blony

At first one can't help but laugh out loud at the insane tempest-in-a-pee-pot vapors leaking from the sick mind of Ann Coulter.

But Poor Ann is like an ugly prostitute who, having spent her youth compensating for her lack of allure with hyper-enthusiasm for depravity, becomes too distasteful to titillate even the most desperate john as time takes its toll. The woman will be haunted by a Coulter-geist of her own making.

It sounds as though Senator Reid thinks his name is Bush or Cheney and can simply disregard the Constitution and nearly 40 year old Supreme Court precedent (Powell vs. McCormack http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=395&invol=486 ) because of how he feels. In part, the Supreme Court held:

7. In judging the qualifications of its members under Art. I, 5, Congress is limited to the standing qualifications expressly prescribed by the Constitution. P. 550.

It's ridiculously disproportionate that a Democratic Senate that hadn't the stomach to impeach Bush or Cheney would over reach its authority in refusing to seat a reasonably good choice of a reasonably good person to succeed Barak Obama in the Senate on the grounds of how they feel about the character of Blagojevich. The latter remains governor of Illinois and, given the intense scrutiny of his behavior since it was made clear that he would have liked to sell the senate seat vacated by the president elect, there's reason to be confident that it was a clean execution of his authority and duty to select Ron Burris.

That Reid feels Blagojevich is a scumbag puts him among many. However, one's feelings about what a scumbag wanted, but didn't get the opportunity to do, is an altogether different issue from whether Ron Burris is a reasonable choice and is qualified under the Constitution to serve in the Senate.

On the subject of what Blagojevich would have liked to do - perhaps Fitzgerald was overly hasty. Had Blagojevich actually been given the opportunity to commit the crime he wanted to the case against him would hold air a lot better. There seems plenty of evidence of desire to commit a criminal act. Whether the evidence amounts to an attempt remains to be seen.

For the Israeli Air Force slaughtering people in Gaza is similar to the proverbial Like shooting fish in a barrel - after having starved them and denied them medical supplies and other necessities of life for 18 months. The fish in a barrel in this case include women and children ... really, anyone who happens to be in the barrel in the proximity of the next stupid bomb or missile.

So it's no wonder that the Israeli government has also blockaded reporters to the strip and launched a PR blitz to smear kitsch [The absolute denial of the existence of shit - Milan Kundera] over an operation that literally guarantees the slaughter and maiming of innocents.

The kitsch campaign is largely motivated by the perception that Israel forces got bad press during their bombardment of Lebanon:

Israel cites as one of the main reasons for blocking foreign journalists from Gaza its belief that the reporting has been unfair and one-sided.

This is hardly the first time that the Israeli government has complained about perceived bias in the foreign media, but this time it is also putting unprecedented resources into getting its message across.

There is a consensus among many Israeli officials that the last war in Lebanon was, in many ways, a public relations disaster for Israel with Hezbollah winning the propaganda war. The same is not being allowed to happen with Hamas in Gaza. Israel has mobilised politicians, diplomats and supporters world wide to present its case.

Correspondents and reporters based in Israel are receiving dozens of SMS messages offering briefings, interviews, facility trips. One team has even been established to concentrate on bloggers.
-- Israel Supreme Court orders passage for journalists

Hold your nose and follow the money - it's yours: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/31/the-money-behind-israel-h_n_154498.html

Amen but so what?: Why Rick Warren hasn't got a prayer.

... the man [Barak Obama] has chosen to deliver his inaugural invocation is a relentless clerical businessman who raises money on the proposition that certain Americans -- non-Christians, the wrong kind of Christians, homosexuals, nonbelievers -- are of less worth and littler virtue than his own lovely flock of redeemed and salvaged and paid-up donors.

We are bemused by the many protests regarding the selection of Rick Warren to speak at the inauguration of president elect Obama. We agree with most of the protesters. But we think the protesting is narrow and bigoted in its own right.

If you're politically required to charade a witch doctor con artist in front of US citizens does it really matter what brand of snake oil the perpetrator has been pushing? And, since any of the brands amounts to blasphemy with respect to pushers of most of the other brands - some are bound to take offense regardless of the selection.

Personally, we suspect the president elect has similar sentiments. That he has selected such a stinker is a conscious act of wonderfully subtle, exquisitely brilliant gamesmanship - with an eye to the end game.

What is the end game? To promote, front and center, the premise: It is a lousy tradition to poison the inauguration of our nation's president, particularly one so auspicious and historically symbolic as Barak Obama, with voodoo vendors, any of which is going to be offensive to many.

Yes, it might seem better for our president elect to be forthright and eliminate snake oil from the menu altogether. But we seem to have a nation of snake oil addicts - some brand of snake oil, how ever foul the seasoning, must be accommodated to validate an electorate of snake oil consumers - or they will rail against your policies and refuse to vote for you again.

So why not serve up a particularly vile brew and generate a dialog about how distasteful snake oil is in the first place?

I think we have a sorely needed man of many intellectual dimensions as our future president. Look out snake oil vendors, the world over - exposure and dialog are your nemesis.

Way to go, Mr. President Elect!

The two state initiative in Palestine ranks among the stupidest, most evil [arrogant, ignorant aggressiveness] blunders of George W[rong] Bush's neo-con mastered puppet dances.

Is that not a harshly negative assertion to make about a policy endorsed by the UN, Russia and the EU? A Roadmap to a final solution to Zionism's Palestinian problem? A state of their own?

If the idea sounds vaguely familiar, it should - that was and remains the problem in the first place and George W[rong] Bush ranks right down there with Balfour, Herzl and Jabotinsky, not to mention the Kings and Queens of Europe who were sure it was their divine right to appropriate, apportion and colonize the lands of others to satisfy their self-aggrandizing needs.

Hindsight isn't really 20/20. For a refresh, read the retrospective on the colonization of Palestine by European Zionists, Zionism in Palestine" that was published in The Atlantic - October, 1930 - six years after the philosophical father of Likud wrote

Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.

Vladimir Jabotinsky ~ 1923

Zionist Israel should be sanctioned by the US

Zionist Israel is schizophrenic. At sixty years of age, it has no constitution. From the beginning, the foundation for a genuinely legitimate democratic state was seen as problematic. The reasons were obvious then and they remain painfully so now for many, even aside from the Ashkenazi, Sephardic, native-Palestinian issues: Being Jewish in Zionist Israel is a matter of race for some, a disputed matter of disputed religion for some and, by law, a matter for elitist theocrats to decide in a wanna-be modern democracy.

Israel is truly crazy: A so-called modern state with a so-called Jewish identity where personal identity has seethed and tumbled for sixty years of chaos.

A clear, well-paved Path to stability and legitimacy

While it is clear that Zionist Israel is a very crazy state many of the people, perhaps most, of Israel understand full well that equality under the law for all is just, that the Liberty and civil rights of individuals are critical to a democracy. The US, and the rest of the world, could and would support a genuinely democratic state in Israel. A constitution is necessary. Equality under the law for all is necessary. The marginalization and curtailment of the power of right-wing nuts is necessary. Conforming with international law and the UN mandates is necessary.

The foregoing of the insanely anthropomorphic identity of a state must be forsaken so that the citizens of that state may each have the right to his or her own individual identity as a human being in the 21st century.

If the citizens of the US wish to truly help the Jewish people of Israel, they will use carrots, sticks, reason, information and persuasion - both privately and via their government - to convince them that the Liberty and equality under the law they enjoy in the US, along with every other citizen regardless of ethnic origin or religion, is precisely what the people of Israel and Palestine need - each for his or her own well being and for each other.

Peace is simple, even after all these years ... just stop being crazy.

Update: Bush ME legacy

The accomplishments of eighteen months of Gaza siege ...
Crazy people slaughter crazy people who will slaughter crazy people back

Humans are pretty unique critters. May we accept our responsibilities and apply our abilities to staving off the time when it will no longer matter that long ago ancestors passed on to their future generations the joy of warmth, light, sustenance and good will among the clan during the longest, harshest nights in the anticipation of a new year of life.

For one who is not a theist, that is the meaning of the holiday. May you, whatever your metaphor, have a good one.

The up-side of California's proposition 8 will be a showdown between democratic mob rule and the U.S. Constitution and the principles our nation is founded upon.

As the sponsors of proposition 8 are attempting to declare null and void 18,000 marriages performed during the months between the time when California's court validated equality under the law for all citizens and the emotion-hyped passage of proposition 8 by 52% of voters who felt they should be the deciders of which citizens get to marry and which citizens do not, the state's attorney general has finally come to his legal senses.

This issue is not about gay marriage. It is about what every American citizen must hold dear and every public official is bound to uphold and defend: It is about the US Constitution and Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Original Intent that inspired our first citizens to risk and give all in order to establish a nation and system of government its citizens might some day grow into and become worthy of.

An Iraqi reporter, now instant world-wide folk hero Muntazer al-Zeidi, is to be charged with insulting the state or insulting a foreign leader or embarrassing Malaki ... or something.

Granted, the man exercised poor taste and disturbed the peace ... wonderfully so. Would that citizens throughout the region had the courage and the wit to protest so effectively and so ... harmlessly, albeit recklessly. Granted, al-Zeidi should be dealt with - and the toll exacted of him should be proportionate to his action. Perhaps a $20 fine would be appropriate.

Should al-Zeidi be severely punished by the Iraqi government for the expression of his pain, anger and disgust, the current regime in Iraq will have shown itself to be of the same mold as Saddam Hussein.

In the meantime, the ME has something it needs desperately - a folk hero who inspires by his words and his non-lethal protest.

People who can effectively express them selves and be heard are not people who are going to slaughter innocents to make their point.

We envision posters of flying shoes in Palestine, Iran, Syria. Israel will be bombarded with sandals and old shoes instead of Qassam rockets.

We can only hope the man got his shoes back - they'll be worth a fortune on eBay.