...and others have a bad fall. … [Read more...] about Some Singers Have A Great Summer

A brief round-up of other issues and posts I've found interesting while I've been on my all-Israel-all-the-time kick. Enjoy the break. … [Read more...] about The World Keeps Spinning

Israellycool live-blogged the events of Friday. Great and informative stuff, as always. Since "restraint" is the topic d'jour around these parts, I'll pluck this interesting tidbit from the Israeli paper Ha'aretz: The Israel Defense Forces is planning to bomb Hezbollah headquarters in a densely populated area of south Beirut on Friday, a senior General Staff official told … [Read more...] about All the News…

Sure, they had the requisite attack on Hezbollah terror. But they "reserved [their] strongest words" to assail Israel "in particular." H/T: Mirror of Justice … [Read more...] about Vatican Condemns Israel

Could the Israeli strikes weaken Hezbollah enough so that the fractured Lebanese government can neutralize it once and for all? From what I've heard, most Lebanese are furious with Hezbollah, not necessarily because they disapprove with attacks on Israel, but because they're not predisposed to like them in the first place, or because they're running a unilateral foreign … [Read more...] about Body Shot

The political car crash known as Katherine Harris continues its collision course in Florida. And now we have hint why the crash is so bad, via the Miami Herald:Katherine Harris' floundering U.S. Senate campaign lost its high-level staff again this week and is groping for a message — which doesn't surprise Republican insiders who trace the seeds of her trouble to the … [Read more...] about The Roots Of Katherine Harris’ Quintessential Political Slide

...are in Lebanon or Israel. … [Read more...] about Not All Bombs

This just in from investigative reporter Andy Borowitz:MAN IN COMA FOR NINETEEN YEARS ASKS TO GO BACK TO SLEEP Bush Administration, Paris Hilton Top Coma Man's Concerns In what members of the medical community are calling an unprecedented development, a man who recently awoke from a nineteen-year coma has asked doctors to put him back to sleep. At a press conference in … [Read more...] about This Just In!

Here's what is TRULY a classic show biz moment: World War II teen idol Frank Sinatra does a duet with 1950s teen idol Elvis Presley on Sinatra's NBC show in 1957. What's striking about this is: --The juxaposition of the two eras of music and show biz. --The different styles. Perhaps there's a hint here of why Sinatra never quite took off on the tube. He does his stuff and … [Read more...] about Great Show Biz Moments: Frank Sinatra’s 1950s and 1990s Duets

If I'm to believe what some of my commenters here and at The Debate Link say, that's the morally preferable response for Israel to make compared to, you know, waging a war within the laws of war. … [Read more...] about Indiscriminate Shelling At Random

New Donklephant contributor Tom Strong injects some reality into the biofuel argument. While the tiny ethanol and biodiesel industries have seen a mini-boom last year, the market took a sharp hit this past spring. Future growth may speed up again, but there’s a very real limit to how much biodiesel and ethanol we can produce without cutting into our food supply. What’s … [Read more...] about Alternative Fuel, Schmalternative Fuel

Beirut taxi driver: "Is this resistance? Ruining your country?"A hero to some, a dangerous militia to others. The bloody fight Hizbullah picked with Israel has aggravated the longtime split in Lebanon over the guerrilla group - and raised worries about whether Lebanon's Western-backed government can survive. The division runs through the Lebanese Cabinet itself, which is … [Read more...] about AP via J Post: Hizbullah criticized in Lebanon

Back in March, I wrote three posts on the Belarusian presidential election and its aftermath: "Balloting in Belarus," "Balloting in Belarus (update)," and "Protesting in Belarus". Well, it looks like Belarus has gone from voting to protesting to, now, imprisoning political opponents. Alexander Lukashenko may have "won" the election with over 80 percent of the vote, but such a … [Read more...] about Imprisoning opponents in Belarus

Putting it together: US Middle East Policy is coming apart 07/14/2006 In the larger perspective, the current crises in the Middle East are due to the fact that the United States Middle East policy is coming apart at the seams. The US wanted to promote democracy in the Middle East. Result number one is the Iraqi non-government. In addition to corruption, disunity and … [Read more...] about Thoughts from MidEastWeb

Will Hillary run in '08? Yes. Will she win the Democratic nomination? Maybe. Would she win the election? A lot depends on what happens this November, as well as on who the Republican nominee is, as well as on what other Democrats emerge as viable candidates (Gore could be a problem for her) as well as on variables like Iraq and the economy, but, well, whatever her defenders … [Read more...] about Doubting Hillary

Israel didn't hit Lebanese transportation infrastructure just to be punitive. They did it to keep Hezbollah from moving the prisoners to Iran or Syria, where in all likelihood they'd never be seen again. … [Read more...] about From Beirut to Tehran (or Damascus)

Mikhail Gorbachev is back. Back in the news, that is, with blunt comments on Bush and Putin, the U.S. and Russia, peace and democracy, Cheney and Rumsfeld. I have some reaction to his comments here. … [Read more...] about Gorbachev speaks

For the latest in The Reaction's ongoing series "Just another day in the life and death of Iraq," now up to nine entries, see here. Basically, there's a bit of good news (the transfer of security responsibility in Muthanna from British and Australian forces to Iraqi forces) and a lot of bad news (yet more car bombs, drive-by shootings, roadside bombs, etc.), … [Read more...] about The grotesque banality of violence in Iraq

A quick note for longtime as well as new readers: --The people who post on this site may differ on issues. We get emails all the time from readers upset because so and so is too far left or right — or that TMV himself is wishy washy, or secretly collecting checks from Karl Rove and/or Howard Dean. If you look at polls there is no 100 percent agreement among moderates on … [Read more...] about Quick Reminder To Readers

Ehud Barak in the Jerusalem Post: We are living in a tough neighborhood. This is not the Midwest, it's the mideast," former prime minister Ehud Barak said Friday in an interview on CNN. Barak said that Hizbullah and Hamas gave the Israeli government no choice but to respond to Lebanese and Palestinian aggression. Barak added that it was impossible to "live normally" in the … [Read more...] about Living in Hell’s Kitchen to the Nth Degree