And so an era ends....

OK, it's a short and relatively insignificant era, but tonight Ken Jennings' Jeopardy! Reign of Terror came to a rather ignominious end, with a wrong answer to a preposterously easy question: "Most of this firm’s 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year." He was defeated by realtor (that's for you, Lynn!) Nancy Zerg, who came away from slaying Goliath with a paltry $14,001 in beating a guy who averaged $34,063.51 per game.



This is no real secret; speculation has been running for days, and Kottke.org had an audio file of Jennings' defeat up yesterday, though they got nailed by Sony's attorneys and had to take it down.



Still, for all that I'd stopped watching once I'd heard the spoiler that Jennings lost once he hit around $2.5 million in winnings, I can't help but have a sense that the world is just a bit more drab today without the "How high can he go?" speculation of Jenningsmania.



Somehow I don't think Mr. Jennings is going to go away any time soon. The only question is what products and services he's going to endorse. I suspect that both Federal Express and H&R Block will be among his suitors.

Tell me what is so threatening about this family

I received a year-end newsletter today from a gay friend who lives with her partner and their collective four children.



Excerpts:

"...during the early part of the year, we began searching for a home to buy. In February we signed the purchase agreement, though we couldn't move into the house till June. In May my mom came into town for Memorial Day weekend and we all spent the weekend with N's parents in [city deleted]. The visit was great and gave the two sides of our family a chance to get to know each other. We spent most of the spring preparing for our move, and the rest of the summer was filled with days of unpacking, organizing, and decorating the house. On the 4th, N. and I had a brief getaway to [place deleted]....The next week we travelled to [Red State name deleted] for a reunion with my family...our whole family stayed with my Aunt V. and Uncle E. and we appreciate them so much for opening up their home to us and giving us time to enjoy each other."



"Truly home is where the heart is, and of course our hearts are with our children and each other. But this year, N. and I learned a new meaning of the word 'home' when we bought our own house. We have experienced an abiding peace and contentment since the first night we tucked our kids into bed in the new house, knowing that we were doing so in the place in which we plan to stay until they are grown. We love the feeling of putting down roots in the community and investing in our future.....This house is a dream come true for our family."



"Throughout the year, my loving partner and our beautiful children have continually shown me who I am, who I want to be, and what I value most."

Can someone please tell me how this loving couple, who simply want to bring up their children in a stable home, put food on the table, put down roots in a community, pay their bills, and have a home full of love and laughter, are a threat to ANYONE's marriage?

Here's the war Bush is fighting in our name

Eric Blumrich does it again. [Note: Not for the squeamish, though if you can handle it, this is must viewing for anyone wanting to be informed of what we're doing to civilians in Iraq.]



Even if you are still clinging to the mistaken delusion that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, and even if you think "they're getting what they deserve" (you're wrong, but whatever), how many dead and disfigured Iraqis does it take before we're "even"? How much destruction are we going to wreak before we can consider 9/11 "avenged"?

Is this related to the gynecologists Bush wants to "share their love...

...with women across the country?"

With the three Cabinet replacements Bush has announced so far for his second term, he kept his circle tight by dispatching White House staff members to take over the State, Justice and Education departments. Aides said many other such moves will be announced, because Bush and senior adviser Karl Rove are determined to "implant their DNA throughout the government," as one official put it.

(WaPo, via Corrente)

Amen.

What Matt Singer said.

Disclaimer stickers for science textbooks

Lay in a goodly supply of these for comparison, folks. I suspect you'll be seeing some of them on your child's textbooks within the next four years.

The Danger of American Fascism

(Source: Air America Place)



Must reading for the DNC. Emphases mine:

The Danger of American Fascism

By Henry A. Wallace

The New York Times

From Henry A. Wallace, Democracy Reborn (New York, 1944), edited by Russell Lord, p. 259.



Sunday 09 April 1944



... A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. The supreme god of a fascist, to which his ends are directed, may be money or power; may be a race or a class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture, religion, or a political party.



... The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned. The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.



... They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.

...



Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. ... The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups. Likewise, many people whose patriotism is their proudest boast play Hitler's game by retailing distrust of our Allies and by giving currency to snide suspicions without foundation in fact.



The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism.... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.



Several leaders of industry in this country who have gained a new vision of the meaning of opportunity through co-operation with government have warned the public openly that there are some selfish groups in industry who are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage. ... Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.

...



Democracy to crush fascism internally must demonstrate its capacity to "make the trains run on time." It must develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels. As long as scientific research and inventive ingenuity outran our ability to devise social mechanisms to raise the living standards of the people, we may expect the liberal potential of the United States to increase. If this liberal potential is properly channeled, we may expect the area of freedom of the United States to increase. The problem is to spend up our rate of social invention in the service of the welfare of all the people.

...

Democracy can win the peace only if it does two things:



Speeds up the rate of political and economic inventions so that both production and, especially, distribution can match in their power and practical effect on the daily life of the common man the immense and growing volume of scientific research, mechanical invention and management technique. Vivifies with the greatest intensity the spiritual processes which are both the foundation and the very essence of democracy.



The moral and spiritual aspects of both personal and international relationships have a practical bearing which so-called practical men deny. This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy. Until democracy in effective enthusiastic action fills the vacuum created by the power of modern inventions, we may expect the fascists to increase in power after the war both in the United States and in the world.

...



It should also be evident that exhibitions of the native brand of fascism are not confined to any single section, class or religion. Happily, it can be said that as yet fascism has not captured a predominant place in the outlook of any American section, class or religion. It may be encountered in Wall Street, Main Street or Tobacco Road. Some even suspect that they can detect incipient traces of it along the Potomac. It is an infectious disease, and we must all be on our guard against intolerance, bigotry and the pretension of invidious distinction. But if we put our trust in the common sense of common men and "with malice toward none and charity for all" go forward on the great adventure of making political, economic and social democracy a practical reality, we shall not fail.

Meet Your New Commerce Secretary

Meet Carlos Gutierrez:

US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) nominated 51-year-old Carlos Gutierrez, the Cuban-born head of cereals giant Kellogg Co., as his new commerce secretary.



[snip]



said Gutierrez, who began with Kellogg Co. selling cereal out of a van in Mexico City and is now chairman and chief executive of the group, knew the world of business from the first rung of the ladder to the top.



"Carlos's family came to America from Cuba when he was a boy. He learned English from a bellhop in a Miami hotel and later became an American citizen," Bush said at a joint news conference.



"When his family eventually settled in Mexico City, Carlos took his first job for Kellogg as a truck driver, delivering Frosted Flakes to local stores," the US leader said.



"Ten years after he started, he was running the Mexican business. And 15 years after that, he was running the entire company."



The president called on the Senate to confirm the nomination as quickly as possible.



Bush vowed to reform the "outdated" tax code so as to eliminate pointless paperwork while stimulating savings, investment and growth.



He promised to cut the burden of "junk lawsuits" on business.



The administration also would help more Americans, especially minorities and women, start small businesses, he said.



"He knows exactly what it takes to make American businesses grow and create jobs," Bush said.

Here's how Gutierrez was creating jobs in 1999:

In a move to cuts costs, Kellogg Company said it is considering the closure of the South Operations portion of its Battle Creek, Mich., cereal plant. The closure would eliminate up to 64 percent of the jobs at the facility.



"Streamlining our operations and avoiding future costs would help keep our North American cereal business cost-competitive going into the 21st century," said Kellogg chief exec Carlos Gutierrez.



Under the proposal being considered, up to 700 of the current 1,100 "hourly and salaried positions at the plant would be eliminated as early as the first quarter of 2000. The news comes seven months after Kellogg cut 525 jobs -- 21 percent of its salaried workforce -- as part of a reorganization of its North American operations.

So I guess what we can read from this is that women and minorities can plan to start businesses selling their worldly goods on Ebay.



(via Kos)

I guess that means I can't have those mission-style built-ins...

Maybe this is why the RAND corporation doesn't make home PCs:







I love this part: "With teletype interface and the FORTRAN language, the computer will be easy to use."



FORTRAN.....brrrrr.....

Which war is this, anyway?

This time I hope the captains of these boats bring their video cameras, or some millennial John O'Neill will be after THEM for 30 years after Bush decides to cut and run from Iraq after he gets bored.

As marines aboard fast patrol boats roared up the Euphrates on a dawn raid on Sunday, images pressed in of another American war where troops moved up wide rivers on camouflaged boats, with machine-gunners nervously scanning riverbanks for the hidden enemy.



That war is rarely mentioned among the American troops in Iraq, many of whom were not yet born when the last American combat units withdrew from Vietnam more than 30 years ago. A war that America did not win is considered a bad talisman among those men and women, who privately admit to fears that this war could be lost.



But as an orange moon sank below the bulrushes on Sunday morning, thoughts of Vietnam were hard to avoid.



Marines waded ashore through soft silted mud that caused some to sink to their waists, M-16 rifles held skyward as others on solid land held out their rifle barrels as lifelines.



Ashore, sodden and with boots squelching mud, the troops began a five-hour tramp through dense palm groves and across paddies crisscrossed by deep irrigation canals.



There were snatches of dialogue from "Apocalypse Now," and a black joke from one marine about the landscape resembling "a Vietnam theme park."



But behind the joshing lay something more serious: the sense expressed by many of the Americans as they scoured the area that in this war, too, the insurgents might have advantages that could make them a match for highly trained troops, technological gadgetry and multibillion-dollar war budgets.



The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit conducted the river raid as part of a weeklong offensive billed as a sequel to the battle for Falluja, less than 20 miles upriver from the village where the marines landed Sunday.



The 40-foot river craft they used are called Surcs, for Small Unit Riverine Craft, a high-tech update on the Swift boats used in Vietnam. The craft were flown into Iraq aboard giant C-5 transport aircraft and were first deployed with five-man crews during the battle for Falluja this month, patrolling the stretch of the Euphrates that runs along the city's western edge to prevent attempts by insurgents to escape that way after American troops had thrown a cordon around the city.



Those patrols were judged a success by American commanders. Now they are eager to exploit the potential the patrol boats give them for mounting fast, unexpected attacks along the Tigris and the Euphrates. The rivers run through many of the cities and towns that are rebel strongholds, and the long stretches of verdant riverbank provide ideal hiding places for insurgents and their weapons caches.

Safe, Legal, and Rare

The American people, seemingly completely ignorant of the implications of re-electing the theocratic wahoo who never made any secret of his wahoo-ness, still oppose overturning Roe v. Wade:

U.S. President George W. Bush's nominee for the next Supreme Court vacancy should be willing to uphold the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed abortion rights, according to a majority of Americans in an Ipsos-Public Affairs poll for the Associated Press.



Fifty-nine percent said Bush should choose a supporter of Roe v. Wade, while 31 percent said they want a nominee who will try to overturn the decision, according to the poll. Support for Roe v. Wade was seen among both men and women, across most age and income groups, and in urban, suburban and rural areas, AP said.



Bush, whose supporters in the Nov. 2 election included groups that oppose abortion, is expected to get an opportunity to put his stamp on the court during his second term, as a result of departures from the bench caused by retirement or illness. All but one of the nine justices are over 65, including Chief Justice William Rehnquist, 80, who has thyroid cancer.



More than 60 percent of all respondents said a nominee should reveal his or her position on abortion before Senate confirmation, according to the Nov. 19-21 telephone poll of 1,000 adults.

Boy, are they in for a surprise when Miguel Estrada or Edith Jones become the next Supreme Court Justice.



Prediction: After they get rid of Roe v. Wade, Griswold v. Connecticut is next.



All you folks who decided that John Kerry was a flip-flopper and George W. Bush will keep you safe? THIS is what you voted for. Don't come crying to me.

Can Saint Hello Kitty be far behind?

Following on the heels of the $28,000 grilled cheese sandwich that supposedly bears the image of the Virgin Mary (I think it looks more like the Steichen photograph of Greta Garbo, myself) comes the Hello Kitty Miracle Sandwich.



Bidding closed at $61.00. And we wonder how George W. Bush was re-elected?

Moral values indeed

Hecate at Atrios points out that "In 1996, when 40 percent of Americans based their votes on "moral values," they re-elected Bill Clinton. Now that the number of Americans who base their votes on "moral values" has been cut almost in half, they selected George Bush. And this gives the Racist Radical Clerics the ability to force their "religion" down everyone's throats?"



I have nothing to add but "Amen."

One state two state red state blue state

Fascinating stuff....on the heels of Jerry Falwell's blunderbussing on Meet the Press this morning comes Middle Earth Journal, which blows Falwell's ideas about Good Kristian Families in the red states to smithereens. Turns out those red staters extolled by Mr. Falwell and his ilk aren't as moral as he thought. Whether it's alcohol, teen birthrates, or divorces, the red states have us Godless liberals in the northeast beat by a mile.

The Death of Science in America: Chapter 1

ModFab reports on the new Museum of Earth History, which will feature creationist rebuttals to scientific principles. Check out the exhibits, which include "The Tower of Babel", "The Ice Age", "Eden", "The Fish Aquarium", and for some reason, "The Curse". Why they're including an entire exhibit on my grandmother's term for menstruation, I have no idea.



All your relatives who voted for George W. Bush? Tell them this is what they voted for, and ask them if that was their intention.

Now Osama REALLY Bin Forgotten

I wonder how all those who voted for George W. Bush because he'd keep us safe from terrorists feel about this:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The Pakistan army said today it will withdraw hundreds of troops from a tense tribal region near Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden and his top deputy were believed to be hiding.

The withdrawals from the South Waziristan area come after several military operations by thousands of troops against remnants of bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization and its supporters in recent months.



Although the tribal region is considered a possible hiding place for bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, a senior Pakistan general said earlier this month that no sign of bin Laden has been found.



Bin Laden, architect of the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States, has been on the run since U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, routing the Taliban rulers, who harbored Al Qaeda militants.



The army will remove checkpoints in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, the top general in northwestern Pakistan, said after meeting with tribal elders Friday.



He said the moves are "in return for the support of tribesmen in operations against foreign miscreants." Some troops will remain in the area, he said.



"We have been assured by tribal elders that they will not allow miscreants to hide in areas under their control," Hussain said.



Between 7,000 and 8,000 Pakistani forces were deployed in a three-pronged offensive in the eastern reaches of the rugged region this month. U.S. military forces remain largely on the Afghanistan side in hopes of capturing or killing any Al Qaeda operatives crossing the border.

For those who have forgotten, here's the official scorecard:



Terrorists under the direction of Osama Bin Laden attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. After ousting the Taliban in Afghanistan, who were believed to have been harboring Osama Bin Laden, but without apprehending Bin Laden Himself, the United States invaded Iraq, a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11. Saddam Hussein is now in custody, and Iraq is now overrun with terrorists. Osama Bin Laden is still out there, and Pakistan has withdrawn its help in finding him. Meanwhile, George W. Bush was re-elected "to keep us safe from terrorists."



Does any of this make sense to anyone? I myself now believe more strongly than ever that Bush and Bin Laden are in cahoots with each other, because both of them have benefitted hugely from both 9/11 and the Iraq war.



Happy holidays, everyone.

Deanocratic National Committee Horse Race Update

MyDD gives us an interesting update on the race for DNC chair, which is shaping up as a showdown between the Clintonistas, who still delude themselves that Clinton won because of them, not because he just happened to be the most charismatic politician of our time, and the Deaniac reform movement.



Eleanor Clift comes down on the right side of the angels.



The irony of this split between the Clinton/DLC wing and the Dean/progressive wing of the party is that Dean isn't the second coming of Joe Hill that the media has made him out to be. As governor of Vermont, he has a decidedly centrist record, particularly on fiscal affairs, something the Democrats ought to, but have so far failed to, make hay of in this age of profligate borrowing and spending on the part of the Republicans. Dean is regarded as a radical simply because of being the first major national figure to come out against the Iraq War (and he has since been proven right), and the first governor to sign a gay civil unions bill.



I've heard enough Republicans say after the election that they were relieved Bush didn't have to run against Howard Dean that I'm skeptical he would have been as bad a nominee as conventional wisdom indicated. Yes, Rove would have blasted him on the "in good enough shape to ski but not to serve his country" meme, but is that any worse than what they did to John Kerry? At least Dean would have had the stones to fight back, something Kerry didn't -- and his campaign never recovered. Still, if we want to take as a given that Bush would have cleaned Dean's clock just for the sake of argument, heading the DLC would give Dean exactly the bully pulpit his innate passion and fire were made for.



The question is whether the Democratic Party even WANTS to be reformed. This race is shaking down as something no less for a fight for not just the future of the party, but its very existence. The party hacks seem perfectly happy with sipping the few dregs of wine from the bottom of the glasses and nibbling the dried and curling brie left from the Republican corporate money feast. They get paid, what do they care if they lose all the time? The problem is that the people have run out of patience, and there's only so long they can get away with it.



The other aspect to this race is its impact on the right wing's favorite obsession: The Hillary In 2008 factor. I'm still not convinced that Hillary is planning to run, but even moderate Republicans are hyperventiliating with panic attacks already. I think Hillary is a decent senator and a bright woman, but she's such a polarizing figure that whether the venom is justified or not, she's a goner before she even starts. And her vote for the Iraq war shows she doesn't have the stones to fight back either. So to me, any DNC head that sends a message against a run by Hillary is A-OK by me. We can no longer afford to keep losing. Creeping fascism won't wait forever.



Historically, the DNC is about generating money, and Terry McAuliffe is from all accounts a master at emptying the pockets of fatcats -- at least what's left after they've finished donating to Republicans. A Dean-based DNC would probably shift the focus away from corporations to the grassroots. Both the Dean and Kerry campaigns (the latter helped largely by Deaniacs being good soldiers -- something we won't do again) showed that you can generate a ton of money from individuals if they believe what you stand for. Arguably, the Kerry campaign showed you can do it even if they don't KNOW what you stand for. But with the Republican Party increasingly blatant about being corporate America's bitch, this can only allow the Democrats to position themselves as being a real alternative...for a change.

Family Holidays

On Thanksgiving, I mused on whether the pity people seem to have for those of us who spend a quiet Thanksgiving at home alone or á deux is because they think we're missing something wonderful, or because they wish they could just enjoy a quiet day off.



These tidbits, via Waveflux, are for all of you who feel sorry for yourself because you think everyone except you a good old fashioned Norman Rockwell illustration of a holiday.



First, from the "Go ahead...use the wrong spoon" file:

WORCESTER, Massachusetts (AP) -- A man was charged with stabbing two relatives after they allegedly criticized his table manners during Thanksgiving dinner.



Police said the fight broke out Thursday when Gonzalo Ocasio, 49, and his 18-year-old son, Gonzalo Jr., reprimanded Frank Palacious for picking at the turkey with his fingers, instead of slicing off pieces with a knife.

And I actually kind of like this idea. Though I don't favor this person's harassment of his neighbors (and the shitstorm that's sure to follow, since this story is what's been deemed newsworthy these days, never mind Mosul, the collapsing dollar, or the humanitarian disaster in Fallujah), a giant talking Grinch would pretty much sum up my feelings on the holidays in general:

MONTE SERENO, California (AP) -- For six years, Alan and Bonnie Aerts transformed their Silicon Valley home into a Christmas wonderland, complete with surfing Santa, jumbo candy canes and a carol-singing chorus of mannequins.



Visitors loved it.



Last year, after NBC's "Weekend Today" featured the $150,000 display of custom-designed props, more than 1,500 cars prowled the Aertses' cul-de-sac in this upscale San Jose suburb each night.



This year, though, the merry menagerie stayed indoors. Instead, on the manicured lawn outside the couple's Tudor mansion stands a single tiding: a 10-foot-tall Grinch with green fuzz, rotting teeth, and beet-red eyeballs.



The Aertses erected the smirking giant to protest the couple across the street -- 16-year residents Le and Susan Nguyen, who initiated complaints to city officials that the display was turning the quiet neighborhood into a Disneyesque nightmare.



Alan Aerts, who makes sure the Grinch's spindly finger points directly to the Nguyens' house, says the complaints killed the exhibit. They also violated the Christmas spirit, he said.

Spit take for Saturday, November 27

"There's just a lot of allegations of vote fraud that placed their election, the validity of their elections, in doubt...The international community is watching very carefully. People are paying very close attention to this, and hopefully it will be resolved in a way that brings credit and confidence to the Ukrainian government." -- George W. Bush



(via Poetic Leanings)

Stop me before I watch again!

When Frank Rich left the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, I was disappointed, because he can always be relied upon to be a voice of sanity in the wilderness. However, with the current drumbeat of so-called "moral values" on the part of the anti-sex minions on the right, Rich belongs right where he is: puncturing the balloons of hypocrisy among those who would return chastity belts to the wardrobes of women everywhere and once again tell boys that masturbation will make them go blind.



This week's column, which will appear in the Arts and Leisure section, is no exception. Once again, Frank Rich gets to the crux of the matter:

Rush Limbaugh, taking a break from the legal deliberations of his drug rap and third divorce, set the hysterical tone. "I was stunned!" he told his listeners. "I literally could not believe what I had seen. ... At various places on the Net you can see the video of this, and she's buck naked, folks. I mean when they dropped the towel she's naked. You see enough of her back and rear end to know that she was naked. There's no frontal nudity in the thing, but I mean you don't need that. ...I mean, there are some guys with their kids that sit down to watch 'Monday Night Football.' "



[snip]



Like the Janet Jackson video before it, the new N.F.L. sex tape was now being rebroadcast around the clock so we could revel incessantly in the shock of it all. "People were so outraged they had to see it 10 times," joked Aaron Brown of CNN, which was no slacker in filling that need in the marketplace. And yet when I spoke to an F.C.C. enforcement spokesman after more than two days of such replays, the agency had not yet received a single complaint about the spot's constant recycling on other TV shows, among them the highly rated talk show "The View," where Ms. Sheridan's bare back had been merrily paraded at the child-friendly hour of 11 a.m.



The hypocrisy embedded in this tale is becoming a national running gag. As in the Super Bowl brouhaha, in which the N.F.L. maintained it had no idea that MTV might produce a racy halftime show, the league has denied any prior inkling of the salaciousness on tap this time - even though the spot featured the actress playing the sluttiest character in prime time's most libidinous series and was shot with the full permission of one of the league's teams in its own locker room. Again as in the Jackson case, we are also asked to believe that pro football is what Pat Buchanan calls "the family entertainment, the family sports show" rather than what it actually is: a Boschian jamboree of bumping-and-grinding cheerleaders, erectile-dysfunction pageantry and, as Don Imus puts it, "wife-beating drug addicts slamming the hell out of each other" on the field.

The current hue and cry about "moral values" is just so much horse manure. The moral police of the red states are very concerned about the morality of other people, not about their own. Rush Limbaugh, with his three failed marriages and drug addiction, is in no position to talk about anyone else's moral values. Kentucky, Mississippi, and Arkansas have the highest divorce rates. Abortion rates are the same in Texas as they are in Massachusetts.



I decided that I hated "Desperate Housewives", so I just don't watch it. But that's not enough for the morality police, they want anything that smacks of people enjoying sex purged from the cultural marketplace. You know why there's sex in movies and on television? Because people want it there. They respond to it. Television is about delivering eyeballs to advertisers, not about providing content to viewers. If enough people didn't want this kind of programming, it wouldn't be broadcast. What's more, "Housewives" gets even better ratings in red states than it does in blue states? Do you think perhaps it's because in the blue states, we're actually HAVING sex, rather than watching it on TV?



It's one of the great ironies of the right that the very people who want less government in the boardrooms of corporations want the government to decide what they can and can't watch on television.



Steve Gilliard has more on this, in the context of video games.

Still think Republicans are the friend of the middle class?

In the latest chapter of the Republican drive to eliminate the middle class and return us to the plutocracy/rabble society of 1905, the just-passed Omnibus budget bill contains a revision to the formula for college aid which will result in cutbacks for some and total elimination for about 1000 students of their Pell grants.



The flip side of this "fiscal responsibility" is another provision in the bill, which allocates $2 million dollars of your money to purchase back the Presidential yacht, Sequoia, which was sold by Jimmy Carter for $286,000.



(Via Sirotablog)



Well, what did you THINK you were voting for?

Friday Cat Blogging

Maggie is skeptical of the Administration's reduction of the alert level, so she's taking precautions.

Sore Loserman

Here's Democracy, Texas Republican-Style. Small children call it the "do-over".



From the Yellow Doggerel Democrat blog:

This is so disgusting I can scarcely contain myself. Former State Representative Talmadge Heflin, having lost the count, having lost the recount in his run against Hubert Vo, has decided to contest the election in the Texas House. The House is of course Republican-dominated. Its Speaker, Tom Craddick, can appoint a committee, invested with subpoena power, to investigate the matter, and he has already stated that Vo will never be seated in "his" House. In fairness, Craddick, pro forma, replaced Heflin in his committee chairmanship. But we all know where this one is going: a legitimate, demonstrable electoral victory by a Democrat is on its way to being summarily overturned by fiat. Some democracy we have here!



Vo won the election, by 32 votes... certified by our oh-so-Republican county clerk. If Vo is not seated in the House, then we have a totalitarian one-party government in Texas... a Republican "right to rule" that supersedes any popular vote to the contrary. Thomas Jefferson and Sam Houston are both spinning in their graves.

Now let me see if I have this straight. If a DEMOCRAT calls for a recount, and will live with the result, he's a "sore loserman". If a REPUBLICAN calls for a recount, and won't accept anything but a recount, that's perfectly OK.



Someone please explain this to me.

Red State Tinfoil

Somehow I liked it better when the people in the Rocky Mountain states who muttered about and did internet searches for government conspiracies could be dismissed as just right-wing nutballs.



Not anymore:

Tim Gale became a believer one day last January. He was prowling the Internet when he came across a video of one of the World Trade Center towers collapsing on Sept. 11, 2001. It was likely a video Gale had seen before, but this footage was in slow motion. As Gale watched the tower’s 110 floors begin to crumble, he noticed something unusual.



Right before the tower dropped into a cloud of debris, the windows on the upper levels of the towers blew outwards, one floor at a time, like clockwork. That wasn’t caused by the plane slamming into the tower or the ensuing fire, Gale told himself.



There were bombs in the World Trade Center.



"It blew my head off," says Gale. "I started searching like crazy."



What Gale found, in countless websites, books and films, was a vast network of information questioning the official story of what happened on Sept. 11. The 42-year-old Boulder resident was inundated with decades-old memos, foreign newspaper clippings, engineering studies and national-defense policies. And he discovered the collapse of the World Trade Center was just the beginning–he believes he’s witnessing the collapse of the American society.



"I was being confronted with the raw fact that the U.S. government was complicit in the mass murder of its own citizens for geopolitical purposes," says Gale. "It’s too much to bear in the confines of your mind."

What's astounding about this article is not just that it's in print media (albeit an alternative newsweekly), but that it details the reasons why groups like 9/11 Truth (and your humble blogger) believe as they do. Certainly the utter lack of transparency and only limited cooperation by the Administration in the many investigations only feed the notion that something is at the very least fishy in the official story.

A Pre-Emptive Strike Against the Law of Unintended Consequences

I don't think anyone is deluded enough to think that the Republican advocacy an amendment to the Constitution allowing foreign-born American citizens to run for President is about anything but Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, I don't think even the most ardent knee-jerk Republican wants to amend the Constitution for just one person, for all that they're calling it the "Arnold Amendment".



The minefield for Republicans in this amendment can be summed up in two words: Jennifer Granholm. Granholm is the popular governor of Michigan, and widely seen as a rising star in the Democratic party, albeit one with limited aspirations to this point, since she was born in Canada.



However, the intrepid and dogged sleazemeisters that populate today's Republicans are right on top of the situation:

Michigan Republicans plan to attack Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm in the next gubernatorial race on the same moral issues that helped President George W. Bush win re-election Tuesday over Democratic Sen. John Kerry.





"The 2006 race has begun today, and we are laying the values debate at Gov. Granholm's doorstep," state GOP Executive Director Greg McNeilly declared Thursday, at a postelection conference of pundits and political leaders.



McNeilly added, "She's wrong on abortion, she's wrong on gay marriage and she's wrong on the war on terror." McNeilly referred to a brief televised interview last week in which Granholm said women would like to hear Bush apologize for mistakes made in the Iraq war.



He said Republicans need to get the Michigan Bush voters, who outnumbered the Granholm voters of 2002, "back out in 2006. They need to realize the threat she is to their beliefs." The GOP plans to pursue the same themes in running against U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow in two years.



Although Granholm opposes gay marriage -- but supports civil unions -- she opposed Proposal 2, a constitutional ban on gay marriage, calling it unnecessary and divisive. Proposal 2 was approved by Michigan voters Tuesday by a wide margin.



McNeilly's remarks drew sharp responses from a Granholm staffer and Democratic state party Chairman Mark Brewer.



"It's just a continuation of personal attacks that they've tried on her. None of it has worked," Brewer said. "Michigan voters know her better than they did John Kerry. Voters know her and trust her and like her."



Brewer said attacking Granholm on moral values would backfire.



Granholm's spokeswoman, Liz Boyd, said McNeilly's remarks were sour grapes by the state GOP and its leader, Betsy DeVos.



"The Republican Party apparatus lost at the local level, the state level and the Legislature to Democratic candidates who vowed to fight for good-paying jobs, improved education and access to affordable health care," Boyd said. "They still don't get that those are the issues that really matter to Michigan voters."



She added, "There's something wrong when people are so vicious and mean-spirited on the very day when their own party leaders are calling for unity."

Hey, Republicans: Be careful what you wish for.

Smart Giving

Steve Gilliard starts the holiday shopping season off with a bang. Go read it. He loves you. Do what he says.

Important addition to blogroll

I don't always post on new blogs I've added to the blogroll, but for folks like me who live in northern NJ, our latest addition is an important one. I'm welcoming Northern NJ Congress Watch to the B@B family. This blog is designed to be a one-stop shop for anyone in the NJ 5th, 8th, and 9th districts interested in knowing how your representative is voting. This blog was created by one of the many people utterly disgusted with the fact that the 5th district, long represented by moderate Republican Marge Roukema, now must endure another two years of Scott Garrett, a.k.a. "Tom DeLay's Bitch".

Surviving the day with conservative relatives

Thanksgiving at Chez Brilliant usually amounts to a day off from work with a preposterously expensive dinner out, followed by a nap. This year, it'll probably be punctuated by slapping some Benjamin Moore paint samples on walls and catching up on backlog of movie reviews that need to be written. It's actually a pretty nice way to spend a day.



And yet, every year, co-workers ask what I'm doing on Thanksgiving, and when I tell them about my planned Day of Quiet Reflection and Overeating, a look of abject pity crosses their faces. Are people really feeling sorry for me that I don't have to spend the day cooking and cleaning up and avoiding confrontations with contentious relatives, or is it more akin to the Wanda Sykes bit about people with children...that they always say that having kids is "a lot of work", and then cast their eyes away and say "...but it's worth it"?



Does misery simply love company?



This year, the annual Festival of Industrial Mutant Dry Bird and Carbohydrates is seasoned with an extra tablespoon of irony: today we celebrate a gathering which brought together a bunch of people who fled their native country because of religious persecution and the people that over the next generations they and their descendants would do their best to annihilate. And this celebration is taking place against a backdrop of our leaders doing their damnedest to turn this country into a particularly odious brand of fundamentalist Christian theocracy, and against the current offensive in Mosul, Iraq, where we are attempting to annihilate another indigenous population.



I realize that most people are just too busy driving or cleaning or cooking to deal with such ironies, and so I'll simply send you over to the pragmatic Joe Conason, who has some useful tips for dealing with your wingnut relatives who, after a few too many Coors Lights, will start waxing rhapsodic about the Golden Era of the American Middle Class that another four years of George W. Bush portends.



Happy fucking Thanksgiving, everyone.

Don Quixote, Sydney

EDIT: Don Quixote has closed and been replaced by The Sanctuary Hotel.Suckling Pig.Two words which trigger salivary overdrive for many a gluttonous foodie.In search of the perfect venue for a foodie Christmas function, we headed to Don Quixote to er... pig out.Don Quixote has been around since 1968, but has only been in its current premises in the heart of the Spanish Quarter since 1999. Inside,

Poor Persecuted Christians: Thanksgiving Edition

Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest debunks the latest Drudge/Bush lie about how poor, put-upon Christians are being persecuted in the public schools. (Hint: They aren't.)

New outsourcing blog

In case your blood isn't boiling enough (particular if you are an information technology professional), here's a new blog devoted entirely to the issue of outsourcing. I'm adding it to the blogroll. I think we're going to want to keep an eye on this one.

Hypocrisy, thy name is "Republican"

Greg Palast (a.k.a. "Mr. February") induces the coffee-spit-on-the-keyboard as he notes Republican Sen. Richard Lugar's shock....shock...and appalled-ness (???) at the election irregularities in Ukraine.



He quotes the New York Times (emphases mine):

An international election observer mission - from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Parliament, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the Council of Europe - released a preliminary report on Monday declaring that the election did not meet democratic standards.



The observers' findings were seconded by Republican Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.



Citing the disturbing fact that official results diverged sharply from a range of surveys of voters at polling places, Lugar said, "A concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities."



Other prominent Western observers were unsparing in their criticism of the state's conduct of the election.



"Fundamental flaws in Ukraine's presidential election process subverted its legitimacy," the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, sponsored by the Democratic Party in the United States, declared in its preliminary report. The institute, cited "systematic intimidation, overt manipulation and blatant fraud" that were "designed to achieve a specific outcome irrespective of the will of the people."

As Palast notes:

This reporter was unable to reach Senator Lugar regarding the inconsistency of official election results and exit polls in the USA; the intimidation of minority voters in Florida and Ohio; nor the failure to count two million ballots cast, half by African-American voters, in America's first post-democratic election held earlier this month.



Eastern bloc observers noted that balloting in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida did not meet Ukrainian standards, but applauded America's attempt to restore democratic institutions after the overthrow of elected government in 2000.

I swear, you can't make this stuff up.



UPDATE: Keith Olbermann, the last investigative journalist in America still with a full-time job, weighs in on the irony of Republican worship of exit polls in the context of Ukraine, and dismissing of them here.



One aspect to this whole recount/exit poll fracas that isn't getting enough attention is that of disenfranchisement. It's one thing to recount the votes and look at whatever pitiful audit logs haven't yet been destroyed by Republican election officials. It's quite another to find out just how many people were prevented from voting entirely due to their precincts being stiffed for adequate voting machines.

Kristof (of all people) tells it like it is

(with apologies to Vern for ripping off his tagline)



Covering Darfur has restored Kristof's sanity. For a while there, he too was beating the Bush is God drum. Nice to see him back in peak form.

f America's secular liberals think they have it rough now, just wait till the Second Coming.



The "Left Behind" series, the best-selling novels for adults in the U.S., enthusiastically depict Jesus returning to slaughter everyone who is not a born-again Christian. The world's Hindus, Muslims, Jews and agnostics, along with many Catholics and Unitarians, are heaved into everlasting fire: "Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and . . . they tumbled in, howling and screeching."



Gosh, what an uplifting scene!



If Saudi Arabians wrote an Islamic version of this series, we would furiously demand that sensible Muslims repudiate such hatemongering. We should hold ourselves to the same standard.

More Idiocy in America

Kevin Drum cites a 2001 study on basic science literacy by the National Science Federation.



Some tidbits:

• 48% of adults believe that the earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs



• Only 53% of adults believe that humans as we know them developed from earlier species of animals



• 65% know that the father's gene decides whether a baby is a boy or a girl. This means that over one in three men may believe Henry VIII was right to blame his wives for his lack of male offspring.



• And here's the kicker: 22% of American adults believe the sun revolves around the earth.
  
  

Expect more cutting-edge thought like this as your kids start learning in school that an invisible man who lives in the clouds created everything on earth in six days just about 6000 years ago. Of course, when they're working as pool boys on the palatial estates of Bush family friends, what will they need science for?

One Republican wakes up, 61 million to go

Jazz Shaw's realization that the Iraq war is a complete clusterfuck and his conversion to our side is hardly the coup it might look like; Shaw is one of the last sane Republicans on earth. However, we'll take every reality-based Republican we can get. There are, after all, so few of them.

Harry Reid: Selling out already

Well, that didn't take long:

In a deal to let 175 of President Bush's nominees take office, an adviser to new Democratic leader Harry Reid, the Senate's staunchest opponent of a nuclear waste dump in Nevada, will be named to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.



For months Senate Republicans had refused to take up, or even hold a hearing, on the nomination of Gregory Jaczko, Reid's adviser on nuclear issues.



In turn, Reid, who has pledged to try to kill the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, had blocked the Bush nominations.



In negotiations just before Congress recessed during the weekend, an agreement was worked out: the White House promised Jaczko would be appointed to a limited two-year term while Congress was in recess, and Reid lifted his hold on the package of Bush nominations, which zipped through the Senate.

Brand Democrat

Of course the party won't adopt this. After all, these are the guys who thought Bob Shrum, who was 0-for-7 going into this most recent campaign, would be able to create a winning campaing for John Kerry. But Oliver Willis is clearly on to something here. Whether the party latches on to it will determine if they really want to oppose the creeping fascism of the right or if they really ARE only there to make us think we have a choice, when in reality they and the Republicans are on the same team.

Building the next generation of scared shitless Americans

In case you were wondering how the Republicans intend to remain in power indefinitely, they're clearly working on keeping people scared for a very long time:

Between spoonfuls of cereal, a little girl in pajamas looks across the kitchen table and innocently asks her mother some chilling questions: "What if something happens? Should I stay where I am and wait for you?"



She may not understand the implications, but she's talking about terrorism. Now the government wants parents to provide answers.



In a series of new TV, radio and print ads, the Department of Homeland Security is encouraging parents to talk to their children about what to do if disaster strikes.

The public service ads, unveiled by the Ad Council on Monday, are aimed at parents. Stations are being encouraged to air them only during adult programming. "It is certainly not our goal that these run during Saturday morning cartoons," said Kathy Crosby of the Ad Council.



But some experts say the ads could frighten children who see or hear them. The ads could make children worry that a terrorist attack is likely, said child psychologist David Fassler of Burlington, Vt. "Parents need to emphasize that's simply not the case," he said.



Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said parents talk to their kids about other issues, including crime and speaking to strangers.



"We don't think this will be any different than anything else parents have been asked to do for a long, long time," Ridge said. "This is only a difficult subject if the parents make it a difficult subject."



The new campaign is part of a government effort to get families to plan for emergencies. In one ad, three siblings ask whether they should go to a neighbor's house and how to keep in touch if the phones are out.



An adult voiceover says: "There's no reason not to have a plan in case of a terrorist attack. And some extremely good reasons why you should." It refers parents to www.ready.gov for information.

So much for a vote for George W. Bush being a vote for your safety...

So long, and thanks for all the fish

From Americablog:

This is one of the nicest stories I have read in a while. And to think that some idiots in Congress want to make it easy again for commercial fishermen to kill dolphins in their nets.

From Reuters:

Lifesavers Rob Howes, his 15-year-old daughter Niccy, Karina Cooper and Helen Slade were swimming 100 metres (300 feet) off Ocean Beach near Whangarei on New Zealand's North Island when the dolphins herded them -- apparently to protect them from a shark.



"They started to herd us up, they pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us," Howes told the New Zealand Press Association.



Howes tried to drift away from the group, but two of the bigger dolphins herded him back just as he spotted a three-meter (nine feet) great white shark swimming towards the group.



"I just recoiled. It was only about 2 meters (6 feet) away from me, the water was crystal clear and it was as clear as the nose on my face," Howes said.



"They had corralled us up to protect us," he said.



The lifesavers spent the next 40 minutes surrounded by the dolphins before they could safely swim back to shore.

NOTE FROM JOHN IN DC: It's obvious why Congress wants to kill them. Saving lives is very blue state.

Help a service member call home this Thanksgiving

I've posted here repeatedly why I think it's important for our side to do what we can to help the guys out there in the field that Bush has forgotten. We may not like what they've been asked to do, but we don't want to make the mistake again of blaming the grunts for the sins of the commanding officers.



Here's a site that lets you purchase phone cards online to be sent to a serviceperson in Iraq. You can either buy one for your own friend or loved one, or just send one to any serviceperson.



Remember, these guys are Bush's victims too.

Yikes.

We are SO fucked:

Stephen Roach, the chief economist at investment banking giant Morgan Stanley, has a public reputation for being bearish.



But you should hear what he's saying in private.



Roach met select groups of fund managers downtown last week, including a group at Fidelity.



His prediction: America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic ``armageddon.''



Press were not allowed into the meetings. But the Herald has obtained a copy of Roach's presentation. A stunned source who was at one meeting said, ``it struck me how extreme he was - much more, it seemed to me, than in public.''



Roach sees a 30 percent chance of a slump soon and a 60 percent chance that ``we'll muddle through for a while and delay the eventual armageddon.''



The chance we'll get through OK: one in 10. Maybe.



In a nutshell, Roach's argument is that America's record trade deficit means the dollar will keep falling. To keep foreigners buying T-bills and prevent a resulting rise in inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will be forced to raise interest rates further and faster than he wants.



The result: U.S. consumers, who are in debt up to their eyeballs, will get pounded.



Less a case of ``Armageddon,'' maybe, than of a ``Perfect Storm.''



Roach marshalled alarming facts to support his argument.



To finance its current account deficit with the rest of the world, he said, America has to import $2.6 billion in cash. Every working day.



That is an amazing 80 percent of the entire world's net savings.



Sustainable? Hardly.



Meanwhile, he notes that household debt is at record levels.



Twenty years ago the total debt of U.S. households was equal to half the size of the economy.



Today the figure is 85 percent.

But hey, at least those pesky gay people won't be able to marry, right?



(via Atrios)

This particular liberal HATES "Desperate Housewives"

Don't you just love the way the fundies are screeching nonstop about the decline in morality and coarsening of the culture -- at the same time that "Desperate Housewives" is the #1 show in America? What are people saying, "Stop me before I watch again!"?



I happened to catch this particular exercise in broadcast swill for the first time on Sunday night. I am an unabashed, unrepentant liberal. I'm anti-censorship, pro-sex, and not in the least bit squeamish about such things. And I found this the ugliest, most distasteful, appalling hour of television I've seen in a long time. I wanted to take a shower after it was over.

And they wonder why we're falling behind in science?

This country has always been at the forefront in science and technology, but now we're falling behind:

The U.S. economy has powered ahead in large part because of the amazing productivity of America's science and technology. That research is done largely by foreign students. The National Science Board has found that 38 percent of doctorate holders in America's science and engineering work force are foreign-born.



WE DON'T STUDY SCIENCE



Foreigners make up more than half of our science and engineering students. The dirty little secret about America's scientific edge is that it's largely produced by foreigners and immigrants.



Americans don't do science anymore. The NSB reported this year that the United States now ranks 17th (among nations surveyed) in the proportion of college students majoring in science and engineering. In 1975 the United States ranked third. The recent decline in foreign applications is having a direct effect on science programs. Three years ago MIT had 385 computer-science majors. Today there are 240. Similar trends exist at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and the University of California, Berkeley.

Part of the problem is that computer science majors have virtually no hope of obtaining jobs in their field when they graduate. As more and more tech jobs are outsourced, why would anyone endure this kind of rigorous field of study, only to end up selling light switches at Home Depot?



But another part of the problem is the creeping dark ages that the rise of fundamentalist Christianity is foisting upon us. Americans don't do science because it might fly in the face of religion, and we mustn't allow anything to interfere with our belief in the Invisible Cloud Being, must we?

Americans do not believe that humans evolved, and the vast majority says that even if they evolved, God guided the process. Just 13 percent say that God was not involved. But most would not substitute the teaching of creationism for the teaching of evolution in public schools.



Support for evolution is more heavily concentrated among those with more education and among those who attend religious services rarely or not at all.



There are also differences between voters who supported Kerry and those who supported Bush: 47 percent of John Kerry’s voters think God created humans as they are now, compared with 67 percent of Bush voters.



[snip]



Overall, about two-thirds of Americans want creationism taught along with evolution. Only 37 percent want evolutionism replaced outright.



More than half of Kerry voters want creationism taught alongside evolution. Bush voters are much more willing to want creationism to replace evolution altogether in a curriculum (just under half favor that), and 71 percent want it at least included.

This is absolutely appalling. There is ZERO scientific method behind these beliefs, they are beliefs based on FAITH. FAITH is just that. It requires no evidence and no experimentation to prove its validity. And this is what Americans believe.



Does anyone honestly believe that this country can remain the superpower it is without science and technology? And does anyone believe that science can be practiced effectively without scientific method, with attributing everything to God? And what do these people think is going to happen to their ridiculously high standard of living when the rest of the world eclipses us because they are willing to THINK, while we're here claiming that the earth is a flat disc that revolves around the sun?

THIS is their idea of less government?

(via Tbogg):

"Protection of marriage" is now the watchword for many activists fighting to prevent gays and lesbians from marrying. Some conservatives, however, say marriage in America began unraveling long before the latest gay-rights push and are pleading for a fresh, soul-searching look at the institution.



"When you talk about protecting marriage, you need to talk about divorce," said Bryce Christensen, a Southern Utah University professor who writes frequently about family issues.



While Christensen doesn't oppose the campaign to enact state and federal bans on gay marriage, he worries it's distracting from immediate threats to marriage's place in society.



"If those initiatives are part of a broader effort to reaffirm lifetime fidelity in marriage, they're worthwhile," he said. "If they're isolated - if we don't address cohabitation and casual divorce and deliberate childlessness - then I think they're futile and will be brushed aside."

Deliberate childlessness?



So now we're going to have to reproduce within a reasonable period of time as set forth by the government?



If you thought that the Republican focus on hetero marriage was about anything but eliminating all non-procreative sex, here's their real agenda.



For years I've been saying that next time they make abortion illegal, they'll be sure to give a zygote the status of a full human being. Since they regard a fertilized egg as the same as a person, women will be required to submit their used tampons to the government to make sure there are no un-implanted fertilized eggs in there, and if there are, the woman will be charged with murder. People have branded me a hysteric on this subject. And yet here's one of THEM deciding that adults don't even have the right to marry and decide not to have children.



You know what? Not all of us are cut out to be parents. I knew very early on that I did not want children, I was not cut out to be a mother, and I was not going to have children. And now people like this are trying to equate that kind of sparing the world from the ravages of yet more fucked-up kids with divorce.



Since when is it the government's business whether we have children or not, and how many we should have? How on earth can any so-called "conservative" buy into this crap? These people voted for Bush thinking he'd keep them safe from Islamic fundamentalists. But who will keep us safe from Christian fundamentalists?



I defy any conservative to tell me why government intervention in MY bedroom, or anyone else's, is consistent with "smaller government." We liberals have long been saying that the Republican mantra is "Keep the government out of Big Business and in the bedroom where it belongs." It looks like we were right.



You no longer have to be gay to know that the government frowns on your private life. It looks like we know now why they wanted Senate committee chairmen to be able to look at our tax returns. They want to be sure we're claiming dependents.

Superbowl, Haymarket--Part II

I've reviewed Superbowl before but this time we opted for different choices and hence another posting seemed worthy.I originally had noble nutritional intentions, ordering the cleansing, life-giving comfort food of congee--essentially minimal rice cooked in a big pot of water or chicken stock until you get a watery rice porridge.Plain congee fat content = negligible.But as any self-respecting

The perqs of being an airport security screener

You get to grope women at will in the name of national security:

At a security checkpoint recently at the Fort Lauderdale airport, Patti LuPone, the singer and actress, recalled, she was instructed to remove articles of clothing. "I took off my belt; I took off my clogs; I took off my leather jacket," she said. "But when the screener said, 'Now take off your shirt,' I hesitated. I said, 'But I'll be exposed.' " When she persisted in her complaints, she said, she was barred from her flight.



Heather L. Maurer, a business executive from Washington, had a similar experience at Logan Airport in Boston recently. And a few weeks ago, Jenepher Field, 71, who walks with the aid of a cane, was subjected to a breast pat-down at the airport outside Kansas City, Mo.



These women and a good many others, both frequent and occasional travelers, say they are furious about recent changes in airport security that have increased both the number and the intensity of pat-downs at the nation's 450 commercial airports. And they are not keeping quiet.



In dozens of interviews, women across the country say they were humiliated by the searches, often done in view of other passengers, and many said they had sharply reduced their air travel as a result.



[snip]



With the new rules, security personnel are given more latitude to select whomever they want for secondary screenings, whenever they want, and to conduct more intrusive pat-downs and more thorough examinations of carry-on bags. In both cases, travelers have the right to seek a private area, and women can request female inspectors.



A provision in the new rules - which says that a screener's "visual observation" of a passenger is enough to order a secondary screening - seems to single out women, something that many women searched attribute to a belief that bras are good places to conceal nonmetallic explosives.



The provision states, "T.S.A. policy is that screeners are to use the back of the hand when screening sensitive body areas, which include the breasts (females only), genitals and buttocks."

I would like to see a study done of the relationship of bra cup size and the age of the female in question to the likelihood that a female will be groped in the name of looking for explosives.



Meanwhile, I'm sure teenaged boys will be reassured that as long as they use the back of their hands, it's not really a grope.

In the Name of God

Scalia's at it again, with his selective use of "original intent", claiming that a nation that litters everything that isn't nailed down with the word "God" is not religion-neutral.



Since he said this in front of a Jewish group, he decided to invoke the Holocaust this time to demonstrate the inevitable result of separation of church and state:

"Did it turn out that, by reason of the separation of church and state, the Jews were safer in Europe than they were in the United States of America? I don't think so."

For Scalia to play the Holocaust card in trying to convince Jews that an imposition of a Christian theocracy is what the Founding Fathers wanted is just appalling. And he doesn't know his Hitler very well either:

I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work."

-- Adolph Hitler, speech to the Reichstag, 1936



"I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator."

-- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pg. 46

Gee, that sounds like the thought patterns of another world leader we know, doesn't it?

"I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job."

-- George W. Bush, Lancaster County, July 2004



"God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East." -- George W. Bush

What part of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" does Mr. Scalia not understand? As for spattering the word "God" like graffiti all over the place, obviously Scalia is ignorant of the fact that the words "In God We Trust" were added to the currency during the Civil War, NOT by the Founding Fathers.

"God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance not by the Founding Fathers, but in the 1950's as a McCarthyite response to "Godless Communism."



Here's what some other scholars had to say about church and state -- each and every one of them with more wisdom than Scalia will ever have:

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."

-- Aristotle



Fundamentalism isn't about religion. It's about power.

-- Salman Rushdie



"Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you."

-- Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois. September 11, 1858. [ironic date isn't it?????]

(Thanks to Lois E. for the above)

Shameless self-promotion

If you,ve enjoyed reading my rantings the past few months, I hope you'll consider nominating Brilliant at Breakfast in the 2004 Weblog Awards in any or all of the following categories:



Best Overall Blog



Best New Blog (Established 2004)



Best Liberal Blog



I hope also that you'll visit and consider nominating some of the other newer blogs that have been kind enough to speak highly of us, and in some cases, include us in their blogrolls:



Modern Fabulousity

Waveflux

Poetic Leanings

Running Scared

Red Hair Black Leather

PJ O'Brien's, Sydney

We grabbed a quick pre-movie dinner at PJ O'Brien's.

Located in the elegant art deco building the Grace Hotel (originally built in the 1930s as a headquarters for the Grace brothers--really pre-Myer!), PJ O'Brien's has plenty of olde world charm. The menu here is significantly expansive; a dizzying choice from ten entrees, ten pizzas and fourteen mains.

We opted for comfort food: burger,

Olbermann is back

...and continuing to fight the good fight. I have no illusions that any of the efforts being made to, well, actually COUNT the vote are going to change the result of the election, but I think it's important to show just how flawed the process that gave Bush his self-described mandate is.



Go send Keith some love.



UPDATED to fix direct link to Olbermann's e-mail.

So you can decide for yourself

(Via Kos)



Kevin Sites, the reporter who captured the shooting of an Iraqi by an American soldier last week, has a blog. Even aside from his side of that particular story, it's fascinating and eye-opening stuff for anyone who wants to know what's really going on by someone who's there, as opposed to some chickenhawk talking head sitting in a studio. I'm also welcoming him to our blogroll.

Have they gone too far yet?

By sheer luck, I happened to be watching C-SPAN at my mom's yesterday when I happened to chance upon Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, a Republican, actually APOLOGIZING for something he said was slipped into the budget bill by "some staffer."



Apparently, what was slipped into the "thousands of pages" referred to by John McCain in the same extraordinary exchange, was a provision that would allow certain chairpeople of Senate committees to gain access to ANYONE's IRS data. Presumably this provision was aimed at the prosecutor who's going after Tom DeLay.



This kind of a provision makes Nixon's old enemies list look like a guest list for a garden party. It would allow Senate committee chairs to investigate anyone sniffing around anything that stinks....like oh, say, the way Ohio's elections were run.



Charles Grassley, another Republican, was also furious.



Josh Marshall has more, and apparently it wasn't "some staffer", it was added at the request of one of Tom DeLay's buddies, Rep. Istook of Oklahoma, whose House subcommittee just happens to have jurisdiction over the Treasury Department.



The real question that rises out of this is whether so-called "principled" Republicans, like McCain, Grassley, and people like Lincoln Chaffee, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe are going to try to do something about it, or if they're going to continue to be good, obedient little brownshirts for the thugs who now run their party. Grandstanding with righteous indignation is one thing. Actually doing something is another. I'd like to believe that the thugs have crossed some sort of line and now the last sane Republicans in power will start to protest. However, if attacking your family, as they did with McCain in 2000, isn't enough, what is?



What's happening now is NOT "conservative." It's NOT about "less government." Allowing anyone in the government to view tax return information for any American, at any time, for any reason, is NOT conservative. It is totalitarian, it is the stuff of the former Soviet Union, and any principled conservative who buys into this ought to be ashamed of himself.

Glebe Street Fair

Bellies distended from our late lunch and with energy still in our legs after our foodie trek, we decided to catch the tail end of the Glebe Street Fair, celebrating its 21st birthday!

Crowds were expected to be 120,000 for Sydney's oldest fair. There were probably more...



Glebe is known for its bohemian, free-thinking and leftist atmosphere originally cultivated by a strong communinity of

Trojans, Balmain

Breakfast seemed like eons ago and we were ravenous after our foodie trek from Rozelle to Balmain.

Trojans looked promising with outdoor tables, plenty of punters and a buzzy atmosphere.


Grilled fresh sea scallops served on rocket, parmesan and truffle mayo $16.00


Steak sandwich $13.00


Turkish bread with roasted eggplant, tomato and bocconcini
and pasta of the day: spaghetti with fresh

Foodies on the run--Rozelle to Balmain

With a Grande Bouffe breakfast churning its way down our digestive tracts, we set off on a fearless foodie frenzy from Rozelle to Balmain.

Darling Street was but a row of white pellets in our mind's eye, and we were individual Pac Men, determined to consume everything in sight...


The Fine Food Store has its own cheese room and stocks a mind-boggling array of gourmet goodies including a good

NJ 5th District Update

Surprise, surprise, surprise. Our recently re-elected wingnut Congressman, Scott Garrett, voted for the "Tom DeLay Rule." What this means is that Scott Garrett, being the good little Nazi soldier that he is, believes, along with the rest of the insane Republican manaics in the House, many of whom voted back when Democrat Dan Rostenkowski was the one in hot water, in favor of indicted members having to resign leadership posts, that when the crook is a Republican, somehow it's different. If you live in the 5th District, and even if you don't, send an e-mail to this un-American loser who worships Jesus, money, and power (obviously not in that order) that this is NOT what he's in Congress for.

Visiting blue family in a red state

Light blogging this weekend; I'm visiting some liberal family members living in a blue enclave in a red state. But while strugging to try to read my regular blogs using an AOL dialup connection (and aging rapidly while I wait for pages to load, this post from Daily Kos, referencing Bob Herbert's New York Times column yesterday, is worth noting:

As I watch the disastrous consequences of the Bush policies unfold - not just in Iraq, but here at home as well - I am struck by the immaturity of this administration, whatever the ages of the officials involved. It's as if the children have taken over and sent the adults packing. The counsel of wiser heads, like George H. W. Bush, or Brent Scowcroft, or Colin Powell, is not needed and not wanted.



Some of the world's most important decisions - often, decisions of life and death - have been left to those who are less competent and less experienced, to men and women who are deficient in such qualities as risk perception and comprehension of future consequences, who are reckless and dangerously susceptible to magical thinking and the ideological pressure of their peers.



I look at the catastrophe in Iraq, the fiscal debacle here at home, the extent to which loyalty trumps competence at the highest levels of government, the absence of a coherent vision of the future for the U.S. and the world, and I wonder, with a sense of deep sadness, where the adults have gone.

This got me thinking about filial rejection as an underlying mindset for way too many of the Bushies. Ari Fliecher and his Democratic parents. Dick Cheney, who's dad was a federal civil servant and whose mentors included the eminently decent Gerald Ford. Donald Rumsfeld, a Congressional ally of Ford's, and an aide to Nixon. And Karl Rove...well, there's way too much material there for a quick psycho-political assessment.



I've long thought of the neocons as approaching politics like a graduate seminar, where the goal is to distinguish oneself with flashy rhetoric and verbal gamesmanship, preferably by constructing and then demolishing straw man arguments. But Herbert may be on to something: this administration, especially in terms of its foreign and defense policy, may be a big exercise in saying screw you to, in addition to most of the world and nearly half the country, the administration members' own elders, mentors, and parents.

Isn't it ironic, then, that the people running the show, with all their vociferous contempt for the 60's, are the ones STILL rebelling against their parents? At least the rest of us got it out of our system when we were still in our teens and twenties. A 50-year-old who's still angry at his dad is just pathetic. Too bad the pathetic 50-year-old with daddy issues, and the rest of his cronies, also with daddy issues, have the power to order the shedding of blood with such cruel abandon.

La Grande Bouffe, Rozelle

We treated ourselves to an indulgent breakfast at La Grande Bouffe, bright and early on a Sunday morning.



With owner David Poirier (ex-Salt) and accomplished Irish chef Colin Fassnidge at the helm, La Grande Bouffe is often mentioned in the SMH's Good Living section, most recently with regards to its use of Bangalow pork.

The emphasis here is French country fare. We were enamoured with our

Sticky fingers...

Has it been too long since you basked in the indulgent joy of crunchy artificially coloured spheres of sugar (Hundreds and thousands) on buttered soft and fluffy white bread? Contrasting textures, gorgeous colours and oh-so-satisfying sticky mouth-staining sweetness.



I was at a kids party today and it was hard to tell who had more fun raiding the treats table--the kids or the kids-at-heart!

Alio, Surry Hills

Just off the main drag of Crown Street and Cleveland Streets, Alio is modern warm furnishing with funky circle cut-out dividers adding a 70s-style feel.

Service was attentive, napery was crisp, and the sound of cutlery and conversation was appropriately muted.

Standouts here were definitely the fried zucchini flowers and the pappardelle with prawns. The zucchini batter was crisp, the goats

Se Joung, Campsie

Se Joung is an unassuming restaurant sitting on the pedestrian ramp next to a suburban Woollies. Shoppers pushing trolleys or laden with bags continually stream past this eatery marked only with a green neon sign reading "Korean Restaurant". Which is confusing for first-time visitors, considering the name of the restuarant is Se Joung. Locals know this place well though, and every night the

The Porterhouse, Surry Hills

A stone's throw from trendy Oxford and Crown streets, The Porterhouse is a refreshing oasis of genuine pub grub served with down-to-earth Irish hospitality.



Inside the pub is bright and airy yet Irish-cosy; red brick arches complement sandstone features and plenty of wooden booths provide enclaves of privacy. Even more heartwarming is the presence of genuine Irish punters--this must be the

And they say Hollywood keeps making the same movie over and over...

Kevin Drum notes that the Iraq script is now being replayed in the context of Iran:

The Israelis have made it clear that they believe Iran is fast becoming an imminent threat that justifies preemptive attack.



There's a multinational effort underway to persuade Iran to stop enriching uranium. The Europeans think they've reached a solid agreement, but the United States remains skeptical.



An exile group is loudly claiming that the Iranians are lying and there's a secret enrichment facility the Europeans don't know about.



Liberal hawk Kenneth Pollack has a big new book out telling us how dangerous Iran is.



I can't be the only one to think I've seen this script before, can I? Is real life turning into Groundhog Day?

And they say Hollywood keeps making the same movie over and over again. Hell, at least with Alfie you get to look at Jude Law for two hours. Here all you get is a frightened American population, a bunch of freepers out for blood, and a shitload of dead and wounded American kids.

Equally Incriminating Photos

Kenneth Starr, please call your office immediately. It's happening again....

Clinton was impeached for lying under oath; Condi was praised

The indispensable Bob Somerby at Daily Howler reminds us how the new darling of the State Department, Condi Rice, lied under oath before the 9/11 Commission.



Ah, but it wasn't about sex, so that's OK, then, right?

I'm just speechless.

Want to know why the Democrats aren't winning? It's a complete inability to engage in utter horseshit with a straight face:

The President’s surprise 2003 Thanksgiving Day visit to the U.S. troops in Iraq has inspired Talking Presidents to create a new action figure, Turkey Dinner Bush.



Irvine, CA (PRWEB via PR Web Direct) November 17, 2004 -- The President’s surprise 2003 Thanksgiving Day visit to the U.S. troops in Iraq has inspired Talking Presidents to create a new action figure, Turkey Dinner Bush.



The secret Thanksgiving trip was the first visit by an American President to Iraq. The trip was said to have boosted the morale of troops serving in Iraq, as well as to have inspired patriotism among many Americans at home. Regardless of how the visit was viewed politically, it has become a piece of our nation’s history. It also inspired John Warnock of Talking Presidents to create a new President Bush action figure.



“It was such a cool, historic moment, I immediately wanted to make a doll to celebrate it,” said Warnock. “As I watched him carrying the turkey tray on television, I started picturing him in a display box.”



Turkey Dinner Bush is dressed in a replica of the Army Jacket, blue shirt and black pants he wore while visiting the troops, and comes complete with a turkey dinner tray similar to the one he carried last Thanksgiving Day. Unlike the company’s other dolls, Turkey Dinner Bush does not talk. This limited edition action figure is strictly limited to production of 5000 dolls.

For those of you who don't remember, last Thanksgiving Bush made a photo-op trip to Iraq, where he made a big show of serving turkey to the troops -- except that he didn't do any actual serving, and the turkey was plastic. Like everything about Bush's attitude towards the troops, this was all show and no go. This photo-op, parodied brilliantly by Atrios at the time, became the genesis of "giv turkee" as a euphemism for donating money to candidates who might have a hope of ending this despotic regime under which we're suffering. At any rate, even though this photo-op has been debunked, the delusional folks at Talking Presidents (I won't deign to publicize these guys) must have one of those "erections of more than four hours duration" that the Levitra ads talk about -- the ones which are not normal and require immediate medical attention, because they are obviously still all hot and bothered by the thought of C-Plus Caligula in his flightsuit.

Population of Hypocritus Republicanis Texacus Increasing Daily

Back in 1993, when DEMOCRAT Dan Rostenkowski was indicted on various mail fraud and other ethics charges, Congressional Republicans decided that in order to prove they were more moral and ethical than Democrats, they would enact rules requiring that any indicted House member in a leadership position would be required to resign said position.



Of course, now that the shoe is on the other foot, and it is House Majority Leader Tom "The Exterminator" DeLay who is about to be indicted, all of a sudden the Republicans don't think that's such a good idea:

House Republicans proposed changing their rules last night to allow members indicted by state grand juries to remain in a leadership post, a move that would benefit Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) in case he is charged by a Texas grand jury that has indicted three of his political associates, according to GOP leaders.



The proposed rule change, which several leaders predicted would win approval at a closed meeting today, comes as House Republicans return to Washington feeling indebted to DeLay for the slightly enhanced majority they won in this month's elections. DeLay led an aggressive redistricting effort in Texas last year that resulted in five Democratic House members retiring or losing reelection. It also triggered a grand jury inquiry into fundraising efforts related to the state legislature's redistricting actions.

So what does this mean? Does this mean that we can finally stop this charade that Republicans are more moral than Democrats? Or more likely, does it simply mean that as with Republican sexual scandals, outright corruption can be excused by either a) claiming it was a "youthful indiscretion"; or b) claiming that "God has forgiven me through the love of His Only Son Jesus Christ" and that means the slate is wiped clean?



And will Americans tolerate this kind of outright hypocrisy?



Of course they will. Look at the people they elected to the White House and Congress on November 2nd.



(via Waveflux)