Friday, January 11, 2002 :::
Man, this blogging is exhilirating, but it also shows me what a terrible writer I can be. Abandon hope, all ye who enter the sentence below beginning, "His thesis."
::: posted by Brian Jones at 4:34 PM
I think this Michael Paternis guy is a tad optimistic.
His thesis, that the country is the same as it was on 9/10, not "profoundly changed," is a rehash of the liberal third-rail issues that (*gasp!*) haven't gone away...NAFTA, GATT, Green issues, tax cuts, etc., is perhaps correct, but what he fails to note is that there is one thing that *has* changed: his irrelevance has gone from 85% to near-total. For all the yammering he does about media's "suppression" of "important" stories (hell-OH, Mr. Chomsky!) like how awful the tax cut is (hence the steady diet of OJ, Monica, etc.), he can only conclude that those stories will *still* not get coverage, and that the "suppressing story" (my phrase, not his), the war, is more compelling than anything the media was able to cook up lo these last few years.
Poor, poor Michael. Did the bad tewwowists make you all iwwelevant?
I found a printout of this column sitting on a hall table at my employer. I suspect it was placed there by a coworker. Wonder who the idiot is?
::: posted by Brian Jones at 1:04 PM
Doesn't seem to be asking me for my FTP password...
::: posted by Brian Jones at 11:43 AM
Problems posting today. My fault?
::: posted by Brian Jones at 11:43 AM
The print version of this story had a hilarious headline mentioning a "plot to blow up Jeb Bush," as if he were a building instead of a person.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 11:29 AM
Thursday, January 10, 2002 :::
Here's an e-mail I just sent to Instapundit. Let's see if he uses it. Hope he doesn't link back here, though. Ick.
Y'know, with all the federal attention Enron's getting now, it occurs to me
that the bloviating about how we ought to look into the Bush/Cheney
connection, trying to turn it into a Whitewater for the new millennium,
could be simply be a method of applying Bush Administration branding to the
problem. I know that when I saw a headline, "Feds Begin Probe Of Enron," my
first thought (based on the bloviating I've read) was, "Hmmm, so they're
looking into the Bush thing?"
As Taranto points out repeatedly in today's brief takedown of Bob Herbert,
there's not a shred of evidence that the administration had anything
improper to do with Enron. But if the Enron collapse and the practices that
led up to it have legs, it would be nice for the Dems if they could always
be sure folks associated it with Bush.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 4:29 PM
Hey, Cool! I sent an e-mail to Jay Nordlinger about today's Impromptus, and got a response! 3-word response, but, still...
Herewith: the reply:
Thanks so much.
-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Jones [mailto:bovious@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2002 2:58 PM
To: jnordlinger@nationalreview.com
Subject: "Let's Roll" in the wrong mouths
So true. Suppose Friedman didn't have Beamer's words to fall back on. Would
he then admonish Bush, all Christ-like, "And as you do unto the least of
these, so you have done unto me"?
This is all part and parcel of the arrant presumption I've noticed in so
much discourse on the president and/or on the Republicans. One can only
debate so much with people who are so smug and self-satisfied that their
definition of effective leadership is that leadership which brings about the
political results they long for. That's right: the only way for the
Republicans to win in these airheads' view is for the Republicans to cave in
all down the line (free false teeth, if you will).
Under that definition, all I can say is, may the Bush administration become
known as 8 years of criminally poor leadership.
And the galling irony, of course, is that under their definition, Clinton,
Mr. Finger-To-The-Wind himself, that poll-biter extraordinaire, is regarded
as a FINE leader. It is to laugh.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 4:01 PM
Click here for an illuminating look at the behavior that Clinton apologists are talking about when they equivalentize Bush's recess appointments talk with their hero's.
Excerpt:
Back when a Republican-controlled Senate found itself at odds with then-President Clinton over the appointment of Bill Lann Lee as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Mr. Lee was given a hearing. And it was Democrats who fought sending his name to the floor for a vote--because they knew he would lose. President Clinton then responded not with a regular recess appointment that would expire at the end of that Congress. Instead he named Mr. Lee Acting Assistant Attorney General, in clear violation of the Vacancies Act and something that even Mr. Clinton noted was not "entirely constitutional."
::: posted by Brian Jones at 3:56 PM
OUCH!
OK, I wanted the photo to come in...I had selected it and everything. Guess not.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 3:31 PM
OK, enough foolishness.
I made the following link for The Hobbit. I'll be blogging this...
::: posted by Brian Jones at 1:02 PM
Ooooh, I forgot to hit "post"
::: posted by Brian Jones at 12:56 PM
OK, looks like I need to change a setting...
::: posted by Brian Jones at 12:46 PM
Testing....
::: posted by Brian Jones at 12:45 PM
