micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links

Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm.

Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net.

Holmquist's full archives are listed here.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)

Aljazeera.Net English
AlterNet (War on Iraq)
Alternative Press Review
Always Low Prices -- Always
Another Irani online
antiwar.com (blog)
Asia Times Online
Axis of Logic
Baghdad Burning (riverbend)
BBC News
blogdex.net ("track this weblog")
bobanddavid.com
BuzzFlash
The Christian Science Monitor (Daily Update)
Common Dreams
Cryptome
Cursor
Daily Rotten
DefenseLINK
Democracy Now
The Drudge Report
Eat the Press (Harry Shearer, The Huffington Post)
Empire Notes (Rahul Mahajan)
frontpagemag.com (HorowitzWatch)
globalsecurity.org
greenandwhite.com
Guardian Unlimited
Haaretz
The Independent
Information Clearing House
Informed Comment (Juan Cole)
Iranians for Peace

Iraq Dispatches (Dahr Jamail)
Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation
Iraq Occupation and Resistance Report (Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice)
MetaFilter
MLive
Mr. Show and Other Comedy
The Narco News Bulletin (blog)
NEWSMAKINGNEWS
The New York Times
Occupation Watch
Political Theory Daily Review
Press Action
Project Syndicate
Raed in the Middle (Raed Jarrar)
random-abstract.com
Reuters
Salon
The Simpsons Archive
Simpsons Collector Sector
Slate
Sploid
Technorati ("search for mth.blogspot.com")
thi3rdeye
United States Central Command
U.S. Embassy Baghdad, Iraq
venezuelanalysis.com
War Report (Project on Defense Alternatives)
The Washington Post
Wildfire (Jo Wilding)
wood s lot
www.mnftiu.cc (David Rees)

Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development)

Thivai Abhor
As'ad AbuKhalil
Ken Adrian
Christopher Allbritton
Alli
Douglas Anders
Mark W. Anderson
Aziz Ansari
Atomic Archive
Bagatellen
James Benjamin
Elton Beard
Charlie Bertsch
alister black
Blame India Watch
Blixa
Blog Left: Critical Interventions Warblog / war blog
Igor Boog
Martin Butler
Chris Campbell
James M. Capozzola
Avedon Carol
Elaine Cassel
cats blog
Jeff Chang
Margaret Cho
Citizens Of Upright Moral Character
Louis CK
Les Dabney
Dack
Natalie Davis
Scoobie Davis
The Day Job
Jodi Dean
Dominic Duval
Steve Earle
Eli
Daniel Ellsberg
Tom Engelhardt
Lisa English
Faramin
Barbara Flaska
Brian Flemming
Joe Foster
Yoshie Furuhashi
Al Giordano
Glovefox
Rob Goodspeed
Grand Puba
Guardian Unlimited Weblog
Pete Guither
The Hairy Eyeball
Ray Hanania
Mark Hand
harveypekar.com
Hector Rottweiller Jr's Web Log Jim Henley Arvin Hill Hit & Run (Reason) Hugo Clark Humphrey Indri The Iraqi Agora Dru Oja Jay Jeff Lynne d Johnson Dallas Jones Julia Kane Blues Benjamin Kepple Ken Layne Phil Leggiere Brian Linse Adam Magazine Majority Report Radio Marc Maron Josh Marshall Jeralyn Merritt J.R. Mooneyham Michael Scott Moore Bob Morris Bob Mould Mr. Show and Tell Muslims For Nader/Camejo David Neiwert NewPages Weblog Aimee Nezhukumatathil Sean O'Brien Patton Oswalt The Panda's Thumb Randy Paul Rodger A. Payne Ian Penman politx Neal Pollack Greg Proops Pro-War.com Pure Polemics Seyed Razavi Rayne Simon Reynolds richardpryor.com Clay Richards Mike Rogers Yuval Rubinstein
Steven Rubio
Saragon Noah Shachtman Court Schuett The Simpsons Archive Amardeep Singh Sam Smith Soundbitten Jack Sparks Ian Spiers Morgan Spurlock Stand Down: The Left-Right Blog Opposing an Invasion of Iraq Aaron Stark Morgaine Swann Tapped (The American Prospect) tex Matthew Tobey Annie Tomlin Tom Tomorrow The University Without Condition Jesse Walker Warblogger Watch Diane Warth The Watchful Babbler The Weblog we have brains Matt Welch
Alex Whalen
Jon Wiener
Lizz Winstead
James Wolcott
Wooster Collective
Mickey Z

Friday, April 30, 2004
 
Micah Holmquist's off the top of his head words to end April

Both Democrats and Republicans are likely to say whatever works to make the partisan point they want to make at the moment without regard for consistency or principles. (Many of other affiliations or non-affiliations do the same, FWIW.) Yesterday's edition of Sean Hannity's radio show provided three examples of Republican partisans doing this...

-Sean Hannity frequently criticizes Democrats for engaging in "class warfare" whenever they mention economic inequality in the U.S. or that the bulk of the savings from Bush's tax cuts go to the very wealthy. And yet yesterday Newt Gingrich and Hannity were making fun of John Kerry for having a personal assistant who made sure Kerry had access to water, aspirin and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and because Kerry preferred strawberry jelly to grape and whole wheat bread to white. If that's the best they got on Kerry's blue blood ways, they don't have anything.

-Ted Nugent was on and, amongst other things I won't get into, said Karl Marx and Mao Tse Tung were responsible for coming up the phrase "redistribution of wealth." That's idiotic in and of itself. Marx died in 1883 and Mao wasn't born till 1893. Nugent went on to ask, "what right" does one "man" have to take what "another man" has "earned"? Fair enough, except that he went on to praise the U.S. Armed Forces for defending "freedom", even though the last time I checked they were, for better or worse, the product of taxes and redistributing wealth in other countries.

-Those were nothing compared to Hannity saying Saddam "couldn't wait" to give WMDs to terrorists. If that is the case, and I have no doubt that it is because Hannity is a big star and I'm not, then what took Saddam so long?

***

The guest host on yesterday's edition of Mike Reagan's radio show was complaining about a piece written by University of Massachusetts grad student Rene Gonzalez in his university's student newspaper that said Pat Tillman "got what was coming to him." Think what you want about that, but this guest host went on to say that Gonzalez was probably getting most of his education paid for by others, be it his parents or taxpayers, and didn't know anything about sacrifice. The host had no evidence of this but was just assuming it to be the case. What is known, and yet went unsaid, is that Tillman received a scholarship to play college football at school that is publicly funded and without this experience he almost certainly never would have been able to earn millions in the NFL. First football, then a government job, damn I hate people who just sponge off of hard working American tax payers their entire adult life.

The guest host also said that he had attended a recent speech by Karen Hughes at Santa Barbara City College and outside of the speech there was a protest that we listeners were told was organized by "professors." The guest host was mad that his tax money went to pay these people's salary. It apparently never occurred to him that they might be mad that their tax dollars help to pay for speeches by the likes of Hughes.

***

Bush isn't too keen on U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners:

A year ago, I did give the speech from the carrier, saying that we had achieved an important objective, that we'd accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein. And as a result, there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq. As a result, a friend of terror has been removed, and now sits in a jail. I also said on that carrier that day that there was still difficult work ahead...

Q What is your reaction to photos of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners? How are you going to win their hearts and minds with these sort of tactics?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes, I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated. Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That's not the way we do things in America. And so I -- I didn't like it one bit.

But I also want to remind people that those few people who did that do not reflect the nature of the men and women we've sent overseas. That's not the way the people are, that's not their character, that are serving our nation in the cause of freedom. And there will be an investigation. I think -- they'll be taken care of.

I'm shaking my head in disgust [please note that the previous link contains some horrific images and looking at them won't do a whole lot of good, unless you doubt that "the men and women who defend our freedom" are capable of torture] and disbelief. Note that Bush has to be asked about this. Decency doesn't come naturally, I guess.