St. Patrick’s Day Open Thread
Welcome to your St. Patrick’s Day open thread. First of all, Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Who’s drinking green beer and eating corned beef and cabbage tonight? At my house, Free Radical made his own corned beef and we’re going celebrate home-cooked style. What are your plans?
By graymalkn (Flickr.com) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
One thing I find amazing right now is how many people from both the left and the right are talking about intervention in Libya. Supporting regime change in another country, what could possibly go wrong? That’s why this blog post from Tom Ricks (author of Fiasco) really resonated with me:
Contrary to many of this blog’s readers, I do think the United States should intervene to help Libya’s rebels. But I also think that invading Iraq in 2003 was a disastrous move for the United States, one that will cost us for decades to come. So it was with very mixed feelings that I read a letter urging President Obama to act, and saw it signed by so many of those people who urged us into Iraq:
Stephen E. Biegun William Inboden Danielle Pletka Bruce Pitcairn Jackson
John Podhoretz Ellen Bork Ash Jain Randy Scheunemann Paul Bremer
Robert Kagan Gary J. Schmitt Scott Carpenter David Kramer Dan Senor
Elizabeth Cheney Irina Krasovskaya William Taft Eliot Cohen William Kristol
Marc Thiessen Seth Cropsey Tod Lindberg Daniel Twining Thomas Donnelly
Ann Marlowe Ken Weinstein Michele Dunne Cliff May Leon Wieseltier
Eric Edelman Joshua Muravchik Rich Williamson Jamie Fly Michael O’Hanlon
Damon Wilson Reuel Marc Gerecht Martin Peretz
Yep, pretty much. If that group thinks it’s a good idea, it’s a terrible idea. I sympathize with the rebels in Libya but military intervention is not the answer.
I’m pretty amazed, but it appears that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is serious about running for president. He’ll have a lot of obstacles to overcome – he looks like Boss Hogg and sounds like Foghorn Leghorn. He also has a Google problem.
A whopping seven of the nine results center on race-related flaps that Barbour has been involved in over the years. Google’s autocomplete feature draws on factors including the popularity of search terms. To explain what each of these searches refers to:
Haley Barbour racist: This one is self-explanatory
Haley Barbour civil rights: Ditto.
Haley Barbour citizens council: This is a reference to comments made by Barbour to a reporter last year praising the White Citizens Councils of the 1950s and 1960s. In Barbour’s account of his hometown of Yazoo City, they were actually a check on the KKK. Critics quickly pointed out that the groups were formed to push an ugly white supremacist platform, and Barbour had to issue a clarification.
…
Haley Barbour license plate: Last month, Barbour was asked at a press conference about the proposal by a Confederate group to issue a state license plate commemorating Confederate hero and KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest. He responded: “I don’t go around denouncing people. That’s not going to happen.” After another outcry, he subsequently promised he would veto the effort if it passed the Legislature.
Haley Barbour and watermelon: This refers to a recently resurfaced New York Times article from 1982 that reported:
But the racial sensitivity at Barbour headquarters was suggested by an exchange between the candidate and an aide who complained that there would be ”coons” at a campaign stop at the state fair. Embarrassed that a reporter heard this, Mr. Barbour warned that if the aide persisted in racist remarks, he would be reincarnated as a watermelon and placed at the mercy of blacks.
An old-time Southern governor against the first black president? Personally I think he’ll lose worse than Sarah Palin.
Tags: Open Thread
Here is what the babykilling nitwits in Sussex are trying to defund:
Good that it was on WGMD; they will all hear it.
Note: Planned Parenthood is one of only three providers in Sussex for the Delaware Healthy Mother and Infant Consortium. Planned Parenthood does no abortions in Sussex.
William Kristol is proof that being 100% wrong about everything is not a handicap for political pundits, but a virtue.
26+6=1
MJ’s going to party like it’s 1981. I don’t think the Irish even say 26+6 anymore.
One of my friends posted that on my FB page today. And a few of my friends have the bumper sticker with that.
Trivia question – what Beatles song was the only one ever banned by the BBC?
Did anyone wonder if the the Administrations adamant rhetoric supporting nuke power has anything to do with corporate campaign contributions?
You almost It doesn’t of course. It’s just a practical and pragmatic decision
Funny that I was in Dublin just before x-mas and found out from locals that Irish Republicanism is more rampant in the States than in Ireland.
Homegrown terrorism had taken its toll. The Irish really don’t think of the north all that much anymore.
Trivia – LSD?
Even if it were evident that the Libyan rebels needed external assistance in their revolution, it is by no means evident that the USA should be the source of that assistance. But that is the default assumption with nearly every conflict, one that we have done a great deal to foster. The USA’s international posture and its domestic prosperity will be enhanced when it and the world give up that assumption.
follow up trivia question… “why on earth wasnt “octopus’s garden” banned from existence?…. seriously i’d like to know why Ringo was allowed to ruin an otherwise perfect album.
It was actually a Paul & Linda McCartney song that was released by Wings (my mistake on the Beatles).
OK, I admit it. I have NO idea what 26+6=1 means.
I was never very bright.
Would someone please clue me in.
And what song was banned by the Beeb?
26 Counties of the Republic of Ireland + the 6 Counties of Northern Ireland = One united Ireland
Holy shit, and I’m an Irishman.
Told you I wasn’t very bright.
you are very bright – with a heart of gold I might add
Happy St Pat’s. My favorite holiday, because it’s silly & green.
Give up on the trivia question?
Lucy in the sky with diamonds?
“Give Ireland Back To The Irish”
The Light Comes from Within
Taxman.-I think that’s the title.
Somebody at AP is in big trouble. Can you spot the gaffe in this otherwise excellent article? It’s easy:
The gaffe is obvious: Somebody screwed up and talked about inflation in the Reagan Adminstration without blaming Carter! Heads will roll at AP.
I quote from the AP style guide:
Anything bad that happened in the early 1970s or early 1980s actually happened during the Carter Administration and was Jimmy Carter’s fault. Anything good that happened during the Carter Administration actually happened in the 1980s and was due to the Reagan tax cuts and deregulation.
I feel sorry for the cub reporter and his fact-checker once management reads this.
Good catch.
EK got it.