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New York, 10:55 AM
Sun Nov 29
12 posts in the last 24 hours
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07/29/09
07/29/09
07/29/09
You have the right to remain deferential.
07/29/09
07/29/09
By the way, a correction: Crowley was not investigating a burglary. He was investigating a possible burglary. He saw almost immediately that there was no burglary in progress.
07/29/09
Speak it like you live it, Mister Secretary.
07/29/09
07/29/09
07/29/09
But I don't think you were going for a lucid analogy so much as expressing a desire to hold Powel accountable for any role he may have played in persecuting the war in Iraq. There's an intelligent debate to be had about that. Alas, that's a battle I don't want to choose right now.
07/29/09
Thanks, but I'll stick with my main point, which is that the case for war in Iraq is the starkest case of racial profiling I can think of in my lifetime. At a time when any raghead would do, the administration chose the most convenient target, the dude who'd been looking at us cross-eyed ever since we'd taken him off the payroll, never mind that absolutely no credible case could be made with the available evidence that Iraq posed any threat to us whatever. To extend the metaphor, which I think is very lucid, Colin Powell is the corrupt cop who plants a gun on the unarmed victim, except that he did it after the fact, with millions watching, at the UN.
That's what he gets to live with. He should keep his mouth shut about racial profiling.
07/29/09
As for Powell, he's a cop-out and blew all the credibility he has ever earned in a lifetime of service in about twenty minutes at the UN. He can't pick a wall paper pattern without the world second-guessing him now. I wish that were enough to exact revenge on those responsible for the approximately 100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties this war has created (not to mention the psychological, cultural, and material costs). I'm a skeptic, so I have a hard time believing that anything could have stopped Cheney and his cabal of neocons from knocking down the gates of Babylon.
07/29/09
07/29/09
....and somehow the Gawker gods saw it fit to randomly change my avatar to an Onion character just now. How bizarre. Is it a sign?
07/29/09
07/29/09
Edit: Okay, back to the Onion character again. Just a cruel cosmic joke, I guess. Where's a Jewish grandma to cheer me up when I need one?
07/29/09
07/29/09
07/29/09
07/29/09
Side note: What's with all the purple people being thrown in with the lists of races? Purple people have been mentioned a bunch of times, yet they are so rare in this country that I may only have seen as few as half a dozen in my life.
07/29/09
07/29/09
07/29/09
I'd be glad someone cared enough to check to see why someone may be breaking in to my house. Next time, just let everyone break in. Then they'll be called racist for not responding promptly to a reported break in. They both acted out of line but if Gates had just not lost his "shit" the issue would have been OVER. He acted like a hothead and no one wants to admit it.
07/29/09
In addition to obtaining the ID of the resident with his own picture on it, of course.
07/29/09
07/29/09
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07/29/09
He lost his shit because the cop wouldn't leave. If you just came back from a long trip, was sick and just wanted to go lie down and be alone, and the stranger in your house wouldn't leave, then yeah, I bet you'd lose your shit.
07/29/09
Voice dissent? Here's your cell.
07/29/09
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07/29/09
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07/29/09
Example, a cop is sitting at the counter of a restaurant. He sees a customer standing and shouting at a waitress. The cop goes over and tells the guy that he has to stop or he will be arrested. The customer then very politely says in a normal tone of voice, "I'm sorry, officer, but she made a mistake on my order." No pissing match with the cop. Then he turns around and continues to shout at the waitress. Do you think he's not going to jail because he was polite to the cop and rude to a waitress that the cop doesn't even know? Of course he is locking the asshole customer up. He has an obligation to protect that waitress as well as the peace of other parties in the restaurant. Now, why would you think that the cop would have to take more crap himself than he would allow to be aimed at the people who he is sworn to protect?
Shouting at a waitress in a restaurant is not protected speech and neither is shouting at a cop on your porch.
07/29/09
07/29/09
07/29/09
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07/29/09
Too bad his public use of common sense kicked in about six years too late.
07/29/09
It's sad to watch Powell nowadays. He knows that he totally destroyed his own credability, which was his chief asset, and that he has to atone for it somehow. But no matter how hard he tries, the Iraq fiasco (and the UN speech in particular) just continue to hang over his head.
07/29/09
But yes, it does seem like he's trying to compensate by giving extremely diplomatic opinions these days.
07/29/09
For a quick minute, I thought he'd be able to do a Jimmy Carter and become a world's statesman.
But, while Presidents who start wars can do, I don't think a former general could.
07/29/09
06/22/09
06/22/09
06/22/09
Of course, if Rummy had meticulously collected all the hate-mail, hate-e-mail, etc. he had received while Defense Secretary, he'd need an Indiana Jones-final scene-sized warehouse to store it all.
12/12/08
Meanwhile, David Brooks is frantically searching for the GOP's soul (working under the amusing premise that it actually has one) and is hoping to aid its rise, pheonix-like, from the ashes of its own self-immolation.
12/12/08
No, what needs to happen is for those two branches of the body politic to be amusing third and fourth parties and for a real liberal party to finally emerge in the U.S. because, frankly, the Democrats have never really gotten the job done for the people and--Blago, Blago, Blago--are just as corrupt as the other guys.
Quite frankly, I'm sick of living in a country that dresses right and righter and pretends its two woeful special interest blocs are actually different.
And if change is going to happen, quite frankly, this is the moment. There's actually someone apparently responsive and not yet calcified by age and indebtedness to the horrible dependence all on fundraising to which U.S. politicians are captive.
12/12/08
12/12/08
The question is, why did you ever listen to him in the first place? OK, i know why--crass opportunism. It gave the GOP a chance to move beyond the country-club and white-shoe law firm set to the guns, taxidermy, and Wal-Mart set, thus latching onto power with a vice-like grip for another generation.
But this is what Rush et al are. Despite being elephantine in ego, he hasn't gone rogue. Rush got his start in the radio market in which i live, and he's always been this way. And until this election, the GOP has been just fine with it, has had no problem with appealing to the baser instincts.