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This is not a post where I intend to get intensely pro-Palestinian, since I believe it should be a basic maxim of our foreign policy that the squabbling of other peoples over small patches of land in small, relatively unimportant Mediterranean countries should properly have nothing to do with the United States (we are not deeply [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
The newest lefty spin on the USA ”scandal” is that the “improper” political firings of the eight USAs now jeopardises…the prosecution of one of the corrupt Democrats whose alleged criminal activities David Iglesias was slow or inept in leading. That means that the thing that got Iglesias fired was probably related to his ineptitude in handling big corruption [...]
Filed under: politics
He is his own vision. ~David Axelrod on Barack Obama So, when people complain that Obama’s campaign is mostly just a lot of egocentrism, gauzy sentimentality and meaningless drivel without any strong or coherent policy elements, don’t worry: that’s the master plan!
Filed under: politics
So I’m thinking of taking intensive Arabic this summer, since facility with that and related Semitic languages has obvious importance for Byzantine studies, and I have been dabbling a little with it so far. My early dabbling reminded me that the Arabic word for ‘right’ or ‘correct’, sahih, was taken into Hindi (presumably by way [...]
Filed under: miscellaneous
On a lighter note, here is where Lebanese pop meets Bollywood: the pop star Nawal al-Zoghbi singing Gharib el-Ray. There are more random foreign locales than in a Yash Raj spectacular (I guess because she is wandering, gharib). Here is a video filled with apparently random scene changes–now she’s in Prague, now she’s surrounded by badly rendered computer-generated helicopters. Perhaps [...]
Filed under: miscellaneous, music
If a Martian came down and read Charles Krauthammer and you asked him whether what he had read made any sense, he would be be baffled and would wonder why you had even asked the question. ”Of course not,” the Martian would say. “How can you earthlings read this junk on a regular basis?” It seems to [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
It doesn’t tell us why other people are supporting Obama, but this “diavlog” from bloggingheads featuring the very pro-Obama Rosa Brooks from the Open Society Institute has her saying exactly the sort of nonsense about his transcending the divisions within this country and around the world that is supposedly merely the projection of Obama observers. Instead, [...]
Filed under: politics
Via Poulos, I see that Ron Paul is polling better (3%!) than several of the other better-known, somewhat more-hyped second-tier candidates, such as Hunter, Huckabee and Tancredo. (Poor Tommy Thompson pulls a whopping 1%.) Granted that this is Zogby, and granted that it is a phone poll of adults, but it seems noteworthy that Brownback doesn’t even show up in [...]
Filed under: politics
Reihan says that he has a problem picking sides between Sullivan and Brooks in a new Sullivan fit over a recent Brooks column, but there really is an easy solution: I think Brooks is wrong, but Sullivan is out of his mind. Unlike Reihan, I have no qualms about criticising both of them. Brooks [...]
Filed under: politics
Sununu is trailing Shaheen by ten points in an early N.H. Senate poll. It might have been a good idea for Sununu to either vote in support of the anti-”surge” resolution or for the latest supplemental/withdrawal bill. Without something real he can take home to show that he isn’t married to the GOP on the things that are [...]
Filed under: politics