Crap Throwing Monkey

Your kid has a web page like THAT?

Hmmm. Interesting observation. It makes one wonder if the brains behind TD's success in Pittsburgh were somewhere other than TD's head...

I don't really know how TD can want Moulds "back", considering that TD's not going to be here next year.

I heard Pat Williams was spotted at Buffalo Airport today too!

I agree - both with you, and with the administration's attitude in theory. In practice, of couse, the administration takes their theory and implements it such ham-handed and clumsy fashion that they piss me off. As usual.

Well...I found my sense of compassion. Interestingly enough, it wasn't under the couch...it was behind the dresser. And Happy Festivus.

Not a very good case in point, though. At least through Ari Fleischer, Helen Thomas had a great deal of access to the administration. My source for this being: Ari. There was - and still is, as far as I know - a great deal of personal respect and even friendship between Thomas and Fleischer, but that respect in no way extended into the professional arena (though to hear Fleischer say it, he has an immense amount of professional respect for Helen Thomas as well...but I question whether or not that works both ways. Thomas hates the Bush administration, with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, as I've heard it). Helen Thomas did not lose any access to the administration via any sort of specifically personal animosity; judging from some of the yahoos Fleischer allowed press passes, NO ONE lost access due to any personal animosity. Rather, her loss of access was more of an institutional-level decision: the administration told the press from the start "We do not believe you're the Fourth Estate; the American people never democratically chose you to represent their interests, you appointed yourselves to the position, therefore we do not believe you represent the interests of the American people. And we will therefore not treat you as requiring full and unfettered access to the government process, as you are not answerable to the American people as we are." And the administration has stuck to that, for better or worse...and as a result, no one in the press corps has any true, direct access to the administration (I know someone's going to argue FoxSnooze does...I've never seen it. At best, the access I've seen from Fox has been indirect simply because as a conservative news outlet they tend to move in the same conservative circles that support and have close ties to the administration.) And in support of this theory, I also submit the observation that Bush (both the man and the administration) have specifically stated their lack of interest in not just the coverage of specific individuals but the press as a whole of the overall government process. I would not expect that if the administration were simply horse-trading info for access as usual... I wouldn't be surprised if every administration used that kind of reward system. The politics of DC, to a large extent, involves trading information and rumor as a currency. In many ways, it's more important than dollars. But there is a fundamentally bigger issue at work now: namely, that the administration unilaterally changed the rules of the game, to the very notable detriment of the press, and are now being crucified as a matter of routine in a situation of their own construction. An I don't think they care, since they believe they're being crucified by a group who doesn't have the interests of the country at heart anyway.

Actually, with regards to the Bush administration's relations with the press, that's not entirely true. The administration took the line early - and pretty much explicitly - that contrary to the press's belief, they do NOT represent the interests of the American public, and would not be treated as such. That is probably the major reason the administration has such a lousy relation with the media - because they chose to. As to where the administration's low approval ratings come from...well, even if one was to assume they're doing everything right, if they choose to marginalize the media and foster an adverserial relationship with them, then of COURSE their approval rating's going to be low, and of COURSE they deserve it, since it's derived from a situation largely of their own making. That hadly makes it media-manufactured...it simply means the media's playing the game the administration's put them in, and doing so without the information the administration refuses to provide them. Even IF you assume the low approval ratings stem from the media's inaccurate reporting, responsibility for that still falls back on the administration.

If there'd been an EMS crew on the scene that timely, odds are they would have had the plane landing on their head. Don't forget, the town of Lockerbie itself was pretty severely damaged as well.

Geez. You know, I was going to avoid suggesting they look under the couch for him...but your post makes that look relatively tame...

Annie's not a-skeer'd of anything. Except me. 'Cause of all the dirt I have on her.

Actually, given this team's success on their opening drives, the first points seem to be easiest for them. It's everything thereafter that's like pulling teeth.

To quote Darin: Adams?

Or the offensive coordinator...

And there's typically no one else on the d-line that even poses a vague impression of a hint of a threat to accomplish anything...meaning teams can key off on Schobel and eat him alive. Schobel will never be Reggie White or Bruce Smith...but he might easily achieve a more than respectable level of solid competence if someone else on the line drew a double-team once in a while.

Yeah. I'm teaching it. To JSP. As utterly a futile pursuit as that is, I may as well spend my time teaching BF to cook...

Or, to rephrase that less confrontationally: the Sunni turnout for the recent elections is one of the first real promising signs that the solidarity of which you speak might be achievable, Kelly. Even if the end result isn't that solidarity, it's still a hard indicator that the Iraqi people, regardless of ethnicity, are accepting the idea that they have a role in their own rule, and it's not just being dictated to them by a foreign power. Regardless of the success or failure of democracy, that is still a huge step for the occupation.

Technically, I think it's just a hobby. Like the bioweapons research I do in my basement.

It probably has less to do with that than it does with his awareness that team management is likely gone after this season, and he's not stupid enough to sign a deal put in front of him by a lame-duck GM when he's not even sure who'll be coaching him next year.

The FU smiley...refuge of the internet tough-guy wanna-be.

So it's nothing Donahoe's done himself, it's the fans fault if he's fired? And we'll suffer for it because Wilson won't be able to hire anyone else qualified? Is there any possible way we can run off Chris Mortensen instead?

And I believe historically the result of such social distribution of wealth has removed those inequities not by lifting the downtrodden up, but by insuring everyone sinks to the same level of poverty. Of course, traditional Communist theory has typically swept that historical fact under the rug by saying that such societies weren't yet sufficiently advanced to benefit from a socialist revolution...the proletariat weren't yet sufficiently aware of their right to the wealth of the bourgeois or something...

Is anyone else as entertained as I by the disparity between JSP's and Wacka's particular brands of right-wing scariness? JSP just comes across like an internet tough-guy wanna-be who'd like nothing better than to have everyone THINK he wants everyone he doesn't like to suffer. Wacka, on the other hand, is just odd. I love the dichotomy.

I agree. Ditto KTFABD's democracy in Iraq thread. But even so, I'd be remiss if I didn't hasten to add that you're one of the bigger partisan shills here...