Well, if no one else will, I’ll say it: Fitz!

And Ned!

And Christy!

And Jane!

And Roots!

fitz 2

I just want to say for the record that this is the very first time I’ve gotten a YouTube to work for me in a post. Yay! (Huge thanks to Jane, who talked me through it the other day. I’m feeling like such a techie now. *g*)

wonder how many people, during Bush’s announcement of his veto on stem cell, were throwing their shoes at the tv and yelling, “you stupid sonavabitch!”

what a self-righteous prick!

Umm, Christy, YouTube no worky…

… Just Kidding ;)

Urban Pirate at 4 — It’s working for me. Try it again…

“Hezbollah sent rockets into Nazareth today (Rita Cosby on MSNBC says it was Jesus’ hometown!)”

Oh my. Is that a quote?

Hezbollian rockets, weren’t they?

I’m surprised the Turks haven’t invaded sooner. The deal is this: 1) The Turks hate the Kurds and always have. 2) The Kurdish homeland in Iraq is the source of the rivers that supply Turkey with most of its fresh water; there’s no way in hell that the Turks will let their age-old enemies control their water supply. 3) The proposed Iraqi Kurdish capital, Kirkuk, is one of the wealthiest oil cities in Iraq. No way will the Turks let their age-old enemies have the resources to set up a viable nation.

OMG, their trying to kill Jeebus?

OK so do we think Shrub pulled the frat boy stunts out of the closet to distract the media attention from the war?

Better to look like you have such exuberant self confidence that you = bad manners, than to look completely limp and impotent in the face of a regional war that you can’t/don’t know how to respond to?

Could it possibly have been calculated gauchehness?

More importantly, is “gaucheness” even a word or did I make it up in my fevered imagination?

Jim at 7 — pretty much, yep. And she said it repeatedly, just variations on the theme.

Hezbolloofah rockets . . .

Totally OT:
That moron has signed his very first veto to the stem cell bill. A political farce, it still plays the knife edge of hoping to bring the evangelicals back into the fold.

Lordy, lordy, I hope this plays out as I expect it to. And as it is playing against Talent’s miscalculations in Missouri:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13...../newsweek/

Love to laugh at the Bush boy. He deserves our laughter, But I wonder if he can hear it inside the bubble.

“Gaucheness” is not only a poifeckly good woid, lhp, but a poifeckly good cue for punaise.

Now where that boy be?

Phoenix Woman, water will be the “oil” of the 21st century, doncha bet?

Froomkin does have a very good column today, seems like the recent attack just got him revved up. The most bizarre and egregious stuff just goes by these days under the rader. The folks who think Watergate scandal and RMN regisnation were an intrusion on proper governance seem to have taken over the fed government and the corporate media.

blog whore alert!: Throwing the bums out is fun too, so I will point out a blog and website I started. Blog contains analyses of registrating and voting patterns so we are not at mercy of the consultants. Plus truly wonderful and totally excellent series “Grassroots Founders” where I show that Jefferson, Hamilton et al would want firedoglakers to get out the vote. We are the original American Way, not them, pundit propaganda to the contrary. Click through to Votinglinks website, which has all GOTV and election related links I could find. End Blogwho… er, announcement.

Gaucherie is more the language of Punaise …

I watched the Preznit holler on TV about his veto surrounded by a bunch of supporters and noisy kids — odd thing: all the folk were white that I could see. I know about this “Snowflake” thing but an all-white crowd of people is kinda extreme … couldn’t they have found an African-American cleaning lady or file clerk to stand behind the Preznit? Rove must be off his feed today!

Kos reports via TMPCafe:

CT-Sen: Lieberman mulls running as a Republican

If that doesn’t shake the trees of those Dems who still support Lieberman, I don’t know what will.

Bye-bye Joe. I wish I could say its been nice knowing you.

My sentiments exactly. And what would Boxer do then, if this is Joe’s intention?

Lebanese PM Urges Cease-Fire
Israel hits Beirut’s Christian enclave for first time. Two children killed by rocket attack in Nazareth.
–Anthony Shadid, Edward Cody and William Branigin 1:44 p.m. ET

*ilson

Gaucherie, YES YES

Q:
What is the “snowflake thing”?

Christy at 12:

Seems like a rather “over the top” attempt by Rita the Meter Maid to get those Fundies gnashing their teeth about some “other” heretical religion’s attack on one of the Fundie’s holy places.

and don’t forget two good interviews over at skippy:

skippy interviews prof. richard hanley of quinnipiac u’s school of communications about the influence of blogs in the lamont/lieberman race

….and….

skippy gets interviewed by bloggasm about blogging

.

Isn’t Nazareth a holy city for more than one religion?

Ok, wait. So Bush The Son was 44 years old and his mom, Zippy The Clown Babs, had to send him to the corner to eat his din-din because he was acting naughty??? Ooooof, that’s tough going. Way too much information.

lhp
The “snowflake” program — which is common practice but is also satire — is facilitating the adoption white babies (and not those other types).

click on my name in comment to get the blog and site. I’m so lousy at the blogosphere, I can’t even BW properly.

BTW, I was wondering what the fuss was about the little neck rub in the news, I just saw a picture briefly in the paper and thought it was Harriet Miers at some staff meeting. So I figured, that is the blogosphere totally out of countrol, why pound on the guy for that? Then I read it was the German Chanceller! Yeesh. The Decidertaing presidentin’ President is getting out of control.

imm

How depressing

wesgapc

Clicked through. Added it to my bookmarks. very nice.

lhp –

The “snowflake” thingy is worse than imm describes — it’s about adopting orphan in vitro embryos that would otherwise be destroyed or used to save lives through embryonic stem cell research.

Cryogenic blastocyst adoption — only in Bush ‘Murka . . .

the ChristoFascists have “Operation Snowflake” which tries to get leftover, unused ultra-frozen blastocysts donated to use in women that are infertile — sorta like an adoption system. Last I heard, there were 13 kids born that way and all Caucasian. The African-American community knows there are too-many alreaby-born babies of color available for adoption immediately. The blastocyst route isnt an issue there …

OK, I have another perspective on this stem cell research thing. As you know, the President is just keeping research facilities from getting federal money for stem cell work that includes anything other than approved lines. This does not really curtail stem cell research, it just slows it down in the United States and — here is my point — makes all useful products of stem cell research private property, not government property.

So, cure for Parkinsons? Pay for it, sucka.

That is Imm.s take on the real opposition to federal dollars for stem cell research. Bush is handing the scientific breakthroughs to 1) private business and 2) the rest of the world.

We will be selling the Chinese cute little cheap toys soon.

After googling, looks like I’m wrong, in fact some say Nazareth didn’t exist in Jesus’s time and no mention made until the third century. Maybe it’s Bethlehem I’m thinking of.

This boat is sinking. A little snippet from Raw:

The Associated Press reported that the Senator who defeated former Democrat Minority Leader Tom Daschle in the 2004 election declared at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, “If I were running in the state this year, you obviously don’t embrace the president and his agenda.”

Thune is seeking to be elevated to the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2008, and warned that because the president’s approval ratings are so low, “these are going to be tough races to win,” referring to this November’s Congressional elections.

after Bush’s showing his uncouth self all week during G8, for him to get on the tv to trumpet his veto as some sort of moral superiority… the great keeper of the faith….

GACK! sickening!

Nice respect for the lady talking to Letterman, whose jacket got used as an eyeglasses rag. Classy. Again.

That woman, Maria Pope, just happened to be the Executive Producer of the show.

the Operation Snowflake thing is very real but its political purpose is to demonstrate: why kill the blastocysts to do icky things like scientific research when you can make beautiful babies with them? Last I saw, there is an estimated 500,000 cryogenic blastocysts in freezers but the Preznit says none whatsoever can be used for science!

I don’t see a big problem with snowflake project in itself. But it used to promote a big lie, that all these blastocysts left over from in vitro fetilization can be ’saved’ by this kind of adoption. There are tens and tens of thousands of them, more are being produced every day, and old ones are degrading every day. If some one wants to do it, fine, but the idea that all these cell clusters could be ‘redeemed’ by snowflaking them, is nonsense.

P at 27 — you are kidding! OMG — that is wrong on so many levels, and it takes me right back to the whole Merkel backrub disrespect of a woman in a professional setting. I thought she might at least be one of Bush’s advance people that he knew and worked with or something…but Letterman’s executive producer? Absolutely un-freaking-believeable.

Meta @ 27:

Evidently all those stern lectures regarding etiquette that involved the phrase ‘dining with your 13th cousin twice-removed’ failed to take root.

;>)

Jesus was born in a manger in the little town of Bethlehem but he grew up in Nazareth (was there a Nazareth H.S.?)

Yeah, well, we took “care” of the cradle of civilization for those fundies- kaboom!

bbuster, since Nazareth is considered by many to be where Jesus did live and since He is revered by Islam and Nazareth is home primarily to Israeli Arabs now, it would not be a place that would be targeted on purpose, imho.

The kids at the veto were children born from donated embryos, that is what I heard the bobblehead saying thru my tears.

No one knows where Jesus was born. I think in the Gospels he’s said to be either from Bethlehem or Nazareth, in different passages, depending on what point the authors wanted to make. She made a silly comment to stir up silly emotions. Interesting to know what the Lebanese Christians’ reaction to it would be.

EPU’d from previous thread —

Interesting to watch ABC’s “Good Morning America” coverage of W’s diplomatic trip. GMA are generally out-and-out cheerleaders for Bush.

The other day, they did a “wink, wink, nod, nod, the President said a bad word…” lead-in to the clip of the open-mike gaffe with Blair. Never mind that they bleeped out the “shit” and played the rest at such a low volume you had to be a lipreader to tell what was said.

But today, nothing, absolute nada on the groping of PM Merkel. I guess it didn’t pass their standards of (in)decency.

On today’s stem-cell veto, I imagine many of you read the New Yorker piece about the Republican war on science a few months ago. If you haven’t, please check it out as I am sure you will learn a few things about what a federal funding bans actually means.

As far as I can see it, the president laid the line in the sand down double-thick today. If you don’t believe in science and you think that things have gotten progressively better in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last four years and you don’t mind the government listening in on all your phone calls, then you’ll definitely want to be voting Republican in November. Everybody else, well, I think George would prefer that you just don’t vote. I can hardly wait until next year when Newt starts running as a “fresh-faced outsider with some shiny new ideas”.

peace,
jim

the dude is often called “Jesus of Nazareth” — in some neighborhoods he was simply called “The Nazarene” (I guess there weren’t an awful lot of folk from Nazareth wandering around)

If you accept that the guy existed, then the definition of ‘hometown’ is fair game. I guess when he returned after hiatus, he was called J/Naz…
But, if ‘hometown’ = birthplace:

http://www.boston.com/news/nat.....he_record/

“Correction: Because of a reporting error, a Page One story yesterday about developments in the Middle East said Nazareth was where Christ was born. Christ was born in Bethlehem.
—-
I cannot fathom why anyone reports anything about this to begin with. Folks are in distress across a broad swath of that general area. We are responsible for alot of it; in other cases we (meaning the folks making decisions) either don’t care or are so inept at their jobs they might as well not care. Shameful.
—–
Christy:
Froomkin rokz! Thanks for the links.
—–
I see this is outdated…good thing I didn’t use “Speedy Kludge’ (if ya find one,IRL, lemme know.) ;->
——
cheers

Nazareth H.S.- Home of the fighting Jesii

I’m just sputtering today over the stem cell veto… condemning people to diseases that don’t have to be…. I think these people must believe that anyone with an illness has it due to their sins…

it’s a creepy, creepy thing… and then to watch all the destruction in Lebanon - wasn’t there some other way to clear out Hezabolla that didn’t involve destroying all the infrastructure? and Bush’s unwillingness to step in to negotiate, provide some diplomatic assests - chaos - these nitwits just LOVE the chaos… must be a lot of money in it for them.

Oh goody, just when I needed a change of subject (you too, lhp?), a friend with LexNex supplies today’s MoDo. Here are some chunks of it:

Reporters who covered W.’s 2000 campaign often wondered whether the Bush
scion would give up acting the fool if he got to be the king.

Would he stop playing peekaboo with his pre-meal moist towels during airplane interviews? Would he quit scrunching up his face and wiggling his eyebrows at memorial services? Would he replace levity and inanity with gravity?

. . .

The open-microphone incident at the G-8 lunch in St. Petersburg on Monday illustrated once more that W. never made any effort to adapt. The president has enshrined his immaturity and insularity, turning every environment he inhabits — no matter how decorous or serious — into a comfortable frat house.

No matter what the trappings or the ceremonies require of the leader of the free world, he brings the same DKE bearing and cadences, the same insouciance and smart-alecky attitude, the same simplistic approach — swearing, swaggering, talking to Tony Blair with his mouth full of buttered roll, and giving a
startled Angela Merkel an impromptu shoulder rub. He can make even a global summit meeting seem like a kegger.

Catching W. off-guard, the really weird thing is his sense of victimization. He’s strangely resentful about the actual core of his job. Even
after the debacles of Iraq and Katrina, he continues to treat the presidency as a colossal interference with his desire to mountain bike and clear brush.

. . .

The world may be blowing up, and the president may have a rare opportunity to jaw-jaw about bang-bang with his peers, but that pales in comparison with his burning desire to return to his feather pillow and gym back at the White House.

“Gotta go home,” he tells the guy next to him. “Got something to do tonight. Go to the airport, get on the airplane and go home.” A White House spokesman said Mr. Bush had nothing on his schedule after he returned to Washington on Monday about 4 p.m.

When he began meandering about how big Russia was, you expected him to yell, “Yo, Condi!” and ask his secretary of state: “Hey, what’s the name of that other big country that has more people than any other country in the world? It begins with a ‘C.’ Dad spent some time there.”

Perhaps it’s that anti-patrician chip on his shoulder, his rebellion against a family that prized manners and diplomacy above all. But when bored or frustrated, W. reserves the right to be boorish — no matter if the setting is a
gilded palace or a Texas gorge.

He treated Tony “As It Were” Blair like the servant in “The Remains of the Day,” blowing off his offer to help with the Israel-Lebanon crisis, and changing the subject from substance to fluff at one point, noting about his 60th-birthday Burberry gift: “Thanks for the sweater. Awfully thoughtful of you.” Then he razzed the British prime minister, who was hovering and wheedling like an abused wife: “I know you picked it out yourself.”

After doing his best to undermine the U.N. and Kofi Annan, W. talked about the secretary general like a fraternity pledge he wanted to send out for more beer or a keg of Diet Coke: “I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen.”

His loosey-goosey confidence that everything could be fixed with a phone call — and not even a phone call made by him, and not even a phone call made to the Iranians, who have more control over Hezbollah — was striking. He seems to have no clue that his own headlong, heedless actions in the Middle East have contributed to the deepening chaos there, and to Iran’s growing influence and America’s diminished leverage.

Mr. Bush may resent the sophistication required of a president. But when the world is going to hell, he should stop chewing and start thinking.

And may I say, that several here have done a better job than this on the topic?

That Bush would grab the clothing at hip level of a woman he did not know and use it to clean his likely spit laden glasses is beyond belief. Maybe some day we’ll be treated to a clip of a woman actually smacking him one or asking him to keep his fucking hands to himself.

Teenage Jesus got an “A” in Nazareth H.S. Woodshop . . .

He got an “F” in Roman Civics . . .

If you want to read some pretty righteous ranting about what a pure jerk George Bush really is, I suggest you look at Justin Frank’s old posts over at HuffPo (check the blogger’s index, or just go to Justin Frank ). Modesty prohibits me from saying any more about it.

You can jerk the Rita out of Faux, but never remove the Faux from Rita. Investigative reporter, my &*(, she is a rabblerouser and a tabloid mongrel, among far too many of the same ilk. I will say that CNN reporters in Syria and Lebanon and Gaza have done a sorta good job today.

blech.

Guess I’m in a really lousy mood.

Sorry, folks.

Froomkin is very good today.

BTW - is Bush sending in a hostage team to save the cells before they become murdered? What if they haven’t been saved before they get wasted? [I almost didn’t get confirmed over this topic, so I guess I should movea along *g*]

Here’s my pondering. The OPR investigation should have been a big nothing. A real big nothing. Why would they conceivably want to block it?

The Congresscritters never asked for a Prof Responsibility investigation - they wanted Pat. Act violations and program investigations. Fine & Co. offered up an OPR investigation as being the “only thing” that could happen, bc they seemed to think no IGs are authorized to investigate criminal violations of US law if they are authorized by the AG or Pres.

So the OPR was just to see if Gonzales acted in accord with Prof Resp. duties - how big a yawner would that have been? So I’m thinking one of two things.

First, they are going to fight the battle, dramatically make a show of good faith closer to elections, and let the yawn out saying — see, told ya, nothing to see here, move along.

Second, there are some stringent objections from sources papering the files. So strong, they make it quite a bit harder for Gonzales et al to claim that there was dept consensus that the PResident can break the law whenever. Maybe some discussions of how to mislead Cong and the public with the misstatements, maybe a hard time not having info that refers to other undisclosed programs that make the AGs misstatements in his nomination hearings and thereafter look more and more like fibs, etc.

Who knows though? BUt I wonder why the effort to block a little Prof Rep investigation of all things?

Bush spoke at the White House, where to illustrate his point he’d gathered 18 families that included children born from implanted embryos. “These boys and girls are not spare parts,” Bush said.

Yeah, you want spare parts go to Lebanon or Iraq,They got’s lot’s of ‘em.
Words fail me.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/.....index.html

I read that ‘the Press’ hated Gore. Unclear why.

They musta REALLY hated him, if they KNEW the Real Bush during the campaign.

Something goofy happened on link above. It is the wrong one.
Right one is here.
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon.....075086.htm

Too bad the stem-cell vote wasn’t veto-proof; seems like Congress didn’t heed the will of the people either.

OT and YOWZER:

Red Sea is parting to create a new ocean
By Mark Henderson, Science Editor

The Red Sea is parting in a way that could ultimately create a new ocean basin and redraw the map of Africa and Arabia.

A huge rift that appeared last year along a fault in the Afar desert in Ethiopia, where the African and Arabian tectonic plates meet, has provided the strongest indication yet of how the plates are separating to create a new sea.

Geologists believe they are witnessing a tectonic process similar to the one that formed the Atlantic Ocean, as adjacent plates push apart over millions of years to alter the shape of the continents.

. . .

Thank you, President Bush, for protecting me and my family from those evil stem cells.

So, Nazareth was Jesus’ home town, eh?

vote here if you feel like punching something wrt the chimp’s veto and screaming– vote is 82% pro stem cell research.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7834030/

The only positive thing about the veto I see is, The rift in the Republican party just got bigger.
Good.

Anne, the stem cell bill has a chance of override, although as someone pointed out, it is tough to imagine four votes among the nuts who voted against it. Any Nebraska folks here? What is Nelson at? is he really right of Hagel?

thanks for the reminder, Bustednuckles @ 65 - that actually DOES help!

Ooohh, Lotus, you’re reminding me I need to put more attention into my disaster preparedness kit. 5.0 quake in Humboldt today. My stomach hurts now.

Mary - I’m sure he would send Condi in to the rescue, but she’d need a couple of weeks to figure out what kind of shoes you wear to rescue frozen embryos…(”ok, these are frozen things, so it must be cold, but is it wet, too? Ugh, these boots don’t look dominatrix-y enough - make my legs look like stumps…”)

(Pardon me for taking such a sexist view, here, but ever since I read that she was shoe-shopping in NY during Katrina, I’ve felt like she betrayed women everywhere who have worked for years to get past just that kind of stereotype)

32-ck- says

July 19th, 2006 at 11:45 am
lhp –

The “snowflake” thingy is worse than imm describes — it’s about adopting orphan in vitro embryos that would otherwise be destroyed or used to save lives through embryonic stem cell research.

Cryogenic blastocyst adoption — only in Bush ‘Murka

What the fuck!

Please tell me you are making that up.

Wonder if Specter is pissed enough about the veto to fight, NOW? An Impeachment and Dem control of Congress and we are well on our way to embracing the future and leaving the middle ages behind us for good.

Humboldt quake? What’re ya waiting for?! Snag some weed in the confusion! ;->

Primordial Ooze says:
July 19th, 2006 at 11:59 am

Nazareth H.S.- Home of the fighting Jesii

And the school newspaper is the End Times?

Sorry.

What I don’t understand is why they (press, admin) have all been so enamoured for so long. I was at the Rice calling Tenet from Africa part in Suskind’s book last night and it is just pathetic (if true - I’m not a big truster) how Tenet made excuses for Bush’s decision to let Rice tether Tenet to the end of the stake, climb a tree, then start calling, “here, kittykitty.”

There’s a kiddy desire to please and to be “in” and to not want to think that Bush himself approved of any of the machinations that hung them out to dry. It’s no wonder O’Neill didn’t last - he didn’t have that giddy, goosebumpy, giggly teenage girl in lust fixation.

This bill would support the taking of innocent human life of the hope of finding medical benefits for others. It crosses a moral boundary that our society needs to respect, so I vetoed it,” Bush said at a White House event where he was surrounded by 18 families who “adopted” frozen embryos that were not used by other couples, and then used those leftover embryos to have children.

>>>>>
A good use for the embryos, but lots. and lots. end up in the trash.

On a more serious note, Bushie’s grope really made my skin crawl, probably because I’ve been reading John Dean’s new book this week. Authoritarian control and aggression just for the hell of it–that’s our boy.

I know Greenwald and everyone else have been beating this do death, but the book is a highly recommended read. A nice accessible summary of the research on the authoritarian personality, and a lot of spot-on examples of how it’s the defining characteristic of the sociopathic cabal that’s taking the country over a cliff.

Wow. The poll has over 102 thousand responses. I’ve never seen one go over 100k. Maybe I’m sheltered…

yeah… making medical waste out of embryos is significantly more moral that using them for the betterment of humankind…

uh-huh… I feel like I’m having one of those real bad nightmares where nothing anybody says makes any sense at all…

Rita,
I am assuming that the father, the son, and the holy ghost got the fuck out of there before the rockets hit.

to make the matter of Nazareth even more complicated, for years the mayor of the town was a card-carrying Communist — for real!

Mary

“[I almost didn’t get confirmed over this topic, so I guess I should movea along *g*]”

Confirmed? are you a judge?

lhp, I think Mary was referring to Roman Catholic sacrament of Confirmation.

either a judge or a nun …

Dean’s book…
Just looked at local library catalog. Three copies being processed. None headed to the main branch. Odd. The main is the one that I just got ‘Crasching the Gate’. You’d think the ‘flagship’ would have it coming. (plus it has the kludgey advantage of being walkably local.)

OTOH -
—-
Walkably local Comm College (my alma mater; great libraians - they’d LOVE FDL) has “HWAPA”. On hold. Looks like the only copy for a very wide area.
(Coop system includes most of MA west of Worcester.)

Christy, thanks for the link to “ANKARA” wanting to invade Northern Iraq. Maybe the TM will figure out why Cluster*uck wasn’t supposed to invade and occupy Iraq at $267,000,000/day. Pretty soon everybody in the ME is going to be trying to “liberate” everyone else.

ohh..I’d love to ‘Tell it to the judge.”

Mary?…

John Casper

Shows you just how lapsed a lapsed Catholic I am. I never even thought about sacramental confirmation

Recovering Catholics are my favorite kind.

What’s really sad is that a lot of seriously hard and bi-partisan work went into the drafting of the stem cell bill. It is a fine thing that people who would not otherwise have had children were able to do so through the adoption of embryos that would otherwise have been disposed of as medical waste.

That being said, if I recall correctly, those who have unused embryos could request that they not be destroyed, so no one who was opposed to stem-cell research, or what they view as the unnecessary destruction of life, would have to contemplate those as possible fates for their own embryos.

But, once again, seems people are not content to be able to make that choice for themselves, but must insert themselves into a decision-making process that should only involve those with unused embryos in storage.

What’s next? “You made these embryos – you birth ‘em; we don’t care if there are 8 of them – you’ll have to have 8 children. Take your time.”

Apologies if it’s been linked in previous posts, but Sterling Newberry has a great post up on BOP and TPM Cafe entitled “The Death of a Decade”, in which he lays out his case for Bush having reached an irrecoverable downside tipping point.
http://www.bopnews.com/archives/006554.html#6554
As usual, Sterling has some priceless lines:

A culture of cement headed fanatics is no[t] the same as a culture of hard headed businessmen, let alone pointy headed academics. Its shape is different. It is able to function in an environment of suspended rules, because the “rules” mean nothing to them. The cognitive dissonance that people who believe what they observe and intuit does not touch them. They, unlike Wiley Coyote, never look down. They do not see the world, because they do not believe in it. If told to fix the numbers, they feel no guilt or shame, they do not need blue ribbon commissions for cover, they simply turn up the heat and simmer the books a bit longer.

. . . Bush has not merely presided over the longest period of undivided government in 40 years, but he has also populated the government, down to low levels, with people who will believe that 2 2 = 5 if one can find a biblical verse that can be construed to mandate it. The US government is becoming increasingly dysfunctional, because it is populated with political appointees who will not believe a weather map, or an intelligence report, if either conflicts with their preconceived notion of how events “must” play out.

Every day through my email box I receive a stream of jokes, cartoons and rants about the Chimperial presidency, and the primate of America. These jokes are dismissed as some unhealthy obsession with a leader of opposing political philosophy. But instead they are the result of an irreconcileable war of ideas. Is the state to be run by those whose mandate is to face the facts and decide on actions? Or to be run by those who decide on actions and then deface the facts?

Long, but worth a read.

PS: For some reason the comment engine doesn’t want to display ‘plus’ signs. We’ll see if they publish.

It is so immoral and unethical that we have and allow the science to produce life in a petrie dish and provide joy to a family and then refuse to use the discarded embryos to preserve and protect the lives of those much less fortunate.

Is this “compassionate conservatism” and the “culture of life?” I guess the world is flat and evolution is a crock.

Slightly reminiscent of a master race, imho. Survival of the fittest– I guess we’re still there.

Nope.

Or Mary may be an Episcopalian. (From which I myself am recovering.)

Athens News Agency - CNN Trk said that the Turkish Armed Forces are going to send 50,000 troops in Northern Iraq in order to destroy bases of PKK. The Turkish Military Assembly also has plans to conduct aerial operations against PKK positions.

http://www.zaman.com/?bl=inter.....p;hn=34898

OfT: Better a “lapsed Catholic,” than a lapsed Xtian, like the whole RC hierarchy imo.

The Israelis are picking some odd targets for their “smart bombs” if their goal is go after Hezbollah: direct hits on a Catholic hospital, a Greek Orthodox church, a dairy processing factory, the Red Cross, privately operated factories, the Lebanese Army…

LOLOL

Plain old Methodist confirmation.

I did hold a judges card for horse shows for several years - but that’s it. Friends who are lawyers crack up when they find out that when I was in Richmond I got tagged to be one of (the MANY) judges at a moot court competitions.

I don’t do lit.

Mary, is being a Judge, like in a bankrupty court in your future? (not to get personal or anything?)

It is important to realize that Bush’s lethargic response to the events in Lebanon is itself a policy of acquiescence to Israeli actions there. The Israeli soldiers were captured on the 12th. If Bush was interested in squelching the potential for violence, he would have sent Rice or a senior envoy to the area immediately and counseled restraint on all sides (meaning Israel) in the meantime. This did not happen. A week of destruction of the infrastructure of Lebanon has passed and there is some talk that Rice may go out there sometime early next week. What this means is that the Israelis will have two full weeks to continue their pounding of Lebanon before there is even the beginning of a likelihood that their attacks will taper off. If they do, it will not be because of Condoleezza Rice but because the Israelis will have no more targets to hit in Lebanon. I think this is the plan: we soft pedal while the Israelis shoot up the place but it has one substantial obstacle and that is Hezbollah which very likely won’t play along. If this happens Rice will go home empty handed and the violence will continue as long as Hezbollah has rockets or finds other ways of hitting the Israelis.

The result of all this will be an impoverished Lebanon, a radicalized South, and if things get really bad a destabilized state. None of these things are in Israel’s long term interests. In addition, the Muslim world will see this latest unchecked violence in Lebanon along with Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank and ours in Iraq as just more evidence of the West as represented by us and Israel making war upon them, their culture, and their religion. Again if you are interested in security and you are an American or an Israeli, this is not good.

Just as Bush took unearned credit for the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon then said the Syrians could fix the current crisis if they wanted to and then warned Syria not to return to Lebanon, the Muslim world sees us as being able to control Israeli actions if really wanted to. Whether we can or how much we can is beside the point, what is clear to the Muslim street is we don’t even try.

As has happened so often in our relations with Israel, they use our support for them to act in intransigeant and irresponsible ways, knowing full well that is we who will eventually have to pay the price.

Also you have to question what Israel’s strategic objectives are here. The destruction or defanging of Hezbollah was a nonstarter from the getgo. Hezbollah in additon to being a militia and social organization is the major party of the Shia who are the majority in Lebanon. You can’t destroy Hezbollah without destroying the Shia and there is a name for that.

The talk of stationing somebody’s troops in the South is also pretty much a nonstarter. We don’t want to send and don’t have to send any troops to the area and Israel wouldn’t want them for much the same reason that they don’t want a robust UN presence there either, it would preclude further major incursions on their part into Lebanon. The Israelis themselves have also tried the occupation of the South and after 18 bitter years they realized it wasn’t worth it. And, of course, nobody wants the Syrians there either, including the Syrians. So that leaves the Lebanese army. There are two things to be said about the Lebanese army. It’s weaker than Hezbollah and would lose in any confrontation with it. It contains many Shi’ites and the idea that they are going to start a civil war with their brethren is just stupid. This I think gets to the core of the Israeli strategy. It is stupid and bound to fail from the start. Israeli policy is inextricably tied into the same mindset we see with our own neocons. Israeli right wing or neocon thinking has the same topsy-turvy ideas that you can make peace by making war and that if we bomb them enough they will thank us for it.

As with American neoconservatism, this is crazy and it will fail at great cost borne mainly by the innocent. In all of this what is missing is that Israel has never really bothered to ask Hezbollah what it wants. Perhaps Hezbollah demands would be too much or too extreme. OTOH a framework for prisoner exchanges and resolution of the status of the Shaba Farms could well produce the peace on its Northern border that has so far eluded Israel. It’s something the Israelis haven’t tried and should.

And this silly thing is Bush’s first veto. An important point to make, if the gutless wonders running the establishement Dem Congressional campaigns wanted to.

90 plus 91 = 1
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As in one single line of thought thru two comments.
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I coined ‘Un/Catholic’ for the way I am. (And I kinda like the Latin Mass mystique…very hallucinatory for a child’s perceptions.
Only ‘religion’ I’ve ever felt comfortable is Grateful Dead. Really.

One Week
by emptywheel
So the Bush Administration has decided that Israel will be given One Week to inflict as much damage on “Hezbollah” as it can. I put Hezbollah in quotes because Israel’s targets are apparently aimed more directly at the supporters of Hezbollah than Hezbollah itself. And by supporters, Israel is including anything–Shiite Lebanese civilians, airports, even Lebanese Christian who might in some be seen as tolerating Hezbollah’s actions….”

Speaking of religion…I’ve got some dude teaching Sunday School about intelligent design.
Can anyone give me a shortcut to a site that knows the issues and discusses both sides?
He was babbling on about irreducible complexity (?) and my brain started to hurt. I had to shut it down.
I want to be prepared this time.

Immanentize at 11:47, by Fitz I think you’ve got it on stem cells.

We should never let the essential inappropriateness of these guys distract us from the fact that they are constantly pushing certain objectives.

lhp –

All your uterus belong to Boosh . . .

Yours has been assigned to nurture blastocyst snowflake # 474682-GOP; should you or your uterus refuse this assignment, you will be given a one way ticket to the uterus reedjumakation camp at Bergen-Belsen-on-the-Pecos.

That is unserious — the snowflake blastocyst adoption is totally true.

Minnesotachuck, thanks very much for the link. The part that jumped off the page at me was:
“But instead they are the result of an irreconcileable war of ideas.”

Yes, irreconcileable and inconsolable.

Blank Kludge, you might enjoy non-Roman, but still Catholic liturgies, such as Russian, Ukranian etc. It’s somewhat similar to the latin rite. Eastern-rite Catholics do not respect the primacy of Rome and have married priests, (but no women priests). Rome, however, does accept the Eastern Rite Catholics.

A**hole vetoed it because they couln’t find a way to use a signing statement. I predict there will be fallout over this for Stupie McFuckhead from his own people. It may not be anything you see right away but, Lot’s of them have been distancing themselves from him already.And now that he has slapped his own in the face ,coupled by his outrageous behavior(s), THE WEDGE is in.
Add to this formula Ralph Reed, Joenertia,Delay and the countless scandals pending, Stupie is in for a ride.

ilson @ 43….

I was taught it was “Jesus of Nazareth” (in Sunday school a bazillion years ago)