Everything You Need To Know About News Corp. In One Picture

Check out yesterday's New York Post front page:



See the headline on the left? When Rupert Murdoch takes over every remaining newspaper in the country, EVERY paper will look like this.

But still....those potty-mouthed bloggers should be ashamed of themselves. They aren't REAL journalists like the fine people who decided that the only kind of fat cat worthy of the front cover and a demeaning headline was of the feline ilk -- and a female one at that.

UPDATE: So now the headline is a gay slur. "Princess Chunk" is a prince. And he was abandoned because his owner was foreclosed out of her home.

John McCain and Big Oil: Perfect Together

Gee....big oil has been so good to John McCain he might even leave Cindy for them:

Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling.

Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.

John McCain sure likes to hang around with people who rake in the bucks, doesn't he:

Exxon Mobil Corp. posted a 14% rise in second-quarter net income, boosted by high oil prices, but results were tarnished by falling production figures that worried investors.

Exxon Mobil's profit of $11.68 billion, or $2.22 a share, up from $10.26 billion, or $1.83 a share, a year earlier, wasn't enough to distract investors from a 7.8% drop in its production of oil and natural gas. The earnings also missed Wall Street expectations of $2.52 a share, according to analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

So...profits are way up, but production is down. Gee. ya think there's a connection?

Side note: I had a little bit of fun today. After years of being tailgated and bullied by Hummer drivers, I had a bit of revenge today. I pulled up to my neighborhood station, right behind some over-made-up McMansionite in a red Hummer. Not an H2 or an H3, but the original Hummer. You know, the one that gets around 8-10 miles per gallon. In New Jersey we don't have self-serve gas, but since I know the station, they know me, and they know that when I was in my 20's I used to work at a gas station on weekends, they let me pump it myself. I pumped $22.50 worth of regular into my Honda Civic and pulled a twenty and a five from my wallet, along with two quarters. She was watching me in her side-view mirror; presumably feeling infinitely superior to me in her Big Red Hummer and her makeup and her Botox and her skinniness. I waved the twenty and the five at her and smiled, then gave the bills to the kid working the pumps, who looked like he was going to bust a gut trying not to laugh. I gave the money to the kid, who handed me three singles, which I promptly waved at Miss Botoxia of 2002, smiling again. I got into the car, backed up, and passed her on the other side of the pumps, waving again for good measure as the price ticked upwards towards the $100 mark.

All by itself, that made it a good day. These days, I take what amusement I can get.

New dispatch from the "Figure That Out All By Yourself, Einstein?" file

Joe Klein finally joins the reality-based community, at least for the moment:

A few months ago, I wrote that John McCain was an honorable man and he would run an honorable campaign. I was wrong. I used to think, as David Ignatius does, that McCain's true voice was humble and moderate, but now I'm beginning to think his Senate colleagues may be right about his temperament. From what I can gather, Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, a Republican, reflected the views of many of his colleagues earlier this year when he said:

"The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine...He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

The erratic nature of McCain's campaign seems to be confirming that judgment.

John McCain has NEVER been an honorable man. John McCain has received a free pass because of his horrific experience as a prisoner of war. That experience has gained him a free pass for his treatment of the wife who waited for him, his use of a young heiress' money to jumpstart a political career, his treatment of said young wife when she was no longer 25 years old, his consistent record of favors-for-cash dating at least as far back as the Keating S&L scandal. There is nothing about John McCain that is honorable, and it's high time that Joe Klein and the others who looked the other way while a similar mythology was built around George W. Bush to pull the blinders from their eyes.

The stakes are too high this year.

Since when is "a direct quote according to Dana Milbank" a direct quote?

It seems to me that if you didn't hear it from the candidate's mouth yourself, it isn't a direct quote.

You have to get up early in the morning to get anything past Rachel Maddow:

Thanks to John Aravosis for tracking this down, because it appears that MSNBC is censoring this part of the discussion from last night's Race to the White House.

Just more proof that Rachel Maddow is the smartest, toughest political analyst around, and deserves her own show. Now. And more proof that despite the presence of Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, the network is still in the tank for McCain. It's time to make MSNBC answer the question of why this five minutes was censored.

My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down

Ben Wattenberg's appearance on The Daily Show scared me. I was afraid he'd get away with saying any old poisonous thing. Jon Stewart softens his style when confronted with an older person or a genteel woman. His interview of Nancy Pelosi earlier this week contains a few Jon, did you hear what she just said? moments, for example. But back to Ben Wattenberg - or more specifically, back to me, on the edge of my seat last night: Jon lets a few very dangerous assertions get past him before he's had enough.



Let me declare, now and forever, that after 9/11 I supported the bombing of NO ONE, the declaration of war on NO ONE, no shredding of the Constitution, no denial of anyone's human rights, no lunkhead rush to vengeance, no. At no time have I ever supported the insensible and grammatically insupportable War on Terror. No. And I know plenty of people who did not lose their minds and wet their beds, plenty of people who opposed rash action and depraved indifference to genocide and torture - you probably number among those people. The media's narrative says EVERYONE supported and supports this pointless, endless, and cowardly fool's errand. It simply isn't so, and insisting doesn't make it so.

Now - with that much straight - now, we can start talking seriously.

Crossposted at Poor Impulse Control.

At last, a glimmer of intelligence in school physical fitness

Ah, gym class; the trauma of the clumsy, the overweight, the spawn of intellectual Jews who spent their time reading, not playing tennis. Gym class is where children learn an important life lesson: Can't win, don't try. Unfortunately, it's the WRONG life lesson.

My earliest memory of gym class trauma dates back to third grade recess. I was the weird kid that other kids teased all the time, and the game of dodge ball, when I was in the circle having the ball thrown at me, felt like a personal attack by a gang. But the worst insult came when one of the third grade teachers who was conducting the "class" that day, screamed at me and called me a "weakling" because I couldn't throw the ball worth a damn.

It went on from there; with the infamous President's Council of Physical Fitness tests that elementary school kids were required to pass. I couldn't do pull-ups. I hated jumping jacks. And as for rope-climbing, well, the lack of arm strength that caused Mabel Young to call me a weakling in the third grade was not about to allow me to climb a rope to the high ceiling of an elementary school gym. But of course that was no excuse, and so there I was, like Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, hovering three feet off the ground, being laughed at by other kids and screamed at by the teacher, unable to go further.

This is how children learn not to be active.

Later on, I did find things that I enjoyed. Because I had discovered baseball on Father's Day 1964, the day Jim Bunning no-hit the Mets, my father and I often went out to Shea Stadium to watch ball games, and one year I went out for girls' softball. I was no good at it, and I played right field where no one would hit anything to me, but at least I went out for something. I also enjoyed ice skating, or at least I did, until I went to a skating party when I was around eight years old and I was shlepped around the rink by the birthday girl's older sisters, who would say things to each other like "Maybe if she wasn't so fat she could skate by herself."

The irony of all this is that if I look back now at photographs of myself from those years, I wasn't all that fat? I always had a belly, and I was by no means skinny, but I wouldn't look at the kid I was and say "That's a fat kid."

But I learned. I learned that sports were not for me, athletics were not for me, fitness was not for me. I was terrified of heights, and they forced me to do uneven parallel bar exercises. I was afraid of being hit by a ball and they put me in the center of a dodge ball ring. It really wasn't until I got to college and could pick and choose my physical education classes -- things like racquetball and tennis and archery -- that I began to think of these things in terms of having fun instead of being competitive. But old lessons die hard, and I've carried this aversion into adulthood. It wasn't until walking and cycling and yoga became regarded as legitimate avenues to fitness that I started to enjoy moving and stretching on its own merits.

So it was with much applause that I greeted this story in today's New York Times that New York City schools are introducing double-dutch, the complex jump-rope game played by inner city kids, into the physical fitness curriculum:

Stephanie was practicing double dutch, an urban street staple that dates back centuries and, come next spring, will become the newest of 35 varsity sports played in New York City schools. As part of an effort to increase the number of students — particularly girls — participating in competitive athletics, the city will create coed double-dutch teams at 10 high schools, many in predominantly black neighborhoods like Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Harlem where the ropes have long swung on asphalt playgrounds.

Double dutch follows cricket, which was added last year and is now played by more than 400 students at 14 schools, including the elite Stuyvesant High School.

School officials said they were also considering cycling, badminton and netball for varsity sports.

Nearly 33,000 students, about 10 percent of the high school population, play on varsity or junior varsity teams, compared with more than a third in many suburban districts.

“As an urban district, we need to be creative in an urban kind of way, and double dutch does that for us,” said Eric Goldstein, who oversees the Public Schools Athletic League, the governing body for the city’s interscholastic sports. “If you see people doing it, it looks hard and it is hard.”

Kyra D. Gaunt, who wrote “The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop” (N.Y.U. Press, 2006), said that recognizing double dutch as a sport not only taps into something that many children are passionate about, but also gives a nod to the influence of black culture. “They’re helping to regenerate a tradition in the black community and legitimize it in the eyes of a lot of parents,” she said.

Dr. Gaunt, an associate professor of anthropology and black music studies at Baruch College, said that she avoided double dutch as a child because she was so bad at it but that she relearned it while writing her book. She said the appeal of double dutch was that anyone could do it, and that once mastered, it lent itself to individual expression through fancy footwork and dance routines.

Imagine that: a sport that anyone can learn to do, a sport that fits into the life kids lead every day, a sport that does not discriminate against the overweight (as the photo accompanying the story clearly demonstrates); a sport that doesn't necessarily require strength or speed, but that has room for kids who only have speed, or who are quick with their feet; a sport where kids with differing strengths and talents can all participate.

It sure beats rope-climbing, squat-thrusts and jumping jacks.

The hidden unemployment

There's more than one way to push people out of the workforce and out of the mainstream. One of the most cost-effective ways is to move people from full-time to part-time work. These people don't inflate and enlarge the unemployment figures because they are at least marginally employed, and they tend not to cost employers too much money, because in many companies, part-time employees are ineligible for health insurance.

But as reported in the New York Times today, part-time employees aren't reliable consumers, and part-time work is often the first step down the slide into poverty:

The number of Americans who have seen their full-time jobs chopped to part time because of weak business has swelled to more than 3.7 million — the largest figure since the government began tracking such data more than half a century ago.

The loss of pay has become a primary source of pain for millions of American families, reinforcing the downturn gripping the economy. Paychecks are shrinking just as home prices plunge and gas prices soar, furthering the austerity across the nation.

“I either stop eating, or stop using anything I can,” said Marvin L. Zinn, a clerk at a Walgreens drugstore in St. Joseph, Mich., who has seen his take-home pay drop to about $550 every two weeks from about $650, as his weekly hours have dropped to 37.5 from 44 in recent months.

Mr. Zinn has run up nearly $2,000 in credit card debt to buy food. He has put off dental work. He no longer attends church, he said, “because I can’t afford to drive.”

On the surface, the job market is weak but hardly desperate. Layoffs remain less frequent than in many economic downturns, and the unemployment rate is a relatively modest 5.5 percent. But that figure masks the strains of those who are losing hours or working part time because they cannot find full-time work — a stealth force that is eroding American spending power.

All told, people the government classifies as working part time involuntarily — predominantly those who have lost hours or cannot find full-time work — swelled to 5.3 million last month, a jump of greater than 1 million over the last year.

Workers who see their pay cut in half and their benefits terminated are more likely to accumulate debt just to make ends meet. They're more likely to put off medical and dental checkups and procedures. They're more likely to enter foreclosure. And this benefits overall American society -- how? Yes, reduced payroll costs can help companies get through the quarter without causing Jim Cramer to jump up and down and screech about them on his television show. But is this the best solution for reduced profits? Or are companies just killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

Yesterday I went for a dental cleaning and to have a crown started on a tooth my dentist has been monitoring for two years. I go for cleanings four times a year, and my dental coverage has helped out with two of them. By the time they were my age, both my parents were well into bridgework and other dental problems. My dental heredity is so bad that my baby teeth sprouted with cavities already in them. But I still have all of my own teeth. The back teeth are all crowned, but they're all mine. Preventive dental medicine and the gradual crowning of all of the teeth that contained more amalgam than tooth has kept me from being toothless in addition to being middle-aged and laid off. Last year I had a colonoscopy, which offers some protection against colon cancer by literally nipping potentially problematic polyps in the bud.

I'm relatively fortunate in that when my insurance lapses at the end of September, and I haven't been lucky enough to find another job by then, Mr. Brilliant can enroll us both on his employer's plan. Of course, this could have the effect of making him more expensive and therefore more expendable, but it's a risk we have to take. Othes aren't so lucky. Others like one of our own, Susie Madrak:

Here’s the deal, kids: I’m out of work now and I need three different surgeries. (I’m just the tiniest bit suspicious that this had something to do with the timing of my layoff.)

I’m having one surgery (an eye operation - I’m seeing double) in two weeks, but I need to schedule the other two and I just can’t fit them all into the next month, which is when my insurance runs out.

I figure three months’ COBRA coverage will do the trick. That’s $447.91 per month, for a grand total of $1343.73.

I plan to pick up some of that slack with blatant advertising (expect to see a lot more ads and text links - please click on them, it helps) but I also need to ask you for donations.

Is this what we've come to? That people have to beg for donations? We see it everywhere. Here in northern NJ, a foundation has been set up to help local families dealing with family members who are injured or ill. Coin collection cans and pancake breakfasts abound. Here in Blogtopia (™ Skippy), those needing help ask for it, and the community responds. This is the Republican dream society, in which individuals are reliant on the kindness of strangers, and the ability of strangers to help out. But is this the country we want to live in; one in which employees with health insurance are in danger of being fired because they are too expensive, in which private health insurance is prohibitively expensive, and where people in need of surgery are reliant on the five dollar donations of other people in similarly threatened straits?

Cutting staff is an easy way to make the balance sheet look better to the financial analysts in the short run. But after you get through the quarter, then what? Who buys your products? Who pays the taxes to perpetuate the Iraq War in perpetuity? And what happens to the sick people who have been let go?

...unless it means he gets to use a private jet and have eight homes

John McCain is a staunch opponent of normalizing relations with Cuba:

“So it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous to American national security if you sit down and give respect and prestige to leaders of countries that are bent on your destruction or the destruction of other countries. I won’t do it my friends,” McCain said to a town hall-style meeting in Little Havana, the heart of Florida’s Cuban-American community and stronghold of the anti-Castro movement.

Obama’s plan to soften the decades-old U.S. embargo against the Cuban regime would “send the worst possible signal to Cuba’s dictators,” McCain said.

[snip]

McCain cited Obama’s response to a 2003 questionnaire about his policy toward Cuba, in which the Illinois senator wrote: “I believe that normalization of relations with Cuba would help the oppressed and poverty-stricken Cuban people while setting the stage for a more democratic government once Castro inevitably leaves the scene.”

Obama has said he would like to ease stringent U.S. travel restrictions toward Cuba, granting Cuban-Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island.

During the Feb. 21 Democratic presidential debate at the University of Texas in Austin, Obama said, “It is important for the United States not just to talk to its friends but also to talk to its enemies. In fact, that’s where diplomacy makes the biggest difference.”

He added that he would meet with Raul Castro “without preconditions,” but acknowledged that there must be “preparation.” The U.S. must ensure that Cuba has “an agenda” in place that addresses “human rights, releasing of political prisoners” and “opening up the press,” he said.

McCain said Tuesday that his administration will oppose softening the economic embargo unless the Cuban government meets certain conditions.

But now it seems that his wife Cindy's money, which has bankrolled his entire career in Washington (other than the favors he's done businesses in return for campaign contributions), may have a little conflict with his "straight talk" on Cuba because of the coming takeover of Anheuser-Busch by the Belgian company InDev -- because Belgium has no such trade restrictions with Cuba:

The pending merger of American beer giant Anheuser-Busch and a Belgian company that brews and sells beer in Cuba is thrusting John McCain into the middle of thorny Cuba-U.S. relations.

McCain's wife, Cindy, owns the third largest Anheuser-Busch distributor in the country — which means she would stand to profit by partnering with a company that is in business with the Cuban government.

McCain is a staunch advocate of the embargo, which bars most American companies from doing business in Cuba. Among the yet-to-be-resolved issues in the $52 billion deal is whether Belgian giant InBev — expected to operate under the name Anheuser-Busch-InBev — will continue to market its Cuban line of beer, and what that may mean for U.S. distributors.

Two of McCain's top Florida supporters, Miami Reps. Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, assailed the InBev-Anheuser Busch deal earlier this month, saying they are "deeply concerned'' that Anheuser-Busch is about to be purchased by a company "with ties to the Cuban dictatorship, a state sponsor of terrorism.''

A spokesman for the Diaz-Balarts said Tuesday night the two congressmen stand by their statement.

Complicating matters for McCain: A Cuban exile family with a long tradition of brewing beer in pre-Castro Cuba claims that InBev has illegally been using the trademark beer name Cristal, which the family created in Cuba before its company was seized by Fidel Castro's government in 1960.

"There are legal figleafs that can be applied here, but the crux of the situation is that property rights are being trampled on,'' said Nicolas Gutierrez, an attorney for Key Biscayne's Blanco Herrera family.

According to financial disclosure statements, Cindy McCain also owns stock in Anheuser-Busch and would stand to make as much as $2 million in profit if she sells the shares after the merger.

If either of the Obamas, or the Clintons, or any other Democratic "power couple" had even this remote a tie with a company that does business with Cuba, the Republicans would be all over the TeeVee screaming their heads off about how Democrats support a state sponsor of terrorism. Instead, this response is typical:

"Making a connection between InBev, John McCain and Cuba policy is a ridiculous stretch of the imagination,'' said Ana Navarro of Miami, who has known McCain for years and serves as a co-chair of his National Hispanic Advisory Council. "First, because John McCain has nothing to do with the operation of his wife's business and secondly, her business has nothing to do with Anheuser-Busch's sale. Does Publix (a grocery store chain) control the decisions of Frito-Lay?''

The idea that John McCain has nothing to do with the operation of his wife's business and so that makes it all OK is ridiculous. He lives in homes paid for by his wife's business. He uses his wife's private plane for his campaign. His entire lifestyle is, and his entry into Beltway Insiderdom was paid for with Hensley money. Their assets may be separate, but to deny that John McCain benefits heavily from Cindy Hensley McCain's assets is preposterous on the face of it.

Of course Democrats will be silent on this, because this is a field on which they still refuse to play, but also because many Democrats DO favor normalizing relations with Cuba. But the issue here isn't Cuba; it's yet another example of the hypocrisy of John McCain, and another example of how the rules are different when the money has an (R) stamped on it.

McCain is Not So Much of a Maverick as a Desperado

This is one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen. I almost feel sorry for the poor old bastard, the operative word being "almost."

Because it was a stupid (not to mention a losing) risk to acknowledge Obama's growing popularity and to try to portray it as a weakness rather than a strength. Sour grapes make for lousy Koolaid.

Is Obama ready to lead? Until inauguration day, we'll never know any more than whether McCain is fit to lead.

But Obama doesn't think Iraq borders with Pakistan, a nation in central Asia. Obama doesn't think that Iran is funding al Qaeda. Obama doesn't think that he can cut two trillion dollars a year out of a three trillion dollar annual budget while cutting taxes even more and counting on some massive, magical windfall to balance the books. Obama knows Czechoslovakia is no longer on the map. Obama knows the real troop level and doesn't underestimate them by 25,000 pairs of boots. Obama never called for sending hot bottled water to dehydrated babies.

And I think it's safe to say that Obama knows the election is in November instead of January. Is either man fit to lead?

You be the judge...

The return of truthiness

With John McCain having been given a free pass by the media on everything from his anger management issue, his flip-flops (not honest changing of the mind in the face of new information, but blatant pandering), his seeming loss of control of his intellectual faculties, it's even more astounding that the press is starting to say "Enough" when he stoops so low as the impugn the loyalty to the country of his opponent.

Michael D. Shear and Dan Balz, in the Washington Post:

For four days, Sen. John McCain and his allies have accused Sen. Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.

The attacks are part of a newly aggressive McCain operation whose aim is to portray the Democratic presidential candidate as a craven politician more interested in his image than in ailing soldiers, a senior McCain adviser said. They come despite repeated pledges by the Republican that he will never question his rival's patriotism.

[snip]

Despite serious and repeated queries about the charge over several days, McCain and his allies continued yesterday to question Obama's patriotism by focusing attention on the canceled hospital visit.

McCain's campaign released a statement from retired Sgt. Maj. Craig Layton, who worked as a commander at the hospital, who said: "If Senator Obama isn't comfortable meeting wounded American troops without his entourage, perhaps he does not have the experience necessary to serve as commander in chief."

McCain's advisers said they do not intend to back down from the charge, believing it an effective way to create a "narrative" about what they say is Obama's indifference toward the military.

"Narrative." Even if it isn't true, even if it's utter horsepuckey, they believe that outright "lies" constitute a legitimate "narrative."

I propose we create a "narrative" in which John McCain has a habit of buggering little boys in the choirloft in the Baptist church he makes a point of saying he attends.

So what if it isn't true. It's a "narrative."

UPDATE: The St. Petersburg Times joins the long-overdue pile-on:

The Straight Talk Express has taken a nasty turn into the gutter. Sen. John McCain has resorted to lies and distortions in what sounds like an increasingly desperate attempt to slow down Sen. Barack Obama by raising questions about his patriotism. Instead of taking the Democrat down a few notches, these baseless attacks are raising more questions about the Republican's campaign and his ability to control his temper.

The most offensive line comes from McCain himself. The Arizona senator has repeated that Obama "would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.'' That is one of the more outrageous statements by a major political party candidate seeking the presidency. The looming choices about the long-festering war in Iraq are not between winning and losing but about how quickly or slowly the United States can reduce its military forces without jeopardizing recent security gains. Even McCain acknowledges that, and insulting Obama in such a reckless way is not presidential.

Of course in John McCain's world, having been a POW means that he is by definition, presidential. It's about time someone called him out on his campaign's increasingly desperate tactics.

And Now, a PSA From the McCain Campaign…

Don’t listen to John McCain.

That is all.

You think I’m making this up? Sadly, even I am not that ingenious. For months, I and I’m sure many of us have long suspected that not only are campaigns and their candidates not always on the same page but that their campaigns work not on behalf of whatever ill-informed boob they precariously balance on a stump but on behalf of their party.

Time and again, we’ve seen John McCain speaking out on various issues that are contrary to his campaign’s (Read: The GOP’s) official line. Last Sunday, McCain told George Stephanopoulos on national TV that he hasn’t ruled out raising the payroll tax in reference to fixing Social Security.

Two days later on Fox “News”, McCain spokeman Tucker Bounds told Megyn Kelly that “(T)here is no imaginable circumstance where John McCain would raise payroll taxes. It’s absolutely out of the question.” This isn’t a mere anomaly, either. As Think Progress points out, this is the third time just this week that McCain’s campaign has said that McCain wasn’t speaking for the campaign.

Translation: “Don’t listen to John McCain. Just vote for him. Well, actually, you’re not voting for him. You’re voting for the campaign (Again, read: The GOP.).”

This marks the first time, in my memory, that an election campaign has come out and admitted that its candidate is irrelevant. I’ve heard and seen candidates say (as with the Phil Gramm “whiners comment”) that people within their campaign weren’t speaking for them.

Never before now have I ever heard a campaign staffer say that a candidate wasn’t speaking for the campaign.

So, for whose campaign was McCain speaking? Obama’s?

Ordinarily, I’d go hog wild on this and be making all sorts of "empty vessel" and "male love doll" references but I can barely stop laughing long enough to correctly type these words so just go to Think Progress and read it for yourself.

"John McCain is Angry"

There's your meme, Democrats. It worked when applied to Howard Dean in 2004, why not apply it to a guy who has real, actual, documented anger management issues?

Apparently even "some" in the GOP are worried about John McCain embracing his dark side, and apparently, Karl Rove:

In recent days Senator John McCain has charged that Senator Barack Obama “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign,” tarred him as “Dr. No” on energy policy and run advertisements calling him responsible for high gas prices.

The old happy warrior side of Mr. McCain has been eclipsed a bit lately by a much more aggressive, and more negative, Mr. McCain who hammers Mr. Obama repeatedly on policy differences, experience and trustworthiness.

By doing so, Mr. McCain is clearly trying to sow doubts about his younger opponent, and bring him down a peg or two. But some Republicans worry that by going negative so early, and initiating so many of the attacks himself rather than leaving them to others, Mr. McCain risks coming across as angry or partisan in a way that could turn off some independents who have been attracted by his calls for respectful campaigning.

The drumbeat of attacks could also undermine his argument that he will champion a new brand of politics.

Of course, that is all dependent on the media doing its job and pointing out that John McCain is now playing the same dirty, ad hominem attack politics that George W. Bush did. Will Americans fall for it again?

Bankstown Bites Food Festival 2008

Bankstown Bites. The most rewarding fooding festival on the Sydney calendar.I can hardly believe it's been three years since my last visit at the inaugural Bankstown Bites Festival. Since then, the festival has grown in size and popularity. Crowd estimates were set at 15,000 according the Bankstown Council website.The highlight, of course, was the range of free food tours on offer: an opportunity

When you see this all in one place, it's downright terrifying

Freepers on Parade

Or what I prefer to call “Penises on Roller Skates.”

Yesterday, when faced with the inconvenient truth that the asshole who shot up a Unitarian church in Tennessee last weekend, killing two and wounding many others, was one of their own, a psychopathic bigot and homophobe who was in possession of books by Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, the proud denizens of Middle America and Freeperdom did what any group of righteous conservatives would do: Distance themselves from him and turn it into a referendum on the evils of immoral liberalism.

Remember the running of the bulls in Pamplona earlier this month? Remember the mad dash, the chaos, the blood and gore? OK, now substitute the bulls for rabid ferrets and lemmings and you’ll get the picture.

What follows are actual comments to the Freeper post that broke the sad news that Adkisson was one of their own. This is right about the time when it’s OK to breath a sigh of relief and thank Providence that you weren’t born in the corn belt and were sane enough to become liberals:

He's NO conservative... just a deluded lunatic sociopath. I don't recall the MSM targeting people with any other philosophy for outright character assassination!

Oh, perish the thought. He’s not a conservative. He’s just someone who hates African Americans, gays and lesbians and sees red at the thought of any organization dedicated to Altruism. And “character assassination” is bad enough but using a shotgun with 76 shells is sort of overkill, wouldn’t you say?

The libs and the MSM have salivated for years over the prospect of angry, white, christian, conservative terrorism against their pet immorality and perverted views of religion.

They will attempt to play this up as such as much as possible a such when the truth is, this was simply a diluded. depressed individual who snapped and became a murderer.
It has nothing to do with conservatism or traditional values, despite the upcoming best efforts of the MSM to the contrary.

The problem is, you psychopaths give us plenty of opportunities to play up “angry, white, christian, conservative terrorism”, such as the assclown who tried to blow up a building rather than lose it in divorce court… with himself still in it after leaving behind another hateful, rambling manifesto.

Are liberals now a protected class or is it because these Unitarians are “gay-friendly” that this is a hate crime?

It ain’t open season on liberals, yet? Yee-haw, ya’ll! Getcher buttfucking and flag-burnin’ in while you can, boys!

Although it makes sense that he hated liberals since that is what he attacked, I do not necessarily believe that story. I noticed the police chief did not quote the note just gave his interpretation of it.

I would love to see exactly what he said.

I love a man with an open mind and can always be brave enough to take the insane side of an argument.

Could be a liberal disguised as a conservative in order to give conservatives a bad rap.

Loonies!

Don’t stop… believing! Yes, people, our shockingly brilliant strategy of murdering our own and disguising our Manchurian Candidate as a red, white and blue shirt-wearing conservative perhaps has a few bugs in it. Next time we bomb an abortion clinic or something, we’ll need a better conspiracy. And, in response to the comment above:

One can only hope!

Never give up hope that one day we’ll be as desperately insane as Freepers.

That’s a theory that could be plausible. Maybe he’s really a liberal and wanted to end his life and make conservatives look bad. That would explain why someone who hates religion would attack a liberal church.

Drat, foiled again by those brilliant basement dwellers!

This guy is no more a true constervative than Timothy McVey was. Conservatives don’t commit acts of terrorism. I won’t believe this until the killer’s actual letter is released. It could be the sheriff is a liberal himself and is saying these things to smear conservatives.

Translation: If a guy reads conservative literature, has conservative prejudices and biases and lashes out at the very people lambasted and threatened in conservative literature and hate radio and TV, then he is not a conservative. That’s because conservatives don’t commit acts of terrorism: They just strongly suggest that others carry them out for them. Those others are, of course, we bleeding heart, animal-loving liberals.

And, just as surely as conservatives are never terrorists, all southern sheriffs are liberals.

How is this a hate crime? It is an attrocity and a vengeful act, but the people he killed and aimed at weren’t homosexuals or members of a protected class. Christians in and of themselves are not protected by hate crimes legislation.

Because… because… I’m sorry, my brain vapor-locked because I made the mistake of actually reading this more than once.

Psst. Fred “God hate f**s” Phelps is a Democrat and no conservative.
Not claiming that this man is a Phelpist, just pointing out that there are Leftists (like Phelps’ cult who protest the Iraq war weekly) who hold hate in their heart that seems to be hand in hand with this man’s actions.

Additionally there are those social conservative Democrats who “cling to guns and religion” and vote against such ballot initiatives and liberal candidates “in spite of their own economic self-interest”.

Yeah, Phelps, too, is one of our own, doncha know, since we’re renowned for loathing homosexuals and wishing death on our troops.

These types of “churches” to me are using the word only for tax purposes, because they absolutely teach nothing like any of the churches I grew up around. Then again, maybe I’m a nut too. I guess I just need to get with it, and start embracing homosexuality, gay marriage, and killing little babies!!

Admitting you’re a hateful, homophobic nut is half the battle won, my child.

So, basically, the guy was a nutcase, but I’m sure the MSM will try to portray ALL conservatives in an equal manner.

Got Paranoia?

The Left has been subverting churches for decades now.
Now they don’t even teach hate the sin but love the sinner. They teach the concept of an evolving bible where we now deny that some things even are sins and celebrate them instead.

I’ve left corrupt church leadership but have not left my faith. There are good churches out there, so I hear. But it requires investigation. Investigation too into any national church leadership they are members of.

I don’t know what can be done to put churches back on a biblical path. Elders and the like. Elections. What is the limtus test to get people in the organized church who are counter to the politics of those who’ve gained control of the church?

Ask Monica Goodling and Jim O’Beirne. They had the religious litmus tests last time I checked.

The libs appease Islamic terrorists when they kill innocents. I wonder if this church will therefore appease those who share this freak’s views?

Well, could you blame them for being scared shitless of you Freepers?

Ironically the authorities in Knoxville aren't going to prosecute the four blacks that went out and abducted a couple of UT students, raped them, tortured them and then murdered them because they were white. This incident makes national news yet the previous murders went barely noticed except for a couple of articles in the MSM...I guess if one expresses hatred for homosexuals it makes national news, gets the FBI involved and if one just hates whitey its ok...no big deal.

This guy’s right, actually. What the MSM needs is more leading news stories that stay alive for one or two hundred news cycles that involve abducted, missing and murdered white women.

In reviewing the posts I see an interesting difference between “liberal” and “conservative” political killers.

Conservatives distance themselves from the murderers who cite conservative polical purposes for killing and cry out for justice regardless of stated politcal purposes(this wacko, McVey, etc).

Liberals point out how oppressed the leftist killer is, how he or she needs understanding and that society was truely responsible for driving him or her to it or allowing a gun to exist that could do such damage. Later, they declare the killer rehabilitated and give him or her a professorship at a major university.

A bit simplistic perhaps, but truer than any liberal would like to admit. Also, let no one misconstrue my sarcasm with a lack of understanding for the victims of this wack job.

Simplistic? Oh, hardly. In fact, I can reduce it further:

Conservatives: Boo! You not us!

Liberals: Me heart bleed.

The Message Behind the Message

Media outlets can no longer ignore our souring economy when even official government statistics are now reflecting the bad news. It's safe to say that we now have inflation, declining home prices, stagnating wages (see chart on page 36 of the link), and rising unemployment rates. As soon as the statisticians run out of seasonal adjustments to tinker with, we might even be able to declare that we are entering a recession.

The reporting of our economic woes does not sit well with the financial elites. Pity those who can only maintain their lavish lifestyles by shipping our jobs overseas, devising even more complex and exotic financial instruments, and lobbying politicians for favorable treatment, while all the time relying on an endless supply of easy money courtesy of Ben Bernanke, Chinese investment, and the Japanese carry trade.

We've wised up to the fact that there's not a lot of good news to report in the economy. Financial publications are running out of creative ways to gloss over the bad news and emphasize the positive. Luckily, through the techniques of codespeak, subliminal messages and subterfuge, they might be able to keep the American public off the scent for a little while longer. Although London-based, The Economist's recent article, "Workingman's Blues", is a perfect example of one of those condescending "so simple even a [pick your favorite target: factory worker, Midwesterner, retiree, or soccer mom] can understand it" types of posts.

For those of you who are too busy to read the article, it basically says, yes, some economic indicators are heading downward, but these factors only affect people who don't really matter, like poor people, blue-collar workers and baby-boomers. The rest of us are just getting hysterical over negative media headlines and really ought to get a grip on ourselves.

For those of you with time to read the article, I offer you this simple translation guide to all of the double-talk.

Codespeak #1: "American voters are in a horrible mood this year. Democrats are sick of George Bush. Republicans are sick of the Democrats running Congress. Everyone worries about Iraq, either because they think the war should never have been fought, or because of the long, costly and thankless slog it has turned into. The latest violence in Afghanistan is depressing. The culture war grinds on: America is slouching towards Gomorrah or theocracy, depending on your viewpoint. The earth is either cooking or being overrun by eco-fanatics. And the American economy is tottering."

Translation #1: The general public is uneasy, for the good reasons listed above. Americans are getting feisty and combative. In these dangerous times, all we need is a normally innocuous event, like, oh, for the sake of argument, the economy taking a nosedive, to set this simmering dissatisfaction on fire.

Codespeak #2: "The polls tell a dismal tale. Only 29% of Americans approve of the president. Only 14% approve of Congress. And just 6% view the economy positively. Yet many Americans combine despondency about the big picture with personal contentment. More than 80% say they are satisfied with their own circumstances. Even more are satisfied with their jobs. And although nearly everyone despises Congress, most Americans like their own representatives."

Translation #2: Since more than 80% of us are satisfied with our lives, our concern for other people who may be suffering is clearly displaced. The article even goes on to describe the recent Phil Gramm debacle over our "nation of whiners", and how we are being profoundly influenced by the negativity in our nation's headlines, and the even gloomier predictions from overseas news outlets.

What exactly does "More than 80% say they are satisfied with their own circumstances. Even more are satisfied with their jobs." mean? There is a huge difference between "I love my house. I love my retirement fund. I have no reason to believe that I'll ever lose my job." and "I love my job, but I'm terrified I'll lose it next week, then lose my house because I won't be able to make my mortgage payments. My 401(k) goes up and down like a yo-yo since Wall Street insiders handle my money as if they were playing in a sandbox, and I've already had to tap into my retirement account the last time I lost my job. But yes, I have a roof over my head, I'm not starving, and I have the love and support of my family. I can't complain."

Codespeak #3: "Amity Shlaes, the author of a history of the Great Depression, thinks the comparison [to the Great Depression] is absurd. During the 1930s, she notes, 'people lost their homes even though they had borrowed only 10% of the purchase price." People losing their homes today often borrowed more than 90%. And today’s unemployment rate, though rising, is 5.5%. In the Great Depression, it peaked at 25%."

Translation #3: You know an article is in trouble when it quotes Amity Shlaes as an authority. As the author of the book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, she is regularly paraded out in public to let us all know that we are not nearly as bad off as our ancestors in the 1930's. If I understand this correctly, we should all go back to our homes and re-emerge with our pitchforks only after our official unemployment rate hits 25%.

Subliminal Message #1: After devoting several inches of copy about the rise in gas prices, the decline in housing values, and the loss of employment opportunities (in an attempt to seem like the authors aren't totally oblivious to our pain), the article comes up with this seemingly harmless item. "John plans to quit construction, move to Texas and get into publishing. He is a college dropout, but reckons that “if you do some research, you can make a lot out of nothing” in America."

Subliminal Message #1 Brought into Consciousness: Hmmh. John is having problems because he does not have a college degree. We all know that a college education is the key to guaranteed success. Right? Also, John lives in Dale City, Virginia, an area that is experiencing an economic downturn. If we could all get our diplomas, pile into our rusting SUV's and move to Houston, all of our problems would be solved. Once we get to Houston, we should probably plan on continuing to live in our SUV's to make it that much easier to move to the epicenter of the next economic bubble when the opportunity arises.

Codespeak #4: "Meanwhile, others see an opportunity in Dale City’s collapse." Housing is all of sudden much more affordable.

Translation #4: Smart people avoid getting involved with any activity associated with an economic bubble. When the bubble collapses, smart people swoop in and feed off of the carrion.

Subliminal Message #2: "But some shocks are hard to adjust to. The American suburban idyll of big homes and big gardens relied on cheap petrol. With gas prices high, many suburbanites yearn for a shorter commute. But they cannot quickly or easily sell their homes and start living in denser clusters with better public transport. Nor is it clear that they want to. So they suffer, and pray for petrol prices to fall. Sometimes literally: Rocky Twyman, a community organiser from Maryland, leads group prayers at petrol stations to beg for divine intervention. "

Subliminal Message#2 Brought into Consciousness: Americans are a bunch of idiots who wouldn't recognize an easy solution if it came up and bit them in their faces.

Subliminal Message #3: "But the earnings gap between the most-skilled workers and everyone else has been widening since the early 1980s."

Subliminal Message #3 Brought into Consciousness: Go to college and major in something besides art history.

Subterfuge#1: "Figures collated by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at Berkeley, make the point starkly. In the 1990s, the incomes of the richest 1% of taxpayers went up 10% a year in real terms (see chart), while those of the other 99% grew at an average annual rate of 2.4%. Between 2002 and 2006 the richest 1% saw 11% annual real income growth: everyone else got less than 1%. Three-quarters of the gains from the Bush expansion went to 1% of taxpayers, who now receive a larger share of overall income than at any time since the 1920s.

Technology is probably the main culprit, but Americans prefer to blame trade. The latest Pew Research Centre survey of global attitudes found that only 53% of Americans think trade is good for their country, down from 78% in 2002 and lower than in any of the other 23 countries included in the survey. "

Remedy of Subterfuge #1: Did an editor accidentally delete some verbiage between the two paragraph listed above? How did we jump from the richest 1% getting 11% annual income growth to us blaming trade because the remaining 99% of us plebeians are getting less than 1% income growth? Could The Economist have forgotten the part about how, in the search for the lowest costs possible, whole industries are being shipped overseas along with the associated blue collar and manufacturing engineering jobs? Did the authors think of how many seemingly safe information technology, engineering, legal, accounting, financing, journalistic etc. jobs are also heading overseas? And employees for the jobs that are remaining here in the U.S. are facing competition from both illegal and legal guest workers and immigrants who are imported to do the jobs Americans supposedly won't do? And many of the high-skilled jobs performed by H-1B guest-workers are exported out of the country for good after the guest-workers have been sufficiently trained? And the consequence of all of these events is to bring down our wages?

Technology is the culprit, and the free trade that allows this movement of jobs and workers is just one big red herring? Could someone please sit down with their pretty charts just one more time and again explain to us all of the benefits of globalization?

Subliminal Message #4: "The baby-boom generation (people aged 43-62) are glummer than the young or the elderly, according to Pew. Some 55% of boomers think it unlikely that their income will keep pace with the cost of living in the next year, compared with 44% of 18-42-year-olds and 43% of those aged 63 or more."

Subliminal Message #4 Brought into Consciousness: Those self-centered baby boomers deserve all of the bad luck heading their way. That's no problem, since most baby boomers are no longer in any key marketing demographic group, and businesses don't really care if they spend their money or not.

Wait a minute! Since when has being realistic about our income prospects meant that we are being gloomy? Wasn't this irrational exuberance about our economic prospects the root of all of our overspending to begin with?

I'll end right here, since the last paragraph is worth it's own post.

As we can see from "Workingman's Blues", our economy and financial system is clearly in shambles. However, trying to make reforms to make everyone's lives better is just too much work, and may cause the unintended consequence of the richest 1% having to put even more of their money in offshore tax shelters in order to maintain their current lifestyles. If we can take a few simple steps, we should be able to fool ourselves into thinking our lives are getting better for at least the next five years or so. If this can help stave off criticism of the financial markets in Britain, so much the better.

By all means, do everything you can to improve yourself. Pay off your debts. Conserve on gasoline and heating oil. Take classes and upgrade your skills. Move to parts of the country that are actually hiring people. But once you get settled in, don't forget about all of the political and financial abuses that caused this mess. Vote intelligently, send letters to the editors, boycott products, and do what you can to make a lot of noise. The people ruining our country right now know what they're doing. Help them rediscover their guilty consciences.

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

Burning questions for our time

Why is it that when a guy with a gun shoots a school full of Amish kids, or goes on a rampage at a college, it receives nonstop coverage for a week...but when a guy with a gun and a house full of treatises by Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Michael the Savage Weiner, Joe Scarborough is talking about Obama "dissing the troops"?

DOJ Lawyers Lawyer Up

Frankly, it scares the shit out of me to know that our Justice Department is filled with lawyers who don't even know when they're breaking the law.

The Justice Department released an internal memo today to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees telling us basically what we've known since spring last year. That Republican operatives (gasp) hired people based on their loyalty to conservative issues and George W. Bush.

Kyle Sampson, through his lawyer, considers to this day his highly partisan hiring practices "an honest mistake." Considering that refusing to hire people for career positions at the Department of Justice because of political considerations is breaking a basic law that you would think every lawyer would know, especially one already working at the DOJ, it kind of makes one wonder what other clowns got in and what Republican credentials they had to show.

Goodling's shyster, John Dowd, bristled at the thought that his client lied to Congress by saying,

"Far from attempting to conceal information, Ms. Goodling went to great lengths to provide the Congress with relevant facts, including important information about matters that had not yet come to the public's attention."

So explain to us why she'd never admitted this information when she testified May of last year in her 5th amendment-laden non-testimony?

Here's a short list of the people Goodling refused to give "the keys to the Kingdom" of Bushworld: A man who was suspected of being "a liberal Democrat", a man with antiterrorism experience whose wife's political affiliations were suspect and even a woman just suspected of being a lesbian, which is also a clearcut case of a civil rights infraction. Then, April of this year, Goodling was accused of engineering the ouster of a highly qualified attorney for the same reason, despite the lady's extremely high performance reviews.

This brazen and frankly fascist attempt to achieve political purity at the Department of Justice is frighteningly reminiscent of Nazi Germany's attempt to keep the Homeland purely Aryan by purging their nation of Jews and homosexuals. One wonders if Goodling and Sampson marked the files of unwelcome applicants with pink triangles.

So, Bush's goon squad essentially weakened our efforts in the war on terror, set gay and lesbian civil rights back about a half a century and blatantly broke the law and expect mercy because they apologized for it afterwards and, despite how they made their living, claimed ignorance of the law.

WH mouthpiece Tony Fratto sniffed at the DOJ memo and said, "There really is not a lot new here."

Unfortunately, he's right, since this blatant partisanship that stretches from the Department of Justice all the way to Iraq is just business as usual in the kingdom of the ideologically blind.

Smaller government in action

We all know about the billions of dollars being shoveled into Iraq, much of it into the hands of unaccountable private contractors.

Here at home, our basic infrastructure is falling apart:

It would cost at least $140 billion to repair all the nation's bridges if work began immediately, a nationwide safety organization said in a comprehensive report Monday.

"States simply cannot keep up with bridge maintenance," the report warns, adding that 73 percent of U.S. road traffic -- and 90 percent of truck traffic -- travels over state-owned bridges.

Nearly one in four bridges needs repairs, and the average age of America's bridges is 43 years -- seven years shy of the maximum age for which most are designed, according to the report, titled "Bridging the Gap."

One in five U.S. bridges is more than 50 years old, the report says.

And yet there is little sense of urgency on Capitol Hill to do anything about it. Last Thursday the House passed legislation that would provide $1 billion for bridge repair -- barely a fraction of the amount needed. And yet this same Congress has given blank checks for Iraq for five years. I often wonder why so much lip service is given to "national defense" and almost none given to having something to defend.

UPDATE: From the "Great Minds Think Alike" file, Joshua Holland has more on our crumbling infrastructure.

OK, so now what is Congress going to do about it

I've long talked about a "tipping point of evil" in government -- a point at which the lawbreaking and the atrocities committed by an American administration become so egregious, so heinous, that the perpetrators become unaccountable because the sheer volume of crimes is too huge to be prosecuted.

When I think Congress having impeachment hearings for a president who lied about an affair while under oath, and has allowed this bunch to carry on, I despair for our entire system of government and wonder why we even bother to participate.

Yesterday the entire country found out what many of has known for a long time -- that the entire Justice Department was stocked with ideologues, and those not toeing the Official Party Line were purged:

The report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general and its internal ethics office, centered on the misconduct of a small circle of aides to Mr. Gonzales, including Monica Goodling, a former top adviser to the attorney general, and Kyle Sampson, his former chief of staff. It also found that White House officials were actively involved in some hiring decisions.

According to the report, officials at the White House first developed a method of searching the Internet to glean the political leanings of a candidate and introduced it at a White House seminar called The Thorough Process of Investigation. Justice Department officials then began using the technique to search for key phrases or words in an applicant’s background, like “abortion,” “homosexual,” “Florida recount,” or “guns.”

The report focused its sharpest criticism on Ms. Goodling, a young lawyer from the Republican National Committee who rose quickly in the department to become a top aide to Mr. Gonzales.

Before a crush of cameras, Ms. Goodling testified before Congress in May 2007 at the height of the uproar over the firings of nine United States attorneys, admitting that she may have “crossed the line” at times in using politics in hiring decisions. But Monday’s report catalogued an effort much more systematic than Ms. Goodling described, leading some Democrats to charge that she, Mr. Sampson and Mr. Gonzales should be investigated for perjury.

Last month, the inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, and the Office of Professional Responsibility released a separate report that found a similar pattern of politicized hiring at the Justice Department in reviewing applications from young lawyers for the honors and intern programs.

The report released on Monday goes much further in documenting pervasive evidence of political hiring for some of the department’s most senior career positions, including immigration judges, assistant United States attorneys and even senior counterterrorism positions.

So now there is a report. Is Congress going to do anything about this, or is this report the equivalent of another "sternly worded letter"?

Shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre

Yesterday I was in Manhattan interviewing, and I feel a bit as if I've been off on another planet for a few days. So thanks to the newly prolific and resurgent jurassicpork for weighing in on the shooting at a Unitarian Universalist church in Tennessee.

I'm less charitable than JP is, however. While I agree that people like Jim David Adkisson as the exception rather than the rule, and that the entire conservative movement doesn't advocate killing liberals, there is such a thing as incitement to riot. Riot needn't take the form of mobs of people running in the streets. One person can be a riot, and in this case, a one-person riot set out to kill people because their religious and political beliefs differed from his own.

When Adkisson's house was searched, they found treatises by the Usual Suspects:

Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."

Adkisson told Still that "he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."

Adkisson told officers he left the house unlocked for them because "he expected to be killed during the assault."

Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday's mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of "the liberal movement," and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.

Adkisson, 58, of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he stated his "hatred of the liberal movement," Owen said. "Liberals in general, as well as gays."

Adkisson said he also was frustrated about not being able to obtain a job, Owen said.

I suspect that the last sentence is the real crux of Adkisson's problem, but in a season when the media drumbeat is relentless that only low-education, white working class males like Adkisson matter in the 2008 election, and equally relentless that the "presumptuous" (read: "uppity") Barack Obama can't possibly win over these voters, there is so much noise tapping into the reptilian brains of guys like Adkisson that it's hardly surpsising that one of them would decide to take his talk radio hosts literally and go out and kill him some lib'ruls.

Michael Reagan has called for his listeners to kill anyone who questions the official party line on the 9/11 attacks. Whether you agree with 9/11 conspiracy theorists or not, summary "justice" and execution is hardly the way to deal with them. But Michael Reagan is still on the air inciting violence in his listeners.

Michael Savage opines about liberals thusly: "To fight only the al-Qaeda scum is to miss the terrorist network operating within our own borders... Who are these traitors? Every rotten radical left-winger in this country, that's who." What do you think happens when a radio host such as Savage, who has been whipping his listeners into a frenzy about Islam since 9/11, when he lumps all liberals into that category? He implies that fighting them (read: killing) is a patriotic act. Savage is clearly a disturbed nut; arguably just as disturbed as Adkisson, except that Savage is paid millions of dollars to spew his bile on the air, which may keep him from shooting up a church in despair over not being able to find a job in George W. Bush's America.

For the most part, these guys whose screeds were treated as gospel by Adkisson are just blowhards. They're an arguably harmless way for the angry white working class males that Chris Matthews and David Gregory think are the only voters who matter to vent their bile at a country that is more and more leaving them behind. But when you combine the kind of scapegoating and stoking the fires of resentment that these guys do with someone who has nothing left to lose and enough guns to go out in a blaze of glory, you have what happened on a Sunday morning in a church in Tennessee, when a group of people who want nothing more than the freedom of speech and religion from which Michael Reagan, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and the rest of their ilk are profiting so handsomely.

The next time someone tells you that George W. Bush and the Republicans have kept us safe because there have been no terrorist attacks in this country since 9/11/01, remind them about Jim Adkisson, who really did want to kill Americans because he hated their freedom. And as Melissa points out, remind them also of "anthrax and copycat mailings, bombings, beatings, church fires, and attacks on women's health clinics".

More from:

Richard Blair
Sara Robinson
PhysioProf (who NAILED it early on)
Driftglass
Warren Street (who says it all in one sentence)

Vocabulary and Doubt..... Propagandizing the Word "Victory" as the New Patriotism...

Remember back when BushCo was pushing us into Iraq, when the UN was still over there, and we were waiting on reports to find out what was really going on? My sister slapped a bumper sticker on her minivan that said "Bomb Iraq? NO!" I was with her in the sentiment, as anyone who has seen my car bumper through the years will attest to, but I was wary of the language, because I wasn't quite sure what the outcome of the UN inspectors was going to be and I was still in denial that America would do something as crazy as actually divert our troops from Afghanistan to Iraq and in fact "bomb" them ("back to the stone age," as the survivalist working at the local video store said, spittle flying.)

Back then, as the Rovian spin machine began to blend the terms of 9-11, Afghanistan, and Iraq into easily digestible sound bytes with a threatening undertone and the fear of being viewed as un-American somehow for questioning our leadership, I was overcome with defiance. From the Impeach lawn signs that grandpa used to crawl up the steep rocky slope to pull down (because it only takes one crazy with a moltov cocktail!...not that he disagreed, you understand,) to my "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" bumper sticker addressing the bold twisting of the power of belief, and using the framework of religion to sell their war. I read a study years ago that people who commute in cars or just drive alot actually learn quite a bit from bumper stickers. I forget the exact numbers, but I remember being impressed enough to consider my bumper as a teaching opportunity, regardless of if I felt frightened of how others might react. So far I get alot of thumbs up for my " My Child is an Honor Student, But My President is an Idiot!," and the like, though lately I had an Obama sticker taken off the car in Manhattan (I'm hoping because it was unusual and someone wanted to use it!) and Ive gotten a few fingers on the highway. Am I un-American for expressing my disgust with the state of things? Should I be frightened because my words might cause some people to act violently towards me?

9-11 sent us all into a spiral of what might have been national shock, fear, or depression, and the Bush White house, with Karl Rove in the wheelhouse, manipulated and played that up to great effect with the undercurrent message being a warning that we must support the executive without question or risk death at the hands of terrorists or worse: being labeled un-American.

In April of this year, BushCo began circulating memos that warned of the power of the use of certain language because of its ability to inflame religious tensions and, according to MSNBC

U.S. officials may be "unintentionally portraying terrorists, who lack moral and religious legitimacy, as brave fighters, legitimate soldiers or spokesmen for ordinary Muslims," says a Homeland Security report. It's entitled "Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims."

"Regarding 'jihad,' even if it is accurate to reference the term, it may not be strategic because it glamorizes terrorism, imbues terrorists with religious authority they do not have and damages relations with Muslims around the world," the report says.

Further, just as of this year apparently, words like "jihad," which beyond the U.S.'s common use of it to imply the waging of a holy war, supposedly means to do good, and "mujahedeen," which are just those involved in a jihad, are supposed to be cut from any official discourse. Likewise, "violent extremist," "terrorist," and "Islamo-fascism" have been deemed inappropriate as highly inflammatory. The reports also note that use of these terms increases the star power of terrorists and inflames relations with regular Muslims, who have nothing to do with terrorism and don't much like their religion attached to what amounts to fringe groups.

Too little, too late, you say? The British published similar reports last year, and I don't think I would have to Google far to find these and many other inflammatory terms used by our very Commander in Chief...often...lately...on television from the rose garden...from the oval office...while dropping his Scotty on his head from Air Force One...When has the man NOT used these talking points again and again to inflame and frighten the American people, while apparently breeding more contempt and new baby terrorists all the time?

This is just another pathetic example of the use of language as a propaganda tool to start and continue unrest and to germinate fear and blind obedience in the people of a nation. Loose lips sink ships, but what if those loose lips are your President's? I know that he is gonna be viewed for all of history as a dummy, but look at how frequently the dummy repeated what the ventriloquist fed into his backflap...look at how insidious these few words have been...and wonder, as I am, how many innocent people died because of a couple of very smart guys who decided to use deep psychological manipulation on a lulled and frightened populace, in order to achieve a goal that will likely play out to be one of stone cold self enrichment.

A week or so ago DINO-republo-freak Joe Lieberman appeared on Faux News Sunday representing the republican point of view in a debate against real democrat Evan Bayh. In one of those unreal exchanges about the war old Joe threw around the talking points and buzzwords shamelessly, referring to victory and how the surge had worked, when it must be clear to all thinking Americans by now that victory is a relative term that can be used in any number of ways, and the effectiveness of the surge is questionable at best. Not one interviewer or pundit seems to be able to ask the question of what victory would look like exactly because the term seems to be attached to supporting the troops. In my estimation, this is some sort of leftover plug from the "cut and run" days and it really does a disservice to the troops because it implies that anything less than victory is not acceptable. If victory, as it has been historically viewed, is really not possible in this theater then the troops are damned to failure.



OK, I get it that Joe is caught up in the talking points and is working with a deep neocon belief in the cause of "spreading democracy," (aka. controlling the oil for mid-east domination, fun and profit,) or whatever flavor of kool-aid they were passing out that day, but as a Connecticut voter and someone who worked on the Lamonte campaign, I have to say that what he is saying does not represent me or anyone I know. Not even CT Republicans are onboard with this pap, so where does he get off heading into territory that betrays all that he ran on and even every other more conservative viewpoint in his state? This man so clearly lied to his constituency to get into office. He used the fear and lies of the vocabulary just as surely as he is following at the heels of John McCain and whispering the new jargon into his hearing aide. Joe Lieberman is delusional and so is John McCain, but they are using the new talking points to great effect.

McCain implies that we would be cowards to withdraw, and that there is some sort of shame in ending this war without achieving its objective. The thing is that the objective has been stated and restated a few times by the Bush administration without anything concrete that one might hang onto, and there remains, even in the face of the Iraqi government asking for us to set a timeline, no clear way to declare victory or mission accomplished, or even just get the hell out of there without the leadership of this country deciding that they are going to make it OK to end this thing. There will never be an easy withdrawal, and even in Obama's best case scenarios we are looking at a long drawn out process involving much loss of life, and probably tremendous heroics of the brave soldiers who are tasked with this nearly impossible task.

What does victory look like? The Iraqi people waving flowers and candy at us as we ride our tanks out of town and into the bellies of huge transports? Can we ever go home?
From the White House's Victory page itself comes this confusing bit:

* Short term, Iraq is making steady progress in fighting terrorists, meeting political milestones, building democratic institutions, and standing up security forces.
* Medium term, Iraq is in the lead defeating terrorists and providing its own security, with a fully constitutional government in place, and on its way to achieving its economic potential.
* Longer term, Iraq is peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism.

None of these goals are even close to being accomplished, nor are programs in place that even seemingly function in the general direction of an orderly return to self governing. The next section gets really bizarre:

* Iraq is the central front in the global war on terror. Failure in Iraq will embolden terrorists and expand their reach; success in Iraq will deal them a decisive and crippling blow.
* The fate of the greater Middle East -- which will have a profound and lasting impact on American security -- hangs in the balance.

Impossible to accomplish, as far as I can see...and really scary if we don't! I suppose that if we replaced the "Iraq" with "our huge embassy serves as our base as a central front in the war on terror and controlling all oil production in the region..." oh wait, our presence creates more terrorists, so no matter how many stinking embassies we build over there, we cant stay if we are serious about stopping it's growth....hmmmm....

The concept of retreat, defeat and/or victory do not apply to what is going on in Iraq. The more that Bush apologists are allowed to throw these phrases around, the more America believes in the fairytale unattainable goals of fighting them over there so we don't have to here. Further, these words should offend us every bit as much as the anti Muslim words and the words that increase the star power of terrorists that are in the memos being sent around now by the white house....now, after Bush has used the terms a million times...and how many times will John McCain imply that our troops are somehow less than brave if they leave without the indescribable and unattainable victory that he...er, Rove... has in mind.

Our acceptance of these words from the likes of John McCain or George Bush, and their surrogates, is the first step down the path to submission and the very real unAmerican act of not demanding full disclosure and accountability from those that we elect to represent us not only in our own government but to the world.

RIPCoco
Brilliant at Breakfast

Gee, thanks, George

Let's see...where are we.

OK, Republicans were supposed to be the party of national security and fighting terrorism, but under George W. Bush, the U.S. was attacked, the man allegedly behind the attack, Osama Bin Laden, is still out there, the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda pretty much controls the mountains of Pakistan.

Republicans were supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility, but under George W. Bush, we now have a record deficit that he's going to leave as a lovely parting gift for the new president:

The White House has increased its estimate for next year's deficit to nearly $490 billion, a record figure that will saddle the next president with deepening budget problems in his first year in office, a report due out today shows.

The projected deficit for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 is being driven higher by the continuing economic slowdown and larger than anticipated costs of the two-year, $168 billion fiscal stimulus package passed by Congress, said two senior administration officials with direct knowledge of the report.

Yes, there's plenty of blame for Congress, including a stimulus package that stimulates nothing but oil company profits, and bridges to nowhere. But it's funny how the pouring of money into Iraq in the form of contracts for KBR so they can electrocute our soldiers and the privatization of American spying aren't even mentioned.

Why on earth is ANYONE planning to vote for this party?

Inhumanity Worth Dying For

Even before I read this AP article breaking the news that Jim D. Adkisson had opened fire on a Tennessee Unitarian Universalist Church yesterday, murdering two people, I knew what the motive was. We have a Unitarian church in my hometown of Hudson, Massachusetts. Those who read my last blog may recall my doing a short photo essay last May about the more than 4600 American flags that they’d planted on their property to memorialize those troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The poet and arch-liberal Percy Bysshe Shelley once complained to a friend that there wasn’t a single religion based on charity rather than faith. The Unitarian church comes the closest to realizing Shelley’s ideal of a religion based on charity. Unitarians welcome everybody into their houses of worship, including gays. The sign outside my local Unitarian church even features the multicolored flag indicating their longstanding invitation to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community. I’m not religious, to say the very least. Yet their liberal, secular humanitarianism has earned my neverending admiration and fiercest respect.

Over the decades, they have fought effectively for women’s and gay rights, sheltered the homeless, fed the hungry. Yet this admirable body of work was considered too liberal by an unemployed man, such as the kind they would've gone out of their way to help, who’d taken two lives yesterday, including a church usher who’d bravely put his own body in the way to shield the others.

A signed, four page letter was found in the SUV of the miscreant explaining his intentions to kill as many people as possible then himself during a children’s production of Annie. The church’s views and biases were too liberal for Jim D. Adkisson.

Yes. To some people (think Conservatives), helping the downtrodden, helpless and disadvantaged is a sin worth dying for, a sin worthy of Old Testament vengeance. Murder is a lesser sin than fighting for gay rights or equal rights for women.

It would be tempting to excoriate the conservative movement for this but it would be unfair. Adkisson doesn’t speak for conservatives any more than Michael Moore or George Clooney speaks for me. At worst, the most vicious and hateful conservatives, people such as Hal Turner, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, Melanie Morgan, Michael Reagan and others of their ideological, odious ilk, will call upon others to visit death and destruction on individuals, whole communities, even entire religions because they’re nonetheless smart enough to know that carrying out such actions will likely get them the death penalty. Which is a whole different thing than compassionate conservatism.

People like Jim Adkisson are, thankfully, a rare anomaly but one that still exists among us. Once in a while they rear their ugly head when they see their own twisted ideology challenged, or perceive it as being challenged. Once in a while, an Amish school will get shot up and children will die. Other times, Baptist churches in Alabama will get bombed and children will die. Unitarian churches in Tennessee will be attacked and, if we’re relatively lucky, as with yesterday, children will not die.

But two elderly people did die for having committed the unpardonable sin of worshipping in a church that is based not on religious dogmatism but secular charity and justice. Because, unfortunately, some people out there think that their ideology is worth killing for.

Bill Granger's buttermilk pancakes

Do crepe pans really make a difference? The friendly folk at Kitchenware Direct recently offered to send me a Scanpan crepe pan to road-test, and who was I to argue?It was also the perfect excuse to test out Bill Granger's recipe for buttermilk pancakes.Bill Granger's buttermilk pancakes2 cups plain flour3 teaspoons baking powder1 pinch salt2 tablespoons sugar2 eggs, lightly beaten3 cups