Edwards focuses on electability argument - 2008 Presidential Campaign Blog - Boston Globe - Political Intelligence
Topic: Miscellaneous
11:31 am EDT, Oct 19, 2007
"We need a leader who can compete anywhere in America, and win," former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes said in a statement provided by the Edwards campaign. "Some pundits say that a Democrat can't win in some places in the South, Midwest or West.
"Some pundits" huh? Jesus christ, this notion of "electability" is a dead end street. Even discussing it is an effective resignation of politics as a competition of ideas. "Electability" means "popularity contest" and as much as I recognize the reality of those elements, discussing them like this is cheap and harmful to the larger discourse. I like Edwards well enough, but I'm very tired of seeing this "electability" stuff. I've entertained the idea before, but ultimately it's just plain detrimental to democracy.
Obama says GOP can't hurt him on foreign policy record - CNN.com
Topic: Miscellaneous
11:25 am EDT, Oct 19, 2007
The Clinton campaign says it's unfortunate that Obama's camp is "abandoning the politics of hope and instead employing the same old attack"
This is annoying as shit. Pretty much anytime anyone says anything about Clinton's record or policy positions, they trot out this bullshit about "abandoning the politics of hope"...
It's fucking asinine. What the fuck does hope have to do with it? This is my least favorite thing about Clinton's campaign... it's a very stereotypical politician attitude she has about not defending herself on merit, but trying to undermine the other candidate's integrity by implying some sort of ad hominem.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has played down expectations of an imminent offensive, but the parliamentary approval provides the legal basis for NATO's second biggest army to cross the mountainous border as and when it sees fit.
iTunes Plus Now Offers Over Two Million Tracks at Just 99 Cents
Topic: Music
2:53 pm EDT, Oct 17, 2007
Apple® today announced that it has expanded its iTunes® Plus offering to over two million tracks and lowered the price of all iTunes Plus tracks to just 99 cents. All iTunes Plus tracks feature DRM-free music with high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings (www.itunes.com). The iTunes Plus catalog is now the largest DRM-free catalog in the world, and includes artists from Sub Pop, Nettwerk, Beggars Group, IODA, The Orchard and many others, along with EMI’s digital catalog.
“iTunes Plus has been incredibly popular with our customers and now we’re making it available at an even more affordable price,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We’re adding over two million tracks from key independent labels in addition to EMI’s digital catalog and look forward to even more labels and artists making their music available on iTunes Plus.”
I recall when I was in high school we wrote a play which contained the words "that sucks!" We performed the play for students and parents, who mostly seemed to enjoy it. The next morning we were informed that the school had received widespread complaints from parents about references to oral sex in our play. We had absolutely no idea what they were talking about.
This same thing happened to me. I got in trouble for saying "You suck!" (not to a teacher) and was somewhat aghast that anyone a) cared and b) thought that it was worth censoring. If I'd wanted to indicate that that son of a bitch sucked something specific, you can be sure I would have given more detail.
If I did not intend to offend you, then what I said was not offensive.
This isn't really true. Offensive is offensive regardless of intent. Nonetheless, your point remains, which is that the punishment or degree to which you ought to be maligned for such action is dependent on motive.
I think it's kind of tasteless to hang a witch in effigy, precisely because of the history we have in this country of murdering people who were accused of practicing witchcraft, usually as an easy way of removing independent minded, non-conforming people from the community. As you state, I don't at all see it as being hateful towards the Wicca community unless it was intended to be such. It's two separate issues.
There's nothing wrong with practicing Witches making note of this as a way of educating people, certainly. "Hey, you know, we're aware that you weren't really directing this at us, but this is who we are and what we do, and we'd prefer if people didn't keep associating with witches in this way."
That's an adult response.
Crying "Hate Crime! Hate Crime!" is a sure way to make yourself and your community look unreasonable and reactionary, not to mention undermine the notion (the validity of which is certainly open to question) of a hate crime in the first place.
