It’s very “funny,” and worth regular and front page blog posts on “liberal” blogs, to talk about Republican candidates who come in last, next to last, or nearly last. These same candidates get all kinds of free coverage from the media outlets the liberal blogosphere is supposed to “balance.” They also have plenty of money to purchase their own ads, money raised from rich people and big corporations and the avowed enemies of the liberal blogosphere.

It’s not funny, or worth any regular or front page blog posts, to talk about progressive Democratic candidates who finish just behind the “two front runners,” or way behind, or even second in some races. These candidates have little money with which to buy ad time, and are constantly shut out of the primary process by way of lawsuits, media blackouts, and fact-free misrepresentation by the SCLM. They are at the same time closest in policy, voting records, and speech to the “liberal blogosphere.”

Discuss.  Read more 

If you haven’t read these, and you like literature, fiction, and the creative use of languages, you’re missing out on treasure. From what I’m reading today, I offer this little gem.

…but what [the captured enemy soldier] had said set me thinking of the North, and I found I knew next to nothing about it.

When I had been a boy, scrubbing floors and running errands in the Citadel, the war itself had seemed almost infintely remote. I knew that most of the matrosses who manned the major batteries had taken part in it, but I knew it just as I knew that the sunlight that fell upon my hand had been to the sun. I would be a torturer, and as a torturer I would have no reason to enter the army and no reason to fear that I would be impressed into it. I never expected to see the war at the gates of [the City]…I never expected to leave the City, or even to leave [my own] quarter of the city called the Citadel.

The North…was then inconceivably remote, a place as distant as the most distant galaxy, since both were forever out of reach. Mentally, I confused it with the dying belt of tropical vegetation that lay between our own land and theirs, although I would have distinguished the two without difficulty if [my teaching Master] had asked me to in the classroom.

But of [the North] itself I had no idea. I did not know if it had great cities or none. I did not know if it was mountainous like the northern or eastern parts of our Commonwealth or as level as our pampas. I did have the impression (although I could not be sure it was correct) that is was a single land mass like our South; and most distinct of all, I had the impression of an innumerable people…an inexhaustible swarm that almost became a creature of itself, as a colony of ants does.

…to think of those millions and millions without speech, or confined to parroting proverbial phrases that must surely have long ago lost most of their meaning, was nearly more than the mind could bear. Speaking almost to myself, I said, “It must surely be a trick, or a lie, or a mistake. Such a nation could not exist.”  Read more 

“We’ve worn handmade peace shirts every Thursday since the first week of school, without fail,” Skylar said.

But what started out as a light-hearted gesture soon started to be taken out of context.

Students started approaching the group members, yelling obscene things at them, said Lauren.

“People just turned on us like that,” she said. “At least 10 boys stood up and yelled things at me at once, and we couldn’t even walk through the halls without a harsh comment being made.”

The heckling began early in the school year, according to group members. They said they were putting small posters promoting peace on friends’ lockers with their permission.

They thought it was OK, because the cheerleaders and football players had signs on theirs. Eventually, though, group members said they were told by the school’s administration they could no longer hang up the posters.

“People tore them down and drew swastikas and ‘white power’ stuff on them,” Lauren said.

Skylar had similar things written on her posters.

“Someone taped an ‘I Love Bush’ sign over my ‘Wage Peace’ sign,” she said. “So I tore it down, threw it away, and the whole commons starting booing. I walk by later and find that someone has completely tore my sign down and placed an ‘I Love America, Because America Loves War’ sign up.”

—Students Wear Confederate Flag Shirts To Oppose Peace-Shirt Group, commondreams.org | sombrero tip to C&L

IT SAYS SOMETHING very revealing that there are young people who think that symbols made immortal by Adolf Hitler are a valid response to a peace sign today. Who see the confederate flag (and it is not being used here to represent “heritage,” if you don’t mind) as a sane response to a peace symbol. Who feel that White Supremacy is the counter-argument to those who ask to live without war between nations. And maybe those pundits who entertain the notion that the USA is engaged in wars of “Liberation” and such should look to the children, who so often lead the way. When we care to pay attention, that is. Because clearly, the kids are not misled. Not by our equivocating fairNBalanced frenzies. When they go crazy it is because of the binds we provide, a series of traps to which we’ve often long been blind. But those newer, more naive, less compromised and cluttered minds always suss out the truth behind our apathy-weighted sighs and rationalized diatribes. And they know what these wars are about. No, not about Freedom, or Peace, or Liberty, or Democracy, of course. Those are soundbytes for Fox-Watchers, para-citizens on brain vacation. The wars of our dear United States of America are about that dark desire that moves mobs to cheer a lynching; they are about about colonialism and imperialism and genocidal impulse and an all-too-human lust for dominance and violence and power at any cost.  Read more 

If it’s coming from the military, that is.

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Teen girl lover:

May 20, 2002 8:45 a.m.
The U.S. Will Not Go to War Against Iraq
Not ever.

Are you starting to get the feeling I’m getting, the feeling expressed in my title? The feeling that there will be no war against Iraq? Not this year, not next year, not ever?  Read more 

Krist on a kracker. Not that this will surprise you, gentle reader. But still, it’s a little shocking to see it out there for all to behold. Turn off your TVs, cancel your subscriptions to cable and print propaganda organs. How many times do I have to ask you? You really feel good that your hard earned slave wages that are taxed to drop bombs on innocent brown people living atop of oil wages go to pay for this man’s salary and antidemocratic projects? Jeebus I’m glad I can’t say I’m doing that.

Given the nature of mass media in the USA is democracy possible in a Nash Equilibrium ?

In contrast to previous research, we find little evidence that citizens are mobilized by or learn from presidential advertisements, but strong evidence that they are persuaded by them. This research supports the contention that political communication is best conceived of as propaganda rather than a vehicle to enhance democratic accountability. We find that campaign advertisements are able to persuade voters to support one candidate over another.  Read more 

As the army gets ready for the second quarter, lower standards appears to be necessary to fill the ranks for the long haul coming. A recent change in advertising accompanies lower admission standards. Mad props to the McCann method – push, push, push. Army Strong is destined to go down in history with “Got Milk?” “Ford Tough.” “Pork – The Other White Meat.” “Did you Play together?” I thought the new Military recruiting trailers were good. Naw, this new mantra just sort of rattles around in your head like an under armor slogan or Homer Simpson longing for “Mmmm Donuts.” A sneaky little meme, like a semantic black hole, surrounded by two little words: Army – Strong. Exactly, how many troops do we need for China?

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Seriously. This is an outstanding example of why the WaPo is worthy of lining your birdcage and wrapping your fish. Get ready for this: Anti War crowd guilty of ’Hindsight Bias.’

Antiwar liberals last week got to savor the four most satisfying words in the English language: “I told you so.”

This was after a declassified National Intelligence Estimate asserted that the war in Iraq was creating more terrorists than it was eliminating. For millions of people who opposed President Bush’s mission in Iraq from the start, this was proof positive that they had been right all along. Yes, they told themselves, we saw this disaster coming.

An intelligence estimate that said the Iraq war was creating more terrorists than it was eliminating was proof to some doubters that they knew all along the war would be a disaster. But psychologists say they are guilty of hindsight bias.

Only … that isn’t quite true.

One of the most systematic errors in human perception is what psychologists call hindsight bias — the feeling, after an event happens, that we knew all along it was going to happen.  Read more 

This is a classic case of clapping harder so Tinkerbell won’t die. I guess I will never understand, living in the Reality-Based community as I do, what it must be like to live as if your own lies were truthy facts. But I’m not Rummy or any of his minions, so what do I know.

U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq.  Read more 

And speaking of death, WaPo’s Harold Meyerson has this to say on death tax lunacy:

A decades-long campaign by right-wing activists (brilliantly documented by Yale professors Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro in their book “Death by a Thousand Cuts”) has convinced many Americans that the estate tax poses a threat to countless hardworking families. That was always nonsense, and under the estate tax revisions that almost all Democrats support — raising the threshold for eligibility to $3.5 million for an individual and $7 million for a couple — it becomes more nonsensical still. Under the $3.5 million exemption, the number of family-owned small businesses required to pay any taxes in the year 2000 would have been just 94, according to a study by the Congressional Budget Office. The number of family farms that would have had to sell any assets to pay that tax would have been 13.

On the other hand, an estate tax repeal would save the estate of Vice President Cheney between $13 million and $61 million, according to the publicly available data on his net worth. It would save the estate of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld between $32 million and $101 million. The estate of retired Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond would pocket a cozy $164 million. As for the late Sam Walton’s kids, whose company already makes taxpayers foot the bill for the medical expenses of thousands of its employees, the cost to the government for not taxing their estates would run into the multiple billions.

My question is this:  Read more 

How do I know this to be true? Because I was told by my slightly paranoid ex some time ago about the camps in Idaho. Also, I once got very stoned with my flaming good friend and we imagined what it would be like for a comic we developed. And, there was this science fiction story about a medical procedure that eliminated The Gay from fetuses that a gay friend of mine and I really loved for its realism. For ultimate proof, I was told by this beribboned, pierced nelly who was also a Christian pastor for completely out gay Christian communities that the story of Sodom is really about how some angels are gay and the evil people of Sodom wanted to rape Lot’s heavenly guests because of their awesome beauty.  Read more 

Well, this kind of says it all:

As Digby mentioned, the tale of Iran forcing Jews, et al to wear distinctive clothing or badges is apparently false. It seems to have been concocted by American rightwing propagandists and has no basis in fact.

On the other hand, Operation Red Scare, in which the Santa Rosa Junior College Republicans posted Red Stars on the doors of professors they identified as advocating communism is true.  Read more