pacino wrote:the recall in Colorado has now put the Aurora, CO state senator as thelikely head of the Senate, someone more liberal than her predecessor. good job, republicans.

I'm sure they're devastated

pacino wrote:the recall in Colorado has now put the Aurora, CO state senator as thelikely head of the Senate, someone more liberal than her predecessor. good job, republicans.

she should thank them for not shooting her

Jerz's luv Gov doing a nice job on the Jersey boardwalk calamity

Soooo, Ted Cruz thinks that the Senate needs "100 more" guys like Jesse Helms. Huh.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/11/ted-cruz-jesse-helms_n_3909610.html

pretty sure Christie referenced "hot pockets" in his recap of the boardwalk situation

Hah, I was just about to post that

I'll go with my other favorite political item of this Friday -

As long as dajafi is around, I'll mention that yesterday I came across a November 5, 2001 copy of the New Yorker with these insightful comments from Elizabeth Kolbert:

Wealthy candidates have lately tended to come in one of two types, the vaguely sinister (Ross Perot) or the frankly comic (Steve Forbes), the difference being largely a matter of how they fare. New York's general-election campaign still has one week left to go, so it is not yet entirely clear which group Bloomberg will fall into. But every sign points to his being a Pantalone-like figure who is parted from a great deal of money and humiliated in the bargain.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html

makes u think

reminds me of starship troopers

jerseyhoya wrote:Hah, I was just about to post that

I'll go with my other favorite political item of this Friday -

Will admit to cracking up when he takes the coffee (?) and goes back in...

I assume that was by the genius who did Jesse Ventura's ads? Dean something? jh will know who I mean. Ad guy of choice for pissy outsiders.

swishnicholson wrote:As long as dajafi is around, I'll mention that yesterday I came across a November 5, 2001 copy of the New Yorker with these insightful comments from Elizabeth Kolbert:

Wealthy candidates have lately tended to come in one of two types, the vaguely sinister (Ross Perot) or the frankly comic (Steve Forbes), the difference being largely a matter of how they fare. New York's general-election campaign still has one week left to go, so it is not yet entirely clear which group Bloomberg will fall into. But every sign points to his being a Pantalone-like figure who is parted from a great deal of money and humiliated in the bargain.

Suzi or Stephen would have been closer to the mark. Though I can see "vaguely sinister" if you're really committed to smoking in bars, drinking >2 pounds of soda at one sitting, or owning a bazooka.

This struck me as a thoughtful take on the gap between Bloomberg and (what I would say is one manifestation of) Bloombergism:

The Dashed Dreams of President Bloomberg

dajafi wrote:
Suzi or Stephen would have been closer to the mark. Though I can see "vaguely sinister" if you're really committed to smoking in bars, drinking >2 pounds of soda at one sitting, or owning a bazooka.

Or if you want to walk around unmolested while wearing brown skin. Benevolent authoritarianism is still authoritarianism.

dajafi wrote:
This struck me as a thoughtful take on the gap between Bloomberg and (what I would say is one manifestation of) Bloombergism:

The Dashed Dreams of President Bloomberg

yep. these bits are bullseyes:

Bloomberg is the candidate of the Democratic Party’s donor class....Bloombergism at a national level is merely Democratic Party liberalism stripped of any concern for public opinion....

[Bloomberg] is that rare species: not merely a functional elitist but a philosophically committed one....

[Bloomberg] displays contempt for all procedural niceties, dismissing opposition as corrupt, ineffective, or otherwise illegitimate, and relies upon his overwhelming personal wealth to bury all opposition....

If I ever finish the book I'm working on, you can buy it and read 200 pages of my left wing argument against Bloombergism. (If Wiz reads this thread, it will share bits with Curtis's The Trap.)

heard someone call Vlad Putin the Matthew McConaughey of shirtless politicians

The framework of the agreement with Russia requires going back to the security council when they don't comply with this one.

That'll learn em.

jerseyhoya wrote:The framework of the agreement with Russia requires going back to the security council when they don't comply with this one.

That'll learn em.

Yeah, too bad we didn't have "stronger" leadership who would have just up & opened fire on something, anything

shooting is stupid

guns are stupid

people are stupidest

one general idea underlying treaties & agreeements is to dissipate the kind of idiot energy that provokes stupid use of guns & shooting

still laughing at the clowns who thought this would boil down to a confrontation between the US & Syria

td11 wrote:http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-doesnt-get-to-say-he-is-tired-of-war/2013/09/12/465cdb20-1bd9-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_story.html

makes u think

Makes me think the author is an ass, actually. :/ While there are a few sentences that I don't disagree with, I'm impressed by his eagerness to state the opposing argument and then only obliquely address them.

“I am not going to send your children to fight this misbegotten war,” or words like that, come from politicians who know full well that our country has an all-volunteer force.

So if the army is "volunteer," then we can enter all the misbegotten wars we want?

And anyone who volunteered for military service in the past decade had to know that meant signing up for war.

Service members or public servants who have served in combat, and had enough of it, have every right to be war-weary.

Wait, why are volunteers allowed to be war-weary when they signed up for it? Perhaps war isn't something to be embraced?

The average American has not served in the armed forces, as a diplomat or intelligence agent in a war zone. Neither have his or her children.

The average American knows someone who went to war.

No one has raised our taxes to pay for war.

War is freeeee!

In their dark moments, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who presided over infinitely more consequential and bloodier wars than Barack Obama, were undoubtedly war-weary.

Perhaps if the US is more aggressive, then we can start a bloody and consequential war that would endow us with the ability to subsequently claim war-weariness.

drsmooth wrote:

dajafi wrote:
This struck me as a thoughtful take on the gap between Bloomberg and (what I would say is one manifestation of) Bloombergism:

The Dashed Dreams of President Bloomberg

yep. these bits are bullseyes:

Bloomberg is the candidate of the Democratic Party’s donor class....Bloombergism at a national level is merely Democratic Party liberalism stripped of any concern for public opinion....

[Bloomberg] is that rare species: not merely a functional elitist but a philosophically committed one....

[Bloomberg] displays contempt for all procedural niceties, dismissing opposition as corrupt, ineffective, or otherwise illegitimate, and relies upon his overwhelming personal wealth to bury all opposition....

Yeah, I enjoyed this one.