Random thoughts on a Sunday afternoon *UPDATED*
An excellent article about the history of the settlements, and how the Obama administration is turning against Israel in every particular when it comes to these settlements.
Ralph Peters harshes on the myriad misconceptions and outright falsehoods peppering Obama’s Cairo speech.
Torture: Maybe wrong, but definitely legal. Apropos torture, that’s become my Mom’s pivot to justify supporting Obama. He promises no more torture (if you don’t count listening to his speeches as pain and suffering, of course). What’s interesting is that she makes no distinction between the torture the Nazis meted out to civilians because they viewed civilians as vermin for Nazi play; the torture the Spanish Inquisition meted out to Protestants and Jews in order to coerce behavioral changes; the torture Muslims use against Christians and Jews because it’s fun; the torture Vietnamese used against POWs, becasuse it’s fun; and the legal (and hard) coercion tactics Americans used against a small number of high placed Al Qaeda operatives to get them to cough up information about upcoming massive attacks against American citizens. Also, Obama’s refusal to produce the proof that these tactics were effective is proof positive to my Mom that the torture was just for fun.
IBD highlights the fact, missed by many, that Obama greenlighted the development of nuclear weapons for every nation in the world. Somehow that seems at odds with his promise to de-nuclearize the world. But so much is at odds with his promises, right?
Elie Wiesel, of course, spoke from the heart, which gave his speech at Buchenwald power, but am I the only one who simply finds Obama dull? I learn nothing from his speeches, I’m not moved by his speeches, and I’m getting really tired of how self-referential his speeches are.
Incidentally, I’m not the only one finding Obama’s obsession with Obama off-putting. George Will, in a column about the tax-payer screwing the government is lining up with respect to Detroit, opened with an attack on Obama’s self-love: “‘I,’ said the president, who is inordinately fond of the first-person singular pronoun, ‘want to disabuse people of this notion that somehow we enjoy meddling in the private sector.'”
As someone who blogs anonymously because of the personal and professional hits I could take for my blogging, I strongly support the “never expose” side of this debate. I’m creeping out of the closet in my own way, at my own speed, but the blog is an outlet for thoughts that, if expressed in public in my community, could well destroy the delicate balance of my life, affecting not only me, but my family too. Of course, I’m a fairly polite blogger, I attack only public figures, and I stick to the facts as I know (and can support) them. In other words, nobody should ever need to rip aside my anonymity, because nobody should ever need to punish me — even if they want to challenge my ideas.
UPDATE: Just a little bit more on why some bloggers — at least, some conservative bloggers — might want to retain their anonymity. You need to be really, really tough to take the absolutely vile and threatening garbage thrown your way. And it’s probably easier to be tough when you’ve got a solid, real world conservative support network out there, starting in the home. I don’t, so I need to keep my barriers up.
