Slow news day so far — unless you’re in Brussels, or Paris — but let’s see if we can identify some topics to talk about:
- Locked Down for 3rd Day, Brussels Hunts Terror Suspects — The city is shut down, but the police have been busy — 20-something raids have produced 21 arrests, but the chief target has eluded authorities.
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Pfizer-Allergan Deal Shifts a U.S. Giant to Foreign Address — Yes, the deal brings with it “significant tax benefits.”
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Carson credits Thomas Jefferson with helping craft Constitution — Which would have been a neat trick, since he was in France at the time. He also alleged recently that none of the members of the Continental Congress had previously held elective office, which is also a complete fantasy.
- NPR is graying, and public radio is worried about it — That is to say, its audience is graying. Well, you know, it’s a very sober, responsible, thorough, grown-up sort of news source, and if you want your news Jon Stewart-style, it’s just not gonna be for you…
- Police: Man struck by dancer at MB club after he insulted her weight — She slapped him four times, according to the report, and then the bouncers tossed him out with extreme prejudice. You know what? I don’t want to sound cynical, but I’m beginning to doubt that all of the clientele at “gentlemen’s clubs” are actually gentlemen.
Please feel free to suggest your own topics.
Uh-oh.
Hey, at least the administration hack used the proper phrase, not “tow the line”.
Maybe he was in the Navy, since that’s where the phrase comes from…
Personally, I prefer “Draggin’ the Line“.
The coolest thing about the unfortunate Brussels lockdown, is that in response to authorities’ request that social media posts not reveal any details about raids, a veritable avalanche of cat photos has been posted.
What was the deal with that? I can understand the police requesting that people not tweet something like “Hey, the SWAT team is about to breach the back door”. How did that turn into cat photos?
Bryan, you may have asked a question with more French relevance than you even realized:
Example:
” ‘Mimi’s cat is asleep under the table’ . Each code message was read out twice. By such means, the French Resistance were instructed to start sabotaging rail and other transport links the night before D-day.” source – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_%28cryptography%29#One-time_code
Instead of “reading twice” )back before D-day), the modern update could be as simple as the update to a related cat tweet.
Please forgive my failure to encode the above link. Cat code
That’s a hoot! What a way to thumb one’s nose at the terrorists!
So, now that we know that NPR isn’t drawing the kids anyway, can we undo the Morning Edition update of several years ago and bring back Bob Edwards? I thought he was kind of the public radio Walter Cronkite…
Maybe they could get a grant from Geritol.
Speaking of which — whatever happened to Geritol? You never hear about it any more, and yet Google tells me it’s still out there for sale.
The weird thing is, it was everywhere back in the 60s. At the height of the youth revolution, when all the world was young, it was a major advertising presence. Which is kind of weird timing. Now that the leading edge of the Baby Boom is at retirement age, suddenly it disappears? Who are the ad geniuses in charge of THEIR marketing?…
So I put “carson jefferson constitution” into a search engine without quotes and found all sorts of webpages bemoaning Dr. Ben Carson’s ignorance of the Constitution. Ha, ha.
Except, a few folks actually did some research and found that the good doctor wrote a book about the Constitution and the roots of our liberties. One can look the book up at Amazon and read some of it, including this: “Our government follows the model set out by Thomas Jefferson…”
If one has the energy to do so, one can go to an arcane site maintained by something called the “Library of Congress and read something like this:
These attacks remind me of the really smart folks who jumped all over Sarah Palin in 2010 when warned Tea Party members that hard work was ahead by saying, “Don’t be thinking that we’ve got victory for America in the bag yet…We can’t party like it’s 1773.” Yes, America’s long war for independence officially started in 1776, but the Boston Tea Party was in 1773.
Piers Morgan Twittered earlier this month “How did Ben Carson ever get to be a brain surgeon?”
Iowahawk provided the first and best answer: “@piersmorgan by graduating Yale, U Michigan Med School, & a residency in neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. Hope that helps, unemployed TV guy.”
You can also read this in tomorrow’s USA Today: Oops! Carson’s not actually wrong about Jefferson: Column.
And the rest is hysteria.
“I’m impressed by a lot of them, but particularly impressed with Thomas Jefferson, who seemed to have very deep insight into the way that people would react,” Carson said. “And he tried to craft our Constitution in a way that it would control people’s natural tendencies and control the natural growth of the government.”
Ben Carson
That’s the exact quote. And it’s NOT, repeat NOT accurate. The implication is clear, Jefferson wrote (craft) the Constitution. He did not CRAFT the constitution. That is clearly an overstatement. You can suggest otherwise but clearly Carson stating that “he tried to craft our Constitution …” suggests he WROTE the constitution which he clearly did not. Carson may be a brilliant brain surgeon but he’s a terrible historian.
Yes, Mike. Madison was in correspondence with his mentor Jefferson during the drafting of the Constitution, and Jefferson did offer advice. But he wasn’t the guy there doing the work, making the arguments and the deals and making it happen.
AND Carson has published a book in which he got it right (that was in the story I linked to above). But I got the strong impression that he was forgetting what was in his book when he spoke.
Of course, I’m kind of on a hair trigger when it comes to people exaggerating the role of Jefferson. Chalk it up to my being a John Adams fan. Adams was the real father of independence, who rammed it through the Congress while Jefferson sat and said nothing. Then Adams recruits Jefferson to put the independence resolution into writing, and henceforth Jefferson gets all the credit.
And yes, the ACLU and other libertarians tend to play up Jefferson. But I think it can be misleading, such as when people get it into their heads that there is a “wall of separation” between church and state in the Constitution. There is not. That is from something Jefferson wrote, not the Constitution…
“But I got the strong impression that he was forgetting what was in his book when he spoke.”
Ghost-written, perhaps?
Piers Morgan- LOL.
Piers has failed at a lot of stuff (marriage, numerous jobs, professional ethics). He probably needs to be worried about himself instead of who America selects as a President.
That’s OK. My favorite chap-hopper, Professor Elemental, has apologized on behalf of Britain for Piers Morgan. It’s at the end of this video…
And there’s this from the good doctor:
Trump initially did get back up from Carson, who told reporters gathered in Nevada that he did see celebrations of American Muslims in New Jersey after 9/11.
“I saw the film of it, yes,” he said. Asked what kind of film, he said: “The news reels.”
Carson is completely unfit to be POTUS. His lack of even a basic understanding of history, even recent history, makes his candidacy a joke, but worse, dangerous for a country that needs a leader who understands how the world works and has worked. Perhaps we can send Dr. Carson to Egypt to see if he can find that grain hiding in the pyramids. At least that would keep him away from the nuclear button.
Uh oh. I think Carson just lost bud’s vote.
If he lost Bud, he might have actually won mine.
To his credit, Carson did take it back when confronted with evidence — or rather, with the utter LACK of evidence.
That did NOT happen with Trump. He is immune to facts.
Immune to facts? Like the current semi-retired president vis-a-viz ISIS/L?
BTW, our attack on the ISIS fuel tankers managed to destroy 116 of 300. Why fewer than half when all were sitting ducks? It’s not that we dropped leaflets 45 minutes before to warn the drivers who may have been civilians, not genuine, card-carrying ISIS member. Nope, They ran out of ammo and bombs. Where’d I read that logistics is the key to warfare?
But what I found more interesting was this:
I guess we can now return to our regularly schedule program of fear and cowering.
OK, I’m going to see if I can win the prize for Geekiest Irrelevant Comment of the day:
When I read that we had attacked ISIL’s oil tankers, striking at the heart of their wealth, I thought of the raid that the Atreides carried out to destroy the Harkonnen’s spice stockpiles early in Dune.
Economically and strategically, it was very similar — trying to cripple the enemy by destroying his stores of something that is critically important to both of you, not to mention something that is key to why people keep fighting over this patch of ground…
Then this happened today: Obama just said the UN Climate Conference will be a “powerful rebuke to terrorists.” Yeah, I’m sure ISIS is really quaking in their boots about the climate conference.
Meanwhile, Turkey shot a Russian fighter jet out of the sky this morning. I don’t think it was piloted by an Archduke, but I can’t confirm. Good thing we can count on Putin to act rationally and not escalate things.
We shall defend our theory about climate change, whatever the cost may be, we shall make solar power on the beaches, we shall use geothermal on the landing grounds, we shall have windmills in the fields and in the streets, we shall have hydroelectric in the hills; we shall never surrender to fossil fuels.
Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf is on board the prevent-global-warming change, recommending that bathtubs be banned since their use wastes water and energy. Now before you start complaining about stinking Swedes, he’s a shower man and was a bit distressed that the hotel where he’s staying had tubs instead of showers.
The king is pretty active when it comes to climate protection — he drives a hybrid, eats little meat and “tries to save energy in the Palace“. I’m sure he’ll be glad when the conference is over so he kick back in one of the 1,430 rooms in his palace, 660 of which have windows. I wonder if uses that window-sealer film to cut down on drafts in the winter…
His majesty is an environmentalist because he loves the wide, open spaces. But he likes them indoors…
The Turks have always jealously guarded their airspace. During the Cold War they gave direct operational control of their anti-aircraft missile batteries to their border signals / electronic intelligence posts so that if any Soviet aircraft strayed even a smidgeon over the border, they could (and would) let loose a volley. Looks like that hasn’t changed.
Bud –
Here are 10 Made-Up Talking Points to Help You WIN Thanksgiving and HUMILIATE Your Idiot Granddad:
Have fun!