[ Posted Thursday, October 8th, 2009 – 16:29 UTC ]
Still, the image remains. The media has apparently discovered that we have troops in Afghanistan. This may come as a shock to some, since the mainstream media (at least on television) have pretty much ignored this fact for around seven years now (so much so that Afghanistan became known as "the forgotten war" for a while). But the reporting on what President Obama is going to do next in Afghanistan has been so over-the-top in the past few weeks, it has astonished me (and I do not astonish easily, especially when it comes to the idiocy of the evening news). More stories have run on Afghanistan, I would be willing to venture, in the past two weeks than have run in the past two years.
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[ Posted Friday, September 18th, 2009 – 17:04 UTC ]
How time flies. This column marks its second anniversary today, by the calendar if not the Volume number. For the second straight year, we only produced 47 columns, but by the calendar we've gone two full years and a few odd days. Actually, now that I think of it, more than just a few odd days. Ahem.
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[ Posted Thursday, September 17th, 2009 – 16:24 UTC ]
Scrapping this idea is a smart decision by Obama, because it defuses a major stumbling block to relations with Russia, and because the system was of dubious strategic value to begin with (if it even worked, which has not been definitively proven). Plus, in both Poland and the Czech Republic, the idea wasn't very popular at all. Nor was it popular with NATO. So taking it off the table results in positive diplomatic gains in more than one direction.
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[ Posted Friday, August 7th, 2009 – 09:00 UTC ]
I've always been confused why the media goes berserk about rating a president's "first 100 days," but then just stops counting after the first milestone. This, to a statistician, would be known as a "zero dimensional data array" -- one data point, to be exact. If you don't re-test the sample on a regular schedule, how are you supposed to compare it to anything?
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 – 17:44 UTC ]
The American media has an enormous double standard on portrayals of violence on our television screens. It can be succinctly summed up as: real-world violence is obscured or (even worse) turned into a cartoon, but fictional violence is shown in stunningly full-color and high-definition clinical graphic detail -- for our entertainment. This disconnect is infantile. It is a form of censorship that the American public, for the most part, isn't even really aware of. But sometimes, as in the footage of the death of Neda from Iran, the disconnect itself is glaringly apparent.
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[ Posted Friday, June 19th, 2009 – 17:17 UTC ]
Welcome back to your weekly Friday Talking Points roundup. This week will be a bit unusual, as instead of the normal list of talking points Democrats everywhere should be using this weekend in conversations (especially with the media), I'm devoting the entire talking points segment to one single issue -- why what President Obama is doing on the situation in Iran is exactly the right thing to do, and why his hands are tied (by the ropes of American history) so that saying anything more enthusiastic than he's already said would actually be counterproductive if you support the Iranians currently marching in the streets. Because there is a giant elephant in the room of the discussion of American/Iranian relations that nobody wants to discuss, and nobody (other than Obama himself) is even admitting exists -- an elephant with the year "1953" painted on its side. But more about that later, let's take care of the weekly chores first.
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[ Posted Friday, June 5th, 2009 – 16:36 UTC ]
Although this is long, it merely hits the highlights of Obama's speech. I encourage everyone to take ten minutes and read the entire transcript for yourself. Obama, it should be pointed out, did not have to give this speech -- he chose to. He ran the risk of criticism here at home, and the benefits to him personally and politically in America were slight compared to the risk of actual political damage.
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[ Posted Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 – 05:39 UTC ]
What a morning!
I awoke to the sounds of my clock radio, and of President Obama giving an extraordinary speech across the airwaves. I'll just transcribe what I heard for all of you here, without comment:
I, President Obama, have taken this opportunity to speak to all of America. Because I'd like to make a [...]
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[ Posted Friday, January 23rd, 2009 – 18:13 UTC ]
Because Obama's Inaugural speech was indeed masterful. When he started speaking, I was thinking "which line will be the one everyone focuses on?" In other words, which line will be the "nothing to fear but fear itself" or "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" moment? Both of those lines are from previous inaugurations, so what would be remembered from Obama's speech?
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[ Posted Friday, December 12th, 2008 – 18:15 UTC ]
The history of profanity in American political discourse is an untold story out there just waiting for someone to research and write about -- although finding a willing publisher might be a bit of a problem. Because it seems we're back to the Nixonian days of "[expletive deleted]."
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