Tuesday, Hamas gunmen opened fire on and killed four Israeli civilians, including a pregnant woman, in the West Bank. Following the attack, more than three thousand Gazans held a celebration in the streets.
Three thousand Gazans celebrated the murder of four civilians.
Now, I understand there are two sides to almost every issue, and I even understand what leads people to commit acts of terrorism… but I’m sorry, these people aren’t human beings. Aside from the fact that feeling pride over the murder of four civilians is kind of pathetic, how twisted do you have to be to take to the streets and hold a mass celebration?
As of this morning, international outrage still seems to be on hold.
New Yorkers, opportunistic politicians, and the ignorant and intolerant are up in arms over plans to build a multi-story mosque just blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. Well, not a multi-story mosque exactly, more like a community center open to the public (sort of a YMMA), which includes a prayer room, but let’s not let facts get in the way of hysteria.
The two Egyptian men behind the plan say it’s meant as a statement against extremism, to bridge the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims. A Tea Party spokesman calls it a memorial to the 9/11 hijackers.
An upcoming ad campaign, to appear on New York City buses, will demand that the city prohibit the building from being constructed. The ads will show pictures of one of the planes hitting the World Trade Center.
A spokesperson for the group paying for the ads said that being allowed to run the ads is a victory for free speech and tolerance.
A victory for free speech and tolerance.
The sound you hear is George Orwell turning over in his grave.
As an American, this all disgusts me. And it’s stupid as well as wrong, because what we’re telling the Muslim world that we think of every Muslim as our enemy.
As a Jew, the fact that so many Jewish groups are joining the hysteria troubles me. And it’s stupid as well, because traditionally, when a government looks for excuses to single out and discriminate against a religious group, it tends to be the Jews. Letting hysteria decide where Muslims can’t build… is that a precedent we really want to support? Hatred of Muslims is just the flavor of the week: anti-Semitism endures.
Ethically ambiguous journalist Joe McGinniss has rented the house next to Sarah Palin’s to help him write his unauthorized biography of the former VP-candidate former governor (see article). Assuming she thought of this herself, you have to give Palin points for posting a photo of the rented house online with the caption “Hi, Neighbor! May I Call You ‘Joe’?”
I was reading today how the New York State Assembly and Senate are just now finishing up their respective 2010-11 state budgets and how the two versions still have to reconciled and voted on. If this isn’t done by April 1, the state essentially has no money and state workers and teachers among others likely won’t get paid. The deadline is unlikely to be met, though, since the legislators start their week-long Easter-Passover holiday this weekend.
Now, here’s a goofy thought, so crazy that nobody seems to be mentioning it. How about… they don’t get their week-long vacation? This seems rather obvious to me, so no doubt I’m missing something — but passing a budget is probably the most important aspect of their jobs. You don’t go home leaving it undone.
I’ll take this a step further, which I wrote about elsewhere last year when the Pennsylvania Legislature was weeks past deadline in getting its state’s budget passed: If a state budget is one week past deadline, the legislature should be dissolved. Automatically. New election scheduled for one week later. If the electorate wants their old guy to stay on, then fine — but he has to earn back the remainder of his term. He has to explain his role in schools and state offices and parks being closed, and state employees not being able to pay their rent.
But this will be a moot point, because I can pretty much guarantee that no state budget will ever be late again.
Okay, personally… I found this amusing until I saw the “debt” caption in the snow. and that was just too much going on at once. If they’d just shown Obama trying to dig his way out of the snow (debt) without the elephant and his comments, that would have made a valid and timely point — but as it stands, there are two different cartoons here, pushing against one another.
As always, your results may vary.
Sarah Palin complained that this week’s Newsweek cover is sexist, and… well, I think I sort of agree, though we might be dealing with semantics here: Certainly Newsweek chose this particular photo with the inten of trivializing Palin (the photo is real, but was taken earlier this year as part of a spread for Runner’s World magazine). And they probably wouldn’t have used this sort of photo to trivialize a male politician (can you imagine a cover story about Obama’s domestic policy agenda being illustrated with this?
So if using a “sexy” cover photo of a female politician is a context where you wouldn’t use one of a male politician is sexist, then I find myself in the odd position of siding with Palin.
Of course what I found most interesting about all this was Palin’s comment on the cover, ending with “If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin” — clear proof, I guess, that she writes her own material. I mean, I sort of maybe know what she’s kind of getting at here, but…
And actually what makes that quote more interesting is the fact that it was written (apparently) on the same day that she vigorously defended racial profiling on the Sean Hannity show.
I’m wondering whether anybody knows… When the President travels to campaign for, say, a gubernatorial candidate, who pays for the Air Force 1 expenses, security for the President, police overtime onsite, etc?
And just for the record, I can’t speak for Virginia, but no matter what you might hear, the New Jersey election was not a referendum on either Obama or the Democratic Party: it was a referendum on Jon Corzine. When New Jerseyans went into the voting booth yesterday, Barack Obama was the last thing on our minds: We were too busy holding our noses as we decided whether the thought of reelecting Jon Corzine was distasteful for us to vote for Chris Christie.
Personally, I voted for Chris Daggett, since in this case voting for the third party candidate wasn’t taking a vote away from any decent candidate. He had me at “I’m not Corzine or Christie.”
As it happens, despite recent polls predicting up to 20% of the vote for Daggett, he ended up with about 5%. Which means, God help us, New Jerseyans got the governor we deserve.
I got a message from my son’s high school this afternoon assuring me that he would not be forced to watch Obama’s speech next week, and that the school would provide an alternative educational program for all students whose parents opted them out of watching the speech. I understand this sort of thing is going on in schools all across the country.
Is there any explanation for this other than mass insanity? I could understand it if Obama were intending to ask children to tell their parents to support his health care reform, or suggest they go through their mothers’ pocketbooks and send him all those little pieces of green paper with presidents’ pictures on them… but apparently he’s only going to offer a pep talk about working hard in school.
Just the sort of underhanded thing you’d expect from a native-born Kenyan!
Does anybody sincerely think this is controversial? And if so, why not just follow with an opposing viewpoint such as a clip from Ferris Bueller?
“I’m sorry it’s happening, of course. Obviously I don’t like the idea of people losing jobs, or being worried about their 401(k)s. On the other hand, the American people got to know that we will safeguard the system. I mean, we’re in. And if we need to be in more, we will.” -George W. Bush, December 1, 2008
I find it interesting how often newspapers and other media are nearly unanimous in telling us in large print that this public figure or another is apologizing for such or such (and I’m not even talking about the insipid, meaningless “I take full responsibility for” comments), when in fact they’ve done no such thing.
According to Newsweek magazine, one of Hillary Clinton’s staffers told one of the magazine’s reporters during the primaries that everybody after a certain point everybody was “fed up with the Bill Clinton mishegoss.”
This word has always been a part of my personal vocabulary, but does the quote make any sense to most of Newsweek’s audience? I’ve noticed that New York City-based magazines and (to an even larger extent) Hollywood screenwriters seem convinced that the entire country is familair with Yiddish (which I suppose, if these magazines and screenwriters keep using it, might eventually be the case).
You don’t think so? Then try rewriting it with the colors reversed and see how it looks.
The reality is, the majority of white voters — or close to it, anyway — will probably be voting for Obama today; and according to the most recent polls, upwards of 95% of black voters will be voting for… Obama.
So with all due respect, Mr. Billingsley… Okay, actually I’ve been sitting here for ten minutes trying to complete this sentence. I can’t. This comic is just ugly and I’m sure Senator Obama would feel the same way.
Is the joke here that McCain wanted Joseph Lieberman as his running mate but got Sarah Palin by mistake? Far Left Side happens to be a very liberal (well, “Far Left Side,” duh) and a rabidly anti-McCain strip, but that still doesn’t explain this comic.
