Month: September 2012

You poor, poor things. Life in The Village is so unfair. Go ahead and keep blaming those nasty pundits for their shallow and possibly traitorous screeds against your chosen ones. I’m certain a good scolding is just what they need to straighten out their recent misguided turn.

…but an overwhelming percentage of material I saw on my usual aggregators was a powerful wave of whining by conservatives about the vicious treatment of poor Mitt Romney by the vicious, hateful, Obama-loving media that’s clearly trying to steal the election once again despite the obvious desire of the American people for new leadership.

<snicker>  

Because I largely ignore right-wing media, I was slow to get to this story. Apparently, the right-wing’s latest obsession is the fate of Shakil Afridi, a man who cooperated with the United States in their search for Usama bin-Laden by running a vaccination program in Abbottabad. He has since been arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 33 years in prison, although ostensibly not for his role in the hunt for bin Laden.

He’s in a Pakistani prison, but Fox News correspondent Dominic Di-Natale claims to have interviewed him for 40 minutes. Whether he was really talking to Afridi is very much in doubt. In any case, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is taking the interview at face-value. During the interview, Afridi, or someone impersonating Afridi, claimed that he had been brutally tortured at the hands of the Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI), who he characterized as completely hostile to the United States. This added new fuel to Senator Paul’s campaign to cut off all aid to Pakistan until Mr. Afridi is released from prison.

Senator Paul started his campaign in June, when he tried to insert an amendment to that effect in the Farm Bill, of all places. This time, the bill is about creating jobs for veterans. It recently passed a cloture vote with 95 votes and a motion to proceed by 84 votes. Nevertheless, the Senate just agreed to shut down for five days in an effort to avoid voting on Paul’s amendment.

If you ask the American people if we should give large sums of foreign and military aid to a country that seemingly harbored Usama bin-Laden and which imprisoned and tortured someone who tried to help us find him, most people are going to say ‘no.’ It is for situations like this that the Founders created the Senate and had the senators selected by state legislatures instead of directly by the people. Yes, the House of Representatives will always be vulnerable to this kind of passion of the moment, but the Senate was supposed to be insulated enough that they could take the heat and make rational decisions even when public opinion was inflamed. We screwed that up when we decided that we had too much corruption in the state legislatures and too little accountability from our senators. It is a trade-off, and Rand Paul is showing us the downside right now. I am going to quote Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, because, in this case, he is completely correct:

“Pakistan is a country with nuclear weapons that is hanging by a thread. I think [the Paul Amendment] would be a very bad idea,” Graham said. “They’ve opened up the supply routes; they have been helpful in some areas.

“We live in dangerous times, and I am very worried about the possibility of a nuclear-armed Pakistan falling into extremist hands. So no, now is not the time to disengage from Pakistan,” Graham said, before noting that the funds should have “some conditions.”

Senator Graham is correct, but asking politicians to vote for continued aid to Pakistan under these conditions less than sixty days from an election when Muslims are assaulting our embassies and consulates is not a recipe for a rational result.

Senator Rand Paul is being supremely irresponsible. He should be castigated from the rooftops. The decision on how to treat Pakistan should be made by the administration, in consultation with Congress. Funding should not be cut off just because the junior senator from Kentucky has found an irresistible tool of demagoguery.

Welcome to Friday Foto Flogging, a place to share your photos and photography news. We were inspired by the folks at European Tribune who post a regular Friday Photoblog series to try the same on this side of the virtual Atlantic. We also thought foto folks would enjoy seeing some other websites so each week we’ll introduce a different photo website.

This Month’s Theme: Hands suggested by wilderness wench..

Link of the Month: The Art of Time-Lapse.

AndiF’s Hands

	An Old Hand at This Click image for larger version
	Reading My Hand’s Lifefline
	Helping Hands Click image for larger version

olivia’s Hands

Critter hands Click image for larger version

Next Theme: (Friday, October 12, 2012) Random (your choice)

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When you post your photos, please keep the width at 500 or less for the sake of our Bootribers who are on dial-up. If you want to post clickable thumbnails but aren’t sure how, check out this diary:
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Previous Friday Foto Flogs

FFFs 1-36	FFFs 37-72	What is it?	DIY
Begin/End	Power	Random	Quiet
Quick Shots	A day in your life	Name Your Own Theme	Random
Textures	Random	Tripping Out	Shadows and Reflections
Random	Nature	New/Change/Diff	Colour
Similies	Random	Spring	On the road
Summertime	Street, concept, or abstract	Skies	“O” for October
Secret Places	Random	Janus	What is it?
The Letter “M”	Air, Fire, Water, Earth	Random	The zen of it all
Summer Titles

Markos has never really fancied himself an analyst. He makes predictions, but not in any kind of methodical way. He gets a feel for things and then he lets it rip. And that’s fine. That’s why he can talk so much smack without fear that his career will be negatively impacted if he’s wrong. Talking smack is not the same thing as telling people what is going to happen. It’s actually more focused on having an influence on what will happen. Presidential elections can turn out a lot like other feats of strength. I’ve used the analogy of arm-wrestling, where two people struggle on seemingly even terms for quite a while before it ends suddenly in victory for one side. Another example is from the battlefield, where any disorganized retreat can quickly turn into a rout.

While Romney is down, struggling with a disappointing convention, a disenchanted press, a dysfunctional party, a series of gaffes, and bad polling numbers, the time is right to push him hard to see if he will crumble. It’s not really about the presidential election, since barring some Act of God, Obama has already proven himself the superior candidate. It’s about routing Romney and getting enough coattails to keep the Senate and take over the House. It’s about totally dispiriting the opposition so that they flee before us and we can hear the lamentations of their women.

More seriously, it’s about creating panic and lack of enthusiasm and infighting and finger-pointing and chaos. It’s about putting pressure on the man to see if he can take the stress. Talking smack isn’t just about expressing self-confidence, it’s about spooking the enemy.

This is why Joe Namath and Muhammed Ali talked smack, and it’s why it worked. People don’t root for losers. They’ll pull for the underdog, sure, but only if they think they have a fighting chance.

So, Kos is trying to put his boot down on Romney’s neck. He’s doing his part to break him.

When I tell you Romney is going to get his clock cleaned, it’s because I have analyzed the race and that is what I truly believe. That’s why I was talking smack in the spring. That’s why I was talking smack when the polls were a dead-heat. I was making a prediction…a bold prediction, that flew in the face of conventional wisdom.

But I also know that self-confidence breeds success. People are attracted to self-confidence in every area of life, from making hiring decisions, investment decisions, finding sexual partners, to electing politicians. A party of mopers and worry-warts isn’t going to win. In 2010, I couldn’t be optimistic, so I gave you the straight dope. We were going to get slaughtered. But when things look good, why not talk a little smack? It adds a little activism to the analysis. Two birds with one stone, and all that.

H/T Marie2

From your info … film director was Alan Roberts from DeVere Films. Inc. Sarasota, Florida. [Link to Laura and Alan Roberts Realty Inc.; Lauroa Roberts is also a filmmaker] Alan Roberts has a link to the film Desert Warrior via actress who has scrubbed film from her career resumé here and cached version.  We all know what happened on the streets of Amsterdam to filmmaket Theo van Gogh.

Gawker – ‘It Makes Me Sick’: Actress in Muhammed Movie Says She Was Deceived, Had No Idea It Was About Islam

ATTENTION: Desert Warrior was the original film version in English. The “Innocence of Mohammad” has been redubbed with new texts and perhaps edited and voiced over in the Arabic language. No one knows who is to blame for that, perhaps Steve Klein, film consultant knows more.

Analysis: Film at heart of Libya attack may be fake

 
Excuses to Marie2, while I was editing my diary to delete a wrong reference, I goofed and hit the delete button. Do you still have your comments?
Please post them again, it supplied in steps the direction leading to completing the puzzle of the Islamophobic film.

Mondoweiss Confirms

With link to Morris Sadek of Coptic Organization and Geller of Jihad Watch.
Great stuff Marie2 !!! Thanks for your work and links.

Coptic Christian leader of organization that produced anti-Muslim film spoke at Pamela Geller’s anti-mosque rally

 « click
Joseph Nasralla Abdelmasih, on the far right, is the head of Media Christ, the organization
behind the anti-Muslim film that sparked protests in the Middle East. To his left is Morris Sadek,
an Egyptian-American anti-Muslim activist. (Photo: http://nacopts1.blogspot.com/)

Movie that set off violence in Middle East produced by Duarte nonprofit

If the Romney campaign would ever stop lying, obfuscating, refusing to talk about his proposals, and insulting everyone, the press would probably revert back to cutting him an inordinate amount of slack. It seems that Boston is stunned at the aggressively negative reporting their campaign is receiving. Maybe some progressives are stunned by it, too, as we’ve been conditioned to believe that the press will always employ “they both do it,” “he said, she said” journalism. In the past, the press has been quick to back down in the face of concerted conservative backlash. But that’s not working anymore. Part of it is that no one likes Mitt Romney. Part of it is that no one fears Mitt Romney. Part of it is that the conservative base isn’t as aggressive about defending Mitt Romney as they were about protecting George W. Bush.

But the main problem is that Mitt Romney is simply lying almost every time he opens his mouth and he isn’t supplementing those lies with any substance. Literally, the only thing to discuss after Romney speaks is whether what he just said was fair or accurate, and it never is. He isn’t even offering a theory about how his tax cuts would help the middle class or how his Medicare voucher plan would save the program. He won’t talk about any of it in any kind of detail. If he won’t even defend his own platform, how can he expect the press to do it for him?

And the reaction from his campaign to all this negative press is to insult the press and New York and DC, which then makes it personal. You know, giving a press conference yesterday while the people in the District were mourning the loss of four of their people was grossly insensitive. Every Village reporter acted very offended by that. Even Peggy Noonan and Mark Halperin were appalled. You can’t go to England and insult their preparations for the Olympics or go to someone’s house and insult the food they’ve offered you, or politicize the death of a high-ranking State Department employee without those communities thinking you are a jerk. And they will treat you accordingly…with contempt.

John McCain knew how to get absurdly good press coverage. He gave reporters access and fed them well and treated them respectfully. Romney does none of those things.

If he thinks now is the time to make war on the media, he’s a fool. But it’s too late to fix his relationship with the media. He screwed that pooch.

Here is an Israeli source for how many people died in the period between the onset of the Second Intifada (September 9, 2000) and the instigation of Operation Cast Lead (December 26, 2008). Just looking at the numbers for the Israelis, it appears that 39 civilians were killed in the Gaza Strip, 200 in the West Bank, and 492 in Israel. If we include Israel’s security forces, the numbers are 97 in the Gaza Strip, 146 in the West Bank, and 89 in Israel. So, all told, 731 Israeli civilians and 332 Israeli security forces were killed in the eight-year period that followed the beginning of the Second Intifada. If we combine the two, we get 1,063 Israelis who lost their lives at the hands of the Palestinians. You can consider that a staggeringly high number or a relative low one when compared to how many Palestinians died (4,817). My point is not to debate the level of violence or even the relative culpability of each side. My point is that Mario Loyola has no basis for writing this (emphasis mine):

If you want to appreciate how ironic (and frankly ridiculous) this passage is, consider that Bibi fully embraced the Oslo peace process; that the years of his first government (1996–99) were dominated by unseemly schoolyard spats over what a particular bulldozer might be doing in a mixed neighborhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem (talk about intruding on internal politics); and that the peace process failed not under Bibi or because of him, but under a left-wing Israeli government, because of the intransigence of Yasser Arafat and the cabal of unreformed terrorists who represented the Palestinians. The Palestinians promptly unleashed a terror war that killed thousands of Israelis in buses, restaurants, and weddings throughout Israel, and it was in that midst of that constantly televised paroxysm of violence that we awoke to the World Trade Center burning in New York.

Let us count the ways that this is wrong. When he uses the word “thousands” that can only be true if at least two thousand Israelis died. Further, since he didn’t mention any deaths in the Occupied Territories, neither should we. He referred only deaths “throughout Israel.” Finally, he put a cap on his timeframe of September 11, 2001. I generously gave him seven more years.

The truth is that Palestinians killed slightly less than 600 Israelis (whether civilians or combatants) within the borders of Israel in the period between the outbreak of the Second Intifada and Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip.

I point this out in no way to suggest that 600 deaths are acceptable or to diminish in any way the pain Israel suffered in those years. I point it out strictly to show how dishonest Mario Loyola is with facts and figures.

So the Boston headquarters of Mitt Romney’s campaign is mad at the press for the coverage their candidate has received over the past two weeks. Philadelphia-area blogger BooMan, as he often does, gets to the heart of the matter:

“…the main problem is that Mitt Romney is simply lying almost every time he opens his mouth and he isn’t supplementing those lies with any substance. Literally, the only thing to discuss after Romney speaks is whether what he just said was fair or accurate, and it never is. He isn’t even offering a theory about how his tax cuts would help the middle class or how his Medicare voucher plan would save the program. He won’t talk about any of it in any kind of detail. If he won’t even defend his own platform, how can he expect the press to do it for him.”

There’s still a decent chance Mitt Romney will be the next president of the United States.  But if he loses, there will be countless post-mortems seeking to identify the primary reason for his defeat.  To the extent (admittedly limited) that the candidate himself can influence the outcome of an election, it will be hard to top Charlie Pierce’s Esquire article about “Life Under Romneycare”.

Pierce tells the story of the greatest accomplishment of Mitt Romney’s public life: the creation of “Romneycare”—a conservative, market-based law that has allowed Massachusetts to provide near-universal access to health care for all its citizens.  It is a law that exists because Mitt Romney made it happen.  He made it happen, in part, because he wanted a platform on which he could run for president, a platform on which his party would nominate him and the citizenry would elect him.  And in 2006 when he signed Chapter 58 of the Acts of 2006: an Act Providing Access to Affordable, Quality, Accountable Health Care, he thought he had a ticket that would enable him to become George W. Bush’s successor, the next “compassionate conservative” to sit in the Oval Office.  Instead Romney has spent the past six years seeking an office that, the oddsmakers say today, he will not occupy.

After telling the story of how Mitt Romney brought universal health care coverage to Massachusetts, and of the hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents—Charlie Pierce included—who have benefited from Romney’s greatest public accomplishment, Pierce concludes,

“So I wonder now how he has come to this unprecedented pass. How much is the presidency really worth to the man? How deeply do you have to scour your soul to eliminate the good you did for the people who elected you? How much of your conscience do you have to excise before there’s not enough left to remind you that, once, you helped people? What kind of a man plays his own virtue for laughs and turns the better angels of his nature into carnival bozos above a dunk tank for the amusement of the rubes?

That is the place whence springs the fundamental dishonesty of the Romney campaign — the place where he somehow made the decision that the best thing he ever did in public life was the thing that would keep him from being president, and that the latter ambition was worth more than all the work that went into the former, and all the benefits that work produced. It is a fearsome, dead-hearted gamble with the soul….”

crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/

Given the recent flap over Rep. Todd Akin’s remarks, you’d think that Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona would know better than to talk about rape. The irony is that Senator Kyl has botched his analogy. He says that the Cairo Embassy’s statement deploring the anti-Islamic movie was akin to telling a woman she deserved to get raped because of the way she dressed.

First of all, the statement was made before the assault. It should be compared to what a woman might say in an effort to prevent a rape, not to what someone might say to her afterwards to justify it.

Secondly, by criticizing the Embassy for their statement, Jon Kyl is essentially saying that the were attacked because they showed weakness. And that is the equivalent of telling a woman that she deserved to be raped because she was alone at night without any pepper spray.

So, in trying to make a rape analogy, Kyl not only failed, but he committed the very sin he was trying to decry.

Good thing he is retiring because he is an idiot.

It bums me out that Bob Dylan is so angry. Here he is responding to critics who think he lifted lyrics from a writer and a poet without attribution:

“Wussies and pussies complain about that stuff. It’s an old thing – it’s part of the tradition. It goes way back. These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil motherfuckers can rot in hell.”

First of all, critics aren’t evil. At worst, they’re stupid. Dylan proved his critics wrong a billion times over, and he should have the self-confidence to know that. Secondly, he’s bitching about something that happened a half-century ago.