Month: March 2004

Endorsements and advisories.

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…I actually had to do real work today, so my usual Must Blog About This Post-it note stash is seriously depleted. Gotta delete that spambot and that’s about it, at least as far as my scribbles go. We’ll combine the two other items: First, North Georgia Dogma has confirmed our worst fears: Cynthia McKinney is … Read more

Broken Record Watch, Part II

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More: Suspected insurgents killed four American civilian contractors in a grenade attack Wednesday in central Iraq, U.S. officials said. Cheering residents in Fallujah pulled charred bodies from burning vehicles and hung them from a Euphrates River bridge. “Barbarous savages,” says Tacitus. True. Our principle enemies in Iraq are bad guys. They’re thugs, assassins, terrorists, criminals. … Read more

Is that a gun? No, it’s a gas pump.

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Not that you can tell the difference much lately. Gas prices in some stations in New York City are over $2.00/gallon. OPEC announces it’s cutting production targets. But don’t worry, Bush knows how to handle this. When running for President in 2000, he said: it was the president’s job to “jawbone” OPEC producers by getting … Read more

Broken Record Watch

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Save for the hands, feet, and (possibly) genitalia, I am a broken record on Iraq. But I seem to be a lonely broken record in the blogosphere, so let’s spin it around once more: We are in danger of losing Iraq. Today’s bombing — though hardly encouraging — is not the reason for my concern. … Read more

Pro Choice Debate

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In the previous entry I pointed out how many pro-life advocates muddy the waters of the abortion debate, and gave advice about how to avoid doing that. Since I am pro-life myself, I won’t be so rude as to give advice to the pro-choice side about how they should argue. That won’t stop me from identifying how some of them poison the well of the debate. If some pro-choice advocates want to use that to steer their compatriots to a more civil debate, I’m not opposed. The polling data on abortion reflects a large amount of unease on the part of the US public. You may believe that the best way to deal with that unease is to use the techniques which I outline below. I suspect (or maybe hope) that such tactics will eventually alienate some voters in the middle, which may cause a sudden shift in abortion politics at some point in the future. If that is true, it may be to your advantage to manage such perceptions so that you have some control over the shift.

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To me, my loyal minions!

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…Oh, right, I don’t have actually have any. Oh, well, so much for that evil notion of everybody going out on April Fool’s Day and posting/commenting as their Spock-has-a-beard Evil Twin*; we’ll instead just use this as an thread for relating classic April Fool’s gags that you, you know, heard about somebody else doing once, … Read more

A minisurvey of what people want re the UN.

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Richard Cohen wants to be able to make a citizen’s UN Resolution so that there can be an official condemnation of Palestinian terrorism, especially the practive of using children as suicide bombers; he also wants everybody not willing to sign such a resolution to shut the hell up. James Joyner wants more Gomer Pyle at … Read more

Honey, not vinegar.

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Lt. Smash demonstrates how to bend elected officials to one’s will – or at least get them to listen attentively for a couple of minutes. Amazingly enough, his technique didn’t require schoolbuses, crowds of demonstrators, flocks of signs and rhyming protests to work; there wasn’t even any violations of private property or abuse hurled at … Read more