In Which I Finally Agree With Sarah Palin (Yikes!)

OK, Sarah Palin has finally made a reasonable point. The photo at the left is the cover of this week's Newsweek. It uses a photo from a shoot that Palin did for Runner's World that was originally published in August 2009. (Click here to see the slide show of photos from that shoot.)

Palin's response: "The choice of photo for the cover of this week's Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this "news" magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner's World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness -- a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention -- even if out of context."

Yes, Palin is a nut case, train wreck and has no place in national politics. But she has a point here. A more appropriate photo for the tone of the coverage should have been used. Of course, if Hillary Clinton posed in short shorts like that I bet it would appear in the National Review (and that wouldn't be proper, either - - for many, many reasons).

Death To You All

The Hebrew Commandments and the punishments for those who transgress them, were as follows:

• I Am The Lord Thy God. This Commandment recognized the sovereignty of the Almighty. Rejection of it was seen as a refusal to acknowledge God's authority... Punishment was death by stoning.
• Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods But Me... Punishment was death by stoning.
• Thou Shalt Not Take The Name Of The Lord Thy God In Vain... Punishment was death by stoning.
• Remember The Sabbath Day To Keep It Holy... Punishment was death by stoning.
• Honor Thy Father And Thy Mother... Punishment was death by strangulation.
• Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder... Punishment was death by decapitation.
• Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery... Punishment was death by strangulation.
• Thou Shalt Not Steal... Punishment was death by strangulation.
• Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor Punishment was death by stoning.
• Thou Shalt Not Covet... Punishment was death by strangulation.

So if you wanna hang up these rules in schools or on public property, then you oughta be OK with hanging up the penalty for non-compliance, right? And then let me strangle or stone you to death because you've violated more than one of these... on multiple occasions.

Senior Health Care Solution

This is from one of those annoying e-mails that keep getting "sent around" the web, but I thought it made an interesting point.

So you're a senior citizen and the government says no health care for you, what do you do?

Our plan gives anyone 65 years or older a gun and 4 bullets. Your are allowed to shoot 2 senators and 2 representatives. Of Course, this means you will be sent to prison where you will get 3 meals a day, a roof over your head, and all the health care you need! New teeth, no problem. Need glasses, great. New hip, knees, kidney, lungs, heart? All covered.

And who will be paying for all of this? The same government that just told you that you are too old for health care. Plus, because you are a prisoner, you don't have to pay any income taxes anymore.

Don't Panic!

I re-designed the blog a bit today. The previous design was a bit cramped and this spreads things out a bit... and it is lighter and hopefully easier to read.

I also added voting buttons at the bottom of each post, so if you don' want to comment you can at least say whether you like or hate a post... or just want to say WTF (What the Fuck!) or that you found it amusing.

Are You Unable to Think for Yourself?

Religion - watch more funny videos

Obama finally ‘taking control’ on Afghanistan?

First we see this: President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

Then this: In the wake of an AP report on Wednesday that President Barack Obama is not satisfied with any of the options on Afghanistan he has received from his national security team and is demanding revisions, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow turned to veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh for insight.

"It could be huge," Hersh told Maddow, "simply that the president's finally saying, 'I'm taking control.'"

"The one thing that mystified a lot of people," Hersh explained, "was the decision to let General McChrystal write a report. There's no general in history that will come back, given that assignment, and say 'We can't win.'"

"This is basically a war, at best, that's going to be a stalemate," continued Hersh. "And so Obama is just putting his foot down, and that's great. ... He's grabbing it and he hasn't been grabbing it until now."

Hersh also commented on a New York Times story which revealed that the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, former Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, had cabled Washington last week to express "his reservations about deploying additional troops to the country," thereby putting himself "in stark opposition to the current American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who has asked for 40,000 more troops."

Hersh described Eikenberry's cable as "big news," especially because Eikenberry has been one of a group of generals -- which also includes McChrystal, Petraeus, and Odierno -- who graduated from West Point around 1973-75 and have stuck together over the years as what is seen by other military leaders as a "West Point Mafia."

According to Hersh, this has caused "a lot of trauma within the Army, which is very resentful. ... The top of the Army ... they've been very unhappy with the McChrystal appointment and the way things have been going."

That is why Hersh sees it as significant that Eikenberry is now steering an independent course. "This summer inside the embassy," he told Maddow, "there was a lot of concerns about the stability -- literally the mental stability -- of Karzai. And I think Eikenberry probably knows more than most people."

"Eikenberry is simply, I think, reflecting a huge split," Hersh concluded, "because he's now splitting from the McChrystal counter-insurgency wing that's been dominated by Petraeus."

Hersh called his conclusion about Eikenberry a "heuristic guess," but it is supported by one online analysis which tracks Eikenberry's statements since 2007 and suggests that "General McChrystal is on a special mission based a specific philosophy of warfare and that General Eikenberry is performing his duty according to his current assignment with an ongoing evaluation of the various players and facts at hand."

"General Eikenberry is both a soldier and scholar of history and political science," this analysis concludes. "He knows the history of occupations that fail to deliver for the populace and he's telling us right now that the U.S. can't succeed with more military forces in a nation run by an illegitimate president who has been exposed for election fraud. More troops are not the solution."

It will be interesting to see what comes next...

Religion Should Have No Official Role In Military

Nice post today on the Washington Post's On Faith blog...

The U.S. military has no responsibility for the affirmation or condemnation of any religion or the lack thereof. The U.S. military has a constitutional obligation to respect the personal or religious beliefs among all of its personnel. Military chaplains should respect religious pluralism and persons with no religion as well as provide ministry to all people in the armed forces who request assistance, regardless of their faith tradition or lack of one. Simply put, religion has no official role to play in our military.

Now I don't necessarily agree with all of that, but it is a reasonable sentiment. Personally, I don't think the military should even have chaplains.

Is Capitalism Working?

Dissatisfaction with capitalism is widespread around the globe 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall that heralded the demise of European communism, a poll released Monday showed.

Only 11 percent of people surveyed across 27 countries thought free market capitalism is working well, while nearly a quarter -- 23 percent -- said the system is "fatally flawed." A bare majority, 51 percent, believed its problems can be solved with more regulation and reform, the poll said.

I think I fall in with the 51 percent thinking that regulation and reform can solve capitalism's woes. But that has to also come with enforcement -- all the regulation in the world would not help if it cannot be enforced!