Knock me down with a feather: Time names Obama Person of the Year

In an announcement that surprises absolutely no-one, Time magazine names Barack Obama as its Person of the Year.

The main surprise is their given reasoning:

As Obama has moved with unprecedented speed to build an Administration that would bolster the confidence of a shaken world, his flash and dazzle have faded into the background. In the waning days of his extraordinary year and on the cusp of his presidency, what now seems most salient about Obama is the opposite of flashy, the antithesis of rhetoric: he gets things done. He is a man about his business — a Mr. Fix It going to Washington.

OTOH I'm pretty sure that his inspirational and transformational election didn't hurt either.

Congratulations Mr. President-Elect.

Free Sarah Palin!

Well, it's about time. Even members of the dread MSM are sick and tired of the sexism being aimed at McCain veep selection Sarah Palin:

Frankly I have had it, and I know a lot of other women out there who are with me on this. I have had enough of the sexist treatment of Sarah Palin. It has to end.

She was in New York on Tuesday meeting with world leaders at the U.N. And what did the McCain campaign do?

They tried to ban reporters from covering those meetings. And they did ban reporters from asking Gov. Palin any questions.

I call upon the McCain campaign to stop treating Sarah Palin like she is a delicate flower who will wilt at any moment.

Like I said, it's about time.

Dogs of War: The New York Times

As BushCorp™ hawks continue to push for war with Iran, no-one serves them so obsequiously as the press.

And especially guilty in this regard is the nation's "paper of record", the New York Times and this week's stenographer, Michael Gordon.

So, unsurprisingly, given their cheer leading for the fiasco in Iraq, the Times is now frontpaging more Dod dictation.

Read Glenn Greenwald for the gristly details.

Dogs of War: New York Times

One of the worst failures leading up to the invasion of Iraq was the unwillingness of the nation's media to question BushCorp™ assertions about the need for war.

Especially egregious was the New York times whose front-page placement of stories by warmongers such as Judith Miller lent the prestige of the US' "paper of record" to the neo-con line of bullshit.

So, it is especially troubling that, despite its mea culpas on its Iraq coverage, the Times is doing it again, this time transcribing, and therefore giving credence to administration assertions about our next target, Iran:

Even beyond its nuclear program, Iran is emerging as an increasing source of trouble for the Bush administration by inflaming the insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and in Gaza, where it has provided military and financial support to the militant Islamic group Hamas, which now controls the Gaza Strip.

But as Glenn Greenwald points out:

Note that the numerous claims here are presented not as assertions, not as arguments, but as facts. And they are not even accompanied by the qualification that these were asserted by the article's anonymous "administration officials." Rather, they are simply stated, by the Times itself, as unquestionable facts. And they are obviously inflammatory "facts," as they depict Iran as, more or less, at war with the U.S. in multiple countries, arming and funding groups directly at war with our military.

I recommend Mr. Greenwald for a point by point break down of the inaccuracies and fallacies behind the Times' assertions, but the key point is this, when administration lies go unchecked and unquestioned by the MSM, the only victors are the dogs of war.

Dogs of War: a reading tip

As the Bush administration continues its efforts to distract Americans from the disaster in Iraq by drumming up support for an attack on Iran, it's well to keep in mind some of the lessons from its previous efforts to manipulate a compliant media.

Today's case in point, an article by Robin Wright in to day's Washington Post breathlessly describing Iran's purported efforts to supply weapons to both Shia insurgent groups in Iran and the Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan. Just read the first paragraph and see if you can spot the problem:

Iran has increased arms shipments to both Iraq's Shiite extremists and Afghanistan's Taliban in recent weeks in an apparent attempt to pressure American and other Western troops operating in its two strategic neighbors, according to senior U.S. and European officials.

Catch it? Let's try that again with highlights:

Iran has increased arms shipments to both Iraq's Shiite extremists and Afghanistan's Taliban in recent weeks in an apparent attempt to pressure American and other Western troops operating in its two strategic neighbors, according to senior U.S. and European officials.

And why do these "officials" need to go un-named? Why should they? The article certainly doesn't tell us.

Since they are talking about (not showing, mind, but merely describing) evidence of Iranian malfeasance, it seems unlikely that the anonymous officials are in danger of running afoul of higher ups, the usual reason for anonymity.

The likely reason said officials seek to remain anonymous is that they don't want to be publicly caught in a lie.

That being the case my advice is this, the history of BushCorp™ lies and deception being what it is, save your self a few minutes in the day and just skip any article that refuses to name names.

Life is to short.

National Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

During his Tuesday interview with Al Gore, Keith Olbermann referred to America's continued state of fear as "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder".

And while that might be somewhat overstating the thing, certainly the government and the MSM still seems, earnest in its attempts to keep the public looking over its collective shoulders (c.f. today's hysteria over the great TB scare).

Certainly though it does sometimes seem that, in addition to non-Texan hot sauce, the biggest import from NEW YORK CITY?! is the paranoid spirit behind its "See Something, Say Something" campaign.

For the latest expression of American PTSD (APTSD) we go to an innocent looking fax machine in Ashland, Mass. From the AP:

ASHLAND, Mass. --A faulty bank fax printed a message that was misinterpreted as a bomb threat Wednesday, leading authorities to evacuate more than a dozen neighboring businesses and a day care center.

The branch manager of the Bank of America called police about 10 a.m. after receiving a fax containing images of a lit match and a bomb with a fuse, bank spokesman Ernesto Anguilla said.

I have no idea how to break the media of its love affair with scary stories, but it would help if individuals at least recognized them for what they are, sensational attempts to garner ratings being promoted out of all proportion to their real importance in our daily lives.

TB scare: typical balanced media response

With my internet connection temporarily down, I had the distinct, um, pleasure, of getting my morning news fix from cable.

Apparently the nation is about to be hit by a devastating outbreak of untreatable tuberculosis, causing, judging from the wall to wall coverage, deaths in the millions.

Or not.

Amid all the breathless coverage bewailing how someone so infected could slip through the security dragnet that envelops the US (or, at least it seems, should), one quote seems to be missing:

"We believe that his degree of infectiousness is quite low," Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC's Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, told a news conference.

Whew, I feel better already. Be a shame if the country got distracted all worked up about a non-threat, wouldn't it?

How to deal with a giant talking head

How could I possibly pass up an article titled: Sweet Jesus I love Bill O'Reilly!?

I couldn't.

The LA times op-ed is Rosa Brooks' account of how her appearances on BillO's show landed her a job as a columnist at the Times.

You see, I am probably the only member of the Left-Wing Media who can truly say that I owe my career in punditry in part to O'Reilly.

Here's how it happened. Two years ago, I was not a member of the Left-Wing Media. I was just a lowly member of a somewhat different left-wing conspiracy, otherwise known as academia, from whence I wrote the occasional radical Op-Ed article, supported various far-left causes and strove ceaselessly to poison the minds of young Americans.

It was hard but rewarding work. Then one day, I got a call inviting me on to "The O'Reilly Factor" as live bait — excuse me, as a "guest." Because I was perhaps the only person in North America who had never actually seen the show, I foolishly agreed.

After a couple of appearances where she served as Bill's liberal punching bag, Ms. Brooks came to the realization that no-one talking with O'Reilly will ever win the shouting matches he initiates and which serve as "debate" on his show.

Michael Kinsley, who was then Times' editorial page editor was so impressed by her calm performance in the face of the huge gusting windbag that he invited her to write a column for the paper.

How was Ms. Brooks able to counter Bill's bombastic bullying?

I emerged from the [first] experience bloody but still unbowed (we radical leftists are a scrappy lot, when we're not advocating surrender to terrorists). And I was invited back.

This time, I practiced beforehand with my overtired toddler. She'd shriek out meaningless invective, and I'd just keep talking calmly. It must have helped, because by my third O'Reilly appearance, I made it through with hardly a scratch. Bill, though, was spluttering madly.

The "topic" that third time was members of the "left-leaning press," such as Michael Kinsley, then-editorial page editor of The Times who — unlike Bill — failed to fully appreciate the terrorist threat (as evidenced by an unpatriotic desire to provide Guantanamo detainees with due process). Bill suggested that Kinsley might find pedagogical value in having his head chopped off by terrorists. I upbraided Bill for going soft and explained that I'd figured him more as a boiling-in-oil kind of guy. Bill appeared disconcerted and abashed and assured me that he, personally, would "never do that to Mr. Kinsley."

Mr. Kinsley's invitation came the next day.

Newsflash: BushCorp™ politicizes DoJ

But don't expect film at 11.

Though it strikes me as patently obvious that an administration that would let ideology guide us into the occupation of Iraq wouldn't hesitate to politicize the hypothetically apolitical Department of Justice, it appears the MSM is just catching on.

Triggered by the recent revelations of the politcal nature, perhaps criminally so, of the firings of the Gonzales 8, others are coming forward to a media that is shocked, shocked I tell you, that BushCorp™ has politicized the DoJ.

As the LA Times headline says:

Justice Department tugged to the right: Under Bush, the department has been tainted by politics, many say.

WASHINGTON — Not long after President Bush was first sworn in, White House political guru Karl Rove and his lieutenants met with officials of nearly every Cabinet agency to brief top officials on the latest polling data and issues that could influence voters and key constituencies.

But the departments of Justice, Defense and State were exempt. Given their missions — to administer federal laws, protect national security and conduct foreign policy — it was considered inappropriate to make such partisan presentations to them.

That sentiment didn't last long.

But while BushCorp™'s ever dwindling corp of defenders may claim that administrations always set political goals for their attorneys, that is a far cry from interfering in particular cases, which interference is unethical, and can be illegal.

Nonetheless, the critics tied their allegations to those described by two of the fired U.S. attorneys. David C. Iglesias of Albuquerque, N.M., and John McKay of Seattle have said they felt pressure from Republican officials to prosecute alleged voter fraud in their states.

Both said their offices reviewed the cases and concluded the evidence did not warrant prosecution.

[snip]

Rich, a 37-year department veteran, said a partisan litmus test in hiring and decision-making has undermined a tradition of nonpartisan professionalism in the division.

"Unfortunately, since this administration took office, that professionalism and nonpartisan commitment to the historic mission of the division has been replaced by unprecedented political decision-making," he told the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights and civil liberties on Thursday.

[Recently retired head of the DoJ's Civil Rights Division, Joseph D.] Rich's views were backed by other department veterans who had left the department in recent years. Many, like Rich, have joined civil rights organizations, such as the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where Rich now works.

"The U.S. attorneys' firing confirmed my view that at the highest levels of DOJ it was decided that politics would play a role in how decisions were made," said Mark Posner, a former civil rights division attorney who contributed to a book-length report released by a civil rights group in Washington last week called "The Erosion of Rights: Declining Civil Rights Enforcement Under the Bush Administration."

The Civil Rights Division veterans focused their criticism on major voting case decisions over the last six years that they say have generally benefited the GOP.

The most recent case concerned a 2005 Georgia law that required voters to provide photo identification. Staff attorneys raised concerns about the law after the Georgia secretary of state supplied data showing that tens of thousands of voters might not have driver's licenses or other prescribed forms of identification. They said the plan could effectively disenfranchise large numbers of black voters.

The staff objections were ignored, department veterans said, and the Georgia ID rule was approved by the Justice Department 24 hours after the staff report was filed.

Again, none of this is shocking stuff, in the sense that such is obviously SOP for our Bushie government.

And I'm currently torn between which I find more shocking, that the MSM never seemed to notice, or that it's finally noticing now.

Idiots

Just in case you need another example of how lame is the MSM, witness today's brouhaha over the misreporting of the "end" of the Edwards campaign.

I'm not going to excerpt Howard Kurtz's outline of how this bit of misinformation exploded across our airwaves. Just read it for yourself and weep.

Suffice it to say that it is a case study for how the right wing noise machine operates and how it enlists the ever willing dupes of the MSM in its cause.

Support Ann Coulter(?!)

[x-posted at Daily Kos: be sure to read the comments]

I am, shall we say, no fan of Ann Coulter's.

But the uproar about her latest vile screed at the CPAC convention has got me t' thinkin'.

Mixed with the well deserved criticism resounding around both left and right blogistan have been calls for the various networks and newspapers who spread her poisonous views to shun our darling Ann.

And while I can viscerally agree with this stance, and as disagreable as the thought of further success for her continuing efforts at self-promotion is to me, still I have to wonder, aren't we on left really better off having her as the face of the Republican party?

This thought was sparked, in part, by an article by Bill Scher [h/t to digby], who's been blogging CPAC. Scher's main point is that, despite the mushy Common Wisdom about Democrats' problems with the religious community, they're nothing compared with Republican's problems with the secular.

Lots of ink has been spilled about how Democrats and liberals suffer from a "religion problem" -- a perceived hostility towards Christianity and religion in general. But Pew Research Center exit poll data from the 2006 midterm elections shows the opposite.

Democrats crushed Republicans among secular voters, broadly defined as those who attend church seldom (favoring Democrats 60% to 38%) or never (67% to 30%). Republicans retained strong support among those who attend church more than weekly. But among those who only go weekly -- the larger portion of the religious vote -- the Republican lead shrunk from 15 points to 7.

In short, Republicans failed to be competitive among secular voters, while Democrats were at least competitive among regular churchgoers. And since the secular vote is roughly equal to the regular churchgoing vote, according to the last several national election exit polls, that means Republicans and their conservative base have a far bigger secular problem than their rivals have a religion problem.

Republican depredations over the last few years (think Teri Schiavo) have finally managed to impinge on the consciousness of middle America.

I say, let's keep the ball rolling. I want MORE Ann Coulter, not less.

Instead of emailing CNN's advertisers to complain, write instead to demand more of her, the true face of the Republican party.

Let everyone you know that, however you disagree with her, you appreciate just how much her unabashed expression of the true conservative spirit, speaking, as she does, the truths so many GOPers keep hidden from the light of day.

Let's make Ann Coulter the postergirl for the Republican party.

And I know, it'll be difficult knowing that you're both making her even richer, while also making her Little Green Fetishists soil themselves with glee.

But think.

With any luck we'll get a few more years of hate from her before she falls into the event horizon of the black hole that is her soul.

And she can suck the GOP in along with her.

So along with all the other good works in which you are no doubt engaged, ask yourself, what can I do today to get Ann Coulter more airtime?

You'll be glad you did.

[Update: Congratulations to the folks at Daily Kos whose efforts have gotten several advertisers to drop their spots on AC's website. That's the spirit! Now she'll need to write another book and whore it on the Today Show. Remember, the more we see AC, the better for America!]

Power of the press

Rarely is the media's power to expose a need and pressure responsible parties to address that need more clearly evident than the Washington Post's recent investigative series examining the deplorable conditions faced by many wounded vets at Walter Reed's now infamous Building 18.

(Links to all related articles here.)

The Post's reports were widely circulated in other national media as well as by many in the blogosphere, including your CaliBlogger.

And while we've yet to see whether the declarations to remedy this deplorable situation will come to fruition, still sincere congratulations are due the Post, as well as lead reporters Anne Hull and Dana Priest who broke the story after a 4 month long investigation.

Truly, great work folks.

Bush Derangement Syndrome explained

The redoubtable Lance Mannion offers some parables explaining what is referred to sneeringly by the wingnutosphere as Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS), the idea that most opposition to BushCorp is rooted in an almost pathological (and to the right) irrational hatred for George W. Bush:

Say you know a guy who likes to kick his dog.

Every morning you see him out walking his dog and whenever the dog stops to sniff around the guy gives the poor mutt a swift kick in the ribs.

You tell your neighbors about him. One of the neighbors says, "Boy, you really don't like this guy, do you?"

"No, I don't," you say, "Who likes someone who's mean to his dog?"

Little time later you hear this guy who kicks his dog wants to open a kennel in the neighborhood. Board pets, groom them. Where he wants to put the kennel is zoned residential so he's asking the town board for a variance. You go to the town board meeting and stand up and say you don't think he should get the variance. It'd ruin the neighborhood, you say. Besides that, you add, this guy abuses animals.

Your neighbor, the one who observed how much you dislike the guy for kicking his dog, stands up and tells the town board not to pay any attention to what you say. Because you just dislike the guy.

The left opposes Bush because he's a dog-kicker, so to speak.

And, as Lance points out, as annoying as it is when the wingnutosphere blithely attributes the left's dislike of W to BDS, it's especially irresponsible when the MSM picks up on the meme as did Ruth Marcus in her recent WaPo column.

But more Lance:

I would just like to point out, as if it hasn't been pointed out a thousand times and won't need to be pointed out a thousand more, that the reason Liberals don't like George W. Bush's plans is that they are bad plans that he makes worse by managing them incompetently and corruptly---in fact, incompetence and corruption are usually built into them as selling points to Republicans.

And the reason we don't like him is that he has a long history of pushing bad plans that he makes worse by managing them incompetently and corruptly.

We don't like people who kick dogs.

We don't like corporate executives who abuse employees and hurt their own companies.

We don't like dishonest electricians who do substandard work.

We don't like incompetence and corruption.

And we don't like Presidents who start unnecessary wars and lose them, who let cities drown, who bankrupt the Treasury and give away the store to their rich pals and cronies, who write legislation specifically designed to undermine existing government services, make things worse for the poor and the middle class, and give away the store to their rich pals and cronies.

Too bad for us.

We're irrational on the subject.

This of course is anathema to members of the DC press elite like Marcus (her co-worker David Broder is notorious for this) because it violates their only article of faith: that the people they attend cocktail parties with should all just get along.

Regardless of who kicks dogs.

A silent surge

Non-binding resolutions condemning Bush's escalation of the war in Iraq would be nice if the US had a parliamentary government and could vote no confidence and hold presidential elections within the month.

But alas this happy revery is not to be.

And besides, unheralded in the press, the escalation surge is already a fait accompli.

William Arkin:

I've already written about the curious silence of most of the mainstream media when the first troopers of the 82nd Airborne Division arrived by helicopter from Kuwait more than 10 days ago landing at the gigantic American base at Taji, north of the capital, and then settling in at Forward Operating Bases Loyalty and Rustumiyah on the periphery of Sadr city, the Shi'a slums in northeast Baghdad.

Now SS writes me that the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina left for Iraq last Thursday. They arrived in Habbaniyah west of Baghdad for duty in Al Anbar province. Word is they may be moving elsewhere before the end of the month.

SS, who has a nephew in the battalion, comments that there was no real news coverage of either the unit's departure from North Carolina or their arrival in Iraq. There was only one tiny item in the Charlotte Observer and the local ABC affiliate aired a report on Monday.

The Defense Department has divulged that troops of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment and the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment are being extended in Anbar province for 60 to 90 days as part of the surge. The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, an additional augmented battalion with air support, is also being extended in Anbar for 45 days.

And ever so quietly, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit also left Lejeune in early January aboard ships to go to Iraq as part of the surge -- at least according to reports by the Associated Press and picked up hardly anywhere in the big media.

And so while the media focus on handicapping the 2008 horserace and dissecting the president's disingenuous State of the Union speech, more souls are being fed into the Iraqi meat-grinder.

Your CaliBlogger wonders whether the Washington press corp is any longer capable of reporting on anything that isn't accompanied by a national news conference.

Or a YouTube video.

Searching for Truth

One of the running jokes in my household is this: "but I read it on the internet, it must be true".

This, of course, represents the fact that information on the web is strictly a Caveat Emptor, "let the buyer beware", sort of enterprise. So much so that websites like Snopes devote serious energy to debunking the misinformation floating through the e-aether.

Among Mark Twain's many quotable quotes was one condemning "lies, damn lies and statistics". Were he writing today he might well add internet "facts" to the list.

(Except, of course, the original quote is from Benjamin Disraeli, whom Twain was himself quoting, though the misattribution is frequent).

And that's part of the problem, with the proliferation of access to a free online presence (like this one) basically anyone can post on the web. And while I generally agree that this access is a very good thing indeed, it can lead to problems with the use of online citations, and one's own level of credibility.

And I'm just talking now about the common misunderstanding so frequennt to the common wisdom. Needless to say, there also exist many sources of intentional misinformation and propaganda out there just waiting to ensnare the credulous masses. (For example check out this site for shameless propaganda).

And since credibility is absolutely key in the news biz, Google's news aggregator is a special target for refining the search engine's ability to gather news items from around the globe, but to be sure to feature news from the most credible sources:

Now Google is looking to develop technologies that factor in the amount of important coverage produced by a source, the amount of traffic it attracts, circulation statistics, staff size, breadth of coverage and number of global operations.

Since reporters for even the world's most prestigious news organizations can commit the most egregious errors (NYT's Judith Miller's breathless Iraq war jingoism leaps to mind as an example) I have my doubts about whether the algorithmic search for truth will be any more effective than the existential one.

Still, if it will help make my quote attributions correct (and by the way, the "lies, damn lies &c" quote mentioned above may not have been uttered by Disraeli) I'll be all the happier.

Now what's this about college co-eds in my area that want to meet me...?

Oh well, I guess the search for truth on the net continues.

On Today's Big Story

Today the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by media conglomerates to overturn an appellate ruling which slows the concentration of media outlets. (What did YOU think I was going to talk about?)

The high court let stand a lower court decision blocking the implementation of Federal Communications Commission regulations that would have allowed media companies to own more television and radio stations in the same market as well as permit newspaper and broadcast cross-ownership.

In fact the Scandal du Jour is one of the syptoms of the concentration of newspaper, radio and television outlets in fewer and fewer hands. A multiplicity of voices is vital for the press to be a truly effective instrument in the never-ending quest to expose that which the powers that be would wish to be concealed.

When the media ARE the powers that be where does that leave us?

I mean sure blogs are great (talk about multiple voices!) but with rare exceptions bloggers do not have the resources to do original reporting, and therefore must rely on the media for original source material.

32 million Americans read blogs, that leaves about 200 million Americans who get their information elswhere, newspapers, national mews, and (God help us) local news.

And it's especially at the local news level that media agglomeration is especially egregious.

Which is why any move which slows this trend is big news indeed.

Deep Throat Revealed

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Why I'm going to miss the New York Times Op-eds

Last week the Times announced that beginning in September it will start charging for online access to its editorial and op-ed columns. And although I sympathize with the paper's need to shore up revenues lost by its ever-shrinking dead-tree version, I believe that rather than charging for a here-to-fore free service, the Times would be better served by a better targeted advertising scheme. Be that as it may, I do not intend to pay to read someone else's opinions, no matter how well written.

Still, three op-eds from today's paper demonstrate why a subscription might be tempting.

By Bob Herbert, The Rumsfield Stain (and doesn't the title just say it all?) discusses the spectacular failures of Donald Rumsfeld's current stint as SecDef:

"In Iraq, more than 1,600 American troops have died and many thousands have been maimed in a war that Mr. Rumsfeld mishandled from the beginning and still has no idea how to win.
…
Potential recruits are staying away from the armed forces in droves… Parents from coast to coast are going out of their way to dissuade their children from joining the military.
…
The military spent decades rebuilding its reputation and regaining the respect of the vast majority of the American people after the debacle in Vietnam. Under Mr. Rumsfeld, that hard-won achievement is being reversed.
…
The insurgency in Iraq appeared to take Mr. Rumsfeld completely by surprise. He expected to win the war in a walk. Or, perhaps, a strut.

But Rummy's worst leadership failure is still just coming to light:

As if all this were not enough, there is also the grotesque and deeply shameful issue that will always be a part of Mr. Rumsfeld's legacy - the manner in which American troops have treated prisoners under their control in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. There is no longer any doubt that large numbers of troops responsible for guarding and interrogating detainees somehow loosed their moorings to humanity, and began behaving as sadists, perverts and criminals.

The catalog of confirmed atrocities is huge. Consider just one paragraph from a long and horrifying story on Friday by Tim Golden of The Times about the torture and brutal deaths of two Afghan inmates at the hands of U.S. troops:

"In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning."

These were among the milder abuses to come to light. The continuum of bad behavior that has been a hallmark of the so-called war on terror extends from this kind of activity to incidents of extreme torture and death.

His colleague having summed up the Rumsfeld legacy, economist Paul Krugman follows by deflating the wingnut lie that Americans want to see our social safety nets dismantled:

After November's election, the victors claimed a mandate to unravel the welfare state. But the national election was about who would best defend us from gay married terrorists. At the state level, where elections were fought on bread-and-butter issues, voters sent a message that they wanted a stronger, not weaker, social safety net.

I'm not just talking about the shift in partisan alignment, in which Democrats made modest gains in state legislatures, and achieved a few startling successes. I'm also talking about specific issues, like the lopsided votes in both Florida and Nevada for constitutional amendments raising the minimum wage.

Oh my god, Americans have just turned into a nation of whiners. Why, oh why, when the economy's so good (that's what BushCorp™ and the Wall Street Journal say anyway) are so many Americans so nervous?

There's a very good reason voters, when given a chance to make a clear choice, increasingly support a stronger, not a weaker, social safety net: they need that net more than ever. Over the past 25 years the lives of working Americans have become ever less secure. Jobs come without health insurance; 401(k)'s vanish; corporations default on their pension obligations; workers lose their jobs more often, and unemployment lasts much longer than it used to.

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed what the pollsters called an "angry electorate." By huge margins, voters think that politicians are paying too little attention to their concerns, especially health care, jobs and gas prices.

(For more on why Wall Street's flying high while your life still sucks see the Times editorial here. Its main point is that the economic factors Wall Street corporate "persons" like to see have little or no relationship to the financial requirements of actual flesh and blood humans, a point I make here)

Finally, like a sip or port after a fine meal, Bruce Wagner pens a marvelous epyllion to the vapidity of Los Angeles politics and politicians. And although I don't entirely agree with his conclusions, I none-the-less delight in the manner with which he unfolds them, to wit:

Jim Hahn and most Los Angeles mayors are like that ghostly caretaker in "The Shining." Whenever there's a new mayor, the old one says to him, just as the ghost caretaker said to Jack Nicholson in the lavatory: "You are the caretaker. You have always been the caretaker."

I read somewhere that Jim Hahn said he is planning on running again or doing something absolutely psychotic like that, but no one knows how he would even do that or why he would, and as I am writing this I am even forgetting who he is and I am trying to remember who Antonio Villaraigosa is - I keep giving him the name "Vargas" in my mind, like the illustrator who used to do those pin-up paintings for Playboy, Alberto Vargas - but now I am remembering that he's the new mayor, I either dreamed that or it's true, and all any of us can do is hope that he will do something terrible or scandalous or flat-out crazy so we may always remember who he is and not think we are seeing his picture in a group photo in "The Shining" or starting to read about him in a newspaper that no longer exists and is crumbling in our hands before we can even finish.

Man I'm gonna miss this stuff.

[x-posted at Daily Kos]

Nevermind

It's now being reported that the Newsweek report of Koran flushing, which report has sparked riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan resulting in 15 deaths, may be mistaken:

Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Daniel Klaidman said the magazine believes it erred in reporting the allegation that a prison guard tried to flush the Koran down a toilet and that military investigators had confirmed the accusation.

Oops.

A couple of thoughts.

First I note that the mistake newsweek cops to is not that the allegations were false, but that they hadn't been confirmed by the military. While damning, the mistake would be more damning still if the US military was a bit more credible in investigating itself. The recent Abu Ghraib whitewash doesn't give much reason for confidence.

Second, as a blogger I'd be remiss if I failed to note, especially in light of the recent spate of "blogger ethics" hand-wrining by the SCLM, as far as I'm aware, no case of bloggerly mis-reporting has resulted in anyone's death.

Another (not) news item

Encouraged by their own efforts to dispute the newsworthiness of such things as suicide bombings, GOPers are now seeking to add another item to the "not news" column.

From the AP:

Some news outlets in northeastern Pennsylvania have declined to report on an encounter between a married GOP congressman and a 29-year-old woman, with one managing editor telling readers he didn't think the matter was "my business. Or yours."

"Where is the connection between the politician's private moral life and his public performance?" Lawrence K. Beaupre, the managing editor of The Scranton Times and The Tribune, explained in a letter to readers Sunday.

Of course some might say that an extra-marital affair between a leader of the "family-values" party and a much younger woman might be a tad bit newsworthy. But no, it must be a result of that dadgum elite liberal media bias. I mean there's NO WAY the SCLM (so called liberal media) would plaster a Democratic politician's extra-marital affair all over the front pages, right?

Of course the story had just a bit more going for it than just an affair involving a married GOPer pol:

After obtaining a tip and a police report, the Times Leader newspaper of Wilkes-Barre reported that police had been dispatched to 64-year-old Rep. Don Sherwood (news, bio, voting record)'s Washington home last September after a woman dialed 911 from his bathroom.

The woman told police Sherwood had been giving her a back rub and abruptly began choking her. Sherwood denied assaulting the woman.

Assault? Erotic asphyxiation? Who knows?

News? According to GOPer publisher, apparently not.

One wonders where the Republican effort to de-newsify information that's awkward for them will lead us. Perhaps the failure of White House officials to notify the president that the Capitol might be under attack is an honest indicator of what GOPers perceive to be newsworthy.

We now return you to our coverage of the Michael Jackson trial.