Category: Strange

If you don’t subscribe to Salon.com, you might want to reconsider. The writing is smart, snappy, and never misses the mark. Much food for thought.

Today’s issue gives a wrap-up of the most recent Republican Presidential Debate. And it’s a riot. Michael Scherer’s piece is titled What you missed while watching “Deal or No Deal”: Salon watches the third GOP debate so you don’t have to: God frowns on Giuliani, Romney does weird math on Iraq, Thompson proposes a Bush morality tour, and more.

We get a minute-by-minute summary of the highlights and lowlights. Among my favorite:

2 minutes. “My name is Thompson, Tommy Thompson,” says the former Wisconsin governor, in his best James Bond impersonation. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who is worth $350 million and does not live in your neighborhood, introduces himself as a “neighbor.” Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee apologizes to the crowd for his hometown, Hope, Ark., which birthed Bill Clinton. “All I ask is give me one more chance.” People laugh.

4 minutes. The first question goes to Romney. It is concise. “Was it a mistake for us to invade Iraq?” Romney won’t answer. He calls the question “a non sequitur.” He also calls it “a null set,” which is a term from mathematical theory that means something complicated involving X, if X is a measurable space, and the “sigma ideal.” Instead, Romney attacks Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid for saying the war is lost.

5 minutes. Undeterred, a reporter from the Manchester Union Leader asks Romney the same question again. “Was it a mistake for the United States to invade Iraq?” Romney says “null set” again, maybe with more feeling this time. Then he says, “That I think is an unreasonable hypothetical.”

6 minutes. The question is asked a third time, but now to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. “Absolutely the right thing to do,” Giuliani says without hesitation. Ouch. That must hurt for Romney.

10 minutes. Arizona Sen. John McCain is asked what will happen if generals report that the surge of troops in Iraq is failing. McCain says he met this morning with the family of a fallen soldier. Then he attacks Hillary Clinton for saying Iraq is “Mr. Bush’s war.” “I didn’t say that Bosnia, our intervention there, was President Clinton’s war,” McCain explains. This is how it is done. If asked a tough question, treat Democrats like pincushions.

A bit later on:

55 minutes. Huckabee reveals the darker side of his faith. Answering a question about gays in the military, he calls homosexuality an “attitude.” “It’s about conduct,” he says, endorsing the current policy that bans gays and lesbians from serving openly. “It’s not about attitude.”

59 minutes. The gays in the military question goes to McCain. He soars. “We have the best-trained, most professional, best equipped, most efficient, most wonderful military in the history of this country. And I’m proud of every one of them.” But McCain also says that the current policy, whose net effect is expelling gays for being gay, “is working.”

And on English as the official language of the United States, which, for some reason is an issue with Republicans, we learn the horrifying possibilities of people speaking Spanish:

100 minutes. Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo explains why Spanish speakers may soon destroy America, and why he would never advertise in his campaign for president in Spanish, which Romney does. “English is the language of this country,” he says. “We should not be ashamed of that.” Blitzer intervenes, “Sen. McCain, I’d like you to respond.”

101 minutes. “Muchas gracias,” says McCain.

Read more here.  It’s worth it.

Newt Gingrich, exercising his rights as an American, called out for less free speech for the rest of us:

“We need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until we actually literally lose a city, which I think could literally happen in the next decade if we’re unfortunate,” Mr. Gingrich said Monday night during a speech in New Hampshire. “We now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren’t for the scale of the threat.”

Speaking at an award dinner billed as a tribute to crusaders for the First Amendment, Mr. Gingrich, who is considering a run for the White House in 2008, painted an ominous picture of the dangers facing America.

“This is a serious, long-term war,” the former speaker said, according an audio excerpt of his remarks made available yesterday by his office. “Either before we lose a city or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people.”

Let freedom ring.

News from Great Falls, Montana. A Republican state lawmaker is calling Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer “incredibly bigoted” for remarks he made about individuals who believe the earth is less than 6,000 years old. The Democratic governor was speaking to a crowd of students, parents, and teachers Friday about global warming. In the course of his presentation, Schweitzer asked the crowd how many thought the earth was hundreds of millions of years old. Virtually everyone in attendance raised their hands.

He then asked how many believed the earth was less than a million years old. Two people, including Rep. Roger Koopman, R-Bozeman, raised their hands.

In an interview later with local media, Schweitzer made note of Koopman’s response. He said that there are people who believe that the earth is only 4,000 to 6,000 years old, despite geological evidence to the contrary.

The Great Falls Tribune reports on the governor’s comments and Koopman’s response:

Koopman called the comments insulting.

”He insulted many Christian people and other people of faith that arrived at that position other than the way I arrived at it,” he said.

Koopman claimed that his belief is not based on his faith, but on scientific investigations. He had planned to introduce legislation in 2005 to allow teaching of “intelligent design,” but never pursued the measure and says he has no plans to introduce a similar bill if he wins re-election.

Koopman is up for re-election in November.