Cute pix, David! Such a pretty little girl!
Also, given the timing of my visit, I'm assuming I need to figure out exactly when I'll be there and reserve a room tout de suite. I've never been to Austin, any recommendations?
Hip, in the middle of things, but pricey: The Hotel San Jose
Green, out of the way (you will need a car), and a little pricey: Habitat Suites
Beyond that, just ask me.
Oh, on the Bush thing, some conservative commenters on Matt Zoller Seitz's blog have been talking about their belief in personal responsibility and how it affects their viewing of The Wire. I don't get where conservatives say they believe in personal responsibility, but somehow find a loophole for Bush and his ilk while rushing in to discuss the personal responsibility in the limited choices made by fictional children born into the most dire circumstances in the US (poor, mostly parent-less, surrounded by drugs, abandoned by the education and social services systems). Must be hard to hold that many contradictory thoughts in your mind at one time, unless, that is, you have a Wile E. Coyote-like ability to remain unaffected by the things you don't examine.
The stereotype I always liked about Carter was the one from SNL -- that he would hold weekly fireside call-in shows, and people would ask him about the bizarrest obscure things
"Now, Billy, do you have any Allman Brothers?"
Peanut farmer or no, the man is in fact a rocket scientist.
(Not literally, to be clear, but damn close, with graduate studies in nuclear physics. Smart man.)
t hearts Jimmy
This was the worst strategic mistake in the entire history of the United States
That's a pretty strong statement. There has to be some others, Vietnam comes to mind as a competitor. Central American policy hasn't exactly been brilliant, but Iraq seems worse than that. There's the backing of the Shah and Hussein that probably has produced a lot of anti-American sentiment in the area. I don't know the events leading to the Civil War very well, but I guess that would be more political rather than strategic. I can't think of anything right off the top of my head that definitely trumps it.
I really don't remember enough about the Carter administration (I was just a kid at the time) to really comment about it. Hell of an ex-president though.
The stereotype I always liked about Carter was the one from SNL -- that he would hold weekly fireside call-in shows, and people would ask him about the bizarrest obscure things
I liked it when he talked the caller down from a bad LSD trip.
OK, this cracked me up. Mainly the headline. [link]
That's a pretty strong statement. There has to be some others, Vietnam comes to mind as a competitor.
The problem with Vietnam as a competitor is that Vietnam was a strategically marginal area. Iraq was a strategic error in the Middle East. (You could argue that Vietnam was morally worse. Vietnam deaths numbered in the millions where our best guess as to how many Iraqi lives we've wasted is around 700,000. But the Iraq war is not over, and the number killed accelerates every month. So it could yet surpass Vietnam as a moral failure too.)
