The old saying might be false here.

You know the one.

Never attribute to malice what may be easily explained by incompetence.

Well, there's only so much incompetence one can see before one starts to believe that there's a kind of intent.

Nobody could be this stupid and remember to breathe, right?

They're going to get us all killed.

The collapse of the towers was a "collateral skyline shrinkage". LOL!!

Obama administration seems to be not too impressive out of the gate. Don't blame me - I protested by not voting.

Norman -

You and Amy are partly to blame. There comes a time for pragmatism over principle. McCain was as unpleasant a choice as you could have offered me, but I swallowed hard and voted for the old coot, because I knew just how damaging Mister Teleprompter was going to be to this nation.

Unwillingness to vote for the lesser evil got us the greater evil.

And we're all going to pay for that mistake.

So, thanks for that anyway.

Come on, folks, you're missing the point here. "Man-caused disaster" can mean anything: a bridge with a design flaw finally collapsing, a train carrying chemicals derailing, and so on. Putting dirty bombs, suicide planes, and such in the same category enables one to say, "Well, it's perfectly awful what happened, but what's done is done, and there's certainly nothing we'll have to, you know, do about it." At most, they'll round up a couple of suspects and put them on trial.

Anyway, the change in terminology suggests, to me at least, the rather cavalier attitude I tried to describe above.

Well Norman what choice did you have? You had the PC fnatasy party and the religious fantasy party.

I would have voted for McCain if not for Palin.

I mean Ann Coulter would have made a more palatable running mate

Christ Almighty! What is murder now? Unnatural, involuntary demise? I've had it with the fucking PC terms. Maybe we could deal with reality if we'd only be willing to recognize it. Even when it sucks.

For a note of levity before these morons get us all killed, Carlin was great on this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOnjEF3RG5A&feature=related

Lujlp -

You got played by the media and did EXACTLY what they wanted you to do.

You believed that Palin was a bible-thumpin theocrat hell-bent on making you go to church.

And you voted accordingly.

Thanks for being yet another media dupe.

I have to admit, I wasn't thrilled with the choices for President but voted for McCain because I thought he would be tough on terrorism. Not loving the Obama administration. I realize it's everyone's "Freshman" year but the entire administration is starting to look more like the dorky freshmen in 16 Candles and less like the leaders we need right now. Oh and don't even get me started on Geithner...what a joke! It's going to be a long 4 years!

We, the freedom loving people should not be too afraid to call those followers of those certain insane religion as terrorists, cause that is what they are prone to do most of the time, given the opportunity by the many ignoramus in this world. hopefully, obama admistration will be tough on terorrism and prevent another horrible chapter of evil islamic infiltration.

Just another example of Orwellian NewSpeak.

"You believed that Palin was a bible-thumpin theocrat hell-bent on making you go to church." And you saw the road kill level intellect as what?

First I voted against the brain dead idiot because her half literate ass (7 fucking years for a comm degree) would have first made my life more difficult, being from the evil empire. She was and still is a bible thumper, and she sure as shit would have been a theocrat if McCain passed. As far as making you go to church, not per say, no. Her policies on everything sucked from either side. If your own party is making you look like an idiot there is probably a reason.

"man-made" disasters makes me kind of ashamed I voted at all. I hate PC, I really do.

Fucking idiots. So now intentionally killing thousands of people is lumped in with "didn't make sure my campfire was completely out and some trees burned down"? Asshats one and all up in DC. God how I wish for supposedly-bible-thumping Palin right now. She damn well wouldn't call terrorists accidental-do-bad-ers.

How about that 90% tax on bonus's? Much better to make anyone who happens to have a family income of $250k pay the piper than-oh, I don't know-do your due diligence when handing out billions, right? I mean, that's, like, hard and all!

Vlad - I don't know what Sarah Palin you were looking at, but she's obviously not the same one that's running Alaska.

And it took me eight years to get my Engineering degree from two universities. Care to question my intellect too?

I want you to name for me one specific policy of Palin's that "sucked" and why. Be as specific as possible.

You want to know why Palin was made to look the fool by McCain's people? Because McCain wanted to throw the fucking election and when he saw how jazzed the base got from the Palin selection he knew she had to be destroyed.

Remember, She was NOT his pick. He wanted Lindsey Graham or some other squish.

Never forget that McCain lost on purpose - to teach the Republicans a lesson for not anointing him in 2000.

Want an example brian? Sex ed
How it sucks? Look at her daugter

>>Want an example brian? Sex ed
How it sucks? Look at her daugter

To add to lujlp's list:
Her terrifying, folksy attack on "pointless" fruit fly research in - as she implied - that wicked, wicked location - "Paris, France".

Hearing the sentences Palin strung together - all by herself with no wicked media edits! - with Katie Couric.

That radio hoax phone call! (Still not sure if it wasn't all a brilliant parody!)

You and Amy are partly to blame. There comes a time for pragmatism over principle. McCain was as unpleasant a choice as you could have offered me,

Again (and again and again) I live in California. McCain was about as likely to take this state as Adolf Hitler.

Furthermore, don't blame the voters for the stupidity of the Republican party. They've been pandering to the religious nuttery while giving us bigger and bigger government while calling it small government. George W. Bush might've been a god squadder, but he was no fiscal conservative. He just pretended to be one.

"Want an example brian? Sex ed
How it sucks? Look at her daugter

To add to lujlp's list:
Her terrifying, folksy attack on "pointless" fruit fly research in - as she implied - that wicked, wicked location - "Paris, France".

Hearing the sentences Palin strung together - all by herself with no wicked media edits! - with Katie Couric.

That radio hoax phone call! (Still not sure if it wasn't all a brilliant parody!)"

She is, has been, and never stated otherwise in any way, FOR complete sex ed, INCLUDING abstinence. I know people who have gotten preggers on the pill, should we outlaw it saying "it's just not realistic and doesn't work"? Should we never mention it in sex ed?

As for her katie couric interview, there are any number of Obama idiot clips readily available on youtube where he can't string a sentence either. And his weren't edited-it was a speech, not an interview like hers.

I happen to agree with her on the fruit flies. It may be needed research, but it isn't going on here and the government has no business paying for it. The people who grow(and buy) the crops should. It's not wheat, where you could make an argument it's necesary for life. We need to completely rethink the places our government money goes.

>>I happen to agree with her on the fruit flies. It may be needed research, but it isn't going on here and the government has no business paying for it.

Momof3,
I thought we covered exactly why you are mistaken (above)last time it came up.

Anyway, here's one explanation: (from a Salon link, it just came up first, there are tons more).

"There's another serious side to Palin's swat at fruit fly research. The French study that she says is doing no public good is no doubt a reference to money secured by Mike Thompson, a Democratic congressman in California's Napa Valley, which was highlighted by the Citizens Against Government Waste as one of its top "oinkers" of 2008. The money is being used to fund research into the olive fruit fly.

In April, when Thompson won the dubious achievement, he responded: "The olive fruit fly has infested thousands of California olive groves and is the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries." He explained that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will employ a portion ($211,000) of the $750,000 award for research in France. "This USDA research facility is located in France because Mediterranean countries like France have dealt with the olive fruit fly for decades, while California has only been exposed since the late 1990s," he said.

Jody, the reason that Palin was protesting against the fruit fly research in France was that it was funded by a $ 750,000 congressional earmark. I agree with her. There's a peer-review & grant process for government funding of research. Use it. If science is to be funded by earmarks, then inevitably the scientists who end up getting the most money will be the ones that suck up to the most corrupt congressmen, not the ones doing the most vital research. Most of Palin's speech was a call for more science funding, & she made a perfectly valid point about the danger of using congressional earmarks for this funding, which was completely lost in the avalanche of media hysteria.

>>Jody, the reason that Palin was protesting against the fruit fly research in France was that it was funded by a $ 750,000 congressional earmark. I agree with her.

Martin,
You are mistaken.

Palin made her ill-informed objection to the specific use of this particular earmark absolutely explicit.

The quote:

"Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not."

Martin,
My problem here about Palin is bigger than this single to-and-fro of ours.

Before the election, many of the Palin supporters here at Amy's kept yelling about the "avalanche of media hysteria" - that's from your comment today - distorting the glorious truth about this candidate. To be fair, it was a noisy time.

But here - months afterward - when there's finally time to settle back and look at what Palin did/did not say in public both you and momof3 simply gaily make up stuff.

Insisting on the under-appreciated wisdom of Palin, Momof3 affects knowledge about fruit flies and US agriculture she doesn't possess, stating foolishly: "I happen to agree with her on the fruit flies. It may be needed research, but it isn't going on here...".

Which is flat out wrong.

And now you embroider an imaginary back story about Palin and her keen contextual understanding of how vital science research is kneecapped by corrupt politicos and backdoor lobbying boffins, in order to rewrite the same ignorant soundbite the wretched woman made!

In god's name, why?

Man-caused disaster? Barak Obama's father impregnating Barak Obama's mother - that was a man-caused disaster. And the wrecking of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez was a man-caused disaster.

But September 11,2001 was Islamic terror attacks. I don't care if it's not politically correct to say so.

The less the Obama regime does the better we'll all be. Hope the next 4 years flies by.

"Man-caused disasters" is just the first of the P.C. bullshit that will rain down on us from the "feel good" administration.

How about we call the poor guys at Gitmo "Misguided Adversaries" instead of "Enemy Combatants"?

We are all so screwed...

Damn. "Man-caused disaster", huh? That is some really elegant bullshit, right there. That implies that, like a natural disaster, these things cannot be avoided, merely prepared for. That such things are inevitable, and the best we can do is brace for it. *sigh* The power of language is extraordinary and this elaborate wordage speaks volumes...

"Why?"

For all her many faults, Palin has some proven record of competence in high office (the state of Alaska hasn't gone to hell under her governance). Obama has none, and it shows.

"Man-caused disaster" indeed! I'm looking on the bright side. I knew an Obama Presidency would be entertaining, but I didn't know it would be this much fun. Like giving the British Prime Minister, who's blind in one eye & losing vision in the other, a generous gift of 25 DVDs that can't be played in the UK to commemorate his first state visit. If he's blowing the little things so badly, it's hard to believe he can get any of the big things (economy, terrorism) right.

"In April, when Thompson won the dubious achievement, he responded: "The olive fruit fly has infested thousands of California olive groves and is the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries."

Again, something to be paid for by those who grow and eat olives. Not something the government needs to be in the business of, any more than they need to be in the business of buying projectors for planetariums. I like olives, and olive oil. Charge me an extra buck a bottle and leave my taxes out of it. Clear enough for you? I treat my own fire ants, buying poisons from companies who do not take government money, and it seems to work out pretty well. Even though fire ants have infested hundreds of thousands of southern yards. Oh, wait, I have a problem-government to the rescue!

I am writing this from my family's farm in tennessee. Please tell me how much agriculture knowledge I don't have again.

For all her many faults, Palin has some proven record of competence in high office - Martin

Aside from her using an unprotected public email account to conduct state business, right?

luj -

you're repeating yet another proven lie.

That's three so far.

No wonder you think she's evil. you're repeating the NYT talking points.

But, y'know 2,000 points down on the dow, trade wars with three countries, bungled diplomacy with four others. I'm so glad we dodged that bullet and sent the moose humper back to Alaska with the rest of her snowbilly kin.

You all seem to be overlooking something:

Der Spiegel is a German magazine. This is the English translation. So Napolitano's words have gone into another language and back out again.

These are the words she actually used in her testimony to Congress.

"At its core, I believe DHS has a straightforward mission: to protect the American people from threats both foreign and domestic, both natural and manmade."

Reading the friggin' thing before you sound off.

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/testimony/testimony_1235577134817.shtm

And, by the way, Janet Napolitano is no dummy. And she's certainly not cute. Check her out sometime.

brian, lujlp et al

there's a little more to it than saying I "didn't vote" - actually I did vote for McCain, but only after the point where it was obvious he was losing (i.e. I voted late in the evening on the west coast). I did this to make an anti-Obama "statement" -Now Amy is right, McCain would have never taken California.

There was no way I was going to vote for Obama, because of Biden- he has an atrocious record of implementing anti-male policies like VAWA (Violence Against Women Act, which no only is misandrist, but is deleterious to women, children, the family..all of society).

Would I have voted for McCain if there was a chance he could win? No. I cannot in my heart of hearts, vote for someone who comes from a party where welfare recipients are a faceless mass waiting for a handout, and ketchup is a vegetable for the poor.

Whenever I drive (from where I live) down to L.A., Venice, or even Hollywood, it seems there are homeless and the poor walking around... I suppose I have too much compassion for fellow human beings, and a level of empathy which I cannot go against - my concience simply will not allow that.

Call me "knee-jerk" or whatever, it wont fase me or change my outlook.

Norman -

Had the Democrats nominated someone other than Obama, I probably would have worn gloves and voted for them. Believe me, McCain is so odious to me that in any other situation I wouldn't let the man be dog catcher.

But Obama is uniquely dangerous. He's a socialist to the core, he's an idiot, he's easily played, and he's got Pelosi and Reid to lead him around.

Hillary would have stood up to Reid, and Pelosi wouldn't dare fuck with her. Hillary may be a socialist too, but she's at least pragmatic, and has the intelligence to know that you don't kill the golden goose.

And for all his faults, McCain would NEVER have passed the 787 BILLION dollar porkulus.

If enough people in California were truly aware of what Barry represents (and we're really seeing a lot of "if I knew then what I know now") then that state could have gone for McCain.

Not the best of all possible outcomes, but the Republican party let the Democrats choose their candidate in open primaries.

I was looking forward to voting for Fred. But he was already gone by the time the primaries hit CT, and it was a foregone conclusion that we had McCain.

Oh, and if you want to know who to blame for the homeless problem, you're looking in the wrong direction. Talk to JFK about it. He's the one who turned all the mentally ill out of the asylums because of abuses within the system. Great idea. Rather than fix the system and punish the abusers, we'll just turn thousands of people who cannot function out onto the streets and prevent any future ones from getting the help they need.

Not a good reason to vote Democrat, my friend.

>>Even though fire ants have infested hundreds of thousands of southern yards. Oh, wait, I have a problem-government to the rescue!

I am writing this from my family's farm in tennessee. Please tell me how much agriculture knowledge I don't have again.

Momof3,
I defer to your knowledge of the southern fire ant. They sound frightful.

Do you also believe the government has no business banning people from bringing seeds and fruit in from abroad? What exactly do you believe re: govt't involvement in agriculture?

My main point, anyway, was about Palin supporters putting words in her mouth.

Jody -

I'll give you a one-word reason for why the government has an interest in banning bringing seeds in from abroad:

Kudzu.

Australia has another one-word reason
(among several) for controlling invasive species:

Rabbit.

Oh, and Jody -

You're quite wrong about Palin. It was her attackers who were putting words in her mouth.

She's not a young-earth creationist, she doesn't want creationism taught in schools, she's not against birth control or sex-ed, she's not in favor of abstinence-only sex-ed.

Her daughter was not forbidden from using or knowing about birth control, she just couldn't be bothered. Which is what accounts for the bulk of teen pregnancies. It isn't for want of a condom, it's that they just can't be bothered on account of they don't believe it will happen to them.

The problem with all the Palin hate is it was ALL based on lies. The Couric interview was horrid because Palin was NOT prepared for it, Couric was a hostile environment that Palin was just not accustomed to. On top of that, the thing was almost certainly edited within an inch of its life.

Look at her success as Governor of Alaska. She's got approval ratings in the high 70s. So she's doing SOMETHING right if half of the Democrats in Alaska have a positive opinion of her.

This is the problem with politics in the United States today. The media have chosen sides, and since they are the primary purveyors of information, the electorate is making decisions based upon "facts" which just ain't so.

And we end up with Barack "Teleprompter" Obama.

>>Jody -I'll give you a one-word reason for why the government has an interest in banning bringing seeds in from abroad: Kudzu.

Brian,
My question to momof3 was sort of rhetorical?

>>The problem with all the Palin hate is it was ALL based on lies.

Yeah, yeah:)

brian,

I wouldn't have voted for Hilary in a million years. Worse for this country than Obama, especially for men: "Women are the primary victims of war." LOL!! Tell that to some guy at the V.A. with his legs blown off.

Hillary has enough enemies in Congress that she wouldn't have gotten anything done.

Plus, there's the inevitable "Queen Bee" syndrome with Pelosi running Congress. Hillary would have handed Pelosi her head when Pelosi's minions showed up to tell her "how things are going to be". Obama rolled.

My goal is gridlock. I do not want to ever have the same party controlling the White House and both houses of Congress. Bad Things happen when they do.

"My main point, anyway, was about Palin supporters putting words in her mouth"

From her October 24th policy speech that's the cause of all the fuss:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/palins_speech_on_children_with.html

"In a McCain-Palin administration, we will fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act...the federal government's obligations under the IDEA have not been adequately met. And portions of IDEA funding have actually decreased since 2005.

This is a matter of how we prioritize the money that we spend. We've got a three trillion dollar budget, and Congress spends some 18 billion dollars a year on earmarks for political pet projects. That's more than the shortfall to fully fund the IDEA . And where does a lot of this that earmark money end up? It goes to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good--things like fruit fly research in Paris, France, or a public policy center named for the guy who get the earmark. In our administration, we're going to reform and refocus. We're going to get our federal priorities straight, and fulfill our country's commitment to give every child opportunity and hope in life."

I'll be glad to concede that her remark about the fruit flies was ill-informed. But you can see for yourself that she did in fact make the perfectly valid point that vital projects should not be funded by earmarks, a point that was entirely lost in the stampede to label her as a moose-humping ignoramus.

"My goal is gridlock. I do not want to ever have the same party controlling the White House and both houses of Congress. Bad Things happen when they do."

I have to concede that's a good point, brian. About the best check and balance this country could have is to not have one party in control of everything.

>>I'll be glad to concede that her remark about the fruit flies was ill-informed.

Martin,
And I'll be glad to concede she made some valid points.

You know what bothers me the most about this guy?

He makes Bill Clinton look Presidential.

Much as I couldn't stand that fucker, at least HE knew how to handle foreign dignitaries -- when he wasn't getting a hummer anyhow.

What I heard about the fruit flies thing is that she was objecting to a porcine earmark for research that would have benefited a particular California research firm.

She's not anti-science, she's anti-pork

" I do not want to ever have the same party controlling the White House and both houses of Congress"

Good point.

Erm, while you're all behaving like a bunch of schoolkids on Facebook, you seem to have overlooked THIS post by the only sensible person to have commented here (modestproposal at March 20, 2009 10:54 PM).

Feel free to go back to fighting over whether your team is better than their team when you're finished:

You all seem to be overlooking something:

Der Spiegel is a German magazine. This is the English translation. So Napolitano's words have gone into another language and back out again.

These are the words she actually used in her testimony to Congress.

"At its core, I believe DHS has a straightforward mission: to protect the American people from threats both foreign and domestic, both natural and manmade."

Reading the friggin' thing before you sound off.

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/testimony/testimony_1235577134817.shtm

And, by the way, Janet Napolitano is no dummy. And she's certainly not cute. Check her out sometime.

from the post above (and from reading the article at the link given there),it sounds like the translators may have been rearranging the words in a sentence, and simultaneously used "man-caused" for "man-made". Perhaps there is no German word for "made" in the same sense English speakers use it, i.e. "made a cake" on the one hand and "made an attack" on the other.

I see where the word "attacks" was used twice but there's no qualifier in either case - I suspect it's a given that they're addressing terrorist attacks.

okay, I just checked and I guess I was wrong.
"Gemacht" is the German word for "made" in both senses of use (cake/attack). Also, the word for "caused" is different ("verursacht").

Maybe it's just the case that the person doing the translation had his or her head up their ass.

Modest proposal, the word "caused" was used in the translation when "made" was the word, but the point remains: she is, well, "cute" on terrorism, while, of course, being cute in no other way.

I'm guessing they didn't get the word "terrorism" wrong:

Napolitano: Of course it does. I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word "terrorism," I referred to "man-caused" disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.

thank you modestproposal and gman for sticking to the subject of the blog, and to the relevant issues.