tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59998322008-07-26T16:08:14.100-05:00Prairie AngelArachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comBlogger1467125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-46946233003331681452008-04-29T22:19:00.001-05:002008-04-29T22:21:19.573-05:00Question no one is asking
What was the NAACP thinking, giving Rev. LooseCannon a platform from which to attempt to torpedo the first black candidate with a shot at the nom? Self-loathing, or what?Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-24795868803506910512008-03-22T15:00:00.002-05:002008-03-22T15:06:00.415-05:00Unbelievable
Just when you think the Far Right can't get any crazier, here's Pat Buchanan on the Rev. Wright imbrolgia:
First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-36899661284642317342008-03-22T13:41:00.004-05:002008-03-22T14:00:56.717-05:00Clinton Derangement Syndrome, Left Edition
Apparently CDS affects your reading skills. Camp Obama (by which I mean the candidate's adherents in the Internet EchoChamber) are in a tizzy over these remarks by Bill Clinton:
It'd be a great thing if we had an election where you had two people who love this country, who were devoted to the interest of the country and people could actually ask Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-37273745453243483082008-03-19T22:44:00.002-05:002008-03-19T22:52:17.579-05:00Sexism versus Racism
Kevin discovers that people are less likely to vote for a generic woman than a generic black and says "But this poll certainly suggests that racism is alive and well in America, and that misogyny is even aliver and weller," and wonders why.
It's easy, Kevin. We have successfully stigmatized public expression of racist sentiments. But misogynistic expression - "Senator Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-46414524519602169802008-03-19T22:22:00.002-05:002008-03-19T22:32:10.493-05:00Baby steps...
From today's WaPo story about Bush's irrational optimism vis Iraq:
In one disputed portion of his address, Bush resurrected assertions that Osama bin Laden and his followers have played a central role in the Iraqi conflict. Bush suggested that a backlash among local Sunni Muslims to the group calling itself al-Qaeda in Iraq amounted to "the first large-scale Arab uprising against Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-21096134884536715402008-03-19T11:33:00.001-05:002008-03-19T11:36:10.442-05:00...dafuck?
From WaPo, via Kevin:
One man went into a Glen Burnie, Md., Toyota dealership to buy a car, only to be told that a name check revealed he was on a U.S. Treasury Department watchlist of suspected terrorists and drug dealers. He had to be "checked for tattoos," he said, to make sure he wasn't the suspect.
Checked for tattoos to buy a car???Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-1336649816854687272008-03-19T11:25:00.002-05:002008-03-19T11:30:13.844-05:00Polls show Amerians smart!
CNN: "More than 7 out of 10 Americans think government spending on the war in Iraq is partly responsible for the economic troubles in the United States, according to results of a recent poll."
For the weirdly sad 28% who think the two are unrelated, a thought problem.... If your waterheater breaks and floods your house and you have to pay to buy a new one AND clean up Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-20470627399597118702008-03-18T11:45:00.000-05:002008-03-18T11:46:44.419-05:00Just FYI
What else I've been doing. Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-1459733748867251922008-03-18T11:34:00.002-05:002008-03-18T11:41:06.836-05:00Poor Florida
Here's what CNN's Candy Crowley said about what the party thinking is about the Florida mess:
I think one of the things is, if you listen to the party leaders, many of them at this point are saying, no matter what happens, we cannot seat delegates from Florida and Michigan that change the results in a way that turn them over.
So, in other words, if they go into this convention -- Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-4714568333154604192008-03-18T11:26:00.001-05:002008-03-18T11:29:54.365-05:00An OJ moment
While I'm a Hillary-supporter (I just don't think Obama has either the toughness to win the general or the experience for the job), I'm not one of those who thinks he should be excoriated for what his preacher says. How many birth-control-using Catholics sit in church every week without feeling the need to rear up and denounce their priest? How many Christians listen to a gay-bashingArachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-24390778355677530502008-03-18T02:36:00.002-05:002008-03-18T02:46:55.096-05:00This explains so much...
Why lies work:
Consider, for starters, this paradox of social psychology, a problem for myth busters everywhere: repeating a claim, even if only to refute it, increases its apparent truthfulness. In 2003, the psychologist Ian Skurnik and several of his colleagues asked senior citizens to sit through a computer presentation of a series of health warnings that were randomlyArachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-26846257224486923512008-03-16T21:13:00.002-05:002008-03-16T21:15:18.823-05:00Paul just now notices
Krugman:
Craziness
One measure of how crazy people on at least one side of the Democratic nomination struggle have become: I’ve gotten a number of complaints that the end of my last — entirely non-political — column, “hope is not a plan,” was a swipe at Obama.
Um, guys, it’s a phrase military types use; I started using it a lot when Iraq went pear-shaped. In fact, if you Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-41547554085049132312008-03-16T20:24:00.002-05:002008-03-16T20:31:24.956-05:00What she said
Filed under 'Shut up and listen for one goddam minute, would you?' comes this from Susan Estrich - The White Elephant in the Room:
Walter Mondale picked her [Geraldine Ferraro] over Michael Dukakis (yes, he was the other choice) in 1984, because he wanted to shuffle the deck, change the dynamic, bring excitement and a sense of making history to what was already seen as a long-shot Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-65398987055078098772008-03-16T14:33:00.002-05:002008-03-16T14:40:14.673-05:00Report from the 51st state
CNN's Kyra Phillips is in Iraq, apparently as part of a Happy-Fifth-Birthday-Iraq-War! thing CNN has going on. Anyway, she interviews some soldiers about the US election. No, not American soldiers, Iraqi soldiers. Let's listen in:
PHILLIPS (on camera): Is there a certain candidate in the U.S. that you're following?
AHMED MANSOUR, 6th DIVISION, ENGINEER (THROUGH Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-5333125261297371872008-03-16T13:17:00.002-05:002008-03-16T13:21:50.724-05:00An Interesting Read
In the Village Voice:
Hillary and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
The strange case of conservative pundits and their love for Barack ObamaArachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-74542371657722841742008-03-15T18:19:00.002-05:002008-03-15T18:36:07.409-05:00The Florida Mess
The majority opinion on seating the Florida delegation seems to be "they knew the rules and they broke them", so no seats for them. Many people even feel that a revote would be unfair; inconsistent messages equals bad parenting, or something.
What I'm not hearing in the media or the blogosphere is the fact that moving the Florida primary got tacked onto a larger election reform Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-70533910508486570062008-03-15T17:38:00.002-05:002008-03-15T17:48:54.625-05:00I'm baaaaack
So I left off blogging for a while to go do other things (Proxima was lovely, thanks), and I come back to find the left side of the blogosphere has gone stark staring mad. (See below.)
Apparently parts of the Obama camp have become so thuggish online that Pro-Clinton writers have left DailyKOS en masse. One wonders how the Obama supporters square their behavior with their Chosen Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-78694471322771394952008-03-15T13:35:00.004-05:002008-03-15T14:38:03.199-05:00
Jumping the Shark
Okay, I haven't been blogging here for a while, but that doesn't mean I'm not still reading the blogs. And today the weirdness out there just got to be too much.
For instance, these separate stories from Americablog:
Hillary urging donors to blackmail DNC into stealing the election for her
I'm really getting sick of Hillary's crap. Fighting tough is welcome. Fighting dirtyArachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-75043200913296849962007-12-31T01:40:00.000-05:002007-12-31T01:47:05.419-05:00Ignorance is bliss?
Further proof that we get the government we deserve:
But ignorance of Pakistan's travails may not necessarily prove damaging to a candidate's political aspirations. In 1999, shortly after Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup, a Boston television reporter asked a U.S. presidential candidate if he could name the general in charge.
"A new Pakistani general has just been Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-14944394140557221022007-12-20T13:39:00.000-05:002007-12-20T14:08:42.305-05:00Apparatchik spurned
This just in:
The Bush administration is dropping a plan to take control over the promotions of military lawyers, following an outpouring of alarm over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly objected to the White House's policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.
Under the proposal, first reported by the Globe on Saturday, politically appointed Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-65244436629387786082007-12-20T13:02:00.000-05:002007-12-20T13:38:50.393-05:00A new (old) nation
Hey, for all you people threatening to emigrate to Canada, now you can emigrate to another country without leaving the continental US...
Lakota nation breaks away from USArachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-31407783971179580282007-12-05T15:00:00.000-05:002007-12-05T15:14:53.526-05:00National Credibility is a terrible thing to waste
I just had a scary thought. This would be a great time for a currently non-proliferation Evil Dictator to get into the WMD business. Because the Bush Administration would jump up and down and yell 'LOOK! WMD' until they were hoarse and nobody would believe them.
It sucks to be led by morons.Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-79073137949792081502007-11-23T13:14:00.000-05:002007-11-23T13:20:01.142-05:00Oooh, it's ON!
From the American Family Association: Put up or Shut up. (ooh!)
Gays challenge traditional marriage supporters: put up or shut up
Homosexual group calls for boycott of Wal-Mart, shopping at Target instead
If Wal-Mart sales go down, gays will claim victory in support of same-sex "marriage" benefits
...
Homosexuals have challenged traditional marriage supporters to do battle. WeArachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-87091826383655818512007-08-08T17:58:00.000-05:002007-08-08T18:16:29.491-05:00It should come as no surprise...
that our government's main concern in emergency management, as in all things, is to avoid blame:
A decision by the Bush administration to rewrite in secret the nation's emergency response blueprint has angered state and local emergency officials, who worry that Washington is repeating a series of mistakes that contributed to its bungled response to Hurricane Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5999832.post-57357166097066833832007-08-08T16:02:00.000-05:002007-08-08T16:03:30.705-05:00Aren't we special?
Ego much?
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on Wednesday defended his five sons' decision not to enlist in the military, saying they're showing their support for the country by "helping me get elected."Look, I know you have to have a pretty high self-esteem to run for Prez in the first place, but we've already experimented with ONE chief exec who thought he was on a Arachnaehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17990626375598577802noreply@blogger.com