Month: October 2007

The answer is yes. One blogger predicts:

"Considerable social backlash. Even in Massachusetts."

Jim Fallows notes some resemblances between how their respective Nobel Prizes were received.

Or the power of the Colbert suffix:

It’s Colbert’s non-virtuous sense of the -y suffix—and his new meaning of “truthy” as not truthy at all—that’s inspired some recently coined words, demonstrating what the Stanford University linguist Arnold Zwicky has called the Colbert suffix. The most notable case is probably "fame-iness," a type of devalued, insubstantial fame epitomized by Paris Hilton and discussed by Meghan Daum in the Los Angeles Times. Zwicky has also found examples of "referenciness" (a quality possessed by writing that appears to contain solid references, but upon closer examination, those sources are actually bogus or beside the point) and “faithy-ness” (an insincere pretense to religious faith, endemic to politicians). Elsewhere, I’ve spotted “democraciness,” “innocentiness,” “integritiness,” “intelligentiness,” “outraginess,” “victoriness,” and “youthiness,” all of which have the Colbert flavor.

The Times Literary Supplement just had a story on the "The Thinginess of History."

Giuliani will have a hard time keeping all the Republicans on board if he wins the nomination. Even the GOPUSA poll suggests a resilient minority – around 15 to 20 percent – willing to jump ship if that happens. In a tight election, that’s a big deal.

"Lets also remember Obama is trying to run against our Eleanor Roosevelt" – from Marc.

Mickey claims:

If the White House had just ignored McCaughey’s piece, it would probably have gone away. The damage was almost entirely self-inflicted.

He’s right, I think. More evidence of Clinton’s self-defeating paranoia. He’s also right about this:

I specifically remember that the Clintonite rebuttal, like Ambitious Whippersnapper Ezra Klein’s recent blog post, made a big deal of the following provision in the law:

"Nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting the following: (1) An individual from purchasing any health care services."

But of course laws have sweeping introductory provisions like this all the time, only to undermine them in the fine print. Maybe the Clinton legislation didn’t undermine this particular sweeping provision–but the Clinton spinners were fools to think anyone would be convinced by the sweeping provision itself. Or, rather, they were treating the press like fools, and the press doesn’t appreciate that. …

A good point, I’d say:

I honor and respect his service to the country.  I respect anyone who spends their adult life in the military as he has, but I respectfully have to say, General Sanchez, why didn’t when I was in Baghdad, meeting with you and Jerry Bremer five years ago — well, four years ago — and I said, "You don’t have enough troops here.  You’re going to fail.  Looting is going on, Al-Qaeda is coming in, you’re going to have these problems.  Why aren’t you settling the de-Ba’athification issue, etc etc."  And he defended the present policy [at that time], he said it was succeeding, and he testified before the Armed Services Committee, of which I am a member, the same way.

When we confirm a senior officer to a position in the military, there’s always a standard question that is asked, and that they always say Yes to, and that is "When asked, will you give your candid and personal opinion in answer to a question by a member of the committee?"  They always say Yes.  He said Yes.  He was asked in several hearings about the strategy, and he not only didn’t complain about it — in all due respect again — but he supported it.  And I wish he had done that back when he was on active duty.

There has been good news from Iraq lately, especially from Sunni areas, with respect to the small but deadly part of the civil war that pays allegiance to the al Qaeda brand. But this passage from the WaPo really struck me:

As the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved.

So we have to keep success against AQI on the downlow because it might interfere the simplistic rationale for continuing the occupation indefinitely. When will the president be honest and tell us that he thinks we should indeed police the Iraqi civil war indefinitely, if only because there might be some local rapprochements between Sunnis and Shiites along the lines we are seeing? Wouldn’t that be a more honest and more persuasive rationale for indefinite occupation than the al Qaeda canard?

The next generation literally cannot understand the arguments against marriage equality.

Who’s nuttier? Kos says Malkin, because she actually takes herself seriously.