Thursday’s Open Thread
Sorry, we missed yesterday.
Roger Cohen in the New York Times says:
So I’m wary of the clamor for retribution. Congress failed. The press failed. The judiciary failed. With almost 3,000 dead, America’s checks and balances got skewed, from the Capitol to Wall Street. Scrutiny gave way to acquiescence. Words were spun in feckless patterns.
Those checks and balances are recovering now. I don’t think this recovery would be served by prosecutions, either of C.I.A. operatives or those who gave them legal advice. Such legal action, if initiated, would split the intelligence services and the military in paralyzing ways at a time when two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, are still being fought. The country would be lacerated.
Michael Hiltzik in the LA Times writes:
Watching people desperately trying to hang on to their little all following a disaster is an experience, as Aristotle would have appreciated, certain to excite pity and terror in the human breast.
If only we didn’t have to spend so much time these days watching bankers and corporate executives do it.
Every day seems to present yet another example of the disjunction between the financial community’s sense of entitlement and the real world occupied by everybody else.
Hube writes:
How’s that “mutual respect” and “new dialogue” going, Mr. President? Hugo Chávez embarrasses you with the book “gift,” Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua) and Evo Morales (Bolivia) rant and rave at you, and even that “new opening” and “outreach” to Cuba has suddenly been slammed in your face.
One can’t help getting the mental picture of Hube’s bloody finger tips slamming mercilessly into a broken, blood and spit covered keyboard when reading that.
48% of Texas Republicans support secession. Think about that the next time you hear “Proud to be an American” on the radio.
Republican Representative Joe Barton embarrasses himself asking a question of Energy Secretary (and Nobel Laureate) Chu. The funny thing is, apparently Barton think he “stumped” Chu and put this video on his YouTube Channel. Republicans live in an alternate reality, really.
Chu had about the same reaction I get when I see yet another creationist state that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics means that evolution can’t happen or say “if men evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” The stupid burns so much you don’t know where to begin.
Hey, I had a comment deleted by Tyler Nixon over at Delaware Libertarian today.
He accused me of “quite nasty and way over-the-top vitriol.” I basically responded by writing that all anyone had to do was read his Obama posts if they wanted to read “quite nasty and way over-the-top vitriol.”
I think he must have got mad when I said that he was a crybaby who liked to dish it out but couldn’t take it in return.
It was in the thread on “cold fusion.” I thought that I was quite polite, actually.
Those crazy Libertarians!
Wingnut Hube’s mantra is to speak loudly and carry a bit stick. In other words his is the behavior of a bully, more than willing to sacrifice basic values in order to pound down perceived adversaries.
There was no need to stand up to the grandstanding of Chavez, Ortega or Morales, since that would give them exactly the attention they desire.
Moreover, Obama has no control over the oscillations of Fidel Castro. An extended hand is no guarantee of reciprocation, but one never knows unless one tries.
Obama knows better, whereas Hube and his wingnuts haven’t a clue, which is why we have sunk into the pits in the past eight years. This corrupt mindset has now been changed by an election from which Hube has yet to recover as he continues his hateful monologues.
Hey UI — I posted a link to that video in yesterday’s Earth Day thread. How funny was that? Barton smugly having on quizzing a serious scientist on where oil comes from. Barton thought that he was getting in some climate change licks, but he just succeeded in looking like an idiot.
One of the primary signifiers of the Wingnut is his or her attachment to belligerence as a foreign policy approach. Somehow they’ve been convinced that we’re a gang, not a country and they expect that anyone not flashing the right signs is deserving only of a beatdown.
Fortunately the grownups are finally back in the room.
It is quite amazing, anonone, how difficult it is for people like Tyler and Hube to visualize how they come over to their readers. It’s OK if they wish to dish it out, but they should be willing to take it as well. I can tell you from personal experience that Hube can’t take it!
Matt Yglesias reminds us that yesterday was Charles Krauthammer Day, the sixth anniversary of his writing this:
Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.
You’d think that one way for newspapers to control some of their costs (or at least control for quality) they’d lay off these persistently wrong pundit types.
Perry,
You’re absolutely right.
Hube is somewhat limited by only having three debating techniques and being reality-challenged so I can sense his utter frustration with anybody who tries to keep him on topic.
Tyler has a bit more knowledge and finesse but obviously has a skin as thin as an onion. I also find it amusing that the “Libertarian” website is censoring comments, particularly when they claim to be so open-minded.
We’ll have to remind Steve Newton of that occasionally.
I’m sure that it is lost on wingnuts that Chavez, Ortega and Morales only hold office because voters in those countries were trying to pick the guy who would piss off Bush the most.
“If men evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”
I never thought of it that way. I guess creatioism is true afterall.
J – you mean like, “Why is Smitty still a R?”
You’re right, there is no evolution!
😆 I slay me!
Given that Joe Barton is the number one global warming denier in the House of Representatives, I’d have to say, “Thanks to Barton, pretty soon there won’t be.”
🙄
Exactly, X.
A1
I was not following the dialogue on that thread at Delaware Libertarian, and did not know that your comment had been deleted. My policy is that only spam, “outing,” and actual threats will ever be deleted. I have put your comment back (but given the limitations of blogspot it had to be embedded in one of mine).
You have my apologies.
Thank you, Steve!
As I wrote on Kavips, I enjoy your posts because you are interesting, educated, and smart. And I’d add “integrity” and “class” to that list, too.
I appreciate it.
Calvin: “Do you believe humans evolved from apes?”
Hobbes: “No, I don’t believe they’ve evolved at all.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/23/torture-prevented-los-ang_n_190841.html
Just another Repuk Lie
When Senator Leahy was vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he leaked classified information, including the Reagan administration’s plans to topple the Kaddafi regime in Libya, plus information on the Iran-Contra case.
Will that fact be part of the Truth Commision?
Mike Protack
That’s right, Mike, dig something up as “recent” as 20-some-odd years ago, and do it for some good ol’, partisan, you-did-it-first waaah logic.
Lesson 1,652 on why we won’t win, which is yet another derivative of having no useful focus.
Oh, tried to click your username for the url for your blog. Think you can spell the url correctly?