June 2007 Archives

• Supreme Court reverses itself on Gitmo case. Why do I have a creepy feeling they're going to rule for the Bushies this time?

• No Satisfaction this Year. This year the Rolling Stones will not be performing in...Israel. Insurance costs are sky-high. I guess this means they won't be performing for the troops in Iraq either?

• Lots of first impressions of the iPhone by new owners. Here's one from TechMeme. Here's a fetishistic photo spread on the actual unboxing of a new iPhone. Here's Xeni's report (calling it the Jesusphone). Here's a guy who tears the iPhone down -- literally.

• Fred Thompson in New Hampshire: Republicans say his speech there was underwhelming. I'd say "where's the beef," but that would be so 80s. Or so Walter Mondale.

• Woz spotted in line for an iPhone. When the crowd recognized him, they stepped aside and put him at the front of the line. Awwwww.

• Prince is releasing his new CD ... in Sunday's edition of London's Daily Mail. The recording industry is pissed. I'm trying to imagine who's still reading a newspaper on any day of the week. Answer: nobody in Prince's audience.

• When I saw that that iPhones are turning up on eBay, I remembered one important fact: "i" before "e" except after "c" (for "cash").

• ...and finally, after watching the one laugh-out-loud moment of Thursday's Dem debate, I wondered: is Barack Obama a dutiful husband, homophobic, or just seeing Joe Biden on the down-low? You decide...and don't miss Al Sharpton's scowl -- it'll melt the hair off your arms:

"If Rupert Murdoch were the angel Gabriel, you still wouldn't want him to own the sun, the moon and the stars. That's too much prime real estate for even the pure of heart."

When it comes time to talk straight about the "the cascading series of mergers, buyouts and other financial legerdemain that are making a shipwreck of journalism," there isn't a better commentator to turn to than Bill Moyers.

And if there is anyone who personifies this corrosive effect, it's Rupert Murdoch.

So on Friday evening's Bill Moyers' Journal, Moyers takes Murdoch, the man who "hires lobbyists the way Imelda Marcos bought shoes and stacks them in his cavernous closet along with his conscience," to the woodshed.

I did know about the debate before it happened -- but only remembered that fact after the evening was over...

...which is another way of saying that we did not watch it. What did I miss?

We opted to watch This Filthy World, the frequently hilarious, delightfully appalling, never boring (but not for everybody) film of Waters' one-man show. A must-see if you are a fan of two or more of the following movies: Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, Pecker, Serial Mom, et. al.

Back on the Dem debate...

I was particularly annoyed to hear that Tavis Smiley will be smooching Frank Luntz' butt and getting his "survey results" from the debate. How completely lame can you get? Will Smiley be getting Mark Penn's analysis of the next Republican debate? Not bloody likely -- Smiley loooooooves him some Frank Luntz.

by shep

"… there’s nothing in my personal views based on faith or other sources that would prevent me from applying the precedents of the Court faithfully under principles of stare decisis."

--Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.

"In this and other ways, The Chief Justice rewrites the history of one of this Court's most important decisions....

The Court has changed significantly since it decided School Comm. of Boston in 1968. It was then more faithful to Brown and more respectful of our precedent than it is today. It is my firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today's decision."

--Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens

(cross posted at Daily Kos)

You heard me right. There is no correlation between being smarter than your opponent and actually, you know, winning the election. It is emotions -- not intellect -- that play a crucial role in shaping our values and beliefs.

If you've worked in sales and/or marketing you "get it." And if you sneer at people who do, you're going to lose elections. It's a paradox, I'll admit: intellectually (as backed up by science) we know now that if a message is purely rational, it isn't going to be successful in changing the way people vote. If anything, emotions veto rationality.

Listen to Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation:

A dispassionate mind that makes decisions by weighing the evidence and reasoning to the most valid conclusions bears no relation to how the mind and brain actually work.

If you saw Hardball the other night you know what I'm talking about. Chris Matthews had on Ann Coulter. Elizabeth Edwards called in and asked (very politely) that Coulter stop with the insults and trash talk already. It was excruciating. It was like watching a responsible adult having a conversation with a bag of worms. The most revealing moment? When someone in the audience (a shill?) shouted, "Why isn't John Edwards making this call?"

Bingo -- point made: Edwards is a sissy hiding behind his wife's skirt. Fair? Of course not. Effective? Unfortunately, very much so.

Here's another example. Remember this moment from the 2000 campaign?

George W. Bush berated Al Gore during the 2000 presidential debates for alleged funny business in his fund-raising...

Bush said, “You know, going to a Buddhist temple and then claiming it wasn’t a fund-raiser isn’t my view of responsibility.”

It was a direct attack on the honor of a fellow Southerner, and Gore wasn’t taking it. “You have attacked my honor and integrity,” the vice president shot back. “I think it’s time to teach you a few old-fashioned lessons about character. When I enlisted to fight in the Vietnam War, you were talkin’ real tough about Vietnam. But when you got the call, you called your daddy and begged him to pull some strings so you wouldn’t have to go to war. So instead of defending your country with honor, you put some poor Texas millworker’s kid on the front line in your place to get shot at. Where I come from, we call that a coward...”

You don't remember it because Gore never -- unfortunately -- actually said it.

I guess the good news is that Westen has been approached by several unnamed Dem candidates this time around. Honestly, though, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with any Dem who could swing their stick in the way Westen suggests...

...on abortion, for example:

“My opponent puts the rights of rapists above the rights of their victims, guaranteeing every rapist the right to choose the mother of his child. . . My opponent believes that if a 16-year-old girl is molested by her father and becomes pregnant, she should be forced by the government to have his child, and if she doesn’t want to she should be forced by the government to go to the man who raped her and ask for his consent.”

...or gun control:

“My opponent thinks you shouldn’t have to show a photo ID or get a background check to buy a handgun. He thinks anyone who wants an AK-47 should be able to buy one, no questions asked. What’s the point of fighting terrorists abroad if we’re going to arm them over here?”

Quick -- which Dem candidate(s) can talk like this? Now think about which Republican candidate(s) can do it. I'll bet you there are more Republicans on your list than Democrats.

Yes, yes -- I know what you're thinking: this is the difference between Democrats and Republicans. We have a conscience, they don't; we are intellectually more able to find, and explain, the subtle nuances in the issues, they cannot; we're tolerent, they're not; blah blah blah. This is all very true, but it's not relevant, nor even remotely helpful.

Fact is, neuroscientific research (using brain-imaging devices) confirms what we already know (and feel!): that when voters evaluate candidates in a campaign context, it is the "emotion circuits" (not the rational frontal lobes) that are responding most intensely.

Can people rise above that? Perhaps. Can the right candidate make that happen? Not sure. Do we have any proof that it has ever happened before? Sadly, no. In fact, if history has shown us anything it is that all the winning presidential candidates from the last 70 years had an instinctive grasp of Westen's thesis -- especially as compared to their opponents.

This should not be discouraging news. We've got candidates who can do this. But we cannot be complacent or whine about "lowering our standards." We canNOT afford to ignore this advice. Because if we do, we may be watching President-elect Fred Thompson being sworn in on January 20, 2009.

Miss Julie and I drove to Memphis last week and took some time off. Here are some of the pictures I took.

Roll your mouse over the bottom edge of the picture frame to get the controls. Click on the icon to view the captions.

P.S. If you don't have the latest version of Flash, this might not work. If that is the case, click below to see the scrapbook posted at Picasa:

Memphis

I don't fly as much as some, but I fly a lot more than most. And I can tell you that the last couple of months have been hell at airports all over the country.

And it's not just me...the WSJ had a piece on it this morning ("Summer Flying Turns Ugly"):

The number of flights canceled in the first 15 days of June was up a whopping 91% compared with the same period last year, and the number of flights that were excessively late -- more than 45 minutes -- jumped 61%, according to the FlightStats.com...

"I fly a lot, and I've never seen it this bad this systematically. It's like the Italian train system," said Nick Abbott, a vice president at [yadda yadda yadda]...

Do we need another Mussolini to make the trains run on time? After my last two trips, I'm seriously considering it.

I flew to Seattle in late May and then Washington DC in early June and both times the experience was FUBAR -- flights delayed, flights cancelled, missed connections, sitting on the tarmac for hours at a time, etc. It was gruesome, I tell you, gruesome!

Here are some words to the wise if you are booking air travel this summer:

• Fly early in the day
  It's the same as seeing your doctor: get that first slot in the in the morning because delays build all day. By late afternoon who knows how late you'll be? Which leads to the next tip...

• Don't book tight connections
  You can easily get from one end to the other of any major airport in the US in under 60 minutes -- if your inbound flight is on time (see above). But if your inbound flight is late, you are going to be stranded. And the airline will not (repeat NOT) bend over backwards to put you on the next available flight to your destination. Put your airline company on speed-dial and be prepared to call them to re-book asap if you think you will miss your connection.

  And that fantasy you had about getting a free hotel room? Bwahahahahahaha! Wake up, it's time for school.

  Bottom line: don't book a layover of less than two hours.

• Carry on food and water
  This has always been a good idea. After all, who wants to eat overpriced, high-sugar, high-sodium airport/airplane food? After you eat it, the last thing you want to do is sit on a plane, if you catch my drift (no pun intended).

  Nowadays, if you take an empty water bottle through security they're OK with that and you can fill it from the drinking fountain near your gate. And I always pack (or buy) a couple of bananas because they are the perfect snack.

  But the real reason to pack food and water? You just never really know how long you'll be sitting on the tarmac.

• Bonus Tip
  Guys, an airsickness bag can come in handy once the airplane bathrooms shut down from overuse after several hours on the ground. (Don't ask me how I know this.)

Bon voyage!

by shep

It has always struck me as odd when libertarians express their hostility toward Democrats for their approach to regulatory government. Beside the obvious fact that it has consistently proved essential for the health and safety of individual Americans and the reliable functioning of markets, what would so aggravate liberty rights advocates about regulation of industry? It took me a while to realize – H/T to Trey and Matt – that they have been completely indoctrinated with belief in “corporate personhood.”

Yesterday’s Supreme Court action points up the inevitable conflict libertarians face if they continue to fail to recognize the inherent differences and conflict between the constitutional rights of individual persons and the supposed rights of corporations. These rights were conflated in the late 19th century by corporate lawyers and judges representing railroad interests but have no basis in the US Constitution. Simply put, corporations aren’t “persons,” in whom all constitutional rights are vested.

For liberals, nothing could be more obvious than the intrinsic conflict between the rights of the individual and the rights of corporate entities. Mainly, this comes in the form of the complete indifference of the corporation to the rights of the individual – ironically, the opposite of the libertarian – and the circumstantial conflicts that occur when amoral corporations seek to use people to make things and sell them to other people, irrespective of the benefit of the making or the selling to people.

Liberal Democrats understand that not only is corporate power the real threat to individual rights, the critical political and public policy issues essentially revolve around the question of whether government winds up being an instrument of industry, often working against the interests of the individual, or a bulwark against the abuse of the rights of individuals by industry.

So now libertarians know. Republicans are finally making it clear what they successfully obscured with their silly “free-market” ideology and rhetoric these many years. They don’t give a rat’s ass about the constitutionally guaranteed liberty rights of individuals, relative to the corporate-created liberty rights of industry.

I wonder if libertarians will finally see how they’ve been fooled and used in time to stop this Republican-led, anti-individual-rights cultural revolution before it’s too late. If they do, there’s a political party that already shares their conviction about individual liberty rights.

by shep

Shorter John Roberts: Free speech for them but not for thee.

To Senate Democrats: I say again, never trust another Federalist, Republican Supreme Court nominee. They have no principles, no sense of the Constitution, no sense of shame and will lie to your face to get power because that is what they value above all else.

"Where the First Amendment (of the Constitution) is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor." --Chief Justice John Roberts

Unless the speaker has no corporate counsel.

Woo hoo! Hillary's in the lead!

By Mark Adams

The first time I heard this idea was driving around town, listening to the Randi Rhodes show. A caller suggested that we defund the Office of Vice President, throw the old man out of the Naval Observatory and shut down his bullying ways.

It gave me a smile, one of those bits of schadenfreude that you get thinking about something deliciously too good to ever happen in real life.

Then real life called, and Congressman Rahm Emanuel sent this little idea out to people like ... Atrios:

Washington, D.C. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel
issued the following statement regarding his amendment to cut funding
for the Office of the Vice President from the bill that funds the
executive branch. The legislation -- the Financial Services and General
Government Appropriations bill -- will be considered on the floor of
the House of Representatives next week.

"The Vice President has a choice to make. If he believes his legal
case, his office has no business being funded as part of the executive
branch. However, if he demands executive branch funding he cannot
ignore executive branch rules. At the very least, the Vice President
should be consistent. This amendment will ensure that the Vice
President's funding is consistent with his legal arguments. I have
worked closely with my colleagues on this amendment and will continue
to pursue this measure in the coming days."

(H.T.: Nick)

There's More ...

From Scholars & Rogues:

So let’s say you’re Rudy Giuliani–darling of the media for turning New York City into Disney World, fawned over as the Saint of 9/11 and a “national security authority” simply for being mayor of a city that was hit by a terrorist attack, and considered socially liberal enough to sap the Democratic advantage even though your political positions put you to the right of George freakin’ Bush.

What are the three worst things that could happen to sabotage your seemingly anointed ascension to the GOP nomination?

1. Word could get out that your campaign director in South Carolina was federally indicted for selling cocaine. No, that’s not a typo–this isn’t some garden-variety GOP fraud like robocalls or bribery. Ravenel apparently was selling the crack rock.
2. It could then be publicized that you got kicked out of the high-profile Iraq Study Group for failing to show up to meetings–and that said failures had to do with the ISG meetings conflicting with your high-priced speaking engagements.
3. Your successor, Mike Bloomberg, a self-described “Short liberal Jewish billionaire,” could switch his party affiliation from GOP to “independent,” fueling talk of a third-party run or even a switch back to the Dems, thus turning any presidential contest between you and him into a “Subway series”–and a referendum on how things REALLY went in New York when you were in charge.

And wait til they get a load of Judy Nathan and how she describes what it was like dating Rudy...while he was still married to Donna Hanover, his second wife.

Hillary hit it out of the park with the Sopranos spoof.

But Barack Obama Official Campaign Ringtones??

(HT to Rachel Sklar)

In 2004, the Office of the Vice President blocked inspectors from the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) of the National Archives from conducting an on-site inspection of the VP's White House office. This, despite Executive Order 12958 requiring the ISOO to do it. This order was issued by the Chief Executive, the President of the United States.

According to Henry Waxman, Cheney "asserted that the Office of the Vice President is not an 'entity within the executive branch' and hence is not subject to presidential executive orders."

Bwahahahahaha! My gosh. Hahahahaha! Ahem.

See here's the thing: Cheney is just screwing with us now. He's talking smack. He's just blowing smoke out of his butt because he knows no one is going to stop him.

No. One.

Waxman:

In January 2007, the Information Security Oversight Office took the appropriate step under the executive order and asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resolve whether the President’s order applies to your office. According to the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office, you responded to this request by recommending that the executive order be amended to abolish the Information Security Oversight Office.

Is it possible to shocked but not surprised? That's how I feel.

Bottom line: Cheney is just daring someone to stop him. And, so far, no one has.

So, based on past precedent, there is only one thing left for the US to do: Invasion!

(HT to Irfo)

Posting light. Will try to get you some pictures of Graceland and Beale Street. TTFN.

Laughter isn't the best medicine. It's the only medicine.

Get Well Soon.
June 29th.

My money and Miss Julie's (and Bill's!) was on Smashmouth's I'm A Believer. Has there ever been a bad version of that song?

I'll save you the suspense: she picked You And I by Celine Dion, which (oddly enough) was originally written for an Air Canada commercial. Before it made it to air, Celine Dion recorded it. Then it went on TV. And now it's a part of Hillary's campaign.

P.S. And, yes, that really is Johnny Sack at the counter.

Austin Fenner:

Disgraced ex-NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik can't stop crying over his fizzled friendship with former BFF Rudy Giuliani.

"I accept the distance created by Giuliani. I understand it, but inside, it's killing me," Kerik said.

"It's like dying a slow death, watching him have to answer for my mistakes," the former top cop said of the ex-New York mayor-turned-presidential-candidate.

Oh, please. "Watching him answer for my mistakes?" What a crock. Rudy Giuliani was his enabler AND his beneficiary. After all, it was Kerik who got the richly deserved nickname of "Caligula's Horse,"

[named for the animal that] was attended to by eighteen servants, was fed oats mixed with gold flake and had a stable of marble, with an ivory manger, purple blankets and a collar of precious stones. Caligula planned to make the horse, named Incitatus, a Consul...It has also been said Caligula claimed his horse to be a 'combination of all the gods' and to be worshipped as such.

Bernie Kerik's corruption (and Giuliani's) was so monumental it stood out even in New York City.

When it was time to name the first head of the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. 9/11 lobbied hard for his former driver, bodyguard, and toady police chief to get the job. In hindsight, the situation was so ripe with rotteness that its surprising that anyone took the nomination seriously.

And, of course, now that Kerik is disgraced, Rudy can't run away fast enough; but apparently he left one last order for his pet crony: that Kerik should absolve Rudy of all the insanity and corruption that was the hallmark of his adminstration.

The following video was produced in 2005 by two Japanese comedians, Jin Katagiri and Kentaro Kobayashi.

Trevor Corson:

Japanese viewers recognize this [video] as satire. But some have worried, in their comments on the Internet, that Westerners might take the video seriously. After all, Westerners are even less familiar with sushi-bar etiquette than the Japanese.

Andrea Dickson:

Give the video a watch, but just note that the fact that they are eating the sushi with their hands is not meant to be a part of the joke. You're actually SUPPOSED to go in, sit at the bar, and eat with your fingers. I'm not saying you won't get some weird looks - I'm just saying that that's what the experts do.

• Karl Rove has been among a small group of Bushies visiting Presidential libraries in preparation for planning the one for his boss. When I bumped into Rove last week, the flight we were both on was going to Atlanta, which (coincidentally?) is the location for the Carter Library.

• Jane Hamsher asks the musical question, "Who Is The Scariest GOP Presidential Candidate?" Rudy's nuts so he's plenty scary. But Romney is scary because he is willing to say just about anything to get elected. [P.S. Is it just me or is Mitt Romney filling a hole left by George Allen, i.e., tall-dark-and-handsome?]

• Sen. Barack Obama's Secret Service codename is "Renegade." Hillary's is "Evergreen," left over from the Clinton White House years. The other candidates will have to wait and see if they get their own handles. This article details the codenames for past and present POTUS' and candidates for POTUS. Here's an interesting bit of trivia:

  [A]ccording to a Secret Service spokesman, all code names are chosen by military officials, suggesting that they should not be examined too closely for deeper meaning.

• NBC seems interested in Jon Stewart. Stewart's contract with Comedy Central is up in 2008.

You're not going to believe this next one...

As you know, I was in Washington DC this week.

So Thursday, late afternoon, I get to the airport and I make it to the gate with plenty of time to spare. I'm feeling pretty good about that, all told. And how about that -- the flight is on time. So I'm kicking back, sitting there reading the Wall Street Journal, with one eye cocked on the gate listening for any changes in the schedule. You know, you have to be careful -- sometimes they'll change the departure gate on you with no warning.

Anyway, a few minutes before they start to board I get up and move toward the doorway when I see this guy standing there with his carry-on luggage. He's wearing a blue sport coat over a plaid button-down shirt and tan slacks. He's a middle-aged guy, balding, with frizzy gray hair on top of his dome-like skull. He's wearing wire-rim glasses.

Holy crap! It's Karl Rove.

Moving carefully, I take a few steps forward. I take his picture.

Then he walks up to one of the gate agents and, smiling, says something while motioning with his hands. The two of them look at each other for a moment and then the gate agent lets him board first, before everyone else. After he disappears down the jetway, I turn to the guy next to me and say, "Is it me, or did that guy look just like Karl Rove?" The guy answers, "That was Rove, all right."

Hunh. Karl Rove. On my flight! What are the odds?

So I'm thinking, "OK, he'll be seated in first class, so get your cellphone ready. When you walk onto the plane, pretend like you're checking your email and snap his photo."

I wait while they board the other zones. Then as they call my zone, I get my camera ready. I walk down the jetway and onto the plane. I'm in first class. No Rove. Dang!

Then I pass into coach and there he is, in 19B (a middle seat), five rows in front of where I'll be sitting. Karl Rove in coach? By himself? Hunh. I stop in the aisle in front of him.

The guy behind him is leaning over the seat talking to him. I don't hear what he's saying exactly, but he's really chatting him up in a fawning way. I've got about five seconds to decide what I'm going to do.

Now, another man might have called him a douchebag, another one might simply have gotten angry and yet another one might have walked right on by, saying nothing. And of course there's always the possibility that "Rove" is some sort of pathetic celebrity impersonator. Although -- my G-d! -- who would want a career impersonating Karl freaking Rove? I'm also thinking I don't want to miss the moment and/but I definitely don't want to be detained by security and taken off the plane.

Rove looks at me. I look back. "Holy crap!" I say. "It's MC Rove." He tilts his head back and laughs. "Oh, gosh, no," he says, all modest.

"Can I have your autograph?" I hand him my boarding pass but instead of taking it, he reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out his billfold. "Here's a pen," says The Goofball behind him. Without glancing back, Rove takes out a business card (and his own pen). He signs the card. He hands it to me.

(Click image to see a larger version. Note: the card wasn't one of those crappy ones printed with thermographic ink -- it was embossed.)

The Goofball rattles on. "Would you sign an autograph for me, Mr. Rove? It would mean so much to my wife..." He's a douchebag.

Now, like I said, another man might have unpacked a short rant. Me? I took out my cellphone and snapped his picture because, after all, you never know: maybe a photograph really does steal a man's soul.

I've been in Washington DC for the past couple of days, so posting has been light. The pic below is from the World War II Memorial which is in between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Note how the eagles face is turned to the right (toward the arrows) instead of the left, as it is today (toward the olive branch). When Harry Truman mentioned to Winston Churchill that he had ordered the change as a reflection of the post-war, peacetime aims of the US government (Dept. of War then becoming the Dept. of Defense, etc) Churchil said, "You should put it on a swivel." Heh.

Couple of other thoughts about DC:

• Schools out and the town is flooded with families with kids. Young people everywhere you look; it makes me feel somewhat optimistic about the future. "Yes," said my 19-year old son, "until you hit the House and Senate office buildings and meet the staffers; you realize then that they're running the country and you're quickly brought back to reality."

• Speaking of reality, I strolled down to the Capitol building and discovered that the western entrance is being guarded by Capitol police armed with rifles. Big rifles. Very big rifles. Haven't seen that before.

• If you plan on driving in or around the DC area, bring maps and have someone navigating -- carefully. The freeways here are among the most poorly marked I've seen in the US. And I've driven all over the country.

• Most architecturally interesting museum building in DC: The National Museum of the American Indian.

  

• Have any of you flown recently? Are you finding what I'm finding -- that the odds of being stranded in a stopover airport are alarmingly high? I don't like to have a layover of less that 90-120 minutes because the in-bound flights are almost always late. This means you stand a pretty good chance of missing your connecting flight. I hate when that happens.

Anyhow, I just read back over this post and realized it sounds like I'm griping. Sorry about that.

See you soon.

FactCheck.org:

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has said that the major tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 have "increased revenues." He also said that tax cuts in general increase revenues.

That’s highly misleading.

In fact, the last half-dozen years have shown us that we can't have both lower taxes and fatter government coffers. The Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers and a former Bush administration economist all say that tax cuts lead to revenues that are lower than they otherwise would have been – even if they spur some economic growth...

Capital gains tax receipts did increase greatly from 2003 to 2006, but the CBO estimates that they will level off and decrease in the next few years. The growth overwhelmingly resulted from a sharp rise in corporate tax receipts, the cause of which is a topic of debate.

Read the rest.

I thought the episode was brilliant.

We got to see Janice, Bobby, Sil, Uncle June, Phil, Paulie, etc. one more time. And while we didn't exactly get closure on any of them (after all closure is rare -- life goes on and on and on) it was touching.

Funniest moment for me: When Meadow says, "The state can crush the little guy," and Tony answers "New Jersey?"

And Sil's hair? Perfect -- even as he lies in a coma, on death's doorstep, his gorgeous pompadour is flawless. And that Mussolini-like smirk! He'll probably have that on his face, in his coffin, as they lower him into the grave.

Anyone notice that Junior didn't have his dentures in for that last meeting with Tony?

P.S. And, yes, I admit it -- I (like many others) was fooled by the jump-cut to black at the end, lunging for the TiVo remote to make sure it hadn't stopped recording early.

Great show. we'll miss it.

UPDATE: The other hilarious moment was when we realized Paulie's cellphone ringtone was Simon & Garfunkel's "Cecilia."

James Wolcott nails it:

It's understandable that the camera-preening flaunting of wealth, youth, arrogance, and privilege on an endless red carpet strut through the supermarket tabloids and the E! network would produce a tangy taste of payback when a Paris Hilton gets tossed in the clink or a Lindsay Lohan is photographed puking and looking unstrung, but there are bigger, better objects for our derision, worthier causes to flex our jaw muscles about in chewy indignation.

As if to illustrate his point, we read yesterday that the same photographer who captured the now-ubiquitous image of Paris Crying (above) also captured another iconic image of a young woman crying, nearly exactly 35 years ago yesterday (below):

Read more about Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut.

by shep

Joe Klein asks:

"A reasonable reader might ask, Why are the left-wing bloggers attacking you? Aren't you pretty tough on the Bush Administration? Didn't you write a few months ago that George W. Bush would be remembered as one of the worst Presidents in history? And why on earth does any of this matter?”

Worse yet, he seems quite earnest in his confusion.

Joe, let me explain: your problem is the same as most beltway insiders, you see everything in terms of politics. I mean everything. No substance. No ethical or moral principle. Just plain political calculation.

Your world – and by that I mean your career and colleagues and the politicians and politics you cover – is all about the competition to win and succeed. Pretty soon, there’s just no room left to analyze the real substance and truth of things.

Liberals don’t give a rat’s ass whether you are sufficiently and reliably partisan. We just don’t think that way. That’s for politicians, media elites (elites of most stripes, really), conservatives and kids in middle school.

No matter how many times you say Bush sucks, the next time you write something false, lazy, stupid or biased, you’re going to get called on it. It matters to us because it is wrong. Hellooooo.

We aren't offended by bad politics, we are offended by bad conduct. That includes arrogant statements by “liberal” columnists that it must be simplistic, extreme apostasy that we should de-fund a disastrous, illegal and immoral occupation in the Middle East. Maybe it’s a really bad idea (Hint: No. One. Really. Knows) but right now the official policy options fall somewhere between a 50-year occupation littered with dead American soldiers and innocent Iraqis or nuking Iran. Tell us again what’s simplistic or extreme.

Sorry if you are offended by the “tone.”

BTW, I liked your takedown of Dick Armey’s libertarian dogma.

H/T: Digby

Excellent, outstanding piece by Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, on America's future ... after Bush has left office:

At the end of the day, openness is America's greatest strength. Many people on both sides of the political aisle have ideas that they believe will keep America strong in this new world—fences, tariffs, subsidies, investments. But America has succeeded not because of the ingenuity of its government programs. It has thrived because it has kept itself open to the world—to goods and services, ideas and inventions, people and cultures. This openness has allowed us to respond fast and flexibly in new economic times, to manage change and diversity with remarkable ease, and to push forward the boundaries of freedom and autonomy.

[...]

We are not really in competition with Chinese and Indian workers making $5 a day. We want Americans to make things that they can't, move up the value chain and work on increasingly sophisticated products and services. We have an educational system that can help make this happen. Of the 20 best universities in the world, 18 are American. And the quality of American higher education extends far and deep, from community colleges to technical institutes.

Perhaps the most hopeful sign for the United States is that alone among industrial nations, we will not have a shortage of productive citizens in the decades ahead. Unlike Germany, Japan and even China, we should have more than enough workers to grow the economy and sustain the elderly population. This is largely thanks to immigration. If America has a core competitive advantage, it is this: every year we take in more immigrants than the rest of the world put together.

[...]

Above all, the United States has to find a way to send a powerful and consistent signal to the world that we understand the struggles that it is involved in—for security, peace and a better standard of living. As Barack Obama said in a speech in Chicago, "It's time to ... send a message to all those men and women beyond our shores who long for lives of dignity and security that says, 'You matter to us. Your future is our future'."

[...]

It is easy to look at America's place in the world right now and believe that we are in a downward spiral of decline. But this is a snapshot of a tough moment. If the country can keep its cool, admit to its mistakes, cherish and strengthen its successes, it will not only recover but return with renewed strength. There could not have been a worse time for America than the end of the Vietnam War, with helicopters lifting people off the roof of the Saigon embassy, the fallout of Watergate and, in the Soviet Union, a global adversary that took advantage of its weakness. And yet, just 15 years later, the United States was resurgent, the U.S.S.R. was in its death throes and the world was moving in a direction that was distinctly American in flavor. The United States has new challenges, new adversaries and new problems. But unlike so much of the world, it also has solutions—if only it has the courage and wisdom to implement them.

Forty years ago, George Romney ran for president. He was the governor of my state, Michigan, and was considered to be a moderate (translation: Rockefeller Republican). He was becoming increasingly anti-war. Back then, there wasn't much coverage of the fact that he was a Mormon, although polling was done on the question.

The Gallup Poll in April, 1967, asked, "If your party nominated a generally well qualified man for president and he happened to be a Mormon, would you vote for him?" 75 percent said yes, and 17 percent said no, while the rest either did not know or declined to answer.

That was then, this is now. Mitt Romney, his son, former governor of Massachusetts, is running for president. While he governed as a moderate, he is running as a hard-right conservative. And on the issue of his Mormonism, polling shows that things have, well, changed:

In March of this year, the CBS News/New York Times Poll asked: "Do you think most people would vote for a presidential candidate who is a Mormon, or not?" A majority of 54 percent said voters would not. FOX News in February posed the question, "Do you think the United States is ready to elect . . . a Mormon president or not?" A plurality of 48 percent said no while only 40 percent said yes.

And it's even worse than it sounds: an alarmingly high percentage of white Evangelicals -- the bedrock members of today's Republican base (Rockefeller now being a faded memory) said they would be "less likely" to vote for a Mormon.

Could it be because they don't consider Mormons to be Christians?

The Church of Latter Day Saints gives scriptural authority to the Book of Mormon, not a part of the standard Old or New Testament. Unlike most traditional Christian denominations, Mormons reject the Trinity and the belief that Jesus was the son of God. Finally, Mormons contend that God was once a man.

Is America Are white Evangelicals ready to elect vote for a non-Christian president? Or, more to the point, is America are white Evangelicals ready to elect a member of a religious cult to the Oval Office?

Sounds like Romney will have an uphill climb.

UPDATE: Speaking of Romney, Paul Krugman watched the Republican debate and has this to say:

In Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney completely misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq. Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan’s birthday. Guess which remark The Washington Post identified as the 'gaffe of the night'? Folks, this is serious. If early campaign reporting is any guide, the bad media habits that helped install the worst president ever in the White House haven’t changed a bit.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
--- Edmund Burke

No wonder stateless, and otherwise powerless antagonists use terror as a tactic: the leverage they gain is so enormous that it puts them on an equal footing with their enemies. And sometimes we help them unknowingly or otherwise...

Chris Matthews: I'll tell you one thing...I agree with what Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek this week which is that terrorism isn't explosions and death. Terrorism is when you change your society because of those explosions. And you become fearful to the point that you shut out immigration, you shut out student exchanges, you shut people out of buildings, you begin to act in an almost fascist manner because you're afraid of what might happen to you. That's when terrorism becomes real...and frighteningly successful. That's what I believe.

And that's where I question the way Giuliani has raised this issue. He raises it as a specter and in a weird way, he helps the bad guys.

UPDATE: Here's Fareed Zakaria from the Newsweek piece Matthews references:

More troubling than any of Bush's rhetoric is that of the Republicans who wish to succeed him. "They hate you!" says Rudy Giuliani in his new role as fearmonger in chief, relentlessly reminding audiences of all the nasty people out there. "They don't want you to be in this college!" he recently warned an audience at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. "Or you, or you, or you," he said, reportedly jabbing his finger at students. In the first Republican debate he warned, "We are facing an enemy that is planning all over this world, and it turns out planning inside our country, to come here and kill us." On the campaign trail, Giuliani plays a man exasperated by the inability of Americans to see the danger staring them in the face. "This is reality, ma'am," he told a startled woman at Oglethorpe. "You've got to clear your head."

[...]

We are repeating one of the central errors of the early cold war—putting together all our potential adversaries rather than dividing them. Mao and Stalin were both nasty. But they were nasties who disliked one another, a fact that could be exploited to the great benefit of the free world. To miss this is not strength. It's stupidity.

Congressional leaders are preparing to introduce legislation to restore habeas corpus rights, so recently banished from our justice system by Bush's Military Commissions Act.

Keith Olbermann: The right to bear arms, to believe your religion or to not believe any religion at all, to say what you want, these rights get people fired up, no matter what side of the debate they're on. Is not habeas corpus essential to all of them? You don't have that, it doesn't matter what the second amendment says?

Jonathan Turley: That's right.... all those rights are meaningless [without habeas corpus] because it's habeas corpus that allows you to get to a court who can hear your complaint. So without habeas corpus it's just basically words that have no meaning, and this president has shown the dangers of the assertion of absolute power. He has asserted the right to take an American citizen, declare them unilaterally an enemy combatant and deny them all rights. The courts have said otherwise and now Congress will say otherwise.

(HT to mcjoan)

by shep

It is now becoming clear that, without some dramatic progress on carbon sequestration or an even more dramatic and potentially dangerous act of desperation, the earth’s climate is headed toward a disastrous tipping point in our, or our children’s, lifetimes.

To recap:

Arguments against:
It gets hot every epoch or so
Scientists are sometimes wrong
We might get hit by an asteroid, so WTF
The commies hate my Hummer
The Sun is hot
Even if true, it probably wouldn’t kill everything and I could grow coconuts in Minnesota
Science is hard

Arguments for:
Spiking CO2
Measurable warming
Melting glaciers, ice sheets and frozen tundra
Increasing cycles of floods and droughts
Rising sea levels
Dying tropical reefs
Dying species and strange migrations of animals, plants and diseases.

So, what should be done? If the methane-spewing cow is out of the barn, why go out in the heat to close the barn door now?

Because, even if we learn how to capture and sequester carbon and filter the sun by blasting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, we still have good reasons to wean ourselves off our carbon fuel addiction:

1) We can. We started using fossil fuels for our energy needs in the century before last. It replaced whale oil. Considering how far our technology has come since then, to say that this is a cultural throwback is an understatement of epoch proportions. Even though the idea gives the CEO of Exxon Mobile the dry heaves, he and his ilk are the only ones who won’t profit mightily by developing new alternatives.

2) It makes us wage stupid, bloody wars. Need I say more here?

3) Since a great deal of our energy consumption goes to complete waste, the cost of doing something can be quite small. What does it cost to build our houses facing south to take advantage of solar gain? Who doesn’t want to be able to work from home when there’s no need to slog through traffic to the office? You actually save money by walking or riding a bike instead of driving.

4) It would be good for us in many other ways. Dismantling the factory farming system and Chinese food imports in favor of locally cultivated food might cost a little more money but at least you’ll be alive to regret it. And advanced nations that get out of the business of making things lose lower skill jobs and become beholden to other nations to lend them money to buy the stuff they make.

Or, let’s all take a fossil-fueled cruise down that river in Egypt. Let’s face it: our technology expanded faster than our wisdom. Natural systems seeks stasis; wiping mankind off the planet is Mother Nature’s way of restoring earth’s equilibrium.

(Cross posted to Daily Kos)

Most observers seemed to agree that sentencing guidelines would have allowed the judge to put Libby in jail for as little as 12-15 months, or less, citing damage done to his career, his long term service to the nation, yadda yadda yadda. So this comes as quite a shock to the long list of Libby's friends (Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, and James Carville to name but a few), who wrote to Judge Walton asking for leniency, citing what a great guy Libby was.

Mary Matalin's plea was particularly putrid:

My lifelong view, which has only been validated in adulthood, is that kids are the most honest and true evaluators of people. Watching my children with Scooter, and all children with him, you'd think he hung the moon. He is gentle and caring. He is genuinely interested in others well being and still inspires me to this day. He is a compelling teacher and extraordinary role model for integrity and humility.

How screwed up is Matalin's value system that she looks up to scum like Libby?

But wait, there's more:

I have seen what this trail has done to my own kids, just their reading about it. I cannot imagine the toll on Scooter and Harriet's young ones. Setting aside the pain of the Libby family, my girls just don't understand. They are old enough to intellectually comprehend the facts of the case but associating these "facts" with "Mr. Scooter" remains a complete disconnect to them.

What. An. Outrage.

What about the toll on Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson's young ones? I understand their kids are the around the same age as Matalin's and Libby's. Aren't they also "honest and true evaluators of people?"

What do you think they believe about the man who did this to their mother and father?

Mary Matalin (and James Carville!) might want to read their kids the words of President George H.W. Bush, someone that Matalin actually worked for once upon a time:

I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.

...unless, of course, your son George W. Bush, someday soon, pardons them. Then it's OK.

Judge Walton, today:

People who occupy these types of positions, where they have the welfare and security of nation in their hands, have a special obligation to not do anything that might create a problem

I give Walton of credit for being relatively mild in his remarks.

Libby will also be on probation for two years after coming out of prison. No word on whether he'll be immediately remanded to the country club federal prison or whether he can remain free on appeal.

As I've mentioned before, I've been using Google Reader to keep up with the blogs I read. They have a neat feature called "Trends" that tracks my reading habits. Accordingly, here are the blogs from whom I read the greatest number of posts (as of June 4, 2007):

1. The Huffington Post - Newswire
   
2. Think Progress
   
3. Boing Boing
   
4. Daily Kos
   
5. Crooks and Liars
   
6. AMERICAblog
   
7. Firedoglake
   
8. Slate Magazine
   
9. Eschaton
   
10. MyDD

Now, some blogs do not post anywhere near the volume that these blogs do. Accordingly, the following blogs are ranked by the percentage of their new posts that I've read:

1. Video On The Web
   
2. JoelComm.com
   
3. Online Auction Blog
   
4. Dispassionate Liberal
   
5. The Queen of All Evil
   
6. James Wolcott
   
7. John Chow dot Com
   
8. Blogging Tips
   
9. Digital Inspiration
   
10. -THE CUNNING REALIST-

Anyway, there you are: a different kind of blogroll -- one that actually presents some meaningful information...about me.

Walter Shapiro:

The question of how tough a Democratic presidential candidate needs to sound to get elected hovered over the debate, as it may over the coming primary races.

Edwards boldly defended his prior comment that the "war on terror" was little more than rhetoric: "This global war on terror bumper sticker -- political slogan ... was intended for ... George Bush to use it to justify everything he does: the ongoing war in Iraq, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, spying on Americans, torture."

That was too much for Clinton, who, as the first woman to wage a serious candidacy for president, must understand the political risks of seeming weak in any setting.

Responding to Edwards, she said flatly that she disagreed, before adding, "I am a senator from New York. I have lived with the aftermath of 9/11, and I have seen firsthand the terrible damage that can be inflicted on our country by a small band of terrorists who are intent upon foisting their way of life and using suicide bombers and suicidal people to carry out their agenda."

Of course they're both right. But Edwards' response focuses on his differences with Bush whereas Clinton's focuses (as Shapiro says) on her own strength and resolve.

The second most interesting moment was when Edwards and Obama sparred -- but not about Iraq. On that score I think Obama ate Edwards lunch, cooly reminding him that he [Edwards] was "4-1/2 years late on leadership."

No, I think their exchange on health care plans was more telling. Edwards' plan is mandatory (good) -- and Obama's is not (bad). Honestly, I hadn't thought about that until the debate. Of course neither plan is much good compared to Kucinich's -- the Ohio congressman has the best idea: Medicare for all. The only way you fix the system is to make it universal. Not only that -- you have to exclude the insurance companies completely from the equation. Health care should not be subject to profit and share price calculations. So anything shy of that is a cop-out -- and Edwards' plan (and Obama's) fall far short. That said, if either one gets elected, their plans will be subject to congressional influence (to say the least).

Bottom line? These are not really debates but rather candidate interviews. And based on last night, I'd hire Hillary Clinton for the job. Luckily for the other top-tier candidates there's time for them to improve their presentations.

I thought Fred Thompson's video rebuttal of Michael Moore was pretty skillful.

But I hadn't seen this video from Hillary Clinton.

Yes, yes -- totally different topic but isn't she great?

P.S. Don't forget to vote to choose Hillary's campaign theme song.

Matt Taibbi reports from the Giuliani campaign trail:

Rudy moves on. "How about you?" he says to the next boy.

"I want to be a policeman!" the kid says.

Rudy smiles. Then the next boy says he wants to be a fireman, and the crowd twitters: Wow, a fireman and a policeman, in the same room! Rudy is beaming now, almost certainly aware that every grown-up present is suddenly thinking about 9/11. His day. As he leans over, the room is filled with popping flashbulbs. Then, instead of capitalizing on the sense of pride and shared purpose everyone is feeling, Giuliani utters something truly strange and twisted.

"A fireman and a policeman, huh?" he says. "Well, the first thing that I want to do is make sure that you two get along."

Huh? Amid confused applause, Rudy flashes a queer smile, then moves on to the heart of his presentation, a neat little speech about how the election of a Democratic president will result in certain nuclear attack and the end of the free market as we know it. I'm barely listening, however, still thinking about the "make sure you get along" line.

Although few people outside of New York know it yet, there is an emerging controversy over Giuliani's heroic 9/11 legacy. Critics charge that Rudy's failure to resolve the feuding between the city's police and firefighters prior to the attack led to untold numbers of deaths, the most tragic example being the inability of firemen to hear warnings from police helicopters about the impending collapse of the South Tower. The 9/11 Commission concluded that the two departments had been "designed to work independently, not together," and that greater coordination would have spared many lives.

Given all that, why did Rudy offer this weirdly unsolicited reference to the controversy now? Was he joking? And if so, what the fuck? It was a strange and bitter comment to make, especially right on the heels of his grand-slam performance in the previous night's debate. If this is a guy who chews over a perceived slight in the middle of a victory lap, what's he going to be like with his finger on the button? Even Richard Nixon wasn't wound that tight.

Giuliani's strongest asset is his connection to 9/11. Without that he is not a lot more effective than, say, Tommy Thompson. That is to say just another moderate Republican who was once a municipal executive. Without 9/11, the real battle for the nomination would be between Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. But of course 9/11 will not fade, not completely, and Rudy will make it his trump card -- unless someone can create a template for him that includes the shocking lameness of his performance leading up to, and through 9/11.

Fact is, 9/11 happened on Giuliani's watch and decisions he made (and did not make) led to the needless loss of dozens, if not hundreds of lives.

It's been 43 years since the city of Cleveland won a major championship in pro sports (the Cleveland Browns in '64) but they have another chance as they Cavs dismissed -- and dissed -- the Detroit Pistons to advance to the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs.

Mark, enjoy the next few days -- you deserve it. The better team won.

P.S. I'll tell you what: It was that pop bottle. It really was an omen.

Rasheed Wallace Throws His Jersey & Hits Someone ... on his own team.

William Blalock, a Pistons rookie, said the jersey felt like it weighed about 40 pounds...from the sweat.

Scandinavia was (is) buzzing about Bush's bulge. Meanwhile Mark Adams scored another post on the list with his call to pummel the president with bill after bill calling for an exit timetable. And for some reason, people suddenly wanted to know about the CAT scan I got 2 years ago when I had a sinus attack. Go figure.

1. Bush Bulge: Is POTUS hiding a serious heart condition from the public? (10/04)
   
2. Holy Crap! Have You Seen Kucinich's Wife?! (3/07)
   
3. Top Ten Chuck Norris Facts (12/05)
   
4. Here's the upside to having a CAT scan on your birthday (04/05)
   
5. What does leadership mean? (3/04)
   
6. Marbury vs. Madison (4/05)
   
7. The difference between Pre-emptive vs. Preventive war (6/03)
   
8. Send It Back (Mark Adams, 05/07)
   
9. Ara Answers The Proust Questionnaire (03/07)
   
10. Start Wearing Purple! (4/07)