Too Much For A Tweet... Too Little For A Post

If House Dems take back control, they'll have to contemplate the difference between Dracula & Frankenstein

Next Speaker Sweepstakes

One of my favorite congressmembers came over for dinner the other night. Very concerned about all the human garbage lining up to follow Pelosi as Speaker if Dems take back House and she shortens her stay in Congress. Fortunately Steve Israel is so thoroughly disliked by so many Members that he'd have no chance & in the epic battle between Mothra and Godzilla, my dining companion would vote for Wasserman-Schultz, not because there's any unawareness of the character issues but because, "If Hoyer were Speaker, nothing would ever get accomplished. He would feed everything we want to do through the lobbyists and nothing worthwhile would ever come out the other end." Nice! At a live chat at Crooks and Liars Tuesday, Raúl Grijalva suggested a more palatable option: Xavier Becerra (D-CA).

Stuff Happens In Other Countries Too-- Even Beyond the Eurozone

I'm lucky I went to see the 2 gigantic standing Buddhas of Bamian when I was in Afghanistan in 1969. One was built in 507 AD, the other a few decades later. In 2001 the Taliban had them dynamited because they were an affront to their primitive religious prejudices. More recently, I've been writing on my travel blog about how the primitive Tuaregs from the Sahara have swept into Timbuktu and found thousand year old monuments to Sufi saints-- a different sect of the Muslim religion than their own-- to be an affront... so they blew them up. And it gets worse every day.

Islamic extremists destroyed another two mausoleums in the northern Malian city of Timbuktu on Tuesday, attacking a graveyard attached to the city’s most picturesque mosque, according to a historian specializing in the area’s heritage.

Salem Ould Elhadj, a researcher at the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu, said the members of the radical sect set out with picks and shovels to raze the tombs of two of Timbuktu’s scholars, Baba Babadje and Mahamane Foulane, both of whom are considered saints.

Their mausoleums are in a cemetery attached to the nearly 700-year-old Djingareyber mosque, built in 1325. It’s made of mud and resembles a ziggurat and is one of the most recognizable symbols of the fabled city, often reproduced on postcards.

Both the mosque and the tombs are listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Ansar Dine, the sect which seized control of northern Mali last month, says they do not recognize any international law, only the law of the Quran. Spokesman Oumar Ould Hamaha said that they have “divine orders” to destroy any grave that is more than 20 centimeters (7.87 inches) tall because anything taller encourages people to orient their prayer toward the deceased rather than toward God.

What's next? The Pyramids? Apparently, yes.

According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt’s Great Pyramids-- or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi‘i, those “symbols of paganism,” which Egypt’s Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax. Most recently, Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs” and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Morsi, to “destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not."

This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad’s companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641. Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity.  While most Western academics argue otherwise, according to early Muslim writers, the great Library of Alexandria itself-- deemed a repository of pagan knowledge contradicting the Koran-- was destroyed under bin al-As’s reign and in compliance with Caliph Omar’s command.

Maine... Good For The Gays?

A friend in Maine told me to ignore polling that shows most Mainers would vote in favor of gay marriage now. "We just tell that to the pollsters because we don't want to sound like rednecks and bigots. We have enough to be embarrassed about here with LePage spouting off again"

"Governor Romney, you are so white you make white bread look like pumpernickel."

Romney got what he wanted-- material for an ad to run in the Old Confederacy of him being booed at the NAACP Convention:



Ever wonder what it looks like when the GOP racist brain trust gets together to strategize with Willard about "The Blacks?" (And yes, Romney has always had a screwed up relationship with the NAACP.)




UPDATE: Looks Like The Pyramids Are Safe After All

The "call" to destroy the Pyramids seems to be a hoax. Something didn't smell right to me about it and this morning I read it's a rumor being perpetrated by right-wing bloggers and Muslim-haters.