Author: Matt Barganier

Both from IOZ. On Christopher Hitchens:

[I]t’s always been the genius of Hitchens to set himself up in amorphous opposition to a perfectly rational, unremarkable belief, which he usually states with the clarity and concision of a wise advocate before tightening his haunches and beginning a wolf-howl of righteous derision – tuneless, frightening, and senseless.

On Andrew Sullivan:

Andrew Sullivan is an ardent disciple of Andrew Sullivan, and that latter Andrew Sullivan is an ardent disciple of a fungible series of interpretations that are remarkable for how closely they hew to whatever Andrew Sullivan is saying at the time.

Nazi propaganda poster, 1944. Hey, it’s no more ridiculous than the typical wingnut’s vision of a Sunni-Shia-Papist-Iran-Saddam-al Qaeda-Jacques Chirac-Michael Moore-Pat Buchanan-Dixie Chicks-Kim Jong Il-Antiwar.com axis of evil.

Via Jesse Walker.

Today’s spotlight viewpoint is by George Soros, and I think it’s very good, for the most part. But it inspires Jonathan Schwarz to fact-check Slick Willie.

A slick White House flack clarifies the war’s progress on CNN: “We’re still at the input stage.”

As long as you get your ignorant flock to back unlimited Israeli aggression (and unlimited American aid to cover the costs), you can say whatever you want. Like how you hope the U.S. will be nuked after Israel provokes a war with Russia.

They hate the Iranians more than we do:

A majority of people from around the world hold predominantly negative views of Israel, Iran, and the United States, according to a survey [.pdf] of more than 28,000 respondents in 27 countries. …

For Iran, the strongest negative opinions were found in Europe, particularly in France (86 percent), Italy (84 percent), Germany (78 percent), Portugal (77 percent), and Britain (76 percent). Three out of four Canadians and Australians also expressed mainly negative opinions about Iran, which Washington and other Western powers have accused of pursuing nuclear weapons. In the U.S., 63 percent of respondents gave a negative assessment, a remarkably sharp drop from the 81 percent who expressed a negative opinion in a similar BBC poll take in late 2005.

Read the rest.