Daily Archives: Friday, April 3, 2009

Michelle Obama reminds me of…

Posted on Friday, April 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

This woman:

Which may explain why she makes a certain sort of American male discomfited.

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Posted in Today's music, Uncategorized

Quote of the day

Posted on Friday, April 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

She [Rachel Maddow] deserves real kudos for asking Colin Powell serious questions about his complicity in the Bush-Cheney torture regime.  – Andrew Sullivan

Indeed.  I watched this broadcast interview.  It was, sad to say, unique in its mannerly but unrelenting focus on an issue of real importance and in its fundamental assumption that our political representatives are responsible to us.


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Posted in Justice, civil right, human rights issues, Media failures, Military matters

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Cheney’s motivation

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I’ve noted before the curious question of why Cheney has now broken protocol and twice spoken critically of Obama administration policies.  Here’s a possible explanation that I hadn’t thought of (nor have I seen mentioned by others) which does make sense…

By relentlessly taking to the airwaves, Cheney is re-politicizing issues that should be strictly legal ones. And as long as the issue of law-breaking remains political, and not legal, in nature, Cheney and his cohorts Donald Rumsfeld and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez can rest easy. By becoming the voice and face of the Bush administration’s wrongdoings, Cheney is gambling, so far correctly, that Obama won’t have the political guts to pursue him.

Continue reading here

h/t Andrew Sullivan

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Posted in Insights

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Taliban flogging of young woman

Posted on Friday, April 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

Not pretty.  But we ought to know about it…

video here

Of course, the Taliban has done far worse, but this is so barbaric in its fundamentalism and its sexism that it is difficult to watch.

h/t Andrew Sullivan

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Posted in Justice, civil right, human rights issues

Not sanity: Gingrich, an example

Posted on Friday, April 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

What is it with this guy?

“I think there’s a clear to desire to replace the church with a bureaucracy, and to replace people’s right to worship together with a government-dominated system,”

see here

Newt has just converted to Catholicism which gives him a formal forgiveness for three marriages, extended periods of boinking women who weren’t his wife and for telling his first wife he was leaving her to continue boinking someone else while that wife was in the hospital recovering from cancer.

I doubt this amoral jerk believes what he says up there.  That would be certifiable crazihood.  A much more likely explanation is that he’s playing the same game Gerson played in his previous column and which the Republicans have used to advantage before – get religious folks scared that Democrats and liberals want to fry their holy books in patchouli oil.  Jerks.

Update: Perhaps I was being too kind to Newt to suggest above that he’s merely amoral, yet sane.  This argues for batshit crazy…

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Posted in Culture war, Propaganda

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Sanity

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Apr 3rd, 2009 | DES MOINES, Iowa — The Iowa Supreme Court says the state’s same-sex marriage ban violates the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian couples, making it the third state where gay marriage is legal.

In a unanimous ruling issued Friday, the court upheld a 2007 Polk County District Court judge’s ruling that the law was unconstitutional.

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Posted in Justice, civil right, human rights issues, Proposition 8 and homophobia

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Paranoia or propaganda? Hard to tell

Posted on Friday, April 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

Here’s the first paragraph from a Jerusalem Post piece by Caroline Glick (linked, of course, at the National Review)…

In the chanceries of Europe, the die has apparently been cast. The time has come to launch an all-out diplomatic war against Israel. That is, the time has come to begin to unravel EU acceptance of Israel’s right to exist.

Column here and no, it doesn’t get any more clear-headed.

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Posted in Israel/Palestine, Propaganda

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Well, no actually

Posted on Friday, April 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

It’s got to be tough for the WSJ crowd to try and find some narrative that will have a shelf-life of more than eight seconds.  Kimberley Strassel tries this one out today…

The thing about fear is that you can see it. For an insight as to what the left today fears most, witness its attempted political assassination of Eric Cantor.

Strassel is probably trying to forward a “the left is the land of smears” notion here first of all (a tad ironic given the WSJ editorial page’s past) but suggesting that the left is scared of Kantor, of all people, is a bit like trying to make a convincing case that pastels are the aggressive colors.

See here and note the absolutes and hyperbole…when you don’t got much, you gotta pretend you do.

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Posted in Propaganda

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Avigdor Lieberman grilled by police

Posted on Friday, April 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was questioned by police on Friday for the second time since being sworn into his position earlier this week.

Police questioned the foreign minister for more than five hours and said to expect another round in the coming week.

Lieberman was questioned on Thursday for more than seven hours about suspicions of bribery, money laundering, fraud and breach of trust, less than a day after he took office in the new government. National fraud unit detectives questioned the chairman of Yisrael Beiteinu under caution as a probe of his business-dealings proceeds.

Police sources said Lieberman may be indicted within a few months. Lieberman denies any wrongdoing and says the probe is politically motivated.

Aside from the observation that politics in Israel is apparently as corrupt as it is here, it will be a good turn of events if this fellow gets discredited and removed from his present position of power. Not least because so long as he is in Netanyahu’s government, Netanyahu by comparison looks rational, which he isn’t.

story at Ha’aretz

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Posted in Israel/Palestine

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