Jay Ackroyd has been posting at Eschaton lately and he has a strong post in his Teaching Moments. He correctly identifies the opportunity of the kerfuffle¹ over Reverend Dr. Wright, and he has apparently read the relevant books [Ghost Wars by Steve Coll and Blowback by Chalmers Johnson] but then he loses the thread by saying:

“If, when the klieg lights came up, he had translated those ideas from the language of an inner city pulpit into secular foreign policy speak he could possibly have influenced the public dialogue.”

Dr. Wright is a pastor, professor, and author. He preaches, teaches and writes about Black Liberation Theology. That is his area of expertise and he stays within its confines. He was attacked for something he said in the pulpit, a phrase taken out of context, and he responded to the attack at every venue offered.

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It’s comforting to know they have learned to phish in the “old country”.

“From” says <paypal @ securesuite·net>, but the header text says orange·fr.

“Subject: Votre compte PayPal est bloqué !”

Were I to “Cliquez” I would end up in a subdirectory of the Vevey Motor Club in Switzerland [motoclubvevey·ch], not at PayPal.

Vevey has had some interesting visitors, including JP Morgan and FM Dostoevski, who may have inspired this.

Words have meanings, but some words have intent. The intent is the key to deciding whether a word is derogatory. While some will attempt to hide their intent by claiming, “It was a joke”, the fact that the individual thought that there might be humor in the use of the word is adequate to assume a bad intent.

Jesse Wendel deals with Obama’s remark, “Hold On One Second, Sweetie”. While he deals with the choice of a word and the non-apology, people in comments attempt to paper over the entire thing.

The question should be: what was the intent?

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When Mustang Bobby does his Friday morning blogaround [that Rook steals] it is a convenient listing of high points from the blogs of the Liberal Coalition.

When Elayne does her version of a blogaround it is an itinerary of an extended and eclectic tour of blogtopia™.

The USGS map shows 74 earthquakes in the area including the original 7.9 event with 4 in the last 24 hours on the earthquake list. After tapering off a bit the magnitude jumped back up to a 5.6 yesterday.

The latest BBC report on the disaster: Quake effort resumes after panic

Rescue efforts are resuming in Beichuan in China, after the entire city was evacuated amid fears that it could be engulfed by a river bursting its banks.
…

Beichuan is close to the epicentre of Monday’s devastating quake, in which it is feared about 50,000 people died.

On Saturday the number of confirmed deaths rose to 28,881. The Chinese authorities say that about five million people have been made homeless by the disaster.

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