John Adams

Is there any chance that we can stop citing Drudge as a source? That website is like the blind squirrel. Even worse, when it does get a story kind of right, it puts more spin on it than the Enquirer. If Cronkite said that at all, he said it sarcastically, acknowledging that the timing of the OBL tape was good for Bush (which it is), and also giving a little back-handed credit to the genius of Karl Rove.

My guess is that Americans will want to show OBL that he can't scare us, and will turn out and vote Bush for four more years. Look for Bush to make a great speech tonight.

I'm a patent attorney, so I'm in the middle of idea importing/exporting. BTW, just to cheer up the lawyer haters, and who isn't a lawyer hater, one big thing happening in the law is outsourcing legal work to other countries. Countries with English speakers now have companies that will do legal research and write memos, even legal briefs, and return them to US law firms for filing. The overseas firms, of course, do the work a lot cheaper than a first year associate (in big Phila firm, such an associate makes about 130K/yr... and bills a client at a rate of somewhere in the $250/hr. range.. all this for a 25 year old's services!). Anyway, there's controversy over the export of such legal work. I think it's an interesting new wrinkle in the law. If it catches on in a big way, and I don't think it will because legal work is pretty hard, it could drive down legal rates.

Unratified treaties have a sort of murky legal value. Knowing slick Willie, he probably hoped that the murkiness might commit the USA to the treaty. He didn't submit it because it would never have passed and become supreme law of the land, so he preferred to leave its status ambiguous. I think it's simple economics. If we could make cheaper GI Joes with the Kung-Fu Grip here, we would. We can't, so they get made elsewhere. I'm not sure what kind of "caring" you are asking about. I don't think the trade deficit is as simple as most people. What we have to export at the moment is ideas. What we import are goods that are the result of those ideas. So far, that works in our favor. Have we lost some of our manufacturing base? Yes. That's the global economy. It works pretty well actually, when the governments get the hell outta the way. Nope.

Sandra Day O'Connor made some headlines recently discussing what most lawyers already know. We are no longer an island of laws unto ourselves- international laws increasingly affect corporations and individuals. O'Connor Speech There's a lot of skepticism in the US about the murky soup of international law. Lots of people, including our president, have little respect for international law. Unfortunately, to enforce our laws, we need to respect others. What's more, when we sign up to a treaty like WIPO, and make ourselves subject to its jurisdiction, we violate the supreme law of the land if we break the treaty. More to come on this. One thing I know- it's good news for lawyers like me. I already deal weekly with attorneys from at least five countries in my practice., and over the course of a year, there's hardly a country with any economy that I don't do some work with.

Is this in the "liberal manual" somewhere? I think IQ is pretty meaningless. I've known too many shiftless lazy useless good for nothing geniuses to place much stock in IQ. What is it a measure of? Someone's ability to do well on an IQ test... which may correspond to certain talents. Give me a person who has good grades and can write a coherent sentence (sorry Boomer- that leaves you AQ guys out) anyday. Colleges are finally realizing that good SATs do not correlate to success in college. That's one reason that the SAT is changing to be subject based. Students will now have to show their aptitude not just in some general test, but in specific areas like biology, chemistry, history, and... wait for it... writing. All of these will give colleges a better indicator of how hard someone is working combined with how smart they are. It's that combination that colleges, employers, and every mom wants.

Badnarik, and since 99% of voters vote in favor of big government, big spending, and government intrusion on our lives, etc., he has no chance of winning. BTW, just so we're clear. The Dems are lost causes, but I respect them for not being hypocritcal. They vote for what they believe in. It's the Republicans who are morons, because they say they believe in small government but don't vote for people who don't do a single thing to shrink it. See, for example, 800,000 gov't jobs added since the Repubs took control of the Fed and Legislative branches four years ago. Those numbers would make Stalin blush.

But the people that vote for Bush and other "conservatives" don't hold them to a higher standard. Why do I attack people who support Bush? Because most of you actually believe in smaller government and less spending, but you would hypocritically give your vote to a socialist anyway. I can't explain you people. You're happy to say things like, "what choice do I have" when you have all the choice in the world. It's a democracy, and yet you let a group of people in the RNC dictate to you how to vote. You are basically part of a big union groupthink called the Republican party. I hear this all the time on here: "I have no choice... between Kerry and Bush, I have to vote Bush." That's moronic and why AD calls you lemmings. Imagine the choice that the Founding Fathers faced, between living pretty rich under oppression and risking everything to create a democracy. They had a tough choice. All you have to do is vote out the people who lie to you about what they will do in office. Egads. This makes me nuts. Why don't I attack the Democrats? They are a lost cause. They actually believe that socialism works. At least most Conservatives, even though they support socialists every election, would say they are capitalists.

I have both an ipod and St. radio. They are both great for different things. When I want to be my own DJ, as you say, I can do that. When I want someone else to be my DJ, which can be a lot of fun, I do that. If anything, listening to satellite complements my ipod nicely. Sometimes I'll hear a song on Sat., copy down the name and artist, and then download it to my ipod so I won it. Plus, on ipod, there's no live football (which matters to those of us who live with trees blocking the dumb satellite for DirecTV) or talk radio. A gadget geek owns both. If I had to go with one, I'd go with the ipod (or equivalent). To all you pervs, XM has a subscription plan for playboy radio. Talk about dangerous driving.

Sirius has traffic and weather for big cities too.

As a side note, for this very reason, I loved the moveon commercial with the kids working. It was effective, and I hoped it would actually make people who call themselves Conservatives think, "Hey. Our guy is pretty much a fiscally irresponsible big government socialist."

You just can't stop yourself from bringing up Kerry. Does your man have no record to stand on? Is his existence right now solely defined by his opponent. You cannot believe he attacked Iraq because Saddam was bad. He sold the attack to the country in the State of the Union Address--within months of 9-11-- by whipping up WMD and even nuclear concerns. That's a fact. He now admits there were no WMD in Iraq. That's a fact. What he won't say is that he made a mistake, and look the few hundred million of his employers who think he made a mistake in the eye and say "the buck stops here." Two years, 1000+ American lives, foreign relations harmed, two hundred billion dollars, civilian deaths, no real hope of a clean exit... I think he has at least some 'splaining to do. My appeal to people like you is, can't you do better? Not only is Bush not a Conservative, he's not even a mensch. And yet you would vote for him.

First. Thanks to most of the original posters for ignoring the point. I made no reference to the dumb "mistakes" question. You all jumped onto Kerry even though the point of the post was about Bush not ever taking blame.. and even after I tried to steer you off your one track minds... (Some one said something bad about Bush... knee jerk- bash Kerry, Clinton bad etc) So, even though the president admints there were no WMDs in Iraq, after he used that to justify the attack, you don't think he should have the balls to say, "I made a mistake. I made the best judgment I could based on the evidence I had, and if you have a problem that, you have a problem with me. Not the CIA. Not Rumsfeld. Me." That would be leadership. And I would respect that more than you know. But that's not what we have. Again Bush people, try try try, if you can, to refrain from now posting things like , "You think Kery would be better? He's a flip-flopping ninny" and the like. I know he is. But how can you "conservatives" support this flimsy gutless unintelligent liberal in conservative clothing? How, how, how for the love of DC Tom, how can you do it?

The below Kerry quote summarizes something that irks me about Bush. This never say you're wrong thing is a symptom of something I see all the time nowadays. I. for one, respect the person who stands up and say they were wrong, or they made a mistake. That's what a person with integrity does. Bush never admits he's wrong. Integrity rating: 0. *** "Can you imagine President Kennedy ... standing up and telling the American people he couldn't think of a single mistake that he had made? When the Bay of Pigs went sour, John Kennedy had the courage to look America in the eye and say to America 'I take responsibility, it is my fault."' Challenging Bush, Kerry said: "Mr. President, it is long since time for you to start taking responsibility for the mistakes that you've made." *** Stay on target Bush-supporters. Don't attack Kerry, the person delivering the message. Defend your man instead. Where does the buck stop in this administration? You can't say it stops with Bush.

I have Sirius and love it. I've checked out my friend's XM and like it too. The biggest differences (to me... and I could give a crap about the Jazz blues offering so you'll have to check that out yourself): Sirius Pros: NFL Stern-- not because I listen to the show, but because he will bring revenue to Sirius which will mean bigger better programming) NPR Multiple choices for receivers (XM has just one receiver maker, albiet a good one, in Delphi) XM Pros: Better music variety (although Sirius offers a jillion channels, XM has a few I wish I could hear... progressive rock being one) Music shows seem to have better programming (on Sirius, it's song after song... on XM, they break it up with more theme hours and whatnot) More talk stations (but again, Sirius has a ton of those too) all MLB games starting in 2005 Both have these pros: Lots of music Never lose signal unless you are under a mountain or in the rain forest Lots of talk Basically endless variety Good sound quality, although to be honest, they could both be better on this. Both have these cons: When driving and twiddling the receiver, you are more dangerous than a person who just drank a bottle of Jack. *** In short, they are really similar, and you should make your choice after reviewing both. When you compare the station lists, you'll see that they both have 10 flavors of rock, decade stations from 1940, kids stations, sports talk stations, etc... I don't think you'll be disappointed in either one. My only real complaint about Sirius is that they don't have a progressive rock station. But that's a narrow genre to cater to, so I understand.

That's pretty good. 4 years ago, I was at a neighborhood dinner party when the host took a poll of the people invited: "Who are you voting for?" Everyone but me said they were voting for Gore (a room of about 15). From this, he riotously concluded that "You see, all the smart people are voting for Gore." This was not a dig at me, since I wasn't voting for Bush either. It was more of an elitist move like the kind commented on in the article. In truth, both parties have dumb people (see Bush), and also a lot of elitist A-holes (see Kerry).

Fantastic. An "I love Rich" thread.

Exactly. That's why Kerry is an idiot on this. The implication that it was stolen is idiotic. The possibility that some number cruncher lost a sheet of manifests for the explosives or didn't enter it into the database, or didn't calibrate the explosive scale for a day and all the weghts were off-- all of these are far more likely than that they were stolen.

"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not the person you want as the commander in chief." IF the above is true, and I think it's pretty self-evident, how do you feel about gut-check George running the military. He admits to following his gut, consulting with Christ, and who knows what else, in making his decisions. This is a test. The quote was from Bush attacking Kerry over Kerry's criticsims regarding the missing explosives, which I agree is not much of a story until we know more about it. Maybe someone carried the 1 and messed up the calcuation of how many tons were impounded. 400 tons of explosives are a tough thing to steal.

I listen to Eminem and I'm not 11. I didn't see the video, but I heard what's in it. Imagine that- a pop star with a new album doing something outrageous to grab headlines. Who'd have thunk it?

Still looking for 450,000 tons of explosives destroyed. Still, 240,000 tons of munitions destroyed at least makes your point. As to the missing explosives, it's an absurd story. It's a concern, but probably the least of our worries.

I just can't find the 450 thousand tons of explosives destroyed in Iraq cite, "pal." If it's "common knowledge," as you say, then it should be easy to find. And since the purpose of your post, by your own admission, is to put the NYT Times story into perspective, and the basis for that perspective is that 450,000 tons of explosives were destroyed in Iraq, I was wondering what your source was on that number. That's in the ballpark of 22,000 truckloads of explosives destroyed in Iraq- a pretty staggering number. If you had more credibility generally, I wouldn't have to question your sources. But since you so often run when confronted with the actual facts, I pretty much question everything you say.

So what's your sage advice: "Don't worry, be happy?" BTW, just for the one or eighty-seven people who are skeptical of everything you say because of your proven track record, how about, just every once in a while, citing a source?

I think the criticism I hear most is that the current admin. hasn't been protectionist in keeping jobs here. I don't think there's been a criticism of the Bush admin. that something it did sent jobs overseas.

Let's rush him in ala Ryan Leaf. Even McNabb sat most of a year behind a no talent Doug Pederson just so he could get used to the NFL. I think we start Drew for now (this season is clearly fooked), and give JP reps for the last few games of the season when little is on the line. That gets him in the game and gives the fans something to watch when there's nothing to play for.