Saccharine, blasphemous, and too damned tight. I wonder if “godinspiredfashion.com” has any skinny jeans printed with “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”?
The designs are tight enough for Calvins, but I suppose it would be unfair to tag this “Calvinism.”
When you get up in the morning and feed your dog he looks up at you and thinks: “She comes, finds my food and pours it for me—she must be a god.” A cat thinks: “She comes, finds my food and pours it out for me—I must be a god.”
(Peggy Noonan, transitioning from “dog” Pope Francis to our “cat” politicians.)
Mr. Putin has … and shielded Syria’s murderous Assad regime without paying any price.
(Wall Street Journal, lamenting U.S. “abasement” at Putin’s hand.)
What WSJ calls “shielding a murderous regime,” if you turn it a degree or two, could equally well be rephrased: “Mr. Putin has been the only major world leader who has lifted a finger to restore Order in Syria, where Christians, as the Wall Street Journal knows full well, have particularly suffered in the anarchy of the ‘Arab Spring’.”
No, I don’t really want us to intervene on Assad’s side, even though he kept order. But we’re already interventionist all over the region, and usually on the side of “democratic” Islamists who somehow just can’t be bothered to protect Christians, who are being effectively exiled from country after country.
And I really get tired of mock indignation when another great (but inferior) power refuses to dance the jig we’ve called, and which we’ve paid the world’s pipers to play. If you want a saner view of Russia, read, oh, Daniel Larison.
[T]he House’s vote on Wednesday to ramp up sanctions on Iran … was rushed to floor before recess not so that sanctions can be escalated anytime soon (the Senate won’t take up the bill till the fall, if ever) but because AIPAC—representing in Washington the perspectives of Israel’s current government—wants to short circuit any chance of meaningful negotiation between the Obama administration and Iran’s newly elected president. One goal of the bill is to demonstrate to Iran’s leaders, through a landslide House vote, that America is deeply, almost inherently, hostile and to undercut whatever small gestures of peaceful diplomacy that Obama and the new Rouhani team have each been making since the latter’s election last June.
(Scott McConnell) Be cautious, though, about attributing actual hostility to Congress. It’s mostly preening for AIPAC, lest they “face a really well-funded AIPAC-backed candidate during their next four election cycles.”
There is no way the United States would be so near to war, no way even the United States would seem irrevocably hostile to Iran, so lacking real diplomatic contact with the country, without the machinations of the Israel lobby. The Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis were long ago, and there are powerful human and economic incentives, on both sides, to work our way towards some sort of detente.
Two food notes/anecdotes:
- If three pieces of baguette don’t make your jaw sore, it’s not crusty enough. Trader Joe’s garlic parmesan baguette is crusty enough.
- I’m on a roll on weight loss since I stopped snacking on sweets entirely, though they’re free and sitting in bowls offered by colleagues. If you’ve got a metabolism like mine, that high glycemic index stuff really starts a vicious circle. I’m also still on VB6, and as I add a variety of Vegan dishes, it gets easier to stick to pretty closely (apart from the occasional craving for lox, bagel and cream cheese).
As Rod Dreher puts it, “this didn’t happen because we were told that it wouldn’t.” And as he puts it again:
“I am still not getting what I want.” No, but you’re not getting what you deserve either, you pompous ass, and for that you should be thankful.
Nothing to see here. Move along now.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 