Schwarzbeined in St. Paul

There’s nothing like a series of five- and six-hour drives to give you time to think. On the way down to Ohio I emptied out my head, and on the way back I filled it up again. I think I know what I want to do with my blogs, but all you need to know is that posting will be later in the day from now on as I intend to aggregate less and write more.

[brief pause while I wait for my Alaskan commenter to stop whooping and hollering]

I had no such thought in my head when I left, and I certainly wasn’t lobbied by anyone to take this course of action while on the road. This decision is, in fact, a medical one. I’ve been on a modified Schwarzbein diet and vitamin regimen for a year now (only four months for the vitamins). To say that it has changed my life would be an understatement, but you can well imagine how I feel about sounding like some diet-of-the-month fanboy.

Like the book(s) say, Schwarzbein isn’t a diet, it’s a way of life. The results speak for themselves. I haven’t cut back on my eating, but since I started taking the vitamins I’ve lost four inches around my middle. No weight loss, the missing inches have been replaced by more muscle. I honestly feel as strong as I did back in my factory and farming days.

But losing weight hasn’t killed my appetite for aggregating. Eating the Schwarzbein way has radically smoothed out my bipolar cycles. I used to start the day with strong coffee and a bit of mania that fueled my aggregating ways. Now when confronted with significant news, I pause and reflect.

No, not the me I know either.

What happens next is whatever happens next, but I suspect you’ll be seeing less aggregating and more analysis, less rant and more judgment. I promise I’ll try to find time to insert some gratuitious profanities and the occasional inappropriate image.

Don’t worry about the attitude. As this picture Vick took last Friday night at The Winds suggests, I still have some devilishness left in me.

Oh, and I’ve only been doing Schwarzbein in a half-assed way. Now that I understand how it works, I’m feeling motivated to take the diet and vitamins more seriously. I don’t know about you, but I find it very easy to like a diet that tells me to eat more meat. And I’m missing bread a little less every day.

Enjoy your holiday

Interest in medical marijuana and easing other marijuana laws picked up markedly about 18 months ago, but advocates say the biggest surge came with the election of Barack Obama, the third straight president to acknowledge having smoked marijuana, and the first to regard it with anything like nonchalance.

Even the Washington Post sees legalization as inevitable.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

In a nation where one hyper-selfish industry fights to ensure that we will always have the most expensive (not the best) healthcare in the world, I have lost all faith in Congress to serve the public good.

Our elected leaders are corrupt and in the bag and nothing short of major primary purges next year can save us from the evil that washed over this nation when Reagan got elected and greed became a religion.

-

Elsewhere in the Post, Chris Cillizza is still a flaming idiot.

Regardless of the “why”, Moore’s departure makes his eastern Kansas seat a major Republican target next year. President Barack Obama narrowly won the seat with 51 percent in 2008 and then President George W. Bush carried it by 11 points in 2004.

WTF does that mean? Then?  How does 2004 follow 2008?

Cillizza bends time and space to make his points. Moore’s seat is probably safe because in Kansas, as in the rest of the nation, the Republican party is a party at war with itself.

The problem isn’t the Republicans. It’s all that money that moved to the Democrats when the Republicans went insane. The new money will give us more Democrats who closely resemble the kind of Republicans we had before Reagan.

The Democratic party is its own microcosm of America, but when America debates and compromises with the extreme 20% on the right, everything is thrown out of balance.

We need to elect Democrats who will ignore the Republicans, shut them out of policy deliberations, and then, when the GOP is dead, the Democrats can split into two parties, one conservative, one liberal, and maybe the Republic will survive.

And it would be nice if the WaPost assigned a copy editor to “Cillizza,” who knows about as much about punctuation as he does Kansan politics.

-

Ironically, if you get past the befuddling first page, Howie the Whore has a fascinating story to tell today about one of Tom DeLay’s former aides. Kurtz makes an interesting story too long by half by twaddling it down with pathos so as to dilute the monstrousness of DeLay and his machine and the overlap with Abramoff.

I guess you need some pathos to humanize a woman who, by all accounts, is a world class bitch. Who just happens to have dirt on a lot of Republicans. And who stalks Kevin Spacey in her spare time.

A woman Howie the Whore just spent 4.5 pages of his 5-page column on.

-

The Des Moines Register sees a lot of support for Sarah Palin among Iowa Republicans.

That’s why an historically Republican state has been reduced to being one third Republican, one third independent, and one third Democratic: the Republicans are too nutty for centrist Iowans.

More to the point, Sarah Palin is why Tim Pawlenty will get his ass waxed in the Iowa Caucuses. Assuming Sarah fierce and full of it hasn’t imploded by 2012, look for her and Huckabee to divide up the looney tunes fringe letting Mitt or another “moderate” player maybe squeak out a win, triggering a recoalescing of social conservatives who’ll support just about anyone so long as they’re not Mormon.

DougJ, however, thinks Palin’s just in it for the money now.

-

At a secret meeting of Israeli Zionist rabbis, it was decided that soldiers who refuse to follow orders are heroes.

I never thought such a scenario could happen in Israel. Their rightwing is actually undermining Israel more effectively than the Arabs ever have.

Not to mention making the country a prickly religious hellhole where opening a parking lot on a Saturday attracts violent protesters.

Please God let Sarah Palin do a book promotion swing through Israel. Please.

-

I doubt I’m the only one who finds it bizarre that a nation with an Official Secrets Act is uncovering the lies that took them to war in Iraq faster than we are.

I’m also thinking that the Iraqis are proving to be much better at getting our goat than we are at running their country.

-

Sam Pizzigati on the good times that never came despite all the tax-cutters’ promises.

Elsewhere in the economy, I think Paul Krugman’s about to start pulling out his hair over Obamanomics.

-

Andy Birkey explains The Manhattan Declaration.

-

Jonathan Schwarz shares Harry Reid’s JFK assassination story and somehow it reads like it just happened yesterday.

-

I tried to watch 60 Minutes again last night.

James Howard Kunstler explains why that was an exercise in newsless futility and he’s just talking about the CBS Business Update. But I did watch and what I saw was an incredibly long puff piece of James Cameron to tout his massively expensive Avatar movie that was as gaseous as their segment on the high cost of dying was specious.

All I know is that if you click to take the 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll, you’ll get hit with such mind-numbingly asymmetrical choices as this one:

Why do you only get to pick one? How does that make sense. Did God Sarah Palin’s burning bush speak to Steve Kroft and say, you only get to pick one from column A?

And when you select one of the choices, are you saying you want it legalized or kept illegal? The premise is posed as “should or should not,” but the question is “What Do You Think?”

I didn’t vote because I didn’t know wtf my vote would mean. The copy afterwards explains that it was a question about legalization, but you only got to pick one and they conclude that this means most Americans oppose legalizing these things.

I can make no sense whatsoever out of this poll. Leave a comment if you can figure it out.

-

Thomas Frank hosted an FDL book discussion on Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

-

Tasers.

-

Glenn W. Smith recalls a Louis Armstrong recording session that helps explain the mental illness that is latter day Republicanism.

-

Credit cards are like cell phones in my world. I simply don’t understand why you people have them. All you do is expose yourself to more of their bullshit.

-

I think that’s it until next week. Traveling for the holidays? The Daily Beast looks at our worst airports (The twelfth best will be due south of me as I leave town, and I’ll be passing within a few miles of O’Hare [#22 out of #28] on Wednesday and Saturday).

If my memory serves me right, I’ll be driving about 900 miles and will use up about $125 worth of gas and oil. And instead of being stacked up over an airport, my downtime will be spent alone in a car driving through the Midwest without a cell phone and only an mp3 player to keep me company.

The travel downtime is the best part of the trip, hands down. Usually. But this year there’ll be more cars than ever on our highways because more Americans than ever are sick and tired of airline incompetence complicated by TSA incompetence complicated by the fact that we have turned into a nation of assholes.

So yeah, I’m expecting more traffic than usual this year.

Liars lying, Books by Crocks edition

Sarah Palin as seen by:

Frank Rich

The Times on Palin in Michigan and Indiana, but no mention of her ditching her fans in Indiana

Christopher Buckley

Steve Chapman

Joe Wurzelbacher

CNN

TBogg

TRex

Palin did manage to find time to ditch some fans yesterday so she could rip on the Senate healthcare vote in which her side has been winning on points but simply cannot stop fuliminating long enough to accept the trophy campaign funds for keeping health insurance in the corrupt hands of the private sector and overpaid executives.

-

Even doctors are shocked by ER costs

Banning fatties from graduation ceremonies

Do you stand in line to have a doctor check your cancer (for the first time in 7 years), or do you get in line to see a dentist for your abscessed tooth?

-

Starting with the premise that if you’re American, you’ve got biases, offends you know who.

I’m sure there are a few bias-free Americans, but the author of this twaddle is obviously not one of them. Another ode on the blackness of kettles as delivered to the National Association of Pot Makers by the Strib’s very own Katherine Kersten.

I did a wordle, but it was as boring as the original material.

-

How corporations ruin everything they touch: the chocolate version.

They respect nothing, their customers least of all.

-

While everyone was focuses on their buttinskiism on abortion, the Catholic bishops also rubbed themselves up against the dying.

They are the boss of you, and no, you don’t get a vote on that.

And if you argue with them, they’ll bar you from receiving communion, like the right reverend Thomas Tobin, Bishop of Providence, just did to Rep. Patrick Kennedy. Bishop Tobin rails against public officials in the name of Jesus, but even after wasting half an hour googling I could not find one utterance from him against war, although he was quick to let Kennedy know that He (the Bishop) knows God’s will better than Kennedy does. Even though you would go insane trying to find any proof* that the Holy Roman Catholic Church ever gave a shit about abortion prior to reinventing themselves in the mid 19th Century.

Why would anyone who claims to love God be a Catholic?

Click here to vote on whether you side with Bishop Tobin or Rep. Kennedy.

[* Click here for the sole exception — scroll down to paragraphs 4-8 and then wonder why our news media never provides this context in their stories.]

-

The Manhattan Declaration. (WWJH?)

-

Recovered memories: is that bullshit ever right?

And what of the folks who work so hard to manufacture false realities?

-

Too many fucking Christmas stories already. This year lobby not to exchange gifts unless they’re handmade by the giver.

This holiday has nothing to do with the religion, it teaches all the wrong values, and more and more the corporations have turned it into such a festival of greed and overeating I really don’t know how any families survive the orgiastic excess.

-

There is a point at which unions lose my support, and that comes when the union becomes more important than the work.

Professions shouldn’t be unionized. Yes, professionals need protection too, but what’s wrong with reviving guilds? Guilds take quality seriously, and speak to the need for higher standards.

Making everything be about your paycheck isn’t the only reason we have unions, but for some I guess it’s enough.

-

Narco-terrorism, cont.

-

Outstate nutjob crashes truck into U of M Public Health building thinking it was FBI headquarters.

Still trying to verify whether he had a copy of Going Rogue in his truck….

-

Sara Robinson on Copenhagen.

-

Bill Moyers is retiring. Digby reminds us why we should care more about this than we did about Oprah’s big announcement, and Charlieq has more.

-

Astonishing:

What the press is up against? Unless only 20% of Americans read newspapers, it seems that the press hasn’t been doing a very good job of explaining to their readers just who exactly is running this country.

BTW, who’s Simon Cowell?

-

St. Petersburg Times sells magazine to group with several Scientologist investors.

-

eTc:

Obama’s first judge finally confirmed

Tasering UCLA students

Steve King: more full of it than even Michele Bachmann?

TBogg on Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book

There’s Freudian, and then there’s laying awake late at night fantasizing about cocksucking

Crossing the line from patriotism to insurrection/treason

Café Press bans Psalm 109:8 gear (if the Psalmers had a clue how to read scripture, they’d realize King David = Obama, and that means the Psalmers are praying for God to strike them down for their heresies)

Klan rallies at Ole Miss before big game on Saturday

Darksyde on the evolution “trick”

E&P embraces Dilbert (who doesn’t “get” it either)

Studs’ FBI files

Joe Lieberman, R-CT

-

Via Ed, the Yellow Pages losers are starting to really, really piss people off.

-

Politifact’s biggest lie to date:

1). Joe Lieberman says, “If  you look at last year’s presidential campaign, ‘you can’t find a mention of public option.’”

2). Politifact headlines that as “The public option was not discussed much during the campaign.”

3.) Lieberman says it wasn’t discussed, Politifact changes that to “not discussed much” and then says Lieberman is mostly right.

4.) Obama did discuss the public option on more than one occasion in 2008.

5.) Joe Lieberman is a liar.

6.) Politifact is not a factchecker so much as a message parlor for the establishment.

7.) Fuck Politifact. I’ve just taken them off my RSS feed and am never going to bother with their corrupt hogwash again. Getting half of them right isn’t a good record for factcheckers.

-

Glenn Beck’s I Have A Scheme march.

Had enough? I sure have. This is one vacation I’m looking forward to.

Want more? Check out this video (with a Cody Diablo lookalike [not]) over at WINston’s.

And yes, that’s the least Sunday morningish music video ever, but not bad for watching football to.

 

Sorry, you’ll have to stand in line for 3 hours before you can read this blog, and we might take down the post before then

Politics:

Bob Herbert with the sad story of Detroit

Not sure where Ray D. Madoff is coming from, but farmers do NOT need protection from estate taxes (that’s a lie, a Republican lie — it’s never been true and never will be true no matter how many times they lie about it)

Tripp Palin’s paternal grandmother gets three years for dealing OxyContin

Kathleen Parker on Sarah Palin

Mary Matalin on Palin

Matt Taibbi on Palin

David Corn on Palin

DougJ on standing in line to get a wristband so you can stand in line to get an autograph with no guarantees

Global warming denialists shift into kleptodrive in their frantic efforts to impede rational steps to limit the global pain and suffering they’ve condemned all of us to

John Ashcroft: still a pantswetting coward at heart

Tim Ruttan on Joe Lieberman’s inherent assholishness

John Cole on the art of making this nation ungovernable (why do Republicans hate America? And why aren’t there more former Republicans pointing this out like Cole does?)

-

An awesome caricature of Katherine Kersten over at David Brauer’s blog.

-

People who buy this garbage have not read the entire Psalm, or the one that precedes it. If they have and they still support this movement, they sound more like Satan worshippers than Christians.

-

From the comments, one of Peter Galbraith’s colleagues makes the case for his actions regarding the Kurdish deal with a Norwegian oil company.

Galbraith is a remarkable guy, much like his father, and I don’t have much use for those who are jumping on this deal as something bad.

No, deals involving Dick Cheney’s friends are bad. The oil is going to be sold no matter what, and I’m pretty comfortable with it being to friends of Peter Galbraith.

More from the rest of the world:

Confusing story from Peru about gangs melting down victims for fat to sell to cosmetic companies

-

Etc:

eBay pulled it, but someone’s trying to sell Mussolini’s brain and blood

DM Register blogger rips Chuck Grassley over marijuana

Fearmongers of the ’30s

Another texecution because if you’re a criminal, you’re responsible for everything your accomplices do [contrast and compare with how corporate executives are not responsible for anything, including their own deeds]

Yes, it’s jackpot justice, but if ‘pugs had their way there’d be no justice at all (and isn’t jackpot justice a good description of how working Americans get compensated?)

Rachael Ray, still fronting for terroramuses

Terroramuses (yes, this is a real video)

Hannah Arendt on lying

Closing the barn door doesn’t slow down the bottomfeeders

 

 

The fearsome troll-hammer of doom

Some thoughts this morning on the fine art of trolling. That’s what I’m paneling on at Netroots Minnesota this afternoon, and that’s what I’ve been thinking about lately.

Not from defensive POV, but in my role as a liberal troll at my buddy Vick’s blog. I think my work in that thread is now over, and yes, I’d rate my work as “mission accomplished.” The post is about Sarah Palin. My comments were focused on her religious beliefs. If there is one point on which the hard right is vulnerable, it’s the balkanized patchwork quilt that is their collectively dyspeptic range of religious beliefs.

And yes, I just shouted MORMON! in a crowded chat thread. Not about Palin, but a good troll shifts gears now and then and the fact that Glenn Beck is a convert to Mormonism isn’t as well known among these folks as you might think.

I like to think it bothers them to learn these things. No one likes Mormons. Not really, especially not on the right where not everyone’s sure their comfort level really includes Roman Catholics. Jews they only discuss on Sundays, preferably in the Biblical sense.

Vick’s got readers I can’t reach, mostly because I don’t think they really understand half of what they read, reading not being their favorite means of gathering data. Talk radio is killing this country. Every day Rush pumps enough disinformation to keep four Media Matters staffers busy. But to the credit of Vick’s sharper rightie readers, they all make more sense than Jonah Goldberg’s latest column in which he writes about Palin’s book by using some troll’s gotcha gambit, and then beats her critics with a tire iron while singing the la-la-la song (he does not quote Palin once or offer up a single fact in her defense).

Your best defense? Know what you’re talking about. Trolls love catching you when you go off half-cocked. My traction at Vick’s came from the fact that the Palin supporters there really don’t know about her religious beliefs, not as well as they should.

Do your damage, and then disengage. Give them the last word if that last word is more or less a “and the horse you rode in on.” Or a digressive thought or somewhat off-topic fact. And if at any point you find yourself shouting at your monitor, you’re losing.

As for the panel, my contribution will be pretty much the opposite of what Mitch Berg is expecting. I tried to wordle Mitch’s post but mostly the app just picked up on his mannerisms and then it crashed Safari which I’m sure pleased Mitch to no end.

Amazingly enough, I’m on the panel because of my anti-troll work for Ford Bell’s Senate campaign. I’m not entirely sure I get that as I don’t recall that we even allowed comments, but that’s the starting point for today’s discussion. Where it goes from there is anyone’s guess, but it’s a safe bet Mitch has no clue as to how we roll when he’s not around.

Note: banning someone is not winning.

-

I wonder if Tim Geithner thinks of Paul Krugman as a troll.

He should.

And we should all be rooting for the troll in this fight but maybe that’s not the best nomenclature. Thad Cochran is being pretty trollish right now, but he’s coming at the economy from the opposite side as Krugman.

The more quickly we figure out how to explain to the right’s base that they’re getting played by Wall Street, the faster we can go back to pressuring Obama from the left. But so long as the right gets to wallow in factoids, lies and disinformation, they can bitter end right through the Last Times and on that they are 100% correct. If we don’t fix this mess, end times will come for U.S., if not the world.

What is the lesson to be learned from wealth earned by the most successful ponziers? Aren’t we teaching kids that whoever screws best/last gets all the toys?

What is the right trying to teach us, and why don’t we call them on their bottom line?

-

I’m not sorry to see that Oprah’s quitting. However much the right saw her as a lefty, I never saw or heard anything from her that didn’t sound very, very pro-establishment.

I don’t think her place in history is very secure. Her viewers weren’t much different from talk radio listeners. It’s not good to let others do your thinking for you.

-

Obama being flat out fucking wrong, again.

As contrasted with those who are wrong every fucking time.

In Obama’s defense, I remember a lot of liberals being pretty pissed about Kirsten Gillibrand getting Hillary’s seat in the Senate. Maybe they’ll be a little less pissed after reading this.

-

A six-year-old girl is facing lifetime of deafness but Cigna is refusing to make good on her insurance policy.

All they have to do is stall her for a while longer and her hearing will be lost forever.

Call it a private insurer’s “hearing panel.”

-

I love when smart people pretend to be stoned.

Maybe in his next video David Lazarus can pretend to be drunk. And then an intern can upload a YouTube of Lazarus belligerently punching out the cameraman afterwards.

-

Prosecutors have dropped 72 immigration charges against Sholom Rubashkin.

I can see why this drives the anti-immigration crowd nuts. The law is the law is the law, but our prosecutors are quick to drop charges against corporate violators even more quickly than they look to pile on more charges when the suspect is not part of a corporation but just a lone individual hurting no one (drug users).

Was Rubashkin’s car ever seized? Did they tear apart his home looking for evidence? Did they try to flip his kids to get them to rat out dad?

-

Labor unrest in India.

About time.

-

No clue when the music post will go up at the other blog tonight. Maybe not until tomorrow.

Linkimus dumpus

More than anything I’m putting up another post because I want to flag something for you. John Cole appears to be just about the only “news” source on the planet who’s put together the fact that CNN’s “Killing at the Canals” series on rogue U.S. troops in Iraq is about the same platoon Scott Beauchamp informed on, resulting in a massive wingnut hissy fit.

-

Sam Pizzigati’s got the dope on a new formula for figuring out why people die younger in countries with more economic inequality.

Inequality grinds on people, both at the top and the bottom.

Mcjoan points out that uninsured ER patients die at a higher rate than insured patients.

And it will still take nothing short of a miracle to get decent health insurance reform passed by the this bought and paid for Congress.

Again, whatever happened to campaign finance reform? Is there anyone left who fails to see the connection between money and legislation?

-

Isaiah J. Poole on how labor is starting to win now that the entire federal government isn’t stacked against them. They’re even taking on the banksters.

Related:

Taibbi on Goldman Sachs

Moberg on banks

-

You know if I weren’t so totally, hopelessly in bed with Obama, I might wonder wtf was up with:

stimulus money for foreign windmills

prosecutors who can’t convict Wall Street thieves

the DOJ opposing Don Siegelman’s Supreme Court appeal

-

Republicans being, well, you know how they are:

Painfully clueless Glenn Beck video

Painful Chuck Norris video

Tommy Chong honored to be Mary Beth’s only regret

City Pages takes a fresh look at Michele Bachmann

Sooner or later, they always blame ACORN (more from TBogg)

Fearmonger in chief

Nasty bathrooms

Quist

C Street update

World Net Daily update

Still having comments fun over at Vick’s with the Palinistas (who really should read this)

Not political, but I’m betting this guy didn’t vote for Obama

-

It had to be said.

-

Client called and told me to call some ad rep and let him know she didn’t want what they were selling. So I did. (She doesn’t like to be the heavy.) Not only did he amicably accept her rejection, but the guy tried to place a take-out order with me!

So I took it. First food order I’ve taken since I worked in the River Room at the University of Iowa Memorial Union.

-

eTc:

Former Timberwolf Marko Jaric and supermodel Adriana Lima just had a baby (and yes, that’s probably the first birth announcement I’ve ever done)

More on the 10-year-old who got tasered

Clusterfuck Nation: The Fate of the Yeast People (not about B12, btw)

How the Israeli religious right undercuts their military

 

 

Is you is (or is you not?) the one you love?

-

I really don’t have much use for Sarah Palin, but I have even less use for smarmy doyennes who sleep their way to the top of the Village’s social heap, and then ask very broad and quite rude religious questions of someone who’s not present to answer them.

What does she believe is God’s plan for her? Does she have any free will or is everything preordained. Can she see something coming and change her mind despite God’s plans for her?

Did God plan for her to become Governor of Alaska. If so, did God plan for her to step down. Did God plan for her to run for Vice President? If so why did she and McCain lose?

Did God plan for her to have a child with Down’s Syndrome? If so why did she consider an abortion? Did God plan for her to have a huge wardrobe? Then why did she apologize for it?

Sally Quinn is a douche. Religion’s not off topic with Palin, but these are the questions you want to ask:

Do you agree with Bishop Thomas Muthee that you are like Queen Esther?

Do you believe that witchcraft presents a danger to modern Christians, especially in Africa?

Why do you think white evangelical women in the U.S. lose their virginity earlier than any other group?

What is your opinion about Purity Balls?

Click here for some background on Bishop Muthee, who, by all accounts, is much less of a douche bag than Sally Quinn, albeit a far bigger asshole.

See also:

Palinmania (the comments mostly)

Seems like everyone is onto the Psalm 109er eliminationists (it’s worth your time to read 108 and 109 in their brief entireties to get a better feel for how much the Palinists hate the rest of America, and how incredibly moronic their interpretation of scripture is — Obama = King David, and only a semi-literate Christianist could think otherwise)

Texas successfully outlawed all forms of marriage in 2005

Scariest parody of the Going Rogue cover yet

I’ve been writing about narcissistic personality disorder for as long as I’ve been blogging, but rarely has it been so accurately diagnosed in a public figure (and verified by emails)

J Street responds

-

Hmm, didn’t know Dwight Eisenhower once bowed to Hirohito. And Nixon bowed to Mao.

Makes no difference, I don’t believe an American president should bow to anyone. A bow is just one generation removed from a kowtow.

Fuck royalty no matter where they’re from.

-

How long has Jerry Brown been looking like Joe Biden without hair plugs?

UPDATE: With a side of Peter Boyle thrown in.

-

Vitamin is not the Strib, but it’s part of the same outfit and I got to this page with just one click from the Strib’s front page:

Not that I really give a shit. It’s kinda interesting is all. In the ’90s (and oh how I wish I’d saved a copy) the Strib reviewed The Clit Diaries, but for the most part you don’t see family newspapers spelling out the names of bands like the Fuck Buttons.

The funny thing to me is that at the height of punk I remember being shocked when my buddy Vick expressed contempt for some band with “fuck” in their name. But he had a good point in so far as back in the day, no major label would distribute a band with an obscene name. To Vick, new vinyl from The Fuck Gods meant having to deal with yet another indie distributor. Serious bands had real names and went through normal distribution channels.

Digital really did change everything.

-

I’ve been skipping over a number of stories in which wingnuts wet their pants over the prospect of genuine terroramuses being brought to this country for trial. One possible incarceration site is the maximum security prison in Thomson, Illinois.

Clinton, Ia. - Mention the massive prison across the Mississippi River and you see a lot of smiles in this city.

People here know all about the federal government’s tentative plans to transfer alleged terrorists from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a maximum-security facility a 15-minute drive away in Thomson, Ill.

And they are a bit amused by some media reports that area residents are worried that terrorists will be running loose in the streets….

They say turning the Illinois-owned Thomson Correctional Center into a federally run “Guantanamo North” would bring up to 3,000 jobs to this part of the country, which is very good news.

For the life of me I don’t understand how the wingnuts can tolerate the fearmongering coming from their leaders. Why would any sane American be frightened by some former goatherd who took the equivalent of a Saturday afternoon workshop in how to set your tennis shoes on fire?

-

Haaretz has an update on purveyor of tainted meat products, Sholom Rubashkin, as well as the infinitely more moral Belle du Jour.

-

The Swamp, the establishment political blog at the reliably Republican Chicago Tribune, goes after Fox News for using ’08 campaign footage to show “the crowd” at a Palin book signing.

That is, of course, what Fox News does. News as a fungible product to be sliced and diced in support of Roger Ailes’ daily talking points. Sean Hannity’s quasi-apology after getting burned by Jon Stewart is the exception, not the rule. They do these things on purpose, and if they burn some production schmuck on this I hope he/she rats out their propaganda mill.

Liars, who wish their pants would just once catch on fire.

-

There’s like one conservative at MinnPost (a libertarian, actually), so he got the honor of interviewing Katherine Kersten. Just looking at the living room behind her is giving me an old people rash, pretty much like her arguments do. Marriage is about children only according to Kersten, and the more rational take on that (marriage is about safeguarding and transferring property) isn’t even mentioned.

No dots to connect, she just segués directly from that to stating that gay marriage backers:

…feel a vindictive loathing of norms and limits in human society.

But then there are people in the “gay rights” leadership — or in the leadership of the same-sex marriage movement — who take a radical view. They want to see an upending of the institution of marriage. I mean, that’s very clear. There’s lots of evidence that some of these people would like to see, essentially, the end of marriage as an institution altogether. In its place you’d see a variety of civil unions, of the kind I just mentioned.

I’ve seen so much anger on the part of these people. They often exhibit an authoritarian, totalitarian impulse. We see some of this in the schools, for example, with regard to the Welcoming Schools curriculum that was so controversial recently in Minneapolis. There is an attempt on the part of some of these leaders to place themselves in positions of great power in order to work a transformation in society — having to do with male-female relationships and marriage and families. There’s so much anger there, I sometimes think that a lot of those folks are unhappy, frankly, for reasons of how they are living, of choices that they’ve made, and they project that anger onto people like me.

The only person identified in that screed is Katherine Kersten. Her enemies have no names other than these people.

Pretty disgusting stuff, only slightly mitigated by the hilarious asides: “So, I’m in the position of, say, a Garrison Keillor.” She also acknowledges that Anders “Tiny Penis” Gyllenhaal was her mentor at the Strib, a fact that just retro-legitimizes many of my angriest anti-Strib rants.

-

Doing that panel thing tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 in the Phalen Room, but either you’re already signed up for Netroots Minnesota, or you’re not. And yes, my name is misspelled.

I’ll see you there if you’re there.

rat1928@disney.com

It’s Mickey Mouse’s 81st birthday today, and he’s still the property of the Disney folks who have owned Mickey since they created him in 1928.

What does that mean, exactly? It means that if you do anything with Mickey and Disney doesn’t like it (or even if they do), they can make “your” creation disappear. Like the picture on the left, for example. My unironic use of it in this blog is every bit as illegal as any of the tens of thousands of songs I’ve got stashed on my hard drives.

A slippery situation indeed, but now that I’ve made a punny joke, the 1st Amendment protects my right to use Mickey on a bar of soap.

I’m less sure about this picture. I’m pretty sure these ladies are violating Mickey’s copyright, altho they may have some mickeyfied accessories that lets Mickey violate them in return. I don’t, however, think my use of this picture violates Disney’s copyright, altho it does violate the copyright of whoever took this picture.

Oddly, you do not have the right to refuse to be photographed (or do you?), and any photo taken of you belongs to the person who took it BUT they cannot profit from the use of your image without your consent. How anyone can claim all this rigamarole makes sense is beyond me but if you try, be sure not to quote Louis Zukofsky.

-

Ted Rall in your face.

-

[T]here is a big something missing from Palin’s narrative: the voice of a leader.

The book made me think about another outsider’s political memoir, that of Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin (1855-1925). He too was a provincial Republican of modest means who, as congressman, governor, senator and presidential candidate, ran as an outsider like Palin. In his 1913 autobiography, subtitled “A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences,” La Follette’s voice is clear, bold, unafraid and without the trace of a whine. He expects mockery, rejection and contempt from the other side, and sometimes disloyalty from those who said they would stand with him. But he was a leader who remained unfazed by storms of words and emotions, focusing instead on organizing and mobilizing people for the struggle.

Palin neither organizes nor mobilizes. There is no Palin movement — or organization of any depth and substance. There is no Palin philosophy beyond bromides about smaller government, the evils of abortion and the dangers of popular culture (which, right this moment, is making her a rich woman). While she easily won election as governor of Alaska in 2006, her victory was built largely on her fresh, attractive face and her predecessor’s unpopularity.

From the Anchorage Daily News’ Michael Carey.

More:

The Daily Beast has an entire page plus a ton of stories on their Book Beast page and do not pass on the Palin or Danielle Steel? contest (I got 5 out of 10)

Right to Lifers go after Palin for not being pure enough

Watertiger on grifting

Media Matters does some factchecking

Eric Boehlert on the coverage

-

The wingnuts are flogging verse 8 of Psalm 109, but they should try reading the entire psalm. If they’re really brave, this Bible Studies page explains the Psalm.

Verses 1-5 are the basis of David’s imprecation. David is innocent, yet his enemies have accused him of wrong-doing. They have engaged in character-assassination. David appeals to God, the object of his praise and adoration, to come to his rescue and to punish his wicked opponents. Verses 6-20 spell out the form which David believes this punishment should take. David’s imprecation is certainly fierce and forthright, but I believe that it is not excessive.

Then perhaps these critics will explain why they see themselves as David when the Psalm clearly should be interpreted with Obama in the role of David, and his critics as the adversaries Psalm 109 implores God to smite.

And perhaps Obama’s critics can explain why they’re not seeking to have God smite Lloyd Blankfein. [More on who should be smited first and why but maybe some more information first would be a good thing.]

-

I do not understand why Obama doesn’t have Wes Clark running our military. Or why Bill Kristol thinks he’s some kind of Wild West hanging judge.

-

Ten-year-old girl tasered in Arkansas.

-

If this is true, Greg Craig’s ouster should speed things up for Obama’s nominees.

-

Techdirt:

Suits ask FCC to ban home digital recording of movies (and I suspect they don’t care much for home recordings of TV shows either)

Piracy to blame for Sony’s best year ever?

Shutting down an entire municipal wifi network over one downloaded movie

-

Jumper cables with your Big Mac?

-

MN:

MPR gets anonymous $5 million gift

Amy Klobuchar is not making her supporters happy (at least not at Wegestock)[UPDATE]

Franken update

Pawlenty

Bachmann

Another doctor running for Congress

-

Etc>

Gutierrez reviews Bérubé’s new book

A follow up on the world’s dirtiest female soccer player

Anoka gay harassment story, round 3

Honduras updates

Privacy matters

Wii Pray, a new videogame up at PZ’s

Digitalizing government

Four years and still no trial for Georgia man accused of murder

-

The very last (I promise) Wegestock link.

I think I ate too much before the party because the blotter didn’t hit until I was halfway home. The colors on Pierce Butler late at night are very pretty this time of year.

There was, in fact, beer

I took this one picture just before I started blowing up the balloons and putting party favors at all the placesettings. It appeared to be in focus last night, but apparently it only took one and a half Maharajas to cloud my vision. They served the strong beer in small glasses, but otherwise I heartily approve of The Happy Gnome even if parking was next to impossible due to some event at the next door curling club.

We did hit double digits in overall attendance, but not at any one time. But that just made for good conversation and we had no shortage of conversationalists. And there was a beer delivery from Chicago — skøl!

Again, a happy birthday to Minnesota Observer, and thanks to all who attended.

And yes, I slept very well last night.

Riding shotgun in the sky

No, not another link to another a story about Sarah Palin. Well, OK, if you insist. But I’m self-aware enough to know that Wegestock is just a manifestation of my inner Sarah, my need for attention, the gratification I get from having others buy me beer.

It’s not my good side. (That, sadly, is the side with the proboscin wart, not the elderhipster earring.) Wegestock is my mirror, a vanity in which I hope to see my future. As I graze upon the throng (5 RSVPs to date — woot!), I hope to see a reflection of what lays ahead for me. I think we can count out Nuremberg-sized rallies with Pink Floyd-sized banners.

And no, I’m not threatening to kill the blog again. That never seems to work out as whatever I focus on next just turns into this blog all over again. But next week I go on vacation and when I come back I plan on making changes. No clue as to what, no glimmering, none whatsoever.

But change would be good.

-

I thought we were going to get change this year, but the only change I’ve seen has been from my cash purchases, and not so many of those as we enter into the age of no-really-you-gotta-tip-me-because-retail-is-not-a-living-wage.

Tight times have come to us all. But not Peter Galbraith, and that really bothers Glenn Greenwald. It bothers quite a few lefty bloggers actually, but I don’t know why.

Peter Galbraith offered up the only pro-Iraq War arguments I respected back in the day. Kurds were being oppressed by Saddam, and Kurds have always deserved a free and independent Kurdistan. Galbraith believes in the Kurds, or at least has been faking support for them convincingly for a long time. And if there is a country on this planet more honorable to deal with in matters of oil, I can’t think of any I’d trust more than Norway.

Yes, Galbraith’s going to make some money from brokering this deal. Would Glenn Greenwald sleep better at night if one of Dick Cheney’s friends had pulled this one off? Would he feel better if the Kurds were selling their oil to Royal Dutch Shell?

Peter Galbraith didn’t decide to cashier the Iraqi Army or let the museums be looted. He didn’t decide to guard the Oil Ministry instead of the stockpiled weapons. In fact I don’t think anyone anticipated just how clusterfucked Bush-Cheney’s war would be. I expected long-term bad things to happen. Many people did. But these assholes couldn’t get through the immediate aftermath of the most lopsided war since Grenada/Falklands.

Galbraith just became the first liberal to get in on Halliburton’s cash cow. The more milk Galbraith gets, the longer the straw Erik Prince has to use.

Yes, the money that went into this stupid war could have been put to better use. But removing Saddam’s thumb from the collective Kurdish jugular wasn’t a bad thing.

As for economists in general, here’s a reminder of what the axis of non-lefty economists does for a living. (Not that cons can’t be right about some things.) And here’s a reminder that our treatment of Saddam remains the exception, not the rule. In a world in which John Yoo is free to pontificate, I find it hard to point fingers at one of the few non-neocon war supporters.

-

Shorter Bob Herbert: this is the future, and we’re failing now. In fact, when it comes to infrastructure, we were failing long before Gov. Pawlenty neglected the I-35 bridge into the Mississippi River.

Our present is cannibalized from our past. The only thing America has invented of note recently are leveraged financial instruments. Because the greedy couldn’t wait for us to make more money for them to steal, so they started stealing from children as yet unborn.

-

Funning on the freakshow that is wingnutterdonia. [Digby's take]

And, speaking for myself only, I’d be glad to let Bradlee Dean buy me a beer tonight. Just before the door hits him on the ass.

-

No one ever paid me $8 million to quit.

Then again, I never embarrassed anyone like Lou Dobbs embarrasses CNN.

-

Son of the Return of Count Dolchstoßlegende.

More from the self-aggrieved whine and jeez r us set:

Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics

The ludicrous efforts to label Bill Sparkman’s murder as suicide

Does Limbaugh ever think before speaking?

Burrowing (hard to sweat this when they’ve got the entire judiciary gamed)

The buttplug cherries topping the burrower sundaes

Taser update

Slob hunter/governor/prezwannabee

Hippocratesy

-

The bow:

Karl Rove

TBogg

-

Money:

Taibbi

David Dayen

Roubini

Brad Johnson

After taxes, after death….

And I think we need a special award to bestow upon Tom Toles for this one:

-

Medea Media:

Strib v MPR (more)

Washington Blade goes down

And christhowdy but I had no clue how bad Richard Cohen had gotten. Forgot I was at the Post and not the Times and I clicked on him by mistake this morning. From just this one column:

I saw the other day

This is Palin Week

On the other hand

And this being the case

A further area of study ought to deal with

The Institute for the Study of Sarah Palin might conclude

I suppose, too,

Finally

It may be asking too much

These words are the exact phrases Richard Cohen used to start the nine paragraphs in his column today. Stylistically he would benefit from studying Katherine Kersten.

And these people have the audacity to judge contestants in a punditry contest?

-

Other places:

Honduras

Chicago

-

People who won’t be at Wegestock but whom I’d love to meet someday:

Billmon

whoever wrote Media Whores Online

Phoenix Woman

TBogg

my out-of-state readers

And I regret that I’ll never get to meet Molly Ivins or Steve Gilliard, at least not in this lifetime.

-

George M. Michaels, R.I.P.

-

If you’re going down to The Happy Gnome,

To join in my rock and roll band

Camp out on the patio

Get your soul free (you have to pay for the beer):

Tonight. And then we won’t talk about this ever again.

.

Unless some of the pictures turn out really well.