Category: Edgewise

  • An Encouraging Poll Result

    I find this report of a US poll encouraging, and better than I’d have expected/feared: Asked if Muslims can go to heaven only 12% said they cannot, 50% said they can and 24% said they do not believe in heaven. Newsweek, May 2004.

  • Deep Throat: The Two Major Loose Ends

    Mark Felt is going to publish a final “tell-all” book soon, and Bob Woodward is also going to publish his final wrap-up on Watergate. What could conceivably come out of these? Well, there remain at least two major loose-ends to the story, one Major and the other Huge. Major: Thomas Eagleton. He was the vice-presidential…

  • Science and health vs. fanaticism

    We know the Dems are playing defense. Part of what comes with that role is that you don’t get to set the agenda. You have to play each game with your eye on the scoreboard to see what everyone else is doing. You can’t just win – your opponents have to lose. They have to…

  • Classic Freudian Slip by Fox’s David Asman

    And the truth shall set ye free.

  • A Tax Backgrounder: The Bush Tax Time-Bomb

    Just a bit of a “backgrounder” on a looming Republican political crisis: Even if the Democrats continue to fail to come up with a vision of their own, the key Bush tax cuts have always had built into them a “time-bomb,” which is bound to do heavy damage to the Republicans in congress. It is…

  • Grand-jury perjury angle to Valerie Plame case

    I’ve been thinking this could turn out to be Watergate 2.0 – a first-term scandal that bears fruit in the president’s second term. Or maybe not. Here’s an update from Quoting from Mark A. R. Kleiman: David Ignatius speculates in the Washington Post that Patrick Fitzgerald’s pursuit of journalists’ testimony might indicate that he has…

  • The president’s bike is missing

    A White House press briefing quoted at length in Editor & Publisher (via The Smirking Chimp) goes on and on in this vein: Q: The fact that the president wasn’t in danger is one aspect of this. But he’s also the commander in chief. There was a military operation underway. Other people were in contact…

  • What If This Had Been a New Pill Made by Bayer?

    And what if, among a huge proportion of the at-risk population, this new pill made people 23 percent less likely to die from any cause…30 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and 49 percent less likely to die from cancer? What if it were devoid of side-effects? And immediately available? One of the…

  • Instant Economic Impact Lad

    I was talking to this Republican I know earlier today about the economy. And I was, you know, speculating about when exactly it would stop being the Clinton recession and Bush would actually take ownership over our economic mess. And this Republican feller says: War time! etc etc, and all that. And then he says:…

  • Why I don’t give a shit about Laura Bush’s jokes

    Quoting from Attytood: W.’s “runaway bride” and the ‘gotcha’ story that wasn’t gotten: Laura Bush telling a scripted joke isn’t news anymore than is a troubled woman walking out on a wedding and panicking. There’s one striking thing we didn’t see on all the First Lady video overkill, and that was any of the guffawing…

  • Call me a kook

    I honestly think the Republicans (again) stole the election. Now I realize that to gain a clear win we had to have a margin that was beyond stealing and failed to do that and the reality is that there will probably never be a consensus that Bush et al. stole two elections, let alone one,…

  • Scott Chacon for Congress

    Here’s a candidate worth supporting: Chacon 2006 – Join the conversation. Scott is running in California’s 11th District, currently represented by the horrible Richard Pombo. Scott is taking only up to $100 from supporters and is running a very open campaign, with a blog and podcasts. Currently, he’s trying to raise money to go to…

  • Mistah Kurtz, he dead

    The Poor Man takes the piss out of Stanley Kurtz (Stanley Kurtz Wins the Wankathalon) in such excruciating detail that I’m afraid the feeble old wanker may never recover.

  • Bush’s Proposal: Slow Death for Social Security

    The Washington Post spells it out — Bush’s Social Security proposal from last night’s press conference is designed to curtail Social Security for all but the poor. On the surface, a Democrat like me might look at this new proposal and say: what gives? The President’s actually looking out for the poor over the rich.…

  • JC’s Unitarian Jihad

    RaptorMage noted this on RaptorMagic and it was so perfect, I felt compelled to repost here. Highly recommended.

  • Even the Oldest Joke May Have Its Day

    Dear Mr. Etiquette, Should carrots and celery be eaten with the fingers? –No, the fingers should be eaten separately.

  • The Odds Are Looking Up

    “People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight, federal researchers are reporting today.” NYT, 4/20/2005 –I think anything below 100% would be a breakthrough.

  • I Want These Officers to Live in Terror of the Truth

    NYT, 4/11/05 (My italics.) “…the arresting officer recalled, it took four police officers to haul him down the steps of the New York Public Library and across Fifth Avenue. ‘We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed,’ the officer, Matthew Wohl, testified in December. ‘I had one of his legs…

  • Yikes

    That’s all. Just:

  • Caution: A Joke to Make Your Head Spin!

    Based on results of the latest brain-imaging technologies, it turns out the right side of the brain does not control the left side of the body and vice versa. It only seems that way because, inside the brain-case within the scull, the brain is actually facing backwards! (No fool, that brain.)

  • Remember Republicans?

    Kung Fu Monkey writes I miss Republicans and I pretty much agree. We liberals have our work cut out for us reforming the Democratic Party but is there anybody even left to try to straighten out the supposedly conservative party?