Archive for February, 2009

Shock Shock

Posted: February 2, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Well I’m actually not shocked but some will be:

The chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs tried to meet a top aide to Iran’s supreme leader in mid-December but was rebuffed at the last minute, a snub that illustrates the challenges to dialogue with Tehran pushed by President Barack Obama.

Rep. Howard Berman, a California Democrat, notified Mr. Obama’s transition team and the Bush White House of the planned meeting in Bahrain, according to senior Obama administration officials.

You mean making nice doesn’t work with these guys?

I’ve been looking for the Cox and Fordham cartoon “I’m a communist dictator you fool” to illustrate this but absent the cartoon it will have to stand for itself.

Israel 100 Hamas 0 Hamas wins!

Posted: February 2, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news, war
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Charles Johnson almost goes Kryten reading the AP and Martin Kramer on the Gaza war:

This is one of those ludicrous media memes that refuses to die: fighting against evil only makes evil stronger. You’ll see it in articles about every conflict; it’s a kind of nihilistic philosophical tic that is nearly universal, a counterintuitive observation that’s supposed to impress you with its depth.

Here’s the dirty little secret: it’s not deep, it’s stupid. The emperor really is naked.

The question they never ask: if fighting terrorists only makes more terrorists, and only makes hard-liners stronger in every case, what’s the alternative? Giving up?

Did these guys report St. Louis as the winner of the Superbowl? Hamas has won in the same way Dallas Acadamy did; only in the minds of the press and now they want the same after result,.

Morning Joe: Joe is back and on fire

Posted: February 2, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Joe is back and hitting with all cylinders on the bill.

6:40 a.m. Mika reads Frank Rich strip saying that the Republicans are as clueless as Bush on Katrina. Bad timing for that example Frank.

6:44 a.m. Out comes the Obamameter and a promise broken rating on sunlight before signing, no word on rendition yet.

6:46 a.m. Mika face when asking how birth control fits on stimulus really is funny

7:07 a.m. Joe & Mika are agreeing on tax credits for people who don’t pay taxes. They’re again’em.

7:14 a.m. It’s up to Max Baucus on Tommy the tax boy. If he decides to let it go God help the democrats in 2010.

7:45 a.m. Mika is going through the list with Crammer they are really hitting this.

7:48 a.m. Aren’t lower house prices good for people to buy houses?

7:58 a.m. Podesta says Daschle will and should survive. Americans should hope it isn’t true, Parisian republicans hope it is.

7:59 a.m. Question we are giving tax breaks to people who don’t pay taxes: Podesta: “They pay other taxes. The Earned Income Credit was a Reagan creation.” This is the new talking point apparently.

8:02 a.m. Is the president willing to change the bill to attract Republicans? He is willing to talk but won’t make changes in fundamentals of the bill.

8:07 a.m. Crammer: Anything you do on energy is a joke without a Gas tax, Mika agrees. The very suggestion gives me gas.

8:15 a.m. It hits me that this is likely one of the only challenging interviews that Podesta is going to see outside of Fox.

8:41 a.m. Erin Burnett is pointing out that Japan did this stuff and it didn’t work

8:56 a.m. Mika promises more on the bill on the radio, I’ll be listening.

Animal Farm at the Atlantic

Posted: February 2, 2009 by datechguy in Blame Bush, opinion/news
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As a follow up to the last post I thought I’d check to see what Andrew Sullivan had to say about the change. I found that all pigs are equal but some are more equal than others:

What some on the far right seem not to grasp is that opposition to torture is not about being soft on terrorism. It is about being effective against terrorism – ensuring that intelligence is not filled with torture-generated garbage, that we retain the moral high-ground in a long war against theocratic violence, and that we can better identify, capture, kill or bring to justice those who threaten our way of life. Rendition and temporary detention are tools in that effort – tools that now need to be as closely monitored and assessed as they were once recklessly abused.

Yeah they will be as closely monitored as the tax records of senior democrats when they are not considered for cabinet positions. Andrew is a good writer, the first blogger I ever read. His “view from your window” feature is one of the nicest things on the web but if he believes this he’ll believe anything.

UPDATE: Patterico takes a less charitable view of Andy than me (and my view isn’t all that charitable).

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