I haven’t been able to digest all the features of the fiscal cliff deal as yet. The White House has put out a fact sheet on what the deal contains. My initial reaction is disappointment that does not seem to go nearly as far in taxing the rich as I would have liked but also relief it did not hammer the poor and the safety net as much as I had feared. [Read more…]
(Via gocomics.)
What was your reaction to the shootings last week at the elementary school? If you were like me, you probably felt a combination of shock, sadness, and anger. Shock at the scale of the carnage and the age of most of the victims, sadness at the thought of the terrible grief that the loved ones of the victims must be feeling, and anger at the person who did such an awful thing. [Read more…]
The US has once again shown itself to be the enabler of Israel’s expansionist policies that have all but doomed the possibility of a two-state solution. As the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported, the threat of a veto by the US scuttled a resolution in the UN Security Council to oppose the recent decision by the Netanyahu government to expand its settlement program around Jerusalem. Even the UK abandoned its ally on this one. [Read more…]
There is grim news from Pakistan that five women volunteers in the rural areas who were administering the polio vaccine were shot dead, with the killers suspected of being Taliban, who claim that the vaccination campaign is part of a nefarious plot by the west. As a result, the UN and the Pakistani government have been forced to suspend the program in that region. [Read more…]
The Guardian reported last week that in a historic unanimous verdict, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, Europe’s highest court, said that, “CIA agents tortured a German citizen, sodomising, shackling, and beating him, as Macedonian state police looked on.” The person who suffered such horrendous abuse was the wholly innocent Khaled el-Masri, shown below with his family, who had the misfortune to have a name similar to that of an al Qaeda suspect wanted by the CIA. [Read more…]
When violence strikes innocent people close to home, you can expect religious leaders to immediately scramble to explain how their god can allow such things to happen. Some, like Bryan Fischer and Mike Huckabee, have suggested that god is punishing people for excluding religion from schools. Others are more aware that such a message it not particularly good public relations for their god and try to square the events with a god who is good and not easily irked into fits of violence. [Read more…]
Phil Burress is president of the Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values. Any group that has the words ‘traditional’, ‘family’, ‘values’, and the like in its title is likely to be narrow-minded and this one is no exception. CCV is one of those groups that fights for ‘Judeo-Christian moral values’ and ‘has been ‘protecting the family since 1983’ mainly, it seems, by fighting against pornography and homosexuality. [Read more…]
The Westboro Baptist church has not been in the news much recently but you knew that that would not last long. They are insatiable in their desire for publicity and have announced that they will picket outside the site of last week’s massacre. [Read more…]
Although I own a TV, it is used almost exclusively to watch DVDs and I have not watched TV news or any programs in ages, preferring to get both via the radio or the internet. But I can imagine that there must have been wall-to-wall coverage of the shootings at the elementary school last week. My local newspaper the Plain Dealer had massive front-page, above the fold coverage of the news on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday even though the events took place in a distant state and had no local connection. [Read more…]