Number of times Camille Paglia refers to herself in the first person ("I," "I'm," "I've," "me," "my") in her Salon comeback column today:
94.
Oh -- she likes Edwards, she'll vote for Hillary if she gets the nomination, but she still thinks the song parodies on Rush Limbaugh's show are a hoot. Oh, and she seems to have a crush on Mitt Romney.
In 1994, on my book tour for "Vamps & Tramps," I was sitting late one night in the empty lobby of WBZ-AM NewsRadio.... While waiting to go on the David Brudnoy Show ... I listened intently to the guest on air before me -- Mitt Romney, whom I had never heard of but who was then mounting his unsuccessful senatorial challenge to Ted Kennedy.
I was very impressed. When Romney emerged, I shook his hand and said, "You're going to be president!" -- something I have never said to anyone, before or since.
And yes, she still thinks Sandra Bernhard is a genius.
Don't click over. Please. You'll only encourage her.
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UPDATE: I realize I left out the most bizarre part:
This past Sunday night, there was a floating, mesmerizingly sensuous moment on Matt Drudge's radio show as he segued long from the midnight news with Yaz's "Winter Kills" ("Green in your love on bright days/ You grew sun blind/ You thought me unkind/ To remind you how winter kills"). No one but Drudge these days uses AM radio for artistic mood and ambience. People who know Drudge simply through his Web site are clueless about his eclectic musical sensibility.
Is this how Camille chills -- a few candles, a glass of Beaujolais and Matt Drudge's radio show?
By the way, this is the first and last time Matt Drudge's name and "sensuous" will ever appear in the same sentence.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Hey, Joe Klein, this is just silly:
I suspect that Obama's aim is to rebuild the bonfire of Howard Dean's grass-roots campaign, minus the scream. But raging infernos don't just happen. First comes courage.
I give Klein credit for saying that Dean had courage ("Dean never would have had his bonfire if he hadn't opposed the invasion of Iraq in clear, plain, inspiring English") -- but Obama isn't running a Dean-like campaign. He's running a very mainstream campaign as a young man in a hurry, a la JFK or Bill Clinton -- which is a smart move considering what usually happens to Democratic insurgents (Dean, Ned Lamont, Jesse Jackson). So Klein is declaring Obama a likely failure at something he's not even trying to accomplish.
Also, who says insurgent "bonfires" happen only when the candidate has "courage"? Is that what George Wallace had in 1968 -- courage? How about Ross Perot in '92 and '96, or, hell, Jesse Ventura in 1998?
Joe, stop measuring every Democrat against your misty watercolor '60s memories. Bobby Kennedy died a long time ago, and Eugene McCarthy's been gone for a while, too.
I suspect that Obama's aim is to rebuild the bonfire of Howard Dean's grass-roots campaign, minus the scream. But raging infernos don't just happen. First comes courage.
I give Klein credit for saying that Dean had courage ("Dean never would have had his bonfire if he hadn't opposed the invasion of Iraq in clear, plain, inspiring English") -- but Obama isn't running a Dean-like campaign. He's running a very mainstream campaign as a young man in a hurry, a la JFK or Bill Clinton -- which is a smart move considering what usually happens to Democratic insurgents (Dean, Ned Lamont, Jesse Jackson). So Klein is declaring Obama a likely failure at something he's not even trying to accomplish.
Also, who says insurgent "bonfires" happen only when the candidate has "courage"? Is that what George Wallace had in 1968 -- courage? How about Ross Perot in '92 and '96, or, hell, Jesse Ventura in 1998?
Joe, stop measuring every Democrat against your misty watercolor '60s memories. Bobby Kennedy died a long time ago, and Eugene McCarthy's been gone for a while, too.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Priorities:
Due to federal budget constraints some 3000 patients could possibly be prevented from taking part in cancer trials nationwide, according to Robert L. Comis, president of the Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups....
The budget cutbacks will affect trials for all cancers, but especially those studying sarcomas, and head and neck cancers.
The Southwest Oncology Group will halt all sarcoma, and head and neck trials. The Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group will eliminate its brain and sarcoma trials. Many other groups will delay various late stage cancer trials, thus, pushing back possible new treatments for needy patients.
These recent setbacks are especially hard to swallow considering that many positive trends have materialized over the last couple of years, including the decline of cancer death rates, and the re-thinking of cancer as a chronic condition, rather than a terminal illness....
Enjoy those tax cuts!
(You can also watch this report that was broadcast on ABC tonight on the same subject.)
Due to federal budget constraints some 3000 patients could possibly be prevented from taking part in cancer trials nationwide, according to Robert L. Comis, president of the Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups....
The budget cutbacks will affect trials for all cancers, but especially those studying sarcomas, and head and neck cancers.
The Southwest Oncology Group will halt all sarcoma, and head and neck trials. The Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group will eliminate its brain and sarcoma trials. Many other groups will delay various late stage cancer trials, thus, pushing back possible new treatments for needy patients.
These recent setbacks are especially hard to swallow considering that many positive trends have materialized over the last couple of years, including the decline of cancer death rates, and the re-thinking of cancer as a chronic condition, rather than a terminal illness....
Enjoy those tax cuts!
(You can also watch this report that was broadcast on ABC tonight on the same subject.)
SLICK MOVE
From today's New York Post:
Rudy Giuliani, a prostate-cancer survivor who fought the disease seven years ago, will have a "comprehensive" physical exam and release the results, his aides said yesterday....
Asked by The Post about the ex-mayor's plans, a Giuliani campaign source said he had an overall checkup in December and got a "clean bill of health" and is cancer-free.
"The mayor will have a comprehensive physical examination, and his doctors will release the results of the examination to the public," said a campaign aide....
Assuming he's still as healthy as he was two months ago, that's very smart. Why? Well, as Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics noted recently, Giuliani's poll numbers in New York actually weren't at their worst just before 9/11 -- they went up after bottoming out at 37% approval/57% disapproval on April 19, 2000. What happened after that? On April 27, Giuliani announced his cancer diagnosis. He dropped out of the Senate race with Hillary Clinton, and by June 14 his approval/disapproval was 49%/45% -- his best showing in 18 months. (By July 2001, he was at 50%/40%.)
Revealing the checkup results is Rudy's way of letting America know he's had cancer -- which a lot of Americans probably don't know, and which is sure to elicit a lot of public sympathy, just as it did here in New York. And, if he's healthy, drawing attention to this fact is unlikely to hurt him in the race, given the fact that his chief rival is also a cancer survivor.
The December checkup went by unnoticed, even here in New York, but expect this test to be played up in a big way by Giuliani's unofficial press office, the Murdoch and Murdoch-affiliated media. You'll see trhe results in the Post, on Fox, and on Drudge. I think one key goal of the Giuliani campaign right now is to make him seem appealing and likable (see also the recent kiss cover of the Post) -- probably in anticipation of a campaign in which Rudy and his people plan to get very, very nasty.
From today's New York Post:
Rudy Giuliani, a prostate-cancer survivor who fought the disease seven years ago, will have a "comprehensive" physical exam and release the results, his aides said yesterday....
Asked by The Post about the ex-mayor's plans, a Giuliani campaign source said he had an overall checkup in December and got a "clean bill of health" and is cancer-free.
"The mayor will have a comprehensive physical examination, and his doctors will release the results of the examination to the public," said a campaign aide....
Assuming he's still as healthy as he was two months ago, that's very smart. Why? Well, as Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics noted recently, Giuliani's poll numbers in New York actually weren't at their worst just before 9/11 -- they went up after bottoming out at 37% approval/57% disapproval on April 19, 2000. What happened after that? On April 27, Giuliani announced his cancer diagnosis. He dropped out of the Senate race with Hillary Clinton, and by June 14 his approval/disapproval was 49%/45% -- his best showing in 18 months. (By July 2001, he was at 50%/40%.)
Revealing the checkup results is Rudy's way of letting America know he's had cancer -- which a lot of Americans probably don't know, and which is sure to elicit a lot of public sympathy, just as it did here in New York. And, if he's healthy, drawing attention to this fact is unlikely to hurt him in the race, given the fact that his chief rival is also a cancer survivor.
The December checkup went by unnoticed, even here in New York, but expect this test to be played up in a big way by Giuliani's unofficial press office, the Murdoch and Murdoch-affiliated media. You'll see trhe results in the Post, on Fox, and on Drudge. I think one key goal of the Giuliani campaign right now is to make him seem appealing and likable (see also the recent kiss cover of the Post) -- probably in anticipation of a campaign in which Rudy and his people plan to get very, very nasty.
PANDER BEAR McCAIN
John McCain, not content to limit this month's shameless pandering to the far right to a speech before the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute, is planning on Sunday to
speak in favor of abstinence-only education at the Carolina Pregnancy Center's Life in the City event at Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium.
Yes, because the young, single John McCain was such a model of purity and traditional morality as a young, single man at Annapolis:
He proved to be a natural leader, his magnetic personality making him the unofficial trail boss for a lusty band of carousers and partygoers known as the Bad Bunch.... [Chuck] Larson, an ex-officio member of the Bad Bunch, was McCain's closest friend at the Academy and for some years after.... They shared a sense of the absurd and an eye for the ladies. Larson, though, was cautious.... McCain didn't know what the word meant. As one classmate put it, being on liberty with John McCain was like being in a train wreck.
And, of course, his later life also wasn't exactly a model of virtue as fundamentalist Christians define it:
McCain was still married and living with his wife in 1979 while, according to The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, "aggressively courting a 25-year-old woman who was as beautiful as she was rich." McCain divorced his wife, who had raised their three children while he was imprisoned in Vietnam, then launched his political career with his new wife's family money. In 2000, McCain managed to deflect media questioning about his first marriage with a deft admission of responsibility for its failure.
The event on Sunday is "free for high school juniors and seniors." I hope a couple show up and ask him if he waited until marriage. Either time.
(Via Feministing.)
John McCain, not content to limit this month's shameless pandering to the far right to a speech before the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute, is planning on Sunday to
speak in favor of abstinence-only education at the Carolina Pregnancy Center's Life in the City event at Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium.
Yes, because the young, single John McCain was such a model of purity and traditional morality as a young, single man at Annapolis:
He proved to be a natural leader, his magnetic personality making him the unofficial trail boss for a lusty band of carousers and partygoers known as the Bad Bunch.... [Chuck] Larson, an ex-officio member of the Bad Bunch, was McCain's closest friend at the Academy and for some years after.... They shared a sense of the absurd and an eye for the ladies. Larson, though, was cautious.... McCain didn't know what the word meant. As one classmate put it, being on liberty with John McCain was like being in a train wreck.
And, of course, his later life also wasn't exactly a model of virtue as fundamentalist Christians define it:
McCain was still married and living with his wife in 1979 while, according to The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, "aggressively courting a 25-year-old woman who was as beautiful as she was rich." McCain divorced his wife, who had raised their three children while he was imprisoned in Vietnam, then launched his political career with his new wife's family money. In 2000, McCain managed to deflect media questioning about his first marriage with a deft admission of responsibility for its failure.
The event on Sunday is "free for high school juniors and seniors." I hope a couple show up and ask him if he waited until marriage. Either time.
(Via Feministing.)
BECAUSE, I GUESS, BUYING A WHOLE BUNCH OF SCARLET A'S WOULD BE A BUDGET-BUSTER FOR THE STATE
From AP:
Legislation introduced in Tennessee would require death certificates for aborted fetuses, which likely would create public records identifying women who have abortions.
Rep. Stacey Campfield, a Republican, said his bill would provide a way to track how many abortions are performed. He predicted it would pass in the Republican-controlled Senate but would have a hard time making it through the Democratic House....
The number of abortions reported to the state Office of Vital Records is already publicly available....
There's clearly no pupose to this except intimidation through the revelation of the names of women who've had abortions -- but, then again, Campfield is kind of an intimidation buff. A couple of years ago he sponsored a bill to impose David Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights" in Tennessee.
Oh, and even though he's white, a while back he tried to join the state legislature's Black Caucus -- and, when he was rebuffed, he told AP
that his "understanding is that the KKK doesn't even ban members by race." He added the KKK "has less racist bylaws" than the Black Caucus.
(In fact, the Black Caucus will grant "honorary membership" to "those persons whose belief and actions contribute to the purpose for which this caucus was formed" -- which, I assume, excludes Mr. C.)
I don't know if there's any chance of ever voting this showboating blowhard out, but if it happens, I'm sure he has a great future as a talk-show host on Fox News.
From AP:
Legislation introduced in Tennessee would require death certificates for aborted fetuses, which likely would create public records identifying women who have abortions.
Rep. Stacey Campfield, a Republican, said his bill would provide a way to track how many abortions are performed. He predicted it would pass in the Republican-controlled Senate but would have a hard time making it through the Democratic House....
The number of abortions reported to the state Office of Vital Records is already publicly available....
There's clearly no pupose to this except intimidation through the revelation of the names of women who've had abortions -- but, then again, Campfield is kind of an intimidation buff. A couple of years ago he sponsored a bill to impose David Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights" in Tennessee.
Oh, and even though he's white, a while back he tried to join the state legislature's Black Caucus -- and, when he was rebuffed, he told AP
that his "understanding is that the KKK doesn't even ban members by race." He added the KKK "has less racist bylaws" than the Black Caucus.
(In fact, the Black Caucus will grant "honorary membership" to "those persons whose belief and actions contribute to the purpose for which this caucus was formed" -- which, I assume, excludes Mr. C.)
I don't know if there's any chance of ever voting this showboating blowhard out, but if it happens, I'm sure he has a great future as a talk-show host on Fox News.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
SEPARATED AT BIRTH?
Surely I can't be the first person to notice this resemblance:
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(Those among you who are unfamiliar with the image on the right should go here.)
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UPDATE: Nope, I'm not the first.
Surely I can't be the first person to notice this resemblance:
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(Those among you who are unfamiliar with the image on the right should go here.)
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UPDATE: Nope, I'm not the first.
REALLY UPSET ABOUT THAT DRAG THING, AREN'T THEY?
Rudy Giuliani is the leading '08 GOP candidate -- in Alabama.
Rudy Giuliani is the leading '08 GOP candidate -- in Alabama.
OOPS -- NEVER MIND
Dinesh D'Souza's book just slithered onto the New York Times bestseller list, at #15.
Hmmm ... #19 to completely out of the top 35 to #15 in three weeks. The Times hasn't detected any bulk orders, but something seems fishy.
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UPDATE: Incidentally, D'Souza's book is nowhere to be found on USA Today's bestseller list.
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UPDATE: Greetings, Carpetbagger Report readers. The newest list isn't up at the Times site yet; it's circulating via e-mail and will be posted over the weekend. The currently posted (D'Souza-free) list is here; the previous list is here.
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UPDATE: Here's the new list, with D'Souza at #15.
Dinesh D'Souza's book just slithered onto the New York Times bestseller list, at #15.
Hmmm ... #19 to completely out of the top 35 to #15 in three weeks. The Times hasn't detected any bulk orders, but something seems fishy.
****
UPDATE: Incidentally, D'Souza's book is nowhere to be found on USA Today's bestseller list.
****
UPDATE: Greetings, Carpetbagger Report readers. The newest list isn't up at the Times site yet; it's circulating via e-mail and will be posted over the weekend. The currently posted (D'Souza-free) list is here; the previous list is here.
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UPDATE: Here's the new list, with D'Souza at #15.
I might buy the theory advanced today by Harold Meyerson in The Washington Post -- that Hillary Clinton, by being the most lukewarm opponent of the war among major Democratic candidates, could be the Ed Muskie of the 2008 race, the frontrunner who self-destructs -- if not for the obvious difference: Nixon's boys schemed to drive Muskie out of the race and worked to set up a Nixon-McGovern race; this time around, it's clear that Hillary is the major Democratic candidate GOP operatives fear the least, rightly or wrongly. If they really did fear her, believe me, she'd be the one being denounced as bin Laden's helpmeet from half a world away by the Australian prime minister. (They're going to save that kind odf attack on Hillary until after she clinches the nomination, if she does.)
I'm a fan of Shakes, I've said things that gave religious conservatives the vapors, so, yes, Driftglass and others: I'm Spartacus, too.
You know who should be taking Giuliani down a peg? Maureen Dowd. Isn't that her market niche -- that she's the equal-opportunity verbal bomb thrower, scourge of Clintons and Bushes alike?
But she won't, will she? How hard is it to imagine that she'll treat candidate Giuliani the way she treated another simulated tough guy, Arnold Schwarzenegger -- especially if, like Arnold, he sweet-talks her? (Read this bit of gush. And this one. As Joan Walsh wrote at the time in Salon, these columns were "valentines to Schwarzenegger, featuring banal banter between them that she seemed to think was politically revealing, but which basically read like flirting.")
For now, Dowd's obsessed with Barack Obama -- and I'm not sure if it's because, to her, Obama's a handsome guy who spurned her or a pretty girl who's going to beat her in the prom queen election.
It's the former if you assume that Dowd thinks she was nice to Obama in this column and, to some extent, this one, and now she thinks he wasn't sufficiently grateful. (For being called "Obambi" in column #2, presumably -- but hey, she also called him "Senator Clinton’s worst nightmare"! What higher praise is there, coming from Dowd?)
Today, here she goes again:
...The Illinois senator didn't have on an implacable mask of amiability, as Hillary did in Iowa. He didn't look happily in his element, like Bill Clinton. But he certainly didn't look as if he was straining to survive the Q .& A.'s, as W. did in the beginning.
So, not being like Hillary and Bill is bad, Maureen? I thought you thought they were the biggest phonies going? Oh well -- at least you graded Obama above Bush.
Beyond his smooth-jazz facade, the reassuring baritone and that ensorcelling smile, the 45-year-old had moments of looking conflicted.
Wow, that's good -- "smooth jazz": both black and phony black, inauthentic, watered down. Dowd ghettoizes him by race and then says he's not enough of a race man. Oh, and "ensorcelling"? First-rate thesaurus work. What it means is "bewitching"; it comes from the same root word as "sorcery" -- because, of course, all Democrats who aren't dolts are cunning, unnatural tricksters.
...Everything was a revelation for him: The advance team acronym RON, for Rest Overnight. Women squealing. "I saw a hat," he noted with a grin, "that said, 'Obama, clean and articulate.'"
Raise your hand if you think he's never been squealed at by women until now.
... and he's so slender his wedding band looked as if it was slipping off....
He's married and thin. Wow, Maureen, we know you've disappeared into a cliche, the single woman with low self-esteem, but could you make it any more obvious that you're jealous?
...After talking to high school journalists, he took a sniffy shot at the loutish reporters who were merely whispering where's the beef: "Take some notes, guys, that’s how it's done."
That one aspect of Obama's style is pretty much George W. Bush's entire style (cranked up, in Bush's case, to a much higher level of nastiness and snippiness). It worked for Bush for years. But I understand, Maureen -- it's unsettling to see a Democrat who doesn't seem to be wearing a sign that says "Kick me."
No fewer than three times last week, Mr. Obama got indignant about the beach-babe attention given to a shot of him in the Hawaiian surf.
Using the dreaded third person that some candidates slip into, he told the press that one of their favorite narratives boiled down to "Obama has pretty good style, he can deliver a pretty good speech, but he seems to prioritize rhetoric over substance.” After an ode to his own specificity, he tut-tutted, "You've been reporting on how I look in a swimsuit."
First of all, that's not the dreaded third person. The dreaded third person is referring to yourself by your own name. This is Obama quoting the way other people talk about him. When they talk about him, they don't refer to him as "I," they refer to him as "Obama." So when he quotes them, he says "Obama" -- because that's what they say. Am I going too fast for you, Maureen?
And did he "get indignant" -- or is this just a terse, effective press-bashing line? I heard him say this on 60 Minutes and it sounded like the latter to me.
He poses for the cover of Men's Vogue and then gets huffy when people don't treat him as Hannah Arendt.
I guess you'd prefer Muscle & Fitness, Maureen? (See the Schwarzenegger columns above.)
For some of us, it's hard to fathom being upset at getting accused of looking great in a bathing suit.
Oh, Carrie. Grab a quart of Haagen-Dazs and call Charlotte, Samantha, or Miranda.
I guess we've got at least a year of this to look forward to.
But she won't, will she? How hard is it to imagine that she'll treat candidate Giuliani the way she treated another simulated tough guy, Arnold Schwarzenegger -- especially if, like Arnold, he sweet-talks her? (Read this bit of gush. And this one. As Joan Walsh wrote at the time in Salon, these columns were "valentines to Schwarzenegger, featuring banal banter between them that she seemed to think was politically revealing, but which basically read like flirting.")
For now, Dowd's obsessed with Barack Obama -- and I'm not sure if it's because, to her, Obama's a handsome guy who spurned her or a pretty girl who's going to beat her in the prom queen election.
It's the former if you assume that Dowd thinks she was nice to Obama in this column and, to some extent, this one, and now she thinks he wasn't sufficiently grateful. (For being called "Obambi" in column #2, presumably -- but hey, she also called him "Senator Clinton’s worst nightmare"! What higher praise is there, coming from Dowd?)
Today, here she goes again:
...The Illinois senator didn't have on an implacable mask of amiability, as Hillary did in Iowa. He didn't look happily in his element, like Bill Clinton. But he certainly didn't look as if he was straining to survive the Q .& A.'s, as W. did in the beginning.
So, not being like Hillary and Bill is bad, Maureen? I thought you thought they were the biggest phonies going? Oh well -- at least you graded Obama above Bush.
Beyond his smooth-jazz facade, the reassuring baritone and that ensorcelling smile, the 45-year-old had moments of looking conflicted.
Wow, that's good -- "smooth jazz": both black and phony black, inauthentic, watered down. Dowd ghettoizes him by race and then says he's not enough of a race man. Oh, and "ensorcelling"? First-rate thesaurus work. What it means is "bewitching"; it comes from the same root word as "sorcery" -- because, of course, all Democrats who aren't dolts are cunning, unnatural tricksters.
...Everything was a revelation for him: The advance team acronym RON, for Rest Overnight. Women squealing. "I saw a hat," he noted with a grin, "that said, 'Obama, clean and articulate.'"
Raise your hand if you think he's never been squealed at by women until now.
... and he's so slender his wedding band looked as if it was slipping off....
He's married and thin. Wow, Maureen, we know you've disappeared into a cliche, the single woman with low self-esteem, but could you make it any more obvious that you're jealous?
...After talking to high school journalists, he took a sniffy shot at the loutish reporters who were merely whispering where's the beef: "Take some notes, guys, that’s how it's done."
That one aspect of Obama's style is pretty much George W. Bush's entire style (cranked up, in Bush's case, to a much higher level of nastiness and snippiness). It worked for Bush for years. But I understand, Maureen -- it's unsettling to see a Democrat who doesn't seem to be wearing a sign that says "Kick me."
No fewer than three times last week, Mr. Obama got indignant about the beach-babe attention given to a shot of him in the Hawaiian surf.
Using the dreaded third person that some candidates slip into, he told the press that one of their favorite narratives boiled down to "Obama has pretty good style, he can deliver a pretty good speech, but he seems to prioritize rhetoric over substance.” After an ode to his own specificity, he tut-tutted, "You've been reporting on how I look in a swimsuit."
First of all, that's not the dreaded third person. The dreaded third person is referring to yourself by your own name. This is Obama quoting the way other people talk about him. When they talk about him, they don't refer to him as "I," they refer to him as "Obama." So when he quotes them, he says "Obama" -- because that's what they say. Am I going too fast for you, Maureen?
And did he "get indignant" -- or is this just a terse, effective press-bashing line? I heard him say this on 60 Minutes and it sounded like the latter to me.
He poses for the cover of Men's Vogue and then gets huffy when people don't treat him as Hannah Arendt.
I guess you'd prefer Muscle & Fitness, Maureen? (See the Schwarzenegger columns above.)
For some of us, it's hard to fathom being upset at getting accused of looking great in a bathing suit.
Oh, Carrie. Grab a quart of Haagen-Dazs and call Charlotte, Samantha, or Miranda.
I guess we've got at least a year of this to look forward to.
IF WE LEAVE IRAQ, THE TERRORISTS WILL FOLLOW THE TROOPS HOME
That's what war supporters say, but I think Quiddity has the perfect solution to that problem.
That's what war supporters say, but I think Quiddity has the perfect solution to that problem.
According to the latest Gallup poll, Rudy Giuliani has a 16-point lead over John McCain among Republicans and Republican leaners. According to the full results, the lead is 40%-24%.
Oh, and another poll says Giuliani is leading the GOP field in Texas. Texas!
Gallup says Giuliani would beat Obama in the general election (handily) and Clinton (albeit barely). Scariest number: Giuliani's favorable-unfavorable numbers among all poll respondents are 66%-22%. People think he's just swell.
Is anybody -- in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party -- planning to do anything about this?
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Rudy has the ability to dazzle people. I don't what the hell is the problem with people who can be dazzled by him, but he has the skill.
A post at The American Spectator's blog:
Having read consecutively Brendan Miniter's column in the Wall Street Journal on Rudy Giuliani, and then Cal Thomas's sharing of a message from a soldier friend in Mosul, I am left with little doubt that if the Mayor was president now, we would be kicking butt in Iraq.
And to me, as a social conservative, Giuliani comes across as more sincere than Romney when he says he will appoint "strict constructionist" judges. I don't know why; he just does.
There you go: I don't know why; he just does. The guy who wrote this is a professional Christianist wingnut, and he's just smitten. We know Rudy can dazzle moderates (Chris Matthews: "How did he get the pee smell out of that subway?"), but the ability to bewitch seems to cut across more lines than a lot of people ever expected. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Oh, and another poll says Giuliani is leading the GOP field in Texas. Texas!
Gallup says Giuliani would beat Obama in the general election (handily) and Clinton (albeit barely). Scariest number: Giuliani's favorable-unfavorable numbers among all poll respondents are 66%-22%. People think he's just swell.
Is anybody -- in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party -- planning to do anything about this?
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Rudy has the ability to dazzle people. I don't what the hell is the problem with people who can be dazzled by him, but he has the skill.
A post at The American Spectator's blog:
Having read consecutively Brendan Miniter's column in the Wall Street Journal on Rudy Giuliani, and then Cal Thomas's sharing of a message from a soldier friend in Mosul, I am left with little doubt that if the Mayor was president now, we would be kicking butt in Iraq.
And to me, as a social conservative, Giuliani comes across as more sincere than Romney when he says he will appoint "strict constructionist" judges. I don't know why; he just does.
There you go: I don't know why; he just does. The guy who wrote this is a professional Christianist wingnut, and he's just smitten. We know Rudy can dazzle moderates (Chris Matthews: "How did he get the pee smell out of that subway?"), but the ability to bewitch seems to cut across more lines than a lot of people ever expected. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
CONSERVATIVE SCHOLARSHIP
Here's Dinesh D'Souza, the noted conservative scholar, in a recent speech:
Ultimately it's up to people in this room, people like us, to make the difference.
I want to end with that slogan from the '60s, "If not now, when? If not us, who?"
The man who said "If not now, when?" was, of course, Rabbi Hillel, who died in 10 A.D.
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By the way, unless I'm misreading the speech, D'Souza actually believes Sunni insurgents could take over Iraq -- all of it -- if American troops leave. ("... it's a pretty safe bet what would happen if the American protective hand is withdrawn.... The Iraqi insurgents are determined that a second major state fall into their hands, ideally to establish a Sunni model for the vast majority of Muslims in the world. And they've already said that if they get Iraq, their next targets will be Egypt and Saudi Arabia.") I guess they're going to do it with weapons from ... er, Iranian Shiites. And I guess letting Sunni neighborhoods be subject to ethnic cleansing by the Mahdi Army was just a ruse by the Sunnis to conceal their dominance of the country.
Here's Dinesh D'Souza, the noted conservative scholar, in a recent speech:
Ultimately it's up to people in this room, people like us, to make the difference.
I want to end with that slogan from the '60s, "If not now, when? If not us, who?"
The man who said "If not now, when?" was, of course, Rabbi Hillel, who died in 10 A.D.
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By the way, unless I'm misreading the speech, D'Souza actually believes Sunni insurgents could take over Iraq -- all of it -- if American troops leave. ("... it's a pretty safe bet what would happen if the American protective hand is withdrawn.... The Iraqi insurgents are determined that a second major state fall into their hands, ideally to establish a Sunni model for the vast majority of Muslims in the world. And they've already said that if they get Iraq, their next targets will be Egypt and Saudi Arabia.") I guess they're going to do it with weapons from ... er, Iranian Shiites. And I guess letting Sunni neighborhoods be subject to ethnic cleansing by the Mahdi Army was just a ruse by the Sunnis to conceal their dominance of the country.
This story with a happy ending is old news -- it's from December -- but I just found it in Church and State, the newsletter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (I missed it when it was on the AU blog):
A Pagan group in Albemarle County, Va., was recently given permission to advertise its multi-cultural holiday program to public school children -- and they have the Rev. Jerry Falwell to thank for it.
The dispute started last summer when Gabriel and Joshua Rakoski, twins who attend Hollymead Elementary School, sought permission to distribute fliers about their church's Vacation Bible School to their peers via "backpack mail." Many public schools use special folders placed in student backpacks to distribute notices about school events, and sometimes extra-curricular activities, to parents.
School officials originally denied the request from the twins' father, Ray Rakoski, citing a school policy barring "distribution of literature that is for partisan, sectarian, religious or political purposes."
A Charlottesville weekly newspaper, The Hook, reported that Rakoski "sicced the Liberty Counsel on the county," and the policy was soon revised to allow religious groups to use the backpack mail system. Liberty Counsel is a Religious Right legal group founded by Mathew Staver and now affiliated with Falwell.
It wasn't long before other religious groups decided to take advantage of the newly opened forum. A group of Pagans who attend Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church, a Unitarian-Universalist congregation in Charlottesville, created a one-page flier advertising a Dec. 9 event celebrating the December holidays with a Pagan twist. They submitted it to the public school and had it distributed through the backpack system.
...The flier invited people to “an educational program for children of all ages (and their adults), where we’ll explore the traditions of December and their origins, followed by a Pagan ritual to celebrate Yule.”
It concluded, “Come for one or both parts and bring your curiosity.” ...
Go, Pagans!
Not surprisingly, some parents are a tad upset that their complaints of religious persecution have helped a bad religion -- but there may not be much they can do about it:
Parents in the county have asked Americans United to help the school system draft a new policy governing distribution of religious fliers. That task may be complicated by an opinion from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Ruling in a case from Montgomery County, Md., the appellate court struck down a policy giving school officials unilateral ability to exclude certain private groups from the backpack system.
Don't you just love that Law of Unintended Consequences?
A Pagan group in Albemarle County, Va., was recently given permission to advertise its multi-cultural holiday program to public school children -- and they have the Rev. Jerry Falwell to thank for it.
The dispute started last summer when Gabriel and Joshua Rakoski, twins who attend Hollymead Elementary School, sought permission to distribute fliers about their church's Vacation Bible School to their peers via "backpack mail." Many public schools use special folders placed in student backpacks to distribute notices about school events, and sometimes extra-curricular activities, to parents.
School officials originally denied the request from the twins' father, Ray Rakoski, citing a school policy barring "distribution of literature that is for partisan, sectarian, religious or political purposes."
A Charlottesville weekly newspaper, The Hook, reported that Rakoski "sicced the Liberty Counsel on the county," and the policy was soon revised to allow religious groups to use the backpack mail system. Liberty Counsel is a Religious Right legal group founded by Mathew Staver and now affiliated with Falwell.
It wasn't long before other religious groups decided to take advantage of the newly opened forum. A group of Pagans who attend Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church, a Unitarian-Universalist congregation in Charlottesville, created a one-page flier advertising a Dec. 9 event celebrating the December holidays with a Pagan twist. They submitted it to the public school and had it distributed through the backpack system.
...The flier invited people to “an educational program for children of all ages (and their adults), where we’ll explore the traditions of December and their origins, followed by a Pagan ritual to celebrate Yule.”
It concluded, “Come for one or both parts and bring your curiosity.” ...
Go, Pagans!
Not surprisingly, some parents are a tad upset that their complaints of religious persecution have helped a bad religion -- but there may not be much they can do about it:
Parents in the county have asked Americans United to help the school system draft a new policy governing distribution of religious fliers. That task may be complicated by an opinion from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Ruling in a case from Montgomery County, Md., the appellate court struck down a policy giving school officials unilateral ability to exclude certain private groups from the backpack system.
Don't you just love that Law of Unintended Consequences?
BUSH ON THE COUCH
Odd statement from Bush in a (rather fawning) C-SPAN interview conducted yesterday:
THE PRESIDENT: ...The Iranian people are good, decent, honorable people. And they've got a government that is belligerent, loud, noisy, threatening, a government which is in defiance of the rest of the world and says, we want a nuclear weapon....
"Loud"? "Noisy"? Is that part of the reason we're rattling sabers at Iran -- because the regime is loud?
Shortly after that, Bush returns to the same imagery, this time in reference to rumors of war with Iran, and Steve Scully, the interviewer, asks him about it:
THE PRESIDENT: ... I guess my reaction to all the noise about, you know, "He wants to go to war" is, first of all, I don't understand the tactics, and I guess I would say it's political....
Q You use that word, "noise," a lot. How do you define that?
THE PRESIDENT: There's just a lot of chatter here in Washington. I mean, it's hard for some of your viewers to get it, I guess, unless they pay attention to the daily grind of news and comments and press releases. I guess I would just say that there's endless chatter, a lot of people on TV expressing their opinion -- which is fine, don't get me wrong, it's just part of the process -- after all, I'm on TV expressing my opinion with you. (Laughter.) But it's just a lot of chatter in Washington, a lot of people expressing themselves on a regular basis.
That's what "noise" is -- "a lot of people expressing themselves on a regular basis." (I thought that was free speech in a democracy, but hey, that's just me.)
But why this particular image? What's going on in Bush's brain? Is this Mom's voice shouting "Stop all that noise!" from when he was a kid? Or is it Little Boy Bush demanding that everyone go silent and pay attention to him?
Odd statement from Bush in a (rather fawning) C-SPAN interview conducted yesterday:
THE PRESIDENT: ...The Iranian people are good, decent, honorable people. And they've got a government that is belligerent, loud, noisy, threatening, a government which is in defiance of the rest of the world and says, we want a nuclear weapon....
"Loud"? "Noisy"? Is that part of the reason we're rattling sabers at Iran -- because the regime is loud?
Shortly after that, Bush returns to the same imagery, this time in reference to rumors of war with Iran, and Steve Scully, the interviewer, asks him about it:
THE PRESIDENT: ... I guess my reaction to all the noise about, you know, "He wants to go to war" is, first of all, I don't understand the tactics, and I guess I would say it's political....
Q You use that word, "noise," a lot. How do you define that?
THE PRESIDENT: There's just a lot of chatter here in Washington. I mean, it's hard for some of your viewers to get it, I guess, unless they pay attention to the daily grind of news and comments and press releases. I guess I would just say that there's endless chatter, a lot of people on TV expressing their opinion -- which is fine, don't get me wrong, it's just part of the process -- after all, I'm on TV expressing my opinion with you. (Laughter.) But it's just a lot of chatter in Washington, a lot of people expressing themselves on a regular basis.
That's what "noise" is -- "a lot of people expressing themselves on a regular basis." (I thought that was free speech in a democracy, but hey, that's just me.)
But why this particular image? What's going on in Bush's brain? Is this Mom's voice shouting "Stop all that noise!" from when he was a kid? Or is it Little Boy Bush demanding that everyone go silent and pay attention to him?
Monday, February 12, 2007
Added to the blogroll, in many cases belatedly: Spencer Ackerman (Too Hot for TNR), Blue Gal, Blue Wren, Glenn Greenwald at Salon, Instaputz, Liberty Street, Paperwight's Fair Shot, Slacktivist, Jon Swift, Why Now?, and Cintra Wilson.
And R.I.P. Billmon, BlogGram, and mfinley.
Jon Swift is right to wonder why it was so damn important for several alpha-dog lefty blogs to purge their blogrolls recently. Jon's blogroll is huge, yet somehow there still seems to be bandwidth left in the world. Why can't the top dogs on the left do likewise? What's the point of acting like Heathers?
****
UPDATE Also see Tom Hilton's thoughts on this (here and here). I don't get the tendency toward what Tom calls "upward linkage," but then I wasn't particularly popular in high school, either.
And R.I.P. Billmon, BlogGram, and mfinley.
Jon Swift is right to wonder why it was so damn important for several alpha-dog lefty blogs to purge their blogrolls recently. Jon's blogroll is huge, yet somehow there still seems to be bandwidth left in the world. Why can't the top dogs on the left do likewise? What's the point of acting like Heathers?
****
UPDATE Also see Tom Hilton's thoughts on this (here and here). I don't get the tendency toward what Tom calls "upward linkage," but then I wasn't particularly popular in high school, either.
WHY DOES THE EXECUTIVE PRODUCER OF 24 HATE AMERICA?
Good article in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer about torture on 24. The article focuses on Joel Surnow, the show's co-creator and executive producer, who's a wingnut pal of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter (and who, we learn, shares Coulter's fondness for Joe McCarthy -- and would actually like to make a pro-McCarthy movie).
Surnow fancies himself a great patriot -- but his patriotism apparently has limits:
This past November, U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind "24." Finnegan, who was accompanied by three of the most experienced military and F.B.I. interrogators in the country, arrived on the set as the crew was filming.
... Finnegan and the others had come to voice their concern that the show's central political premise -- that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security -- was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. "I'd like them to stop," Finnegan said of the show’s producers. "They should do a show where torture backfires."
... Several top producers of "24" were present, but Surnow was conspicuously absent. Surnow explained to me, "I just can't sit in a room that long. I'm too A.D.D. -- I can't sit still." He told the group that the meeting conflicted with a planned conference call with Roger Ailes, the chairman of the Fox News Channel. (Another participant in the conference call attended the meeting.) Ailes wanted to discuss a project that Surnow has been planning for months: the debut, on February 18th, of "The Half Hour News Hour," a conservative satirical treatment of the week's news; Surnow sees the show as offering a counterpoint to the liberal slant of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."
Now, can you imagine if a left-leaning producer of a hit show did something like this -- blew off a meeting with a brigadier general who felt his show was harming America? Can you just imagine the outrage from the right? Can you imagine the trumped up, days-long drumbeat of manufactured outrage, accompanied by calls for the firing of the producer and for boycotts of the show's advertisers?
But Surnow's a right-winger with fans throughout the Bush administration (which, of course, doesn't agree with the general), so it's no big whoop.
Good article in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer about torture on 24. The article focuses on Joel Surnow, the show's co-creator and executive producer, who's a wingnut pal of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter (and who, we learn, shares Coulter's fondness for Joe McCarthy -- and would actually like to make a pro-McCarthy movie).
Surnow fancies himself a great patriot -- but his patriotism apparently has limits:
This past November, U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind "24." Finnegan, who was accompanied by three of the most experienced military and F.B.I. interrogators in the country, arrived on the set as the crew was filming.
... Finnegan and the others had come to voice their concern that the show's central political premise -- that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security -- was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. "I'd like them to stop," Finnegan said of the show’s producers. "They should do a show where torture backfires."
... Several top producers of "24" were present, but Surnow was conspicuously absent. Surnow explained to me, "I just can't sit in a room that long. I'm too A.D.D. -- I can't sit still." He told the group that the meeting conflicted with a planned conference call with Roger Ailes, the chairman of the Fox News Channel. (Another participant in the conference call attended the meeting.) Ailes wanted to discuss a project that Surnow has been planning for months: the debut, on February 18th, of "The Half Hour News Hour," a conservative satirical treatment of the week's news; Surnow sees the show as offering a counterpoint to the liberal slant of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."
Now, can you imagine if a left-leaning producer of a hit show did something like this -- blew off a meeting with a brigadier general who felt his show was harming America? Can you just imagine the outrage from the right? Can you imagine the trumped up, days-long drumbeat of manufactured outrage, accompanied by calls for the firing of the producer and for boycotts of the show's advertisers?
But Surnow's a right-winger with fans throughout the Bush administration (which, of course, doesn't agree with the general), so it's no big whoop.
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