My sensitivities are injured

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday September 02, 2010 · 3:57 PM PDT

2010/09/02 · 15:57

This Mosque thing has made me rethink my sensitivities. I have a lot of them and I damn well want patriotic Americans to do something about it! I have suffered for decades now with my sensitivities uncared for and disrespected! It's time to clean house and get rid of all those alien faiths that intrude on our sacred land. I want congressional action to remove all those foreign religions. Pass a law and bring in the bulldozers to knock down all those unAmerican creeds!

arion

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday August 07, 2010 · 12:28 PM PDT

2010/08/07 · 12:28

Tony Judt just died. The left has lost one of its best voices and I feel as if I've lost a close personal friend. The Times has given him a respectful obit; yet one that is wrong in one crucial way: The Times describes Tony as a polemical writer, and that is one thing Tony never was. While he never avoided controversy and often took positions that made him unpopular, his tone was never sharp nor his manner anything less than respectful to all. This was precisely his greatest gift. It was this absence of animus and acrimony that made made his writing so oddly healing As well is witty, balanced and remarkably penetrating. He deserves to be ranked with Havel and Said as one of the few great intellectuals of our time.

How to leave Afghanistan

arion

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday June 24, 2010 · 7:19 AM PDT

2010/06/24 · 07:19

Unlike Vietnam, there is no reason why we cannot maintain some kind of military and diplomatic relations with Afghanistan after a complete ground withdrawal. In fact we should be putting the groundwork in place for these connections even before we withdraw. Vietnam was an essentially monolithic enemy. In contrast, Afghanistan is a highly fragmented society; in may ways more a collection of tribes than a nation. Our mistake, in many ways, was to treat it as if it were a nation - or a place where we could make a nation.

arion

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday June 07, 2010 · 4:06 PM PDT

2010/06/07 · 16:06

"Never Explain." Z'ev Jabotinski, 1911
"We do not have to apologize for anything. We demand the right to have villains, exactly as other people have them." Jabotinski
"We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war go goes..when before us is the commandment of the Torah: 'Ye shall blot them out to the last man'. Stern Gang manifesto. 1943
I think this tradition lingers in a powerful and influential way in Israel today. Israel's conception of diplomacy; it's conception of its own rights and limitations owes as much to the Slavic anarchism of over a hundred years ago as it does to any appreciation of conduct among civilized nations. I call this the Irgun/ Stern gang complex. It is no wonder, since not only Stern and Jabotinski but more recent transitional figures like Begin and Shamir were directly nurtured in this atmosphere of horror and violence

arion

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday November 02, 2009 · 4:51 PM PST

2009/11/02 · 16:51

Purity cults have been around for a long time. They all imagine some perfect world, now lost to enemies within society. They seldom enlist more than 5-10% of the body politic, but they tend to be very noisy. We can think of the French Poujadists, Haider's Austrians,Bavaria's National Socialists or those Georgians who still light votive candles before icons of Stalin. The enormous if brief success of the Know Nothings, who wanted to purify us from the Irish pollution here in the 1840s is a good native example.

arion

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday September 10, 2009 · 3:29 PM PDT

2009/09/10 · 15:29

I am concerned about the impact of health costs on the larger economy. Health care today as a sector is as large as the entire Federal Government. There is no effective market mechanism to retrain the continuing growth health care. There is no effective competition at the level of insurance companies. On the consumer level, no-one goes comparison shopping when he is sick. Hence there is no market and no market restraint on costs.

arion

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday September 01, 2009 · 2:49 PM PDT

2009/09/01 · 14:49

They came for Abe.
"I hate him" they say, hate him for his Yankee ways".
"Just let us alone to whup the darkies when they need it."
"Or we'll kill yuh for interferin."

And so they tried, at Shiloh and Antietam.
Whitman came to nurse shattered bodies;
Melville to record their passing

And they got him.
"Certitude begets violence" said Justice Holmes.
Bachmann cries for blood.

And now they come for Barack, who has the
Audacity to sit in the Chief magistrates chair
Wearing a brown skin.

I think of eighteen thousand Americans. The ones who die
Early this year for lack of good medical care.
And their wives and little ones,
Lambs on the altar of Free Enterprise

"Your benefits ran out", they say. "not covered by our policy" they say.
The shambling boys in gray gather again, in Peoria and Waxahatchee.
Lock and load. Lock and load.
The eighteen thousand died without a shot.

ON INDEPENDENCE DAY AND ABORTION

arion

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday July 04, 2009 · 8:02 AM PDT

2009/07/04 · 08:02

To belabor the obvious, it can be all to easy to see the abortion issue in a narrow focus, as if it were solely a matter or carrying a fetus to term. but I think much larger ethical issues are involved. What is in contention is an entire definition of women's rights. What is at stake is a definItion of freedom for the female 50% of our population.

arion

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday May 30, 2009 · 2:50 PM PDT

2009/05/30 · 14:50

My contention is that the unrest over gay marriage is deeper and older than Christianity. To be sure, scripture-literal people cite verses in Leviticus and Paul condemning homosexuality. But I think the main impetus is a more archaic kind of belief rooted in animism. One can see the germs of this even in the gender concepts portrayed in the 20,000 year old cave paintings of Lascaux.
Let me be clear immediately: I don't mean to dignify these beliefs by noting their antiquity. Quite the opposite. They are superstition and it's long past time to shed them. Nonetheless it's interesting to look at the associated chains of thought.

arion

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday April 05, 2009 · 4:22 PM PDT

2009/04/05 · 16:22

The major pro-life voices avoid challenging pro-life rhetoric. Pro choice folks stick to the positive side of their case, stressing the liberty argument. No doubt this is wise. To do combat with pro-life arguments would be to descend into either hopeless webs of faux Thomism, or ~~worse~~ repellant gutter matches. By taking the high road pro-choice manages to stay mature, dignified, and tolerant.
Yet, i think the pro-life argument ought to be at least examined. One reason for my belief is that the pro-life argument is designed to do more than simply rally the faithful and make moderates squeamish. Indeed, the bizarre 'fetus is a human being' claim is designed specifically to establish a so-called non religious basis for ending abortion rights

arion

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday February 24, 2009 · 8:25 AM PST

2009/02/24 · 08:25

For all you doughty Delaware County Democrats, Scott Murphy will be attending the County Democratic Committee meeting tomorrow night at 7:00 at Sanford Hall on the SUNY Delhi campus. He's going to be opening his campaign office on Main Street at 5:30 as well. Both events open to the public. In the last 2 elections cycles, we didn't quite pull Delaware County into Kirsten's column, but we did better than Democrats have done in the county since the 1930s! Time to keep that momentum.

arion

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday November 06, 2008 · 12:03 PM PST

2008/11/06 · 12:03

There has been some talk of giving RFK jr. a post in the Obama administration. I sincerely hope this doesn't come to pass. RFK is known for an abrasive, confrontational litigator's style. This would be acceptable if he knew what he was talking about. He does not. He takes on issues where he is amazingly ill informed, often undercutting good causes in the process.

Newer
Older

RSS

My sensitivities are injured

Tony Judt is Gone

How to leave Afghanistan

Israeli Exremism

Teabaggers as a Purity Cult

WILL UNRESTRAINED HEALTHCOSTS MAKE THE ECONOMY TANK?

The Boys in gray

ON INDEPENDENCE DAY AND ABORTION

Gay marriage, canoe paddles and water witches

The 'Fetus is a human being' argument

NY 20TH. SCOTT MURPHY.

Contra Robert Kennedy jr.