The Waterglass

Hezbollah shows its terrorist mettle:

Western Beirut fell under the control of opposition Hezbollah militias Friday in what amounted to an army-negotiated surrender of pro-government positions, Lebanese Internal Security Forces and Western military observers said… Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, part of the pro-government coalition, said the government was “now at the end of a gun barrel” and they expect the “conditions for surrender will be offered sooner or later,” Sadler reported.  “I think … it’s a coup,” Jumblatt told CNN in a phone interview. “The Lebanese army is in total paralysis.”

Israel was heavily criticized for battling Hezbollah two years ago.  Violence doesn’t solve anything, does it?  Well, ask Hezbollah, that terrorist organization determined to overthrow the government of Lebanon.

Star Jones has a beef with Barbara Walters over Walters’ new book:

Nearly two years after Star Jones left “The View” on rocky terms, the 46-year-old TV personality has criticized former boss Barbara Walters for writing about her.  In Walters’ new memoir, “Audition,” she discusses how Jones wouldn’t acknowledge her gastric bypass surgery on the air. She also writes about Jones’ lavish wedding, which wound up alienating viewers as Jones accepted gifts in return for promotion.

Star Jones comments:

“It is a sad day when an icon like Barbara Walters, in the sunset of her life, is reduced to publicly branding herself as an adulterer, humiliating an innocent family with accounts of her illicit affair and speaking negatively against me all for the sake of selling a book. It speaks to her true character,” Jones told Us Weekly magazine.

Barbara Walters writes:

Walters says Jones, who’d dropped 160 pounds in three years, changed her mind after telling Walters she’d talk about the procedure on the program. Walters says she didn’t want to be the “poster child” for the procedure.  “I understood that, but it put us all in a terrible position,” Walters writes. “It meant we virtually had to lie for Star, especially when she said again and again on the air that her weight loss was due primarily to portion control and Pilates. … Joy (Behar), in particular, resented having to go along with the lie that implied that all one needed to do was sit-ups and ingest one cookie instead of two.”

It is notable that Barbara Walters saw no need to write the memoir in the manner of her unfortunate speech impediment.

Global warming killed 22,000 people in Myanmar, according to Albert Gore:

[Albert Gore] was interviewed by “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross about the release of his book, “The Assault on Reason,” in paperback.

 “And as we’re talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated,” Gore said. “And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.”

Meanwhile,

The U.N. says hungry crowds of survivors have stormed shops that reopened Wednesday in Myanmar’s devastated Irrawaddy delta, with little aid reaching the area since a weekend cyclone killed more than 22,000 people.  The delta, Myanmar’s rice-growing heartland, has been devastated by Cyclone Nargis, threatening long-term food shortages for survivors, experts said.

In the endless campaign that is the Democratic presidential primary, Clinton scored a big yet narrow victory in Indiana, while Obama won North Carolina in a landslide:

Senator Obama won 56% of the vote in North Carolina, while Senator Clinton won 51% of the vote in Indiana. Both votes were the final major Democratic primaries which help decide the party’s White House candidate. Neither scored a knock-out blow, but analysts say Mr Obama’s lead looks increasingly unassailable. Mr Obama is leading the race in delegates who will chose the presidential nominee by 1,840 to 1,684, according to the Associated Press news agency.

The call for unity seems to ring hollow in this super-campaign:

Speaking to a divided crowd of almost 3,000 Indiana Democrats Sunday, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean and presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama said if a Democrat were to defeat presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in the fall, the party would need to unite.  Clinton, the first of the three to speak, started her talk by reminding voters that regardless of what happens in November, they can “breathe a sigh or relief” knowing that President Bush leaves office in January. Dean spoke after Clinton and encouraged the audience to stand behind whoever won the nomination.  “The truth is, the only thing that can stop us from winning the presidency is ourselves,” he said. “We need to support whichever candidate wins the nomination.”

As Obama took the stage, his supporters, who took up about two-thirds of the room, applauded and cheered “Yes we can!” for almost a minute, drawing annoyed stares from Clinton supporters across from them. In the last few minutes of his talk, Obama echoed Clinton and Dean’s comments, saying the party needed to mend its fences. “I know that some of you all probably feel dispirited about the length of this primary,” he said. “I am absolutely convinced that Sen. Clinton and I share the same values and that we are interested in moving this country forward and bettering the Democratic Party. The question is, do we shed our cynicism and our doubts and reach for what we know is right?” By the end of Obama’s speech, some Clinton supporters seemed to warm up to him, clapping whenever he said something they strongly agreed with. For other Clinton supporters, though, it was too late for them to clap. Rather than stay to hear Obama speak, they left as he approached the podium.

That’s an ass-full of unity right there, bub.

Stephen King sticks his foot in his mouth to about thigh-deep.  Sort of like his fellow traveler John “Stuck in Iraq” Kerry.

Thanks to Ace for the pointer. 

Past King stupidity is evident here, here, and here.

No, this is not Abbie Hoffman, but Albert Hofman, the guy who invented LSD:

Albert Hofmann, father of the mind-altering drug LSD whose medical discovery grew into a notorious “problem child,” died Tuesday. He was 102.  Hofmann died of a heart attack at his home in Basel, Switzerland, according to Rick Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies…

Hofmann’s hallucinogen inspired — and arguably corrupted — millions in the 1960’s hippie generation. For decades after LSD was banned in the late 1960s, Hofmann defended his invention.  “I produced the substance as a medicine. … It’s not my fault if people abused it,” he said.

The Swiss chemist discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm in Basel. He became the first human guinea pig of the drug when a tiny amount of the substance seeped onto his finger during a repeat of the laboratory experiment April 16, 1943.  “I had to leave work for home because I was suddenly hit by a sudden feeling of unease and mild dizziness,” he wrote in a memo to company bosses.  “Everything I saw was distorted as in a warped mirror,” he said, describing his bicycle ride home. “I had the impression I was rooted to the spot. But my assistant told me we were actually going very fast.” Three days later, Hofmann experimented with a larger dose. The result was a horror trip.  “The substance which I wanted to experiment with took over me. I was filled with an overwhelming fear that I would go crazy. I was transported to a different world, a different time,” Hofmann wrote.

Sharpton to recreate Crown Heights riot?

Hundreds of angry people marched through Harlem on Saturday after the Rev. Al Sharpton promised to “close this city down” to protest the acquittals of three police detectives in the 50-shot barrage that killed a groom on his wedding day and wounded two friends.

“We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians,” Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people at his National Action Network office in the historically black Manhattan neighborhood. “This city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell.”

Sharpton was joined by the family of 23-year-old Sean Bell - a black man - and a friend of Bell who was wounded in the 2006 shooting outside a Queens strip club. Two of the three officers charged were also black.

The rally at Sharpton’s office was followed by a 20-block march down Malcolm X Boulevard and then across 125th Street, Harlem’s main business thoroughfare, where some bystanders yelled out “Kill the police!”

I’m sure racism played a part in some fashion or other.  If you look hard enough, you can find racism anywhere.

Here is today’s political cartoon of the week, submitted by noted political cartoonist, I. P. “Ip” Freely.

Today, April 22, 2008 is Earth Day!  Make sure you get on your knees and kiss the soil! (Earth Day is not to be confused with Earth Hour.  Turning off your lights for 60 minutes won’t help anyone today).

Our most worthless living ex-President continues to beclown himself in the Middle East:

Former US president Jimmy Carter and Khaled Meshaal, exiled chief of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, held more talks in Syria on Saturday focused on a possible truce between Israel and Gaza militants and the release of an Israeli soldier, Hamas said. The two men held a lengthy meeting on Friday, strongly opposed by Washington and Israel who view Hamas as a terrorist organisation despite its victory in Palestinian elections in 2006.

Carter, on a Middle East trip to promote peace efforts amid continuing bloodshed, suggested to the Damascus-based Meshaal that the Palestinian movement should make some goodwill gestures towards Israel.

The 2002 Nobel Peace prizewinner proposed a truce between Israel and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, “an exchange of prisoners, which would include Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, the lifting of the Israeli blockade of the strip, and a solution to the Rafah terminal,” Hamas official Mohammad Nazzal told AFP.