Hugh Hewitt's answer to Moveon....Ladies and Gentleman---I give you "The Victory Caucus!"

 (guest blogged by Howie Klein.)The first time I heard Israeli-Yemenite singer Ofra Haza she was just as a sample on "Paid in Full" by Eric B & Rakim. Eric B's song was really good but we rushed out to sign the sample. Ofra had already released a dozen albums in Israel, mostly children's songs, but "Im Nin-Alu," (the one the sample was taken from) busted her career wide open everywhere in the world. She had a top 5 song all over Europe and even in the U.S., where songs in strange languages make most Americans reach for their guns, the song gave Ofra a big underground/hipster following. I loved working with her and her manager and was heartbroken when I found out that her husband, who died of a drug overdose, gave her a fatal case of AIDs. (cd contest below the fold)

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I'm stealing Digby's post...

YKOS is having an auction to help defray costs for the their convention and they have some excellent stuff to bid on. I'd bid on the John Stewart or Live Aid tix if I were going to be in NY any time soon, but that's just me.

It's hot and I'm beat....

You'll know all the right wing tools by their articles. Michael Moore is trying to raise the debate of health care in this country. He is not telling us what system to use to how to solve it---only that ours is horrible. Loder uses a short film from the wingnut Liberty Film Festival as evidence to attack Moore.  If Loder wants to use it he could at least mention that it's from a right wing hack shop please.

Mark from NewsCoprse:

The film made its debut at the Liberty Film Festival, which describes itself as “a forum in the heart of Hollywood for conservative and libertarian filmmakers.” In 2006 the festival operations merged with ultra-right wing provocateur David Horowitz‘ Freedom Center...read on

And Loder claimed that Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth was a fraud too: "But Al Gore's environmental alarmism — much of it since heavily questioned — no doubt plays better in Beverly Hills."

My grandparents refused to speak Italian to their children because of the racial pressures they faced in the early 1900's. Because of that I never learned Italian and it often upset me as I grew up and appreciated what a gift it would have been to speak a second language. It's too bad that Congress couldn't have taken their time (Tancredo is Italian and this exchange about the English language is an embarrassment...see video.) and worked out a comprehensive plan, but the Republicans blocked it. Arthur links to an article by Peter Quinn that talks about the history of this country on immigration and its sins. History is something we sorely lack...

Considering that the United States is made up of "others" and those descended from "others," it is remarkable how much we hate the "other" targeted for vilification at any particular moment in history. We don't hate only those "others" who come here: we hate the "others" who remain there, wherever "there" might be...

At the conclusion of his article, Quinn wonders "whether we will learn from the past or repeat it." On this, as on every other issue of consequence, the evidence compels but one conclusion: we resolutely refuse to learn a single damned thing from the past -- especially since we are almost entirely ignorant of our own past, as well as everyone else's -- and we will repeat it an endless number of times, with all its grisly, bloody details fully intact..read on

 Sen. Lugar wants to do something before Gen. Patreus reports back in September because he feels the surge will not help the Iraqi politicians get their deals struck for years to come. In essence it's a big waste of time. And then he gets honest about the Iraq government. Oh, and he makes Lieberman out to be the fool that he is...

Lugar:...as a matter of fact they hate each other on most occasions...

Download | play Download | play

That's just wonderful, but many people understood this before Bush/Cheney attacked Iraq. Chalabi and the INC received over 33 million dollars to supply President Cheney with discredited sources to push for war as Moyers unveiled. What about the Kurds and the Turks? And the oil money is still being stolen...In the second segment, (I didn't post the video) he does suffer from a symptom I'll call "Bush optimism." He thinks Bush/Cheney will listen to him and others to come to some sort of agreement and start changing course before September. Hahahaha....He loses me there...

Arvin Hill: American jurisprudence gone BUCK-wild!  (Although sometimes it’s nice to hear from a Vogon, as opposed to the usual Krikkiters.) 

Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus, on losers, leftnecks, and trench liberals: “So the party of Roosevelt begins to dimly understand that now is the opportunity to re-associate itself with populism. The problem is that Democratic Party ‘leadership’ has no notion of what populism means.” 

Then again, asks Alternate Brain, how do you get through to the 60-year-old man who told Michael Moore he’d “rather have no insurance than socialized medicine”?  Badtux the Snarky Penguin has one compelling argument. 

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Interesting article on privacy rights in the UK....

via Nonny Mouse in the UK:

BBC is remarking on how calm the public was during the 'car bomb' attack on the Glasgow airport, how little panic or 'terror' there was - mostly just people whipping out their mobile phone cameras and filming everything in sight.

Arrests made on the M6 motorway in Cheshire last night as well. People got out of cars and offered to HELP the police.

Glasgow Airport is back up and running, passengers being interviewed coming off planes have said things are running smoothly, no problems. A bit of a hassle walking around the cordoned off bits of the airport, but no one's complaining. Lots of smiling faces.

It's almost psychology in reverse - the more fanatics try to terrorise the British, the more the British refuse to be terrorised. We're more worried about the goddamned rain at the moment.