Many reasons to vote FF, but his HP qualities outweigh them.

This is over. Markey won't win big, but he will win comfortably.

It never began. Running a Generic R (except for being pro-life and anti-AWB) against Generic D in MA = big Dem win.

Yes. Gomez is relatively close because he's vastly more telegenic than Markey but that's more or less the only thing that he has going for him, at least in the area of things Massachusetts voters care about.

I say Gomez will come dangerously close 47-43 because we should of ran a young gun like Cupuano. But Boston will come in big and it will be over.

I'm having trouble parsing this, mainly because I still don't know what the hell a 'young gun' is supposed to be. I can guess, but I don't see how it applies to a sixty-one-year-old who is on his eighth term in the House and before that was Mayor of Somerville for almost a decade. Unless we're speaking purely relatively.

As far as political leaders go, I do admit some admiration for Charles de Gaulle, Aldo Moro, and Ikeda Hayato, although Ikeda was on the left wing of his party.

The same goes for Moro. De Gaulle, while obviously not to the left of his own party, in many ways moved the French right to the left (decolonization, etc.).

I see. Well, I guess that kind of defeats the purpose of the question asked in this thread, then; that being the case, I would like to cite De Gasperi, actually, now that you mention him. Harold Macmillan, too.

What's your specific issue with Adenauer?

Thank you for this poll. Thank you.

Naso/Naso, of course.

The events of the Book of Joshua are troubling to deal with, yes.

Actually I once heard a sermon that was more of an interview between the pastor and a prominent Old Testament scholar who teaches at a seminary here, with at topic of basically "what violent and unsettling stories in the Bible really mean" with that book being the primary focus. The way she explained it is that it was more of a war story and allegorical to the ancient Israelites, and that archaeological evidence does not show anything for Jericho's walls crumbling. However there is some evidence that there was a group of slaves that may have escaped from the Canaanites and joined in with ancient Israel, and she later compared it to the Battle Hymn of the Republic and how it was used by slaves during the Civil War and their war anthems and all that. Interesting take.

The divine liberation/human war theme is how I've always been most comfortable dealing with that part of the Bible too.

And my views on Hitchens are very well known. Actually like most vocal atheists the worst thing about him wasn't so much that he was an asshole but that he was a boring asshole who did nothing but spew out hackneyed arguments that the "new atheism" brigade and their internet followers have spewed out hundreds of times already.

The worst thing about Hitchens was his collocation of political and cultural views, some of which were related to his atheism, some of which weren't.

Frankly I find the OP's question a tremendously crude and unhelpful one to have asked.

Crude = Simple

Its secondary definition is tactless or offensive. I don't think you usually are those things, but in view of history I think this was.

The basic idea behind the queston is to enquire whether you think cultural similarity (and therefore also ability to quickly integrate into US society) should be a factor in American immigration policy.

I don't.

I have a lot of respect for George P. Grant's work, as well as Tadano Makuzu, although part of the beauty of the latter is her focus on the problems of her own time and place and how she wed the theoretical and the pragmatic in discussing them.

I don't know what side Christopher Lasch is considered to have been on.

As far as political leaders go, I do admit some admiration for Charles de Gaulle, Aldo Moro, and Ikeda Hayato, although Ikeda was on the left wing of his party.

[There's an animal in my community who isn't being cared for properly—is that cruelty?]

I obviously trust the SPCA more than the guy who can't string two sentences together coherently. Leaving a puppy outside all day is abusive. Dogs are social animals, and they depend on close attention from and interaction with their family, particularly at an early age.

So, your opinion is since I don't bring the dog inside is that I should lose the dog and be thrown in jail for animal cruelty?

http://www.aspca.org/fight-animal-cruelty/reporting-cruelty-faq.aspx#crueltyincomm

There's an animal in my community who isn't being cared for properly—is that cruelty?


Yes, it is. You don't have to hit an animal to be cruel to him—depriving an animal of food, water or necessary medical care is neglect, which is a form of cruelty.
There are two general categories of animal neglect: simple neglect and gross, willful, cruel or malicious neglect. Simple neglect (failure to provide basic needs) is not always considered a criminal act, and can often be resolved by the intervention of local animal care and control or humane agencies, which may be able to offer resources and educate offenders on how to provide proper care for their animals. However, a growing number of states make a distinction between simply failing to take adequate care of animals and intentionally or knowingly withholding sustenance. Accordingly, "willful" neglect is considered a more serious, often prosecutable offense.

Bushie, you're not going to go to jail even if somebody actually did report you. The police don't have time to deal with that (they're too busy beating up black people and drug users). The most drastic thing that would happen is that you'd have the dog taken away from you.

There is no reason for the dog to be taken.  We are not mistreating him.  Everybody is just trying to frame me and blackmail me.  Opie is right, this is a pure witch hunt.

Ooh, that's a new one. I like it. What are we demanding from you as part of this blackmailing deal?

Bushie letting his dog inside in the Oklahoma summer so he can cool off and be socialized properly would be a nice demand.

Uh the polling for this race is all over the map it seems, I don't know what to believe

Polls in June:

New England College: Markey +12
UMass/YouGov: Markey +11
PPP: Markey +8
WBUR: Markey +7
Suffolk: Markey +8
Harper: Markey +12
Boston Globe: Markey +13

Not perfectly synchronized, but not 'all over the place'. Believing that Markey is ahead by somewhere in the high single or low double digits seems like a safe bet, albeit a depressing one.

Epic FF for the ages.  One of the best. 

If you weren't neglecting the puppy you would bring him inside like a normal pet owner.

Hitchens never did have a very good grasp of world history or different cultures, did he?

Or the fact that it's not as if he's the first person to notice this! Indeed, some of the earliest people to notice it were the members of the religions that were founded in the way he describes! Hint: the seemingly arbitrary, unearned nature of 'chosenness' is partially the point.

I understand why that may have been hard for somebody like Hitchens to accept. The sort of person who non-ironically uses the language of backwardness, barbarism, and savagery is clearly not the best sort to ask about these things.

The events of the Book of Joshua are troubling to deal with, yes.

I see certain individuals are still trolling with MSI votes.

For Nathan

I skipped. We're on opebo.

Also, with any other poster, I might suggest that the mental connection between opebo and Robert Herrick runs through Ron Jeremy who is a Herrick look-alike and much more of an opeboesque figure than Herrick. Given that the person posting that was Nathan, though, that seems unlikely.

I knew that Herrick had a porn 'stache (I was trying to say so tactfully), but I wasn't thinking of Mr Jeremy by name, no.

Although now that you mention it, the resemblance is uncanny. I Googled 'robert herrick ron jeremy' and other people have noticed it too. Search for 'herrick' in this page, for instance. Or 'jeremy' in this one. The second link, incidentally, also taught me that Ovid's cognomen was 'Naso', a fact whose implications I still need time to process.

*skip*

Bushie, let the dog in the house. It's the Oklahoma summer, for Christ's sake.

I think we can safely concede at least that much, largely because of the character of Mustapha Mond and Huxley's decision to write him in a way that can be read as well-intentioned by some definitions and have him attempt to explain and defend himself.

Still PSDI.

Antonio, I know you said there were several PoCs in quick succession in 1951, but would it be possible to get lists of Presidents and PoCs for completeness's sake?

I liked Moby Dick but it's not the greatest American novel I've read, for sure.

Really liked The Plague. Didn't know Camus could feel like some kind of atheist Victor Hugo.

Followed up with To Kill A Mockingbird. I sense that one ought to disapprove of it but I'm a sappy romantic so I just loved it.

Now I'm returning to Graham Greene!

I don't think one is supposed to disapprove of To Kill a Mockingbird. At least if one's American one's not.

What Graham Greene are you reading?

Simfan/Simfan. The post that BRTD linked to was nothing if not an engaging read.

No.

HP, but an HP who paid his dues, which is more than can be said for a lot of his contemporaries in Southern politics.

[one's better off joining Al Qaeda or Ted Kaczynski off in the woods]

Its a horribly nihilistic book, if one concludes that that outcome is inevitable for modernity; if it is, one's better off joining Al Qaeda or Ted Kaczynski off in the woods.  I don't know enough about Huxley to say if that's the case.

What a silly thing to say.

Some necromancy here--but I suppose this board does move rather slowly as it is.

The fact that you found Brave New World unobjectionable doesn't surprise in the least.

Sonnets from the Portuguese. I'm exactly halfway through.

Seriously overrated, like all Melville.

I'd like to register my disagreement here.

For some reason I always imagined opebo as cutting a somewhat Herrickian figure, minus of course the religiosity. Perhaps it's the combination of the monarchism and the association of Herrick's moustache style with seventies sybaritism: