Know thine enemies

At the General's suggestion I'm posting some helpful links for the various Republicans running for election this year.

They all provide useful information that somehow escaped the attention of the webmasters of their official websites. I guess they're just too busy slandering their opponents to keep up.

Senate races:

• WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
  
• VA-Sen: George Allen
  
• TN-Sen: Bob Corker
  
• RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
  
• MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
  
• MO-Sen: Jim Talent
  
• MD-Sen: Michael Steele
  
• AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

House races:

• WA-08: Dave Reichert
  
• VA-10: Frank Wolf
  
• PA-10: Don Sherwood
  
• PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
  
• PA-07: Curt Weldon
  
• PA-04: Melissa Hart
  
• OH-18: Joy Padgett
  
• OH-15: Deborah Pryce
  
• OH-02: Jean Schmidt
  
• OH-01: Steve Chabot
  
• NY-29: Randy Kuhl
  
• NY-26: Tom Reynolds
  
• NY-20: John Sweeney
  
• NY-03: Peter King
  
• NV-03: Jon Porter
  
• NM-01: Heather Wilson
  
• NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
  
• NH-02: Charlie Bass
  
• NC-11: Charles Taylor
  
• NC-08: Robin Hayes
  
• MN-06: Michele Bachmann
  
• MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
  
• KY-04: Geoff Davis
  
• KY-03: Anne Northup
  
• KS-02: Jim Ryun
  
• IN-08: John Hostettler
  
• IN-02: Chris Chocola
  
• IL-14: Dennis Hastert
  
• IL-10: Mark Kirk
  
• IL-06: Peter Roskam
  
• ID-01: Bill Sali
  
• IA-01: Mike Whalen
  
• FL-22: Clay Shaw
  
• FL-16: Joe Negron
  
• FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
  
• CT-04: Christopher Shays
  
• CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
  
• CO-05: Doug Lamborn
  
• CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
  
• CA-50: Brian Bilbray
  
• CA-11: Richard Pombo
  
• CA-04: John Doolittle
  
• AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
  
• AZ-01: Rick Renzi
  

If you have a blog or website and would like to help spread this information read Chris Bowers' article here.

Daily Show as Substantive as Network News

From the "I always thought as much" file, a study by Indiana University shows that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart contains as much news as a big 3 network news show:

Julia R. Fox, assistant professor of telecommunications at Indiana University isn't joking when she says the popular "fake news" program, which last week featured Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as a guest, is just as substantive as network coverage.

While much has been written in the media about The Daily Show's impact, Fox's study is the first scholarly effort to systematically examine how the comedy program compares to traditional television news as sources of political information.

Like I said, I don't find this too surprising, given TDS' fondness for using real news segments as foils for its satire.

And frankly, given the rank hypocrisy and corruption of so much of today's news and today's newsmakers, it seems to me that satire is a much more honest and accurate way to depict the news than the repetitive, "he said/she said" blather so frequently practised by straight journalism.

Perhaps there's hope for this country yet.

State of Denial

Many of us on the left, myself included, criticized Bob Woodward's previous books about the Bush administration. Too chummy, too cocktail party gossipy, too inside the beltway.

Well we were right, but then so too was Bob Woodward. With his latest book, Woodward uses all those inside connections we so rightly criticized, and puts them to devastating use against the Whitehouse.

(Some review and analysis here, here, and here).

In retrospect I have to wonder whether Woodward was consciously or unconsciously setting BushCorp™ up. Perhaps his reporter's instincts simply told him that to ultimately get to the evil heart of the Bush crime family he would have to go into deep cover, if you will, by pretending to buy their load of bull, and convince them that he was indeed buying sincerely.

But regardless, as the flurry of Whitehouse denials indicates, Woodward has indeed struck a nerve.