Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Disregarding the fact that Buddy Holly is perhaps one of the most overrated artists of all time

I hardly see how a statue in Lubbock qualifies him as overrated.

[ilikenewsocks]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore

* Next week, China bans her for Shanghai Surprise

Can they throw her in jail next time she visits for human rights violations? That thing was a crime against humanity.

On the whole ban-the-bible thing, I've always wanted to vacation somewhere in the rural south, get good and liquored up and pick a fight with some fat hillbilly, just so I could tell him "I'm about to get all Old Testament on your ass".

This has nothing to do with anything, and I return you to your regularly schedule Cat Stevens is/isn't a terrorist sympathizer argument. Happy Friday, all.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Not Me
Disagree that Stevens didn't bring it on himself. He did. However, I agree that it is not a good thing that it is harder for non-muslims foreigners to get into the US. It is, however, a good thing that it is harder for muslim foreigners to get into the US.

The problem isn't that our borders have been hardened. The problem is that we didn't harden them selectively to prevent muslims from entering. It is the muslims who are the threat to us.

Hey! I know! Let's raise up a crusade and take back the Holy Land (and everything else within 1000 miles of it)!

[SlaveNoMore]

Gattigap
An editorial on Sept. 22 in The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, for example, asked, "Holy Moley! Who concocts this gibberish?"

Speaking of gibberish

Anyone from the DNC going to step forward and accept responsibility for the mass e-mail to college students with the "George Bush will reinstate the draft and get you!!!!" message?

Or the one from Kerry about "over a million blacks being disenfranchised" in Florida alone.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Speaking of gibberish

Anyone from the DNC going to step forward and accept responsibility for the mass e-mail to college students with the "George Bush will reinstate the draft and get you!!!!" message?

Or the one from Kerry about "over a million blacks being disenfranchised" in Florida alone.

I didn't hear about this email. Did you get one?

Did Coltrane forward you his?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Speaking of gibberish

Anyone from the DNC going to step forward and accept responsibility for the mass e-mail to college students with the "George Bush will reinstate the draft and get you!!!!" message?

Or the one from Kerry about "over a million blacks being disenfranchised" in Florida alone.

You're going to have to provide a little more detail if you want us to respond, since there aren't enough tinfoil hats to go around.

[Gattigap]

From Time:

• SOMETIMES IT FEELS AS IF WHEN THE STAKES GET HIGHER, THE QUALITY OF DEBATE GETS LOWER. Oh, I don't think there's any question about that. Now it's gone Malcolm X. It's gone "by any means necessary." I mean, how many campaigns do you remember where Hitler has come up a lot? If I were the Hitler people, I'd be raising a stink. I think he's gotta protect his legacy. He's gotta come out and go, Look, all right, you guys have your flaws but, hey, I was evil, baby!
  
  ****
  
  DOES IT WEIRD YOU OUT THAT PEOPLE TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY AS A POLITICAL PUNDIT? Well, I don't know that that's the case. But I will tell you this: I don't put any stock in political commentating. Political commentators at this point are mostly rewarded by the extremity of their viewpoint. Most of the analysis you see on television doesn't reflect the general sense that the public feels about a situation. It's two sides advocating, with no arbitration.
  
  SO YOU'D LIKE TO SEE MORE ARBITRATION? That's the change I would like to see — that the news media take a more active role in arbitrating, in mediating, in credibility. The way I've always looked at it is, politicians are — When you go to a zoo and you see a monkey throwing its s___, you can't get mad. That's what monkeys do. But you want the media at some point to go, "No! Bad monkey!" And that's really the direction that it should be going in. Not for Republican desires or Democrat desires but for truth.

*Platonically, of course. NTAWWT. Gosh, that makes me miss Penske. [sniff]

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
I actually wouldn't be surprised by this. Failed assault weapons ban renewal aside, DiFi has been doing a reverse Scarborough (now that's a term I never thought I'd coin) for a while now. The Green party aficionado whose rants I am subjected to whenever I go to the office refrigerator bitches about her conservative streak as often as he explains to me how Halliburton is inserting subliminal messages into SpongeBob episodes to get kids to support drilling in ANWR.

I will never vote for DiFi because she single handedly killed term limits.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I will never vote for DiFi because she single handedly killed term limits.

Then your secret love is for Boxer?

[Crush] Whoa. You've got serious voting issues, dude. [/Crush]

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Yglesias in Tapped, on the same article (by the DC bureau chief for the SF Chronicle):

• MEDIA SLOWLY AWAKENING. Marc Sandalow of The San Francisco Chronicle notes that "[n]o argument is more central to the Republican attack on Sen. John Kerry than the assertion that the Democrat has flip-flopped on Iraq." Nevertheless, writes Sandalow, "an examination of Kerry's words in more than 200 speeches and statements, comments during candidate forums and answers to reporters' questions does not support the accusation." Imagine that. Knight-Ridder's Thomas Fitzgerald has a similar piece. Kerry's "positions are not contradictory, but his attempts to explain the distinction between them are often complicated, and they have given President Bush an opening to caricature Kerry as a flip-flopper. However, beneath the torrent of campaign verbiage, Kerry's position on Iraq for the past two years has been consistent and defensible - just difficult to sell in a sound-bite world."
  It's about time, though as Nick Confessore wrote yesterday I would appreciate it if the media revisionists would stop pretending that Kerry's acquisition of an image as a flip-flopper is something that just happened, rather than something the press itself did. Going back to read the text of the speeches Bush and Kerry gave at the time of the vote on the use of force resolution isn't exactly the most arduous investigative reporting I can imagine.

Rich, very rich

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Then your secret love is for Boxer?

[Crush] Whoa. You've got serious voting issues, dude. [/Crush]

No, but Polosi is kind of hot for an older broad.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Rich, very rich

I think that belonged in the DiFi thread.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
You're going to have to provide a little more detail if you want us to respond, since there aren't enough tinfoil hats to go around.

On which one?

I know Matt, Kevin and Josh like to ignore these Dem gaffes, so someone needs to point them out to you.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The significance of the distinction between whether his money went to the directly or indirectly, and with or without his knowledge, was the whole point of my prior posts. I'll wager that he didn't send money directly to Hamas, but I've already demonstrated how little I know about Cat Stevens.

Turns out that if you listen to Tea for the Tillerman backwards, it says "Kill the Infidel."

I read it in a blog, so it must be true.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Hey! I know! Let's raise up a crusade and take back the Holy Land (and everything else within 1000 miles of it)!

You silly ass. Didn't you hear Rummy slip up in front of the Press Club and keep referring to Iraq and Afghanistan as "Phase One?"