He never flushes the john after he uses it
He is an environmentalist trying to save water.
In Arizona, they appreciate that water is a limited resource.
I'll bet Hillary flushes once before she goes, and twice after. She does not care.
Doesn't flush the toilet? Leaves it for the next person? I hate when people do that.
McCain has the right idea when it comes to liquid deposits. Not so much for #2.
As for the rest of his mavericity, these are just the kind of positive rumors we don't need.
A very similar story about Senator Kerry visiting Vietnam was buzzing around the internets in 2004. Apparently he and his crew had eaten a pizza intended for someone else! Also, he was unfriendly. I was able to track the story down to the source, who basically didn't want to stand behind his story -- it was an offhand comment he'd sent in an email, which eventually got to a recipient who blasted it to everyone.
The other side has some kind of organized network for making this kind of thing go viral, but we don't. This year I've already archived about 30 email smears against Obama or Clinton, mostly by one Robert Morrow, and the election is still almost nine months away.
4: I'm okay w/people not flushing their own toilets after they use them, esp. if they want to save water by not flushing #1, but if one is using a public toilet, I'd much rather they flush anything and everything they put in there.
I disagree with #6, though only for liquids.
Why does Annie hate the Earth?!?
Don't men's rooms generally have urinals? I'd figured that doesn't flush the [public] toilet, as applied to a man, would be an unambiguous reference to solid rather than liquid waste. But I may be misunderstanding.
Annie doesn't care about my children's future.
8: "John" was the word used in the anecdote. I would say that includes both urinals and stalls.
Also, maybe he doesnt want to touch the toilet flusher and get germs. McCain is trying to prevent the spread of flu and infectious diseases.
What are the Democrats doing? Shaking hands, touching babies and toilet flushers!
Not flushing the loo after peeing is like buying fair trade coffee: it may soothe the conscience but it won't solve the problem.
I try to only pee every couple of months, Martin, but I find that my behavior becomes less and less earth-friendly in the meantime.
12: Not flushing: something white people like?
Of course McCain was relaxed while cruising Iraq. The whole point of his being there was to prove what a garden it was, right?
5: WorldNetDaily is the leading source of the viral stuff, isn't it? A lot of the stuff I see crop up as new Republican memes I see in their e-newsletter first.
Army bases in Iraq have flush toilets?
Depending on the base, they've got Starbuckses. I'd figure at least some of them have flush toilets.
I'd say that the viral anti-McCain stuff circulates not in emailed rumors but rather in cultural media, where he's uniformly being represented as a creepy psychopath, Christopher-Walken-in-Pulp-Fiction model.
Why should we want this to be a story? McCain Somewhat Erratic—A1. Poddymouth Pres Lax on Restroom Courtesy—details at 11.
16: Aren't Army bases in Iraq huge, self-contained, American-built, heavily shielded enclaves, even outside the Green Zone? I could see them having various amenities - though not the more recent, smaller forward bases.
And I don't see "he ignores people telling him he's behind schedule" as having any impact. That's what powerful people do. If it actually had to do with the safety of his entourage, that might be different, but probably not much.
4: McCain has the right idea when it comes to liquid deposits. Not so much for #2.
Maybe he just wants others to admire his handiwork.
I have heard that splashback can be problematic for women -- contributing to yeast infections? UTIs? Which doesn't make a ton of sense given that urine is sterile, but maybe if the person before you had an infection? Anyway, I heard it somewhere or other, so it must be true.
When Obama takes a dump, the toilet flushes itself in gratitude afterwards.
22: Oh, I think this is all entirely insignificant. I just saw it and thought it was funny.
(The not flushing the toilet thing reminds me of an LBJ story: driving through Texas, he told his driver to stop so he could piss. The Secret Service agent got out of the car with him, and soon felt something warm and wet on his leg. He looked down and said "Excuse me, Mr. President, I believe you're pissing on my leg."
"Son, that's my pre-rogative.")
I agree that these are really "nothing to see here", but that does beg John's point on the massive difference in uptake by of these little "character smears". Things like Kerry supposedly being rude to an SS agent while skiing etc., etc.
It is a combo of the underground e-mailers and the little boosts that the Hannitys et al give to this stuff. Contrast with the treatment of Hott Lobbyistgate. (from a CNN story)
"There is no bigger boogeyman in the media constellation than The New York Times," Martin said. "Conservatives may not like John McCain ... but they hate The New York Times much more ... the McCain campaign is exploiting that for everything it's worth."That's something that could help McCain as he continues to try and win over the conservative base as the next round of contests come.
The fruits of 40 years of "liberal" media demonization. It is going to be a long, hard road back.
7 & 9: I've got nothing against the earth or Will's kids' futures. It's more that I don't care for public toilets as communal chamberpots of piss. Maybe public toilets could be designed in such a way that the urine could be disposed of w/o flushing.
this is something of a threadjack, but political, so...I was just trying to figure out how much I would owe in taxes over the coming year under certain parameters, since I'm old enough to manage my own (modest and tasteful!) trust fund. (sure, we bitched, but I would have already spent that shit on drugs a while back otherwise. yay prudential great-grandparents.) I said, innocently, income from dividends is just normal income, right? and my husband says, no, I don't think so. so I check out the 2003 Bush tax changes (called something like 'the awesome job creation economy-powering bill1111!!"): max 15% and down to 5% if your other taxable income is low enough. %5! that's like reverse highway robbery, in which I'm robbing america of tons of money! and capital gains taxes are hella low. I knew at some level that republicans enact policies that favor really rich people but goddamn that's some preferential taxation right there. I should probably give Obama some more money so he can raise my taxes.
Ordinary dividends and interest are taxed at your usual rate. They go on Schedule B and are added to your income.
mostly by one Robert Morrow
The same Robert Morrow who's claimed to have been involved in the Kennedy assassination?
4, 7, 12, 13, 24. It was my understanding that John McCain was NOT divesting his liquid assets.
My (conservative Republican) uncle has a picture on his refrigerator door, showing a soldier shaking hands with Hillary during one of her visits to { Iraq | some kind of military base }. They're both smiling, but the soldier is making some kind of sign with his hand as he shakes hers. There's a caption on it, "explaining" that this is a signal that the soldier is operating under duress or something. It's lame.
And this is an equivalent thing, with McCain. "A friend of a friend knows a guy who says that McCain endangers soldiers and isn't properly potty-trained." Equally lame.
Oh, since we're on McCain, a transcript of a recent reported conversation between my mother and (very liberal) grandfather. He voted for McCain in 2000 ("I can trust him").
M: So, who are you voting for?
G: I like McCain.
M: But he's for the war in Iraq!
G: He is?
M: Yes, and he always was!
G: He is?
Yes, equally lame, but the real question is, why are our lame smears so much less effective than theirs? I see a teaching moment here.
I'll have you all know that I've peed several times today w/o flushing. AND I set the toilet paper out to dry for reuse. So there. I do love the earth.
I don't pee into toilets at all. I use the neighbors' mountain laurel bushes.
33: Apparently, it's true.
I look forward to Drudge's revelation that Obama peed while sitting for six months in the late 1980s.
38 -- yeah, that's the one. I didn't say it wasn't true, just that it was lame. I'll be that there's some kernel of truth in the stories about McCain too, but they're (also) ridiculous.
If this kind of stuff is indeed the content upon which some/many/most Americans base their gut-feelings about presidential candidates, then ... I'll despair even more, I guess.
our possible future commander-in-chief
De-lurking briefly to pedantastically note that this is a stupid phrase that needs to die. The president is not "our commander-in-chief." The president is the commander-in-chief of the army and the navy and of the militia of the several states. Civilians in the U.S. have no commander-in-chief; we are not yet a military dictatorship.
40: Yep. I'm a civilian, and don't have a commander.
30 - There's a distinction that I don't understand between ordinary dividends and "qualified" dividends, which get taxed at 15%. I think it has to do with what the dividend-producing asset is and how long you've owned it.
Yay! George Bush is not the boss of us.
THREADJACK:
Is there a website where you can put in two cities (and possibly an airline) and it lists all flights between those two cities today and whether they have been on time, canceled, or delayed? I can find the flight schedules and look up the statuses one by one but I think that would be really helpful for getting a quick look at whether, say, a SNOWPOCALYPE is causing almost all flights to be canceled today between two cities or if they're still getting out just delayed.
44: You have to do it one airline at a time, but this is close
45 - That's close to what I want but I want to be able to scan down the list on one page and see:
8 am - Delayed
9 am - Canceled
10 am - Canceled
11 am - Delayed
12 pm - Canceled
without clicking "Select" for each one.
Good question -- it never occurred to me there might be such a site. This site seems to do exactly what you want. (It crashed IE, but worked fine in Firefox. Also, it's easier to use if you put in the airport codes than the cities -- LGA to DCA, etc.)
That site also gives average and maximum security waiting times, which is helpful. (In general, not in real time.)
40 Stras, a commonly recognized figure of speech. However, considering the suspension of habeas corpus and the presumably unconstitutional provisions of the Intelligence Act that the SCOTUS refuses to review, "commander-in-chief of all of us" is not far from the truth. Just because I have kids in the military does not mean I am not on the same page as you on these issues. In fact, I hear this from my kids all the time: "What the hell am I doing here while this happening in the States."
50: Kids plural? I only knew about your daughter.
Daughter and son-in-law (remember the proxy wedding?)
Yay, Sir Kraab! That's just what I wanted!
(Although how an airline can call a 9:30 flight that still hasn't left at 1 PM "On Time" I do not know.)
52: That's really nice -- I don't think my parents think of my husband and me as "their kids". I'm their daughter, and while they like him fine, he's not theirs.
OT: stras, as someone who's clashed with you in the past, I'd just like to say that I noticed and appreciated your attempts to tone done the rhetoric and hope you'll return to commenting at some point.
Semi-OT: See, this is what I was saying about McCain's response -- I think he got overheated about defending himself as the icon of maverickitude and went way too far denying his very obvious connections to a lot of a lobbyists; here's Newsweek's Isikoff noting McCain seems to have lied about whether Paxson wanted him to write that letter to the FCC (and that it's not a he-said-she-said but rather contradicting an under-oath deposition that McCain gave). McCain can dance around this -- maybe he can find some wiggle room between "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC" and "I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue" in that Paxson didn't say in so many words that he should write a letter, but his pride and self-image seems to have opened up an opportunity for him to be revealed as way more of a normal-type politician than he gets depicted as.
55: here's Newsweek's Isikoff noting McCain seems to have lied about whether Paxson wanted him to write that letter to the FCC
Good that Isikoff has it out there, but per John's point above, it will be interesting to see if this gets picked by the cablers and network news. Right now all I see is: "Was McCain smeared or was he "really, really smeared", and on Fox, "Campaign raising money from NY Times article".
Just fucking kill me know. Handgun at 100 yards will do.
44: You can't actually trust the websites. Our flight on Tuesday was still showing "On Time" on the site while a rep was telling me via my cellphone that the flight had been cancelled.
53: That's nothing - our flight from SF to LA was cancelled, yet still appeared on the airline's website as "on time". The flight we were placed on was supposed to leave two hours later, but left four hours later.
Still, the burgers at The Burger Joint were good...
What 50 said -- it's a common figure of speech. Like when they announce to the crowd, in the trophy award after the Super Bowl, "your new world champion, the New York Giants." But obviously the Giants aren't the champions of me...
I don't think it's a commonly recognized figure of speech. I think that it's a fairly new phrase made famous by Dan Rather during the post-9/11 bed-wetting stage of his unbearable pomposity. "The American Commander in Chief" or "The Commander in Chief of the American Forces" was the previous, correct term, and the new term is significantly wrong-headed.
Lexis-Nexis for "My Commander-in-Chief"? Prove me wrong.
Apparently Gore used the phrase too.
I think that it's a fairly new phrase made famous by Dan Rather
Blame Bill Gates for "My Whatever". Bleah!
40
"... Civilians in the U.S. have no commander-in-chief; we are not yet a military dictatorship."
"De-lurking briefly to pedantastically note that this is a stupid phrase that needs to die. The president is not "our commander-in-chief." The president is the commander-in-chief of the army and the navy and of the militia of the several states. Civilians in the U.S. have no commander-in-chief; we are not yet a military dictatorship."
Civilians employ a commander-in-chief. Referring to "our nanny" would not imply you are subject to her authority and neither does this.
I'd agree that there is some dangerous slippage there, though, and it's obvious in the mentality of the Bushites. They're really convinced they're taking marching orders from him, and owe him something as Commander-In-Chief of their Hearts or whatever.
I agree strenuously with stras' comment. I'm sure people occasionally used it before, but the Bush admin has successfully insinuated it into ordinary political discourse is quite a propaganda coup.
actually some illnesses related to advanced age affect standard hygienic practices. Of course I am thinking more of tendencies to play with shit but still...
When you call someone your Commander-in-Chief, Shearer, the message is NOT "He better command correctly or I'll go after his sorry ass". In some civics textbook world it could mean that, but it doesn't.
In fact, leaders commander-in-chiefness most often is referenced in cases when they use their war powers to override democracy and peacetime law. The emergency-powers stages, which the Constitution does (I believe) give them to power to do.
What Bush is trying to do is make the emergency-powers stage permanent and total.
civics textbook world
Wouldn't that be great? Dull, but chockfull of legal rights.
I agree with stras.
I've noted before that some folks are confused about whether or not they're in the militia. See 10 U.S.C. section 311(a) & (b)(2). Interestingly, the feds and some states, e.g., New York, exclude women from the unorganized militia. Minnesota, though, includes women. But only includes people between the ages of 45 and 64 based on a finding of need by the Governor.
Rhode Island automatically includes men in the UI, but allows women to join volutnarily. Cf RI code 30-1-2 and 30-1-3.
The California codes sections are kind of interesting:
The militia of the State consists of all able-bodied male citizens and all other able-bodied males who have declared their intention to become citizens of the United States, who are between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, and who are residents of the State, and of such other persons as may upon their own application be enlisted or commissioned therein pursuant to the provisions of this division, subject, however, to such exemptions as now exist or may be hereafter created by the laws of the United States or of this State.
The unorganized militia may be called for active duty in case of war, rebellion, insurrection, invasion, tumult, riot, breach of the peace, public calamity or catastrophe, or other emergency, or imminent danger thereof, or may be called forth for service under the Constitution and laws of the United States. Whenever it is necessary to call out any portion of the unorganized militia, the Governor may call for and accept as many volunteers as are required for such service, under regulations provided by this division.Every member of the militia who is ordered out, or who volunteers or is drafted under the provisions of this division and who does not appear at the time and place designated by the Governor, or under his authority, within twenty-four hours from such time, and who does not produce a sworn certificate of physical disability from a physician in good standing, is a deserter and shall be dealt with as prescribed in the Articles of War of the United States, or by this division.
Hey, speaking of "our" commanders-in-chief and "our" Super Bowl champion New York Giants, is the lead photo on this NYT article great or what? Bill looks like there are about a billion other places he'd rather be watching the game. Also: nice sweater.
Rchardson should get the blogger vote. He looks like he should be in his mother's basement typing away.
My mom should get the blogger vote. She's in her own basement, typing away.
Blame Bill Gates for "My Whatever". Bleah!
Actually, I think Jerry Yang is more culpable for that.
"Can I get you some chips or salsa or something, Bill?"
"No, just a glass of water. I might have to leave early, too. Thanks for having me over, though. It's great to watch the game with such a good friend..."
70. Clinton is a Patriots fan. Who knew?
And Hillary's probably an avowed Yankees fan, right? Birds of a feather...
Napi: that's amazing. So in time of public emergency (or tumult) the Governor of California (that would be Arnold Schwarzenegger) automatically assumes military command authority over every man in California? And if you don't do what Arnie says, you can be punished for desertion under the UCMJ? (Penalty for desertion in time of war: death).
Doesn't this bother anyone even a little bit?