Liberal Talk Radio

Looks like someone else wants to play with The Precious:
Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad outlined an ambitious plan on Sunday to greatly expand its economic and military ties with Iraq — including an Iranian national bank branch in the heart of the capital — just as the Bush administration has been warning the Iranians to [...]

I suppose we have Nouri Maliki to thank for making even the American “Arab Street” sympathetic to Saddam:
The execution of Saddam Hussein was big news from the Euphrates to YouTube. But along Bay Ridge’s heavily Arab-American Fifth Avenue, the death of the tyrant was greeted with silence.
“I won’t watch it and I have no other [...]

In other spam news (two spam posts in one day!), I suppose this explains why Nigerians continue to keep at it after all these years:
Ed Mezvinsky, a former Iowa Congressman, is serving a seven-year sentence for fraud after getting caught up in a series of Nigerian e-mail scams.
Initially, Mezvinsky became the victim of “just about [...]

If it’s true that Vladimir Putin ordered the hit on Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-Russian spy, that’s some seriously messed up shit!
Also, I heard on NPR today that Litvinenko had just become a British citizen. Meaning that if the Russian government successfully assassinated a British citizen, well… that’s some seriously messed up shit! There [...]

If you want to get any sleep at all in the next few days, do not read this article on the current sorry state of electronic voting systems.
I try not to get paranoid about this, and I honestly don’t believe that the CEO of Diebold is rigging the elections to favor Republicans. [...]

What a strange time. You can go to work on the subway, feeling satisfied that peace is at hand as you read an encouraging op-ed in the Times by the Hamas Prime Minister, then read the news from Israel that Hamas is organizing a full-fledged army complete with battalions and divisions.

Lede of the day:
The first rule of public health is one most of us learn in kindergarten: Don’t eat poop.

It’s true that history will judge what’s happening now (and also true that the Future will be left to pick up the pieces). And I’ll give you that it’s a sour, sour pickle that we’re in.
The biggest issue, IMO, remains: there’s very little agreement on first principals. In some sense, by quibbling over the definition of [...]

How did all of us miss this* the other day? Life actually imitates South Park:
Osama bin Laden has more on his mind than just the destruction of the United States — the world’s most wanted terrorist is obsessed with Whitney Houston, so much so that he’s even mulled a hit on her hubby, Bobby [...]

Tom Friedman just got his next op-ed idea:
The carpeted room is full of children in skullcaps crouched on prayer mats, reciting verses from a holy text. Some mumble the words under their breath; others sing them out. They rock back and forth as they chant, their disparate voices blending into an ethereal melody.
The children, ages [...]