simple truths
“You know, back in 2000 a Republican friend of mine warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we'd lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched.

You know what? I did vote for Al Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned if all those things didn't come true.”
—James Carville
2.19.2009
 
Israel, vindicated
This fine quote came to me in email today, had to do a little searching to authenticate it. found a lot of blog posts, going back a few years to the alleged interview [aug 2006], including a a dead video link. good news is i found an audio broadcast (mp3) here

http://blog.honestreporting.ca/my_weblog/2006/08/bibi_on_bbc.html

and a few other blogs with good discussions/links to boot:

http://www.barder.com/ephems/537

http://www.seraphicpress.com/archives/2006/08/bibi_bests_the.php

http://www.topix.com/forum/ps/gaza/T3DUKJ7TQK7MDAVO2

audio interview

Interviewer: "How come so many more Lebanese have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?"

Netanyahu: "Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?"

Interviewer: "Why not?"

Netanyahu: "Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war was caused by Germany's aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima. Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children's hospital, killing 83 little children. Perhaps you have another question?"

"... in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war was caused by Germany's aggression."

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10.13.2008
 
Yee-Ha!
Donkey Kicks Elephant

Just stumbled onto a little internet whimsy:


donkey kicks elephant complete with sound effects

A simple animation of a Democratic Donkey kicking a Republican Elephant. Complete with sound effects!

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Comparisons to 1992 and 1996
Obama Projected Winner
1992 map comparison

1996 map comparison

As of today, polls showing Obama ahead with 333 electoral votes; leading my curiosity to compare to 1992 and 1996 elections respectively, in which, of course the Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton won.

What appears is a strikingly similar map, with only the south in play as having "flip-flopped" (*smirk*) including fickle Florida, which of course voted for Gore but still went to Bush-it in the OJ-ing of the American Electoral College.

Of course this is comparing current polls to electoral outcome and the election is still weeks away, still trends are emerging that are consistent and indicative of regional zeitgeist. For example, Arizona is backing McCain but went for Clinton in 1996.

What appears is a strikingly similar map, with only the south in play as having "flip-flopped" (*smirk*) including fickle Florida, which of course voted for Gore but still went to Bush-it in the OJ-ing of the American Electoral College.

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9.01.2007
 
On a lighter note...
Official Gmail Blog: Watch the final Gmail collaborative video
¤ Share this @ On a lighter note...
9.15.2006
 
The 14 Identifying Characteristics of Fascism
The 14 Identifying Characteristics of Fascism

David Loehr at Austin Unitarian Church gave a sermon a couple of years
ago on fascism, where he quoted the following from Dr. Lawrence Britt's identifying traits of fascism. Here is what he said:

In an essay coyly titled "Fascism Anyone?," Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, identifies social and political agendas common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 "identifying characteristics of fascism." (The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2. Read it at http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm) See how familiar they sound.



1 Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2 Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights

Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3 Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause

The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4 Supremacy of the Military

Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5 Rampant Sexism

The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively
male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

6 Controlled Mass Media

Sometimes the media are directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media are indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7 Obsession with National Security

Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8 Religion and Government are Intertwined

Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9 Corporate Power is Protected

The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10 Labor Power is Suppressed

Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11 Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher
education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other
academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

12 Obsession with Crime and Punishment

Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to
enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13 Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and
associates who appoint each other to government positions and use
governmental power and authority to protect their friends from
accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14 Fraudulent Elections

Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.


Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

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8.14.2006
 
Anti-Semitism for Dummies
The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

Anti-Semitism for dummies
By Suzanne Fields
Published August 14, 2006

In the larger scheme of things, Mel Gibson's drunken outburst against the Jews is very small potatoes. But it underlines an important element of anti-Semitism often overlooked. Contempt for the Jews is nearly always self-destructive, not necessarily in the short run but over time, not simply person-to-person, but for nations, too. Anti-Semitism is for dummies.

Paul Johnson, the British historian, documents how this works: Anti-Semitism clouds a person's judgment, forcing him to look for validation of his hatred and this inevitably narrows his ability to reason. He's like the Marxist ever in search of "evidence" to confirm his economic theory, and voila, it's there. The anti-Semite can't accept what doesn't fit into his narrow worldview and his hatred prevents him from enjoying the creativity of Jews, no matter that this creativity would pay him great dividends.

Anti-Semitism dilutes the rewards of Jewish financial, scientific, artistic and intellectual strengths. When Spain expelled the Jews (along with the Moors) at the end of the 15th century, for example, Spain lost the intellectual gifts it needed as the New World flowered with unprecedented opportunities for economic development. "The effect of official anti-Semitism was to deprive Spain (and its colonies) of a class already notable for the astute handling of finance," Paul Johnson writes in Commentary magazine. "As a consequence, the project of enlarging the new World's silver mines and [bringing] huge amounts of silver into Spain, far from leading to rational investment in a proto-industrial revolution or to the creation of modern financial services, had a profoundly deleterious impact, plunging the hitherto vigorous Spanish economy into inflation and long-term decline, and the government into repeated bankruptcy."

It's ironic that when Jews become financiers, they are often loathed for their abilities to manage money and those in authority do not draw on their gifts. Spain never recovered from sending Jews into exile, and the Netherlands inherited good fortune when the Jewish refugees settled and contributed to the eventual mercantile and financial supremacy of that time. Amsterdam and Rotterdam became cities that endure as great trade centers to this day.

England expelled the Jews in the 13th century, but invited them back 300 years later, using money from the Rothschild's international banking establishment to defeat Napoleon. Jews have flourished in England without religious restrictions, though Shakespeare tapped into the residue of official anti-Semitism in his portrait of Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice." (It's another irony that he probably never met a Jew.)

Laws that control and restrict Jews become models for control and restrictions of other religious and ethnic groups. Catherine the Great limited where Jews could live. Prejudice expanded to officially sanctioned pogroms that sent many Jews emigrating to the West. The Soviet Union enforced brutal legal restrictions on Jews and ruthlessly expanded them to other minorities. The Dreyfus case in France at the end of the 19th century provoked international condemnation and severely weakened the French military; its effects are felt today. Germany has yet to recover the talents of the Jews it killed or expelled under The Third Reich, including 20 Nobel Prize scientists.

The impact of anti-Semitism on the Arabs in the Middle East is only now getting the attention it deserves. Jews under the Ottoman Turks in the 15th and 16th century were welcomed for their advanced knowledge of spinning, weaving and dying of textiles. Their knowledge of European languages enabled Muslims to employ them as diplomats. Modern Islam merely blames them for everything they imagine going wrong.

Paul Johnson notes that Arabs have not only wasted trillions of dollars of oil revenues, blowing much of the money on armaments, but they have neither consolidated nor modernized their law nor copied any of the techniques of land management the Jews have used to make the desert bloom. Playing the victim and blaming the Jews for everything that goes wrong galvanizes hatred, but it doesn't do anything to make Arab life livable.

"The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," the crude Czarist forgery that blames Jewish conspiracies for everything bad, is a perennial best seller in the Arab world and is taught as fact in the schools. The book, laughed at in the West, became a Cairo television series widely popular in the Islamic world.

Imagine how different things could have been if the Arabs had cooperated with Jews early in the 20th century. Imagine a Jewish-Arab collaboration to build real schools, teaching hospitals and great universities. Imagine what might have been if they had worked the land together, exchanging techniques of cultivation. Imagine what might have been if they had cooperated to develop joint social services for the needy of both peoples. Imagine.

Copyright © 2006 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.>

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7.31.2006
 
Dr. Wafa Sultan


"The Jews have come from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

-- Arab-American Psychiatrist Wafa Sultan


Transcript of Dr. Wafa Sultan

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“What we find is that a whopping 86% of Americans believe that there need to be stricter laws and regulations to protect the environment; 77% think it is more important to maintain government services such as Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid than to cut taxes; 72% of Americans favor stricter laws related to the control of handguns; 63% of Americans favor affirmative action programs designed to help blacks, women and other minorities get better jobs and education; 62% don't think Roe v. Wade should be overturned by the Supreme Court; and 62% would prefer a universal health insurance program run by the government and financed by taxpayers.

On virtually every issue, public opinion polls show that consumer preferences are for the policies of the Democrats, and not for those of the GOP. Republicans offer inferior, less desirable policy solutions, while Democrats offer superior policies that are preferred by the majority of Americans.”
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18395

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