Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by John Cole| 20 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
I should probably point out that they are now taking nominations for the Koufax awards for lefty bloggers. Since a lot of you lefties reside here, I figure you might be interested.
And for the love of everything holy, do not nominate this website. I am not a lefty, and if we did get nominated, we would get laughed that, and barring being merely laughed out of the place, we would come in even farther behind than we did with out miserable showing in the weblogawards.
by John Cole| 17 Comments
This post is in: Media
Good thing bloggers don’t have them:
A senior fellow at the Cato Institute resigned from the libertarian think tank on Dec. 15 after admitting that he had accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff’s clients. Doug Bandow, who writes a syndicated column for Copley News Service, told BusinessWeek Online that he had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles over a period of years, beginning in the mid ’90s.
“It was a lapse of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it,” Bandow said from a California hospital, where he’s recovering from recent knee surgery.
After receiving BusinessWeek Online’s inquiries about the possibility of payments, Cato Communications Director Jamie Dettmer said the think-tank determined that Bandow “engaged in what we consider to be inappropriate behavior and he considers to be a lapse in judgment” and accepted his resignation. “Cato has an excellent reputation for integrity, and we’re zealous in guarding that,” Dettmer said.
You wonder how much of this stuff is going on.
by John Cole| 48 Comments
This post is in: Politics, War on Terror aka GSAVE®
Compare and contrast. The Bull Moose:
Democrats must make a decision. At the moment, the party is incoherent in a decisively weak fashion. Democrats should certainly not be “cheerleaders” for this Administration but Democrats should be doing back-flips for democracy – a novel concept, that.
Is the donkey’s message getting out or getting it right? And let’s understand what the meaning of the term “redeployment”. It is a cute euphemism that means giving up – no one is confused about its meaning. If we leave Iraq, does anyone seriously believe that we will re-invade? Will Zarqawi and his buddies interpret a redeployment as anything but an American retreat? Let’s be honest.
And honesty is the best policy when it comes to Iraq. The President is very belatedly coming to that conclusion, as was somewhat evident in his speech on Wednesday. It is high time that we not only get candor from this Administration – it is also the moment when the Bushies should seriously reach out to Democratic hawks. If we are to be successful in this war, a bi-partisan domestic coalition is imperative. And it would be useful if the President gave Rummy a gold watch and showed him the door.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday that Democrats should not seek a unified position on an exit strategy in Iraq, calling the war a matter of individual conscience and saying differing positions within the caucus are a source of strength for the party.
Pelosi said Democrats will produce an issue agenda for the 2006 elections but it will not include a position on Iraq. There is consensus within the party that President Bush has mismanaged the war and that a new course is needed, but House Democrats should be free to take individual positions, she sad.
“There is no one Democratic voice . . . and there is no one Democratic position,” Pelosi said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors.
Are these mutually exclusive positions. Is one right the other wrong? Both wrong? Which of these two approaches will lead the Democrats to the promised land?
by John Cole| 2 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Ok- Watch a few minutes of this, and tell me if you don’t feel like Mickey Kaus is using his eyebrows to hypnotize you. I felt myself getting woozy when he raised one eyebrow then quickly raised both.
Kind of an interesting idea, though. I will check out more of their arguments later.
by John Cole| 39 Comments
This post is in: Popular Culture
I have been meaning to ask you guys this for a while and keep forgetting- do any of you read George R. R. Martin, and is itworth a read?
If so, I understand this is an elaborate, complex series. What is the first book (his site makes no sense).
by John Cole| 61 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
This is irritating:
Anti-smoking activists who are driving cigarettes from public places across the country are now targeting private homes — especially those with children.
Their efforts so far have contributed to regulations in three states — Maine, Oklahoma and Vermont — forbidding foster parents from smoking around children. Parental smoking also has become a critical point in some child-custody cases, including ones in Virginia and Maryland.
In a highly publicized Virginia case, a judge barred Caroline County resident Tamara Silvius from smoking around her children as a condition for child visitation.
Mrs. Silvius, a waitress at a truck stop in Doswell, Va., calls herself “highly disappointed” with the court’s ruling.
“I’m an adult. Who is anybody to tell me I can’t smoke or drink?” she said in an interview yesterday.
You know what this country needs to ban? Zealots, of all stripes, including the anti-smoking nuts, the prohibitionists and MADD, the drug warriors, the sex police, the gay bashers, the PETA twerps, the folks who freak out over a manger in a public square or the words ‘Under God” in the Pledge- just ban them all. The attitude of the general public should be:
“I know you feel strongly about this issue, but really, get a damned life. And quit telling everyone what to do.”
by John Cole| 12 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, War on Terror aka GSAVE®
Cautious optimism seems to be the theme of this Robin Wright story:
For President Bush, the strong turnout for Iraq’s election yesterday may represent the best day since the fall of Baghdad 32 months ago because all major factions participated in the political process, according to U.S. and Middle East analysts. But the sobering reality, they added, is that the vote by itself did not resolve Iraq’s lingering political disputes.
After weeks of an increasingly divisive debate at home that helped sink the president’s approval rating to an all-time low, the Bush administration appeared buoyed by the throngs at the polls and the low violence. Flanked in the Oval Office by six young Iraqis, all with a purple-stained finger signifying they had voted, Bush called the election a “major milestone” on the road to democracy.
“This is a major step forward in achieving our objective, which is . . . having a democratic Iraq, a country able to sustain itself and defend itself, a country that will be an ally in the war on terror and a country that will set such a powerful example to others in the region, whether they live in Iran or Syria,” he said.
***But even some Republicans urged caution in assessing the results yesterday, while congressional Democrats called on the White House to use the election to accelerate the transition and create the conditions for the redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq.
In Baghdad for election day, Republican Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) said the vote provided a “second chance,” but he also warned that the successful day should not be interpreted as a solution to Iraq’s problems. “Really, in many ways, they’re just beginning,” he said in an interview with NBC’s “Today” show.
Anthony H. Cordesman, a Persian Gulf military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed. He said the vote is not the long-awaited turning point but rather a trigger for launching a new political process next year that will include amending a constitution. That, he said, will better determine whether Iraq has a chance of emerging out of turmoil.
Milestone is probably a more apt description than turning point. Just another step in a long process, and one that seems to have gone off rather wll. That is a good thing and a cause for optimism, but it doesn’t turn Fallujah into Fargo.
The accompanying headline made me laugh, though:
Experts Cautious in Assessing Iraq Election: High Turnout, Low Violence a Positive Step but Not a Turning Point, Analysts Say
Every time I see a headline touting experts, I am reminded of my favorite all-time Onion story- Nation’s Experts Give Up:
Citing years of frustration over their advice being misunderstood, misrepresented or simply ignored, America’s foremost experts in every field collectively tendered their resignation Monday.
“Despite all our efforts to advise this nation, America still throws out its recyclables, keeps its guns in unlocked cabinets where children have easy access, eats three times as much red meat as is recommended, watches seven hours of TV per day, swims less than 10 minutes after eating, and leaves halogen lights on while unattended,” said Dr. Simon Peavy, vice-president of the National Association of Experts. “Since you don’t seem to care about things you don’t understand, screw you. We quit.”
“My final piece of expert advice,” Peavy added, “is that all of you people should just go fuck yourselves.”
The Onion is pure genius.