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In Afghanistan, a Troop Withdrawal Deadline Is Good Policy
Tweet Share on Facebook June 25, 2010 Comment (9)Conservative op-ed columnists have taken the firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal as an opportunity to repeat, once again, their demand that the United States make an open-ended commitment to the use of American ground troops in Afghanistan.
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McChrystal Firing Is a Sign of Afghanistan Problems
Tweet Share on Facebook June 24, 2010 Comment (9)There is no good news for Americans, this summer, in the departure of Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
Forget Harry Truman. American presidents don't fire generals who are winning America's wars.
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Nikki Haley Could Save the GOP From Itself
Tweet Share on Facebook June 22, 2010 Comment (11)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I suppose the Republican Party can survive its love affair with the dingbat Right. But it's getting harder to see how. Today's election in South Carolina offers a case in point.
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Mitch Daniels in 2012--Much Better Than Palin, Paul, and Angle
Tweet Share on Facebook June 11, 2010 Comment (13)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Several months before Paul Tsongas announced that he was going to run for president in 1992, I grabbed a meal with him and with several other political reporters. This was nine years after Tsongas had announced he had lymphoma, and three years after Michael Dukakis had been whipped by George H.W. Bush.
Let's get this straight, we said. What the Democratic Party needs now is another Greek liberal from Massachusetts--with cancer?
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Ranking the Political Polls for the 2010 Elections
Tweet Share on Facebook June 11, 2010 Comment (9)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The liberal and conservative bloggers here at Thomas Jefferson St. throw a lot of poll numbers at you in the course of the year. Predictably, we cherry pick the numbers we like, and flaunt them. I don't really know why--I guess to rally the troops with the thought that victory is at hand. Polls measure nothing but momentary popularity, not wisdom or courage or brilliance or innovation. They certainly won't answer the pressing questions of the day, like whether Sarah Palin has gotten breast implants. You go girls, says I.
(Since we are talking about polling, you can weigh the visual evidence and cast your vote--Did she? Or didn't she?--at Huffington Post.)
Anyhow, over at the FiveThirtyEight website, ace political analyst Nate Silver has published an analytical survey of the better-known polling firms in America, and ranked them on accuracy in the final weeks of an election. Here are some results that jump out. You may want to remember them the next time one of us acts like a know-it-all, using a poll as evidence.
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Cooks Illustrated Shows Cooking's Adventurous Side
Tweet Share on Facebook June 10, 2010 Comment (1)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
“As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined.”
It is rare that one gets a laugh from a cookbook. But aside from furnishing nifty culinary tricks, the folks at Cooks Illustrated can sometimes make you snort at tales of their visits to failure, along the highway to success.
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Helen Thomas Should Have Quit Sooner
Tweet Share on Facebook June 8, 2010 Comment (33)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I don't know what the rabbi thought she would say when he stuck the video camera in the face of an 89-year-old Arab-American lady and asked her what she thought about Israel. It is not the first place I would go to get a testimonial about Israeli pluck and virtue.
Old age deteriorates mental powers. In Western culture, since long before Shakespeare, old folks are portrayed as daffy for good reason, and for no fault of their own. The vessels bringing oxygen to the brain shrivel. Brain cells die. Codgers blurt out crazy things. And Helen Thomas did.
But to post her remarks on the Internet? Well, there was only one reason to do that, and it had its intended effect. Thomas was called vile and reprehensible, and pushed into retirement. And now both sides in this 60-year-old conflict, Arabs and Jews, can spend the week saying "See! They hate us!" God forbid we should let the wounds heal, not when we can tear at the scar tissue and rip off the scabs and start the bleeding again.
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Perfect Game Blown Call, the iPad, and Other Summer Musings
Tweet Share on Facebook June 4, 2010 Comment (3)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Some random thoughts for a summer Friday:
1. Major League Baseball has a new asterisk. Armando Galarraga got cheated out of an “official” perfect game when the lords of the league refused to overrule a call that even the umpire in question says was wrong.
But there’s no need to weep for Armando. Over time, Galarraga’s sublime effort will be mentioned and remembered more than any other perfect game--except that thrown by Don Larsen in the 1956 World Series.
Galarraga will get a footnote in every baseball book and a display of his own in Cooperstown, no doubt, as the victim of the worst call ever. And, hopefully, he’ll go down in history as the guy that brought instant replay to the sport.
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Israel Flotilla Attack Strains U.S. Relations
Tweet Share on Facebook June 3, 2010 Comment (67)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There are times when nations make big mistakes, and there are other times when, confronted with golden opportunity, countries just fritter it away. The Bush administration had its test, in that moment when all Americans were united after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It chose, almost inexplicably, to divide the nation instead.
And the state of Israel had an opportunity, as well, on Sept. 12, 2001. America and Islam had each other's full attention, and everyone knew that solving the Palestinian problem would remove a major irritant in that relationship. And even if one accepts the Israeli argument that Hamas was an immoveable stumbling block, the opportunity was there for Israel to strengthen its historic ties with the United States which had just, after all, been attacked by a bunch of crazed Arabs.
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Romanoff, Sestak Job Offer "Bribes" Are Not Scandals
Tweet Share on Facebook June 3, 2010 Comment (8)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
You're a hotshot Wall Street trader, the best cowboy on the ranch, a power-hitting third baseman, or the fastest checkout clerk at the local supermarket. Word gets around. Somebody offers you a better job, a nicer shift, a richer contract, more perks. Your boss calls you in. "What will it take," she asks, "to make you stay?"
Call the FBI! Appoint a special counsel! Alert Fox News!
The all-American advantages of "leverage" have been re-defined, in this silliest of political seasons, as "bribery."
