Powell Has Praise for Obama – New York Times:
“‘I thought that Senator Obama handled the issue well,’ Mr. Powell told ABC’s ‘Good Morning America.’ ‘He didn’t abandon the minister that brought him closer to his faith, but at the same time he deplored the kinds of statements that the Reverend Wright had made.’”
(Via NY Times.)
I wonder with the hit job on Rev. Wright and his church, if Powell’s statement will have an effect.
Cheney, others OK’d harsh interrogations – Yahoo! News:
“Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned.
The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.”
(Via Yahoo! News.)
I actually saw this on The West Wing. General would fall on his sword if Bartlett’s assassination of a terrorist is found out. Great drama, but highly disturbing in real life. It’s always easy to go along when they aren’t coming for you. That’s why we have to stand up against torture regardless of whose the target. Even if you have no morals whatsoever the poem First they came… provides good enough reason to do so. Ashcroft’s quote at the end of the story is great.
“Why are we talking about this in the White House?” the network quoted Ashcroft as saying during one meeting. “History will not judge this kindly.”
“In Eugene, Ore., Saturday. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., attempted to change the measure by which anyone might assess who criticized the Iraq war first, her or Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., by saying those keeping records should start in January 2005, when Obama joined the Senate. (A measure that conveniently avoids her October 2002 vote to authorize use of force against Iraq at a time that Obama was speaking out against the war.) She claimed that using that measure, she criticized the war in Iraq before Obama did.
But Clinton’s claim was false.”
(Via Political Punch.)
Is it me or is Hillary turning into George Bush in Democrat drag? This isn’t even a clever misleading lie half-truth. It’s an easy fact check call. Wow. Talk about looking desperate.
King was a flawed and human man, but a genius of love by living and speaking it in public. Just looking a few quotes, reminds one of that. What a terrible loss we suffered on April 4, 1968.
Today, I learned an important lesson: faith is a great ally and great threat in politics. When discussing a recent article on the Internet titled, “How to Disagree,” with some friends, I took the opportunity to correct past mistakes at being ineffective, intemperate, or just plain disagreeable when discussing contentious topics. I decided to revisit a particular discussion on homosexuality and examine the mechanics of the back and forth. I wanted to highlight my reasoning, how I was trying to make a point, and so on, to show that I was refuting (and this is important) logical claims by providing evidence that supported my refutation.
I received a couple of responses that greatly frustrated me at first. Technically speaking, my friends had simply restated a contradiction to a point I had painstakingly proven with biblical evidence, evidence that I found incontrovertible. It was right there in black and white, after all. Yet, here they were simply restating the opposite! My ego was stung and information not conforming to my worldview was imposed on me and like most human beings, anger was the predictable first and thankfully internal response. Aren’t they listening?!? Don’t they respect me?!? Are they boneheaded??! And so on. To be clear and concise consider this conversation:
What is the wavelength of blue light?
550 nanometers.
What is the wavelength of light scattered from the sky on a sunny day?
550 nanometers.
What is the color of the sky?
Green.
It hadn’t yet occurred to me that they were simply confessing faith. Confessing one’s faith comes in many different forms and is often disguised, as it was in this situation. Faith is also emotional and deeply multivalent in one’s life. It doesn’t fit in a nice neat box. It is often ineffable and a reflection of the person who has it rather than a reflection of some abstract or objective reality.
Heavy Troop Deployments Are Called Major Risk – washingtonpost.com:
“Senior Army and Marine Corps leaders said yesterday that the increase of more than 30,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has put unsustainable levels of stress on U.S. ground forces and has put their readiness to fight other conflicts at the lowest level in years.”
(Via The Washington Post.)
What are you left with when you kill the goose to get more and more of those golden eggs?
AlterNet: The Top 10 Myths Keeping Hillary in the Race:
“Myth: Well, I say they are disenfranchised, and Hillary Clinton is their champion.
Only when it suits her. Last fall, when the decision was first made to flush 100% of Michigan and Florida delegates, Clinton firmly ratified it.”
(Via AlterNet.org.)
Usually, I’m not a fan of AlterNet’s writers. So liberal, they lose touch with reality a bit too often for my taste, but this piece was amusing with a good ol’ fashioned sprinkling of—gasp!—facts thrown in!
I just read a great article that details disagreement that actually elevates a discussion’s participants far better than I have ever done. This is why I’m not a fan of rhetorical battle which on the DH scale is approximately DH3.5. It’s pretty and can convince those dazzled by eloquence or volume, but it’s not really substantive. Sophistry is what it is. And we are all guilty of it from time to time. That’s human.
For example, we cannot argue about matters of faith for reasons best given by example.
P1: The Bible is the Word of God.
P2: No it isn't.
--or--
P1: I know God.
P2: So do I.
The second statements should be completely true for P2 who contradicts P1, but without evidence to back P2 up she/he hasn’t made a convincing argument for either one’s veracity. That’s why I try to be very picky about how and why I argue things about faith, the Bible, politics, etc. Evidence requires substance and empirical observation. I can make a convincing argument based on evidence that the Bible doesn’t refer to itself at least the Bible. That’s cut and dry like saying that John begins with “In the beginning, was the Word.”
What’s more interesting, is that I can make a convincing argument that the Bible and the Word of God are not the same things provided I define them well. Based on those definitions which are real empirical things, I can construct an argument that differentiates them. That is a subtle but very important difference from proving the statement: “The Bible is not the Word of God.” A faith assertion that is not subject to rational argument. Faith is not argued; it is confessed.
Michelle Singletary – Debt Addicts Get A Dose of Reality – washingtonpost.com:
“But many of the individuals who are overloaded with debt need to take responsibility for their bad choices, too. Take credit card debt, for example. Certainly there has been a tremendous push — for decades — by financial institutions to get people to view credit cards as indispensable.
And consumers gladly went along, with no complaint, using other people’s money until life’s hardships — a job loss, illness or divorce — got in the way and they could no longer pay today for what they long since had purchased.”
(Via The Washington Post.)
A quick, but fair, look at why debtors clearly have to share responsibility in the current economic crisis.
(Via The Huffington Post.)
If Hillary misspoke, how can you misspeak in a book? How do you misspeak repeatedly? I don’t think I’d ever forget, misremember being shot at, ever.
My problem isn’t that she did the ol’ resumé puff up. After all, she is trying to sell herself to us voters by the very definition of political candidate. I expect puffery and I’ll even tolerate a small fish story here and there. But this is about substantiating her central claim to in her own words, “crossing the commander-in-chief threshold.” She has repeatedly belittled Obama on this score. My take: you live by the sword, you die by the sword. Her experience warrants scrutiny and if it is found lacking, whether because of lies, misspeaking, or faulty memory, it’s still lacking.
