podpolia

…apparently. I would note that it looks suspiciously like a mob clashing with police.

It also raises questions about possible dangers of police unions – the protesters are clearly trying to divide them by invoking unionism.

This is definitely an important article to read and understand, and makes a major argument for keeping American spending under control.

It’s a pity that American congressmen can’t speak like this, or generally be bothered to speak this openly and clearly about problems that are facing the country…

It’s very sad that the British media are now more free (or at least, more willing) to criticize the U.S. President than the American media generally seem to be.

UPDATE 8/13/10 18.35: I was very amused by one commenter on this article:

The 11th reason is because Obama is a “Pole Turtle”. If you ever see a turtle sitting on top of a fence pole you know the following: He didn’t get up there by himself. He doesn’t belong up there. He doesn’t know what to do while up there. He certainly isn’t going anywhere and you have to wonder what kind of dumb ass put him there in the first place.

Certainly sums that up.

Well, my health insurance just went up another 15%. Yeah, those of us who like our insurance can keep it, alright, but we have to pay an arm and a leg for it.

This seems to explain quite a bit.

The Jawa Report has had a number of interesting posts on the incident on the Mavi Marmara recently. I thought I would hit a few highlights:

The story is really coming in from the commandos’ point of view now, and at least one of them is being considered for a medal of valor. The story includes much more information about what was happening in the first seconds on board the ship than I’ve seen anywhere else (including details on the shots fired at the commandos and the fact that the attackers were apparently trained and well paid). Naturally, it doesn’t fit the narrative that much of the media has already created, so it’s being brushed aside.

Another interesting bit is a translation of a speech made by the organizer of the flotilla – definitely provides some perspective.

It would be interesting to analyze the progression of the story from the initial reports to the current narrative, and see how the story has changed. How does the narrative actually change as new details come out? Have individual organizations / governments / media outlets actually corrected previous inaccuracies, or have they simply shifted the story and assumed people would catch up? How much of the shift is intentional, and how much unconscious? It would probably make an interesting paper. (In fact, if anyone wants to collaborate on such a paper, let me know!)

I had seen this elsewhere earlier, but I’ll give the hat tip to the Jawa Report.

UPDATE: YouTube has pulled this video because apparently they don’t understand the Fair Use Doctrine. There’s another copy of the video here, but I’ll leave up the original embedded video as a reminder of YouTube’s perfidy, and my own laziness.