On health care, my opponent has a history of opposing needed reforms. He voted against the Medicare bill, even though it was supported by the AARP and other seniors groups. He has voted 10 times against medical liability reform, and now his health care proposal calls for bigger, more intrusive government. Eight out of 10 people who get health care under his plan would be placed on a government program.

Sleep is the new sex.
Lovely is the new loud.
Orange is the new black.
Black is the new black.
Fake is the new real.
E-mail is the new database.
70 is the new 50.
Sacramento is the new New York.
Hip-hop is the new jazz.
Purple is the new red.
Red is the new green.
Science is the new religion.
Small is the new big.
The location field is the new command line.
Awake is the new sleep.
Desperate Housewives is the new Sex in the City.
Storage is the new chips.
Cast is the new star.
Gay marriage is the new abortion.
Twelve is the new zero -- UK Telegraph, filed months after I adopted that as my RT blurb for Oceans 12!
Internet pornography is the new crack cocaine
Music is the new black
Obesity is the new tobacco
Fat is the new thin
Java is the new COBOL
Consumption is the new crack
Referrer spam is the new Amway
Analog is the new digital
Ohio is the new Florida
Butt crack is the new cleavage (thanks for telling us, Salon)
Hate is the new love
Clarendon is the new Helvetica
Knitting is the new rock n' roll
The MFA is the new MBA
The American cubicle is the new textile mill
Things that are the new black
MacMini is the new Altair
Boring is the new Charisma
Story is the new movie star
Organic is the new kosher
Iron is the new platinum
Large is the new medium
Islam is the new communism
October is the new June
the Mobile Cap is the new tinfoil hat
The prequel is the new sequel
and
Glam is the new metal.

and, apparently, pith is the new insight.

The problem with Social Security (news - web sites) is that it isn't broken, which is precisely why the President is so eager to destroy it. It is the continued success, rather than failure, of the program that irks him.

As George W. Bush continues to flail at Social Security, even in the face of increased public opposition, you have to wonder: "Why?"

The most successful safety net program in human history is currently sitting on $1.7 trillion in reserve funds and faces a possible shortfall decades from now, which minor corrections to the program could prevent. Yet our President has been running around like Chicken Little telling us the sky is falling.

[snip]

This ideological hostility to progressive taxation and income redistributions is the real issue behind the assault on Social Security, and it deserves to be debated head-on.

Knowing that the program is far too popular to be axed completely, hyper-conservatives hatched this idea of diverting its funds into the stock market. They hate the idea of all that money flowing down the food chain instead of up--lower-income workers get a higher rate of return on their Social Security taxes than those better off.

Social Security-funded private accounts, on the other hand, would not redistribute income; they simply would extend into retirement the existing decades-old pattern of the rich getting richer, the poor doing worse and the middle class eroding.

Let's be blunt: A progressive tax is a good thing for the very reason libertarian and conservative ideologues think it is bad: It redistributes income in a way that ever so slightly makes us more equal and minimally protects the weakest among us.

Anybody who wants a democratic society cannot accept excessively uneven income distribution. As Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed, the rule of the majority must be rooted in a thriving middle class.

The alternative? Class warfare and socioeconomic chaos--exactly what we faced during the Depression when Social Security was introduced to save capitalism.

A former U.S. Marine who participated in capturing ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said the public version of his capture was fabricated.

Ex-Sgt. Nadim Abou Rabeh, of Lebanese descent, was quoted in the Saudi daily al-Medina Wednesday as saying Saddam was actually captured Friday, Dec. 12, 2003, and not the day after, as announced by the U.S. Army.

"I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced," Abou Rabeh said.

"We captured him after fierce resistance during which a Marine of Sudanese origin was killed," he said.

He said Saddam himself fired at them with a gun from the window of a room on the second floor. Then they shouted at him in Arabic: "You have to surrender. ... There is no point in resisting."

"Later on, a military production team fabricated the film of Saddam's capture in a hole, which was in fact a deserted well," Abou Rabeh said.

Dear Senator Reid,

Since the election, most days, I feel determined. I have become more involved, more passionate, more informed. There is no other choice--because to accept the defeat I felt the day John Kerry made his concession speech is to admit more blackness into my life than I can handle.

I don't do hopelessness and depression well. I'm a take-action person. Show me where to aim, and I'll fire. I've been proud of the work I've done since the election and I've been proud of the work you've done since becoming Minority Leader--and there have been some hopeful days.

But then there are bad days. Very bad days, like yesterday, when that Bankruptcy Bill slammed the Senate like a tidal wave, and the whole Democratic Party got swept under. Not Nader, not the media, not anybody but blogger Maryscott O'Conner seemed to have seen it until it was too late.

Senator Reid, to be frank, you must get control of your caucus. There have been three votes in the past four months that have meant a great deal to Democrats in which you got steamrolled. I know you're not going to win every battle--but you need to win one, and you need to do it yesterday.

Right now, to Democratic faithful, the situation feels like an ancient massacre. We've got our backs to the water, Hannibal's hordes are bearing down on us, and we can't even see our battle standards go up until it's too late.

I made my phone calls, I've donated, I've drummed up attention, I sent faxes, I write letters, I recruit members, I start clubs. I'm willing to do whatever you need me to do, but I have to see some progress, however symbolic.

I realize you must be skeptical of the blogsphere and the way some of us hate the Democratic Party every time you all don't vote exactly the way we want you to. But that's really just a small portion of us, as was evident in the way we analyzed the Bankruptcy amendments the other day--when it came to that one Amendment that 19 well-respected Democrats voted against, all of us kind of went 'Huh, maybe it was bad drafting'.

It's not like we can't be reasoned with if the effort is made. I know my Senators have more important things to do than to explain things to me personally, but when you let even freshman senators vote for something like this, Democrats owe the whole nation an explanation.

Some people in the blogsphere think the solution is housecleaning. Usually I think that's ridiculous. I don't want to spend my money defeating Democrats. I'm not a one issue voter. And I don't believe having a Republican in that seat that votes against my interests 90% of the time rather than Ben Nelson's 60% of the time, or whatever it is, is a reasonable trade. But I've changed my mind about primary challenges--I'm ready to start funding them after today.

Today was one of those days when the enormity of what we are up against, and our impotence, was just overwhelming to me. I won't crucify any one Senator for their vote on this issue, and I won't condemn you for failing to block this legislation. I realize that you too are up against a lot.

But please understand, you need to be cracking skulls up there. Channel LBJ--I don't care whose arm you have to twist to the breaking point. Make sure Ken Salazar is stuck with every crappy assignment from here to eternity for the kind of hubris he shows in breaking party ranks over and over again in his first four months in office. Get Leiberman on a shorter chain. Even if you have to pick a fight in order to win it, please do it.

We just can't wait much longer for a victory. We can't wait on the judges. I don't know how much more energy we are going to have under this kind of demoralization.

Senator Reid, please rethink our strategy about filibusters. If the Republicans are going to use the nuclear option, then so be it, let them use it, because if they're going to use it over bankruptcy they're going to use it on the judges too. Let them get it out of the way that much quicker so that at least there isn't even the illusion that we're participants in this national travesty.

Senator Reid, your troops are willing to fight and lose, but we're not able to tolerate defeat at our own hands over and over again.

Sincerely,
Stephanie Dray

he good news for Americans concerned about post-9/11 preparedness is that 58 potential gun buyers were flagged in a nine-month period last year as positive matches on a federal watch list of terrorism suspects. The bad news is that 47 of them were cleared to go ahead anyway and buy assault rifles, ammunition or whatever else was on their firearms shopping list. Federal agents could only watch as the crazy quilt of loopholes that passes for gun control in this country enabled dozens of suspects to stock their personal or group armories.

Welcome to the new world of homeland security, where all the national resolve to be alert is clearly butting into the citizenry's near-almighty right to bear arms.

Warnings about terror suspects' easy access to combat rifles grew after 9/11 when it was disclosed that John Ashcroft, a gun rights zealot who was attorney general at the time, had blocked federal agents from matching gun-purchase records against the growing list of thousands of terror suspects. The privacy rights of innocent gun purchasers were deemed paramount in the national emergency. The policy was theoretically reversed, but federal agents complain that they are still stymied by laws and by officials dedicated to the most extreme agenda of the gun lobby.

The leaders of Times Mirror and Tribune have proven to be mirrors of a general trend in the media world: They serve their stockholders first, Wall St. second and somewhere far down the list comes service to newspaper readerships

[snip]
The deterioration we experienced at Newsday was hardly unique. All across America news organizations have been devoured by massive corporations, and allegiance to stockholders, the drive for higher share prices, and push for larger dividend returns trumps everything that the grunts in the newsrooms consider their missions. Long gone are the days of fast-talking, whiskey-swilling Murray Kempton peers eloquently filling columns with daily dish on government scandals, mobsters and police corruption. The sort of in-your-face challenge that the Fourth Estate once posed for politicians has been replaced by mud-slinging, lies and, where it ought not be, timidity. When I started out in journalism the newsrooms were still full of old guys with blue collar backgrounds who got genuinely indignant when the Governor lied or somebody turned off the heat on a poor person's apartment in mid-January. They cussed and yelled their ways through the day, took an occasional sly snort from a bottle in the bottom drawer of their desk and bit into news stories like packs of wild dogs, never letting go until they'd found and told the truth. If they hadn't been reporters most of those guys would have been cops or firefighters. It was just that way.

Now the blue collar has been fully replaced by white ones in America's newsrooms, everybody has college degrees. The "His Girl Friday" romance of the newshound is gone. All too many journalists seem to mistake scandal mongering for tenacious investigation, and far too many aspire to make themselves the story. When I think back to the old fellows who were retiring when I first arrived at Newsday – guys (almost all of them were guys) who had cop brothers and fathers working union jobs – I suspect most of them would be disgusted by what passes today for journalism. Theirs was not a perfect world --- too white, too male, seen through a haze of cigarette smoke and Scotch – but it was an honest one rooted in mid-20th Century American working class values.

This is terrible for democracy. I have been in 47 states of the USA since 9/11, and I can attest to the horrible impact the deterioration of journalism has had on the national psyche. I have found America a place of great and confused fearfulness, in which cynically placed bits of misinformation (e.g. Cheney's, "If John Kerry had been President during the Cold War we would have had thermonuclear war.") fall on ears that absorb all, without filtration or fact-checking. Leading journalists have tried to defend their mission, pointing to the paucity of accurate, edited coverage found in blogs, internet sites, Fox-TV and talk radio. They argue that good old-fashioned newspaper editing is the key to providing America with credible information, forming the basis for wise voting and enlightened governance. But their claims have been undermined by Jayson Blair's blatant fabrications, Judy Miller's bogus weapons of mass destruction coverage, the media's inaccurate and inappropriate convictions of Wen Ho Lee, Richard Jewell and Steven Hatfill, CBS' failure to smell a con job regarding Bush's Texas Air Guard career and, sadly, so on.

What does it mean when even journalists consider comedian John [sic] -- "This is a fake news show, People!" -- Stewart one of the most reliable sources of "news"?

The bankruptcy bill was written by and for credit card companies, and the industry's political muscle is the reason it seems unstoppable. But the bill also fits into the broader context of what Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale, calls "risk privatization": a steady erosion of the protection the government provides against personal misfortune, even as ordinary families face ever-growing economic insecurity.

The bill would make it much harder for families in distress to write off their debts and make a fresh start. Instead, many debtors would find themselves on an endless treadmill of payments.

The credit card companies say this is needed because people have been abusing the bankruptcy law, borrowing irresponsibly and walking away from debts. The facts say otherwise.

A vast majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States are the result of severe misfortune. One recent study found that more than half of bankruptcies are the result of medical emergencies. The rest are overwhelmingly the result either of job loss or of divorce.

To the extent that there is significant abuse of the system, it's concentrated among the wealthy - including corporate executives found guilty of misleading investors - who can exploit loopholes in the law to protect their wealth, no matter how ill-gotten.

One increasingly popular loophole is the creation of an "asset protection trust," which is worth doing only for the wealthy. Senator Charles Schumer introduced an amendment that would have limited the exemption on such trusts, but apparently it's O.K. to game the system if you're rich: 54 Republicans and 2 Democrats voted against the Schumer amendment.

Other amendments were aimed at protecting families and individuals who have clearly been forced into bankruptcy by events, or who would face extreme hardship in repaying debts. Ted Kennedy introduced an exemption for cases of medical bankruptcy. Russ Feingold introduced an amendment protecting the homes of the elderly. Dick Durbin asked for protection for armed services members and veterans. All were rejected.

None of this should come as a surprise: it's all part of the pattern.

et us now praise Paul Wolfowitz. Let us now take another look at the man who has pursued - longer and more forcefully than almost anyone else - the supposedly utopian notion that people across the Muslim world might actually hunger for freedom.

[snip]

If the trends of the last few months continue, Wolfowitz will be the subject of fascinating biographies decades from now, while many of his smuggest critics will be forgotten. Those biographies will mention not only his intellectual commitment but also his personal commitment, his years spent learning the languages of the places that concerned him, and the thousands of hours spent listening deferentially to the local heroes who led the causes he supported.

To praise Wolfowitz is not triumphalism. The difficulties ahead are obvious. It's simple justice. It's a recognition that amid all the legitimate criticism, this guy has been the subject of a vicious piling-on campaign by people who know less than nothing about what is actually going on in the government, while he, in the core belief that has energized his work, may turn out to be right.

I watched a clip of Sen. Joe Biden on Bill Maher's HBO crapfest. I wonder why he didn't mention meeting me some years ago. C'mon Joe, think...

It's got everything that gets gossip going. It's got sex, it's got national security, how did he get so close to the president? The pseudonym, it's got intrigue, so it's the kind of thing that gets people talking.

Now, GannonGuckert is either lying or telling the truth. If he's lying, his already sinking credibility will sink even further. If he's telling the truth, however, then things get even more interesting with this story as "some years ago" would be at least two years ago, and it's only two years that Gannon has been covering the White House. That would put GannonGuckert and Biden's "meeting" smack dab in the middle of Gannon's known prostitution years.

And if GannonGuckert is suggesting he slept with a senior US Senator (who is one of the top Senators on foreign policy issues) for pay during war time, then all bets are off on this investigation. That would mean we were right to be concerned about the security risk of GannonGuckert getting access to the White House, senior staff and the president. It would mean we were right to be concerned about who GannonGuckert might have slept with as a client to gain and retain access to the White House, and possibly sensitive information. It would mean we were right to ask what connection GannonGuckert has to Senator Thune in South Dakota, to Karl Rove, to Scott McClellan, and more.

If Gannon really wants to go there, then have at it. Because he's starting to make the case for one hell of an FBI investigation.

"The fact that the Americans don't want negotiations to free the hostages is known," Ms. Sgrena said in a telephone interview with Sky TG24 television. "The fact that they do everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the lives of people held hostages, everybody knows that. So I don't see why I should rule out that I could have been the target."

[snip]

The American military said the car carrying Ms. Sgrena and the Italian agents was speeding to the airport as it approached a checkpoint. Soldiers shot into the engine block after trying to warn the driver to stop by "by hand-and-arm signals, flashing white lights, and firing warning shots in front of the car," a statement said.

But Ms. Sgrena refuted that account, telling the Italian television channel La 7, "There was no bright light, no signal." She added that the car was traveling at "regular speed."