Letters to the Editor
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I believe that sometimes when people say
"look at the monkey" it is because they want to change the subject and there isn't actually a monkey present.
Hence I believe that monkeys do not actually exist at all, anywhere. That is the only possible explanation for my behavior.
I suspect this thread has a fair number of other shameful monkey-deniers.
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David Brooks is a disappointment
It's sad to see a man with such obvious intelligence and concern for the world whore himself out for the President on television.
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On the subject of irony (sorry for the message spamming)
In my blog (spamming and blogwhoring, yay!) I covered not only Dana Perino's comments but a followup by Dan Reihl who wrote, in response to Olbermann:
And todays winner of the worst case of moral equivalence evah has to be MSNBC's resident idiot Keith Olberman for comparing Burma's Monks to terrorists being held in Guantanamo.
See..when we detain people it's because they are terrorists! Also this is what Dana said, emphasis added:
Well, unfortunately, intimidation and force can chill peaceful demonstrations. And reports about very innocent people being thrown into detention, where they could be held for years without any representation or charges, is distressing;and we understand that some of the monasteries have been sealed.
"Very innocent people." Totally unlike our very guilty terrorists. It seems dumb but this is how people like Bush, Perino and Reihl really thing: it's wrong for Burma to detain people without trial because those people are innocent, but ok for us to do the same because the people we detain are innocent. How do you know that?
You'll have to read the post. I have discovered an extremely rational and reasonable explanation for our certainty.
http://margalis.blogspot.com/2007/10/just-how-dumb-do-they-think-we-are.html
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Cindy Ross
I despair of the Iranian Bogeyman. Not the Iranian people, mind, but the false threat ginned up by Bush.
Every time this feeling takes hold, I go to a wonderful delicious local "Persian" eatery (Persian is code for Iranian) and commune. Food & drink. (They've been gettin' a lot of my business lately.)
It's not rational, but it in some silly way, makes me feel better. No harm in that?
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Brooks ain't Burke. Berk, maybe, but not Burke
The last Republican worthy of being called a Burkean conservative was Robert Taft. Brooks puts on that label whenever he feels the need to shore up his dignity, the way poseurs of an earlier age might have taken up pipe smoking, or had leather patches sewn on the elbows of their jackets.
If you've followed his flatulent and self-congratulatory pontifications as long as I have, you'd realize that he doesn't have much of a mind to change.
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Sensitivites about anti-Semitism only flow in one political direction
The sensitivity many individuals and organizations express regarding criticism of Israeli governmental policies or about particular individual political figures of Jewish backgrounds do NOT apply toward people or groups of Jewish, even Israeli Jewish background, who oppose right wing and hawkish Israeli policies.
No defense will be raised, nor any limit of calumny be withheld, regarding US citizens of Jewish backgrounds or even of Israeli Jews who advance a counter-hawk agenda.
Every single day I read the English language Israeli Jewish (as well as what Palestinian or Israeli Arab press is available) simply to be able to hear complexities of arguments and widely divergent policy views outside a U.S.-based news media filter of what "is" or "is not" proper. (Needless to say, many actual Israeli Jews complain about the extraordinarily right wing hawk nature of activists and organizations purporting to be "pro-Israel" in the U.S.)
Think about that.
In order to hear an accurately broad debate about Middle Eastern and Israeli politics and current events, I have to read the English language Israeli Jewish press, since the 'debates' here hew to such a ridiculously small range of views.
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two notes: cabal and dual loyalty
1) the word cabal does indeed come from the cabbalists in Spain. It is a reference to the fact that they had secret practices. They did. The anti-Semitism in Spain at the time was related to the allegation that they were trying to take over the Spanish economy. That they were a Jewish group with secret practices, of and by itself, is no more anti-Semitic than that the Masons are an originally Christian group (later persecuted by Christians) with secret practices.
2) dual loyalty has negative connotations. However, dual citizenship is considered legally to be dual loyalty: reference the fact that the Supreme Court ruled in the 1970s that American men of draft age were not allowed dual citizenship, and if they had it, had to declare their allegiance to a single country during the time between their 18th and 34th birthdays (at the time this set off a fracas about sex discrimination, since women are not draftable and therefore need make no such declaration). That is not an anti-Semitic thing, it's literally a national loyalty thing. That such dual loyalty is blamed for nefarious conspiracies can be anti-Semitic, or anti-whichever group it targets, but dual loyalty by itself is not.
Just wanted to clarify. But I'm sure it won't.
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WinSmith...My 'Personal' Thoughts
This is not necessary for me to do, because you've already shown your colors, and I have no care to change them. I've already stated my thoughts on you and what you've had to say. But, just for the heck of it, I'm going to personalize this to an extent.
Joe Lieberman is a backstabbing prick who is contributing to the destruction of our Democratic Republic. He also happens to be Jewish. Which, on it's face, has nothing to do with my abhorrence of him.
Have you read Anne Frank's diary? I have read it several times. I can't tell you how many times reading it made me laugh, smile and also, cry. And I mean really, really cry. I would go so far to say that I came to love Anne Frank. She exposed her soul in her diary. And her soul was/is a beautiful soul. She also happened to be Jewish. Which, on it's face, has nothing to do with the love I feel for her.
But since I despise Joe Lieberman, I'm anti-semitic?
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@ Win : I think we need to define our terms.
Seems like a good moment to reassert my point from the original ADL thread: the evolution of the ADL from a Religiously-themed civic organization to a conservative, political one has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH JUDAISIM, per se. It is easy to imagine the exact same trajectory happening around any number of religious groups. An (admittedly loose) parallel can be drawn to conservative "Christian" groups that purport to speak and--frighteningly--act, on behalf of a "Christian" perspective. (And who have so co-opted the term "Christian" that it is necessary to put it in quotes to distinguish the merely faithful from those that use religion to justify conservative political positions.) The difference is the source of their political power: While conservative "Christian" groups draw theirs from an unquestioning belief in a literal interpretation of their Bible, the ADL's is derived from the vicarious moral authority afforded to such groups after the Jewish Holocaust.
So both things are true: Jews were disproportionately targeted for extinction during the Jewish Holocaust and have historically faced prejudice and violence AND the ADL have traded on the unmitigated tragedy of the Jewish Holocaust to gain political power and influence public policy. These facts can--and, I think--do coexist. Of course anti-Jewish sentiment still occurs, but do you really think that the ADL is the last, best defense against this from of prejudice? Is there anyone who really believes that a sharply worded press release from the Abe Foxman is the only thing standing between the Jews and another Holocaust? Besides Abe Foxman?
During a historical moment when religion asserts so much influence over the public sphere, in both overt and covert ways, it is specious to take umbrage when Jewish political figures are questioned re: their support of Israel and its policies. Cultivating a purposeful naiveté about the strong allegiance that some politically conservative Jewish (and, not coincidentally, "Christian") leaders have to Israel does not end well for those of us less interested in fulfilling a biblical imperative re: the “holy land”/ killing as many Arabs/Muslims as possible/getting a world monopoly on oil. Whatever else it is Israel is also a modern, nuclear state and American military outpost. Those objective facts make criticism of Israel among progressives a necessary position.
And no, Hillary Clinton, whose grotesque pandering while Israel was bombing the hell out of Lebanon last summer, does not get a free pass either. Not with me anyway.