While our politicians argue about whether we should bomb Iran or meet with their leaders, the well-known travel writer Rick Steves takes a film crew to Iran and finds, according to him, some of the friendliest people on the planet.
It’s ironic that in most countries these days, Americans find they’re better off keeping a low profile. But here, in a country I’m told hates me, my nationality has been a real plus — absolutely everywhere I’ve gone. … And I have absolutely never traveled to a place where I had such an easy and enjoyable time connecting with people. Young, educated people speak English. Locals were as confused about and fascinated by me as I was about them.
Steves paints a surprisingly candid account of life in Iran, from the friendliness of the people, the propaganda billboards, to the strictly conformist universities. Anyone who has any curiosity about life in a modern Muslim nation should read his blog entries about the trip.
Just as it is with Christians and gays, just because we say nasty things about you doesn’t mean we hate you. Good Christians hate the sin and love the sinner. We love white. We just hate whitey.
The first (actually, the only) item on the agenda was revenge — how to pay whitey back. Some of you have obviously been dreading this since the end of Reconstruction. Obama practically has to tattoo the flag on his ass to convince you he’s not out to get you. Judging from your behavior, I suppose you’ve just put yourselves in our shoes and realized that if the roles were reversed, revenge is all you’d think about.
We all celebrated by bumping our knuckles together. It’s not a “terrorist fist bump” as Fox News suggested. It’s the International Get Whitey Bump. Just make a fist and bump, bump, bump your knuckles against your neighbor’s.
Reporter: “Why did you say that?” McCain: “I’m sure for all the wrong reasons.” Reporter: “And those wrong reasons would be?” McCain: “For ambition.” Reporter “For ambition?” McCain: “Sure.”
In other words, for the sake of his ambition (to get elected), McCain will lie.
It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn’t support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay. No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the nation and the government lack that resolve, it is criminal to expect men in the field to carry it alone.
From John McCain’s forward to a book about the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest.
It is difficult to understand why any Clinton supporters would declare that they will vote for McCain in the general election. Yes, I know they are spiteful and out for revenge, but still, can any one who claims to have even the slightest feminist tendencies seriously believe that McCain would be a better second choice than Obama? Really?
McCain, who cheated on and then dumped his first wife and mother of his children after she was permanently injured in a car accident? And then one month later married a younger, richer woman?
McCain, whose own website says Roe v. Wade “must be overturned” and wants abortions to be illegal again? Who has vowed to appoint judges to the Supreme Court who will overturn it? McCain has a 0% rating from NARAL (Obama has a 100% rating), has vowed to be “a loyal and unswerving friend of the right-to-life movement” and voted against criminal penalties for people who use threats or violence against women who attempt to gain access to reproductive health clinics.
McCain, who is against universal health care? And wants less regulation for insurance companies? Who voted against the Title X program, including breast cancer screenings?
Some ironic statements from George W. Bush back in 2000 when he was running for the presidency:
Dubya claimed that he would be able to bring down the price of gasoline through sheer force of personality. “I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply.” How? By using the political good will his administration would earn with the Saudis and Kuwaitis.
Responding to charges that the Republicans were “turning the US Congress into a scandal-industrial complex” and that Bush was “the CEO” of that, Bush replied “It’s frankly the type of politics people in America are sick of, this kind of finger pointing, calling names and trying to divert attention.”
Finally, he claimed that he was “the person that can change the tone of Washington, D.C.”
Strange things continue to happen in New York. First there is Congressman Vito Fossella, who was stopped in Virginia for running a red light while drunk. When the arresting officer asked where he was heading, Fossella answered he was going to visit his family. It turns out that Fossella has two families: one in Virginia and one back home in Staten Island. Despite this abundance of family values, the Republicans decided that he should not run for reelection.
Unfortunately, the Republicans couldn’t convince anyone to run for Fossella’s congressional seat. They finally settled on a wealthy businessman, Francis Powers, whose main advantage was that he could fund his own election campaign.
Now the strange twist. It turns out that Powers is actually Francis Powers Senior, and Francis Powers Junior has decided to run for the same seat against his father, but as a Libertarian. Or, as Junior puts it, “This is not about my dad, I’m running against the Republican candidate.”
Will voters get confused when they see a ballot containing F. Powers, F. Powers, and a (to-be-named) Democratic candidate? F. Powers Jr. responds “If people can’t tell the difference between the Republican Party and the Libertarian Party, maybe they shouldn’t be voting.”
The John McCain campaign has started a new blog, called The McCain Report. So far there are three posts, all by a single little-known blogger. The first entry is the standard “Hello, World!”, but it shows a cheeky sense of humor when it jokes about the blog ditching its original lime-green background. Looks promising, but it goes downhill from there.
The second entry shows what this blog will be all about: it accuses Obama of being “Changey” (a word not in my dictionary, other than for a small town in France — are they accusing Obama of being, um, French?), followed by a quote from McCain where he calls Ahmadinejad a dictator (note to McCain: Ahmadinejad isn’t even the primary leader of Iran).
The second entry ends with a seriously misleading quotation. They quote an AP article about Jerusalem as saying “Obama is trying to have it both ways, but there is nothing new about that.” They imply that the AP article is saying that there is nothing new about Obama trying to have it both ways. But the actual quote is “Obama is trying to have it both ways, but there is nothing new about that. So does President Bush. President Clinton did, too.” The point being that our last two presidents have also had ambiguous positions on Jerusalem (which they seem to think might be a good thing, all things considered).
The last (but certainly not least) entry is “Attention disaffected Hillary supporters, John McCain is a huge ABBA fan.” Followed by a ABBA music video of “Take a chance on me”.
Seriously.
UPDATE: According to The Nation, the McCain Report originally had a link to the liberal blog Daily Kos, but apparently that was short lived — the link is gone.
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It’s ironic that in most countries these days, Americans find they’re better off keeping a low profile. But here, in a country I’m told hates me, my nationality has been a real plus — absolutely everywhere I’ve gone. … And I have absolutely never traveled to a place where I had such an easy and enjoyable time connecting with people. Young, educated people speak English. Locals were as confused about and fascinated by me as I was about them.
