AddieStan

Your blogstress finds herself most indebted to Atrios of that pithy blog, Eschaton , for linking to her piece , A Canterbury Tale , at The American Prospect Online, in which she, once and for all, throws in the towel at the notion of a cohesive religious left. At AmericaBlog , John Aravosis echoes your Webwench's sentiment . Posting in reponse to news of yet another gathering of liberal religious figures, Aravosis writes: I'm not convinced the religious left will ever get its act together. They just don't seem to know politics, or public relations, nor are they angry enough to be inspired enough to make a difference (our guys, silly people that they are, actually buy into all that Biblical stuff about loving thy neighbor - the religious right, on the other hand, has ignored all the love in the Bible).

Speaking of South Asia, did anybody catch Rummy's performance yesterday in his joint press conference with beleaguered Afghan President Hamid Karzai? He actually had the gall to suggest that the fighting in southern Afghanistan between coalition forces and the Taliban doesn't speak to a resurgent Taliban; it just looks that way because the U.S. has gotten better at keeping track of Taliban attacks. Was the U.S. military, until recently, really not keeping track of attacks on its forces by the reportedly routed enemy?

Your blogstress finds it quite amazing that the terrorist bombing of commuter trains in Mumbai -- known to Westerners as Bombay -- are playing in this continent's broadcast media as a B-list story. Nearly 200 people were killed, and at least double that number injured, in those ghastly attacks, carried out during rush hour in India's largest city. Mumbai is to India what New York is to the U.S.: its financial capital, its multicultural Mecca, if you will. (You'll recall that when the London tubes were attacked, the situation was treated almost as if the attack had happened on this side of the pond. But then again, the U.K. is a nation run by white people.) The Indian government has been quick to lay responsibility for the assault (which, as of this writing, no group has claimed) at the feet of the Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-e-Toiba , but your cyberscribe suspects the truth is a bit more complex. Yesterday's bombings bear all the marks of an al Qaeda action: p...