From an op-ed in today's NYT, "Paul Newman is still HUD"
The Fox News Network is suing Al Franken, the political satirist, for using the phrase "fair and balanced" in the title of his new book. In claiming trademark violation, Fox sets a noble example for standing firm against whatever.
Unreliable sources report that the Fox suit has inspired Paul Newman, the actor, to file a similar suit in federal court against the Department of Housing and Urban Development, commonly called HUD. Mr. Newman claims piracy of personality and copycat infringement.
In the 1963 film "HUD," for which Mr. Newman was nominated for an Academy Award, the ad campaign was based on the slogan, "Paul Newman is HUD." Mr. Newman claims that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, called HUD, is a fair and balanced institution and that some of its decency and respectability has unfairly rubbed off on his movie character, diluting the rotten, self-important, free-trade, corrupt conservative image that Mr. Newman worked so hard to project in the film. His suit claims that this "innocence by association" has hurt his feelings plus residuals.
A coalition of the willing — i.e., the Bratwurst Asphalt Company and the Ypsilanti Hot Dog and Bean Shop — has been pushed forward and is prepared to label its products "fair and balanced," knowing that Fox News will sue and that its newscasters will be so tied up with subpoenas they will only be able to broadcast from the courtroom, where they will be seen tearing their hair and whining, looking anything but fair and balanced, which would certainly be jolly good sport all around.
Paul Newman, an actor, is chief executive of Salad King."
Note: Paul Newman is a liberal, in case that was unclear in all the sarcasm.
From Democratic Underground's "Hate Mailbag"
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This Is Your Brain On Limbaugh
From: "----- -----" <--------@--------.com>
To:
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 6:31 PM
Subject: Bill Clinton
his wife is going to run for president, then billy is going to run for U.N. president then make the U.S.A. like the U.S.S.R. where bread was $15.00 and you have no gun to fight for the right to live, work, and go where you would like to go. You are giving them the right to kill anyone they want, to walk into your home and rape and kill you and your family, take you house your children your money you worked you ass off getting and give it to someone that is lazy and has drug babies. Conservative: You'r walking down the street and there is a homeless man, and you give him the money in your poket. Democrats: you'r walking down the street and there is a homeless man, the government puts a gun to your head, and makes you give him money. is that right. if no then you are not a Democrat. but if you think that the government can then you would be the first to die because you bring no good to a dictator form of government.
DU RESPONDS: I saw a homeless man once. I walked past him, the government took my gun away from me, put it to my head, and made me give him $15 for a loaf of bread. Then he came round to my house, raped me and my family before taking my house, and my children, AND all my money, and then he gave it all to his wife for her drug baby. Man, I wish I was a conservative. Then I could have just solved the problem by giving him all the money in my pocket, just like all conservatives do when they see homeless people.
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When it's posted, Hate Mailbag is the highlight of my day.
Clever Title eh? I stayed up all night trying to think of it.....
Anyway, from Bob Herbert's column today in the NYT:
Al Gore slipped into Manhattan last week and gave a rousing speech downtown before a very young audience at New York University. He got some coverage, but Mr. Gore has never been mistaken for an entertainer. In the superamplified media din created by the likes of Arnold and Kobe and Ben and Jen, it's very difficult for the former vice president, a certified square, to break into the national conversation.
That says a lot about us and the direction we're headed in as a nation. You can agree with Mr. Gore's politics or not, but some of the points he's raising, especially with regard to President Bush's credibility on such crucial issues as war and terror and the troubled economy, deserve much closer attention.
(break)
The essence of Mr. Gore's speech was that these corrosive false impressions were part of a strategic pattern of distortion that the Bush administration used to create support not just for the war, but for an entire ideologically driven agenda that overwhelmingly favors the president's wealthy supporters and is driving the federal government toward a long-term fiscal catastrophe.
What if Mr. Gore is right? There's something at least a little crazy about an environment in which people are literally stumbling over one another to hear what Arnold Schwarzenegger has to say about the budget crisis in California (short answer: nothing), while ignoring what a thoughtful former vice president has to say about the budget and the economy of the U.S.
(break)
"The Bush administration has managed to dodge the hard questions and benefit from an atmosphere in which the media and much of the public would rather contemplate Jennifer's navel and Arnold's fading pecs than pursue a possible pattern of deceit at the highest levels of government."
This is close to my own possible doomsday scenario. We've pointed to a lot of sources to blame for Bush's corruption and malfeasance: His PR Team is just too deceptive, he's not afraid to lie, people are willing to cut the President some slack in times of national crisis (but how long is this supposed crisis going to last exactly...?), the media have let the public down by acting as cheerleaders for the administration and its policies, leading Democrats have been afraid to challenge Bush, we're all afraid of looking unpatriotic (but what does it mean to be patriotic exactly?...another post for another time.)
There are a litany of reasons, these and others, and most of them are true to differing degrees. But here's one that Herbert brings out in his column, albeit gently, but it still takes courage to mention it.
It is OUR fault, the public, the people, whatever, that this guy gets away with what he does. We're simply too damn busy with our own little lives, watching American Idol, playing golf, playing videogames...we're simply too damn busy to care, or worse, we just don't give a shit. Don't get me wrong, hobbies and entertainment and, yes, even American Idol are all fine to a degree. But when these things NARCOTIZE us, the public, to the point that really important issues are drowned out, our society and civilization are in jeopardy.
A gross exageration? Well, maybe. But consider the following:
Could it be that we just don't give a shit when people in other parts of the world die?
Could it be that we just don't give a shit when the poor have necessary govt. services cut because of an outrageous, regressive taxcut?
Could it be that we just don't give a shit about corporate thievery, stolen elections, famine across the globe, disasters that hit places we can't locate on a map, etc... because we think that these issues somehow don't affect us?? Well, at least, maybe not yet.
Bob Herbert is right. There is a serious problem when the latest rumor about J. Lo and Ben generates more attention than a massive White House scandal.
The evididence is out there folks. And this time it's not the media's fault or anyone else's. The problem lies with us as a nation and a culture, and I hope to God that we do indeed give a shit about the items I've listed. But more and more these days, I have my doubts.
Phew! I was getting worried that they wouldn't be and Bush would look like a jackass.
More than 660,000 chemical weapons, packed with chemicals like VX gas, mustard gas and sarin, are stored here, in concrete bunkers known as igloos.
Good thing we found those....in Alabama.
Found is the wrong word of course, everyone knew they were there. But we can keep VX gas because....well we just can okay? So stop asking questions. (Link below)
Oh, and as for those "mobile biological weapons trailers"?
"Iraqi Trailers Said to Make Hydrogen, Not Biological Arms"
Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for two mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials say.
It's been one of those days.
"Too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgments and historic mistakes that have put them and our nation in harm's way," Mr. Gore said.
He credited Mr. Bush for having removed Saddam Hussein but lamented what he called the lack of "honesty and integrity" in the debate leading to the war. He noted that no nuclear weapons had been found in Iraq and no direct link between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda established. He suggested that a hidden motivation for the war was securing access to oil.
After musing aloud about whether Mr. Bush's advisers had steered him wrong, Mr. Gore said, "I've just about concluded that the real problem may be the president himself and that next year we ought to fire him and get a new one."
Give em hell, Al!
The President delivers an address
This is why I keep reading the newspaper!
BRITAIN: NAKED ODYSSEY Wearing little more than sun screen and boots, Steve Gough is walking the length of Britain to celebrate the joys of nudity. Efficiency is not one of them. His 847-mile trek from Land's End on the southwest tip of England to John O'Groats at the northern tip of Scotland, has been hampered by eight arrests, an examination at a psychiatric hospital and several nights in jail. This week, he is starting over after the Scottish police shipped him back to his starting point in Cornwall for a court appearance. But Mr. Gough, a 44-year-old truck driver, who started his trip on June 16, says he is undaunted. "I am determined to carry on," he said. Apart from being beaten up in St. Ives and told by a farmer in Yorkshire to "put on your trousers," Mr. Gough said public reaction had been largely positive. He hopes to finish his trek by September, barring further run-ins with the police. (AP)
New Reality Show? Yeah, you know you were thinking it too.
Maureen Dowd has some insightful points. For once.
I’m not really a fan of Maureen Dowd. I think she could be a very columnist/political commentator, if not for her annoying habit of referencing everything even remotely serious to pop culture ( e.g. “the political situation in Iraq/The White House/ The California Recall is just like Seinfeld/The Rat Pack/ American Idol, etc.”). Oh yeah, and if not for about a half dozen other things that piss me off about her.
I don’t know if she’s thrown American Idol into one of he columns yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me. The first two items on that second list, however, have been featured before.
But ripping Kool Mo D isn’t the issue. Today at least. Her latest column brings up three interesting points: 1) Colin Powell may be sick of the circus freak show this administration has become and wants out. 2) The comedy troupe of Rumsfeld/Rice/Wolfowitz/Groucho/Harpo etc. wants to hasten the Secretary’s departure. 3) Bush wants Powell to stay on, mostly to maintain his pathetic charade of presenting a “moderate” group of advisors, but BUSH IS NOT THE ONE MAKING THE CALLS.
Point one is in reference to a Washington Post story that contained leaked information purporting that Powell would refuse to serve in a second (god help us all) Bush term. Powell, of course, denies this, but we all know that that is just what one does in these types of scenarios.
Point two has been out in the open for a while. A few entries back, I linked a story on Newt Gingrich blasting a scathing and very public attack on the State Department. Newt and his posse of orcs hate anything with even a hint of multinationalism. Since international relations is pretty much what the State Department does, one can guess the former speaker’s regard for diplomacy. He was careful to praise Powell himself, but no one really believed that part of the tirade. It was clear at whom the attack was aimed. And Gingrich is not alone in demonizing the State Dept. (Incidentally, the column bandies about some names of people who might replace Powell should he decide not to serve a second term. One of those names is the Lizard himself. Please. I stand a better chance of becoming the next Secretary of State than does Gingrich. The guy is a leper, even to scumbags like Rusted and Co.)
Point three is something I’ve debated with a number of people. The issue is: Who’s really in charge here. Is it Bush, or does he have his puppetmasters jerking him around at every turn? I tend to favor the latter opinion. Case in point: The idea for this past Iraq war. While I’m sure that the Chimp took little convincing, the plan did not hatch fully formed from his simian skull. This was the work of the comedy troupe aforementioned. Examine the following: Iraq, tax policy, energy policy, domestic law-enforcement post 9/11, “defense of marriage” acts and related bits of nonsense…the list goes on. Now ask yourself who the driving force(s) is/are behind these policies. Answer: Someone who walks upright and has opposable thumbs, not Bush.
Back to Kool Mo D, I think the thrust of her column is best summarized in this line: “Mr. Bush might be trying to signal his respect for Mr. Powell, but the president is not always privy to the start of a grandiose neocon scheme.” If Powell leaves, so be it. The last modicum of respect I had for the guy was lost during his presentation to the UN. And of course, should Bush lose the next election, all of this becomes a moot point. So let’s just hope for that.
Gingrich Blowing Smoke out his Arse
An op-ed entitled, "It All Depends on What You Mean by 'Have'" Check it out.
So if you're asking me did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction, I'm saying, well, it all depends on what you mean by "have."
See, I can "have" something without actually having it. I can "have" a cold, but I don't own the cold, nor do I harbor it. Really, when you think about it, the cold has me, or even more precisely, the cold has passed through me. Plus, the word "have" has the complicated letter "v" in it. It seems that so many words with the letter "v" are words that are difficult to use and spell. Like "verisimilitude." And "envelope."
Therefore, when you ask me, "Did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction," I frankly don't know what you're talking about. Do you mean currently? Then why did you say "did?" Think about "did." What the heck does that mean? Say it a few times out loud. Sounds silly. I'm beginning to think it's just the media's effort to use a fancy palindrome, rather than ask a pertinent question.
And how do I know you're not saying "halve?" "Did Iraq halve weapons of mass destruction?" How should I know? What difference does it make? That's a stupid question.
Let me try and clear it up for you. I think what you were trying to say was, "At any time, did anyone in Iraq think about, wish for, dream of, or search the Internet for weapons of mass destruction?"
Of course they did have. Come on, Iraq is just one big salt flat and no dictator can look out on his vast desert and not imagine an A-test going on. And let's face it, it really doesn't matter if they had them or not, because they hate us like a lassoed shorthorn heifer hates bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
Finally, all this fuss over 16 lousy words. Shoot, "Honey, I'm home," already has three, with an extra one implied, and practically nothing has been said. It would take way more than 16 words to say something that could be considered a gaffe. I don't really take anything people say seriously until they've used at least 20, sometimes 25, words.
When I was criticized for my comment, I was reluctant to point out it was only 16 words, and I was glad when someone else took the trouble to count them and point out that I wasn't even in paragraph territory. When people heard it was only 16 words, I'm sure most people threw their head back and laughed. And I never heard one negative comment from any of our coalition forces, and they all speak English, too.
This is the man, of course, who blew open the whole scandal on the fraudulent uranium claim. Now the White House is coming at him with a vengeance for exposing his lie.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 — Joseph C. Wilson IV, a retired ambassador who was a secret envoy of the Bush administration to Africa and who publicly voiced doubts about a reported Iraqi weapons program, says he has become a target of a campaign to discourage others like him from going public.
(break)
Days after the [Wilson's] column, another chapter opened. Mr. Wilson's wife was identified by name as a covert C.I.A. operative in a column by the conservative columnist Robert Novak, a disclosure that Mr. Novak has attributed to senior administration officials.
Officials are barred by law from disclosing the identities of Americans who work undercover for the C.I.A. That provision is intended to protect the security of operatives whose lives might be jeopardized if their identities are known.
Among those who have cried foul are several Democratic senators, including Charles E. Schumer of New York, who have said that if the accusation is true and if senior administration officials were its source, law enforcement authorities should seek to identify the officials who appeared to have violated the law. Mr. Schumer has asked Robert S. Mueller III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to look into the case.
Mr. Wilson, who as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad in 1990 was the last American diplomat to meet President Saddam Hussein, said the events were evidence of distressing American heavy-handedness.
"The issue was never about her," Mr. Wilson said of his wife in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "The issue was about who so badly staffed the president of the United States that they would put into a State of the Union address something that was so transparently unsubstantiable, and this from an administration that came to office saying it wanted to restore dignity and honor to the White House. It wasn't to intimidate me, because I'd already said my piece. Clearly, this was to keep others from stepping forward."
Yes, this is pure intimidation. Restore dignity and honor my ass.
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 7 — Six Afghan soldiers and a driver for an American aid agency were killed today in a raid by attackers suspected of being Taliban guerrillas. The Taliban announced today that in a separate attack it had killed five government soldiers.
Local government officials would not confirm the report of a second attack. But if the report is true, the total death toll would be the largest for a single day attributed to the resurgent Taliban movement in many months.
(break)
Separately, in Kandahar Province, Taliban guerrillas said they had killed five Afghan government soldiers and wounded three in a rocket attack on a vehicle about 15 miles north of the town of Spinbaldak, also near the Pakistani border.
"Their vehicle was totally destroyed and the Taliban left the area after the attack," Mullah Abdul Samad, an intelligence official in the Taliban government that was overthrown in 2001, said by satellite phone from an undisclosed location.
Wait, I thought we defeated the Taliban? Bush said so right? And he's a man of integrity, right? Alas, no.
So Much for, “securing the peace in Afghanistan.” This White House had more important things to do. Like make shit up about nuclear weapons and terrorism ties, sit idly by while the cultural artifacts and archives of a 6,000 year old civilization were looted and burned, kill a bunch of civilians, Iraq conscripts, and US and British military personnel, etc.. But hey, at least we scored a victory in Afghanistan by…oh wait.
Afghanistan will never make the front pages again. Mark it down.
Taliban back up and kicking ass
WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 — The Justice Department told a federal court administrator today that it would begin compiling data on judges who give lighter sentences than federal guidelines prescribe, a move that critics see as an effort to limit judicial independence by creating a "blacklist" of judges.
The new policy will require prosecutors to notify Justice Department officials in Washington whenever a federal judge issues a sentence that falls below sentencing guidelines. The notification will set in motion a review of whether an appeal of the judge's sentence should be filed.
(break)
Some lawmakers, judges and legal observers, however, said they were deeply troubled by the shift.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, accused Mr. Ashcroft of requiring prosecutors "to participate in the establishment of a blacklist of judges." He called the policy "the latest salvo in the Ashcroft Justice Department's ongoing attack on judicial independence and fairness" in sentencing.
John S. Martin, a federal district judge in Manhattan who announced in June that he would retire in part because he saw the judiciary's independence as threatened, said the Justice Department policy was "based on the erroneous premise that a lot of judges around the county are just going off the reservation."
He added: "The problem is that a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington looking at the statistics won't know the facts of these cases. They're taking a very mechanistic approach to the whole process."
Nicholas M. Gess, a senior Justice Department official in the Clinton administration, said the policy fit a pattern in the Ashcroft Justice Department of centralizing decision-making in Washington, a trend also seen in death penalty cases.
I don’t have time to go into this full now, but mandatory sentencing guidelines and regulations of that ilk are an abomination of the law. Much as we would like to think so, legal punishments are not uniform, nor should they be. The fair application of justice requires that a judge have and use discretion when sentencing criminals. There was an op-ed by a federal court judge this summer (which, regretably, I didn't link) in the NYT that said he was retiring precisely because of these overly stringent, and, yes, unjust sentencing guidelines. A judge is not required to throw the proverbial book at every drug user and low level skell that enters his courtroom, and these Justice Department regulations are an attempt to force judges to do just that
I’ll just let you read this one.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 — The Bush administration persistently manipulates scientific data to serve its ideology and protect the interests of its political supporters, a report by the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform says.
The 40-page report, which was prepared for Representative Henry A. Waxman, the committee's ranking Democrat, accused the administration of compromising the scientific integrity of federal institutions that monitor food and medicine, conduct health research, control disease and protect the environment.
On many topics, including global warming and sex education, the administration "has manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings," the report said.
"The administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the president, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered Web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications and the gagging of scientists," the report added
(Now there's a part with Scott McClellan trying to bullshit his way out of this
story.)
Some of the examples from the report's 21 subject areas have already been reported in the media. They include the Environmental Protection Agency's decision last year to delete a section on global warming in its comprehensive report on the state of the environment and President Bush's overstatement of the number of stem cell lines available for research under controls imposed by the administration.
The report's authors say federal agencies have jeopardized scientific integrity in many ways, including stacking scientific advisory committees with unqualified officials or industry representatives, blocking publication of findings that could harm corporate interests and defending controversial decisions with misleading information.
With respect to sex education, the report said, the Bush administration has advanced what the report described as an unproven "abstinence only" agenda and abolished an initiative at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that listed scientifically validated safe-sex techniques that included using condoms.
On agricultural pollution, the Agriculture Department has issued tight controls on government scientists seeking to publish information that could have an adverse impact on industry, the report said. It cited the case of a microbiologist, James Zahn, who was denied permission to publish findings on the dangers of antibiotic-resistant bacteria near hog farms in the Midwest.
On the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the report said that Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, a firm advocate of drilling for oil in the region, misrepresented to Congress her agency's scientific opinion on how drilling would affect the region's caribou population. She told lawmakers most of the caribou calving occurred outside the refuge; her scientists said the opposite was true.
And from Paul Krugman's column today:
Before last year's elections Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, wrote a remarkable memo about how to neutralize public perceptions that the party was anti-environmental. Here's what it said about global warming: "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but is not yet closed. There is still an opportunity to challenge the science." And it advised Republicans to play up the appearance of scientific uncertainty.
But as a recent article in Salon reminds us, this appearance of uncertainty is "manufactured." Very few independent experts now dispute that manmade global warming is happening, and represents a serious threat. Almost all the skeptics are directly or indirectly on the payroll of the oil, coal and auto industries. And before you accuse me of a conspiracy theory, listen to what the other side says. Here's Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma: "Could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it."
The point is that when it comes to evidence of danger from emissions — as opposed to, say, Iraqi nukes — the people now running our country won't take yes for an answer.
Meanwhile, news reports say, President Bush will spend much of this month buffing his environmental image. No doubt he'll repeatedly be photographed amid scenes of great natural beauty, uttering stirring words about his commitment to conservation. His handlers hope that the images will protect him from awkward questions about his actual polluter-friendly policies and, most important, his refusal to face up to politically inconvenient environmental dangers.
The man is a national treasure. And Bush is a genuine threat.
Bush manipulates scientific data
DALLAS, Aug. 7 — Condoleezza Rice, one of the highest-ranking African-Americans in the Bush administration, told a gathering of black journalists here today that growing up in the South during the civil rights movement had informed her view of American foreign policy in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
What? Okay I’m listening.
"Like many of you, I grew up around the home-grown terrorism of the 1960's," she said. "The bombing of the church in Birmingham in 1963 is one that will forever be in my memory, because one of the little girls that died was a friend of mine. Forty years removed from the tragedy, I can honestly say that Denise McNair and the others did not die in vain."
Now I know that Rice did indeed spend her early youth in Alabama. But I didn’t know she was a friend of one of those girls who died in that church bombing. Now because I’m a skeptic, no wait let me rephrase, because I’m a cynic, I’m a little bit disbelieving of Rice’s claim here. She does have a penchant for telling whoppers, like claiming she knew nothing about that whole uranium thing, as well as a some other not-quite-truthful statements. But of course, “friend” could mean a lot of things here. Maybe they played together as little girls (with Condi still not smiling, even at 5 or 6) or maybe the girl who died was just an acquaintance, if kids that young can be said to have such a thing. Anyway, I guess I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt on this one. Though I’m not sure how it relates to Iraq. Oh wait here we go:
"We must never, ever indulge the condescending voices who allege that some people in Africa or in the Middle East are just not interested in freedom, they're culturally just not ready for freedom or they just aren't ready for freedom's responsibilities," she said. "That view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East."
Uh, just so you know Dr. Rice, Tom “The Exterminator” Delay (R), House Whip, is now currently in the Middle East pushing an “alternative” plan to the current Israeli/Palestinian framework for peace. The cornerstone of Delay’s plan: Palestinians “are not ready for self-government,” and shouldn’t be given a state. So, Dr. Rice, when you talk about not “indulg[ing] the condescending voices who allege that some people in Africa or in the Middle East are just not interested in freedom, they’re not culturally ready for freedom or they just aren’t ready for freedom’s responsibilities,” you’re talking about a leader of the Republican Party. So go do your fucking job and advise your boss to rein this yahoo in.
Civil Rights Movement = Iraq....I don't get it.
“9/11 Flight 93 Crash is Seen as Deliberate”
Yeah, I’ve had my doubts for a long time on this story. The whole picture is still not there, and I still think it highly possibly that 93 was shot down by a US military plane. Then this hero story was allowed to float because, hey, who really wants to be the one to disprove this story? It’s not by accident that this snippet is buried at the bottom of page 14.
I just don’t know. I don’t think we ever will. But i really do believe that actual events do NOT correspond exactly with the official record.