That's Rep. Barney Frank, who made a persuasive appeal on Charlie Rose's show last night for a promoting a liberal, populist agenda in '08. In Frank's talk about wage stagnation, it was pretty easy to make a connection between that & the scapegoating that fuels the immigration debate, although Rose didn't pick up on it. Just as well, probably. Scapegoating is the most reliable diversionary strategy in the reactionary playbook.

Why did Democrats win in the 2006 congressional elections? Partly the war, and partly because the Republicans stressed the economy, in their words a very healthy and robust, growing economy. But reality is that 95% of the population has had no growth in real income over the last 6 years. When people feel they are not receiving their fair share of a steadily growing economy, and not just that but losing their investments, their pensions, and their health care, they start to ask where is all that growth going?

Frank also hit on the need for unionization:

The greatest growth in jobs has been and will be in services, occupations that are not generally protected by unions. They should be unionized and can be because they cannot be outsourced; nobody in Mumbai can make the hotel beds in Peoria. That’s another big difference between the parties, Democrats support unions and Republicans try to destroy them.

He means all the lower tier "dirty" jobs that are largely done by immigrants, legal or not. Republicans have not been able to explain just exactly who will be cleaning nursing home bathrooms if a substantial portion of the labor force disappears, or why unionizing these occupations would be a bad thing if they expect native-born Americans to be doing that work.

The video isn't up yet at Charlie Rose website. Democratic presidential candidates should be listening to Frank. He's hardly a radical leftist. He's endorsed Hillary.

Labels: 2008 election, Barney Frank, immigration, income inequality

"What? No propeller guy?"

We really ARE repeating the so-called Gilded Age:

A small, historic cruise ship with an imperfect security record was listing dangerously after it struck ice in Antarctic waters today, with 154 passengers and crew members evacuated in a flotilla of lifeboats and inflatable boats, the cruise operator and coast guards said.

Late into the day, the small red and white ship - named the Explorer but known affectionately as "the little red ship" - was listing dangerously to starboard in steely gray waters below a low sky. The vessel - on an expedition to trace the doomed route of the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton - sent out a distress signal in the middle of the night (5:24 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time) after it began to take in water through "a fist-sized hole," said Dan Brown, a spokesman for G.A.P. Adventures, the Toronto-based tour operator that owns and operates the ship. He said the "running assumption" is that it hit an iceberg. Water began to trickle into a cabin and eventually flooded the engine room, causing the ship to lose power.

The accident occurred well north of the Antarctic Circle in an island chain that is part of the Antarctic peninsula, which juts close to South America and has seen sharp warming of temperatures in recent years.

As the satellite distress signal was being picked up by coast guard stations in Britain; Norfolk, Va.; and Ushuaia, Argentina, the ship's 100 passengers - 14 of them American, 24 British, 17 Dutch, 12 Canadian and a smattering of other nationalities- were awakened and told to don warm clothes and life preservers, said Mark Clark, a spokesman for Britain's Maritime and Coastguard Agency, which was one of the first authorities to receive the distress signal. They clambered down ladders on the ship's side to board lifeboats.

Clark said they were taken aboard a small research vessel, the National Geographic Endeavour, that was nearby, before they were transferred to a Norwegian cruise liner, the Nordnorge. But Brown said open lifeboats bobbed in the frigid waters for four hours before the Nordnorge could help them.

You KNOW what these poor folks were thinking about, right? Now aren't you glad they have lifeboat drills on cruise ships? And modern radios? And satellite distress signals instead of bottle rockets? Still...it seems that the basic methodology of handling a ship in distress has changed very little.

Glad everyone is OK.

If you think that making cell phone calls will keep the government from sweeping up your call data, guess again:

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

Such requests run counter to the Justice Department's internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas. The requests and orders are sealed at the government's request, so it is difficult to know how often the orders are issued or denied.

The issue is taking on greater relevance as wireless carriers are racing to offer sleek services that allow cellphone users to know with the touch of a button where their friends or families are. The companies are hoping to recoup investments they have made to meet a federal mandate to provide enhanced 911 (E911) location tracking. Sprint Nextel, for instance, boasts that its "loopt" service even sends an alert when a friend is near, "putting an end to missed connections in the mall, at the movies or around town."

With Verizon's Chaperone service, parents can set up a "geofence" around, say, a few city blocks and receive an automatic text message if their child, holding the cellphone, travels outside that area.

"Most people don't realize it, but they're carrying a tracking device in their pocket," said Kevin Bankston of the privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Cellphones can reveal very precise information about your location, and yet legal protections are very much up in the air."

Legal protections? You mean we still have any?

Labels: police state, surveillance

Enron. Tyco. The dot-com crash. No matter how many times we go through this, the business community never learns, and the public is bamboozled every time.

Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations of the "invisible hand" -- that an individual pursuing his own self-interest tends to also promote the good of his community as a whole. He believed the ridiculous notion that each individual maximizing revenue for himself maximizes the total revenue of society as a whole. It's not even saying "What's good for General Motors is what's good for the country." It's saying "I have a shitload of money. So what are you complaining about?", or in the vernacular, "I got mine and fuck you."

George W. Bush used to brag about the high percentage of people who were now homeowners. Now many of those "homeowners" are finding themselves losing those homes through foreclosure; with a stain on their credit records that will damage their ability to gain a toehold in the economy for years to come.

The business community couldn't have handled it better if they had set out to cut these people off at the knees and kicked them out of the middle class.

Paul Krugman, today:

In a direct sense, the carnage on Wall Street is all about the great housing slump.

This slump was both predictable and predicted. “These days,” I wrote in August 2005, “Americans make a living selling each other houses, paid for with money borrowed from the Chinese. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a sustainable lifestyle.” It wasn’t.

But even as the danger signs multiplied, Wall Street piled into bonds backed by dubious home mortgages. Most of the bad investments now shaking the financial world seem to have been made in the final frenzy of the housing bubble, or even after the bubble began to deflate.

In fact, according to Fortune, Merrill Lynch made its biggest purchases of bad debt in the first half of this year — after the subprime crisis had already become public knowledge.

Now the bill is coming due, and almost everyone — that is, almost everyone except the people responsible — is having to pay.

The losses suffered by shareholders in Merrill, Citigroup, Bear Stearns and so on are the least of it. Far more important in human terms are the hundreds of thousands if not millions of American families lured into mortgage deals they didn’t understand, who now face sharp increases in their payments — and, in many cases, the loss of their houses — as their interest rates reset.

And then there’s the collateral damage to the economy.

You still hear occasional claims that the subprime fiasco is no big deal. Even though the numbers keep getting bigger — some observers are now talking about $400 billion in losses — these losses are small compared with the total value of financial assets.

But bad housing investments are crippling financial institutions that play a crucial role in providing credit, by wiping out much of their capital. In a recent report, Goldman Sachs suggested that housing-related losses could force banks and other players to cut lending by as much as $2 trillion — enough to trigger a nasty recession, if it happens quickly.

Beyond that, there’s a pervasive loss of trust, which is like sand thrown in the gears of the financial system. The crisis of confidence is plainly visible in the market data: there’s an almost unprecedented spread between the very low interest rates investors are willing to accept on U.S. government debt — which is still considered safe — and the much higher interest rates at which banks are willing to lend to each other.

How did things go so wrong?

Part of the answer is that people who should have been alert to the dangers, and taken precautionary measures, instead blithely assured Americans that everything was fine, and even encouraged them to take out risky mortgages. Yes, Alan Greenspan, that means you.

But another part of the answer lies in what hasn’t happened to the men on that Fortune cover — namely, they haven’t been forced to give back any of the huge paychecks they received before the folly of their decisions became apparent.

Around 25 years ago, American business — and the American political system — bought into the idea that greed is good. Executives are lavishly rewarded if the companies they run seem successful: last year the chief executives of Merrill and Citigroup were paid $48 million and $25.6 million, respectively.

But if the success turns out to have been an illusion — well, they still get to keep the money. Heads they win, tails we lose.

Not only is this grossly unfair, it encourages bad risk-taking, and sometimes fraud. If an executive can create the appearance of success, even for a couple of years, he will walk away immensely wealthy. Meanwhile, the subsequent revelation that appearances were deceiving is someone else’s problem.

If all this sounds familiar, it should. The huge rewards executives receive if they can fake success are what led to the great corporate scandals of a few years back. There’s no indication that any laws were broken this time — but the public’s trust was nonetheless betrayed, once again.

It's interesting that Fortune only started caring about the carnage when it began hitting the banks. When the housing bubble was actually going on, and even when it started to collapse and middle-class Americans were being affected, the business community didn't care. But now that it's hitting the banks, and the people who make huge sums of money may not get their obscene bonuses this year, suddenly it's a problem. It's also interesting that the Fortune article doesn't even mention the compensation these guys receive for running these companies into the ground while middle-class Americans are ruined.

Labels: corporatism, greed, housing bubble

How Captain AWOL supports the troops on Thanksgiving


He's really good at giving the troops "the least he can do":

President Bush, who visited troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving after the U.S. invasion in 2003, called several servicemen and women Thursday to extend best wishes and say it was “the least I can do.”

Three of those receiving holiday greetings are in the Army, two are Marines, three are in the Air Force, two serve in the Coast Guard and two in the Navy. The troops called are serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and aboard ship, said White House press secretary Dana Perino.

[snip]

The president asked for God’s blessings on the members of the military, Perino said. He said he was thankful to be commander in chief of the finest military ever assembled and told them, “calling you is the least I can do because I admire the military so much.”

The president was celebrating the holiday at Camp David with his wife, Laura, and their twin daughters, who have a birthday this weekend. Also present were daughter Jenna’s husband-to-be Henry Hager, some of the president’s brothers and sisters with their families, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Isn't it nice that the Bush family was able to get together today with all their children and their children's spouses and intendeds -- and not one of them is in Iraq today? Because after all, real patriotic Americans don't do the dirty work of fighting, right? They make show phone calls while the baby brides and the children who don't remember what their fathers look like and the parents who worry that their son won't get back from his third deployment alive eat their turkeys and try to pretend their lives are normal.

Labels: Bush family, rant, Thanksgiving

The history of LOLCats:



(More LOLCats "history" here.)
And more:



My LOLCat is in r bed...purrin n droolin on r comfiter.

(hat tip: Amanda)

Labels: I Am My Cats' Domestic Staff

The lead-in stories on MSNBC at 10:00 AM today:

1) The arrests in the disappearance TWO FUCKING YEARS AGO of blonde nubile ripe luscious (sic)...and (sick) fantasy-object teenager Natalee Holloway

2) Some story about another guy named Peterson who probably killed his wife. She's missing too. She's white too.

3) A young black woman who's been missing for a week. I guess they took their bad press seriously last time a young black woman disappeared and they said nothing

4) 10 explosions in the Green Zone in Iraq today.

And we wonder how anyone can think Rudy Giuliani is somehow a leader?

Not even Keith Olbermann is enough to redeem MSNBC for crap journalism like this. Dan Abrams, when you fire that asshat Tucker Carlson, take yourself off the air, and put on a one-hour panel news show featuring Sam Seder, Marc Maron, and Rachel Maddow every night, then we can talk.

Labels: Missing White Women, MSNBC

How do YOU like your tax dollars going to fund a Christian crusader's army? Well, that's what the U.S. military is becoming. If you think fears of a president regarding himself as God's Anointed Architect of the Rapture are overblown, go read this Mother Jones article on how the Christofascist Zombie Brigade is quietly and behind the scenes turning the U.S. military into armies for Christ.

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, U.S.Military

If Rudy says so, that should be enough, right? Who needs oversight? Why do we need to know anything about Rudy's business dealings? Shouldn't we take his word for it? After all, he IS the Saint of 9/11, right?

Rudy Giuliani has nothing to hide about his business dealings. Or, rather, he wants everyone to know that if the press finds what he's hiding, everyone will agree that everything's been "totally legal, totally ethical."

Every time reporters press Giuliani on his work with Giuliani Partners, his booming consultancy (Guiliani took home $4.1 million last year and his stake is worth anywhere from $5 million to $25 million), he's got the same answer: I'm not telling, but you should ask the firm. Then the reporter diligently calls over to Giuliani Partners to get the brush-off from its spokeswoman. That's what happened to The Wall Street Journal when the paper had questions about the firm's contract with Qatar. The Chicago Tribune got the same treatment when it asked about the firm's work for a developer's casino resort in Singapore.

When the AP asked him in an interview earlier this month if he'd disclose his client list, he responded that the business was "totally legal, totally ethical," "very ethical and law-abiding" and that there's "nothing for me to explain about it. We've acted honorably, decently." It was unfair to even ask, he said, employing the deft logic that since no one has found anything wrong, people shouldn't even ask the question:

Uh...maybe it's because of your long association and business partnership with that thug Bernie Kerik, who is now under federal indictment? Maybe it's because your firm represents a billionaire with ties to Kim Jong-Il? Maybe it's because your firm provides security for a state-run petroleum company in Qatar and your law firm opened an office in Doha? Maybe it's because:

Giuliani Partners and its units have repeatedly become entangled in petty deals that seem unworthy of someone with national aspirations. It has accepted fees from companies with over-the-counter penny stocks, made alliances that have gone nowhere or made little financial sense and engaged with businesses and individuals who have come under scrutiny by regulatory and law enforcement officials. Such associations are astonishing for this tough, Brooklyn-born prosecutor who nailed gangsters like Paul Castellano and white-collar felons like Marc Rich, Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. It's the sort of carelessness that suggests either poor judgment or inattention. "We do this very careful due diligence," says Hess. "We would never get involved in anything that is at all shady or risky or questionable."

Maybe it's because we've had enough secrecy in our presidents for one lifetime?

Labels: corruption, Rudy Giuliani, secrecy

Thanksgiving may be the holiday that most often causes people to plunge into holiday-related depression. No other holiday, not even Christmas, comes with as much Rockwellian baggage as Thanksgiving. It's the day when we think everyone but us is going to sit down to a perfectly-decorated table and eat a delicious meal of golden-brown turkey that oozes juices as it's carved, glistening cranberry sauce, fluffy stuffing studded with bits of sausage/raisins/whatever, mashed potatoes that taste like potatoes instead of something you'd use to putty dents in your car, and apples or pumpkin custard nestled in crusts that flake with a fork -- even on the bottom. We think everyone but us is going to sit around that table, without a cross word spoken, beaming at a few dozen loved ones -- grandparents, parents, children, cousins, siblings, nieces, nephews -- and thank God that they all had the opportunity to be together on that day.

There are people for whom today is going to be like this. They are the lucky ones. For others, it's a day when they pray that their wingnut brother-in-law doesn't insist on bringing up Iraq at the dinner table, or that Grandma doesn't say anything about their weight, or that cousin Brenda's vegan boyfriend doesn't go into one of his meat is murder rants about the turkey, or that Uncle Carl doesn't fall off the wagon again and drink a sixpack of beer while watching the football game. For many women (and it's still mostly the women who do the cooking) it's a day off spent trying to coordinate all the pieces of this dinner that gets demolished in twenty minutes, leaving nothing but leftovers that everyone will be sick of in another day and a mountain of dishes and dirty pots and pans.

My thoughts are with this latter group today.

Because I absolutely refuse to travel on Thanksgiving weekend, this is a holiday that's usually spent quietly at Chez Brilliant. In previous years we've gone to a local restaurant, but after last year, when a size-zero waitress made a snarky comment at me because I dared to have a couple of cookies for dessert, I really didn't want to go back there. I toyed with the idea of making a turkey breast, but frankly, at this point in my life, I mostly identify turkey as deli meat, best served on a whole wheat baguette with a spread of brie and a schmear of honey mustard and maybe a bit of tomato. I don't much care for mashed potatoes, and once you get that "wet bread" idea in your head, the idea of stuffing seems pretty nauseating too. I do, however, love sweet potatoes, but I like them baked, served plain or perhaps with just the tiniest bit of butter. Mr. B's idea of sweet potatoes is those sad little creatures out of a can that are then dressed up with marshmallows until they are unrecognizable as anything but a particularly unpalatable breed of candy. I have vowed to do something with roasting the yams I bought this week with olive oil and herbs to show him how fabulous a little tuber this really is.

But if you're not going to go out, or to where someone else does the cooking, and you don't want to do the bird, what do you do? This is where I ask Mr. Brilliant what he'd like to have, and this year the answer was "Indian food." But alas, Twins India Palace in Orangeburg, NY is closed, so it was back to cooking. Plan B? Spinach lasagne with garlic bread.

Just on the off chance that you can't face the Big Bird today, or if you want to add a pasta course to guarantee turkey leftovers, here's what's cooking at Chez Brilliant today. It's a sort-of less fattening version of conventional lasagne, and uses a white sauce instead of a tomato-based sauce. I made this recipe up, so feel free to adjust seasonings and everything else at will:

SPINACH LASAGNE

• 2-3 bags frozen chopped spinach
  
• 1 onion, chopped
  
• 1 Tbs. or so olive oil
  
• As many garlic cloves as you like, minced (I like to make it really garlicky)
  
• 2 16-oz. containers ricotta cheese (the fat free works just fine)
  
• 8 oz. shredded mozzarella
  
• 2 eggs
  
• oregano and/or basil to taste
  
• freshly-ground pepper to taste
  
• 4 Tbs. butter
  
• 4 Tbs. Wondra flour
  
• 2 cups milk (1% or skim is fine)
  
• 1 box lasagne noodles (I use the Ronzoni Healthy Harvest or whole wheat noodles)
  

Prepare spinach: Thaw spinach and sqeeze out excess moisture. Heat olive oil in saute pan and add garlic and onion, cook till onion is translucent. Add spinach and saute about 1 minute. Set aside.

Prepare cheese layer: In a bowl, combine ricotta, half the mozzarella, eggs, basil, oregano, salt/pepper to taste. Set aside.

Make white sauce: In a saucepan, melt butter. Add flour and stir. Add milk. Slowly bring to a boil, reduce heat immediately and stir till thickened. Add salt/pepper to taste.

Cook pasta till just al dente. Drain, rinse with cool water.

Spray a lasagne pan with oil spray. Spread a thin layer of sauce in the pan. Layer noodles, spinach, cheese 2-3 times, stopping with noodles. Spread a thin layer of sauce on top if you have any left, top with remaining mozzarella.

Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees about 40 minutes. remove foil and bake another 15 minutes or so till mozzarella is of desired consistency.

And so today we will eat this repast and be thankful for reduced-fat cheeses and high-fiber pasta and for not having to work ourselves to death today. And I will be thankful for being still employed, and for still having my health (and insurance) and a roof over my head. I'll be thankful for not having answered the siren song of home equity loans and not being in debt up to my eyeballs. I'll be thankful that at least for now there is someone running for president who isn't completely loathsome. I'll be thankful for Keith Olbermann and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and Paul Reickhoff Jon Soltz and the Wilsons and Naomis Klein and Wolf and Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert and the many, many others who do yeoman work trying, however vainly, to save this country. I'll be thankful that there are no family members I'm not speaking to. I'll be thankful for my friends, both meat world and virtual, and you readers who for some strange and wondrous reason known only to yourselves, give me the blessing of your eyeballs every day.

Have a happy, wonderful, and safe day, everyone.

Labels: recipes, Thanksgiving

And one from the "piss down my back and tell me it's raining" file:

President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

Bush spoke nearly three weeks after Musharraf declared emergency rule, sacked members of the Supreme Court and began a roundup of journalists, lawyers and human rights activists. Musharraf's government yesterday released about 3,000 political prisoners, although 2,000 remain in custody, according to the Interior Ministry.
[snip]

Several outside analysts and a key Democratic lawmaker expressed incredulity over Bush's comments and called them a sign of how personally invested the president has become in the U.S. relationship with Musharraf.

"What exactly would it take for the president to conclude Musharraf has crossed the line? Suspend the constitution? Impose emergency law? Beat and jail his political opponents and human rights activists?" asked Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a presidential candidate. "He's already done all that. If the president sees Musharraf as a democrat, he must be wearing the same glasses he had on when he looked in Vladimir Putin's soul."

It may very well be that Musharraf is the US' best hope for keeping Pakistan, and its nuclear weapons, out of the hands of the Taliban, Osama Bin Laden, and the many other Bad Operators™ lurking in the mountains. But that doesn't make him a beacon of democratic hope.

Of course, given how George W. Bush has run his own government, it's clear that his definition of "democracy" isn't exactly the one the rest of us have.

Labels: delusion, George W. Bush, Pervez Musharraf

Or as Melissa would say, "Fuckity fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck."

As you regular readers know, Mr. Brilliant and I have begun researching HDTV with an eye towards purchasing right after War on Christmas. We've been a Dish Network household for about eight years, and we like the company so much that when I sold the Home Depot stock in my IRA, I had the broker buy some shares of Echostar instead.

The service is great, the programming selection is fantastic, they keep giving us new channels like the Documentary Channel and Veria, they give great promotions to their best customers, and the stock is up over $10 a share since I bought it.

And now it looks like it may all be ruined:

As one might expect, AT&T, the world's largest telecoms group, is skilled in the art of communications. But on the persistent rumours that the company might bid for Echostar, the company has remained tight-lipped.

Wall Street rumours about a potential takeover of the second-biggest US satellite operator have swirled around both companies for several years. However, they peaked this week after reports in Barron's and the financial website TheStreet.com said that AT&T was preparing a takeover bid worth as much as $26bn (£12bn) and that both companies have been in talks.

The reports sent Echostar's share price, depressed by recent disappointing quarterly results, soaring. The stock closed up 27 per cent at $47.49 on Monday, but slipped a little on Tuesday when no bid materialised.

Echostar was founded by Charles Ergen, who retains control of the satellite company. In spite of recent indications that Echostar's subscriber growth may be slowing, there is no sign that Mr Ergen wants to lose control or leave the business.

Monday's share price gain however, reflects the belief among some investors that a deal is not just plausible, but likely.

The speculation surrounding AT&T and Echostar comes amid a realignment of the industry in the US.

Echostar and DirecTV, the largest US satellite operator, have succeeded in taking millions of customers from cable operators such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable in the past decade by offering high-quality multi-channel video and good customer services.

Meanwhile, AT&T and Verizon Communications, the second largest US carrier, are both scrambling to roll out their own television and video services, targeting customers who pay $100 or more a month for their multi-channel TV offerings, internet access and landline phone services.

Cable companies have reported in recent weeks that they are starting to feel the pinch, particularly from Verizon, which had signed 717,000 subscribers to its advanced fibre optic-based video service by the end of September.

Shares in Comcast and Time Warner Cable have been hard hit, partly because of investor fears of a price war as competition heats up.

Proponents of an AT&T-Echostar deal argue that Echostar's Dish Network - with 13.7m satellite-TV subscribers - would bolster AT&T's U-verse IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) offering, which has just 126,000 customers. Others are not so sure.

"A takeout of EchoStar by AT&T is possible, but not certain," said Todd Mitchell, of Kaufman Bros, in a note on Tuesday. Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein, is also doubtful. "There is nothing AT&T can do by bolting a satellite provider on to the phone network to give it a cost advantage against cable," he said.

That may be, but a quick Google search this morning has more than one analyst saying that an AT&T takeover of Echostar within the next twelve months is highly likely.

I can't imagine a company I'd less want to take over my beloved Echostar than AT&T. Charlie Ergen is a bit of a folk hero to his customers, and to turn us over to those wonderful people who brought you secret NSA wiretap rooms is just too horrifying for words. It's at the very least not the stuff that makes me want to commit to another two years of Dish Network at this point.

The problem is, what are our options? Where we live, the alternatives are the odious Cablevision, which offers crappy customer service and outrageous pricing, and the as-bad-as-AT&T Verizon, which has sent door-to-door salesmen employed by third parties who obviously don't screen very well to harangue homeowners at all hours of the day and night to try and strongarm us into taking their FIOS service.

It's bad enough that we have our DSL and cell phone through Verizon; at least we have been able to do business for TV with a company that isn't completely ghastly.

If AT&T buys Echostar, however, all this will change.

If you listened to Randi Rhodes yesterday, you heard a great show about media consolidation. It's no exaggeration that just five companies own about 90% of what comes into our houses. If Dish goes the way of all startups, that consolidation is going to be that much worse.

Labels: corporatism, icepick meet forehead, media consolidation

Why not take a leisurely spin around in this last day before the nightmare of consumerism and hopelessly dashed expectations that is the Holiday Season begins?

Tbogg on Michelle Malkin once again violating the corpse of Terri Schiavo because she couldn't think of anything else to write this week.

Eli at Firedoglake makes a strong case for Rahm Emmanuel as the perfect running mate for Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani, now that Rahm has set himself up as a self-contained informal vice-presidential search committee. (Why on earth does anyone listen to Rahm Emmanuel about anything?)

Barack Obama, call your office: Phoenix Woman passes on the information that Social Security has outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the last 45 years.

Speak for yourself, Brian: Melissa on Brian Williams' parroting the Christofascist Zombie Brigade meme about a war on marriage. (And here I thought there was a war on Christmas. Good heavens, how many wars can we moonbats fight at the same time?)

Jill (also) on how good Christian Republican values about women's health care exist in Iraq too.

And in case you're a wingnut who's feeling smug about how much superior we are, check out Jessica on what our good friends the Saudis do to rape victims.

...and as we recover from multiple self-inflicted wounds to the forehead:

Skippy does a better job of reporting on the WGA strike than any of the so-called "real" news media do.

Larry Johnson wants to know why Barack Obama is falling for Bob Novak's Karl Rove playbook.

Driftglass on the history of taxation.

Carl has some advice for New York City's holiday tourists.

Jesse Wendel liked John Edwards' Iowa Jefferson-Jackson speech too.

Labels: bloggers

Scott McClellan spills the beans and reveals what all thinking people knew already:

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative.

In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recount the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.

"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Monday. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

I've long said, as I've watched this Bush Administration commit atrocity after atrocity against the Constitution, the law, the American people, the soldiers he sends off to die, and common human decency, that the weakness in our system is that it presupposes that our leaders will take their responsibilities seriously, that they will "do no harm" -- at least not deliberately. But whether it's pre-emptive war against a country that did nothing to us, or funnelling billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to fight that war into the pockets of campaign contributors, or blowing the cover of a CIA asset working to ensure Americans' safety for cheap petty revenge, there's been almost no outrage.

Part of it is that we have a compliant media run by giant corporations that stand to benefit from chummy relations with those who are corrupt and fronted by people who want access to power, who want to hobnob with and eat cocktail weenies with the very same people they're supposed to cover. But part of it is that there is indeed a tipping point of evil, and if a leader, or group of leaders can just reach that tipping point, the consequences for Americans of believing that people we elect (or who take office even if we don't elect them) can be as corrupt as the leaders of the banana republics and the dictatorships and the theocracies we've always regarded as enemies, are just too monstrous for Americans to face. So we turn off the news, and we watch Heroes and American Idol and Survivor and Dexter and fade away into an imaginary world. Because we live in a country populated with other people doing just that. And they don't want to hear how in just six years, this president and those around him have turned the last world superpower into Argentina circa 2000. They don't want to hear how we are bankrupt; how the machinations of the stock market over the last two weeks are indicative of what they can expect for the foreseeable future; how the Treasury Secretary continues to crow about our strong dollar policy while our currency is in a free-fall; how we are mired in a conflict in the Middle East from which we are unlikely to ever extricate ourselves, how we are more likely to be attacked from without because of our weakened position within, and how your children -- if you have them -- are going to face futures that are in all likelihood going to be nasty, brutish, and short.

Labels: Bush Administration, corruption, rant, Valerie Plame

I am a huge fan of Leo Laporte and his TWIT podcasts. Yeah, I'm a tech geek girl, and one of my long term plans has been to put together a tech blog with alot of contributers. I set that one up a long time ago, but so far haven't had the time to get it going.
Meantime, I've grown the tendency to listen to these things more than I normally would, because Air America Radio has gotten so screwed up as to be...well, alot of it is unlistenable, and the truly talented, revolutionary, and interesting shows have been cut back and cut off.
Its not often that I stop the car while running around and write things down to check out later, but I do that often with the Leo's shows and Ive found some pretty cool stuff that way. I used to do that while listening to Morning Sedition when they would interview an
author or talk about an issue. They sold quite a few ipods that way via Marc Maron's slow adoption of technology and hilarious assimilation to the i-borg.

Well, in the spirit of working my way down the long list of things that I wanted to look into, I have been looking at this online social network called Twitter that Leo Laporte is all involved with. Leo loves it and its copy twins out there and has been on it for quite some time (though I cant seem to find him...thats just problem one.) I looked at it when it first began, and I used it a little, but it seemed sort of pointless and ive been so busy and caught up in the past couple of years that Im lucky to have time for my personal email much less an ongoing conversation with the internets and its denizens...beyond long form blogging,of course.

Recently Leo has been talking about it again and so, in a low moment when I was sinking beneath the family thanksgiving dysfunction, the early darkness, and the political swirl thats making my head hurt and not forming itself into a real post...yet...I went on and recalled my password and user name, which is apparently Melina Celeste because someone has Melina already.

I looked around and...I dunno...maybe its that I hardly have enough time to make it through what Ive selected for my Google reader, or that I prefer to do things in real life...often alone...but not needing to report my every move to the internets, but it seemed sort of silly.

So, yesterday I got some mail on my Treo that someone that I don't know was "following me" on Twitter. I guess that's what they do there, but it seems sort of creepy. Maybe if you have lots of friends online and on twitter who are hanging on your every movement, it is a good thing? I guess that Leo is thinking of using his Twitter time line to do a book. Could be interesting in that he travels so much and does so many interesting things. But, what civilian has time for this? I was thinking that this is probably going to be the next big thing for reaching America's youth. Doesn't it just smack of what bored college students do during class?

After a couple more emails about some men following me, I went on last night and I figured that maybe I should try to find something to use the thing for before I give up on it, so I searched for John Edwards. Sure enough he is there, or someone pretending to be him. I added him as my only friend, and was about to look for Elvis Costello or The Replacements, when something happened here and I signed off.

This morning, when I opened my email I had around 20 more people following me.
Now, knowing that my ONLY friend (in the world, at this point,) is John Edwards, he is, of course, following me, but the ones who came next were just so interesting:
First came Bill Richardson, then Ron Paul from last evening...hmmm...then some other personal emails...then all in a row beginning at midnight: Joe Biden, Mike Gravel (with video footage of his debate with himself, among other things,) Dennis Kucinich, followed quickly by Sam Brownback, and Rudy Giuilani, of all people! Then came Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Duncan Hunter, Mitt Romney, and Tommy Thompson. Bringing up the rear was Hillary Clinton! I cant tell if these are entities that are sanctioned by the campaigns or what...but it would be a good way to combat swiftboating smears (more on that later in the supposed post that is forming in my jumbled mind.)

Some time around daybreak, Barak Obama got on my tail, followed by Johnny just checking in, and then Chris Dodd and Tom Tancredo. Finally, much later, Fred Thompson Sauntered into the line....and then it stopped.

Maybe they only come out at night, or maybe I have to go onto Twitter and tell them all something to get more attention (like to go away!) But if I follow the links that they provide they tend to go to alot of input from other entities that support the person, and its unclear to me yet how the thing works exactly.

Here's the thing: This technology was originally aimed at texting on cellphones. We know that texting is very important, not just so that our kids can endlessly chat with their friends without using up all the cell minutes, but also because texting is the security system that works best in reaching large groups of young folks, like entire college campus' that have a mad shooter on the loose. Part of the reason that I have encouraged it in the 13 year old boys here is that half the time we don't have a cell signal, and so we text to be sure to reach one another.

There is nothing worse than unsolicited texts or the idea of wireless companies allowing anything of the sort, but on Twitter and its ilk, (with Twitter currently being the biggest,) you have a potentially large audience that is asking for a quick sentence about what's going on from those they care to hear from, and a huge group of what must be kids, (and Leo, of course,) telling you what they are currently doing.

The marketing potential of something like that could be fantastic, as the stumbling candidates are sorta slowly learning. But I actually think that it could be more useful as a tool by someone who could create or BE a persona that kids WANT to hear from, who can impart fun and important information to them. Like if Bon Jovi or Springsteen,or whoever is hot these days would do one for a candidate, for instance. It could also be a good way to cut through some of the main stream media crap that is being fed to us all.

The problem that I see out there now is that each message from a candidate or those pretending to be them, just sends you to a web page or a YouTube type service. I know that the personal items are just sentences, and I think that must be a much more functional way to use the service. Twitter takes URL's and automatically turns them into TinyUrl's and sends them as links, which is good if you're sitting at your computer, and if you want to follow another link...but if you're in line somewhere or in class, or at a boring performance...the sentence thing seems like it could be used in a way that wouldn't involve alot of getting your phone onto the internet slowly to look at something. I have broadband service on my Treo and I still avoid going on the Internet unless I know what I'm gonna be looking at.

I wonder how much good information can be sent out to a large group in a sentence or 140 characters? Or if announcements or puzzle pieces could be sent in a way that would make people a part of something different than the usual web site thing.

I think I'm gonna look into Twitter and see what it really can do, if it crosses language barriers, and how large of a following someone can have. Its an interesting idea to use cell phones and single sentences to communicate with large groups if people, at a rally or gathering...or even just waiting in line bored somewhere.

So, if you re on Twitter, follow Melina Celeste. You'll be in good company, as I seem to attract politicians of all stripes, or their doppelgangers....Hey, maybe its fun!...probably not, but it could be something to do and maybe more....

c/p RIPCoco

Labels: technology

It seems to me that "angry" has become the most overused word in America.

"Angry Democrats" is an expression that had been bandied about for a while, but the critical mass point was reached after the 2004 Iowa primary, after John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, and the DLC tag-teamed Howard Dean to knock him out of the race. Legend has it that the now-infamous "Dean Scream" demolished Dean's campaign, but the reality of the "scream" (the distortion of which was later admitted to by Diane Sawyer, after it was safely too late to make a difference), was a result of this:

David Jones, an avid fundraiser and organizer for the Democratic National Committee and a staunch DLC patron who garnered money for centrist New Democrats like Bill Clinton and Al Gore, founded an anti-Dean group that ran vile ads attacking him early on in the Iowa contest. Deceptively called "Americans for Jobs, Health Care & Progressive Values, 2004 Election Cycle," Jones' group conducted a poll, which found that most Americans championed Dean's Iraq war stance. But few knew of his support of NAFTA, Medicare cuts in the mid 1990s, or his endorsements from the NRA.

"The first spot, on Dean's NRA endorsements, ran Dec. 5-12 in Iowa," The Chicago Sun Tribune reported on February 19, 2004. "The second ad ran Dec. 12-19 in Iowa and hit Dean on his NRA backing and NAFTA and Medicare stands. By this time, Jones did not have much money left."
Jones' group raised in excess of $600,000 from numerous Democratic insiders, including former New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli whose political career ended abruptly fell victim to ethics violations. Torricelli donated $50,000 to Jones' group.

As The Washington Post reported on February 16, 2004, "The [Jones' donor] list makes clearer than ever that the rules need to be changed to provide timely disclosure-to ensure that voters know who is behind this kind of attack advertising in time to factor that into their decision-making, should they so choose. We learn now that unions that had endorsed Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) contributed $200,000 of the group's $663,000 in donations. Two top Gephardt backers also contributed: Leo Hindery Jr. of YES Network ($100,000), who served as a national finance co-chair, and Swanee Hunt ($25,000), who was a national campaign co-chair.

While Mr. Gephardt's backers [including Jones during the late 1990s] constituted the bulk of the donors, they weren't alone: Slim-Fast Foods founder S. Daniel Abraham, a major Democratic donor who contributed to his home state senator, Bob Graham (Fla.), and to Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), gave $100,000. J. McDonald Williams, a former chairman of the Trammell Crow construction company and a donor to the Bush-Cheney campaign this year, though to Democrats in previous cycles, gave $50,000 Mr. Torricelli, you will remember, had the cash to spare because he was forced to quit his reelection race after being 'severely admonished' by the Senate Ethics Committee for accepting expensive gifts from a campaign donor he was doing official favors for. Now a champion at collecting special-interest money is gathering checks for Mr. Kerry, who's busy railing against those interests."

As it turns out, the Post article doesn't even tell the full story. In reality, the ties between Jones' organization, the Kerry campaign, and DNC chair Terry McAuliffe were much stronger than suggested.

As Marc Brazeau pointed out on the online political site Joe Hill Dispatch, a closer examination reveals "that the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & From was paid $18,000 for legal work by the group and the e-mail contact for Americans for Jobs" ended in skadden.com.

Why the fuss? It just so happens that skadden.com was the email tag for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & From-a firm that has donated $176,575 to John Kerry's presidential campaign as of mid-June 2004. To put things in perspective, this is more money than any other big Kerry backers, including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan, and Microsoft have donated since the inception of Kerry's campaign.

"And while the Post points out that Leo Hindery had ties to Gephardt, it should be noted that he testified before Kerry's communications committee as well.

So you have a $50,000 contribution from Kerry fundraiser Robert Torricelli, legal expertise provided by Kerry's largest contributor, and a major donor from an industry that Kerry was responsible for regulating," Brazeau explained. "Those are the dots. Connect them how you like."

Given this, it's abundantly clear that the grassroots efforts of Howard Dean, Inc. were being taken on by insider money.

And for the record, here's the video of the "Dean Scream" taken by someone who was actually there in the crowd:



...and here is what was broadcast into homes all over the country:



Kind of a difference when you hear it in context, right? But after all, what is the truth when compared to the need to frame a story?

Eric Saltzman of CBS News put it thusly:

Before Dean came out onstage, communications director Tricia Enright worked the press in the back of the hall. "He's going to be fiery," she told reporters. She said Dean would walk out on stage, take off his jacket, hand it to Sen. Tom Harkin and roll up his sleeves. Dean, she said, was fired up.

The rest, by now, you know.

What you might not know, because it doesn't play 30 times a day on the cable news channels, is what was happening in the rest of the room. You don't see the visual and you don't hear the audio. The television crews recording the event plug into an audio source picking up Dean's microphone, not the sound of the room. The cameras focus in to a tight shot of the candidate, not the rest of the room.

What you are not hearing is a room with thousands of people screaming and cheering.

What you are not seeing are hundreds upon hundreds of American flags waving.

What you are not hearing are members of the audience shouting out state names urging Dean to list more.

What you are not seeing is the way Dean's supporters were lifted out of their slump by the speech.

In a nutshell, you are not seeing that Dean's speech fit the tone of the room.

Not that the speech was a good idea; clearly it has created problems for Dean, but not because he's a loose cannon or a little off kilter. Dean is actually a rather straight-laced, staid person. The Iowa speech has become a problem because Dean's aides either failed to recognize or failed to convince their candidate that when he speaks to a roomful of people, he is not speaking to a roomful of people: he is speaking to a television camera.

That camera might pick up an entire speech, but it will only disseminate sound bites; quick, interesting, entertaining, news-making sound bites.

For months, pundits have been suggesting that the only person who could stop Howard Dean is Howard Dean. And pundits like to be right.

Even when they're wrong. Even when they lie. If the public trusts the media to tell the news as it is, and the media willfully gets it wrong, then where do Americans who don't read blogs find out what's really going on?

Now it's John Edwards' turn to be branded as "The Angry Candidate:"

• Roger Simon, Politico: "John Edwards has found a theme: He is angry and he is on your side. He is bold and he will use his boldness for you."
  
• Mo Rocca, AOL Newsbloggers: "Everyone played their parts: John Edwards was angry and shrill. (When will Democrats learn that righteous indignation never wins elections? Be sunny. Be optimistic. Bush proved that you can be dumb as a box of rocks and still get people to vote for you if you seem like a happy guy.)"
  
• Stephen Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers: "John Edwards had an even worse night, seen by voters and analysts as too angry in attacking his party's front-runner."
  
• Even Chris Dodd has joined the meme party: "I am surprised at just how angry John has become,"
  
• Foon Rhee, Boston.com: "John Edwards' second TV spot in his make-or-break state of Iowa focuses on healthcare and his sort-of-angry populism."
  

I'd go so far as to say that if you AREN'T angry, there's something wrong.

One of the things that's made me angry recently is John Kerry deciding NOW to fight back against the Swift Boat Liars in the wake of T. Boone Pickens' pathetic attempt to regain the spotlight by offering a million dollars to anyone who can prove the group's 2004 claims false.

Now, I'm all for fighting back, even if it has taken Kerry three years to learn that you have to do it. But there's something very "yesterday's news" about it that makes it seem like a hollow, symbolic gesture. By all means -- if Pickens is trying to revive the Swifties, they should be squelched as quickly as possible, but I think John Kerry has a real opportunity here to use his experience, his national influence (and some of his cash) to expand beyond his own experience and work to organize a real rapid response operation to get out front of all of these bogus claims, to push our way onto the gasbag shows that perpetuate them, and keep pushing the media to stop being paid shills for Republicans. This is what Media Matters professes to do, but MM's reach doesn't seem to extend beyond the web, and something more high profile is in order.

My mention of Media Matters is deliberate, because it illustrates what can happen when someone who made an even more egregious error than Kerry's 2004 inaction and refusal to insist on an accurate vote count decides to redeem himself. David Brock was at the forefront of the Arkansas Project, and a key figure in the trawling net that resulted in the impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying about sex in a civil case that never should have been brought. Brock also was the perpetrator of the "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty" slur against Anita Hill. But today he's a staunch advocate for truth, and while there's still no overestimating his fault in the 1990's scandalmongering atmostphere, he's done yeoman work in trying to do something to counteract the damage he did. If John Kerry can take a rapid response concept beyond clearing his own name, and by recognizing the collusion between the right wing and the mainstream media, prevent what happened to him from happening to Democrats in the future, it'll be a long way towards redeeming him in my eyes.

I think, though, that Kerry is representative of entrenched Democrats in that he truly doesn't understand the outrage that many of us progressives still feel about the 2000 and 2004 elections. He's like Tom Glavine, shrugging his soldiers after the Mets' devastating collapse and saying "You learn and you move on" -- not understanding the utter devastation many of us feel when our candidates don't get the job done year after year after year. Blind rage accomplishes nothing, but there's been so ittle progress in the last seven years against what we know about how Republicans run campaigns and how they govern. Our candidates should know better. And they don't. And now we see a party apparatus that is clearly poised to try to do to Barack Obama and John Edwards in Iowa what they did to Howard Dean in 2004, thereby making the 2008 election safe for the party hackocracy. The only irony here is that while in 1992 the Clintons and their entourage were regarded as the hillybilly arrivistes, today THEY are the hackocracy. And the hack-in-chief, Hillary Clinton, thinks that when other candidates point out very real, substantive differences in just whom government should represent, it's "piling on."

And the expectation is that once the corporatist Democrat has defeated the insurgent(s), progressives will once again fall in line and vote for someone who doesn't stand for our values on the assumption that we have no place else to go.

Think I'm being overly dramatic? Last night Lawrence O'Donnell had this to say on Countdown last night on this very topic. No video available, I transcribed this myself:

O'DONNELL (referring to Congressional Democrats and why they don't force the filibuster): So they fear looking ineffectual in one way and they fear looking like showboats in another way and they're not getting where the left side of their party wants to go, and they're just hoping that they will have forgiveness from the left side of their party on Election Day in 2008.

OLBERMANN: Any chance that they wont? And what happens to the left side of the party if it doesn't support the Democratic candidate in 2008?

O'DONNELL: The Democratic calculation in the Senate, Keith, is always the left has nowhere to go but the Democratic Party. I've never been in a meeting in the Senate where there was any other presumption.

And that, my friends, is what the party we're expected to blindly support, the party in which we're not supposed to have any squabbles, lest we play into Republican hands, the party we're supposed to focus on putting into power thinks of us.

"...the left has nowhere to go but the Democratic Party."

So if you think that the party apparatchiks give a rat's ass about what the so-called "left side of the party" thinks -- that side of the party that just happens to represent the majority of Americans in that we want to stop all of our jobs from going overseas, end the Iraq War, stop funnelling more and more wealth into the pockets of corporate bigwigs and their cronies, that wants universal healthcare and education for their kids -- guess again.

We put these Democrats in charge so that they would get us out of Iraq and stop the metamorphosis of the United States into a feudal society where a few wealthy families own everything and the rest of us are crawling on the ground scrambling for scraps. Not only haven't they done that, but they have no motivation to do so, because like the kinds of men who beat their wives, they believe that we have noplace else to go, that we will continue supporting these people who claim to be on our side and screw us over again and again and again, "...because we have noplace else to go."

Angry? You're Goddamn right I'm angry. If I wasn't angry I'd be a Republican. And instead of giving every Democrat a goddamn medal just for not being a Republican, I'm going to hold these people's feet to the fire every waking minute until they start doing what we pay them for.

Fighting back against the right-wing noise machine is a start. But it isn't enough all by itself.

Labels: 2008 election, Democrats, rant

Back in the 1980's, when I was working as an administrative assistant at Standard & Poor's, I used to talk with my boss about Things You'll Be Able To Do With Electronics In the Future. I had the idea that someday, instead of mail order catalogs, you'll get catalogs on a VHS tape, and you'll somehow be able to order right through your TV, probably via your cable system.

A year and a half later, Home Shopping Club launched nationwide.

About five years ago, after spending an evening copying recipes onto index cards despite the computer sitting upstairs, I thought how nice it would be to have some kind of touch-screen internet terminal PC that you could flip down from your kitchen cabinets and surf for recipes instead of having cookbooks around or printing out recipes from the Web and having them clutter up the kitchen. Then in September I read this:

DREAM kitchens may soon include a computer along with the latest refrigerator or oven. That way people gathered at the family hub can satisfy their digital needs along with nutritional ones.

Hewlett-Packard’s new TouchSmart IQ770 PC ($1,699 at Circuit City) is designed for that kitchen of the future, where people turn on the computer along with the coffeepot, and then check the screen for the weather, ball scores and the family calendar as they breakfast.

It's not quite a flip-down, but it's small-footprint.

A few weeks ago I was talking with a co-worker who was complaining about the heavy textbooks her son has to shlep around, and how quickly textbooks become outdated. I said that the successful e-book reader is going to be something that approximates the experience of reading a book.

What I envisioned was something like a small, very thin laptop, hinged in the middle, with screens on both sides. It would have thumb-buttons on each side for next page and previous page, and an interface through which you could search for specific words or terms. It would have a black-on-white display so that it would actually look like reading book pages. It would use an SD card and you would download the book from a web site. It would decimate the used book market at colleges, but it would also hopefully reduce the ridiculous cost of textbooks if there were no distribution issues for updated versions.

Have I mentioned today how much I hate this fucking guy:



That little gadget he's holding is the Amazon Kindle, and it's a wireless book reader:



And except for the fact that it doesn't have a two-screen display, it's almost exactly what I was describing to my co-worker.

Next time I have an idea for a great gadget I'm going to get going on it. This is getting to be a pattern, and I'm sick of watching other people come up with the reality because I can't get my shit together or don't know the right people to get it done.

Labels: cool gadgets

It sure sounds like the Air America president has already decided whom he's backing:



Given that his 7 Days in America cohost Arianna Huffington is making no secret of her contempt for Mrs. Clinton and her partisanship towards Barack Obama, I wonder what's going on there.

I'm not a huge Ed Schultz fan; I've never had the sense that his progressive cred extends beyond his radio persona. But props to him for standing up for John Edwards in this Hardball appearance.

Meanwhile, Chase Martyn of the Iowa Independent believes that despite polls indicating that Hillary comes out on top, real people on the ground are having a hard time finding Hillary supporters, and that if the caucuses were held now, Edwards would come out on top, with Hillary third behind Barack Obama.

Let's hope he's right.

Labels: Air America, Ed Schultz, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mark Green