Letters to the Editor
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@JackHughes
You prove my point. I don't consider Moyers or Keillor "haters," just mistaken.
It's the difference between Left and Right. Conservatives think that liberals are mistaken. LIberals believe conservatives are evil and haters.
Such simple-mindedness ...
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@Klooster
It's the difference between Left and Right. Conservatives think that liberals are mistaken. LIberals believe conservatives are evil and haters.
Oh, what a crock of shit that is, and I'm a conservative.
If you really believe that, you haven't been paying any attention at all.
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Bill Owen
I agree that Salon needs to fix the wrap problem...
The problem is not one of formatting, the problem is that Salon doesn't allow links. People route around this limitation by posting raw URLs. Raw URLs can sometimes be very long. The problem of long non-descriptive URLs was solved by links.
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Operation Cassandra
Admiral Fallon's (forced?) resignation was the last warning we are likely to get of an attack on Iran. It does not mean an attack is certain, but the U.S. could not attack Iran so long as he was the CENTCOM commander. That obstacle is now gone.
Vice President Cheney's Middle East tour is another indicator. According to a report in The American Conservative, on his previous trip Cheney told our allies, including the Saudis, that Bush would attack Iran before the end of his term. If that report was correct, then his current tour might have the purpose of telling them when it is coming.
Why not just do that through the State Department? State may not be in the loop, nor all of DOD for that matter. The State Department, OSD, the intelligence agencies, the Army and the Marine Corps are all opposed to war with Iran. Of the armed services, only the Air Force reportedly is in favor, seeking an opportunity to show what air power can do. As always, it neglects to inform the decision-makers what it cannot do.
The purpose of this column is not to warn of an imminent assault on Iran, though personally I think it is coming, and soon. Rather, it is to warn of a possible consequence of such an attack. Let me state it here, again, as plainly as I can: an American attack on Iran could cost us the whole army we now have in Iraq.
[...]
rest here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind137.html
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Mr. Lind is an important figure in the development of 4th generation war theory. He lectures to the military, and some here hate his guts. (that should be an endorsement) :-)
He claims to be America's last monarchist. (whatever that means)
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I don't think Salon is going to fix the link problem.
I'm not sure where I got this idea, but my sense is that Salon does not want us to be able to include links, not because they want to be mean to us, but because they don't wish to make it possible for anyone else to spam the comments with all kinds of objectionable spam.
I noticed a different variation in Salon's blog software... in the comment boxes, you could post all kinds of things, including images, but somewhere there was a list of words that could not posted in a comment.
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Its a bit more complicated than that, klooster.
It's the difference between Left and Right.
The modern "Right" isn't conservative in the traditional sense, but has become the refuge of a collection of cultural reactionaries that by historical chance converged in the Republican Party. Hence the prevalence and prestige of the likes of Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Reily, Hannity, De Lay, Vitter, Cheney, and so on. Any functioning political party with a clear-minded and pragmatic agenda would have excised these idiots and their fellows some time back.
Worse, the political operations of the "Right" depends in large measure upon a disparate gaggle of sectarian groups, both for funding and grassroots work. Moon, Dobson, Robertson, Hagee, and the rest push agendas that have no realistic hope of being accepted in mainstream America, but have the funds and footsoldiers to ensure compliance among whatever officeholder they choose to favor. Its a cynical calculation on the politico's part, but one that's worked semi-well up to now.
In contrast, the "Left" is a diverse collection of interests (both progressive and in some ways conservative), but who lack a singular 'identity' - which is largely what drives the "Right" these days - and no overriding goal that might otherwise minimize friction between those interests. It also lacks a ready source of funds and grassroots organization like the "Right" does, although this appears to be changing.
The only saving virtue of this is that it also lacks a class of punditry and talking heads with the kind of national stature and prevalence enjoyed by the "Right". This means the Democrat's brand isn't as tainted as the Republicans now by the overheated rhetoric Limbaugh, Coulter and the rest trade in.
And given the complete decimation of the Republican party, both in candidates and fundraising, the "Right" may soon be left with nothing but talk radio and the old guard Religious Right. Hence the tendency (somewhat unfair) of associating the "Right" with blind hatred and reactionary policies as those are the trade of both.
The "Left" meanwhile has been building itself from the ground-up and offers a more moderate and responsive agenda. Getting it widely-disseminated is a critical challenge, albeit one that has been helped by the weblog community and tech-savviness.
In short, both sides have their extremists. But those on the "Right" have had the louder voice and less restraint, finally over-reaching themselves in the last 15-20 years (I mark it peaking in the early-90s and beginning a slow but steady decline since the OK City Bombing). Those on the "Left" are so marginal one would be hard-pressed to name a one.
Whether these trends continue or not is beyond any predictative ability. We'll see what the future brings.
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The solution to the long URL problem ...
... lies in bypassing it. The problem is caused by Salon refusing to allow the <a> tag to create links. The way to go around this is not to use tinyurl (for all the reasons given previously), but to simply turn a valid URL in the text to a clickable link.
The way to do this is:
Get Firefox and an add on that makes any URL in text into a clickable link. I use Linkification (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/190), but there are others available also. Copy and paste no more. And don't let tinyurl take you somewhere you don't want to go.
For those who don't use Firefox and don't want to give up their present browser, you can go to the tinyurl site and let them install a cookie that will let you preview tinyurls so that you at least know where you are going when you copy and paste the tinyurl into your browsers address line.