…of the lipstick on the pig Bush Abandons Phrase ‘Stay the Course’ on Iraq - New York Times
Why do they continue to deal with the war in Iraq like it was some kind of ad campaign for marzipan-flavored toothpaste?
For serious thoughts on Iraq, refer to Tierney at http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/opinion/24tierney.html and Kristof at http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/opinion/24kristof.html on today’s Op-Ed page.
Add Jim to your del.icio.us network
both of those op-eds were good. I don’t think many people will admit they have been wrong in their blind and unflinching support of the administration though.
In today’s paper, Maureen Dowd http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/25/opinion/25dowd.html?hp picked up where I left off - but of course the writing’s better.
i would love to read this stuff but i do not have an account at ny times. is there any other way to access it?
Chris,
I assume that buying a real newspaper is out of the question. In that case, I’d suggest that you contact our rotting-tuna blogmeister outside of the blog and he can give you the key to accessing this stuff.
i could get my news from the ny times but then i read this.
http://newsbusters.org/taxonomy/term/499
interesting read as well. i dont agree with all but a worthy of a thought or two at the very least.
http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/061002-machan-times.php
and the rotting tuna blogmeister will have to equip me with that and many other keys when he gets home.
also, i feel as though i have to do one more tuna trip to make up for the trunk cooked tuna incident.
however i still have to sell that to liz.
@chris:
Kent is not suggesting you get your news from the NY Times. Get your news from wherever the hell you want.
The links Kent posted are to op-eds. They’re opinion and editorial pieces. The pieces articulate a position, a perspective or a point of view. Bias, perceived, implied or otherwise, is no reason to bury your head in the sand and pretend that you didn’t vote for one of the worst leaders this country has ever had. So rather than pull the first two links off of google after searching for “new york times left-wing bias” every time someone posts something with nytimes.com in the url, make a little effort to educate yourself before you paste your empty, kneejerk responses here.
good luck on the tuna, btw. my mom says the trunk of her audi smells but i think it’s psychosomatic.
re-read the posts.
i siad i didnt have access to the ny times articles.
then kent, in good humor i am sure, mentioned me buying a “real newspaper”.
to that, in good humor i posted a link to an opinion or point of view about the realness of the ny times.
tell her to use lemon soap.
empty and kneejerk to insinuate the extreme leftist BIAS of the nyt indeed, but not far off the mark.
@chris:
interesting that you’re so insecure in your news sources that by “real newspaper” you took it to mean “something other than what you currently read” instead of a “real” (read: dead-tree paper).
in any event, your comments are more about the finger pointing at the moon than the moon itself which is sort of lame since I’d love to hear your justification of and response to http://aei-brookings.org/iraqcosts/
Jim,
Are you grumpy? Is the stress of the impending move getting to you? I mean, I agree but it seems like the anti nytimes sentiment hits a nerve with you. Sounds like you need a link to another kind of joint insitute, not Brooking’s. Just think soon enough you’ll be duking it out face to face with hempstead on a regular basis, is it too late to take the house off the market?
i dont want to talk about war or left/right anymore.
it’s boring and inconclusive. the right will never reach the left and vice versa. so until we are all standing in the middle, those who grasp either side are at an impass with the other.
lets talk about food and beer.
Chris,
There are many things on which we agree, not the least of which are food and beer, we need to elect people who can help us focus on our commonalities. Not right and left wing aholes who use wedge issues like gay marrigae, abortion and to mobilize their base.
I am grumpy. Not so much because of the move but because I stumbled across this piece the other day. It’s a very good read (and I REALLY encourage everyone to read it) but when I combine the facts of that piece with the knowledge that I’m moving to a locale where on the whole I just don’t get a sense that people really care deeply about anything larger than themselves or their families, it sort of makes me sad.
I’m sad because I read comments like JJ’s and I think to myself, “what a miserable existence, devoid of joy or hope he and so many others must lead.” Anger is not a conviction or a belief (in the way that say, a belief in the equality of all people is a conviction or belief) but it *is* something that you pass on to your kids and infects those around you.
I’m also a bit anxious about the fact that here in PVD kel and I are surrounded to the Nth degree by people who spend the vast majority of their lives trying to make the world a better place–not just for themselves but for the wider world. We are not special here or unique and it makes it easy for us to be who we are and we spend our energy making the world better not arguing about why it’s important to do so.
I have a pretty good idea of what i believe in and what I consider to be true and am open to changing those beliefs when evidence to the contrary is presented. I find it aggravating and somewhat offensive when I need to expend energy defending those beliefs against mere distractions (like the perceived bias of a media outlet or the hyperbolic hypotheticals posed by misanthropes). There are times when I enjoy defending my beliefs against facts and–for certain–facts have caused me to change my beliefs more times than I can count. But there are only so many times you can hear someone say that the earth was created in less than a week or that W is a great leader or Iraq has something to do with terrorism or stem cell research is criminal before you just want to give up trying to make the world better and instead hope that maybe the human race 2.0 will do a bit better than the ignorant lot we’re going to go down with.
f’ing misanthropes. jeesh.
Dude thats some bleak shit, makes grumpy too. Will to fight is the antidote to dispair, thats it?
A note of optimism: That Moyers piece is a year and a half old. Almost everything that’s relevant to his concerns, and ours, has gotten better - or at least less bad - in the interim. The wingnuts on the religious right will be minimized by the upcoming election (there’s really only about 17 of them, and they’re all in Kansas, t.g.). The right wing “dynasty”, as with so many before it in history that looked ready to rule for a millennium, has been done in by its own excesses. Even in Iraq, where things have gotten much worse, they needed to get worse before people would wake up to make them better.
As to the PVD/NJ issue, PVD is unique as a university town and a capitol city of at least regional importance; there’s no equivalent in NJ to that atmosphere. In fact, in my experience, only Dublin would fit the bill. As to the inhabitants, I’m sure you’ll find folks in NJ that are of the sort you found in RI(not many states are bluer than NJ), but they’re not likely to be found on the commuter boat to Wall Street - that’s not a shot at any individual, simply a recognition of demographics.
re:demographics
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/volun.nr0.htm
jim, feel free to come down to the wall street ferry and do a head count of white males and females between the ages of 35 and 54. if i only had demgraphic tables to refer to, i’d guess that you’d be more likely to find a volunteer(trying in some way to make the world a better place) on the wall street ferry than on any train or bus within 300 miles.
and then theres the fact that there are countless people i have met on that boat who give both money and time to a large number of charities ranging from the sandy hook foundation, the american litoral society, the american cancer society, the variety childrens charity, the doe fund, breast cancer charities, beach cleaning, big brothers and big sisters, the 180 project, clean ocean action and many more. so dont worry, if and when you move back, i’ll be happy to provide you with a rather extensive list of the hundreds of people we commute with and live with who dedictae their free time to making the world a better place.
i’m not being defensive. just wanted to make sure you had a better understanding of the demographics of eastern monmouth county and those who commute to wall street via the ferry.
Jim,
I’m with Chris on this one, you don’t really know the people who do positive things for their communities around here, maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised. It’s wrong to judge people just because they have an expensive car, or big home, maybe not always inaccurate, but wrong.
In my post above I’m not referring to the # of individuals who give their excess income or free time to charity (volunteers). I’m talking instead about people who get up in the morning and go to work and “work” is something that tries to make a positive dent in the universe. I don’t want to be all high holy about this shit and get into what kind of job constitutes Right Livelihood so I’m not going to harp on it too much other than to say that w/r/t selfish individuals there is a chance that I over-generalized in my comment above.
However, for me it comes down to simple density of for-impact/non-profit institutions in the MonCo geographic area. My client base generally consists of organizations or institutions that exist to make a positive dent in the universe by addressing social problems via direct intervention or through public policy. The number of organizations that are like this in Mon and Ocean county fits on a single side of a piece of paper. Providence has hundreds (perhaps thousands) of them (and see Kent’s remark as to why). So I’m sure that there are a slew of individuals who do positive things for their communities in MonCo. Some probably do it for all the right reasons and others do it for all the wrong reasons. What I’m saying is lacking (at least as far as my pretty detailed market research goes) is a deep and rich culture of organizations/institutions that facilitate helping others as a vocation (it occurs to me that the church probably filled this role to a greater degree in MonCo for older generations and as the church spins into obsolescence nothing has stepped up to fill its place the way orgs have in a town with an Ivy League university).
earmuffs jim….earmuffs
On the flip side of the coin… there are assholes everywhere.
Also, Jimmy, you happen to hang out/work with/live near people who are into doing good for others… or so it would seem. Nonetheless, I’m sure RI is loaded with its share of money grubbing mother humpers who’d sell their sister for a half-priced Whopper.
Also, I have to say, a lot of do-gooders could more accurately be described as make-themselves-feel-gooders. Or to put it another way, a lot of volunteers in this world are simply compensating for their deep-seated asshole-ness. Sometimes, the guy who got sentenced to community service by the judge is really the one who would give his right arm to save the leg of a total stranger.
Meanwhile, I live in a very rude city full of people who will cut you off in a traffic jam as well as those who will stop to let you in. There are very polite assholes not giving their seats to pregnant ladies on the subway and genuinely good people with grumpy dispositions who will pick up some other asshole’s chicken bones from the subway car floor.
There’s going to be a lawsuit against the city by the guy in the mini-van who tore around the stopped cars to race through a yellow light despite the firetruck responding with lights and sirens to a confirmed scaffolding collapse with people trapped underneath. A broadside collision by the firetruck at the intersection launched the minivan spinning onto the sidewalk where a 23-year-old girl got swatted through the air and slammed against a stone wall, breaking both legs, her hip, some ribs, one arm in three places, and bloodying her mouth and head. The asshole in the minivan was the opportunistic piece of garbage who shot around cars to beat the yellow light, ignoring the impending collision, and then ignoring the nearly-killed girl to make his cell-phone call that would set in motion his future law suit. The girl, happy to be alive, was brave and thankful and never once pointed a finger (even from her hospital bed). In fact, what she wanted to know was if the firemen and the driver of the minivan were okay.
Perhaps this is divergance, but it’s all part of my point… Assholes and good people everywhere.
Jim, this is not in disagreement with what you were saying…
For example from your comments: “So I’m sure that there are a slew of individuals who do positive things for their communities in MonCo. Some probably do it for all the right reasons and others do it for all the wrong reasons.”
Back to my original comment, “I assume that buying a real newspaper is out of the question.” The emphasis was meant to be on the gerund. Maybe I’ll try italics next time, or ALL CAPS.
if you want pumpkins to grow in your backyard, plant pumpkins.
i admit i had to look up gerund. fine. and even then i cannot figure out where it fits in the sentence. but anyhoo, jim, can we get a dictionary search spot on this site so that anytime you or anyone else uses a daedal word some of us can look it up.
Fisrt off…
THE worst leader we have ever had is Jimmy Carter…..hands down. GWB would not have let American citizens be held hostage for 444 days by “peaceful protestors”
Second…Are you shitting me with comments like>
I read comments like JJ’s and I think to myself, “what a miserable existence, devoid of joy or hope he and so many others must lead.” Anger is not a conviction or a belief (in the way that say, a belief in the equality of all people is a conviction or belief) but it *is* something that you pass on to your kids and infects those around you.
Are you serious dude????
@bry: rock!
@chris: just because you failed to pay attention in Mrs. Rodgers class doesn’t exempt you from knowing how to look stuff up on the internets.
@jj: 1.) I didn’t say W was our worst leader so I’m not sure what your point is. 2.) No, but pls let me know if you got me email or not.
Is there an unslanted newspaper out there? Otherwise, isn’t “real newspaper” a fairy tale? My REAL NEWSPAPER, as Kent well knows, is the Daily News. That’s the one that entertains me the most. And who is anybody kidding… that’s the only reason we read the newspaper, for entertainment. That’s why Right Wing nuts watch Fox News and Left Wing nuts watch CNN, or why they read, what?, the Wall Street Journal compared to the New York Times. We get our news from those who make us say, “Yeah!!” Or, once in awhile, when we’re in the mood to get our ire up, we’ll get our news from those who make us say, “Bullshit!!” Entertainment.
First, will someone please start a new thread. This one has too many twists and turns for me to follow.
Second:
Bry - I’m having a foggy a.m.; pls explain the pumpkin thing to me.
JJ - If you think it a coincidence that the hostages were released on the day after the Reagan inauguration, you believe in the Easter Bunny. The terrorists succeeded in getting rid of moral leadership, and got the guy in office they wanted. It was the most successful attempt of a foreign power to influence a U.S. election in history. (Some would say it evened the score for the U.S. sponsoring the coup that overturned the legitimate government of Iran and installing the Shah, under Eisenhower - a coup, btw that Truman refused to support) The quid pro quo, you’ll recall was called the Iran/Contra scandal a few years later, which had several senior members of the Reagan administration lying under oath to Congress. If you want a quick summary of Carter and the hostages, let it be that they returned home alive!
nav - Couldn’t disagree more. Most of my newspaper reading is to glean information and to consider opinions more enlightened than my own - entertainment is way down the list of reasons I read. Papers like the WSJ and the Times, despite their editorial positions, make a sincere effort to remove their slant from their news reporting and imho usually succeed. I don’t watch enough TV to be sure, but I suspect that CNN may do the same; do you think that Lou Dobbs represents the Left Wing? Don’t try to explain away the media bias that does exist (or anything else, for that matter) with the “everyone’s doing it” excuse.
Kent,
Simply put, in the words of Ghandi “You must be the change you wish to see in the world” If you want to see something happen, plant the seeds, nurture them, and harvest the fruits of your labor. If you’re wondering ” Where did all the good people go?” Become what you think a good person should be, and spread the word through your living example. The metaphor of pumpkins was random, yet in the spirit of Halloween I chose to highlight them with my statement. Enjoy the windy weekend all. cuzbry-
I did not get your email Jimbo….use my jjallingham@yahoo.com address