The last time I enjoyed regular home delivery of a daily newspaper was back in 2003, when I ended a three-month subscription to the Seattle P-I after accumulating stacks of recycling and a six-inch diameter rubber band ball. It’s not that I didn’t read the P-I, it’s just that I mostly read it online, and the satisfying hand-feel of the dead-tree edition simply wasn’t worth the extra clutter or cost. And so it was with some nostalgia this week that I drank my morning tea while shuffling through the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer, a big city paper that despite a noticeable decline over the past couple decades, still puts its smaller Seattle cousins to shame.
Even on this notoriously slow news day, the Inquirer’s front page once again finds room for five stories, four with bylines from staff reporters, while the Seattle Times features two articles from the LA Times, one from USA Today, and a column by Jerry Brewer. I’m just sayin’. The P-I’s front page is a bit more encouraging, with all three articles sporting bylines from staff reporters, including one actual local news story. Wow.
But it’s not the news or the op/eds that caught my attention this week, but rather the ads. Of course today is “Black Friday,” and the Inquirer was so chock full of ads and inserts yesterday that it had to be bagged and delivered in two parts. I’ve written before about the experiential difference between reading a paper online versus reading it in print — they often emphasize entirely different headlines — but online readers almost entirely miss the usual Sunday circulars, let alone the deluge of holiday advertising. And I’m guessing online publishers miss the revenue windfall from the holiday season as well.
This highlights just one of the many challenges facing publishers and the communities they serve as the newspaper industry continues to transition from print to web. Unless newspapers can find a way to maintain or replace such traditional revenue sources, newsrooms will continue to experience cuts, and overall quality will continue to decline. Meanwhile, consumers and retailers alike risk losing what is after all, a valuable service. No, I don’t particularly like having my living room cluttered up with circulars for stuff I’ll never buy, but I don’t mind learning about a 32″ LCD HDTV for $399, or an 8GB USB flash drive for $28.95.
Happy Black Friday Frank Blethen and Roger Olgesby.
I will still need a print edition, to line my bird cages!
My sister saves them up for me. That way I can still get the satisfaction of having my parrots poop on the pictures of the crooks in this administration. A small comfort, I know, but anything at all helps these days.
“Dead tree?” Have you checked how green in terms of recycle content newsprint has become?
Read http://www.afandpa.org/Content.....ycling.htm and http://www.conservatree.com/pa.....view.shtml
While the percentage content is still low, it increases every year. Plus, with a 71% recycle rate into other paper products (your Lucky Charms box was last weeks’ Inquirer, Goldy) for newsprint itself, to snidely dismiss the printed newspaper product as “dead tree” is uninformed. Also, the trees harvested for virgin fiber are, for the most part, commercially grown as a crop. Complaining about “dead tree” is, then, akin to complaining about eating bread since it’s from “dead wheat.”
So much for the roll in your Philly cheesesteak!
That more and more people get their news on-line or electronically is a given; the halcyon days of, “Extra, extra, read all about it!” are gone forever. But as long as there are bird cages to bottom and puppies to train, yes, Goldy, there will always be a newpaper.
Probably won’t be the P-I (hear tell the Little Nickel has greater circulation), but there will be one.
The Piper
Having cashed out some of my stock market winnings, I’ve been looking over newspaper stocks. On paper, they look like a bargain, if not a steal. Book values twice the stock price, low P/Es, etc. I’m not saying one should invest at current share prices, or even at all. Obviously, the fact McClatchey’s stock is now selling for 20% of its recent high reflects both some internal problems at that company and the broader industry’s systemic problems. All I’m saying is that the conventional wisdom that the stock market is “perfectly efficient” is bullshit and investors do overreact to situations and either get too enthusiastic or too pessimistic about individual stock issues. If you want to make bank-interest-plus on your savings then, fine, play it safe and buy the blue chips everyone else buys and watch your money grow in tandem with the economy, which is averaging about 4% a year. If you want to make money by investing in stocks, then you have to realize that 80% to 90% of the potential gains represent a zero-sum game and are realized by taking money away from investors dumber than you. If the dead-tree news industry can polish its business model and revitalize the eyeball count and grow advertising revenues, there are enormous potential capital gains to be made by buying these stocks at today’s prices.
The birdcage demand puts a floor under how low circulation can go, to my way of thinking. Of course, this has been a journalism industry bromide for eons: No matter how lousy the content, a certain number of people will still buy the paper to line shelves with, or wrap fish bones and garbage in. That’s comforting to the accountants, if not to the reporters and editors.
If the newspapers were smart, they would have an optional ads section by the big retailers, with a trade-off of something specific to the Times or P-I, for example, in return for a very good placement price.
Or, perhaps more realistically, they cut a deal with outfits like the Black Friday website, emphasizing that going to their newspaper website is a “one-stop shop”.
It all comes down to marketing and providing value. When people perceive the value, then, if they want it, they’ll pay for it.
Instead, it seems increasingly likely that we’ll just see our local daily newspapers continuously fritter away their opportunities and get market share nibbled away by specialty rags and web-based alternatives.
@4…RR…
In the same vein, there still is a market for buggy whips, albeit small.
The Piper
Should Candidates Who Win By Cheating Forfeit The Office?
The case of Yakima city councilman-elect Rick Ensey has been discussed before in this blog, but took a new turn today when Yakima’s mayor demanded that Ensey resign.
Ensey — a Republican — won a close, hard-fought, election this month against incumbent Democratic councilman Ron Bonlender after an anonymous blogger spread “rumors” on a local blog that Bonlender “had been arrested several times for investigation of drunken driving and that police, the city manager and local newspapers had covered up the reports.”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....gn23m.html
The anonymous blogger turned out to be Ensey’s wife, and the “rumors” were an outright fabrication. The Enseys eventually admitted this fact, but only after Mrs. Ensey’s stealth smear on behalf of her candidate-husband was exposed. Mr. Ensey also sent a letter of apology to the Yakima newspaper, but it is less than sincere. It says:
“Dear editor, I want to apologize to the people of Yakima for not disclosing before the election that my wife was the person behind InsideYakima.com. Clearly mistakes were made and for that I am sorry.
I also want to thank all of the people who supported my message of smaller and smarter government. I look forward to serving my neighbors as a hard-working member of the Yakima City Council for the next four years.”
http://www.kimatv.com/news/11221526.html
The problem is Ensey wasn’t elected. Oh, technically he won alright, according to the official returns — by 8,790 votes to 7,815 votes. But given that Bonlender had been previously elected to the position and Mrs. Ensey’s smear received wide circulation, it’s not plausible that Ensey would have won anyway. This election was stolen.
This brings us to the question of what the remedy should be.
1) Tort lawsuit: Bonlender would appear to have an open-and-shut case agaisnt the Enseys for defamation. The “rumors” clearly were false, and he should have no problem establishing a malicious element. But SCOTUS has made it very difficult for public figures to sue for defamation; in addition, the courts can be expected to go pretty far in protecting as “free speech” the rough-and-tumble brawling of a political campaign. And then there’s the question of damages; a token award of a few thousand dollars, or even awarding Bonlender the lost council job pay, would be inadequate because the man has been portrayed as a drunk and scofflaw in the community where he lives and conducts his livelihood. And the Enseys would not be effectively punished for their conduct unless the verdict exceeded any insurance they have so that Bonlender could enforce a deficiency judgment against their personal assets. If a jury returns a large verdict — say, a couple million dollars — then their might be some real justice. But the odds of the Enseys ever been financially punished for their egregious wrong against Bonlender are slight.
2) Regulatory punishment: There is none, because our state supreme court ruled last month that fining candidates for campaign lies is an unconstitutional infringement of free speech — a decision, by the way, which I support. Government cannot be the arbiter of what is truth, and what isn’t, in the heat of a campaign because you would inevitably have partisans making those decisions, and such decisions inevitably will be based not on what the truth is but on who controls the commission making the decision.
3) Revote: This question was thoroughly hashed over following the 2004 governor’s election. Our laws simply don’t allow for redoing elections, even where the outcome was close and may have been affected by voting errors, fraud, slander, or what have you.
4) Election contest: Our law does give courts authority to set aside fraudulent election outcomes. However, the election contest laws are narrowly drawn, and don’t appear to allow room to challenge an election on the basis that the victorious candidate lied to voters or smeared his opponent. This is probably a dead end.
5) Resignation: Ensey obviously should resign, but he has said he won’t, and he can’t be forced to. He possibly could be persuaded to resign by bringing to bear overwhelming community pressure. This process has already begun with the mayor and several other council members calling on him to resign, and may intensify in coming weeks. But if Ensey is stubborn and insists on clinging to his ill-gotten election spoils, at the end of the day, he can’t be compelled to resign.
6) Recall: This might be an option, but I doubt it. That’s because the recall laws, like the election contest laws, allow for removing a person from office only on narrowly defined grounds, and to the best of my knowledge, an officeholder can be recalled only for misconduct in office, and not for misconduct in gaining the office.
We need to keep in mind, also, that we don’t want to promote remedies that would give an opening to foaming-at-the-mouth partisans of the Rossi ilk to continue disputing every election they lose. Elections are supposed to settle partisan disputes, bring closure, and at some point the election results need to be final. That was certainly the case after Judge Bridges threw out Rossi’s baseless allegations of fraud by Gregoire, the Democrats, and/or King County Elections officials in the 2004 governor’s election.
But a do-nothing approach to cases like Ensey’s can only encourage unscrupulous parties like the GOP and ruthless candidates like Ensey to game the election system by lying to voters and smearing their opponents. We need to find some acceptable way to both punish people who steal elections in this manner, and to deprive them of their ill-gotten fruits of office — without creating opportunites for people of the same ilk to challenge legitimately elected officeholders like Governor Gregoire. I don’t know the answer to this. Maybe the best solution is a good old fashioned midnight tar-and-feather party.*
But I do know this: Rick Ensey is not a legitimately elected Yakima city councilman, and should not spend one day in that council seat, and should not cast a single council vote. If ever there was an illegitimate officeholder in this state, it is he.
* Just kidding! I couldn’t resist throwing a little Ann Coulter humor in here to show you wingnut trollfucks what your side sounds like!
@6 As usual, you have your head up your ass, Piper. The market for birdcage liner is quite large. Rupert Murdoch is living proof of that. So is the National Enquirer, the Globe, and all the other supermarket tabloids.
@8…RR…
Tabloids? I wouldn’t know, but you seem to have an extraodinary knowledge of them, so may I presume you know them in the, as we used to say, “biblical sense?”
Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.? Driving a lot of the innovation and change in the media. The pairing of the WSJ and the new Fox Business Channel, will bring intense competition to cable business news reporting. Should be fun to watch! Perhaps even bring some WSJ editorial regularfs on Fox News? Paul Gigot has been gone from my TV screen for too long.
BTW…in re Ensey? If a Republican won an uncontested election, you’d figure out some way to allege the results were stolen.
The Piper
Of course, illegitimacy has never stopped anyone from exercising the powers of office, once gained. A litany of history’s despots proves that:
Caligula
Nero
King George III
Napoleon
Bismarck and the Prussians
Kaiser Wilhelm
Stalin
Hitler
Idi Amin
General Pinochet
Castro
George W. Bush
@9 No, I know them in the professional sense. I was a journalist before I became a lawyer.
Tabloids, of course, are not journalism. They’re more in the category of pulp fiction, although even that is not a very accurate description. They’re … they’re … well … they’re tabloids. Everyone knows what a “tabloid” is. So, no explanation is required. They’re pulp journalism, I guess. I never worked in the field, although I have to say that it would have been tempting if I had stayed in the journalism profession, because the tabloids are by magnitudes by far the best-paying jobs in the newsprint business. The guys who write and edit those rags make huge bucks.
@12…RR…
Wow! Become a used car salesman and your social status might improve!
The Piper
They’re probably worth it, too. I mean, what can you say about a headline like this:
DONOR WANTS KIDNEY BACK
The sheer talent behind that bit of copywriting makes you stand in awe.
@13 If I was worried about my social status I wouldn’t be blogging on the same blog as you.
@10…RR…
No point on earth arguing anything Bush with you since your mind is more closed on him than anything under the sun.
But since there’s a difference between “legal” and “legitimate,” how do you explain these”
King George III – legitimate successor, Stuart claims aside.
Napoleon – First Consul of France and subsequently acclaimed emperor, he may have got there a bit sticky, but even on St. Helena he was accorded the appropriate honorifics.
Bismarck and the Prussians – Unified the fractious German states into one nation
Kaiser Wilhelm – Again, blame his parents.
Especially in the case of George III, the issues we had with the British weren’t as much with him as with Parliament. I’ve always thought he unnecessarily gets a bad rap. Besides…as a British monarch, he was remarkably progressive, forward looking, and very middle-class. And he suffered from mental illness, so I’m inclined to cut him some slack.
His son, however, the Prince Regent (later George IV), was a corpulent dandy and ne’r do well who’s biggest claim to fame was spurring a revival of things Scottish by being the first reigning monarch to visit Scotland since James I. That he wore tights under his kilt (Stuart tartan although he was a Hanoverian) was only a sop to his fat physique and increasingly conservative ideas of middle-class morality.
Where do you come up with this stuff?
The Piper
@16 My suspicions are confirmed; I always figured you for a royalist.
@17…RR…
Not hardly! My mother was a member of the DAR! But calling George III the villain is straw-man rhetoric. More likely it was Lord North and his policies. Besides, in GB, George III is regarded with as much fondness as we regard a particularly popular president or similar figure in history.
The real royalists around these parts are those who mistrust the will of the people as expressed through the initiative process, which is about as equalitarian and democratic as you can get. Couple that with failing to support something as democratic as I-25, and you have the ultimate in aristocratic thinking: HA.
Let them eat tofu!
The Piper
Okay, Piper, since you seem eager to defend Bush, let’s talk about him.
Apart from the questions of legitimacy raised by the GOP’s pervasive (and illegal) voter suppression activities, not to mention outright election stealing with rigged voting machines manufactured by companies owned by prominent Republican partisans which never seem to make errors in favor of Democrats …
The gravest responsibility any national leader has involves questions of war and peace, and committing his nation to war. Bush lied to us about WMDs in Iraq. He misused the authority Congress granted him to use military force as a last resort by using it as the first and only resort. I could go on, but there’s no sense in rehashing here all the details that both convict Bush as a warmonger and indict him and his administration for incompetent civilian managemnt of the war; those fields have been plowed and replowed, and yet in the face of overwhelming evidence of chicanery and misfeasance, you continue to defend the man and deny the obvious facts. Fuck you, you unpatriotic ass.
Bush has dragged America’s reputation through the gutter by authorizing the kidnapping, torture, and murder of perceived enemies — violating numerous international treaties and domestic laws in the process. And, of course, he lied about this, too. Yeah, the 9/11 perps have it coming, but this isn’t about those guys. The problem with all of this is that, given the incompetent fucks the Republican torturers are, they’ve scooped up legions of innocent people in their kidnapping and torture net — and denied all of them any semblance of due process or human rights. As a former lawyer, you should be appalled by this behavior. It’s a good thing you no longer are, because the fact you continue to make excuses for the criminal behavior of the Bush administration is compelling evidence of your unfitness to be a lawyer.
And then there’s the subversion of the Justice Department and U.S. Attorneys for partisan purposes, including the filing of malicious prosecutions and the use of those offices for covering up and protecting Republican corruption. And, of course, Bush and his cohorts lied about that, too. This guy is not a serial liar, he is a mass liar.
I could go on, but it’s a waste of time to try to persuade an ass like you with reasoned argument. You are not amenable to either facts or reason. You are as incorrigible as the Republican scumbags you shamelessly shill for. It’s probably just as well for you that you’re not a lawyer anymore, because you’re shilling for a lawless administration, and it doesn’t look good for an officer of the court to do that.
These comment threads reek with your dishonesty and bad faith, Piper. Now, you can say all you want that’s just my opinion. Wrong. It’s the opinion of a vast majority of people in this country. It’s the opinion of countless journalists and editorial writers who have finally found enough backbone to begin calling “foul” on this corrupt, lawless, illegitimate regime. With Bush’s approval ratings below 33% in virtually every national poll, including the biased partisan Republican polls, clearly the governed have withdrawn their consent to be governed by this gangster. And yet you continue to act as an unabashed apologist and cheerleader for him and his gang. Fuck you, you unpatriotic slimesucker.
Here’s an idea for you to chew on, Piper. The comment threads of this blog are populated for the most part by good, caring, unselfish people who care about their country and their neighbors, and want the best for America. And you are pissing them off by leaving your slime trails here.
Here’s another idea for you to ruminate about, Piper: Go fuck yourself, you unpatriotic blockhead. A brick is more intelligent than you are.
You get to a point with some people where name-calling is the only way to deal with them because it’s the only thing that can penetrate their thick skulls.
@18 You’re already an apologist for the current King George, so you may as well defend the dead one, too. It’s hardly possible for you to debase yourself lower than you already have.
@18 “The real royalists around these parts are those who mistrust the will of the people as expressed through the initiative process, which is about as equalitarian and democratic as you can get.”
Although we have a few transplanted easterners around here who exhibit difficulty in understanding, much less accepting, our Western ways … that doesn’t make them royalists. It makes them easterners, which is not the same thing. And if you weren’t such an illiterate fuck you would know the proper terminology is “egalitarian” not “equalitarian” — how the hell did you ever get accepted to law school, anyway? Did you go to one of those mail-order correspondence law schools where the only admission standard is the ability to sign your name to a tuition check? But I digress. Yes, it’s true we have some immigrants on those blog who don’t comprehend Western populism. We’re working on that. I, among others, am trying to educate them, in order to acculturate them to their new social environs and ease their transition into the local community. I don’t need your help for that, thank you very much. Your interference will only make my job harder by mucking things up like you muck up everything else. So, bugger off! That’s Aussie for “butt out,” in case you didn’t know. Leave this job to me. You’re too fucking incompetent to handle it.
erratum
immigrants on this blog
Hmmm … no reply yet. Looks like I ran him off. Good! We don’t need his kind around here.
@22…RR…
A quick smack back at ya…http://www.selfknowledge.com/32546.htm
“Equalitarian (E*qual`i*ta”ri*an) (?), n.
One who believes in equalizing the condition of men; a leveler.”
If the education of Eastern elites is left up to you, they’ll remain Eastern elites in perpetuity.
How did I get accepted? I applied…You?
The Piper
@24…RR…
Not so fast, rodent! Only ran to the drugstore for my beta blocker…and I broke down and bought two of those $19.95 DVD players. Since they’re so small, I can mail one to my daughter in North Carolina in one of those “all you can cram in here for $8.41 in postage” boxes even after gift wrapping it. Plus, bought one for myself “just in case.”
Nothing like buying gifts for kids and grandkids to make an Ol’ Piper forget about vermin-infested blogs.
Any truth to the rumor that the Washington Dept. of Game is considering a bounty on rabbit pelts? Because they’re so annoying?
The Piper
@20…RR…
With you, aside from some decent common sense on Prop 1 and transportation issues, name calling seems to be your epithetery of first choice.
Where did you learn the law? From a restroom wall?
The Piper
Piper @ 6:
Son, you need to just go hire a professional mistress already, and get it out of your system. Oh, wait…I’ll bet Mistress Matisse talked about one of your calls in her column already. ;-) No wonder you’re feeling pent-up. There are other pro-dommes out there, honey, just keep calling.
Piper @2
You may be correct that the PI will eventually go away, but it will have lasted a lot longer than the Eastside Journal American (fka Bellevue Journal American)your Eastside conservative rag, unlamented by any thinking person.
@19…RR…
You sure have a hare hair up yours, don’t you?
For an attorney – an officer of the court committed to the principle of the presumption of innocence – you sure condemn, try, convict, and sentence to execution on evidence not even a Stalin show trial would accept.
Lied about WMD? Prove it. Mistaken? Derived inaccurage conclusions (along with the rest of the world)? Yes, but intentionally deceived? Deliberately misrepresented material facts? Sounds more like partisan loathing than legal analysis…
America’s reputation? That not everyone likes what we do isn’t determinative; this isn’t a popularity contest, it’s a war. But if you check recent statements by people such as Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, and – the more I hear of him, Norman Mailer comments aside, the more I love him – Nicolas Sarkozy, the more you hear how they regard their nations’ relationships with the U.S. to be paramount, and they’re all saying good stuff about America these days.
BTW…the current wave of strikes in France reminds me of Maggie Thatcher in the late 70’s and early 80’s and how she took on the featherbedding unions just as she promised when running for office. My youngest daughter has been in France since early August at the University of Nantes, and they’re getting along fine, while public opinion continues in Sarkozy’s favor.
Speaking of Sarkozy and collapsing strikes…Read http://www.nysun.com/article/66884
Approval ratings? Check those of the Democratically controlled Congress of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Those who govern by poll numbers – think Clinton – aren’t leaders, they’re panderers. Since neither one of us are objective on this score, we shouldn’t sit on the jury; let history, say 50-years from now, take on that role.
“Scooped up legions of innocent people in their kidnapping and torture net — and denied all of them any semblance of due process…” Who? Where? Since when are combatents captured in battle or Iraqi’s suspected of complicity with the insurgents or al-Quida entitled to Miranda warnings, and levels of due process accorded criminal defendants in the U.S.?
During WW II, prisoners remained prisoners until hostilities ceased. Period!
When federal courts have ruled against the Bush administration, as SCOTUS did in re detainees, it has worked to develop policies and procedures to reflect those court rulings, not simply ignore them. Still, I contend Ex Parte Quirin was rightly decided, and that some things aren’t the business of the courts.
If things are so wrong, so illegal, so inimical to U.S. interests, so dastardly, so outrageous, then why haven’t Democrats in Congress simply cut off the funds?
BTW…checked the news from Iraq lately?
Read http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....68_pf.html
Things ARE getting better, and all is not lost.
Consider, also, that not all share the virulent loathing of Dubya you and those among the netroots demonstrate. When even your own friends like Joel Klein shake their heads, then maybe you better spend less time venomizing and more time remembering that your side ain’t been elected to nothin’ yet. Read http://www.time.com/time/polit.....09,00.html
Patriotism? I’ve never called yours into question, so what gives you pause or the right to call mine into question? I’ve offerred up my own sons, so it’s not like I have no stake in all this.
Sometimes I’m not sure just how large a grain of salt should be applied to you. To take you completely literally and at absolute face-value would be akin to believing in grassy knolls everywhere. While you claim to live on what some might consider to be a grassy knoll, I’m not sure.
Your anger to humor ratio is pretty heavy on the former and light on the latter.
My comments vis a vis others? I didn’t know HA was supposed to be a mutual admiration society. Sorry…must have skipped that part of the posting rules; I’ve never been much of a sycophant or toadie for anyone. It was never my intention to be the most popular guy in town; I’m here because what you don’t have is much in the way of diversity of opinion, let alone the truth.
Believe what you want, hold any point of view that you want, but accord others the same right.
You never did tell me why Bismarck was “illegitimate,” or did you pull that rabbit out of your hat, too?
I still think you’re fun to read, and I would love to bring my Browning to Green Lake and hunt your and yours sometime, but Seattle has this stupid law about discharging a firearm within the city limits.
The Piper
RR @ 19
That’s one for the ages.
Lee, take notice for your next crackpiper chronicles.
By the way, part 2 of which has been up for a few days.
@28…Tlazolteotl…
Thanks, but no thanks…While I appreciate that you’ll take anyone as a client, and I bet you’re smashing in black leather, that’s not my cup of kink.
In so far as buggy whips are concerned, however, I’m sure you must be relieved that you can still pick one up as the need arises.
The Piper
@29…RCR…
That’s what happens when Canadians buy newspapers! Where were all you media consolidation types when the KC Journal died a year ago? Nary a peep…
Still, I have picked up a gig writing a column for one that company’s community weeklys, so it’s not a total loss.
The Piper
@33 Piper
The Canadians were just the undertakers who took the corpse away. Terminal gangrene had set in much earlier.
A paying job, good for you.
@34…RCR…
Maybe, but it left the Eastside without a daily of its own. The P-I doesn’t cover much of anything outside the Seattle City Limits, the Times occassionally prints something from its so-called Eastside “bureau,” but neither really pay attention to the dynamics of what’s going on over here.
For example, the Kirkland annexation story is getting bigger all the time, and it’s rife with themes unique to the Eastside, yet nary a peep from Blethen or Hearst. Given the influence of Eastisde legislators in Olympia, more attention should be paid.
For example: word on the street is that the county creation issue still simmers below the surface. Creating new ones, collapsing rural and sparsely populated ones into more viable entities, etc., isn’t on the radar screen of Seattle-centrics, yet it could dramatically influence them if it becomes viable for Eastern King County to split from Seattle.
It’s a long way off, but it’s not dead by any stretch.
I said it was a gig, but I never said paying gig.
The Piper
@30 “You sure have a hare hair up yours, don’t you?”
I have limited patience for fools.
@30 “Lied about WMD? Prove it. Mistaken? Derived inaccurage conclusions (along with the rest of the world)? Yes, but intentionally deceived? Deliberately misrepresented material facts? Sounds more like partisan loathing than legal analysis…”
Oh please. Are you really that gullible? Don’t answer, you’ll only embarrass yourself more …
@30 “I still think you’re fun to read, and I would love to bring my Browning to Green Lake and hunt your and yours sometime, but Seattle has this stupid law about discharging a firearm within the city limits.”
Don’t let that stop you. If you do, it’ll be the first time in the history of the universe that a Republican let the law impede him at anything.
@36…RR…
I, on the other hand, have the patience of Job with you. Besides…you’re cute when you’re flustered and angry! But remember, silly Rabbit…Trix are still not for you!
Is that the root cause of all your bitterness? Not enough sugared breakfast cereal in your diet? What a bummer! Would you like I should leave some down at Green Lake? Just for you?
Cheers!
The Piper
@37…RR…
Now, now, now…you raised the issue, not me, so don’t be so dismissive when asked for definitive proof.
Old lawyers never die, they just allege away.
The Piper
While I appreciate that you’ll take anyone as a client
That’s what you think….
@41…Tlazolteotl…
So you do take those kinds of clients then, eh?
Any of the HA Happy Hooligans regulars?
The Piper
@30 “Scooped up legions of innocent people in their kidnapping and torture net — and denied all of them any semblance of due process…” Who? Where? Since when are combatents captured in battle or Iraqi’s suspected of complicity with the insurgents or al-Quida entitled to Miranda warnings, and levels of due process accorded criminal defendants in the U.S.?”
Are you really this ignorant and uninformed?
That’s what’s so frustrating about Nazis — they pretend they’re normal, and they pretend they’re not doing anything wrong. Worse, when the forces of peace and justice finally stand them in front of a firing squad or on a gallows trap, the last thing they say is, “Heil Hitler!”
RR:
You lose Godwin’s law.
rr
Please respond to #30 in detail, instead of spin. Your reputation depends on it
Piper: You really want to get Pelletizer (TM) going?
Ask him about Bush/Gore 2000 and why Tennesseans rejected ol’ Al Jr. in 2000?
Maybe they remember him before 1992 he was pro-life. 1992 he becomes pro-abortion. In discussing his past, Gore draws a distinction between the legality of abortion and government funding for it. What is clear from a review of his public statements and the votes he cast is that Gore’s position on abortion has changed. Gore says his journey was a personal struggle, but it also reflected the broader political forces of the era, which saw many moderates move to a more wholehearted embrace of the abortion-rights agenda
Source: NY Times News Service Feb 26, 2000
In another letter from 1984, Gore indeed said abortion was “arguably the taking of a human life.” But Gore continued, “It is my deep personal belief that abortion is wrong. I hope some day we will see the. outrageously large number of abortions drop sharply.” Source: Boston Globe, p. A30 Jan 30, 2000