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Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm. Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net. Holmquist's full archives are listed here.
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Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution) Aljazeera.Net English Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development) Thivai Abhor |
Monday, November 10, 2003
Eloquence Today, on his radio show, Bill O'Reilly said al Qaeda had "no reason" to attack Saudi Arabia. *** Glenn Reynolds keeps on the sunny side today: This may be a revision of an earlier position. *** In a post from yesterday Andrew Sullivan writes: MARSHALL COMES UP EMPTY: Desperate to prove the notion that the administration did too call the threat from Saddam "imminent," Josh Marshall, becoming ever more stridently anti-Bush, came up with a contest. He asked his readers to send in the best administration "imminent threat" quote. Well, you can judge for yourself. But, to my mind, he comes up completely empty. No administration official used that term. None.Apparently it would be impossible for Sullivan to think about what was said unless a specific term was used. More from Sullivan: The actual threat hangs over us all the time. It is unlike previous threats from foreign powers. It is accountable to no rules and no ethics. We know it will give us no formal warning. But we cannot know it is "imminent". If we had such proof - that the U.S. was under an imminent threat of attack - there would have been no debate at all.If Sullivan had respect for logic, this would come back to embarrass him at some point in the future, and the present and all of the past since he wrote it, but he doesn't and so it won't. Let's march on to war like good little Americans! *** The real connection between these three comments is that all reflect the mentality of "just say something that supports my argument at the moment," which O'Reilly, Sullivan and Reynolds probably didn't learn from the Bush Administration although that group has modeled the practice for all to see. That and/or this stems from a fundamental difference in how to understand the world. If that's the case I really don't see where the hawks are coming from. UPDATE: One day I’ll stop rewarding myself with Glenn Reynolds Brilliance: Then there's John Hawkins' complaint that a mainstream journalist actually called King Bush on the shit that was one could be excused for thinking Bush thought was pretty goddamn important and Andrew Sullivan summing up a piece he wrote with the headline "BI-POLAR NATION" even thought that piece includes this bit of wisdom, "'Bi-polar' suggests serial ups and downs, whereas America's divisions are deep and simultaneous." 2:11 p.m. 11/12/03 UPDATE #2: Andrew Sullivan writes: THE FRUITS OF ANTI-SEMITISM: When you construct an extremist movement based in part on irrational hatred of Jews, it is only a matter of time before you start targeting Jews in every country for death. That much we know from history. Except it isn't history any more, is it? For good measure, a Jewish Middle School was just burned down in France by what even the French Interior Minister describes as anti-Semites. Never again? It's already here.I certainly don't want to diminish what happened here but I have a strange feeling Sullivan wouldn't have reacted in the same manner to similar action from a little over 40 years ago. 11:33 p.m. 11/16/03 UPDATE #3: Here are some more of similar quality. 12:36 p.m. 11/16/03 |