Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
Since I unintentionally hit some nerves in an earlier post, it’s only fair to try to offera lighter segue.  The repercussions from mentioning Stalin reminded me of something from Seinfeld:

MICKEY: I knew that Commie stuff was going to get us in trouble.
KRAMER: Yeah, well I didn’t realize that was such a sensitive issue.
MICKEY: Communism, [...]

Julian has more about Soviet Chic, and the lack of Nazi Chic. Excerpt:
We may not feel sufficiently confident in our ability to tame or detourn the Nazi aesthetic as we do its Soviet counterpart, precisely because Naziism was in some ways an essentially aesthetic movement—at its core a style as much as an ideology . [...]

Ring around the puppy!

Next, Kate tries to get Dipsy to wear it.
Via Kate and Dally blog, which has the big version of the picture. And thanks to the people who posted supporting comments during Mrs. Offering’s time of trials.

Oh no he didn’t!
Judge Reggie Walton, you get the Awesome Award.
Via Atrios.

By Mona
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I strongly dissent from those who would romanticize the former Soviet Union, and claim Stalin was some aberration; he followed in Lenin’s footsteps. None other than Emma Goldman and her anarchist lover, Alexander Berkman, sounded the alarm. To quote from a transcript of this PBS documentary, my emphasis:

NARRATOR: Faced with [...]

By Thoreau
For those who say that Islamist terrorism is some sort of peril without precedent, this refutes them far better than I could.
Hat tip to The Poor Man institute

By Thoreau
Today’s winner is Jon H:
Ignore him [Stalin] and the Soviet union’s human rights record becomes one that today’s GOP would find not just defensible, but admirable.
Exaggerated, but only slightly. It’s still scarily close to the mark.
(I should emphasize that although we’re nowhere near the scale of civil liberties violations that the Soviets had, [...]

By Thoreau
Julian Sanchez blogged that he’d like to see this idea of Andrew Sullivan’s make it into wider circulation: That Giuliani and other hawks are basically stuck in a 9/12 mentality–a blind rage that leaves no room for other ideas other than fear and a desire to lash out. They always accuse [...]

By Mona
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Scooter Libby is a “Fallen Soldier”:

In “The Soldier’s Creed,” there is a particularly compelling principle: “I will never leave a fallen comrade.” This is a cherished belief, and it has been so since soldiers and chroniclers and philosophers thought about wars and great, common endeavors. Across time and space, cultures, [...]

I packed my angry eyes today.