Penske in Mourning
 

Do you laugh at funerals?

Culture Comes to Washington
 

John Kerry thought we should seek France's approval for defending ourselves. Anyone see a fault in that thinking based upon the past few weeks? Hint see oil bribe scandals and Islamic riots. Kerry did speak eloquently in making the point.

Culture Comes to Washington
 

This is nice, but doesn't make the same emotional connection. Can you try this in verse?

Penske in Mourning
 

When I'm not feverishly masturbating in the men's room.

Culture Comes to Washington
 

Hank has got some mad skillz, but I think even he may have trouble rhyming "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."

aV

Culture Comes to Washington
 

Do not misunderestimate us, Penske.

We are the pit bulls on the pantleg of opportunity!

S_A_M

Penske in Mourning
 

Ha. Just like Clinton at Ron Brown's funeral.

Culture Comes to Washington
 

As he spoke so eloquently, it should be no problem at all for you to find a cite to this.

Evolution and Intelligent Design revisited
 

I thought this article did a much more eloquent job summarizing the evolution v. ID debate than some of us had a few weeks ago. If you recall the discussion SHP and others had with Hank, I think you'll see some of the same themes below.

From the most recent Time magazine:

Evolution and Intelligent Design revisited
 

I object to the explicit assumption in the article that the Supreme Being is God. My Pastafarian beliefs are being oppressed in favor of the notion that this God, who is somehow 3 parts in one whole, but each whole is somehow complete, whatever that means, sent one of his parts down to earth to take the form of a human being born in - get this - a "virgin birth", who later was miraculously resurrected in complete health after dying an agonizing death on a slab of wood, and then conveniently was whisked off this mortal coil before the truth of all this could be established. Somehow a lot of people buy into this story. And they dare to laugh at the idea of a Flying Spaghetti Monster?

I and others have been touched by His Noodley Appendage. Ramen.

frere Jaques, frere Jaques, dormez-vous?
 

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/sto...639538,00.html

• Riot coverage 'excessive', says French TV boss
  
  One of France's leading TV news executives has admitted censoring his coverage of the riots in the country for fear of encouraging support for far-right politicians.
  Jean-Claude Dassier, the director general of the rolling news service TCI, said the prominence given to the rioters on international news networks had been "excessive" and could even be fanning the flames of the violence.
  
  Mr Dassier said his own channel, which is owned by the private broadcaster TF1, recently decided not to show footage of burning cars.
  
  "Politics in France is heading to the right and I don't want rightwing politicians back in second, or even first place because we showed burning cars on television," Mr Dassier told an audience of broadcasters at the News Xchange conference in Amsterdam today.
  
  "Having satellites trained on towns across France 24 hours a day showing the violence would have been wrong and totally disproportionate ... Journalism is not simply a matter of switching on the cameras and letting them roll. You have to think about what you're broadcasting," he said.

Say what you will about france, but it would be refreshing if our mainstream media was as honest about the liberal bias in its broadcast decisions.

frere Jaques, frere Jaques, dormez-vous?
 

Having read your postings on France for some time now, I can appreciate the difficulty that you must've had in providing even a backhanded compliment to the French, even accounting for the benefit of a slam on American media. Salut!

frere Jaques, frere Jaques, dormez-vous?
 

The problem with the "far right" in France is they are just bigots. They are against free trade so they are a complete nightmare. They are social conservative, racist, socialists. Le Pen represents everything I detest.

frere Jaques, frere Jaques, dormez-vous?
 

Well, Hank, Penske and I have great admiration for these few brave souls. If only the rest of the French thought like them.

Smart Democrats?
 

These guys are really on the ball. It is lucky for us that the majority of Democrats don't listen to them (and listen to Cindy and Howard Dean instead).


=============================================
THE NEW DEM DISPATCH, November 10, 2005
Political commentary & analysis from the DLC =============================================
[http://www.DLC.org ]

Idea of the Week: Taking Suburbs Seriously

One of the most important ingredients of Tim Kaine's victory in
Tuesday's Virginia gubernatorial election was his remarkable success
in the high-growth suburbs of Washington, DC. In county after
county, Kaine improved on Mark Warner's winning performance in 2001,
and even carried important exurban counties like Loudoun and Prince
William that haven't gone Democratic in a long time.

Political analysts have rightly pointed out that a lot of factors
contributed to this Democratic suburban triumph: a backlash against
Republican Jerry Kilgore's negative attacks on Kaine's character and
his last-minute immigrant-baiting demagoguery; the ethnic
diversification of Northern Virginia; and the unusual attention paid
by Northern Virginians to the Republican march of folly in
Washington. But aside from these factors, it's important to note
that Tim Kaine had a positive economic message to suburbanites,
especially late in the campaign, that stressed his willingness to
give them greater powers to shape uncontrolled development and all
the quality-of-life problems that go with it.

That Northern Virginians responded to this message is hardly
surprising, given the incredible traffic congestion, the volatile
housing prices, the overwhelmed public facilities, and the
environmental problems that characterize so much of daily life in
the region.

But there's an important lesson here for Democrats in other parts of
the country as well.

Remember the widespread debate in the late 1990s
about "sprawl," "smart growth," and "quality-of-life?" Well, that
debate's still going on at the grassroots in high-growth areas
throughout the sunbelt and elsewhere, and just as in the 1990s, it
offers an important opportunity for Democrats, who, unlike
Republicans, aren't ideologically opposed to public-sector activism
at the state and local levels, and don't normally think of
developers as a partisan constituency group.

This emphatically doesn't mean embracing an anti-growth message of
mandatory development controls, much less lecturing suburbanites
that they need to move back into cities, give up their cars, and
give up the entire lifestyle that made the suburbs appealing in the
first place. On the contrary: it means taking seriously the
distinctive challenges of suburban life, from overcrowded schools
and vanishing "green spaces" to two-hour commutes and rising
property taxes.

Nor, just as importantly, does "taking suburbs seriously" mean
abandoning traditional Democratic constituencies in pursuit of
upscale voters. For one thing, the middle-class wage-earning
families that Democrats rightly fret about are increasingly found in
fast-growing suburbs rather than in the cities -- young families,
and increasingly minority families, who move to the exurbs because
that's where the new jobs are and that's where they can afford to
buy a home and send their kids to decent public schools.

Moreover Democrats should be able to walk and chew gum at the same
time, dealing with the economic challenges of "low-growth" areas
like trade dislocation, offshoring, and the erosion of collective
bargaining power, along with the equally valid challenges of high- growth areas. Certainly Virginia Democrats have figured that out,
with an economic message that is rebuilding the party's strength in
struggling urban and rural communities as well as in thriving
suburbs.

As many worried Democrats noted after the 2004 presidential
election, George W. Bush won 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties
in America. Writing these communities off, or worse yet, treating
their economic challenges as less legitimate than those affecting
other Americans, would not bode well for the party's future
prospects.

There's a better approach that could help make Democrats a truly
competitive national party, while rebuilding its strength in the
heart of the American middle class. Taking suburbs seriously is the
right thing to do and the smart thing to do. Just ask Governor- elect Tim Kaine.