Other points aside, how is the Citadel not a "real military academy?" Is that just a strange, if not disrespectful, way of saying that it's a private military academy? The Citadel is to West Point what Harvard is to UMass. There's something inherently wrong with that?
 

The analogy doesn't work; it's more the difference between an accredited school of medicine and a non-accredited one.
 

So all you really mean is that it's not a federal service academy? So VMI is also not a "real military academy?" Nor are any of the other non-federal military academies? Just had to point it out, Rich--you often rail against similarly loaded, uninformed characterizations made by your fellow journos. I know this is a Harvard audience, but I'm uncomfortable giving you a free pass for nonchalantly floating an anti-military aside.
 

Indeed, VMI is not a "real" military academy. Hey, I should know. My grandfather went there. Nothing anti-military in saying so.
 

If military-ness is just a mode of pedagogy at these places, it's true that they're not 'military academies' in the sense that that term is usually meant. 'Military academies' feed into the military. Schools that just have a military ethos have no particular bearing on public life, in the way the academies do.

So I think I'm with Richard but am willing to learn more about Citadel, VMI, if someone wants to bring knowledge to the table.

SE
 

SE:

What do you do for a living?

You have the luxury of reading and posting on almost every issue (that interests you which seems to most).

Or perhaps I should rephrase the question-why do you have so much time on your hands and why do you spend it on this blog?
 

My point was/is that these schools do have more than the "military ethos" you describe (which is probably a better characterization of military prep schools than the role of these institutions). I think they do still "feed into the military," the difference is simply that some have an official arrangement/partnership and federal funding. But I can't imagine anyone going to the Citadel with anything other than a military career path.
 

Anon: I work in education. Hours are flexible. As I believe I mentioned, too, I type fast. And many of these thoughts are developed through other engagements and reading online, a hobby which has to do with the importance to me of my US civic identity.

Egret: Okay, I learned a smidge about these academies; got any numbers though on how many people go into military careers? Do they enter as officers only; i.e., is the whole school ROTC? Or what?

SE
 

SE:

Thanks for answering sort of.
For those of us who have actually created companies, made payrolls and developed and balanced govt budgets without a whole lot of resources, I find you and your ideas about your civic identity curious.

Can you tell us what you have done to create meaningful employment or solve a civic problem or crisis or do you just read and philosophize? Not taking a shot at you, really do want to understand you academic types-payrolls always increasing, tution increasing and what is the product and how can I measure it based upon your output? This has a significant impact on our civic life since it gets to the affordability of education and learning for all our citizens. Please explain your contribution in something other than platitudes and vague ideas.

Best,
a non academic who finds all the babble fascinating.
 

Non-academic anon:

It's a fair question, and I'll try to answer it in the spirit in which I wish it was intended. When you say "those of us who have ACTUALLY done things in the world" you make it sound like running a school, or a course, or whatever, isn't work. Which it is.

Is it valuable?

As I say, it's a fair question.

It creates jobs, but only secondarily.
It concentrates resources in a way that is generally good for communities -- academic towns tend to do well, even if it's only by feeding off the markets of students with parents' money and the freedom to spend it in a variety of new ways.

Universities are valuable also in the ways that Larry Summers often talked about -- biotech, concentrating R&D money and brainpower, and so on. And some great economists cycle through universities when they're not advising on policy.
I'm less persuaded about the civic value of political science.

But the main point is for me to try to say what I mean by 'civic.' By 'civic' you seem to mean 'promoting the well-being of the community.' But if that's measured in dollars alone I'm suspicious from the get-go (because markets always create losers and sometimes they are more plentiful than the winners, and deserve better; and because market value isn't always permanent and isn't always healthy). I'm even MORE suspicious if that's measured in short-term dollars -- yes, lower taxes, for example, are good for the national economy, but at some point the bills come due. (That's my understanding, at least -- I've just read a great piece in the Atlantic that explained very clearly exactly what separates the US, whose biggest export is -- literally -- debt, from say Argentina circa 1997. We're really relying on a lot of Chinese banks to stay afloat as a national economy now.)

An over-simple definition of 'civic well-being' leads to policies that are basically adjustable-rate mortgages for society. Politicians are hardly accountable at all, and the national memory is poor, so I think there's a real danger in listening to shortsighted civic boosters of the "starve the beast (but give it lots of midnight snacks)" type. This Republican Congress has the country in hock up to its eyeballs, and it has done so with pork and inefficiency beyond the dreams of contractor avarice.

Shortsightedness on the matter of dollars goes along with what seems to me an inadequate definition of 'civic.' The REAL strengths of America, in my view, are the political conditions under which entrepreneurialism is fostered: a government abundant in checks and balances, a certain kind of libertarianism that doesn't neglect real collective concerns (consider the environment, for example), a strong judicial branch that has routed corruption and made business workable by making contracts both flexible and enforceable, and open discussions centered on a rapid election cycle.

One key aspect of what I mean by the word 'civic' is just that I'd like to champion the idea that voting needs to be taken very very seriously. And any part of the public discourse that cheapens voting hurts my idea of the citizenry. I work to help foster the idea that voting is a sacred transfer of power, from the people it belongs to, to their servants, from President on down.

Any dishonesty in the talk that surrounds VOTING demeans us all and demeans the national project of growing as a civilization beyond servility to kings (Bush dynasty? Clinton dynasty? unitary executive?) toward a place where respectful listening and careful analysis lead to optimal circumstances for the economic and moral thriving of a people.

Okay, that last bit was pompous. But true.

There is, moreover, the special quality in the American spirit that comes from the undeluded side of its claim on the moral high ground. Equality of opportunity, faith in democracy, and carved-out rights that are not negotiable -- these are extremely valuable things. And I guess now I'm outside the realm of even long-term dollars. But there is value there, and it's in the Constitution.

Better-educated people are better positioned to understand what the Constitution means, and the dignity it confers on each person. (If that sentence isn't true then I have to be super-dismayed -- there's a great book that calls it into question, "Lies My Teachers Told Me.") As a teacher of texts, or whatever, I hope I make better citizens as part of the project of making better people (their parents send them to us so that we can help them make themselves better people). But when I look around at Harvard I worry that short-term dollars and short-term global power are the real values being taught at places like the IOP. (My GOD, Bill Kristol teaches there. I can't get over that.) And that's why I developed this hobby of bird-dogging the things government does, and preparing myself to teach people with FACTS when I get into conversations with them.

The rules of those conversations should match the contours of intellectual rigor, evidence, and honesty. I think those are civic values more important than GROWTH, taken as an entity to itself. Things can 'grow' a lot without getting better -- consider, for example, Enron's business plan. It got big. It got pricey. It created no real value, and was leveraged out the wazoo. A lot of hardworking people lost their shirts and their nest eggs.

Am I a hardworking person? Often, yes, absolutely. Does the twenty minutes it took me to type this make me more valuable as a member of the industry of education? I think it does.

But I'm not sure this will satisfy you and I'm not sure it should. I think it's totally legit for you to question whether people are freeloading on society. BUT I ABSOLUTELY DRAW THE LINE at the claim that academics are intrinsically bigger freeloaders than arbitrageurs, members of newspaper editorial boards, lobbyists, fancy cover-your-ass consultants, insurance executives, and any number of sales forces who create competition that does nothing to drive down prices and only creates red tape so people can feel like they're getting some extra value from their mutual fund, the HMO they chose for their new company, or their life insurance, or whatever. When you point your finger equally at those kinds of freeloaders then your claim that I might be a wart on the backside of the civic economy takes on more credibility.

No one works harder than a hard-working teacher: That's a fact. No one is lazier than a lazy teacher: Double true.

Is meeting a payroll harder than some of the things educators do? Yes. But some of the things educators do are wicked hard and have civic meaning too. (You might simply for example consider the fact that Harvard is in charge of the development of postadolescents who are both rising from and destined for the top of society -- political, economic, you name it.)

Say what you mean by 'civic' and I'll see if I can answer better. I don't think I've been responding to a straw man but I'm sure I haven't satisfied you. Sorry that this is longwinded and a little disorganized, but it's certainly harder work than NOT answering you would have been.

Tell me how I can answer better. Be specific. Believe that I work a full day, and raise my kids assiduously, and pay my bills, and that it's not easy. Show respect and we can talk both ways. (My suspicion I'm afraid is that you won't really believe those things and will hold my achievements against me because they're all in the context of The Academy, which means that they are founded on relativism and socialism and none of the things that make America America. This is just Republican propaganda -- anti-intellectualism is all they had left once they came into control of the entire government -- and if you start from believing that, rather than asking in earnest the question that you asked, then we'll not be able to communicate.)

Optimistic that you might be willing to listen to this answer, and help me make it better --

Standing Eagle
 

On reflection, I think I answered the wrong question there. Anon was, I now think, asking about academic administration as an industry. Insofar as I've done that, I've done nothing on the financial side of the house. So payrolls aren't my thing.

I focused on the counterpointing concept of 'civic identity,' and tried to define that without explaining what my job is. But anon wanted to know precisely how my job fit into my definition of the 'civic,' and it's hard to answer that without being more precise about how what I do is different from what he seems to think I do.

Moreover, there's an apples-and-oranges thing in this exchange: Anon has done a bunch of things in industry and government. I'm at a MUCH earlier point in my career.

So we're probably ships passing in the night here for non-ideological reasons, as well as for other kinds of reasons.

Just an apology then for not sorting through more carefully where the anonymous questioner seems to be coming from.

SE
 

SE:

Wow-how revealing. Thanks you for such thoughtful answers. Again this is just because I do not come from academia. Here are a few observations:

Unless it is a new start up school it really doesn’t create jobs so no net new growth for econ. develop and multiplier effect. Who cares about economists stopping by in btw gigs. Hey I majored in econ and had some of the best on the planet - but really, so what!

The spending certainly does have an effect on the local economy but it comes at the expense of taxable land and taxable holdings – tradeoff for municipal budgets that serve the local community including traffic/parking police fire and parks not to mention the schools and public health – big trade off.

No, not measuring "civics" in terms of dollars but as we know all politics is local and all local politics are personal. And as we all know we keep score by counting and in civics or gov’t just like academia or business the score has to do with dollars who gets them, who gives them, who doesn’t get them etc and why-just the process.

Any way, civics is not just the federal experience which none of us truly experiences first hand on a daily basis – we live in local communities and interact at a local level. I am curious as to why Harvard people think of gov’t as federal or international-it is not sophisticated to really approach it on that level; that approach is equally as myopic as the current administration in DC. Very important to understand the world but at the expense of the real world around you?

So for the whole "debt" thing, what's your net worth and how mortgaged are you? Home mortgage, car, student loans, second home and how much to send your kids to school-cheap debt fuels that. And since you are at an extremely expensive school explain how it is supposed to be financed if not for the foreigners buying our debt. If they didnt you'd be working for an insurance company or even a mutual fund company since all the public university jobs would be filled by the smarter people who contributed to the political campaigns-hey it's reality deal with it.

I think I agree with the thrust of your argument but, how do you propose to implement the ideas you offer? As for voting, what's the plan? Not a thoughtful essay on why it is important - we all know that - it's the franchise thing-how are you going to get people to vote? Show me. I have run campaigns for 25 years and done it-love to hear your experience and I do hope you have voted in every election since you turned 18. I have - it's political currency. They people who dont vote elect our elected officials not the ones who do.

I agree about education being the big equalizer-do you know how much money Harvard takes away from local communities school systems to subsidize your professional lifestyle at the expense of k-12 spending? If not, take the value of all the property and equipment owned by the university and multiply by the commercial tax rate. Have you and your employer really contributed to the "civic" environment or atleast paid for the full value of the services you use? At least a for profit company pays taxes in the community it is located in. The bumper sticker reads THINK GLOBALLY ACT LOCALLY-so what's the response going to be? And by the way, all the tax exempt benefit the university gets for bio-tech goes where? To manufacturing jobs overseas or to co-investors located where? Anything coming back to your community for the expense or opportunity cost? Love to see your math on that. Not picking a fight but I just want to see if you really have thought through the problem and the implication for "civics".

Slow down-I never called you a free-loader. But, let's do the overall math and see how it plays into the virtous circle/cycle. I have worked in both the private sector and public sector and had the pleasure of creating net new jobs and growth that translates directly to improving the number of teachers and cops and the resources they need not to mention taxes and physical improvements to the community. I have also had days were I did nothing-gotta come clean on that account.

Not all Harvard students are destined for the top of society - very arrogant. I know tons of losers who went there and cant find jobs. so, so what. Again , so what. And if that is the case, we are so many underclassmen so disatisfied with the level of instruction and advice from the faculty? Job performance indicator? By the way, yes I went there.

As someone who really worked in govt at the lowest levels and some of the highest levels-let's remember govt is what we do together and civics then is how we treat each other; not just the one's that fit a thesis or interest group but everyone.

So now that we have bored everyone else silly. Let's start over.

What do you mean by civics and your US civic identity?. And perhaps is there only 1 US civic identity-could there be many civic identities in the US. I think that it would be a very scary place if there is only one identity for US citizens. Perhaps its the academic mindset, but cann't you accept that there is more than just your point of view and its valid?
 

I will write you back in the a.m., anonymous. After a martini I'm not ready to write the essay your earnestness and attentiveness deserves.

For now just three small facts:

1) I didn't say Harvard taught ONLY scions of society's leaders and future leaders. Only that among those it teaches are many of those groups.

2) Me? $109K net worth, excluding cars and property, and including $34K cash and -$14K on zero-interest (for now) credit cards. No other debt, wife's student loans paid off, no mortgages (and I'm pretty young, really). How? I made a quarter million on the side (and I do mean on the SIDE) through grad school and my first half-decade in the workforce. (Fingers crossed that no one I know well clicks the Giuliani link at this point; I'd be identified in a snap.)

3) Harvard pays an extremely significant sum to Cambridge in lieu of taxes. It's not incommensurate to what a for-profit would pay. But I'm not a finance guy so I don't have the numbers. They'll be easy to find online or in the Crimson. --Incidentally, one of the big issues with Allston/Boston has been what kind of pressure each of the two entities can put on the other to alter the negotiation as to how much the Allston development projects should cost Harvard every year in this municipal honorarium.

More tomorrow to speak to the substance. I imagine I'll be saying more about the principles of democracy, rather than dollars, so brace yourself. But on some level I think the long-term dollars are going to play into my argument: we in this country have been spoiled that there's been no currency crisis, no day of reckoning, for a long while. Just the dot-com bubble bursting, taking down some young people's risk-loving portfolios. But how much do you suppose, long run, 9/11 has cost the US? Multiply that by the number of 20-person nutjob-groups the Iraq War has helped create, from Syria to Indonesia to Frankfurt, and then we'll talk some math. There is much whirlwind to reap from the Bush administration, and it will probably have effects on local economies -- consider the gas shocks of the 70s for a reference point, then multiply by the whole world hating us and being owed money by us, and having bin Laden to emulate indefinitely.

Enough about me. More tomorrow about how civic identity should advert to the Constitution -- on the principle of 'Dance with them whut brung ya.' Whether I'll then be able to link that in with being a teacher, and using the platform of academia that thousands of philanthropists and estate lawyers have built through development offices, I don't know.

Peace --

SE
 

One thing I forgot to mention -- my patrimony:

My grandfathers paid the difference between my college tuition (minus aid) and what my parents could afford. They were a suburban dentist and a small-town doctor, both from the Midwest.

So that helps.

Hardly self-made,

SE
 

harvard might if it is lucky pay boston $2mm in PILOTS (i dont care about cambridge-its a theme park)

thank god you are not a finance guy-you answered the net worth question wrong. btw, it is always about the money. do you work for free?

i dont want an essay-just answer the question as succinctly and cogently as possible - you are a wind bag.

on second thought - you are an idiot i was trying to withold judgement but you dont have a clue as to how the world works.


have your martini and go over to the b-school tomorrow and figure out how to calulate net worth. write a book that no one will buy and bother the students but for god's sake leave the grown ups alone.
 

1) How do you calculate net worth? I left out my yearly income; is that what you want to know?

2) What's a PILOT?

3) Don't be a jerk. I was serious about writing more tomorrow. If you don't want me to answer the questions you asked so be it.

SE
 

at this point the questions are rhetorical. sorry about that -too much jesuitical training.

google networth (you teach at harvard for god's sake)

i do not care how much you make or your networth-you went off on a riff about politicians and sub-prime mortgages and you dont know the first thing about home finances let alone institutional, corporate or govt. so who should listen to you. you are slow to connect dots, kid.

give you a little advice, sonny. it is always about the money and if you cannot swallow that then good luck to you.

by the way a PILOT is a payment in lieu of tax. Every taxpayer with a non-profit in its backyard knows that.

keep drinking the Kool Aid.
 

And you simmer down a bit 10:03, or go get yourself a martini maybe. Such anger!
 

Hey 10:03!
SE seems more contented/living the examined life, etc. than you do with your:

"give you a little advice, sonny. it is always about the money and if you cannot swallow that then good luck to you."

Good luck to you, pal!
 

Up early to grade papers.

Seems true that my worth and salary aren't relevant to anything. Guess I should have read more carefully to understand that the question was rhetorical.

Should I know more about institutional finances than I do? Maybe. But I also know that Cambridge is NOT a theme park. Cambridge is quite a sizable town (101,000), and it supports the economy of a number of suburbs. The comment about it being a theme park -- as if Harvard Square represented everything Cambridge is -- reveals as much ignorance about the politics here as anything I might have said about mortgages or acronyms.

In 2004 the Crimson reported on numbers: they are, in fact, a little lower than I would have guessed.

"Last year Harvard paid the city $4.5 million for its taxable properties as well as a voluntary $1.7 million payment in lieu of taxes—(PILOT)—to compensate for its tax-exempt property.

"After the PILOT agreement re-opened for negotiation in 2000, Harvard officials met with City Manager Robert W. Healy to discuss upping Harvard’s contributions.

"The new agreement, signed in January, commits Harvard to contributing $2.4 million [PILOT, excluding taxable properties] to the city’s 2006 budget. The base payment will increase by about 3 percent each year and $100,000 each decade."


And as to your last point -- before I get properly to work -- well, it reminds me what my motivation was for giving you the information about my savings.

"It is always about the money and if you cannot swallow that then good luck to you."

I don't believe it's all about the money. But at this point, guess what? I don't NEED luck. I've made my nut. Thanks anyway.

That was the point about how un-leveraged I am, and also the point about how little I trust (or am relying on) the federal government to take care of the macroeconomics around me. (Consider just for example how much incredible waste this country has in the health-care industry; nobody serious believes that Hillarycare wouldn't have solved huge swaths of that. But a bunch of liars called it a curtailment of freedom of contract and no one spoke up on behalf of accuracy. On the flip side, though, consider how carefully insulated from political pressure Social Security is. Now THAT'S something you can count on.*) I think the federal government's incompetence is very much my business, and the more people say "All politics is local" the more I worry about the national economy.

So I reject both parts of your sentence -- your money, my naivete. It's a sentence that makes it clear that you believe academia is a fantasyland where there is no accountability and where values of any kind just don't count, no matter what they are. In this age starved for leadership and clarity, that description seems to apply much more to the governments we keep electing, and to corporate governance. I would never say that about the arenas where you've made your mark, and without claiming any special achievements for society I think one of my strongest points of civic pride lies in my insistence on respecting other people's work, in a very considerable number of areas. (The beauty of going to good schools: you have friends who lead in many industries -- not necessarily directing the dollars, but leading nonetheless. The challenge of going to good schools: you have relatively fewer friends in the service industries, and must exercise constant diligence to keep low-wage workers high in your awareness.)

And by the way, I have already written that book you mentioned, and have no plans for another one. If you read it, you might call it childish, but I'd be inclined at this point to believe it's because you didn't work hard enough to understand it or its basis for existing. Whether it has any civic value or not, it's a grown-up document.


Oh, I forgot to answer your question succinctly. The last question you ask seems to be this one -- and I guess you didn't mean it rhetorically, since you say you want it answered without windbaggery--


Do I work for free?

--Only for you, baby. Only for you.




--Twenty more minutes of in-kind donation to you, just now, taken out of my workday.




Top of the morning --

Standing Eagle


*You might have an instinct, as most Americans under 50 now do, to snort at this claim about the fiscal reliability of Social Security. But this time *I'm* better informed than the average taxpayer. Social Security is the only part of the government that's NOT broke -- and the way Bush, the unstoppable political force, crashed against it like a balsa-wood yacht on the rocks in 2005 proves that the voting demographics with real political power believe in it. Why? They have skin in the game. Yes, it is all about the dollars -- in this case, LONG-term dollars, shared across the generations.

PS. I looked up 'net worth' and I think the answer I gave you was about right. I broke out the debt figure from the total, cause you asked specifically about that aspect and the question of interest was relevant to our exchange, but the total is still correct. If you want me to total up the value of my cars and household goods, or amortize out some rent or some shit (and NO, I don't know what 'amortize' means in this context), and include that, and show my work, --well, too bad. I don't work for free.
 

Clarification: By 'corporate governance' above I didn't mean management generally. Just the very top levels of the very biggest companies. (Failed CEOs seem to make bigger fortunes than effective ones, and they all sit on each other's boards to ensure that.)

And by the way, those same big companies pay the very least federal income taxes. Enron might -- or might not -- have been good for Houston, but "Over the five-year period from 1996 to 2000, Enron received a net tax rebate of $381 million. This includes a $278 million tax rebate in 2000 alone."

Freeloading on the country is not uncorrelated with local freeloading. Houston's best corporate citizen turned out to be a house of cards -- and even at full size it employed only 4600 people locally, .3% of the Houston workforce.

Harvard employs 5900 Cambridge and Boston residents, which is six percent of the Cambridge POPULATION.

SE

From Pravda -- I mean, the Gazette:

In addition to being a world class research and teaching institution, the University is a talent developer, business incubator, cultural resource, research center, economic magnet, and community partner.

Purchaser
In 2000, the University's revenue was $2,022,634, almost half of which was spent on instruction, research, services, scholarships and fellowships, student services, academic support, and libraries and museums, among others - with a considerable impact on the local economy. In 2001, Harvard purchased more than $1.3 billion in goods and services, of which about $105 million was spent in Cambridge and nearly $340 million in Boston.

Employer
Harvard is one of the largest employers in Massachusetts, ranked 5th in the state by the Boston Business Journal. Harvard employs more than 14,000 people, including some 2,000 faculty. More than 5,900 residents of Cambridge and Boston were employed at Harvard in 2002, at an annual payroll of some $300 million.

Developer of talent
The University trains tomorrow's workforce and retrains today's workers. In 2000, Harvard enrolled 18,918 undergraduate and graduate students, 3,448 of whom came from 130 countries around the globe. The Extension School offers one of the most popular programs of continuing education in the Boston metropolitan area. Harvard students, graduates, and faculty move on to form new companies in the region, such as Tom Stemberg, founder of Staples Inc.

Business incubator
The University's research-based scientific and medical breakthroughs lead to new lifesaving products and technologies that find their way into the marketplace. Just one example is the work of a group of HMS researchers who discovered how bacteria and viruses work together to cause cholera. Based on research, they developed a single-dose oral vaccine, which is undergoing clinical trials.

Community partner and cultural resource
Harvard is an important partner in addressing regional and community needs. Harvard students, faculty, and staff run more than 260 community service programs in the greater Boston area, representing well over a million hours spent teaching, mentoring, and helping area residents in a variety of ways. Harvard's support of affordable housing, including the 20/20/2000 Initiative's commitment of $21 million, has helped create 2,900 new affordable units in both Cambridge and Boston to date. Harvard offers financial aid to Cambridge and Boston residents attending Harvard College, more than $1 million annually. Harvard pays an annual total of about $13 million in real estate taxes, voluntary payments in lieu of taxes, and for municipal services in Cambridge and Boston.
 

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
 

Sorry, 7:24, I'm going to strike that. If you're new to this blog, then, fyi, I delete posts that are simple ad hominem slurs. They contribute nothing to the conversation.

Here's my general rule: You're welcome to write anonymously, but write as if your name *were* attached.
 

the strike SE's comment about Soledad OBrien yesterday if you are going to be consistent, ok
 

Soledad O'Brien is a public figure; the bar's a little higher.

Or lower, I'm not sure which.
 

I'm going to find the time today to back up the stuff about O'Brien. Won't be hard.

Hi-ho, hi-ho, off to take the kids to scho'.

SE
 

This blog has turned to rubbish.
 

Your mom has turned to rubbish.
 

This blog is not rubbish. Here we have a perfectly interesting post about Rudy Giuliani...and I would like to see a spirited discussion about Rudy Giuliani...at least reasonably on track. Instead we get Standing Eagle's long winded dissertations about matters that are not in the least bit related to the post at hand...and that is the case with other perfectly interesting subjects that are introduced which again result in Standing Eagle's dissertations that bog down any discussion by other informed, educated, sometimes funny, interesting comments from posters I know are out there but who must be simply overwhelmed by sheer volume of verbosity about stuff, quite frankly, that relates to nothing Richard is trying to get out there. Standing Eagle...get your papers graded...take a deep breath...remember the original post and start over...easy now.
 

Rudy Giuliani is not interesting, in my opinion. But you're entitled to your opinion, and there were almost ten hours in this thread for a conversation about Giuliani to emerge. There were no takers.

Moreover, I didn't hijack the thread with talk about me. The anonymous questioner did, and he and I had what I think it is fair to call a back and forth. If the thread were fresh at that point, or had something cooking on the Giuliani tip, then I hope I'd be the first to admit that that was inappropriate.

It's very very rare for me actually to change the topic of an ongoing thread. And the health of the many threads that get their own life, based on ACTUAL INTEREST in the topic Richard posted on (something that was lacking in this case), suggests that you're exaggerating about my lack of forbearance.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go substantiate my claim that Soledad O'Brien is an idiot.

SE
 

Good point...there were no takers. And I guess that makes me a bad judge because I find most things on this blog and most comments interesting to read although I'm not much of a contributor...I watch and learn. So break the thread if you must...you're a great contributor, Standing Eagle, most of the time but come up for air once in awhile. And I'm not sure why Soledad O'Brien is an idiot but that's my opinion.

Must go...there are interesting things going on elsewhere on this blog.
 

SE

How badly did the slap hurt?
My goodness they are really ganging up on you today.
So, go over to the S O'B post and kick her around, you'll feel better.

LOL
 

That wasn't a slap...it was just a gentle nudge. I have been a reader of this blog for a long time and I remember that Standing Eagle was there when nobody else was.
 

so