John McCain: Luddite
ArchPundit
Seriously, the Straight Talk Express goes to the central repository for intelligent design.
Paul Tsongas would call him a Pander Bear and he’d be right.
2007
One is Now a Saint to Compare State Senators to Porn Stars
Lying Gasbag Tom Roeser folks.
You can say anything as a movement conservative and still be taken seriously.
It begs the question as to how the HPV was contracted-an experience that would serve young women by being instructive. When Stanek called on Halvorson to further illustrate that experience, a hail of mud and bricks have rained down on her assailing her for unfairness. Those who flail her do not understand the consequences. Not in the slightest. Of course the bluntness of Stanek’s message was startling. But her bluntly courageous stand should be honored…as should Stanek the pro-life saint…that the answer to serious infection-sometimes physically, always morally-is abstinence before marriage and abstinence in relationships outside marriage. God bless, Jill.
This man has a radio show on WLS and he thinks it’s courageous to attack Halvorson not for her stand on mandatory vaccination, but on her sexual history including if she had been raped, how she could have avoided it.
Nothing they say can stop them from being taken seriously. Nothing.
John Howard: Bad at Math Too
Apparently Australian Prime Minister John Howard thinks he’s giving an appropriate number of troops to what views as essential to the war on terror even though the vast majority of the violence is sectarian in nature.
The US has 140,000 troops out of a population of 300,000,000 while Australia has 1,400 troops out of a population of 20,000,000. To offer up a proportionate force Australia would need to provide just under 10,000 troops. Currently about 850 Australian troops are even in Iraq and they have no deaths as of yet. One might suggest he’s scoring cheap political points without putting his own troops on the line every day.
What is the Obsession with Obama’s Race
Apparently conservative white talk radio hosts are becoming experts on what constitutes black–you know, because they are so in touch with the black community.
As Obama has said, no one splits these hairs when he tries to catch a cab.
If you start to, you know, delve around the edges, say, ‘Wait a minute, isn’t he mixed race? Weren’t we told that last year?’ Or whatever, biracial. Not allowed to say that anymore.” Beck responded by saying “he’s very white in many ways,” adding, “Gee, can I even say that? Can I even say that without somebody else starting a campaign saying, ‘What does he mean, “He’s very white?” ‘ He is. He’s very white.”
After the interview, Beck attempted to clarify his comments to executive producer and head writer of The Glenn Beck Program, Steve Burguiere, who is known on-air as “Stu.” Beck claimed that Obama “is colorless,” adding that “as a white guy … [y]ou don’t notice that he is black. So he might as well be white, you know what I mean?” In addition, Beck said: “I guarantee you, there will be blogs today that will have me being a racist because I say that.”
Gee, why would a blogger do that?
As a white guy you don’t notice he’s black, but you are really obsessed with the relative level of blackness he possesses.
Who let’s the dipshits on teevee and radio?
A Strange Kind of Complaint
Greg Sargent writes about something some Clinton supporters have written in about concerning Obama on Clinton:
A Hillary supporter writes in to argue that Barack Obama’s comments yesterday about his opposition to the Iraq War are at least somewhat at odds with what he said in October of last year.
According to Reuters, here’s Obama yesterday:
On the day after he formally launched his 2008 White House bid, Obama said on a campaign swing through Iowa that even before the war began it was possible to see the dangerous consequences of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
“Even at the time, it was possible to make judgments that this would not work out well,” the Illinois senator told reporters, indirectly contrasting his stance with presidential rivals Clinton and John Edwards, who both voted to authorize the war in 2002.
But as the Hillary supporter points out, here’s how Obama described his differences with Hillary over Iraq in an interview with The New Yorker in October of 2006:
I think what people might point to is our different assessments of the war in Iraq, although I’m always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn’t have the benefit of U.S. intelligence. And, for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices. So that might be something that sort of is obvious. But, again, we were in different circumstances at that time: I was running for the U.S. Senate, she had to take a vote, and casting votes is always a difficult test.
The Hillary supporter points out to us that Obama was more forgiving of the pre-war failures of his fellow Dems in that interview than he is now that he’s in the race. Not a huge deal, by any means, but worth noting. We’re passing it along to keep the discussion humming.
Shrug. Okay, he won’t be nice about her incoherent positions anymore if her supporters insist.
Blogrolls and Stuff
As many of you know Atrios, Markos, and The General all redid their blogrolls and I was eliminated from all three. I kind of expected it and I’m fine with it-Markos says it best with the following:
To me, that’s a slap in the face of every new blog that was added. Rather than celebrate the fact that a whole new generation of blogs gets a little recognition, some (and that doesn’t include most bloggers pulled from the blogroll) apparently had a bizarre sense of entitlement. Everything in a blog is in constant motion. Nothing is static. That’s the beauty of the medium. And now the blogroll will reflect that spirit — constantly evolving as the blogosphere itself changes.
It’s a good thing when blogrolls change–there will be some great new sites to discover.
Yepson on Barack
One of the biggest kick-offs in Caucus history
Wow. One good thing Yepson points out is that there was a good cross-section of Iowans there. A big mistake in Iowa is to bring in people from your home state to do the door knocking and such. Your organizers and such can be operatives and such, but it’s far better to have neighbors doing it in Iowa where the personal relationship means far more.
60 Minutes Video
Barack on 60 Minutes—does a tour of the Old Capitol–one of the coolest places in the world. I watched the first Obama-Keyes debate there and despite Alan, the ambience was amazing.
Hysterical
Urquhart Media Honors Life & Times of Francis Urquhart
Chicago, Illinois… Urquhart Media, LLC today honors the life and times of our company’s namesake, Francis Urquhart, with the untimely passing of accomplished actor Sir Ian Richardson on Friday. In memory of Sir Ian Richardson/Francis Urquhart, a black armband has been affixed to the Urquhart Media logo on our company website, www.urqmedia.com.
In the history of the world’s politics, there was no finer practitioner of the art of politics than Francis Urquhart, the late Prime Minister of Britain.
What’s that, you say? There never has been a Prime Minister of Britain named Urquhart — Francis or otherwise? You’re quite right, of course. We’re referring to the fictional lead character of House of Cards, a BBC-produced political satire about the post-Thatcher succession struggle inside Britain’s Conservative Party.
Do we endorse the diabolical schemes and Hobbesian sensibility of Francis Urquhart? In honor of his passing, we must say, “You might think that. We couldn’t possibly comment.”
Ian Richardson: 1934 – 2007
British actor gained fame in `House of Cards’
Evil politician in satirical television series became signature role during long career on stage and screen
Associated Press
LONDON — Ian Richardson, who brought Shakespearean depth to his portrayal of a thoroughly immoral politician in the hugely popular satirical television drama “House of Cards,” died Friday at age 72, his agent said.
In addition to his many stage, screen and TV roles, Mr. Richardson also appeared in one of the mustard commercials as the man in the Rolls-Royce who asked, “Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?”
He died in his sleep at his London home, said the agent, Jean Diamond.
Mr. Richardson played the silkily evil Francis Urquhart in three mini-series, “House of Cards” in 1990, “To Play the King” in 1993 and “The Final Cut” in 1995.
Urquhart’s smooth riposte to any slur against another character–“You may think that; I couldn’t possibly comment”–was picked up by British politicians and heard again and again in the House of Commons.
His other television roles included Bill Haydon in John Le Carre’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”; Sir Godber Evans in “Porterhouse Blue” and Sherlock Holmes in “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”
In 2000, he starred in “Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes,” playing Dr. Joseph Bell, the mentor of Arthur Conan Doyle, in a mini-series that was broadcast in the United States on PBS’ “Mystery.”
He also portrayed the British spy Anthony Blunt in the British Broadcasting Corp. television play “Blunt.”
On Broadway, he played Jean-Paul Marat in “Marat/Sade” in 1965, reprising the role on film the following year, and Henry Higgins in a 1976 revival of “My Fair Lady,” for which he was nominated for a Tony Award as best actor in a musical.
Other movie credits included “Brazil” in 1985, “The Fourth Protocol” in 1987 and “102 Dalmatians” in 2000.
But it was his “House of Cards” role that turned him “from a jobbing actor that the cognoscenti were aware of into a star that the country’s entire viewing population knew,” Richardson said in an interview last year.
“House of Cards” was brilliantly, if accidentally, timed. It appeared in Britain in the same year that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was brought down by feuding in her Conservative Party.
The mini-series was shown in the United States as part of PBS’ “Masterpiece Theatre.”
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I like to poke fun at Proft, but this is really funny.
More First Person Springfield Coverage
The great line of the article is this:
Part of this can be chalked up to a kind of punk-rock-band-gone-MTV disaffection. People who were into Obama when he was an underground, authentic phenomenon aren’t necessarily so into the slickly produced, more pop-friendly version.
Many who have been reading this blog since 2002 are familiar with this feeling. Okay, not many since not many read it in 2002.
I was interviewed by BBC 4 and then BBC Belfast over the weekend and trying to describe the speech was a little hard. I thought it was excellent by most standards of American politicians, but only decent for Obama.
I’m a bit more positive about what Obama is doing now than many of the early adopters, but I also understand the concerns and observations and Chris does one of the better jobs laying out the thought processes I’ve seen. I think there is something else going on in the rhetoric that Chris points out is in tension between unity and progress. I’ll cover that later, but it’s a good article so take a look.