Our periodic linkfest pointing you to interesting posts from DIFFERING viewpoints. These viewpoints do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Moderate Voice or its co-bloggers.
The Plaaaaaaaaaaame Game via Pennywit is MUST READING. A tiny taste 4 U:
Plame-Plame bo-Blame Bonanana Fo-flame …
Am I the only political blogger who doesn’t play the Plame game? When I glance at the prominent political bloggers, I think I am.
The Plame game: If you’re liberal, you say Karl Rove, in a political game, leaked the name of Plame. Robert Novak published the name of the dame and her flame, giving Plame undue fame. Then the prosecutor came. Since Rove gave the name of Plame the dame, he should resign, you claim.
If you’re conservative, the Plame game’s the same, but you change the blame. You claim that the dame Plame is the right name, but liberals are to blame. The dame Plame’s name was no secret, and Rove is under a frame, you proclaim.
To that TMV says: I’d try to rhyme Bush, but it’d turn out a mush — and you’d call me a tush..
Meanwhile, The Liberal Blog Americablog is selling this Karl Rove collectible (and it is).
Bill Frist And Big Pharmaceutical Companies The Lullaby Pit has a post about a story involving Frist sneaking something in the Homelands Security Act to benefit drug companies (all seemingly framed in a way to use the bill’s theme as an excuse to help his backers). And since Dr. Frist is said to be so compassionate (apparently even when he was claiming and experimenting on stray cats as a med student), note his position on compensating kids with vaccine-related brain damage. (Let’s guess: if he when he runs for President Mr. Frist will get big bucks from what kind of company? Oh. The linked story suggests he’s already gotten some…)
A Fascinating Experiment In Education…NO JOKE: An Arizona school is going to forgo textbooks and move exclusively to laptops.
Volkswagon Is In Trouble Again in a major corruption scandal.
There Is Good News From Iraq and Arthur Chrenkoff has a ton of it.
Rove’s Leak Points to Bush Conspiracy? The Locust Fork thinks so and explains why. (This one will be highly controversial…)
Why Hillary Will Never Get To Be President: An intriguing analysis by Dafydd at Captain’s Quarters. It MUST be read in full, but here’s a small part:
The reason is fairly simple: because she simply cannot win election, and she will be tainted by the Kerry Kurse. Bluntly put, senators are simply not elected president unless they have achieved a position closer to the idea of a chief executive of the country… such as a governorship or the vice presidency….
…..But there is an even more basic reason senators tend not to get elected: by the very nature of the job, a senator is a deal-maker… that is, a compromiser. They do not decide, they debate; they do not govern, they negotiate, they cut deals, they sacrifice one principle for another. Senators are not leaders; even the so-called leadership is not what most folks think of as leading: it’s more like herding cats, or trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.
Read it all. This is quite a refreshing analysis and is MUST reading not just for news junkies but for serious political scientists. And it’s yet another post (and they do exist) that proves good points can be scored without adjective hurling (something some folks in comments on blogs seem to forget: if you want to score in a debate, use facts and cut the tiresome rage).
Nathan Newman Moves to TPMCafe…the latest “big name” blogger to do so. He’s keeping his other blog but calls this one House of Labor. Check it out. PS: TMV has NOT been invited to blog at TPM Cafe, but he was invited to blog at FU Hot Dog Stand.
Gay Marriage, Abortion And The Upcoming Supreme Court Battles are put under the microscope by ATypical Joe.
More Blog Troll Purges: First, Daily Kos purged itself of conspiracy theorists. Now the great Republican website RedState is going to weed out Democratic trolls who, the website’s managers say, are going beyond just leaving comments disagreeing with the site’s prevailing Republican views. Read the lively comments.
We have to say this: it truly can be trying when you have comments. Do you err on the side of letting people post what they say, or view comments as a kind of Letters To The Editor section. On newspapers and magazines Letters To The Editor are edited – they just don’t go in. There ARE standards. Intelligent, even spirited discussion is one thing. Name calling, obscenities, etc. can actually chase readers away (as well as attract those who used to enjoy the Morton Downey Jr. Show). So while we haven’t done much of that here (and don’t ever want to) we fully understand the dilemma both Kos and Red State face.
A Spanish Perspective On The London Bombings can be found at Iberian Notes which urges a hard line. This must be READ IN FULL but here are two key sections:
It seems to me that there are several possibilities which are not mutually exclusive about the bombings. First, we recognize that successful mass murder like this takes at least months to prepare, so of course they had this planned. Probably they timed it to coincide with either the Group of Eight meeting in Scotland or with the Olympic Games announcement, or both. There’s no way they could have known London would win, but they must have known it had a good chance. Maybe even they had a plan prepared to be executed anytime and thought this was a good opportunity. I suppose the question now is exactly who did it and how we catch them.
As for trying the prisoners at Guantanamo, let’s not be disingenuous. They fall into the category of partisans, neither civilians nor captured lawful bearers of arms…So we should do exactly what we’re doing. Lock them up and keep them locked up so they can’t go back to their old ways. Interrogate them, and let us not be finicky about the methods. I would say the limit is inflicting pain rather than discomfort. I hope these guys’ lives are as unpleasant as possible; that’s more likely to convince them to talk. But we must set limits for ourselves, because if we do not we will certainly be corrupted. Power exercised without limits is tyranny. Well, here’s the limit. No physical pain and no unsupervised interrogation. If some psycho hillbilly thinks it would be fun to take some naked photos with them, well, that’s wrong because it’s out of control behavior. But if the interrogators want to humiliate a prisoner as part of making his life so uncomfortable he’ll talk, I say bring on the dog collars. Al Qaeda must be destroyed.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.