Ok, yes I saw the Wright speech on CNN tonight. I know I saw it because I just saw another thread on corrente where Wright talked about the right-brained creative black child vs the wrong brained who-gives-a-damn white child. I thought that I had fallen asleep on the couch and dreamed that. Now I have to reconcile reality with um reality. Yes, Virginia this is 2008 not 1846.
Letting that sink in.
Wright went on to say in a tone that was as if all whites during desegregation ran and met in a big assembly room and said “we know what to do, they are right-brained creative AFRICAN children, we will desegregate thus keeping them down forever and ever!”  Read more 

I’m sure this may come as a shock to you, but military is hiring bloggers to work as moles, “verbally attack[ing] specific person[s] or promot[ing] a specific message.”

Wait, sorry, wrong link.

Here’s the article.  Read more 

Bill-O writes:
The American people need to wise up. Yeah, the presidential horse race is fun and interesting. But on vital questions of the day, the candidates spit out flimsy general rhetoric and walk away. To protect my family, I want the “waterboarding” option included among presidential powers. As for Musharraf, I want this guy held accountable. Sorry if that interrupts the hope train.

Bill O’Reilly is scared again. This fear-mongerer — a witless moran with Faux Noise’s biggest microphone — wets his bed, afraid the US government might stop torturing (brown) people to make his (wealthy WASP) “family safer”. Where do they find these notions? And since he’s painting GOP front-runner John McCain (whose shoes O’Reilly is, truly, not worthy to tie) with the same panic-stricken  Read more 

My niece gave me a cold yesterday while we were playing with stuffed animals and numbered legos, and I’m so sorry as I meant to blog heavily today and just don’t have the energy. But I was thinking of writing more about “why we fail,” or perhaps better put, “how we can win” or even “learn from your enemies/those who have beaten you/to fight again another day and win this time.” Joe noticed a good one.

The telemarketing campaign, run by a nonprofit organization called “Faith, Family and Freedom” begins its pitch by asking the callee if they were opposed to same sex marriage. If the callee responds positively, they are then transferred to a United American Technologies representative who will explain to them how the more common telephone service providers, such as AT&T, MCI and Verizon are supporters of gay marriage and child pornography, and that United American Technologies is “the only carrier that is taking an active stand against same sex marriages and hardcore child pornography”.  Read more 

Wow. This is just uneffing believable.

I don’t really even know what to say. As one of the commenters so aptly put it:

It’s good to know that not all Republicans are crooks. Some are just assholes.

Indeed.

From Think Progress, who are astonished that the right-wing Reaganites (remember, Reagan fought his own Surgeon General regarding HIV and AIDS, and whether the public health threat the virus and diseases posed should receive federal funding to identify and treat and prevent):

In a column titled “Callous Conservative” in today’s Washington Post, former Bush White House aide Michael Gerson criticizes Fred Thompson’s stance on international AIDS funding.

At a campaign stop last week, Thompson was asked if he, “as a Christian, as a conservative,” supported President Bush’s global AIDS initiative.Thompson said there are larger “problems” at home and that it was not his “priority” to fund HIV/AIDS efforts in Africa:

“Christ didn’t tell us to go to the government and pass a bill to get some of these social problems dealt with. He told us to do it,” Thompson responded. “The government has its role, but we need to keep firmly in mind the role of the government, and the role of us as individuals and as Christians on the other.”

“I’m not going to go around the state and the country with regards to a serious problem and say that I’m going to prioritize that. With people dying of cancer, and heart disease, and children dying of leukemia still, I got to tell you — we’ve got a lot of problems here…”

But the right wing is outraged at Gerson, rather than Thompson.

The right wing wants people who are brown to die.
They don’t care how it happens or why it happens.
They don’t care whether bullets, bombs, or bugs kill brown people, just as long as none of those things threaten their shiny white fannies.

AIDS has taken a devastating toll around the world, but in Africa it has done perhaps its cruelest damage, because it has laid waste young adults — leaving children without parents; leaving elderly people without children; leaving whole nations without a workforce aged 25-60, on a continent where the ravages of  Read more 

It’s all lies. Or distortion. Or confabulation. Or misdirection. But I found this example rather egregious. I bet you DFHs remember this sort of thing from back in the day:

Radio Sawa broadcast on December 11 the good news from the American forces that the regions of Arab Jabour and Al-Buaitha had been definitively cleared of the last vestiges of AlQaeda. Here’s what their website reported that day

Joseph Inge, fourth brigade, third American infantry division, said his forces with the aid of the Awakening forces had been able to clear out the last strongholds of AlQaeda in the regions of Arab Jabour and Al-Buaitha south of Baghdad. He told Radio Sawa: “We have secured the area by freeing it from the threat of AlQaeda, with the assistance of local citizens”. And Captain Inge called on the families that had fled to return to their homes in those areas, promising every type of support and assistance to those families.

On Thursday 40 “targets”—described by the miitary as “reported AlQaeda safe-havens”—were hit by a total of 40,000 pounds of bombs dropped on Arab Jabour in a 10-minute raid by the American Air Force assisted by another brigade, the second, of the same third American infantry division that had invited families back into the area only three weeks ago. The military had no information on how many people it killed.  Read more 

Welcome to the first episode of “The Sorry News,” a series of occasional commentaries about false narratives in today’s America.

Suggestions for future topics are most welcome! What dubious memes, truisms, and such get your goat???

Today’s topic is the oft-praised quality of “Bipartisanship.”

Transcript:  Read more 

A few years back Benedictus noted and pulled together a number of posts from a number of people I respect on the increasing acceptibility of violence in society related to the mindless response to the War on Terror.  Read more 

The Federalist Society congratulates itself at Union Station, and torture fan Fat Tony has the quote of the day. WaPo teabags them with A03 placement**:

Federalists Relish Well-Placed Friends

Funny, if they were so important, you’d think that Justice Roberts wouldn’t have “forgotten” he was a member during his confirmation hearings. But let that pass. Fat Tony’s quote:

Scalia said courts and law schools embrace the alternate view of a “living Constitution” and so too does the ordinary citizen, “who has come to believe that what he violently abhors must be unconstitutional.”

“It is no easy task to wean the public, the professoriate and (especially) the judiciary away from such a seductive and judge-empowering philosophy,” he said.

“Seductive and judge-empowering philosophy”?!

You mean like the kind of philosophy that allows judges to select a President with a “good for one time only” case like Bush v. Gore?  Read more 

Rudy Giuliani stands an excellent chance of becoming our next president. In fact, I think it’s gonna an inevitability, especially in light of the intense self-delusion we liberals are engaging in regarding his electability.  Read more 

Let’s have a Free for all post. Jeralyn is ticked off, because a judge punishing a reporter who broke the law wants her to do a public interest story as penance. Is this wrong? A bad idea? Why, or why not? Lambert reminds us that B and C (blog) listers aren’t really “journalists.” Is that a good thing, in light of this case? Meanwhile, journalism is becoming more and more akin to state sanctioned observation and data mining. Again- we want to protect these people?  Read more 

’Cause a libertarian is supposed to be for it. Most of them, at least in public, claim they’re against government interference.

Start with this: Positive liberty is often described as freedom to achieve certain ends, while negative liberty is described as from external coercion.

Go from there. What is liberty, to you?  Read more 

The National Fanny Cyst Erupts:  Read more 

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What would YOU say to that shit-whistling fucknozzle McCain, who claims the US WAS ALWAYS an “Xian” Nation, such that it would suitably express your revulsion, your utter rejection, your inexpressable  Read more 

AP:

“[CHERTOFF:] Illegal migrants really degrade the environment. I’ve seen pictures of human waste, garbage, discarded bottles and other human artifact in pristine areas. And believe me, that is the worst thing you can do to the environment.”

Really.

So live brown bodies jumping a fence are worse than dead brown bodies floating in the water after Katrina. Good to know.  Read more 

Tom Friedman tries to get in on the Class of 2007 paper chase:

9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.

But a little remedial work remains:

I’d love to see us salvage something decent in Iraq that might help tilt the Middle East onto a more progressive pathway. That was and is necessary to improve our security. But sometimes the necessary is impossible — and we just can’t keep chasing that rainbow this way.

Tom, you had me until “was and is necessary.”  Read more 

Sorry, that’s a metameta meme I’ve seen spreading around the intertubes. Does it come from a TV show or something? I wouldn’t know. Ahem. Seriously: “Some periods in history don’t allow the moral luxury of standing aside. This is one of them.” Read the comments too, they are fascinating. Overton window shifting is so fun, forgive this very lazy linkage pretending to be a post. But if you get to my comment, you’ll know the spirit I was in writing it and this post.

Yesterday, I spent some time in Michigan’s Capitol Building, you can read about it here (warning: wonky budget negotiation details ahead). But one thing really struck me- how open and well, free it was. No charges, no pat downs, no burly men in suits with guns posted at every door. I even spoke with a Senator, just walked right up to her and started chatting it up. Something a lowly DFH blogger-cum-cub reporter could never, ever do in DC. This is really the heart of the problem about which so many are constantly complaining. There is no contact between real people and their leaders elected officials, not at the national level at least. For Democratic reps, the most important thing is what is said on TV, and the only America they know is one on constant Orange Alert, peopled with “protective” thugs and brownshirts on every corner.  Read more 

JG’s book is up-for-sale (like his body parts used to be), and reads much like his copy and paste journalism rooted in red-state-rose colored glasses. The first chapter is up on his publisher’s website (iUniverse).

It is nice to know Gannon’s dog Winston is #3 after Mr. Pill-Popper and Ms. Voter-Fraud.  Read more 

Yet another example from Pravda on the Potomac:

Clement will serve as acting attorney general until a new leader is confirmed by the Senate.

Sloppy authoritarian-enabling writing and thinking.

Why not just write:  Read more 

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the Federalist Society elves. Rosa Brooks on Cheney’s mouthpiece, David Addington:

For instance: When Goldsmith tried to explain to Addington that terrorists and insurgents might be covered under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which applies to civilians (rather than under the Third Geneva Convention, which covers prisoners of war), Addington reacted with fury: “The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections. You cannot question his decision.” That’s the rule of law, as understood by Cheney’s office.

Yeah. And?  Read more