Exactly- I mean its his friggin dream, and i know it'll be bad but should I tell him that? (he's not a long time friend- a long time friend I'd tell)

Ah, fun
 

"
XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX TUE APRIL 26, 2005 14:20:17 ET XXXXX

BUSH ASKS ABOUT 'SPLASH DAY'

President Bush raised eyebrows on Tuesday when he asked locals in Galveston, Texas: "Do you still have Splash Day?"

"Splash Day" is the annual "adult oriented enormous beach party" celebration on the Gulf Coast.

BUSH: Do you still have Splash Day?

(LAUGHTER)

BUSH: You have to be a baby boomer to know what I'm talking about.

(LAUGHTER)

BUSH: I'm not saying whether I came or not on Splash Day. I'm just saying, Do you have Splash Day?

(LAUGHTER)

Bush was unaware "Splash Day" is now a fully gay and lesbian event on the beaches.

Developing..

Ah, fun
 

Is he gonna answer mmmmmmmmmmmmmm's poll?

And dammit, where is Spanky to prevent these cross-board references?

Max Weber invented this.

Ah, fun
 

He's reaching out to the gay and lesbian community...

Ah, fun
 

Dissent. He won't even acknowledge the orgasm.

I'm not sure how anyone can really criticize the thesis by reading a 1 page summary of an entire book. Perhaps its hogwash (Hi Gatti!), but its hard to tell without reading the entire thing.

Possible Movement on SS?
 

• All three proposals call for creating individual accounts through which younger workers could divert some of their payroll taxes into stock and bond funds that would follow them into retirement. Graham would fund the accounts by raising the wage cap for Social Security contributions; Hagel would borrow the needed money; and Bush has said he is open to several possibilities.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...032502816.html

Do you feel this way about Das Kapital and Mein Kampf?

I respect Sowell, but can't figure out from this exchange what his thesis is.

Or in supporting it, for that matter.


(Hi!)

Well, the summary is written by him.

Ty, you know as well as Larry Summers that there's only one explanation for all differences across races in this country. It's clear from Sowell's exec. summary that he has the wrong reason.

I'll be sure to get around to it.

So they caught something from his cousin. too?

That'd be dumb. You already know it's wrong.

Apparently, it's permissible to say that a book is spot-on based on a summary, but not to say the opposite based on a summary, even if the summary is written by the author.

I have little patience for social science studies of this sort, that attempt to attribute broad and complicated social phenomena to individual causes. I would be similarly unlikely to read a book that explained why racism was the cause of the difference between white and black economic status in the US.

Unlike you, I do not have the ability to read every book published in the United States, and thus periodically have to make these judgment calls. If I can see what the author himself says about his thesis, that seems to me to be a good basis for such a judgment call. Sorry, but I can only aspire to your level of knowledge and your reading speed.

Yep. see in re Ty's defense of the Conter terroirsm guy's book, and following posts.

Wouldn't know. What I said was, it seems like a valid approach. I might even read it. What you said was "snicker."

You read the summary and say "seems like a valid approach." I read the summary and feel that the thesis is laughable, so I laugh. As you were saying this morning, there is room for humor. Though I guess not humor at the expense of people you agree with.


I also say:

But that's just the point -- the "content of the culture" is so variable and so malleable that tying a complex social phenomenon to that culture makes little sense.

And:

I have little patience for social science studies of this sort, that attempt to attribute broad and complicated social phenomena to individual causes. I would be similarly unlikely to read a book that explained why racism was the cause of the difference between white and black economic status in the US.



You translate that as "snicker". Because, I suppose, there is also no room for criticism of people you agree with.


So, just translate this post as "fuck you, Bilmore." Your claim to moral and intellectual superiority has, as usual, grown tiresome. Go home and insult your wife so she won't fuck you some more.

Are you sure you're in the right business? This life just really seems to make you . . . I don't know . . . bitter and humorless.

Oh, and bitter.

Okay, the level of discourse has been raised. We can all go home now.

Ah, fun
 

Heh. My sister and a gay friend were looking for the gay beach in Galveston a few years ago, but it changed location. All they found was a glow stick and a used condom.

Heh.
 

http://www.theagitator.com/archives/DMN04-26-05.jpg

Dallas Morning News this morning.

I have the sense of humor of an 11 year old boy.

Per capita incomes and educational levels have always been lower in the South (although that has been changing rather significantly recently).

Bush Taps DeLay
 

My man McCloskey is there right now trying to dig up someone else. I am sure he is promising them all sorts of money that he expects me to raise.

Bush Taps DeLay
 

Don't buy his BS for a minute. I had drinks with Sidd on Friday and he is serious. He is going to put money into Delay's campaign if it looks like he is going to lose. So if Delay gets vulnerable I may have to fit Sidd for some cement shoes. Or at least dig up some dirt on him.

Write what you know
 

Zell Miller's new book is titled...

Write what you know
 

Slavery also cannot explain the difference between American blacks and West Indian blacks living in the United States because the ancestors of both were enslaved. When race, racism, and slavery all fail the empirical test, what is left?

Culture is left.

The culture of the people who were called "rednecks" and "crackers" before they ever got on the boats to cross the Atlantic was a culture that produced far lower levels of intellectual and economic achievement, as well as far higher levels of violence and sexual promiscuity. That culture had its own way of talking, not only in the pronunciation of particular words but also in a loud, dramatic style of oratory with vivid imagery, repetitive phrases and repetitive cadences.

Although that style originated on the other side of the Atlantic in centuries past, it became for generations the style of both religious oratory and political oratory among Southern whites and among Southern blacks--not only in the South but in the Northern ghettos in which Southern blacks settled. It was a style used by Southern white politicians in the era of Jim Crow and later by black civil rights leaders fighting Jim Crow. Martin Luther King's famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 was a classic example of that style.

While a third of the white population of the U.S. lived within the redneck culture, more than 90% of the black population did. Although that culture eroded away over the generations, it did so at different rates in different places and among different people. It eroded away much faster in Britain than in the U.S. and somewhat faster among Southern whites than among Southern blacks, who had fewer opportunities for education or for the rewards that came with escape from that counterproductive culture.

Write what you know
 

Interesting. Unfortunately, Zell was worried about having sufficient gravitas, but I think the forward gives the book the heft that it needs.

Write what you know
 

I think that if this book doesn't do well, it won't be because Zell bored the readers, but because the readers bored Zell.

I actually read that book.

Write what you know
 

• "A Deficit of Decency" addresses specific issues where Miller sees a need to return to a basic sense of duty. Miller writes in the preface, "There have been ten generations of Americans since this nation was founded….Each left this nation in a little better condition than they had inherited it from their parents. This is the first generation at risk of doing the opposite. Why? I have come to believe that it is because we failed to acknowledge and discipline ourselves with the spiritual truths that have made us great for these two hundred years—faith, family, country, values. This book is about how one man thinks they may be restored and yet save this great civilization from itself."

Now which generation, exactly, is fucking everything up? Zell looks a bit too long in the tooth to be a boomer, and we all know the Greatest Generation is beyond reproach. I know he ain't sayin' that shit 'bout me.

The hits just keep on comin'...
 

More DeLay news....

http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...054596,00.html

Bush Taps DeLay
 

FWIW, Sidd talks a lot of shit when he drinks.

Write what you know
 

Don't be too sure, Weed. Check out Chapter 11, "Our Town and Our Youth: A Review of The Lazy, Ungrateful Liberals Who Deserve to Be Shot."

Write what you know
 

Umm...I'm not listed there, am I? Could you take a look? I would, but I don't feel like it.

Write what you know
 

Look, doing the all-nude, all-male production of Our Town wasn't my idea. Our drama teachers told us it was avant garde and who were we to question? And as I recall, they were of Zell's generation.

Generation X never got a fair shake from day one, and now Zell Miller wants to put some mess on us? No fucking way. If I've got bad manners it's Hunter S. Thompson's fault. If I think about sex too much it's Henry Miller's fault. If I drink too much it's because Bukowski made it sound fun. If I lie it's because Nixon taught me how when I was just knee-high to a black and white television set. And if I ever get around to dodging the draft it'll be because I have lots and lots of other priorities.

I'm not bitter, just confused. When I respond to you seriously, you get all pissy because I'm not giving you room for humor.

When I make a joke (and c'mon -- "The Belle Curve" -- that was funny shit) then you get all snide and smug and accuse me of being insufficiently intellectual because I reject the book without reading it.

Anyway. Good to know that there is room for humor again. Whenever Bilmore's sense of moral and intellectual superiority doesn't squeeze it out.

For Spanky
 

Andrew Sullivan writes in The New Republic the most comprehensive review I've read so far about the divide in the GOP today between the conservatives of faith and the conservatives of restraint. It's pretty damned long, but worth the read.

Heh.
 

It's in a jar on my shelf.

(Sorry. Old joke. More properly, for the old guy who says "I have the heart of a thirty-year-old.")

Still, this was funny. Had to be on purpose.