How dare they!

The DNC did not credential this blog to attend the 2008 Convention in Denver.

And all this after we did not apply and played coy by never expressing any interest in attending.

And yet they didn't deign to beg us to go.

Harrumph, I say, harrumph!

That's it, I'm going to have to vote for Gravel.

Shorter Geraldine Ferraro

Please allow me to dig this hole deeper.

Whom he chooses for his vice president makes no difference to them. That he is pro-choice means little. Learning more about his bio doesn't do it. They don't identify with someone who has gone to Columbia and Harvard Law School and is married to a Princeton-Harvard Law graduate.

Yes, they are not the salt of the earth-types two Yalies like Bill & Hillary Clinton are!

Nothing against the Clintons, this is purely an example of one camp's supporter being off their fuckin' rocker (see, Father Pfleger). Logic like elitism for thee, but not for my two Ivy League favorites is rich indeed.

What America needs is apparently black people who are a whiter shade of pale. Because those are the only black people that Geraldine Ferraro will feel are not attacking her.

That's quite a legacy she's building for herself.

Bob Dole is mad as hell and Bob Dole can't take it anymore

Bob Dole writes:

"There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues. No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.

"In Bob Dole's nearly 36 years of public service Bob Dole has known of a few like you. No doubt you will 'clean up' as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, 'Biting The Hand That Fed Me.' Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years"

Bob Dole won't read your book because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job"

That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively. You’re a hot ticket now but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?

BOB DOLE

Ironically, this was not Bob Dole's letter announcing he wants a divorce to his wife Elizabeth, who owes her Senate seat in large part to the jobs and fame she obtained because she married Bob Dole.

No, it was a letter to Scott McClellan.

Bobolicious

Ah, the banality of the inanity:

We don’t understand the Iranians because the Iranians don’t understand themselves. The regime isn’t sure whether it is an ideological movement championing global jihad or whether it is merely regional power seeking Middle East hegemony. Until the Iranians resolve this internal ambiguity, you can talk to them all you want, but they won’t be able to make a strategic shift or follow a more amenable path.

Well, it seems clear enough to McCain -- he's a uniter, so bomb 'em.

But the really important thing to Bobo is that we absolve Bush:

There are a hundred things they could have done differently, but the primary fault for the failure to contain Iran does not lie in Washington.

It lies first with the feckless international community

Yes, the UN is at fault for the Bush Administration toppling Tehran's major enemy in the region and allowing it to fill the vacuum and dominate the internal politics of the place it was at war with so recently.

But it isn't Bush's fault.

Uh-huh.

The Evolution of the Right Wing Blogger

Episode Three:

The Seventies -

More McSame

John McCain wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years, 1,000 years, One Million Years, 2013 ... an indefinite date of self-proclaimed undefined victory of an ascertainable nature to be proclaimed (he hopes) eight years from now.

Who benefits?

Why John McCain supporters!

A little-noticed civil lawsuit in Florida is shining a light on an unusual but hugely profitable Pentagon contract to ship millions of gallons of aviation fuel to U.S. bases in Iraq through the kingdom of Jordan.

The deal involves a cast of influential characters, including the king of Jordan’s brother-in-law, who is suing Harry Sargeant III, a top Florida-based fundraiser for Sen. John McCain's presidential bid.

Sargeant is a Florida businessman and former Marine Corps pilot hailed by the McCain campaign as a "Trailblazer" for raising $100,000 or more in political donations. Through a company called International Oil Trading Co., or IOTC, Sargeant and a partner have a lucrative contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year to supply American military forces in Iraq with fuel, especially aviation fuel. The firm ships the fuel to Jordan and then trucks it across the border, where U.S. forces escort the convoys to air bases...

The way the American military structured the deal, only a company with the blessing of the Jordanian government could win the contract. A bidder was required to have a Jordanian government "Letter of Authorization," and only IOTC received such a letter.

The lawsuit against Sargeant was filed April 10 in Florida state court by Mohammad Al-Saleh, who is married to the half sister of King Abdullah of Jordan. Al-Saleh’s suit says he essentially brokered Sargeant's contract by arranging the approval and cooperation of the Jordanian government, using his "connections and influence." The lawsuit alleges that Al-Saleh arranged for the Jordanian government “to issue a letter of authorization to IOTC.” Al-Saleh’s lawyer, Jonathan Frank, said, “Were it not for my client, they would not have been able to get that letter.”

Someone give Smedley Butler's coffin rotisserie a turn.

Highly recommended

The reaction to McClellan's book castigating both Bush & the media from the McClatchy (then Knight-Ridder) reporters who got Iraq right!

The news media have been, if anything, even more craven than the administration has been in defending its failure to investigate Bush's case for war in Iraq before the war.

Here's ABC News' Charles Gibson: "I think the questions were asked. It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. It is not our job to debate them. It is our job to ask the questions.” And “I’m not sure we would have asked anything differently."

Really?

Or this from NBC's Brian Williams: “Sadly, we saw fellow Americans — in some cases floating past facedown (after Katrina). We knew what had just happened. We weren’t allowed that kind of proximity with the weapons inspectors [in Iraq]. I was in Kuwait for the buildup to the war, and, yes, we heard from the Pentagon, on my cell phone, the minute they heard us report something that they didn’t like. The tone of that time was quite extraordinary.” And this: "“It’s tough to go back, to put ourselves in the mind-set. It was post-9/11 America."

So the Pentagon tells the media what kind of reporting is in- and out-of-bounds?

Hogwash. Hogwash! HOGWASH.

Smackdown part 2

Yesterday, I wrote about the Right-Wing smears against veterans and victims of the satellite of the Nazi Concentration Camp at Buchenwald, specfically Ohrdruf. We noted the smackdown one of these vets gave a right-wing blogger.

Let us continue down that road, as found here:

I awoke in a hospital. As soon as I opened my eyes the nurse ran to get the waiting American officers and their press corps. I was taken back to the Concentration Camp Ohrdruf by jeep in a convoy headed by Generals Eisenhower and Bradley themselves. Several survivors and myself gave General Eisenhower and his men a personal tour of the horrors, which you had discovered at Ohrdruf.

I never forgot how General Eisenhower kept rubbing his hands together as we spoke of the horrors inflicted upon us and the piles of our dead comrades. He insisted on seeing it all, hearing it all, learning it all. He knew!! General Eisenhower knew. He wanted to have it recorded and filmed for the future. He said that sometime in the future there may come a time when people will say it never happened that way -- it's an exaggeration, it's propaganda, it was just the end results of war. Well, the time is now, only 50 years later. There are those who would tell you WWII of the 89th Division that what you saw at Ohrdruf and at other camps never happened the way you said it did. The atrocities never happened. The tortures. The hangings. The starvation. The brutality. It never happened and YOU NEVER SAW IT!! They would take your fight for goodness and freedom and call it futile, worthless. Your sacrifices would have no meaning if all that you fought for were nothing more than a tale of someone's imaginings!

But, we were there. I, the victim. You, the liberators. I, the survivor. You, the witnesses. And together we must, in our golden years on this earth, again do battle with the forces of man's worst evil so that what I and you lived through 50 years ago, what we say, will not be tossed aside as insignificant in the annals of man's history. It must be made so important that no one can ever say it didn't happen that way and therefore they could be allowed to repeat it.

Written by a survivor of Ohrdruf.

Ike's son John (a retired brigadier general himself) endorsed Kerry in 2004. I sincerely doubt the old man would still be wearing the elephant pin today if it meant associating with the pricks that would diminish the service of those who liberated Ohrdruf or diminished it as a nightmare for its victims.

Dancing Fool

As we watch David Gregory tap dance around Scott McClellan's assertion about the liberal media falling down on the job when it came to Iraq, let's not forget that Gregory is an accomplished dancer.

No Ignorance too vile to reveal

First of all, this is what the internet-term P3WNED was invented for.

Second of all, the degree to which these dime-store (er, "Dollar Store) gumshoes will go to demonstrate their extreme imbecility is, indeed, something to behold. Just ask the Frost family.

This is truly awe inspiring in its douchiness (commenter, though the poster is the ultimate douche as well):

Still, Mr. Payne may have been present at the liberation of Ohrdruf. Which, it should be remembered, was a work camp — and not a death camp like Auschwitz or Treblinka.

So one wonders why he was so terribly traumatized.

So after denying this guy even exists, they add he was a pussy too. Way to honor a veteran you pathetic fucking morons.

Let us talk about Ohrdruf for a moment:

1. It was indeed part of the Buchenwald concentration camp, Buchenwald was the hub of a bunch of also hell-on-earth satellite camps, like Ohrdruf. This was true of many of the major death camps. Auschwitz for example had satellite nightmares similar to Buchenwald. Amongst it's most infamous was Monowitz. It is not inaccurate to call Ohrdruf, Buchenwald.

2. Saying Ohrdruf was just a "work camp" and not a "death camp" like Auschwitz is both incredibly stupid and incredibly insulting.

Ohrdruf had some pretty famous visitors a little over a week after it was liberated -- the visitors came on a pretty infamous day [FDR died the same day] during the Second World War and it created quite an impression:

When the soldiers of the 4th Armored Division entered the camp, they discovered piles of bodies, some covered with lime, and others partially incinerated on pyres. The ghastly nature of their discovery led General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, to visit the camp on April 12, with Generals George S. Patton and Omar Bradley. After his visit, Eisenhower cabled General George C. Marshall, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, describing his trip to Ohrdruf:

. . .the most interesting--although horrible--sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda.'

Seeing the Nazi crimes committed at Ohrdruf made a powerful impact on Eisenhower, and he wanted the world to know what happened in the concentration camps. On April 19, 1945, he again cabled Marshall with a request to bring members of Congress and journalists to the newly liberated camps so that they could bring the horrible truth about Nazi atrocities to the American public.

That same day, Marshall received permission from the Secretary of War, Henry Lewis Stimson, and President Harry S. Truman for these delegations to visit the liberated camps.

Ohrdruf made a powerful impression on General George S. Patton as well. He described it as "one of the most appalling sights that I have ever seen." He recounted in his diary that

In a shed . . . was a pile of about 40 completely naked human bodies in the last stages of emaciation. These bodies were lightly sprinkled with lime, not for the purposes of destroying them, but for the purpose of removing the stench. When the shed was full--I presume its capacity to be about 200, the bodies were taken to a pit a mile from the camp where they were buried. The inmates claimed that 3,000 men, who had been either shot in the head or who had died of starvation, had been so buried since the 1st of January. When we began to approach with our troops, the Germans thought it expedient to remove the evidence of their crime. Therefore, they had some of the slaves exhume the bodies and place them on a mammoth griddle composed of 60-centimeter railway tracks laid on brick foundations. They poured pitch on the bodies and then built a fire of pinewood and coal under them. They were not very successful in their operations because there was a pile of human bones, skulls, charred torsos on or under the griddle which must have accounted for many hundreds.

Just a workcamp, Eisenhower, Bradley & Patton at Ohrdruf.

Just a workcamp, corpses stacked at Ohrdruf just after liberation.

And what would Eisenhower think of these new, modern goons diminishing the nightmare of the victims of Ohrdruf and those who make light of it as an example of Nazi crimes after it was liberated by men like Barack Obama's great uncle Charlie Payne? I think we can guess pretty accurately:

Colonel Charles Codman, an aide to General Patton, wrote to his wife about an incident that happened that day. A young soldier had accidentally bumped into a former Nazi guard at the camp and had laughed nervously. "General Eisenhower fixed him with a cold eye," Codman wrote "and when he spoke, each word was like the drop off an icicle. 'Still having trouble hating them?' he said." General Eisenhower had no trouble hating the Germans, as he would demonstrate when he set up a POW camp in Gotha a few weeks later.

Strange-Talk Express

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake, because, as ever, I'm lazy]

There are gaffes, and then there is straight out BS. The man who has been singing the praises of whatever re-imaginings of actual reality he can manage to shove down the throats of the press corp slathered in gallon jugs of Kirkland-brand barbecue sauce is on a new theme.

Demanding Barack Obama hang out with his Mentholatum-dipped posse on their jaunts to the land of never-ending-ever-impending-undefinable victory, Iraq.

As I posted yesterday, McCain has engaged a constant drum-beat the last nearly six-years praising Bush, but mostly himself, for the "always" successful policy that is the Iraq War. At least as it exists frozen in a Rich Lowry NRO special of May 2005, "We're Winning". McCain styles himself the new Admiral Farrugut, "Damn the facts, full speed-o-wank".

Because Obama refuses to sit for three days as the meat in a "McCain-Lieberman sandwich" McCain gets to call him a coward, rather than what he clearly is, a person of at least modestly refined taste.

So now the self-styled "Mr. Straight Talk" is adding another layer of fertilzer to the pile, because Obama will do things on his own schedule, rather than toady to McCain's agenda, the "Maverick" takes away his offer of a Werther's Original and makes proclamations like this yesterday in Reno (the press corps went, just to watch him lie):

"Why is it that Senator Obama wants to sit down with the president of Iran but hasn't yet sat down with General Petraeus, the leader of our troops in Iraq?"

That's funny, I remember just last month, when all three of the remaining Presidential Candidates sat down and had talks with Petraeus. It was in all the papers and McCain was even there:

The Senator who mined this turf most profitably was ... Barack Obama (a surprise, since you never expect a presidential peacock to be succinct or acute enough in these bloviathons). Obama hit Petraeus and Crocker with an artful series of questions about the two main threats: Sunni terrorists like al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Iran. He noted that al-Qaeda had been rejected by the Iraqi Sunnis and chased to the northern city of Mosul. If U.S. and Iraqi troops succeeded there, what was next? He proposed: "Our goal is not to hunt down and eliminate every single trace of al-Qaeda but rather to create a manageable situation where they're not posing a threat to Iraq." Petraeus said Obama was "exactly right."

And it is Obama that is supposed to have the problem -- not the self-proclaimed "Straight-Talker".

But then again, they do say short-term memory is the first thing to go.

All you need to know

From Scotty McClellan:

McClellan describes Bush as able to convince himself of his own spin and relates a phone call he overheard Bush having during the 2000 campaign, in which he said he could not remember whether he had used cocaine. "I remember thinking to myself, 'How can that be?' " he writes.

"Ah think ya'll should know..."

"Mah balls are itchy so get to it."

(AP Photo/Aaron J. Latham)



"I had to do it, please don't modify the pre-nup."

(AP Photo/Aaron J. Latham)

No public hugging this time

But it looks like they both reject and denounce Cindy's dress, which appears to be "Best Western Bedspread circa 1977".


And now...

Run Away from the Photographers...Run away!

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Sweaty

The Don Knotts of Press Secretaries tells us Dirty Fucking Hippies we were fucking right all along.

And because we're always fucking right we all new this already.

But first, the press has to express how nobody could have anticipated matters such as this:

* after Hurricane Katrina, the White House “spent most of the first week in a state of denial,” and he blames Rove for suggesting the photo of the president comfortably observing the disaster during an Air Force One flyover. McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett had opposed the idea and thought it had been scrapped.

But he writes that he later was told that “Karl was convinced we needed to do it — and the president agreed.”

• Bush was “clearly irritated, … steamed,” when McClellan informed him that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey had told The Wall Street Journal that a possible war in Iraq could cost from $100 billion to $200 billion: “‘It’s unacceptable,’ Bush continued, his voice rising. ‘He shouldn’t be talking about that.’”

• “History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder. No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary.”


I remember when people were instructed from the White House Press Room podium to call such charges treasonous.

Hug 'em tightly

I hear the seminar on the purpose of Hitler will be awesome.

Senator Joseph Lieberman is scheduled to headline Pastor John Hagee's 2008 Christians United For Israel Washington-Israel Summit this July 22.

You know, if nothing else, the timing is exquisite.

"Only the good die young"

So Happy Birthday, Henry Kissinger, America's most senior unindicted war criminal.

He's turning into Marlon Brando in "The Island of Dr. Moreau"

(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Seriously,

Doesn't Lindsey Graham have other old men to stalk?

It isn't about glory...

John McCain yesterday continued his bombastic shell-game with Barack Obama proclaiming the latter needed to visit Iraq because "He really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time."

Aside from the laughable bluster of this, as McCain tries to prove he has 17 balls and talks like some sort of warmongering uberasshole, it ignores a few things.

First, McCain has absolutely no room to criticize others for being wrong about Iraq, zero. It matters not how many barbecued ribs he passes out to Michael Sherer or other apologists.

Second, I wouldn't doubt that sometime between mid-June and the Democratic National Convention Obama was planning such a move. Nevertheless, once it's done I have no doubt McCain will made the same blowhard assertions because with nothing else to crow about he'll spend his time calling Obama a coward. It's all he's got.

Third, instead of calling out Obama, maybe McCain should spend some time filling the shoes of Shurvon Phillip's mother and tell her and his family how awesome it all really is?

Pat Robertson asserted that on the eve of the Iraq invasion Bush told him there would be no casualties.

Five years and ten weeks later, more than 4,000 Americans have been killed, more than 30,000 are listed as wounded.

But they are not all of the casualties, nor is that where the story ends.

In Iraq’s Anbar Province, in May 2005, Shurvon [Phillip], who joined the Marine reserves seven years earlier at 17, partly as a way to pay his community-college tuition, was riding back to his base after a patrol when an anti-tank mine exploded under his Humvee. The Humvee’s other soldiers were tossed in different directions and dealt an assortment of injuries: concussions, broken bones, herniated discs. Along with a broken jaw and a broken leg, Shurvon suffered one of the war’s signature wounds on the American side: though no shrapnel entered his head, the blast rattled his brain profoundly.

Far more effectively than in previous American wars, helmets and body armor are protecting the skulls and saving the lives of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. But according to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, a joint Defense Department and V.A. organization, about 900 soldiers have come home with serious traumatic brain injury, or T.B.I., which essentially means dire harm to their brains; it can be caused by explosions that deliver blunt injury to the helmeted skull or that send waves of compressed air to slam and snap the head ruinously even at a distance of hundreds of yards from the blast. (The 900 also include injuries caused by shrapnel or bullets that have managed to penetrate.) Some of these veterans have been left — for protracted periods and often permanently — unable to think or remember or plan clearly enough to cope with everyday life on their own; others, like Shurvon, have been left incapable of doing much at all for themselves. (A recent Rand Corporation report estimates that, additionally, 300,000 soldiers have suffered milder T.B.I., frequently including brief loss of consciousness, disorientation or cognitive lapses.)

George Bush's War, the war that John McCain more than figuratively embraces has accomplished little strategically or tactically, except provided excuses for its proponents to say we need to stay there and fund it with real-life monopoly money until some metaphysically undefined moment of victory comes.

But for the millions of Iraqis and tens of thousands of Americans there is nothing esoteric about it. For the mother of Shurvon Phillip, no matter when the mission is half-heartedly (but full-throatedly) claimed accomplished, duty will always call:

He was silent now, turned onto his back again. In the near-darkness, she dipped a washcloth and squeezed it from above his thighs so that a tiny waterfall dripped down over him. “Don’t worry, big guy,” she said. “Mama’s got you.” She swabbed him with the cloth.

“The first time I gave my son a bath,” Gail told me about life after Shurvon’s injury, as we sat again at the kitchen table, “I cried. It took me a good while to get used to cleaning him up. In the morning if we have to go somewhere, everything that a mom with a baby has to walk with — wipes and everything in a bag — I have to walk with.” She talked about the A&D ointment that kept him from getting rashes, and she talked about how she imagined he thought about this aspect of his life. “Nobody wants anybody else to clean them. He wouldn’t look at it like he’s a child again. He’s this grown man, but he just can’t do it.” Then she remembered that before his deployment, when she would get upset about this or that difficulty in her life, he would say: “ ‘Mom, what are you crying for? If Plan A don’t work, Plan B will work.’ ”

There is always another plan, and always more sacrifices, for George Bush's War.

How do these idiots get, let alone keep their jobs?

Someone stop passing the bong to Richard Cohen, he's a mean high.

Obama represents a constituency that holds that much of the world's troubles are caused by the United States and can be rectified by a president who is alert to cultural nuance and can be a keen listener. This is the world according to Oprah Winfrey.

In one paragraph and three sentences, he manages to factually slur Obama, Oprah, and - according to Gallup - two-thirds of the country with the tired old FoxNews toss-away of Democrats being "America Haters".

Truly living up to his moniker of "America's Concern Troll".

John McCain's little Gambling Problem

Now this is some serious shady-looking business:

“McCain is an avid gambler. Wes Gullett, a close friend who worked for McCain for years, told me that they used to play craps in Las Vegas in fourteen-hour stints, standing at the tables from 10 a.m. to midnight.” […]

...

* Wes Gullet is an old friend and gambling buddy of John McCain. They rolled dice together in 14-hour-long sessions in Las Vegas.

* Gullet was McCain’s campaign manager and top senate staffer and is now a lobbyist.

* Gullet was hired to lobby McCain on the largest land swap in Arizona history, exchanging private land in the wilderness for valuable federally-owned land ready for development.

* McCain, who initially opposed the swap, changed his position and supported it after Gullett was hired.

* The land swap benefited one of John McCain’s top fundraisers who has hauled in more than $100,000 for his Presidential campaign.

Originally from the Jed Report.

Bwack!

Remember when Rove's lawyer said he'd HAP-HAP-HAPPILY come down to Congress and testify about the Siegelman matter?

Yeah, I figured it was a lie then too.

And we were right.

President Bush's former chief political adviser denied meddling in the Justice Department's prosecution of Alabama's ex-governor and said Sunday the courts will have to resolve a congressional subpoena for his testimony.

This...is....rich

The Audacity of a dope:

Bush calls on Americans to remember war dead

But no pictures of their flag-covered caskets.

"But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or that or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that...?"

- Babs Bush

Recount Rioters

Eschaton commenter Stunt Woman pointed us to this video. I'm posting it to mark the debut of HBO's Recount, which I won't be watching until it's released on video because I don't have HBO. Pay particular attention to the Bourgeoise Rioters at 2:24. Remember their faces and names, in case they ever ask you for a job or try to work in government again.



Who were they?

1. Tom Pyle, policy analyst, office of then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).
2. Garry Malphrus, majority chief counsel and staff director, House Judiciary subcommittee on criminal justice.
3. Rory Cooper, political division staff member at the National Republican Congressional Committee.
4. Kevin Smith, former House Republican conference analyst and more recently of Voter.com.
5. Steven Brophy, former aide to Sen. Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.), now working at the consulting firm KPMG.
6. Matt Schlapp, former chief of staff for Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), now on the Bush campaign staff in Austin.
7. Roger Morse, aide to Rep. Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.).
8. Duane Gibson, aide to Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska) of the House Resources Committee.
9. Chuck Royal, legislative assistant to Rep. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.).
10. Layna McConkey, former legislative assistant to former Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot (R-Iowa), now at Steelman Health Strategies

And where are they? In comments, Southern Beale points to this WaPo article which followed up on their whereabouts as of 2005. Of course, they put the riot on their résumés.

FoxNews all class

On no other network would such discussion be permitted.


The level of repulsiveness of these assholes is unbelievable. Disgusting.

Blazing Saddles

Apparently some GOP wankaroos believe that now that they have convinced the Democrats to nominate Sheriff Bart, they can get Heddy Lamar* into the White House by a landslide.

Here we see the operation in question.


Same folks that thought Iraq would be a cakewalk no doubt.


*Sorry, that's Hedley.

Memorial Day Weekend

I hope everyone is enjoying theirs.

I'm memorializing by not going anywhere and thinking of all the money I'm saving by not buying gas.

For this precious right of staying home because it's too expensive to do otherwise, I'll thank a Republican for their service.

But it will have to be via email.

Bush Administration's True Face

There is nothing like showing your true face -- inhumanity and whatever the absolute opposite of compassion and integrity are -- while your administration grounds to a halt. 

As the New York Times reported, we have an administration that is simply hell bent on doing whatever they feel, whenever they desire... and as always the consequences are irrelevant.  So, this is the true face of compassionate conservatism revealed for those willing to see. 

In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.

The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration’s crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported.

Nice legacy guys.

It's not about the Middle East

But I think Juan Cole is right on this. What Clinton did yesterday is a mistake she should be criticized for (as I said yesterday) but it is getting way too much attention and it is systematic of the system we have for electing Presidents.

I don't think it is healthy that the information age causes such memes to circulate with such velocity that they are given far more significance than they deserve. Seeing Hillary abjectly and in a stunned voice apologize for any offense made me feel sorry for her. When you speak in public, you always risk misspeaking or having the audience misunderstand your intent. We make our presidential candidates speak constantly in public for 2 years straight, now. It is like a medieval form of torture. It is amazing that anyone runs this gauntlet.

Elections should be about issues, not about this sort of hothouse speculation about personalities.

And making it about personalities over issues is what television, especially, does -- and it is something that plays right into the GOP's hands.

How else could progressive positions continually trump conservative ones in public opinion polls but the GOP still eek out elections because our candidates are either portrayed as "effete elitists" (men) or "ball busting harpies" (women)? It happens over and over and over.

And it keeps giving us a shittier country.

You know who was an effete elitist? The greatest fuckin' President in the last 140 goddamned years, that's who. Plus he was married to someone who was portrayed as a ball-busting harpy [in reality, because she grew apart from him because he cheated on her with her own secretary]. But he was around before tee vee, so...

The World's Worst Ombudsperson

Li'l Debbie Howell:

In this episode we see Ms. Howell tut tut about the lack of diversity on the Washington Post's Editorial Page and how old, white, and male it is. "We need more diversity", Ms. Howell says.

She then approvingly states that in an effort to broaden diversity the Post this week published an Op-Ed from Kathleen Parker.

And what did Ms. Parker editorialize about?

That Barack Obama, unlike John McCain "is not a Full-Blooded American". In other words a racist diatribe.

Nice.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha

The Merde Touch:

A Tuesday fundraiser headlined by President Bush for U.S. Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is being moved out of the Phoenix Convention Center.

Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue than attending the fundraiser inside.

Another source said there were concerns about the media covering the event.

I do think one goal of the McCain campaign is to get some money out of Bush while avoiding any more pictures of he and McCain together.

There are gaffes...

And then there are GAFFES!



I think it's safe to say she did not mean to imply she's hanging around waiting for something awful to happen to Obama, but it sure is unfortunate. You cannot make this kind of statement, ever!

Let the several hours of explaining and apologizing commence.

Ugh, better damage control please:

"The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy," she added, referring to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's recent diagnosis of a brain tumor. "I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever.

You feel bad about Ted's brain tumor so it led you to bring up his brother being shot in the head?

Look, I know she doesn't mean to offend, but it is tasteless. Just apologize, say it was a mistake and move on. You're just making things worse.

UPDATE:

I've got to say the reaction to the remark has officially become WAY over the top. She deserves to be criticized heavily for the remark perhaps but it's becoming a flogging several hours later. I'm not a Clinton supporter, but there are a lot of folks over-anxious to inflict a coup de grâce as if she actually explicitly did wish for someone to take out Obama. She did not do that, cut her a margin of slack.

Joe Biden speaks for me

Rips Lieberman a new one in the process in the Wall Street Journal, a follow up to Lieberdick's wankitorial there this week wherein he gave McSame a desperate reacharound. Best section:

The Bush-McCain saber rattling is the most self-defeating policy imaginable. It achieves nothing. But it forces Iranians who despise the regime to rally behind their leaders. And it spurs instability in the Middle East, which adds to the price of oil, with the proceeds going right from American wallets into Tehran's pockets.

The worst nightmare for a regime that thrives on tension with America is an America ready, willing and able to engage. Since when has talking removed the word "no" from our vocabulary?

It's amazing how little faith George Bush, Joe Lieberman and John McCain have in themselves – and in America.

Bingo!

McMyanmar

Do McCain's medical records demonstrate he suffers from the 'military-industrial complex'? Because he's acting all junta-riffic:

"I can't understand why he would line up behind the president in opposition to this GI Bill," [Barack Obama] said. "I can't believe why he believes it is too generous to our veterans. I could not disagree with him and the president more on this issue."

An angry McCain answered in a statement released by his campaign.

"I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did," said McCain

Only military guys can have opinions on military issues and thus be 'Commander-in-Chief'.

Sounds like a good idea -- for a military dictatorship.

So I guess FDR must have sucked at the job, huh?

Christ almighty, this HAS to be the last Vietnam War veteran to pick a fight. Is it a fight he picked with 5-Deferments Cheney? 2-Deferments Lieberman? AWOL-Bush?

I keep hearing how reluctant McCain is to wave this around...and yet he keeps doing it.

I have not yet begun the non-anticipation

Roll out the fainting couch:

A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.

The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash. The audit was released Thursday in tandem with a Congressional hearing on the payments...

The mysterious payments, whose amounts had not been publicly disclosed, included $68.2 million to the United Kingdom, $45.3 million to Poland and $21.3 million to South Korea. Despite repeated requests, Pentagon auditors said they were unable to determine why the payments were made.

“It sounds like the coalition of the willing is the coalition of the paid — they’re willing to be paid,” said [Rep. Henry] Waxman

Outstanding!

Ayatolla Sistani wants to get in on a little of that attackin' Americans action. He's late to the party, but apparently is on his way.

Wonder how much it has to do with stuff like this? Always good at increasing an occupying forces popularity.

Meanwhile, the murky mystery of how we're ultimately going to see this disaster play out in its multiple choice game of losses continues on.

But not hidin' anything

Two reporters get three hours to sift through years, and undoubtedly hundreds if not thousands of pages of McCain medical documents...but no copies.

On the Friday before Memorial Day?

Oh, no, nothing that could cause suspicion there.

Change is a comin'

Headline at CNN:

Obama, McCain may be hunting VP candidates

Which is good because the last eight years, the VP hunted you.


(insincere apologies to Yakov Smirnoff)

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! THE MERDE TOUCH IN ACTION

My extra virgin olive oil [the Purity Ball of viscous fluids] is getting really pissed for having kept its chastity while "crude" oil is doing this:

Oil sped to new peaks for a third straight day on Thursday to top $135 a barrel as investors fretted over long-term supply constraints and a big drop in U.S. crude stocks.

Meanwhile, it brings us back to a simpler time before we were overcome by simple men:

Gov. George W. Bush of Texas said today that if he was president, he would bring down gasoline prices through sheer force of personality, by creating enough political good will with oil-producing nations that they would increase their supply of crude.

If it wasn't so pathetic, you'd laugh yourself to death.

That was late-June 2000. The price of a barrel of oil was about $30 a barrel. It remained at about $30 a barrel well into March 2003 when the Chimperor made his awesome, "Let's invade Iraq" declaration.

Conflicts of Interest

NYT: Frank Rich To Be Consultant for HBO

Frank Rich, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, has signed on with HBO as a creative consultant to help develop new programming, while still writing his weekly column, HBO and Times executives said Wednesday.

He will be barred from writing in his column, which deals primarily with politics, about either HBO or its parent company, Time Warner, Mr. Rich and Times editors said....

Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor of The Times, said that he had signed off on Mr. Rich’s deal with HBO, and that the top newsroom editors and the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., were informed and did not raise any objections. “There was no concern that there was a conflict of interest, because he no longer has any connection to news coverage of HBO or any related entity,” he said.

Glad to see Rosenthal and Pinch on top of this. I wonder why they weren't as vigilant guardians of the NYT's integrity when Judy Miller was consulting for Dick Cheny or Phil Taubman was consulting for Condi Rice.

It makes you think...about pulling out your hair

This little snippet from when the Senate called up the CEO's of the major oil companies, like Marlon Brando summoned "the heads of the five families" and berated them about the price of gas:

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) added that in his state, "regular was $3.89, medium was $4.04, super was $4.12." Asked the senator: "Where does this end?"

"I would like to be able to answer that," Exxon's [CEO Stephen Simon] said. But "it's absolutely impossible" to predict. "I'm not smart enough to do so."

He only made $32.7 million last year, so obviously he's not spending it on doctoral research, or even capable of picking up a phone and asking someone who is much smarter and paid much less.

Stuff That Drives Me Crazy

Is there anything more disgusting than wearing flip-flops on the streets of New York?

Yes: wearing flip-flops on the streets of New York in the rain.

Obama + Webb?

A component of the argument for ....

When the FBI are the Good Guys

FBI agents who assisted with overseas interrogations of suspected terrorists after Sept. 11 often clashed with their military counterparts and refused to participate in the most aggressive intelligence-gathering methods because they doubted they were legal or effective, a long-awaited Justice Department audit found.

At the same time, the report released Tuesday by Inspector Gen. Glenn A. Fine faults officials at FBI headquarters for failing to provide prompt guidance to agents in the field on what to do if they witnessed interrogations using snarling dogs, sexual ploys and other abusive techniques that violated long-standing FBI policy.

According to a report in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, FBI agents were distraught and concerned about the military's overly aggressive interrogation tactics.  Now I realize that not many of us see the FBI as the bastions of sound criminal justice policy because of an entire history of mistreatment, abuse, illegal wiretapping and all many of questionable surveillance and eavesdropping.   But you have to wonder exactly how far was the military willing to go in conducting illegal interrogations?  We know about some abuses which I will not rehash here.  However I would wager that we do not know about all of them by a long shot.  If so, what does this say about our government?  While the NeoCons have created an unholy mess of foreign policy, I often wonder if they meant to do so...

Imagine the deep and lasting damage to the image of the United States and the U.S. Military's reputation in the world which causes political instability at home?  Maybe the NeoCons are trying to destabilize American politics for years to come -- maybe they did mean to do all of this if the right opportunity arose.  Then 9/11 happened, a horrible tragedy but a perfect opportunity to enact several draconian political measures and the open door to NeoCon's much desired military adventurism.

Imagine running up a huge bill (which is happening) and then you do not have to pay for it when it comes due.

We might have a scorched earth political policy which leads to many messes that the next president -- a Democrat -- has to try and solve.  And because of the extreme and unitary actions of the NeoCons the problems become so intractable that real damage is also done to the Democratic party when a Democratic president tries to solve them.  Then another NeoCon (or worse a religious nut-job NeoCon) swoops in with all kinds of promises and is elected for eight more years of NeoConservative political and governmental realignment.  Sounds far fetched?  Who would imagine a situation in which the FBI is troubled by interrogation techniques?

In the end it is never wise to fight extremism and terrorism with more of the same.  Maybe we should listen to the FBI on this point. 

I think this news came out yesterday

But as the long and often deflating nomination fight reaches its end a bloodied but relatively unbowed Barack Obama has regained momentum against McCain in the general numbers.

Democrat Barack Obama has opened an 8-point national lead on Republican John McCain as the U.S. presidential rivals turn their focus to a general election race, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Obama, who was tied with McCain in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup last month, moved to a 48 percent to 40 percent lead over the Arizona senator in May as he took command of his grueling Democratic presidential duel with rival Hillary Clinton...

...The poll also found Obama expanded his lead over Clinton in the Democratic race to 26 percentage points, doubling his advantage from mid-April as Democrats begin to coalesce around Obama and prepare for the general election battle with McCain.

"Obama has been very resilient, bouncing back from rough periods and doing very well with independent voters," pollster John Zogby said. "The race with McCain is going to be very competitive."

The poll was taken Thursday through Sunday during a period when Obama came under attack from President George W. Bush and McCain for his promise to talk to hostile foreign leaders without preconditions.

Obama's gains followed a month in which he was plagued with a series of campaign controversies and suffered two big losses to Clinton in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

I do think that despite low points that are inevitable in campaigns (and there will be a few more groaners to come I'm sure) the battle between Obama and Clinton has been good for the likely nominee. It has, indeed, toughened him up and given his campaign a good idea where to hit and where to repair during the general campaign.

Plus, this has quite possibly been the highlight of the McCain campaign. He only has started to get coverage of any critical variety and despite the laughable common wisdom of national security being a Republican strength (which is sooooooooooo 2004) he has come out the obvious loser for obvious reasons:

But Zogby said the attacks on Obama by Bush and McCain, who have been critical of his willingness to talk to leaders of countries like Iran, did not appear to hurt Obama. If anything, he said, it reminded voters of McCain's ties to Bush, whose approval rating is still mired at record lows.

"The president is so unpopular. To inject himself into a presidential campaign does not help John McCain, particularly when McCain is tied to Bush," Zogby said.

And therein lies the rub. McCain is not comfortable with domestic issues, where he loses -- so he wants to concentrate on international matters, especially jingoism and wars where he feels most comfortable.

...and where he is tied most clearly with Bush, who's policies in these areas are grossly, grossly unpopular. The policy McCain has is the one clear idea that Bush has tied his Presidency to. McCain cannot talk about the area he is comfortable in without sounding just like the monstrously unpopular President, widely recognized because of these same policies as one the poorest President since the antebellum period.

There is some good news for McCain:

McCain led among whites, NASCAR fans, and elderly voters.

Okay first of all, "whites" & "NASCAR" fans is a bit redundant.

Second, McCain is not way ahead in the white polling and the elderly polling will change when McCain's social security policy is revealed as Bush's horribly unpopular social security policy, which began the second Bush term out with an anvil of unpopularity around its already sinking feet.

Larry Craig would request a dozen cases of these...

For the GOP National Convention in St. Paul:



Be careful Mr. Kasparov, you don't know what form of toxic KY Putin has put on that thing.

Liar or Bonehead?

Maybe both?

It's fairly common knowledge that the position of President in Iran holds very little actual power. Back when moderate reformer Mohammad Khatami held the presidency, we were regularly reminded that he was pretty much of a figurehead with no real power. Now that the confrontational and controversial Ahmadinejad holds the office, we don't hear so much about how the president is not really the top dog.

Yep.

Anybody remember who the elected political leadership of Iran were when Khomeini was the Supreme Leader?

I thought not.

So it's telling that McCain knowingly perpetuates this lie and the press is generally too lazy or ignorant to bring it up. They don't know, they don't care, and crazy Members-Only Jacket man is too easy a target for making Iran scarier.

Meanwhile, Republican Chuck Hagel has a few things to say about McCain's statements and clearly falls more on the liar side of the equation:

"We know from past campaigns that presidential candidates will say many things," Hagel said of some of McCain's recent rhetoric, namely his policy on talking to Iran. "But once they have the responsibility to govern the country and lead the world, that difference between what they said and what responsibilities they have to fulfill are vastly different. I'm very upset with John with some of the things he's been saying. And I can't get into the psychoanalysis of it. But I believe that John is smarter than some of the things he is saying. He is, he understands it more. John is a man who reads a lot, he's been around the world. I want him to get above that and maybe when he gets into the general election, and becomes the general election candidate he will have a higher-level discourse on these things."

Here's what I want to see

Denver August 2008, Monday or Tuesday at the Democratic National Convention.

Senator Ted Kennedy steps to the rostrum in prime time and gives a stem-winder as memorable as his 1980 speech all in support of the Democratic Nominee -- and ripping the Republicans a new one for how they have treated the nation he and his family have had such an integral part of -- in triumph and tragedy.


"The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."

There will be few dry eyes in the nation.

Get well Ted.

Ok, I am officially "Creeped" Out

It's simple to behold — a single mattress, tucked into a dark, curtained back room of the showcase space. On it: a lithe brunette. She's perfectly quiet, but once you sit or lie down, she responds to your every move. Lie on your back, she snuggles up right next to you in a log position. Curl up in the fetal position, she spoons. The only hitch: She's 2-D. "Yeah, you can't feel the girl. That's the thing," Burrows explained as he demonstrated his invention, an "infrared sensitive" light projection (meaning it reacts, and the projected woman moves, based on an infrared sensor) called INBED. "Still, it's so nice if you're tired and worn out to have someone to curl up with."

Ok, I can handle many strange ideas, deviant behavior, and more but this leaves even me feeling a wee bit uncomfortable... I just love how the reporter is pushing the creepiness factor in the story as well.  Thanks a lot.

Earth to Cynthia Ruccia

Yesterday I read about Clinton supporter Cynthia Ruccia, who is indulging in a fit of pique because HRC is, well, not winning:

Cynthia Ruccia, 55, a sales director for Mary Kay cosmetics in Columbus, Ohio, is organizing a group, Clinton Supporters Count Too, of mostly women in swing states who plan to campaign against Mr. Obama in November. “We, the most loyal constituency, are being told to sit down, shut up and get to the back of the bus,” she said.

Leaving aside Ms. Ruccia's incredibly poor choice of metaphor, I'd like to direct her attention to this report by Jeffrey Toobin about a recent speech by the man she would prefer to win the election:

[John] McCain plans to continue, and perhaps even accelerate, George W. Bush’s conservative counter-revolution at the Supreme Court....

In short, this one passage in McCain’s speech amounted to a dog whistle for the right—an implicit promise that he will appoint Justices who will eliminate the right to privacy, permit states to ban abortion, and allow the execution of teen-agers.

(Just as an aside, in addition to a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy, the right to use birth control emanates from that right of privacy for which Ms. Ruccia apparently has so little regard.)

The question, as always with McCain these days, is whether he means it. Might he really be a “maverick” when it comes to the Supreme Court? The answer, almost certainly, is no. The Senator has long touted his opposition to Roe, and has voted for every one of Bush’s judicial appointments; the rhetoric of his speech shows that he is getting his advice on the Court from the most extreme elements of the conservative movement.

For all the elisions in John McCain’s speech, one unmistakable truth emerged: that the stakes in the election, for the Supreme Court and all who live by its rulings, are very, very high.

Perhaps Ms. Ruccia is living in a bubble that will protect her from those rulings. If so, would one of you please pierce it and clue her into the fact that the rest of us will have to live with those decisions and that this election is not about the dashed hopes and dreams of Cynthia Ruccia? Thanks.

Update: I see Ms. Ruccia met with O'Falafel last week. What a surprise.

Update II: in comments, thomasthomas points us to a post that fills in the blanks re Ms. Ruccia.

Josh Marshall is right

This column is a must read.

The fact that Americans, still at this point, don't understand international politics and such -- due both to determined ignorance and incredibly shoddy and scant coverage by the media explains the fact that American politics has to be more pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian, than Israel's internal politics.

As Marshall says:

I won't take the time to recapitulate the whole article. But you should read it because it covers a basic reality -- by conflating being pro-Israel with supporting the continued colonization of the West Bank, many of Israel's 'friends' in the US are placing Israel in great danger and doing no favor to the United States either.

It is infuriating and incredibly bad for Israel that its most important international supporter has become so myopic. At this point, thanks to the poison of the Neo-Cons and the Bush Administration taking less than the full-on Likud position on anything gets you labeled as a potential "anti-Semite" or having a "jewish problem" [even when polls show most American Jews agree with your position -- just not the ones who speak about Israel on the tee-vee]

It is the road to disaster for all of us, but especially Israel and the Palestinians.

George Bush & The Parliamentary Wankadelic

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Not surprisingly the reporting on the very legitimate point brought up by Obama at a campaign appearance in Oregon, that Iran poses a significantly smaller threat than the Soviets who we always talked to, has brought out the insanity of those with no historical "bearings" whatsoever.

But really, let's compare:

1. Revolutions: The Soviets shot the Tsar, his family, his servants, his dog, his stuffed animals, his draperies, his yearbook editor, etc. Millions of Russians also died. The Shah died of natural causes...terminal dickishness. Hundreds died. And we can have an accurate position on this because America backed the losing side both times -- so there's that [USA! USA! USA!].

2. Evil Leaders: The Soviets had Stalin. They win. Plus there was nothing about Stalin that rhymed with "ass-a-hola" so it really cut down on T-shirt sales.

3. World War II: No matter how you want to slice it, the Soviets started off pretty badly, but then kicked Germany's ass in the most deadly and brutal war ever fought. Iran hosted a summit that got Stalin to wear his summer generalissimo outfit [dude was definitely "a summer"]. In comparison Khomeini was the Iranian "man in black". Mr. Blackwell would definitely vote Comrade.

4. Key Moment of Victory: Stalingrad, 200 days killed 750,000 Germans, captured 250,000. Iran, hostage crisis lasted 444 days, all American hostages freed safely.

5. Weapons development: The Soviets developed nuclear weapons more than 60 years ago, the H-bomb well over 50 years ago. The Iranians have "enriched" some uranium, yay! Although it should be noted the Iranians have been widely-used test subjects on the effects of chemical weapons. Which would explain a few things, if George Bush gave a damn -- but he doesn't so continuing on...

6. Number of Nuclear Weapons: The Soviets possessed about 30,000 of them at the end of the Cold War...most all of them pointed at the United States. Iran...uh, that would be zero. But, on the other hand you can honestly say that all existing nuclear missiles are pointed at the United States...or Israel depending on who an American politician is speaking to.

7. Eyebrows: Brezhnev in a split decision over Khomeini.

8. Clown-like Leadership, non-George W. Bush Division: Khrushchev banged his shoe with more authority than Ahmadinejad wears that Members-only Jacket. This is especially true in that Khruschev actually ran things, while the latter just drives the tiny, tiny car around the circus.

9. Allies: The Soviets had a "bloc" comprising half of Europe through the Warsaw Pact [coincidentally comprised of nations they occupied, funny that], the Iranians were tossed in with North Korean and Iraq as the "Axis of Evil" [much to the surprise of Iraq & Iran, see #5 above] because Bush learned his history from Dixie Cup sayings.

10. Movies: "Red Dawn" much cheesier than "Not Without My Daughter"

11. Military Spending: In the mid-1980s the Soviet Union spent 15 to 17% of its GDP on the military. Iran, as of 2006, spent 3.5% of its GDP on the military, the least as a percentage of the country's gross national product (GNP) in the region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on its military. Saudi Arabia spends more than 10 times what Iran spent. Oh, and not matter what you hear about oil, the Soviet Union had a much, much, much (add a few more) bigger economy than Iran [damn commies had oil too].

Unintentional Comedy

The thing about Bobo Brooks is, he can be as laughably wrong as Bill Kristol, but he manages not to outright lie. You see, Bill, that's how the pros do it.

McCain has been in Congress for decades, but he has remained a national rather than a parochial politician. The main axis in his mind is not between Republican and Democrat. It’s between narrow interest and patriotic service. And so it is characteristic that he would oppose a bill that benefits the particular at the expense of the general.

Yeah, he's never cut favorable land deals for parochial supporters, he's never kissed up to special interests, he's never cut corners on ethical behavior, he's never engaged in practices unbecoming a Senator, he's never been in favor of wasteful government spending.

WHAT-EV-AH!

Pressure

Smarter people than me have things to say about this NYT "Purity Balls" story, but this jumped out at me:

Yet the graying men in the shadow of their glittering daughters were the true focus of the night. To ensure their daughters’ purity, they were asked to set an example and to hew to evangelical ideals in a society they say tempts them as much as it does their daughters.

“It’s also good for me,” said Terry Lee, 54, who attended the ball for a second year, this time with his youngest daughter, Rachel, 16. “It inspires me to be spiritual and moral in turn. If I’m holding them to such high standards, you can be sure I won’t be cheating on their mother.”

...

The girls, many wearing purity rings, made silent vows. “I promise to God and myself and my family that I will stay pure in my thoughts and actions until I marry,” said Katie Swindler, 16.

So if daddy stays pure, then daughter will stay pure? And if daddy strays, is daughter's purity compromised? Is daughter's purity the only way for daddy to control himself?

If I'm a teenage girl with impure thoughts somehow straying into my gray matter, in addition to feeling shame because I've broken my promise to God, am I also thinking, "I've got to stop because if I don't, daddy will cheat and mommy and daddy will divorce?"

That's an awful lot of pressure for a teenage girl.

A mirror, a rolled up dollar bill, and blow

And Larry Kudlow is ready to post:

"Joe Lieberman: Absolutely Brilliant"

Who could have anticipated

Bill Kristol, laughably WRONG AGAIN!

TRY...USING...TEH...GOOGLE


(like he cares about not lying)

Straight Bullshit

Lame

Mr. Straight-Talks attempts to counter blows to his metaphorical gut are so over-the-top yet lame, only Sean Hannity could be inspired, this is a pretty bad sign of the self-immolating campaign they plan on running:

Aggravated over persistent questions surrounding their new policy on lobbyists working for the campaign, Team McCain sought to change the topic tonight by raising Barack Obama's ties to a 60s-era radical.

“Just a few years ago when Barack Obama was beginning his career in politics he was launching it at the home of William Ayers, an unrepentant domestic terrorist...

If this is the card McCain wants to play, then Mr. Straight-Talk deserves all the attention he gets for his terrorist & Chalabi coddling lobbyist buddies and consultants.

It also means McCain opens the door completely to his Charles Keating days.

How much barbecue is that guy going to grill anyway?

One toke over the line

I really have to credit Bill Kristol, for being transcendentally wankerish across various mediums. It really is a notable accomplishment. Matching Bill O'Reilly's ability to be a douche on TV, Radio, and newspaper.

And to think they are both stars in the FoxNews firmament.

Obama took Bush to be alluding to Obama’s willingness to meet, without preconditions, with Iran and North Korea, and attacked Bush. The conventional view in Washington is that Obama was smart to pick a fight with the unpopular Bush. And when McCain intervened, Obama was able to attack Bush and McCain in the same breath. But over the longer term, it can’t be in Obama’s interest to divert voters from a focus on gas prices or health care to the question of what he hopes to achieve by negotiating with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Well, that's your opinion asshole. I'm sure that jaw jaw being better than war war, the Churchill quote Kristol-types always forget while tonguing random bulldogs because of their resemblance to "Winny" has no popularity when compared to "Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran". And again, enough with the lying scumbaggery about Ahmadinejad, the leader of Iran is named Ali Khamenei -- which is why he is called "Supreme Leader Khamenei". I bet if you asked Kristol who the "Supreme Leader" of Iran is he'd get the answer wrong.

And the wankery doesn't end there:

On Thursday, the California Supreme Court did precisely what much of the American public doesn’t want judges doing: it made social policy from the bench. With a 4-to-3 majority, the judges chose not to defer to a ballot initiative approved by 61 percent of California voters eight years ago...

Yeah, and Obama said he's cool with it. But Bill, you know who else is cool with it? California's Republican Governor, Ahhhhhh-nold.

If you think the Democrats are going to lose California this year Bill, then your hypocrisy over medical marijuana is showing.

Of course, the underlying premise of Kristol's article is that the GOP brand is a disaster...apparently because those idiots listened to douchebags like Bill Kristol. So, thankfully Bill Kristol has some helpful advice for how fine things actually are for John McCain.

I admit

I love stuff like this...a trip down old computer advertising lane.

My first computer, 1988, Leading Edge, 8088, MS-Dos 3.11, 512k of memory, later boosted up by 128k for $250.00; two 5.25" floppy drives...and for cutting edge 14" amber monochrome monitor with a 1200 baud moden...1200 fuckin' baud!!!

Along with a 9-pin dot matrix printer it was all mine for $1800.00.

Every Picture Tells a Story

WOW.

More here.

All Things Considered, I'd Rather Not Be in Charlotte

Would one of you please explain to me how Charlotte, North Carolina can simultaneously be the best place to live in America and ninth on the list of America's 10 most miserable cities?

First, the good:

Charlotte's diversity of housing options and home affordability were two of the reasons users nominated the city, Nickerson said. The city's strong economy, boosted largely by the banking industry, was another selling point.

But then, an ugly surprise ...

The biggest surprise on the list is Charlotte, N.C., which is ranked ninth. Charlotte has undergone tremendous economic growth the past decade, while the population has soared 32%. But the current picture isn't as bright. Employment growth has not kept up with population growth, meaning unemployment rates are up more than 50% compared with 10 years ago. Charlotte scored in the bottom half of all six categories we examined and ranked 140th for violent crime....

....*Misery Measures are derived at by ranking the 150 largest metropolitan areas on six criteria -- income tax, violent crime, Superfund sites, commutes, weather and unemployment – and then adding their ranks. For example, New York ranked worst (150th) for commutes, 150th for income tax, 99th for unemployment, 78th for number of Superfund sites, 105th for violent crime and 86th for weather, which add up to its Misery Measure of 668.

Whatever. My hometown is fourth on the "Misery" list. I wish some of the zillions of tourists who throng New York year-round now knew that. (And Philadelphia is fifth, so take that, Duncan Hack!)

OH PLEASE!

I cannot honestly fathom anyone, not named Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing this:

The reasons for Romney go beyond McCain's image problem and party doubts. Romney was the first GOP presidential candidate to publicly warn back in January that Obama would be the likely GOP opponent, and then say that he could beat him. This was not mere political braggadocio. He like Obama sold himself as the change guy who can go to Washington cut the cronyism, bureaucratic and congressional inertia, and restore public confidence. McCain is the walking embodiment of the much loathed Washington insider establishment.

Considering my agnostic sensibilities, I naturally find it hard to believe that either "Old World" virgin Jesus or "New World" serial marrying Jesus love me this much.

Mitt Romney proved one thing this election cycle.

He is the biggest effing phony to come down the political pike in years. He certainly is not the only phony, but he's the only one that is so obscenely artificial in construction that 75% of the country finds him a walking, talking, buffoon.

If McCain picks Romney he'll instantly plunge at least 5% in the polls. People really have a visceral dislike of the guy, especially independents. And the thought that "old man" McCain would have a higher than normal likelihood of being succeeded by his VP choice if elected is a factual point Democrats would relish.

So by all means, please pick Romney -- please!

Damn, I hope this becomes conventional wisdom.

The important stuff

Atrios notes that of all the guests on the Sunday Chat shows one thing seems to be missing:

Women.

Oh, and African Americans too.

And FoxNews is the most far reaching today as well, because...

"Fox News Sunday" - ... Rick Dutrow Jr., trainer of Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown.

I wonder who Mr. Ed supports?

Here's to Teddy

No matter how much he has been pilloried by the right, the guy is a giant of the Senate.

Kennedy, 76, is reportedly resting comfortably at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston while doctors run tests to determine the problem. A family friend told TIME on Saturday afternoon that he was awake and joking with family — his old self. Senators Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and dozens of others joined McCain in expressing concern and sending prayers.

His advice for those candidates who will return to the Senate after failed presidential bids? It boils down to following his example. "They'll work their way through it. It's a great opportunity for service," Kennedy said. "You know, running for office is not the purpose of this business; it's service. And there's opportunities for service as President and there's also important opportunities as Senator and I'm sure they relish that." Kennedy certainly has.

RIAA about to Lose it All?

What if the music companies realized they should work with file sharers rather than attack them?  What if the RIAA's only significant law suit against a music downloader fell apart on a legal error?  What would they do?

Well, we should soon have the answers to some of these questions.

As we have reported repeatedly on this blog, last October the Recording Industry Association of America - RIAA - achieved what many commentators on the industry described in unison as a significant victory when alleged file sharer Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay in excess of $222,000 for music piracy by sharing access to his music files.  This conclusion sent a shockwave throughout the music community.

But persistent and important legal questions which we have commented upon here remain.  These questions hang on the idea of sharing versus downloading.  And this is far from settled, it remains a sticky mess for the RIAA.  The question is focused upon whether the act of simply making a song available for others to copy is an active and indefensible act of infringement.  There remains the possibility of a new trial and the thuggish tactics of the recording companies (in several cases going to extreme and potentially illegal steps to find file sharers, especially on college campuses) are not going to serve them well in a new trial.

According to Catherine Rampell, different courts have come to different conclusions on the “making available” argument:

[Some] courts have said that making a song available on one’s computer for download does constitute infringement, while others have decided that an unauthorized download must be proven to have occurred as a result of the song’s being made available. In the Jammie Thomas case, which is the first and only music-sharing case to go to a jury trial, the judge specifically instructed the jury that if Ms. Thomas had made songs available, she had committed copyright infringement.

And at long last it appears that this instruction conflicted with a binding precedent from the very same court.  And, of course that is a bit of a mistake for a court to have committed.  The presiding district judge said he may have committed “a manifest error of law” in his jury instructions that would require nothing less than a new trial for Thomas.  Given that the RIAA and individual record companies point to the Thomas case as their "standard" regarding file sharing, they may have a serious problem here.

This is especially important given the increased efforts of the association which has been going after college file sharers with renewed vigor following the Thomas case.  So, this mess may have profound and long lasting consequences for these college (and a few high school) file sharers threatened with fines and lawsuits by the RIAA.  This could force a realignment over these issues which could potentially lead to a very good outcome.  It is far past the time when the association should embrace and use file sharing in some way as a means of getting music into the ears of fans rather than attacking them for their devotion to the music.

There is a serious flaw in what the Association has done in concentrating its efforts on catching college students who share music.   The flaw as we have consistently reported here is that the record companies have publicly acknowledged that they have no identifiable way of telling if a student (or other user whatsoever for that matter) is making an illegal download from shared files. It can only tell one thing and one thing alone:  when users have potentially made music available for others to download.  Last I checked, you cannot convict on the possibility.

So, as you can see the RIAA has a big problem here.

She can see that rake layin' in the grass ... yet she's compelled to walk toward it and...

BAM!

Kathleen Parker, the latest odious reich-wing blogger to get a spot on Fred "Where's his fucking buyout?" Hiatt's wankitorial page:

The Democrats Hug It Out
By Kathleen Parker
Saturday, May 17, 2008; Page A17

Well, at least they didn't kiss.

Yeah, they're that dumb...you want hugging?



Nobody saw that coming.

Here's a clue WaPo, fewer racists writing editorials, thanks.

Query

Isn't negotiating with people we don't like (so much we we're at war with them) what led to John Sidney McCain III getting released from the Hanoi Hilton?

All so he could come back and run for President and proclaim he will not negotiate with people we don't like?

Why is Friday so Popular?

For release embarrassing new and important information, that is.  Yes, we are all going to agree that the quickest way to bury a news story appears to release it on a Friday afternoon.  Perhaps we should paraphrase The Cure about Friday I'm in Love with the ignorant media.

I would call this a pretty damn important story in the continuing series of episodes that destroy what little credibility Mr. Straight-talk had left:

From Jonathan Stein at MotherJones...

Republican operatives Doug Davenport and Doug Goodyear were both quietly released from their duties with the McCain campaign this week when it was revealed that their Washington lobbying firm, DCI Group, had been paid $348,000 to represent Burma's repressive military junta in 2002. McCain's critics noted that top McCain aide Charlie Black has lobbied for authoritarian regimes as nasty or worse than Burma's, raising the question of whether McCain will cut ties with tainted figures only when it is politically expedient for him to do so.

It is so very interesting how the McCain camp managed this nothing-to-see-here wee news item about him taking money from military dictators by releasing it on Friday.  Military dictators who are creating a human tragedy in their country right now, in case we're all not paying attention.  And as usual the national media played right into the McCain camp's hands.  Could they have helped him slip out of this anymore easily?

And forget the local media -- they have abrogated their responsibility to the public good a long time ago.  How much decent (forget good) political coverage do you see from your local stations?

This is a much more important issue than the out of context rantings of a preacher with an ego.  This story is so much more important because it reveals more about McCain than any of his "aw shucks" just-doing -my-duty illusion -- the 'ol war hero straight talk carefully crafted image is just that, a carefully orchestrated image.  McCain consistently reveal his true image, a walking talking political cartoon.

I am curious, though.  Can we think of anyone who did not have to jump through numerous hoops, tests, and interviews in order to secure their employment?  So the idea that McCain didn't know who these guys were and what they did before they joined his campaign is a boldfaced lie.  One more lie to the mountain of lies that McCain is willing to tell to secure what he thinks is some strange kind of birth right to become president.

Or worse... is it possible that McCain was stupid enough to think that their ties to the Burmese/Myanmar dictators would not be discovered?  In any case, this whole episode gives us a clear glimpse into what a McCain administration will actually look like, what they will do.  It will make George W. Bush's mis-administration look positively competent.  Just imagine how bad your organizational skills have to be to accomplish that....

Isn't that a frightening thought?  Was that a chill down your back, too?

Hey, think McCain will give the money back?  Think that will happen on a Friday?

M-O-R-(A)-N cont.

I haven't paid attention to "The Corner of Assholery Street & Various Types of Squash Avenue" lately and my life has been better for it.

But this from the Doughy Pantload cannot be passed up:

As scary as a Deval Patrick appointment as AG would be (I've long thought he would be Obama's likely choice), the suggestion that John Edwards would be even considered for Attorney General is horrifying. I really can't think of any mainstream political figure more inappropriate for that job than Edwards.

Leaving out the dubious proposition of the words "think" being associated with Jonah Goldberg, apparently the name Alberto Gonzales has already been deleted from history by the Winston Smith of Pantload's mind.

Way to Go California!

Once in a while a very far and distant occasion, there is something hopeful that happens.  The overturning of a California court decision which banned gay marriage is a hopeful start for a more progressive cultural turn in this country.

Yes, I would like to think that we are going to see a turn away from the regressive extremist conservative and neoconservative cultural and political turn in this country. 

So, go ahead... I know you all are going to call me an idiot.  But I do not know about you but I need some hopeful, something meaningful, some kind of human openness if it is only for a few minutes.   But until the inevitable cultural backlash and political attack squads go after this, I do not want to live in a tiered society where only the "right" people can marry.  This is a step and a damn good one at that.

BoBo Bizzaro Deluxe

Ok, I have serious disagreements with many commentators... I await the day when Chris Matthews' pops or when Tucker Carlson starts laughing at himself over the insanity of his comments.  And I am sure we all look forward to the day when the incredibly dark dye in Cal Thomas' hair explodes.

But today Bobo Brooks has a bizzare rant that just seems like a case of crying out for help.  Please someone get him his meds.  What is he trying to say here?  Really?  I do want to know.  What?

Is that Naughtiness with your Coffee?

(from StarTribune)

A far right Christian group called "The Resistance" based in San Diego find the Starbucks mermaid  to naughty.

The Resistance says the new image "has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute," Mark Dice, founder of the group, said in a news release. "Need I say more? It's extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks."

The group, which claims more than 3,000 members nationwide and has found a place on the fringe advancing various conspiracy theories, is calling for a national boycott of the coffee-selling giant.

The  new-old retro logo will continue to run on Starbucks cups for "several more weeks," and will live on as the logo for their Pike Place bags of coffee.  So, it is not going away any time soon regardless of the complaints.

The explanation from the company for the logo is explained in the company bio book "Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time," written by Starbucks founder Howard Schultz:

"[Creative partner Terry Heckler] poured [sic] over old marine books until he came up with a logo based on an old 16 Century Norse woodcut: a two-tailed mermaid, or siren, encircled by the store's original name, Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice. That early siren, bare-breasted and Rubenesque, was supposed to be as seductive as coffee itself."

Is anyone else wondering why these religious right groups seem to find pornography everywhere?  Or should I be more concerned about a Starbucks bio called "Pour Your Heart into it?"

Cyanide Case Reveals Underpinning of Domestic Extremism

Readers of the Rising Hegemon will remember that in the past I have commented on the Texas case of the then 63 year old William Krar.  Krar was sentenced in 2004 to eleven years in prison for his plans to use cyanide in a domestic terrorist plot. It is important to note that Krar has been connected to several violent domestic extremists in the racist Christian Identity movement.

While Krar was arrested with a relatively small inventory of cyanide it was never resolved whether he had a lot more or shared it with others so inclined to use it.

Now comes a somewhat similar case also in Texas except that the suspect was trying to selling cyanide to someone to get money for meth.  The "buyer" was an undercover FBI agent.  Whether the effort to get meth was for use or to be sold to make money to support extremist efforts, we still do not know.

This case has produced some candid remarks to the media about the likelihood of domestic terrorist attacks from experts.  Many of these domestic terrorists would be more likely to use sarin rather than cyanide.  And while it is not any secret that sarin gas is easy to produce, little attention is being paid to prevent the creation of the poison.  Sarin was used in a terrorist attack in Tokyo in 1995 and is easily distributed in an urban area. 

At the time of the 2004 Krar case it was widely discussed that turning the cyanide that Krar had into a weapon merely requires the presence of a strong acid which can be purchased at an industrial supply house.

It is a mistake to overlook the efforts of racist domestic extremists.

Limbaugh Attacks Essay of Highschooler?

IF this is true it is hilarious... from Brandon Live!

The best story I’ve heard this week by far was told today over lunch.  Apparently, a co-worker of mine named George listens to the Rush Limbaugh show in his car, and yesterday heard him discussing Barak Obama’s comments about similarities between the recent housing crisis and the lead-up to the Great Depression.  I imagine the comments were referring to the obvious similarities between those who obtained ridiculous sub-prime loans and those in the 1920s who bought stock they couldn’t afford on margin.  However, Limbaugh decided that Obama’s comments were the result of a crazy “liberal education” - and even remarks how “lucky” he is that he didn’t graduate from college, thus allowing him to escape the perils of actual knowledge.

To prove his point, Rush says he did some Google searches for “Great Depression” and then proceeds to attack each of the results as liberal propaganda.  Because we all know that college professors teach straight off of Google results pages.  So my friend is listening and hears something rather striking… the name of one of our mutual colleagues - Paul Alexander Gusmorino (”The Third!” - I love the way Limbaugh says that).  

Limbaugh found among the top results an essay written by Paul, entitled “The Main Causes of the Great Depression.”  He quotes Paul’s essay and refutes each of its claims, dissecting them as if they were part of a Harvard professor’s lecture on the subject.  He doesn’t pull any punches either.  “Mr. Gusmorino, you better check Karl Marx and see if you plagiarized him in putting this piece together.”

Ouch.  Those words would be harsh if they really were for a Harvard lecturer.  But that’s not who wrote this essay.  It was my friend who works as a Program Manager at Microsoft.

When he was in 10th grade.

George Bush, the "MERDE touch"

Bush decides to give Saudi Arabia nuclear technology, you know that thing conservatives say Iran doesn't need so we must bomb them.

Meanwhile, the home of Bin Laden and the vast majority of the 9/11 hijackers (who, by the way is mangoless) gets nuclear power technology.

And what does the Decider get from his buddies in return?

White House says Saudi Arabia does not see a reason to increase oil production
- Breaking MSNBC

Dear Media,

Most American Jews do not agree with Bill Kristol, George Bush, Joe Lieberman or John McCain.

In fact, a healthy portion of them do not.

Bush's foreign policy, especially in the Middle East & Central Asia is monstrously unpopular with both Jews & Gentiles. John McCain "hugs" those beliefs tightly.

It was true in 2004.

It is true now.

Hamas' worst nightmare

Yeah, right. See McCain hold up a sheet of paper...PEACE IN OUR TIME...2013 (maybe)



Hamas, who loved would deal with ya' baby?

You can literally see he's also freezing his bearings off.

Crap on a Cracker

Michael Gerson pens yet another Jeremiah Wright column in today's Washington Post. Comparing Wright to Martin Luther King, Jr. I wrote about Gerson doing this at Firedoglake over a week ago, and yet here he is doing it again.

Because who possibly, short of Jonah Goldberg, would know more about the African-American experience then the guy who could replace John Hodgeman as the "PC" guy in the Apple ads in a pinch?

But it is actually worse that Gerson constantly uses the Washington Post to bash Wright and through it Obama, when Gerson's Church is run by a person who is so, so, so much worse.

Gerson is a member of the Falls Church in Falls Church, Va. His congregation and the nearby Truro Church, played the key role in leading 11 Virginia parishes out of the Episcopal Church after the Church consecrated Gene Robinson, an openly gay man as bishop in 2003. Most of these parishes joined the Church of Nigeria, which Archbishop Peter Akinola leads...

In February 2006, 10 months before Gerson's church made the final decision to affiliate with Akinola, Bishop John Bryson Chane of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington (full disclosure, he is my boss) published an op-ed piece in The Washington Post calling attention to proposed Nigerian legislation (here, on page 12) supported by Akinola that –interpreted as narrowly as possible—would have significantly curtailed the rights of gays, lesbians and their supporters to speak about their lives in public, assemble or practice their religion. Interpreted more broadly, language that aimed at stopping any displays of same-sex affection, public or private, direct or indirect, was a prescription for home invasion.

One of the more objectionable clauses in this legislation reads:

Any person who is involved in the registration of gay clubs, societies and organizations, sustenance, procession or meetings, publicity and public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly in public and in private is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a term of 5 years imprisonment.

That's pretty damn bad...and much less tolerant than Wright or Obama's church. Furthermore, Wright served as a Marine, Akinola may have served as a conduit to genocide:

In May, The Atlantic magazine raised new and more troubling concerns about Akinola. In “God’s Country,” the writer Eliza Griswold, daughter of the Rt. Rev. Frank Griswold, former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, describes a retributive massacre in the Nigerian town of Yelwa carried out in 2004 by a well-organized band of men, wearing clothing and tags that identified them as members of the Christian Association of Nigeria. Akinola was president of CAN during the massacre, which Human Rights Watch reports claimed the lives of approximately 700 Muslims. Dozens of others were kidnapped, raped or maimed...

When asked if those wearing name tags that read “Christian Association of Nigeria” had been sent to the Muslim part of Yelwa, the archbishop grinned. “No comment,” he said. “No Christian would pray for violence, but it would be utterly naive to sweep this issue of Islam under the carpet.” He went on, “I’m not out to combat anybody. I’m only doing what the Holy Spirit tells me to do. I’m living my faith, practicing and preaching that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to God, and they respect me for it. They know where we stand. I’ve said before: let no Muslim think they have the monopoly on violence.”

And this asshole has the temerity to criticize Wright & Obama...constantly.

M-O-R-(A)-N

Josh Marshall captured this complete meltdown I was today on 'Hardball' when Tweety is the voice of reason, when Mark Green beats you like a drum in an argument --- it is time to retire from the "talk" game.

This guy Kevin James is the biggest idiot on television not appearing on a VH-1 reality show...nah, I take that back, only John Gibson is dumber.



via Talking Points Memo

"Honoring Sacrifice"

Won't golf, but will do this:


Little known fact, while they were in Munich, Chamberlain, Daladier and Hitler went on a leisurely bike rides.

The Talk™

The late Steve Gilliard used to do relationship posts every so often. I remember those posts, not just for Steve's jaded, humorous take on relationships, but also for the rollicking comments sections they inspired. (The wisdom -- or prodigious lack thereof -- of Cary Tennis used to provide Steve with a regular jumping-off point for those posts.) So I'm going to give it a whirl. Today's subject is The Talk™ .

You know The Talk™. Its long-form name is The State-of-the-Relationship Talk. It's essentially a sit-down wherein you and your partner try to figure out just what in the hell is going on. It's the Where-Are-We-Going-And-Where-Have-We-Been conversation and to my mind, I would rather do almost anything, including attend a dinner party at which all the other guests were conservative pundits, the only music played was by '80s hair bands, and the only food served was cauliflower, than have The Talk™. Sometimes The Talk™ leads to a breakup. Sometimes it pushes the relationship to the next level. Sometimes it goes nowhere. My friends tell me that my distaste for The Talk™ is unusual for a female, that we are the champions and usual instigators of The Talk™ and that it's men who typically dread The Talk™ the way George W. Bush dreads an empty keg, a dictionary, or The Hague.

What's your experience? Do you hate The Talk™. Love The Talk™? Or are you agnostic on The Talk™? Is there any way to know what in the hell is happening absent The Talk™ ? Is The Talk™ different when you're married than it is when you're single? Is there one Talk™ or are there many? Is it realistic to think that I can avoid The Talk™ and still take part in a healthy relationship? Or is leaving well (or hell) enough alone acceptable? Or are you like me and is this a subject you would rather avoid for the rest of your days?

Talk to me.

THE Actual Campus Thought Police

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder hopes to raise $9-million to endow a faculty chair for a professor of conservative thought and policy.

According to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal, the chancellor, G.P. (Bud) Peterson, believes the new chair would help create “intellectual diversity” on the campus.

Activists like David Horowitz have been pushing that concept for years, amid complaints that the professoriate is full of liberals. But, in the article, Mr. Horowitz is quoted as saying that creating such an endowed chair might simply establish a place on the campus for a token right-winger. And as Mr. Peterson notes, the professor might not even be a genuine conservative, just a scholar of the movement.

This all seems like an effort to appease the nut-wing religious and idocratic right.  And, of course it sounds like that because it is a project of the political right since Goldwater (which certainly gathered greater steam under Reagan). 

This is clearly a well organized effort by the administration of University of Colorado to pander directly to those faux “fair and balanced” neoconservatives.  The neoconservative movement has made reshaping education a goal.  And neocons do not really care for balance.  They simply want their side presented as the unvarnished and absolute truth -- true dialogue is not required here.  Remember this is the same university that fired Ward Churchill for being so-called too liberal.

The vast majority or academics -- at any institution -- are not extreme flaming liberals nor mean-spirited heartless conservatives.  These teachers and researchers are professional people who work hard on their teaching, research and service in a difficult industry that is often misunderstood.  Most of these professors are poorly paid and teach out of care for their students. Yes, they have ideas and opinions and yes again they are expressed in the classroom from time to time. In truth most teachers have the integrity to evaluate students fairly regardless of the students’ opinions, ideas, and political ideologies. 

Furthermore, few if any of these teachers indoctrinate, and that at best is a small few.  Most of these professionals are engaged in a learning experience not a cloning experiment.  If people like David Horowitz really spent time with real, regular faculty members at universities and schools across the country, he would see that fact for himself.

But it always easier to accuse without knowing what you are really talking about.

Its all Smiles and Roses and Other Stuff

Check out McCain's everything will be great again if you elect me speech.  While you are there, take a peek at the video... voiced by someone who is clearly supposed to sound like Obama.  Oh McCain's new slogan -- The world will be fine only if you elect Me.  Haven't we heard that meaningless rhetoric before?  Yup, Chimpy McEmperor GoNuts said the same worthless sloganeering when he first ran for Preznit.

Know Your Enemy

Bush is over in Israel blathering about Nazis, a subject with which he and his family may have more than a passing familiarity.

/via Atrios

Douchebag to Public

The Douchiest of Douchebags, Robert Novak wants to let the public know that he will continue doing damage to democracy, reporting, and the public's trust in the media.  And according to him, we just don't get what he does:  He is exposing secrets that need to be exposed.  Oh yeah, uh huh...

Way to go 'ol Douchie!

Couples From Hell

The Carville-Matalin Vegas schtick is at best tiresome, at worst brain-deadening. But it could be worse. What if Mary Matalin had married Lanny Davis instead?

Seriously, watch those videos. Are there two more unpleasant people on television? Are there two more unpleasant people anywhere?

Inspired by the bickering couple I stood next to on the subway this morning.

Classy

Having alleged given up golf, America's Sandbagger decides to re-use one of the oldest canards on the books -- and doing so before the Knesset on Israel's 60th anniversary -- should we ever expect less (can you actually be below "zero"?):

In a particularly sharp blast from halfway around the world, President Bush suggested Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats are in favor of "appeasement" of terrorists in the same way U.S. leaders appeased Nazis in the run-up to World War II...

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Meanwhile, our negotiations with North Korea and Libya continue unabated by such nonsense which would, of course, be equally applicable [by Bush Logic] to them.

Apologies

Barack Obama carelessly referred to a female reporter as "sweetie". He later called to apologize to the woman and admit it is a thoughtless habit he has and should be chastened for it.

I'm sure this will still lead some people to bash him, but that seems a remarkably candid admission of error, and it was an error. And how dare he make a mistake, but even more abominably that he admit one.

Meanwhile, laughably the Republican National Committee tries to make something of it:

“Women have come too far in this country to have a presidential candidate refer to them as ‘sweetie’ while they are working and carrying their professional responsibilities. Barack Obama’s comment is another example of his poor judgment and further proof of how out of touch he really is.”
- Jo Ann Davidson, the co-chair of the RNC

No response as of yet by Ms. Davidson of John McCain calling his wife a "cunt".

Bush at Masada

How about a little reenactment of the end game?

(AP Photo/Ariel Jerozolimski/ Jerusalem Post, Pool)

Later...

The Noblest of "Sacrifiers"

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Every candidate makes pap statements about how "awesome" we are. It's just so self-evident that our ability to improve the lot of the individual American gets trapped in the smarmy "why should we? We're already so awesome...those folks should just shut up!" The kind of stuff FoxNews gets off on.

But sometimes the smarmy meets a new example of nausea inducing dementia that demands a response from the speaker of the original pablum. I give you John McCain in a refrain he likes to make:

"With all due respect to citizens of every other nation of the world ... I don't think, because of the very nature of our history, that they match up to our citizens' willingness to serve and sometimes to sacrifice."

Yeah, because the average Russian in the between June 1941 to May 1945 didn't sacrifice shite. And you, Cambodian survivor of the 'Killing Fields', bow down at your lack of comparative willingness to sacrifice, we had to use gas rationing coupons once! And then there are those folks in Burma and central China, you think you have it tough, after 9/11 I was morally compelled to go shopping. So, you over there in Ethopia, suck in that distended stomach, and remember Americans gave up Crystal Pepsi.

I vividly remember in the in the months before we invaded Iraq how I was told by the nation's finest minds that I was supposed to stop thinking and stop talking about not letting Bush fight a war on a credit card. I was supposed to be supportive of the United States occasionally bombing another far-weaker nation into rubble so we can show we're the most moral and upright nation on earth [USA! USA! USA!]. So I guess on that one, I didn't sacrifice enough.

Still, in the spirit of the sacrifices better Americans than me are "uniquely" able to make, unlike the rest of those selfish, shallow countries, we need to know McCain's opinion of George W. Bush, nobly sacrificing golf in order to show solidarity with America's grieving parents, spouses and children because of the war he and McCain love so much. I already know Dan Quayle's thoughts.

You have to admit, saying "I gave up golf" must have a real special meaning to the person keeping the flag that once covered the coffin of their child.

Your 'Maverick' like thoughts, Senator?

(pic from NAVROC)

For those of you who missed it

Olbermann on Bush's "sacrifice" of golf amongst other things:


And part 2, with the summation of what three-fourths of the American people and probably 98% of the rest of the planet would say to Bush...in the most polite way:

Query

What would the world be like if Arlen Specter, who now is obsessed with defending the United States Steelers & Eagles from Osama bin Belichek, treated the Bush Administration with such skepticism?

Ladies & Gentlemen

It's kind of cool, they were able to dig up the late Boris Karloff for an interview.

"Fire, bad!"

Good point

I mentioned (as seemingly the whole left wing world did yesterday) Bush's pathetic interview and his sacrifice of "golf"

i.e. "Tiger Woods = Osama bin Laden"

I also mentioned the interviewer Mike Allen was the most insipid person on Earth.

Dan Froomkin agrees:

Has there ever been a more moronic interview of a president of the United States than the one conducted yesterday by Mike Allen? The only one I can recall that comes close was in June 2005, when Fox anchor Neil Cavuto asked Bush about John Kerry's Yale grades and the Michael Jackson trial's effect on public policy discourse -- without asking a single question about the war.

Allen's interview started off with seven questions about Jenna Bush's wedding, and went downhill from there.

The only really critical question came from a reader, who asked: "Do you feel that you were misled on Iraq?" Bush predictably ducked it.

Here are some of Allen's own questions:

"Mr. President, I know you're going to hate this, but I'm hoping that we may twist your arm and talk about baseball for just a moment. (Laughter.) Mr. President, you're a Major League Baseball team owner again. Everyone is a free agent. You have a Yankees-like wallet. Who is your first position player? Who's your pitcher?"

"Now, Mr. President, you and the First Lady appeared on American Idol's charity show, 'Idol Gives Back.' And I wonder who do you think is going to win? Syesha, David Cook, or David Archuleta?"

"All right. Mr. President, who does the better impression, Will Ferrell of you, or Dana Carvey of your father?"

"And speaking of impressions, our friend, Robert Draper, author of 'Dead Certain,' said you do a great impression of Dr. Evil from 'Austin Powers'."

The Politico's proudest moment.

OMG! You have GOT to be kidding me

Honest to God, the GOP revealed their clothing-line for the GOP National Convention in St. Paul yesterday. And I kid you not it included this:

What would prompt Bloomington mayor Gene Winstead to vogue down a Mall of America runway modeling a t-shirt and Zubaz? Nothing short of the unveiling of the official line of Republican National Convention clothing, which took place at the mall's rotunda Tuesday.

Zubaz?

Who the hell decided on that? K-Lo?

(fez tip Sinfonian)

UPDATE:

Reader Anna Granfors sends us this more accurate representation of GOP Delegate fashion...as active wear.

What the fuck?!

I mean, truly WTF?!!

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane...

more than 250 cases The Washington Post has identified in which the government has, without medical reason, given drugs meant to treat serious psychiatric disorders to people it has shipped out of the United States since 2003 -- the year the Bush administration handed the job of deportation to the Department of Homeland Security's new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE.

Involuntary chemical restraint of detainees, unless there is a medical justification, is a violation of some international human rights codes. The practice is banned by several countries where, confidential documents make clear, U.S. escorts have been unable to inject deportees with extra doses of drugs during layovers en route to faraway places.

This is the kind of bizarre dark sci-fi bullshit we regularly accused the Soviets of during the Cold War for propoganda purposes showing how we are teh awesomest nation evah!

Thanks for your awesome help in creating the Orwellian Department of Homeland Security Joe Lieberman, when it does shit like this:

Records show that the government has routinely ignored its own rules, which allow deportees to be sedated only if they have a mental illness requiring the drugs, or if they are so aggressive that they imperil themselves or people around them.

Stung by lawsuits over two sedation cases, the agency changed its policy in June to require a court order before drugging any deportee for behavioral rather than psychiatric reasons. In at least one instance identified by The Post, the agency appears not to have followed those rules.

I here Bush is so shocked about this, he called up and arranged 18 holes at Augusta National.

What we know

Barack Obama doesn't do well in Appalachia.

Of course, neither did Ned Beatty*.

But nonetheless, that doesn't mean, unless the theme many pundits with the help of the Clinton campaign want to put forth, that he cannot win the white working class.

Actually both candidates do much better for Democrats than usual...that's right both of them:

But primaries only tell us so much about general elections. In our latest ABC/Post poll, testing each of the Democrats against John McCain, there’s a shortfall among less-educated whites for both: McCain leads Obama by 12 points in this group, Clinton by 8.

Obama, with his upscale appeal, does better among better-educated whites: McCain’s just +3 vs. Obama, compared with McCain’s 12-point advantage against Clinton among college-educated whites.

So Clinton does slightly better among non-college educated whites, but both lose to McCain at this moment.

However, the important thing is to compare how they are doing to the last two Democratic nominees, one who actually won the popular vote and the other who barely lost in a much more positive environment for the GOP:

It’s fair for the Obama camp to point out that he doesn’t do significantly worse against McCain among working-class whites than Clinton does, and that he does better with their upscale counterparts. And Obama’s numbers are nothing like John Kerry’s and Al Gore’s; they lost working-class whites to George W. Bush by 24 points and 17 points, respectively.

And in either case, Obama's race and Clinton's age remain less problematic for them than the fact the McCain is old.

As we noted in our poll analysis yesterday, 17 percent of less-educated whites say they’re at least somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of an African-American president; among better-educated whites that declines to 4 percent. As noted, there’s a similar effect on comfort with a woman president – and McCain’s age is a far bigger negative than either of these.

(*may not be technically not true (the appalacia part I cannot remember the movie well enough, but play along -- it will help with my Branson jokes at a later date)

Holy Crap!

Whatever happens on the Presidential Ticket, the Democrats are truly looking at a banner year when these things keep happening.

Democrat Travis Childers picks up yet another former GOP seat in Mississippi, by 8 percentage points, in a district that went for Bush in 2004 62%-37%. As Eric at Talking Points says, it denotes a disturbing trend for the Republicans:

• The Republican strategy to tie down-ballot Democrats like Childers to Barack Obama has failed. Even in a district that Obama is unlikely to win, it doesn't appear that an Obama-based attack can actually cause real damage for a relatively conservative Democrat.

• The GOP is in serious trouble overall. They have now lost three special elections in what should be safe seats: The Illinois seat of former Speaker Dennis Hastert, the Louisiana seat of former Rep. Richard Baker, and now this.

• Dick Cheney's visit to the district didn't help -- or at least didn't help enough.

• Republican morale is probably going to be even lower now as it was before, as they have been reduced to 199 House seats, down from 232 seats after the 2004 election.

When could a visits by Dick Cheney ever help? It used to be most, but now I'd guess every STD is more popular.

What a stupifyingly Dope

Whenever I think, Bush couldn't possibly be any more venal, and sillier, and just jaw-droppingly bizarre douchebag, the man pulls out another meaningless and insulting act to try to show he cares, but just shows he's a goddamned insipid loon.

...and speaking of insipid, the questioner was Mike Allen (who the hell fed him this obsequious piece of shite?):

Q Mr. President, you haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, it really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.

Golf?!!!

Of all the things your could sacrifice to express solidarity with the troops you stuck in that hellhole you chose golf?

Really?

Why not ball-point pens? Sponge-Cake? Your 'Manimal DVD Set'?

Oh, I know, how about not fucking being a goddamned warmongering asshole?

Showing solidarity with the troops by giving up golf, the guy who did this?



Nonetheless, the moron hasn't given up dancing like a dipshit in solidarity with the troops.

Crazed fucking asshole

More from the DOD document dump shows Rummy & the Whores to be complete sociopaths:

An ongoing exploration of the documents related to the Pentagon's "message force multipliers" program has unearthed a clip of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggesting that America, having voted the Democrats back into Congressional power, could benefit from suffering another terrorist attack, and doing so in the presence of the very same military analysts who went on to provide commentary and analysis of the Iraq War.

Those people the networks just vouche for without reporting their conflicts.

Many of the "message force multipliers" named in the original New York Times piece were in attendance, including David L. Grange, Donald W. Sheppard, James Marks, Rick Francona, Wayne Downing, and Robert H. Scales, Jr.

Talking Points Memo has a whole host of bloggers digging into the thousands of pages, you can check it out here.

Behold, the Great Idiot

Visiting Isreal, while chearing on the 'rapture' our Designated-in-Chief stated:

'I'm a peace man'

Suddenly, he thinks he's the Big Lebowski.

(top picture from youoweadam)

Like Kelsey Grammar teaching you to Drive

Nobody could have failed to anticipate:

The Bush administration repeatedly ignored corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information so as not to undermine its relationship with Baghdad, according to two former State Department employees.

Arthur Brennan, who briefly served in Baghdad as head of the department's Office of Accountability and Transparency last year, and James Mattil, who worked as the chief of staff, told Senate Democrats on Monday that their office was understaffed and its warnings and recommendations ignored.

"Nobody could have anticipated". It's only in the waning days of the Administration I realize I really should have written a macro to spit that phrase out.

Brennan also alleges the State Department prevented a congressional aide visiting Baghdad from talking with staffers by insisting they were too busy. In reality, Brennan said, office members were watching movies at the embassy and on their computers. The staffers' workload had been cut dramatically because of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's "evisceration" of Iraq's top anti-corruption office, he said.

The State Department's policies "not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government," Brennan told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

Something tells me that during their video prayer chats Bush & Maliki don't talk about corruption -- after all business is business.

And that Maliki's government would be corrupt isn't a terrible surprise, that happens to some degree in all governments and in a situation like Iraq's not unexpected (unanticipated?). But the fact that it is so over-the-top bad and ignored by the American government that is doling out the money and propping it up can be explained best in one excerpt from Robert Draper's 'Dead Certain':

By the time he first laid eyes on Maliki in Baghdad on June 13, 2006, Bush could not afford to be choosy. Iraq was out of control, here was its new leader ... and through his willful optimism, Bush would see to it that theirs was a match made in heaven. In 2007, he found himself mentoring the head of the world's most frail democracy on how to lead a nation.

OH, FUCK!

Explains everything.

Congrats

[UPDATE] This story is true, but having gotten the news from some other blog (I don't remember, it was early) there's a very relevant fact that I missed when I posted the story. It's six years old. It's stupid but I missed that fact when I posted it in the a.m. Totally my carelessness.

Myanmar (who we hate) & Saudi Arabia (who we love) let us know we are not, even under Bush, anywhere near the worst governed people on earth.

USA! USA! USA!

Saudi Arabia's religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers.

In a rare criticism of the kingdom's powerful "mutaween" police, the Saudi media has accused them of hindering attempts to save 15 girls who died in the fire on Monday.

About 800 pupils were inside the school in the holy city of Mecca when the tragedy occurred...

One witness said he saw three policemen "beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya" [ed. head scarf].

The Saudi Gazette quoted witnesses as saying that the police - known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice - had stopped men who tried to help the girls and warned "it is a sinful to approach them".

The father of one of the dead girls said that the school watchman even refused to open the gates to let the girls out.

Relatives of the girls are understandably incredibly pissed off.

We spend a LOT of time talking about Iran's mullahs, but as bad as they are -- and they are quite bad -- the have more than a match in Saudi Arabia's Mutaween.

Madness, Madness

The tough, long, Bataan Death March to the Democratic Nomination (credit Jon Stewart & the Daily Show) is really starting to go off to a new level bat-shit level of nausea-induced yet understandable frustration.

This blog is not one of those "giant" blogs that has 10,000 or more daily hits. For several reasons, one of which is because it sucks, but sucks in its own unique and not particularly profitable way. It's just the blurbs of four people; or one particularly neurotic individual [waves] paired with three moderately sane ones.

As I've mentioned before, all four of us are Obama supporters and we're all handling the long Primary process differently. As I pretty much have to blog every fucking day, I have to try to maintain an even keel about the whole thing. And, though it's pretty clear who I support between the two remaining candidates, it isn't like I would not vote for the other person. I'd happily do so. I'd be happier to vote for my guy, but there are supporters of a Kucinich, Edwards, Biden, Dodd, Kucinich etc. who have already made that choice. It's tough, but you're a Democrat for a reason - not a cultist (and boy have both sides thrown that term out too much).

One of these two is going to be the nominee, and the odds are it will be him.

But either one of them is a million miles above John McCain, or George Bush, Part III. And you know one thing that is true about almost all trilogies, the third one is the worst.

John McCain isn't 'Return of the King', he's "The Godfather Part III", he's Matrix Revolutions (especially if the first one sucked as much as the sequel), he's one of the other ewoks in 'Return of the Jedi', he's every subsequent Star Wars prequel if they were primarily about Jar Jar.

So the descent into insanity of some blogs is just sad. They are on both sides [waves at John Aravosis], but for the pro-Hillary blogs, you are going to have to back away from the ledge eventually. The Obamaphiles will eventually have to deal with their hopes being crushed -- hopefully by a President Obama as to some extent people always are. It would be nice if things got taken down a notch. Okay, not you 'No Quarter' you guys are Wile E. Coyote, already over the cliff and trying to use that small umbrella to both slow your fall and shield off the giant Acme anvil simultaneously falling just above you, you just keep on keepin' on and we spineless, gutless, anonymous, neerdowells of the internet will somehow get by.

Tragically misconstrued Headlines

"Senator Clinton discusses Eleanor Roosevelt, teabag."

As intepreted by Leonard Simpson.

He's always been an ass

Bill Orally, being himself. Thanks to this Kos diarist. Now you know how they would that Polk Award...after he left.



UPDATE:

Apparently FoxNews goons have gotten this off YouTube. But not Gawker.

Changing the dynamics

I agree with Booman, if we're going to run on our hopes instead of our fears, and not accept the demands of mediocrity, we're going to have to send people like this on their way until they, not we change:

Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain in November, the 67-year-old retired coalminer would vote Republican.

“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.

Mr Simpson’s remarks help explain why Mr Obama is trailing Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, by 40 percentage points ahead of Tuesday’s primary election in the heavily white and rural state, according to recent opinion polls.

If Obama means ceding the moron vote to John McCain, well so be it. I happen to think that there are more non-morons then morons in the country, so I'll cast my lot with the former.

The Leonard Simpsons of the world and their determination to find some reason to hide racism through stupid arguments a degree of sentient thought would disabuse is both a sign of progress and a sign of how far we have to go.

But it is Leonard Simpson's duty to be less of an idiot, it is not our duty to cater to him, because he is one. From phony welfare reform to going along with military intervention to prove "I too am an badass" the Democrats need to stop being Republican-lite. In spite of the Leonard Simpsons, the nation will go nowhere by kissing their ass.

In the spirit of rugged independence, it is time for Leonard to be smarter through self-effort, rather than excusing his ignorance by saying we cannot nominate a black guy.

It's Leonard's problem, not ours. If telling ignorant bigots to go fuck themselves makes me an elitist, so be it.

Let's just pretend this picture is as it ought to be

And giggle

at how all of their zippers are down.

(AP Photo/The White House/Shealah Craighead)

Rare footage of John McCain's first Republican Convention Speech

Thank goodness for Juan Cole

The suave & debonair professor explains what happened in Sadr City:

PM Nuri al-Maliki had demanded that the Mahdi Army militia that serves as the Sadrist paramilitary give up its arms and dissolve itself. The compromise simply states that the Iraqi security forces would be allowed in to Sadr City to search for suspected medium and heavy weapons. The implication is that the Mahdi Army may continue to exist and may keep its light weapons (e.g. AK-47s), though it has to pledge not to walk with them in public...

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the agreement stipulates that the government should have a court order to come into Sadr City. Arrests of rogue commanders had to to be based on warrants and not just 'indiscriminate.' There is nothing in the agreement about the Mahdi Army disarming altogether, as Nuri Al-Maliki initially demanded.

Reading news about Iraq is like watching Bill Murray's 'Groundhog Day' in which you have to live through the same day over and over again. So the US and Iraqi governments have announced a new campaign against Sunni radicals in Ninevah province, especially Mosul. Take a look at this article, published late last January: "Thousands of Iraqi army soldiers reached the northern city of Mosul on Sunday in preparation for what the government said would be a major offensive there against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, along with other Sunni militants."

You have a sinking feeling that al-Maliki is recycling old announcements in a futile attempt to distract the public from his climb-down in Sadr City. Al-Maliki left for Mosul Saturday along with a few cabinet members and close advisers. Curfews have been announced in some Mosul neighborhoods.

So at best for Maliki, he got a draw. Sadr's militia remains, its structure undisturbed, and the context for any enforcement that isn't judicial (something frankly unlikely to always happen to say the least) provides the ability to say "Han Nori shot first".

Ah, context and explanations, outside of McClatchy, the press isn't very good at that nowadays.

Because there are black ministers to clip for YouTube.

I don't think the Clinton campaign will be citing SNL anymore

This seemed inordinately cruel...as humor sometimes is.

Riding High in April, Shot Down in May

Imagine you are young woman, born in the 1930s, growing up in 1940s and 1950s New York City. You're intelligent and a good student, so you're admitted to one of the City's highly selective specialized high schools, in this case, Bronx Science. You go on to earn an undergraduate degree at the first of the Seven Sisters, Mount Holyoke. You graduate, marry, and spend the 1960s and the 1970s raising your three children, caring for your husband, and making a home.

Nice. You're living the American dream.

One day in 1974, a neighbor asks you to host a gathering for a local lawyer with political ambitions. Mario Cuomo runs for lieutenant governor of New York. He loses, but he gets a gig as New York's Secretary of State. In 1975, he gives you a job and for the next ten years you serve the citizens of New York as assistant to the secretary of state for economic development and neighborhood preservation as well as deputy director of the New York state division of economic opportunity. In 1985 now-Governor Cuomo promotes you to assistant secretary of state, a position you hold for three years.

Interesting second act.

In 1988 you assess your opportunities and decide to run for a U.S. House seat that spans parts of Westchester and Queens. You beat a two-term Republican in a squeaker and are sworn in as a member of the 101st Congress. In subsequent elections you will pull 62% and 67% of the vote against your Republican opposition. In at least one you won't have much opposition to speak of at all. You serve your district in Congress for twelve years, sitting on and chairing various committees and subcommittees along the way: Labor; Health and Human Services; Education; and State, Foreign Operations. Later, you'll get a plum roles as chairperson of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and on the newly formed Committee for Homeland Security.

Impressive third act.

In 2000, the senior Senator from your home state, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, announces his retirement and you -- along with the New York Democratic establishment -- seriously consider your options. You're a brand name in New York politics. You've got twenty-five years of experience serving the state, twelve of those in the federal legislature. You know New York. You know D.C. For the last decade you've probably spent more time on the Eastern Shuttle and Amtrak Metroliner than most people have in their own houses. You've worked your butt off. You've schmoozed. You've fund-raised. You've paid your dues. You've been a Democrat in Congress when being a Democrat was not much fun. You're a player. And you must have been doing something right, because your constituents kept sending you back to do it over and over again. You gear up to run.

Not so fast.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, someone else expresses interest in the job, too. Someone without your experience in either state or federal government. Someone who's never held elected office. Someone who's not even a New Yorker. But even you have to admit it: this person -- this interloper -- might make a more glamorous candidate. They might bring a little more oomph to the race. They might drive more people to the polls out of sheer curiosity. They might have more influence in the senate. They might bring New York more attention -- and more goodies. You've always been there. You'll always be there. You're a standby. A stalwart. You're part of the machine. But the interloper has a machine, too. And the interloper could make history! "Let this hysteria die down," you think. When it does, you'll be there. So while the interloper dithers and dances with the press, you play understudy. You wait in the wings while the press calls you a Handmaiden. Finally, the decision comes down from the Powers That Be.

It's not your turn.

The interloper wants the seat. And the Democratic Establishment -- the one within which you've been toiling for twenty-five years -- wants the interloper. What do you do? Do you cry? Complain? Throw a public tantrum? Stonewall? Refuse to yield? No. You do what you have to do, which is to become famous for what you didn't do. For the good of the party. Incidentally, later you'll become one of that interloper's most reliable allies.

Why am I telling you about Nita M. Lowey?

Because Hillary Clinton is not the first woman (or man) to work for something she wanted badly and for which she was qualified and probably very well suited and have someone come seemingly out of nowhere and take it away from her. She's done her share of that taking and when she did, Nita Lowey, for one, stepped up, stepped aside, and took it like a grownup.

But more importantly, because that sort of thing happens every day. I bet it's happened to you, because I know it's happened to me.

I know many women (and at least a couple of men) who think something's been taken from Hillary Clinton. (I think she threw it away in part, but I digress... .) I wonder if they were as disappointed for Nita Lowey? Were hopes and dreams invested in her candidacy dashed? Did they see her as a model of thwarted ambition, as many seem to view Hillary (which I find amusing seeing as Hillary's fall-back position is the United States Senate)? As a victim of bad timing (which is how I see Hillary, in part)? Or just as a person who hit the proverbial bump in the road, did what she had to do, and made the best of it?

Inspired by a conversation with Culture of Truth.

Photo by Eric Thayer/Photo Shelter

Um....

Wouldn't the more appropriate item be shot glasses?


(Larry Downing/Reuters)

Electibility

Bottom-line, either one of them will likely whip McCain's ass according to one of the more conservative, GOP friendly polls. We're near, perhaps just emerging from the nadir of the Democratic nomination fight -- although it's always capable of getting worse I suppose. Nevertheless at the point where Obama has had his toughest stretch because he is being attacked and at the point where it's arguable Clinton's also at her lowest point because she has been forced to go negative, they both still beat McCain - who is hardly being touched at all.

Although Democrats are tangled in a fractious primary contest, both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama probably would win the White House against presumptive GOP nominee John McCain if the election were held now, according to a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll.

Arizona Sen. McCain remains competitive, but the poll identified one important vulnerability: Voters ranked him lowest among the three candidates on who could best handle the nation's economy -- by far the most pressing concern for the public irrespective of party, gender or income. Of the three main candidates, New York Sen. Clinton inspired the most confidence on the economy.

In a hypothetical matchup, the poll gave Illinois Sen. Obama 46% to McCain's 40%, with 9% undecided.

Clinton led McCain 47% to 38%, with 11% undecided. The nationwide poll, conducted May 1 through Thursday and released Friday, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The results represent a shift from a Times/Bloomberg poll in February, when McCain led Clinton by 6 percentage points and Obama by 2, within the poll's margin of error.

Clinton's slightly higher margin is attributable to two factor, one the margin of error renders it fairly meaningless, except to the extent the economy is the major concern for the electorate and that's her best rating. If and when Clinton is not the nominee the fact remains that McCain is by far the least highly rated in that area, it is clearly his weakest issue, and Obama & Clinton essentially have the same economic program, with slight differences.

So the bottom-line for this is, I guess, good news for Giuliani.

Double Ought Spy

Bill O'Reilly surrounded by his fan club.

(Mediabistro)

Well, at least they're pleasant about it

Looks like I made an internet acquaintance in classic blog fashion:

I am not a chickenshit like you. I am not hiding behind a false name. I put my real name and my actual picture on my blog. I do not have to pretend to be somebody else. And I have the guts to stand up for what I believe. You, Hegemon, are a coward and spineless wonder. You like to pretend to be tough and “out there” but you lack the balls to write under your real name. But this is typical of Obama propagandists and supporters.

I only wish I was a spineless wonder. It would make the weekends go faster.

Potentially good news

Because it comes from McClatchy:

Followers of rebel cleric Muqtada al Sadr agreed late Friday to allow Iraqi security forces to enter all of Baghdad's Sadr City and to arrest anyone found with heavy weapons in a surprising capitulation that seemed likely to be hailed as a major victory for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.

In return, Sadr's Mahdi Army supporters won the Iraqi government's agreement not to arrest Mahdi Army members without warrants, unless they were in possession of "medium and heavy weaponry."

The agreement would end six weeks of fighting in the vast Shiite Muslim area that's home to more than 2 million residents and would mark the first time that the area would be under government control since Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. On Friday, 15 people were killed and 112 were injured in fighting, officials at the neighborhoods two major hospitals said.

It also would be a startling turnaround in fortunes for Maliki, who'd been widely criticized for picking a fight with Sadr's forces, first in the southern port city of Basra and then in Sadr City.

As usual though, you have to wonder (a) whether what is being said is actually what will happen and (b) whether under the surface this is just another whack-a-mole situation where something is happening under the table that means the time for accomplishing something has passed.

Iraq the $3 trillion dollar riddle hidden in the hopelessly fucked up enigma.

From Worse to Worser

From FishBowl LA:

Sources close to Ryan Seacrest have confirmed to FBLA that Ryan Seacrest is in talks with CNN to shimmy into Larry King's chair. Now "talks" can mean a lot of things, and our source also says, "I don't think it's going to happen."

From Larry King to Ryan Seacrest... brrrrrrrr...  Maybe the most important question is whether or not Nancy Grace is covering this "outrage?"

Dear Earnest American Patriots

Read just how in the tank your broadcast media really is.


Glenzilla to the rescue.

Remember

You CANNOT even refer to John McCain as "The Senior Senator from Arizona" because you are being ageist.

Which is unfortunate, because fuckin' A, that dude is really old.

Who Could Have Anticipated?

It's only been happening for 5 years and three months:

Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, has not been captured, a senior U.S. military official told CNN on Friday.

Yesterday afternoon:

Iraqi police commandos captured the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq in a raid in the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi officials said Thursday, in what could mark a significant blow to the Sunni insurgency in its last urban stronghold.

Good for McClatchy

You see this is HOW you commit journalism -- as opposed to commit journalicide:

Some things about Barack Obama rub some voters the wrong way.

"We don't need a Muslim," said Jannay Smith, a retiree from Kokomo, Ind. "Who's to say if he gets in there what he'll do?"

Added Steve Shallenberger, a Kokomo electrician: "He's just calling himself a Christian because he knows that's what we in Indiana want to hear."

Then there's Sherry Richey, also from Kokomo: "He wouldn't put his hand on the Bible; he wanted the Quran. He won't put his hand over his heart during the anthem or say the Pledge of Allegiance. He's too un-American."

All of these slurs on Obama are categorically untrue.

And who are these smear artists...and suddenly I wonder if retired CIA clandestine officer Larry Johnson of "No Quarter" would like to categorically deny this is him, not saying it is...but the description leads one to wonder:

In fact, they tend to be the work of committed political amateurs.

One practitioner in Virginia, who hates Obama like a dog hates cats, led a reporter through his efforts. Because the man is a retired clandestine CIA officer, identifying him could endanger officers or operations that remain classified, so McClatchy will not reveal his name.

In late 2006, convinced that an Obama presidency would be disastrous for America, he decided to start an anti-Obama operation. He combed the public record on Obama. He used a couple of allies and informants — half-jokingly dubbing his group "The Crusaders" — to learn about Obama's background, especially his Africa connection and how he came to be the editor of the Harvard Law Review.

He assembled a dossier on Obama, including allegations that Obama attended a madrassa, or Islamic religious school, in his youth in Indonesia.

Then the retired spook tried to get Israeli intelligence officials interested in his Obama dossier. They weren't, to his chagrin. He also shopped it to some foreign reporters. Again, no luck.

He wound up posting some of it on a blog — and where it went from there in the vast world of cyberspace is anybody's guess.

But a few months after the man began his work, the allegation that Obama was educated in a madrassa appeared in an anonymous article in Insight Magazine, an online publication of the Unification Church, in January 2007. It also claimed that Clinton operatives had dug up the information. The article was cited by several conservative commentators, including on Fox News, before it was debunked.

From Beer to Paternity (Part I)

VITO: Hi, honey.

MRS. VITO: Fuck you, you filthy WOP. You're going to pay for this.

VITO: I know. What's for dinner?

MRS VITO: For you? Merdecotta!

VITO: Ah, it's reverse Passover -- this night is no different from other nights.

MRS. VITO: (hits him in head with rolling pin). In the words of America's greatest jurist, Vaffanculo!

VITO: Will you keep your voice down? The whole neighborhood can hear you.

MRS. VITO: I don't care if Guy Molinari, the ghost of Paul Castellano, and the Pope can hear me. Where's that putana of yours and her miserable brat! I'll fix you all!

VITO: I’m outta here. Where's my wedding band?

MRS. VITO: What the fuck do you care, stronz?

VITO: Come on, I gotta go.

MRS. VITO: Where? Back to the bar to break a few more tables? Or back to your gummar to break a few more hearts? What do you need that wedding band for anyway?

VITO: Can't go up to the Hill without the band or the flag pin.

MRS. VITO: Stick the flag pin up your ass, Vito. I'm calling Raoul Felder!

VITO: Oo fa!

MRS. VITO: You mean "Oo faTHER," asshat. Get out your checkbook, Vito! This is gonna cost you.

Credit where credit is due: "From Beer to Paternity"

Title by Attaturk

Dialogue by res ipsa loquitur

Inspired by Vito Fossella (R - Of Course), who voted to impeach Bill Clinton and who now has troubles of his own.

Hey! Here's Vito on impeachment back in a simpler time (1998). Guess one of the "Americans yet unborn" to which he refers is now his illegitimate kid.

. . . Earlier today, one of my colleagues said that this would be the most divisive issue since the Vietnam War. While he may believe that to be true, I take strong exception with that, and I'll tell you why. Men and women were sent overseas like every other war or military conflict since our nation's birth, to defend the rule of law, the notions of personal freedom and individual liberty.

And in the case before us today, we're asking a simple question: "Did the president of the United States violate any of those rules of law that we cherish and that so many men and women have died for and are willing to die for at every point around the globe?"

I don't want to be here today, like so many of my colleagues. But the generations of Americans yet unborn must look back on this day in this matter, in this situation, and see this as our finest hour. . . . Reluctantly, I am here. I proudly, though, support this resolution.

Coming soon to Rising Hegemon

FROM BEER TO PATERNITY...The Vito Fossella Story


By Res Ipsa Loquitor


And starring David Hasselhoff as Mindy.

Republicans continue to take advantage of C-Span

Obviously, I'm tired:

"I'm John McCain and I approved this message"

First Bush, Now...

(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Ted Olson.

If McCain hugged Terry Schiavo he'd hit the trifecta*.






*too soon?

Aw, and they make such a cute couple

Nobody could have not anticipated:

The Iraqi government has all but given up on hopes it can persuade Iran and the United States to meet again to discuss security issues, the Iraqi foreign minister said Wednesday.

So comforting then to see the same ol' criminals out there cheering on bombing.

Jon Don't go so easy on McCheat!

What is it about Jon Stewart and the Daily Show audience when McCheat makes the rounds?  Stewart who normally asks hard hitting questions in a nice snark infested manner threw softball after softball for McCain last night. 

Is it the fact that he looks like your grandpa? 

Well, McCheat has something for this country and it is not peppermint candy, my friend.  There is something dark and rotten at the center.  Don't forget it.  Don't ever forget it.

Pissing on the value of Jounalism -- WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA?

From PEW:

In a number of recent presidential campaigns, someone or something has emerged from obscurity to become a household word and an integral part of the media narrative. In the 1988 race it was a Massachusetts criminal named Willie Horton, and four years later, it was a former television reporter turned singer named Gennifer Flowers. In 2004, the name in the headlines was a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. This year, at least so far, the newsmaker from nowhere is Chicago minister Jeremiah Wright...

Last week—as Wright re-emerged into full public view to speak to PBS’ Bill Moyers, the NAACP and the National Press Club—the controversy he generated made more news than both Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Clinton was a significant or dominant factor in 41% of the campaign stories and McCain registered in 14% of them. Meanwhile the relationship between Wright and his former parishioner Obama accounted for 42% of the week’s campaign coverage.

Gee, what do Willie Horton, Gennifer Flowers, Swift Boat Vets and Jeremiah Wright have in common?

They were all bogus slanders raised by the right wing AGAINST DEMOCRATS and flogged to death by the media.

The GOP count is ZERO.

Parade of Losers

Dear Congressional Republicans:


(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Thanks for hanging out with this asshole. Look how happy you all are.


REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES)
Now hug him!

Hug Him!!

HUUGGGGGGGGGGGGG
HIMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!

Even on reflection he's kind of a wanker

Howie Kurtz:

Even more interesting, after many (mostly unfounded) attacks on his patriotism, Obama talked about "the America I love" and "American values" and "the promise of America" and "the flag draped over my father's coffin." He was sending a star-spangled message.

"Mostly unfounded"?

Pray tell which attack on his patriotism has been "founded"?

"To tell ya' the truth ah had become partial to Senator Clinton..."

(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

"there was just sumtin' 'bout her"

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The NEXT Scandal

Now that Obama has for all intents and purposes locked up the nomination, expect the GOP to bring out the big guns. I understand this is something Lanny Davis insists we take seriously:

Barack Obama's secret "Illegal Space-Alien-Undocumented
Mexican, Islamic, six-fingered, love-child."

Details here.

As you can see, this is a recurrent GOP theme:



And finally, the SHOCKING twist...

Music Read

I recommend: "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon."  Don't be so cheap its a paperback and very insightful.  "Sleep" was written by Crystal Zevon, Warren's ex-wife and life long friend one.  The book shows the tortured genius that was Warren Zevon.  Nothing is more tragic when a book about the supposed  true life of a musician becomes a glossy piece of crap written by a publicist as an excuse to make a buck or two.  That is not this book.  Excitable boy, indeed.

One Reason to Stop McCain

Among all of the reasons to stop McCain... the 100 years stupidity, the smarmy connection with the religious whackamole right, the lack of an economic policy... I have one more for everyone:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Tuesday he would appoint judges in the mold of conservatives John Roberts, Samuel Alito and former Chief Justice William Rehnquist if he were elected in November.

In an excerpt from a speech McCain was to give in Winston-Salem on Tuesday, the Arizona senator said he would "look for accomplished men and women with a proven record of excellence in the law, and a proven commitment to judicial restraint."

"I will look for people in the cast of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and my friend the late William Rehnquist -- jurists of the highest caliber who know their own minds, and know the law, and know the difference," McCain said.

I promised mom I would not swear... But, man I really want to... So, whether you support Clinton or Obama, we must stop this imbecile from continuing the destruction and devastation of this country.  Surely, we can all agree on this, right?

On a side note - McCain's doctors must be really pleased with themselves, they have completely removed McCain's brain.

Not even phoning it in

James Buchanan wasn't this pathetic:

7:13 a.m.: The South Lawn. President Bush, determined to dispel doubts about his relevance, grants an early-morning interview to Robin Roberts of ABC News's "Good Morning America." Joined by the first lady, he fields hard-hitting questions about . . . the White House grounds. "It's a beautiful place," the president discloses. "In the spring, the flowers are fantastic. In the fall, the -- it's just such a -- kind of a place that's so fresh. In the winter, of course, it's got a lot of snow. [Laughter.] Summer is real hot, but it's -- we love it out here. It's beautiful."

* * *

7:58 a.m.: By e-mail, the White House Communications Office sends out its "Morning Update." It lists two events on Bush's schedule for the entire day: a "Social Dinner in Honor of Cinco de Mayo" and, an hour later, post-dinner entertainment. To react to the main news of the day -- thousands of deaths from the cyclone in Burma -- Bush sends his wife out to make a statement. She criticizes the Burmese government for its failure "to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm's path" and "to meet its people's basic needs." Reporters, too tactful to draw parallels to New Orleans, quiz her instead about daughter Jenna's wedding, and the names of future grandchildren. "George and Georgia, Georgina, Georgette," the first lady says.

Hypocritically Awesome!

(cross-posted from Firedoglake out of Laziness)

Ah, speaking of Republicans ... and might as well be Republicans ... and their religious buddies.

McCain’s aides attribute the Hagee controversy to poor vetting. But even some Republicans (not affiliated with the campaign) privately wonder how the pastor’s extreme views slipped through without notice. McCain personally wooed Hagee for more than a year.

How about because his BFF vouched for him:

Pastor John Hagee. I would describe Pastor Hagee with the words the Torah uses to describe Moses, he is an "Eesh Elo Kim," a man of God because those words fit him; and, like Moses he has become the leader of a mighty multitude in pursuit of and defense of Israel...He has done so because Israel's fight is his fight. Israel's values are his values. And Israel's hopes and dreams are his hopes and dreams.

Hagee's fight is Israel's fight?

Hagee is pastor of the Cornerstone Church in Antonio and head of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a new organization led by the religious right's biggest names. CUFI's purpose is to lobby Congress to support Israel. The Christian Zionist movement's motives are based on end-times "Armageddon" scenarios of wars involving Russia, Iran and Arab countries...Christian Zionists put great emphasis on returning all the world's Jews to Israel as part of their end times scenarios."

And when "Jesus II: This time it's Personal" happens it will be time for the final judgment and who goes to heaven and who goes to hell in Hagee's view:

At first, Hagee insisted that Jews could be "raptured" into the air along with Christians.

"Well, there are Jewish people who believe in Jesus Christ, and there are Arabs who believe in Jesus Christ, so you don't have to be a gentile to be a believer," he told Gross.

But, she pressed, "you do have to believe in Jesus Christ." Hagee agreed to that

So basically Joe Lieberman supports a policy allowing for the complete destruction of the world, especially Israel [so "God damn America" plus really]. As a side benefit, all of Israel will ascend into heaven...except the Jews & Muslims, of course.

Now, that's a policy truly in Israel's self-interest -- the one calling for it's obliteration [isn't a certain Members Only Jacket wearing Iranian allegedly Hitleresque for such oblique phrasing?]. The real laughable farce of all this, is Hagee is no different than many Christian Fundamentalist preachers in supporting Israel with the end goal being the death of all the Jews & Muslims. But this NEVER gets any time in the media, period.

Good job Joe. Good thing you were able to get John McCain on board with that.

But Jeremiah Wright is the one that gets obsessed about?

An Admission

The never-ending primary campaign has really made it tough to blog the last couple months.

I mean, though I'm an Obama supporter, truth be known, like the rest of those who post here, but we have tried not to be so heavy-handed about it that this place is uncomfortable for Clinton supporters to visit.

But avoiding the topic of the primary and constantly dancing around the periphery is a drag.

On the other hand, those blogs that have gone all in for one candidate or another have, in my opinion, often become unreadable. I suppose it would be different if the campaign was still inspiring, but it isn't, it's depressing. It's day after day of bullshit subjects, gotchas, and DLC talking points. It's being determined to lose with a tire-iron still being wielded upon the likely victor's kneecaps, then hoping you can convince the judges you should run because your opponent can no longer walk. Not surprising, but not exactly glorious.

I don't know what the balance is, and I think we've chosen the proper one, but it is getting wearying.

I suppose if blogging was my sole vocation it would be different, but the spare-time I devote to blogging is starting to have politics fuck with my mind more than usual.

I think I'm allergic to "horse-race" analysis and since that is all the broadcast media gives a shit about, I have come to loathe it with the heat of a million suns. I've also come to loathe some blogs...though I won't name names. Which is unfortunate.

So, I feel like I'm merely blogging for blogging purposes a lot lately, so I apologize if the posts aren't up to even my usual menial standards. Maybe others cannot tell the difference, but I can.

Nine Inch Nails Free Album Download

Whether or not you are a big fan of Nine Inch Nails, you can download their new album - The Slip - for free.  Although I have personally always loved 'Head like a Hole' as it has quite the political critique.

This is another example of an artist trying to break the music industry monolith... and for that alone, we should all support them.

Hammer, Meet Nail

James Wolcott hits the nail on the head re online BHO- v. HRC-supporter sniping (in which I've played my part):

Such fratricidal skirmishing may sound silly and minor-league, like a feud between high-school cliques where the two sides sit on opposite ends of the bleachers, texting each other inappropriate messages full of misspellings and nonperforming grammar. But there is a deeper frustration at work, a more unappeasable, unaddressed anger. And that is the failure of Democrats and activists to bring the Bush-Cheney administration to account for any of its destructive and disastrous misdeeds over the last seven years (even raising the possibility of impeachment was treated as poor etiquette by the queasy Democratic leadership), the impotent fury over the knowledge that the masters of disaster will leave the White House unscathed, unaccountable, their smirks intact. There will be no day of reckoning, nothing to stop their clean getaway.

When ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz mentioned during an interview with Vice President Cheney that two-thirds of the American people thought the war in Iraq wasn’t worth fighting, his reply was “So?” ...

Cheney’s sarcastic “So?” was a spit in the eye of not only the American people but of the critics of the Iraq policy whom he could treat as irrelevant, and why not? Since 9/11, he and the president had had a free hand and played it for all it was worth.

Ratings Gap

Nationally "Press the Meathead" usually beats "This Wank with George Stephanopoulis" and it's possible the margin is more substantial in some markets than others.

But these rankings from the appearance of Obama on Timmeh & and Clinton on Stephy may be good news for Obama (or maybe 'Giuliani'):

Overnights from the Indianapolis market (where both shows originated):

"Meet the Press" - 8.5/21
"This Week: - 1.3/4

In D.C.:

"Meet the Press" - 4.4/12
"This Week" - 1.4/4

Now, it's possible that Russert normally beats Stephanoulis better than 6 to 1 in Indy. And it is also quite possible ratings don't mean shit when it comes to votes.

Whatever, I didn't see either show, but I'm willing to bet the hosts sucked as usual.

Well, somebody is going to lose their GEICO coverage

Neanderthals were separate species, new study finds

In other news, John McCain suddenly has bigger worries than being born in the Panama Canal Zone.

Be warned

I remind Clinton supporters that if you somehow overcome the odds and take the nomination from Obama, you know they'll cast Don Cheadle as Obama in the movie-version and everybody always likes Don Cheadle.

Douchebag

Michael Gerson has spent the last several editorials tut-tutting Obama's relationship with Reverend Wright.

But what of Gerson's own Pastor?

Well, he hates gays and muslims...A LOT! Supporting this law:

Any person who is involved in the registration of gay clubs, societies and organizations, sustenance, procession or meetings, publicity and public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly in public and in private is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a term of 5 years imprisonment.

And there's more than that.

The hypocrisy of Gerson criticizing Wright, when his chosen Pastor is a gigantic homophobic bigot himself is rich indeed.

Michael Gordon of the NY Times

Like Judy Miller, remains willing to take it in the face.

Awesomer

Not content with barely holding Iraq together (okay, just pretend that proposition is true) the Bush Administration remains determined to turn the fuck up to "11".

CIA Director Michael Hayden said Wednesday that Iranian policy, at the highest government level, is to help kill Americans in Iraq, the boldest pronouncement of Iranian involvement by a U.S. official to date...

Military commanders in Baghdad are expected to roll out evidence of that support soon, including date stamps on newly found weapons caches showing that recently made Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq at a steadily increasing rate.

Another senior military official said the evidence will include mortars, rockets, small arms, roadside bombs and armor-piercing explosives - known as explosively formed penetrators or EFPs - that troops have discovered in caches in recent months.

Only one problem:

Iraq said on Sunday it has no evidence that Iran was supplying militias engaged in fierce street fighting with security forces in Baghdad.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said there was no "hard evidence" of involvement by the neighbouring Shiite government of Iran in backing Shiite militiamen in the embattled country.

The Finger

(Cross-posted from Firedoglake by reason of laziness)

Poor Bill Kristol...but mostly poor us.

The Uriah Heep of war criminality cannot even mange to write malicious editorials anymore. Now they are just lame and pathetic.

Wanting to get a few digs in about how Reverend Wright has buried Obama and all the Democrats for that matter, Kristol actually commits to paper this paragraph:

In a New York Times/CBS News poll in late February, Obama was defeating John McCain 50 to 38. Two months later, the Times/CBS poll had McCain and Obama tied. The poll that came out yesterday showed Obama reopening a lead over McCain — but clearly over this period a vulnerability for Obama was exposed.

The latest CBS poll, that shows this awesome damage to Obama?

Obama (D) 51%
McCain (R) 40%

Wow, that's really, um, not at all devastating. No matter how much the chattering classes -- the wealthy, white, actually elitist chattering classes -- cannot grasp it. Sadly, for Kristol and the rest of the fans of things like Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos", Clinton kicks McCain's ass by a similar margin.

And unnoticed by the nation's editorial writers and gasbags of cable news, especially by the Kristols and the Stephanopouli, the public seems to have determined the real culprit in the Jeremiah Wright matter:

Concerning Rev. Wright's coverage in the media the new poll sites that according to registered voters polled the attention paid has been:

Too Much.....56%
Too Little.......5%
About Right...34%

Not that this fact will stop a talking head from trying.

But not content in stopping after eviscerating his own argument in the early paragraphs Kristol digs deeper (goin' for the gold?). He decides to use FoxNews polling which shows that if McCain picks Mitt Romney, he loses his maverick scent. But fear not, Kristol is there to suggest an acolyte for the job.

Maybe that’s why, in separate conversations last week, no fewer than four McCain staffers and advisers mentioned as a possible vice-presidential pick the 36-year-old Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal. They’re tempted by the idea of picking someone so young, with real accomplishments and a strong reformist streak.

It might also be a way to confront the issue of McCain’s age (71), which private polls and focus groups suggest could be a real problem. A Jindal pick would implicitly acknowledge the questions and raise the ante. The message would be: “You want generational change? You can get it with McCain-Jindal — without risking a liberal and inexperienced Obama as commander in chief.”

Yes, Bill, the public is crying out for somebody who can push through a 3rd Bush term, with even less experience than Bush just in case something happens to the original water carrier.

What a keen and discerning analyst.

Bobby Jindal, now the governor of Louisiana (thanks Katrina, for halving the New Orleans vote). A former Congressman he had this singular accomplishment:

In 2005, Jindal led other freshman Republican House members in dipping their fingers in purple dye to celebrate the 2005 Iraqi national elections.

Oh, how awesome for the GOP that guy would be. He sure sounds like the kind of candidate who would keep us on the track 81% of the American public so dearly loathe. The kind of candidate who has little to offer the American people but "the finger". So he has much in common with Bush.

You go Bill! I'm only surprised you did not suggest McCain select a random Kagan.

What's Missing?

From this NYT article about how even people with health insurance are getting hammered because they cannot afford the portion of the cost the insurer passes on to them?

How about a little data on the financial health of America's medical insurance companies?

Winning friends and influencing people

You know, you keep invading a culture and bashing them as a bunch of extremists and having a perpetual "crusade" to fight what you call perpetual "jihad" and it's amazing how stuff just gets all complicated and works against you.

Welcome to Bush World:

Almost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials...

Khaled al-Anesi, an attorney for some of the Cole defendants, said Yemen had rushed to convict them. But he said he is still mystified by the government's subsequent handling of the case.

"There's something that doesn't smell right," he said. "It was all very strange. After these people were convicted in unfair trials, all of a sudden it was announced that they had escaped. And then the government announced they had surrendered, but we still don't know how they escaped or if they had help."

Hamoud al-Hitar, a former Supreme Court justice, said the trials were fair. But he suggested that the government had turned lenient because the Cole defendants had participated in a "dialogue and reconciliation program" designed to de-radicalize al-Qaeda members.

Hitar, who oversees the program, claimed that 98 percent of graduates have remained nonviolent. Asked about two Cole suspects who escaped and went to Iraq to become suicide bombers, Hitar shrugged. "Iraq was not part of the dialogue program," he said.

Disgusted yet?

It gets worse:

Relatives of the 17 sailors who died on the Cole said they are furious at Yemen for releasing the plotters. But they expressed equal disdain for their own government.

The families have fought for years to obtain information from the State, Defense and Justice departments about their inquiries into the attack. "We never really got anyplace," said Andrew C. Hall, an attorney for the relatives.

With few other options, family members filed a civil lawsuit in 2004 against the government of Sudan, alleging that it had provided support for al-Qaeda over the years and therefore was also liable for the Cole attack. Last July, a federal judge in Norfolk, Va., ruled in their favor and ordered Sudan to pay $7.96 million in damages. (Yemen could not be sued because, unlike Sudan, it is not listed as a state sponsor of terrorism by the State Department.)

John P. Clodtfelter Jr. of Mechanicsville, Va., whose son Kenneth died on the Cole, said the families have tried to meet with Bush to press for more action.

"I was just flat told that he wouldn't meet with us," Clodtfelter said. "Before him, President Clinton promised we'd go out and get these people, and of course we never did. I'm sorry, but it's just like the lives of American servicemen aren't that important."

How dare these people question their government in a "TIME OF WAR"! Bush has no obligation to explain why he doesn't give two shits about anyone but Bush. [/sarcasm]

I'm sure a 3 minute Google search would be rife with your Malkins, Reynolds, Confederate Meathead, etc. going on and on about how Clinton didn't give a shit about the USS Cole, while the mighty Preznit goes uncriticized.

Well, it's been seven years, three months and two weeks and what has the Chimperor done but fuck in everything worse -- even alleged Clinton problems (the kind he had two months to deal with)?

Predict Timmeh Today

Obama questions from Timmeh:

45 minutes of Reverend Wright questions.
1 minute about how awesome Iraq is.
5 minutes about elitism.
1 minute on the gas tax.
8 minutes of GE commercials.

Meanwhile, on ABC's Clinton Town Meeting with George Stephanopoulos:

40 minutes of Reverend Wright questions.
5 minutes about the gas tax.
5 minutes about how elitist the black guy is.
3 minutes about how awesome Iraq is.
7 minutes of Archer Daniels Midland commercials.

New Taxi Drivers

Apparently Tommy Friedman traveled or met a new "everyman" character.

Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.

I don’t know if Barack Obama can lead that, but the notion that the idealism he has inspired in so many young people doesn’t matter is dead wrong. “Of course, hope alone is not enough,” says Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, “but it’s not trivial. It’s not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else.”

I'm sure the press, the Clinton and McCain campaigns, would agree, but for the fact those tire-irons in their hands must be meant for something and Obama's knees are so tempting.

Glen Campbell comes back

Call me crazy, but I am really really interested in this....

GLEN CAMPBELL RETURNS TO CAPITOL RECORDS FOR HIS DYNAMIC NEW STUDIO ALBUM, MEET GLEN CAMPBELL

New Album to be Released August 19; Campbell to Premiere Select Songs at Stagecoach Festival on Friday, May 2

Hollywood, California – April 29, 2008 – In a legendary music career that spans more than five decades, Glen Campbell has achieved chart-topping, platinum-selling pop and country success singing everyday tales of life, love, work and heartache. For Meet Glen Campbell, his inspired, dynamic new studio album, the music icon has returned to his longtime label home, Capitol Records. Meet Glen Campbell will be released on August 19 on CD, limited edition vinyl and digitally.

The songs on the album all strike a personal and musical chord with Campbell. He has reinterpreted and re-imagined both older and contemporary songs with his own signature vocal and guitar arrangements. A true musician's musician, Campbell's distinct guitar playing, along with the clarity and emotion of his powerful vocal performance, come together to give new life to the songs he selected for Meet Glen Campbell.

The influential singer, guitarist and stylist, who has long made others' songs his own, is doing it again, recording high-spirited, emotionally charged versions of tracks that have personally moved and inspired him. Campbell's intimate performances convey an autobiographical and deeply personal connection to the album's songs, which include Travis' "Sing," Tom Petty's "Angel Dream" and "Walls," The Replacements' "Sadly Beautiful," U2's "All I Want Is You," The Velvet Underground's "Jesus," and Jackson Browne's "These Days," among others.

"I really like all of the songs and I had a great time recording them. While I didn't write these songs, this sounds like a Glen Campbell album, which is important to me," says Glen Campbell.

A musician at heart, Campbell has maintained a sense of truth, respect and authenticity throughout his career. The songs on his new album were written by others, but become undeniably Campbell's own as he has personally styled them for the new album. Titled evocatively by design, the album is certain to surprise and delight longtime fans and turn many new ears to the music icon's legendary career. Meet Glen Campbell welcomes discovery and re-discovery of the legend and his music.

Recorded in March and April at The Recording Studio and Jim Henson Studios in Los Angeles, Meet Glen Campbell is produced by Julian Raymond (Rosanne Cash, Fastball, Shawn Mullins, Wallflowers) with engineer/co-producer Howard Willing. The album features musical contributions by Campbell contemporaries as well as younger rock and alt-country artists who joined him in the studio, including Cheap Trick's Robin Zander, Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. and Jason Faulkner from Jellyfish, and Chris Chaney from Jane's Addiction. Campbell's sons and daughters, who regularly perform with their father, recorded backing vocals for the tracks, providing the album's warm family tone.

Conceived by Julian Raymond to honor Campbell's musical legacy while showcasing his creative versatility and vitality, Meet Glen Campbell has been long in the making since its creative inception to the recent studio sessions. Says Raymond of the new album, "I've been listening to Glen since I was nine years old, so making this record is an honor and a dream come true. I am incredibly proud of this project."

Meet Glen Campbell begins an exciting new chapter in the 50-year career of one of America's most beloved musical icons. This Friday, May 2, during his set at the Stagecoach Music Festival in Indio, California, Campbell will be joined onstage by special guests to premiere select songs from his new album.

To watch a video trailer for Meet Glen Campbell, please visit
Campbell's official Website, www.glencampbellshow.com.

Meet Glen Campbell (CD, limited edition vinyl, digital album)
(NOT FINAL SEQUENCE)
1. Jesus (Velvet Underground)
2. All I Want Is You (U2)
3. Times Like These (Foo Fighters)
4. Grow Old With Me (John Lennon)
5. Angel Dream (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers)
6. Sadly Beautiful (The Replacements)
7. Sing (Travis)
8. These Days (Jackson Browne)
9. Walls (Circus) (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers)
10. Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) (Green Day)

How to pay for school?

How’s a kid to cover tuition if his mom has bad credit? Wait tables? Work at Wal-Mart?

Or sell cocaine. That’s what a straight-A student at Pennsylvania State University at Altoona told the police he decided to do after he couldn’t get student loans, according to The Altoona Mirror.

Twenty-year-old Michael Conforti, of Hackettstown, N.J., was charged on Thursday with, among other things, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession with intent to deliver cocaine, the newspaper reported. The police say they found drugs, almost $3,500 in cash, and other incriminating items at his residence. Mr. Conforti’s lawyer declined to comment on the charges to the paper.

Damn these student loans I have...

Return of the Loyalty Oaths

A lecturer at California State University at Fullerton was fired because she refused to sign a loyalty oath.  Now, first being a lecturer sucks.  You have no security, very little if any academic freedom, are evaluated at the whims of a department chair who prefers to hire their friends... shall we go on?  It sucks.

Being a lecturer normally means the position is not a permanent job in any way, shape, or form.  While this has been a bonanza for universities as it has fueled the growth in the number of students who can attend, alas it brings a form of indentured servitude to the lecturers and adjuncts who teach the classes.   

For the university it is a huge win because non-full time personnel are cheaper and health insurance is not required.  It allows them to pay administrators and researchers more while staffing classes with cheap readily available labor.  Make no mistake these are the instructors who will be teaching your children soon, if not now.

So, being a lecturer is no longer simply the indignity of hard work for very little pay and virtually no respect, now several schools are forcing these educators to sign loyalty oaths that go back to the cold war years.

The lecturer at California State University at Fullerton has been fired because she refused to sign a loyalty oath to “defend” the U.S. and California Constitutions “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Wendy Gonaver, a Quaker and a lifelong pacifist, was set to teach American studies at the institution this academic year. She told the newspaper that she had offered to sign the oath if she could attach a short statement expressing her views, but Fullerton wouldn’t allow that.

Of course, what many academics don't realize is that their institution may already have loyalty oaths -- when teachers and researchers sign those "letters of appointment" there are riders and more to the contract that are not spelled out except in documents in the President's and Provost's offices that include... yup, you guessed it among other things... old loyalty oaths from the cold war. 

And, if these administrators wanted to do so, they can fire teachers, professors, researchers, adjuncts, and lecturers for failure to abide by that part of their contract.  A part of their contract that in most cases they were never even given to read. 

Oh where, oh where has my academic freedom gone?  Oh where, oh where can it be?

Small credit where small credit is due

I didn't post anything on the alleged video of Mickey Cantor that is so offensive and in your face that no one had noticed it for a decade and a half until yesterday.

Because I listened to it and couldn't tell what the fuck he was saying...except that he wasn't saying what he was purported to be saying in said video.

This took like...one minute.

And, I, a mere blogger -- one of the lowliest of scum -- managed to do this.

But not Jake "Smellin' Obama" Tapper.

Who totally fell for the latest Drudge smear because his world was rocked...and could resolve the matter:

Were I not currently eating a chicken sandwich at Liberty East Restaurant in Charlotte, NC, while working on a World News piece about the economy and the candidates, I would go to Blockbuster, rent a copy of The War Room and settle this matter as much as possible.

Jake Tapper, dumb enough to post obvious bullshit, but not smart enough to really care.

Nice try

Washington Post Website Headline:

Bush Resolute Amid Obstacles

What the article really means, however, is

Stubborn Moron Continues to Be Asshole

Bill Moyers sums it all up about Wright

Versus Hagge, Robertson, Falwell et al. It's all about race.



I'll tell you one thing, there's no conservative in America who expresses themself with a tenth the thoughtfulness of Moyers.

Bush and the Wrong Message

Could not say it better myself...

When President Bush erased the prison term of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, he reinforced some Americans' perception that status can affect justice, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who sentenced Libby, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In commuting the 2 1/2 - year prison term of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Bush called Walton's sentence excessive, given Libby's "exceptional public service" and lack of criminal history. "There are a lot of people in America who think that justice is determined to a large degree by who you are and that what you have plays a large role in what kind of justice you receive," said Walton, 59, who spoke in Milwaukee yesterday. "It is crucial that the American public respect the rule of law, or people won't follow it."

A jury found Libby guilty of four felonies for lying to FBI agents and the grand jury that investigated the leak of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity. Walton, who said he and his family were threatened after he handed down the sentence, said the time he gave Libby was at the low end of federal sentencing guidelines. "I believe firmly you apply the law and apply it strictly," Walton said. "I don't give white-collar criminals a pass." Bush's commutation of Libby's prison sentence stopped short of a pardon. Libby's $250,000 fine and felony conviction remain, along with two years of probation.

Giant Inflatable Psychedelic Pig Found

Inflatable pig lost during Coachella music festival is found

When things go bad for a huge inflatable pig, don't expect it to be pretty.

A helium-filled swine, released into the night sky during Roger Waters' headlining set Sunday at the Coachella music festival in the Southern California desert, has been found in pieces.

Two couples found tattered halves of the pig in their yards, a few miles from the festival grounds.

Concert organizers had offered a $10,000 reward for the pig's return. On Tuesday, pieces of the plastic carcass were examined.

"That's definitely our pig," producer Bill Fold said.

Susan Stoltz found a plastic heap in her driveway Monday, but said she didn't know what it was until she read about the missing pig in the Desert Sun newspaper.

"My kids are going to think I'm so cool," she said.

Another resident of the same neighborhood, Judy Rimmer, said she found a piece of the pig draped over a front-yard plant.

The two couples will split the cash reward, Fold said.

As tall as a two-story house and as wide as two school buses, the pig was led from lines held on the ground Sunday as Waters played a version of Pink Floyd's "Pigs" from the 1977 anti-capitalist album "Animals."

Then it just floated away.

"It wasn't really supposed to happen that way. I don't have the details," festival spokeswoman Marcee Rondan said.

The pig displayed the words "Don't be led to the slaughter" and a cartoon of Uncle Sam holding two bloody cleavers. The other side read "Fear builds walls" and the underside read "Obama" with a checked ballot box for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

Whew.  So glad they found it.  I just don't know what I would have done.  Really. 

Weather Forecast in Hell

So, I can only imagine that given this strange new cozy relationship between Democrats and Faux News that we either have snow in the netherworld or we are seeing YET AGAIN the domination of the centrist right-leaning Democrats taking over the party.

This is why so many (although not all, of course) establishment Democrats are hostile to Obama.  Many of his supporters are not part of the functionaries and bureaucrats who are willing to work with the noxious Roger Ailes Republican party spokeschannel.  But even Obama (somewhat contrary to the movement springing from his candidacy) has embraced this example of the right-wing media machine in order to try and secure the Democratic nomation.

Standing in front of a television camera last week, the chairman of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign, Terry McAuliffe, uttered four words that the Fox News Channel would not soon forget.

“Fair and balanced Fox!,” he exclaimed, noting that the network was the first to project Mrs. Clinton’s Pennsylvania primary win.

Fox executives could not have asked for a more rousing endorsement. The next day it showed up in promotions.

All of a sudden, the once-frosty relationship between Fox News and the Democratic candidates seems to have grown warmer. Mrs. Clinton and Barack Obama, who steadfastly refused to attend Fox-sponsored debates last year, are now giving plenty of interviews as they court Fox’s viewers, who are largely white, conservative and undecided.

(picture from NYT)

Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Republican self promoting Clown Bill O’Reilly on the network. Senator Clinton has been on the network at least ten times this year, so far.  And to make matters worse she has gone out of her way to not confront the right-wing bias of Fox.

(picture from NYT)

Here we have Barack Obama and Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday recently. He has been on Fox News seven times this year so far.  And he has also avoided commenting on the right-wing bias.

Is this an effort gone too far?  Shouldn't the Democrats avoid a channel that goes so far to attack Democrats and Democratic policies on a daily basis?

Should we be checking the weather forecast in hell?  Or is the classic problem that The Who so accurately noted: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Early Morning Musings

So, if John McCain had not clenched the Rethuglican nod, who would have?  Would Mr. TV Thompson be the current heir apparent?  Or would there have been a nasty struggle in the Republican party?  Can we imagine a situation where Ron Paul would have received more support?  Or would Mitt "I can spend their inheritance any way I want!" Romney have moved in for the takeover?

What do you think?

Feeling Inadequate?

It's not just for Saturday Afternoons with Condilicious anymore.

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The Donut Accords

Much was decided within the Best Western lobby that morning. Ahmet agreed to get sprinkles on only half.

REUTERS

Tax Dollars at Work

There is a "school" in San Francisco that can reduce re-arrests related to prostitution. Or at least so we are told.

The San Francisco District Attorney's office screens men who are arrested for soliciting prostitutes to see if they are eligible to attend a re-education program. Those who qualify can choose between facing prosecution or paying a fee to attend a one-day class (known generically as the "john's school.")

This program is a partnership of many expensive offices: the San Francisco's district attorney's office, San Francisco's police department, SF's public health department and several local organizations—especially Standing Against Global Exploitation.  Gotta love the SAGE acronym.

An evaluation of the program shows that men who attend say they change their attitudes and behavior. I wonder if re-educating a few "johns" is really going to stop global exploitation?  I suppose one can indeed dream, right? 

The evaluation also shows the program can be replicated which officials at the NIJ are really hoping to do.

Read a summary of the evaluation. Or read the full report (its over 245 pages)

I am wondering if as much assistance and effort is being given to those who are often forced into a life of prostitution.  How much support and education are they being given?

More trouble in RIAA paradise

Another interesting wrinkle in the music industry's non-stop efforts to sue their fans and force us all to like drivel like American Idol.  According to the Chronicle of Higher Ed's Catherine Rampell:

Yet another court decision questioned one of the Recording Industry Association of America’s main legal arguments in prosecuting alleged music pirates.

The RIAA argues that people who have made copyrighted music available for sharing have committed copyright infringement, whether or not the music was then illegally copied and downloaded by an unauthorized user. This argument was questioned in several recent conflicting court decisions. A judge this week in Atlantic v. Howell rejected the “making available” theory and denied the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment. (There are other wrinkles in the case, too, such as whether the defendants intended to share the music or whether they did so accidentally.)

A bench trial for the self-represented defendants will likely happen sometime in September, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed an amicus brief in the case. The judge’s 17-page decision can be found here.

Stay tuned folks, this could be "vewy vewy interesting" as the great American philosopher Elmer Fudd once said.

Is Our Children Learning?

Apparently not.

President Bush’s $1 billion a year initiative to teach reading to low-income children has not helped improve their reading comprehension, according to a Department of Education report released on Thursday....

“Reading First did not improve students’ reading comprehension,” concluded the report, which was mandated by Congress and carried out by the Department of Education’s research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences. “The program did not increase the percentages of students in grades one, two or three whose reading comprehension scores were at or above grade level.” ...

In 2006, John Higgins, the department’s inspector general, reported that federal officials and private contractors with ties to publishers had advised educators in several states to buy reading materials for the Reading First program from those publishers.

The Reading First director, Chris Doherty, resigned in 2006, days before the release of Mr. Higgins’s report, which disclosed a number of e-mail messages in which Mr. Doherty referred to contractors or educators who favored alternative curriculums seen as competitors to the Reading First approach as “dirtbags” who he said were “trying to crash our party.”

Another one for the "Nobody could have anticipated" files. Cost to taxpayers: $1 billion a year, until the Democratic controlled congressed whacked its funding by approximately 60% for this fiscal year.

I don't mean to complain

But it seems like there's no controversy the press will fail to give McCain a pass on.

It's really getting on my nerves.

[Dedicated to John Derbyshire]


(artwork by the masterful Watertiger)

Remember

We can dis Tweety Matthews all we want, but you have to remember the boy grew up without anything to pound his pud over but the stuck together pictures within Curtis LeMay's biography.

What So Proudly He Hailed

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like [former President Bill] Clinton or even like [former Democratic presidential candidates Michael] Dukakis or [Walter] Mondale, all those guys, [George] McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits. We don't want an indoor prime minister type, or the Danes or the Dutch or the Italians, or a [Russian Federation President Vladimir] Putin. Can you imagine Putin getting elected here? We want a guy as president." --Chris Matthews on "Countdown with Keith Olberman" -- May 1, 2003

Five flipping years

The wood anniversary.

"Want some wood?"

And how is that "victory" working out?

Fierce fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City fuelled the bloodshed in April, with at least 1,073 people killed across Iraq and the US military's toll hitting a seven-month high.

Overnight clashes in Sadr City between US forces and Shiite militiamen left another eight people killed, including two children, officials said. The military said it killed eight militants.

According to data collected by the interior, health and defence ministries and made available to AFP, 966 civilians were killed in April, as were 69 police officers and 38 soldiers...

The April toll maintains the trend of rising violence that in March reversed a gradually declining trend seen from June last year. It follows 721 killed in February, 541 in January, 568 in December, 606 in November, 887 in October, 917 in September and 1,856 in August.

Awesome, let's keep winning like this for 100 to 1 million years shall we?