Unqualified Offerings

Finally come to Iraq:
The mood was quite different in Amarah, where jubilant residents flocked to Sadr’s office to offer their congratulations. Drivers in the street honked their car horns in celebration. Some prepared to take to the streets to rejoice.
“Today is a holiday in our province,” said Abu Mustaffa, an unemployed 45-year-old from the city’s [...]

The parenting dilemma issue of the day – I solved it. To recap, from Slate:
Our teenage son (17) has started going out with his first girlfriend. He badgers us to let her stay overnight in our house, but we’ve said no and explained that as long as he is in high school, we don’t approve [...]

I can’t believe that in almost five years of blogging “fortune cookie neoconservatism,” the absolute perfect formulation, eluded me:
Everyone knows you can get a good laugh out of your meal at the local Chinese Buffet by opening your fortune cookie, reading the message aloud and adding two words on the end of the message: in [...]

Speak Persian? Willing to listen to a few seconds Persian for me? Please let me know.

Jimmy Carter’s signing speech for the act that created the Department of Education in 1979 is full of passages that range from dubious to absurd on their face. Of the former, there’s the claim that
The Department of Education bill will permit improved administration of the Government’s health and human service programs, whose functions are closely [...]

So the chorus for war with Iran crescendos, and will keep doing so. I should master my anger and contempt at the sheer cowardice involved, but it’s tag team cowardice, hard to decide where to focus first. There’s the strategic cowardice of the powerful and their lickspittles, the politicians and the operatives, in and out [...]