More shorter David Broder:

Republicans are more believable.

For an even more idiotic take on the whole paper back-ups issue, check this out.

Apparently, none of the hip, happening kids (which Utah is overburdened with, I’d imagine) want anything to do with honest elections.

Hey smartguy, David Broder is so fucking clever he knows everyone is thinking he’s toadying to vote stealing Rethugs so he prepared a stinging rebuttal to this post 4 years before you even wrote it.

Let me disclose my own bias in this matter. I like Karl Rove. In the days when he was operating from Austin, we had many long and rewarding conversations. I have eaten quail at his table and admired the splendid Hill Country landscape from the porch of the historic cabin Karl and his wife Darby found miles away and had carted to its present site on their land. (May 18, 2003)

david broder – file under “ass clown”

David Broder: a man for whom the operation of a pencil and a piece of paper is too complex.

David Broder is a fucking awesome journalist. I mean, he consulted an expert named Doug Lewis to form his opinion for him, basically. A entire expert. An unimpeachable expert. No amount of Googling his name and organization could possibly provide a basis for skepticism of his conclusions such that at least one other expert might need be consulted.
Oh, wait, I forgot to push enter in the search box.
Ah, here we go. Second result.
David Broder should not have a job.

Here’s another page on Doug Lewis and his Election Center.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Election_Center

This quote should come as no shock:
“In October 2003, Jim Hightower described the Election Center as a “private firm that also doubles as the quasi-regulator of the industry, supposedly overseeing the integrity of the machines, while also coordinating affairs between the vendors and state election officials” and Center executive director R. Doug Lewis as “the perfect embodiment of George W.’s philosophy of ‘voluntary regulation.'”

For an even more idiotic take on the whole paper back-ups issue, check this out.

I was going to make a couple quick snarky responses to that brilliant piece of opinion journalism, but it would take a whole blog post to give it the attention it deserves. Too bad I don’t have a blog.

I was interested to learn that I’m over 40 and believe in gremlins. You think you know yourself, and then suddenly you realize you don’t really know yourself at all.

Gavin, where the f*&k have you been man?

I’m not sure I can rag on “Dean” Broder for developing Alzheimers, but I sure can rag on his WaPo editors for using a confused old man as a figurehead for their dishonesty. Anybody else getting an Iran-Contra flashback?…

I was going to make a couple quick snarky responses to that brilliant piece of opinion journalism, but it would take a whole blog post to give it the attention it deserves. Too bad I don’t have a blog.

I’ll probably put something up on it on my blog later tonight (even if that piece is a couple of weeks old). Although with the (deservedly) low traffic my blog gets, it’s almost like not having a blog…

Doctor Marita. Those of us with blogs in the 20-40 uniqe visitors per day range best not write for the consumption entertainment of others. I actually kind of like to say my piece and push and listen to my thoughts and opinions go bouncing off into the eternity of the blogosphere, where they will rattle around in their solid metallic tinyness like a BB in a boxcar, forever.

Actually, when brad posted that link to the Bill Shattner/Pulp vid and referenced me on the post and I got 197 visitors that day, it was somewhat terrifying. So perhaps having a readership you could comfortably address in a first grade classroom is not such an awful thing…

mikey

Those of us with blogs in the 20-40 uniqe visitors per day range best not write for the consumption entertainment of others.

I stick to what I like to call the KISS rule:

Keep
It
Stupid
Simpleton

Oh, Mikey, I don’t have a problem with a low readership. I’ve been lazy lately and haven’t put up new posts very often, so I totally don’t deserve a loyal following. It is kind of disturbing though that most of my traffic seems to come from people googling either “gory pictures” or looking for photos of people wrapped in saran wrap.

As for Righteous Bubba… ears, huh? Are you like Jeff from Coupling? Do you keep ears in a bucket?

As for Righteous Bubba… ears, huh? Are you like Jeff from Coupling? Do you keep ears in a bucket?

Let’s just say that when everybody at the game is yelling DEEE-FENSE! I yell EEEEAT PANTS! and it works just as well.

Just in case you hadn’t run into this one before, Mikey:

“Writing is like making love. First you do it for love, then for a few friends, and eventually you start taking money.”

OK, I sniped at the Deseret News piece here. Please feel free to chime in with additional snark.

(Also, please consider this a trackback, and not just blatant blogwhoring. If blogger has trackback functionality, I haven’t found it.)

Marita, your Ph.D. gives you the prerogative to create your own trackback. It’s one of the more useful rights and privileges pertaining thereto.

Awesome, J-! I was wondering what those rights and priveleges were when they mentioned them during the graduation ceremony. It wasn’t immediately apparent.

Any ideas what the others are? Are there designated parking spaces or anything like that I should know about?

One is that you get to make trolls call you doctor, but you already know that. I think the parking spaces are usually handled by the alumni offices and not the graduate schools. The bigger the drop in the tip jar, the more righteous and privileged the space.

Did you get any emoluments? I’m still trying to figure out what they are, how they work, and where you put them.

I think I had some emoluments stuck to my shoe, but I scraped them off.

I also got what they called a “hood”, but what I choose to think of it as a cape. I’m wondering if it will enable me to fly. The pocket in the bottom of it is nice and everything, but if it doesn’t have any magical powers, I’m wondering what the point is.

For what it’s worth, this is the 35th anniversary of the Watergate reportage.

Read it and weep, copiously.

“…admired the splendid Hill Country landscape from the porch of the historic cabin Karl and his wife Darby found miles away and had carted to its present site on their land.”

To paraphrase Dave Barry, he had both the cabin and the landscape carted into place. Jeebus, the guy’s columnist and cannot even write a clear piece.

The pocket in the bottom of it is nice and everything, but if it doesn’t have any magical powers, I’m wondering what the point is.
Well, since you ask —
The pocket at the bottom of the hood was originally for collecting remuneration. Yes indeedy. You have to imagine that you have recently graduated from (say) the University of Paris, with your Trivium and your Quadrivium, and the year is (say) 1367. Some merchant type comes into your office to ask your advice on some point of law. Naturally you do not ask for payment, because you are a disinterested intellectual, a scholar; you have raised yourself above the tawdry pecuniary concerns of the merchant class. Instead, you turn your back to your client, so you can concentrate upon his question. This leaves him staring at the hood on the back of your graduate’s cloak. At this point he may decide to start dropping coins into it, in order to help with your concentration. When you have heard enough ‘clink’ noises, and you can feel the hood weighing you backwards enough, you turn round again and deliver your advice, with your scholarly detachment unsullied.

I am not making this up.

Has anyone noticed how much that picture of Broder makes him look like Beeker?