AdamSmith

Fortunately (in this case), many of them are sufficiently bigoted religiously that the Mormon business may put enough of them off. I can tell you that here in NC, the Jesse Helms voters (they are still legion) feel no compunction about calling Mitt's religion a cult. (In contrast to their own traditions which, like as not, involve snake-handling.) (...somehow, it occurs, an oddly apt term for where politics and religion intersect.)

Romney -- the gift that keeps on giving. The Guardian, like I (like me?), cannot contain its giggles: ...Kevin Madden, a senior Romney adviser, who sat beside Cutter on CBS's Face the Nation, described it as "troubling" that the Obama campaign would label an "honourable" man such as Romney a felon. Of course Mitt Romney is an "honourable" man. And that in no way brings to mind Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons." http://www.guardian....y-bain-tax-live

What froze me (in the best possible way) -- final cockpit dialog. Sully: "Got any ideas?" Skiles: "Actually not."

She is too canny by half to do it this time round. BUT: Clintons -- and Rodhams -- being unkillable, and irrepressible, you can much more likely look for her to "retire" end of this term, then re-merge for the 2016 race. ...Wanna bet money? (I will now suppress 4 or 5 remarks: http://www.maleescortreview.com/forum/index.php?/topic/3724-three-dinners-with-andre ) (Lucky, one may pray, will do likewise. )

Old topic, but maybe not played out yet. Just re-found this slightly less familiar reconstruction of Sully and Skiles's achievement on the Hudson. Interesting in that it integrates (1) familiar air-to-ground voice recording with (2) transcript of never-publicly-heard words from cockpit voice recorder, overlaid on (3) dynamic map of flight path. What put me in mind of this was a new book by Sully on leadership: http://books.usatoday.com/bookbuzz/post/2012-05-17/sully-sullenberger-talks-leadership-obama-talks-fifty-shades/695761/1 Couple days ago I read about 1/3 of it sitting in a Starbucks embedded in a local Barnes & Noble. Cheap way to read! (Akin to my other Cheap Way to Read: between flights, hang in airport bookshops and pressure-read whatever they have that hooks you. Great way to get the gist, and decide whether to buy or pass.)

Are you saying you know where we can see further evidence of his brattiness? Spill!

Have to agree! The Chicago dirt in BO's and his team's DNA definitely has its uses. No high-road let-them-bring-the-fight-to-us naïveté such as doomed the hapless Kerry campaign. P.S. Saw an interesting bit in The Guardian, I think, on how this ad, and the accusations about when Mitt wasn't-but-was running Bain post-Feb-1999 or whenever, are designed to make him look not just wrong, but ridiculous. The deadliest thing for a candidate to be perceived as. Delicious how he and his team are playing right into it with their clueless responses. Michael Tomasky has a good piece at Daily Beast on how the Republicans got themselves to this pitiful point: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/15/michael-tomasky-obama-is-winning-because-of-the-shrinking-gop.html

Thank you. Where has our Lord and Master's judgment gone?

They ought to be getting paid on Letterman scale and be ready to nip into his chair the instant he croaks. Genius!

Few more (showing my manias & fixations)... Armstrong setting foot on the moon Apollo 13 splashdown Shuttle Columbia breakup (TV footage of multiple parallel contrails in the skies over Texas) P S. First spacewalk in like 1963 by whoever it was. I was born in 1959 and have that spacewalk as my first memory of television, my mama by my side explaining what the hell was happening. I was entranced.

Larry Niven wrote a droll piece on the regrettable implications of Our Hero interacting with a mere fleshly Lois -- "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex": http://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html

Word now is that Condi is off the list because she is (more or less, even if only lukewarmly) pro-choice. Besides the fact that, as you say, she herself made clear the idea of running for VP, in fact anything "political" rather than "policy," nauseates her.

No, no! Only like little bathtub splashes...

You know you have what karmic waves I can send to help you in this.

One cannot but recall Lookin's citation of Dorothy Parker in a thread past: I like to have a martini, Two at the very most. Three, I'm under the table; Four, I'm under my host.

More, if it can be borne: http://www.doug-long.com/index.htm P.S. May have reported this before. I have a grim fascination with this whole business. In my personal archives I have a photograph of the Enola Gay autographed by the pilot, navigator, and bombardier. (Not especially rare; they, shudderingly?, signed a bunch of these at some point.) I also have, sealed under a glass dome, a little (1/2 x 1 inch) bit of 'Trinitite,' the blue-green glassy substance formed from the desert sand when the test bomb exploded at Alomogordo, the site of the 'Trinity' (so named by Oppenheimer: religious? Poetic -- Donne: 'Batter my heart, three-person'd God..."?) first a-bomb test.

I remember being surprised to read in Richard Rhodes's The Making of the Atomic Bomb that Eisenhower, after hostilities in Europe had ended, advised against using the bomb on Japan. In his memoirs President Dwight D. Eisenhower reports the following reaction when Secretary of War Stimson informed him the atomic bomb would be used: "During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives..." Eisenhower made similar private and public statements on numerous occasions. For instance, in a 1963 interview he said simply: ". . . it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." Found the foregoing on the following site, which catalogs how many military officials were against it at the time: http://www.colorado....0/atomicdec.htm

I was rummaging in their archive. Byline date is Aug. 5, 2002.

Forthcoming book by Jesse Ventura might be worth a glance, if his written word is as colorful as the spoken. Heard him speak a couple of times when he was doing a gig at Harvard after leaving office -- shrewder than he looks, steroidal past and all... "DemoCRIPS and ReBLOODlicans uncovers the truth about how corporations have bought the American electoral and legislative process through the power of lobbyists, campaign contributions and political action committees. Covering historical details such as the development of the two-party system and the advent of third-party candidates throughout US history, Democrips and Rebloodlicans exposes how the two-major parties, acting like a gang-land cabal, have allowed corporations, businesses and politically-motivated wealthy individuals to manipulate elections, bribe elected officials and, in short, silence the average American voter. Exposing the ineptitude of both parties at insuring the integrity and vitality of American democracy, Jesse Ventura advocates the replacement of the two-party system for a no party system based on the ideals of our Founding Fathers." http://www.amazon.co...41327626&sr=1-1

Fascinating (if you grok this kind of thing) interview with the pilot of the Enola Gay: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/06/nuclear.japan

For no particular reason, a nice bit from "Barry Lyndon"... I read somewhere that for the jig scene at the end of this clip, Kubrick had the actors do something like 43 takes. No explanation or direction, just "Go again." And again, and again. He used the 42nd or so take. So that they would look like they had been dancing this jig all their lives, not like actors doing it stiffly who had obviously learned it just the day prior.

Great discussion of his role in "A Face in the Crowd": http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/07/03/andy_griffith_dead_at_86_before_andy_taylor_and_matlock_there_was_a_face_in_the_crowd_.html?wpisrc=obinsite

Asians and Latinos, please. The best threads on here have all been about our obsessions, one way or t'other.

You have bitched about this laziness of mine before. But if you mouse over the link -- no need to make the deep commitment of actually clicking! -- your browser will show that it reads "iamus-computer-composes-classical-music". Too late the phalarope?

Fairly cool... http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jul/01/iamus-computer-composes-classical-music