Sometimes it’s obvious:
Well, whenever I travel, one of the first things I do upon checking into my room is to turn on the TV and search the available channels. Stateside, I suffer from withdrawal if TV Land is unavailable. While abroad, I’ll sit through any show if I recognize the theme song, despite the language barrier.
"The Nanny". Now in Spanish. She has the YouTubes.
Clemons wants Giuliani:
The fact that David Frum, Norman Podhoretz, and Daniel Pipes are advisors to Giuliani makes folks like me salivate. Whether the Republican Party knows it or not, a Romney/Hagel ticket or Romney/Huckabee ticket would be much harder for Hillary Clinton to tackle.
Matt’s still a Mitt-man.
That’s the answer to the question of whether you can chew gum and lose weight at the same time. In fact, a new study argues that the two go together.
They’re inversely correlated, according to the latest Pew Report. Notice how the US is an outlier. I loved this nugget:
More than half of Americans say their culture is superior to others, a larger proportion than in most other Western publics. But in Italy, nearly seven-in-ten say their way of life is better.
A Wisconsin Republican sees hope in Louisiana.
If you think it feels like a police state now, just wait till the DHS gets its way.
Riverbend is back, blogging about the Iraqi diaspora:
It is estimated that there are at least 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria today. I believe it. Walking down the streets of Damascus, you can hear the Iraqi accent everywhere. There are areas like Geramana and Qudsiya that are packed full of Iraqi refugees. Syrians are few and far between in these areas. Even the public schools in the areas are full of Iraqi children. A cousin of mine is now attending a school in Qudsiya and his class is composed of 26 Iraqi children, and 5 Syrian children. It’s beyond belief sometimes. Most of the families have nothing to live on beyond their savings which are quickly being depleted with rent and the costs of living.
From the Senate Judiciary Committee, re: waterboarding. Not a single Republican signed the letter.
Apparently, the only people allowed to comment on health care are uninsured diabetics from East New York . . . which makes any discussion moot, because that sure doesn’t describe any of my interlocutors.
There’s a weird presumption that the political must be personal. To be sure, class and income and background affect our thinking in subtle ways. But they don’t make it impossible to develop, or maintain, a principled belief that runs against one’s own immediate self-interest. What’s the Matter with Kansas? might more properly have been titled What’s the Matter with Thomas Frank?
The Dish 