacts on foreign policy. The "Bush Doctrine" has been predicated on "spreading democracy", albeit with mixed results. How long do you think this can happen - if, in fact, the administration is honest about it in the first place - on money borrowed from the world's most powerful totalitarian regime? Not only is the Bush foreign policy working on borrowed money, it's working on borrowed time. There will come a time soon when China will have the power to turn America into Argentina if their foreign policy displeases them.
President Reagan was also especially careful not to waste American lives in persuit of a fantasy. His main objective - at least in the short term - was to contain communism - not to spread democracy.
The waving of Republican purple fingers aside, democracy in Iraq can still very well lead to a civil war that spread and ultimately threaten Isreal. Sure, everyone hopes that Iraq works out well. As a suporter of the war, I do too. But no serious person can argue that an army of 130,000 can stabilize a nation of 25 million people who, generally speaking, have hated each other for hundreds of years.
More than thirty months after the invasion, even Baghdad has "irregular" electrcity. Certainly some of that can be blamed on the insurgency, but had a larger occupation force been put in place, the insurgency could have been contained.
I remain in mortal terror that the adminstration will wave another big "Misson Accomplished" sign and decrease American forces out of Iraq in antincipation of the '06 elections. That would be disasterous. Republicans like to point out that "soverignty" was handed over to Iraq early. Well, President Reagan lived to see a seven year military occupation of Japan, which had no insurgency at all. The same is true of Germany. I also shouldn't have to point out that American forces are still in both countries in significant numbers.
In short, President Bush has far exceeded the exesses that you have criticized the other Republican Presidents cited and has been a polar opposite to President Reagan. I'd like to close with a question. Can you, or anyne else, name five ways that President Bush has acted on the tenants of traditional Republicanism or conservatism?
I keep hearing this blather about how is a Great Conservative President, but I have yet to see ANY evidence of it.
Posted by: skippystalin at October 15, 2005 12:00 PM (+L2kz)
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Yeah, that's my chosen pseudonym. I once considered Bush Jr. to be Reagan's true spiritual successor, but I'm starting to re-evaluate my position on that ever since the Miers nomination.
I've known about Bush's Nixon-ian spending habits and gov't enlargement since his first term, but I forgave him since I thought he was just trying to appease the "moderate" and "undecided" voting demographic into re-electing him so that he could later show off his true Reaganite colors. I was hoping this scenario would occur:
[Its preferred method has been to use deceit to create faits accomplis, facts on the ground that then make the administration's broader agenda almost impossible not to pursue. During and after the 2000 campaign, the president called for major education and prescription drug programs plus a huge tax cut, saying America could easily afford them all because of large budget surpluses. Critics said it wasn't true, and the growing budget deficits have proven them right. But the administration now uses the existence of big budget deficits as a way to put the squeeze on social programs--part of its plan all along. Strip away the presidential seal and the fancy titles, and it's just a straight-up con.] (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.marshall.html)
Bush almost lost to Gore, remember. Throughout his first term, Bush was trying to take away as much liberal political ammunition for his re-election campaign.
-He signed the unconstitutional Campaign Finance Reform bill to throw his biggest primary rivals, McCain supporters, a bone.
-He signed the prescription drug bill to blunt Democratic attacks on the "let them eat dog food" party(GOP).
-He created the Homeland Security Dept. and national intelligence csar to let the ignorant moderate voters know that Bush followed the shitty 9/11 Commission recommendations to a tee.
However, it is impossible for me to justify Bush and the GOP's activities since 2005. If they don't start acting like the GOP of the Gingrich days, then I will have to declare Reaganism dead. Well, I'm tired of posting my criticism of Bush and the GOP, so I'll give my reasons why I like Dubya.
"Can you, or anyne else, name five ways that President Bush has acted on the tenants of traditional Republicanism or conservatism?"
1. He's trying to reform the tax code.
2. He's tried to reform the great ponzi scheme, Social Security.
3. He's kept taxes low.
4. He let the assault rifle ban die despite his campaign promise to renew it.
5. He's been firm on his policy in Iraq even though it almost cost him his re-election.
I have an affinity for Bush because, like Reagan, the media and the Dems have been saying that his policies would fail all along. Bush and Reagan proved everyone wrong when the tax cuts resulted in increased revenues and positive economic development.
Reagan proved everyone wrong with his "peace through strength" strategy against the Soviets as opposed to starting a Nixon-ian policy of engagement with the USSR. Bush proved everyone wrong about the "apparent failure" of our forces in Afghanistan when the conflict was ongoing.
Reagan got credit for finishing off the Soviets and ending the Cold War while his opposition was shrieking "failure". Bush will hopefully get credit for establishing democracy in the "cradle of civilization" and for halting the spread of radical Islam while the whole world was pissing on him.
I was born while Reagan was in power. Bush is the first president that I've voted for. Those 2 will probably always be my favorites. 'Nuff said.
Posted by: reagan80 at October 15, 2005 01:58 PM (K9tdw)
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I am actualy starting to think we might need McCain, not because I like the guy, but because, he has been a certified deficit hawk all his time in the Senate, and we might need a serious deficit hawk now.
Posted by: Kyle N at October 15, 2005 05:57 PM (GcITD)
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But when McCain gets heartburn whenever he starts to think about running. Wouldn't you?
Posted by: d-rod at October 15, 2005 08:17 PM (Xd3fg)
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Reagan80,
You raise some particularly interesting points.
Not only did the President sign the "unconstitutional" McCain/Feingold bill, he said it was unconstitutional when he signed it. So much for his oath to "support, protect and defend" the Constitution. This is but the most egregious instance of "being against something before he was for it" (sound like someone we know?) The prescription drug benefit, the farm bill, the highway bill, the stell tariffs and his constant fucking about with NAFTA all belie his claim to be a conservative and a free trader. He is nothing of the kind, and probably never was. In fact, his father was far more of a classical conservative than he was.
You state that the above were ploys for re-election, and to some degree that's true. But what does that say about his principles? Is re-election really worth any and all costs? I think that the President,like most politicians spends like he does because it supposedly buys him popularity. How else do you explain the Republican conference spending like they do? Or DeLay's magnificently stupid remark that there's no spending left to cut?
The tax cuts are something else entirely. Anyone who knows anything about economics will tell you that tax cuts are spnding by other means. Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, in implimenting large tax cuts sought to cut discretionary spending to minimize their impact on the deficit. President Bush has done no such thing. Not only is his father more of a conservative than he is, so was President Kennedy.
You state that he's "trying to reform the tax code." If so, how? He hasn't introduced a bill to do this and there's absolutely no indication that he will soon. And the odds of such a bill passing are slim at best.
If Bush can be properly compared to any other recent President, it would be President Lyndon Johnson. Both implimented large tax cuts as they wildly increased discretionary program spending and fought large wars. The economic consequences of Johnson's policies destroyed the presidencies of his three successors, Nixon, Ford and Carter. In fact, Bush's deficits are much worse than Johnson's and Nixon's because so much of the debt is held by a hostile foreign power.
For example, what happens if China attacks Taiwan and the United States intervenes? The Chinese could respond by selling off their American currency and T-bonds, creating a run on the market, turning America into Argentina over night. This president's spending priorities have effectively frozen American foreign policy in South Asia
As to "establishing democracy in the 'cradle of civilization '", that couldn't be more misleading. While the United States has achieved more in Iraq than I thought it would given the minimal investment in people and resources there, I don't see the prospects of democracy in the long-term as being particularly bright.
Iraq is not a natural country and never has been. Like the former Yugoslavia, its competing etnic groups were unified by coercision. Yugoslavia was broken apart by democratic means and Canada will be someday as well. However, Iraqi democracy is particularly dangerous. What if the Kurds democratically decide to establish their own state? That state, as the Kurds themselves will tell you, will include swaths of Syria, Iran and Turkey, none of whom would tolerate that.
Then there's the matter of Israel. Even moderate Iraqis are not likely to recognize Israel's right to exist in any meaningful way. But what if a radical Islamic government is elected in a fair and free election? The geopolitical consequences of that are enourmous. It is entirely possible that a "democratic" Iraq will subsidize terrorism against Israel as a means of "liberating" the Palestinan people. Remember, terrorism is a relative term. Does the United States attack a democracy that it created or does it abandon its committment to Israel?
I'm not saying that any of the above will happen, but they certainly could, and no one in the administration has thought this through.
Further on the point of "democracy", this is not the objective of American foreign policy and never has been. To this very day, the United States is friendly with some truly odious regimes, specifically in the former Soviet Central Asian region. Ironically, this is done to further democracy in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan deserves a lot more attention than it recieves. Much has been made of the progress of democracy there, but little of the fact that the country outside of Kabul is controlled by warlords and heroin trafficers. Importation of heroin in the US has actually increased since the liberation of Afghanistan.
It is incredibly hard to take the administration's policy on spreading democracy seriously when its closest allies in doing so are a military government in Pakistan, a royal autocracy in Saudi Arabia and a fascist government in Uzbekistan.
Besides, aren't REpublicans supposed to be against "nation building?"
President Bush lost the popular vote to Gore and nearly lost it to Kerry. Were it not for the abject stupidity of the Democratic Party, Bush would have been destroyed last year. He was easily the most vulnerable incumbent since President Carter. I'll believe for the rest of my life that if the Democrats were smart and nominated Joe Lieberman, he would've eaten Bush's lunch. Instead, they nominated Kerry and Bush only barely beat him, winning by the lowest margin of a re-elected president ever.
Look not just at the President's own dismal polling, look at the "right track/wrong track" polling. Those numbers show that 60% think that the country is on the wrong track, up 12% in less than a year. This is much, much deeper than Miers. She's just the final nail in the coffin that the President's own misguided policy priorities have put him in.
I imagine that the above arguments will paint me as a "radical Bush hater." I'm not. I supported his election twice and I supported the war against Saddam Hussein. But I cannot - and will not - ignore what he's done to both the country and the Republican Party.
A close reading of my attacks on the President should demonstrate that I'm not attacking him from the left (although I could do that, too) but from the right. I'm a fiscal conservative and a social libertarian. The President lost people like me a long time ago. With Miers, he seems to have lost religious conservatives as well. Accordingly, he now has no political mobility.
His presidency is effectively over.
Posted by: skippystalin at October 15, 2005 08:53 PM (+L2kz)
31
Almost sounds like the guy with the fucked up name above has the disease called Gonorrhea Lectimagin (pronounced "gonna re-elect him again").
So skippy, who you rooting for in '08?
Posted by: d-rod at October 15, 2005 10:49 PM (uRMS9)
32
D-Rod,
Well, if I could vote (which I can't because I'm not an American citizen), I'd go with Giuliani or McCain. I find that I agree with both far more often than not. Besides, the social conservatives hate them and that's always a bonus with me. They're nice, traditionalist Republicans and both are strong on defense and probably don't advocate a small government that dictates where I can put my penis and what kind of pornography I can own. As you might guess, my penis and pornography collections are far more important to me than my political affiliation.
Besides, both of them can destroy anyone the Democrats put up. The problem is getting them nominated. McCain won New Hampshire by 19 points, so that shouldn't be a problem. It's down South where they face some heavy opposition. McCain is loathed in the South and Giuliani's name is very foreign sounding. This is where the White House becomes important. Rove, et all are going to have to tame the lunatic wing like Senators Santorum and Brownback long before March of '08. If either of them are nominated, the Democrats can beat this with an autistic four year-old. God help everyone if the primaries turn into a death match ot there's a brokered convention.
If Rudy's nominated, the Republicans can run on 9/11 again without saying so. It also takes Iraq off of the table as Giuliani had nothing to do with it. And Rudy can deliver New York state, which the Democrats can't mathematically win without. Either McCain or Giuliani can make California competetive.
Giuliani also got rid of the silly comb-over, which was smart. It can be very difficult to be a profile in coutrage if you're afraid to go outside on a windy day.
The Democrats have their own problems. No matter who gets the nomination, its virtually certain that Senator Obama will be on the ticket. Not only is he a problem for Republicans - who can't be seen as beating up on a young black guy - but for the top of the ticket. Obama outshines virtually everyone else in the party. Remember in '96, when Bob Dole gave Jack Kemp the second slot? Remember how no one wanted to talk to Dole anymore?
It seems to me that Republicans have a very stark choice before them, nominate either McCain or Giuliani or lose the White House in '08. One or both houses of Congress will be gone next year.
Posted by: skippystalin at October 16, 2005 06:05 AM (+L2kz)
33
Good Gawd, McCain "Deficit Hawk", "War Hero", '08 Candidate"??? McCain is nothing more nor less than this, an egoist self-serving aged Clintonian lite, clotpole.
I always love it when foreignors weigh in on who we will/should elect. I'd NEVER think to opine on what might happen in any other nation. They all have cultures impregnible to the mind of one who is not part of them.
Hill&Bill Redux will top the D ticket, and some already known R will top the R. It won't matter who, because whomever is atop the R ticket will prevail against the wicked witch of New York/Little Rock. One can safely say that it won't be a Guliani, or McCain. It will be someone with broad party appeal, who can raise early money, and man his barricades with the party footsoldiers. While we always enjoy G&M at the dinner table, we don't really want them in the kitchen cooking.
Posted by: Casca at October 16, 2005 07:36 AM (qBTBH)
34
Casca,
If you read my earlier posts, I said that I didn't think Clinton would win the nomination, Al Gore will. And, if I remember my history correctly, he beat the President by half a million votes. In fact, he won by pathetic margins against the worst campaigners the Democratic Party has ever put up.
Gore is a very real, very serious threat. He should be ignored at the peril of the Republican Party. Hillary would be pretty easy to beat. I asked a question at my place nearly three years ago, "name me five states Hillary can win." So far, no one has been able to.
Given the way the adinistration has fucked up everything its touched in the last 10 months, you'd have to be hallucinating to think that at least one house of Congress will go bye-bye. If the Republican primaries are half as nasty as I suspect they'll be, the Democrats can win. How do you think Jimmy Carter ever got to be president in the first place.
If the social conservatives nominate one of their golden boys, a Born Again who lives to spend other people's money, virtually any Democrat will crush him. Nominating another George W. Bush is an invitation to disaster. If you don't believe me, watch his polling over the next year and the '06 off-years. We'll son see who's right, Casca.
As I write this, there are maybe 4 Republicans who can clearly win. Those are McCain, Giuliani, Condolezza Rice (who won't run), and George Allen, who I don't know enough about to make an informed decision.
And while I'm thrilled that my foreign nationality amuses you, you really haven't made any effort to point out where I'm wrong and why. There isn't any paucity of assertions that I've made in this tread that can't be challenged. Yet, you've chosen not to.
And you'd NEVER opine in foreign politics? Not even in places like Iraq and Afghanistan? After all, you did sort of invade those places, which one should presume to mean that you have some sort of investment in the outside world.
On the other hand, I've read your comments here and you really don't seem all that interested in analysis that doesn't end up as cheerleading for the right-wing of the Party. Of course, that's your right as a citizen, but an indication of just how informed a citizen you want to be.
But, hey, you can vote in the prmaries and I can't. So, knock yourself and nominate Santorum. I await the look of shock on your face when he gets crushed like a beercan by a loser like Al Gore. I think you'll grow to love Vice President Obama, too. Really, I do.
Like I've said in prior posts, the Bush administration has turned out to be like FDR's, only the priorities are dumber. Maybe a couple of good, sound thrasings in the next couple of electons are what the Party needs to rediscover what, if anything, they believe. Truth be told, I'm not even sure I care anymore. The Republican Party has moved so far away from its founding tenants in the last 5 years that it's barely recognizable.
More and more, I hope that Richard Nixon's dream - of a third party made up of moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats - becomes a reality. Nixon envisioned tht Party being headed by John Connolly, but maybe a McCain, a Giuliani or a Lieberman can find a comfortable home there.
Look, if the Miers nomination has pointed out anything, it's that the Republican coalition is facing the same fracturing that the Democrat one has over the last twenty years. Maybe a history lesson is order here. The only reason the Republicans are the majority party today is because it won over disgruntled Southerners who abdandoned the Democrats over desegregation. They are very religious, and very culturally conservative. Yet the voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976. Bill Clinton carried Florida in 1996. You can't count on the stupidity of Democrats forever. Eventually, they'll nominate someone who appeals to evangelicals - and that's when the Republicans get ruined forever.
Sure, the Republicans can slow this by nominating people who hate gay marriage and love Intelligent Design. And not only will they lose, they'll deserve to lose, because they'll have betrayed all of their own basic principles. Wasn't it the Republican Party who wanted to abolish the Department of Education just a decade ago? Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who wanted to get the "government off people's backs?"
I miss the days when Republicans said those things and even appeared to believe them. The Republican Party of George W. Bush and Tom DeLay differs not at all from the Democratic Party of Lyndon Baines Johnson. If it vanishes tomorrow, I certainly won't shed any tears for it.
Posted by: skippystalin at October 16, 2005 08:42 AM (+L2kz)
35
You want McCain to be president even though Campaign Finance Reform was his stupid idea to begin with?
"In fact, his father was far more of a classical conservative than he was."
I doubt it. He was the one that was pouring cold water on the democratic movement in Ukraine when the USSR was collapsing. Speaking of the USSR, Bush Sr. didn't want the Soviet empire to break apart since he cherished totalitarian "stability" as opposed to fomenting the "chaos" of democratic independence movements. He called Reagan's economic plans "voodoo economics" during the 1980 Republican primaries. He presided over "Bay of Pigs II" in Iraq when he encouraged the Shia and Kurds to topple Saddam without giving them military support and finishing off the Republican Guard. I even believe that he intentionally left the Republican Guard alone so that they could quickly crush the anti-Saddam rebels and preserve regional "stability".
"In fact, Bush's deficits are much worse than Johnson's and Nixon's"
Bush has made an effort to reduce the deficit. Before Katrina fucked up things down here, the budget deficit was starting to decrease.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4343814.stm
"For example, what happens if China attacks Taiwan and the United States intervenes? The Chinese could respond by selling off their American currency and T-bonds, creating a run on the market, turning America into Argentina over night. This president's spending priorities have effectively frozen American foreign policy in South Asia"
Fuck China. If I had it my way, Nixon would never have re-established normal diplomatic relations with those commie shits so that they could eventually exploit our capitalist investments on their soil. They would have collapsed along with the Soviets by now.
You think T-bonds are all we'd have to worry about when the Chi-Coms decide to go batshit crazy on Taiwan? Hell, that's just the icing on the cake. In addition to that, the Chinese will probably seize all American corporate assets(factories, manufacturing equipment, and technology) on their soil and use them against us. They will probably throw in an extra military offensive/diversionary operation to assist the North Koreans in driving our forces off of the Korean peninsula and reunifying Korea under Communist rule once and for all.
Yeah, I kinda wish that we didn't create the Chi-Com monster with our money. The business community should have put that money and infrastructure into India instead. Let the Europeans finance the Communist monster and reap the whirlwind when they lose their assets someday for opposing China's foreign policy.
"To this very day, the United States is friendly with some truly odious regimes, specifically in the former Soviet Central Asian region."
True, but if we aren't friendly with these tyrants then we lose our "soft power" influence over them. Look at this scenario with Nepal:
[As it happens, the Bush Administration has managed, intentionally or otherwise, to follow Amnesty’s advice: all military aid to Nepal has been suspended since the February coup. The result? The army is running out of ammo and Gyanendra is now getting cozy with China and North Korea, two regimes who will sell him arms on the cheap and won’t give two shakes about his human rights record. So we’ve forfeited any influence we had over the King and have lost geopolitical ground. Thank you Amnesty—mission accomplished.] (http://www.cominganarchy.com/archives/2005/04/25/coming-anarchy-in-nepal/)
"She's just the final nail in the coffin that the President's own MISGUIDED POLICY PRIORITIES have put him in."
Since he's considered "Bush's brain", I'll blame Karl Rove for at least half of Bush's mistakes. Like Coulter says, Rove probably would have told Bush to endorse Ronald Reagan's GOP primary opponents if he were alive today. Rove probably came up with the brilliant "let's get the hispanic vote by ignoring the border crisis" idea. I know Bush could have ignored his advice, but......?
"I'd go with Giuliani"
I wouldn't mind voting for Giuliani, but he better keep mum on overturning the ban on partial birth abortion if he wants the Southern vote.
"More and more, I hope that Richard Nixon's dream - of a third party made up of moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats - becomes a reality."
That's not a third party. It's today's Republican voting demographic. The conservative Democrats were Reagan Democrats that finally abandoned the party after Clinton/Gore in 2000.
The only third party I'd want to succeed is the Libertarians, but only when they become more hawkish or when the War on Terror is over.
Posted by: reagan80 at October 16, 2005 11:35 AM (K9tdw)
36
Skippy:
As long as people are reminded that enlightened fucktards like Zippy are running the Democratic party, then I wouldn't worry about the extinction of the GOP.
Posted by: reagan80 at October 16, 2005 11:52 AM (K9tdw)
37
Reagan'80,
Annika's gonna kill me, but again you raise so many tantalizing points. I should start off by saying that you remind me a lot of me when I was in my early twenties. Even though I disagree with you, I kinda like you.
Actually, Bush 41 WAS far more conservative than the son would have been vis-a-vis the collapse of the Soviet Union. It would have been very easy (and very popular politically) for the president to have danced on the Berlin Wall and declared victory. But what would it have accomplished? It would have strengthed the resolve of the Soviet hardliners to hold n to their remaining empire. Since that empire wasn't particularly fond of the idea of being held on to, the bloodshed would have been gigantic. The same is true of the policy toward the Blatic Republics.
A grand total of thirteen people were killed in the Baltics in their liberation. Had you have had your way, and the first Bush administration had gotten involved, it might have been 13,000. I think that the first Bush administration will be seen as heroic for their restraint during the collapse of the Soviet Empire. God knows, the son would've showed up in a fucking flight suit and gotten a bunch of people dead.
Then there's Iraq. The first Bush adminisration went into Iraq in 1991 under very specific UN and congressional guidelines. Yes, he could've toppled Saddam then, but at what cost? Actually, itwould be the cost the United States is facing right now, but the situation was much more dangerous. Who's to say that that the Soviets wouldn't have used the Amerian redeployment to hold on to Eastern Europe? The circumstances were very diffeent then.
As to the Shi'a uprising in March of '91, that was a Bush blunder, I agree. But it had far more to do with the Bush family's inability to complete a coherent English sentence. What 41 actually meant to say was to encurage the Iraqi military to overthrow Saddam.
But let's assume that you're right and he meant a general overthrow with American support. You would then be faced with the same problem America is faced with in Iraq today. And I ould've much preferred the first President Bush to handle it than the current one. At least the first Bush knew that overwhelming force would have been needed for at least a decade to occupy a stable Iraq. Reading "A World Transformed" is very instructive on this point. It's too bad that 43 didn't bother to read his own father's book.
On to China. Wishing things were different does absolutely nothing to change the way things are. Not recognizing China only allowed them nuclar weapons and the Korean War. Are you sure that you really want to follow the Truman-Johnson policy on China, Reagan? By the way, Nixon didn't re-establish relations with China, Carter did.
But ignoring Communist China wasn't a good idea then and it isn't a good idea now. If you know your history, Reagan, you'll know that the biggest tank battle since World War Two was fought between the Soviet Union and China in central Asia in 1969. What the 1972 Nixon initiative did was exploit the communist schism and open up a second front against the Soviets in the Cold War. More than anything President Reagan did, THAT ended the Cold War. The Soviets, like the Nazis before them, were unequal to the task of fighting a two-front war.
As much as you might rail against the Chinese and their holding of American debt, you cannot avoid the reality that they do and that President Bush willingly allowed it. In fact, you go further than I do in what the Chinese are capable of doing to the American economy. And guess who's reponsible for that?
Your Tibet argumet is HIGHLY interesting. On one hand, you support "spreading democracy", yet on another you argue that doing so will throw said countries into the communist sphrere. If nothing else, you seem to reinforce my point that promoting democracy isn't nesseciarly in the American interest from a foreign policy perspective. Why, you sound almost Nixionian in doing so.
While it's true that Mr. Rove is singly esponsible for electing President Bush, blaming him for the President's policy misteps is to argue that he shouldn't be president at all. I don't ever remember President Regan's policies either being credited to or blamed on Mike Deaver, Ed Meese or Bill Casey (at least in the first term.) Either George W. Bush is president of the United States or he isn't. Blaming his subordinates on major plocy decisons is a sucker's game, and one I would've thought better of you to engage in, Reagan. Where does the buck stop in your world?
Karl Rove isn't the President of the United States, George Bush is.
Furthermore, you entirely misread the history of "Reagan Democrats." I'll write that off to your youth. In fact, the Southern Democrats first swung to Nixon in '68. The did this despite George Wallace's being on the ballot. They were orignially segregationists who were betrayed by President Johnson. Well they've been screwed by the Republicans under five administrations now. President Bush just cemented that trend with the Miers nomination, which I applaud him for. But do you think they'll stand for being screwed forever? If you do, then you have even less respect for them than I do - which would be difficult.
But let's say that the Jesus crowd pervails. In that event, I and millions like me, will walk away from the Republican Party. We're not interested in "Come to Jesus" socialists.
The onus isn't on people on me to prove why we should stay, it's on you to demonstrate why we should. And that case isn't particularly compelling right now. People like me are strgging to find a way to argue how President Clinton wasn't a fiscal conservative and Preisident Bush is. That's what this comes down to.
Posted by: skippystalin at October 16, 2005 03:07 PM (+L2kz)
38
"Even though I disagree with you, I kinda like you."
The feeling is mutual.
"I think that the first Bush administration will be seen as heroic for their restraint during the collapse of the Soviet Empire."
No, Bush Sr. didn't want the Soviet empire to disintegrate. Here's what Sharansky said:
[The president told me he intended to support Gorbachev’s efforts to keep the Soviet Union together and wanted my opinion on how best to help him. When I asked him why America wanted to prevent the breakup of the USSR, he explained that Gorbachev was a man with whom the United States “could do business.” Bush argued that it was better to have the Soviet nuclear arsenal in the hands of a leader America could rely on than under the control of unproven heads of state, even ones who were democratically elected. President Bush also make it clear that he believed dealing with an unelected Soviet leader who could be counted on to help preserve stability around the globe was better than taking a chance on a Pandora’s box of international chaos opening up in the wake of USSR’s collapse.]
http://hnn.us/articles/9817.html
"At least the first Bush knew that overwhelming force would have been needed for at least a decade to occupy a stable Iraq."
Occupying Iraq with overwhelming force would be counter-productive. Oversaturating Iraq with American personnel would send the wrong message to the Iraqi people and it would have just provided more targets for terrorists/insurgents during the post-invasion "power vaccuum" period. Bill Kristol turned me off to our "Iraqification" policies at first, but I've warmed up to them. The terrorists lost most of the Iraqis' public support because we proved that we weren't imperialists by handing over sovereignty and security duties to their fellow countrymen. When we handed over sovereignty, the terrorists were starting to kill our troops less while focusing their attacks on Iraqi forces and citizens. They effectively nullified their claims to being "freedom fighters" and will lose this war as long as we keep up the financial and military support to the fledgling regime.
Before you say anything, I have to give Nixon credit for this strategy("Vietnamization"), but unlike him, Bush doesn't have Watergate or effective Congressional opposition to distract him from making sure Iraq doesn't fail. And, Bush isn't an alcoholic during wartime.
"By the way, Nixon didn't re-establish relations with China, Carter did."
If that's true, then you have reduced my contempt for Nixon by half and have given me another reason to set Carter's ass on fire.
"Your Tibet argumet is HIGHLY interesting. On one hand, you support 'spreading democracy', yet on another you argue that doing so will throw said countries into the communist sphrere."
Reagan was a pragmatist. He supported the contras and many other anti-communist regimes that were atrocious. Even though they were atrocious, we would eventually try to use our influence to make them conform more to our human rights standards after the smoke cleared when the Communists were defeated. In other words, we can try to positively influence Nepal AFTER THE SMOKE CLEARS when the Maoists are defeated. One thing at a time, please.
South Korea was effectively a military junta until 1980, but we finally prodded them in the right direction until they were free and democratic. North Korea isn't aligned with us and the differences are as clear as night and day...literally.(http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-dark.htm)
"We're not interested in 'Come to Jesus' socialists."
I hate all socialists even if they are religious, but not all social conservatives want fiscal liberalism(Ronald Reagan comes to mind).
Posted by: reagan80 at October 16, 2005 08:24 PM (K9tdw)
39
my vote somthing that has not happened yet.
Posted by: cube at October 17, 2005 07:10 AM (nyNr0)
40
Didn't the Sherman Adams thingie happen during the second Eisenhower administration?
Posted by: Ontario Emperor at October 17, 2005 08:20 PM (6Stiu)
41
Emperor,
Yes, it did. That was Eisenhower's "second term stumbling block."
Oddly enough, no one has mentioned the "mother of all second term stumbling blocks," FDR's Court packing plan and his subsequent targetng of opposition Democrats in the '38 off years.
You'd think knowing all of this stuff would make me sexy, wouldn't you?
Posted by: skippystalin at October 18, 2005 01:12 AM (+L2kz)
42
Reagan '80
I'll respond, as you did, point by point.
-No, Bush Sr. didn't want the Soviet empire to disintegrate.
That Sharanskt quote is misleaing and lacks proper contxt. As you might know the Soviet Union bgan it's collapse just as Yugoslavia did and, it was feared, several other Easter Bloc countries might. This was a time of mighty, even genocidal, nationalism.
One of the great fears of the time was a the USSR would fragment, and nationalist/chauvinist leaders would get elected. These leaders, depending on how the Soviet Union disintegrated, would cntrol nuclear aresenals and would therefore immune from world opinion and its ability to change circumstances on the ground. Imagine Milosovich with nukes. Now imagine 12 or 13 of them.
There was also the fear, which is much more pronounced now, that the former Soviet Reoublics would be facing such economic despair that they would sell nuclear technology to rogue states or terrorists. That is still a real threat and one that would have been unlikely under a unified Soviet command.
And, as anyone who knows something about history can tell you, wars that start in Eastern Europe only very rarely stay there. The borders of the Soviet Republics were fluid and never determined by something like due process. The possibilty of war - even nuclear war that could've spread into Southern, the Western Europe was also very real.
Foreign policy requires a great deal of subtlety. 41 had and 43 doesn't. I shudder to think what would have happend were this President in office just 16 years ago. I suspect the worls would be far worse off.
- "In fact, Bush's deficits are much worse than Johnson's and Nixon's"
Bush has made an effort to reduce the deficit. Before Katrina fucked up things down here, the budget deficit was starting to decrease.
No, in fact, what bush has done was made a (very tepid) to reduce the growth rate of government spending. Actually, last years budget was 3.7% abobe the previous year's.
You're making the same argument that President Clinton made against Speaker Gingrich in 1995. Gingrich tied to cut the rate of growth of program spending and Clinton sold it as "cutting programs." Conservatives were outraged ay Clinton's assertion then and you can't honestly make it now in support of President Bush.
If anything, the fiscal situation is much more dire than it was 10 years ago. What might fix the deficiet is spending CUTS, not reductions in the rate of growth. As things stand, President Bush is following President Johnson's policies of tax cuts, increased defense spending and the costs of waing war. The results of this are predictable.
If you're interested, the United States government now eats up a greater percentage of the GDP than it did during World War II. I'm not sure the economy can bear it for too much longer.
Occupying Iraq with overwhelming force would be counter-productive. Oversaturating Iraq with American personnel would send the wrong message to the Iraqi people and it would have just provided more targets for terrorists/insurgents during the post-invasion "power vaccuum" period.
Actually, I would argue that the reverse is true. The Administration decided to try Rumsfeld's experiment, wherein a light military can topple an entrenched enemy. It worked militarily, but it was diasterous both politically and for the long term stability of the region.
You see, the lack of a heavy occupation force allowed social order to break down in the immediate aftermath of Saddam's fall. This, I believe, provided the insurgency with reason to believe that they can act with impunity. Subsequent events have proven this all too true. This was further compounded by Ambassador Bremmer's decision to disband the Iraqi military. It immideiately reduced the defense capability of Iraq from about 650,000 Iraqis and Americans to 135,000 Americans. In a country of 25 Million!
The comparison to Vietnamization is therefore not apt. Nixon never disband the Vietnamese army, he built upon it. Bush's policy is the reverse, to build from the ground up. And this is one of the hings that annoys me about Republican purple finger waving. The right has been crowing about Iraqis facing death just to vote where it is because of American political and military decisions that thy faced that fate in the first the first place.
I have no illusions that there would have been SOME insurgency, but it could have been minimized. And THAT will be President Bush's ultimate legacy.
-He supported the contras and many other anti-communist regimes that were atrocious. Even though they were atrocious, we would eventually try to use our influence to make them conform more to our human rights standards after the smoke cleared when the Communists were defeated. In other words, we can try to positively influence Nepal AFTER THE SMOKE CLEARS when the Maoists are defeated. One thing at a time, please."
Okay. Again, name five times this has hapened before?
You seem to mistake results with actions, Reagan. Often times, the United States has (and continous to) support malignant regimes. However, the tactics of those regimes have rarely changed because of US pressure, rather the countries changed regimes, toppling US allies.
Sometimes, the "moderating influence" of the United States has lead to the overthrough of friendly regimes and lead to their replacement with more brutal ones.
For example, the United States had managed to "moderate" The Pahlevi dynasty in Iran. It was replaced with Khomeni. The United States only had to support the Contras because it tried to "moderate" the Somoza regime in Nicaraugua.
In fact, one of the things that scares me the most about the neo-conservative agenda is the inistence on "moderation", despite what its done demonstrably in the past. If you check your history, you'll find that both things occurred during the Carter administration, the last to use a "moderating influence" on tyrannies allied with the United States.
I hate all socialists even if they are religious, but not all social conservatives want fiscal liberalism(Ronald Reagan comes to mind).
Socialism, as one can gleam from its title is more than just an ecoomic theory. It is also a theory of statist thought. Socialism also brings about things like "speech laws" and "behaviour codes" that are dictated by a federal government.
You can't really argue that the Bush administration hasn't been socialist in its spending priorities. At least not while trying to look serious, anyway.
But to get at what I mean by "socialist", maybe you need to understand what conservatism to mean.
The Republican Party used to believe in minimal government. Minimal government can mean many things, but to me it means freedom of the individual. The current republican government has decided that it is the jurisdiction of the government of who you fuck, where you fuck them and what you do with the result. It is also a party that feels that feels that it limitations can placed on who gets married, but not on who can get divorced. Newt Gingrich is a perfect expression of "family values." How can he not be? He's on his third family now.
That the Republicans get so bent out of shape about abortion astounds me. They maintain that they people have the glove compartments in their cars have a right to privacy to keep their guns safe from "tha man", but a fucking uterus does not? C'mon, how can any serious person believe that gun collectors and Rush Limbaugh's doctor have a right to privacy and a woman's uterus doesn't?
How about a government so small that it can legislate the death of Terri Schiavo? When Reagan was president, that was a decision reserved to families -including Tom DeLay's.
Ronald Reagan famously said that he wanted the government "off of our backs." George W. Bush wants it not only in the front of your pants, he wants it in your hospital bed, too.
If that's "conservatisim", I regret ever having signed up. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, "I Didn't leave the conservative movememnt, the onservative movement left me."
Posted by: skippystalin at October 19, 2005 06:48 PM (+L2kz)
43
I haven't encountered any Leftist trolls that have ever made a teflon-coated "Bush-bashing" argument in a debate with me, but this thread is giving me a bad case of "cognitive dissonance". I'm glad that you're not on "the other side", Skippy, because I would be humiliated if you were actually a liberal poster. Thank you for shedding more light on these glaring flaws....
Posted by: reagan80 at October 19, 2005 07:53 PM (K9tdw)
44
Reagan,
Would it be worse if I told you I was a Canadian?
Posted by: skippystalin at October 22, 2005 01:49 PM (ohSFF)
45
Skippy:
No, the truth doesn't have a nationality. The only Canadians that I have a problem with are the anti-American and socialist ones. Before I ran into you and before the Miers nomination, Bane was also a sign of the imminent schism of Bush's base.
(http://banedad.blogspot.com)
Posted by: reagan80 at October 22, 2005 02:54 PM (K9tdw)
October 13, 2005
Pinter Gets The Nobel
Playwright Harold Pinter has won the Nobel Prize for literature. i saw a production of his most famous play The Birthday Party years ago. It was as advertised: tense, absurdist, deeply psychological and disturbing. i recommend it. i have also seen The Caretaker, which i didn't like as much.
That's not even good poetry. Its more like a piece of dialogue at some snooty Brit cocktail party where every one wears black sportcoats over black turtlenecks. Its easy to sneer at Democracy when your life is spent hobnobbing with celebs in Mayfair and the Upper East Side and you never have to deal with real people.
Nice. Sounds like he has a problem with religion too. It would be a shock if even one of these celebrity anti-war libs ever strayed from that template.
But Pinter is as anti-American as they come, which says something about the Nobel committee, since i don't think Pinter's done anything noteworthy since he wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman.
Here's a sampling of his poetry:
DemocracyThere's no escape.
The big pricks are out.
They'll fuck everything in sight.
Watch your back.
That's not even good poetry. Its more like a piece of dialogue at some snooty Brit cocktail party where every one wears black sportcoats over black turtlenecks. Its easy to sneer at Democracy when your life is spent hobnobbing with celebs in Mayfair and the Upper East Side and you never have to deal with real people.
God Bless AmericaHere they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.
Nice. Sounds like he has a problem with religion too. It would be a shock if even one of these celebrity anti-war libs ever strayed from that template.
Update: More at The New Criterion. Hat tip to K-Lo at The Corner.
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Pinter always had serious mental problems. Anyone who sits through more than 2 of his plays will also have serious mental problems.
Posted by: Jake at October 13, 2005 08:12 AM (r/5D/)
2
Both of those so-called poems were ridiculous. If they are any indication of his "talent," I think that I'll pass on his other work. Any semi-literate, angst-filled 8th grader could come up with that kind of trash.
BTW, when did any collection of words strung together become "poetry?"
Posted by: Blu at October 13, 2005 09:23 AM (j8oa6)
3
I noticed that Pinter opposed our invasion of Afghanistan. Great.
Like Arthur Miller's subliminal pro-communist tripe in our schools today, the socialist Euro-trash are probably going to make it a mandate that all kids read Pinter's shit in high schools throughout the E.U.
Wikipedia had this interesting tidbit in their Miller entry:
[In 1985, Miller visited Turkey and was honored at the American embassy. After his traveling companion Harold Pinter was thrown out of the country for discussing torture, Miller left in support.]
Douchebags alike.
Posted by: reagan80 at October 13, 2005 12:45 PM (K9tdw)
4
It's funny you mention Arthur Miller. When i was in High school (Oh so long ago) and was exposed to "Death Of a Salesman" I thought it was pretty good, but I completely did not identify with the Moral of the story.
I understand that Miller was trying to say that Willie Loman raised his kids wrong, teaching them to rely on their looks, charisma, and contacts to get by, rather than any real ability.
However, even at that age I could see that if you have looks, charisma, and contacts, thats a winning strategy. Certainly it pays off much more often than a plain looking person from the wrong side of the tracks working their ass off.
Posted by: Kyle N at October 13, 2005 02:07 PM (1x2lE)
5
Hey Raygun,
Whose torture do you think they were discussing? Ours or Turkey's and when did you become a big supporter of torture? I agree Ray the world would be a far more interesting place if all the novelists, playwrights, painters and others that find fault with America were not studied in our schools. Then you could just sit there and stare out the window contemplating the oxymoron of your existence and intelligent design.
Annika- consider the “left’s” template like this: do you think it is a defect of imagination that causes gun manufactures to all make their bullets cylindrical?
Posted by: Strawman at October 13, 2005 02:16 PM (0ZdtC)
6
No offense there Mr. Strawman but your parallel between the Left's template and gun manufacturers' use of cylindrical bullets is some pretty weak shit. I've come to expect a little better rhetoric from you. Next time maybe....
Posted by: Blu at October 13, 2005 02:38 PM (j8oa6)
7
For the record, Annie, the Nobel in 2001 went to V.S. Naipaul, who is about as right-wing as you can get and still be published in English letters. The Nobel committee has made some mystifying choices and overlooked worthies (I am pulling for Doris Lessing or Phillip Roth), but it doesn't invariably skew left.
Posted by: Hugo at October 13, 2005 04:57 PM (Yu24L)
8
Mike,
I don't believe Reagan was attempting to make a point about torture; by my reading, he was simply pointing out that, in line with his expectations, Miller and Pinter were friends.
Right, Reagan?
Posted by: Matt at October 13, 2005 06:35 PM (R4rir)
9
Correct, Matt.
Instead of closing with "douchebags alike", maybe I should have said "birds of a feather...." instead.
Kyle:
I had to read The Crucible in high school AND college. I had to learn and write papers about the evils of Joe McCarthy and anti-communist Republicans twice. Fuck Miller I say.
Strawman:
You misunderstood me. I never supported torture, and I'm not a big fan of the Turks either. As Matt said, I was just pointing out the "guilt by association".
"I agree Ray the world would be a far more interesting place if all the novelists, playwrights, painters and others THAT FIND FAULT WITH AMERICA were not studied in our schools."
It would be a nice change if there were more books that pointed out the goodness of our country instead of constantly shoveling self-hating American Leftist literature into the classrooms of future generations of our citizens.
Most of my American history courses in college were devoted to telling us how awful we were to the Native Americans, Mexicans, blacks, and women. Besides The Crucible, my literature instructor also threw in some anti-war satirical short story(W.D. Howells' "Editha") about the Spanish-American War a month before the conflict in Iraq began. I've had it with the liberal bully pulpit crap.
Intelligent Design? I wonder how you would have felt about Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mike? She was a Republican and a Bible-thumper. In Uncle Tom's Cabin, she cited the Lord's name often when making her case against slavery. Almost every character in that book was devoutly religious and PRAYED often except Simon Legree and the slave traders. Does this book's apparent church/state violation in our schools make your skin crawl?
If not, would you be comfortable if Stowe were alive today to write a fictional book with strong Christian influences that espoused the abolition of abortion AND if that book were required reading at public schools?
Posted by: reagan80 at October 13, 2005 08:50 PM (K9tdw)
10
Birds of a feather flock together.
Douchebags alike... uh... take a hike? Ride a bike? Wanna be like Mike?
"Most of my American history courses in college were devoted to telling us how awful we were"
i think its funny that my professors tried so hard to turn me into a liberal, and look what happened.
Posted by: annika at October 14, 2005 06:38 AM (7tH/9)
11
Nice rhymes, Annika.
I'm grateful that people like you and the other Bear Flag Leaguers could resist the overwhelming influence of the Left on the West Coast during your formative years.
Posted by: reagan80 at October 14, 2005 07:46 AM (bCo8k)
12
Funny you say that Annika, I am currently getting a second degree in History, and it seems that the dark times (at least at my university) are on the wane, By that I mean that most of the courses are very reasoned and make claims only that are backed up with copious research. That is not to say most of the proffs arn't lefties, they are, But they are not far out foaming at the mouth moonbats.
Posted by: Kyle N at October 14, 2005 02:43 PM (mSqh8)
13
Madonna says we're all going to hell if we don't stop our wicked behavior. Bad poetry and eternal damnation, what next?
Posted by: MarkD at October 17, 2005 01:42 PM (oQofX)
14
I so agree with you on Pinter. I still propose a mass exodus (with blessings) of the anti-American populous at large.
You are my idol.
Dave
Posted by: DP at October 18, 2005 07:31 AM (EjXVN)
October 12, 2005
President To Replace Miers
This just in. Bowing to criticism, it seems that President Bush will replace Miers with another woman whose credentials, some might argue, are similarly noteworthy.
i'm talking about Brittany, of course.
President Bush said that Spears, who is an expert in rhythmic 'dancercise' and has achieved notable success marketing recorded entertainment to the under-14 WASP demographic, will make 'a real good judge'. While the choice of Washington outsider Britney Spears is clearly intended to help deflect growing accusations of cronyism and insideropeia within the Bush administration, pundits on both sides of the isle nevertheless predict an uphill confirmation climb for the youthful entertainer.As for me, i'm disappointed. i'm sure Brittany might make a fine justice, but i'd much rather have someone with "Meals On Wheels" experience.Britney Spears, who joined the nomination announcement via video uplink, said she was 'totally excited' about the opportunity. 'This is like so cool,' said Ms. Spears. 'I mean, like, the Superior Court and everything. It's like a dream come true. I mean for somebody, I guess.'
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Brittany threw her bra out in the public arena and she was called to serve.
Posted by: Jake at October 12, 2005 07:57 PM (r/5D/)
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This is a decision I could get...umm, excited about. Actually the cruel irony here is that Britney is getting less and less attractive whereas Miers might actually get more so if she doesn't "pull out" soon.
Posted by: Uncle Ben at October 13, 2005 06:34 AM (/I1/i)
3
Tonya Harding has "Meals on Wheels" experience
as a result of beating a boyfriend with a hubcap.
Posted by: anonymous at October 13, 2005 12:47 PM (Lb7Td)
4
This showed up in [CENSORED BY MU.NU]. Note that Bush is courting the Louisiana crowd, although there probably aren't a lot of white Kabbalahers down yonder.
Posted by: Ontario Emperor at October 17, 2005 09:37 PM (6Stiu)
Subconscious IM Conversations
id: i want to begin drinking beer as soon as i get home.
superego: i don't want to begin drinking beer as soon as i get home.
superego: i don't want to begin drinking beer as soon as i get home.
. . .
id: i want to throttle that idiot in front of the line who can't decide which scratcher to buy.
superego: i want to wait patiently like a good person.
id: i want to smash a 2 liter bottle of cola on that idiot's head while he cashes in his $2 scratcher so he can play again while i'm waiting.
superego: i am a good person.
. . .
id: i need new boots.
superego: i need to pay rent.
. . .
id: Martha's show is a must see on Wednesday nights.
superego: i have homework.
id: You are weak. Embrace your weakness.
superego: i am a responsible person.
id: Fuck you. You're weak and you know it.
. . .
id: Light beer is for sissies. It tastes bad.
superego: i can always do an extra set of stairmaster tomorrow.
id: That's my girl.
. . .
id: Leftover pizza tastes great with a beer.
superego: i believe it does. But still.
. . .
ego: Can't we all just get along? i suggest a compromise. i was good, and didn't smash a 2 liter bottle of cola on that idiot's head, therefore i deserve to reward myself by drinking a beer and watching Martha.
id: What about the pizza?
. . .
id: i need new boots.
superego: mmm boots.
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Excellent. Very clever. Very funny. (do you really have to be a lawyer?)
Freud says that now you are aware of your superego, you are at the end of your phallic stage of development. I am sure you are happy to get that behind you.
Freud was certainly a bullshit artist, wasn't he?
Posted by: Jake at October 12, 2005 07:40 PM (r/5D/)
2
don't be talkin bout puttin no pallic thing behind me.
Posted by: annika at October 12, 2005 07:51 PM (b2vYZ)
3
You don't need boots. You need one of those pink diaphonous slave-girl outfits like Jeanie. Da duh, duh duh da duh duh, Da duh, duh duh da duh duh, Da duh, duh duh da duh duh, DUH!
Posted by: Casca at October 12, 2005 10:30 PM (qBTBH)
4
You're always better when blogging about your one and only true love: Shoes and boots.
Posted by: Victor at October 13, 2005 06:28 AM (L3qPK)
5
anybody see that genie outfit on last night's apprentice? That thing was scary.
Posted by: annika at October 14, 2005 06:43 AM (7tH/9)
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mmm... sweet boots. This is why the id always wins. 
Posted by: ethne at October 14, 2005 07:03 AM (miAG4)
7
Introspection is one of the most significant attributes of an advanced mindset. Apply liberally.
Humorous introspection allows us to banter about that which is serious, while keeping seriousness at arm's length, plausibly deniable. I'm reminded, if tangentially, of Jefferson's debate between his Head and Heart, and of Eramus' "The Praise of Folly".
Posted by: will at October 14, 2005 07:15 AM (GzvlQ)
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What's a scratcher? Cali lingo?
Posted by: Midwest Mark at October 14, 2005 05:45 PM (Vg0tt)
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it's a scratch off lottery card, mark
Posted by: annika at October 14, 2005 07:03 PM (0JhSy)
The Next George Lazenby?
The rumor now is that Daniel Craig may be the next James Bond. i thought Pierce Brosnan had a few more movies left in him, but what do i know. Daniel Craig is not someone whose name i recognize and in this article he appears blonde. IMDb says he played Ted Hughes in Sylvia, that depressing Sylvia Plath biography with Gwynneth Paltrow. i thought he was good in that role, and Hughes being such a controversial figure he must have had to walk a fine line. Craig was also in the first Tomb Raider, but i can't remember his character.
i say again, what was wrong with Pierce Brosnan?
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The Bonds always change... The ones they pick are never 'choice' but they always turn out good
Posted by: tesco at October 12, 2005 11:05 AM (c0E+O)
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Apparently Cubby Broccoli's wife didn't like Brosnan, so she had him axed. He was willing to do at least two more movies.
Thanks for the poetry today, btw. Even if it's been raining like hell for the past week in New England, at least Frost can make me think it's a lovely fall.
Posted by: Trevor at October 12, 2005 11:19 AM (RwZxT)
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It will be interesting to see who is picked, though, IMHO, Sean Connery is the standard by whom everyone is judged, he still is the very definition of the the James Bond for movies.
Posted by: BobG at October 12, 2005 11:22 AM (2gZji)
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From the pictures, I'm not a fan. It's the eyes. They look too... innocent? Youthful? James Bond needs slightly squinty, wisened, piercing eyes. I was holding out hope for Clive Owen, personally.
Posted by: The Law Fairy at October 12, 2005 11:35 AM (XUsiG)
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What about the SNL guy who imitates Sean Connery? Could he portray Bond as a slutty buffoon?
Posted by: Ontario Emperor at October 12, 2005 12:14 PM (UTd3/)
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I'm a Brosnan fan. Next to Connery, he is the best of the rest. But I saw Craig in Layer Cake and thought he was excellent. So, if it's true, at least they are picking a good actor.
Posted by: Blu at October 12, 2005 01:34 PM (aP4zl)
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I'm a big Brosnan fan too. Hopefully the new guy won't let anyone down.
Posted by: Amy Bo Bamy at October 12, 2005 01:56 PM (kxatG)
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He was a little nancy boy.
Posted by: Sean Connery at October 12, 2005 03:48 PM (qBTBH)
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I thought Pierce had hung up his PPK. Speaking of PPKs, have you considered the Bersa .380 Thunder? Just bought one for my wife, perfect for her, and I expect to find it handy as well. Not a cannon, but more than adequate.
http://www.gunblast.com/Bersa_Thunder380.htm
Posted by: will at October 12, 2005 06:11 PM (h7Ciu)
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i'm looking for a place that will rent the Walther P99. Or maybe a P38. i'll have to look into that Bersa idea.
Posted by: annika at October 12, 2005 07:54 PM (b2vYZ)
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Hey Lazenby wasn't that bad.
Posted by: the Pirate at October 13, 2005 04:49 PM (Rg0+S)
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i'd rank Lazenby right after Connery, actually. i loved On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Posted by: annika at October 14, 2005 06:46 AM (7tH/9)
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That one also has a great theme song. But Lazenby's biggest problem was he came after Connery (ignoring Never Say Never Again, which technically ISN'T a Bond Film). Moore was probably my fourth favorite, Dalton as the fifth, but I found his films horrid.
Posted by: the Pirate at October 14, 2005 08:55 PM (Rg0+S)
Wednesday Is Poetry Day
Poetry Wednesday is like Desmond's crappy 80's Apple II on Lost. What would happen if i didn't enter the code and push the button every week?
Update: i chickened out.
Octoberby Robert Frost
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrowÂ’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapesÂ’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapesÂ’ sake along the wall.
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What would happen if i didn't enter the code and push the button every week?
Normally people don't ask questions they know the answer to...but to remind you: You'd get me screaming, "Where's the poetry?" and starting some stupid haiku contest.
Nice selection, BTW.
Posted by: Victor at October 12, 2005 09:13 AM (L3qPK)
2
You and I share not only a love for poetry, but a love for autumn.
Of course, Frost -- living where he did -- wanted fall to come slow; we Californians (after blistering summers and Santa Anas) can't wait for a bit of a chill!
Posted by: Hugo at October 12, 2005 10:25 AM (TGpyr)
October 10, 2005
MNF Pick, Week 5
i'm late, but you'll just have to trust me. i got SD to win minus 3 points.
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It seems you're having the worst luck this season.
Posted by: Victor at October 11, 2005 02:14 AM (l+W8Z)
2
You getting your tips from Casca?
Keep looking for the OSU Offense; it's there somewhere...
Posted by: shelly at October 11, 2005 07:05 AM (6mUkl)
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There is solace in knowing that it won't be long until you're rotting in a rest home watching Oprah 24/7, because there's no remote, and that's what everyone else likes. Broadband? What's that?
Posted by: Casca at October 11, 2005 07:46 AM (qBTBH)
4
Yep, already watched Oprah yesterday; didn't want to miss Ricky Martin's comeback.
By the way, everyone knows what a broad band is, it's The Dixie Chicks, right?
Or maybe the interior line at OSU.
Posted by: shelly at October 11, 2005 08:14 AM (6mUkl)
5
You know what we need? We need to get Shelly & Casca their own blog. We could call it "The Lockhorns" or "The Genius and the Dumbass" or "You ignorant slut!"
You'd swear these two were married to each other.
Posted by: Victor at October 11, 2005 09:57 AM (L3qPK)
6
at least they're too preoccupied to talk about my Bears.
Posted by: annika at October 11, 2005 10:00 AM (zAOEU)
7
Annie:
November 12 is far away for now, but don't think for a second we have forgotten what happened last time we were in Strawberry Canyon.
A zit upon an otherwise unblemished record. Your Bears paid the price last year in the Coliseum, but it will be infinitly more satifying to whack them around at home in front of those blue painted idiots.
Don't worry, SC NEVER looks past Cal.
Victor, you're wrong, Casca is Annika's bitch; can't you read?
Posted by: shelly at October 11, 2005 10:49 AM (M7kiy)
8
I have hopes for the Bears. Might not need 'em though, I have the Irish this week.
Posted by: Casca at October 11, 2005 04:42 PM (qBTBH)
9
Shelly, with all respect due to my elders--annika is waaay too classy to own Casca. Doormat maybe, but not bitch.
Posted by: Victor at October 11, 2005 07:11 PM (l+W8Z)
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Silence, ratboy, I'll be in DC next week.
Posted by: Casca at October 11, 2005 09:48 PM (qBTBH)
11
Casca, the protests were a few weeks ago.
Posted by: Victor at October 12, 2005 05:40 AM (L3qPK)
12
Possible showers Friday, clearing and windy Saturday.
SC favored by 11 1/2. Lay the points, the Irish are going down.
Ain't no stopping this team, especially if they show up before halftime.
Posted by: shelly at October 12, 2005 08:43 AM (6mUkl)
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Joe Montana (ND QB) was on Best Damn last night with Jerry Rice. Only a fool bets againt the Irish. Hell, I may take the moneyline.
Posted by: Casca at October 12, 2005 02:07 PM (qBTBH)
14
Go on ahead, chunk it in on the Irish.
"A fool and his money..."
By the way, Montana doesn't play for ND anymore. Johnny Lujack and Joe Theisman are also gone. George Gipp may be there, though.
Posted by: shelly at October 12, 2005 03:01 PM (M7kiy)
15
i caught some of that BDSSP, with Joe and Jerry. Arguably the two greatest ever to play the game. Joe seems nice, but he's never been a very interesting guy to listen to. No wonder he didn't last in the booth. i played hooky to go and see him when he announced his retirement at the Embarcadero Fountain. It was a mob scene, the guy was loved.
Posted by: annika at October 12, 2005 06:19 PM (b2vYZ)
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Joe is a smart guy, he keeps his mouth shut, except when he has something worth saying. Looks like he's giving the pep talk on Saturday to the Domers.
In any case, a fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place. We shall see.
Posted by: Casca at October 12, 2005 10:35 PM (qBTBH)
17
Lines are moving; SC is now -12 and OSU is -6 1/2.
No money line on SC/ND
Posted by: shelly at October 13, 2005 08:49 AM (6mUkl)
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Repent!
And ye shall be saved.
All Hail USC Trojans!
Threepeat
Posted by: GoodbyeColumbus at October 14, 2005 07:41 PM (6mUkl)
19
Blowout, huh?
Posted by: shelly at October 15, 2005 05:20 PM (6mUkl)
October 09, 2005
Sweet...
You are LaFawnduh. Why are you so sweaty?
Which Napoleon Dynamite character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
You are LaFawnduh. Why are you so sweaty?
Which Napoleon Dynamite character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
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You have style, poise, know what you want in life, AND A PENIS. Looks like a pre-op tranny to me.
Posted by: Casca at October 09, 2005 09:19 AM (qBTBH)
2
I think he/she/it played cornerback for OSU on Saturday.
Posted by: shelly at October 09, 2005 03:56 PM (6mUkl)
3
I'm Kip.
Posted by: Matt at October 09, 2005 04:06 PM (BkVa4)
4
Nope, if it's a cornerback, then definitely a Trojan. Now if it is a QB, that's an entirely different story.
Posted by: Casca at October 09, 2005 04:40 PM (qBTBH)
5
I'm sorry, but who?? I'm 39; this pop culture reference doesn't make me old, does it? For me, this is like when someone asked President Bush about Leonardo Di Caprio.
Posted by: Bryan at October 09, 2005 09:06 PM (G5PGV)
6
Nah, but then, I couldn't tell if it wa a QB, since the offense was so well hidden that I never got a chance to see it.
Boy, are they gonna surprise someone in a bowl game. Just by getting a bid.
Use it or lose it.
Posted by: shelly at October 09, 2005 10:50 PM (6mUkl)
7
I'm Kip Dynamite and I love technology. Always and forever...always and forever...
Posted by: Amy Bo Bamy at October 10, 2005 09:01 AM (kxatG)
8
Who's LaFawnduh?
Posted by: Victor at October 10, 2005 11:11 AM (L3qPK)
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I'm Trisha. Bo-ring. I really wanted to be Uncle Rico. Or Pedro.
When I'm elected president, you can be my secretary or something.
Posted by: The Law Fairy at October 10, 2005 09:23 PM (bzLvk)
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Hi Trisha:
I think I remember you from the OSU-Michigan game. Didn't you play QB, or was it Middle Linebacker for OSU?
Posted by: GoodbyeColumbus at October 11, 2005 03:18 AM (6mUkl)
11
Dude, I too am LaFawnduh...
Posted by: King tesco at October 11, 2005 04:46 PM (c0E+O)
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I actually saw the real LaFawnda on TV today. She's an "artist", well if making faces out of plastic food containers is art... she thinks it is. Hell, if you're happy covered with cowshit...
Posted by: Casca at October 11, 2005 09:45 PM (qBTBH)
13
If you vote for me (Pedro) I will make all of your dreams come true.
Posted by: Carhag at October 24, 2005 07:15 PM (bTAqk)
October 08, 2005
Breaking News
BRITTANY PULLS BRA
Scroll down for Brittany's personal message to her fans.
i'm very confused by this auction. The item description is full of contradictory statements. Is the item for sale or isn't it? Do proceeds go to Hurricane Relief or to Brittany's foundation?
Developing...
[Hat tip to Steve at Poker for the Masses, who asks the following questions about playing in a charity poker game at the Playboy Mansion:
1) should i bring a towel?i got a chuckle out of that.]
2) how should I play 99? (strong is the correct answer)
3) should i tell my wife where the charity event is?
4) if yes, should i tell her before?
Posted by: annika at
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SORRY, this isn't a Brittany comment, But Texas just beat oklahoma 45 to 12!! Usally when a game gets that one-sided it gets boring, But not this time! The last touchdown was just as sweet as the first.
Suck it Sooners!
YEEEHAWWW
Posted by: Kyle N at October 08, 2005 02:22 PM (OPeck)
2
SORRY, this IS a Britney comment...
Re "his bra was worn by me during promotion of my HBO special, however it is not the one I wore onstage during the Baby One More Time performance."
It's just bizarre to me that an item that was worn during an onstage performance would have more value than an item that was merely worn during promotion. But that's the way supply and demand works, I guess.
Posted by: Ontario Emperor at October 08, 2005 11:56 PM (x+05V)
3
My wife was selling her Coach bags (out of style ones) on eBay saying she was giving profits to the Katrina victims and eBay pulled them stating that you can't use them for donations or something like that...
jus sayin
Posted by: tesco at October 11, 2005 04:50 PM (c0E+O)
4
tesco, what is up with that? doesn't sound right to me.
Posted by: annika at October 12, 2005 06:14 PM (b2vYZ)
October 06, 2005
Quick Note On The Speech
Bravo, at long last, thank you.
Posted by: annika at
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Jeez, the man hasn't even finsihed yet, but you're right. This is the Bill Clinton bitchslap, and covers all of the nabobs of negativism. Wipes out Katrina & Meirs as issues in one fell swoop.
Oooooooo, paraphrased Reagan, and took Clinton to the hoop, "are they more safe or less safe". Damn this is classic.
Posted by: Casca at October 06, 2005 07:41 AM (qBTBH)
2
Speech? OMFG, WHAT SPEECH?!?!! Did Bush finally make a Reagan-esque oratory to cheer me up?! Where can I see this?! FUCKING TELL ME BEFORE I KILL ALL TEH GODDAMN LIBS IN MY DORM!!!!11one
Posted by: reagan80 at October 06, 2005 09:48 AM (K9tdw)
3
Rush all over it on the radio show now. He kicked A-double-scribble and took name-single-scribble!
Ooo-rah!
Posted by: Thomas C. Wyld at October 06, 2005 10:13 AM (qmjZ7)
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Thanks, Annie.
Posted by: reagan80 at October 06, 2005 10:25 AM (K9tdw)
5
The response immediately afterwards by the talking heads was uniformly classic too, "These are not the droids you're looking for". Dana Priest, and Gen. McCaffrey, "There's nothing new here."
Posted by: Casca at October 06, 2005 11:21 AM (qBTBH)
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It reached the dssired audience; no one gives a shit what the talking heads are saying.
The speech was a precursor of things to come.
he's tired of being beat up.
Stand back! They're rolling out the big guns for the November vote.
Betcha we gain...
Posted by: shelly at October 06, 2005 01:03 PM (6mUkl)
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I can only say, Why did he wait so long for a speach like this, and why not in a prime time big forum?
Posted by: Kyle N at October 06, 2005 02:50 PM (3Yf+L)
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All and all ya gotta say this speech was a rank smelling sack of jingoistic slogans and revisionist history. Total crap.
A few of the stunning lies and deceptions and revisions:
"At the time of our Falluja operations 11 months ago, there were only a few Iraqi army battalions in combat. Today there are more than 80 Iraqi army battalions fighting the insurgency alongside our forces."
Although during Senate sub-committee testimony last week general Meyers said there is one battalion ready to fight successfully on its own. 80 in poor shape and name only.
"Throughout history, tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that murder is justified to serve their grand vision. And they end up alienating decent people across the globe."
Yea, so? What makes him any different? You donÂ’t think 20 000 Iraqi civilians were murdered by the US invasion?
"The United States, working with Great Britain, Pakistan and other nations, has exposed and disrupted a major black market operation in nuclear technology led by A.Q. Khan.
"An operation that was known to Masharef (sp) and was allowed to continue and when we discovered it no sanctions or punitive action was taken against Pakistan."
"Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life"
And what temperature is the Pinheads contempt for innocent life? Fucking hypocrite!
"The militants are aided as well by elements of the Arab news media that incite hatred and anti-Semitism, that feed conspiracy theories and speak of so-called "American war on Islam" with seldom a word about American actions to protect Muslims in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, Kuwait and Iraq."
He conveniently forgets to mention the millions of Muslims killer in the Iraq-Iran war that we promoted
"The government of Russia did not support Operation Iraqi Freedom, and yet militants killed more than 180 Russian schoolchildren in Beslan."
He conveniently forgets to mention the Russian struggle in Chechnya with Muslim extremists which predates 911 by years. Duh!
I am too sick to my gut to continue. Needless to say, this man is evil incarnate masquerading as a dumb chimp.
Posted by: Strawman at October 06, 2005 07:29 PM (0ZdtC)
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I'm so glad that strawman took the time to type all that up so I could read the first lines and then ignore the rest. Hope you like talking to yourself.
Posted by: TBinSTL at October 06, 2005 07:47 PM (Vq/8g)
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Shhhhhhhhhhh, TB, don't let him know that nobody reads it but Matt & Shelly.
Posted by: Casca at October 06, 2005 08:52 PM (qBTBH)
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Two things especially stuck with me, and might be long remembered from the speech:
1) "That is a dangerous illusion." - used to describe the, well, dangerous illusion that we can withdraw into our geographic cave and remain safe.
2) "He never goes along for the ride." - used to describe Bin Laden's penchant for encouraging others to martyr themselves.
There was lots of other wonderful stuff, and I found myself saying "hell yeah" as I listened to it. However, I think "dangerous illusion" and "along for the ride" are what will resonate with Middle America.
Posted by: gcotharn at October 06, 2005 11:27 PM (yCxJo)
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Actually, I'm hoping "along for the ride" will resonate with the Middle Middle East. Many in the Middle East will read about this speech. The speech was partially targeted towards them, and it should have an impact. Bush is a player, and the world pays attention.
Posted by: gcotharn at October 06, 2005 11:31 PM (yCxJo)
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Dictionary definition of a "Buckeye"- "A worthless nut, with soft meat inside".
Posted by: shelly at October 07, 2005 02:05 AM (6mUkl)
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Not everyone has the skillset to stumble in after midnight, AND write something that makes sense. I'd also advise not calling people and telling them what you REALLY think at that hour.
Besides, anyone who thinks that a Buckeye is a worthless nut has obviously never thrown one at his brother. They happen to be just the right weight to cause pain yet not draw blood, and they're too big to put-out-an-eye.
Posted by: Casca at October 07, 2005 04:37 AM (qBTBH)
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Great as the POTUS speech was, I sure liked the ROLLING STONES better! Caught their show in Charlottesville, Virginia, last night. Mick and the boys were spot on -- and their grace and rock spirit lasted thru a phony bomb threat that unseated a huge chunk of fans and halted the concert for more than a half-hour.
Yeah, yeah, it was only rock and roll, but I liked it!
"Tom"
Rocker himself -- but just a schmo in a choir
Posted by: Thomas C. Wyld at October 07, 2005 05:20 AM (iES8o)
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Good New===========!Flash+++++++++++
"President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God.
`God would tell me, `George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan'.'
"And I did, and then God would tell me, `George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq...' And I did.
"`And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, `Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.' And by God I'm gonna do it.
I can rest easy now that I know for sure we are on a divinely inspired track in iraq and elswhere.
We always new he was ignorant and dim witted (and proud of it) and we always suspected he was answering to a higer authority, because he has none of his own, so this is really not big news. We thought it was ROve but who knew he though more of god.
I am sure there are going to be droves of right minded americans, red state gun toters, compassion enhanced justice seekers who will roll their eyes, put down their beers and spit.
And Shelly thinks the mid terms are going to be a gain for the forces of compassion, civility and honesty.
Shelly, you having experience in the law and all, and having a passing aquaintance with Orin, maybe you can explain to me why ROve and Libby still have jobs? Did the pinhead not say he would fire anybody involved in the Plame affair? And didn't McClennen dismiss as "crazy" the notion the Rove would have talked to anyone about this women? I don't get it? I thought a he was bringing a new era of openness and honesty to the White House? But alas, this white house appears to be full of rats and voles scurrying in and out of stinking mounds of religious slag don'tcha think? Unless you know something I don't.
."
Posted by: Strawman at October 07, 2005 09:17 AM (0ZdtC)
Posted by: annika at October 08, 2005 07:59 AM (7mB+o)
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Anni,
We are committed to a wide spectrum of animal references. Its a Brooklyn thing.
BTW, did you see the eyes on that little fella?
Is there someone who sits behind a big desk in an oval shaped office with the same eys or what! Dead on. Or brain dead on if you like.
Posted by: Strawman at October 08, 2005 08:33 AM (0ZdtC)
The Becker Stance
Wherein i toot my own horn and pretend like i'm an expert, just a little.
i'm ready to say it now. After only eight week's experience shooting pistols, i'm pretty confident that i can take down any assailant at 25 yards, given a quality firearm, and assuming i don't freak out when the time comes.
i was uncomfortable making that boast before now, because i'm basically a self-taught shooter. But everytime i go to the range i'm amazed at how much other people suck at pistols. i look around at the other targets and the holes are shotgunned all over the place. Many of these guys are law enforcement types, too. i consistently outshoot my boyfriend, who learned how to shoot in the military. At the ranges i go to, i've noticed most guys like to shoot at 7 yards predominately. i've gotten to the point where 7 yards is no challenge for me anymore, and i shoot that range with my prescription glasses off.
Am i that good or are other people just that bad? i have no idea. i'm not going to go tap a stranger on the shoulder and say "hey, why do you suck so bad?" Especially if that other guy is armed. So i'm left only with my theories.
My first theory is that people look at aiming and pulling the trigger as two separate and sequential actions. i think that's my boyfriend's problem. He takes aim, then he pulls the trigger. In my humble novice's opinion, i think you have to concentrate on aiming the whole time, and the trigger pull should be slow and almost unconscious.
i read somewhere that you should be surprised when the gun fires. i also harken back to a book i read long ago, called Zen in the Art of Archery. In that book the Zen master constantly harped on letting the arrow go only as a natural unconscious act. Like snow falling from a bamboo leaf, the arrow should fly when it's ready, no sooner and no later.
i think the same philosophy can be applied to trigger pulls. So i take aim and concentrate on lining up the sights properly, keeping the gun as steady as i can. As i'm doing this, i begin pulling back on the trigger. Once i begin that action i try not to think about it anymore. i especially try not to anticipate the shot. i keep my mind focused on the sight picture and when the shot happens, it happens. That's one reason why i hated the Glock. i need a heavier trigger pull because my squeeze is so slow.
Another theory is my stance. i've done some research about the Weaver stance, but i never really felt comfortable using it. i think it allows for too much movement in the elbows, especially since it requires the muscles of both arms to be working against each other. Here's a good site that describes the various stances.
My stance is more like the modified Weaver described as the Chapman in that website. First i take a 45° stance with my left foot forward (i'm right handed.) i lock the elbow of my gun arm and point the elbow down. Using my left hand, i then pull the gun arm toward my body until it lines up on the target. i also pull my right shoulder blade rearward until it stops.
The main difference in my stance is that i place my left hand under the grip, palm up. The fingers of my left hand go around the outside of my right hand, instead of covering the fingers of my gun hand. i think this allows my left hand to support the weight of the gun better, and also makes it easier to pull my right arm against my body.
Another advantage to my hold is that it gets my left thumb out of the way. Using the conventional hold, i once noticed a temptation to use my left thumb to assist my trigger finger as i got tired. My new method eliminated that temptation.
So does it work? i'll let you be the judge. Last weekend, i shot the target on the right using a Sig Sauer P226 in .40 S&W. The cartridges were Magtech 180 gr. FMC, which have a muzzle velocity of 990 feet per second. As you can see, i was least accurate at 25 yards, aiming at the head. Actually, i'm better with the HK at that range. i like to leave a target like that out there for a while so the other suckers at my range can see it and be properly impressed, before i swagger out of there.
Posted by: annika at
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"i consistently outshoot my boyfriend, who learned how to shoot in the Seabees", lmao, learned being the operative word.
"i think you have to concentrate on aiming the whole time, and the trigger pull should be slow and almost unconscious." That's right, only with the symantical argument of what you mean by "aiming". Aiming is finding the target through the sites, while siting is alligning the sites on the target, thus creating a "site picture". You're doing this naturally now. Like golf, once you start thinking about it, it will get a lot harder, lol.
Accurate shooting is all encapsulated in the discipline/ability to hold the site picture while squeezing the trigger. A good shooter hits what he is shooting at no matter the body position. Just remember ASS; aim, site, squeeze.
Posted by: Casca at October 06, 2005 08:34 AM (qBTBH)
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ASS? lol.
Posted by: annika at October 06, 2005 09:15 AM (zAOEU)
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You're exactly right about what a good trigger pull should feel like. The great trick is learning to compress that process into a fraction of a second -- what I've often called and heard called "a controlled jerk" -- which is what you'll likely have to do if you ever have to defend yourself. I personally believe that poor trigger control accounts for 80% or more of most handgunners' accuracy problems. It's awfully easy to jerk the trigger, especially when you're trying to shoot fast -- and doubly so when you've got a little adrenaline flowing and your fine motor skills are in the shitter.
The stance you describe is pretty much the one I use, although I keep my left hand in the traditional position. (Supporting the pistol's weight isn't my primary concern; recovering from recoil is. And keeping the thumb out of the way becomes instinctive with practice -- or with your first painful lesson, if you're careless.)
However, some quite knowledgeable people claim that you should always train using an isosceles stance, because it's what you will instinctively and uncontrollably resort to in a sudden crisis. Supposedly, it has to do with the fact that human beings have binocular vision, and process most of our information visually when under stress. That's very plausible to me, and comports with my own experience. (I've never been in a gunfight, but I have experienced the fight or flight mechanism kicking in.) I haven't started practicing with the isosceles because I'm an old dog, and it's hard for me to learn new tricks after nearly 30 years of shooting (and about 25 years of handgunning). But since you're just starting out, you might want to consider adopting the isosceles.
Posted by: Matt at October 06, 2005 09:58 AM (10G2T)
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That trigger pull sounds about right on to me. You may want to add "calling your shot", where after the gun fires and before you look at the target, you call out where on the target you think you hit, relative to the bull's eye. For example, "twelve o'clock" or "four o'clock, nine ring". This is supposed to keep you focused on the sight picture all the way through the trigger pull and the gun firing.
Posted by: leemc85615 at October 06, 2005 04:51 PM (dbxuL)
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Your modified Weaver is a good stance in terms of self-defense. If Le Bad Guy manages to get close, you pull the gun back to your hip, barrel still at him, while using your left to deflect. Shuffle step to one side or the other, resume fire. It's the one I learned and still revert to. Drop my right leg back, fall into the stance, out of the holster comes the pistol, and it's time to work.
Your range work is great, accuracy is cool, but sooner or later you need to get to an outdoor range where you can run. Run? Yes. The trick I learned in the academy was that all the stuff a light to medium run does is a good duplicate of what happens in an actual gunfight. Heart rate goes up, breathing becomes harder, etc. Run, work up a bit of sweat, then pull your pistol and go to work.
Target shooting is great. It's fun. It is, literally, a blast. But if you're talking about a handgun for personal defense, you have to think combat, and at that moment -- with a pistol -- sight picture/sight alignment go out the window and you're reduced to point-shooting. 7 yards is the magic number for bringing your pistol up to shoulder, looking OVER that lovely front sight (because it's all about that front sight), and shooting until Le Bad Guy drops. When you shoot to develop combat skills is when you appreciate wrapping your left hand around the front of the right, because you use it to help pull the gun out of recoil for a decent double-tap.
Always work on your trigger pull because a good, smooth squeeze works for target shooting and combat. And under combat, when all goes to hell, your finger remembers what you taught it. Never give up target work, because the more you shoot the more familiar you become with your pistol (always a good thing). But if the weapon is for defense, at some point it's time to work on combat skills. Then the real fun begins.
Posted by: bob at October 06, 2005 09:58 PM (YVhRl)
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Well there you go, Bob takes you to another level, but that's the paralysis by analysis cop thing.
I'd expect to hit the target before he got to me, and then grab him by the throat and simultaneously choke and beat him to death with the pistol if I didn't have a contact shot left, thus my affection for the colt .45.
You DO know how to choke someone with just your thumb don't you?
Posted by: Casca at October 06, 2005 10:11 PM (qBTBH)
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Annie:
Try not to shoot yourself in the foot while you are patting yourself on the back.
Remember, guns don't kill people, people do. Safety, safety, safety. You cannot be too safe when handling a weapon. Most people killed with a gun are killed by an "unloaded" one.
Good one about ASS; Hell, that's just about all the folks on this blog think about anyway, 'cepting football and politics.
Come to think of it, what else is there?
Posted by: shelly at October 07, 2005 05:27 AM (6mUkl)
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http://mysite.verizon.net/jimroth/2005/09/on-shooting.html
here is a blog post by some shooters in texas on the stance bob mentions. I am going to give that a try next time I am at the range.
Posted by: cube at October 07, 2005 07:05 AM (nyNr0)
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> i need a heavier trigger pull because my squeeze is so slow.
Then you may not like the Bersa .380, as it has a 7 lb DA and 3 lb SA pull.
Posted by: will at October 25, 2005 04:57 AM (GzvlQ)
October 05, 2005
Lying Is A Nasty Habit
One of the central characteristics of the left is the ease with which they lie. A website whose purpose is to direct trolls to right wing blogs had this to say about me:
Annika’s Journal - This lovely lady says Al Gore is “fat” and “tacky” Possibly her body is thin, but her brain spews nothing but vile bile. I’m confident that she is as tacky as it gets.i once called Gore a "fashion disaster," but i never called him tacky. If you do a search using the search function at the bottom of my sidebar, you will easily find that the word "tacky" has never appeared on this blog before today.
Why lie, when the truth is so easy to find out? Because lefties know that most people won't go to the trouble to research things. This "tacky" lie is just a small example, but if you've been listening to the news lately you'll find many more examples of lefty lies that are much more disturbing.
It's also funny that my blog has been pigeonholed as a "right wing" blog. Sure i'm proudly conservative, but i don't blog about politics exclusively. Lately, i don't even think politics makes up half of what i write about. And how many right wing bloggers can say that they have turned over their blogs to left wing guest bloggers for a whole week, as i have. Twice.
You may also notice that it takes a heck of a lot for me to ban any troll, or to interfere in the comments section at all. Sometimes i think i should be more strict, but i truly believe in Ronald Reagan's precious ideal, "the marketplace of ideas." It's ironic that the one website which exhorts lefty trolls to go forth and comment, does not itself allow comments.
i like to think i do things differently here, but you wouldn't know it by reading what that lefty troll clearing-house blog says about me.
Hat tip to Six Meat Buffet.
Posted by: annika at
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They treated you with kid gloves, you should see what they write about people like David Horowitz, Michelle Malkin, and Hugh Hewitt.
Vile, Mean, Disingenuous, hate-filled, sophomoric,
traitorous, wrathful, elitist, and contemptuous.
This describes the modern day American Left. Its really sad.
Posted by: Kyle N at October 06, 2005 03:48 AM (0Zt6B)
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Annika, some folks wouldn't know class if it bit 'em in the ass.
You rock.
"Tom"
just a schmo in a choir
Posted by: Thomas C. Wyld at October 06, 2005 05:02 AM (ZY8Xq)
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Fuck. Old Skool and I aren't even influential enough to get a write-up. Truth hurts.
Posted by: Matt at October 06, 2005 06:41 AM (10G2T)
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"A website whose purpose is to direct trolls to right wing blogs"
So that's where these guys come from. Ever so often these trolls act like Messerschmitt 109s to come out of the blue and take their best shots on the blogs I read.
I like to shoot them down with my P-51 comments by pointing out the poverty, despair and desperation the left have brought to minorities around the world.
Remember that any publicity is good publicity. Plus they give your readers some war game fun.
Posted by: Jake at October 06, 2005 06:42 AM (r/5D/)
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My dear, NEVER run for public office. You are far too thin-skinned. As Kipling said, more or less, the only way to deal with lies or hating is not to deal in kind. These people are mere pimples on one's virtual ass, who with proper hygiene will not become anything worse. It is after all an imperfect world.
"...it takes a heck of a lot for me to ban any troll, or to interfere in the comments section at all. Sometimes i think i should be more strict, but i truly believe in Ronald Reagan's precious ideal, 'the marketplace of ideas.'"
That was the first thing that I ever noticed about you. You have the strength to allow things to stand of their own merit so that others may decide. It is a very rare quality.
Posted by: Casca at October 06, 2005 08:16 AM (qBTBH)
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And why in the world would she WISH to go into politics?!
Been there, done [with] that. I find music composition infinitely more rewarding, sane and, honest, honest.
Keep your thin skin, Annika. Heart and sensivity still matter.
Tom
aka a schmo in a choir
Posted by: Thomas C. Wyld at October 06, 2005 10:16 AM (qmjZ7)
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I'm not sure it's real productive, but I feel the need to point out that lying is not the exclusive province of the left. For example: President Bush went around for a long time talking about how he had said in a Chicago speech that he'd preserve the budget deficit except in case of war, recession or national emergency. He then joked that he never imagined he'd hit the trifecta.
It was a great laugh-line, and he repeated it for months, even after The New Republic, among others, had asked the White House to document the speech the President was quoting. They'd searched -- speeches of Presidential candidates are pretty well documented -- and came up empty. The White House press office never could find a specific citation. The President's story was, in a word, a lie.
It's not a big lie -- certainly not on the scale of condensing "fasion disaster" to "tacky"-- but it's the kind of thing that the President and his people do all the time.
The current administration's respect for the truth is exemplified by Condi Rice's explanation of the yellowcake uranium glitch in the SOU; she said it was "technically true," because the President hadn't said it was true, he'd said that the British said it was true.
Uh, OK, I guess. True, but hardly honest.
My point is that hyperbole and outright slander are not isolated on the left. You're more sensitized to bad behavior on the left because you're on the right. I'm on the left, and I just lived through an election where a war hero was smeared with charges that he had earned his decorations with self-inflicted wounds, and where self-declared patriots mocked wounds suffered in combat by decorating themselves with Purple Heart Band-Aids. You might remember that the right made a lot of money selling videotapes that accused President Clinton of Murder.
Empty invective is a hallmark of American politics these days. Everyone does it. The fact that you can only hear it coming from one side doesn't mean the other side isn't doing it. It just means you aren't an honest listener.
Posted by: Tom at October 06, 2005 01:24 PM (pMzgj)
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There you go lyin', "war hero". I can see how draft dodging fucktards could paint him as such in their romantic fantasies, however those who served in any real combat arms capacity know the type, medal hunter. Lots of real heroism goes unrecognized everyday, shooting the wounded and writing up your own "heroic" acts aint it.
You can lie to your wife. You can lie to the IRS, but don't lie to yourself.
Posted by: Casca at October 06, 2005 01:58 PM (qBTBH)
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TOM, I will concede to you that there was a lot of Clinton hate, and some Kerry hate (not that he didn't deserve it after slamming combat vetrans before congress). But the Bush hatred is several orders of magnitude greater. And one thing that makes it worse is that back in the Clinton days, the people calling him a murderer and such were mostly talk show hosts and some fringe elements. Republican politicians critisised him but were much more circumspect.
But now, you have high ranking democrats including the head of the DNC accusing Bush of the most insane conspiracy crap. Also, at no time in the 200+ year history of our country has any other sitting President had his foriegn policy slammed by a former president, on foreign soil at that!
Its reprehensible.
Posted by: Kyle N at October 06, 2005 03:00 PM (3Yf+L)
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The carefully reasoned argument of Casca would seem to demonstrate my point: Viciousness knows no party or political orientation. Casca: We can debate Kerry's war record all we want, but one thing is undeniable. He volunteered twice for service in Vietnam. That's two times more than the combined total of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, John Ashcroft and Paul Wolfowitz.
One might imagine, as a patriot, that you would afford Senator Kerry the same respect you'd afford any combat veteran. But no: In the world where you, Casca, exist, patriotism and heroism are the sole property of Republicans. I give you as futher examples Max Cleland and the marvelous moment when Ollie North lectured Daniel Inouye, who lost an arm in World War II, on the nature of patriotic sacrifice.
As for Kyle, the main profiteer on the Clinton/Murderer front was Pat Robertson, who was at the time much more than a "fringe element" in the Republican Party.
You dismiss Clinton hatred as if it were some minor media fuss. Were you alive during the Clinton years? Do you remember Tom DeLay condemning Clinton on the floor of the house while American troops were in harm's way, saying that the only reason they were dying was to distract the country from the really, really important issue of Monica Lewinsky? Way to cheapen the sacrifice of the troops, Mr. DeLay!
You want 100 more examples? I'll give them to you. As a Christian and a family man, I can't turn on the TV at night without hearing how I'm against God (because I don't want prayer in schools) and anti-family (I don't believe reproductive decisions should be made by government) and unpatriotic (I think the President ought to get his facts straight before he drags us into a war -- a war which, by the way, I supported). I'm pretty familiar with the slurs of the right. I'm sure you're familiar with the slurs of the left.
I don't think it's productive to argue about which side is worse; they're both bad. Our political culture right now stinks. But for every Kos you revile, I'll give you one Little Green Footballs. We can pile up the list of offenses all night and accomplish absolutely nothing.
The point is that neither side is in a position to display the kind of no-self-awareness sanctimony in Annika's posting, blaming one side and one side only for something that is endemic and threatening to our political culture. It offended me when I first read it and it still does.
But somehow, lefty liar that I am, I've managed to get through this without callling anyone a "fucktard." Must have been some horrible oversight.
Posted by: Tom at October 06, 2005 06:59 PM (M7kiy)
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Is that windy ass Strawboy posting here under another nom de plume? Let me tell you Tommyboy, you have stumbled in where angels fear to tread. I won't waste my time fisking your dumbass, but will simply state that the only sailors who were ever in "Harms Way", were the corpsmen with the Marines, the Seals, and those stupid fucking naval aviators. They rest are a bunch of phony poseurs. That's why that weak ass Borda blew his brains out in the CNO's garden. They caught him with a combat V for valor on his Navy Commendation Medal, and someone had the temarity to ask, "How the fuck did a sailor get that?" It was his bravest act. Too bad Kerry doesn't have those kind of stones.
Posted by: Casca at October 06, 2005 09:02 PM (qBTBH)
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PS, I don't parlay with fucktards, fucktard. Now get your ass out of my beachfront community.
Posted by: Casca at October 06, 2005 09:07 PM (qBTBH)
13
I think we all realize that neither the Communists nor the baby seal clubbers have a corner on Truth and Goodness. And anyone who believes that one party is Good and one is Evil must be a...a Communist. (I'm trying to call everyone Communists, including Annika, so that I can qualify for the Lefty List.)
But, on to more important things...why didn't the Lefty List say anything about the hot tub? A glaring omission!
Posted by: Ontario Emperor at October 06, 2005 11:54 PM (xyGHE)
14
Simple answer: Besides being Godless, they're also unwashed.
Posted by: Casca at October 07, 2005 04:42 AM (qBTBH)
15
We own you Nazi bastards!
We will crush you like the cRapitalist racist shit you are!
Posted by: cb at October 07, 2005 10:13 AM (EquoZ)
16
Tee-hee. Like you crushed those Klansmen in Greensboro in '79? Hell, at least those assholes deserved your hate.
Posted by: Matt at October 07, 2005 12:46 PM (10G2T)
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Yikes. I prefer Hugh Hewitt's testimonial on the sidebar, and I say that as a consistent critic of you, albeit an affectionate one.
Posted by: Hugo at October 07, 2005 04:31 PM (Yu24L)
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I must have made a mistake when I put the word "tacky" in quotes, and I will change my description. But you did say his look was "cheesy" and "Man that dude's got a big ass." Your quoting yourelf as saying "fashion disaster" is deceptive. You said "What a fucking fashion disaster." I jumped off a descriptive cliff by using 'tacky' as a way of summing up words like "cheesy" and "fucking fashion disaster." But making a leap like that is not lying - intentional deception, as you do, is lying.
Posted by: bbbustard at October 28, 2005 10:24 AM (M7kiy)
The End Of An Era
It saddens me to report the end of the "All the way with Tim Rattay" era for the San Francisco 49ers.
Okay, i'm not really sad.
On a related sports note, has anyone noticed that ESPN.com has basically become a pay site this year. Useless for anything but statistics, and maddeningly slow to load too.
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The only reason I ever visit espn anymore is for the Sports Guy. Otherwise it's a big pile of suck. As soon as they make his column part of their insider package I'll never visit there again.
Posted by: Trevor at October 05, 2005 02:20 PM (GtBBB)
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The only things that are working for the Disney company are the US parks and ESPN. The rest of the corporation is in trouble. That's why Michael Eisner was kicked out.
So Disney is milking ESPN for all its worth. But if they don't watch out, they will kill this cash cow.
Posted by: Jake at October 05, 2005 03:54 PM (r/5D/)
3
I've noticed that too. Of course, they have a right to charge for their content if they want, but I wonder if they aren't overestimating the number of people who are willing to pay to read their columnists, rather than just do without. Other than the Sports Guy and the stats, everything in the free section is pretty lame. Once they move the SG to the pay site, I'm going to just find someplace else to get my stats.
They seem to have beendoing this incrementally, moving a few features at a time behind the pay wall. I wonder if this was planned, or if they're doing it this way because the response to the pay sight has been disappointing and they're figuring "If we just move a few more features to the pay site, maybe business will pick up".
Posted by: JimN at October 05, 2005 05:14 PM (TELLe)
4
That's exactly what i've noticed, JimN. i think its a bad business move. i'm a huge sports fan, but i don't need to rely on ESPN for my sports news. There are too many alternatives. And really, the only thing i'm willing to pay for is live sporting events and cable tv. i think most people are like that. i've updated my drop-down favorites menu to CNN-SI.com.
Posted by: annika at October 05, 2005 07:01 PM (WSLkD)
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I get all my statistics and news from NFL fantasy football. Its free, and one of my two teams is now 4-0.
Posted by: Kyle N at October 06, 2005 03:50 AM (0Zt6B)
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I bought the "Gameplan" broadband download package last year for the grand sum of $100 for the season. All things considered, it wasn't worth it. The resolution sucked. The big draw though was that you could watch archived games all season long, which was a neat idea, although I never did it.
Imagine this, I've been a purchaser. They know everything about me except whether the roll is installed over or under. Am I solicited for the '05 season? Fuck no, I'm just a customer. BTW, this year ABC games are no longer available in archive, "contract problems". WTF, they're the same company! The proliferation of ESPN variant channels is another thing. Now I have go buy a satellite package to watch a football game?
I could go on and on about what's wrong with ESPN, but you have it right. Really the problem runs from ABC on down. I suspect that the people making decisions are MBA's not sportsfans, thus their cluelessness is remarkable. There is plenty that could be done to increase revenue at ESPN, instead they cluelessly choke the goose.
Posted by: Casca at October 06, 2005 08:52 AM (qBTBH)
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I agree about ESPN. The best place to go for NFL news and stats these days is NFL.com. That is also the home of Gregg Easterbrook, author of Tuesday Morning Quarterback, who was fired from ESPN for pissing off his Disney masters. Always worth a read.
Posted by: Roscoe at October 06, 2005 10:55 PM (KHNGh)
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yup, espn sucks, besides, as someone above expressed, for sports guy. even the fantasy football is crap. I joined a couple leagues over there and abandoned them because I don't have 8 hours to watch the screen load up, on broadband nonetheless. okey doke. rant over. yahoo all the way. ALSO: big game this weekend, cal's gonna take ucla out to the woodshed in pasadena, he said hopefully with a side of chagrined not-so-youthful exuberance. GO BEARS.
Posted by: kool keith el otro at October 07, 2005 07:55 PM (/MDEc)
Hello Love...
mmmmm wow.
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Glad to see you're back to blogging about your first (and only true) love.
Posted by: Victor at October 05, 2005 11:17 AM (L3qPK)
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Shoe porn? You dirty girl.
Posted by: Matt at October 05, 2005 12:38 PM (10G2T)
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Study hard; you'll have all you want, Imelda...
Posted by: shelly at October 05, 2005 01:42 PM (6mUkl)
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They look like shoes from a James Bond flick.
Posted by: mark at October 05, 2005 02:56 PM (Vg0tt)
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Can some one explain to this poor bachlor WHY women will torture thier feet by wearing godawful shoes like these? The can't be comfortable and the only people who look at shoes are other women and fetishests.
Posted by: Keith at October 05, 2005 09:37 PM (7AYFc)
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Keith, I don't know, but as a Married man I can tell you, do not come between a woman and her shoes! She will need a large closet just for those, but its worth it just to keep her happy.
BTW Annika, my wife thought they were lovely.
Posted by: Kyle N at October 06, 2005 03:54 AM (0Zt6B)
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You fools, because they make them look HAWT!
Posted by: Casca at October 06, 2005 12:29 PM (qBTBH)
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VERY nice.
Posted by: tesco at October 11, 2005 04:52 PM (c0E+O)
It Was Bound To Happen...
Brittany Sex Tape release feared.
My prediction: she still has no talent.
Update: Her lawyers concur.
A copy of the original tape viewed by the couple's lawyers elicited laughter and disgust.That's harsh, dudes.
Update 2: My sources in the media have obtained for me a copy of the tape. It's dark and filmed in night vision green, but i was able to transcribe some of the audio for you.
Brittany: "is that better hun?"It goes on like that for several minutes. Quite boring, actually.Kevin: "uh-uh"
Brittany: "here let me..."
Kevin: "I don't..."
Brittany: "it's not..."
Kevin: "just..."
Brittany: "uhhh..."
Kevin: "maybe if you just..."
Brittany: "huh?"
Kevin: "ow"
Brittany: "sorry, I..."
Kevin: "no keep going..."
Brittany: "I'm..."
Kevin: "there... no... "
Brittany: "ow"
Kevin: "what?"
Brittany: "let's try it this, uh..."
Kevin: "wait..."
Brittany: "how about now?"
Kevin: "it's gone..."
Brittany: "what?"
Kevin: "it's no good..."
Brittany: "huh?"
Kevin: "sorry I'm just..."
Brittany: "huh?"
Kevin: "you're..."
Brittany: "i can't..."
Kevin: "ow"
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I have a headache.
Posted by: Casca at October 05, 2005 07:07 AM (qBTBH)
2
Kevin: "ow"
I'm never gonna live this down, am I.
Kevin
Posted by: Kevin Kim at October 05, 2005 08:09 AM (1PcL3)
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That dialogue is too good to have been made up. I'm sensing personal experience.
Posted by: Wayne at October 05, 2005 08:19 AM (lXOo9)
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"My prediction: she still has no talent."
Musical talent or sexual talent?
Posted by: Mark at October 05, 2005 09:33 AM (Vg0tt)
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Mark - Yup!
Posted by: MCPO Airdale at October 06, 2005 07:49 AM (WOQ34)
Wednesday Is Poetry Day: More O'Hara
Typically Frank O'Hara. The setting for this poem starts out in bed and ends up in the street.
PoemThat's not a cross look it's a sign of life
but I'm glad you care how I look at you
this morning (after I got up) I was thinking
of President Warren G. Harding and Horace S.
Warren, father of the little blonde girl
across the street and another blonde Agnes
Hedlund (this was in the 6th grade!) what
now the day has begun in a soft grey way
with elephantine traffic trudging along Fifth
and two packages of Camels in my pocket
I can't think of one interesting thing Warren
G. Harding did, I guess I was passing notes
to Sally and Agnes at the time he came up
in our elephantine history course everything
seems slow suddenly and boring except
for my insatiable thinking towards you
as you lie asleep completely plotzed and
gracious as a hillock in the mist from one
small window, sunless and only slightly open
as is your mouth and presently your quiet eyes
your breathing is like that history lesson
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Miers Haiku
Pro gun, life, and property
she has the republicans blowing big chuncks
liberals smile, wave and coo
Posted by: Kyle N at October 05, 2005 06:47 AM (qbM2m)
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Annika: Do try "What We Carry," poems by Dorianne Laux. Check out "The Thief" and "The Kiss."
The volume will never leave your bedside.
Best wishes,
Tom
a schmo in a choir
Posted by: THomas C. Wyld at October 05, 2005 10:02 AM (/b1ob)
October 04, 2005
Just A Little Pet Peeve
i was listening to Hugh Hewitt's show on the way home tonight and i heard a conservative caller from San Francisco say something that really bothered me. The caller paraphrased Bush the Elder's response to criticism that he had flip-flopped on his famous "voodoo economics" quote after Reagan selected him for VP. Supposedly, G.H.W. Bush said something to the effect that "Before Reagan picked me I owed him my discretion, afterwards I owed him my loyalty." The gist of the caller's analogy was that we conservatives owe the president our loyalty, i.e. our trust.
We owe him no such thing. i voted for president Bush twice. He serves at my pleasure and at the pleasure of the American voter. i don't owe him or any other politician my loyalty. On the contrary, they owe me. That is our system of government. i just want this to be clear, because i think most Americans suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding of the most basic philosophy by which our nation was founded. It's not just a cute little theory that some old guys in powdered wigs made up. I believe it is Truth.
Do these words sound familiar?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. [emphasis added]In other words, they work for us. If any loyalty is owed, it is owed by the government, including the executive, to the people. We hold all the cards because we have rights, which come from God Almighty. The government has no rights, only powers, which come from us.
So anyone who says i owe my loyalty, or my trust to any government official, evan a president whom i like a lot, is simply mistaken and needs to take a refresher course in American History, preferably by a professor who knows what he's talking about.
Now i'm just taking the long way around, to make a minor semantic point. But these things do piss me off because i often wonder how people can be so dense.
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Technically you're right. Practically, you're wrong. There's a war out there, and we are on one side of it, whether we want to be or not. He's our general, good, bad, or ugly. We don't have to love him right or wrong. We can be disappointed, pissed even, but we're not going to go support the midnight channel swimmer Ted.
Posted by: Casca at October 04, 2005 08:12 PM (qBTBH)
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Annie:
If you are talking about me, let me clarify. You do not OWE George W. Bush anything, but you OWE yourself the opportunity to at least wait for the hearings to see what you can learn about the woman to whom he has entrusted his place in history.
I have enough faith in his choice, one made based upon vastly more knowledge of the individual than most appointments, that my President, the guy to whom I entrusted my sacred vote, my money and my name, will make the right choice.
Remember these words: "...our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor..."?
Our Founders trusted each other; I choose to place my trust in God and his present messenger who is delivering us from Evil. Remember, it could have been Gore or Kerry.
Me, I like it right where it is right now. My prediction is (liberally quoting Rich Galen in Mullings)that the Liberals will cool to her and the Conservatives will warm, but we shall see.
Posted by: shelly at October 04, 2005 08:17 PM (6mUkl)
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Great point Annie. There is something deraded on the nationalist right these days that wants to engage in a sort of hero-worship of Bush. Not only is he in particular unworthy of such praise, but such treatment is anathema to our Republican traditions.
Further, on this choice in particular, it is owed no deference whatsoever. There are hundreds of other more obviously qualified people than Miers and there is no other reason to assume Bush picked her other than a strong personal working relationship and friendship and the fact she's a woman. That relationship is completely irrelevant to her task as an independent judge with life tenure, and it requires one to suspend reason to think this person with no signficant government, academic, writing, or other appellate and constitutional credentials is up to the challenge. The choice of Miers is sickening.
Posted by: Roach at October 05, 2005 07:30 AM (MRlvg)
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Speaking of Professor Hewitt.....is it just me, or will he defend anything the Bush Administration does? At times, he appears mortified by the possibility of diverse opinions on the Right. He talks the talk about "a big tent" yada yada yada. But listen to his show and pay attention to how he responds to conservatives who don't tow the Republican party line. Regardless if the person makes a reasonable argument, he will respond like the person suggested 2 + 2 = 5. Don't get me wrong, I like and usually agree with Hugh; but,personally, I find Medved and Praeger to be more interesting and provacative.
Posted by: Blu at October 05, 2005 10:07 AM (j8oa6)
October 03, 2005
Supreme Court Pick
i know everybody's been patiently waiting for my opinion on this chick Bush picked for Supreme Court. i wanted to read a little bit about her and listen to some other opinions before i weighed in.
i am a little disappointed that Bush did not take my advice. i have a pretty good idea that he or one of his aides reads this blog. My advice was to pick an in-your-face conservative. My personal choice would have been either Mike McConnell or Janice Rogers Brown. i like McConnell because he's a historian, and i like Brown because she's a Californian.
Of course, if i had my way, and i could give the Supreme Court an extreme makeover, things would be way different. i imagine there would be a huge exodus of liberals from this country, and that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Except for Canada and France, that is.
If i had my way, Roe would be overturned. Kelo would be gone. The Lemon test: gone. Oregon v. Smith: gone. Fifty years of establishment clause jurisprudence: gone. i wouldn't stop there either. The exclusionary rule? History. Miranda? Toast. 1A protection for Child Porn? Dead. The Second Amendment? Reborn. Federalism? Hell yah.
Regarding Miers, i'm adopting the wait and see approach. Maybe she'll be okay. Maybe not. The whole idea about wanting a known conservative is so that members of the Republican base, like me, won't have to worry. Now we have reason to worry. Two reasons, if you count Roberts.
Another disappointment is the likelihood that we won't get rid of that stupid filibuster rule now. i wanted a fight, because i wanted the nuclear option. But it's easy to forget that Bush is at heart a conciliatory kind of guy. All this talk about him being an evil warmonger has obscured that fact. It really should be no surprise that if Bush sees a way to do something without a fight, he'll do it. Again, if it were up to me, i'd have liked to see the Senate Democrats get straight-armed on this nominee, and losing the filibuster would have been gravy.
i'm not as worried as some people are about Miers having been a Democrat. Reagan was a Democrat once too. So was my dad. Still, neither of them would have ever given money to a freak like Gore. But the real problem is that Miers is not an idealogue. And the Court can change a person; i believe that. Unless a justice has a strong belief system, i'm afraid the pressure to get along can lead to a leftward drift over time.
So, should we trust Bush's judgment on this one as Professor Hewitt counsels us to do? Well, what choice do i have? Miers will probably be confirmed easily and i will have to hope for the best. But i can't help thinking this was a wasted opportunity.
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OK, for the record. This is NOT Souter redux.
David Souter was the number two to Senator Warren Rudman when he was the AG of New Hampshire. Rudman swore on a stack of bibles that Souter was a confirmed conservative. Bush 41 trusted Rudman.
Souter wasn't and isn't. Rudman's Senatoral career came to screeching halt. He is no longer the Senator from New Hampshire.
Harriet Miers has been Bush 43's attorney for more than ten years. She counselled him in private industry and then when he was Governor.
She cleaned up the dirty Texas Lottery as his hand picked Chairwoman. She got herself elected to the Dallas City Council.
All the while, after putting herself through college and law schoiol at SMU, she got a job as the first woman in a 200 man firm that she ended up running, then merging into another 200 man firm which she co-chaired.
In her spare time she was elected the first woman president of the Dallas Bar, then, the first woman president of the Texas Bar.
When Bush went to Washington, she went with him, rising to be his counsel, replacing Alberto Gonzales when he became AG. As such, she's been vetting judges and getting them confirmed, counselling with the President about them.
Every piece of paper that gets to his desk is vetted by her.
I trust my President; I worked my ass off to get him elected and then reelected, and gave the maximum and raised a lot more.
I trust him now when he says he knows her heart.
Why doesn't every other good conservative? Because Harry Reid says he likes her? Hell, he said he liked Roberts, too, then voted against him.
I am backing Harriet Miers. Damn the torpedos.
Posted by: shelly at October 03, 2005 09:20 PM (6mUkl)
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No not Souter, more like the airhead she replaces. Pat Buchanon called her a cipher. I think that describes the intellectually dull Mandarin set who are untroubled by ideology because their connection to life is not intellectually rigorous. To borrow a phrase, they always vote at their party's call and never stop to think for themselves at all.
The upside is that she doesn't seem like the kind of gal who is interested in hobnobbing with the Washington social scene. She's a crapshoot, and that's not what we deserve.
Posted by: Casca at October 03, 2005 10:19 PM (qBTBH)
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Events have weakened this presidency to the point where the filibuster is a reality that the President must face and deal with. He has.
He knows what this woman thinks; for him it is no crapshoot, for all the reasons I set forth earlier.
Me, I'd rather have her than some of the others that he does not know. The ones about whom we could be sure, Janice Rogers Brown for one that I know personally, are not confirmable right now without further erosion of the presidency.
He's just got too much on his plate with Iraq and the hurricanes to stop and fight one out right now.
If he sails her though like I think he will, the next one, (John Paul Stevens), if and when it comes, may be the place to make the political stand. It may also be better timing for the next president, be it McCain or Guiliani, to make his case and to beat up on Hillary and the Kerry clones.
For now, I back Harriet, until I learn something really bad about her, which I deem unlikely, since she's been in the spotlight a long time without any scandal being attached to her name.
People thought Roberts was a bad choice when it began and look how it turned out. I say, trust the man, it's better than the other alternative.
Remember, he won Ohio. More than I can say for California.
Posted by: shelly at October 04, 2005 03:20 AM (6mUkl)
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CASCA, i am going to scold you now. I am not an anti-intellectual, in fact I am returning to college after many years for further education. But I don't think you have to be a graduate from an Ivory league school like most of the other justices, to be smart and know what the hell is going on. In fact, I think it refreshing to get someone with a mid-west, or southern sensibility in the court, instead of the northeast corridor thinking which has ruled everything for centuries.
Posted by: Kyle N at October 04, 2005 03:53 AM (J1uif)
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LOL, Kyle, that's what they said about O'Conner. She's a pragmatist... politically sound...
The trouble with that argument is that people who are unwedded to ideas are so for a reason. Ideas are not a part of who they are, and they never will be. Without the tether of ideology, why the whole field of maneuver is open, and one is free to embrace the sophist fancy of the moment.
As for which battles to fight... the only good of political capital is when it is spent. It is always better to fight in the first ditch than the last.
Posted by: Casca at October 04, 2005 06:17 AM (qBTBH)
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Shelly, if Bush wanted someone with State Bar experience, he should have picked you. At least one blogger would have been totally behind that pick!
Posted by: annika at October 04, 2005 06:59 AM (Ku+kp)
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Thanks Annie, I'm flattered, but you forget that I used to be a judge. I hated the regimented life and resigned after three and a half years to return to doing what I like and actually getting paid for it. So, I would not qualify, nor would I be interested. On a hot day, those robes are murder.
I know most of the California judges, know Janice better than most because of her work in the Governor's office. The travesty that occurred in the State JNE Commission during her confirmation for the State Supreme Court has haunted her even to today. Because of it, I will monitor the Commission's deliberations of the Governor's possible picks to be sure that political considerations will not enter into the ratings. Actually, the leadership of the JNE Commission today is a far cry from the old one, so we will have no further outrages, I think.
I also know Tony Kennedy. Sometimes I like him, other times I wonder why we supported him. He's not far from Sandra, and will replace her as the leader of the center, I believe.
Posted by: shelly at October 04, 2005 07:31 AM (6mUkl)
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You had me at "Roe would be overturned."
Check my blog out; I trash this chick, and as a former Dallas lawyer, I know the type all too well.
Posted by: Roach at October 04, 2005 07:34 AM (MRlvg)
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I agree with Shelly.
Annika, we don't know you very well but we know how you would vote on most issues.
Surely, Bush who has known Miers for 12 years knows how she will vote on every issue.
Posted by: Jake at October 04, 2005 08:18 AM (r/5D/)
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Jeez, I just read David Frum's piece in NRO:
http://frum.nationalreview.com/archives/09292005.asp#077899
That's all I need to know.
The President has no better friend than the vast majority of people who come to this blog. Our disappointment is not because we desire anything less than success for his administration. This is one of his greatest missteps because at a time when the dogs are at his heels, what does he do but throw his allies from the sled? These SCOTUS appointments are a defining moment of his administration.
In Churchill's words, "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war."
Posted by: Casca at October 04, 2005 08:19 AM (qBTBH)
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Michael Savage was right. Bush is really moving to the Left.
I thought that Bush would be more Reagan-esque in his last term, but it appears that he just wants to be another Nixon or a substitute for his mediocre father's lost term.
Not only do I have to worry about Bush's apparent Supreme Court blunder, but Ann Coulter is giving me reasons to HATE Karl Rove now.
After all of these years in the political wilderness, the GOP wants to screw up their rennaissance by emulating Nixon and becoming lite Democrats. The dream of a Reaganism rebirth died on Jan. 20, 2005 even without Kerry's inauguration. When 2008 rolls around, I won't be biting my nails again over the fate of the GOP.
The GOP better hope that Hillary is the Dem's candidate because I'm thinking about staying at home on election day if she isn't.
Posted by: reagan80 at October 04, 2005 08:50 AM (K9tdw)
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I agree with every word of this post.
I think some criticism of Miers is culture-based. She comes from a southern/Christian/Texas nicey-nice culture which aims to please, and values acting like a decent person in public - as opposed to acting like an asshole. I come from the same culture. What this means is your dingbats and your hard as nails people are all walking around aiming to please and acting like decent people, because both are "the Christian thing to do." From a distance, there's absolutely no way to tell if Harriet Miers is a dingbat, or is hard as nails - except, if you trust G.W. Bush not to promote the career of a dingbat - which we have to do at this point. I'm hoping Harriet Miers will be what I originally hoped O'Connor would be - before the long O'Connor nightmare began.
All that said, I am disappointed in Bush. I believe this pick is a political move designed not to frighten the electorate of the 2006 Mid-term elections. I disagree with the "don't frighten the electorate" political strategy, and believe the Republicans would've been better off swinging haymakers in a huge political fight, then going into 2006 Mid-Terms from a position of strength. A huge political fight tends to get everyone's cards on the table. The more that happens, the better it is for the Republicans. A lot of them can't even remember what cards they have in their hand.
Posted by: gcotharn at October 04, 2005 09:32 AM (3Bn47)
13
"If i had my way, Roe would be overturned. Kelo would be gone. The Lemon test: gone. Oregon v. Smith: gone. Fifty years of establishment clause jurisprudence: gone. i wouldn't stop there either. The exclusionary rule? History. Miranda? Toast. 1A protection for Child Porn? Dead. The Second Amendment? Reborn. Federalism? Hell yah."
A sincere round of applause to Annie, who understands the Constitution better than some Justices do.
Posted by: Mark at October 04, 2005 10:30 AM (Vg0tt)
14
Some justices? How about most justices?
The only ones that seem to fully get it are Scalia and Thomas. I think Roberts will be a strict constructionalist as well. If Miers follows in the same mold, it sets the stage for WWIII when Stevens dies or leaves.(I hope soon)
They can still get Kennedy some of the time, but he is wobbly at best. I give up on Stevens, Souther, and the ACLU Twins.
The build up has been over the "swing vote center" of O'Connor, so try to imagine the controversy if one of the Four Horse's Asses of the Apocalypse were to leave in this administration.
Katie bar the door...
Posted by: shelly at October 04, 2005 12:37 PM (6mUkl)
15
that brings up an issue i've never heard anybody talk about. The left has argued that Bush should replace moderate for moderate (i.e. O'Connor mold) and center right for center right (i.e. Rhenquist mold). The implication is that under no circumstances would the Senate Democrats accept a replacement who is to the right of the justice being replaced. How would this work if Stevens leaves and there's an opportunity to turn the ideological balance of the Court upside down? Would the left argue that Bush must nominate a liberal? As ridiculous as that sounds, i wouldn't put it past them.
Posted by: annika at October 04, 2005 01:42 PM (zAOEU)
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Annika,
I am confused. Why would you wish to overturn Oregon v. Smith? It seems inconsistant with your other stands. Other than the fact that we both agree that Peyote is a cool and probably should be decriminalized, I think of you as someone who would have ruled against the two NA's and denied them UE benefits. SInce when do you think religious beliefs trump the criminal statutes or more to the point an employers right to terminate an employee for engaging in criminal behavior especially if they agreed to not imbibe as a prerequisite of employment?
I find Scalia's reasoning to be OK.
What's your problem?
Posted by: Strawman at October 04, 2005 01:56 PM (0ZdtC)
17
in Smith, the court declined to give religious freedom the highest standard of judicial scrutiny. i believe the free exercise of religion is so fundamental a right, that it deserves such protection. Congress agreed, and passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, only to be smacked down again by the supreme court.
Posted by: annika at October 04, 2005 02:16 PM (zAOEU)
18
I ALWAYS find Scalia to be persuasive.
The man's a genius and is able to simplify any issue so that even I can understand it.
Oh, to have had 60 votes this year...
Posted by: shelly at October 04, 2005 02:17 PM (6mUkl)
19
Annika,
Do you remember who struck down this precious act? An act that was vigorously put forth by your pal Bill Clinton? Supremes ruled 6-3 Breyer, O'Conner, SOuter desenting.
I love that act! Actually, now that I researched it a bit the one I really love is a spin off called the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGRPA) Same difference though.
It was the basis for a suit by NA's to have the Williamette Meteroite moved from the Museum of Natural History back to Oregon where it was dug out in 1908. They claim it belonged to them, did not come from outer space and was an important part of their relgion and culture.
http://salmonriver.com/lightscience/willamettemeteorite.html
They lost the case but were granted a day each year to dance around it, commune with it and generally stay aquainted whilst it stays in place at the ROse Planetarium on 81 street. But, and this is a big one, should the Museum decide it is no longer needed it will be returned to them. Nice.
The other case that made me fall in love with this act was that of another NA tribe of the Pacific Northwest that demanded that the remains of a human "Kennewick Man" discovered in a riverbank, and determined to be 9,300 or so years old and was of non-asian decent and supported another theory of the migration of humans to the New World, be returned for reinternment. They argued sucessfully that the science be damned, that it came from a river on their land and it was one of them. The bones were reintered and the origin of this early explorer was never fully determined and the clocks ran backwards for a few days.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V119/N52/col52schne.52c.html
I love religion and how it re-dedicates itself time and time again to the shackling of human curiosity and the quashing of human potential. Your absolutely right Anni, the practice of religion should be held back by no laws of man.
Posted by: strawman at October 04, 2005 03:09 PM (0ZdtC)
20
Strawman once let his anti-religion sentiments become known in a more amusing way at Moxie's:
"And don't forget that until the people of Earth give up the idea of a supreme being in any form, nobody on the galactic council will ever vote to let us into the Federation. The council thinks the refutation of a belief in a supreme being is an important marker in evaluating the cultural evolution of a planet. Just as you think your kids are getting more sophisticated and grown up when they give up the tooth fairy and Santa Claus."
Aren't Jews supposed to be religious? Mike's Jewish, right?
Posted by: reagan80 at October 04, 2005 03:33 PM (K9tdw)
21
Raygun,
Once more dedicates himmself to and renews his membership in the head up my ass and loving it society.
But seriously Ray, have your parents gotten through to you yet about the tooth fairy? I know your not old enough to have all you permanent teeth and need the money to buy the God cut of the "Passion of Christ" with commentary by Pilate and Mary and never before scenes of the blood spatter anaylized by David Caruso and Melina Kanakaredes.
I hear is it amazing.
Posted by: Strawman at October 04, 2005 03:45 PM (0ZdtC)
22
Anni,
Please change precious to pernicious in my first sentence. Sorry for the confusion.
Thanks
Posted by: Strawman at October 04, 2005 03:49 PM (0ZdtC)
23
FUCK involved IT NAZIS! shrub and Chaney of the mornings NOT in this scandal, however in CONSEQUENT the CPar mornings behind 9-11! what to make you sheep think, which, if it of the Songtonnenehmen-Custom-Ton illegaly, immoral war and they, which this to help, IT And to examine, TREASON by Outing means has the to fix, then they not in 9-11, also to include? How that other our gov' T! With LU IF the CIA or FBI this one, RULE CVos arbeit and RESEARCH HOWEVER ALSO ALSO CVotre CPossible INCLUSION of the SUPERIORS in HIGH the CEn cover CPeut-to be CVotre INCLUSION NOTCNur SHRUB, cheney CEt RUMMIE, in 9-11!If which has everyone in CChaque groups Eingeweihtinfo with the REQUEST the CPour REQUEST WHICH LOVES of CNotre COUNTRY, to ruin HIM to it QUALITY CDehors CEt NOW!CONGRESS TO LEAVE TON of the CEt SHRUB of CHENEY GESICHTSCAnklage of ODER Itself WISHES CMaintenant CHARGES! HEY, IF HIM NOT CHARGES, LEGEND ME CHARGE YOUR ASSES SANS.VALEUR TOO! AND TO LEAVE YOU SHRUB AND CHENEY-bezahlung ALSO OF CHEEK VON OF The PATIENT TO RECEIVE PROFIT YOU IT LARVA, The OVER AND SMART ROOFRIDGE THEIR Golf IN WATER THUNDERS YOUR APPROACH WITHOUT FOOD, IN ANY WATER AND ASSISTANCE NO, THEN LIKE PUNISHING FOR 9-11, Etc... IF YOU SEND The TONS OF GITMO, THEN AFTER CELUI-Ci, YOU ARE MADE ASSASSINATE PAYMENT OF CHEEKS, AROUND THEN With SLOPES OF YOUR EVIL AND ASS AND NOW! JUSTICE ONLY RIGHT UNIVERSE OF THESIS THINGS! AS MUCH OF SETTING WITH DIED AND MURDER AND BADLY HIM THOUSANDS OF THE PEOPLE CAUSES A CREDIT! IF YOU TEST YOURSELVES, RK LA HAGUE WAS ALSO FOR CRIMES! AND NOW! DO NOT LEAVE you to the REMAINDER of CAutre richter! AND ROBERT RECALL, NOW! The European Council, NOTCZaehlimpuls! AND IMPEACHEMENT AND NOW! If IT There A OF, EACH POSSIBLE PIECE WISHES JUSTICE SE FINDING IN AMERICA, THAT the ASSASSINATION, NO GOOD, BAD FASCISTIC MISCHLINGS SHOWN On the left AND FOR TREASON, With OF HUNG ECTcC.
Posted by: cb at October 04, 2005 04:17 PM (V2eAR)
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So, tell us how you really feel......
Posted by: reagan80 at October 04, 2005 04:21 PM (K9tdw)
25
OK, Annie, some maniac has found our blog.
Do your duty.
Hit the "delete" button, immediately, if not sooner.
Posted by: shelly at October 04, 2005 04:46 PM (6mUkl)
26
Damn, that reminds me. I forgot to go to the gunshow and buy ammo last week. Ah hell, I usually shoot what I'm aiming at, and I got more than I can carry anyway.
Posted by: Casca at October 04, 2005 04:53 PM (qBTBH)
27
Sorry Annika,
One of my multitude of repressed personalities got the better of me for a minute. But, fear not, my sane and reasonable self is back. See how bad it could really be if I had no observing ego?
Straw.
Posted by: Strawman at October 04, 2005 04:58 PM (0ZdtC)
28
Annie, looks like CB is on to us. Damm, I just got through to Karl Rove and he assured me that the guy has already been identified and the Men In Black are on the way.
Posted by: Kyle N at October 04, 2005 05:13 PM (gPomq)
29
Here's two of my favorites from Von Bismarck:
"Politics is the art of the possible."
"To retain respect for laws and sausages, one must not watch either being made."
Those who are new to the process of making judges should turn off their TV's and forget about the newspapers for a while.
It is different when it is the Democrats doing the choosing, for we play the game differently. We actually measure the merit without the agenda of killing off every qualified person who is suggested due to some identifiable agenda.
I once asked Senator Orren Hatch why it was that we were so generous in our confirmations of obviously left wing liberals, and it was he who told me the above. For the Demoncrats, the end justifies the means, no matter how ugly it is getting there.
Maybe that's why we keep getting majorities elected, year after year; the people are on to them.
I hope.
Posted by: shelly at October 04, 2005 05:41 PM (6mUkl)
30
Shelly,
I'm curious; what "left wing" liberal has been confirmed for anything in the past twenty years?
Posted by: Strawman at October 04, 2005 06:35 PM (0ZdtC)
31
Guess you never heard of Breyer and Darth Vader Ginsburg?
Posted by: Kyle N at October 04, 2005 06:38 PM (gPomq)
32
I'm more interested in Annie's Second Amendment conversion. Last I heard, Annie, you were a skeptic.
Posted by: Matt at October 04, 2005 07:33 PM (BkVa4)
33
Well, yes, Breyer and Ginsburg, to name a couple of Supreme Court Justices, but also a whole bunch of 9th Circuit and other Appelate Judges, and another passel of District Court Judges.
I could name a lot more, but Richard Paez in the 9th, Bill Fletcher in the 9th, Marsha Berzon in the 9th. Kim Wardlaw in the 9th, Ray Fisher in the 9th and a passel of District Court Judges we just let go through without any shenanigans.
But, the Dems all but stopped a bunch of ours, Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, to name a couple who benefited from the deal by the Gang of 14. It took a real threat of a nuclear option to do it.
Caroline Kuhl dropped out of the 9th appointment after being frustrated for years at being unable to get a hearing.
Judge Charles Pickering dropped out of the 5th. He was stopped cold, but Bush finally gave Pickering a recess appointment just to piss off Leahy, Kennedy and Schumer, after they stopped him twice.
And, of course, there is Robert Bork, himself, who the Democrats changed the rule from 51 to 60 votes required, just to keep off the Supreme Court.
They also damn near got Thomas.
We've never done what they have done, and I hope we never get in a position where we are on the outs again, but they are so frustrated about having no cachet in the House, the White House, or the Senate (other than an ability to filibuster with their meager 45 votes. (44 plus Jeffers).
Now, they are losing some more control of the one place where they used to make a difference, their Judicial Legislators.
So, what you see is a bitter bunch of losers, trying to protect the last liberal bastion, the refuge of liberal legislation, the Judiciary.
The liberal democrats are literally in danger of becoming the permanent minority party in the US, and one more eight year Republican President will all but wipe out their stranglehold on the courts.
Is it any wonder they fight so hard and so dirty?
Well, maybe, if they'd act a little more civil, they might appeal to more voters and actually gain some seats in the House or Senate, instead of losing more and more each election.
We shall see how this next confirmation goes, but, like I said earlier in another place in this blog, when Stevens goes, if it is in this Administration, it will be WWIII and Armageddon combined to replace that liberal old goat with someone to Bush's liking.
Katie bar the door.
Posted by: shelly at October 05, 2005 01:50 AM (6mUkl)
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