"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Fighting for hearts and minds
A couple of casual observations to start the weekend. ——————– Lately, Rachel Maddow has been asking why Congress isn’t debating President Obama’s military campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. It’s surely odd that Congress, which interferes with or tries to block everything else the President does, is allowing him free rein to conduct the […]
Watching NBC and MSNBC reports on the Charlie Hebdo terror killings in Paris, I see very few depictions of the magazine’s cartoons. In print and web-based media, though, the cartoons … even the really offensive ones … are everywhere. You’d have to be a cloistered monk not to have seen them, which makes me wonder why our TV […]
Never mind there should be no debate over torture, any more than there should be a debate over rape or child molestation. There is a debate and it’s heading downhill fast, witness this statement by one of the most powerful men in the land: “I think it is very facile for people to say ‘Oh, torture is terrible,’” […]
People keep saying torture can’t be all that bad … after all, we torture our own aviators and special operations forces at a super-secret training facility so they’ll be able to stand up to it if they’re ever captured by the enemy …. and you don’t hear any of them complaining, do you? The acronym for this specialized training […]
Americans who look like me torture.
I feel like we’re slipping back to the 1960s; I meant it when I said I can see Donna and I packing clothing and food for freedom riders again, just as we did in 1964.
Sometimes I wonder what it’s like on Conserva-Earth, where this nasty woman lives. Do young couples elope because they hate each other? Does the water smell vaguely of urine? Are surfaces coated with a thin layer of grime? Does everyone carry? Are pimples considered marks of beauty? Who are their role models? The Walton family? […]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvccehgpXP4[/youtube] I thought this video, which has been widely shared on Twitter, would be all over Facebook by now, but so far no one in my small circle of friends has posted it. Too often, when women try to explain the sexual harassment they experience on the street, fending off or trying to ignore comments and […]