May 2003
Friday 30 May
- Colour -- which Brit's which? - Oh, this is the best thing I've seen in hours. An English thinktank guy, talking about how British intelligence came out with all these reports that Iraq had oh-so-many tonnes of WMD: "The British public would like to believe that...
Posted in color
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- Maybe Taranto has SARS - Tapped, thankfully, put the bitchsmack down on James Taranto, the editor of the idiotic OpinionJournal.com. Taranto said that liberals have cooked up some delusion about conservatives wanting to starve the government way down by cutting taxes and precipitating a fiscal...
Posted in political currents
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| 210 Comments
Thursday 29 May
- Shocktopus II - I'm so on the ball that this is actually a shocktopus sighting from today: 'Despite many Dems' protestations that they are shocked--shocked!--that Bush refuses to adequately fund...' blah blah blah. Then there's some other stuff about politics or something. I...
Posted in language
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- Shocktopus I - For your benefit, good reader, I am crawling the web and with my numerous tentacles gathering up every use one horrendously hackneyed phrase that just keeps popping up in various snarky articles no matter how much I wish it would...
Posted in language
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Wednesday 28 May
- Onion or nonion -- Adolf, that's soo last fall - I guess this is sort of a follow-on to my previous post. Does the Onion do lifestyle stories? They should. And if they do, this should be one. 'Home Despot: From Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler, history's most evil tyrants...
Posted in
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Monday 26 May
- Saddam the fetishist - Saddam filled 'Shagdad', his love-shack, with some cheezee romance-novel paintings of scantily clad women. This is what happens when you don't work through a dungeons and dragons phase as a kid....
Posted in
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- Color -- what's close? - Adam Clymer [the famous 'major-league asshole' from the 2000 presidential campaign] today wrote the second part of his Democrats-are-up-shit-creek-wif-no-paddle. And in one swift stroke explained the sourcing for one of my brother's favorite phrases: 'As George C. Wallace once said,...
Posted in color
, language
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| 403 Comments
Sunday 25 May
- Deep regret -- strong dollar or bullshit market? - This past week there was a big financial furor over whether the US still supported a 'strong dollar policy' as implemented first by Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Current T-boss John Snow said the US still did advocate a strong...
Posted in language
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Friday 23 May
- Could Santorum be [gasp] right?? - That reminds me about something I meant to post a while ago. Santorum said that homosexuality is depraved, basically, on the level of lots of other kinds of sexual practices that are generally frowned upon. "If the Supreme Court says...
Posted in political currents
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- Onion or nonion -- It comes out [the truth, that is] - I'm beginning a new chronic. Right now. It's called onion or nonion. News stories that could just as well be in the Onion. Today's entry: Poll: Gay remarks don't hurt Santorum. 'Gay' as an insult having nothing to do with...
Posted in political currents
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Thursday 22 May
- Speak softly and cut secret deals, pt ii - Another prime example of combining secret deals with a bluff of unassailable power is the Iran-Contra deal, in which the Reagan adminstration sold missiles to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages, and then gave some of the...
Posted in political currents
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- Speak softly and cut secret deals - This Slate piece is an interesting look at whether Kennedy would've gone full-bore into Vietnam had he been president for two full terms. Some of the central themes discussed in this would seem to have a pretty universal quality about...
Posted in political currents
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Tuesday 20 May
- Expendable Muslims? - One point my brother makes about Islamic terrorists is that you can really see their depravity in how they kill so many people who have nothing to do with their goals. In the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, all...
Posted in political currents
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Monday 19 May
- Slated for destruction - I like Slate, but this is the stupidest article I've read in a really long time. Mock trials to distribute money to smart jurors? Fining jurors who are proven wrong? Can we just fine bad columnists instead? Maybe I should...
Posted in monkey vs robot
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Thursday 15 May
- My second-biggest-wigged reader: Fred Kaplan - In a recent Slate War Stories column, Kaplan referred obliquely [ahem] to my apparently now-famous parable of the hostage, and says Bush has flipped the script [almost literally]: "Now, though, Bush is telling Kim: You want to build nukes? Fine....
Posted in political currents
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- Like a hole in the head - Geraldo, as he's preparing to marry for the fourth time, says he's "making a conscious decision to take this whole Judaism thing seriously. I think the Jews need me right now." Hm, that calls to mind an Eminem line from...
Posted in
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Wednesday 14 May
- Call in the pros - It seems that Saudi security forces suck -- they conducted a raid to try to catch the terrorists who eventually launched this latest attack in Riyadh, but all 19 of them escaped. Perhaps they will ask Mossad for some help?...
Posted in political currents
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Tuesday 13 May
- Bush indeed - I woke up really early this morning. I think it may have been due to an unquenchable desire to read about how hot George W Bush is. I must have been dreaming about him in that flight suit after he...
Posted in political currents
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| 192 Comments
Monday 12 May
- GRRRRR... - I'm sooo pissed at blogger right now. Just had a massive battle against this frickin' program trying to get everything posted right. You might notice that there are tons of posts from today. They weren't all really from today, of...
Posted in
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- The dirtiest way to come clean - So Stephen Glass' fictionalized account of his plagiaristic journalism career is coming out soon. Glass was a young journalist who made up a whole bunch of elements to a number of stories he published a few years ago in The...
Posted in
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- My biggest-wig reader: Karl Rove - Bush said during the 2000 campaign that he would extend the ban on assault weapons which is set to expire soon. Now, the president says he maintains that position. And he feels confident in doing so because he's read the...
Posted in political currents
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- Deep regret -- Drug news at 11 - Ohmigod this is ridiculous. Melody Peterson of the NYTimes exposes two extremely dodgy companies that exploit newscasters' celebrity and credibility to hawk their pharmaceuticals. Of course, these companies take money from their big drug clients. Isn't there a slight chance...
Posted in language
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- Blind in the USA - Aha! I'm glad to see someone comment on this after I'd noticed it a while ago. I was ticked off when I read the lyrics to Born in the USA a couple months ago. I suddenly realized that it's not...
Posted in political currents
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- Guns v torts, pt ii - One other thought on the gun control/tort issue from yesterday: what the situation needs is a clearheaded, fairly concrete, fairly permanent compromise. There is a very reasonable middle position that one can find in the gun-control debate that basically centers...
Posted in political currents
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- Guns v torts - Haven't posted longtime. Oops. Will return to more frequent postings now that I'm back home. Seems Congress is about to pass a bill granting gun owners immunity from lawsuits. This is an interesting big societal issue where a couple of...
Posted in political currents
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- My archrival archrival - Ah. I finally figured out my troubles with the archiving function and all of that. Soon, I'll fix the chronic and update it. [Joy.]...
Posted in
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