The Wire

[Zanshin]

Interesting and relatively surprising story on a number or levels.

[PhillyPhreak54]

The Redemption of Michael K. Williams

http://www.nj.com/inside-jersey/index.ssf/personalities/the_redemption_of_michael_k_williams.html

Finally had time to read this...wow. I had no idea he was binging on blow while shooting the wire

[ice grillin you]

set your dvr's

david simon on maher next week

legends

[MDS]

lol no farging way

no shot maher ever watched the wire. hes such a farging funhole too busy smoking vaporized weed, telling awful jokes and banging strippers. and being a liberal god.

[SD]

set your dvr's

david simon on maher next week

legends

If you could only bang one which one would it be?

[Diomedes]

I can answer that for you:  Simon.

Even his igness knows that Maher is an insufferable icehole.

[SD]

I can answer that for you:  Simon.

Even his igness knows that Maher is an insufferable icehole.

pretty sure I remember igy saying Maher was his god/idol.

[Diomedes]

Well I'm sure he'll appear to settle this matter directly.  I can't wait.

[ice grillin you]

i honestly cant choose between the two...whichever one swallows?

and lil guy simon has been on before and he obviously took heads...he was a the mid hour guest...but next week i believe hes a panelist

[MDS]

i know hes been on before im saying maher never watched the wire

in fact id be shocked if maher has ever watched something that didnt include maher

[Diomedes]

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6821163/the-wire-rpg

[Rome]

Die screaming.

[SD]

Clever

[Zanshin]

So, that makes you want to chop them with a kitchen implement?

[ice grillin you]

lord simon on mitt and the video....

My support for Mr. Obama and my opposition to Mr. Romney was, until this moment, premised on the idea that I believe more in one man's vision of the American experiment and much less so in the other.  It has exactly nothing to do with my own personal standing.  My support isn't predicated on any perceived benefit to me.  My opposition isn't predicated on any perceived threat.  Although this may be an incredible and perverse notion for Mr. Romney to contemplate, my political positions do not follow from simple self-interest.  At points, as a function of citizenship itself, I feel obliged to contemplate something larger than myself, something that might benefit others more than me, something that might require collective sacrifice of a kind associated with great nations and great societies.  And if my vote results in a higher tax rate for myself and others in my income bracket, that's certainly understandable given the current level of societal need and the fact that American tax rates are at their lowest ebb in modern times.  I need to pay more, and so do many other fortunate Americans who have had the benefit of an economic system and infrastructure that allowed such opportunities to amass wealth in the first place.  How much more? Well, that question is premised on another:  What does my country require from all of us — proportionally — to sustain itself as a first-rate society?  What does it demand of all Americans, but in particular, those of us who have gained affluence in that society?

That Mitt Romney, with his too-clever-by-half 13 percent tax rate — and no, you can't see his returns, but trust him, he never slipped to single digits — feels equipped to sneer en masse at the millions of fellow citizens who support his opponent as being entitled, greedy tax derelicts, that he believes the vote of every American has to necessarily be rooted in the crudest and most basic self-interest — well, this ugly moment reveals more about the man himself than the targets of his derision.  Until this moment, I thought I was going to vote for Mr. Obama because, while not satisfied by all of his positions and actions, I find his vision of the American collective to be fairer and more utilitarian.  Mr. Obama seems to be asserting for an America in which sacrifice is proportional and widespread, and correspondingly, an America in which the future is inclusive of more of us.   The alternative is, of course, a nation in which more wealth is concentrated in fewer Americans, and a greater mass of citizens endure higher rates of poverty — a nation that we have been constructing, systematically, since 1980.

That was my previous argument to myself and it certainly seemed enough to decide my vote.

But now, after witnessing this fresh astonishment from Mr. Romney — after reading the above statements from a man who wants to be my president while contributing less than half of my proportional share to the commonweal, who then wants to denigrate others for not pulling their weight when in many cases that weight is greater proportionally than that which he himself has shouldered — I confess I have suddenly acquired an altogether different reason for pulling the lever in November.

This man is a lout.  A shameless lout, who, among the supposed privacy of close supporters, reveals that he can conceive of no idea larger or more profound than self-interest.  As he believes first and foremost in Mitt Romney and his ambitions, he can't conceive that others can conjure anything larger than themselves or their possible personal gain.  Here and now, he is laid bare by his own cynical critique of others who will not follow him in selfishness.  It is not that Mr. Romney is merely unfit to serve us as president.  Based on this latest revelation, it may go much deeper.  If he believes what he told that group in private, he may well be unfit to serve us as a fellow citizen.