Now here's a dilemma for ya

Sorry about the light posting, I've been away visiting family in Florida since Wednesday. But perhaps someone can tell me how one can keep up with blogging while visiting without being insufferably rude -- even when said family is asking you what you're blogging on when they know you haven't been blogging because it's insufferably rude!

Anyway, I'm back home and taking the day off work tomorrow to do laundry, catch up on housework, recuperate, and go sniffing around the basement to see if I can smell a dead squiirel which I know is down there but can't find and hasn't started to stink yet.

A second pest control guy, one not obligated to make a shitload of money by finding problems where none existed, determined fairly definitively that because the noise was during the day, our unwanted critter was a squirrel. The bad news is that said squirrel either somehow miraculously escaped (unlikely) or has expired (more likely). The problem is that we can't find a corpse and there's no smell yet, so I'm not quite sure what to do.

Anyway, this is why I haven't blogged on the latest escapade of Bush Brownie-ism (Walter Reed) or the loathsome Ann Coulter's showing her true colors -- though frankly, I'm not sure that Andy Kaufman -- I mean Coulter -- really warrants the attention. Like a blog troll, some people are better left ignored.

Musashi Dining Bar, Sydney

The problem with good budget eats is that everyone else seems to know about them. And so Musashi is no longer a place you can casually drop into for a bite to eat. Packed with people both at lunch and dinner-time, you must either plan ahead and book, or otherwise arrive extra early.On a Friday night before Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays (a fantastic show that was both heartfelt and entertaining) we

What I'm reading today

Cernig discusses the right-wing outrage about some people leaving blog comments about wishing Dick Cheney had been killed in Afghanistan -- and includes some interesting statistics about how wingnuts talk the talk but don't walk the walk.

BlueGal wants to know how like-minded groups can reach out to the blogosphere.

Melina has some choice words for Maureen Dowd in regard to Al Gore.

At Blue Jersey, 5th District Dweeb Wuss-Boy Candidate Paul Aronsohn, apparently not understanding any part of "44%-in-a-Democratic-year-really-sucks" is already whining about people saying mean things to him.


Dave at The Galloping Beaver warns about being happy about Marty Peretz being out of the picture at The New Republic.

Larisa Alexandrovna calls (correctly) for the impeachment of Alberto Gonzales, who fired a federal prosecutor after he refused to accede to Rep. Heather Wilson and Sen. Pete Domenici's demand that he indict a Democratic state Senator prior to the election.

And speaking of wingnuts with the vapors, ShakesSis talks about the wingnut blogger whose balls are no doubt being squeezed into oblivion by his twisted panties after spending his masturbation time analyzing how many progressive blogs use how many of George Carlin's Seven Words You Can't Say on Television.

It's for research: Farmer's Rustica, Luneburger

A good sandwich starts with good bread.That's why I couldn't resist buying a loaf of Farmer Rustica from the German Luneburger bakery in the bustling corridors of the QVB (Queen Victoria Building).Farmer's Rustica $4.50The Luneburger website describes this as a "round loaf made of wheat and rye. Soft and moist inside. Extending baking time makes a tasty rye-flavoured crust".It is all this and

Network news viewers still want to see father figures

While the trend in cable television news is towards vapid-eyed, poufy-haired, lantern-jawed men and vapid-eyed blond botoxed women, all around the age of 35, it seems that among those who still watch network news in the evening, the mature, father figure still reigns supreme:

he looming change in the control room at “Nightly News” and the ratings surge by Mr. Gibson are but the latest developments in the most tumultuous two years in the recent history of broadcast news.

Mr. Williams succeeded Tom Brokaw in December 2004. After that, Dan Rather resigned as anchor at CBS in the midst of a reporting scandal, and was soon succeeded by Katie Couric. Peter Jennings died of lung cancer while still the lead anchor at ABC, and one of Mr. Jennings’s designated successors, Bob Woodruff, nearly died in a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq, setting off a sequence of events that ultimately led to Mr. Gibson’s move to the anchor desk at “World News.”

Only six months before Mr. Gibson got the evening news job, he was effectively passed over for it, in favor of two much younger journalists, making his current run at Mr. Williams’s broadcast all the more remarkable.

Even as some young viewers forsake television for the Internet, the three network newscasts continue to attract a collective audience of nearly 25 million viewers most nights. The programs are also among the most lucrative for the networks, with advertisers planning to spend nearly half a billion dollars on them this year.

More than a few viewers, and advertisers, choose their broadcast based on the personal strengths of those anchors. That has left some people at the networks wondering whether Mr. Gibson — who, at 63, is the oldest and most established of the three — may be proving more attractive to more viewers than Mr. Williams and Ms. Couric.

The network news viewer tends to skew older than the audience for cable news, and this undoubtedly counts for part of Gibson's rise. Elderly audiences don't want to be read the news by their kids. But I can't help but wonder if some of the loss of Brian Williams' audience doesn't come from his frequent presence at the side of Jon Stewart. Stewart's growth as a news personality is baffling to him, but it's more an indicator of the state of television news than a reflection on Stewart's own gravitas. The problem with Williams is that his role as a fixture of fake news/comedy indicates a healthy snark and lack of reverence for the traditional role of news anchor as father figure. Gibson, being a bit older, seems to embrace that role, and therefore his older audience is more comfortable receiving the news from someone who better accepts the "reassuring parent" role.

They ran it up the flagpole and no one saluted

And they have no personnel with which to attack Iran and North Korea at the same time:

The Bush administration is backing away from its long-held assertions that North Korea has an active clandestine program to enrich uranium, leading some experts to believe that the original U.S. intelligence that started the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions may have been flawed.

The chief intelligence officer for North Korea, Joseph R. DeTrani, told Congress on Tuesday that while there is "high confidence" North Korea acquired materials that could be used in a "production-scale" uranium program, there is only "mid-confidence" such a program exists. Meanwhile, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, the chief negotiator for disarmament talks, told a conference last week in Washington that it is unclear whether North Korea ever mastered the production techniques necessary for such a program.

[snip]

When Bush took office in 2001, a number of top administration officials openly expressed grave doubts about the 1994 accord, which was negotiated by the Clinton administration, and they seized on the intelligence about the uranium facility to terminate the agreement. The CIA provided an unclassified estimate to Congress in November 2002 that North Korea had begun constructing a plant that would produce enough "weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year . . . as soon as mid-decade."

David Albright, a respected former U.N. inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, issued a report last week in which he likened the intelligence on North Korea's uranium facility to the discredited intelligence before the invasion of Iraq that Baghdad was building a nuclear program. "The analysis about North Korea's program also appears to be flawed," he wrote.

This is now the Bush Administration's modus operandi. Claim that you have the intelligence, invoke mushroom clouds, then attack. The problem is that Americans aren't buying it anymore. Of course, this disbelief has its own problems, because it means that if and when here IS a legitimate threat, we won't believe them then either.

Sounds like a perfect setup if you want to allow another attack to take place on U.S. soil, doesn't it? Especially one timed to allow you to cancel the 2008 election.

Walter Reed: the military scandal no one was supposed to know about

I don't ever again want to hear another Republican accuse anyone of not "supporting the troops". It is the Republicans who have looked the other way while returning wounded veterans lived in squalor. It is the Republicans who want to cut veterans' medical benefits to continue to feed the corporate war machine. It is the Republicans who regard these kids as just so much breathing carrion -- nameless, faceless (except when needed for a photo op), expendable.

The Army's own surgeon general knew about conditions at Walter Reed -- and did nothing:

Top officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, including the Army's surgeon general, have heard complaints about outpatient neglect from family members, veterans groups and members of Congress for more than three years.

A procession of Pentagon and Walter Reed officials expressed surprise last week about the living conditions and bureaucratic nightmares faced by wounded soldiers staying at the D.C. medical facility. But as far back as 2003, the commander of Walter Reed, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who is now the Army's top medical officer, was told that soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were languishing and lost on the grounds, according to interviews.

Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, said he ran into Kiley in the foyer of the command headquarters at Walter Reed shortly after the Iraq war began and told him that "there are people in the barracks who are drinking themselves to death and people who are sharing drugs and people not getting the care they need."

"I met guys who weren't going to appointments because the hospital didn't even know they were there," Robinson said. Kiley told him to speak to a sergeant major, a top enlisted officer.

Every day there is another horror story about this Administration's callousness where the men and women who fight is completely gratuituos wars are concerned. Every day hey give lip service to patriotism and supporting the troops, and every day they show that these kids mean no more to them than the kid in the rat-infested tenement does. And through cuts in edcation, in Pell grants, in health care; though policies that encourage plant closings and outsourcing, they are making damn sure that the kid in the rat-infested tenement grows up with no other options but to be cannon fodder for them. It would be one thing if these kids really were being sent to defend their country. But it's criminal when they are being sent to fight corporate wars -- and then neglected when they are wounded in the line of duty.