Author: Shelley Powers

Categories
Political

Which side are you on?

There was a pro-Palestinian march on Friday in downtown San Francisco. The marchers made their way to the Israeli consulate, where they were met by a pro-Israeli protest.

Both sides met across a space separated by metal barriers. Each side threw words of hatred at the other, as if the words were a weapon that could penetrate the other side’s absolute belief that they were right. The Pro-Israeli side screams out that the Palestinians are murderers and terrorists. The Pro-Palestinian side screams out that the Israelis are murderers and terrorists.

Take away the flags and the pictures of Arafat and Sharon and you wouldn’t be able to tell which side was which.

Categories
Political

Just cuz you’re paranoid…

Y’all remember the posting last week with pictures of the National Guard trucks that have been sitting in the Caltran work lot next to the Bay Bridge?

The trucks had been parked in the lot close to a month, I think, maybe more. However, within a couple of days after that post, the trucks were gone.

I’m sure it was just a coincidence.

 

Categories
Political Weblogging

A gentle thank you

Sometimes things just don’t go the way you want. When I’m in a pissy mood, and need cheering up, I find myself going out to visit my favorite weblogs, looking for glimpses of humor, beautiful writing, and interesting and unique personal perspectives. And my favorites never fail me. A gentle thank you from me to you. In particular, I wanted to thank the following friends for their postings:

— Jerry posts another one of his wonderful photo essays this one on the New England mud season.

If you haven’t lived in rural New England, than you probably don’t understand why most country homes in the region have what they call a “mud room”. I found out the necessity of a mud room when I lived in Vermont for a year.

Hey Jerry — there’s a reason I moved to San Francisco 😉

— Shannon’s in an absolute manic writing mood, of which this posting,Shannon Campbell Meets Blair Witch, is just one example.

Shannon, I’m also terrified of spiders. When I lived in Seattle (I’ve moved around a lot, haven’t I?) we would get these spiders about the size of a tennis ball — and they were the small variety. I knew that the spiders (except for the Brown Recluse) were harmless, but I’d still run from the room when I spied them. Run quickly I might add.

Did you all know that Seattle and vicinity has more spiders per square meter than any other place on Earth? More interesing if useless facts: Folks in Seattle also eat more Hershey chocolate and read more books than any other place in the US.

I’m sure there’s no connection between any of these facts.

— On a more serious note, Mike Golby was forced to, yet again, defend himself from the label of “Anti-Semitic”. A weblog reader tells Mike the following in a comment attached to one of Mike’s posts:

    • Just a little feed-back from a sporadic reader. You do come off as anti-Semitic and especially anti-Meryl. I know neither of you, and I’m from the midwest of the US (read cornfields and Bible Belt) and I thought your post a month ago or so directed towards Meryl was heartless. I wanted to say something then, but didn’t, but here you go again, so I just thought I’d give you some disinterested feedback.

What a foolish comment. And what a thing to say to a person — hello, I don’t read you that often, but you seem Anti-Semitic to me. Anti-Meryl, too. However, I’m disinterested so don’t take it personally.

All together now folks: Airhead alert!

Mike took the reader’s comments personally; most people would. And he responded, accordingly, in a manner that was both eloquent and passionate.

Mike, I guess it’s my turn to ask if you’d like one lump or two with your tea?

Categories
Weblogging

Housecleaning

I’ve updated the Plutonian list to reflect the change in time due to Daylight Savings Time (pain in the butt). In addition, I also alphabetized the list.

Notice the new grouping titled “Recent Visitors”. This is a list of weblogs of people who have been kind enough to stop by, sit a spell, and leave a comment or two. Right now this list is maintained manually, once a week, but I’m in the process of writing a small application to pull weblog links from my comments and update this list automatically every night at midnight.

You wanna be on this list? Then you gots to do more than lurk. Hee Hee Hee.

I’m also playing around with Movable Type 2.0, which means yet another set of weblogging tool templates to master. BTW, I have the one, the only, the true Stavros the Wonder Chicken aka Empty Bottle to thank for help in me getting Movable Type setup. Chris — you da man.

Open Offer to Blogspot residents — this is an open invite to any Blogspot residents on my Plutonian list. I have room for a couple more weblogs on my server if you’re interested in making the move. You would get a weblog by the name of yourcurrentweblogname.burningbird.net, or you can have your own domain — though you’ll have to handle your own domain registration and name server entries.

Categories
Political

Deconstructing Sullivan

I read with intense interest Eric Grevstad’s take down of Andrew Sullivan. He starts with the post title of “Andrew Sullivan is a big svelte idiot” and then continues on wonderfully from there.

I, too, wonder about the Sullivan links we see sprouting like calla lilies to quote Eric. I’ve tried reading Sullivan and find his manner bellicose, inaccurate, and inflamatory. Bottom line, the man is an idiot.

Consider a choice morsel from this week. Of the Saudi Ambassador’s frustration that Israel won’t consider the peace plan, Sullivan writes:

    • So this guy, who represents a country which has financed Islamo-fascism, gave us the citizens who killed over 3000 people in New York City, now threatens that there will be more suicide bombers, if Israel doesn’t capitulate to terror. And he claims that he and the dictatorship he represents were “sticking their necks out” to offer Israel a plan that would effectively destroy that country’s security. Are we on the same planet or what?

Here’s a little tidbit for you all to gnaw on, Sullivan — there has been extremist elements in Saudi Arabia that have wanted the US out of that country for two reasons: the first is because we represent all that is evil to them, but we knew that; however, the primary reason they want us out is to overthrow the current regime in order to put one in that adheres to a stricter Islamic code. Similar to that of the Taliban. Other leaders in other Arab countries are faced with the same problems of extremists within their midst.

Did the Saudi government and the other Arab countries that participated stick their neck out? Believe it or not, they did.

This plan was not unfavorable to Israel, as even the Israeli government admited at first glance. However, the plan included the repatriation of the Palestinian refugees, something the Israelis refuse to consider. And it is this issue that will remain key to the conflict.

Regardless of his opinion of the plan, instead of taking a few minutes and a little effort to consider each individual aspect of it, Sullivan takes his usual lazy, irresponsible, and vitriolic approach and just blasts away with his 20-gauge shotgun mouth.

I used to think that Sullivan took this approach because he gained more buzz. I now think he takes this approach because he doesn’t have the brains for any other.

However, I believe in free speech and if the jerk wants to talk, let him talk. And if webloggers want to read him and link to them, cool. But I wonder how many link to him because they read him, or if they link to him because it’s the thing to do. That he’s become part of a “who’s who” list that webloggers feel must be on their blogroll to be in style.