Jim wrote a letter to Mitt. Wasn’t that nice?

In comments yesterday, Jim Wheeler wrote a little letter to Mr. Romney after seeing the quote below about Vietnam service.  Here it is.

Gosh, Mittens, I was there and I really, really missed you.  And you know what?  If you had been there it would have done wonders for your ability to empathize with the little people.

For example, there was the family separation of 474 days out of 540 during which my wife raised our three boys alone, closed on the purchase of a house and made all the major family decisions without me.  For example there were the incessant hours of boredom punctuated by moments of fear and immense loneliness.  For example there was the frustration of having politicians trying to run the goddam war by sitting around a coffee table drinking bourbon while we were racing up and down the South China Sea lobbing 8 inch shells into attacking Viet Cong.  For example there was the immense pleasure of receiving one’s wife’s accumulated 17 daily letters, each numbered consecutively because she knew they would arrive that way, and because there was no fucking email or satellite video then.

But never mind, Mittens.  You can take consolation with all those souls you won for the Lord in France.  After all, there are all kinds of sacrifice.

Yours in sympathy,

Jim

How Bill Clinton won his third term

I wish I could see deeply enough into this to know if the divergence began the night of or the day after Clnton’s speech at the DNC. Quite remarkable! (Since this is Intrade, I’d guess ‘the night of’).

Libya and the 47% pile it on, but I could be convinced this was just the big dog turning around a battleship with one hand.

Friday night oldie

Just like Cheney who had ‘other priorities’

From The Last of the Milleniums where he has a juicy post about vets, Sen. Jim Webb and the 47%.

There is only one Samuel L. Jackson.

Dickens worthy this is. Thanks friend Shep.

The angry gods of the interwebs came for me today

First WordPress shut me out of multiple functions, something that’s been building over the last few days. I couldn’t even access the WP help forums and found no solace in outside forums. Deeply frustrated, I turned away and decided to make some calls.

Uh-oh. Dialing yields only a dial tone. I unplug and replug, I reboot, I turn off, I turn on. I change clothes and even re-comb my hair. Nothing. Nada. Sorry. Have a nice day.

So it was on to MagicJack live chat help – for a 53-minute long chat. That’s 53, as in fifty-three. They sent a few updates and did some remote resets. Once again there was much unplugging and replugging and even more rummaging around in Device Managers and such.

But they did it. Those sweet sweet kids in Bangladesh or wherever, fixed it. I am grateful.

So now one thing is fixed, but the WordPress problem sits there, waiting. More tries but it was just hitting a wall.

And yet here I am. Posting – because I decided to try the desktop. And voila! Everything works fine over here!

So the problem is in my laptop somewhere. And it is something beyond my ken. This may require a visit from the good Todd, he who fixes all things.

It is now four hours since I sat at my desk, four lost hours.

I’m going to have a Diet Coke.

WordPress is not my friend – again

There may be no oldie and posts themselves are iffy. WordPress is blocking many functions for me today. Input welcome.

UPDATE: Nothing is working. If this update appears, at least I can edit already published posts, which at least gives me a way in although I can’t do much!

Is Mitt a secret colonial oppressor?

Mitt Romney’s odd use of “sport” and “aircraft” reminds me of an oddity between American and British English. While it is entirely understandable that different countries sharing a language would develop different words for things, like “lift” and “elevator”, “flat” and “apartment” and hundreds of others, I am puzzled by the the opposite use of the ‘s’es here.

Why do we say math and they say maths, but they say sport and we say sports?

How did that happen? And dear Elvis, is it possible that Mitt is not a real American?

The Les Mis movie will no doubt call for a double box of Kleenex; I will enjoy every minute.

Just visited Christian Mihai where I saw the official trailer for Les Miserables which opens in December. From his post:

Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter, and Tom Hooper, the director of The King’s Speech. Honestly, what more can you ask?

This new adaptation of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (well, technically it’s based on the 1980 musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg) is set to be released on 14 of December 2012.

UPDATE: TheOtherSteve tells me in comments that the opening has been moved to Christmas Day.

I can always use some exhuberance in the a.m.

I guess it’s Korea week . . . Go to 2:00 in for the real show.

And thus does Steve Doocy lead the nation

The climate deniers have had a triumphant run over the last 20 years. Their campaign, financed mostly by the fossil fuel industry, has succeeded in changing American’s attitudes and beliefs. (They had a little help from their friends.)

A recent paper from the Union of Concerned Scientists analyzes how FOX News Channel and the opinion pages of the WSJ reference climate science. The entire thing is here.

 . . . . examined six months of Fox News Channel content and one year of representations in the Wall Street Journal opinion section based on keyword searches for the terms “climate change” and “global warming.” Our team examined transcripts and articles to determine whether these media outlets mentioned climate science, action on climate change (personal action or government policies), both, or neither.

There are charts and specifics a-plenty

Over a recent six-month period, 93 percent of Fox News Channel’s representations of climate science were misleading (37 out of 40 instances). Similarly, over the past year, 81 percent of the representations of climate science in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion section were misleading (39 out of 48 instances).

. . .  the misleading citations include broad dismissals of human-caused climate change, disparaging comments about individual scientists, rejections of climate science as a body of knowledge, and cherry picking of data. . . .  much of this coverage denigrated climate science by either promoting distrust in scientists and scientific institutions or placing acceptance of climate change in an ideological, rather than fact-based, context

 

I know. So last month, but still . . .

Well, there may be someone left who hasn’t seen this (266,000,000 hits on youtube right now) . . . I love the damn thing on every level, but ask – if you can bear it – that you take another look. Aside from the pure entertainment value, isn’t the color wonderful? The clothes, the backdrops, everything – wonderfully brilliant, almost neon colors. This is a palate I’m rather fond of.

18 of 19 and 17 of 19

From Taegan Goddard this morning – history counts.

I’m thinking about that old political maxim about how hard it is to unseat politicians once elected. They’d have to be found with “a live boy or a dead girl.” We don’t hear it anymore because it hails from a time when congress was all male, but the sentiment still resonates.

Promoted from comments (my own actually)

Chatting with the Arborist in a post below, I noted something I’ve been meaning to write about, but I never got around to it.

On FOX News a few years ago in a conversation about those lazy masses dragging down good honest hard working ‘mericans, actor Craig Nelson famously said: “I’ve had hard times too. I’ve even been on food stamps and welfare. Did anybody help me? No.”

Let them eat cake

I was reading my paper this morning, and a story from Honduras caught my eye because my sister-in-law is there right now for a meeting. The headline is Human-rights lawyer is killed.

It said that he “helped prepare motions to oppose a proposal to build three privately-run cities“.

Three privately-run cities? I hope you recoil as I did. Has anyone ever seen such a reference outside of apocalyptic sci-fi novels?

Romney did this

Intrade has Obama at 71%. Must say though, that this has been some serious up/down sice May.

It’s midnight, it’s . . dammit, it’s 12:01am. So a Friday oldie on Saturday

Five Satins in a reprise (I think).

It lives!

It claims to be a collapsing silo, but that’s a lie. They are here, and now they walk among us. (h/t Jonathan Turley)

Where are the 47% from? Bah, you knew all along

The Atlantic sheds some light on the subject (notice that the red states are Red States and the blue states are mostly Blue States). This is a pattern we see often on issues like teenage pregnancy, educational levels, income, health, obesity. It’s not Connecticut that isn’t educating its next generation.

You need only watch 5 seconds of Maru today

Start at :40 in. It’s Maru at his best.

And a Happy Rosh Hoshanna to you too Mittens

The GOP’s choice for the White House also said this of the Israeli peace process:

[He] as president, would aim to postpone significant action: “[S]o what you do is, you say, you move things along the best way you can. You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem…and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.”

The man’s a giant.

2751 comments on a single post. Alas, not mine.

I’ve never seen a number like that. That comment thread is at David Corn’s original MoJo article about the video from a Romney fundraiser where, to quote Corn:

Romney displayed a high degree of disgust for nearly half of his fellow citizens, lumping all Obama voters into a mass of shiftless moochers who don’t contribute much, if anything, to society, and he indicated that he viewed the election as a battle between strivers (such as himself and the donors before him) and parasitic free-riders who lack character, fortitude, and initiative.

2751 Frackin’ comments! Also, class warfare anyone?

UPDATE: In comments, mac adds this (wowza!):

But guess what Moe! Just saw that the original post on HuffPo about the video – which has become the most commented EVER at their site..

167,682 comments.

Yes. 167 thousand comments.

USA! USA! USA! (ssshhhh, don’t let the secret out)

We don’t trust the Congress. We don’t trust the Executive. And since Bush v. Gore and all the 5-4 decisions since, we no longer trust the Supreme Court.

However, by all measures, Americans have a high level of  trust in the U.S. military. Admiration too.

Don’t tell the flag wavers that the United States Military is an entirely Socialist enterprise. It would spoil their fun.

 

Honest

Moving up a decade this Friday

I loved Blood, Sweat & Tears.

Means nothing, but I have to post this!

There are other demonstrations in Bengazi

Another Hundred Years War? I’m sure the Three Amigos* would like that, but

Romney aside, Obama aside, serious things appear to be happening.

The usual noise machine is going all ‘we can’t let this stand’. I assume they want to shoot someone.

Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia . . . shall we wage war on all of them? (Hey, war with a billion people would be awesome!)

War with a billion people who mostly don’t want war with us.

War with a billion people because of the actions of  a hundred thousand? A few hundred thousand? The militants among the billion? The Islamists amongst a billion Muslims? Wage war on a billion people?

If the neo-con dreams come true, that’s what we’ll have. And Saudi Arabia couldn’t stop it; the Saudi royal family would probably be wiped out early on. They’ve been in Al Qaeda’s gun sights for some time.

You think it can’t happen? Check out the 11th and 12th Centuries.

* Messers McCain and Lieberman and Ms. Graham of the United States Senate.

Dear Pastor Jones

I’d like to hear your opinion of what should be done to someone who shouts “FIRE” in a crowded theatre? Just wondering.

Anyone else?

And so Western religious fanaticists light the fire of Eastern religious fanaticists. Nice.

So Putin goes there and hints Romney is a fool

Oh, nice, even more – from Dependable Renegade (who finds all the good stuff):

Thank-you! – Vladimir Putin thanks magical panties enthusiast The Willard Mechanism for saying that Russia remains the US #1 geo political threat, because it solidified his missile defense argument:

“I’m grateful to him (Romney) for formulating his stance so clearly because he has once again proven the correctness of our approach to missile defense problems,” Putin told reporters, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

“The most important thing for us is that even if he doesn’t win now, he or a person with similar views may come to power in four years. We must take that into consideration while dealing with security issues for a long perspective,” he said, speaking after a meeting with Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic, according to Interfax news agency.