'nuff said.

Who knew Kos could be this funny?

Our very own Bob Johnson has announced his candidacy in the comments. His platform, I must admit, is quite compelling:

• Platitude platitude platitude grassroots platitude


• Platitude every vote counts platitude


• Platitude special interests platitude platitude platitude


• Platitude


• Stand up to platitude platitude platitude


• (Note: This platitude canceled due to large contribution from pharmaceutical firm)


• Platitude platitude platitude platitude healthcare (except prescription drug coverage -- see above)


• State-by-state platitude


• Platitude hollow promise platitude


• Platitude platitude platitude platitude snore platitude


• (Note to consulting team: Is that enough bullshit yet?????)


• Platitude platitude every man, woman and child platitude

However, he still needs to clarify where he stands on platitudes.

I don't know about you, but that made me laugh till my stomach hurt. That'll teach me to eat apple pie while blogging.

(UPDATE: Oh. It's not Kos, it's Bob Johnson who's funny. Sorry.)

Amen:

...sometimes it's just good to say "no," simply for the sake of saying it, because doing so lessens your complicity in a comfortable politics in which the destruction of American ideals is more admired for its clever tactics than it is condemned for its lasting damage. This is a government of vandals, and shame on anyone too dumb to realize it, or so ambitious that they'd make peace with it. Shame on any Democratic legislator who didn't line up with Boxer yesterday, especially the ones that gave pretty speeches and voted the other way. Shame on any Democrat who votes to confirm Alberto Gonzales. Shame on any Democrat who attaches himself to any Social Security plan while this administration is in office. This is a time to say no, just for the pure hell of it. Trust me, there's no political price to be paid that you're not already paying, piecemeal, out of your souls.

(Edited to give proper credit to the quote's author. It's Slacker Friday, after all...I should have known.)

Snagged wholesale from Hoffmania, because it's too important not to.

Here's the guy who's going to be our next Attorney General:

In January 25, 2002, a memo to President Bush from Mr Gonzales asserted:

"I note that you have the constitutional authority to make the determination you made on January 18 that the [Geneva Convention] does not apply to al-Qaeda and the Taleban."

"...this is a new type of warfare - one not contemplated in 1949 when the [Geneva Convention] was framed - and requires a new approach in our actions towards captured terrorists."

"You should be aware that the Legal Adviser to the secretary of state (Colin Powell) has expressed a different view."

That the US would continue to be constrained by its commitments to treat detainees humanely, by applicable treaty obligations, by minimum standards of treatment universally recognised by the nations of the world and by applicable military regulations regarding the treatment of detainees.

Doesn't sound all that bad, right? Read on:

On August 1, 2002, Jay Bybee, an official at the justice department and now an appeals court judge, wrote a 50-page memo at the request of Mr Gonzales. In that memo, Mr Bybee asserted:

"Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

"Any effort by Congress to regulate the interrogation of battlefield combatants would violate the constitution's sole vesting of the commander-in-chief authority in the president."

That if certain interrogation methods "crossed the line" of the US anti-torture laws, soldiers or US officials might defend themselves from prosecution if "the threat of an impending terrorist attack threatens the lives of hundreds if not thousands of American citizens".

Translated Jay Bybee: Anything less than murder doesn't qualify as torture. The President is above the law in dealing with detainees. And U.S. officials can get off the hook for any atrocities they commit simply by playing on Americans' fears of terrorism.


Nice fucking guys, eh? And you still think the U.S. has any moral authority?

Bush Takes Aim at Asbestos Lawsuits

the courts and hinder economic growth, President Bush is urging Congress to change the way people are compensated for diseases caused by the deadly material.

In his third event this week calling for legal reforms, Bush was to speak near Detroit to suggest ways lawmakers can tackle asbestos litigation reform an issue that has deadlocked Congress in recent years.

Before leaving for Clinton Township, Mich., Bush was scheduled to meet Friday with the top two members of a bipartisan panel he's setting up to recommend ways to reform the tax code.

Bush claims 74 companies have been forced into bankruptcy because of asbestos-related litigation that has cost more than $70 billion, the majority of which is not seen by victims but swallowed up by legal and processing fees. Employees of these companies saw the value of their pension accounts shrink by an average of 25 percent, the administration says.

The volume of asbestos lawsuits is beyond the capacity of our courts to handle, and it is growing," Bush said earlier this week. "More than 100,000 new asbestos claims were filed last year alone."

The American Trial Lawyers Association, however, says many of the companies that filed for bankruptcy were reorganized, not liquidated, and that few cases filed in court actually go to trial. Fifty to 60 cases have gone to trial annually in the past few years, Carl Carlton, a spokesman for the group, said Thursday.

"That's hardly clogging the courts," Carlton said. "Why isn't the president of the United States standing up for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who were poisoned by these companies that knew precisely what they were doing? They continued to expose their workers and their customers to this dangerous substance. Now the president wants to reward them."

Why is Bush focusing on asbestos lawsuits? Could this be why?

Halliburton, the oil company, famed for its work in Iraq, yesterday claimed it had ended the asbestos problems that have dogged it for years with a $5 billion settlement.

Under the deal it will pay $2.3 billion in cash and almost 60m shares into a trust fund that will compensate current and future victims of asbestos-related diseases.

Halliburton insists that the settlement cannot be appealed against, although US courts have often been sympathetic to new claims.

The Bush Administration sure takes care of its own. This would ensure that no pesky new claims will show up in court.

Looks like this is going to have to be #1 of a series.

"Maura in VA" at Daily Kos is reporting that Virginia legislator John A. Cosgrove is proposing legislation (HB1677, "Report of Fetal Death by mother, penalty")which requires any woman who experiences "fetal death" without a doctor's assistance to report this to the local law-enforcement agency within twelve hours of the miscarriage. Failure to do so is punishable as a Class 1 Misdemeanor.

What this means is that if you miscarry, endure the pain and bleeding of a miscarriage for hours, and then fall asleep, exhausted -- and you do not awaken and report the miscarriage to the police within 12 hours, you are guilty of a crime.

"Maura in VA" notes that there is no law mandating that a woman must report a pregnancy to the Commonwealth, or even seek medical treatment for one. But this bill proposes that a woman report a LOSS of a pregnancy to the Commonwealth, whatever the gestational age of the embryo/fetus.

Here's the information that health care pracitioners have to report. The legislation provides for NO change, which means that the woman herself would have to provide this:

- place of occurrence
- usual residence of patient (mother)
- full maiden name of patient
- medical record number and social security number of patient
- Hispanic origin, if any, and race of patient
- age of patient
- education of patient
- sex of fetus
- patient married to father
- previous deliveries to patient
- single or plural delivery and order of plural delivery
- date of delivery
- date of last normal menses and physician's estimate of gestation
- weight of fetus in grams
- month of pregnancy care began (sic)
- number of prenatal visits
- when fetus died
- congenital malformations, if any
- events of labor and delivery
- medical history for this pregnancy
- other history for this pregnancy
- obstetric procedures and method of delivery
- autopsy
- medical certification of cause of spontaneous fetal death
- signature of attending physician or medical examiner including title, address and date signed
- method of disposal of fetus
- signature and address of funeral director or hospital representative
- date received by registrar
- registrar's signature
- registration area and report numbers.

You see of course where this is going...this legislator is simply getting ready for when the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Virginia is one of 30 states that is ready and waiting to make abortion illegal in that state the minute it becomes legally possible to do so. By requiring women who miscarry alone to report their miscarriages to law enforcement authorities under penalty of imprisonment, they're getting ready to prosecute women who attempt to obtain illegal abortions.

The author of this Kos diary reports also that the legislative agenda of numerous anti-abortion groups includes increased reporting of fetal deaths and issuance of death certificates for miscarriages. The point is to advance the legal recognition of "personhood" for all "products of conception".

Now think about this for a minute. These groups believe that human life begins at conception, and that conception occurs at fertilization, not at implantation. I've been saying for years that since up to 30% of fertilized eggs never implant for a variety of reason, a logical result of this would be a requirement that women submit their used sanitary products to the government to make sure that no fertilized eggs were passed, and if they were, the woman could be prosecuted. This legislation makes what people used to call crazy ranting no longer seen so crazy.

I wonder what all of the young women who felt that reproductive autonomy wasn't an important issue for them will think when this is implemented?

I'm at the age now where you start joking about hot flashes. Some women are saddened by menopause. Not me, brothers and sisters. I regard it as a blessing from God, given what Republican leaders in this country want to do with fertile women's bodies.

Throughout my life I've often had the feeling that I don't live on the same plane of reality as everyone else does.

Yesterday I watched the Democrats in the Senate play tough with Attorney General nominee Alberto "You Want a Cattle Prod With That?" Gonzales before their inevitable unanimous vote to confirm him. Then I watched as they hung Barbara Boxer out to dry. Instead of behaving like an opposition party, they allowed Boxer to be the only Democrat with a pair of testicles yesterday as she signed on to Stephanie Tubbs Jones' protest of the Ohio vote certification.

Boxer gets it. It was never about changing the result of the election. I think we all know at this point that John Kerry fucked up hugely on so many fronts that there's no point in putting ourselves through the pain again by enumerating them. Kerry would have had to run the kind of campaign that no one could possibly run in order to win, because the Republicans had the game rigged on more fronts than any army of lawyers could handle, with Ohio as Ground Zero. The many reports of voting machines that registered "Bush" when the voter selected "Kerry" (funny how there were no reports of mistakes in the other direction). Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's obstacles to voter registration. Botched voter rolls that didn't have the names of people in Democratic districts who had registered legally to vote. Voting machines left collecting dust in storage as minority Democratic districts received an inadequate number of machines, resulting in the kinds of 10-hour waits we saw only in Democratic districts.

You've got to hand it to the Republicans...they leave no stone unturned. And in Election 2004, they covered all the bases.

And yesterday the Democrats let them get away with it.

Boxer is right: This was NOT about overturning the result of the election. It WAS about shining light on the way the Republicans won it....and the Senators who talked a good game yesterday but when the time came to put their money where their mouths were, they just didn't have the guts. Perhaps they thought they'd go along to get along, in the hope that maybe Republicans would throw them a bone. Maybe they thought they could keep the filibuster rule if they went along. Maybe they thought that Bush might send Supreme Court nominees to them who weren't hopelessly corrupt or religiously insane. I just have to wonder how much abuse the Republicans have to rain down on this bunch of pussies before they wake up.

Or maybe it's true that they're owned by the same corporations as the Republicans and they're just there so you think you have a choice.

Today, I don't know.

The one Democrat I felt badly for yesterday was Barack Obama. This shining light of the Democratic Party, who came out of nowhere and now is expected to carry this whole team on his skinny shoulders, looked profoundly unhappy that this was his debut moment in the Senate. It's clear that this was Obama's "gays in the military" moment, and while he spoke eloquently, when the time came to vote, he took the dive. He threw the World Series....and for what? Somebody please tell me for what.

Randi Rhodes was absolutely right on this one as she hammered home the last few days why it was important to force the House of Representatives to be the ones to certify Bush's second term. This Administration is claiming a clear mandate with 51% of the popular vote and 286 electoral votes. Richard Nixon won a mandate in 1972 with 61% of the vote and 520 electoral votes. Ronald Reagan won a mandate in 1984 with 59% of the vote and 525 electoral votes. Bush has not won a mandate, but he's going to govern as if he had. THAT's why it was important...to try to slow this runaway train down enough so that something resembling America can be sustained as we march towards the Fourth Reich.

Maybe it's just that I'm old enough to remember when Democrats won actual victories by standing for what was right. I'm old enough to remember Lyndon Johnson, a relatively conservative Texas Democrat, acknowledging that in supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he was probably losing the South for the Democratic Party...but he signed it anyway BECAUSE IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. Just as yesterday, voting to decertify Ohio's vote would have been THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

On June 24, 1964, civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were murdered in Mississippi. They are just three of the many people who died to ensure that black Americans would have the right to vote. And to watch the Democratic Party cower in the corner yesterday was disgusting -- and an insult to the memories of the many people in this nation's history who understood the value of the right to vote.

And yet today I go to other blogs, and I see intelligent people like Steve Gilliard claiming that what we saw yesterday was some sort of victory.

That's not how you make a point. You do that, nothing gets done in either body as grudges play out. There is a ton of shortsighted thinking here. I mean, it's not about your feelings, it's about politics. The objection surprised the GOP and sent a clear message that there is no mandate.

People are quick to cry sellout and rant, but how long have they worked in politics? A year? Attended a few Meetups, volunteer for Ohio or Florida for a few days. Well, it's not just about one day or even one election. It's every day.

A lot of these people so quick to rant need to shut the fuck up and listen. You have to think about the long term, and you cannot oppose the majority on everything. Why? Because, first of all, the majority of voters in this country are independents. They don't like partisan politics to begin with. You resist every idea, you condemn the Dems to minority status as obstructionists. Now, that may make you feel better, but that's not politics, that's a temper tantrum.

No, Mr. Gilliard, it's called standing up for a principle. You may be one of my favorite bloggers, and 99% of the time I find myself cheering out loud with every one of your blog postings, but here you're wrong. We've seen what the Democrats get out of "going along." The answer is "nothing." Bill Frist has already talked about the "nuclear option." What part of "We are not going to work with you" do you not understand? And now we're going to get another term of Terry McAuliffe as head of the DNC, and more craven weaselling by a party that doesn't give a shit about us. That's the reality, my friend. I wish it weren't. I really do, because I remember when it wasn't like this. But now it is.

Tim Grieve at Salon DID see the same sorry spectacle I did:

The protest put a hold on the vote certification so that each house could retire to its respective chamber for debate and a vote on the issue. But Boxer -- or anyone else who thought the protest would lead to serious discussion of election reform -- must have been disappointed by the sorry spectacle that followed. There was no sense of history being made, no sense that anything was really happening at all. Although a few hundred people protested in the drizzle across the street from the Capitol, the visitor galleries in the Senate were mostly empty. Fewer than a dozen senators showed up for the debate, and only the ones who spoke -- among them, Hillary Rodham Clinton and, in his first floor speech, Barack Obama -- seemed to take it seriously. As Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin made an impassioned plea for a bipartisan effort to improve the electoral system, Dick Cheney and Sen. Rick Santorum sat slumped in a couple of chairs on the edge of the Senate floor, talking and laughing. They weren't listening. With solid majorities in both houses, they didn't have to.

And the Republicans weren't the only ones who seemed to give the protest short shrift. Minnesota Sen. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, took to the floor to criticize Boxer for facilitating the protest, saying she would undermine the country's confidence in its democracy if the protest were to succeed and the election were thrown to the House of Representatives. And while Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid ultimately spoke of the need for election reform, he spent much of the protest debate on the other side of the aisle, kibitzing with Santorum and a few other Republican senators.

Think about that. The leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate was schmoozing with "Man on Dog Sex" Santorum" after giving mere lip service to a concept as important as fair and honest elections. That's your Democratic Party.

I wish I had an answer. I wish I could believe going to Meetups and grassroots activism could take our party back. But I'm sorry, I can't. I'm going to continue to fight for what's right, but I can no longer support a party that's sold us down the river every step of the way for the last 10 years. Progressives no longer have a home in this party. They don't want us. They want to make nice with Republicans and hope that it results in a few committee memberships and some corporate dollars flowing into the coffers. Progressives embarrass them. They wish we'd go away so that they can move further to the right. I'm just giving the Democratic Party what it wants. I'm going away.

According to Will Pitt, Harry Reid is on board in the challenge to the Ohio electors. 38 more, and the Democratic Party keeps me. Any less, and I know that they don't represent me and that they're owned by the same corporations who own the Republicans.

It's up to them now. This is their chance to show what they're made of; whether they're planning to be a true opposition party, or if they're going to lay down and allow George W. Bush and his Congressional lapdogs to dismantle the entire New Deal and the entire Great Society in favor of an "I got mine and fuck you" nation.

Regardless of how many senators find their balls in the next twenty-five minutes, what's mind-blowing about what's going to happen today is that it would not have happened without Michael Moore. You can talk all you want about Moore's use of innuendo and making leaps of logic in Fahrenheit 9/11, but you can't argue that without his use of the appalling footage of one after another African-American representative getting up and begging a Senator to sign their protest of the Florida electors in 2000, none of the light that is currently being shone on Republican thuggish tactics in the days leading up to the election and on November 2nd itself would ever have occurred.

We are going to get another four years of George W. Bush no matter what happens. But Republicans cannot escape this fact: They don't want Americans to vote. They are about suppression of the vote, not encouragement of the vote. The fact of the matter is that throughout this country, but especially in Florida and Ohio, where the instances are documented, people associated with the Bush/Cheney campaign did whatever they could to keep black Americans from voting. In the year 2004. People died forty years ago trying to make sure that black Americans could vote, and forty years later, people who call themselves patriots because they support a war are trying to keep people from exercising their rights as citizens to vote.

Think about it.

Yesterday I blogged on Digby's comments about a caller to Limpballs' show expressing her rage because one kid showed up in a photograph from Indonesia wearing an Osama Bin Laden T-shirt. (It occurred to me later that it's entirely possible that such a shirt was one of those "Wanted Dead or Alive" shirts that were so popular in the U.S. for about five minutes after 9/11, but of course considering that possibility might mean that this caller might have to have some human empathy, and after all, we mustn't have that, now, must we?)

Americablog today links to a truly ghastly (and very graphic, you have been warned) photo that shows far better than the highly sanitized and much-repeated footage we're seeing in the LRWM exactly the kind of death, destruction and horror they're dealing with in Asia.

And our government STILL isn't being anywhere near as generous as countries with far less population than we do.

From the Al Franken Show Blog, via Atrios:

The Nelson Report is a daily political tip sheet and analysis written for the past 20 years for the (US and Asian) corporate and government clients of Chris Nelson, a former Capitol Hill staffer and UPI reporter. (He was actually the first to break the looted explosives story before the election; Josh Marshall then posted it to his blog.) This Monday, he wrote:

There is rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information. Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear “bad news.”

Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq...building democracy. “That’s all he wants to hear about,” we have been told. So “in” are the latest totals on school openings, and “out” are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that “it will just get worse.”

Our sources are firm in that they conclude this “good news only” directive comes from Bush himself; that is, it is not a trap or cocoon thrown around the President by National Security Advisor Rice, Vice President Cheney, and DOD Secretary Rumsfeld. In any event, whether self-imposed, or due to manipulation by irresponsible subordinates, the information/intelligence vacuum at the highest levels of the White House increasingly frightens those officials interested in objective assessment, and not just selling a political message.

In other words, Bush refuses to hear anything that might interfere with his own delusions.

They used to make Masterpiece Theatre series about insane rulers like this. Now we call them the President of the United States.

When will Americans wake up?

There is absolutely no reason why every Democratic Senator who's in Washington today can't stand up today in support of John Conyers' report. This would force discussion of what occurred, and quite possibly throw the election into the House of Representatives, where of course they would certify the election.

But let it go to the House. Let it be resolved there. Because then George W. Bush will have gained two terms NOT through normal electoral channels, but once through a partisan Supreme Court, and once through a partisan House of Representatives. Mandate, schmandate.

What on earth are they so afraid of? The Republicans will say mean things? They're going to say mean things anyway. They've been saying mean things for the last 24 years. That Republicans won't work with them? Bill Frist has already used the expression "going nuclear" in regard to his dealings with the Democrats.

The Democrats have a MORAL OBLIGATION today to stand up today for all those they profess to represent, ESPECIALLY black voters who were systematically denied their franchise in Ohio this year through a variety of means. People died so that these people could vote, and this bunch of chickenshits is going to throw that in the garbage?

So I'm laying down the gauntlet to the Democratic Party today. You get 40 Senators up there today, and I'll continue to support you. If ANY LESS THAN 40 get up there, I'm done with you. I don't want your e-mails, I don't want your requests for money, and I sure as hell don't want you telling me you represent me. Because you will have shown me that you are at best craven little cowards who have forgotten who you're supposed to represent, and at worst, you're whores owned by the same corporations who own the Republicans. And I will know that elective democracy is dead in this country.

Jon Stewart is now the King of All Media. How drunk with power he must feel today. Nice work, Jon! Keep it up!

CNN said goodbye to pundit Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, and with him likely the "Crossfire" program that has been the granddaddy of high-volume political debate shows on cable television.

CNN will probably fold "Crossfire" into its other programming, perhaps as an occasional segment on the daytime show "Inside Politics," said Jonathan Klein, who was appointed in late November as chief executive of CNN's U.S. network.

Klein on Wednesday told Carlson, one of the four "Crossfire" hosts, that CNN would not be offering him a new contract. Carlson has reportedly been talking with MSNBC about a prime-time opening replacing Deborah Norville.

Carlson did not immediately return a call to his cell phone for comment.

The bow-tied wearing conservative pundit got into a public tussle last fall with comic Jon Stewart, who has been critical of cable political programs that devolve into shoutfests.

"I guess I come down more firmly in the Jon Stewart camp," Klein told The Associated Press.

I wish I could say we've seen the last of the bowtie boy with dead fish for eyes, but alas, he is still going to be appearing on the whoring PBS in a show that ate up half of the excellent Bill Moyers/David Brancaccio-helmed NOW's hour.

Good Lord. I've been nominated for a Koufax Award. This here modest little rantfest hasn't even been in existence for a year, and I've snagged me a Koufax nomination. Sure, the category is "Best Overall Blog by a Non-Professional", which is kind of praisation by faint damns, but I'll take what I can get.

My only question is "non-professional what?" Does this mean there's a public perception that I do this all day sitting around in my jammies at home drinking coffee nonstop and chowing down on Trader Joe's chocolate chip meringue cookies? Or does it mean it's just another vehicle for entertaining the six or seven people who actually read this to hopefully be entertained by my deathly prose without monetary compensation? Not that it matters, I happen to at least for now be fortunate enough to have a full-time job doing work I enjoy for decent pay, which makes me one of maybe 2% of Americans who can say that.

Anyway, who am I to quibble? It's a frickin' KOUFAX AWARD NOMINATION!! It's like playing in the World Series in your rookie year, man! So if you like what you read here, please go over to Wampum (and toss them a few bucks while you're at it, right now they're having to choose between putting gasoline in the car and paying site hosting costs) and vote for us. You can either vote right there in the comments, or e-mail at wampum AT maine DOT rr DOT com. (You'll need to translate this to an e-mail address; I think it's pretty straightforward what you need to do. I just don't want to give their e-mail address to spammers.)

In case you had any doubts, a White House memo has surfaced that all but admits that the Social Security crisis is a sham created by the White House so that they can funnel that nice pie over to their friends in the investment industry (emphases mine):

WASHINGTON - The success of President Bush’s push to remake Social Security depends on convincing the public that the system is “heading for an iceberg,” according to a White House strategy note that makes the case for cutting benefits promised for the future.

Calling the effort “one of the most important conservative undertakings of modern times,” Peter Wehner, the deputy to White House political director Karl Rove, says in the e-mail message that a battle over Social Security is winnable for the first time in six decades and could transform the political landscape.

The White House confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail but did not have an immediate comment.

“We have it within our grasp to move away from dependency on government and toward giving greater power and responsibility to individuals,” said Wehner, the director of White House Strategic Initiatives. He called the Democratic Party the “party of obstruction and opposition. It is the Party of the Past.”

But the administration must “establish an important premise: the current system is heading toward an iceberg,” Wehner’s e-mail said.

There's nothing here about alerting the public to a real crisis, just about the necessity to establish the PERCEPTION that there's a crisis. And nestled right in there is the Republican viewpoint: That Social Security is nothing but a big welfare program that must be eliminated.

This "power and responsibility" meme that they're pushing sounds good, but the flip side of that is "If you're not as good at the game as we are, suckers, you're on your own, and go fuck yourself and die."

That's the Republican way, folks. Is that what YOU wanted?

Hey, George! You know what they say about the road to Hell, don'tcha?

Under the new fund-raising drive, to be coordinated by the White House's USA Freedom Corps, an office that encourages volunteering, Clinton and former President George H.W. Bush will solicit donations by doing interviews and traveling the country. They also will tap into their own networks of contacts to try to pry donations from corporations, foundations and the wealthy.

To help in what he called ''this urgent cause,'' Bush urged Americans to send money instead of other items and restrict their giving to ''reliable charities already providing help to tsunami victims.'' The Freedom Corps Web site -- www.usafreedomcorps.gov -- was providing a ''donate now'' link to five dozen such organizations.

Bush himself plans to make a personal donation but has not done so yet.

You know, I got online on Tuesday the 28th -- just as soon as I saw links as to who was accepting donations -- and donated to Doctors Without Borders. This fucking guy still hasn't given a nickel out of his own pocket nine days later?

(In fairness, Bill Clinton hasn't indicated how much he's planning to donate either, though he too says he's planning to. Stay tuned for updates)

Look, I'm under no illusions that anything is going to declare John Kerry the winner of the Presidential race. This isn't Florida 2000, in which Gore clearly won the popular vote and was robbed by a partisan Secretary of State in that state, a partisan media who followed John Ellis' lead in declaring Bush the winner, and a partisan Supreme Court.

Yes, I believe that there was massive voter fraud nationwide in the form of votes being switched at the polling places, votes tabulated wrong, provisional ballots discarded, disenfranchisement of Democrats in the form of their polling places being stiffed on machines. The mistake the Democratic Party made was in focusing SOLELY on the voting machines, not realizing that the Republicans were going to cover ALL the bases. You gotta hand it to them -- they did a thorough job. They put the final nail in the coffin of any belief I had that the electoral system in any way works, but they did a thorough job.

I hope that at least one Senator stands up with John Conyers tomorrow, NOT to change the result of the election, but to shake people into realizing that unless something is done about the way elections are run in this country, we might as well declare Bush dictator-for-life and stop deluding ourselves that we have anything even remotely resembling fair elections -- and stop kidding the rest of the world that we are some bastion of democracy. I'm frankly hoping that it's Robert Byrd. He has nothing to lose, and for him to come full circle from his KKK affiliations of the 1950's to standing up for the rights of minorities to have their vote counted would be a fitting end to his story in political life.

But here's how arrogant the Republicans have come in their confidence that they can steal elections with impunity -- and get away with it. Case in point: one Kenneth J. Blackwell, Secretary of State of Ohio.

Here, via Raw Story, is the text of a letter he sent to Ohio Republicans, ON SECRETARY OF STATE LETTERHEAD, trying to drum up funds for his gubernatorial run. As if that weren't sleazy enough all by itself, here's a key quote (but do read the whole thing -- the envelope, page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, page 5.

That's why in the late hours of Election Night, I was truly pleased to announce that President Bush had won a critical and clinching victory in Ohio, on the belief that it was statistically impossible for Senator Kerry to recover.

Note that this was before all the votes were even counted! Blackwell BRAGS about this. Of course, since HE ran the statistics, HE was in the position to decide whether it was possible for Kerry to recover.

Meanwhile, this guy is sending letters PAID FOR BY TAXPAYERS, using the stationery of his office as Secretary of State, in a money grab for his gubernatorial campaign.

Kenneth Blackwell is a disgusting, pathetic, corrupt-to-the-bone excuse for a human being. His pride in the way he rigged the system for his Republican masters and is now using his office to launch a political career ought to offend everyone who believes in Democracy.

article, USA Today (emphasis mine):

The son of Mexican immigrants with little formal education, Gonzales had ascended from a childhood home in Houston with no hot water or telephone to the Air Force, Rice University and Harvard Law School. Gonzales' against-all-expectations success impressed Bush.

Bush “likes somebody he sees as having overcome potential disadvantages, because he sees himself as having done that,” says Paul Burka, executive editor of Texas Monthly magazine and a close follower of the president.

Gonzales is scum, but I'll give him his rags to riches story. Bush, however, is simply showing the world how delusional he is. Here's a guy, born to a wealthy and influential family (his grandfather, Prescott Bush, was an international banker, after all, even if he did do business with some unsavory characters such as that German guy named Adolf), who went to the best schools on legacy admissions, lost millions of dollars of his father's friends' money in his many failed business endeavors, and says he's overcome "potential disadvantages"? Like what, George? Being a drunk, cokehead, cocksman wastrel? That's hardly the same.

Gawd. How out of touch can these people get?

I'm gonna go bang my head against the wall a few times now.

By now you've probably seen the flyer being circulated by the so-called "Reverend" Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church, in which he regards the recent Asian tsunami as God's punishment against Sweden for their tolerance of gays.

Turns out that Mr. Phelps has some like-minded friends in that bastion of religious freedom, Saudi Arabia.

From the New York Times, via Factesque:

The view that wanton behavior provoked the quake was the subject of Friday sermons in Saudi Arabia and of other religious commentaries.

"Asia's earthquake, which hit the beaches of prostitution, tourism, immorality and nudity," one commentator said on an Islamist Web site, "is a sign that God is warning mankind from persisting in injustice and immorality before he destroys the ground beneath them."

Walid Tabtabai, a member of the Kuwaiti Parliament, said the earthquake was a message.

"We believe that what occurs in terms of disasters and afflictions is a test for believers and punishment for the unjust," he wrote in a column in the newspaper Al Watan.

Aren't theocracies wonderful? I can't wait till we have one, which at the rate we're going will probably be long around January 21st.

What a nasty, petty, mean-spirited bunch conservatives are. Via Digby, comes this exchange from Rush Limbaugh's radio show:

"CALLER: (Giggle) Well, I was pretty upset and even getting madder the more coverage I watched, and I was thinking, 'Why am I not feeling so charitable, and I'm seeing all these bodies,' and then I see this picture on the Internet that was sent to me, and it was them carrying a body along in Sri Lanka, it said Galle, G-a-l-l-e, Sri Lanka and they had a crowd of people watching and this guy in the middle is standing there looking at the body wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt.

RUSH: I saw that picture.

CALLER: And I thought, it just validated the way I felt and I thought these are the same people that were the cheerleaders on 9/11, and we're going to go rebuild their world for them.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Now, I love President Bush. I respect him. I voted for him, but when I saw him come out and I realized they were asking for more money --

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: -- I got even madder, and I thought, 'I don't think we should be asked to give any more.' "

What the fuck kind of sentiment is this? Are we now so mean-spirited that we demand loyalty oaths to George W. Bush before we'll donate to help people who have lost everything?

We love to crow about how good we Americans are, and how we are so much better than everyone else. And in fairness, most of us are good -- certainly the ones who opened their wallets immediately without wanting to know if the victims were Muslim and who they supported in Bush's war. But there is a nasty streak of bigotry and tribalism that runs from wingnut talk radio right through to the heart of the Republican Party and to the leadership of this country. One kid shows up in a photograph wearing an Osama Bin Laden T-shirt, and it means an entire country is unworthy? Sounds like an excuse to me.

Digby nails it:

Yes, which countries am I allowed to get "madder and madder" about and recoil at the idea of "bailing out" their innocent children, again? It's so hard to remember which ones to openly hate and which ones I have to pretend to give a shit about. (And besides, those Sri Lankens are... well, they're rather dark, aren't they? )

Let's not kid ourselves about the base of the Republican party, the dittoheads, the alleged Christian Right. A vast number of them are primitive tribalists at best and racists at worst. There have always been many Americans who are racists and many of those have always been and remain very political. It is part of our national psyche. They are now fully sewn into the fabric of the Republican party's big tent (as they once were the Democrats') and they wield considerable clout. They have made strides in accepting those African Americans who agree not to discuss race into the fold. (And the leadership have learned how to effectively neuter this entire debate by hoisting the left with our own petard by accusing us of racism whenever we criticize a Republican racial minority.)

But at the heart of their reaction to 9/11, the invasion of iraq, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror in general is a knee jerk racism that says "those people" are our enemy and they must die. Ann Coulter sells millions of books that say it right out loud. Michelle Malkin and Daniel Pipes are both making quite a respectable stir making the case for "muslim" internment. And people are getting all steamed up about illegal immigration again.

It is intense tribalism that fuels the right wing, not ideology. In fact their ideology mostly flows from their tribalism. It fuels their resistence to redistribution of even the smallest amount of wealth (the "wrong" people will be helped) and it fuels their hyper nationalism (those "other" people are our enemies.) They make no distinctions between the "wrong" and the "other", it is anyone who isn't like them.

The reason that the Senate of the United States is about to confirm a man who designed an illegal system of detention and torture against any Muslim or Arab (and others to come, no doubt) is because a fair number of people in this country believe that "they're all alike." Terrorists today, commies yesterday, japs, gooks, wogs, niggers everyday. It is a measure of progress, I suppose, in the fact that this hispanic man is even given the opportunity to make his bones with executions, torture and lifetime detention for public relations purposes. Still, one wonders how long it would take, were he to stray from the party line, for someone to call Rush and say, " I couldn't understand why I disliked him so much..."

There are many cosmopolitan writers and think tank intellectuals on the right who have come up with some elegant ideological arguments that explain all this to each other in salons and greenrooms. But in barrooms and factories and churches in Republican dominated parts of America, the reason is pretty simple. Us against them. And basic human empathy for anyone who isn't a strict member of their tribe is in short supply. Hence, this.

Too bad about this whole globalism thing. These people are going to be very, very angry for eternity. But then they always have been, haven't they? At one time I thought our history of immigration and assimilation would be what kept us on top during this transition. I was wrong. Our original sin of slavery is probably what's going to lead to our downfall. It's infected us much too deeply for us to be able to handle the responsibility of being the world's only superpower. When you get right down to it, it's why a majority of the country supported the invasion of Iraq -- all Arabs are the same --- and that horrible miscalculation is very likely to be our Waterloo.

Guess again, if you think that Bush's plan to put a measly $1000 annually into private accounts will bring you a more secure retirement.

The cuts Bush is proposing are going to hurt...and hurt badly:

The Bush administration has signaled that it will propose changing the formula that sets initial Social Security benefit levels, cutting promised benefits by nearly a third in the coming decades, according to several Republicans close to the White House.

Under the proposal, the first-year benefits for retirees would be calculated using inflation rates rather than the rise in wages over a worker's lifetime. Because wages tend to rise considerably faster than inflation, the new formula would stunt the growth of benefits, slowly at first but more quickly by the middle of the century. The White House hopes that some, if not all, of those benefit cuts would be made up by gains in newly created personal investment accounts that would harness returns on stocks and bonds.

"The White House hopes..." Well, I hope that I wake up tomorrow and I'm 29 years old again, tall, slim, and blonde. Ain't gonna happen. Hope is nothing to build a policy on.

Oh, people MY age won't do too badly. You know, those baby boomers who are like an elephant going through a snake. Under the Bush formula, we'll only take a 9.9% hit. But those of you who are younger are going to be clobbered by the guy you think is going to save your benefits. If you're planning to retire in 2042 (which means you're about 30 years old right now), you'll take a 25.7% cut EACH YEAR over what you'd receive if Social Security remains as it is now. Are YOU confident that the markets will give you a 25.7% return each year? If so, you're living in a dream world.

A former senior administration official who recently discussed Social Security strategy with Bush aides said the change in the indexing formula "is assumed to be a part of any final solution."

"You've got the bitter medicine of changing the indexing, but to go along with that you've got the sweetener of the accounts," the former official said.

Yikes. Isn't it interesting how this former official used the expression the Nazis used for their extermination of Jews to describe what Bush is going to do to Social Security? I'm not sure that's accidental.

Now, what this official is saying is that you're supposed to be lulled into a false sense of security because MAYBE the private accounts will offset ENOUGH of the hit you're going to take that you won't squawk too much.

But as the Center for American Progress notes, "If this system had been in place since Social Security's inception, people today would be retiring with a benefit tied to the living standard of the 1930s, when 40 percent of households lacked indoor plumbing."

I know that most of you who are younger resent that baby boomers are going to "steal" the entire Social Security trust fund, leaving nothing for you. But most baby boomers are under no illusions about Social Security. Most of us have always assumed that it was not going to be there by the time we retire anyway. But more importantly, WE ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. When the Social Security (FICA) tax was raised to provide a "trust fund" for the purpose of handling this elephant going through a snake, the plan was for that money to be there when the baby boomers retired. But because Republican presidents have replaced the trust fund with IOUs in order to fund tax cuts and huge military expenditures (you could call this "investing the trust fund" -- loaning the money to the government at interest), these IOUs need to be paid. Essentially, the government has borrowed this money and will have to pay it back, just the way a bank loans you money to buy a house, and then they expect you to pay it back.

But George W. Bush doesn't want to pay it back, because that might require sacrifice in the form of rescinding the tax cuts he's granted to his wealthy cronies and campaign contributors. But because he's in the unusual position of being a borrower who also runs the bank, he gets to set the rules, and according to his rule, he doesn't have to pay the bank back, so the bank has to cut what it pays to other depositors. Essentially, he's defaulting on a mortgage but has no fear of foreclosure.

All Bush has to do is live up to his obligations, and the system will push this elephant through, and after the baby boomers die off by 2040 at the latest, the system will be just fine WITHOUT CHANGES. Even if he won't live up to his obligations, the system can be secured simply by lifting the cap on earnings subject to Social Security.

The Bush Plan is NOT about "saving Social Security." It's about destroying one of the few government programs that actually works. Republicans have been wanting to get rid of Social Security since the 1930's, and now they have succeeded in using generational warfare and outright lies to gain approval for dismantling the program brick by brick. They're telling you that you can do better in the stock market, but the numbers tell otherwise. The only people who benefit from the Bush plan are the investment companies, who charge account maintenance fees that will cut into the returns you MAY get on your "investments", and people who earn most of their money through investments. Do you think they give you the same information they give their large investors or institutional investors? If you do, guess again. Many investment companies were touting Enron and Worldcom and Global Crossing, even as those companies were imploding from within. Have you forgotten? Are you willing to rely on the kindness of corporate executives and investment managers?

So what's driving this push to divert money into the markets? Here's what:

You see, many baby boomers have invested a ton of money into the markets through our 401(k) plans and IRAs. And when we start tapping those funds, that's going to be a ton of money being pulled out of the markets all at once. And what happens when people start selling stocks? The price goes down. A good chunk of the markets' performance over the last 15 years has been baby boomers making up for lost time by socking away as much as we can afford into retirement accounts. What do you think is going to happen when we start taking that money out?

But if Bush can redirect Social Security funds into the markets, it might help ameliorate the hit that HIS friends will take when stock prices plummet as all that money is taken out of the markets.

Think about it.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall says pretty much the same thing:

After 1980 we started borrowing money big-time to finance our deficits -- in large part because of tax cuts on high-income earners. However you want to slice it, we started spending substantially more than we were taking in in tax revenue.

So where'd we borrow the money?

This is from memory, so I may have the numbers a bit off. But I believe about $4 trillion of that debt was borrowed on the open market -- individual Americans have them in their investment portfolios, or pension funds hold them, or the Chinese, Japanese and the Saudis and others have them in bonds.

But about $3 trillion of those dollars we needed to fund the 1980s and 1990s deficits we managed to borrow closer to home. We borrowed it from the Social Security (and a few other government) trust fund(s).

Almost the entirety of President Bush's Social Security phase-out plan comes down to a simple proposition: finding out how not to pay it back.

Now, admittedly, this is an approach that the president is rather familiar with from his own business career at various failed energy companies. But it is, in so many words, a straight up con -- one of vast scale, and one which virtually no one in the media ever frames in just these terms.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And Lambert at Corrente points out that if the stock market is so great, how come U.S. executives are bailing out of their stock IN THEIR OWN COMPANIES?

The rats with the most to lose leave the ship first, I guess:

U.S. executives sold $41 billion worth of their own companies' stocks in 2004, the second-highest level since 1990, according to Thomson Financial.

Insider sales in 2004 jumped 40 percent over 2003, with the first and fourth quarters seeing the highest three-month sell volumes. Large insider stock sales often precede a drop in stock prices, analysts said.
(via Reuters)

More from the same article:

Insider purchases, too, rose 27 percent to $1.45 billion, Thomson said late Monday. Still, the amount of stocks bought by corporate executives was at its second lowest annual level since 1996.

As a result, the annual sell-buy indicator of insider sentiment -- the ratio of insider sales to purchases -- hit its most bearish reading at 28 in 2004.

Don't you think perhaps those guys know something you don't?

The insensitivity, narcissism, and outright cruelty of George W. Bush know no bounds. Here's what he told the newly-elected incoming Congresspeople yesterday (emphases mine):

I want to welcome you all here; Laura and I are so thrilled you're here. We want to welcome your spouses. I particularly want to say a thanks to your spouse for having supported your run for the Congress or the Senate. Laura and I know how hard it is on a family to be in the political arena. It's the ultimate sacrifice, really: sacrifice your privacy; it's a sacrifice of time with your kids. But you're going to find it's worthwhile -- serving this great country is an unbelievable honor, and both the elected official and the spouse are serving our great country.

So being a politician is the ultimate sacrifice. And here all along I thought that losing life and/or limb in combat is the ultimate sacrifice. I'm sure all those guys with parts of their bodies missing, trying to recover enough at Walter Reed and other medical centers to live some kind of a life will be happy to know that a bunch of guys all set to rake in the lobbyists' dough and perqs in Washington are the ones Bush thinks are REALLY sacrificing.

No wonder he thinks tax cuts for people who already have more money than they know what to do with is appropriate during wartime.

Did YOU vote for this guy?

(via Americablog)

The more I read of what I call the "second tier of bloggers" (which means everyone outside of the Big Kahunas -- you know who they are), the more proud I am to be one of them.

Today I'm quoting from Norwegianity, whom I'm also adding to the blogroll. (Thanks to Middle Earth Journal for this particular find.)

This whole tsunami in a Sammon misquote is a little hard to take. By now I’m sure most who say Egeland called the US stingy honestly believe he said it, but damnit! Sammon and many of the initial sources either knew better and lied, or as journalists should have known better and therefore erred and should correct themselves.

This constant sky-is-falling/the-USA-is-being-disrespected stuff is demeaning and makes our nation look childish. Let’s at least fight over real stuff, and not this made-up foolishness.

And stop fucking with Norwegians. Egeland is a First Worlder who was talking to other First Worlders. He looked us all collectively and spoke his mind, peer to peer. I wish more bureaucrats would do that. This hissy fit from the wingnuts is tantamount to saying that this administration may not be criticized, not even indirectly or by inference. [thought, word or deed?]

Just how thin-skinned have we become? 150,000 people and counting are dead and undies are in a bunch over a possible slight? More manufactured outrage.

Which leads me to ask: just how angry is the right? Why all the constant anger? You have the presidency, you have both houses of Congress, and you own the judiciary everywhere except California. WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM?

Can’t take winning?

Or is it that you don’t like waking up and realizing that what you’ve got isn’t what you voted for.

You could switch sides, you know. Enough pissed conservatives could team with real liberals to throw out the pro-corporate incumbents in the Democratic party and run a decent human being for president in 2008.

All you have to do is stop and take a hard look at just about everything. Does anything make sense to you? How is it you’ve been kicking liberal ass all over the place ever since Reagan, yet everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket?

Wake up to the fact that every lie Kerry told Democrats, Bush told ten of to you. He’s Clinton lite — telling you what you want to hear, then doing whatever while his friends empty the Treasury. He doesn’t care who gets on the court — if he did, he wouldn’t be pushing hacks like Gonzales. He could pass anti-abortion legislation if he wanted, but he doesn’t have the political will. Even after that cockup of an initial occupation, we could be holding down the fort in Iraq just fine but he spent the money wrong and overrode the generals, screwing everything up. He treats our troops and veterans like crap, saying one thing but always doing another, invariably cutting VA funds in the process.

If you trust this man, you’re just not paying attention.

The reason why you keep hearing what fuckers the liberals are is because they’re trying to distract you from their misdeeds. The time has come to set aside politics and look at the facts and figures. What good thing has come from Bush’s presidency?

You don’t have to agree with me about anything else, but if you’re honest, you’ll draw the same conclusion I have. George Bush is an empty suit. Not stupid, but not fully engaged. Blow in his ear and he’ll let you follow him anywhere. He has no work ethic except for gladhanding, and if all it takes to own your vote is a handshake or two, then you’re not working very hard at being an American.

Question authority.

That’s as much a conservative maxim as a liberal one.

Amen, brother.

They voted for it before they voted against it:

Stung by criticism that they were lowering ethical standards, House Republicans on Monday night reversed a rule change that would have allowed a party leader to retain his position even if indicted.

Lawmakers and House officials said Republicans, meeting behind the closed doors of the House chamber, had acted at the request of the House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay, who had been the intended beneficiary of the rule change.

When they rewrote party rules in November, Republicans said they feared that Mr. DeLay could be subjected to a politically motivated indictment as part of a campaign finance investigation in Texas that has resulted in charges against three of his associates. The decision, coupled with other Republican proposals to rewrite the ethics rules, drew fierce criticism from Democrats and watchdogs outside the government, who said the Republican majority was subverting ethics enforcement.

Lawmakers said the party had also abandoned a proposed ethics change that would have effectively eliminated the broad standard that lawmakers not engage in conduct that brings discredit on the House, a provision that has been the basis for many ethics findings against lawmakers.

Representative David Dreier, a California Republican who is chairman of the Rules Committee, said Republicans on Tuesday would present to the full House a proposal that ethics cases be dismissed if the ethics committee, which is divided equally between Democrats and Republicans, is deadlocked. That plan has also drawn opposition from ethics advocates, including Democrats and some Republicans.

Those attending the Republican meeting, which was held on the day before the opening of the 109th Congress on Tuesday, said Republicans unanimously agreed to restore the old rule after Mr. DeLay told them that the move would clear the air and deny Democrats a potent political issue. In the past year, he has been admonished by the ethics panel three times: for his tactics in trying to persuade a colleague to support the Medicare drug bill, for appearing to link political donations to support for legislation and for involving a federal agency in a political matter in Texas.

You know what Republicans call people who do stuff like this, right? In Bush World, changing your mind is a sign of weakness, right? So why is Tom DeLay being so seemingly noble? Sounds to me like he's pretty confident of being acquitted if he's indicted. The only question is how he's going to pull it off.

Americablog answers the question I've been wondering about: What, if any efforts, are being made in the fundamentalist Christian organizations of the right wing to provide aid for tsunami victims? The answer: Pretty goddamn little:

- American Family Association has one small news story up, not even something they themselves wrote, and no appeal for money. The only "action alert" is about the Ten Commandments. I guess AFA is only truly concerned about the American family: http://www.afa.net/

- The Family Research Council has nothing about the Tsunami. Their headline is about "activist judges." http://www.frc.org/

- Traditional Values Coalition has a very small link or two from WorldNetDaily about the Tsunami, but the link is BURIED on their page. No apparent appeal for money for the victims. But lots of news about the homosexual agenda, which apparently is a bigger calamity than 150,000 dead in Asia. http://www.traditionalvalues.org/

- Concerned Women for America, not a thing. Though they do have an essay about how the media has lost is sense of morality. Apparently the CWFA is only concerned about American women. http://www.cwfa.org/main.asp

- Pat Robertson's Web site. Nothing. www.patrobertson.com

- Jerry Falwell's Web site has nothing, even though he did post an updated letter from himself dated December 30, days after the Tsunami hit. http://www.falwell.com/?a=

- National Association of Evangelicals, nothing. http://www.nae.net/

- Focus on the Family to its credit does have a prominent link to give money. I wonder how long that's been up. http://www.family.org/

I guess God was punishing all those heathen for not worshipping George W. Bush and Jeebus, in that order.

Today, World O'Crap introduces us to the Second Coming of The Virgin Ben Shapiro, one Judson Cox.

Maybe that's why the Bergen County Independent News project I was working with never took off: Just Not Enough Hubris.

Today's Hackensack, NJ Record has yet another story from a so-called "journalist" pooh-pooh-ing blogs as something no one reads. No link yet, but here's an excerpt, with comments from Yours Truly:

The survey reveals that blogs, as interesting as they may be to journalists, have yet to capture the imagination -- or the eyeballs -- of the general public.

"I just think it's kind of a waste of time," said Peter Hoytema, the pastor at Midland Park Christian Reformed Church in Ridgewood. "I don't find a whole lot of productive discussion coming out of them."

Yes, and a minister is just your average citizen, right?

...interviews with people in North Jersey confirm that blogs aren't really registering. Even if they know what blogs are, they don't usually read them. And if they do, it's generally the blog of someone they know.

[snip]

So is it all a bunch of hype? A bit, says Jay Rosen, the journalism department chairman at New York University and a blogger himself.

Coming on the heels of Andrew Sullivan's attempt, as put forth in Matt Taibbi's article in New York Press, to "put bloggers in their place", this just tells me that journalists are scared shitless of bloggers, because we don't have corporate masters telling us to regurgitate the Talking Points of the Day issued by Karl Rove. I'm sorry, but a profession which has people like Judith Miller spouting the Gospel According to Ahmad Chalabi in justifying the Iraq War, and which broadcasts the Swift Boat Liars ads over and over again in news reports, thus saving the organization the trouble of actually having to spend money to broadcast their lies and smears, and which has given George W. Bush a free pass every step of the way, has NOTHING to say about so-called "journalistic integrity."

Further proof that the MSM has its collective nose up Bush's ass:

Let the fence-mending begin. According to a Broadcasting & Cable source in Washington, D.C., CBS News president Andrew Heyward, along with Washington bureau chief Janet Leissner, recently met with White House communications director Dan Bartlett, in part to repair chilly relations with the Bush administration.

CBS News’ popularity at the White House—never high to begin with—plunged further in the wake of Dan Rather’s discredited 60 Minutes story on George Bush’s National Guard service.

An incentive for making nice is the impending report from the two-member panel investigating CBS's use of now-infamous documents for the 60 Minutes piece.

Heyward was “working overtime to convince Bartlett that neither CBS News nor Rather had a vendetta against the White House,” our source says, “and from here on out would do everything it could to be fair and balanced.” CBS declined to comment.

Fair and balanced, eh? Interesting how CBS is using the slogan of Fox News to demonstrate how its coverage is going to be from now on. "Fair and Balanced" now means "Give Bush a Journalistic Blowjob Daily". So now we know what we can expect from CBS News from now on.

Liberal media indeed. Perhaps if journalists actually did their jobs instead of blowing the President every day, we wouldn't need bloggers.

California Democratic Rep. Robert Matsui died today. His death has been met by the following statements from the wingnut community. I guess these are part of those good old Christian moral values that conservatives stand for:

Lucianne.com:

"Had no respect for him when he alive and have nothing good to say about him now that he's dead."

"No more standing by Pelosi's side as she spouts her sorry leftist hate crap. Bye."


Freepers:

"Seems as if ol' Bob won't be telling anymore lies."

"Pelosi's one I would like to see follow in his footsteps."

"He was a left-wing Dim and will be replaced by another left-wing Dim."

"Thats the only way you see turnover in the Kalifornia legislatute."

"Matsui was an enemy of conservatives. I'm sad to see anyone die, but we didn't lose a friend here."

"The man was a slug."

"Matsui was an unconvicted felon. I have no respect for him in life or death. The less people of his ilk around the better it is for the rest of us."

"Looks like a Republican pickup out in CA."

Nice. Very Christian of them. (via Oliver Willis)

Curcumin, the yellow pigment in curry spice may be a potential agent to fight against Alzheimer's, according to researchers at the University of California at Irvine.

The new UCLA-Veterans Affairs study involving genetically altered mice suggests that curcumin, the yellow pigment in curry spice, inhibits the accumulation of destructive beta amyloids in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and also breaks up existing plaques.

The research team also determined curcumin is more effective in inhibiting formation of the protein fragments than many other drugs being tested as Alzheimer's treatments.

"Curcumin has been used for thousands of years as a safe anti-inflammatory in a variety of ailments as part of Indian traditional medicine," Gregory Cole, Professor of medicine and neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA said.

Link...

And the media parade of Heroic White People In the Face of Tsunami (unlike all those cowardly wogs (sic)) continues, this time from MSNBC:

U.K. girl saved tourists after raising warning

‘Water started to go funny,’ 10-year-old recalls

LONDON - A 10-year-old British girl saved 100 other tourists from the Asian tsunami having warned them a giant mass of water was on its way after learning about the phenomenon weeks earlier at school, a newspaper reported.

“I was on the beach and the water started to go funny,” Tilly Smith told the Sun at the weekend from Phuket, Thailand.

“There were bubbles and the tide went out all of a sudden. I recognized what was happening and had a feeling there was going to be a tsunami. I told mummy.”

While other holidaymakers stood and stared as the disappearing waters left boats and fish stranded on the sands, Tilly recognized the danger signs because she had done a school project on giant waves caused by underwater earthquakes.

Quick action by Tilly’s mother and Thai hotel staff meant Maikhao beach was quickly cleared, just minutes before a huge wave crashed ashore. The beach was one of the few on the Thai island of Phuket where no one was killed.

Well, yeah, along with the one these people live on:

Knowledge of the ocean and its currents passed down from generation to generation of a group of Thai fishermen known as the Morgan sea gypsies saved an entire village from the Asian tsunami, a newspaper said Saturday.

By the time killer waves crashed over southern Thailand last Sunday the entire 181 population of their fishing village had fled to a temple in the mountains of South Surin Island, English language Thai daily The Nation reported.

"The elders told us that if the water recedes fast it will reappear in the same quantity in which it disappeared," 65-year-old village chief Sarmao Kathalay told the paper.

So while in some places along the southern coast, Thais headed to the beach when the sea drained out of beaches — the first sign of the impending tsunami — to pick up fish left flapping on the sand, the gypsies headed for the hills.

More "White people inconvenienced, others also affected" quasi-journalism from the good U. S. of A.

Second inaugurations tend to be relatively low-key affairs compared with the first go-round, but the most experienced concierge in Washington feels certain this one will be a blowout to rival its predecessor.

"We're not calling it an inauguration," said Jack Nargil, head concierge at the Hay-Adams Hotel, as he gazed across the street at the White House last week. "Because the president's supporters believe he has a mandate, there's going to be, in effect, a coronation."

Link.

Does anyone doubt that the inauguration on January 20th is going to be the most tasteless display of tastelessness ever seen outside a Super Bowl halftime show? The only question is whether Bush is going to come out in a crown and ermine robes, or a military uniform. It all depends on which of his leadership role models he decides he wants to emulate.

Franklin D. Roosevelt held a low-key inaugural for himself during wartime, but not George W. Bush. Why should he deprive himself of anything? He's never had to, why start now?

Ordinarily I defer to Gabriel at ModFab for coverage of the cultural beat; he's does it so much better than I could. But in the interest of cross-posting, here's my somewhat unusual list of the best films of 2004.

via Gilliard:

The primary reason I believe, of course, is because the Bible tells me so. That's good enough for me, because I haven't found the Bible to be wrong about anything else.

But what about the worldly evidence?

The evolutionists insist the dinosaurs lived millions and millions of years ago and became extinct long before man walked the planet.

I don't believe that for a minute. I don't believe there is a shred of scientific evidence to suggest it. I am 100 percent certain man and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time. In fact, I'm not at all sure dinosaurs are even extinct!

Think of all the world's legends about dragons. Look at those images. What were those folks seeing? They were clearly seeing dinosaurs. You can see them etched in cave drawings. You can see them in ancient literature. You can see them described in the Bible. You can see them in virtually every culture in every corner of the world.

Did the human race have a collective common nightmare? Or did these people actually see dragons? I believe they saw dragons – what we now call dinosaurs.

All the delusion that's fit to print.