Freak Flag Fly

Last night, at a panel discussion hosted by Marvin Kalb on the role of values in election '04, FoxNews blowhard Michael Barone accused Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg of issuing a "blood libel against the American people" because she referred to the infamous Willie Horton ads as an example of racial politics.

Wikipedia notes that blood libels

...are allegations that a particular group kills people as a form of human sacrifice, and uses their blood in various rituals. The alleged victims are often children.

Many different groups have been accused, including Canaanites, Jews, Christians, Cathars, Knights Templar, Witches, Christian heretics, Roman Catholics, Roma, Wiccans, Druids, neopagans, Satanic cultists, and evangelical Protestant missionaries.

A famous example of blood libel is the allegation that Jews kill Christian and Muslim children and use their blood to make Passover matzohs. Variants of this story have been circulating since at least the 1st century.

After the C-span event, Barone could be seen sternly lecturing Greenberg, presumably about her "blood libel against the American people."

What a complete fuckwad.

Convention has it that Powell's departure removes the only bulwark against the more radical foreign policymakers in the administration, but can anyone point to a real example of moderation or multilateralism in statecraft in the last 4 years? Should we feel glad that Powell convinced Bush to send him to the U.N., lied to them about Iraq WMD, and then ignored them? (Perhaps Powell lied a little less than John Bolton would have). Is the fact that we are not invading Iran and Syria as we speak evidence of moderation? Ah, the soft bigotry of lowered expectations.