Category: The Dish

Or lack of it. A dispatch from the car bumper-sticker wars.

I can’t see how the recent fiasco with Iran can be viewed as anything else. The sailors were obviously unprepared for captivity, insufficiently defended and hapless propaganda tools for Ahmadinejad. At the same time, after they had been captured, what option did Blair really have? The UN would not have supported ratcheting up confrontation with Iran; the EU left Britain in the lurch; the war in Iraq is deeply unpopular in Britain and full-scale confrontation with Iran right now would have prompted a collapse in the British government. I’m dubious of Blair’s statement that the release was accomplished

"without any deal, without any negotiation, without any side agreement of any nature whatsoever,"

but I cannot know for sure. What we can know is that Iran is currently proving to the world just how much it has gained by the disaster of the Bush Iraq policy. Tehran knows that Washington cannot go to war with Iran because the American people and the Congress will oppose it. Tehran also knows that America is stuck in Iraq, prey to every bomb Iran can throw at it and to Shiite militias over which Iran has considerable sway. This is a microcosm of where we are. And for the time being, diplomacy is our only effective way forward.

(Photo: Bertrand Langlois/AFP/Getty.)

"Imbeciles like Ann Coulter play to the basest instincts of the conservative movement to give the president a blank check to grab whatever power he wishes… Neither party has shown the courage to assert the power of Congress as a coequal branch of government. Congress should be telling the president it’s not OK to detain people without trials, to grab people off the streets and ‘render’ them to other countries to be tortured, to listen in to our telephone conversations, and to issue signing statements that nullify laws he doesn’t like," – Bruce Fein, of the Liberty Coalition. Vive la resistance.

Zogby digs deeper.

And other proven stereotypes.

"In an interview with ABC radio, Vice President Cheney said he did not know if the sailors had been released because of a quid pro quo arrangement," – New York Sun. Did not know?

A contretemps in San Francisco led to this dyspeptic post at the paleocon American Thinker. Money quote:

My complaint is with the bad attitude way too many bicyclists have toward others. I am certain there are drivers who scare the wits out of them and endanger their lives. But that is no reason to give into a self-righteous fury at all drivers.

That’s a complaint? Of course, we bicyclists shouldn’t express fury at all drivers. Just most of them. But, of course, my own experience is that the "bad attitude" invariably lies with those in cars. Many American drivers (it’s different in Europe) simply act as if cyclists have no right to be on the road at all. You get "doored" all the time, cut off, pushed into curbs, and, my pet peeve, prevented even from crossing streets by cars sitting plonk in the way trying to get into oncoming traffic. After my testosterone shots, it’s a wonder I don’t go Cheney on these people.  Especially those in their smug, huge SUVs.

Two words: "spousal unions." When New Hampshire’s House votes overwhelmingly to give gay couples and only gay couples all the rights and responsibilities of civil marriage while calling it something else, the debate has moved on to new ground. New Hampshire would be the sixth state to give gay couples every benefit of marriage without the m-word. But "spousal union" is new language.

Nancy Pelosi has finally brought them together.

Only if you have no idea what you’re talking about.