The Strib is still playing with their “some content print only” strategy. Here’s this week’s inducement:

Somehow I don’t feel compelled to run right out and buy a copy. Bill Cooper brought a world of overdraft pain to the inner Twin Cities and that’s all I really need to know about this anti-tax fanatic.

UPDATE: Actually I did see a copy and I’d have to call it tongue-in-cheek hagiography. Just enough self-awareness to avoid being parody, but way, way too much about what Bill Cooper says Bill Cooper is about, and not nearly enough dissenting voices. Small town newspaper values from a major daily.

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Jon Tevlin returns to the story of Daniel Hauser, the kid with Hodgkin’s lymphoma whose alt-religioned parents and religious gurus are forbidding chemotherapy.

It turns out that Daniel’s also been home schooled. How do we know? Because he can’t read. 

More child abuse is committed in the name of religion than from sex, even if you keep the priests on the sexual side of the ledger.

And yes, that’s a story that might have gotten me to buy a print copy.

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You have to go to page two, but they’ve finally published the names of the Gang Strike Force members who went to Hawaii to further their professional education.

I was glad to see that my former client on the Strike Force wasn’t among them, even if he won’t talk to me about their business.

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47 Minnesota executives got paid over $1 million last year, one got $32 million for running St. Jude Medical.

Bill Cooper (who you have to buy the Sunday Strib to learn more about — that or click here) says we can’t raise their (his) taxes so yeah, let’s cut healthcare for the poorest Minnesotans.

And yes, I would have definitely have paid for a Sunday Strib for this information. If they’d include maps to these jerks’ homes I would have paid double.

The most telling thing about all the Norway articles I linked to recently is that Norway has kept economic inequality at low levels because they publish everyone’s taxes. It’s harder to be a pig when everyone’s watching, and these Strib charts are among the most valuable reporting they do each year.

Really, I’m shocked they haven’t killed this feature yet given how much it hurts Bill Cooper’s cause. Then again, they did reprint GWill’s latest railing against economic justice.

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Bad taste in your mouth? Read Garrison Keillor on Republicans, or at least this taste:

I went to a party the other day and heard the word “torture” and said that I didn’t think we should prosecute the Bush lawyers who wrote those torture memos, and people jumped all over me like I was an escaped Nazi, so as long as I was persona non grata, I said some more stuff — that America would be a better country if we took the vote away from people over 65 because they are selfish and greedy and the future of America is its young. People about dropped their drinks. And then I said that cat ownership is a sign of emotional immaturity and a good predictor of a tendency toward violent crime. I saw lifelong friends turn away in disgust. And you know something? I Don’t Care. It felt good.

Liquor wasn’t the cause. Crankiness was. And crankiness is the birthright of Republicans.

Keillor’s joking (click the link to see how Proust enters into all of this), but the Republican party has to be repopulated with non-zombies. That or a stake driven through its heart. One way or another it has to change because it’s clearly become cancerous. 

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All of the above content via the Strib, and yes, that’s the most links I’ve given them in one post in years. I’m guessing one of their more evil editors is on vacation and the liberal survivor/gremlins slipped some extra news into today’s edition.

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Frank Rich on Obama and torture and how the worst is yet to come. I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn that the rest of the column is mostly about Donald Rumsfeld.

This incredible picture is from a GQ slideshow of the covers of briefing memos from Rumsfeld to Bush during the war, each complete with a Bible verse. I would not object to these covers being posterized and placed in public squares, preferably where they usually try to put the nativity scene. Rich:

Rumsfeld is not known for ostentatious displays of piety. He was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible. But the secretary’s actions were not just oily; he was also taking a risk with national security. If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world’s apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war. As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout “would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

Cue the Dobsons and Robertsons to retreat to undisclosed locations for the duration.

The NYTimes also has a highly related article about how the Pentagon’s drones are doing little key damage while outraging Pakistanis into a white hot rage.

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Obama hasn’t named anyone yet, but the Republicans have their game plan ready because the Supreme Court isn’t about justice, just politics. 

Seriously, O, dude, nominate Lani Guinier and then just jam her down their fucking throats.

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The Gulf Cartel broke into a prison in Zacatecas (northern Mexico) and freed 53 of their fellow gang members yesterday.

This is totally fucking up my distribution chain (of which I am an end user), forcing me to go with higher quality boo. Boo who? I dunno, but I’m happier and broker than I’ve been in a while.

Buy American.

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More Republican skullduggery in NC?

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Blog links:

Mick on how I might possibly be right about O’s rope-a-dope

Giordano on rope-a-doping the Mormons

Charlie on creating a true Libertarian state (as an example for the rest of us) [there are numerous Libertarian refugees in Minnesota, a legacy of the Charles Taylor era and no, I'm not joking — Liberia is an excellent example of a Libertarian state]

Lawyer proves that forensic “bite mark” experts totally bite

Mick on the racist underpinnings of our financial debacle

Link for live chat/Digby/Neiwert fans

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Dennis Hartley on Star Trek:

Gene Roddenberry’s universally beloved creation has become so ingrained into our pop culture and the collective subconscious of Boomers (as well as the, um, next generation) that the producers of the latest installment didn’t have to entitle it with a qualifier. It’s not Star Trek: Origins, or Star Trek: 2009. It’s just Star Trek. They could have just as well called it Free Beer, judging from the $80,000,000 it has rung up at the box office already.

But unlike the entire Star Trek franchise to date, this Star Trek is truly enjoyable. The closet the real STrek got to that was the dark politics of Deep Space 9, STrek’s take on Babylon 5.

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Not quite the truth, but close enough to hurt.

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Angela Lansbury and Rupert Everett doing Noel Coward? Sounds like fun. I hope they do a movie for those of us not likely to jet off to Broadway anytime soon.

Since finally getting over the flu/cold, I’ve been sorting music again. The folders I’ve been putting off, actually. Rock is now done on external drive #6 (but, perversely, not on #5). That required me to wade through Jimmy Page’s non-Zep discography. Nothing sharpens your ability to sort through metal like a lot of metal. Rock, actually, Page never really tears it up like a Buckethead or Metallica. 

I followed that up with Johnny Cash’s discography and that was a healing process. Educational too. Man but he put out a lot of really crappy “Nashville/patriotic” albums. Forget anything he released during his TV years but the early and later stuff was consistently real, making the argument that we are most full of it in middle age.