"This isn't even fun anymore ... I just feel sorry for you guys."
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
The Best of 2011: The Idiot Baines
"Texas is 1 of 29 States in Which Gays Can Be Refused Service"
It's so much easier to "discriminate" when you do it behind million dollar ad buys (and object to having your own ads shown in court, as happened during the Prop8 trial), ...
It's Jerusalem Tuesday!
hummm...I think we're going to get an earful about the Golan ... er, no, it'll be about how Israel cannot - couldn't even possibly imagine - compromise on Jerusalem, right, no matter what the price?:
The Israeli prime minister did not expand on his ideas for peace discussions, but he promised he would lay them out in more detail Tuesday, when he addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress.-LA Times
Netanyahu's coalition have to try to convince Americans, so they can at least say they tried, I guess.
Monday, May 23, 2011
GOP-Tea Politics: Brain Drain America - No Quarter to Fulbright Scholar!
Read the story. You probably can guess the basic storyline ...
Another American discovering that worker-friendly and gay-friendly nations DO exist, and they are outside the ambit of GOP-Tea politics (or even Democratic politics, in many instances):
Some members of Team Scarborough?
Sorry, Joe, but you might want to check your coattails.
If anything, it might make you a little less ... fearless.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Rescuing Occam
Occam, a biologist, never said, the simplest way is the best way or whatever. He said, after observing a particular stimulus-response mechanism, "entia non multiplicanda sunt praeter necessitatem."
This does not alter the rest of the points about complexity the author makes, but leave Occam out of it, for the sake of purity - and my grade school biology teacher.
Minnesota GOP Goes for "Super Big Hate"
MINNESOTANS TO VOTE ON WHETHER TO SEND THEIR GAY SONS AND DAUGHTERS PACKING TO OTHER STATES / COUNTRIES
Proponents now have a year or so to buy disinformation ads about gays and generally stoke the fires of fear, doubt, and uncertainty over gays who love each other.
As has been typical, proponents in the MN legislature did not speak on the floor much at all to the merits of the bill. Like cowards or an Inquisition, they - 70 of them - voted, instead, largely in silence.
Update: three Democrats in tow
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Lampoon-laugh of the day
Wait 'till BHL finds out that it was mossad who set up DSK at the Sofitel.
(It's a joke, not part of the crazy 'mossad did everything' conspiracy nuts. And, yes, the timing is bad for this kind of a joke.
But, you do have to admit that the whole thing has the patina of a spy novel set-up, no?)
The latest reconceptionalization of the haplessly defined "War on Terror"
Here.
We had to pay in blood and treasure for the authoritarians and the rightwingers to "get it".
Separately, we can "withdraw" but the shiny new Afghan constitution (on paper) is still what it is, right?
Dennis Ross, Part II
How Dennis Ross ... lacks the vision thing, at a minimum, even if one agrees with some of his tacks or insights.
When is the 'world community' going to realize that the wisdom of leaving the solution to the problem in the hands of the two warring parties, who constantly 'play for time' or 'call off negotiations' and posture indefinitely for preconditions, is ... no longer valid?
Everyone keeps saying that 'everyone knows what a final negotiated settlement looks like', so ... where are the strategists who are willing to map out what the chessboard looks like if we go there and just say what it is?
Clearly, not Dennis Ross.
Meanwhile, George Mitchell leaves the service of the U.S. Government, taking years of experience with him.
You'd think that, since almost all western "powers" have agreed the key importance of mitigating the I/P conflict to their own and broader interests, that we'd have a staff of hundreds, if not thousands, focused on the issue - and maybe its own DIA team, too. So far as I know (which is not much), it's still a smallish bureau at State and the turnover every so often suits Israeli (and Palestinian?) purposes...
Netanyahu: Israel is a rejectionist too
Taking a page from well known rejectionist attitudes, Netanyahu positioned himself for maximal advantage in the US elections.
The US election cycle is clearly part of strategic national consideration in Israel, no?
For Israeli rejectionists: Play for time just after each election, then press the case for more Bush-era "let Israel do what it wants" attitude just before each election. If things start to tilt toward peace, stir the pot with provocations of one kind or another.
Nevertheless, the situation is almost intractable with Hamas - whatever happened to the hope that Gazans would ultimately reject their dead-end, single-minded leadership? How are attitudes in Gaza today?
Friday, May 20, 2011
The 'Appeal to Prejudice': NOM Exposed
A LYING TONGUE
For groups like NOM, voter initiatives aren’t about democracy; They’re about spending millions of dollars lying to the public and scaring on-the-fence voters into opposing LGBT equality.
background
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Media Literacy
A tomb on what you need to know to understand the facts about drug trafficking as it is going on today, right now:
We trust that this report will raise the understanding that covering organized crime requires a new approach, new tactics and new strategies. This is a global phenomenon that knows no borders and that speaks all languages. As such, crossborder collaboration, and regional and global cooperation among those that try to uncover the realities of this business, is fundamental. Journalists in the region are re-thinking media coverage, and there is a need to go beyond the body count and focus on an in-depth analysis of the issues.
Similar to Libya and posting the security agents, I noticed this:
One of the best sources for information on the drug war in Mexico comes from a surprise source. It is blogdelnarco.com. David Sasaki, a specialist in new media at the Open Society Foundations, called it “a citizen replacement for a media that’s been silenced. They publish photos of sons and daughters of narcos. They have a Facebook account. They put information on attack plans, on the guns [the drug traffickers] have, how much drugs they sell. You’ll see photos of narco-bloqueos on Twitter accounts.”
Just the facts
NOM'S CAMPAIGN OF FEAR, LIES, AND INTIMIDATION
GLAD, often the purveyors of some of the most detailed advocacy, have issued a well compiled rebuttal to the DOMA testimony recently allowed to be propagated on the Hill by the new GOP-Tea chairman of the House judiciary committee.
Of special note is their documented section on what the facts are in the case of Catholic Charities in Massachusetts and adoption.
All of it here.
Colorism
THE PERILS OF DOWNSIZING COPY EDITORS
BBC tweeted this article as "Brown leads field at BET awards".
30 Minutes of Sanity
Still one of the best SecDefs ever. It's easy to say I'm biased, because of policy changes, but no... clear, concise, explanatory (not declaratory), ... the list goes on.
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