I am still swamped, so go back to these two threads, read the comments, and place your nominee for best quote. I will trim them down to ten we can vote on tomorrow or Thursday.
I like to think of Jesus as an Ice Dancer, dressed in an all-white jumpsuit, and doing an interpretive dance of my life.
Others prefer to think of Jesus as Bush:
Over the course of the next two years I think many of these Republicans will regret their decision of support for this Democrat resolution as they realize the extent of its impact. Their careers most likely will end in the same undignified manner as Judas ended his own life. Speaking for myself I can say this without hesitation, there are now seventeen pieces of silver in our party historically represented by red, and I promise you I shall not be colorblind in 08.
Watch out, Judas! Boobookitty is gonna come at you in 2008 like a spider monkey!
Open Thread
Just Say No
It is looking more and more like Hillary Clinton will never be Preznit, and the Republicans will not even have had to fired a shot. That is probably a good thing, because they are busy shooting at Mitt Romney.
And I will go on record and say that I love the nickname “Multiple Choice Mitt.”
In Defense of Michelle
I know what she meant (and, I suspect, so do all the people attacking her for this remark):
Right-wing author and pundit Michelle Malkin filled in for Bill O’Reilly tonight on The O’Reilly Factor. During a segment on a newly-proposed Airline Passengers Bill of Rights, Malkin said, “So you’re behind this Passengers’ Bill of Rights move. I have to tell you, in general, I’m skeptical of anything that has Bill of Rights tacked on to it.”
She wasn’t talking about the Bill of Rights, although with her writings sometime, you can detect that she doesn’t hold some of them in very high regard (Numbers 4-8, in particular), but she was talking about creating a Bill of rights for silly things like, well- airline passengers.
Airleine passengers are already protected by the criminal code, the big daddy Bill of Rights, and, most effectively, their wallets. If an airline hoses enough people, they will not attract customers and either fold or change their ways. That will have more of an impact than any silly “Airline Passengers Bill of Rights.”
Less Than Zero
David Broder thinks Bush got his groove back, and Joe Gandelman and James Joyner discuss the merits of Broder’s piece. Personally, I think Joyner nailed it:
Given Nixonian poll numbers and the most unpopular war in more than thirty years, simple regression to the mean should bring Bush’s public standing up.
Regression to the mean is a phrase I think we will hear a lot of when the Bush presidency is finally over.
The Refugee Issue
This is a story I have not paid much attention to, but probably should have (and I only looked it up when my mnother called me, hysterical that she found herself in agreement with Ted Kennedy):
Moving to address the flood of refugees fleeing war-torn Iraq, the Bush administration and the United Nations have developed a plan that would bring several thousand of them to the United States over the next 10 months, officials familiar with discussions of the plan say.
Under the plan, which is expected to be formally unveiled this week, the United Nations began its first large-scale screening this month of Iraqis who have fled to Syria and Jordan since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It hopes to register 135,000 to 200,000 of them to determine which Iraqis have fled persecution at home and would be eligible for refugee status.
It appears we have only accepted several hundred refugeees, and that seems like an awfully miniscule number considering the sheer volume of people who have fled Iraq. Especially folks like this:
2003 was a year A.J. will never forget. He was honored to work as an interpreter for American troops.
“I was very proud to wear the uniform and to put the American flag on my shoulder,” he says.
But it all ended for him less than two years later, when he was wounded on patrol with his American buddies.
“On that day we got attacked by mortars and RPGs,” recalls A.J.
And while his wounds have healed, he’s in more danger than ever. Militant Shiites and Sunnis brand him as a collaborator.
“Now I can’t go back to my house,” he says. “I’m living in a totally different area and I’m facing a very hard time.”
A.J.’s hope? America. And while he has glowing support from American commanders, he’s been turned down twice for a visa, with no explanation.
And he’s not alone. Millions are signing up for passports to escape the chaos. More than 2 million Iraqis have fled their homes — that’s about 10 percent of the population now living outside Iraq’s border. And the U.S. has accepted only a handful of them.
Of the 50,000 refugees allowed into the U.S. last year, only 202 were Iraqis.
We should make it a priority to make sure that those Iraqis who help our troops aren’t given a death sentence, and we should be welcoming and inviting thousands more refugees every year. By any standard of decency, that is our obligation. And of those we admit, folks like AJ should be given the first plane here.
I am glad the adminstration is upping the number who will be admitted, but I would suggest that number needs to be even higher.