Still Hating America.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Adder
Yes, this is what is so frightening about continuing to let this administration do anything.

No choice

Originally posted by Adder
The current situation was always strong possibility, and was predicted by many. Why the administration failed to plan at all for it, I have no idea.

I think its a bit more complex than that statement suggests, but -- two second-hand statements were attributed to Henry Kissinger (one of the few outsiders Bush & Cheney talked to relatively often about issues) in Bob Woodward's book most recent book that may be revealing:

(a) Most importantly -- Kissinger allegedly said that the administration had no mechanism in place for systematically considering and planning for the "downside" (or worst case results) of proposed policies.

If so, that is a very serious indictment of the National Security Advisor, SecDef, etc. -- but it also speaks to both the choices Bush made in personnel and how they thought about what he wants to hear.

(b) He also allegedly said that he liked Bush, but wasn't sure he knew how to run a government.

S_A_M

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Spanky
[polls, and fewer deaths in Switzerland-by-the-Tigris]

Ah, polls. Wonderful things, really.

• The proportion of Iraqis who say their lives are better now than they were before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 has slipped below half for the first time. Forty-two percent say "things overall" in their lives have improved, down from 51 percent who said so in 2005 and 56 percent in 2004. Thirty-six percent now say things in their lives are worse today; 22 percent say their lives are about the same.
  
  This question and many others in the survey elicited sharply different responses along sectarian and ethnic lines. For example, most Shiites and Kurds say things have improved in their lives and for the country overall; fewer than one in 10 Sunnis agree. Former President Saddam Hussein repressed the country's Shiite majority and its Kurdish minority while granting favored status to members of his own Sunni sect.

Though members of different sects seem to disagree over how fabulous things are, one thing they can all agree on is that Iraqis aren't really running much of anything.

• Despite U.S. efforts to promote the emergence of a free-standing Iraqi government and political system, 59 percent of Iraqis said the U.S. government "controls things in our country," up from 24 percent who said so in 2005. The percentage of those who say that the Iraqi government is in control dropped from 44 percent in 2005 to 34 percent in the current poll.

Gattigap

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by LessinSF
I prefer to think of him as benevolent - intentionally creating an oil-price crisis so as to raise prices and encourage alternative energy development.

LessinColon, Argentina

Finally.

Someone has identified the upside of the Iraq mess. Spanky, you want to hire this guy for the next campaign.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Ah, polls. Wonderful things, really.

• The proportion of Iraqis who say their lives are better now than they were before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 has slipped below half for the first time. Forty-two percent say "things overall" in their lives have improved, down from 51 percent who said so in 2005 and 56 percent in 2004. Thirty-six percent now say things in their lives are worse today; 22 percent say their lives are about the same.
  
  This question and many others in the survey elicited sharply different responses along sectarian and ethnic lines. For example, most Shiites and Kurds say things have improved in their lives and for the country overall; fewer than one in 10 Sunnis agree. Former President Saddam Hussein repressed the country's Shiite majority and its Kurdish minority while granting favored status to members of his own Sunni sect.

Though members of different sects seem to disagree over how fabulous things are, one thing they can all agree on is that Iraqis aren't really running much of anything.

• Despite U.S. efforts to promote the emergence of a free-standing Iraqi government and political system, 59 percent of Iraqis said the U.S. government "controls things in our country," up from 24 percent who said so in 2005. The percentage of those who say that the Iraqi government is in control dropped from 44 percent in 2005 to 34 percent in the current poll.

Gattigap

In Spanky-land, you only believe polls when they support what you already think (or when you can pretend to read them that way).

So, you believe a poll that says that most Iraqis do not describe the current conflict as a "civil war".*

But you ignore the polls that consistently say that most Iraqis think US forces make security worse, or that they want US forces out within a year.


*For the record, I agree. In a civil war, you can identify who is fighting, and you usually have the ability to conduct diplomacy and negotiations. In Iraq, we can't begin to list all of the factions that are killing people. This isn't civil war, it's armed chaos.

[Diane_Keaton]

Dang. Whoever this Ehrenstein guy, he'd better be black and even then...

Obama the 'Magic Negro'
The Illinois senator lends himself to white America's idealized, less-than-real black man.
By David Ehrenstein, L.A.-based DAVID EHRENSTEIN writes about Hollywood and politics.
March 19, 2007

AS EVERY CARBON-BASED life form on this planet surely knows, Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, is running for president. Since making his announcement, there has been no end of commentary about him in all quarters — musing over his charisma and the prospect he offers of being the first African American to be elected to the White House.

But it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."

The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.-wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro .

He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.

As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic."

Poitier really poured on the "magic" in "Lilies of the Field" (for which he won a best actor Oscar) and "To Sir, With Love" (which, along with "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," made him a No. 1 box-office attraction). In these films, Poitier triumphs through yeoman service to his white benefactors. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" is particularly striking in this regard, as it posits miscegenation without evoking sex. (Talk about magic!)

The same can't quite be said of Freeman in "Driving Miss Daisy," "Seven" and the seemingly endless series of films in which he plays ersatz paterfamilias to a white woman bedeviled by a serial killer. But at least he survives, unlike Crothers in "The Shining," in which psychic premonitions inspire him to rescue a white family he barely knows and get killed for his trouble. This heart-tug trope is parodied in Gus Van Sant's "Elephant." The film's sole black student at a Columbine-like high school arrives in the midst of a slaughter, helps a girl escape and is immediately gunned down. See what helping the white man gets you?

And what does the white man get out of the bargain? That's a question asked by John Guare in "Six Degrees of Separation," his brilliant retelling of the true saga of David Hampton — a young, personable gay con man who in the 1980s passed himself off as the son of none other than the real Sidney Poitier. Though he started small, using the ruse to get into Studio 54, Hampton discovered that countless gullible, well-heeled New Yorkers, vulnerable to the Magic Negro myth, were only too eager to believe in his baroque fantasy. (One of the few who wasn't fooled was Andy Warhol, who was astonished his underlings believed Hampton's whoppers. Clearly Warhol had no need for the accouterment of interracial "goodwill.")

But the same can't be said of most white Americans, whose desire for a noble, healing Negro hasn't faded. That's where Obama comes in: as Poitier's "real" fake son.

The senator's famously stem-winding stump speeches have been drawing huge crowds to hear him talk of uniting rather than dividing. A praiseworthy goal. Consequently, even the mild criticisms thrown his way have been waved away, "magically." He used to smoke, but now he doesn't; he racked up a bunch of delinquent parking tickets, but he paid them all back with an apology. And hey, is looking good in a bathing suit a bad thing?

The only mud that momentarily stuck was criticism (white and black alike) concerning Obama's alleged "inauthenticty," as compared to such sterling examples of "genuine" blackness as Al Sharpton and Snoop Dogg. Speaking as an African American whose last name has led to his racial "credentials" being challenged — often several times a day — I know how pesky this sort of thing can be.

Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record or what he's written in his two (count 'em) books, or even what he's actually said in those stem-winders. It's the way he's said it that counts the most. It's his manner, which, as presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Biden ham-fistedly reminded us, is "articulate." His tone is always genial, his voice warm and unthreatening, and he hasn't called his opponents names (despite being baited by the media).

Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.

Jeez. No way is this author black - most likely an annoying leftist pscyhobabbler. Don Cheadle should kick the author's scrawny little ass.

[Adder]

Originally posted by Diane_Keaton
Dang. Whoever this Ehrenstein guy, he'd better be black and even then...



Jeez. No way is this author black - most likely an annoying leftist pscyhobabbler. Don Cheadle should kick the author's scrawny little ass.

The author says he is black in the article. And this reads more like academic races theory than something offensive (unless you are offended by radical academics, like Spanky).

But I agree with you in that I don't think Don Cheadle fits into the category he is describing.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

From the iPod to the iRack . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM_MkWgbt3k

A little strained, but kind of funny -- typical Mad TV.

S_A_M

[Adder]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
From the iPod to the iRack . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM_MkWgbt3k

A little strained, but kind of funny -- typical Mad TV.

S_A_M

It drives me nuts when people who should know better pronounce it I-Rack. Personally, I think it is an excellent indicator of whether you should put any weight on the speaker's views on the subject.

This, of course, disqualifies about 65% of our elected officials. Which is probably about right.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Adder
The author says he is black in the article. And this reads more like academic races theory than something offensive (unless you are offended by radical academics, like Spanky).

But I agree with you in that I don't think Don Cheadle fits into the category he is describing.

It's a load of pseudo-academic crap. You come up with a novel-sounding theory -- preferably, one designed to be slightly outrageous, because that will increase your notoreity, making you more attractive to grant-making organizations. Obama isn't brilliant, interesting, dynamic, a good-politician. He's the light-skinned negro that white people can vote for without feeling like they are giving Sambo or the Crips the keys to the country.

Then, you squeeze a bunch of people or events into that theory -- regardless of how poorly they fit. And you never bother to prove that they fit - you just say it. So, you say that Sidney Poitier's character in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner succeeded because of his "yeoman service to his white benefactors," when really he was a brilliant, fantastically successful doctor, who succeeded because his father worked himself halfway to death to send his son to the very best schools. (Note: The author seems to think that academic success is somehow demeaning to black people, or places them in service to whites. No wonder he dislikes Obama, who has attacked this very attitude in the black community.)

And, of course, you never suggest what character type you would prefer. "Criticism" means being negative, doesn't it? I mean, I'm sure this author thinks that some successful black people, other than himself, are worthwhile. It's just hard to tell who -- clearly, not politicians, athletes, actors, or musicians. And clearly not the educated, successful professionals that Sidney Poitier has played. So who? Nah, that would be too difficult to say.



Christ, I hate academia.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Adder
It drives me nuts when people who should know better pronounce it I-Rack. Personally, I think it is an excellent indicator of whether you should put any weight on the speaker's views on the subject.

It is a mistake to (mis)underestimate people because they don't speak like you.

Grammar timmies don't run the world.

S_A_M

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
It is a mistake to (mis)underestimate people because they don't speak like you.

Grammar timmies don't run the world.

S_A_M

You should post that on the FB. I'd like to watch what happens.

[Adder]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
It is a mistake to (mis)underestimate people because they don't speak like you.

Grammar timmies don't run the world.

S_A_M

This isn't a question of grammar, it is a question of actually knowing the name of the country you blathering about.

I am not suggesting that the speaker need affect a perfect native pronunciation. But the word "eye" does not appear in it's name. It is a small price to pay to qualify one's self to enter the debate.

[LessinSF]

Originally posted by Adder
This isn't a question of grammar, it is a question of actually knowing the name of the country you blathering about.

I am not suggesting that the speaker need affect a perfect native pronunciation. But the word "eye" does not appear in it's name. It is a small price to pay to qualify one's self to enter the debate.

How do you say Peru? You are unqualified unless you pronounce it pay-roo.

How do you say Iran? You are unqualified unless you pronounce it ee-ron.

LessinRosario, Argentina

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Adder
This isn't a question of grammar, it is a question of actually knowing the name of the country you blathering about.

I am not suggesting that the speaker need affect a perfect native pronunciation. But the word "eye" does not appear in it's name. It is a small price to pay to qualify one's self to enter the debate.

You remind me of the politically correct folks (back when "politically correct" was an insult used by those on the liberal/left side) who sounded like they were gargling when they said "Nicaragua".

[SlaveNoMore]

LessinSF
How do you say Peru? You are unqualified unless you pronounce it pay-roo.

How do you say Iran? You are unqualified unless you pronounce it ee-ron.

LessinRosario, Argentina

How do you say Houston?