Keeping a jaundiced eye on the corporate media.
Posted in General on Dec 22nd, 2003
You’ll be amazed how liberal college students become when the draft is activated. But Rummy still insists it won’t in this TIME interview:
Positioning the President as Reluctant Warrior: The White House was at pains to disguise, before the shooting started, any indication that a war was inevitable. The decision to go to war was Baghdad’s, [...]
Posted in General on Dec 22nd, 2003
I really don’t understand the American susceptibility to marketing. I don’t understand why so many people have bought into the idea that Iraq was an immediate threat but North Korea and Pakistan weren’t.
But then, if I knew that, Wee George wouldn’t be in the White House.
Posted in General on Dec 22nd, 2003
ON PROFANITY
Believe it or not, the hot story on C-SPAN this morning is (I kid you not) Wesley Clark’s use of the word “shit.” (As in, “I’ll beat the shit out of him” - his response to a voter who asked what he’d do if Bush attacked him the way he did McCain.)
They call it [...]
Posted in General on Dec 21st, 2003
Digby points us to this post from Donkey Rising, which refers to this Michael Tomasky piece from TAPPED:
Michael Tomasky has an important article, “Is It Time to Believe�, in the new American Prospect that DR recommends to everyone. Tomasky’s basic point is that Howard Dean, regardless of what one thinks about him as a general [...]
Posted in General on Dec 21st, 2003
FUN WITH GOOGLE
Who doesn’t know that George W. Bush is, quite simply, unelectable? Come to think of it, so is Dick Gephardt. So is Joe Leiberman.
Posted in General on Dec 21st, 2003
NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED
Last winter was rough. I’d just been laid off and lost my health insurance, I’d twisted my knee and couldn’t walk across the room without agonizing pain, my ex-husband was dying and it was so, so cold all the time. I couldn’t afford to turn up the electric heat.
As my readers [...]
Posted in General on Dec 21st, 2003
Excellent post from Mark Kleiman on Christianity and its theory and application to current events:
Even with Cardinal’s qualifier that Saddam bears “heavy blame,” this is still pretty appalling. Despite Christ’s teaching that we should love our enemies, it’s hard for me to feel “pity” and “compassion” for a mass murderer just because he got his [...]
Posted in General on Dec 21st, 2003
Oh yeah, I’m feeling safer now that the Kurds caught Saddam. How about you?
Posted in General on Dec 21st, 2003
Baghdad oil pipelines are burning.
Posted in General on Dec 21st, 2003
ME WRITE PRETTY ONE DAY
Here’s a little holiday treat for you all from the New Yorker - a story from David Sedaris, who really might be the world’s funniest man.
“That bitch,” my sister Lisa said. We pounded again and again, and when our mother failed to answer we went around back and threw snowballs at [...]
Posted in General on Dec 21st, 2003
Oy.
Keeping the federal budget at or near balance over the next 50 years could require painful tax increases, spending cuts or both, the Congressional Budget Office says.
In a look at the government’s long-term budget outlook, Congress’ nonpartisan fiscal analyst offered possible combinations of tax and spending changes, all of which would leave lawmakers choosing [...]
Posted in General on Dec 21st, 2003
John Dean on how the omnibus bill was passed:
This contentious spending bill, created in secret, with giveaways galore, will be the first order of business when Congress returns. It will be on the agenda immediately after the President’s State of the Union message is delivered. President Bush wanted Majority Leader Frist to call the Senate [...]
Posted in General on Dec 21st, 2003
Interesting.
Saddam Hussein was captured by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him, a British Sunday newspaper said.
Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, [...]
Posted in General on Dec 20th, 2003
Billmon looks closely at our new best friend.
And that unpleasant business about blowing an American airliner out of the sky? Or that disagreeable incident with the bomb in the Berlin disco? All forgotten and forgiven. Heck, what’s a few minor acts of terrorism between friends, anyway.
And the one-party police state? The cult of personality? The [...]
Posted in General on Dec 20th, 2003
Henri over at Democrats WatchBlog has some pertinent things to say about policy creep in the Bush White House.
So it doesn’t matter if there are any weapons, weapons programs are equally valid as a cause of war? Now in my entire life of sixty years I have seldom seen quite as gratuitous and grating a [...]
Posted in General on Dec 20th, 2003
WHAT I’M LISTENING TO:“I Can’t Let Go,” Lucinda Williams - I got a big chain around my neck/ And I’m broken down like a train wreck/ Well it’s over/ I know it but I can’t let go/ Turn off trouble like you turn off a light/ Went off and left me/ Well it just ain’t [...]
Posted in General on Dec 20th, 2003
HEALTH CARE
So I went to the doctor’s yesterday, hoping to score some free drug samples for my allergies while I still had insurance. No such luck.
Instead, she wrote me prescriptions and then asked if she should order smaller sizes “to save money.” I told her I wouldn’t be getting either of them filled, since rent [...]
Posted in General on Dec 20th, 2003
ALL OR NOTHING
David Brooks gives us a preview of what’s going to be in Wee George’s State of the Union address - and he’s practically creaming his jeans at the sheer nobility of it all.
This is a bundle of proposals that treat workers as self-reliant pioneers who rise through several employers and careers. To thrive, [...]
Posted in General on Dec 19th, 2003
You know, Bev Harris has done such an excellent job, working tirelessly to get the black-box electronic voting issues before the public. And tomorrow morning, C-SPAN will examine the controversy in depth at 8:30 a.m., EST. Check it out.
Posted in General on Dec 19th, 2003
If this story came out of anywhere but Texas (Arkansas during the Clinton years, for instance), it would be major news and certain people would be screaming for a special prosecutor. But the rule of law is only for Democrats, as you know. Move along, now. Nothing to see here.
Texans for a Republican Majority has [...]
Posted in General on Dec 19th, 2003
Letters from the troops:
December 14, 2003
Spec-4 Marshall L. Edgerton was 27years old. He was from Rocky Face, Georgia. He was assigned to [deleted], 82nd Airborne Division. We are based in Fort Bragg, N.C. Marshall was killed December 11th when he was escorting a delivery truck into the 82nd Headquarters in Ramadi, Iraq. The news told [...]
Posted in General on Dec 19th, 2003
On the secrecy of the GOP-ruled Congress:
At 2:54 a.m. on a Friday in March, the House cut veterans benefits by three votes.
At 2:39 a.m. on a Friday in April, the House slashed education and health care by five votes.
At 1:56 a.m. on a Friday in May, the House passed the Leave No Millionaire [...]
Posted in General on Dec 19th, 2003
Great column:
An acquaintance of mine, Ted Webster, has thought of a fine bumper sticker. Goes like this: “If Dean Is Too Liberal Why Don’t We All Just Shoot Ourselves?”
Yes, the dangerous radical who threatens our very way of life is the last in a long line of zany socialistic Vermont governors. They’re almost Canadian. [...]
Posted in General on Dec 19th, 2003
Krugman on the death of Horatio Alger:
The other day I found myself reading a leftist rag that made outrageous claims about America. It said that we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic [...]
Posted in General on Dec 19th, 2003
Oh dear. Anne Lamott is going on sabbatical again. But here’s her parting column, about visiting prisoners at San Quentin:
We had evoked the listening child in these men, with the only real story anyone has ever told — that the teller had been alive for awhile, and learned a little in surprising ways, the way [...]
Posted in General on Dec 19th, 2003
More arguments against IT outsourcing from Salon’s Letters page. Go read all of them:
In 1990 the software company I worked for wanted to save money by moving software development to India. After due diligence, they passed. In 1999 another software company I worked for, with mostly Indian management, shut down their software development branch in [...]
Posted in General on Dec 19th, 2003
Because they’re a buncha pussies:
Many leading Democrats say they are uneasy about Howard Dean’s candidacy for president and are reluctant to cede him the nomination for fear that his combative style and antiwar stance will leave Democrats vulnerable in November.
They acknowledge that Dr. Dean has run a strategically savvy campaign that has made him the [...]
Posted in General on Dec 18th, 2003
Oh, goody. I actually like Barbara Hafer, and I’d love to see her run against noted dog lover Rick “Hump My Leg” Santorum in 2006. I think she’d have a good shot - and be a great senator.
Almost two years ago, state Treasurer Barbara Hafer ended her campaign for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, supposedly so [...]
Posted in General on Dec 18th, 2003
I’m catching up on the soaps while I’m out of work; I’ve been watching “All My Children” (”Kids” to the real fans) and “One Life to Live” since I was a kid.
It occurred to me today: I may have found the voting demographic missing link.
Those of us who watch soap operas know every possible plot [...]
Posted in General on Dec 18th, 2003
If you ever wondered what it would be like to see a pig tapdance, read this. Scroll down for the best parts on the 9/11 commission.
You are a Working Class Warrior, also known as a blue-collar Democrat. You believe that the little guy is getting screwed by conservative greed-mongers and corporate criminals, and you’re not going to take it anymore.
Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com
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