Homo Sum:
humani nil a me alienum puto

Did you catch the snippet from (retired) General Sanchez’s new book that was in the WaPo earlier this week?
As I was reading this bit:
During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a “confused” pep talk:
“Kick ass!” he quotes the president as saying. “If somebody [...]

Tired of paying through the nose, Americans try praying at the pump
“Lord, the prices at this pump have gone up since last week. We know that you are able, that you have all the power in the world,” he prayed, before former beauty queen Rashida Jolley led the group in a modified version of the [...]

We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear—fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist [...]

I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown [...]

There’s an evil tableau for you: the callous torturer stands up with blood on his hands and a lie in his teeth, while the priest draped in gilt reassures him of his righteousness. How often has that scene played out in history, I wonder?
You know, I wouldn’t change a word in what Paul Myers says [...]

Last night my mother sent me one of those horrible “email forwards”. She’s the only person with my email address who actually passes these hideous things on to me, knock on wood.
This one was one of those tedious things that abuse casuistry to snark at people who put reason above faith–you know the type, the [...]

TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Today’s Must Read
More than five years after its composition, we finally see a copy of John Yoo’s March 14, 2003 memo to William Haynes, then the Defense Department’s general counsel. It was, as The New York Times and Washington Post report, a green light for military interrogators to use [...]

It is very hard for me to imagine that Guinness cupcakes could be anything but super yummy. Make me some–I’ll be your friend.

While we’re talking about food, I’ve got to say that enough is enough. I consider myself at least something of an epicure, so I believe that there are such things as quality olive [...]

Just for fun, let’s look at what Paul Krugman wrote five years ago.
Snippet one, concerning the U.S. finances:
Meanwhile, consider this: we need $400 billion a year of foreign investment to cover our trade deficit, or the dollar will plunge and our surging budget deficit will become much harder to finance — and there are already [...]

…but over the last few years this has become less and less true.
I’m a pretty rabid atheist, but when someone makes Dawkins look like a moderate on religion, they might have gone a bit too far, you know?
And ever since he went pro-war on Iraq, his writings on foreign policy have taken on a continually [...]

The ass hamsters are at it again, this time in Oklahoma, where House Bill 2211 has just passed the state House of Representatives. If you don’t want to read the Bill, here’s the summary from the Edmond Sun:
The bill requires public schools to guarantee students the right to express their religious viewpoints in a public [...]

You are about to hear Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern (sallykern@okhouse.gov) speaking when she thought that only 50 highly-targeted people were listening.
Every time I start feeling good about humanity, something like this comes along to remind me that we’re basically ten minutes away from hitting each other with sticks. How can people this hateful still [...]

Here’s an example of the difference between someone with an optimistic outlook, and a cynic like me.
It’s pretty easy to imagine someone reading this news story:
Vatican recants with a statue of Galileo
Four hundred years after it put Galileo on trial for heresy the Vatican is to complete its rehabilitation of the great scientist by erecting [...]

OK, let’s close some tabs.
First off, let’s start with our old friend, the head Inquisitioner, Pope Benedict.

It appears he’s been a naughty fellow.
A BBC documentary has exposed that Pope Benedict XVI, aka Cardinal Ratzinger, played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests.
In 2001, while he was a [...]

You know those hoary old SF stories where the hero defeats the robot/intelligent energy matrix/computer/whatever by giving it information that can not be logically processed–isn’t “Is the following statement true? ‘This statement is false.’” the classic one?–and thus causing the super-powerful processing of the robot/intelligent energy matrix/computer/whatever to burn out, usually accompanied by a nice [...]