Yesterday’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai (formerly Bombay, a global financial capital) and car bomb outside the American embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, remind us of the instability in Central/South Asia. India, a secular democracy, has a large (over 100 million citizens) Islamic minority, and the Hindu majority country also has a cadre of militant Hindu extremists. [...]
For years I had shopped at Circuit City, the Virginia-based electronics retailer, for a variety of products. News that they are filing for bankruptcy, however, comes as no surprise.
When Circuit City fired experienced and knowledgeable retail sales staff a year or so ago but continued to pay its executives more than those at up-and-coming Best [...]
“When from our exile God leads us home again,
we’ll think we’re dreaming.
Then lead us home, bring us to life again,
even as rivers which, in the desert,
when the first rain falls,
start flowing again.
Sow seed in sadness, harvest in gladness.
A man goes his way and sows seed with tears.
Back he comes, singing,
sheaves on his shoulder.”
–Psalm 126 (translated [...]
The Counsel for the Army Joseph Welch earned his place in history when, responding to Senator McCarthy at the McCarthy hearings in the early nineteen-fifties, Welch said, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” McCarthy was infamous for destroying lives and careers by using guilt-by-association [...]
This handy calculator will give you a ballpark estimate on how much your taxes will be reduced under the Obama tax plan. (This calculator is only an estimate; I’m still taking my taxes to my accountant, Ham Dwyer.)
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Don’t get me wrong. I’ve known Republicans all my life. Some of my best . . . well, some of my friends, are Republicans. Some of my extended family are Republicans. Heck, when I was a teenager we even had black neighbors who were Republican (because it was the Party of Lincoln). So for over [...]
For those of us who have been paying attention to this presidential campaign from the start (i.e. November 2000), the End of Days can’t come soon enough. Jesus, according to his prophetess Sarah, wants us in Iraq. No wonder one McPain Campaign worker calls the prophetess Sarah a “wacko.” Maranatha.
Thanks to Kevin G for this [...]
New signs of desperation on the McPain Campaign in Hampton Roads, Virginia (that’s Norfolk, Virginia Beach to you), where I used to live: a phony flier made to look like a Virginia State Board of Elections press release announcing that an “emergency session” of the General Assembly decided to extend the election over two days, [...]
In one of the more bizarre turns in an already bizarre election season, an Islamist Web site with links to Al Qaeda has endorsed John McCain:
“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the [...]
David “Mudcat” Saunders, a Virginian in the southwest of that Commonwealth (where I had the privilege of serving in the ministry in the late 1070s and early 80s), has this to say about the charge that Obama’s desire to “redistribute wealth” is “socialist” or “communist” (having no substance to their campaign and now desperate, the [...]
The mendacity of McCain-Pain would gag Big Daddy Pollitt: “What’s that smell in this room? Didn’t you notice it, Brick? Didn’t you notice the powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room?”
In the latest instance, the telemarketing script on behalf of McCain-Pain that was used in Wisconsin to alarm the “base” (an apt word [...]
McCain-Palin and the Republican apparatchick have made much of the not-for-profit Acorn community organizing group and its associated Project Vote whose paid voter registration canvassers included fraudulent registrations among the “newly registered” (were they paid by the piece like farm workers or sweatshop workers?). McCain characterized this as the most serious threat to American democracy [...]
Turns out that “Hockey Mom” Sarah Palin and her family don’t get their wardrobes nowadays from Marshalls, T.J. Maxx, (two of my favorites) or J.C. Penney (I’ve gotten some nice shirts there). They have been kitted out by the RNC with fashions from Neiman Marcus (over $75,000 worth) and Saks Fifth Avenue (nearly $50,000 worth).
No [...]
In a fine testimony to the desperation and vacuity of the McCain-Palin campaign (as if McCain’s selection of Palin were not testimony enough) comes the news that McCain-Palin’s pal, Joe the Plumber, is neither a licensed plumber nor named Joe. He also owes back taxes (even under the generous Bush-era taxation).
Joe, even if your taxes [...]
Desperate housewives McCain-Palin have attempted to smear Obama with guilt-by-association involving a 1960s radical (who is now a tired, middle-aged university professor–a very dangerous person in the eyes of today’s descendants of the John Birch Society), but girls in white dresses shouldn’t throw mud. (Why is it that guilt-by-association, no matter how tenuous the association, [...]
Seems like everyone is looking for someone(s) to blame for the financial mess that the US and now the world have descended into. “Wall Street Greed,” “Bush and His Pals,” “Congress (except my senators and congressional rep)” seem at the top of the list.
Now look in the mirror.
If like many Americans over the past 28 [...]
Essayist Bob Herbert takes note of Sarah Palin’s opining on foreign affairs to Katie Couric (Queen of MSM Softball Pitchers):
When asked again this week about her puerile linkage of foreign policy proficiency and Alaska’s proximity to Russia, this time by Katie Couric of CBS News, here is what Ms. Palin said she meant:
“That Alaska has [...]
An administration that values cronyism over competence.
An administration that values secrecy over transparency.
An administration that views criticism as disloyalty and brands critics as enemies.
An administration that retaliates against its critics and opponents.
An administration that believes in its Divinely Ordained Manifest Destiny.
No, I’m not rehashing the last eight years of Incurious George, the mischievous monkey who has [...]
Visit MSN’s Republicrats, featuring Harrison White as “Harrison DuBrie,”Republicrat hair stylist.
Just when you thought that the current presidential campaign season couldn’t get any longer, I’ve decided to run for president. Visit my grassroots campaign video.
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One of the handful of points of pride that Thomas Jefferson specified as his epitaph was that he was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Famously in Query 17 of the only book he published in his lifetime, Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson wrote:
The legitimate powers of government extend to [...]
There may not be “out” gays in the military, but there appear to be Queer Eyes among Air Force officers.
An article by R. Jeffrey Smith in The Washington Postreveals that top brass among Fly Boys have lobbied Congress to spend counter-terrorism funds for “comfort capsules” (and we’re not talking about Qualudes, girl friend), modular suites [...]
The week that Eliot Spitzer came clean (pun intended) about his creative financing of sessions with a high-end sex worker, my students in the second semester of a survey of world literature course were looking at Freud’s account of his patient “Dora.”
I’ve configured the world lit course as an exploration (I just typed and corrected [...]
This week we learned that the well respected and beloved (though controversial) president of the College of William and Mary, Gene Nichol, would not have his contract renewed by the Board of Visitors (headed by the college’s rector, the refried Bush administrator Michael K. Powell [son of the Good Soldier and former Bush Secretary of [...]
