Thursday, February 12, 2004
Ralph Don’t Run
Please visit Ralph Don’t Run. It’s a grassroots campaign that depends on us to forward the message — to Ralph, and to others that might tell Ralph not to run.
As NewMexiKen did.
Archive for February 12, 2004
The wired world
My 14-year-old blogger daughter got Instalanched last week, after she wrote about how her English teacher had ridiculed her in front of the class for writing an un-p.c. paper. I’ve heard what happens when the mighty Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds links you but never seen it up close, and it really is amazing: From 100 hits a day (typical for a teenager’s blog) to 100 an hour, with links to dozens of other blogs and almost 200 posted comments from Edinburgh to Auckland.
That’s my Congresswoman!
Credit, I always say, where credit is due.
And with that in mind, tonight we’re awarding Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R-NM) the first annual Heather Wilson “I think the American people are a bunch of god-forsaken idiots” Award….
After detailing all the reasons why the president’s pre-war rationales for war make sense in retrospect, she uncorked this beauty. “And to me,” she told CNN’s Heidi Collins, “the most important thing was his biological weapons program, which we’ve now confirmed he was continuing to pursue up to the day of the invasion, and the ability to deliver those biological weapons against Americans on American soil.”
An on-going biological weapons program? Really … Continuing research into delivery systems for biological weapons attacks on the United States mainland? She really needs to bring her data to David Kay and the president. The president, I think, would find Wilson’s new findings really helpful right now.
End of civilization as we’ve known it (OK, I accept)
NewMexiKen agrees with Electablog* where I first saw the link. This is a bad thing, why?
Electablog
Electablog* has an amusing blog description —
Dave Pell’s electablog provides a daily (and sometimes nightly) slicing and dicing of the mad dash that is America’s election cycle. Think of it as C-Span meets the Daily Show meets the little girl from Whale Rider meets Dennis Miller before he lost his mind.
Comments Off | 
Print This Post
Filed under Blogs & Blogging and Politics & Elections on February 12, 2004
Print This Post
Filed under Blogs & Blogging and Politics & Elections on February 12, 2004
Quote of the day
So it’s come to this: “He had the capacity to have a weapon, make a weapon,” Bush said.
Yeah, and I have some cake pans, but it doesn’t mean I’ve ever made any cakes.
Important, If True
From CJR Campaign Desk —
During the Civil War, some northern newspapers, uncertain as to the reliability of dated dispatches sent overland by part-time correspondents at the front, resorted to a standard headline that read:
“Important, If True”
The post goes on to discuss how this phrase applies to today’s wildfire story about Kerry.
White House Briefing
A new blog from Dan Froomkin at washingtonpost.com bears watching if the current first line is any indication: “Dental records are typically used to identify the dead.”
Thanks to Jas for the link.
Probably not all that far off
From The Onion —
Majority Of Americans Thought We Already Had A Moon Base
WASHINGTON, DC—A NASA poll conducted to gauge support for President Bush’s space-exploration initiative revealed that a depressing 57 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. already has a research base on the moon. “We put that international space-station thing up there in the ’60s,” phone-poll respondent Randy Snow said. “It might be on Mars, but I think it’s the moon—wherever they have the golf course that President Kennedy played on. Remember, the Cubans tried to take it over?” NASA officials said they hope someday to make Americans’ perception a reality.
Google art parody
Some (many) are dumb and some are tacky, but FARK.com: Comments Thingee has a wonderful page of make-believe Google pretend holiday art. Here’s a couple, but go take a look.
Ex-officer: Bush file’s details caused concern
NewMexiKen isn’t certain what this Bush-National Guard AWOL thing really amounts to, but when the story gets this kind of treatment in USA Today of all places, it’s mainstream. (It’s been hot in the blogs since Peter Jennings asked Wesley Clark why he didn’t repudiate Michael Moore’s endorsement because he, Moore, called Bush a deserter. That was at the New Hampshire Democratic debate January 22nd.)
It’s beginning to look like a cover up of some sort. And, as we all should have learned by now, it’s the cover up that gets you in the end.
Calpundit has been providing the most details on the AWOL story.
Omar Bradley…
the G.I General, was born on this date in 1893.
Rhapsody in Blue…
George Gershwin’s phenomenal blending of jazz and classical music, premiered at Aeolian Hall, in New York, on this date 80 years ago. Gershwin wrote it in three weeks, reportedly improvising some of the piano parts during the premiere.
You can hear an acoustical recording by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra made on June 10, 1924, by clicking here [RealOne Player]. That’s the composer, Mr. Gershwin, at the piano.
Rhapsody in Blue was one of NPR’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. You can listen to the NPR report here [RealOne Player].
Abraham Lincoln…
was born on this date in 1809.
The Address at Gettysburg (November 19, 1863) —
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
And, from his Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865) —
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Charles Darwin…
was born on this date in 1809.
February 12, 1809, was a particularly promising day in the evolution of the human race.
Bill Russell…
is 70 today. Back-to-back NCAA championships at the University of San Francisco, 1955-1956 — 55 consecutive wins. Eleven NBA championships with the Celtics in 13 years, 1957-1969 — Russell was the only player there for all 11.
Simply the greatest winner in basketball history.
Thomas Moran…
was born on this date in 1837. The National Gallery of Art has an outstanding online exhibit on Moran.
Click to see a replica of his classic painting Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
Otherwise known as Judy the Great
Author Judy Blume was born on this date in 1938.
