Remember way back, after the 2006 election, when we actually had hope that a Democratic majority in Congress meant a change in Iraq war policy and a reining in of the Bush Administration? Kind of hard to think about that now, as we lay on our backs while Lucy laughs at us once again, isn't it?

The Democratic-led Congress authorized more Iraq war spending on Friday, sending President George W. Bush a defense bill requiring no change in strategy after failing again to impose a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawals.

The defense policy bill, approved 90-3 by the U.S. Senate, also expanded the size of the U.S. Army and set conditions on the Bush administration's plan to build a missile defense system in Europe.

The measure already had passed the House of Representatives and now goes to Bush, who is expected to sign it into law. It authorizes Pentagon programs expected to cost $506.9 billion during fiscal 2008, which began in October.

The bill authorized another $189.4 billion for the Iraq and Afghan wars, for which Congress has already approved some $600 billion. But it does not deliver the new money. That is done by appropriations legislation at the center of a big dispute on Capitol Hill.

90-3. That's not a close vote caused by DINOs like Dianne Feinstein. That's an entire Senate full of frightened, craven Democrats so unable to articulate a message that they have no answer to "Democrats don't support our troops." I'm getting really tired of writing this, but the only reason to continue to appropriate this money is if the Democrats know that this president is so evil that he WILL leave troops in Iraq whether they are funded or not -- even if that means they have no food, no clean water, no changes of clothing, no armor, and no weapons. This president will allow 150,000 troops to be sitting ducks rather than compromise one iota. That much is clear to me. And since that seems to be the case, then why aren't the Democrats saying so? The only reason other than sheer gutlessness is if they are in the pockets of Halliburton and KBR and Blackwater and the other deep-pocketed corporations making a killing (if you'll pardon the expression) off of this war.

So which one is it?

Labels: Democrats, Iraq, spinelessness

Just a few days ago, Mr. Brilliant and I were talking about what possible logic there could be in refusing to resign a sparkplug of a catcher who even in a slump year hit .272 and instead essentially trading Lastings Milledge for a .232-hitting catcher?

I guess now we know....which brings up the question: Did the Mets know?

I'm sure I wasn't the only one who looked at the roster of the all-steroid baseball team yesterday hoping to not to find too many Mets players. It's sort of like the time Reagan was shot and all I could think of was "Please don't let the guy who shot him be Jewish." For that matter, I'm sure every baseball fan approached the list hoping that his/her team wasn't too terribly tainted. That Lenny Dykstra was on steroids was no secret to anyone; between his pumped-up physique after the 1986 season and his myriad injuries late in his career, it was impossible to ignore. That Roger Clemens was still throwing hard well into his 40's, combined with his size, made him not a surprise either. Neither was the preponderance of Yankees on the list, given the organization's "Win at any price" philosophy.

What WAS a surprise was how many third-tier players there were on the list -- guys like Chris Donnells and Josias Manzanillo, whose careers were nasty, brutish, and short. We forget how many aspiring ball players scrape by on minor-league pay hoping against hope that they'll get to the big leagues. Even if their careers are short, an inexpensive by today's standards $5 million, three year deal can give a guy with few other options a chance at a relatively decent post-baseball life, if he's smart about his money during that short career. Without that edge that steroids gave them, guys like this were the baseball equivalent of Lana Clarkson, the still-aspiring actress whose time was running out at age 40 and ended up dead in Phil Spector's house -- just so much offal spat out of the giant sports-o-tainment maw.

I can't even say I have a problem with George Mitchell's judgment that it accomplishes nothing to administer retroactive punishment to these guys, especially when there was no banned substance policy in place when steroids were rampant in baseball and the choice was do what everyone else was doing or find yourself back in Springfield, USA delivering beer or working at Wal-Mart. And even for those star players, a disproportionate number of them passing through the Yankees organization, how can you hold it against them that they did what their employer expected them to do? When your organization wants a World Series win every year, and the back page of the Daily News and the Post; and the callers into the Mike and the Mad Dog show, like Vinnie from Queens and Jerome, will treat your failures as if they are somehow the end of the world?

What these guys did was the baseball equivalent of the 80-hour week -- whatever had to be done to get out a "quality product". The owners wanted the press. The fans wanted big, towering home runs. The players wanted to stay in the show. Everyone got what he wanted. So where's the problem?

The problem, of course, is that we still romanticize this game. The problem is that the Annie Savoy character in Bull Durham was right; that there IS a kind of poetry to baseball. It's the sport that best defines not "America" (that's football), but "Americana" -- that Charles Wysocki vision of what we want to think America is. It's what James Earl Jones as Terrence Mann says in Field of Dreams:

"The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and what could be again."

Just as we want to believe that our leaders can't possibly be as evil as George Bush and Dick Cheney appear to be because gosh darn it, we're America and we don't DO that sort of thing; we want to believe that our baseball players are pure, and that the sweet swing, the 95-mph fastball, the no-hitter, the 450-foot home run to win the game in the bottom of the ninth, are a result of that karmic magic that's baseball, not from an injection into the buttock before the game. It's the constant. It's what links us back to our fathers and grandfathers and a rural heritage many of us don't even have.

But just because we want to believe it doesn't make it true. And just as we must now face a world with the inescapable knowledge that we have allowed fear to control us to the extent that we are willing to tolerate torture practices for which we could condemn anyone else, we must now face a world where "sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains." Because that's the way the universe works. America isn't always right. And baseball players aren't always heroes.

Deal with it. And learn how to appreciate the bunt single.

Labels: Baseball, Steroids

After reading about the theocratic resolution passed resoundingly by the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives which comes perilously close to declaring Christianity the national religion, it's difficult, if not impossible, to have any remaining hope that this Democratic Congress has any intention of acting in opposition to the American Christian authoritarian Mullahs currently dominating the other side of the aisle.

Yesterday's resolution makes me angrier than I can even express, not just because it seems clearly designed as an attempt to mollify the unmollifiable Bill O'Reilly in his rants about some kind of "War on Christmas", but because it flies right into the "Christian Nation" trap that the theocrats are trying to set. I don't know about you, but where I live, it's kind of hard to think anything BUT that Christmas is an important holiday. Between the traffic making it impossible to navigate Route 17 or any of the surrounding streets in Paramus any time after 8 AM on Saturdays, the relentless Christmas music on radio, and the garish displays of cheap inflatable plastic Santas on people's lawns who deflate every night until by daybreak they look like so many redsuited passed-out drunks, it is most definitely the Christmas season. So why on earth do we need a Congressional resolution to tell us what we already know? And why is THIS what Democrats are doing, along with censuring MoveOn.org, when there are still American kids getting killed in Iraq, Americans losing their homes, jobs moving overseas, and a Republican Party that seems bound and determined to get its attack on Iran if they have to have an "investigation" into the recent NIE report in order to get it?

The solution, as E.J. Dionne points out today, is very simple:

What's the alternative to internecine Democratic finger-pointing of the sort that made the front page of yesterday's Post? The party's congressional leaders need to do whatever they have to do to put this year behind them. Then they need to stop whining. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should put aside any ill feelings and use the Christmas break to come up with a joint program for 2008.

They could start with the best ideas from their presidential candidates in areas such as health care, education, cures for the ailing economy and poverty reduction. Agree to bring the same bills to a vote in both houses. Try one more time to change the direction of Iraq policy. If Bush and the Republicans block their efforts, bring all these issues into the campaign. Let the voters break the gridlock.

If Democrats don't make the 2008 election about the Do-Nothing Republicans, the GOP has its own ideas about whom to hold responsible for Washington's paralysis. And if House and Senate Democrats waste their time attacking each other, they will deserve any blame they get next fall.

The Democrats seem content to run out the clock, assuming that Democratic voters have noplace else to go, and that if they continue to let George Bush and Dick Cheney run amok, they'll win by default in 2008. But is that how you want to win? Isn't it better to win by offering a genuine alternative?

Given the FUBAR state of the country at the moment, even if we DO end up with a Democratic president in 2008, if the party can't line up behind a positive, definitive, progressive agenda, this ineffectual party is setting up said president for four years of accomplishing nothing; four years of Republican minority obstructionism, and four years of Clinton scandals, investigations into Barack Obama's childhood, or relentless snarking about John Edwards' hair, depending on which of the three front-runners finally emerges from this interminable primary season.

If Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were TRYING to cripple the Democratic President they give lip service to wanting, they couldn't do it better.

Labels: Democrats, spinelessness, theocracy

Glenn Greenwald on the Big Tough Democrats. (When you get to the part about the resolution the Democratically-controlled House passed overwhelmingly yesterday, grab a wastebasket in which to vomit. You're going to need it. (Pam has more on this travesty, and also on how utterly batshit crazy Mike Huckabee is.

Here's my question: If Christians are so damn sure that their religion is Absolute Truth, why do they need constant affirmation from others about it?

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, theocracy

Of course global warming apocalypse is just as OK with the Christofascist Zombie Brigade as apocalypse in the Middle East -- as long as they get raptured to Jesus, they're happy.

I don't know why they can't just put on their Nikes and rapture themselves and leave the rest of us alone. Because when a country like the U.S. has leadership that doesn't care about the future of this planet because they're going home to Jesus and they don't care about anything else, this is what happens:

An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.

Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.

"The Arctic is screaming," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.

Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.

This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."

Labels: global warming

I remember being outraged every tiime Ronald Reagan would answer questions about Iran-Contra by saying "I don't remember". Although no one has ever come right out and said it, it became clear later that he may well have been speaking the truth, given the slow progression of Alzheimer's Disease and how quickly he was diagnosed after leaving office.

It's often seemed as if George W. Bush has some kind of neurological impairment. Others have also noticed the deterioration of his ability to speak from the time he debated Texas Gov. Ann Richards in 1994. Some have speculated that he has Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, often associated with alcoholism. In an interview reported Tuesday, he seemed a bit more willing to talk about the extent of his alcohol abuse, though he still shows signs of "I can quit any time I want to" syndrome, which makes it difficult to believe that the stresses of even a bubble presidency wouldn't drive him back to the bottle.

But whether he has a form of delayed alcohol-related dementia, or early-onset Alzheimer's, such an excuse is the only non-nefarious reason for him to be so unable to recall so many things:

The only substantive thing White House Press Secretary Dana Perino offered up about the matter on Friday was a carefully parsed denial of any direct involvement by President Bush himself. "He has no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction before yesterday," Perino said.

That's what's known in Washington as an assertion of plausible deniability -- particularly given Bush's history of leaving such matters to his vice president. And he's not even saying he wasn't involved, he's just saying he doesn't remember.

Yesterday, Bush used almost the same phrasing during an interview with ABC News's Martha Raddatz: "My first recollection of whether the tapes existed or whether they were destroyed was when [CIA director] Michael Hayden briefed me," he said, adding: "There's a preliminary inquiry going on, and I think you'll find that a lot more data, facts, will be coming out... That's good. It will be interesting to know what the true facts are."

There is, however, plenty of data the White House could and should share with the public right now, starting with the disclosure of who in the White House knew about the tapes, what they knew, and when they knew it.

So which one is it? Is the man mentally unable to carry out the duties of his office, or is he stonewalling? Because it's one or the other, and we have a right to know either way.

Labels: George W. Bush

Not while Mike Huckabee walks the earth:

And then there’s the matter of Giftgate. It turns out the guitar-strumming, good-humored populist has never met a present he didn’t want. Huckabee managed to pile up $112,000 in freebies in a single year as governor. I can see how he would feel constrained to politely accept a picture of a duck or a cowboy hat, but $48,000 in clothing? A discount card for Wendy’s? A chainsaw?

Wedding gifts are exempt from ethics restrictions in Arkansas, and when Mike left office, the Huckabees — who have been married for more than 30 years — were signed up on the Target wedding registry so fans could help furnish their new 7,000-square-foot home. “Message from the couple: Target GiftCards are welcome,” added the registry helpfully.

The Arkansas Times, in which the Giftgate article was published, listed some of the items on the wish list. They were pretty modest: a $30 asparagus pot, a $100 Jack LaLanne power juicer and a $250 cookware set. But if the Huckabees move into the White House, it’s a whole new level. I’m thinking they could reel in one really special asparagus pot.

I guess that if Huckabee should manage to get to the White House, the gift registry will be at Nordstrom's or Niemann-Marcus instead of at Target and Dillard's.

It would almost be worth having Rev. Cletus Creationism in the White House for one reason: to see if Sally Quinn and the rest of the Village Heathers Society is as outraged at having "Arkansas yokels" inside her precious Beltway when said yokels have an (R) next to their names.

Labels: http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

“Merry Christmas, you parasitic little fucks. We‘ll bill you for the coal in your stocking.”

He's a foul one, that Mr. Bush. I don’t know what’s more despicable: The fact that George W. Bush, aka the children’s health insurance Grinch, has vetoed a childrens’ health care bill for the second time this year or the fact that he did it behind closed doors.

If the evil twin of Diogenes scoured the world for another billion years holding aloft a lamp glaring the obnoxious kind of halogen headlamp that 17 year-old punks put on their Dodge Neons, he could not find a more loathsomely, thoroughly dishonest scumbag of a human being than George W. Bush. The tsunami of moral putrefaction and relativism vomited daily by this cuckolding of American democracy must, at some point, wash over the mainland and spill out into both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, poisoning our international neighbors with its sheer virulence, with an irresistible force unseen since the levees were breached in New Orleans.

It wasn’t enough that Bush vetoed the bill in private before toddling off to beddie bye but that he even provided Congress with a statement that talked down to them as if they were the children and he the stern authoritarian Daddy:

"This bill does not put poor children first, and it moves our country's health care system in the wrong direction. Ultimately, our nation's goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage, not to move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage."

Get that? The right direction is to get children into the warm, waiting embrace of privatized, nickel-and-diming HMO’s that makes its billions each year not by providing health care but in denying it in ever more novel ways.

Then again, there’s that stubborn insistence that children whose family’s incomes come above the median line already have private insurance. His other objection, if you can believe this, is that it would also provide state and federal government health coverage for adults.

So the kids already have private health coverage but their parents don’t?

Despite their single digit approval rating, I still trust in this instance the judgment of a bipartisan Congressional movement over that of a boob who once thought that he’d solved the health care crisis by telling us that all we have to do is walk into an emergency room.

Some have said that Bush’s main motivation for vetoing this bill again and again, to an increasingly jittery Republican minority that’s about to become an even smaller minority come November next year, is that he wants to continue moving all health care into the private sector. This isn’t true. Republicans couldn’t even dream of getting rid of federal entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and S-CHIP.

Others have opined that it’s because he’s opposed to a .61 cent increase on a pack of cigarettes. This also isn’t true, since a minor tax will not hurt tobacco giants who will merely find some way to pass it onto the consumer.

Some have even simplistically stated that it’s because George W. Bush is a cold-hearted prick who loves to deprive children.

No, no and no. I think the guy who said Bush’s opposition was predicated on a shivering loathing of any government program that would actually work hit the fucking nail on the head. This is at the bottom of every Republican’s shivering, shuddering, dry-heaving self-loathing of anything even remotely resembling competent government, except perhaps a government that acts like an ATM to every soulless, avaricious, self-dealing, GOP-friendly corporate entity looking for a stock-splitting, tax-free, cost-plus, no-bid handout at taxpayer expense.

Meanwhile, this is what Bush yesterday considered worthy of his attention and mercy: Pardoning 29 drug dealers, crooks and election fraudsters, some of whom with minor convictions going back to 1959, the year I was born.

Thank God some Republicans have their priorities straight.

But anyway, we're not doing it....maybe in extreme circumstances like an imminent attack on the US....right?



As Olbermann said tonight, why are we even discussing the IF of this, when its a settled part of law and ethics? When do we look at what is being done in our names and take responsibility?

Oh yeah, he supports Rudy too!

Labels: wingnuttia

Largely thanks to Oliver Willis, who likens himself as “kryptonite to stupid“, this cartoon about Mormonism has been making the rounds of the Internet as if it’s, well, the gospel truth about the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints, hence an indictment on Mitt Romney for believing in it.

However, Willis, while purporting to know nothing about the church’s teachings, then goes on to say that he’d be more sympathetic of Mitt Romney and the anti-Mormon bias he’s had to endure if the right wing was more apologetic of slandering John Kerry for his Catholicism back in 2004.

Tsk, tsk, tsk, Ollie. Ever hear of the pot calling the kettle, well, black?

Now, if Mr. Willis had bothered checking the comments section of this YouTube video or had bothered to Google the title “The God Makers”, he would’ve come across this wikipedia article and a whole host of others that prove this cartoon originates with one Ed Decker, a wife-beating assclown who was so extreme that the Mormons threw his polygamous posterior out of the church (it ought to make you feel better just to know that this asshole published a book just last month).

In response, he’s written a whole slew of books (as a Born Again Christian) railing against Mormonism, including “documentaries” such as this one. It purports to tell the tale of “Mormon Jesus” and “Mormon Lucifer” and how they had a round table discussion as to how to go about enslaving the human race (Jesus won when he bought off the other council members with frosted donuts and a box o’ Joe from Dunkin’ Donuts).

The followers of Satan, avers this unimpeachable documentarian, had their skin blackened to punish them. They became the people of Africa.

The good ones who followed Mormon Jesus, got to remain white for their good sense.

This is what Decker would like to have us believe about the Book of Mormon.

Now, while I profess to be as ignorant, if not moreso than Mr. Willis regarding Mormonism, I will not merely pass along this video and blindly say that this interplanetary 1960’s DC comics/Highlander II bullshit is what Mitt Romney believes in. We’re already hearing too much about religion’s role in politics, which is the very polar opposite of what the Founding Fathers had intended. Religion alone neither proves nor disproves a candidate’s fitness to lead the country, unless he or she is so extreme about it that it does make them unsuitable (in which case, it’s an indictment on the candidate, not their religion). Mitt Romney does not strike me as a religious zealot and I should know- this guy used to be my governor. You want to smear Romney on his politics, fine. But leave his or anyone else’s religion out of it.

Consider the source and that especially goes for influential bloggers such as yourself, Mr. Willis.

Well, I found the template problem -- YouTube video encased in BLOCKQUOTE instead of DIV tags. Everyone should see things OK now.

I've taken out as much stuff that requires downloads from other sites as possible. Unfortunately, that means also widgets -- at least for now -- until we break in the new template and I see how those of you who have written me in the past about load times and browser crashes do with the new dress.

The last step in this process is to restore the Haloscan commenting, which I'd like to do. However, I don't want to lose the comments we already have, especially the generational warfare comments. I've snagged what we have as of this morning, and I can restore them manually by copying them into Haloscan once that's set up.

If you have any objection to this kind of cut-and-paste, please let me know via e-mail: brilliantatbreakfast-at-gmail-dot-com.

Labels: blogging

Feeling I have to defend Hillary Clinton against Adam Nagourney doing a typical Adam Nagourney hit piece on her problems in Iowa.

Labels: hack journalism, Hillary Clinton

Last night I heard that Alex Trebek, the host of Jeopardy, had had a heart attack. Now, you all know who Trebek is -- nice looking fella, slim and trim, probably goes to the gym every day.

And he had a heart attack.

You know who's still kicking at age 74? Dom DeLuise. This photo is from 2005. There's NOTHING in Google about HIM ever having had a heart attack.

You really want to know just how ludicrous the EVERYONE MUST LOSE WEIGHT NOW!!!! movement is?

There is apparently a move afoot for Santa Claus to slim down because a fat Santa is a poor role model for children.

I kid you not.

It seems to me that a "role model" represents someone kids want to be like when they grow up. Today it's usually sports figures. How many kids have you known who want to be like Santa Claus? To a five-year-old, that's like saying "I want to be God when I grow up." Except that a five-year-old thinks he's God now.

There's only one thing you can do with this kind of idiocy if your name isn't "Bill O'Reilly", and that's.....

VIRAL MARKETING!!

An enterprising PR firm has instituted the Keep Santa Fat campaign, with proceeds from the sale of its branded gear and donations for every petition signature going to Second Harvest. So go sign and help a family that doesn't have the luxury of caring that Santa Claus is too fat.

And besides, he's fictional.

Or is that a spoiler?

(h/t: Maya's Granny and Kate)

Labels: idiocy

I agree enough with what Chris Bowers says about the Obama campaign to actually link to it.

Labels: Barack Obama

Buried in the latest USA Today/Gallup poll, in response to the badly-worded question "Do you think the Republican Party or the Democratic Party would do a better job in dealing with the following issues and problems", is the appalling finding that Republican still enjoy a narrow (4-point) edge on what the poll referred to as "moral values."

Putting aside for a moment the question of whether any political party or the government has a role in "moral values", the question must be asked: Why on earth does anyone give Republicans the edge on morality?

Summer Ludwig at Who Would Jesus Vote For lists her top five reasons for Republican sex scandals, two of which are the lack of an internal moral compass and a history of being told that sex is dirty. The more Republicans thump the Bible or pander to the Christofascist Zombie Brigade, the clearer it becomes that for many Republicans, the sexual aspect of morality comes down to "Do as I say, not as I do." It's difficult for secularists like me, who have managed to live a far more moral life than most of the Bible-thumpers, to understand why anyone for whom "moral values" are important would buy this as a philosophy. However, when you have a spiritual structure that is about faith, not deeds, you leave the door wide open for politicians who in no way practice what they preach. Morality then becomes not about living according to a certain moral code, but about advocating that code for others -- particularly those who do not adhere to a particular religion, and especially for those who provide embarrassment by living a life most people would regard as moral and manage to do it without the threat of hellfire and damnation for refusing to believe a story.

This list probably isn't comprehensive, and some kool-aid drinker insisted on adding the usual supects Ted Kennedy (cleared), Bill Clinton (unsuccessfully impeached, not "indited" (sic) and an unnamed Congressman who is obviously Barney Frank, caught up in a "gay sex scandal" (reprimanded) to the list, as if these incidents somehow negated the 89 Republican sex scandals cited (never mind those not yet on this list). This list spotlights Republican pedophiles.

Of course moral values extend far beyond just sex, though you'd never know it from listening to Christian conservatives. Greed is also one of the "seven deadly sins", and just the list of those touched by Jack Abramoff is enough to put a stake in the heart of any notion that Republicans are clean.

Of course Democrats have sex scandals and money scandals. But Republicans, particularly those who identify most with the Christian right, seem to have elevated sin to an art form. When you look at the Abramoff, Dan Rostenkowski's fall for trading postage stamps purchased at the House post office for cash seems downright quaint by comparison.

And yet Republicans still hold the edge on "moral values", despite the fact that one of their presidential front-runners practically came out and stated on Press the Meat last Sunday that Secret Service protection for a presidential mistress was appropriate, while all three of the Democratic frontrunners are still married to their first spouses. Even Hillary Clinton made the decision to work through her marital problems, which ought to be lauded by so-called "values conservatives" and yet is derided by them.

And yet, despite a four-point drop since the October Gallup poll, Republicans still hold the edge on "moral values."

I must just have a different definition of moral values than the more than four out of ten who still regard Republicans as more moral. Can it really be just about believing a story about a guy who rose from the dead?

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, Republicans

Godspeed to John Edwards. With the Iowa Caucuses offering probably the most fair picture of middle Americans (albeit, jaded by this rather heady process that allows most of them to meet and talk with the candidates,) barreling towards us, and Barack and Hillary neck and neck, with only one mistake possible between the two of them, John is well within the margin of error, with a good network already in place in New Hampshire. I really believe that Edwards is the only electable candidate that isn't under the sway of the powers of the ego/career trap or the big power of the ruling corporations that quake at the idea of Edwards raining on their parade. For God's sake, when are Americans going to look at the hard facts and cast a vote that serves them and their fortunes, instead of voting on a vague impression taken from media bytes being thrown about by the M$M.


I would be very interested in seeing Barack Obama win this thing too; as opposed to Hillary....BUT...I don't know if he has enough political experience to get things done in the office, and whoever gets this one has to hit the ground running. At the same time, I like the idea of ideals being tossed about; I liked the West Wing and I can easily see Obama starring in the next generation. But I get this red flag warning, strobing G-R-I-D-L-O-C-K. Maybe it will be that way to an extent anyway, considering that the war will become ours on inauguration day, and we are doing nothing to make it clear that there is a laundry list of criminals here, and their crimes are being glaringly ignored. If we don't go after the criminals now, we deserve what we get.
Can Obama handle the fallout of 8 years of the Bush crime syndicate?

To me, Edwards holds the key to the undoing of the insane policies that have been sliding into place since Reagan. He also doesn't care anymore what they say about him and what they do to him. He has been through it all and acts with the air of someone who is just concentrating on being himself, and screw the handlers and bullshit. Edwards still has a chance and I hope to god that he has the support in Iowa among people who are weighing the actual policies of the candidates.
And to be absolutely sure of this, it looks to me in hi-def, like Edwards has recently freshened up his botox, as has Chris Matthews. Whatever it takes, I'm for it!

On the other side, its clown-time all the time...its never over.
Rudy cackled through Timmeuh Russert's, "tough as they get..." according to Chris Matthews, questioning (NOT!) on Meet the Press. Every time he was asked about his scandalous ongoing rip-off of NYC during his tenure, he cackled hysterically, like a crazy man. But then, Matthews talking about cackling, is a bit of pot-kettle-black, and his ranking of who is a tough interviewer....well, these guys are so involved with each other's asses that its not worth getting angry anymore. Oh, and by the way, Matthews thought that Romney's not-Mormon, religion speech, was the best speech of the campaign! Huh? Hasn't he heard Edwards? Obama?...hell, even Oprah reading off cards, in her MLK-black voice, was better than that. He made no sense and he came off as disingenuous.

Lets get real about the church of Mormon and Mitt Romney's bullshit speech that has already gotten too much airtime by now. Mormon: There is a self appointed leader to whom,it is purported, Jesus himself appeared in 1820, and subsequently an angel dictated the Book of Mormon to him. Thus began a cult of Jesus-freakishness, in which Jesus is considered the creator of everything, replacing God, except to get a little help or direction from him here and there. There is some sort of planetary influence a la Scientology, a disgusting amount of sexism and racism, and the belief that those who don't practice this particular form of Christianity will not go to heaven. The notion that the followers were sent from heaven where they previously resided with god, and that they are following a predestined path in order to gain experience for their return to heaven, removes basic responsibility from them of having to question their assumed authority about all things Jesus; the rest of us be damned...unless we want to get baptized into the cult...then I guess we're saved, only to be explained away as some wandering sheep that have found their way back to the fold; as part of the grand predestined design, of course...like, to teach the rest a lesson...?

Mitt says that America's founders didn't mean to separate church from state THAT much, but at the same time he says that he will do his best to keep the two separate, except that...he is a devout Mormon, and so he must have believed the particularly disgusting teachings that he no doubt followed in his early 20's, such as the belief that blacks are from Mars, while Mormons are from Venus! yup....This group has a dirty history worth looking into, and old Mitt, by proclaiming his devotion throughout the years, particularly naming times of his life that he was still a Mormon, has made it clear who he is...exactly clear.

Larry O'Donnell hit this straight on yesterday on McLaughlin. I was so relieved to see someone able to express the disgust that I have been feeling about the fundamentalism coming from sectors of the republican party, that I started to count the minutes until this showed up on the YouTubes. Larry O'Donnell has the first comment, and its really the only thing you need to hear on this joke of a debate on religion and what the candidates intend to do with it.


I'm not a religious person, but I respect the urge in others, if it gives some comfort. Its certainly nice to have some belief and community in this world; something that I personally lack. I just cant see anyone with the devout belief that a certain group of people are going to heaven (coming from heaven, even,) and the rest of us are going to hell, (or are from hell,) as capable of being a leader to us all. Can one just set those sorts of beliefs aside? I didn't get the feeling from old Mitt's speech that he is able to separate anything from his religion.

...Oh and, he is no JFK...nope, not at all....


Bill Maher on Mormonism


Next: Huckabee is a freak!

c/p RIPCoco

Labels: Barack Obama, Bill Maher, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Obama, religion, Rudy Giuliani

No sooner did Les Moonves announce that some of Showtime's successful original series may be used to plug up writers' strike-paralyzed shows on CBS (a perfectly hideous idea, if you ask me) than the Parents Television Council weighed in:

"CBS' plan is purely based on corporate greed, not what's good for families or in the public interest," said PTC President Tim Winter. "These Showtime programs contain some of the most explicit content on television, period. Yet CBS has no qualms about putting shows that make heroes of serial killers and revel in sick, graphic violence or those that condone drug use and glorify drug dealers in front of millions of children and families on broadcast television. Despite that CBS and Viacom are now 'separate,' CBS is funneling in super-raunchy Viacom-owned premium cable content onto the CBS broadcast network ... It is also another powerful example of why the rules concerning media consolidation must not be loosened."

[Note: Showtime is actually a wholly owned subsidy of CBS Corp., not Viacom. The PTC caught its error and sent a corrected release].

CBS President and CEO Les Moonves mentioned the plan at the UBS Global Media & Communications Conference in New York on Tuesday. He noted that Showtime's serial killer drama "Dexter" was considered a likely contender to lead the charge because the show fits CBS's crime-drama brand (except, of course, that CBS's crime protagonists tend to arrest murderers rather than dismember them).

"Dexter" is winning raves and breaking Showtime ratings records for its current second season. Though the crime drama has pitch black humor and is sporadically gory in a "'CSI'-gone-wild" kind of way, it likely has never been described as "super raunchy."

When I first read about this dumbass idea, it sounded like Moonves was talking about a wholesale move of Dexter to CBS, which would result in travesties like Erik King's ferocious Sgt. Doakes referring to Michael C. Hall's eponymous Dexter Morgan as "you muthaflipper".

I hate to agree with an outfit like the PTC, but in this case I have to: Dexter is just not network television fare; I don't care how much you cut it....so to speak....any more than The Sopranos is. These shows that deal with dark, deeply psychological themes don't belong on broadcast television. They are paced as cable series, written for cable, plotted for cable, and directed for cable. To "clean up" Dexter or The Tudors enough for network TV is to make them unwatchable -- and to give the religious police more ammunition to turn the airwaves even more into conduits for the kind of thin gruel dished out in the so-called "family viewing time."

I for one can't watch The Sopranos on A&E any more than I can watch Goodfellas on AMC. Gangsters curse. Cops curse. They don't say "darn" and "drat" and "flippin'" and "freakin'" and "dog". They say "damn" and "shit" and "motherfucker" and "douche."

And isn't it interesting that adult sexuality isn't regarded as suitable for network viewing, but a serial killer, however appealing and antiheroish he is; and a king who gets rid of wives who don't produce sons for him by any means necessary and beheads or banishes anyone who stands in his way, are perfectly OK.

Labels: Dexter, media, WGA strike

Last month I had an extended and rather heated exchange with one of our commenters who made a host of sweeping generalizations about baby boomers, few if any of which were true. I've had conversations with some of my Gen-X friends on this as well, with many of them similarly blaming the baby boomers for their own plight. I've even seen Gen-Xers trying to claim Keith Olbermann as one of their own, even though he was born in 1959 and therefore is indisputably a baby boomer. I hate to tell them this, but no less a Gen-X icon than old Lloyd Dobler himself, John Cusack, only escaped the dread Baby Boomer label by a mere six months.

I'm seeing a lot of this lately; blaming the baby boomers for everything that's gone wrong in this country, hand-in-hand with the idea that Gen-X, Gen-Y, and the Millenials are somehow either a) hapless victims of the evil boomers (largely the province of Gen-Xers who are now reaching an age when the refusal to "sell out" is starting to have the nasty consequences of no savings and no health insurance); b) greedy, evil people who have sucked up all the resources and left nothing for anyone else; or c) an entire generation of hippies who had all the sex and all the drugs and all the fun and then became Republicans and tried to deny anyone else the fun they had.

Over at Americablog, the primary culprit is "Chris in Paris", who yesterday posted yet another of his screeds contrasting the evil, venal baby boomers with the pure, altruistic millennials:

For years we all heard about the staggering retirement costs related to the Boomers but in the last year we hear much more about the work attitudes of the Boomers compared to the younger workers. The UK, probably like the US, is facing a problem with a substantial percentage of school principals heading into retirement. That alone is not necessarily a problem, but the younger generations are showing little interest in taking on the stresses/risks of management. They would just assume make a little bit less money and enjoy time with friends and family.

All of this is connected and surely is a reaction to what many of us saw growing up. How many kids under 30 (and younger than the Boomers) saw parents lose all job security? How many saw parents/family pursue higher positions only to be tossed aside with the first sign of trouble. As much as Boomers like to argue that young kids are just lazy, I simply don't buy it. It's obvious to me that we are in a testing period where employers and employees are trying to figure out the dynamics of the future.

Maybe young workers will have to give a little (leaving home, for example) but I also think that they are forcing employers to update and adjust. More young workers want a clearer division between work and life and they are not going to be intertwined as we saw with the Boomers. This is a healthy change, in my opinion. It's a different world today and that means adjustments are necessary. If the best employers can offer is job insecurity, fewer benefits and pushing workers upwards to their own level of self-incompetence, something needs to give. More power to the youth who are forcing change. Just because the Boomers don't like it or it doesn't fit with their model of life, doesn't mean it's wrong.

The name "Dennis Hopper" always comes up in these conversations as being somehow emblematic of the baby boom generation even though with a birth year of 1936, he's only nine years younger than MY mother and is closer to the WWII generation than to the baby boom. I suppose this is due to those ghastly TV commercials he does for Ameriprise, which annoy even me. But just because someone played a rebel in Easy Rider, a movie that has come to be regarded as THE signature film of the 1960's doesn't make him a baby boomer. And even if he were, the fact is that those born between 1946 and 1964 are as polyglot as any generation before or after them.

There have always been rebels. John Reed and Louise Bryant and Gertrude Stein were radicals, and the bohemian monde was already thriving in Greenwich Village when the Titanic sank. The Beat Generation was already in or close to adulthood and beyond by the time WWII rolled around. William S. Burroughs was born in 1914, Jack Kerouac in 1922; and Allen Ginsberg in 1926. The unfortunate reality, if you look at the American Rebel in the 20th century, is that none of the rebel movements that arose have ever managed to make more than a dent in "the system."

I was born in 1955, which meant that I was in junior high and high school during most of what we think of as the 1960's upheaval. As such, I was too young for a lot of what went on, though there were people my age who ran away from home in their early teens and went to Haight-Ashbury and hung out with those who formed the San Francisco music scene. Many of those either never made it out alive or never really got their lives together afterwards, because teenage runaways rarely do. I went to the antiwar marches, and stuffed envelopes for progressive Democratic candidates, but there really isn't all that much you can do to Change the World when you're a high school student living with your parents.

I was raised by parents whom I've always believed really wanted to be beatniks. They were the kind of Adlai Stevenson liberal intellectuals you had in the late 1950's and early 1960's; cynics about the process who hated Nixon with a passion, read Jules Feiffer cartoons and The New Yorker and had major freakouts, though in different ways, when what we think of as "The Sixties" came around and my sister was just old enough to take part.

I graduated high school into the first of the 1970's oil shocks, and graduated college into another one. By that time, the left was all but dead; traumatized by the assassinations of 1968, the defeat of Eugene McCarthy for the 1968 nomination by the Vietnam-identified party choice Hubert Humphrey and the election of Richard Nixon, the re-election of Nixon in 1972 and Watergate. Vietnam finally ended, however ignominiously, and by 1977 we were too worried about double-digit inflation and getting up at four in the morning to be on the gas line by five to do much of anything by way of activism.

There's this notion Chris and others put forward that the 80-hour workweek is somehow the invention of sellout baby boomers out of pure greed for bigger houses and ever-more electronic gewgaws and STUFF. But the fact of the matter is that at least for people born my year and later, especially those of us on a white-collar track, the defined benefit pensions and job security that our parents enjoyed was already largely gone by the time we emerged from college into a recession caused by the second oil shock in a decade.

I remember a cartoon that made the rounds during the early 1980's. It was called "The Reading of the Will", and it depicted a bequest from the World War II generation to the baby boomers, such as taking all the prosperity and all the Social Security and all the pensions. So the idea that the previous generation stole all the goodies for itself and left nothing for the future isn't new.

During my high school and college years, I knew as many kinds of people as exist. There were the student council liberals in their plaid pants; the kind of guys who went on to run for office on the safest of Democratic platforms. There were the "love it or leave it" chickenhawks -- the guys who were gung-ho about the Vietnam War (though they were relieved when they drew a high draft number) and adored Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. Those are the guys who spawned the likes of George W. Bush and Karl Rove. There were the hippie/politicos; the ones who organized school walkouts on Martin Luther King Day before it was a holiday and arranged large groups to participate in big antiwar marches in New York and Earth Day festivals in the local park. And then there were the drugs-and-music crowd, which I can't say much about because in my school, they tended to be part of the hippie/politico crowd.

I suspect that if you went to any high school today, you'd find the same basic groups, albeit distributed perhaps differently. And among my generation, the YAF chickenhawk crowd is still supporting war, albeit another pointless one, the liberals are largely still liberal, and many of those who did the whole hippie/drug thing are long dead or burnt out.

Are most corporate CEOs today baby boomers? Absolutely; but this is largely a function of age rather than a sign of a mass sellout by the baby boom generation. And many of the names most closely associated with corporate greed, like Dennis Hopper, pre-date or were born in the earliest years of the baby boom: former Exxon chief Lee Raymond (1938), Ken Lay (1942), just-fired Citigroup head Charles Prince (1950), jailed Tyco chief Dennis Kozlowski (1946). Other baby boom CEOs include Apple's Steve Jobs (1955); Microsoft's Bill Gates (1955), who may be loathsome for other reasons and preposterously wealthy, but is also putting a good chunk of his fortune into philanthropy; Echostar's Charlie Ergen (1953), who is a kind of folk hero among his customers; and Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (both 1951).

The 80-hour workweek, this drive towards "productivity" that has us all spinning our wheels harder for less reward, found its footing during the Reagan years, when the doctrine of "trickle-down" economics had American workers behaving like the Little Engine that Could, working ever-longer hours with ever-less security, repeating "I think I can I think I can I think I can" while deluding themselves that if they just WORKED HARD ENOUGH, they'd get their piece of the Republican pie. And nothing that's happened in the meantime, no matter how much they've been screwed, has dissuaded many from this belief.

Another reason, other than sheer size, that the boomers are being blamed for everything is because of Bill Clinton, the baby boomer president who in his sexual laxity represented everything about the sixties that caused our parents' generation (and those boomers who still adhered to their parents' values) to freak out, and combined it with a nearly pathological desire to be liked and to "play nice with others." This need, combined with a ferocious political "pragmatism" brought us eight years of prosperity, but it also brought us NAFTA and other trade policy that led to the wave of outsourcing of American jobs that we see today. And now that president's wife, whom everyone forgets was a Goldwater Girl before Republicans turned her into Lady Macbeth by way of Janis Joplin by way of Angela Davis, is also running for that office.

Most of us have to sell out eventually. I thought I was refusing to sell out by working in book publishing, for all that the editor for whom I worked was the foremost publisher at the time of conservative screeds by the fathers of the neocon movement. But when I couldn't afford to get my car fixed, I "sold out" and worked for a financial information services company. Later I worked for a company that does business with the company that makes Hummers and now I work for a place that does mental health research, including drug research. I don't have to work 80 hours a week, and while I feel I'm compensated quite fairly, I'm not rich, nor would I be if I did work 80 hours a week. However, when your competition is willing to work 80 hours a week for peanuts, as is the case when jobs are outsourced overseas, taking a month off to go hang gliding in Macchu Picchu isn't going to be applauded by employers, no matter how much Chris in Paris thinks millennials are going to change the nature of the workplace. Far more likely is that millennials and the generation after them will find the screws being tightened even more so by employers.

No doubt it's the fate of every generation to be hated by the one that comes afterward, because unfortunately (as we have found out, much to our dismay and eternal embarrassment), rebels have been trying to change the world for the last century; and not even a large generational population is not going to be homogeneous enough to create any kind of real change all by itself.

Now if the Gen-Xers moaning about how they aren't going to see any Social Security (which by the way, we always knew to be true of us as well) and the progressive millennials thinking that they are going to be able to work 20 hours a week so they can go kite flying every night and still make enough to pay the rent and if they can't it's all the fault of their boomer managers, would recognize that there is greater power when generations get together in the common interest rather than their own parochial ones, perhaps we would have the numbers to make substantive changes. Because a lot of us have been out here trying for the past 30-40 years. We've had limited success at best, but we could sure use the help as we continue.

Of course that would require making an effort instead of complaining and scapegoating Baby Boomers as the source of all our problems the way Republicans have decided to scapegoat Mexicans.

Labels: baby boomers, Generation X, millenials

Nothing like a new outfit to make a girl feel like a new person. But like most clothing I buy, it needs alterations. I'm having some problems getting Haloscan commenting, and in my IE6, the index page doesn't want to load the YouTube videos (though everything is fine in Firefox), the center column is wider than it should be, and that's pushing the right-hand sidebar down the page. And I have no idea why; it was fine earlier this evening.

If any of you lovely folks who have tweaked more templates than I have have any ideas, please e-mail me at brilliantatbreakfast-at-gmail-dot-com. I'd say post in the comments, but once I get Haloscan up the Blogger comments will go away. But I'd like to know what you're seeing, what browser you're using and version, Mac or PC, screen resolution, etc. Thanks.

Labels: blogging