Since no one else has addressed this – yes, you are whooshed. In Colbert’s “The Word” segment, Colbert muses out loud about a topic while his faithful sidekick Bullet (a series of bullet points) provides a counterpoint. Last night Colbert did the entire segment silently miming his anguish over the election results, while Bullet provided commentary, as usual in the form of written bullet points.
BG speaks the truth. The Word bullets described what Colbert was silently musing. It was brilliant.
A good response from the Dems - we have a new SecDef - at last. Let’s give him a chance to do his job. Bipartisan, cooperative, and no plan required.
You’re exactly right. Calling the guy an “Indian feller” is just like calling him shit in a foreign language. How astute of you. Anyone else would have just assumed I was talking about his ethic background in a casual manner, without the benefit of knowing his nationality. But you, sir, have discernment.
If it pleases your sensibilities, forget I said “Indian”. Such language has no place on this board.
But seriously, are you under the impression that Allen called the dude “macaca” because he assumed he wasn’t American? All this time I thought it was because he looked brown and Arab-like. I’m fairly confident that his citizenship had nothing to do with the name that Allen called him. Please consider the foolishness of this comment. Mistakening someone as a foreign national is not racism and it’s not remotely in the same class as calling someone a slur.
Me too, but the prime responsibility of the US government is to US interests. It’s not always possible to fix what has been really bungled.
The thing that worries me more is that we will stay there trying to fix what could be unfixable by us.
Nixon was going to get us out of Vietnam but he stayed 3 more years trying to salvage at least something.
During those three yearsthe casualties mounted and nothing was accomplished. The site yields the following statistics.
Combat deaths during the three years 15320 which was 32% of the total (47348) for the war.
Combat wounded 102300 which was 34% of the war’s total (304704).
MIA 240 which was 10% of the total (2338).
Whatever the problem is in Iraq, I doubt that it can be solved, and perhaps not even eased, by keeping the US military there. It’s eminently possible that our presence exacerbates the problem
I favor going hat in hand to the regional powers and asking them for assistance in getting some sort of order in Iraq. They have no reason to help us but they might want to stabilize Iraq for their own protection.
I’m with this, only not just the regional powers, the U.N. too.
“Look, we screwed up, bad. We’re sorry. Work with us on solving this.”
John, at this point, I’m not sure Bush has access to all the information Bush has access to.
To others here: the fact is, there are any number of plans that Democrats have. Democrats are not the Borg. The President is one person. Democrats are many people, and hence have many plans. It’s not surprising at all that the Republican plan is “whatever the President says” (though the anger over Rumsfeld seems to be quickly finalizing the death of that) while Democrats have no unified message or plan on Iraq.
I couldn’t tell if you thought the guy was a foreigner or not. And if he isn’t, I feel needlessly calling attention to someone’s ethnic background is a form of discrimination. How would you feel if people from the community you grew up in kept referreing to you as “The <ethnicity> guy”?
His exact words were: “Let’s give a welcome to macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.” Either he thought the guy was a foreigner, or implied that he doesn’t consider the guy to be a true American. Do you interpret it differently?
Could be a “city boy” snark. “See that there city boy with his fancy camera! Well, he aint in the dissolute salons of Richmond, he’s out here with the real Americans…”
Sidarth was called “macaca” because he’s Indian (or at least because he’s non-white). How can it be “needless” to mention his ethnic background when that background was the basis for the insult?
In the context of the discussion, it’s not a needless reference. The guy was called “macaca” because of his ethnic appearance. If Allen had called me that name, I’d have absolutely no problem if people refered to me as the “black gal that was called a macaca” in a discussion like this one.
Yeah, I interpret “macaca” to mean “a human resembling the color of shit, like an Arab” not “a non-American citizen”. I have a strong feeling Allen would never think of calling Tony Blair a “macaca”, for instance. There’s no need to sit and ponder on this to figure out why.
You’re right. I apologize for needlessly taking offense.
I meant how do you interpret the “Welcome to America” comment?
An idiotic, insensitive statement based on a lazy, thoughtless assumption? It wasn’t racist whatever it was, and it wasn’t why he got in trouble.
How about a silly conflation of the prejudice against dark-skinned people with the prejudice against people from outside the country, a prejudice daily exhibited by many in this coutry against those from south of our Southern border?
I agree that he would not have used the term to refer to a, say, German who was standing there. The offending term was racially motivated; the fact that he assumed that the person being insulted was also foreign doesn’t change that fact.
Why am I thinking of the opening of “Battlestar Galactica”? 
Compared to whose?