And don’t forget. There’s football BOTH nights.

ABC won’t pull it. They have now increased viewer interest and hope to take some of the air out of John Madden’s Sunday regular season debut. There’s even bigger things in network TV than complaints from politico’s–such as free advertisement from politico’s.

Walter. I’m going to assume and in fact hope that you’re kidding about Rummy. Today’s Rummy fun fact? Three months before the invasion, he vowed to fire anyone who talked about the need for a post-war plan.

This, from one of the generals who was there.

By all means. Let him run for Prez. Please. The Bush admin. is full of clowns — Scooter, Bolton, Hadley etc. — but Rummy? Heck. He’s the first one out of the Clown Car.

And the “famously” wonkish stuff had nothing to do with appearances. Moonbat poop. By the way, I was implying that simply disregarding whatever Rumsfeld says would spare you from thinking (and that is the purpose of disregarding it).

Of course Administrations worry about appearances, but the conventional knock on this Administration is that it doesn’t pay enough attention to public relations and framing its message.

And it isn’t in “my head” that a former president of the US is trying to squash the broadcast of a program. Nor is it my imagination that Dems are sounding preciously inconsistent about Free Speech. (and spare us the crap about the Reagan docu-drama after CBS looked at its somewhat elderly viewer demographics and decided that turkey wasn’t going to fly).

Okay, heís impatient with phonies. Thatís awful.

Heís sometimes brusque with people. Thatís terrible.

But he can be charming as hell in front of a camera.

Sounds a lot like Harry Truman.

Calling it ‘thinking’ or ‘analyzing’ is a stretch. Every Prez admin. concerns itself with appearances — and none more than the current admin. (Mission Accomplished!) That’s an inevitable part of the process, and yes, that’s too bad. But the notion that Clinton, famously wonkish when it came to policy discussions etc. of every variety, was more concerned with appearances?

Winger pablum of little value. And, heh, as for ‘continuing to rear its head’?

Where exactly, other than in your own?

That was from an old Frontline program, and Rummy said that pre 9/11. This is not some ex post facto comment. As for not putting much stock in anything he says, well I suppose that would spare somebody the trouble of thinking, analyzing, and evaluating–exactly the kind of mindset that caused members of both parties to not do a good enough job pre 9/11. My point was about the Clinton fetish for appearances, which continues to rear its head.

Joseph,

I’ve been thinking lately about this whole, “don’t look cross-eyed at a terrorist, you’ll only make more of them,” so called argument. I have a hard time accepting that people are so stupid that they can’t see the logical fallacy therein. We’ve had plenty of evidence that some people have trouble with it, but my mind rebels.

I know people dispute supply-side economics, but no serious economist disputes the basic idea of the Laffer Curve. (If taxes are at 0%, the government takes in no money. If taxes are at 100%, the government takes in no money. The rate at which the government will take in the most money is somewhere between those extremes.)

I think it works the same way with terrorists. Killing zero terrorists will cause the total number of terrorists to rise. 100% Indiscriminate killing of the people that come into contact with terrorists will quickly produce many more terrorists, causing the total number of terrorists to rise. Clearly, there is an optimum “aggression level” at which terrorists are killed as rapidly as possible without producing more than the kills. As with economics, all the serious discussion is about where and why the optimum point resides.

I understand your desire for a 1940s mindframe. But the odd thing is, given your comment?

I’m not exactly sure which country’s mindframe you’re interesting in adopting.