Betty Friedan has died at the age of 85.

Conservatives, of course, blame Betty Friedan for ushering in a world in which women were no longer content to spend their days keeping house and waiting for hubby to come home. We've all received this alleged excerpt from a 1950's home economics textbook:

1. Have dinner ready: Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal - on time. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him, and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospects of a good meal are part of the warm welcome needed.

2. Prepare yourself: Take 15 minutes to rest so you will be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be happy and a little more interesting. His boring day may need a lift.

3. Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives, gathering up school books, toys, paper, etc. Then run a dust cloth over the tables. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too.

4. Prepare the children: Take a few minutes to wash the children's hands and faces if they are small, comb their hair, and if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part.

5. Minimize the noise: At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of washer, dryer, dishwasher, or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet. Be happy to see him. Greet him with a warm smile and be glad to see him.

6. Some DON'TS: Don't greet him with problems or complaints. Don't complain if he's late for dinner. Count this as minor compared with what he might have gone through that day.

7. Make him comfortable: Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or suggest he lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soft, soothing and pleasant voice. Allow him to relax and unwind.

8. Listen to him: You may have a dozen things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first.

9. Make the evening his: Never complain if he does not take you out to dinner or to other places of entertainment; instead try to understand his world of strain and pressure and his need to be home and relax.

10. The Goal: Try to make your home a place of peace and order where your husband can relax.

Note how a place where the woman can relax and unwind never comes into play. On balance, that women have choices other than marriage or old maidhood; other than housewifery or being shunned, is a good thing. No, it isn't possible to "have it all" and do everything well, and all choices have consequences. If you take time off to rear children, you may not find the job market open to you later on. If you delay childbearing, you may have infertility problems. But it's still better to have choices than not.

And Betty Friedan was hugely instrumental in allowing us to even have these choices.

By the time I read The Feminine Mystique, it already seemed quaint, because the women's movement was already in full flower. But although much of what the book discussed was already outmoded, its power and its themes remained resonant.

Conservatives would have you think that the housewife of the 1950's was the norm in American society until people like Betty Friedan came along and ruined things for men. The reality, for those with an interest in American social history, is that it was that postwar period which was the anomaly. From the factory and sweatshop workers of the WWI era, to the flappers and even the married women of the 1920's, to the female riveters of the WWII era, women have always sought the choices that came finally to fruition in the 1970's. Feminists have been with us at least since the suffrage and birth control movements of the early 20th century -- and men managed to survive.

If the contemporary women's movement as launched by Betty Friedan in 1963 made mistakes, it was in its focus on the fulfillment ambitions of middle-class white women instead of opening its eyes to the very real struggles that women of color and poor women in rural communities face, as well as in neglecting to realize that men were as oppressed by the system as were women. Perhaps if men hadn't been made the enemy, but instead had been made our allies in fighting the system, we wouldn't see so much hostility to women today, in the form of pharmacists refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, male legislators thinking they have the right to decide what happens to our bodies, and media pundits claiming that women are taking jobs away from men.

For all that we seem to be headed backwards, away from the notion Betty Friedan put forth in 1963 that men and women are created equal, her death reminds us that we still have time to reverse that tide, that we don't need to return to the anomalous era into which I and my peers were born. Women have been fighting this battle in this country for a hundred years....and we will continue to do so.

Remember back in the 80's, when it seemed that every other day, some South American guy was being arrested in some high profile sting, and we were told that each one of them was responsible for 80% of the cocaine coming into the country?

Well, now it's terrorism. Remember when Osama Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11? Then it was Saddam Hussein. Then it was Saddam Hussein providing aid to Osama Bin Laden. Or was it Saddam Hussein providing aid to Hamas, which is now the governing authority in Palestine? Can you keep it all straight? Well, WE can, because we read and we ask questions. But what about your average American, just trying to get the kids dressed and off to school, get to work, get home, cook dinner, help the kids with their homework and then watch CSI: Miama before collapsing in a heap?

Donald Rumsfeld is relying on those Americans, because now the boogeyman is Iran:

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused Iran on Saturday of being the world's leading sponsor of terrorism, a charge that his Iranian counterpart rejected as "ridiculous" and "outrageous."

"The Iranian regime is today the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism," Rumsfeld told an annual security conference in Munich where talk of Iran's nuclear program was at the top of the agenda.

"The world does not want, and must work together to prevent, a nuclear Iran," he said.

[snip]

Although he labeled the Islamic republic of Iran as the main sponsor of terrorism, Rumsfeld said Islamic terrorists had made Iraq the "central front in their war against the civilized world."

Rumsfeld said they were using Iraq as a training and recruiting ground, in the same way as they operated in Afghanistan when the Taliban were in charge.

But he vehemently rejected any suggestion that Iraq had been a catalyst for a global wave of terrorist acts.

"Any argument that Iraq might have been a trigger is inconsistent with the facts," he said, listing a number of terrorist acts that took place even before September 11, 2001.

In addition to the September 11 attacks, which are believed to have been carried out by al Qaeda, Rumsfeld named other attacks which he said Islamic terrorists had masterminded. He mentioned the massacre of schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia and bombings in Britain, Spain, Egypt, Israel and elsewhere.

Rumsfeld said that the world needed to prepare itself for a long fight against Islamic terrorists who he said wanted to set up a global Islamic empire.

"They have designed and distributed a map where national borders are erased and replaced by a global extremist Islamic empire," he said. "As during the Cold War, the struggle ahead promises to be a long war."

Washington and its allies were doing everything possible to ensure that terrorists did not get hold of weapons of mass destruction, which he described as a nightmare scenario.

"The world would change overnight if a handful of terrorists managed to obtain and launch a chemical, biological, or radiological weapon," he said.

Few are denying that a nuclear Iran is Not. A. Good. Thing. However, this Administration has played this "booga-booga!!" card so many times that now that they may have a point, who's going to believe them? And who's going to pay for war with Iran, let alone fight it?

If the world is a more dangerous place, terrorists have easier access to weapons, and Iraq is now the central front for terrorism, it's because the Bush Administration and Donald Rumsfelt have made it so.

No.

Just No.

Just Freaking No.

As an American born in 1955 and therefore a bona fide baby boomer, let me state emphatically that the LAST thing we need is some navel-gazing horseshit book crowing about how we are the greatest generation.

We're not.

Neither was the WWII generation.

Neither is Gen-X.

We're all just schmucks trying to get through this God-forsaken level of reality as best we can.

That is all.

Here where the Bush Administration's "strong leadership" in disaster preparedness as it pertains to bird flu has gotten us so far:

U.S. experts expect to be overwhelmed by bird flu
02 Feb 2006 22:53:15 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - U.S. flu experts are resigned to being overwhelmed by an avian flu pandemic, saying hospitals, schools, businesses and the general public are nowhere near ready to cope.

Money, equipment and staff are lacking and few states have even the most basic plans in place for dealing with an epidemic of any disease, let alone the possibly imminent pandemic of H5N1 avian influenza, they told a meeting on Thursday.

While a federal plan has been out for several weeks, it lacks essential details such as guidance on when hospitals should start to turn away all but the sickest patients and when schools should close, the experts complained.

"There is no way at this time that we can even plan for this epidemic," said Dr. Roger Baxter of the University of California San Francisco and associate director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center.

"We could be easily overwhelmed," Baxter told the meeting organized by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"A lot of our facilities are old, with no isolation facilities," Baxter said.

[snip]

Dr. Trish Perl, president of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and director for infection control at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore said she did a quick estimate of how many masks, for instance, a hospital would need to get through a pandemic outbreak.

A protective face mask is standard equipment for use in caring for patients with respiratory disease such as flu.

A 600-bed hospital would need 1.6 million masks to get through six weeks -- and that is assuming the hospital eases up on rules requiring workers to wear a fresh mask at each encounter with each patient, Perl said.

So what have the wingnuts got their panties in a twist about? Gay marriage, and frothing at the mouth about the Oscar-nominated films.

Wow. More Dems like this, please.

He's got a blog.

He's got a MySpace. (For that matter, so does Howard Dean.)

He's on Friendster.

Of course MySpace and Friendster are idiotic, but they are bees' nests full of young, eligible voters who are ripe for the picking. Smart, smart, smart move, guys.

This is the kind of thing we have to see more of in order to take the Democratic Party back from the Vichy Democrats and the corporate hacks.

It hasn't always been easy being named Jill. Of course, when you're a little kid, you get all the Jack and Jill jokes, which of course escalate once the kids start getting an inkling about sex. And since you yourself still think sex is icky, instead of taking it as a compliment that you're really hot (even if you are a slut), you're just embarrassed.

Then there's the issue of it being a little girly name. I remember being in my teens and wondering what would happen when I got old and had this ridiculous little-girl name. I suspect all the Brandys and Brandis and Heathers and Jennifers and Tiffanys and others who have these preposterously feminine names will have the same problem. Whereas the Gladyses and the Margarets and the few Gertrudes still around will have the world kicked in the ass.

So it hasn't always been easy having this name. Oh, it's not as bad as the person I used to know whose last name was Fox and who named her kid Lacey, or the former San Diego Padres pitcher Randy Ready who named his kid Justin Casey. But still -- at times it's been weird.

Well, it just got weirder, because I have now found out, after playing Marc Maron's new comedy CD, Tickets Still Available, recorded at Seattle's Giggles Comedy Club in December 2004, that I am Marc Maron's inner girl.

If you saw Marc Maron on Conan O'Brien a couple of weeks ago, you know that he believes that inside every straight guy is a little gay man saying "Hello!", and that the straight guy should greet him, have sex with him once, then tell him you'll meet him once a year in the mountains of the Wyoming of your mind, but meanwhile you've got to go do this thing with the wife.

Well, it seems that the Wyoming of Marc Maron's mind has a girl living there too, and in some ways she bears an alarming resemblance to me:

I believe that all men have an inner girl, you know? You just don't want her to come out at the wrong time. I know I have an inner girl. I know she's a bitch...I'm starting to think she has an eating disorder....and her name is Jill. And there's no shame in that. I have no shame about Jill. The only weird thing about Jill is, and it's really not her fault, is that every once in a while the guy who's in my head saying, "You suck, Jew, I'm gonna kick your ass", says, "And I'm gonna fuck Jill." And all I can do is sit there and watch uncomfortably. I mean, what do you do when your inner biker is fucking your inner girl? Do you masturbate? Do you wait it out? I dunno, you know, I feel helpless.

Well, I don't mind sharing mindspace with that little gay man; after all, we can go to movies and then dish about them afterwards over coffee, or we can deconstruct last night's episode of Survivor, and we're pretty much in synch politically. So that wouldn't be so bad. But as a happily married woman, the idea of having to fuck the biker that occupies that mindspace is not exactly an appealing prospect. And I don't think Mr. Brilliant would appreciate it.

So if Marc Maron is reading this, might I ask that you look inside yourself and see if, just maybe, your inner girl is named, oh, I don't know, maybe Paris or Britney, or if the eating disorder is a big deal, how about Mary-Kate?

Because sometimes it's tough enough living inside MY head, let alone yours.

(Note: I kid, of course. Maron's inner girl may have my name, but she isn't me, nor is she based on me. I have met Marc Maron exactly once, at City Bakery in June 2005 -- six months after this CD was recorded. It's just a little disconcerting to find that you're a walking comedy bit. I guess all Jews ARE alike after all.)

Does it bother anyone else that James Frey, a guy no one ever heard of before he wrote a best-selling book in which large portions were fabricated, is being skewered as if he crucified Christ, but George W. Bush, who has killed over 2200 American young people and countless tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in a war based on lies and bankrupted the country in the process, gets a free pass from Americans?

Why doesn't Oprah get BUSH on her show and skewer HIS lies?

Whose lies have damaged the country more? And why are people angrier at Frey?

NJDC has a list of "Ten Things Every American Jew Should Know About John Boehner", but his advocacy for Christianity in government should make EVERYONE who isn't a Christian nervous.

Lost in the news about the hard-on (Boehner) beating the spliff (Blunt) for the House leadership position today is this little tidbit:

House Republicans are taking a mulligan on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting. Stay with RollCall.com for updates.

Even with no more than 435 votes, they still have more votes than eligible voters. And we should rely on Republican Secretaries of State to monitor elections nationwide?

A story has been cooking up in the last 24 hours which would have been explosive if the president's name were "Bill Clinton." Apparently there are a bunch of White House e-mails which should have been archived, but weren't.

Patrick Fitzgerald has issued a letter to Scooter Libby's defense attorneys indicating as such, in response to their request for a barrage of documents which seem to indicate a defense built around assassination of Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson's character than having to do with what their client did or did not do.

The full letter (in PDF format) is here.

In the letter, Fitzgerald reveals, "We advise you that we have learned that not all e-mail of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system," but cautions that "no pertinent evidence has been destroyed."

That the destroyed e-mails may not have been of relevance to Libby's case is immaterial. The question is why they were deleted, when a 1994 court case ruled that all such electronic records are to be kept the same way any federal records are to be kept. This issue came up in April 2000, when the same Republicans who are no doubt going to excuse the Bush Administration for this cover-up of whatever they're covering up, investigated the Clinton White House for what they believed to be a cover-up of up to 250,000 missing e-mails.

Once again, Republicans set these rules for retaining White House e-mails. They are in no position to say now that it doesn't matter. And don't tell me 9/11 changed everything, either. I don't want to hear it. They've used that excuse too many times.

Digby has more.

Bush to nation the day after the SOTU: "Kidding!"

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.
But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that's where the greatest oil supplies are.

The president's State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that "America is addicted to oil" and his call to "break this addiction."

Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."
He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Not exactly, though, it turns out.

"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

Note to Republicans: He didn't mean anything else he said either. Pathological liars never do.

(hat tip: Americablog)

UPDATE: He's laying off energy researchers, too:

The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.

A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports.

But of course the American Idiots(^TMGreen Day) aren't going to read the newspaper, so all they'll know is the lies they heard Captain Cokehead say on television on Tuesday night.

It's not easy being a news junkie these days. In fact, it's downright depressing. Therefore, everyone needs a guilty pleasure. I'm usually fairly picky about what I watch on television, mostly because I already have one glowing screen ruling my life; I don't need another. Most of what I watch is either movies, the Comedy Central fake news shows, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, or Lost, which has enough obscure occult geek factor to qualify as cerebral programming.

But everyone has a show they're ashamed to watch. Some people watch soaps; some people watch those "I Love the Decade" shows on VH1, I watch Survivor, because there's nothing quite like watching an assortment of mostly loathsome recruited actor/models, hot pharmaceutical sales reps, ex-high-school jocks, and Christofascist zombies bond and then backstab each other for $560,000 after taxes.

Mark Burnett is going to be hard-pressed to make Survivor 12: Exile Island as much fun to watch as Survivor: Guatemala was, though snarking about two barely articulate actor/models from the south, a narcissistic returning pharma rep, an ex-quarterback waxing philosophical about doing the Christian thing while backstabbing all the way, a gay Mormon, and a walking Jersey stereotype, is perhaps TOO easy -- like shooting fish in a barrel.

This season, Burnett is giving us a fair number of preposterously high achievers sprinkled in with the usualy bunch of miscreants, which means that we'll either be completely intimidated, or else it'll be even more fun enhancing our self-esteem by making fun of them. Let's meet them, shall we?

The Young Guys Team:


Aras Baskauskas: Based on pre-season scuttlebut, this guy seems to be the designated hottie for this season. I really want to hate this guy, for all that he's a yoga instructor, which of course gives him a good-size bank of cool points right out of the gate. This is mostly because everyone I know is drooling over him already, but also because he says stuff like this:

In a state of flux, I'm learning to be a more loving honest person. battling the demons of competitiveness, and ladder climbing, wanting to be successful, monetarily, but also wanting spiritual growth. And sometime those things don't come hand in hand.

Have you ever watched the Wisdom Channel? It's full of people like this. I think he's going to be this season's New Age equivalent of last season's Gary Hogeboom, a holier-than-thou evangelical Christian ex-NFL-er who obviously justified his own duplicity by saying he was betraying for Jesus. Add to Aras' insufferability factor an unfortunate resemblance to Peter Krause, and it's going to be as if Nate Fisher were on Survivor. I expect him to go far in this game because in this bunch, a yoga instructor qualifies as "colorful".

Austin Carty: Oh, this is just TOO easy. You want to talk Christofascist zombies? This guy went to Liberty University, a.k.a. Jerry Falwell University. All you have to know about Austin is contained here:

In 2003, his first novel, Somewhere Beyond Here, was published. His agent is currently shopping his two subsequent novels, Storm of Fireflies and Grays' Sacrifice. He supplements his income with modeling for print and commercial advertising. He has previously worked in retail, as a waiter and as a bartender.

What they don't tell you is that he's a CHRISTIAN novelist and his first novel was self-published. But I'm reassured to know that Burnett hasn't completely abandoned the archetype of the southern fundie nutjob model/bartender. I was worried there for a minute.

Bobby Mason: Black males have not fared well on Survivor. Usually the black male is edited as lazy (Sean Rector), a useless quitter (Osten Taylor), or a sex criminal (Ted Rogers). Bobby looks like if Burnett edits him that way, he'll kick Burnett's ass from here to sunday. This guy is no slouch -- grew up in south central L.A., went to Amherst, and then to Stanford Law School. I'd like to root for this guy, but he refers to himself as "Bob Dawg". Now, first of all, any guy who puts "Dog" or "Dawg" in his nickname is automatically by definition an asshole. That this guy tends to refer to himself in the third person makes me think of him less as a badass, and more Bob Dole than Bob Dawg.

Nick Stanbury: This is the guy who'll be the focus of all the gay speculation, since he grew up in Riverton, Wyoming, which apparently is the town that Ennis and Alma Del Mar moved to in Brokeback Mountain. All you need to know about Nick is here:

Stanbury is currently working as a waiter while he awaits word on his law school applications

The Older Guys Team:



Bruce Kanegai: Of all the men, this is the guy I want to see go far in the game. He's 58, a high school art teacher, and a fifth-degree karate black belt. My pre-game take is that he's a really nice guy who probably wants to prove himself in the face of taller, more dominant guys (see below). My guess is that he talks a blue streak and is a funny drunk, so when they deliver wine to camp, he'll be the one to watch.

Dan Barry: This guy is a real slouch. He's a former astronaut who builds robots. What I want to know is what the heck is a guy with this resume doing on this particular show?

He has five patents and has had over 50 articles published in scientific journals.

For his work and accomplishments, Barry has received numerous special honors and awards over the years, including the 1971 McMullen Engineering Award, the 1984 Young Investigator Award from the American Association of Electrodiagnostic Medicine, an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from St. Louis University in 1996; the Vladimir Komarov Diploma from Federation Aeronautique Internationale in 1998; an Honorary Life Membership from the United States Tennis Association in 1999, inclusion in the list of 100 Most Notable Princeton Graduate School Alumni of the 20th Century in 2001, and both the Paul J. Corcoran Award from Harvard Medical School and an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Beloit College in 2003.

Survivor contestants are supposed to be people you make fun of, not people who make you want to crawl back into bed because you've achieved so little by comparison! Dan is either going to be Tom Westman and dominate his way through the game, or else and Terry Dietz (see below) are going to knock each other out of the game early.

Shane Powers: So....do you hate this guy just looking at his photo (third from left)? Do you hate him just because of his porn actor stage name? Take your pick. He's eminently hatable. Here's what he does for a living:

In 1999, Powers and two business partners established a boutique specialty marketing company with the goal of effectively branding products. On the side, Powers makes time to coach his son's football team. Previous employment included work as a club promoter and restaurant manager.

Uh.....M'kay.

Bruce, Dan, and Terry are going to clean this guy's clock. Early bootee.

Terry Dietz: Somehow I think this guy still has the Bush/Cheney sticker on his car. Just a hunch. He's an airline pilot and ex-Navy guy. I expect him to be bossy, opinionated, and he will butt heads with Shane very early on. He and Dan will either bond or kill each other, whichever comes first. I don't know what's going on with the Lauren Hutton teeth, though.

The Young Women's Team:

Courtney Marit: Courtney is actually the most interesting young woman we've had on Survivor in a long time. Not an aspiring anything, she's a circus arts performance artist. Perhaps a tad long in the tooth at 31 to carry off the whole dreads/adorable boho thing, but she's quirky, different, and I hope she's the last young woman standing.

Danielle DiLorenzo: Burnett isn't going to give us two under-the-radar winners named Danni in a row, is he? God, I hope not. This is the nightmare love child of Danni Boatwright AND Stephenie LaGrossa -- an athlete and pharma rep (the only qualification for which seems to be that you be young, female, and hot). Expect new heights of loathsomeness.

Misty Giles: You want to feel like putting a bullet in your own head? Then Misty is your girl. Yes, we can snark about her ridiculous name, but you know how the last refuge of snarking about girls who used to be teen beauty queens is to make fun of them because they aren't rocket scientists? Well, this one IS a rocket scientist. I kid you not. However, she also sounds like she's a bitch, so we can hate away safely:

Being a female and being physically attractive and keeping up with myself has been somewhat of an issue from time to time. In college it was definitely difficult.

My heart bleeds. I will cry every night for her. Please, God, boot this bitch early.

Sally Schumann: Is it just me, or does she look more like a 35-year-old soccer mom with delusions of girlishness than a 28-year-old social worker? Bonus points for her chosen career, but now she's a waitress and bartender? Can you spell "ASPIRING MODEL"? Sally is the "Female Contestant Most Likely To Be A Recent Emergee From the Closet", because of this oddly-worded tossaway in her CBS bio:

Schumann recently went through a divorce and is currently dating her best friend.

The Older Women's Team


Needless to say, my other two favorites are on this team.

Cirie Fields: I just LOVE this dame. Pre-show interviews show her to be the most unaffected and charismatic of all the women. She's a Cancer woman, an O.R. nurse, and she seems to charm over just about everyone. Even Jeff Probst is wowed:

Well, Cirie seems to have...and you kind of hit on it...that quality that you can't manufacture which is true likeability. You just like her and you actually would probably get rid of somebody else just cause you like Cirie. Whereas so many times in this game you're getting rid of somebody because they're too likeable, meaning, they might win this game. But there's not a true, soulful, I just like you and what you represent. I think people want Cirie to succeed. I think the audience is really going to pull for her.

Ruth Marie Milliman: A graduate of the Stephenie LaGrossa School of Badly Plucked Eyebrows. I'm sorry, but I can't get past the eyebrows. And what the eyebrows don't do, the braids do. At 48, braids are just too cutesy, even in Panama. She's a former beauty queen, former model, former flight attendant, and former narc. I kid you not. A narc. That's all I need to know about Ruth Marie.

Melinda Hyder: Has someone cast her in "The Tammy Faye Bakker Story" yet? I can't imagine that this aspiring "singer" is real happy about being on the "older women's team". I have nightmares of Wanda Shirk with real showbiz aspirations, and an unwillingness to break her fake nails. If there's a granola bar in camp, she brought it in. Mark my words.

Tina Scheer: My heart belongs to Cirie, but my head belongs to Tina Scheer. Tina was supposed to be on last season, but her 16-year-old son was killed in a car accident not long before she was supposed to leave. I have a friend who just lost a young daughter, and I simply can't imagine the grief to the nth degree that the tragic loss of a child creates -- and this was Scheer's only child. Is there anyone who's NOT going to root for Tina to go far in the game? I only wonder if emotionally she'll be up to it so soon after this kind of loss.


The fun starts at 8 PM tonight on CBS. Let the snark begin!

If more conservatives were like John Cole, instead of mindless grinning bulldogs resolutely goosestepping behing George Bush because they can't face admitting that they were wrong, we would be much better off.

Cole has no love lost for Cindy Sheehan, but even he knows that arresting someone for wearing a T-shirt is completely antithetical to the U.S. Constitution, as well as making a mockery of claims to be spreading freedom:

It was one thing when I thought she was arrested for unfurling a banner in the Capitol or some sort of civil disobedience. But arrested for wearing a t-shirt? WTF? What the hell is going on? Someone fill me in on why an anti-war t-shirt is a criminal offense.

Read the comments as well; there are a variety of opinions, though it appears that Sheehan did nothing illegal:

...the United States Capitol Police Board issued a regulation that interprets “demonstration activity” to include: parading, picketing, speechmaking, holding vigils, sit-ins, or other expressive conduct that convey[s] a message supporting or opposing a point of view or has the intent, effect or propensity to attract a crowd of onlookers, but does not include merely wearing Tee shirts, buttons or other similar articles of apparel that convey a message.”

Meanwhile, this from his comments indicates the kind of dumbass mindset we're up against:

Remember, that by stopping her from wearing that tee-shirt they’re protecting your right to blog, watch Joss Wheadon movies, drink Johhny Walker blue, etc.

So let me see if I understand....by stopping free expression, they're protecting free expression? Someone please explain this logic to me.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald on the same topic is must reading as well. An excerpt, which in no way exempts you from reading the whole thing:

This is nothing more than a naked attempt to stifle dissent and to create a criticism-free bubble around George Bush. Presidents routinely use all sorts of propagandistic imagery at the State of the Union to decorate their speeches with an aura of regal patriotism. We always see weeping widows and military heroes and symbolic guests of all sorts who are used as props and visuals to bolster the President's message both emotionally and psychologically. The State of the Union speech is hardly free of visual messages and propaganda of that sort; quite the contrary.

But we apparently now have a country where the only ideas allowed to be expressed in our Nation's Capitol while the President is speaking are ones which glorify the Government and its Leader and where dissenting views are prohibited and will subject someone to arrest. Message cleansing of that sort belongs at a political rally in North Korea, not in Washington, DC.

There have been stories here and there of the Secret Service and other federal government agencies exercising the police power of the state for no purpose other than to stifle dissent. Virtually every appearance of George Bush is meticulously and vigilantly staged to ensure that he is surrounded only by agreement and adoration and almost never dissent of any kind.

This is plainly unhealthy and disgustingly contrary to every defining core American value. Our leaders aren't entitled to reverence and worship and aren't supposed to want it. Criticism, dissent and divergence of opinion are things which the founders did everything possible to foster, and the idea that someone is dragged out of a speech by the President for silently and peacefully wearing an anti-war t-shirt is disgraceful and embarrassing.

And these attacks on dissent are particularly ironic given that they occurred in the midst of a speech by a President who loves to lecture the world on the virtues of liberty and who holds himself out as the Chief Crusader for freedom and democracy.

Pam:

As expected, Dear Leader leaned heavily on the use of Terror Unlimited^TM. He mentioned terror, terrorism, or terrorists 21 times in that speech. My favorite section of the night, delivered in his best bogus bumf*ck hick accent:

This terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with al-Qaeda, we want to know about it because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.

There you have it -- the neatly-wrapped-and-tied-with-a-bow justification for his domestic spying program. I could hear the Freepi from afar, giving a standing ovation for this bullsh*t.

Those of you who are liveblogging fans (and if you are one of them please e-mail me and tell me why on earth why) should also read Pam's minute-by-minute here.

Drifty:

I'm sorely tempted to heap up the adjectives, but why bother? This was warmed over turkey dinner. From 2003.

We can disagree...as long as you capitulate with everything I say.

I want to compromise...as long it's only you who gives anything up.

We can debate...but you are forbidden from bringing up the inconvenient fact of my five years of lies, incompetence and serial reckless fuckuppery.

I want to keep this civil...as long as my racist, Christopathic Party gets to continue to march unmolested under Karl Rove's banner and keep calling you cowards and traitors for political advantage.

Ignore everything we have said and done and not done for the last twenty years -- and in the last twenty minutes -- and bend over.

HoDee:

Remember this? "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Those are George Bush's famous 16 words from his 2003 State of the Union address, delivered less than two months before he sent troops into war in Iraq.

They were false. Three years later Americans are still demanding answers on the manipulation of intelligence by an administration eager to start a war.

Americans have a lot of questions that went unanswered tonight. When George Bush delivered his State of the Union address, he had a big megaphone and the world's attention. He had the opportunity to regain some degree of credibility with the American people -- more than half of whom disapprove of his performance as president. But he failed to answer the real questions ordinary Americans have about the state of our union:

Read on, McDuff...

=Sigh= I wish I knew how to quit him....

Cindy Sheehan on what really happened:

I had just sat down and I was warm from climbing 3 flights of stairs back up from the bathroom so I unzipped my jacket. I turned to the right to take my left arm out, when the same officer saw my shirt and yelled; "Protester." He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs. I said something like "I'm going, do you have to be so rough?" By the way, his name is Mike Weight.

The officer ran with me to the elevators yelling at everyone to move out of the way. When we got to the elevators, he cuffed me and took me outside to await a squad car. On the way out, someone behind me said, "That's Cindy Sheehan." At which point the officer who arrested me said: "Take these steps slowly." I said, "You didn't care about being careful when you were dragging me up the other steps." He said, "That's because you were protesting." Wow, I get hauled out of the People's House because I was, "Protesting."

I was never told that I couldn't wear that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things...I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later. I was immediately, and roughly (I have the bruises and muscle spasms to prove it) hauled off and arrested for "unlawful conduct."

After I had my personal items inventoried and my fingers printed, a nice Sgt. came in and looked at my shirt and said, "2245, huh? I just got back from there."

I told him that my son died there.

More as I find 'em.

UPDATE:

Of course, thre's The Rude Pundit:

The only thing significant in the entire evening was the treatment of two mothers who lost children in the Iraq War. Bush recognized the parents and widow of Sergeant Dan Clay, killed in Fallujah last month (didn't we secure Fallujah by leveling it?), who stood to applause and cheers from the slavering politicians. Meanwhile, Cindy Sheehan was arrested and led out of the gallery for revealing a t-shirt that read, "2245 Dead. How many more?" She didn't even get to hear Bush promise to kill more soldiers like Dan and Casey, as well as more Iraqi civilians, in order to honor them. He may as well have dug up their corpses and made them dance, dance, grotesquely, horribly, in celebration.

I hope you all watched Keith Olbermann's systematic evisceration of Bill O'Reilly tonight. If not, I'll post the link as soon as it's up on the inevitable Crooks and Liars.

You want to know what Keith is talking about regarding CNN?

Here ya go:

During CNN's live coverage preceding President Bush's January 31 State of the Union address, co-host Paula Zahn claimed "a lot of people out there" are saying that "if you vote for a Democrat, that basically you want to be bombed." Zahn also purported to identify a "perception" that Democrats are "reactive, not proactive, that they have no agenda of their own, and ... that basically the only thing they're good at is blasting the president."

[snip]

But security is still going to be a huge issue in this country, and whether you like it or not, you've got a lot of people out there saying, if you're Republican, we're going to keep the country safe, you know, if you vote for a Democrat, that basically you want to be bombed.

And they want to know why no one takes CNN seriously anymore?

UPDATE: Here's the Crooks and Liars link to Olbermann's O'Reilly smackdown.

In case you missed it:

9:13: starts sotu by mentioning Coretta Scott King and hoping for a reunion with her husband at the Rainbow Bridge. Sam Seder: Too bad he named a Supreme Court Justice who's going to reverse most of the gains MLK made.

9:14: Calls for civil tone in debate. OK, Republicans, you go first.

9:16: Invokes 9/11 and mentions terrorism.

9:17: Mentions the fight against terror

9:17: Third mention of the word "freedom"

9:18: Mentions purple ink on Iraqi fingers

9:19: Mentions that half of people live in Democratic nations. Does not mention that the U.S. is no longer one of them.

9:20: Says terrorists are trying to break our will. Could not see if the hula jaw was working.

9:21: Gotta get 'em there so they won't come here.

9:21. Workin' the jaw.

9:22: We will never surrender to evil. Translation: We will be at war forever, and I can do anything I want while we're at war.

9:22: That jaw is really working.

9:22: Lies that we have killed or captured many terrorist leaders.

9:22: Says we have a clear plan for victory in Iraq. Says we are continuing "weconstruction efforts." Does not mention whether it's wabbit season in Fallujah.

9:23: Mentions Iraqis showing their courage. Does not say it's because they might get blown up on their way to work.

9:23. Says work in Iraq is difficult because enemy is brutal. Does n ot say it's because he doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

9:24: Says he's confident in Iraqi victory. Says we are winning. Does not mention "truthiness." The morons present give him a standing ovation. Says Iraqi forces are increasingly taking the lead. Tell that to Bob Woodruff, asshole.

9:25: Closeup of jaw working. He stops when he realizes it's a closeup.

9:25: Brands anything that disagrees with him as defeatism. Works the jaw.

9:26: Says those in public office have a duty to speak with candor. As of when, Georgie?

9:27: Smirks.

9:27: Invokes the sacrifices of the soldiers. Says they know what it's like to fight house to house....to see a comrade killed. That's more than he knows.

9:28: Invokes Dan Clay, who was killed in Fallujah last week. Dan's father Bud is present. Applause. (Snarky trivia note: "Bud Clay" is the name of Vincent Gallo's character in The Brown Bunny, which Roger Ebert regards as the worst movie ever made. In the film, Gallo receives a blowjob from Chloe Sevigny.)

9:29: Mentions terror. Says we support democratic reform across the Middle East. Does not mention that he favors dictatorship here.

9:31: Mentions Hamas. Take two drinks. Says Hamas must recognize Israel. Huge ovation.

9:31: Lauds "first steps to reform" among his buddies in Saudi Arabia.

9:32: Mentions "small clerical elite" holding Iran hostage. Does not mention the small clerical elite which holds our government hostile.

9:32: Says we will not allow the Iranian regime to obtain nuclear weapons. Speaking directly to citizens of Iran, he says we respect their rights to choose their own future, as long as they choose a free and democratic Iran.

9:33: Mentions AIDS again. Does not mention the $15 billion he promised last time that he didn't deliver on.

9:35: Gets belligerent, claims that other presidents have done the same warrantless searches he has. Says that if you are getting calls from Al Qaeda, he wants to know about it "because we will not wait to be hit again." Presumably if you are getting calls from Cindy Sheehan, he will want to know about it too.

9:38: Implies that warrantless spying is going to go on indefinitely.

9:38: Says our economy is healthy, talks about creating 4.6 million new jobs. Does not mention how many jobs were lost and what those jobs pay compared to the lost jobs.

9:39: Implies that everyone who lost a job to India is a bigot.

9:39: Says this economy could not function without immigrants. Republicans applaud politely, confused.

9:41: Asks for tax cuts to be made permanent. Yes, creating an even larger deficit is the way back to prosperity. Says this year he will cut programs that are performing poorly. (Translation: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Veterans' benefits)

9:42: Jesus H. Christ...he just asked for the line item veto. Under what rock in the Rose Garden did he find that one?

9:43: Whoa. Designated Family Shithead joke. Says that two of his father's favorite people are approaching retirement age -- himself and Bill Clinton. Makes dire remarks about Social Security; Republicans erupt in enthusiastic applause. I wonder how watching these guys go nuts over Social Security privatization is going to play in Peoria. Gets even more hysterical as he continues talking. His bold plan: Create a commission to study the problem. Oy.

9:47: Here comes his health care plan. Make wider use of electronic records to control costs. Calls for health savings accounts "so that people can buy insurance with the same benefits that big corporations get." (How is that going to happen?) Calls for tort reform this year. He spends 1-1/2 minutes on health care, which means he hasn't got a frickin' clue.

9:47: Announces that we are addicted to oil. Announces a 22% increase in energy research, invest in coal-fired plants, wind power, and nuclear energy. Talks about hydrogen and hybrid cars. Wants more research into ethanol. Sounds like Archer-Daniels-Midland got hold of him. Calls for reducing oil imports by 75% by 2025. This is all well and good, but how is he going to do this and keep his contributors in the energy industry happy? Or are they going to get all this government investment?

9:52: Says we're going to keep our edge in education. Announces American competitive initiative, including giving American children "a firm grounding in math and science." Does not say whether this includes the study of so-called "intelligent design." Supercomputing is a "promising technology"? Does the name "Cray" mean anything to him?

9:54. Calls for children to opt for more math and science curricula and institute rigorous standards. Does not say whether this includes intelligent design. Dobson must be having a coronary.

9:55: Talks about the U.S. as a compassionate nation. Touts drop in welfare cases, but does not mention the people tossed off the rolls. Says the number of teenaged pregnancies has dropped over 12 years. Gives credit to commitment to "a life of personal responsiblity" and abstinence education. Does not mention that abortions have INCREASED during his term over the number of abortions during the Clinton years.

9:57: The Alito welcome: Talks about judges who won't legislate from the bench. Gives thanks to Sandra Day O'Connor for her service and for retiring, thus allowing him to name Strip Search Sammy the Stem Cell Alito to the court.

9:58: Calls for a ban on human cloning, including human/animal hybrids. This is ostensibly aimed at Rick Santorum's attempt to locate a cross between a woman and a collie, allowing him to have man-on-dog sex while still not committing bestiality.

9:59: Tepidly says he supports ethics standards strengthening. This is met with equally tepid applause.

10:00: Encourages adults to get involved in the lives of children, including an initiative led by Pickles, who looks drugged. His speech is getting really slurred. Funny...when Hillary Clinton used to talk about this, it was called "It takes a village to raise a child" and everyone laughed at it.

10:01: It's been about 45 minutes. He's starting to head into Clinton territory, with none of the Clinton substances.

10:02: Calls for reinstatement of the Ryan White Act to provide for better access to AIDS drugs. This is met with very tepid applause from Republicans, who want the wages of sin to be death. Talks obliquely about prevention, which may be translated as "keep your legs closed, bitch!"

10:04: He's starting to sound like Bluto, exhorting the troops to a really futile and stupid gesture.

10:04: It's over. Thank God. Brian Williams is already fellating him on the air, Timmeh belabors the obvious by noting the divide in Congress. These guys think he has little chance of getting any of this through. Andrea Mitchell says there was nothing conciliatory about this speech and his military vision is "We can't retreat" and nothing more. David Gregory comes along. He notes the mix of conciliation and confrontation. Wonders if it's too far into the Bush presidency for him to get the parties to come together. Williams says Bush is frustrated with what he sees as a large part of the population that doesn't agree with his message, that this is a nation at war.

Timmeh says that he should then ask for sacrifice from Americans. Notes that he was flanked by the Congressional leadership that Bush says was informed about the eavesdropping. Timmeh says it's going to go to the Supreme Court, and that what the Court says about this eavesdropping will determine the Bush legacy. Of course, with Sammy Alito on the Court, we all know how they will decide.

OK, I've had quite enough of this.

MSNBC just reported that Cindy Sheehan has been arrested for unfurling an anti-war banner from the gallery of the Capitol, where she had been given a pass by Rep. Lynne Woolsey.

Any bets on how long it takes before he talks about spreading freedom around the world, after jailing a dissident only moments before his speech?

Rant 'n' rave about the State of the Union Address in the comments. I'm working on my blog template and listening to The Majority Report, so I'll liveblog whatever of this crap they actually play.

UPDATE: Turns out Cindy Sheehan did NOT unfurl a banner, but was wearing an anti-war T-shirt. She was not asked to leave, she was not asked to cover up the shirt, she was arrested. Nice way to introduce the idea of spreading democracy. Either that or they hired Carson Kressley to enforce tasteful attire. If that's the case, then what was with Elizabeth Dole's suit?

Since I started to ride this particular donkey last weekend, let's follow through with the latest installment of Nick Kristof's series on improving American health, shall we?

Nothing much to get hot under the collar about today:

First, a quiz: What "vegetable" do American infants and toddlers eat most?

Weep, for it's the French fry. A major study conducted by Gerber found that up to one-third of young children don't eat any vegetable daily, but that the French fry is the single most common one they do consume. And among children age 19 months to 24 months, 20 percent eat French fries at least once a day.

This is truly appalling. First of all, it's appalling that there are parents in this country who think that french fries qualify as a vegetable. It's also appalling that so few kids will actually eat vegetables. I'd be interested in hearing from parents who have dealt with this particular adventure, because I have no first-hand experience. I do have a theory, though, based on the experiences of a co-worker.

It seems to me that most children get their first taste of vegetables via some variation of Gerber strained baby food. I'm skeptical as to how much this stuff tastes like the real thing, and I wonder if when the kids DO see the real thing after being fed this slop, they respond in the standard kid fashion to things unfamiliar.

The aforementioned co-worker makes her own strained vegetables by cooking real vegetables and then pureeing them in a food processor. This is no supermom; she works a 32-hour week with an hour drive each way. But her kids have absolutely no qualms about eating real vegetables, because they're used to how they taste.

Back to Kristof:

Ban soda, potato chips and other unhealthy snacks from American schools, and discourage them in the workplace. It's unforgivable that our schools help to send children on the road to diabetes. Obesity kills far more Americans than heroin does.

I still think Kristof is painting "obesity' with too broad a brush, but his point is well-taken anyway. Schools should not be purveying the kind of crap they do as food. The film Super Size Me had an excellent segment on school lunches and what's offered, and showed that children who went to a school in which lunches were prepared on-site and were well-balanced, without unnecessary fat and sugar and white flour, had less behavior problems than their pizza-and-Ding-Dong-eating peers.

Sell cigarettes only in pharmacies and raise cigarette taxes. Smoking still kills 440,000 Americans a year, including 50,000 nonsmokers. One study found that raising the federal excise tax on cigarettes by 75 cents a pack would generate $13.1 billion in additional revenue per year and cut youth smoking by 13 percent and adult smoking by 3 percent, saving 1.2 million lives. Let's do it.

I'm there, dude.

Tax junk foods. Some 19 states already impose taxes on particular junk foods, like soda, and a nickel-a-can tax on soft drinks would generate $7 billion in revenues. In particular, we should tax high-fructose corn syrup, which is used as a sweetener in a vast array of products and is a major culprit in the fattening of America.

Alas, this is where some well-meaning but misguided people on my side of the political fence are likely to scream bloody murder, branding this a regressive tax on the poor, who have better access to junk food than they do to healthier choices. I would prefer to see some serious restrictions on the use of high-fructose corn syrup, which is metabolized differently from sucrose and has been linked to high levels of triglycerides. However, high-fructose corn syrup is cheap, so the big Frankenfood companies prefer to use it instead of sugar. I wouldn't look for a Republican government to demand that the food industry use a more expensive sweetener.

Promote jogging and biking. Since we pay for all the consequences of inactivity (like those heart bypasses), we should encourage exercise. We should build more bicycle paths and turn more streets over to bikers, skaters and pedestrians — starting with Sixth Avenue in Manhattan.

Encourage exercise breaks. Governor Huckabee gives state employees a 30-minute daily "exercise break" that is modeled on the smoking breaks that smokers take. It's a good idea.

I love the idea of more bike paths. I work 9 miles from my home. In theory, I could ride a bike to work in the nice weather, if a) showers were available where I work; and b) I wouldn't be taking my life in my hands bicycling on the main roads I drive on to get to work.

As for exercise breaks and in-company gyms and such -- I wouldn't use them. I used to work for a company that had a very elaborate in-house gym, with fluffy towels and showers and toiletries and gym shorts and T-shirts provided, and a trainer to work up a program for you. And I never went, because I was working 12-14 hours a day in this place, and it was pretty obviously designed for the already fit and fabulous. I work out at home by myself and I'm much happier that way.

Distribute fruits and veggies to certain low-income people, as Maine does in FarmShare, a potent antipoverty program.

Fabulous idea.

Expand P.E. It's ridiculous that schools have been cutting back on P.E. when students need more of it. Likewise, kids should be encouraged to walk to school. When my eldest son attended a Japanese elementary school in Tokyo, the school required him to walk or bike to school beginning in the first grade.

As someone who hated P.E. in school, I don't know how I feel about this. The problem with school physical education classes is that they force kids to do things they hate, and expose them to ridicule for things they can't do. When I was in school, I was ridiculed for my inability to do pull-ups or climb a rope. I was ridiculed for my fear of gymnastics equipment. I was ridiculed for my lack of ability to hit a ball. I hated, hated, hated gym class. Now if I'd been able to do something like lap swimming at the Y, or go ice skating, or something else to fill the phys. ed requirement so that I didn't have to feel "Can't win....don't try" -- perhaps I would have adopted a fitness regimen much earlier on.

As for walking to school, I'm all for that. In my neighborhood, I see parents driving down one block and up the next one to take their kids to school. Put the baby in a stroller, put a leash on the dog, and everyone could get a walk in when your kids go to school.

I understand that parents fear their kids being snatched by predators right off the street, and that's why the kids are chauffeured the 1/4 mile to school. Much of this fear is fed by television, and it doesn't explain why a 16-year-old high school kid still needs a ride or a bus when he lives four blocks from the school.

Most of Kristof's suggestions are good ones, but they don't address some fundamental problems in our culture. One of those problems is that people, especially parents, are just stretched too thin. I covered this in my earlier blog on this issue. At a time when jobs that pay enough to support a family are becoming more scarce, and workers are afraid to take sick days or vacation days for fear of being deemed expendable, and more people are cobbling together an income working multiple jobs, something's got to give -- and nutrition and exercise are often what's deemed jettisonable.

There's nothing I can say to add to this.

Thus proving that no one is more of a true believer than a convert, repentant Clintonistas James Carville and Paul Begala have penned a book full of DLC garbage, which they are pimping all over the place.

Charles Pierce, who is almost as mandatory reading as James Wolcott, demolishes this intrepid duo in a piece in The American Prospect:

These are two guys with permanent seats at the Beltway Cool Kids table, but they can publish an entire chapter -- and cite my friend Eric Alterman in doing so -- on how conservatives "work the refs."

This is in a book in which Tucker Carlson is "a good guy." And Gary Bauer is "a good guy."

And Tim Russert is "indefatigable" in his pursuit of Republican miscreants. And Mark Halprin of The Note is "one of the smartest people we know in the media."

And Don Imus impresses Bill Clinton with "his grasp of the issues and his uncanny ability to sum up a situation or a person with a single, cutting phrase." This example is cited as a measure of how Bill Clinton brilliantly used the media in "a populist way," and as a cautionary tale for Democrats who "don't want to do farm radio or be in the local paper."

Glorioski, Don Imus. Populist media. I mean, there's triangulation and there's triangulation, and then there's Pythagoras on crystal meth.

WaPo:

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) charged yesterday that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales misled the Senate during his confirmation hearing a year ago when he appeared to try to avoid answering a question about whether the president could authorize warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens.

In a letter to the attorney general yesterday, Feingold demanded to know why Gonzales dismissed the senator's question about warrantless eavesdropping as a "hypothetical situation" during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2005. At the hearing, Feingold asked Gonzales where the president's authority ends and whether Gonzales believed the president could, for example, act in contravention of existing criminal laws and spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant.

Gonzales said that it was impossible to answer such a hypothetical question but that it was "not the policy or the agenda of this president" to authorize actions that conflict with existing law. He added that he would hope to alert Congress if the president ever chose to authorize warrantless surveillance, according to a transcript of the hearing.

In fact, the president did secretly authorize the National Security Agency to begin warrantless monitoring of calls and e-mails between the United States and other nations soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The program, publicly revealed in media reports last month, was unknown to Feingold and his staff at the time Feingold questioned Gonzales, according to a staff member. Feingold's aides developed the 2005 questions based on privacy advocates' concerns about broad interpretations of executive power.

Uh....this is pretty cut and dried, folks. Unless Gonzales can show some pretty compelling evidence that he was not aware of the warrantless surveillance, this is a pretty clear cut case of lying under oath. And it was Republicans who decided during the last presidency that ANY kind of lying under oath warranted serious punishment. So their inevitable claims of "no harm done" are going to ring hollow here.

Not that I expect any Democrat other than Feingold to have the stones to follow up....

This post at Kos by a recent returnee from Iraq makes a compelling case for the ambush that injured ABC news anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Douglas Vogt being the result of insurgent spies working within the Iraqi army that the U.S. is supposedly training:

Bob Woodruff was set up.
by tricky dick
Tue Jan 31, 2006 at 12:11:19 AM PDT
As some of you know, I recently returned from Iraq. This Bob Woodruff story has been bothering me. Something about it stinks.

I have a theory about what likely happened. I think it's worse than we know.

Update - I suspect that Bob Woodruff was set up by insurgent spies working within the Iraqi Army, and that the US Military was unable to protect him. I want to be clear, this is no conspiracy theory. I am in no way suggesting that Bob Woodruff was working on behalf of the US government, as some are suggesting in the comments. I have the utmost respect for Bob Woodruff and do not question his journalistic integrity. I wish him a speedy recovery.

tricky dick's diary :: ::
The biggest problem with Iraq is that the Iraqi Army (IA) is a complete joke. This is why the US Military is stuck there for the next decade, guaranteed. The GOP will get clobbered in the mid-terms if they can't figure out a way to convince the gullible Amercan public that things are improving. That means some artificial troop reductions and a carefully orchestrated PR campaign... along with a significant amount of praying. We know the US is involved in negotiations with various insurgent groups, hoping to cut a deal with them. In short, the Bush Asministration is terrified of losing the mid-terms and will do anything necessary to turn the tide with regards to the domestic political situation. They are desperate.

Tonight is the State of the Union Address. I believe that Woodruff was meant to be embedded with an IA unit in order to give the impression that the IA is making "good progress" in "standing up" so that the US can "stand down". Of course it's all a con game. I believe Bob Woodruff fell victim to an ill conceived attempt at propaganda.

First of all, I should tell you that while in Iraq, I was stationed at an IA training base in Diyala Province. I saw the IA train everyday. What first grabbed my eye about this story was that Woodruff was riding in an armored vehicle which was supposed to belong to the IA. The problem is that the IA doesn't have any armor. They drive around in Toyota pickup trucks. They are white with brown stripes and usually have M-60's (or a Russian equivalent) mounted on the back. They have zero tactical vehicles. I can't imagine they have aquired them in the last 90 days.

So where the hell did they get the armor?

My guess is that some IA unit was selected for a crash course in "how to drive a 113" or whatever in the hope of giving ABC News the impression that the IA was indeed becoming mechanized, which is an absolutely vital step towards them becoming effective. In short, this would have been very irregular and conspicuous activity for the IA to be engaged in. Again, the IA NEVER TRAIN IN OR OPERATE ARMORED VEHICLES!!!

Second, the IA is completely compromised by the insurgency. Once insurgents within Woodruff's embedded unit saw what was going on, it would have been all too easy for them to get the word out and set up an ambush. It certainly would have been in their interest to do so, they well understand the information war that is going on. They are probably aware that the US Government is actively engaged in PSYOPS against the US Public. They would have desperately wanted to kill Woodruff even as the US Military hoped to show "progress in Iraq".

Now look, I know I am speculating. But I don't think you people know how unlikely this attack was to be random. The area Woodruff was in is not that bad. It's not as if every single convoy gets nailed every time out. In 11 months, my vehicle was never directly targeted. The odds that the insurgents would happen to hit that particular convoy in that particular area is remote. The odds that they would hit Woodruff's vehicle is also a long shot. And they must have hit it hard. They inflicted serious injury on personel who were riding in a well protected vehicle. Naturally the Army wouldn't send Wooodruff out in a Toyota, they sent him out in a vehicle that was a hard target.

You see, most of the IED attacks in Iraq are ineffective. They usually wouldn't kill an armored vehicle. They are becoming more and more lethal, to be sure. But it is actually unusual, in my experience, to come across one that is potentially this destructive. This, however, was a complex attack. It was an (especially effective) IED attack followed by small arms fire. That, contrary to what you might think, simply does not happen every day. I don't believe that this is a coincidence.

For Woodruff to be out on patrol with an armored IA unit (which is something I have NEVER heard of) the day before the SOTU address, and then for him to be nailed by a devastating complex-IED attack... it stinks to high heaven.

This isn't tinfoil hat stuff, nor is it vague mumblings about some kind of Administration setup. If true, what it points to is a serious infiltration of the Iraqi army by the insurgency -- with Woodruff and Vogt being made an example of just who's running the show.

Chris Matthews' lust for George W. Bush is COMPLETELY out of control:

Yes, it's that bad. After his on-the-air gay-bashing, his creepy stereotyping of Latinos, his incredibly offensive comparisons of peaceful Americans to Osama bin Laden, and his ever-growing right-wing bias, MSNBC's Chris Matthews has gone off the deep end.

Crooks and Liars has the video. On tonight's "Hardball," Matthews discusses US Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's wife, and how she'll likely be featured during the State of the Union:

MATTHEWS: ...won't they say something up beat and (bucking up)... isn't she a great woman, didn't she stand up-and then they'll put the camera right on Ted Kennedy and show how he was the guy that molested her basically-that's the way they'll play it...

This is journalism? Making light of the sexual abuse of women on national TV? And accusing a sitting US Senator of the offense, to boot (and no suprise it was a Democratic Senator).

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Kennedy men, women, William Kennedy Smith Mary Jo Kopechne.

Now that those irrelevancies are out of the way, will someone please explain to me how even the most blowhardy bombast directed at Martha-Ann BombBomb's husband is some how equivalent to sexually molesting HER?

Every time a progressive says anything against a Republican, it's hate speech. But in the last few days, we've seen Ann Coulter call for someone to put rat poison in Justice Stevens' coffee and call it a "joke", we've seen a Republican fundraiser which crowed until the mention was taken off the RNC's web site that it would feature a Jesse Jackson pinata in a fun re-creation of the good old days of lynching, and now Chris Matthews is calling the Judicial interrogation process a sexual molestation of the nominee's wife, and that's perfectly OK.

I'm going to go stick an icepick in my forehead now.

Remember that guy? At the time this photo was taken, he was Lance Cpl. Blake Miller, age 21, and the photo became an iconic image from the early, heady days of the Iraq war.

Here he is today:



Only now he's suffering from PTSD:

The photograph hit the world on Nov. 10, 2004: a close-cropped shot of a U.S. Marine in Iraq, his face smeared with blood and dirt, a cigarette dangling from his lips, smoke curling across weary eyes.
It was an instant icon, with Dan Rather calling it "the best war photograph in recent years." About 100 newspapers ran the photo, dubbing the anonymous warrior the "Marlboro Man."

The man in the photograph is James Blake Miller, now 21, and he is an icon, although in ways Rather probably never imagined.

He's quieter now -- easier to anger. He turns to fight at the sound of a backfire, can't look at fireworks without thinking of fire raining down on a city. He has trouble sleeping, and when he does, his fingers twitch on invisible triggers.

The diagnosis: post-traumatic stress disorder.

[snip]

When Miller returned to America, he brought back a big duffel bag packed with numerous letters and gifts from those who had seen his photo. It was only later that he discovered he'd brought home some of the war, too.
None of the Marines talked much about the strain that war puts on one's emotions, Miller said. The "wizards" -- military psychologists -- gave the returning troops a briefing on the subject, but nobody paid much attention. Even guys who were taking antidepressants to help them sleep didn't think much about the long-term consequences.

"What the hell are those people going to do once they get out? They ride it out until they get an honorable discharge, and then they're never diagnosed with anything," Miller said. "How the hell are you going to do anything for them after that? And that's how so many of these guys are ending up on the damn streets."

Miller dismissed the early signs, too. When he and his buddies reacted to a truck backfire by dropping into a combat stance and raising imaginary rifles, well, that was to be expected. And when his wife, Jessica -- the childhood sweetheart whom Miller had married in June -- told him he was tightening his arm around her neck in the night, that was strange, but he figured it would pass. So would the nightmares he began to have about Iraq, things that had happened, things that hadn't.

Then one day, while visiting his wife at her college dorm in Pikeville, Miller looked out the window and clearly saw the body of an Iraqi sprawled out on the sidewalk. He turned away.

"I said, 'Look, honey, I just got to get out of here.' I couldn't even tell her at the time what had happened," he said. "(I thought), 'Well, that's it. That's my little spaz I'm supposed to have that the psychiatrists were talking about ... I'm glad I got it out of the way."

But he hadn't. Jessica, a psychology student, tried to help with a visualization technique. But when he looked inside himself, Miller found a kind of demonic door guarded by a twisted figure in a black cloak. Under the cloak's hood, he spotted the snarling face of the teufelhund, a Marine Corps icon -- the devil dog.

"So I come out again, without closing the door," he said. "After all this happened, my nightmares started getting a lot f -- ing worse."

Finally, Miller went to a military psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Miller thought that meant he could not be deployed. But in early September, he joined a group of Marines headed to police New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

"I really didn't want to go. ... There was a possibility we would be shooting people," he said. "We could be going into another (urban warfare) environment just like Iraq, except this would actually be U.S. citizens.

"Here we go, Fallujah 2, right here in the states."

Not long after they arrived, as Hurricane Rita bore down on them, the Marines were packed into the amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima to wait out the storm offshore. And one day, as Miller headed for the smoke deck with a Marlboro, a passing sailor made a whistling sound just like a rocket-propelled grenade.

"I don't remember grabbing him. I don't remember putting him against the bulkhead. I don't remember getting him down on the floor. I don't remember getting on top of him. I don't remember doing any of that s -- ," Miller said. "That was like the last straw."

On Nov. 10, 2005 -- the Marine Corps' 230th birthday and one year to the day after the Marlboro Man picture appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Miller was honorably discharged after a medical review. His military career was over.

Needless to say, the New York Post, which used the earlier photo as part of its rah-rah war dick-waving, has no use for Lance Cpl. Miller anymore.

Amanda makes a very good point about why the Bush Administration thinks that seizing the wives of insurgents as a tactic to get them to surrender is perfectly OK:

While I’m sure it’s all thrilling in neocon dreams to have romantic plots where one’s enemy is defeated because you exploit his foolish love for a mere woman, in real life once you open up the door to treating women’s bodies as strategic weapons against the enemy, you’re opening yourself up to moving onto the next level of war atrocities.

Of course, this is the administration that is about to appoint Strip Search Sammy, who argued that women should be required to tell their husbands about getting an abortion. In the BushCo worldview, women aren’t people with minds of our own that are responsible for ourselves. We’re just extensions of men, available to be seized as property in order to punish them.

Mr. Brilliant has many wonderful traits, not the least of which is his demented, snarky sense of humor. Another of his wonderful traits is that he appreciates women who are smart and funny and who can make him laugh. This makes him different from most representatives of his sex, apparently, who seem to feel that a woman should be simply an audience; a receptacle for their own witticisms instead of a witty person in her own right:

Hundreds of men and women in their twenties were questioned. Asked if they found a sense of humour to be attractive in women, most men said yes. But when they were asked if they would want to be with a woman who cracked jokes herself, the answer was a resounding no.

"When forced to choose between humour production and humour appreciation in potential partners, women valued humour production, whereas men valued receptivity to their own humour," said Dr Martin.

More than half the men who took part in the survey revealed that a witty woman was not what they were looking for in a partner. Dr Martin said the findings suggested that men see themselves as the ones who should be delivering the lines and feel threatened by humorous women.

The revelations came as no shock to some of Britain's funniest females. Meera Syal, who co-wrote and starred in the BBC comedy show Goodness Gracious Me, said: "The idea that men are more interested in having an audience rather than sharing banter doesn't really surprise me.

"Women see men with a sense of humour as dangerous and sexy, while men see it as threatening. Basically, what it comes down to is that humour is a mark of intelligence. Many men don't really want to be the recipient of a cutting remark in public that will make them look small or stupid."

Good Lord, are men really that insecure? Another reason to be glad that I am middle aged and are fortunate enough to live with the kind of guy who, when asked at various times who he finds sexy, has answered people like Linda Ellerbee and Emma Thompson. Oh sure, he appreciates a bikini-clad babe as much as any red-blooded male, but he knows that if you're going to live with someone for two decades, it's much easier when that person can make you laugh.

Krugman channels the on-book-leave Frank Rich today, slamming the irresponsibility of media whores like Deborah Howell and Katie Couric who insist on repeating the FALSE meme that Jack Abramoff gave to both parties:

How does one report the facts," asked Rob Corddry on "The Daily Show," "when the facts themselves are biased?" He explained to Jon Stewart, who played straight man, that "facts in Iraq have an anti-Bush agenda," and therefore can't be reported.

Mr. Corddry's parody of journalists who believe they must be "balanced" even when the truth isn't balanced continues, alas, to ring true. The most recent example is the peculiar determination of some news organizations to cast the scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff as "bipartisan."

Let's review who Mr. Abramoff is and what he did.

Here's how a 2004 Washington Post article described Mr. Abramoff's background: "Abramoff's conservative-movement credentials date back more than two decades to his days as a national leader of the College Republicans." In the 1990's, reports the article, he found his "niche" as a lobbyist "with entree to the conservatives who were taking control of Congress. He enjoys a close bond with [Tom] DeLay."

Mr. Abramoff hit the jackpot after Republicans took control of the White House as well as Congress. He persuaded several Indian tribes with gambling interests that they needed to pay vast sums for his services and those of Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay aide. From the same Washington Post article: "Under Abramoff's guidance, the four tribes ... have also become major political donors. They have loosened their traditional ties to the Democratic Party, giving Republicans two-thirds of the $2.9 million they have donated to federal candidates since 2001, records show."

So Mr. Abramoff is a movement conservative whose lobbying career was based on his connections with other movement conservatives. His big coup was persuading gullible Indian tribes to hire him as an adviser; his advice was to give less money to Democrats and more to Republicans. There's nothing bipartisan about this tale, which is all about the use and abuse of Republican connections.

Yet over the past few weeks a number of journalists, ranging from The Washington Post's ombudsman to the "Today" show's Katie Couric, have declared that Mr. Abramoff gave money to both parties. In each case the journalists or their news organization, when challenged, grudgingly conceded that Mr. Abramoff himself hasn't given a penny to Democrats. But in each case they claimed that this is only a technical point, because Mr. Abramoff's clients — those Indian tribes — gave money to Democrats as well as Republicans, money the news organizations say he "directed" to Democrats.

But the tribes were already giving money to Democrats before Mr. Abramoff entered the picture; he persuaded them to reduce those Democratic donations, while giving much more money to Republicans. A study commissioned by The American Prospect shows that the tribes' donations to Democrats fell by 9 percent after they hired Mr. Abramoff, while their contributions to Republicans more than doubled. So in any normal sense of the word "directed," Mr. Abramoff directed funds away from Democrats, not toward them.

True, some Democrats who received tribal donations before Mr. Abramoff's entrance continued to receive donations after his arrival. How, exactly, does this implicate them in Mr. Abramoff's machinations? Bear in mind that no Democrat has been indicted or is rumored to be facing indictment in the Abramoff scandal, nor has any Democrat been credibly accused of doing Mr. Abramoff questionable favors.

[snip]

...the reluctance of some journalists to report facts that, in this case, happen to have an anti-Republican agenda is a serious matter. It's not a stretch to say that these journalists are acting as enablers for the rampant corruption that has emerged in Washington over the last decade

It's interesting that the so-called journalists who are repeating this meme are perfectly willing to either be known as blatant shills for Republican corruption, or else too stupid to understand the difference between legal campaign contributions and illegal ones -- and too lazy to explain said difference to their audiences.

It was an ominous development when we found out that people were getting their news from The Daily Show -- not because Jon Stewart's program is a bad program, or even misinformative, but because even with Stewart's disclaimer that TDS is a fake news show, people still believe it's real. It's an even more ominous development that the terminology of fake journalism -- "fact-esque", "truthiness" and "biased facts" -- have become the Holy Trinity of mainstream news reporting.

We already know about how the Bush Administration let Osama Bin Laden get away in Tora Bora. But today we're finding out that in December 2001, OBL's right-hand man, Abdallah Tabarak, was captured, held at Guantanamo Bay for three years, then released:

For more than a decade, Osama bin Laden had few soldiers more devoted than Abdallah Tabarak. A former Moroccan transit worker, Tabarak served as a bodyguard for the al Qaeda leader, worked on his farm in Sudan and helped run a gemstone smuggling racket in Afghanistan, court records here show.

During the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, when al Qaeda leaders were pinned down by U.S. forces, Tabarak sacrificed himself to engineer their escape. He headed toward the Pakistani border while making calls on Osama bin Laden's satellite phone as bin Laden and the others fled in the other direction.

Tabarak was captured and taken to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was classified as such a high-value prisoner that the Pentagon repeatedly denied requests by the International Committee of the Red Cross to see him. Then, after spending almost three years at the base, he was suddenly released.

Today, the al Qaeda loyalist known locally as the "emir" of Guantanamo walks the streets of his old neighborhood near Casablanca, more or less a free man. In a decision that neither the Pentagon nor Moroccan officials will explain publicly, Tabarak was transferred to Morocco in August 2004 and released from police custody four months later.

Tabarak's odyssey from Afghanistan to Guantanamo and back to his native land illustrates the grit and at times fanatical determination of one bin Laden recruit. Yet his story also shows how little is known publicly about al Qaeda figures who were captured after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Major gaps remain in his account, and terrorism experts and intelligence officials continue to debate whether he was a member of al Qaeda's inner circle or its rank and file.

His case also highlights mysteries of U.S. priorities in deciding who to keep and who to let go. As the Pentagon gears up to hold its first military tribunals at Guantanamo after four years of preparations, it has released a prisoner it called a key operative. At the same time, it retains under heavy guard men whose background and significance are never discussed.

[snip]

A review of Moroccan court documents, including records of his interrogations by Moroccan investigators, shows the U.S. military had good reason to consider Tabarak a valuable catch. In addition to his firsthand knowledge of how bin Laden survived Tora Bora, he had worked for the al Qaeda leader since 1989 and was often at his side as he built the terrorist network from bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan.

According to the documents, details of which other foreign intelligence officials confirmed, Tabarak served as a jack-of-all-trades for members of the inner circle. For several years, he received his orders and a regular salary from Saeed Masri, an al Qaeda financier, military training camp leader and relative of bin Laden.

We invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, toppled a leader who had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and then we allow the so-called mastermind behind the attacks to get away and release his right-hand man?

What do Al Qaeda leaders know about this Administration, or what is their relationship with the Bushies, that real Al Qaeda are treated so cavalierly while completely unrelated people are held indefinitely?

(An aside: Is anyone actually planning to watch the movie about Flight 93 that's running tonight on A&E? Just the radio spots are making me cringe. Why on earth would anyone want to watch a speculative re-creation of the last minutes of the flight as evening entertainment?)

John Aravosis makes a pretty good case against the way the filibuster against Strip Search Sammy the Stem Cell Alito is going.

I haven't beaten the filibuster drum here all that much because the words of Oscar Wilde keep coming to mind: "There are two tragedies in life: One is not getting what you want. The other is getting it."

I agree with John that a well-organized filibuster which communicates to the American people the danger of this nominee, and gets them on board, is an effective technique. This particular effort, about which even those Democrats who have agreed to aren't enthusiastic (I'm talking to you, Sen. Obama), is going to fail, and it is going to reinforce the idea of the Democrats as an ineffective party.

I also agree that John Kerry's sudden enthusiasm for the netroots is less a function of a true belief in the danger of a Supreme Court nominee who believes that a president is a king, and more a function of trying to get a database of names for his next presidential run. Kerry can talk about a filibuster all he wants, he's a day late and a dollar short, and as I've said before, if he'd done his fucking job as a candidate, and NOT allowed the Swiftboat liars to smear him without a response, and NOT tried to look like the blue collar tough guy he isn't, and if he hadn't tried to finesse every goddamn issue until even I didn't know where the hell he stood on anything, we wouldn't even have to talk about a filibuster. So if Kerry thinks he can undo that damage now and I'll slap a Kerry sticker on my car in 2008, he'd better guess again.

Sam Alito, or someone like him, was a foregone conclusion when John Kerry took his $14 million of leftover campaign money and left Ohio, while his running mate was still telling supporters that the ticket would not give up until every vote was counted.

George W. Bush is never going to name a consensus nominee, and Capitol Hill Republicans aren't going to make him. He may have a 36% approval rating, but he he thinks he's the King of America, and he's going to continue to behave like one until he either leaves the White House in 2008 or cancels the election. If the Alito filibuster should by some miracle be successful, then we'll get Janice Rogers Brown, and then there's NO chance of a filibuster, because the Mighty Wurlitzer is already warmed up and ready to brand the Democrats as the party of racists and misogynists.

The time for hue and cry was November 2004.

John's bottom line, and I concur:

But, you need to recognize that those are not the only two options available to us. There's a third. Destroy the Senate Democrats who did nothing to launch a REAL campaign to convince the American people that Alito must be defeated. Destroy the traditional non-profit advocacy groups who took our millions of dollars and did NOTHING to launch a real campaign to win the public to our side. And go after the rich donors who continue to enable these failed Democratic politicians and these failed advocacy groups like some addict who only needs one more fix, then promises he'll get better. If we do not go after them, if we do not force them to change or get out of the way, the same problem, the same failure, the same ineffectiveness will continue to plague our party and our movement, with no change in sight.

We have a choice. We have the ability to make change in our party. We have the power to make the Democrats stand up and fight like real Americans for real principles in a way that shows how fierce and tough and committed we can be.

I'm not convinced that we have the time or the ability to do this before the Bush unholy combination of fascism and royalism comes to pass and we no longer have choices because we are At War In Perpetuity. But if you aren't as much of a pessimist as I am, and if you believe that we will continue to have elections that aren't completely rigged, the fact of the matter is that the Old Guard of the Democratic Party must go. This means John Kerry and Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein and every pussy-ass Democrat who is content to nibble table scraps from the corporate table as long as it means re-election must be dumped from office as quickly as possible, replaced by candidates who fight for Americans, not corporations. We want elected representatives who can clearly articulate why progressive values are the values Americans want, and who can remind them that the things they take for granted as emblematic of the good life in this country were all progressive initiatives -- public education, clean water, clean air, public transportation, Social Security, Medicare, Head Start, voting rights -- all progressive triumphs.

Lyndon Baines Johnson was a Texas Democrat who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 even though he knew it meant losing the South BECAUSE IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO FOR AMERICA. When was the last time you saw a Democratic presidential candidate with that kind of courage? I'll tell you when: It was early 2004, and the candidate was named Howard Dean, and the campaigns of John Kerry and Dick Gephardt got together and ran negative ads in Iowa that worked. Then John Kerry left his testicles in Des Moines and now he thinks he can go through the motions of filibustering Alito and it makes everything OK.

It doesn't.

I don't oppose the filibuster with the vehemence that John does. I think that doing SOMETHING, even if ineffective, may be necessary at this point, not to keep the netroots supporting this old guard of political hacks, but to make SOME kind of stand against this spoiled brat of a president who's used to getting his own way. And if by some miracle the filibuster is effective, then this party has to get its ass in gear immediately and educate the American public about what the Unitary Executive theory is and why it's so dangerous to everything this country stands for.

I just don't have a whole lot of faith that this bunch can do it.