Coo, coo, ca-choo, Mrs Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo, wo, wo)
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)
Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Ev'ry way you look at it, you lose
Elwyn Tinklenberg is socially conservative, so we shouldn't fall in love with him. But he's better than the crazy Prez-groping lady.
Or, if we do fall in love with him, we must be prepared to bear his lovechild.
OT: If you're itching to vote before election day, I have an opportunity for you. My farmer friend is a finalist in Martha Stewart's Dreamers Into Doers contest, and y'all should vote for her (she's Laura M, pictured with one of her draft horses). It appears she faces stiff competition from the motorcycle lady. Vote daily!
Hey! I just got canvassed! Put me down as a strong Obama. Woo.
The dude canvassing me was complaining about VA not having simple early voting, so I mentioned they did have simple early voting in TX, and the guy said he was from San Antonio.
max
['Apparently all the D's around here are from Texas.']
I'm always surprised that Texas has early voting. How did we actually pass legislation that helps people get to the polls?
And the DMV is way better there than here.
How the fuck did THAT happen?
max
['It's probably one of God's little jokes.']
We have early voting in Ohio. Canvassing yesterday I heard two people say "I've already voted for Obama." I liked hearing that. I also just got to tell it to a phone canvasser.
I can't fully explain why, but I am fascinated by Powell's endorsement of Obama. Maybe it's because he's finally saying out loud some of the things that many Republicans must have been thinking but that one never hears said plainly by Republicans or the media. Someone actually using their head, instead of spinning things for political gain. (And I don't care if it makes you think he is angling for a position in an Obama government; I think Powell really meant the things he said).
7 - I got to say that to a phone canvasser yesterday.
The DMV still kind of sucks here, but I'm sure it's possible to suck much worse.
I always thought Powell would be our first African-American president. Except for his complicity in the Bush agenda, about which he was profoundly regretful, he's one of the few truly principled people we've seen in that kind of a position. I always liked him, anyhow, and enjoyed watching several lengthy interviews with him about his life and career. Like Obama, he seems to have somehow escaped a lot of the cynicism and cronyism that power brings. It's too bad he fell for the Bush-Cheney doctrine, or he really might have had the chance to retire upward.
Huh. I don't feel this way about a lot of people, but Powell is dead to me for his support of Iraq. Most war supporters I figure were either deceived (with varying degrees of complicity) or were people I never thought much of. Powell stood up in front of the UN and delivered a speech purporting to give factual support for the need to invade Iraq, and was enough of an insider, with enough expertise, that he can't possibly have been under any illusion about the bullshit he was spouting. I haven't seen him on TV since then other than to hope he's developed a drinking problem.
Part of my vehemence here is that I like him, in the 'find him personally appealing' sense, too. He talks like my dad; they're in the same age bracket, and they've both got a very-well-educated newscaster accent overlying a kid from the outer boroughs. So I hear him, and he seems smart, and decent, and I want to trust him. Which means I never want him on my TV screen again.
12 nails it. I've been trying to figure out how to write a measured response to 11 that doesn't make me sound unreasonably vindictive, but now I don't have to.
I think Powell gave up any claim to being "principled" after he lied to the United Nations about weapons of mass destruction.
At SLU I brought Ann Wright, a state department official who resigned in protest at the start of the Iraq war, to speak to the students. She had some incredibly harsh things to say about Powell. A lot of it boiled down to "He made his decision. And now he can drive around a fancy sports car and collect big speakers fees and live comfortably, and the children of Iraq are dying."
I am unapologetically unreasonably vindictive to Fox for canceling Futurama.
I'm glad he didn't go on to beg everyone's forgiveness and try to get away with what he did, but I can't say he's dead to me. I guess I just sort of feel deeply saddened that he lied.
Ann Wright by the way was a fascinating person to meet. In the 80s she worked in the Pentagon helping with the planning of the invasion of Grenada and working with the contras. Now she's a radical opponent of war and imperialism. The weird thing, is that she still thinks she was doing the right thing in the 80s. Hearing her try to justify the invasion of Granada after arguing for Ehren Watada's right to refuse to serve in Iraq was very strange.
For some reason, all of the email around Colonel Wright's visit to SLU failed to survive the transition to my new workplace & email system. Bummer.
18: double-plus good? ungood? We report, you decide.
18 in the context of 14 is rather interesting.
For myself, I don't like Powell because I can't see where he's ever basically taken a strong stand about anything where it would have potentially cost him, and that includes the Obama endorsement. To me, his disgraceful conduct around the selling of the Iraq war was cosmic justice for being so selfishly concerned about maintaining his credibility as a thoughtful, centrist insider. If he was really fighting and losing these battles inside the white house, he should have fucking well acted on his conscience and made that clear to the world. Instead, afraid of being destroyed, he knuckled.
But hey, I'll take the endorsement, because not for me, etc., and it's making the vicious racism of the right all that much more apparent, which, you know, better to have it on the surface.
One of the troubling things about Powell, to my mind, is that, from what I understand, he sees his rise as non-extraordinary. He had a C-average at City College, but then, in the military, learned to be very disciplined and careful, making himself just the right size and shape for each position that opened up above him. He wasn't openly ambitious or daring, just a decent guy who made himself pretty competent and never went too far out on a limb.
What I wondered about his endorsement, talking about generational change and all that, was whether he is jealous, in some sense, of a younger black man whose rise has not been due to being the quietly studious moderate, but by being bold in his ambition, clear about his objectives, and unashamed to talk about racism. Listening to Powell talk about race on TV a few years ago, it sounded like he wanted to communicate that it doesn't help a black man to talk about racism; he's got to pretend there is no such thing, even though he knew damn well that it was all around.
That is, I think Powell credits a lot of his success to being able to listen to and not intimidate the people around him, and not to stick out too far. But what do you do when everyone around you wants you to do something truly awful? Powell was playing easy-to-get-along-with, and it cost him not only his self-respect, but the respect of everyone watching, too.
I think we're getting a little close to the way Mars Attacks lampooned Powell, which is probably unfair. He's clearly extremely intelligent and competent. But if he had been more of a bold mover, and less of a profoundly capable military bureaucrat, well, maybe things just wouldn't have gotten so fucking fucked up. If there's one position where you can't go along to get along, it's fucking Secretary of State. The Pentagon will roll right on over you.
The Pentagon Dick Cheney will roll right on over you.
I think that's right, Tweety. Maybe it's a good reason why a lifetime military bureaucrat makes a bad SecState. Powell got to where he is by being excellent at following orders. I don't think he was ever a lapdog or a sycophant, but there's just something about a lifetime in the military that makes me very unsure about a person's ability to form an ethos of their own.
26: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Pentagon, Defense: same difference. They rolled as one.
well, yeah. How about a *career diplomat* as Secretary of State for a change?!
Obama, I'm holding my breath!
Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes tonight: still undecided about whom to vote for! We can't go wrong with either one!
30: How old is that guy, now? He was ancient and doddering when I was a kid. I had no idea he was still pumping out that ignorant crap.
I was shocked, OTOH, to learn that Colin Powell is 71. He looks eerily like my dad about five years ago, when he was 50.
31: Rooney will be 100 years old in 2019.
Didja ever wonder about voting? Why do they make you choose only one of the candidates? It seems like they oughta have an option for choosing both!
At any rate, I figured the Pluggers comic strip had rendered Andy Rooney redundant.
Take it easy, guys. It's all good.
ZOMG Colin Powell is older than Dick Cheney?
Cheney looks like death, but he's not insanely old. One of the weirdest things about the Cheney/Edwards debate in 2004 was that IIRC, there's less than 15 years between them.
Anyone see the train wreck of W this weekend? Powell was the only person who Stone seemed to give a pass to.
Looks like the limits on executive compensation limit executives to a mere 10% of the entire bailout, paid without regard to the quality of their work.
37, That was indeed surprising to realize.
37: He's just rotten like Emperor Palpatine.
Less than 15 years' difference is still pretty significant. What's weird is that differences of 5 years can still really show up differently; or hell, once you hit your 40s, people your own age can appear quite differently aged.
Heh. Hilzoy has a troll worse than me.
Cheney looks like death.
That's just his soul showing.
I haven't forgiven Powell for the role he played in walking back Clinton's 1992 campaign promise to DADT. He didn't have anything to lose with me at the UN . . .
Powell would never have made General, let alone four star and Chairman of JCOS without being a White House Fellow under Nixon. Don't think My Lai had nothing to do with it, either.
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I think ToS needs a serious intervention. He's not his normal chipper self today.
