August 7, 2005, My bologna has a first name...
Israeli Finance Minister and Political Lazarus Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu resigned in protest over the now all but inevitable pullout from Gaza, to the delight of both the Israeli left and right (and m'self). Bibi was ridden out of the premiership on a rail after various scandals, and amazingly, has made it back to the forefront of Israeli politics. (I remember Bibi from a talk he gave in the mid-80's at NYU law school, back when he was Israel's ambaassador to the UN; man is he smart and charismatic... those aren't good enough to cover a paucity of character, however.) There are those of us who will never, ever, ever forgive him for the poisoned rhetoric that led may well have directly to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, when Bibi was then trying to derail another incarnation of the Israeli-Arab peace process. The good news now is that unlike Rabin's, Sharon's hardass credentials are well set to all but the most right wing. Most Israelis favored the unilateral pullout from Gaza (where Israel does not belong) which, of course, was the main campaign position of former Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna, duly coopted, and about to be implemented, by none other than Ariel Sharon. Who will go down as Israel's greatest peace-maker, despite all the crap that others may want to lay upon him. Bibi: you're an asshole. And, btw, you ARE the weakest link. Good bye.
Mel Gibson has been asked by his adopted homeland of Australia (he's a native of Westchester County's Peekskill, NY, IIRC) to do a live version of his Passion of Christ, i.e., staging the Stations of the Cross in the streets of Sydney, in some kind of a bid to obtain a major world Catholic conference. Mel's father, from whom apparently Mel gets his enthusiasm for trying to stir up centuries' old passions (for anti-semitism, burning of heretics and witches, etc.) you will recall, believes in a form of Catholicism that is too hardass to accept the authority of the Pope, which our friend Julia once likened to the branch of Judaism that advocates keeping Kosher by eating bacon cheeseburgers on Passover.
On a thematic note, Julia is also kind enought to send us this troubling tale of how certain members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy TM failed to get the memo about "support our troops", at least when such message is overridden by "God hates faggots most of all". There was quite a lengthy piece devoted to the one-man glue who literally holds the VRWC TM together, one Grover Norquist, in the current New Yorker (discussed with the author here); Grover, you must be so proud of the members of your big tent, and that the likes of the "Reverand" Phelps are pissing out of your tent (and on the memories of slain American service personnel) instead of on you, as you richly deserve.
Cautionary word of advice, Grover, from Comrade Trotsky: "The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end. " The rest of us might just not value "lower federal estate taxes" to the same degree you do, I guess. Of course, it's a free country (no thanks you to you, and the VRWC TM...)
For now.