I got an article from an email friend:
Only ten Arabic speakers at Baghdad embassy
Hey, that’s up from 6. Way to go.

Maybe they should put everything on the internet and ask for “free translations”. ;-)

Tim @ 18
Foreign Service officers must serve in hardship posts

The countries that fall into a ‘hardship post’ varies widely. Out of US consular and embassy postings overseas, you’d be very surprised to find out what constitutes ‘hardship.’

I want that geeky Shuster!

Marcy’s most recent TNH post: Sentelle, Henderson, Tatel

It appears that we’ve got our panel for Scooter’s motion for release pending appeal–and we lucked out. Judges Sentelle, Henderson, and Tatel appear to be the panel–the same three judges that heard Judy’s and Cooper’s appeal on their subpoena. Sentelle is no liberal, not by any shade. But his decision on the appeal was reasonable. And Henderson and Tatel? They’re probably not invited to many cocktail parties at Laurence Silberman’s.

They’ve ordered the government to file its response to Libby’s request for bond by the 22nd, Friday. And Libby’s team must respond by the 26th.

(snip)

“And Libby’s team must respond by the 26th.” How sweet it is – June 26th is the birthday of the late great neglected gay American artist Hubert Julian Stowitts who deplored the industrial (corporate) military complex.

I like the idea of audiences calling out to the media moderator to “ask a real question” as happened to Matthews. Of course, if that starts happening more often, media will panic & try to figure out how to avoid it.

TradMed is already looking to remove the people formerly known as the audience from these events; more participation as we saw at AFSCME will only be used to support this thesis: “Audience participation cuts into the time the candidates have to present their views to the American people, our viewers. Therefore, to provide the candidates more time to present their views [and allow Wolf/Tweety/Brian more airtime] we are continuing our debate format but without an audience.“

Watch. It will happen.

LS @ 83

Good God. Podhoretz and his bomb Iran push:

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/…..retz-bomb/

Here’s an excerpt from that ThinkProgress post:

(snip)

In a new interview, Podhoretz was asked to comment on the possible fallout of the military strikes he advocates. “Well, if we were to bomb the Iranians as I hope and pray we will,” Podhoretz says, “we’ll unleash a wave of anti-Americanism all over the world that will make the anti-Americanism we’ve experienced so far look like a lovefest.”

Podhoretz qualified his statement about anti-Americanism, saying it was only a “worst case scenario.” It’s “entirely possible,” he claimed, that “many countries, particularly in the Middle East” would “at least secretly applaud us.”

But even global anti-Americanism is worth it, he argues, to slow Iran’s nuclear program “for five or 10 years or more.” In fact, American Progress senior fellow Joseph Cirincione has argued that such a strike “would not, as is often said, delay the Iranian program…”

(snip)

Yup. They want to think that they have a legitimate reason to bomb Iran into nothingness, but really it’s all about The Ledeen Doctrine:

“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”

Except that The Ledeen Doctrine doesn’t work. All it does is create more enemies. But if you’re an amoral trust-fundie and you already see anyone who might make you a tad less rich than you already are (via taxes for social programs here or overseas) as your enemy, then you don’t care about pissing them off.

Lou Costello @ 88

Still works fine for me but here, try this cached LINK

Got blown off again. It must be MSVISTA doesn’t like the page. Thanks for trying.

Try this LINK