Sam Phillips:

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TBogg:
If we are going to stay and fight than we’re going to need some of our best and our brightest, and that includes the children of bland, white, upper-middle-class attorneys. Anyone unwilling to contribute to the cause, and curbside waving of the flag or pony-wishing doesn’t count, must be considered deeply unserious.

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What did you expect, really? That James Baker would come up with something brilliant and groundbreaking? That isn’t what these people do. They’re political fixers, expected to come up with solutions to fix the domestic political fallout from a Middle Eastern crisis, not the crisis itself:
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 — A draft report on strategies for [...]

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Obviously this guy didn’t understand the corporate culture into which he was buying:
The Florida pastor recently tapped to lead the Christian Coalition of America resigned his position in a dispute about conservative philosophy - more than a month before he was to fully assume his post, he said this week.
The Rev. Joel Hunter, of Northland, [...]

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Let’s see. Pat Meehan 1) goes after Philadelphia corruption and 2) has a form of regional amnesia regarding the corrupt GOP suburban pols who put him in power, and the Inquirer wonders why? Gee, you don’t suppose the Republicans are going to put Pat Meehan up for Arlen Specter’s Senate seat, do you?
One question embedded [...]

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Back in style.

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What will he do next?
The New York Times will raise the question on the minds of all of Washingtons Republicans in a front page splash Monday, RAW STORY has learned, according to an advance copy.
“Senior Republican staff members in Congress have voiced the fear that Bush will now put his legacy over the party’s immediate [...]

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Duncan on add-on accounts for Social Security.

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Howard Zinn on the uses of history and the war on terrorism:
So, war — well, Einstein said this after World War I. He said, “War cannot be humanized. It can only be abolished.” War has to be abolished, you know. And it’s — I know it’s a long shot. I understand that, but you have [...]

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A fan of “A Christmas Story” bought and faithfully reproduced the house used in the movie and opened it to the public. On the first day, 3000 people showed up…

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Geeze, I can’t believe some of the names on here - and the ones who aren’t. Your reaction?

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Doug Smith on Hagel’s op-ed:
We will make much faster progress when people like Senator Hagel find the stomach to acknowledge the full picture. The Senator correctly describes the actions of the US government when he writes: “misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged.”
Now, the Senator — and others — must also speak as clearly about the fact [...]

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1. Big Time - Pete Gabriel
2. Glad All Over - Dave Clark Five
3. When I Come Around - Green Day
4. Kentucky Girl - Emmylou Harris
5. Lovers in A Dangerous Time - Bruce Cockburn
6. A Foggy Day - Mel Torme
7. Down in Flames - Mindy Smith
8. Six Feet Under - Mason Jennigs
9. Meet On The Ledge [...]

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This, of course, is the logical outcome when you seek corporate funding for education:
At hundreds of screenings this year of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the first thing many viewers said after the lights came up was that every student in every school in the United States needed to see this movie.
The producers of former vice president [...]

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I read this provocative piece on educating poor children in today’s Times magazine, which validates many of the things I’ve noticed in poor neighborhoods (smaller vocabularies, overwhelmingly negative interaction with caretaker adults). It also highlights something I’ve been railing about for years - which is that the best teachers apply for positions in the districts [...]

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Michael Moore:
Tomorrow marks the day that we will have been in Iraq longer than we were in all of World War II.
That’s right. We were able to defeat all of Nazi Germany, Mussolini, and the entire Japanese empire in LESS time than it’s taken the world’s only superpower to secure the road from the [...]

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Andrew Greeley:
What can we say to the additional survivors between now and the day the last American dies there, all those lives erased in a lost war our leaders could not end? Should we tell them what Henry Kissinger said of Vietnam casualties after President Nixon took office — they died in the name of [...]

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Jon Stewart is one of the few media stars to use his powers for good - like this interview with this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Prof. Muhammad Unus (ht to The Unapologetic Mexican):

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Not sure where I am, but I’m trying to leave when an adorable white spotted kitten comes up and begins to play with me. I start scratching it behind the ears; I notice there’s something a little off about this kitten and just when I realize it’s actually a white leopard cub, its mother approaches. [...]

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Ordinary Iraqis talk about their lives:
Saad’s dreams were dashed a long time ago. “We always say, ‘Inshallah, there will be a solution’, but realistically we can’t see any hope.” Would he like Saddam back? “Yes,” he says. “For many reasons. During Saddam’s time I never saw a friend killed in front of my eyes, I [...]

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Most of my friends live a conscious, intentional lifestyle: Hybrid cars, vegetable gardens, recycling, low energy use… I’m probably the single most wasteful person they know. Yet they’ve had their effect, even on me. I go out of my way now to turn off anything using electricity (okay, so it takes an extra 90 seconds [...]

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I thought they said it would “devastate the economy” if they had to deal with global warming. Guess they were wrong, huh:
“We have to deal with greenhouse gases,” John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co., said in a recent speech at the National Press Club. “From Shell’s point of view, the debate is over. When [...]

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Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) in today’s WashPo:
There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. These terms do not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there. The future of Iraq was always going to be determined by the Iraqis — not the Americans.
Iraq is not a prize to [...]

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Kind of an overreaction, don’t you think? I’m guessing they don’t know urine is sterile:
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A bloody brawl erupted outside a tavern after one customer thought another failed to wash his hands after using the bathroom, police said. One man was hospitalized with stab wounds. Another was arrested on suspicion of [...]

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I was trying to watch a DVD on my laptop, but it wouldn’t work. I installed a free trial of a DVD player which cut off in the middle and demanded $14.95 to watch the rest.
I uninstalled that and installed a different free trial, which I could not get to work. So I uninstalled [...]

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Juan Cole got this letter from someone who’s left Iraq:
‘ It is desperate in Iraq, worse then ever and there is no end in sight. I had lunch with [a former high ranking medical educator in Iraq] two days ago. [He]noted that Iraq no longer has neuro-surgeons, no cardiac surgeons, few pediatric doctors - they [...]

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Duh! Queen with the ultimate car song:

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Paul Krugman on the electronic voting machine anomalies in FL-13:
Although state officials have certified Mr. Buchanan as the victor, they’ve promised an audit of the voting machines. But don’t get your hopes up: as in 2000, state election officials aren’t even trying to look impartial. To oversee the audit, the state has chosen as its [...]

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Can’t find a video of David Wilcox playing his great car song, ideal for rounding out the theme, but here’s someone else doing a serviceable cover:

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I’m going to keep this “in love with an automobile” motif going here with NRBQ, playing a song that never fails to make me smile:

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