Links With Your Coffee - Saturday
- Beautiful Line Drawings from Iranian Fine Artists(tip to box)
- McCain, the Surge, and 'verb tenses' - Fact Checker
"I can tell you that it [the Surge] is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet."
--John McCain, Town Hall meeting, May 28, 2008.
John McCain got ahead of events this week in claiming that the United States military has gone down to "pre-surge levels" in Iraq. That will not happen until later this year, even by the most optimistic scenario. He is also wrong about the city of Mosul being "quiet", unless you exclude car bombs and other mayhem. His advisers attempted to spin his remarks as a simple matter of "verb tense." But there is a big difference between "Mission Accomplished" and "We expect the mission to be accomplished soon." - YouTube - George W. Guilty of Murder?(tip to Erick)
- The Pretty Good Generation | Mark Fiore's Animated Cartoon Site
- SPINOZA'S LENS - Talking to Ourselves - by Susan Jacoby(tip to Steve)
As dumbness has been defined downward in American public life during the last two decades, one of the most important and frequently overlooked culprits is the public's increasing reluctance to give a fair hearing -- or any hearing at all -- to opposing points of view.
- Anecdotal Evidence: `Save the Word'
- A Poem by Billy Collins - John Baker’s Blog
Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep A Gun In The House
The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.
. . . - À la Recherche de Youthful Folly - Dick Cavett - Opinion - New York Times Blog
Again, I offer refuge for those who, like me, feel they are being force-fed this endless presidential campaign. You might say we are being Strasbourg-goosed by it — this endless diet of the Hillster, the Obamster and the Oldster.
- Amusing Stories Behind the 12 Words of Indian Origin That Made It to the Oxford Dictionary
- U.S. Withdraws Fulbright Grants to Palestinians in Gaza - NYTimes.com
The American State Department has withdrawn all Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza hoping to pursue advanced degrees at American institutions this fall because Israel has not granted them permission to leave.
Comments
re the "12 words..." I recommend "Hobson Jobson" for the other (several thousand) words in English derived from the British Raj
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/hobsonjobson/
The Fiore cartoon is great (as per usual). John Stewart has a nice commentary on this issue as well.
Does anyone have any actual data on current G.I. payouts for college? I can only speak from the experience of family members, and they are almost literally nothing, and even a pittance is a lot of bureaucracy and paper work--but that's a rather limited sample.
The Jacoby article is wonderful as well.
I wish she had said more on how to deal with this topic of faux "objectivity" in a practical way. In addition to the tendency to seek information only from those sources that can be expected to espouse one's own views, I think there is a confused counterveiling tendency in the mainstream media as well, namely the absurd idea that all standpoints are somehow equally valid and ought to be accord equal treatment--this is obvious from how the vaccination issue and evolution are sometimes presented, as well as the rote repetition of the sound bite, favored by dissenting extremists, that there is an alleged "controversy" on these topics. This would fit in well with the "degradation of a base of common knowledge" Jacoby diagnoses: we can't agree on what the facts are, and when they are relevant--and that, I find frightening.
Helter Skelter!!! By the way, you gen-x and gen-y folks may need to be informed that Mr. Vince Bugliosi was the most renowned prosecutor of the '70's. He crushed a bug named Charles Manson, and I'm betting he's right on target again in this book he's talking about.
RE: 12 words
Ummm..."pundit" (pandit)?
...waiting patiently for the OGM discussion f the Democratic Rules Committee's decision.
A lot of great posts......
I just wanted to bring up - what's strange to me on fact checker is there doesn't seem to be any weighing of the importance of the misinformation. Or maybe I haven't seen enough of these.
But - would Clinton's statement about Monica get as many Pinocchios as Bush's about - well, everything. Or, Obama's about the concentration camp re: McCain's about the war in Iraq...Shouldn't public relevance be part of the grading system?
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