29 December 2003
Hate vs. compassion
[source]
“We greatly welcome any assistance from the United States. We welcome assistance from all countries except Israel,” [provincial governor] Alavi said.
Yes, clearly better to let people die from the aftermath of an earthquake than suffer the presence of Israelis. There’ll be no peace until those in the Middle East love their children more than they hate the Jews.
The disrespectful youth of today
This is mean, but funny.
In the picture is John Kerry, a Democratic Party candidate for President. He’s doing one of those silly but required exercises where he talks to high school students who can’t vote. The picture shows him trying to make a point to one of the students, whose shirt says “Your mouth keeps moving but all I hear is ‘blah, blah, blah’ “
The article says
The student told the Monitor that he did not mean to make a political statement with the shirt, which features the likeness of “Psycho Chihuahua,” a talking Mexican dog whose appearance in Taco Bell commercials is the subject of recent litigation. “I completely forgot that he” — Kerry, not the Chihuahua — “was coming,” LaGuardia, 17, told the Monitor. “I asked, ‘Do I have time to ride home to change?’ But I didn’t.”
One finds this explanation suspect; LaGuardia admitted that he is a Republican.
I have to agree with the article writer on that last point.
Sadly, if Kerry had an actual campaign this would damage it, despite the complete irrelevance of the image.
However, It’s still funny.
UPDATE: I knew this reminded me of something else — the AG Ashcoft vs. the naked breasts of Justice flap. Ashcroft supporters have maintained that the real problem was photographers striving to make sure the breasts were in pictures of Ashcroft speaking. As far as I can tell, Ashcroft himself has never officially commented on the issue.
Don't put that sauce on me!
Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean has demanded release of secret deliberations of Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force. But as Vermont governor, Dean had an energy task force that met in secret and angered state lawmakers.
Dean’s group held one public hearing and after-the-fact volunteered the names of industry executives and liberal advocates it consulted in private, but the Vermont governor refused to open the task force’s closed-door deliberations.
In 1999, Dean offered the same argument the Bush administration uses today for keeping deliberations of a policy task force secret.
“The governor needs to receive advice from time to time in closed session. As every person in government knows, sometimes you get more open discussion when it’s not public,” Dean was quoted as saying.
I don’t like to pound on Howard Dean, because frankly I want him to get the Democratic Party nomination. That would result not only in a resounding Republican victory in 2004 but would also serve up a giant helping of Big Media Delusion. I fully expect that Big Media will report a close race right until Dean’s concession speech, at which point we’ll have a repeat of the California’s governor’s race aftermath.
It's always more complicated
As an update to yesterday’s post about supporting Poland, Winds of Change has a response. It’s worth reading but the summary is that the issue isn’t money, but equipment. The supplies that are wanted by Poland are ones that the USA doesn’t have suffficient supply for our own front-line troops.
The comments are interesting as well and indicate that no small part of the bottleneck is a political unwillingness to gear up for war production. Blame for that can be attached to President Bush and Congress in equal parts.