Crossposted at Mideast by MIdwest.

Crossposted at Mideast by Midwest…

I regret to inform you that Mideast By Midwest not tweets:

http://twitter.com/mideastxmidwest

Crossposted at Mideast by Midwest.

Crossposted at Mideast by Midwest.

This week the Madam Secretary pledged a vast sum for the Palestinians. But rather than reconstructing Gaza, Clinton’s State Department seems more committed to reinvigorating stale policy. Her rallying behind Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will likely weaken his stature in the long run.

And Plan B for Israel and Palestine doesn’t look so promising either.

The Week in Quotes:

MR. SADJADPOUR:….And my point is that Iran is to the Middle East in a way what Rush Limbaugh is to the United States in the sense that they know they can be the champions of the alienated and the dispossessed, but they know they can’t be the champions of the upwardly mobile. And I think the problem with our strategy and Israel’s strategy in the Middle East the last several years, if you look at the last three wars which have been prosecuted in the Middle East — the Iraq war, the 2006 Lebanon war and the recent war in Gaza — is that we’ve created — we’ve increased the ranks of the alienated and the dispossessed and we’ve created more fertile ground for Iran’s ideology throughout the region.

SEN. CASEY: Thank you.

SEN. KERRY: Thank you, very much.
We’re going to resist the temptation to talk about foreign policy and Rush Limbaugh. (Laughter.)

… Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing
3 March 09

***

“Bush did the wrong things poorly - it gives us the illusion that they can be done well”

…Robert Malley, Carnegie Endowment
5 March 09

Crossposted at Mideast by Midwest. Stay tooned for more.

Too busy today to find something subtly obnoxious enough to earn the esteemed designation of “DAILY SNARK.” That said, one David Denby has explored the past and present of those comments that make us snicker. Denby’s new book, aptly titled Snark, dives into the squalid world of back-handed replies, the very moments when as an observer one can’t help but let laughter break the silence of an awkward circumstance.

Dearest reader(s): I haven’t yet had the time to read Denby’s publication in full. But I assure you that once I do, I will think of something really snarky to quip about. And that’s a promise.

In this past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, Walter Kirn offered the book’s basis but could have been snarkier. But clearly Denby doesn’t like snarky comments as much as I do. Kirn’s critique:

Snickering at power has it uses, whatever Denby imagines drives the snickerers, and however he belittles their spitting prose. Playing polite, though, exacts a higher price — and one that Denby seems strangely willing to pay for the sake of . . . what? It’s hard to know. One almost wonders if what he so deplores about what he calls “the hunting of the snark” is that, invariably — given his obtuseness about the necessity of irreverent laughter, even if it’s rude, unfair or lamebrained, in revealing or merely helping to abide perceived arrogance and fraudulence — someday the snark would come for books like his.

Ok, maybe this guy Kirn is snarkier than we thought.

Introducing a new feature to this ‘bril’ blog:

The DAILY SNARK

Today’s award goes to an ace reporter who had the patience to sit through an entire press conference with State Department spokesman Robert Wood. This dutifully snarky reporter inquired about the geographical boundaries of Dennis Ross’s new diplomatic post:

QUESTION: Have your ace geographers been able to determine what Southwest Asia is and thereby figure out what exactly Dennis Ross’s mandate is?

MR. WOOD: I’m so shocked that you asked that question. Let me give you my best – our best read of this. From our standpoint, the countries that make up areas of the Gulf and Southwest Asia include Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen, and those are the countries

At least Wood snarked right back at him.

Sadly my scanner is broken, so this post is an inspired from an insider tip.
Xinhua ‘reports’:

Israeli girl Gali Avni Magen plays with Sylvester, an 8-week-old Sumatran tiger cub, in her home in Zur Hadassa near Jerusalem February 20, 2009. Sylvester, who was abandoned by its mother, is being raised by Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo’s veterinarians, one of whom is Gali’s mother. According the zoo’s spokesperson the Sumatran tiger is an endangered species with only about 400 living in the wild.

• Special prize for anyone who can find tiger appearances in the Hebrew bible. And I know you can do better than grabbing a quote from the story of Noah and his ark.

Read this post and more at Mideast by Midwest.

Stay tuned for more on Hillary’s listening tour.

Perhaps only renewed interest in Ben’s Chili Bowl…

Is it only this cartoonist who is quite surprised how long people would wait in line for a half smoke?