A Babbling Stream of Semi-Consciousness
{ Monthly Archives }
On Sunday, with the announcement of the death in Baghdad of Specialist Dustin R. Donica, 22, of Spring, Tex., the list [of U.S. military deaths in Iraq] reached the somber milestone of at least 3,000 deaths since the March 2003 invasion.
Happy New Year.
When I tell people about the musical group The Roches, a lot of people hear “The Roaches” and imagine, perhaps, some particularly grungy punk rockers.
So there was a little murmur of surprise on Christmas day when a couple people unwrapped The Roches’ Christmas CD, We Three Kings. What must that sound like?
Actually, The Roches are three sisters, Maggie, Terre and Suzzy Roche. Here they are, doing an a cappella version of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.
If you like that, there’s plenty more on their site. Only a little bit of it is Christmas music.
These young folks today just don’t understand that no video game is as exciting as real life.
The first time I saw an actual U.S. president live and in person was in October or early November of 1970. That year, like this one, was a mid-term election year, and Richard Nixon was traveling the country promoting Republican candidates. He spoke to a campaign rally at the Statehouse in downtown Columbus, and I went down to see him.
There was a big crowd — lots of Nixon supporters, and a small number of Vietnam War protestors around the edges of the crowd. And every word out of Nixon’s mouth seemed calculated to stir up anger and hatred in his listeners. The air was thick with it. At any second, I expected someone to start throwing punches, or worse.
On November 1, 1976, I saw another president speak at a campaign rally at the Statehouse. It was the day before Election Day, and the president was Gerald Ford. He had become vice-president when Spiro Agnew resigned, then president when Nixon resigned. Once again, there was a big crowd with lots of Ford supporters and a few protesters. But the atmosphere — that was completely different.
Ford did not preach hate. He said what he was for, and why, and asked for our support. But he didn’t ask us to hate anyone who disagreed. I was wearing a campaign button for a Democratic candidate for Senate, and one of the Republicans in the crowd kidded me about it. I wasn’t worried that he wanted to bash my skull in. Six years, and a different president, and everything had changed.
So I will always think good thoughts about Gerald Ford, the 38th President of the United States. He showed that it really does matter what the president says, and how he says it. This would be a better nation today if his successors had followed his example.
Via Boing Boing, a list of video links to the 50 Greatest Cartoons.
This is the kind of thing that makes high-speed internet connectivity desirable. The quality isn’t good enough yet, and there are other technical and legal issues yet to be resolved, but we’re headed toward billion-channel television.
Surely, with a billion channels, there will be something worth watching. Right?
In the meantime, it’s nice to catch a few cartoons.
What he said: No-Bid Dick Cheney just before the November election:
[T]he president’s made clear what his objective is. It’s victory in Iraq. And it’s full speed ahead on that basis. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.
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It may not be popular with the public — it doesn’t matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Cheney on Rumsfeld just last week:
I believe the record speaks for itself: Don Rumsfeld is the finest secretary of defense this nation has ever had.
What I hear:
John Hodgman, the Daily Show’s “resident expert,” and the PC in those new Macintosh ads, is also the author of a book, The Areas of My Expertise. There’s an audiobook version of the book available on CD, and for download from Apple’s iTunes Store.
Now, via Boing Boing, here’s the part that’s hard to believe:
I just discovered that the audio version of John Hodgman’s excellent The Areas of My Expertise (read by the author), which I’m reading and loving right now, is available FREE on iTunes! Do get it now, while you can.
Aww… it’s abridged. Only six hours and 58 minutes. Just like the CD. Obviously, the whole audiobook thing is just a clever ploy to get me to buy the book.
Still, can’t beat the price. I’m guessing it’s a limited time offer, so hurry!
Mark Fiore’s animated Remedial Iraq Study Group:
Remedial Iraq Study Group can help you reach that basic minimal level of competency that has eluded you for so long.
Cartoonist Ward Sutton looks back at 2006: The Year that Wasn’t.
Have another piece of cake:
On the December 16 edition of Fox News’ Journal Editorial Report, after Wall Street Journal editorial board member Jason Riley claimed that it would be “very difficult,” politically, for President Bush to increase troop levels in Iraq, fellow Journal board member Robert Pollock countered: “[A]ll that means is decreasing the length of some breaks from tours of duty and increasing the lengths of some tours of duty.” Pollock added: “That’s not a hard thing to do.”
No job is too difficult for the guy who doesn’t have to do it.
More hard-hitting political cartoons via Daily Kos and Bob Geiger.
Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin:
One of President Bush’s most emotional arguments against cutting our losses in Iraq and coming home is that doing so would be a betrayal of those soldiers who have already made the ultimate sacrifice there.
For instance, at his October 25 press conference, Bush spoke of having met “too many wives and husbands who have lost their partners in life, too many children who won’t ever see their mom and dad again. I owe it to them and to the families who still have loved ones in harm’s way to ensure that their sacrifices are not in vain.”
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Bush is certainly far from alone in being moved by the sacrifices of those in uniform. And nobody wants to believe that soldiers have died in vain.
But if they have, sending more soldiers to die after them doesn’t make it better — it only makes it worse.
And according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, even this potent attempt to pull on American heartstrings isn’t enough to overcome the public’s profound distaste for the current effort.
The poll asked: “Do you think the United States has an obligation to American soldiers who have been killed or wounded in Iraq to remain in Iraq until the mission there is completed, or not?”
A stunning 53 percent of respondents said the U.S. has no such obligation, compared to 39 percent who say it does.
We’ve all heard how Bush’s religious conversion freed him from his drinking problem. Could we get someone to talk to him about his gambling problem?
You don’t keep raising the bet when you’re holding a hopeless hand, especially when you’re playing with people’s lives.
A few years ago, I got a very formal-looking letter from Marquis Who’s Who, the publishers of the famous directories of prominent people.
They were considering me for inclusion in Who’s Who in America, the letter said, and they sent along a little questionnaire to help fill out my biographical details.
“They must have the wrong guy,” I thought. But I do have an elevated opinion of myself, so for a while I wracked my brain, trying to think just what I had done to merit consideration for Who’s Who. I had a pretty good job, high enough in the pecking order that my boss’s boss would surely have been in Who’s Who. But me? I just couldn’t see it.
Near the end of the letter, Marquis explained how I could buy my own copy of Who’s Who in America. (I had been freeloading for years, using the library’s copy.) The price might have been chump change to a prominent person, but I certainly wasn’t prominent enough. “Oh, I get it,” I said. “It’s a profit deal!”
I was reminded of this when I learned that I have been named TIME magazine’s “Person of the Year.” I’ll bet you’re jealous, huh?
It’s a great honor, of course, but it’s not going to make me buy the magazine. Not when I can just go down to the library and make photocopies.
Turns out Jeb Bush is not George:
Gov. Jeb Bush yesterday suspended all executions in Florida, citing a troubled execution on Wednesday and appointing a commission to consider the humanity and constitutionality of lethal injections.
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Florida started its moratorium two days after Angel N. Diaz’s execution appeared to go awry. Dr. William Hamilton, medical examiner in Alachua County, Fla., said yesterday that the needle with the lethal chemicals that should have gone directly into Mr. Diaz’s veins punctured the veins before entering soft tissue. It took a second dose and 34 minutes for him to die.
George, of course, would never let anything stop the killing.
InfoWorld blogger Bob Lewis on confidence vs. arrogance:
In general, I figure confident people are comfortable acknowledging the good ideas and insights of others, where arrogant people, never being wrong, rarely acknowledge that anyone with a different perspective is ever right … and usually won’t have any basis for evaluation, since they rarely waste their time listening to anyone else.
Try this on for size: Confidant people figure they’re one of the capable people in the room. Arrogant people each figure he or she is the only capable person in the room.
Uh oh…
The God’s Politics blog quotes Mother Theresa:
You can find Calcutta anywhere in the world. You only need two eyes to see. Everywhere in the world there are people that are not loved, people that are not wanted nor desired, people that no one will help, people that are pushed away or forgotten. And this is the greatest poverty.