I forget sometimes that most Americans are not familiar with the word ...

And on queue.....


I'd have thought it would be "on cue". Though I suppose "add it to the queue" would work.

The phrase "on cue" is a reference to acting, so it's "cue." You hit your mark on cue. You're never on queue; you're in a queue.

Hey I just got change out of the soda machine and received a dollar coin with Millard Fillmore on the cover. I thought it was a joke till I tried it again and got John Q Adams. So 2 questions: #1 when did they change the dollar coins and #2 who thought these 2 guys would be ideal for coins unless they are using presidents that are not on other money?

n the northeast, they say "On line" rather than "in line".

From 2007 to 2011, Presidential $1 Coins were minted for circulation in large numbers, resulting in a large stockpile of unused $1 coins. Since 2012, new Presidential coins are only being minted for collectors, in order to reduce the stockpile.

In the northeast, they say "On line" rather than "in line"

No, the other one.

Cue or Queue?

There are ancient precedents for this sort of thing. According to Thucydides, when the Athenians captured the rebellious city of Melos, they “slew all the men of military age.” And according to the biblical book of Deuteronomy, when the Israelites besieged a city and “God delivers it into your hands…you shall put all its males to the sword.” Since the Deuteronomist goes on to exclude children, the two policies are identical. The new American doctrine isn’t the same. We are not aiming to kill all the men of military age, but we have made them all liable to be killed. We have turned them into combatants, without knowing anything more about them than their (approximate) age. That wasn’t right in ancient Greece or Israel, and it isn‘t right today.

This last point can be driven home very simply: imagine a world, which we will soon be living in, where everybody has drones.

When these particular chickens come home to roost, it's gonna be uuuuuuuugly.

I wish Hagel had given him his direct answer - it was a dangerous foreign policy blunder. It did not meaningfully change the arc of our involvement, did not change the ethnic cleansing, did not alter our eventual departure without achieving much of anything other than Saddam's ouster, and delaying our attention to the real problem, Afghanistan, and at significant cost and risk. Whether that was worth the whole mess or not, I'll leave to others, but the "surge" did little or nothing to change the calculus.

kabuki theater

I've read this phrase more times in the past two months (usually in reference to political affairs) than I had in my whole life up to that point. Is there a reason for its sudden popularity?

What would be the point of that? I'm going to make sure my drone is one of th handsomest models available.

Mine will have decals of flames. Either that, or a paint job of Competition Orange

You don't pay income taxes on inherited money. The estate may have have to pay taxes on the value of the estate. But if your parent dies and you inherit money, that's not treated as income for tax purposes. Note that gifts are also not considered income. If someone receives a gift in amount large enough to trigger the gift tax, it's person who gives the gift that owes the taxes on that gift, not the recipient.

so east asia is looking at a currency war, a space race, and multiple border dispute for all parties, oh and a crazy kid with nukes, woopy!

John McCain is a bad impersonation of a Dana Carvey skit.

Speaking of which, why did the GOP not bluster and threaten wholesale bombing when NK was close to the bomb? Surely they make the Iranians look perfectly sane by comparison.

Just Jen Rubin, who hardly has a track record of successful prognostication. Chambers-esque, in fact.

Senate confirmation hearings are often about the performances. Chuck Hagel delivered a particularly mediocre one.

The former Nebraska senator struggled through answers, changed responses and seemed at points at a loss to describe why he wanted the job — or why President Barack Obama wanted him for it.
. . .
Given the weeks of acrimonious back-and-forth over his nomination as secretary of defense, former Sen. Chuck Hagel couldn’t — or shouldn’t — have been taken by surprise by the fusillade of questions he faced Thursday about Israel, Iran and other national security issues. Yet, again and again, Hagel found himself on his heels, offering awkward retractions of his prior statements and repeatedly using garbled phrases that underscored pre-existing doubts about his positions. He seemed like a politician more suited for the revise-and-extend tradition of the Senate than for the YouTube age.
. . .
At times, despite his dozen years in the Senate, Hagel seemed bewildered with the way his quotes were being picked apart. “I’ve had more attention paid to my words in the last eight weeks than I ever thought possible,” he said.

Seems like a lot of folk, from both aides of the aisle, are suggesting Hagel isn't all that bright, based on today's performance.

That was my takeaway as well. The votes are pretty much set, why give these bums the satisfaction of an argument?

My impression was that he knew he was going to be lambasted by the hawkish Republicans, but also knew that lashing back at them wouldn't win him any votes, so he just took a "whatever" attitude and waited until the inquisitors time ran out.

That was my takeaway as well. The votes are pretty much set, why give these bums the satisfaction of an argument?