Louis Farrakhan is a very scary black man who everybody assumed had been dead for twenty years, and denouncing him means about as much these days as denouncing Peter Frampton’s hair. Now, I would say something like that, wouldn’t I just?, being as I am a callow and thoughtless Gen X’er with no appreciation for the heated racial politics of the 1970’s and the pure rock-n-roll awesomeness of listening to some bell-bottom’ed tit warble into a vocoder for 20 minutes.
I used to imagine there would be some generational shift in the media, leaving behind the previous baggage, and things might improve. But from what I can tell you have the perpetually lost in the 60s crowd, the 70s anti-partisan crowd, the 80s Reagan is The Awesome crowd, the 90s Republican Revolution and Bill Clinton's Penis is a WMD Crowd, and then the 00s George Bush's crotch looks awesome in that flight suit crowd.
New SEPTA Regional Rail cars will be at least four months late, delaying relief for riders on the increasingly crowded rail lines, SEPTA officials said yesterday.
...
Rotem was unable to procure enough of the type of steel specified in the SEPTA contract because the U.S. government has cornered the market; it is using the steel for armoring vehicles bound for Iraq, Nowakowski said.
I have no idea if this person is, as claimed, a friend of Tim Goeglein, but these comments by William Walters are hilarious.
....oy, server hosed. Here they are:
# William Walters Says: March 1st, 2008 at 11:01 am
Nancy you wrote: “Once a charge is made.” Indeed, once a charge is made publicly. And you are the one who gleefully made it public.
Did you bring this to the White House privately? Obviously not. Did you bring this to Tim’s attention privately? Obviously not. You executed him publicly with your own self-serving intentions in mind. Could you have forced his resignation privately - indeed you could have. You are not only in part responsible for Tim’s children being “un-provided for” - the greater collateral damage you intentionally created is solely your responsibility. That’s on you and no one else. Now that names were named you want to wash your hands. As I said before - shameful.
William Walters
...
# William Walters Says: March 1st, 2008 at 9:26 am
Your gloating belies your trite statement that you “feel bad about what I’m going to do here.” Obviously, you take great pride in being center stage in public. Moreover, and contrary to what you may have expected, Tim Goeglein took immediate and full responsibility for his actions. The White House acted immediately as well. Tim, a husband and father of two, is now jobless. If the issue of plagiarism is so dear, and is the sole core of your intentions in exposing this matter, then you could have handled this privately. Nevertheless, you chose to smear this man publicly. Now that you have assisted in the destruction of his career, are you big enough to step up and offer your support to his family? I do not fault you for holding any public servant’s feet to the fire, but your manner of execution is shameful. William Walters - a former colleague and friend of Tim Goeglein.
This one by someone else is pretty funny too:
eff Says: March 1st, 2008 at 10:11 am
Damn, Nall, you’re the epitome of prejudice and hate. You obviously don’t believe that other points of view should be allowed by your first amendment.
Here’s a few of my observations.
• The trash Urinal Gay-zette wouldn’t exist if it were run in the evening. • Call the Sentinel what you wish, we consider the source.
You slam Tim for his beliefs, his family, his friends and I’m sure nothing is off limits to a bitter old hag as yourself.
If I chose to read more of your blog, you would also slam his children.
Are you on Hillary’s campaign? You should be. I see many similarities.
As far as the left’s failings, they can be summed up as, well, socialist, communist, and whatever TEARS at the positive social fabric of the family and America. Homosexuals, internet porn, NAMBLA, ACLU, Antichrist, Antichurch, Illegal alien amnesty-votes (for democrats), property tax increases, tax increases.
The muslims hate America only because what the lowlife liberals are exporting here and abroad. They hate the abominations I mentioned above. As far as I’m concerned, I would invite them in this country to take care of the left, if only the muslims were intelligent enough to identify what they hate is NOT all Americans but —Liberal americans.
(P.S. Those of us who saw your article photo in the past know why your web blog picture is blurred….Thank you, Photoshop.)Damn, Nall, you’re the epitome of prejudice and hate. You obviously don’t believe that other points of view should be allowed by your first amendment.
Ezra's certainly right to say that it's bizarre for George W. Bush to criticize Barack Obama on the grounds that "it'll send the wrong message" for Obama to hold a meeting with "a tyrant who puts his people in prison because of their political beliefs" considering that Bush does exactly that on a regular basis. Is it a good thing that the people of China and Russia and Saudi Arabia are, like the people of Cuba and Syria and Iran, ruled by dictators? Of course not. And if the lessons of history indicated that some kind of "no meetings ever" policy caused those regimes to melt and transform into wholesome democracies, then we wouldn't be having this debate.
But things don't work like that, and in the world as it is it's hardly practical to eschew all meetings with everyone whose political system you don't approve on. The question is, thus, whether or not this posture of creating a mostly arbitrary class of "bad guy" that we're going to take down with our awesome powers of snubbing accomplishes anything meaningful. Obama's contention is "no." Bush's contention is "yes" but he has absolutely nothing to show for it.
The frustrating thing is that the media plays along, designating "bad guys" as whoever the US government is designating a bad guy that week, while perpetuating the notion that the "bad guy" designation is linked to some sort of human rights badness when in fact it's just because they're bastards, but not our bastards.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - The economic impact of the mortgage crisis and credit crunch will be huge, and it has barely begun, a new study prepared by several prominent economists and released Friday has concluded.
"Feedback from the financial market turmoil to the real economy could be substantial," it said. Unless they can quickly recapitalize, banks are likely to cut back their lending to consumers and businesses by more than $1 trillion, cutting economic growth by more than a percentage point over the next 12 months.
While the notion of this thing continuing until Pennsylvania so that I can actually vote has some appeal, I'm really not sure I can stand another 7 weeks of this.
Having said that, this election season doesn't exist for my amusement so campaigns are of course perfectly entitled to stay in the thing as long as they want.
I have a pretty broad tolerance for messaging that comes out of campaigns. I appreciate that political speech includes hyperbole, spin, exaggeration, theater, etc. Just don't talk to the world as if it's as stupid as George Bush.
I don't have any strong feelings either way about whether Drudge was good or evil for reporting that Prince Harry was in Afghanistan. Obviously there are times when news outlets should consider not reporting things, but on the other hand one gets a little uncomfortable when there's a conspiracy of silence so large that it suggests that the media is simply an adjunct of the government or state.
Still, as others have suggested, if, say, the New York Times had broken this story it they would have been accused of painting a bulls eye on his head so The Terrorists could kill him faster.
HOUSTON -- The president of the Catholic League today blasted Sen. John McCain for accepting the endorsement of Texas evangelicalist John Hagee, calling the controversial pastor a bigot who has "waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church."
Hagee, who is known for his crusading support of Israel, backed McCain's presidential bid Wednesday, standing next to the senator at a hotel in San Antonio and calling McCain "a man of principle."
But Catholic League President Bill Donohue said in a statement today that Hagee has written extensively in negative ways about the Catholic Church, "calling it 'The Great Whore,' an 'apostate church,' the 'anti-Christ,' and a 'false cult system.'"
"Senator Obama has repudiated the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, another bigot. McCain should follow suit and retract his embrace of Hagee," Donohue said.
I've met Arianna, and it's hard to imagine her presiding over a holocaust, but that's why I've got Fox News's Bill O'Reilly to set me straight on this stuff.
And all of this was coming from an alleged tough-guy who admitted to Bill Moyers that he got suckered on Iraq because NOBODY CALLED HIM. A guy who anyway said under oath that, if a government official calls him, he presumes the conversation is off the record. A guy of whom the vice-president's aide said under oath that his show was the administration's best platform for launching bullsh*t into the media stratosphere. That he will be praised for it anywhere may well be the most perfect museum specimen we have of a feckless and corrupted national press corps.
When SEPTA hiked fares 12 percent last summer, transit-agency officials said they expected ridership to decline, as it had after prior fare increases.
But when gasoline prices jumped sky-high and stayed there, SEPTA ridership escalated by 30,000 daily trips (4 percent) from July 1 to Jan. 1 over the same period in 2006.
Regional Rail ridership rose 12 percent, or 13,000 daily trips, while city transit (trains and buses) increased by 17,000 daily trips or 2.6 percent.
The ridership renaissance continued last month, up 51,000 daily trips or 6 percent over the previous January - up 32,000 daily trips on city transit; up 19,000 daily trips on Regional Rail.
The headline is "SEPTA ridership up, despite fare increases," though a better headling would probably be "SEPTA ridership up, despite fact that
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