i missed the first minute so i thought it was 'My Name is Earl" introducing a new character. I know all the characters on that show are sterotyped idiots, but I thought that "president" character was way too stupid to be funny, and that's why they ignored him in the second half of the program.

as the article points out, briefly, american aid to israel can be looked at as a money laundry for funneling cash to american military hardware manufacturers, a holdover from the cold war when the israeli military was essentially the middle eastern wing of the US military; howsoever one feels about that and the consequences, since the money for fuel is apparently going to American oil companies according to the article, how isn't it just more of the same? (howsoever one feels about that and the consequences)

you could make a case that the natural order of things is for democrats to be in power and republicans the opposition; the natural tendency of democrats/liberals/the left is to find problems and propose government solutions to them, the natural tendency of republicans/conservatives/the right is to oppose that, so both are in their correct place and there is a natural balance.

when you get situations which are against nature, such as republicans in power, you get all the dysfunction of the past few years, where the party which believes that government is corrupt and only exists to perpetuate graft and mismanagement gets to put that theory into practice, and the party which believes that democratic government is, though fallible, essentially a more positive thing than negative, has to try and oppose the administration from that position. all the real conservatives fall away from the republicans and drift into the democratic party, leaving nothing but radical rightwingers in the republicans, and all the progressives fall out of the democrats and become homeless.

the secret is to combine the two.

that's all i wanted to say.

which (before noor married into their divinely ordained monarchy) occupied and annexed the West Bank portion of the "Palestinian State" immediately upon its birth (without any complaints from the world, the Arab nations, or the Palestinians themselves over their need for their own state or the insult of suffering under foreign rule), then, having lost the West Bank after using it as a base to attack Israel in 1967, ethnically cleansed itself of Palestinians in 1970 by killing thousands of them during "Black September" and chasing the rest of them into Lebanon? (Granted, the Palestinians had set up their own paramilitary government complete with taxes, visas, customs, and most ominously, a foreign policy centering around war on Israel; had assassinated King Hussein's grandfather, King Abdullah; and had attempted but failed to assassinate King Hussein. but still the reaction might be seen by some as "disproportionate".) That's the person, who by virtue of her telegenicity and presumed objectivity, is the spokesperson for the need for American media to express the Palestinian point of view? The mind boggles.

Of course, truth be told, Jordan is today not only one of Israel's best friends in the Arab world and one of America's best friends in the Arab world, but also one of the few Arab states which offers citizenship to Arabs of Palestinian origin who desire it, rather than keeping them locked into perpetual refugee status as a thorn in Israel's side. However, since I haven't been able to watch the video yet, I wonder whether Queen Noor might have perhaps enhanced her credibility by mentioning that her country had taken a bit of a hardliner attitude towards the Palestinians at one point, and that perhaps she could therefore understand the motivation of the Israeli hardliners, even though from her advanced and progressive perspective it was misguided?

possible scene at scifi channel:

"you ran WHAT scene at the end of BG? ohmigod, that one was just a joke!!!!"

i still like it when the Warrior Princess told Pres R. that she was the final cylon.

but.... if the cylons are physiologically different enough that they are immediately recognizable by their skeletons, how is it nobody ever noticed that sharon and number 6 the second and the final five minus 1 were a bit different?

i thought starbuck was going to identify the moldering remains of the real john mccain, and the crashed vehicle would turn out to be the straight talk express. that would have explained a whole lot.

the concept that the bush administration and the iraqi war were "good for israel". good maybe, just maybe, for israeli rightwing political parties. but it'd be hard to make the argument that liberating iran from attending to iraq and allowing them to become a nuclear power are going to be beneficial to israel the country.

and a substantial segment of the population, Jew and nonJew alike, would argue that giving israel an absolute free hand in anything palestinian-related is about as beneficial as standing by appovingly while your best friend deals with a dispute with his neighbor by trashing the guy's car and house with a sledgehammer. unless, of course, the intent is to drive all the israeli political parties further to the right.

the president of pakistan is musharaff, not general

iraq and iran are two separate places.

there aren't any wmd in the oval office

you need to turn on a segway or it falls over

and he was born in kenya too!

bush provides a handy place to place the blame/guilt of all those who supported his actions, and the lesser guilt of those who just went along so as to not rock their personal boat. me included, of course. from the moment we let the republican brooks brother riot take the election in 2000 through every crappy action they did with our major response being griping and blogging.

"heh heh. don't know who this feller is he's talkin' 'bout, but he's really givin' it to 'im. heh heh"