Month: January 2009

But it remains true that HIV can help you stay slim, along with a balanced diet and exercise:

Get AYDS! is after the jump:

Thank goodness for AYDS

It all makes sense in his head:

He also said he doesn’t think anyone at the CIA did anything illegal during interrogations. He says they followed the administration’s legal opinions.

And the administration lawyers were ordered to find torture legal.

Some hints he doesn’t see himself as a place-holder. Which is a good thing.

A reader writes:

Just at about the same time you were writing that post, I was at a Starbucks sipping the exact same thing and said to two of my colleagues "this is the same thing that my Amma has been making for me since I was 8 years old and something that I drink every morning even today". Hilarious.

PS Amma is Tamil for mum, but you already figured that.

Another adds:

I pass along this anecdote from my own family – my Irish grandmother on her deathbed calling out "Please, God, just make me a cup of tea."

That will be my mum when the time comes. And it better be scorching hot.

A reader writes:

I’ve been casually reading your blog for about a year now, and while I think I understand your motivations behind posting the horrifying pictures of dead children in the most current Israeli-[insert enemy] conflict, it is too just too painful and depressing to view.  Obviously shocking photos bring the issue (war=dead children) straight to the forefront in a way that perhaps television (if they had any cojones), print and radio cannot.  We Americans do not know the tiniest molecule of terror that children live and die with in Gaza.

But as a mother of young children and a human being, I cannot bear to see those pictures. The child’s bloody feet at the morgue were almost overwhelming, and while I only caught a glimpse of what looked like a head in rubble, it feels seared in my brain and I can’t seem to scrub it off.  My first reaction was to remove your blog from my RSS feed, but I don’t want to miss your opinions and messages, just the shocking photos of dead humans.  Perhaps you might provide more warning for us softies in the future?

Point taken. My policy is to air as much of the truth as I can. And one of the benefits of being a blogger is the ability to raise issues and publish images that the MSM won’t. I published the Danish cartoons and the beheading of Nick Berg. I have posted countless victims of Jihadism and Islamist sectarianism and the falling bodies of 9/11 victims. And it seems to me that the moral issues involved in thinking through the Gaza blockade and invasion was helped, not hurt, by facing the photographic reality that is sometimes kept from MSM readers. My apologies if you were offended. I’ll think about warnings before particularly graphic shots in future.

Goldberg has a good idea for Israel.

Marc reports on stimulus happenings:

At the end of the day, Obama’s name will be associated with an epically large stimulus package that may, in the end, do be too little, too late. Late last year, Obama hoped that the Democratic House and Senate would come to quick agreement on spending, and, by January 20, a bill would be on his desk. But aides say that the scale of the work exceeded their original expectations. It’s just not that easy to figure out how to stimulate an economy in this condition. In a normal recession, small tax cuts might  boost savings, which, if the economy were growing, would be fine. But Obama needs Americans to spend, spend, spend, and not to save. And Americans, worried about mortgages, debts and the falling stock market, are keeping their cash in their mattresses. When people save a tax cut, aggregate demand is unaffected. But people, in this deep, deep recession, are demand-starved; they need money to pay for basics like their mortgage payments. The thinking, then, is that no one will save the money.

She died too soon.

Weigel speculates:

… once ensconced in the Senate, Franken will likely eschew the racier, angrier jokes that gave him political trouble and become a harder target for Minnesota Republicans, and barely a target at all for national Republicans. It’s not like he’ll become a cultural lightning rod like Rick Santorum or Katherine “Queen Esther” Harris — Franken’s a conventional liberal, which isn’t a controversial thing to be right now.

A reader writes:

You wrote:

"What we have learned is that once Islamists actually wield power, their popularity collapses. Religious fanatics do not know how to run countries; their real interests lie elsewhere (you can apply that on a much lesser scale, of course, to the competence of the Bush administration). The place where Shiite Jihadism is least popular? Iran. And remember how al Qaeda managed to turn off the Jordanians after various atrocities; and how they lost the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis (with the brilliant and brave help of US troops) – after the Bush administration unwittingly gave them a lease of life in that country?"

Here, sadly, is the difference.  Even when Islamists wield power poorly and are unpopular, they don’t leave.  Iran is a perfect example.  Even if the mullahs aren’t popular, they’re as firmly entrenched in power as they ever were.  Yes, the Islamists (or Al Qaeda anyway) are less popular in Jordan now, but they don’t control that country.  And it was a lot easier for the Iraqis to turn on Al Qaeda when they had American troops there to help them or at least watch their back.

Even if the rocket attacks on Southern Israel could be tolerated for a long time (this is, of course, a big if), how exactly is Hamas going to be dislodged from power?  They have the guns and the power and the state sponsor in Iran.  Their popularity may suffer (as no doubt it already had) but in power they shall remain.