Does this make any sense at all?Hillary Clinton
yesterday:
“Now, I see that sign over there. A guy's got a sign that’s saying ‘A Gas Tax Holiday is Blatant Pandering.’ Now, I’ll tell you what. I’d rather have the oil companies pay the gas taxes than you pay the gas taxes this summer. I'll tell you something else. When the Federal Reserve and the Federal Treasury bailed out Bear Sterns to the tune of $30 billion, I didn’t hear about it being pandering.”
Let's see. Ben Bernanke is not a politician running for office, so a "pandering" charge would be inappropriate. But setting that word-issue aside, Clinton is suggesting that relief for Bear Stearns was greeted without any dissent. That's not true at all. Maybe there was no outrage at the
Wall Street Journal, but virtually everywhere else there was dismay, along with calls for reform and regulation of investment banks.
When Hillary speaks, often times the listener is wondering, "What's the point here?" She defends herself against a pandering charge by:
- Not denying it.
- Saying that a pander-free action by someone else wasn't called pandering at the time.
Anyone familiar with logic must be wondering what's going on.
ALSO: Don't you just love those webpages (ABC's
Political Radar, NYTimes
The Caucus) where, if taken to a post's perma-link, you get the post and
every single comment - which can run into the hundreds (and bog down your browser). Those pages can range in size from 400K to 3 Meg of HTML - which must be a catastrophe for anyone still with dial-up. Good design would gate the comments to, say, 50 per page. And no nested tables. Get with it guys!
posted by Quiddity at 5/04/2008 05:49:00 AM
Q: I don't know if you read the comments after the post falls from the top position. But, for what-it's-worth, the reason I come to your site is the low number of comments (and your diagrams...which you haven't done in a long time.) Your are the small college versus the big state U of blogs, the neighborhood grocer versus the big box retailer of blogs, etc.
Yes, I read comments, but not always. As to diagrams, I got out of the habit. They take a fair amount of effort and with the advent of several new blogs over the years, many of the points I'd make diagrammatically would often be explained well in prose. I'll see if I can get back in that groove.
I'd be glad to see the diagrams return too. They are great examples of visual thinking.
