Last night I aked, "Will that fool anybody?" Today, according to an AP-Ipsos poll, the answer seems to be No: Americans overwhelmingly oppose sending more U.S. forces to Iraq, according to a new AP-Ipsos poll that serves as a strong repudiation of President Bush's plan to send another 21,500 troops. The opposition to boosting troop levels in Iraq reflects growing skepticism that the United States made the right decision in going to war in the first place and that a... Read more
So it looks like President Bush is going ahead with tonight's "major speech" on the war in Iraq. I was half-expecting it to be postponed or delayed again, since delay and stalling for time is the whole purpose of this speech. Essentially, Bush is asking for an extension. Another one. That's what this whole surge/escalation business is about. Think back to last year at this time: War's not going well, ethnic conflict is blossoming into full-fledged civil war, and the... Read more
Pittsburgh commenter JRoth supplies the ballpark figure for that city's economic boost from the Steelers' Super Bowl win: $25 million. And that's without any home games in the playoffs. So in addition to the morale boost home teams can provide — the civic pride and unity — home towns also have an economic stake in their teams' fortunes. Part of the reason that Pittsburgh is a great sports town is their color scheme. Seriously. The hometown Steelers, Pirates and Penguins... Read more
This is a bit of a dilemma. The Philadelphia Eagles won their first-round NFL playoff game yesterday, beating the New York Giants 23-20. So far so good. Now they advance to the second round. Also good. That means the Eagles will be heading to New Orleans to take on the Saints on Saturday night. And that's where it gets tricky. Rooting for the Eagles next week will mean rooting against the Saints and thus, to some degree, against the city... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 239-241 Much of Left Behind is difficult to understand without grasping the authors' bizarre understanding of the role, function and jurisdiction of the United Nations. I've noted earlier that they seem to view the UN as a kind of federation — not so much like an international version of the United States as like a merely international version of the United Federation of Planets. But that's still not quite right. It's still too democratic. It doesn't quite... Read more
Once you were tethered / and now you are free "This Charming Man," The Smiths "This Cowboy Song," Sting "This Disco (Used to Be a Cute Cathedral)," Steve Taylor "This Flower," Kasey Chambers "This Is Cracker Soul," Cracker "This Is Hell," Elvis Costello "This Is Life," Jacob Altemus "This is the Sea," The Waterboys "This Land Is Your Land," The Waterboys "This Property Is Condemned," Maria McKee "This World Is Not My Home," Lone Justice Two from Woody. Two from... Read more
Yeah, that's right, this guy. Mr. Circumnavigation. Friend of mine's daughter has a class project due (Friday) so I figured I'd appeal to the hive-mind for the kind of winning, teacher-impressing anecdotes she won't find from Encarta or the World Book Encyclopedia. The Web being what it is, some Ph.D. candidate midway through her thesis on Juan Sebastian Elcano will stumble across this and post the perfect final tidbit here in comments. At least, that's what I'm hoping for. Thanks... Read more
Before there was TBogg or The Poor Man or Sadly, No! or World O' Crap, there was Philip Freneau, who was born 255 years ago today. Freneau will forever appear in anthologies of American Literature since, let's be honest, the 18th-century pickings are kind of slim. Those anthologies will reproduce "The Wild Honey-Suckle" and "On a Honey Bee"* and will discuss Freneau's place as the first significant American poet. Sadly, however, they rarely provide examples of Freneau's other, arguably greater,... Read more
I have friends and relatives who fervently believe that the war in Iraq is going well. Any bad news you may be hearing is simply the distortions, lies and propaganda of the evil liberal media. (Since I'm part of that evil, liberal media, you can imagine what my Christmas visit with my family was like.) I say that they believe this "fervently" — an adverb settled on because "honestly" and "earnestly" just won't fit. This is not something one can... Read more
In the movie Magnolia the narrator (Ricky Jay) says, "And the book says, 'We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'" Since I was quoting this in the previous post, I spent a little time surfing around, trying to find out if there was an earlier source than Paul Thomas Anderson's film. The quote sounded, to me, like an AA slogan, so I searched through a bunch of online collections of them, but didn't... Read more
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