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Did you know that Rock the Vote is still around? Anyhow, I just received an email asking me to join up. Included was this:
Why: Encourage your peers to vote early and on March 4…
I don’t think one needs to be a legal scholar to understand the crucial distinction between and and or in this context. Vote twice or die?
Apollo posted this at 8:10 PM HKT on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 as Politics and the English Language
Interesting concept from the New Yorker:
Six words can tell a story. That’s a new book’s premise, anyway. “Not Quite What I Was Planning.” A compilation of teeny tiny memoirs. The forebear, it’s assumed, is Hemingway. (Legend: he wrote a miniature masterpiece. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Slightly sappy, but a decent sixer.)
(H/T)
Six words, no more, no less? Brevity is the soul of wit. Still, it’s tricky being so short. How do I summarize my life? Perhaps I should go for puns. I did inherit Dad’s punny bone. That’s not quite right for me.
Usually reading, occasionally wise, always neurotic. So that’s me, what about you?
Hubbard posted this at 4:14 PM HKT on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 as Ourselves, Random Bloggish Things
Another election cycle, another liberal Democrat who can’t stop repeating that he’s not a liberal. Every time this happens, and every time Republican candidates fight over who’s the most conservative (and actually use the word), it’s a testament to the fact that we’re still living in the age of Ronaldus Magnus.
The more I see, the more I’m convinced that Obama doesn’t have it within him to be a transformational figure. He’s not leading on issues, he’s not changing minds on policy or philosophy, he’s not persuading anyone of anything, except that he’s a good speaker. Being called a liberal was a good opportunity for him to show some actual leadership and say something like, “Sure I’m a liberal on some issues, and I bet you are too.” Instead he ran away to where he’s most comfortable, the land where words have no meaning, only pretty cadences.
Apollo posted this at 3:22 PM HKT on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype
My purchase of a hybrid last year may have disastrous consequences.
Apollo posted this at 3:04 PM HKT on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 as Convenient Truth
An evangelical Christian photographer was brought before the New Mexico Human Rights Commission after she declined for religious reasons to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony.
When Elaine Huguenin of Albuquerque, N.M., declined in September 2006 an e-mail request from a lesbian couple to photograph their ceremony, one of the lesbians responded by lodging a human rights complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Division, the state agency charged with enforcing state anti-discrimination laws and sending cases to the commission to be adjudicated.
Vanessa Willock sought an injunction to prohibit Mrs. Huguenin and her business, Elane Photography, from declining any future request to photograph a same-sex ceremony. The agency agreed to hear Miss Willock’s complaint, the latest case brought before tribunals in the U.S. and Canada that free-speech advocates say threaten expression across North America.
Tom posted this at 2:17 PM HKT on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 as The Law Is An Ass--An Idiot
Would you believe I just learned something from a campaign commercial? Barack Obama wants to eliminate taxes on “seniors” making less than $50,000.
What sort of priority is that? Are you a recent college graduate working at your first job and paying back student loans? PAY YOUR TAXES! Are you a divorced parent, trying to save and pay child support at the same time? PAY YOUR TAXES! Hard working laborer? PAY YOUR TAXES! But if you’re in the age bracket least likely to support children, least likely to work for their money, but most likely to vote: No taxes for you!
Is there a justification for this beyond simple pandering?
Apollo posted this at 9:54 AM HKT on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype
Prudence answers my letter.
Apollo posted this at 12:41 AM HKT on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 as Humor
I reported here a couple of weeks ago that an Austin bum (who had taken up residence on a street corner between me and the university) had gone missing and so many people were worried about him that it was the lead story in the town paper. The next day they had found him. The latter story is worth reading. Nerd Bonus: He looks like a deranged Victor Davis Hanson.
I reported here on Friday that someone at an Obama rally threw couscous on a Secret Service agent. Today the Statesman has the real story: it was egg salad. This should restore the good name of couscous, and let all know the true infamy of egg salad.
Apollo posted this at 12:30 AM HKT on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 as Deep in the Heart of Texas
I haven’t ragged on movies in a while. So just in case you weren’t aware, the nominees for best picture this year were the 18th (Juno), 40th (No Country for Old Men), 53rd (Atonement), 55th (Michael Clayton), and 78th (There Will Be Blood) highest grossing films last year. The one that gets me there is Michael Clayton–a Best Picture caliber film starring George Clooney, and it can’t even top $50 million?
I’ve seen 2.5 of those, which is significantly more than I’ve seen of the last two years’ crop. I loved No Country, I found Atonement decent until the last five minutes when it descended into drivel, and I stopped watching There Will Be Blood maybe halfway through because it was boring as hell. That said, it’s hard for me to justifiably claim that No Country was the best movie of the year if 39 other movies sold significantly more tickets. It seems like the first thing a good movie should do is compel people to watch it.
Anyhow, congrats, Hollywood on continuing to expand that gulf between you and your audience. You guys sold fewer tickets than you did seven years ago, when the economy was in the crapper, people spent months avoiding public places out of fear of terrorism, and there were several million fewer people in the country.
Apollo posted this at 8:18 PM HKT on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 as Pop Culture Is Filth
So The Politico has Michelle Obama’s thesis online now. First thought: “Yeah, now I can read it and prove what a radical she was.” Second thought: “96 pages? I barely brought myself to read my thesis, and it was 20 pages shorter.”
Apollo posted this at 6:30 PM HKT on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 as Ourselves
Apollo posted this at 6:05 PM HKT on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 as Audacity of Hype
That’s how this post reads. I’ve been sorta interested in this story. It seems as though Obama heard an account from a soldier, and then retold it; because Obama doesn’t really undestand how the military runs, he told it in a way that didn’t make much sense to those who do (Captains commanding platoons? Platoons being split up? American soldiers running out of ammo?). If you read the story the Captain recounts to Tapper, it sounds substantially less awful than the ham-handed recounting by Obama. I guess what Obama said was basically factually true, but the real story sounds pretty run of the mill Army grousing, not defenseless soldiers rummaging corpses for guns.
This information is useful, and basically well reported until the end:
I might suggest those on the blogosphere upset about this story would be better suited directing their ire at those responsible for this problem, which is certainly not new. That is, if they actually care about the men and women bravely serving our country at home and abroad.
Wow, Tapper, stick it in your ear. I guess people who question fishy stories from presidential candidates are just channeling their hatred of soldiers.
Apollo posted this at 2:51 PM HKT on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, Journalism
From the Politico comes this report:
“Ayers was a terrorist. Bernardine Dohrn was a terrorist. Ayers has never offered one word of apology — he glories in it, thinks it’s terrific. And that to me is not what I would call acceptable or mainstream behavior,” said Dan Polsby, a former law professor at Northwestern who is now dean of George Mason University Law School. “If Obama takes a different view on that—well, ok, that’s data about Obama.”
On Thursday, Ayers spoke at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where he refused to answer questions from Politico about his relationship with Obama.
Dohrn did not respond to a message left at her office.
Obama’s campaign dismisses the notion that his relationship with Ayers should be seen through the lens of the latter’s violent past, or his present lack of regret for the bombings.
“Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence,” said Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton. “But he was an eight-year old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous.”He described Ayers as “a professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a former aide to Mayor Richard J. Daley,” referring to printed reports that he had “advised” Daley on school reform.
If you want more background on the murderous Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayers, look at this old New York Times piece, bylined September 11, 2001:
”I don’t regret setting bombs,” Bill Ayers said. ”I feel we didn’t do enough.” Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970’s as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago. The long curly locks in his Wanted poster are shorn, though he wears earrings. He still has tattooed on his neck the rainbow-and-lightning Weathermen logo that appeared on letters taking responsibility for bombings. And he still has the ebullient, ingratiating manner, the apparently intense interest in other people, that made him a charismatic figure in the radical student movement.
Now he has written a book, ”Fugitive Days” (Beacon Press, September). Mr. Ayers, who is 56, calls it a memoir, somewhat coyly perhaps, since he also says some of it is fiction. He writes that he participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972. But Mr. Ayers also seems to want to have it both ways, taking responsibility for daring acts in his youth, then deflecting it. . . .
Mr. Ayers is probably safe from prosecution anyway. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said there was a five-year statute of limitations on Federal crimes except in cases of murder or when a person has been indicted. . . .
During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states, taking names of dead babies in cemeteries who were born in the same year as he. He describes the typical safe house: there were usually books by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara’s picture in the bedroom; fermented Vietnamese fish sauce in the refrigerator, and live sourdough starter donated by a Native American that was reputed to have passed from hand to hand over a century.
That Che poster in Obama’s Houston office makes for an unpleasant parallel.
C’mon, Obama. Can’t you muster an unambiguous denunciation? Think of it as a Sister Souljah moment. Yes, you were only 8 when the bombs were going off; since these people haven’t repented, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t slam them.
Hubbard posted this at 9:44 AM HKT on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past
The Saudis sentence a witch to death.
Dorothy posted this at 9:09 AM HKT on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 as Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!, The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past, Those Wacky Foreigners
I wish we had trademarked some of our category names. Alas. (scroll down to second headline)
Jamie posted this at 3:23 PM HKT on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 as Journalism
