"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” - Biden, today, on opponent Barak Obama.
To start with, no one has yet thought to accuse Israel of creating a phony country in finally acquiescing to the creation of a Palestinian state. Palestine is no Bantustan. Or if it is, it is the creation of Arabs, not Jews.This, of course, is highly debatable. The current Palestinian state has almost no sovereignty at all except for elections. It certainly has been powerless to stop Israel from building settlements on its own territory, and, currently, walls encasing those settlements, beyond the established borders of the Palestinian territories. Finally, he writes:
And the most tragic difference: Apartheid ended peacefully. This is largely thanks to Nelson Mandela, who turned out to be miraculously forgiving. If Israel is white South Africa and the Palestinians are supposed to be the blacks, where is their Mandela?This misses the obvious point that blacks vastly outnumbered whites in South Africa. When Nelson Mandela, a leader with singular abilities, arose and united them they were then taken seriously. Currently Palestinians do outnumber Jews in Palestine, though barely. As their numbers continue to increase, no doubt it will become harder and harder to ignore them.
He's ugly as goat, and twice as stupid. John Gibson all but donned his pointy hood and white sheet as he conducted his own brand of debunking on CNN's report that the Barak Obama "madrasssa" story, which Fox News acted on, was a work of fiction. Obama's staff has fired back, specifically at Gibson, for engaging the story without confirming the charges.This guy is so ridiculous he would be funny if his special brand of ignorance and ethnocentrism didn't produce a shocking amount of terrorism. His books read more like hate manifestos. He's obviously trying hard to keep up with the conservative pundit curve, what with that dork Glenn Beck stealing all the headlines.GIBSON [W]hat did they see when they went to the madrassa where Barack Obama went to school?
HOST: Kids playing volleyball.
GIBSON: Playing volleyball, right. They didn’t see them in any terrorist training camps?
HOST: No.
GIBSON: No. Um, but they probably didn’t show them in their little lessons where they’re bobbing their heads and memorizing the Koran.
HOST: I didn’t see any tape of that, no.
I guess I wasn't the only one who noticed representative Michele Bachmann acting like a low-rent groupie at the State of the Union address. My actual thought while I watched her grip Bush's elbow and shoulders was "he's a married man." And I don't even give a shit about that kind of thing.
He's not crazy, he's actually a lot like Christ, says Scientology leader David Miscavige about embattled actor Tom Cruise. According to a Sun Online story Tom Cruise is the new Christ. My only question is when is his execution?The Mission: Impossible star has been told he has been “chosen” to spread the word of his faith throughout the world.Actually, by that criteria Cruise is much more like any Christian disciple, perhaps an evangelist, definitely a televangelist. Regardless, being crowned the new Jesus Christ has to be at least as big as winning American Idol, right? After all, Jesus, you're my American Idol. I for one welcome our new misunderstood savior. I can be very useful in rounding up Christians to work in his underground sugar caves.
And leader David Miscavige believes that in future, Cruise, 44, will be worshipped like Jesus for his work to raise awareness of the religion.
A source close to the actor, who has risen to one of the church’s top levels, said: “Tom has been told he is Scientology’s Christ-like figure.
“Like Christ, he’s been criticised for his views. But future generations will realise he was right.”
The Politico reports that John McCain has finally come out against the handling of the war in Iraq. After carrying water for the administration Senator McCain has decided to take a bold stance and come out against Vice President Cheney much the same way Princess Diana once came out against land mines.
But reporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.
My gut instinct is that there are 7 or 8 Republican candidates who could beat him in a Reagan style landslide because he's inexperienced, very liberal, and beyond charisma, he brings nothing to the table.Perception: he's inexperienced.
Clearly, Obama has struck a chord with celebrity watchers, liberal Democrats, and even ordinary Joes who ache for someone to mount the White Horse and ride to the rescue; the shining knight saving us all from our partisan follies and rancorous politics. But is there anything inside the armor our savior is wearing? Or is it simply a matter of us filling that empty suit with whatever hopes and dreams we can stuff inside it?
Obama is not an everyman. He is an "anyman" - he's anything you want him to be. Until he defines himself, he risks having his political opponents do it for him. And that's an opportunity that Team Hillary is salivating for.
There really is no other way to describe the fawning, goo-goo eyed coverage of Mr. Obama in the press except "Obamania." More has been written about his pecs than about his thoughts on Iraq. One would think his first name is "Rock Star" given how many times that appellation has appeared as a descriptive of his impact on a crowd. His books have rocketed to the top of the bestseller charts - thanks to millions of dollars in free publicity given by the media.Perception: Obama is allied with the liberal media.
He was elected in 1996 to the Illinois state Senate, where he earned a reputation as a consensus-building Democrat who was extremely liberal on such social and economic issues as backing gay rights, abortion rights, gun control, universal health care and tax breaks for the poor.Perception: he's a humanist?
One of the most entertaining opportunities that will emerge in 2007 will be using Barack Obama to fight Islamofascism. He is the product of a black Moslem from Kenya, Barrack Hussein Obama, and a white atheist from Kansas, Shirley Ann Dunham, who met at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. That is why his middle name is the same as Saddam’s: Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. His first name is taken from the Islamic term in Arabic for “blessed,” baraka, used in the Koran.Perception: he's Muslim?
On this day, 1912, English explorer Robert F. Scott and his expedition reached the South Pole, only to discover that Roald Amundsen had gotten there first. 
Muslim swimwear designers have discovered the wet suit. They're calling it a burkini and it is currently all the rage among observant female surfers.A recent report showed that since Christmas more Americans have died in New Orleans than in Iraq. This was used by some to show that Iraq is not a raging civil war, but is, in-fact, safer than some places in America. Needless to say I did not find much comfort in the comparison. Have we gone from measuring Iraq against ourselves to measuring ourselves against Iraq? This report is indicative, and the facts seem to bear it out: Iraq, the grand front in the war on terror, seems to be a much higher priority than many elements of our own country. It seems to make little sense to do everything we can to protect ourselves from rogue organizations when in the process we end up doing far-more damage than they could ever hope to accomplish.
How terrifying is terrorism? In a recent poll Americans ranked it as a greater threat than global warming. It is already the dominant issue for potential presidential candidates, while we channel trillions of dollars to attempt to fight it. Indeed a widespread dismay and suspicion over terrorism has set in across the country. John Muller's uses this as the base for his book A False Sense of Insecurity
The terrorists have only one angle and that is to strike fear into as many people as possible. From that perspective the White House has done an incredible job of PR for them. On October 21, 2004 Vice President Dick Cheney told us we were "far better off" fighting in Iraq than "fighting them here in the streets of our own cities." He uttered the very same statement just three months ago. This type of rhetoric is typical of the administration which has allowed a nervous mind-set to settle in across the country. Such paranoia is no-doubt what prompted Glenn Beck to ask congressman Keith Ellison whether or not he was "working with our enemies." You see, Ellison, along with being a natural born citizen, is also a Muslim. The enlightened founding fathers never had to fight a war on terror.
And the key strategy in fighting against terror seems to be to terrify citizens and use that fear as the reasoning for invading Iraq, or suspending various civil liberties. In their wildest, terror-filled dreams did the 9/11 planners ever think the United State's renounce freedom itself? While they succeeded in scaring us, the death of American values has been an unplanned terrorist victory. Today some people are so worked up we are expected to pay any price to fight terror. Perhaps this would explain a recent article which stated even if we loose 6,000 Americans or more in Iraq it will be worth it to avoid another 9/11. On such reasoning our contemporary society flows. President Bush recently painted the war as the "ideological struggle of our generation." We personify it to a level unimaginable by even the most zealous terrorist. We have currently committed over half a trillion dollars to fight it in Iraq, or about eight times our annual education budget. We fear terrorists much more than uneducated citizens. Sowing irrational concerns to an poorly educated public equals big returns at the polls but it also plays into the wrong hands.
Experts agree that the real threat is not another 9/11, but that a rogue organization will acquire a nuclear weapon and detonate it in a highly populated area. Along those lines how effective has Iraq been? Our own government releases reports saying we have increased the pool of potential candidates who would use WMDs against us. So, while our false sense of insecurity boiled over into the invasion of Iraq, we may not be concerned enough about how ineffective the invasion has been. Terrorism needs to be addressed in the right way, not in an overblown, hyperventilating paranoia. The price we have paid is enormous, not the least of which has been handing over our identity and ignoring the needs inside our country. We vowed we would never allow the terrorists to change us. But have we lost ourselves trying to change the terrorists?
In-case you missed the Bush interview on 60 Minutes allow me to sum it up: I'm the Prez, so fuck off. The President answered questions on the only things that matter to anyone, anywhere, anymore: the war in Iraq, terrorism, mistakes, and how the world is a better place without dictators who have a tenuous grasp on reality (hypothetically, of course).
President Bush unwrapped some late Christmas gifts tonight: 20,000 more troops to fight in Iraq, and a carrier strike force to intimidate Iran. Bush addressed the country tonight and laid out his new plan for expanding the ongoing war in Iraq. Bush called the conflict as the "ideological struggle of our time" and said more troops are needed to secure Baghdad. 
That's essentially how I feel about this whole issue. Let's face it, we're taking McGwire, Palmero, Bonds and others down for basically giving us what we wanted. Often the 1998 McGwire / Sosa home run chase is credited with saving baseball. I don't know if I'll go that far but it did serve as a huge turnaround. Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci has become the resident watchdog for purity in baseball, but even he was not immune, when recapping the '98 season he called McGwire's 70 home runs "good for baseball." We were all turning a blind eye to the obvious.For some reason, the furor over Wal-Mart's new software reminds me of the righteous indignation at Mark McGwire, the former baseball now denied entry to the Hall of Fame. It is symptomatic of a certain kind of schizophrenia that we demand our heroes to kill the cow and then interrogate them over how they got the meat. Wal-Mart is, after all, responding to our demand. We want big home run hitters and $9 DVDs and plenty of other things that someone, somewhere has to sacrifice to achieve.
If baseball fans hadn't salivated over the McGwire-Sosa home run derby, and appreciated Ichiro's style of baseball more, steroids wouldn't have taken over the big leagues. If we remained willing to pay $22 for DVDs, Wal-Mart workers wouldn't be paid minimum wage.
Why should Mark McGwire and Wal-Mart suffer for our greed?
General Motors Chairman G. Richard Wagoner Jr. on Sunday unveiled an innovative prototype, the Chevrolet Volt -- a plug-in vehicle that derives its power primarily from electricity rather than gasoline -- as the world's automakers take on global warming and U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
GM hasn't given a date when consumers can buy the Volt because the advanced lithium-ion batteries needed to power the vehicle -- similar to technology used in cellphones -- are still years from widespread use in automobiles.
I agree that video was unfortunate. It was produced from the same place that our original invasion was: vengeance rather than justice. I've never argued that Saddam did not deserve justice, but I have a hard time finding it here. The injustice to Iraq began with the hyping of pre-war intelligence. This was done in order to generate the collective rage needed to invade that country. You don't have to try very hard to understand how a people who value justice, who live in a region that has been treated so unjustly, now view this as another example disastrous Western meddling.
By standing up to the United States and its client government in Baghdad and dying with seeming dignity, Mr. Hussein appears to have been virtually cleansed of his past.“Suddenly we forgot that he was a dictator and that he killed thousands of people,” said Roula Haddad, 33, a Lebanese Christian. “All our hatred for him suddenly turned into sympathy, sympathy with someone who was treated unjustly by an occupation force and its collaborators.”
Just a month ago Mr. Hussein was widely dismissed as a criminal who deserved the death penalty, even if his trial was seen as flawed. Much of the Middle East reacted with a collective shrug when he was found guilty of crimes against humanity in November.
But shortly after his execution last Saturday, a video emerged that showed Shiite guards taunting Mr. Hussein, who responded calmly but firmly to them. From then on, many across the region began looking at him as a martyr.
The article then goes on to crush Michael Leadon, a "Freedom Scholar" at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. I was also very happy to see Charles Krauthammer did not escape the article's wrath. Krauthammer, one of the most vocal pro-war critics, has recently written an article in the Washington Post calling Saddam's execution a travesty. Indeed, most reasonable people are compelled to view it that way. The real travesty, of course, has been the entire endeavor. The incredible implausibility of their ideas aside, how come more of these people didn't foresee the high possibility of failure by asking this administration to conduct an operation so complex, which required so much sensitivity?
The invasion would not have occurred had Americans not been persuaded of its wisdom and necessity, and leading that charge was a stable of pundits and media analysts who glorified President Bush’s policies and disseminated all sorts of false information and baseless assurances.Yet there seems to be no accountability for these pro-war pundits. On the contrary, they continue to pose as wise, responsible experts and have suffered no lost credibility, prominence, or influence. They have accomplished this feat largely by evading responsibility for their prior opinions, pretending that they were right all along or, in the most extreme cases, denying that they ever supported the war.
The Army said Friday it would apologize to the families of about 275 officers killed or wounded in action who were mistakenly sent letters urging them to return to active duty.
The letters were sent a few days after Christmas to more than 5,100 Army officers who had recently left the service. Included were letters to about 75 officers killed in action and about 200 wounded in action.
I took it and scored a 13, which puts me between Bill and Hilory Clinton (how's that for a visual?). For a range Ronald Reagan represents the "perfect" conservative (40 points) and Jessie Jackson the perfect liberal (0 points). Of course it's all highly subjective but it's a good time waster.
This Political Quiz published in a 1994 edition of USA Today is making the rounds for some reason, with Andrew Sullivan, Ann Althouse, Glenn Reynolds, and Eugene Volokh all taking and commenting on it.
The coveted, and increasingly competitive, Dumbass of the Week award goes to a 47 year old woman who thought it'd be cool to go drinkin' and clubbin' with her 15 year old daughter and friend. Today, Ann Marie Ciarcia, known on myspace as 'RoccerMom', pleaded guilty to manslaughter in a drunken car crash that killed her daughter's friend and seriously injured her daughter and the driver of the other car. She was driving the wrong way down a parkway and slammed into another car after a night of clubbing in Manhattan.
