more republican thuggery. called out on it by republicans.

who knew that dan abrams didn't suck?

Fox importing two British sitcoms - Entertainment News, TV News, Media - Variety

Look, ma, I did it!!!!

fine, others were involved. indeed, some of them may have been as if not more integral to getting this pilot shooting ready than me. possibly.

but is this their blog?

no, no it is not.

so nyah nyah to them.

TPM Cafe | Talking Points Memo | The Lying Despicable Campaign To Turn Jews Against Obama

The reason I refer to chickens coming home to roost is because I believe that Russert would not have mentioned Farrakhan if segments of the Jewish community had not raised this rather insignificant Muslim preacher into prominence. They did that by publicizing every nasty comment about Jews or Israel the man ever made, as if he had a huge following, was a candidate for high office, or was successfully instigating pogroms.

But that is what some segments of the community enjoy doing. It is as if our identity is only secure when we can point to enemies. Unfortunately, and predictably, our well-publicized responses to Farrakhan's attacks gave him national prominence he does not deserve.

In that sense, it is our own fault that Tim Russert asked Barack Obama about his non-existent relationship with Farrakhan. But it is Russert who asked the question and he is the one who needs to be called out for it. It is also worth noting that Farrakhan is seriously ill with cancer and has been out of the limelight for years -- at least until Russert decided to make him a story when he no longer is one.

exactly. i've received some of the hate mail being circulated by jews against obama, and all i can say is: the crap is ridiculous, self-destructive and ultimately self-hating.

Iraq war 'caused slowdown in the US' | The Australian

but what does joseph stiglitz know? i mean, other than winning a nobel prize and being a VP of the world bank.

the linkage between the war and the subprime mess is interesting. and depressing.

3.3 trillion, for those who won't click through. that's how much it's cost us.

Media Matters - The proud son of Buffalo ...

charles pierce pointing out the obvious:

tim russert is teh suxxor times infinity.

as it were.

Canada's Toxic Sands: The Most Destructive Project on Earth

O! Canada!

why?

tar sands oil from western canada--tied with monstrous new coal plants in china for the coveted "world's most devastatingly deadly idea" trophy.

canadians are just as bad as americans when it comes to lacking forward-thinking leadership, and this cements that fact.

the republican party is a party by for and of organized crime.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

damn it i knew this would happen.

military-industrial complex, i'm shaking my fist at you!!!!

Time is up for coal: environmental analyst | Environment | Reuters

goodbye, coal world.

don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

maybe, just maybe, we can a) save appalachia while b) stopping some of the effects of global warming while c) promoting other energy technologies and efficiencies while d) paving the way for china and india to find alternative sources of energy.

or we can kill ourselves, pretty much.

tough choice. to paraphrase bill hicks: "anyone here work in the coal industry? (applause) great--go kill yourself. seriously. now."

i've said it once, i've said it a thousand times: anyone who thinks the right won't try to rip obama's heart out and show it to him, still bleeding...well, you are a naive fool.

Glenn Greenwald - Political Blogs and Opinions - Salon

Glennzilla:

Most importantly of all, the guardians of our political discourse -- the Chris Matthews and Howie Kurtzs and Mark Halperins and The Politicos, all of whom dwell in Matt Drudge's kingdom -- traffic almost exclusively in puerile, vapid fixations with these types of petty conflicts and substance-free controversies. They're the decadent ringleaders of the freak show which dominates our political discourse and dictates the outcome of our elections.

Just this morning alone, Howie Kurtz's entire column is filled with quoting the likes of The Weekly Standard, Captain Ed, Kathryn Jean Lopez and David Brooks in order mindlessly to re-circulate every slimy, small-minded attack from this week on Obama. None of them is going to change in the slightest, because slothful, empty, small-minded chatter, driven by their Matt Drudge overlords, is all they are told to do, all they're capable of doing, and all they want to do. No matter who the nominees are, the behavior of our media stars won't change, because it can't.

Nor, contrary to what appears to be the unduly optimistic belief of some Obama supporters, will the sleazy right-wing noise machine change its tactics in the slightest. Immediately before I read Lisa Schiffren's "half black/half Jewish, red diaper baby" rant, I watched Mike Gallagher on Fox News explain, to a sympathetic host, that Sharon Stone ought to be "charged with treason" for pointing out that insufficient attention is paid to the death of Iraqi civilians.

It's vitally important to remember that our political life is suffuse with lowlifes and hatemongers like this. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter -- the heart and soul of the right-wing -- aren't going anywhere, nor are the media-connected, Swiftboat-spewing operatives who function in the shadows and the sewers. As Digby pointed out yesterday, the Right has already created a new, extremely well-funded organization -- overseen by the incomparably slimy and truth-free Ari Fleischer -- preparing to unleash exactly this sort of bile. As Digby said, the Democratic primary is exceedingly polite when compared to what is coming: "Just wait until you see what Ari Fleischer and his quarter of a billion have in store for us."

So the question isn't whether Obama will be relentlessly pelted by the sprawling appendages of the Right-wing edifice and its media allies with the most grotesque, bottom-feeding, substance-free, personality-based attacks. Of course he will be -- ones as ugly as, if not uglier than, anything we've seen yet.

An animal lover in the lion's den - Los Angeles Times

factory farming of meat. is. evil.

read this one and weep.

watch this from theo jansen, clearly an extremely brilliant man.

wow.

if you are a coke addict, bluefields, nicaragua is the town for you!

the WGA strike is over! so sayeth michael eisner!

everybody back to work.

if these people are right, there is no other topic of import to discuss other than global warming. maybe dr. james hansen is a crank. or maybe he's just so smart we can't keep up. i suspect the latter. his suppositions and theories about where we stand re the earth's temperature and how much carbon we can continue to put out are frightening. and how we respond, or rather what paradigm of human social interaction we use in order to literally save our skins--all of them--that becomes the key question. probably the key question in all of modern human history.

it's...food for thought, though maybe not my cup of tea.

this article from Greg Mitchell at Editor and Publisher is extraordinarily important to read. it discusses press and mainstream opinion maker reaction to colin powell's presentation before the UN 5 years ago today. this presentation, more than any other moment, led us into gulf war II.

there has been much discussion of "what he knew and when he knew it". was powell mendacious or just unprincipled (there isn't any better option i'm afraid, given what we now know from powell and lawrence wilkinson) when he gave the speech?

but it's not the important question. governments lie--it's what they do best. gulf of tonkin incidents are the rule, not the exception. there is one extremely important question that does need answering, however: how does an elite opinion maker consensus develop on an issue, and how can it be that so many "insiders" with special knowledge, allegedly, can be so horribly shockingly wrong.

to whit: there were no WMD's in Iraq and there was a strong body of evidence at the time that this was the case. though many try to ass cover with "clinton thought so too, and germany, and even france" it's all bullshit: scott ritter existed. mohamed el-baradei existed. hans blix was not a figment of my imagination. three people with the most direct knowledge of the situation were quite clear that something was very wrong with US intel, and yet this fact did not penetrate the op-ed pages, nor the salons of washington, nor the idea factories there either. and many of my ostensibly liberal friends bought into it too (or my dad's friends, people like michael walzer, who essentially threw away a lifetime of good work with his argument for the war from the left).

the thing about consensus when it comes to ideas, to memes, is that it seems that any meme that gets all of them: AEI and the WaPo op-ed page and richard cohen and george will and NBC and Fox and on and on and on--should of course be part of a fact-based narrative. but it's not necessarily the case. i often say that truth is the enemy of drama when i'm developing a script based on "actual events"--if the lead character in real life just decided to back away quietly from the situation but we can write him in as having come in guns blazing, guess which one hollywood will choose. every time. and here we see this writ large: war is more interesting than UN inspections. anything can happen! cool visuals!!! embedded reporters!!! realtime hot death action, now with 30% more blood!!!! so fuck the truth, what we wanted was a narrative that would deliver a satisfying kick, and we got one from powell, a man who should be permanently banned from polite society. he was doing the bidding of some evil people, but then he knew that (and he did the same thing in my lai, putting his career on its upward trajectory).

anyway, don't trust the consensus. it's often just a shared hallucination. and never trust anyone who says they know something because "insiders" told them so--the closer you get to power the more necessary it is to share that hallucination (or create it) in the first place, and the less chance you will know what you've done.

UPDATE:
an excellent refutation of powell's presentation, showing that we knew then it was all a crock.

Organic food is better for your children.

but that's not really a surprise. what is a surprise from that article is how quickly you can get horrible chemicals out of your children's systems--as little as 5 days!

anyway, another reason to start thinking organic. now the question remains: how can organic food become as available and abundant for those less well off as for those fortunate enough to be able to afford whole walletfoods?

it reminds me of the introduction of airbags into the US marketplace--first only people who could afford fancy cars (mercedes, IIRC) were able to have this life-saving device. in fact, lee iacocca swore they would never catch on, by which he meant "i can still sell crappy unsafe cars to my american customers."

it took 10 years before airbags became legally mandated. i'd like to see organic methods become legally mandated as well.

from the american prospect (via the poorman) comes the following fun facts and comments of american talibanical fascist vermin mike "nice lunatic" huckabee:

3. Huckabee Compares America to Nazi Germany

In a speech to the Florida Renewal Project Monday night, which in an unprecedented move was live streamed on the American Family Association's Web site, Huckabee compared America to Nazi Germany. He first implored the audience to renew their "commitment to Christ" and "to our nation, to its heritage, as well as to its future," adding "do we expect the seculars [sic] to do it? Do we expect the unbelievers to lead us, and if so, how will they lead us and where?" He then engaged in an extended description of his visit to the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem with his 11- year-old daughter, who asked, "why didn't somebody do something?" Huckabee, who has called abortion a "holocaust," then issued a dire warning:

... I pray that no father ever stands over the shoulder of his own daughter and after her witnessing the decline and the fall of a great nation, writes, and sees her write these words, "why didn't somebody do something?" You see, I believe the reason we're here is because we are the somebodies. And we're to do the something and if we don't, who will? And if we don't act now, when will it happen, and will it be too late? You leave this conference with this haunting question, and pray that no one would ever ask of you or of me, why didn't somebody do something.

You read that right. Huckabee thinks if the "seculars" are allowed to rule America, our country could suffer the same fate as Nazi Germany. A resounding insult all around from this "Christian leader."

4. Huckabee's Christian Constitution

Huckabee has been consistently cagey about answering questions about his views on biblical law and Christian Reconstructionism. In the Times this weekend, Oran Smith, a conservative Christian activist in South Carolina, portrayed Huckabee as "Houdini," but he really is more like Zelig, adapting his answers to particular audiences to satisfy his radical fans while assuaging his critics.

Huckabee has offered his view that the Bible prohibits marriage between people of the same gender, and hell, between humans and animals, and hence the Constitution should be clear on that point, too. He slaps his opponents around for their lack of support for a federal marriage amendment and a human life amendment. Many supporters of a human life amendment believe that birth control pills cause abortions, and therefore should be outlawed under such an amendment. In a meeting with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register last year, Huckabee sidestepped answering the question directly but strongly suggested he thinks at least certain types of birth control pills should made illegal. In his Renewal Project speech Monday night, on the eve of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Huckabee made yet another inappropriate and insulting comparison, maintaining that overturning Roe is "not good enough," and that letting the states "handle something that is a moral issue is the logic of the civil war."

given how often "secularists" (whatever the hell that mean) are accused of having some sort of specifically "anti-religious" agenda, i would like to throw one out there:

i propose the following:

1. those bastards have to start paying taxes. period.
2. no more blue laws--they should be unconstitutional.
3. hammer the living fuck out of any preacher who ever says anything about politics. they should never be allowed to preach again.
4. absolutely no religious schools of any sort should be allowed, and there should be an even greater attempt to stamp out any religious influence in public school.
5. no allowance for religions such as lubavitch "judaism" or mennonites and so on to separate themselves from their surrounding societies.
6. all televangelists to be non-profit, and to be audited on an ongoing basis. any televangelists who make any money in excess of a living wage (set at the same level as the local living wage and not a penny more.
7. all religions must open their "spiritual" books to the scrutiny of neutral scholars, and must be put on the internet for the perusal of all at any time. no more bullshit secrets.
8. no special privileges for any prelates or officers of any religion. they must be treated like regular citizens, not like doctors or lawyers. or people who actually deserve respect, like janitors or laborers.
9. US to become an asylum for anyone trying to escape religious persecution anywhere in the world.

i'm sure i can think of more, or feel free to e-mail some other ideas of your own. given how often we are being told on right-wing and evangelical websites that there is a "war" coming, it's time for our side to actually give a shit.

also, as usual, where is the ADL when this creep uses the holocaust in such a perverse matter? nowhere, of course, because huckabee may be psychotic but at least he's pro-israel!

jill in the washington post, with a very good gallery as well.

the most conservative, which is to say the least fascist thing you could possibly ever do would be to go purchase this book: it's funny because it's funny, and it's funny because it's (not) true.

the poorman regularly delivers some of the best commentary on the web IMHO, so check it. they seem to be back to blogging.