Remind me never to cross Mark Kleiman, because he just UNLOADS on Juan Cole.
Ouch
by John Cole| 32 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
by John Cole| 32 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
Remind me never to cross Mark Kleiman, because he just UNLOADS on Juan Cole.
by John Cole| 18 Comments
This post is in: Media
I just errantly watched about 5 minutes of Mad Money with Jim Cramer, and anyone who follows his advice deserves their investments to go the way of Enron.
At least whatshisname was doing boatloads of cocaine and has that as an excuse.
by John Cole| 39 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
As doctors warn more patients that they should lose weight, the advice has backfired on one doctor with a woman filing a complaint with the state saying he was hurtful, not helpful.
Dr. Terry Bennett says he tells obese patients their weight is bad for their health and their love lives, but the lecture drove one patient to complain to the state.
“I told a fat woman she was obese,” Bennett says. “I tried to get her attention. I told her, ‘You need to get on a program, join a group of like-minded people and peel off the weight that is going to kill you.’ ”
He says he wrote a letter of apology to the woman when he found out she was offended.
Her complaint, filed about a year ago, was initially investigated by a panel of the New Hampshire Board of Medicine, which recommended that Bennett be sent a confidential letter of concern. The board rejected the suggestion in December and asked the attorney general’s office to investigate.
Even more shocking than that is the fact that President Bush (aka Chimpy McHitlerBurton BushCO) has not taken a moment from his vacation to SPEAK OUT ABOUT THIS!
Someone alert Armando and KOS!
This post is in: Democratic Stupidity
I am little sick and tired of these stupid games played by the adolescent left:
Why Won’t BushCo Condemn Robertson’s Remarks?
Ironic but, in a way, not surprising. Bush and the Republicans are the Party of Joe McCarthy AND the Party of Dobson. No false smear of Democrats is left unsaid and no disagreement with the extremists of their extreme GOP will ever be spoken.
Wingnuts on parade.
The other day, the Daily Kos reacts to the idiot in the pick-up truck running over the political props/crosses at Crawford:
Bush can’t meet with Cindy. Not anymore. It would be seen as a surrender. But he could’ve spoken out against this desecration.
But he didn’t. Of course.
Bush is evil. Bush endorses running over ‘crosses’ at an anti-war rally. Why? Because he didn’t pull a Chuck Schumer and race for the camera to condemn the action!
Bush is evil. Bush favors assassination of people chosen by idiotic television ministers. Why? because he didn’t pull a Bill Clinton, bite his lip, and look into our souls through a local camera and tell us this is unacceptable.
Idiots. And they wonder why, even with Bush near rock bottom in the polls, people don’t treat certain wings of the Democratic party seriously.
Isn’t there enough stuff out there to be legitimately pissed off at this administration about that they can take a damned breather from the venom? The answer is- NOPE! This idiotic ‘smirking chimp’ haters crowd exist solely to keep me a Republican, it seems.
by John Cole| 16 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
WVU’s fall semester started, and Morgantown is a flurry of frenetic activity once again. There are just people everywhere, and the traffic is terrible (by local standards). The bus I take to work and back usually takes 20 minutes to get there (which is still faster than driving, because you don’t have to spend 30 minutes finding a place to park), but yesterday it took 50 minutes.
Because I will be busy, expect this blog to slow down during the days. I will still have all my morning posts and updates at night, but since I work during the days (and on Wednesday, from noon until nine), daytime updates will be minimal to nonexistent.
Still, this is my favorite part of the year. You can feel the electricty and energy in the air, Mountaineer and Steeler football are about to start, and every semester is a chance to start anew. One of the things I really enjoy is watching the students. As they get younger every year (I stay the same, of course), it is endlessly amusing to watch them try to assert their own identities and struggle to express themselves.
There is no better life than on the college campus.
by John Cole| 51 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
Andrew is back from the beach, and starts off on a dour note:
Hey, we’ve exploded the size of government, legitimized an insolvent nanny-state for a generation, guaranteed a huge future tax increase, missed an opportunity for seriously trying to move toward energy independence, and made the biggest intelligence error since Pearl Harbor. Not bad, eh? The emails on Frum’s blog are very telling about the mood of the conservative base. My own evolving view of what’s happening in Iraq is that there’s still a reasonable chance of a pretty depressingly illiberal constitution, folllowed by low-level civil war, policed in part by young Americans. Better than Saddam? You betcha. Better than a crumbling regime under Saddam’s sons during an Islamist upswing? Absolutely. But a long way from what many of us had hoped for.
And that is after a several month vacation.
by John Cole| 64 Comments
This post is in: Media, Military, War on Terror aka GSAVE®
Public confidence in the news about the military is waning:
Similarly, the public grew increasingly skeptical of the news media’s efforts, with 61 percent of Americans saying that the media keep them well informed on military and national security issues, down from 79 percent in 1999. More than three-quarters of Americans also believe that the military occasionally provides false or inaccurate information to the media, according to the poll, which surveyed 1,016 adults during the first two weeks of June.
Media and military experts said the data are troubling at a time when Americans are becoming more savvy about the information they receive and are seeking their news from an increasing number of sources.
Retired Maj. Gen. David L. Grange, executive vice president of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, said he believes the round-the-clock news cycle and perceived biases within media organizations have hurt public confidence in their information.
“The mass media gets negative points from the people because they think that the big media is taking a position and shaping stories to fit their agenda,” said Grange, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division. “The military gets negative points because they come across sometimes as being deceptive or using [operational security] as an excuse.”
Hardly surprising, when the two narratives we seem to get are ‘Everything is ok’ from the military and ‘VIETNAM! VIETNAM! QUAGMIRE! QUAGMIRE!’ from the media. Cori Dauber, who is also featured in the article, comments.
Also see this GALLUP poll regarding comparisons between Iraq and, you guessed it, Vietnam. Cori Dauber also has some thoughts on this.