The Mississippifarian

The salmonella outbreak has finally been solved. The outbreak originated — as suspected — from the Third World backwaters of . . . Florida.

And Mexico, but don’t think I didn’t enjoy pointing out the Florida part. The reichwing asshole growers down there have had their way too long, and now their product is for shit.

Wholesome food is a thing of the past. It will take Obama’s Dept. of Agriculture years to clean up Bush’s shitty mess. And the right will whine at every step of re-regulation, because they seem to enjoy catching the Hershey squirts now and then.

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[Masonic/RIAA item dividers today — in copyright we trust!]

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Five billion “sold.”

And I’ve only stolen about 600GB worth. 

[sigh]

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I like to think of the backlash against the Russert week-long wake as overdue, but I’m surprised atsome of the folks who’ve decided enough is enough. Reaction to media isn’t just the province of media wonks anymore.

CP’s Blog of the Year winner on Robson on Russert

Charlie, the ad man, on the Coleman commercial

Deborah Howell on Broder and Woodward being ethical violators

Ken Silverstein on Broder and Woodward being ethical violators

What happened to Al Giordano

Michael Savage: salmonella-infected on-air hate (from the America for some, not all crowd)

 

In other continued stories:

The Dells are still open, just a little different

More on the political nature of this year’s Northrup jazz calendar

Steny Hoyer

Renters winning

Charlie Crist rumored to be a renter

Scott Horton interviews Sibel Edmonds and Luke Ryland

J. Robert Flores latest Bushie to be investigated

Colby King advices Barack on DC insiders

Michele Bachmann confuses caribou with Caribou

Another great Garnett story

This deep into the Bush administration, all stories are continued, and many linger because they’ve been deferred too long. We’re going to need some CSI historians to figure out all their bastardly crimes.

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Send baking soda to Bush via the mail and get four years in prison. But if you send anthrax to Congress and the media, you get to live free and die of old age.

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A radical view of how the world economy was altered by the Days of Rage from Slavoj Zizek. Your hard reading assignment for the weekend.

Capitalism abandoned the hierarchical Fordist structure of the production process — which, named after auto maker Henry Ford, enforced a hierarchical and centralized chain of command — and developed a network-based form of organization that accounted for employee initiative and autonomy in the workplace. As a result, we get networks with a multitude of participants, organizing work in teams or by projects, intent on customer satisfaction and public welfare, or worrying about ecology.

In this way, capitalism usurped the left’s rhetoric of worker self-management, turning it from an anti-capitalist slogan to a capitalist one. It was Socialism that was conservative, hierarchic and administrative.

The anti-capitalist protests of the ’60s supplemented the traditional critique of socioeconomic exploitation with a new cultural critique: alienation of everyday life, commodification of consumption, inauthenticity of a mass society in which we “wear masks” and suffer sexual and other oppressions.

The new capitalism triumphantly appropriated this anti-hierarchical rhetoric of ‘68, presenting itself as a successful libertarian revolt against the oppressive social organizations of corporate capitalism and “really existing” socialism. This new libertarian spirit is epitomized by dressed-down “cool” capitalists such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates and the founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

What survived of the sexual liberation of the ’60s was the tolerant hedonism readily incorporated into our hegemonic ideology. Today, sexual enjoyment is not only permitted, it is ordained — individuals feel guilty if they are not able to enjoy it. The drive to radical forms of enjoyment (through sexual experiments and drugs or other trance-inducing means) arose at a precise political moment: when “the spirit of ‘68” had exhausted its political potential. 

That’s a sample, but it does get a bit more turgid, as in Red Army Faction and “Real” with a capital R.

The House has folded like an ten-high broken straight, now only the Senate can save us from an imperial telecommunications industry, serving as Bush’s bulwark in the fight to eliminate individual privacy once and for all.

How can the government possibly fight the terrorisms if they don’t know what you said to your buddy on the phone last night?

Steny Hoyer, the best leadership money can buy.

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Digby says it’s time for Obama to demonstrate his leadership by reversing himself on a key Georgia race. That’s fine, but I’d rather see him clog dancing on Steny Hoyer’s face.

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Republican women, a sorry lot at best, are not exactly flocking to McCain’s banner.

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Seems like no one nowhere believed a word Rafid Ahmed Alwan had to say. No one except Dick Cheney and George Bush.

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Norm and Laurie “Blo and Go” Coleman spend so little time together, they had to use special effects to jimmy her into one of Norm’s TV commercials. Next time she’s interviewed, someone should ask her what color her kitchen curtains are. I’ve got five bucks that says she doesn’t have a clue.

And I’ll leave it at that. (I’m sure she knows what color her kids’ eyes are. Pretty sure, anyway.)

See also Rachel Stassen-Berger, who apparently didn’t notice anything hinky about Norm’s cut and paste marriage being bluescreened into the commercial.

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Draft Ciresi! has a new Facebook member. You tell me, but I think the new guy’s avatar is of a naked man with his legs (pants?) on fire.

Hard to say, but if he is indeed nekkid, that’s one hell of a pubic thatch he’s got there.

I still cannot find a single DFLer or Independent who thinks Draft Ciresi! is anything but some more of Michael Brodkorb’s asshole buddies doing yet another web fraud in the time-dishonored tradition of Nixonian ratfucking.

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Brian Lambert has more on that new MPR acquisition and the membership flogging that goes with it.

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Bob Collins eulogizes Janet Christine Dietrich, who, were it not for sexist knuckleheads at NASA, would have been the first woman in space.

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The Curmudgeon rips on Russert coverage, Franken, and Bush, in that order. [print, not audio]

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Turns out the “porno judge” seems to have gotten a phony rap from unscrupulous media who radically distorted a few key facts. 

The L.A. Times owes a HUGE apology to this judge. Let’s see if they have enough pride in their product to actually correct the record. So far, only a few bloggers and their readers even know there’s another side to this story.

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Crazed morons at Worldnutdaily link to Ed Brayton but only after staying up all night typing one-handed love letters to the Bush administration.

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If you’re using Firefox 3, try typing “about:robots” (no quote marks) into your browser URL selector.

And yes, I mean you Denny. This one is worth the download.

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Brian Eno and friends made some predictions about the future back in ‘93. How accurate were they? 

KEVIN KELLY:

* Nobody wants to be a doctor. It becomes an over-whelming bureaucratic job with low status. Women and minorities become working doctors; men do medical research. 

* People begin leaving the U.S. Many arrivals to the US keep resident status but choose not to adopt citizenship. The world sees more people without allegiance. 

* It costs half a day’s pay to drive your car into the downtown area of a big city, and a day’s wages to park. 

 * No more employees. Everybody is hired as a consultant, each negotiates a deal with various goodies (benefits, insurance, perks). Even factory workers are treated as “consultants.” 

BRIAN ENO:

 * Video phones inspire a new sexual revolution whereby everybody sits at home doing rude things electronically with everyone else. Productivity slumps; video screens get bigger and bigger. 

* 2010 AD: California elects the first transsexual governor. All public toilets are redesigned at great expense. 

 * A new kind of holiday becomes popular: you are dropped by helicopter in an unknown place, with two weeks’ supply of food and water. You are assured that you will not see anyone else in this time. There is a panic button just in case. 

* A new profession, meme-inspector, comes into being. 

 * A highly successful new magazine — Ordinary People, edited by the nonagenarian Studs Terkel — focuses only on people who have never done anything in particular to deserve attention. 

 * News is understood to be a creation of our attention and interests (rather than “the truth”) and news shows are redesigned as “thinktanks,” where four interesting minds from different disciplines are asked the question, “So what do YOU think happened today?”

* Later, four uninteresting minds (chosen from the pages of Ordinary People magazine) are asked the same questions. 

There are scads more, but these are the only ones that even came close to being right.

PZ writes about a couple of lists circulating among the right of books “that screwed up the world.”

Here’s my list:

1. The Christian Bible
2. The Torah
3. The Quran
4. Dow 20,000
5. Mein Kampf
6. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
7. The Lexus and The Olive Tree
8. Atlas Shrugged
9. The Way Things Ought To Be
10. Neo-conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea

Given how history has proven that the Christian New Testament is largely a made-up mess, created at the behest of Emperor Constantine, it has to be ranked #1. The notion that Karl Marx messed up the world is beyond contempt: the history of Communism is the history of how Marx’s message has been ignored by non-capitalist totalitarians.

I’m sure you can add plenty of titles to this list.

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You might also want to offer some nominations for the Cartoonist’s Mt. Rushmore. Too many good names to pick from, but my CMR would include:

1. Walt “Pogo” Kelly
2. Charles “Peanuts” Schulz
3. Bill “Calvin & Hobbes” Waterston
4. Garry “Doonesbury” Trudeau

But there should definitely be souvenir shop garden gnomes honoring Gary “Far Side” Larson, Chas. “Addams Family” Addams, Edward Gorey, Sam Gross, Will Elder, Ted Rall, Dan “Tom Tomorrow” Perkins,  and — hell — the list could just go on and on.

I tried hard to think of some women cartoonists that have had me ROFL, but couldn’t think of any. (Sorry, but Cathy “Cathy” Guiesewite, Lynn “For Better or Worse” Johnston, and Lynda Barry just don’t do that much for me.)

I laugh at women comedians — actors and stand up — but I cannot recall any comics drawn by women that I got hooked on. Oh I read For Better or Worse and Cathy, but mostly to help me understand the woman I was living with at the time.

Likewise, I practically grew up on Erma Bombeck, so it’s not like I have an issue with women and words. Just ‘toons.

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Not just the worst president in history, but also the first to ever veto a veterans benefits bill. (A little late, but last week’s This Modern World nails Curious George to a banana-shaped T.)

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Big Daddy Malcontent has a vintage but dead-on Vonnegut quote.

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TBogg: asked and answered.

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Putting together your own TV listings is illegal in Australia. 

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Some aged Phronesisaical that’s still as fresh as the day Helmut posted it:

China in Africa (welcome to the future)

More on Postville

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Bad ideas:

Giving the FDA the very last word on drugs

Soylent Fuel (via Kip)

Going back every time they ask

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75,000 in Oregon. Has John McCain drawn 75,000 total people to rallies this year? 

This is why I don’t “get” Hillary’s bitter enders. No one in American history has ever drawn such crowds. How could we possibly find another candidate half as electrifying?

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This is maybe my first link to Jeralyn Merritt in months, but since it’s to FDL, I guess I’m still boycotting TalkLeft, formerly one of my favorite websites but now it’s more like a homeless shelter for Obama haters.

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Last week’s winner (yes, I got it wrong by guessing Paths of Glory — right director, wrong movie), this week’s quiz.

The endorsement also drew a rebuke from Emily’s List, which endorses only women who support abortion rights and which has endorsed Mrs. Clinton. Ellen R. Malcolm, the president, said in a statement that it was “tremendously disrespectful” of Naral not to give Mrs. Clinton “the courtesy to finish the final three weeks of the primary process.”

NYTimes

Maybe, if Emily’s List hadn’t kept their belief that Clinton has lost such a secret, NARAL wouldn’t have felt obliged to endorse Obama.

Just sayin’. 

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Toles reminds us that the Republicans have much worse problems than this business of how HRC makes her exit.

—o—

Big Tent Democrat, formerly known as Armando, is still going through the grieving process. I think he’s got a few more steps to go before lucidity intervenes.

—o—

Sorry guys, but if you want to keep your bloody little fucked up war/occupation going, you’re going to have to vote to pay for it yourselves.

—o—

A follow up look at the Texas family Swiftboaters.

—o—

Bob Novak, lying to us for 45 years now.

—o—

When a Pulitzer Prize winner signs a petition calling for a newspaper columnist to be fired, the national media takes notice.

But not to the point of anyone actually running a news item about it in a dead tree publication. No, that turf belongs to our corporate masters, and they don’t have any problems with Kersten’s political or cultural illiteracy.

I’m not qualified to be a dead tree columnist either, but if I ever fell into such a position, I’d bust my butt to learn the ropes. There is absolutely no reason — based on her work product — to think that Katherine Kersten has ever cracked open any books about basic journalism. Her column continues to read like it has from day one, as a receptacle for unbalanced polemics, political payback and hatchetry.

UPDATE: Just dandy. Now the meatheads on the right are launching their own petition drives, predictably going after Nick Coleman. And, being wingnuts, they each have to make their own little speech, like this jackass writing as David Hanners, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who most certainly did not sign the Coleman petition.

2:45 pm PDT, May 15, David Hanners, Minnesota

As a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, I have to say, Nick Coleman writes like a toddler after sniffing a hardwood floor cleaning chemical. The man strings together sentences that make sense only to a select few people suffering from a combination of explosive diarrhea and paranoid schizophrenia. Coleman’s not so much a journalist as he is a hemorrhoid that has inexplicably developed the ability to type.

Because that’s exactly how Pulitzer Prizing winning reporters write. (In crayon, during recess.)

UPDATE: More gas for the fire from E&P. If Kersten were an actual reporter, she’d be mortified. As it is, I’m not sure she even knows what E&P does, or who Jim Romenesko is.

—o—

Because speaking the truth is such a Klannish thing to do. Bill O’Reilly isn’t the worst person in the world, just a tired flack with a head full of bile.

—o—

Demko has more on Stephanie Shriock. Interesting analysis, and way more insightful than the crap I’ve seen coming from our dead tree folks.

Needless to say, I’m thrilled that Chuck Schumer’s getting a second butt buddy from Minnesota to carry Wall Street’s water in the coming new Congress.

Just because Schumer’s a Democrat doesn’t mean he’s not the enemy. Nothing New York does benefits the Midwest; Wall Street is a carrion eater, and they love the taste of our farms and small towns.

The New Yorker has one of those hopelessly hip lists of the 100 Essential Jazz Albums. I have most of the music, but not necessarily from the albums they suggest (lots of Best Of’s). Forget the albums, here are the artists from that list.

1. Fats Waller
2. King Oliver
3. Louis Armstrong
4. Fletcher Henderson
5. Bessie Smith
6. Bix Beiderbecke
7. Django Reinhardt
8. Jelly Roll Morton
9. Sidney Bechet
10. Duke Ellington
11. Coleman Hawkins
12. Billie Holiday
13. Teddy Wilson
14. Lester Young
15. Count Basie
16. Benny Goodman
17. John Kirby
18. Chick Webb
19. Benny Carter
20. Charlie Christian
21. James P. Johnson
22. Nat King Cole
23. Charlie Parker
24. Dizzy Gillespie
25. Thelonious Monk
26. Lennie Tristan and Warne Marsh
27. Miles Davis
28. Bud Powell
29. Gerry Mulligan
30. Modern Jazz Quartet
31. Art Tatum
32. Clifford Brown and Max Roach
33. Charles Mingus
34. Sarah Vaughn
35. Ella Fitzgerald
36. Sonny Rollins
37. Tito Puente
38. Sun Ra
39. Abbey Lincoln
40. Art Blakey
41. Ahmad Jamal
42. Dave Brubeck
43. Jimmy Witherspoon
44. Ornette Coleman
45. Freddie Hubbard
46. Jimmy Smith
47. Dinah Washington
48. John Coltrane
49. Eric Dolphy
50. Bill Evans
51. Jackie McLean
52. Stan Getz and João Gilberto
53. Dexter Gordon
54. Andrew Hill
55. Lee Morgan
56. Albert Ayler
57. Archie Shepp
58. Horace Silver
59. Wes Montgomery
60. Cecil Taylor
61. Betty Carter
62. Frank Sinatra
63. Nina Simone
64. Pharoah Sanders
65. Chick Corea
66. Keith Jarrett
67. World Saxophone Quartet
68. Charlie Haden and Hank Jones
69. Joshua Redman
70. Cassandra Wilson
71. Wynton Marsalis
72. Bill Charlap Trio

That’s it. No Art Ensemble of Chicago, Cannonball Adderly, Chico Hamilton, Don Cherry, Ike Quebec, Frank Zappa, Joe Henderson, Lee Morgan, Alice Coltrane, Roland Kirk, Sonny Stitt, Tomasz Stanko, Jan Garbarek, Lee Konitz, Sonny Rollins, Zoot Sims, Wayne Shorter, John Zorn, Anatole Gerasimov, Archie Shepp, Hugh Masakela, Manu Dibango, Bill Bruford, Clutchy Hopkins, Erik Truffaz, Don Byron, Gabor Szabo, Getatchew Mekuria, Jack McDuff, Kammerflimmer Kollectief, John Lurie, John Medeski, McCoy Tyner, Roswell Rudd, Tortoise, or Yusef Lateef.

To each their own, I guess. Otoh, it takes a lot of arrogance to pass judgment on a musical genre so broad and complex. Eurojazz apparently wasn’t on their radar at all, which is odd since many of their artists were, at times, expatriates, performing in Europe to avoid the racist peckerwoods here at home.

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Fuck. Shows I’ve never watched are now celebrating their 21st season on air.

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Via Rex, the new X-Files trailer is out. I want to believe . . . that this movie will be better than that last stinker.

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More on Mississippi and the last throes of the Republican-Dixiecrat Party.

BarbinMD

Al Giordano

DavidNYC

DemFromCT

And more politics:

NARAL stabs HRC in back, endorses Obama

Greenwald with more on the sorry state of our media

African American woman new Speaker of the CA State Assembly

Revisiting the bowling brouhaha

NPR reviewing that Prozac informercial they ran as news

Burmese generals for Michele Bachmann

Pawlenty vetos carcinogenic flame retardant ban 

Burmese generals for Norman Bruce Coleman

Brauer on Strib Guild

American money taints Israeli elections

Einstein on religion: god and atheists both get trashed

David Moberg on the White Working Class

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One last brilliant video: A Mac parody involving a Christian and a Christ follower. 

Apparently, many Christians are abandoning that term as a burned out brand dragged down by far too many negative connotations. The new movement looks very positive, and not nearly as obsessive or hateful as what’s passed for Christianity in this country the past few decades.

Pawlenty and his concern troll allies in the lege worry that wait staff might be able to make as much as $15/$20 an hour if the minimum wage is bumped to $6.75 and pegged to inflation. But Pawlenty’s own Dept. of Employment and Economic Development says that the median wage for wait staff in the metro area is $8.13 an hour. 

This is how our economic debate goes. Democrats try to raise the minimum wage and Republicans squawk about how some blue/pink collar workers could potentially make as much as a convenience store manager. Republicans then try to shovel something vaguely approximating an economic stimulus package through Congress, and object mightily when Democrats point out that the workers get little, and the rich much. There’s never any concern from the Republicans that those at the top might make out like bandits. 

If you’re not a millionaire or caught up in some kind of incestuous religious loop, you really do have to be a moron to vote Republican if you make less than a quarter million dollars a year. Even then don’t expect me to be impressed by your voting habits.

And teenagers — many of whom can no longer consider college without working through high school and maybe a year after that? Well, Pawlenty and trolls won’t like that bump from $4.90 to $5.25 an hour but that’s OK because I think the phony teen training wage should be bumped entirely. Just because some kids are suburban brats trying to earn spending money is no reason to punish those who really need the money. And yes, teens do earn their pay, often much more so than the adults they work with.

•=•

Frank Rich uncorks a good one.

BORED by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly to YouTube, search for “John Hagee Roman Church Hitler,” and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive.

What you’ll find is a white televangelist, the Rev. John Hagee, lecturing in front of an enormous diorama. Wielding a pointer, he pokes at the image of a woman with Pamela Anderson-sized breasts, her hand raising a golden chalice. The woman is “the Great Whore,” Mr. Hagee explains, and she is drinking “the blood of the Jewish people.” That’s because the Great Whore represents “the Roman Church,” which, in his view, has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust.

Mr. Hagee is not a fringe kook but the pastor of a Texas megachurch. On Feb. 27, he stood with John McCain and endorsed him over the religious conservatives’ favorite, Mike Huckabee, who was then still in the race.

Are we really to believe that neither Mr. McCain nor his camp knew anything then about Mr. Hagee’s views? This particular YouTube video — far from the only one — was posted on Jan. 1, nearly two months before the Hagee-McCain press conference. Mr. Hagee appears on multiple religious networks, including twice daily on the largest, Trinity Broadcasting, which reaches 75 million homes. Any 12-year-old with a laptop could have vetted this preacher in 30 seconds, tops.

Since then, Mr. McCain has been shocked to learn that his clerical ally has made many other outrageous statements. Mr. Hagee, it’s true, did not blame the American government for concocting AIDS. But he did say that God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins, particularly a scheduled “homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came.” 

But Hagee and McCain are Republicans, so this will never be a quarter the flap that we’ve had to endure over the Rev. Wright’s bold and — in my opinion — entirely defensible comments.

Rich asks (and answers) the questions the rest of the media won’t even consider. Even questions I’ve asked time and again.

When Rudy Giuliani, still a viable candidate, successfully courted Pat Robertson for an endorsement last year, few replayed Mr. Robertson’s greatest past insanities. Among them is his best-selling 1991 tome, “The New World Order,” which peddled some of the same old dark conspiracy theories about “European bankers” (who just happened to be named Warburg, Schiff and Rothschild) that Mr. Farrakhan has trafficked in. Nor was Mr. Giuliani ever seriously pressed to explain why his cronies on the payroll at Giuliani Partners included a priest barred from the ministry by his Long Island diocese in 2002 following allegations of sexual abuse. Much as Mr. Wright officiated at the Obamas’ wedding, so this priest officiated at (one of) Mr. Giuliani’s. Did you even hear about it?

There is not just a double standard for black and white politicians at play in too much of the news media and political establishment, but there is also a glaring double standard for our political parties. The Clintons and Mr. Obama are always held accountable for their racial stands, as they should be, but the elephant in the room of our politics is rarely acknowledged: In the 21st century, the so-called party of Lincoln does not have a single African-American among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington. Yes, there are appointees like Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice, but, as we learned during the Mark Foley scandal, even gay men may hold more G.O.P. positions of power than blacks.

A near half-century after the civil rights acts of the 1960s, this is quite an achievement. Yet the holier-than-thou politicians and pundits on the right passing shrill moral judgment over every Democratic racial skirmish are almost never asked to confront or even acknowledge the racial dysfunction in their own house. In our mainstream political culture, this de facto apartheid is simply accepted as an intractable given, unworthy of notice, and just too embarrassing to mention aloud in polite Beltway company. Those who dare are instantly accused of “political correctness” or “reverse racism.”

An all-white Congressional delegation doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the legacy of race cards that have been dealt since the birth of the Southern strategy in the Nixon era. 

That’s the hardest thing for me, knowing that every vote cast by my parents since the early ’70s has been, increasingly, impacted by the Republican party’s decision to become the White party, a sorry distinction previously held by the Democratic party.

Not to be a race traitor or anything, but more and more it seems like the average white person has made a conscious decision to live life with their head up their ass. Racist? Oh no, not racist. Just thoroughly, completely unwilling to examine the consequences of their votes. Or, as Rich says in his close:

Anyone who does the math knows that America is on track to become a white-minority nation in three to four decades. Yet if there’s any coherent message to be gleaned from the hypocrisy whipped up by Hurricane Jeremiah, it’s that this nation’s perennially promised candid conversation on race has yet to begin.

•=•

Tom Friedman, the cognitively disabled kid from the western metro ‘burbs, rediscovers America and decides we need to invest more money into our own country. Be forewarned, clicking on this link will lead you to copy that licks you on the face and promises you eternal puppy love if only you’ll forget what a stupid, pro-war fuckwad Friedman was these past several years.

I’m not sure, but I think Friedman’s catharsis came from sitting in Singapore’s nice airport and wondering why the US can’t have nice airports too.

Shit, that’s it. I never fly anywhere. No wonder I never figured out that the US needs to pump a lot of money into our infrastructure. Too bad Friedman doesn’t spend more time in America — we could have solved this problem a long time ago.

Tom Friedman: he’s way smarter than the rest of us. And if you park your gum under your chair, he’ll have you caned.

•=•

It’s pile on the Republicans day at the Times. Here also is Kristof on Guantanamo/torture, and James Risen on shoddy contract work in Iraq that kills our troops. But just to keep things fair and balanced, the Times’ answer to Nedra Pickler uses her column to mock the Democratic candidates. Again.

•=•

Would someone please tell the WaPost to get a grip on itself. This is just embarrassing.

•=•

Solving all our woes in one panel: Tom Toles draws another award-winning snapshot of the way we are.

Btw, I O.D.ed in the early ’80s, and haven’t had any plastic since — not counting my debit card which isn’t a loan, just plasticized cash.

How much does the racist right hate McCain? Enough so that Ron Paul is considering supporting Obama. The jr. Senator from Illinois is winning in Guam today, btw.

Meanwhile, from Camp HRC, the notion that their double standard for Obama applies to Hillary Clinton as well is quickly shot down.

The executioner’s argument was, that you couldn’t cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn’t going to begin at his time of life.

The King’s argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren’t to talk nonsense.

The Queen’s argument was, that if something wasn’t done about it in less than no time she’d have everybody executed, all round. (It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and anxious.)

Alice could think of nothing else to say but `It belongs to the Duchess: you’d better ask her about it.’

`She’s in prison,’ the Queen said to the executioner: `fetch her here.’ And the executioner went off like an arrow.

The Cat’s head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the time he had disappeared; so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the game. 

 

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$108 billion + $70 billion + whatever else Bush wants. The budget? The budget’s for suckers.

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No one is more scathing towards the church than a lapsed Catholic.

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Doug Grow reminds us that Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is still running against Al Franken, something most of the local major media seem to have trouble remembering.

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Even Bush’s own church has had enough of his high-handed ways.

Please note that it’s quite the 180° for me to be reporting good news about a church. I think lots of things are going to change in the near future and, damnit, I’m going to be too old to enjoy a lot of them.

On the local front, the same DFL insiders who decided that El Tinklenberg wasn’t half the Bachmann killer that Patty Wetterling was two years ago, have decided in all their holy modal majestic majesty that El Tinklenberg is “the Man“ to stop Bachmann this time.

No one is so full of themselves as political insiders playing God. In a saner state, the primary would precede the endorsement convention.

Minnesota is, as proven by our voting history, not a sane state, politically speaking. Was Bob Olson a better Bachmann killer than Tinklenberg? Well, common sense says that a primary would have been a much better indicator than an incest fest attended only by those who’ve mastered the art of jumping through hoops and getting elected by their peers (i.e., other wonks) TWICE before being permitted to humbly vote on such a matter.

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MPR, introducing the National Press Club segment just now:

Rev. Wright, as you will hear, is NOT apologizing.

Fuck Gary Eichten and his daily financial masturbations. The Rev. Wright has NOTHING to apologize for. The apologies are all due from the media, who have shamelessly sensationalized words ripped out of context. Eichten never betrays any excitement unless he has a Republican guest on who’s talking about cutting taxes on Gary’s retirement investments. [Seriously, did they clone Eichten from a used rubber in Bob Potter's wallet, or what?]

And yes, the National Press Club is touching itself inappropriately as they introduce the Rev. Wright in the most sensationalistic manner possible. 

God but I fucking despise the American media. And if you’re listening, all that applause is from non-reporters present who are being as loud and supportive as they can. Wright has truly entered into the lion’s den.

[Wow, not even five minutes in and he's dropped Ralph Ellison and Langston Hughes on his audience. "As the Vice President has told you, that applause does not come from the working press." No shit.]

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Jeff Shaw rummages through Paul Demko’s things [scroll down], looking for story leads now that CP’s most prolific newshound has moved on to MinMon.

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Ron Paulistas fuck up Nevada’s GOP state convention so thoroughly, it’s adjourned and will be held later after the discombobulated Republican powers that be figure out how to stifle democracy at their convention.

Meanwhile, in Indiana, two young Republican frontrunners ran such fabulously nasty campaigns that a third candidate ended up winning their primary.

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More on all the depth of study and profound insights that went into Rubinomics.

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Fat Tired bikery.

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Been wondering about Afghanistan? You’re obviously not paying attention. You should be worried about Afghanistan. Worried, if not actually shitting bricks.

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If you’re from Minnesota, you already know darned well that Tim Pawlenty isn’t fit to be a governor, enamored as he is with hyperpartisanship, eroding infrastructure, obscenely unnecessary tax cuts and — yes — still more pork for the richest few.

So you wouldn’t think that Bob Collins’ post on whether Pawlenty is ready to be Vice President would be the first such item from a news organization anywhere. (It is.)

Like Senator McCain’s jet fighter during the Vietnam war, McCain’s campaign will go down in flames. I hope — if he picks Pawlenty as his Veep — that McCain has the common sense to tell Pawlenty to replace his gasoline cannister with a fire extinguisher. It’ll come in more handy when they crash and burn. (And they will.)

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Eric Black liked Frank Rich’s last column. I won’t argue with him.

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The Rev. Wright isn’t the only one unloading with both barrels lately. Elizabeth Edwards popped up on the NY Times editorial page on Sunday.

The vigorous press that was deemed an essential part of democracy at our country’s inception is now consigned to smaller venues, to the Internet and, in the mainstream media, to occasional articles. I am not suggesting that every journalist for a mainstream media outlet is neglecting his or her duties to the public. And I know that serious newspapers and magazines run analytical articles, and public television broadcasts longer, more probing segments.

But I am saying that every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture.

Well worth a read.

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Last week’s answers, this week’s quiz.

The other big news item today seems to be the appearance of the $1 billion girl, topless, in Vanity Fair.

She didn’t get paid for the shoot. Remember that the next time someone tells you that “free” content can’t make you money.

Otoh, Britney Spears got paid for those Pepsi commercials that helped Bob Dole rediscover boners. Then again, Britney’s not a billionaire. And because this is America, home of corporate lobbyists and whackjob fundamentalists, I can watch those Britney commercials over and over again on my TIVO, even if possession of digitally manufactured child porn will send me to prison for 10-20 years of involuntary AIDS injections.

Remember: it’s only legal if someone who’s already rich makes all the money from it. And you’re only a hypocritical horn dog if click on this link to see the pictures.

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Krugman trash talks John McCain while Bill Kristol pretends to give some advice to Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, the only man to gain the world’s respect as an ex-President lectures us on the Middle East. You tell ‘em Brother Jimmy!

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Katherine Kersten works so hard to squash any attempt at letting Muslims have their own schools, but despite her valiant efforts, no one pays any attention to her. 

Not so in NYC, where they just fired a Muslim principal. And don’t even think about making a Jew York City crack! No, seriously — don’t. Anymore it’s as much the ethnic Catholics as it is the observant Jewry. Just proving, once again, that religious idiots is a term that needs no further clarification. All religions produce idiots, and many let them be in charge.

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Mars buys Wrigleys.

Why? Because the first corporation that locks in a monopoly on rotting children’s teeth wins Satan’s favor.

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OK, given my lead story, I guess I can’t pretend this isn’t news. 

Even if I have no clue who Mindy McCready is or why this slut tried to break up Roger Clemens marriage.

Hmm, maybe that was a little harsh. Maybe she was just doing him to get some cheap steroids.

UPDATE: Whoopsie! I just read the whole article and apparently McCready was 15 years old when the affair started. OK, I guess this really is newsworthy. By corporate news standards, anyhow.

Only a hundred people show up at fundraiser with Dick Cheney headlining. You have to watch the video as the article doesn’t give a head count, but I’ve seen much larger turnouts at fundraisers for legislative candidates. Given that it was for an incumbent, this was a very poorly attended Congressional fundraiser.

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Here’s Bill Moyers’ interview with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The good news is that Rev. Wright will be speaking to the National Press Club on Monday. I suspect he’ll set the fourth estate straight. Sadly, knowing the truth and reporting the truth are nowadays not always the same thing.

Another thing. The Rev. Wright makes it clear that it was the eminent Lutheran, Dr. Martin Marty, who encouraged Wright to stay at Trinity.

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Catching up with TechDirt:

Bill Gates lies about Open Source like Dick Cheney lies about Iran.

Appeals court dittoes: your hard drive is fair game for Customs snoops — but they didn’t say you have to give them your password. Encrypt!

If you don’t do it, you shouldn’t get to own it. The corporatizing of sports really sucks.

More on the growing belief that everything on TV is advertising.

More on the corporatization of the news media.

Another cable company caught lying its ass off (while this one just stacks the audience).

The kids who are going to jail are the ones who don’t play video games.

If you have any interest in the politics of technology, TechDirt is a great read.

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Dawn raids, multi-agency task forces, drawn weapons: another farmer selling raw milk goes down in Canada.

There’s protecting us, and then there’s telling us what to do. Regulation is to protect the consumer, not limit their choices.

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At least he accepted it with some style and grace.