Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2856

Before The Explosion

GQ has a terrific, eye-opening account of the men who worked on the Deepwater Horizon rig before the disaster struck. The whole piece has a tragic irony to it. You can see what's coming, even if they can't. Money quote:

The problems with Macondo started on his last hitch, about two weeks into the job. Twice drilling had to stop—oilmen call it getting stuck—once to patch a crack in the bore hole, then again to drop a cement plug into a tender spot in the subsurface that collapsed around the...

How Not To Respond To New Media, Ctd

Greenwald calls for the arrest of Rep. Bob Etheridge.

Glenn Greenwald - United States - Elena Kagan - Israel - Salon.com

The Slaughter Of Innocents

It has taken Britain almost four decades to admit to a war crime in Northern Ireland:

The Bloody
Sunday Inquiry
report found that all those killed were unarmed and that
paratroopers had lost control and opened fire without warning. Some
had been
trying to flee when they were hit and soldiers had made up false
accounts in
a bid to cover up their actions, the report found.

A total of 13 unarmed civilians, seven of them teenagers, died in Londonderry when soldiers from 1st...

No Madonna

Some critical pushback on Lady Gaga's recent pretensions.
















Lady Gaga - Madonna - Visions - Religion and Spirituality - Perspectives

The VFYW Contest: Winner #2

A reader writes:

Not sure about this, but I think this is Honolulu, Hawaii - either toward the Moilili/University side where it's sparser, or toward the Ala Moana Park side ... sort of where Waikiki peters out?  Clouds are right, it's the right place for the setting of the winter sun, and the buildings are all relatively early postwar.

Another writes:

I'm an architect, and the view from this particular window looks just like my stay several years ago in a Singapore Public Housing Estate...

Trying To Understand The Tea Party II

Or maybe it's back to Hofstadter, citing Adorno (sorry, governor Palin, this post is probably one you'll want to skip):

From clinical interviews and thematic apperception tests, Adorno and his co-workers found that their pseudo-conservative subjects, although given to a form of political expression that combines a curious mixture of largely conservative with occasional radical notions, succeed in concealing from themselves impulsive tendencies that, if released into action, would be very...

Trying To Understand The Tea Party I

This ad seems to imply that the Founding Fathers were opposed to all taxation, as opposed to taxation imposed by an alien power without any representation. Is this now the official view of Tea-Party Nation? One would have thought that the principle was no taxation without representation, not no taxation at all.

I confess to staying baffled by this whole movement. I spent many years wailing about spending under Bush, and the Tea Party was largely silent. I'd like to see serious cuts in...

Hewitt Award Nominee II

"The president had a choice between standing with Benjamin Netanyahu, or standing with Ahmadinejad and Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization. This should not have been a difficult choice, but the President chose to stand with Hamas and then they were rewarded this week with $400 million in aid," - Michele Bachmann, to FNC host David Asman (who titled a recent piece, "Is the president funding terrorism?").



Hamas - Benjamin Netanyahu - Terrorism - Middle East - Israel
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Goal Of The Day

Paraguay's Antolin Alcaraz stuns the heavily-favored Italian team:

The game ended 1-1.  Runner-up goal - Denmark's athletic own goal - after the jump:

Money quote:

The goal was credited to Simon Poulsen.

Antolin Alcaraz - Simon Poulsen - Paraguay - Denmark - Italy

"An Epidemic Of Not Watching" Ctd

David Pollock reads a new poll out of Israel:

In the aftermath of the recent ship-boarding
three-quarters of Jewish Israelis say Israel should not open the Gaza Strip
international aid shipments. Narrower, yet still solid, majorities also say
should not accept an international investigation, nor adjust its tactics to
favorable international consideration.

Even more surprising, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu'sjob-approval rating has now climbed into positive...