Letters to the Editor
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mea culpa again.
drdave39.
That was great. I always think of the Leo Tolstoy's, Anna Karinnah (sp)book, mention that all families are "screwy" in different ways. Leo wrote it on the first page much more eloquently. Maybe somebody can research and go to K-mart and buy a tube of Elmer's Brown Wood Glue and paste it?
The best part of the Family Therapy? comment...
... the how it came across... "spanking" each other... and Listening. Great. Thanks. Paste A.K.?
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Extremism may be closer to McCain's heart than political correctness
My opinion is that McCain's al-Qaida-Shi'a conflation has a long history and is especially popular among that segment of his base that believes Islam to be irredeemable. If 13% think Obama is in fact a Muslim, I'd suggest--strongly--a greater percentage believe this is a 'clash of civilizations.' This posit is popular elsewhere than in the Christian fundamentalist camps.
It goes like this:
al-Qaida enjoys support on the so-called Arab street.
Islam proffers a conception of its being the last Abrahamic revelation.
This conception makes a duty of converting the un-believer.
All Muslims are called to this unless they are themselves heretics and unbelievers.
The above conceptions enjoy support on the Arab street.
Islam is equivalent to the Arab street.
Islam wants to convert the non-believer.
Thus: IT HARDLY MATTERS WHAT THE NUANCES HAPPEN TO BE.
It would be charitable to state this is poppycock. Yet, it would be a mistake to underplay the support of the American street that is vulnerable to hooking up 'we don't do defeat' with 'Islam wishes to defeat us.'
...just my opinion, yet, McCain does seem to play to this crowd. His job is to scare enough of the middle undecideds into going along for the ride such a clash of civilzations promises.
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The muddy river
Accurate, but incomplete....
That's Arizona just desserts, Señor Celery, if you please. No peaches or blueberries here. We barbecue whiptails instead, fight the javelinas for the nopalitos, and dream of the broad Potomac. If we were better people, we might be vouchsafed a glimpse of it one day. As it is, well....
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The Potomac is brown usually.
Sometimes it's a dull green, like moss. I see it every day, and it's nothing to write home about.
Truth be told, I ought not get betwixt Mr. Celery and WT, salami scent notwithstanding. Such discussions are poetically licensed and fraught with erudition. I have no such license, and my prose is comparatively a bit amateurish. ;-)
I'll stick to McSame, The BarackStar and Hillacious. Mrs. Bubba can give a good speech, and make clear concise points. She can even make points extemporaneously, in a Q&A session. Must be that whole trained lawyer thing. Barack can handle these tasks too, despite Charles Krauthammer's vehement screed to the contrary.
Saint John not so much... he needs Holy Joe (or Cindy) to keep his ass is line.
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diggeracity
The nation needs to question politicians more. Why on Lincoln's Birthday, and Veterans Day, are there are many mattress sales to honor Abraham and war vets?
There ought to be a Bush Led Moslem White House conference.
The last days of the neoconservative era.... GWB can invite The Baptist, The Jewish, The Mennonites, and The horse and buggy Amish for the best doggone survival advice ever.
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Tone in DC.... you did not misread me... thanks. Citizens 'round the world wish ya's in DC some luck...
The Bush Administration (Mal) reminds me of the wife who was married 7-years and got up the courage to ask....
~ "Why have you not kissed me since you said 'I do' at the wedding alter rail?"
For 7-long years we itch, and ran out of pink calamine lotion. They itch to kill.
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Tone in DC.
If we go back to the 50's style pointed male shoes, the nation may be redeemed?
If we have another GOP conference where flip flops are used for clapping? Trouble.
Let's hope that we can all find a cheap pair of earmuffs to help us through 'our' times.
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Google is a smoke fiend. Winkle Pickers. Hush Pups?
I gargled and found the shoe's proper name. Wear pairs of Winkle Pickers.
Maybe Capital Hill can smoke three packs per day and smell like a Camel?
Is there a legal Sage blend with desert tumble weed that can be pipe-smoked for world peace?
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herding cats, drdave...
You're welcome... and I appreciate your response, since otherwise, all I got was grief. A reason I usually stay out of those cat fights.
You mentioned the signal to noise ratio. I think it correlates to the ratio between those who are trying to have an entertaining discussion and the (growing) few who just like to troll. It feels (to me) as if the ratio has shifted in the time I've been reading Glenn.
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McCain's gamble
McCain and his allies believe that if the American public associates Iran with al Qaeda, it will support a (presumptively necessary) attack on Iran. Thus the project of war with Iran, desirable on its face and at any cost, drives a cynical view of public discourse according to which anything that one says to further the given outcome is justifiable.
And of course the press goes along with it for all the various reasons that we already understand.
So how do you counteract this? By attacking the process at the source — show that there is a cost to spinning this line, that a cynical view of the the electorate's poor memory and gullibility will backfire early and often, and that the more McCain lies the more his Democratic opponents will benefit.
Otherwise he won't stop, and it will eventually work.
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Minding Your P's & E's
Note the semantic evasion of Howard Kurtz: "... to say he doesn't have experience in this area is simply not true."
What is "experience in this area"?
a. Being shot and captured in a war?
In which case, McCain has no more experience than the tens or hundreds of thousands of soldiers who were injuried in the past century of military conflicts.
b. Talking about wars?
Makes him a little more experienced that the local tavern drunk with an opinion.
c. Visiting foreign places?
Puts him on a par with anyone who can frivol away a few thousand dollars on an international airline ticket.
What Kurtz hopes to conflate is military experience or foreign experience with foreign policy insight. Arguing a particular policy in the Senate (or on Meet The Press) isn't "experience", it's just the ability to expound (mistakenly) on military strategy or tactics.
So, it is true that he has as much policy experience as any candidate for President, or townhall drunk, but he has no history of exceptional knowledge or keen analysis that would distinguish him from any of the others.
His sole claim to fame is that "He was a major proponent of the surge," which, in his mind, was a complete and transcendental success. But, "add more troops" is not a policy, nor even a strategy. It's a momentary tactic, at best. Whether it succeeded or failed is - in spite of representations by the remaining military servants of the administration - still a matter in factual dispute.
That McCain has no grasp of the facts of the matter is now fairly evident. He's always been wrong on the policy because he's always been wrong on the facts: WMD, AQ in Iraq, nuclear weapons in Iran, etc., etc.
McCain has one foreign policy position: "kill the bad guys", whoever they are, wherever they are, until there are no more boogeymen left anywhere in the world. Just gird your loins, because it's going to be a million years of death and destruction.