Politics
Are You Ready for Some Race Mixing?
Samuel Francis, a newspaper columnist distributed by Creators Syndicate, believes the Terrell Owens/Nicolette Sheridan skit on Monday Night Football was an insidious effort to promote interracial sex: If only morals and taste had been the targets, the producers could easily have found white actresses who are less obviously Nordic than the golden-locked Sheridan, but Nordic is what the ad's producers no doubt wanted. For that matter, if you only wanted to take a swipe at morals and taste, you ... (read more)MEMRI is Being Repressed
The Middle East Media Research Institute, a group that cherry-picks articles by bigots and extremists in the Arabic language press and publishes translations, has threatened to sue Juan Cole for libel. Cole, a Middle East scholar at the University of Michigan who represents one of the rare voices of reason among webloggers who focus on the subject, rejected MEMRI official Yigal Carmon's demand for a retraction: Israeli military intelligence is used to being able to censor the Israeli press and ... (read more)Peggy Noonan's Sparks of Sexuality
Now that the election is over and there's nothing to be gained from rank partisanship, I have a confession to make: I love Peggy Noonan. If you can abandon the attempt to derive meaning from her columns in the Wall Street Journal or her blatherings on television, Noonan may be the most bewitchingly mad arranger of words on the planet, a Kurt Vonnegut character come to life. Kilgore Trout would envy a passage like this, Noonan's description of her first meeting with Ronald Reagan in What I Saw ... (read more)The Trouble with Harry
With one week to go, there's no sign that any liberal group will mount a challenge to the selection of Harry Reid as Senate Minority Leader. E-mailing all 45 Democrats in the Senate got me a handful of pleasant form letters. I'm thinking about calling them next, since being a cog in the machinery of republic provides comfort in dark times. Molly Ivins panned the selection of Reid this morning: ... let's get a battler from a safe blue state who doesn't have to worry about re-election all the ... (read more)Jargon: Kidding on the Square
At the first press conference since he won a broad nationwide overwhelming landslide mandate, President Bush gave reporters a hard time for asking multi-part questions: Question: Mr. President -- thank you. As you look at your second term, how much is the war in Iraq going to cost? Do you intend to send more troops, or bring troops home? And in the Middle East, more broadly, do you agree with Tony Blair that revitalizing the Middle East peace process is the single most pressing political issue ... (read more)When News Breaks, He Fixes It
John Ellis criticizes the exit polls that suggested a big Kerry win on Tuesday: The weirdest thing about Election Day 2004 was the seven or so hours, from roughly 1:30 p.m. to roughly 9 p.m. when Big Media's story-line was based upon fiction. Kerry never led Bush nationally by 4 points. He was never ever close in any Southern state save Florida (and he lost that by 5). Colorado wasn't close. Virginia wasn't close. Kerry never led Bush by double-digits in Pennsylvania. Everything that was hinted ... (read more)Bang Your Senators
Here's a better list of e-mail links for Democratic senators, updated to add Obama and Salazar and remove the departing members: Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI), send e-mail Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), send e-mail Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN), send e-mail Senator Joseph R. Biden (D-DE), send e-mail Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), send e-mail Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), send e-mail Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), send e-mail Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), send e-mail Senator Thomas R. Carper (D-DE), ... (read more)Democrats: Make the Pie Higher!
In my political adulthood, I have voted for one presidential candidate who won: Bill Clinton in 1996. From Dukakis to Kerry, I know what it feels like to wake up on the first Wednesday in November and clean the tire treads off my back. Everywhere but the Electoral College, Bush and the Republicans ran us over. They gained four seats in the Senate, four in the House, and might have gained one governorship, depending on the results of a Florida-close race in Washington. This isn't the time for ... (read more)Florida: The Election is In Your Hands
I voted in St. Johns County, Florida, this morning, a reliably Republican area that uses optical voting machines which spit mismarked paper ballots back at voters, giving you a chance to mark up a new one and try again. Few ballots were spoiled here in 2000 and the same process is in place this year. Much to my amazement, the "A-C" precinct worker checking my identification hesitated before giving me a ballot, challenging my signature. My penmanship has been in steady decline since I began ... (read more)Google News search: "If Kerry wins", 1,450 results; "if Bush wins", 1,140 results; "if Nader wins", 1 result. ... (read more)
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