What's the sense in having secret code names if everybody knows them :?:

SCOTUS ruled today that the Navy can use sonar in the waters despite the apparent harm to whales. Ginsburg had a strong dissent, but I agree with the ruling in full.

^ This reminds me that EVERYONE should watch the show Whale Wars on Animal Planet. HARD FUCKING CORE

CFP wrote:SCOTUS ruled today that the Navy can use sonar in the waters despite the apparent harm to whales. Ginsburg had a strong dissent, but I agree with the ruling in full.

What harm? Do the whales try to mate with the submarines?

No they use sonar to navigate so it throws off their internal GPS or whatever and they end up dead on beaches and stuff. And then Will Smith chucks them back into the ocean on top of a sail boat

Monkeyboy wrote:

Wizlah wrote:wow. some pretty arresting photos Arkady Babchenko's photo-essay from the war in ossetia and georgia earlier this year. It's worth a look, but fair warning - some of these pictures may be hard to stomach.
]

You mean the war Scheunemann helped start? Go ahead and attack the Russians, we have your back. Honest.

I'm pretty sure the 1st picture is just Jack in a scene from an upcoming Lost episode.

Am I being stupid or too cynical or are Prop 8 protests outside of California sort of silly?

Houshphandzadeh wrote:Am I being stupid or too cynical or are Prop 8 protests outside of California sort of silly?

Maybe. But I think they're trying to send a message that the Mormon Church can't spend millions of dollars to deprive California gays of a basic right without at least some consequence.

But their real focus should be on more effective outreach into nonwhite communities. The best "No on 8" commercial I saw replaced all mention of "gay marriage" with "interracial marriage." Maybe that would have moved some of the majorities of African-Americans and Latinos who voted for 8 to think about it as a civil rights issue, rather than a bigoted act sanctioned by their religion.

Begich is beating Ted Stevens by three votes.

Don Young looks like he's going to hold on though.

They're gonna steal that seat in Minnesota and win that race in Georgia and get to 60. God fucking damnit.

A really good interview the next Republican President (about 8 minutes, 7:30 if you cut out the attempts to get him to badmouth Palin). If he keeps talking this talk and walking this walk, he has an opportunity to be a strong leader in this country. I like how straightforward he is, particularly on the subject of internal conservative debate/factions/whatever and the Democrat's success versus Republican failure. He already looks better than every candidate the GOP has run since Reagan (Obama blowing out the racial barrier doesn't hurt his chances either).

jerseyhoya wrote:Begich is beating Ted Stevens by three votes.

Don Young looks like he's going to hold on though.

They're gonna steal that seat in Minnesota and win that race in Georgia and get to 60. God $#@! damnit.

Steal? You sound like a conspiracy freak. All your future views are hereby nullified. Enjoy your life in intellectual oblivion.



I said the dems would get to 60 and Lieberschmuck would switch sides (as if he hasn't already). I'm sticking to it.

VoxOrion wrote:A really good interview the next Republican President (about 8 minutes, 7:30 if you cut out the attempts to get him to badmouth Palin). If he keeps talking this talk and walking this walk, he has an opportunity to be a strong leader in this country. I like how straightforward he is, particularly on the subject of internal conservative debate/factions/whatever and the Democrat's success versus Republican failure. He already looks better than every candidate the GOP has run since Reagan (Obama blowing out the racial barrier doesn't hurt his chances either).

And if he can't get it legitimately, he'll hold a seance or exorcism to make it happen.

I don't see much chance that the Democrats win in Georgia. But retiring Uncle Ted and that weasel Coleman would be pretty sweet.

The 60-seat thing doesn't mean much, though. On any given issue, they'd be more likely to pick off Snowe or Specter or whoever than to retain Lieberman--whether or not he formally switches--or someone like Ben Nelson or Pryor. And Reid, however much he might like to fight, isn't a DeLay-type party line guy anyway. (If Schumer ever becomes majority leader, that's a different story.)

As for Joe the Quisling, I don't care if he caucuses with the Democrats or not, but he did such a fucking awful job with his chairmanship that I think he should lose it on merit, regardless of disloyalty.

Yeh, I don't expect Lieberman to side with the dems on anything of importance anyway, which is why I think he can take his committee chair and shove it. The guy presided over the most corrupt administration since Harding and he couldn't find one single thing to investigate. I'd prefer someone who is willing to do his/her job, even if it means looking into bad things that might happen in Obama's administration.


BTW, if Palin is going to do the interview tour de force, while still spouting the crap about Ayers, etc, I really wish someone would ask her about her secessionist husband and their ties to radical preachers and America haters. There's no reason not to do so at this point. I would just like to see the look on her face. Please, national press corps, I beg of you.

This question is sort of being asked with TV in mind -

I've read multiple articles recently about how the spatial model of divining political interests (left, right, center, and where the electorate sits) is poorly organized and almost demonstrably false in terms of arriving at any conclusions on what the "center" believes. One article talked about how research consistantly shows that the large clump at the center is not knowledgeable about politics, hold ideologically incoherant positions, can't be counted on to vote, can't describe the difference beteen a liberal and a conservative, and don't follow campaigns closely. Further, research indicates that a very high percentage of these independents are influenced mostly by a person they know's enthusiasm for a candidate, not the candidate's actual policy or governing positions.

The other article (might have been a few) argued that there's no such thing as a coherant centrist public policy in the first place, that it's either all a convienient lazy description, or a sloppy way of saying that those people I described above have a fetish for this issue or opinion this year so x politician is going to play to it.

Anyway - both articles discussed research into studying "the center" and that spatial model, but because they were opinion pieces there were no citations. I'm not asking you to provide a bibliography, I'm just curious if you are or have been aware of such ideas lurking under the academic surface.

VoxOrion wrote:This question is sort of being asked with TV in mind -

I've read multiple articles recently about how the spatial model of divining political interests (left, right, center, and where the electorate sits) is poorly organized and almost demonstrably false in terms of arriving at any conclusions on what the "center" believes. One article talked about how research consistantly shows that the large clump at the center is not knowledgeable about politics, hold ideologically incoherant positions, can't be counted on to vote, can't describe the difference beteen a liberal and a conservative, and don't follow campaigns closely. Further, research indicates that a very high percentage of these independents are influenced mostly by a person they know's enthusiasm for a candidate, not the candidate's actual policy or governing positions.

The other article (might have been a few) argued that there's no such thing as a coherant centrist public policy in the first place, that it's either all a convienient lazy description, or a sloppy way of saying that those people I described above have a fetish for this issue or opinion this year so x politician is going to play to it.

Anyway - both articles discussed research into studying "the center" and that spatial model, but because they were opinion pieces there were no citations. I'm not asking you to provide a bibliography, I'm just curious if you are or have been aware of such ideas lurking under the academic surface.

It's been a long time since I looked at that literature. But I recall that often times these kinds of things are based on whether one's views conform to the way academics look at things. Ironically, it means someone like John Stuart Mill would be seen as incoherent and not very knowledgeable. I gotta go catch a plane.

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/us/politics/13apply.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin]Well, I guess I'm out.
[/url]
Is there anyone on this board who'd pass the sniff test?

Only the smallest details are excluded; traffic tickets carrying fines of less than $50 need not be reported, the application says. Applicants are asked whether they or anyone in their family owns a gun. They must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages.

The application also asks applicants to “please list all aliases or ‘handles’ you have used to communicate on the Internet.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/arts/television/13hoax.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

It appears Sarah Palin knows Africa is a continent.

Slate had an interesting roundtable of Republican officials, thinkers and personalities about where their party should go next. If nothing else, it reminded me how intolerably annoying I found Christine Todd Whitman, and featured Tucker Carlson channeling jeff2sf.

Also of interest is Democratic bigfoot Ed Kilgore, munching popcorn and watching the Republican recriminations.

Bakestar wrote:[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/us/politics/13apply.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin]Well, I guess I'm out.
[/url]
Is there anyone on this board who'd pass the sniff test?

Only the smallest details are excluded; traffic tickets carrying fines of less than $50 need not be reported, the application says. Applicants are asked whether they or anyone in their family owns a gun. They must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages.

The application also asks applicants to “please list all aliases or ‘handles’ you have used to communicate on the Internet.”

"It says here that you're known for posting on internet lists and forums using the handle 'Woody', and that includes TYPING IN ALL CAPS the following phrase: 'I'D DIP MY BALLS IN IT'. Care to elaborate on that?"