2010-12-17

"Time To Get The Christ Out Of Christmas"

Stephen Colbert delivered another satirical tongue-lashing, this time to Republicans and conservatives coping with the cognitive dissonance of reconciling their faith in a Christ whose deeds they renounce by their own.

"It hurts me to say this folks, but if Jesus really is a liberal, it's time to get the Christ out of Christmas [...] It is time to take Baby Jesus out of the manger. Replace Him with something that's easier to swallow: How about a honey baked ham?

"Because if this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we've got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition, and then admit that we just don't want to do it."

2010-12-09

Wikileaks Supporters Determined To Turn Public Against Them


In a series of Denial of Service attacks, ostensibly in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the hacker community intends to target some of the most popular and important e-commerce sites.

Already attacked: MasterCard, amazon.com, PayPal, visa.com.

The attacks are intended as a retaliation for these sites interfering with hosting of or donations to WikiLeaks. They seem to me the surest way to galvanize opposition to WikiLeaks, and frame its activities as public mischief rather than public service.

Like Fareed Zakaria, I am impressed by the quality of the American diplomatic cables, and the alignment of their content with the public rhetoric of the State Department. However, while the US may not have been compromised directly, its relationships with other states--whose public and private foreign policy bear little resemblance--are at risk.