I’m willing to believe that Iranian munitions are finding their way into the hands of insurgents in Iraq. It’s entirely plausible. I’m even willing to believe that the Iranian government might be deliberately arming Iraqi insurgents. Despite that, I think expanding the war into Iran would be an even bigger disaster than it is in Iraq.

But look, ( Read more... )

The funniest thing about this afternoon’s Mooninite-induced panic is that the billboards don’t actually look like bombs. Real bombs are hidden away inside innocuous-looking containers. The blinky lights and LEDs counting down to zero are artifacts of Hollywood dramas, a modern-day symbol of “bomb”, the cinematic equivalent of the shiny black sphere ( Read more... )

Isn’t it nice to know our government is keeping us safe from cartoon ads?

Libertarians like to remind people how every law passed by state authority, no matter how minor, is ultimately backed up by brutal force. I’m not a libertarian, but here’s some evidence backing them up:

An SVSU student who made headlines for being tasered during a struggle at a Saginaw City Council meeting after refusing to remove his hat is ( Read more... )

Does anyone else think that Moqtada Sadr looks a little like Stephen Furst?

Back in 1989, when that big quake hit San Francisco, I called up drcpunk, who was then at UCLA, because I was a lifelong New Yorker, and had no idea that San Francisco and Los Angeles were 300+ miles apart.

Now I’ve got Google Earth to reassure me that Jakarta and Rembang are likewise 300+ miles apart, so I probably shouldn’t worry that tinpan might have been ( Read more... )

You’ve all heard about Tim Ted Haggard, the powerful Christian evangelist who has frequent discussion with GW Bush, and how Mike Jones, a gay bodybuilder and masseuse, said a few days ago that Haggard had frequently had sex with him and that he’d seen Haggard use methamphetamine.

Haggard denied the accusations, claiming that Jones was lying, but ( Read more... )

Stingray leaps into boat, stabs man in chest!

Kevin Baker’s “Stabbed in the Back!” from last month’s Harper’s Magazine (thank to PNH for pointing it out) makes a good sequel to Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, published in Harper’s more than 40 years ago. And it’s convinced me to add the Harpers.org RSS feed to my regular trawl. I should have long ago, since I’m ( Read more... )

Outrage time again! Even though I’ve stopped reading the New York Times in general, I’d been keeping up my old habit of skimming the Week in Review section (and sometimes the magazine) at my local coffee shop on Sundays. No more, I’ve had enough.

The final straw was the latest column by Byron Calame, the Times’s current “public editor”, the guy ( Read more... )