Take up the White Man's burden--

Send forth the best ye breed--

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness,

On fluttered folk and wild--

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half-child.

...

Take up the White Man's burden--

The savage wars of peace--

Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--

No tawdry rule of kings,

But toil of serf and sweeper--

The tale of common things.

The ports ye shall not enter,

The roads ye shall not tread,

Go mark them with your living,

And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--

And reap his old reward:

The blame of those ye better,

The hate of those ye guard--

The cry of hosts ye humour

(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--

"Why brought he us from bondage,

Our loved Egyptian night?"

...

Take up the White Man's burden--

Have done with childish days--

The lightly proferred laurel

The easy, ungrudged praise.

Comes now, to search your manhood

Through all the thankless years

Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,

The judgment of your peers!

I want one too! I can travel and talk outn of my ass as well as the next guy.

Actually, it happened all the time, most famously in the epic poem Táin Bó Cúailnge (the Cattle Raid of Cooley) -- of course in that case Cú Chulainn single-handedly defended Ulster against Medb's army of Connacht. In non-mythological terms, the tuaths (petty kingdoms) of Ireland invaded each other constantly for centuries. I don't know what the UFC was thinking, but they're not completely off base.

Albert Pujols, whom Buster wants to marry

I know it gets repetitive to constantly point out the dishonest language/statistics of this administration, but to fail to do so, concedes the argument. Hence, when Tim writes: "raising the U.S. death toll in the war to 3,545", he is agreeing with the administration's white wash.

That number doesn't include civilian contractors/mercenaries. We are, after all, supposed to care about them when they are killed and their bodies are paraded in front of crowds or hung from bidges, but we're not supposed to care enough to count how many have been killed? The latest estimate I have seen is north of 600.

The army also doesn't count suicides and accidents in the 3,545 number. So, my understanding is and please correct me if I'm wrong, if someone gets backed over by a tank in the Green Zone, that doesn't count. They're dead and wouldn't have been behind that tank except for the war but because it wasn't an IED or a sniper rifle, that doesn't get counted. If someone cracks under the pressure of a third tour and puts a bullet in his brain, that is not a casualty of the war. (Needless to say, when that same soldier puts a bullet in his wife/girlfriend back home, no one is counting that in the death toll either.)

What is the actual death toll?

So, let's skip the journalistic short hand and keep pointing out the mendacity of these stats.

I want to say, in case you didn't know, that the experience of the first Bills' Super Bowl loss was not at all helpful in the subsequent three.

I know the purpose of War Room is to allow us all to mock the administration, but really, is Pace really so far off? Cuba and Soviet era Russia probably had very low levels of day to day volence, but one wouldn't classify them as successful democracies despite their stability. Likewise, by world standards, the USA is and has always been a place of extraordinary violence thanks to the availability of guns inter alia, nonetheless, we see ourselves as a stable democracy and judgng by the numbers trying to get into the country, many people around the world lkewise would trade the dangerousness of our streets for the prosperity of our economy.

So, I don't think Pace is wrong in his basic attitude. He's wrong in that the Iraqi people want us to leave and we really don't care about that in the least.

Is there even one letter supporting naming your kid whatever the hell you want? If the kid doesn't like it, they can change it later. Usually they won't because they will have grown up with it and it will have become part of who they are (cf, the Boy Named Sue).

Kids are going to make fun of kids no matter how 'normal' their names are, ask Fat Matt over in the corner, or a favorite of this message board, "Anne the Man Coulter."

What about ethnic names? Should Indian parents name their kid Jim rather than Jamsetji because it is easier to imagine someone sayng "Supreme Court Justice James Smith" than it would be to imagine someone sayng "Supreme Court Justice Jamsetji Kuppuswamy." That's a great way to let us all end up with good old fashioned WASPy names. I wonder what that commentator would have said to Mrs. Marshall when she named her son "Thoroughgood" (which incidentally, he later shortened to "Thurgood"; she probably should have named him John, right?.

Oy vey, lighten up people. It is a name, not destiny. Your kid will survive whatever you name him/her and they will be made fun of no matter as well.

Really, and what would that mean for those Sunnis in Afghanistan, Pakistan, all the other 'stans', India, Burma, Indonesia, China (yes, there are millions of muslims in China), the USA, sub-saharan Afric, etc? Last time I checked they were not primarily Arabs.

Good, I am glad you know that Iranians are not Arabs. But that is not enough to understand the Islamic world. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.