Letters to the Editor
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"Where's Sally and hundreds of other New Orleansians?
I wonder if Noonan had occasion to remember her heroic image of Bush rushing into a burning house to save the children after Hurricane Katrina? He wasn't in any hurry to save DROWNING children, or adults, was he? But Noonan obviously doesn't have the capacity for self-examination that would allow her to recognize the irony of her earlier mash note to her hero.
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Thanks bystander
Interesting. I don't think I'd be very complimentary about my aunt if I thought she was complicit in murdering my father, either.
But there was a good comment on the Lahore Metroblog (http://lahore.metblogs.com) that this really about stifling democracy. Whether or not if she lived she would have fixed anything, she probably would have been elected. As George Mitchell once said, in a democracy the people have the right to be wrong.
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@RMP
Unfortunately, there are places in this world where saying, "al Qaeda did it!" doesn't get a government off the hook. Kinda like if the Bush people were to blame their response to Katrina on right-wing extremists.
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And, thank you
I hadn't been back to the Lahore metroblog since last night. Geeze. Remind me again how important net neutrality is. You are absolutely correct. People in a democracy have the right to be wrong. Witness our own past 7 years. How much more wrong could we get? Well, I suppose, I can answer myself by arguing if we elect any of the front running Republican candidates we will (wrong)^10.
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"Where's Sally?"
"You know him. He's not exotic. But if there's
a fire on the block, he'll run out and help.
He'll help direct the rig to the right house
and count the kids coming out and say, "Where's
Sally?"
...I wonder how many "Sallys" were dying in New Orleans after Katrina when Bush decided not to land and do a fly-over instead. Do you care to speculate, Ms. Noonan?
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interesting Pakistani prespective
Not sure if you've seen these blogs:
http://iaoj.wordpress.com/
In the past, military rule was designed to preserve order - and did so for a few years. No longer. Today it creates disorder and promotes lawlessness. How else can one explain the sacking of the chief justice and eight other judges of the country’s supreme court for attempting to hold the government’s intelligence agencies and the police accountable to courts of law? Their replacements lack the backbone to do anything, let alone conduct a proper inquest into the misdeeds of the agencies to uncover the truth behind the carefully organised killing of a major political leader.
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To those people who offered kind thoughts yesterday
I have received word from my friends in Lahore that, at least for now, they are okay. They say it's pretty bad there, though, not safe to venture forth, a lot of things burning, a lot of things shut down by authorities.
Thanks for your support. It's easier not worrying alone.
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Karrsic
Karrsic, thanks for that link. Score one for Uncle Sam, eh? More goodwill for which we're roundly 'appreciated.'
‘Red Alert’ in Pakistan allows riot police and paramilitary police to ‘fire live rounds’ at protesters. (MSNBC)US tax dollars are funding the clampdown.
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Peggy Noonan is a MAN, BABY!
I hope that clears it all up.
Noonan is a man, a republican man, a republican man in drag.
What? You thought Rudy was the only one?
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internet outages in Pakistan
Took me a bit to orient to Lahore metroblogs' comment section. Comments kicked up this (at sig):
Rioting Causes Major Telecom Disruption Across Pakistan
With a few telephone exchanges burned in the Sindh Province, PTCL ITI backbone has been out of order. PTCL's ITI connectivity to the Internet Backbone is in excess of 6 Gbps. From Islamabad at least, both DWDM rings are down at the moment. Reportedly, SDH equipment inside the telephone exchanges has been damaged (burned!). This has also affected operations of some GSM mobile companies. This means that most of the Service Providers and Businesses running off the ITI backbone are down!...
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For a study in glaring contrasts, I suggest reading Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Reading a sentence fragment of Noonan's is enough to depress cognitive ability in every measurable category, out of proportion to exposure. But carping about an earnestly un-nuanced intellectual neutrino weight like Noonan won't improve anyone's understanding of politics.
To that end, I suggest "The Logic of Political Survival," by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, et al, published by MIT Press. Mesquita and his coauthors present a game theoretic analysis of how politicians survive in office.
An excerpt from the book will illustrate a level of political insight neither conceivable nor possible by reading Noonan. De Mesquita writes that a president (or dictator or monarch) has three tasks before him or her, all of which stem from the essence of politics, which is staying in office.
"First, they [a president, dictator or monarch] choose a tax rate, which generates government revenue and influences how hard people will work. Second, they spend revenue in a manner designed to keep incumbents in office, particularly by sustaining support among members of their winning coalition. Finally, they provide various mixes of public and private goods."
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So it's okay there's a youtube video of
Bush acting like a total dick while someone else is primping his hair just before announcing he's attacking Iraq?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s1odqQTKyU
And wow, I guess it's just fine and dandy to have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube acting like a 12 year old who's discovered what "flipping the bird" means.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ig5gPbKdJk
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Noonan
OLD PEGGY IS JUST A PIECE OF EXCREMENT!
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ondelette
Thanks for bringing us up to speed on your friends. I was just getting ready to ask when I noticed your comment. Keep us posted, okay? I keep thinking of them...
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Wow
The level of stupidity here (in the letters, that is) is truly astounding.
Mesquita and his coauthors present a game theoretic analysis ...
Anyone who uses the word "theoretic" instead of good ol' "theory" is not worth listening to, since he's sure to hide all sorts of codswallop behind such silly rhetoric. And then the provided excerpt just proves the vacuity of this freshman-level analysis.
I'm not even American and I know the president does not set the tax rate (congress does), does not decide how money is spent (congress does), on and on. It is congress (that is, the representatives of all the people) who gerrymander, put earmarks in spending bills, etc., not the president.
Yeesh, this idiot dares to criticize Noonan while offering up this puerile pap as an "intelligent" alternative? The idiocy of Salon readers never fails to astound.