On Jim Webb, the double chickenwing camel clutch, and manners

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Tuesday December 05, 2006 · 7:08 AM PST

2006/12/05 · 07:08

I gotta find out whose cousin Richard Cohen is, because that's the only reason I can imagine The Washington Post keeping around a columnist who obviously suffers from some sort of bizarre, mid-stage dementia.

In today's series of incoherent paragraphs, Cohen takes on the Jim Webb flap two weeks after it happened. After reporting a fuller and more honest account of the incident than George Will did (in what Cohen refers to as a "magisterial rebuke"), Cohen goes on to say that Washington needs to have good manners, except that sometimes the times call for bad manners, except now is not one of those times, unless it is, and Jim Webb should behave himself. Or something.

But here's the part that shows that Cohen really is nuts:

Dr Tom More

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Wednesday November 29, 2006 · 10:38 AM PST

2006/11/29 · 10:38

Frist won't run for president:

"In the Bible, God tells us for everything there is a season, and for me, for now, this season of being an elected official has come to a close," said the Tennessee Republican, a surgeon before he entered politics in 1994.

The verse Frist is refering to, of course, is Ecclesiastes 3, and it reads in part

Dr Tom More

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Monday November 27, 2006 · 10:38 AM PST

2006/11/27 · 10:38

NYT::

“It’s not at all clear that we can reach consensus on the military questions,” one member of the commission said late last week.

The draft report, according to those who have seen it, seems to link American withdrawal to the performance of the Iraqi military, as President Bush has done. But details of the performance benchmarks, which were described as not specific, could not be obtained, and it is this section of the report that is most likely to be revised.

While the commission is scheduled to meet here for two days this week, officials say the session may be extended if members have trouble reaching consensus.

It's hard to reach a consensus when there are no good alternatives. No one wants to endorse a bad solution, but they're all we have left.

So why are Democrats waiting for this report before announcing any detailed alternatives of their own?

Dr Tom More

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Monday April 03, 2006 · 7:06 AM PDT

2006/04/03 · 07:06

Afghan poet Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, after having been wrongly imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for three years, has been released. Now, he wants his poems back:

The Americans can't return the three years that Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost lost, locked in a cell in Guantánamo Bay. But they could at least give back his poetry.
"Please help," said Dost, who says he penned 25,000 lines of verse during his long imprisonment. "Those words are very precious to me. My interrogators promised I would get them back. Still I have nothing."

Dr Tom More

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Monday January 23, 2006 · 4:29 PM PST

2006/01/23 · 16:29

Thanks to Sagra for linking to this in this diary. Some of my commenters have recommended I crosspost this whole long beast of a thing here, so here goes:

Memo

To: Any Democratic politician who might, for whatever reason, want to stop listening to consultants whose main qualifications are (a) they know how to spend your money, and (b) they've been getting their asses kicked for the past 40 years.

From: Dr. Tom More, humble blogger

In Re: Karl Rove's "Battle Plan" for the 2006 elections, and what to do about it.

* * * * * Read More

Maybe Wampum Need a New Koufax Category

Dr Tom More

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Thursday December 29, 2005 · 8:26 AM PST

2005/12/29 · 08:26

Some woman named Kathleen Parker, writing in the Chicago Tribune today:

Bloggers persist no matter their contributions or quality, though most would have little to occupy their time were the mainstream media to disappear tomorrow. Some bloggers do their own reporting, but most rely on mainstream reporters to do the heavy lifting. Some bloggers also offer superb commentary, but most babble, buzz and blurt like caffeinated adolescents competing for the Ritalin generation's inevitable senior superlative: Most Obsessive-Compulsive.

I've never really understood the mainstream media's animus against bloggers, especially when that animus couches itself in the argument: If the mainstream media disappeared tomorrow, most bloggers would be out of business. All bloggers do is recycle and chew over the news, people like Parker say. Read More

Screwing New Orleans, again

Dr Tom More

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Saturday December 10, 2005 · 3:20 PM PST

2005/12/10 · 15:20

In mid-September the President went to New Orleans, stood up in front of the bright lights, and promised the country that its government would do everything possible to help New Orleans and the Gulf Coast recover.

Apparently, though, it's not possible for the Administration to stop settling old scores.

Reuters yesterday ran this report, titled "Entergy Appeal for New Orleans Aid Rejected: Read More

Other SCOTUS Justices weren't judges first: but Miers doesn't measure up

Dr Tom More

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Monday October 03, 2005 · 4:59 PM PDT

2005/10/03 · 16:59

This is going to be a really long post that you probably don't want to read but might want to bookmark as a not-so-handy guide for future reference.

One of the things we've been hearing all morning out of Washington is that one needn't have been a judge to be on the Supreme Court. True enough. By my count, it's happened 42 times out of 109 total justices, most recently when William Rehnquist was named to the court.

But I do think it's safe to say that rarely (if ever) have a Supreme Court nominee's qualifications and accomplishments been so . . . well, feeble. Now, I'm no judicial scholar, but I can read a resume. Here's how Miers stacks up with the other 42 SC nominees with no judicial experience. You can read Miers' dossier here. Read More

Proud Mary: An open letter to Senator Landrieu

Dr Tom More

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Sunday September 04, 2005 · 10:06 PM PDT

2005/09/04 · 22:06

Dear Senator:

I watched your performance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina this week with revulsion and astonishment. On Thursday, when given the chance by CNN to voice your urgent request that the President of the United States do something about your constituents who were dying, instead you appeared almost medicinally calm while praising the non-existent president for his support and thanking him for all his help and admiring how he knew what was going on in Louisiana. This was after three days of the president and his administration doing nothing, the same day the director of FEMA and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security admitted that they had no idea that there were 15-20,000 people camped out at the New Orleans Convention Center. Read More

NPR's Robert Siegel nails Michael Chertoff

Dr Tom More

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Thursday September 01, 2005 · 9:11 PM PDT

2005/09/01 · 21:11

In another sign that the media is finally waking up from their five-year sleep, NPR's Robert Siegel worked over Michael Chertoff this afternoon on "All Things Considered."

Chertoff begins by saying that there has been a "more than adequate response" from the federal government to the disaster, and then Siegel says this:
Read More

A New Democratic Strategy

Dr Tom More

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Wednesday August 31, 2005 · 9:24 PM PDT

2005/08/31 · 21:24

I'm afraid that my initial reaction to this latest Pew poll on religion and politics was a tad inelegant. Now that I've had the chance to look at the numbers and to read this fuller synopsis from the New York Times, it is now clear to me that I should have never so cavalierly dismissed the forty-two fucking percent of the country who believe in a strict interpretation of Genesis.

As a Democrat, I recognize that my party needs to be more "friendly" to religion, like the Republicans are. Read More

Jonathan Chait is a Raving Idiot

Dr Tom More

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Friday August 19, 2005 · 10:26 PM PDT

2005/08/19 · 22:26

I thought hard about leaving Jonathan Chait's column in the LA Times alone, to chalk it up to the blitherings of another lib-hawk who still can't quite let go. But the thing is, Chait caught me on both a slow news day and a high-blood-pressure day, an all-around grumpy bastard day, so we're gonna look at this little gem piece by stupid piece.

Chait begins: Read More

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On Jim Webb, the double chickenwing camel clutch, and manners

A blow to the hopes of comics everywhere

This is what we're all waiting for?

Take Action for Words

How to Defeat Karl Rove's Battle Plan: a Memo

Maybe Wampum Need a New Koufax Category

Screwing New Orleans, again

Other SCOTUS Justices weren't judges first: but Miers doesn't measure up

Proud Mary: An open letter to Senator Landrieu

NPR's Robert Siegel nails Michael Chertoff

A New Democratic Strategy

Jonathan Chait is a Raving Idiot