Saturday, March 20, 2004

Blech

Blogging is impossible when one has the flu. For one coughing on the keyboard is icky. For another, scrolling through articles makes my head feel like my eyeballs are spinning. So I'm going back to bed.

Friday, March 19, 2004

The Bush Administration's Misleading Statements: The PDF

"I was trying to post it on your blog deedee, but can't remember how to do it :) it's like a drinking game--take a shot everytime the bush administration lies to us--whoo hoo!"
-- from Ceds (courtesy of Rep. Henry Waxman)

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Oh brother
The county that was the site of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" over the teaching of evolution is asking lawmakers to amend state law so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature.

Tennessee: Shaming the Country Since 1796
(link via atrios)
"...the answer to failure is not more of the same"

Since I officially cast my first vote for John Kerry yesterday, I am hereby adding my humble blog to the John Kerry for President fray.
Liar, Liar

...pants on fire!

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Cool!

On March 4, BookExpo America (BEA) announced the speakers for its special events program at this year's convention to be held at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, from June 3 - June 6. Three Book & Author breakfasts, a lunch, and an audiobook tea are among the events planned, and the hosts include NPR's Terry Gross, Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter, and C-SPAN's Brian Lamb.

(snip)
Vanity Fair's Carter will host Jon Stewart, Gish Jen, and Tom Wolfe at the Sunday morning breakfast. Tickets for the Book & Author breakfasts are $25, and the events will be held each morning from 8:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. in the Grand Ballroom.

Apparently, Jon has penned a book between shows called The Daily Show Presents...AMERICA THE BOOK: A Citizens Guide to Democracy Inaction.
The Spanish are smarter than us

Hi, I’m back. And I wish I could say that it was good to be home but 60 degrees and sunny will always trump 30 degrees with snow. Sniff.

Meanwhile it’s nice to know that life through the looking glass continues. I’m still getting caught up on the news coming out of Spain, but I’m already inclined to believe that David Brooks is dead wrong. Not simply because Brooks is wrong about 99 percent of the time but because the logic doesn’t follow.

One of the whispered fears over here on the left is that there will be another terrorist attack and this will shore up support for President Pig-in-Shit before the election. Because a frightened electorate is a stupid electorate. Except that this makes no sense. If there was a terrorist attack I can see the Rove spin machine might try to make it work for Bush. “You see? We are still in danger! You don’t want French-looking John Kerry in charge in these times do you?” But if—God forbid—there should be an attack here on the scale of the Madrid bombings, Rove will have a hard time explaining how two terrorist attacks on Bush’s watch make the Democrats less capable of governing.

And I fail to see how Spain is caving in to al Qaeda. José María Aznar justified going to war by claiming that helping the United States would help them in their own fight against terrorism. Clearly he was wrong and the elections prove that. Also the fact that Aznar was trying to use the attacks against the Basques when signs clearly pointed to Islamic fundamentalists went a long way towards discrediting his decisions regarding Iraq and the war on terrorism.

So the Spanish said. “Sorry we think your full of it,” and gave Aznar his walking papers. Are we that smart? I wonder sometimes. Perhaps I’m wrong and if there is another attack we’ll all go back to that September 12th world where Bush is the Savior President come to make the world safe again from terror and liberals.

But I hope I’m right.

Monday, March 15, 2004

Oye, Gringo

Is Latino immigration into the US destroying the American way of life?
...the Latinos are coming. In fact, the Latinos are already here, "washing your dishes, looking after your children" and denuding a once proud, unified country of everything that held it together. "Will the US remain a country with a single national language and a core Anglo-Protestant culture?" he [Samuel Huntington, Harvard academic and one-time member of the US national security council] asks in an essay entitled The Hispanic Challenge, published in the journal Foreign Policy. "By ignoring this question, Americans acquiesce to their eventual transformation into two peoples with two cultures and two languages." Welcome to Amexica.

"The single most immediate and most serious challenge to America's traditional identity comes from the immense and continuing immigration from Latin America, especially from Mexico, and the fertility rates of these immigrants compared to black and white natives," he writes. "The assimilation successes of the past are unlikely to be duplicated with the contemporary flood of immigrants from Latin America." The Latinos, to borrow a phrase, are over here, oversexed and will soon be overpaid as well.
A core Anglo-Protestant culture? ¿quién está asustado del mal lobo grande? Pass the nachos, por favor.