Damn the Swiss !!!

Conservative blogger (and attorney) Patterico demonstrates why you can't judge a blog by the comments it generates, although I doubt he intended to.

I'm proud to be an American....

Matt Welch, who's written the book on what a virulent authoritarian streak John McCain possesses, strikes again. Concerning McCain's support/authorship for the plan to increase troop levels in Iraq, in absolute defiance of public opinion, Welch notes:

The significance of the McCain Plan transcended horse-race politics. It was a microcosm of the Arizona senator’s largely unexamined philosophy about the proper role of the U.S. government. Like almost every past McCain crusade, from fining Big Tobacco to drug-testing athletes to restricting political speech in the name of campaign finance reform, the surge involved an increase in the power of the federal government, particularly in the executive branch. Like many of his reform measures—identifying weapons pork, eliminating congressional airport perks, even banning torture—the escalation had as much to do with appearances (in this case, the appearance of continuing to project U.S. military strength rather than accept “defeat”) as it did with reality. And like the reputation-making actions of his heroes, including his father, his grandfather, and his political idol Teddy Roosevelt, the new Iraq strategy required yet another expansion of American military power to address what is, at least in part, a nonmilitary problem.

In short, McCain would represent a continuance of the Big Government conservatism championed by George Bush, not a new direction.

A good analysis of why the next Republican to be elected President will likely continue shifting governmental policy to the right on abortion and birth control, regardless of whether they're pro-choice (Giuliani), pro-life (McCain), or whatever position happens to be convenient for the time being (Romney). An unwillingness to buck the party's base will probably extend to lower Federal court nominees as well, but the article is less convincing on the subject of the Supreme Court.

It is correct that when Republican Presidents have focused on ideology over competence, they've gotten what they wanted, as the Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas selections indicate. But unlike other judicial nominations, the Supreme Court focuses a great deal more public attention, and the political temptation to court a faction outside the party's base is usually too important to resist. The five previous Republican Presidents each nominated justices who were either liberal (Brennan, Stevens, and Blackmun) or right-centrist (Stewart, O'Connor, Powell, Souter and Kennedy), each of whom played a role in enacting, or reaffirming, Roe v. Wade, and even the current occupant was more than willing to nominate a less-than-ideological pick (Harriet Miers) the last time out. Six of the nine judges who ruled on Roe were GOP appointees, four of them by Nixon, and seven of the nine replacements for those justices were nominated by Republican, anti-abortion Presidents. And yet, Roe still stands, thirty-four years later, sturdy as an oak, and unlikely to be overturned by the Supreme Court anytime soon, regardless of whom President Giuliani or McCain nominate. [link via Tapped]

Play Ball:

Actually, Sash, I’d like to have some porn for me to watch while she sucks my (expletive). I’m into watching two gals together in a movie. Can she have that there?

--Tommy Lasorda, according to the soon-to-be-published memoirs by "Hollywood Madam" Jody Babydol Gibson. Lasorda is denying the entire account.

Atrios' "Wanker of the Day" has long gone from being a biting slam at a perceived enemy, to a backhanded honor at a foe whose words have cut too close to the bone. It's the lefty version of Andrew Sullivan's old "Begala Award" or "Sontag Award," which the Brit would give to honorees back before he discovered the Bushies ran torture camps. In other words, it's an honor to win the damn thing; only pundits and bloggers who won't shill for The Cause get so recognized.

Today, the WOTD went to Richard Cohen, for a post-Oscar column chastising his brother pundits for labeling Al Gore as a prevaricator and exaggerator during his Presidential run in 2000, and all but calling the former Veep a hero for his patience and integrity. What's wrong with that, you may well ask? Well, according to Media Matters, a website whose typical post goes something along the lines of "Giuliani Interviewed by ABC News, Not Asked About Bernard Kerik or His Three Wives," Cohen didn't mention that he too was critical of Gore during the 2000 campaign. Its examples: that he criticized Gore after the first debate for implying that he had visited the site of Texas wildfires with the head of FEMA, when, in fact, he had only visited the state of Texas with an assistant head, and that in two 1999 columns written more than a year before the election, Gore seemed to him to be uncomfortable in his own skin.

To show how exactly wankerific Cohen is, Media Matters went so far as to point out that Cohen had specifically exonerated Gore of the charge of him being a liar, discrediting some of the more bogus charges against the Vice President during that election. But Atrios either ignores that part of the post, or doesn't get this whole "nuance" thing, and gives Cohen his eighth WOTD, many for reasons just as specious and petty (including this column, in which the evil pundit comforts a girl who dropped out of school after failing algebra).

So in the world of Prof. Black, anyone who has ever said anything critical about Al Gore is not only immediately suspect, but a "wanker" to boot. Don't like him picking Joe Lieberman as his Veep? Wanker. Thought his dithering response to the recount in Florida cost him the election? Wanker. Hold the mistaken belief that his stage moaning and mannerisms helped him pull defeat from the jaws of victory in his first debate with Bush? SuperWanker !!!

I believe that Black originally desired that the WOTD Award be cutting and incisive, instead of a cheap stunt to avoid actually posting something thoughtful and substantive, which Kevin Drum or Digby do almost every day. I think a certain laziness creeps in when you run one of the uberblogs, a temptation to just go through the motions and belch out random "Wanker of the Day" or "Heh. Indeed" or even just "Threads," mixed in with a link from Media Matters or a clipping from Glenn Greenwald or Tom Maguire (and to understand the full extent of the falloff in quality, take a look at Eschaton in the week before the onset of hostilities in Iraq, here). You already have the traffic coming in, so why bother giving a rat's ass if what you're doing is elevating the public discourse.

It seems that being tougher than deer jerky on the campaign trail is more important than attending junkets with Tavis Smiley, Cornel West and other blowhards. In a little over two weeks, Obama has obliterated Clinton's lead among African-American voters, halving her overall margin among Democrats.

The good old days, before the blogosphere, back when debate was polite, civil and respectful:



From the coverage of the Democratic Convention, August, 1968.

The fact that NBC is willing to spend $10 million on a reality show concerning Posh Spice's move to Los Angeles is disturbing on so many levels, the least of which is that it will parade before the world some of the lamest parasites and wannabes of my hometown. Why are all the Brits who try to crash Hollywood (or the Big Apple, as Toby Young so deliciously recounted) such pathetic losers? Why can't they all be like Dame Helen? Oh well, I guess the spotlight can also be the best disinfectant....

The sort of advertising In-N-Out couldn't hope to buy:



But no fries with the Double-Double? And is that a bag of Lays next to the sparkling wine? That's a combo that will send even a Queen to an early grave....

According to a blogger who was offered the position before Ms. Marcotte, the Edwards campaign knew exactly who it was they were hiring when they made the decision. That really doesn't speak well of their political acumen.

ALARM !!! ALARM !!! ALARM !!!

MUST CREDIT SMYTHE

ALARM !!! ALARM !!! ALARM !!!

I have it from an unimpeachable source that Babel will win the Oscar for Best Picture. My source is the ultimate insider for this sort of thing. Let's just say that it's as if she's already opened the envelope, if you catch my drift...UPDATE: Never mind. She's telling me she's just guessing, and has no real clue who's going to win. I'm such an idiot for believing her.

Back when variety shows were ubiquitous on American TV, occasionally you would see pairings like this one, between two giants:

I believe this might have been Dylan's debut on network television....

An opinion of a non-Academy voter:

"A lot of the mannerisms were right. But the problem was the walk -- Forest didn't get that. My father strides and his hands would go like a paddle because of his wide shoulders. Whitaker is knock-kneed -- my father was bowlegged."

--Jaffar Amin, son of the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. He returned to Uganda in 1990, and now makes a living, swear to Kobe, doing voiceovers for advertisements. My essay on other scions of deposed dictators can be found here.

Rabbi Haggard? The Rude One is on to something, concerning this quote from a Michael Medved op-ed:

Tim Hardaway (and most of his former NBA teammates) wouldn’t welcome openly gay players into the locker room any more than they’d welcome profoundly unattractive, morbidly obese women. I specify unattractive females because if a young lady is attractive (or, even better, downright “hot”) most guys, very much including the notorious love machines of the National Basketball Association, would probably welcome her joining their showers. The ill-favored, grossly overweight female is the right counterpart to a gay male because, like the homosexual, she causes discomfort due to the fact that attraction can only operate in one direction. She might well feel drawn to the straight guys with whom she’s grouped, while they feel downright repulsed at the very idea of sex with her. (emphasis added)

Besides the offensive bit of racial stereotyping ("love machines of the National Basketball Association"?), Medved seems to have a complete lack of knowledge about what straight men are doing when they take a shower in a public place. They're trying to wash up after a game or work-out, not hoping that some Charlize Theron-lookalike will walk by and give them some complimentary wood while they're soaping up with the boys. Who wants to advertise their shortcomings to the world? It's a question of modesty.

The New York Times is reporting that former Mass. Sen. Edward W. Brooke is still alive. Others who this day yet live include him, her, him, her, him, her, him, her, and him. Him too.

Rocky Roid.

Did you know there's actually a country where the children of the nation's leaders go and fight when their country goes to war? It's called, "The United Kingdom." Kinda blows your mind....

Melissa McEwan, the "other blogger" in l'Affaire Marcotte, has been getting the bum end of the stick in this whole controversy. Unlike Marcotte, she never posted anything that could conceivably be termed extreme or bigoted against the Catholic Church (a point reiterated by that noted lefty blogger, Patterico), and her role in this matter seems to be that she was just another woman whom Tom Donahue and the other bundists of the far right could bully. Her opinions may have been left-liberal, and she may have taken no prisoners on her blog, but surely that cannot be justification for seeking to blackball her from mainstream political activities.

But the post-resignation articles all seem to lump the two of them together, as if her calling the Pope on the Church's recent history of anti-gay persecution, or decrying what she termed the "Christofascist" element of the GOP, was somehow indistinguishable from a blogpost denigrating the Virgin Mary. Death threats, never justifiable no matter how rancid the commentator (right wing or left), are especially odious when targeted against someone who has done nothing to merit any sort of scorn. It doesn't take a Cal Tech grad to figure out that lumping her and Marcotte together may have less to do with what they had written and everything to do with the fact that they were young, talented, and blunt women.

Ladies and gentlement, the ever-credulous Howard Kurtz....

Fox to Air Fake News Show: How will we tell the difference?

And now, the feel-good hit of Spring 2007:

Mensteala: It's hard to watch this video and not feel sorry the guy, no matter how wealthy or famous he is. Like watching Jerry Lewis, or Adam Sandler, or seeing Whoopi Goldberg host the Oscars....

An interesting take on the problems Mitt Romney will have with the GOP base, which have got nothing to do with his flip-flops on abortion or gay rights.

It's not a blanket slam on Catholic dogma, nor a foul-mouthed tirade clothed in self-righteousness, but this is my effort to forever disqualify myself from working on a Presidential campaign:

Nacht und Nebel: A prof from one of the SEC's finest law schools has a modest proposal to solve the Iranian Problem: Death Squads.

Marcotte Resigns: No surprise there. A campaign blog, or any sort of corporate/institutional blog, has to be bland and inoffensive by its very nature. And she was clearly not that. The only other justification to hire her would be if she had a proven ability to manage and format a weblog, something that Kos has almost patented; obviously, if Pandagon was "losing" half of her controversial posts because its archives were busted, then she's not the person to bring in to set up an entirely new website. Having her "resign" after the heat has died down (while keeping the other blogger, who doesn't appear to be guilty of anything other than being anti-Christianist) allows the Edwards camp to claim they put up the good fight against the Giant Fascist Noise Machine without having to worry about losing Pennsylvania or Ohio the next time their spokeswoman decides to mock the Immaculate Conception.

UPDATE [2/13]: And now the other blogger has resigned. Since there was no recent post on her weblog that would justified any further right wing outrage, the proximity of the two resignations is most curious.

Francis Urquhart Dies: Ian Richardson, the star of the one of the greatest black comedies ever to air on television, "House of Cards" (and two fine sequels), passed away over the weekend. Dame Helen Mirren paid tribute to him last night after accepting her BAFTA honor, calling him her "mentor", and tearfully saying that she doubted she would be where she was today without his help early in her career. He also played the treacherous mole opposite Sir Alec Guinness in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", and starred in both the movie and the original theatrical production of Marat/Sade. But he will always be remembered for the line, "You might well think that. I, of course, could not possibly comment," which F.U. would always repeat whenever he was called upon to give an off-the-record (and invariably false) slur upon the reputation of one of his rivals in the "House of Cards" series.

What a start for the Obama Campaign !! First John Howard, now Cornell West, who thought that the election of George Bush in 2000 would be better for black America than Al Gore. All Barack needs now is to get denounced by Tony Blair, and he'll have poodles in three different countries yelping at his heels. [link via Steve Gilliard, who is very disappointed that Obama is trying to win the Presidency, rather than appeal just to black voters, and that he chose to announce his campaign at the home of that noted racist cracker, Abraham Lincoln]

The Order of the Phoenix: Ralph Fiennes, who when last we met had just ended an eleven-year relationship with a 62-year old woman, has apparently joined the Mile-High Club with a 38-year old Qantas stewardess. [link via HuffPost]

OBAMA !!! What's not to like? He was right from the start on the war, he doesn't employ wackjob bloggers whose opinions would have been more at home in some nineteenth century anti-Fenian salon, and his campaign says this, about the empty suit running Australia:

"If Prime Minister Howard truly believes what he says, perhaps his country should find its way to contribute more than just 1,400 troops so some American troops can come home," he said. "It's easy to talk tough when it's not your country or your troops making the sacrifices."

That was in response to John Howard's assertion that if he was "al Qaeda", he would praying be praying for an Obama victory in the first primaries in March, 2008. Howard faces a new election himself later this year.

This is a journalistic low, even for Howard Kurtz....

I've never been all that impressed with John Edwards. His mediocre campaign in 2004 for the Democratic nomination barely raised a sweat on John Kerry, and his bid for the Vice Presidency provided no benefit whatsoever to the ticket. L'affaire Marcotte can be looked at two ways: he either didn't perform due diligence when he hired her as his campaign blogger, or he knew what he was getting, didn't think statements like this would effect his ability to get out his message, and now must humiliate her and cut her loose.

There is a double standard here, one that I think liberals must insist on: that any platform or ideology based on compassion and concern for those least privileged, the hallmark of progressive politics for more than a century, has to have as its spokesmen people who walk the walk as well as talk the talk. So of course the right is free to have bigots like Michelle "V-Dare" Malkin and William "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity" Donahue as its public face, and John McCain can employ an extremist as his bloggissimo. Modern conservatism doesn't pretend to be compassionate towards human suffering, and so who can begrudge its candidates for playing to that crowd. On the other hand, liberalism without civility is a contradiction in terms.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has a defense of the Edwards bloggissimos, and more questions about some of the hatemongers hired by Republicans to do the same sort of work. What a lot of Marcotte's defenders (I haven't read much of the other blogger to judge one way or another) seem to be missing isn't that she has "made controversial or profane remarks in the past," but that she doesn't seem to have an "indoor voice" to begin with. A politician like Edwards wants to win elections, and if one of his employees has a history of making remarks that offend the religious beliefs of a core constituency of your own party, he must act quickly before the problem metasticizes.

There is an important role for the Marcottes of the world, to roil the waters and shake up the false consensus that restricts our political debate. Some people have to go too far in their rhetoric, if only to show up the mealy-mouthed among us for our complacency, and Pandagon often succeeds in doing precisely that. But if that's the path you want to take, you must also understand that other doors will be closed to you, and that the heavy lifting of actually getting something done will be performed by the policy wonks and the "concern trolls" you routinely mock.

UPDATE [2/8/07]: Not fired, at least for now. The two pretty much had to repudiate everything they had previously written on their blogs as "satirical in nature" for which they are sorry if anyone "was personally offended." In the future, this may neuter other talented bloggers who wish to join campaigns, and people who take their political writing seriously may find the "satirical in nature" language hard to swallow. But the kids stay in the picture. My respect for the courage of John Edwards, if not his political foresight, has just gone way up.

Why has John McCain spent his political career bashing our troops?

Classic music video, from the King of Kool:

Super Bowl LXI: FWIW, the Chicago Bears owner, Virginia McCaskey, is a diehard Repubican, while Colts owner Jim Irsay has largely contributed to Democrats. The teams' stars go the opposite way: Peyton Manning was a Corker man in the last cycle, while Brian Urlacher's one contribution went to a Democratic congressional candidate two years ago. It appears that Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith are skinflints when it comes to politics, but Mike Ditka isn't; he has been a reliable GOP donor for years. [h/t via Daily Kos]

CHEWBACCA BUSTED !!!!

The phenomenum surrounding clubs that cater to under-21's is explored here, including a profile of Jim Smith*, proprietor of iconic hipster hangout The Smell in downtown Los Angeles.

*Brother of me.

We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the Vice Presidency of Dick Cheney. If this is true (and suffice it to say that FBI agents are trained to ensure they accurately account what they are told by witnesses), Cheney's top aide confessed that his boss told him the identity of a CIA agent, then aggressively lobbied to have her outed to the media on the most specious and petty of grounds. The Bush Administration is going to have cut this guy loose pretty soon or their whole closet is going to begin smelling.

Media Matters is a useful website, especially when it examines the assumptions behind many a false cable news report, but it would do a much better job if it got it's tongue out of the anus of the Democratic Party. A female Presidential candidate rhetorically asking how she is equipped to deal with "evil men," and alluding to the husband who was brutally disparaged by his foes while he was President, and who, on numerous occasions, betrayed their wedding vows, but whom she still loves, is being witty; it's taking a potential weakness (her marriage-of-convenience to Bill Clinton) that's on the subconscious of everyone in the audience, and making a self-deprecating reference that lightens the tension.

On the other hand, perceived references to "Ken Starr", "Newt Gingrich", "Dick Cheney", et al., aren't witty; they're banal partisan jibes. Regardless of what Hillary Clinton intended, the joke is only funny (and she did say she was trying to joke) if the "evil men" line refers to her husband. The Democrats already pay people whose sole responsibility it is to generate propaganda for the party, so unless Media Matters is getting a healthy stipend, it isn't worth it to be compromising it's integrity on something so silly.

You know you have an especially thin skin if you get all angry and emotional every time the President refers to the "Democrat Party." If it's a slur, it's an extremely petty one. More than twenty-five years ago, when I was working for a Democratic state legislator, we would "push poll" Republicans and identify our guy as the "Democrat candidate." It enabled us to inform the person at the other end of the phone that we were honest-to-goodness, rock-ribbed Republicans of the Bircher stripe, and thus made it easier to stick the shiv in when we asked if it would effect their vote if they knew the GOP candidate was a Klansman, or performed abortions, or whatever it was we wanted to communicate.

As Congressman Miller said, it's code, like flashing gang signals, that indicates the speaker is from the far right. It's not like being called the n-word, or using the word "Jew" as a verb or adjective, and the number of people who are so identified with that amorphous ideological blob known as the Democratic Party who could rightly take offense is so minuscule as to be irrelevant.

Far be it from me to criticize the sources of revenue for the local government, but the County of Los Angeles last year made a profit of $3.6 million in fees from online searches of Superior Court cases. Most judicial districts either give the info away for free as a public service, or charge a nominal fee. Sweet.

Resistance Is Not Futile: A good exegesis of the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Act (BARF), here. It's a good take on what an honest judge can do to when confronted by a statute drafted by morons:

The problems with the 2005 Act are breathtaking. There are typos, sloppy choices of words, hanging paragraphs, and inconsistencies. Worse, there are largely pointless burdensome new requirements, overlapping layers of screening, mounds of new paperwork, and structural incoherence. These are dark days for all bankruptcy professionals and both judges and debtors' lawyers are on the front lines. Resistance is key to self-respect as well as necessary to keep the system operating in ways that catch abuses while providing bankruptcy relief, at the lowest possible cost, to those who need it.

The main problem with BARF, the article notes, is that it was drafted by the none-too-bright hired guns of the credit industry, who focused primarily on granting their clients' wishlists rather than designing an intellectually consistent (but perhaps politically less palatable) law. By enacting a poorly-crafted law, Congress gave judges the freedom to interpret the law in a manner different from how the credit industry lobbyists and their vassals in Congress may have intended, relying instead on the reasons stated for its passage, on the record (ie., to "protect consumers" and "reduce fraud").

A.A.R. sold, Franken leaves: The new owner is the brother of perennial New York candidate Mark Green. Franken's show was the only good thing about the network; about half the programming for the LA affiliate is non-AAR (ie., Stephanie Miller and Big Ed Schulz), and the few times I listened to the carwreck they aired in the evenings, it seemed little different than dittohead agitprop for lefties.

Apparently, St. Joseph's going to do the old "National Interest" thing in the next election. Pretty big of him, don't you think? What was Gore thinking....

Paging Gretchen Mol: An absolutely cruel take on west-Pennsylvania native Sienna Miller, in Defamer. Vanity Fair has always been good at spotting It Girls-Who-Never-Were (remember Sophie Dahl?), as well as other trends that never quite got off the ground, a tendency memorably recounted by Toby Young in How to Lose Friends & Alienate People. To wit, this month's cover girl is "hot" actress Demi Moore, recently snubbed by the Academy for her stellar work in Bobby, and leading the casual reader to wonder why Ellen Barkin or Cher weren't available for the shoot.

Sorry, but the headline, "Key Tapes Said to Exist in Bush Case," is particularly lame. It's not even hearsay evidence; it's the hearsay possibility ("said to exist") that hearsay evidence exists (that is, the "key tapes") that may circumstantially prove Reggie Bush's family was receiving money at some point during his career at U.S.C. And the underlying Yahoo!Sports story is even thinner gruel, since it's based not on what anyone has claimed on the record, but on the fact that during discovery, "at least one of the witnesses was asked to produce 'any recordings in (his) possession of conversations between Lloyd Lake and Reggie Bush, Denise Griffin, or LaMar Griffin.' Denise Griffin is Bush's mother. LaMar Griffin is Bush's stepfather." In fact, asking the other side to produce any recordings that may be in their possession is asked in almost every civil case, and is part of the standard form interrogatories in California civil cases. Duh.

It may be too late for Zach Lund, but WADA has agreed to relax anti-doping sanctions that result in suspensions for athletes who inadvertantly ingested (or ingested trivial amounts of) stimulants tangentially found to improve performance. The group also hinted at possibly reducing the punishment for positive tests for cannabis, a drug with no known performance-enhancing characteristics in Olympic sports, but which has been tested at the strong urging of American representatives.

Eric Alterman points out that Bush's approval ratings are now less than half of what Clinton's were at the same point in his Presidency, which also happened to be when his impeachment trial was taking place.

Among the suitors for the Tribune Company's stake in the LA Times is Rupert Murdoch, apparently. Considering the financial mess his paper in New York City has been, or the clusterfuck that was News Corp's prior trusteeship of a local Angeleno institution, there's no reason to believe he will do much to stem the paper's continuing brain drain or its falling circulation, and as his cable "news" channel attests, he never has been one for practicing actual journalism.

Congolese Yellow Cake: It would be interesting to see how the Mutombo Myth got started, since I doubt anyone in the White House was clever enough to invent it. Since the final five minutes were all I saw, a good question would be whether anything else the President said bore any resemblance to the truth. [link via Hotline]

Today was the thirty-fourth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, the death of LBJ, and the Foreman-Frazier title fight (ie., "down goes Frazier, down goes Frazier...."). I wonder if there are any other historical dates that had three distinct, unrelated events that were as momentous as those. Roe was perhaps the biggest Supreme Court decision of the past fifty years, and Foreman's stunning knockout of Smokin' Joe not only crowned a new heavyweight champ, it also helped resuscitate Mohammed Ali's career. But the big headline in the paper's the next day was Johnson's death, only two days after his second term would have ended had he run (and won) in 1968.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss....

Your sister is a thespian !!! I didn't believe this guy was still alive, until he wasn't...in all fairness, Smathers did deny ever accusing his opponent of having a thespian relative, or practicing "nepotism" with a sister-in-law.

Imagine trying to generate news on the day Brownback announces for President....

How Al Jazeera covers American football. [link via LAist]

Shorter Richard Dawkins:

Tis a slippery slope indeed twixt MLK and OBL.

(and with all due props to Daniel Davies, Elton Beard, et al., for the "Shorter..." form.)

Any good investigative piece should have some real world impact, and Michael Hiltzik's series on the ongoing fraud that is Olympic dope-testing seems to be getting some positive results in the right places. International sports officials have begun to lobby to end the policy of strict liability, which bans athletes from competition even when testing reveals amounts too tiny to have any effect, or where the doping was purely accidental. The International Basketball Federation is particularly aggrieved at the inclusion of cannibis as a banned substance, even though it provides no known competitive advantage to athletes; it is the number one cause of positive tests in that sport (who knew?), and the notion that an athlete can get banned from his sport and stripped of any medals simply because he got baked after competing is absurd. Moreover, the reliability of the testosterone testing procedures that has besmirched the good name of Tour de France champion Floyd Landis has come under scrutiny, apparently because the scientific principles it adheres to are similar to those of creationism.

Ouch:

And although they all praised the troops before they dissed the troops, we're also starting to see some in the pro-war crowd place the blame for the coming defeat on the troops themselves. Here's NRO's Michael Ledeen slagging the soldiers last week:

Note that an increase in embeds [U.S. troops embedding in Iraqi military units] doesn’t necessarily require an increase in overall troop strength. We’ve got lots of soldiers sitting on megabases all over Iraq. They should be out and about, some of them embedded, others just moving around, tracking the terrorists, hunting them down. I don’t know how many guys and gals are sitting in air-conditioned quarters and drinking designer coffee, but it’s a substantial number. Enough of that.

Could you imagine the reaction from Ledeen's pals at Pajamas Media if Markos Moulitsas (or God forbid, John Kerry) had said exactly the same thing in the exactly the same context? It would have been a pure shitstorm of indignation. Roger Simon would have written a cute little post about liberal reactionaries that incorporated a Buddy Holly song, Charles Johnson would have cited it as inconvertible proof of the worldwide conspiracy between Islam and The Left to enslave us all using the Vulcan Mindmeld, Glenn Reynolds would have sputtered something about Markos (and/or Kerry) hating America and the troops, while Michelle Malkin synthesized it all into a really stupid post of fifteen or so very small words.

In any event, per Ledeen, the war is being lost because our goldbricking soldiers are sitting around drinking latte instead of shooting Muslims. That sounds pretty bitter, too.

--Dennis the Peasant.

DTP used to brutalize me over at Roger Simon's comments, so I do feel empathy for Malkin, et al.'s for being his latest targets...but not a lot. Better them than me. [link via James Wolcott]

Sadly, the California congressional delegation seems to contain a fair share of xenophobes, particularly among the Democratic contingent. According to the LA Times, at least seven California Democrats on the Hill would oppose any move to amend the Constitution to remove the ancient anachronism barring naturalized citizens from running for the Presidency. More telling, a number of supporters say that such a change would be a "low priority," adopting the language many civil rights "supporters" used in the '40's and '50's to justify their inaction in combating Jim Crow. Speaker Pelosi also qualifies her support, demanding that any such amendment have a ludicrously long residency period of thirty-five years.

There are a thousand good reasons why Ahnold should not be elected President, but the fact that he was born in Austria almost sixty years ago isn't one of them, and efforts to point to immigrants having divided loyalties and/or dual citizenship, or references to his piggish behavior on movie sets, are irrelevant to this topic. The real issue is that the governors of Michigan and California, as well as millions of other loyal Americans, are barred from running for President, and it is no different than a Constitutional provision limiting the office to Christians, or to men. Kudos to Henry Waxman, who averred "I favor a constitutional amendment to allow naturalized citizens to run for president, even those I may not support myself."

I dream of things that never were: Could Tommy Lasorda have saved the country from the Nixon Presidency, and ended the Vietnam War five years earlier, if only he hadn't worn tight shoes on the night of June 4, 1968? Some questions are raised....

Not a good day for Andrew Sullivan. He seems to unintentionally "out" Condaleeza Rice, here, then approvingly quotes an anti-chickenhawk argument made by a racist xenophobe, here. Senator Boxer, of course, is exactly right. Whatever the merits of requiring a person to have some sort of stake in the policy they're arguing for, it must be clear to anyone who doesn't have his head up his ass that the ongoing debacle in the Middle East stems in large part from this being a war in which our governing elite and our fighting men and women come from two different classes. So much of our thinking stems from two interrelated notions: that we extrapolate onto the universe our own unique experiences, and that we feel much greater empathy to those closest to us. The full gravity and horror of war cannot be wholly appreciated by those who've never seen combat, or who've never had a loved one do so.

UPDATE: Another moronic take on the subject, here (esp. in the comments). Those conservative cheerleaders for war have never had an effective counter to why they're sitting this one out, besides the Modified Liston Alibi.

David Beckham signing to play with the locals is probably the thing needed to free Major League Soccer from its malaise. The league gets good but not great attendance and TV ratings, but has not matured to the point where it can sell to the fan the notion that American sports fans take as their birthright: that it is a top calibre league where the best players in the world congregate. Americans can accept the fact that the U.S. national team is not even close to being at the top in ice hockey, and that other countries have now surpassed us in baseball and basketball, since our domestic leagues in those sports are still the best.

But it's next to impossible to develop any sort of passionate interest in teams like D.C. United or the Galaxy as long as they remain content to dominate a very mediocre league. Fanatics of the sport in this country can easily dial into the Premier League or Serie A on the Fox Soccer Channel every weekend, while the casual fan has other, more palatable options during the season than watching the Houston Dynamo take on Chivas U.S.A. Giving Americans a reason to watch is one way the MSL can make itself more credible, and the best way to do so at this point is by signing top-flight players. Beckham, who has had so much attention paid to his demotion, at both the club and national level, that he can now be classified as one of the game's most underrated players, will do that, in much the same way Michael Jordan's return to the hapless Washington Wizards several years ago gave hoops fans an excuse to watch Eastern Conference basketball.

Oh, to be in England...The Trial of Tony Blair debuts this Monday. For the swelling legions of Phoebe Nicholls fans, it will surely be nirvana, and the early word is that it will even be worth watching the scenes she doesn't appear in. She has a line about Bush being in a coma that may surpass "Game, set and match" as the greatest line she's ever uttered. Otherwise, it's got some telling points about the responsibility (or lack thereof) that Western political leaders have for the consequences of their actions, including the fairy tale notion that we would actually allow international tribunals to judge our own actions.

The ICC, which tries Blair in the satire, got a bad rep from the Milosevic trial, which lasted for four years; needless to say, a four-year trial that ends only because the defendant died is contrary to any elemental notion of due process, and ends up being self-defeating if the goal is to illuminate the atrocities of the accused. After about six months, even the most passionate adherents of human rights and accountability are going to be more interested in what Paris Hilton or Posh Spice are wearing than who ordered what in Bosnia. But it obviously beats the travesty of the victor's justice that we just saw take place in Iraq. How we can consider ourselves civilized for applying one standard of justice to Pinochet and Milosevic, and another to Bush and Blair, who have the blood of hundreds of thousands on their hands, is beyond me.

This is directed at women, but it's something for a fat bald wastrel on a cruise ship to think about:

Beauty is power -- except for those who'd rather not spend the time. They call it "pandering to the male gaze." Yeah, it's that, too. Like wastrel kids whose legacy relative gets their asses into Yale, sometimes a little cleavage, a nice smile, and a fabulous hat get you a better seat on the plane. When they offer to move you to first class, what do you do, offer your seat to the ringer for Andrea Dworkin?

Just my luck, I'm seated in first class, and I get seated next to Miss Dworkin...or Jack Abramoff. If you haven't checked out her site recently, Amy Alkon is on a run comparable to Urban Meyer tonight.

Congrats on ending a 207-game losing streak, but when did Cal Tech become one word ("Caltech")? Have I been pronouncing it wrong all along?

Our Long National Nightmare, Part II: A profile of Robert T. Hartmann, the man who crafted the most famous line Gerald Ford ever spoke, in this morning's LA Times by the Burt Blyleven of the blogosphere, Matt Welch:

Hartmann, a Times reporter from 1939 to 1964 (with time out for service in the Navy during World War II), was no fan of the Nixon staffers, who he derisively referred to as "the Establishment." He blamed them for Ford's 1976 defeat and warned about their influence early in the Reagan era. Rumsfeld, he thought, was a cunning opportunist, while his sycophantic assistant Cheney, according to Hartmann's 1980 memoir, was "somewhat to the right of Ford, Rumsfeld or, for that matter, Genghis Kahn."

The feeling was mutual. Rumsfeld eventually undermined Hartmann by arguing successfully that the counselor's office — which shared a door with Ford's — should be converted into a presidential study. Cheney, dissatisfied with the speeches Hartmann was writing for the president (especially a historic April 1975 Tulane University address in which Ford declared the Vietnam War was "finished as far as America is concerned"), simply created his own separate speechwriting shop. And Nixon Chief of Staff Alexander Haig landed the most lasting blow of all by working around the counselor to discuss with then-Vice President Ford the possibility of pardoning the outgoing chief executive.

Hartmann, a former Counselor to the President, was a pallbearer at President Ford's funeral last week. Ironically, he spent a quarter of a century as a reporter at the Times, where he had been a particular favorite of the politician who was most famously a creation of the paper, Richard M. Nixon. Hartmann opposed the pardon of Nixon, and as recently as seven years ago called the act "an extremely selfish decision" by Ford, geared more towards making his life easier as President than any desire to put the past behind him.

We've just left Hilo on the Big Island, and it's five days at sea until the Island Princess hits San Pedro. So far, the highlight of the cruise has either been the 17-year old girl on the Aloha deck who was reported missing on the ship at four a.m. Wednesday morning, causing a great consternation among the crew and waking up half the ship (it turns out she was bonking a passenger in another cabin, and her dad overreacted), or the two, count 'em, two, performances by the legendary ventriloquist act, Willie Tyler & Lester," who for some reason was plugging a new CD (how exactly would that work?)

As anyone who has ever been on a long cruise can tell you, the port days are the least interesting part of the voyage, since you're never at any locale for longer than ten hours. Once there, you either have to overspend on a cruise-sponsored tour, make your own arrangements (always an iffy proposition), or hope there's something to do near the port. On this trip, the Island Princess stopped in Kauai for the day, and I managed to spend my visit to one of the world's most breathtaking islands doing nothing more than walking to a nearby mini-mall and buying a newspaper. On the other stops, I was more lucky, visiting the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, with a side trip to the USS Missouri, and today hooking up with a friend of a cousin-in-law to tour the spectacular (and undeveloped) outskirts of Hilo, a town which doesn't appear to have changed much in the last fifty years.

So now the fun part begins, with five days with nothing to do but eat, get smashed and play bingo. I'll have pictures to post next week. Be seeing you.

Two more black eyes for the blogosphere, here and here. For the record, I am not a Media Watchdog; if the most important thing in your life is whether Meet the Press has any left-of-center pundits on its panel, or whether the LA Times is biased against conservatives, you are living a very sad existence indeed. But the right wing obsession with the media isn't simply an embarrasment, it may eventually get someone killed. I know that there hasn't been a lot to cheer about as far as successes for the keepers of the starboard flame (sorry, I've been on a cruise ship for the past week), but some bloggers really have to get over the fact that they busted Dan Rather three years ago. Claims that the media has falsified evidence or invented sources are starting to be reminiscent of Queeg's Strawberries, and it's starting to taint the rest of us everytime they go off the deep end.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald says it better, firing both barrels:

And now the right-wing blogosphere stands revealed as what they are -- a pack of gossip-mongering hysterics who routinely attack any press reports that reflect poorly on their Leader or his policies, with rank innuendo, Internet gossip, base speculation, and wholesale error as their most frequent tools of the trade. They operate in packs, constantly repeating each other's innuendo and expanding on it incrementally, and they then cite to each other endlessly in one self-feeding, self-affirming orgy of links, as though that constitutes proof.

And they are wrong over and over and over -- and not just in error, but embarrassingly so, because so frequently their claims are transparently, laughably absurd, and they spew the most righteous accusations without any sort of evidence at all. The New Republic has its Stephen Glass and The New York Times has its Jayson Blair. But those are one-off incidents. The right-wing blogosphere is driven by Jayson Blairs. They are exposed as frauds and gossip-mongerers on an almost weekly basis. The only thing that can compete with the consistency of their errors is the viciousness of their accusations and their pompous self-regard as "citizen journalists."

The comparison with Glass and Blair may be a tad unfair, since those journalistic malefactors were caught deliberately falsifying stories, while I have no doubt the bloggers involved in this the AP fiasco sincerely believed they were purusuing some sort of Higher Truth. But that makes it even more frightening. As a wise man of the blogosphere once said in a completely different context, "screw 'em."

It appears I'm not alone. From Terry Lawson of the Detroit Free Press:

Since it can safely be assumed that millions are now in possession of copies of "Cars" and "Six Feet Under: The Complete Season," this is the perfect opportunity to trade in or up for other, less obvious DVDs or sets you really want -- or in some cases, need.

My personal want list, fulfilled this year, begins with the best limited TV series ever made, "Brideshead Revisited," adapted from Evelyn Waugh's novel and originally shown here on PBS in 1982.

All 660 minutes of the drama -- about the life-altering friendship of would-be painter Charles Ryder (Jeremy Irons) and Oxford classmate Lord Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Edwards), who introduces him to a world he would have never known when he takes Charles home to meet his his family and his upper crust London crowd -- have been remastered for the "25th Anniversary Edition Collector's Edition" (FOUR STARS out of four stars, Acorn Media, $59.99).

The perfect cast includes Sirs Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, and as Sebastian's sisters, Diana Quick and Phoebe Nichols (sic), for whom I developed life-long crushes.

Or maybe I am alone; it would stand to reason that if you truly have a life-long crush on the Phoenician, you'd be able to spell her last name correctly. It's not like the first "l" in her last name is silent.

Long live the splendor and glory of Ms. Nicholls against the depradations of the infidel !!! Kobe Akbar !!!

The Poor Are Still With Us: As you enjoy the Rose Bowl at home this New Year's Day, perhaps a thought can be spared for these benighted wretches, our nation's federal judges. According to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts:

In 1969, federal judges earned substantially more than the dean and the senior professors at Harvard Law School, Roberts said. Today, federal judges are paid about half of what the deans and senior law professors at top schools are paid, he said.

During the same period, the average U.S. worker's wage, adjusted for inflation, has risen about 18%. By contrast, the pay for a federal judge has declined about 24% compared with inflation, creating a gap of 42%, he said.

Federal judges, who have lifetime appointments, "do not expect to receive salaries commensurate with what they could easily earn in the private sector," Roberts acknowledged. Indeed, judges in many cities know that lawyers fresh out of law school will earn more than they do, he noted.

But judges should not have to accept salaries that "fall further and further behind the cost of living…. The time is ripe for our nation's judges to receive a substantial salary increase," he said.

--From today's Onion Los Angeles Times. For the record, federal district court judges, who serve lifetime appointments, have had to make do on a meager stipend of $165,000 a year, which is less than four times the average national income. It would be terrible if all the young principled ideologues that have been placed on the courts these last six years would have to leave for the private sector so soon.

After an embarassingly shabby show trial, Saddam Hussein may go to meet his maker on the morrow, and Josh Marshall has a good overview as to what it signifies:

The Iraq War has been many things, but for its prime promoters and cheerleaders and now-dwindling body of defenders, the war and all its ideological and literary trappings have always been an exercise in moral-historical dress-up for a crew of folks whose times aren't grand enough to live up to their own self-regard and whose imaginations are great enough to make up the difference. This is just more play-acting.

These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing's a mess and that they're going to be remembered for it -- defined by it -- for decades and centuries. But before we go, we can hang Saddam. Quite a bit of this was about the president's issues with his dad and the hang-ups he had about finishing Saddam off -- so before we go, we can hang the guy as some big cosmic 'So There!'

Marx might say that this was not tragedy but farce. But I think we need to get way beyond options one and two even to get close to this one -- claptrap justice meted out to the former dictator in some puffed-up act of self-justification as the country itself collapses in the hands of the occupying army.

Marty Peretz, with some sort of projection, calls any attempt to rain on this parade "prissy and finicky." Myself, I just find it embarrassing. This is what we're reduced to, what the president has reduced us to. This is the best we can do. Hang Saddam Hussein because there's nothing else this president can get right.

Putting Saddam on trial was always going to be hard; the more internationally-legitimate tribunal at The Hague for Slobodan Milosevic lasted four years, and was as much a debacle as the Hussein "trial", ending only because the former dictator died. Obviously, though, there is no a way a fair trial could have taken place in Iraq, and the fact that they're still debating whether the execution should be televised is an indication that only the names of the rulers have changed.

Blogging will be intermittent the next two weeks, as I cruise to Hawaii aboard the Island Princess. First night's weather made for a very rocky passage, but it's settled down enough for the crew to allow people on deck. It's five days there, five days in the islands, and five days back, so I'll see you after the new year....

Gerald Ford, the 38th President of the U.S., has died. Our nation was lucky Ford was vice president when Nixon resigned. He represented a brand of conservative Republicanism that seems quaint today: hawkish on foreign policy, moderation on hot-button issues like abortion, and adherence to economies of budgeting that would seem naive to the Cheneys and Bushes of the world. The Republican Party that Ford joined in his youth still identified itself as the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, and viewed support of civil rights and the E.R.A. as part of its birthright. Goldwater, Nixon and the Southern Strategy would alter the party beyond recognition; by the time he became President, he was already out of touch with much of his party's base, and 170 of the electoral votes won by the Democrats in 1976, and 143 of those won by the G.O.P., were captured by the other party in 2004.

In light of yesterday's Christmas traditional between the Lakers and Miami, I wonder if it's time to do a post-mortem on the trade between the clubs two years ago, the one that basically created the rivalry. At the time, it seemed like a desperation ploy by the Lakers, a move to dump one of their stars because of his incompatibility with another star. But over time, it's beginning to look like it has the makings of one of the most one-sided trades in history, but in favor of the Lakers. In exchange for an injury-prone, declining athlete at the tail-end of his career, the Lakers obtained one star (27-year old Lamar Odom), one potential star (24-year old Kwame Brown, who has thrived under Phil Jackson) and a 20-year old rookie with impressive offensive skills (Jordan Farmar). Plus, they freed up a bunch of room under the salary cap, and are clearly a team on the upswing; no prolonged decline, followed by a slow retooling while Kobe ages, for them.

The Heat won a title with Shaq, of course, and on those occasions when he's healthy, he can still play like one of the top centers in the NBA, but last year's Heat was more Dwyane Wade's team, and there's no way the Lakers were going to win another one with Shaq on the inside if he couldn't lead a team that had Kobe, Gary Payton and Karl Malone to a title three years ago. Trading O'Neal allowed the Lakers to resign Kobe, and break up what had become a dysfunctional relationship. Kudos to Mitch Kupchak and Jerry Buss for making a ballsy move when they had to.

Black Republican Dies.

Michael Hiltzik follows up his superb series on sports labs (and the bogus science they practice) with a piece on Floyd Landis' innovative approach to charges he was doped when he won the Tour de France last summer:

Landis' team has posted online the laboratory reports on which the charge is based. This step, unprecedented in an anti-doping case, has allowed independent scientists to study the evidence against Landis — 370 pages of technical documentation.

The result is a vigorous debate on Internet message forums and bulletin boards about the science underlying the charge and whether Landis, successor to Lance Armstrong as America's leading competitive cyclist, has been unjustly accused.

Landis' representatives say they have gleaned a wealth of clues about how to attack the evidence when the case goes before an arbitration panel, probably this spring.

(snip)

Landis' defense team calls its decision to publicize the evidence against him the "wiki defense," referring to an online application allowing members of the public to collaborate on encyclopedias, dictionaries, computer programs and other services.

The idea is to counteract the advantages that anti-doping agencies have in bringing cases against athletes. As The Times reported this month, WADA uses a zero-tolerance standard, punishing athletes for unintentional or inconsequential violations of doping rules.

(snip)

With the wiki defense, Landis's team can subject the prosecution's scientific evidence to global scrutiny.

"There has been a tremendous amount of knowledge-sharing among the folks online, even among those who disagree about what the tests say," says Kevin Dykstra, 47, an amateur cyclist and professional chemist who has posted extensive analyses of the lab reports under the online alias "Duckstrap."

Dykstra's posts criticize the Paris lab for failing to demonstrate that it measured Landis' testosterone and epitestosterone accurately and that it could reach consistent results with multiple tests.

"To make the kind of accusations they made as publicly as they did, this has to be a slam-dunk," he says. "And this was not a slam-dunk. The data that's here leaves ample room for doubt."

Read the whole thing; it's the kind of investigative piece that wins Pulitzer Prizes.

[UPDATE: For more on all things Floyd Landis, both pro and con, check out this site.]

The Ultimate Christmas Video:


...and the story behind the Video [link via Robert A. George]

Virgil Goode's attack on Muslim-Americans may be just the wedge for Democrats to push an aggressive pro-immigrant policy through the next Congress. Think about it: Goode is a corrupt hack who was originally elected to Congress as a Democrat, then switched parties, but not after voting for three of the four articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton. Now he makes a thinly-veiled swipe at the first Congressman of Islamic faith in U.S. history, then compounds matters by asserting that Keith Ellison's election is what happens when our borders aren't being closed (Ellison, btw, is native-born). He's the trifecta: a crook, a backstabbing turncoat, and a moron to boot. He makes a much better David Duke than Cong. Tancredo, so let's use that.

An opinion concerning the blogosphere:

Every conceivable belief is on the scene, but the collective prose, by and large, is homogeneous: A tone of careless informality prevails; posts oscillate between the uselessly brief and the uselessly logorrheic; complexity and complication are eschewed; the humor is cringe-making, with irony present only in its conspicuous absence; arguments are solipsistic; writers traffic more in pronouncement than persuasion.

(snip)

journalism as practiced via blog appears to be a change for the worse. That is, the inferiority of the medium is rooted in its new, distinctive literary form. Its closest analogue might be the (poorly kept) diary or commonplace book, or the note scrawled to oneself on the back of an envelope--though these things are not meant for public consumption. The reason for a blog's being is: Here's my opinion, right now.

The right now is partially a function of technology, which makes instantaneity possible, and also a function of a culture that valorizes the up-to-the-minute above all else. But there is no inherent virtue to instantaneity. Traditional daily reporting--the news--already rushes ahead at a pretty good clip, breakneck even, and suffers for it. On the Internet all this is accelerated.

The blogs must be timely if they are to influence politics. This element--here's my opinion--is necessarily modified and partly determined by the right now. Instant response, with not even a day of delay, impairs rigor. It is also a coagulant for orthodoxies. We rarely encounter sustained or systematic blog thought--instead, panics and manias; endless rehearsings of arguments put forward elsewhere; and a tendency to substitute ideology for cognition. The participatory Internet, in combination with the hyperlink, which allows sites to interrelate, appears to encourage mobs and mob behavior.

This cross-referential and interactive arrangement, in theory, should allow for some resolution to divisive issues, with the market sorting out the vagaries of individual analysis. Not in practice. The Internet is very good at connecting and isolating people who are in agreement, not so good at engaging those who aren't. The petty interpolitical feuding mainly points out that someone is a liar or an idiot or both.

Because political blogs are predictable, they are excruciatingly boring. More acutely, they promote intellectual disingenuousness, with every constituency hostage to its assumptions and the party line.

From WSJ assistant editorial features editor Joseph Rago, earlier this week. Although he's understandably concerned with the effect that blogs have on the practice and craft of journalism (and I concur with much of his criticism over what passes for political blogging), he seems to be missing the point as to why this new medium rocks. With few exceptions, such as Josh Marshall's growing online fiefdom, bloggers aren't in the habit of breaking stories or reporting news, and the third-party interview with a newsmaker is rare. Indeed, bloggers are commenters, akin to the op-ed section of a daily newspaper, where the standard rules of objectivity don't apply.

The blogosphere is an improvement over the ancien regime in two ways. First, it has expanded the universe from which "pundits" are drawn, going beyond the perspective of former journalists, speechwriters and Ivy League academics. To communicate an opinion to a large audience no longer requires a person to have paid dues at a newspaper, or to have attended the Kennedy School, or to have signed on to a political campaign in his youth; anyone who is motivated enough to spend time in front of his computer can opine away. The popularity of blogs stems from the discovery that the opinion of a grad student, or a retired software marketer, or a housewife, or even a West San Fernando Valley bankruptcy attorney, can be as weighty as any of the Sabbath Gasbags.

Of course, the big initial drawback has been to promote those whose violent rhetoric has been more conducive to attracting attention and building a large readership, with the result being what Mr. Rago said, a panoply of angry, dull, predictable and partisan blogs using over-the-top attacks to bully their opponents. As the sad story of Ned Lamont's general election campaign attests, it is a style that is clearly counterproductive. But with thousands of Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, indicate, anything that shatters the elitist dominance of our public policy discourse, while expanding the realm of what ideas are considered "mainstream" or "acceptable" can't be a bad thing.

Second, even though the hyper-partisan rhetoric in most blogs can be deadly to the unconverted, not all partisanship is bad, as we can see when we examine the growing online empire of Markos Moulitsas. As any blogger who has a regular readership can tell you, the discovery that there are other people out there who feel the same way you do is a thrilling revelation indeed, and when multiplied exponentially, a site like Daily Kos can do remarkable things with that audience. The story of the 2006 election was that of a reenergized liberal base, taking the battle to the conservative ruling coalition that had governed this country since the late-60's, and against all odds, recapturing control of the engines of government.

This historic victory was accomplished because bloggers like Kos (IMHO, the person whom Time should have honored last weekend) and MyDD provided an outlet for people who otherwise would have felt marginalized by a political system that favors the interests of the wealthy and powerful, and gave them a chance to participate, one Congressional district at a time. These online bulletin boards alerted like-minded readers about needy, often quixotic challengers who needed money, canvassing, and assistance, and helped level the playing field.

In 2004, Kos got bageled in November, losing every race he focused on. This time around, that same energy and focus paid off big time for the Democrats. Bloggers are enabling millions of people to participate in our system of government, much as the old political parties did at one time, and are helping to discard outdated notions of what sort of grassroots politics is effective.

One of the things I despise most about the blogosphere is the notion that anyone who disagrees with you isn't simply wrong, but evil. Bob "Al Gore is a f***ing god" Somerby has already become a parody of himself with his incessant sycophancy towards the former Veep, as well as his banal attacks on any who dare criticize his Noble Friend from Harvard, and his bizarre take on Richard Cohen's column attacking John McCain's shift to the hard right (Cohen unfortunately thought that McCain was still a decent person) seems to have all the subtlety of a Jane Hamsher post on St. Joseph. If anything will ensure the election of a McCain-Lieberman ticket in 2008, and perhaps tens of thousands more Americans dead in Iraq, it will be the overheated prose of the blogosphere "making the case" against their enemies.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately; I have been quite busy working for a living, and the number of bankruptcy cases has risen dramatically in recent months (thanks, housing bubble !!) Since it is that time of year, I thought this essay by philosopher Peter Singer would be worth reading, on the topic of philanthropy.

Figures that when I finally made the cover of Time Magazine, I wouldn't photograph well....

As if dying wasn't bad enough, Buck O'Neill has now been posthumously awarded the nation's highest award honoring incompetance.

A complete glossary of racial and ethnic derogatorisms, here. But nothing on yoopers, yet.

An even 30: In the last undecided House race, a Democrat knocked off a Republican incumbent in Texas in a run-off yesterday. The Democrat, Ciro Rodriguez, had lost a primary earlier this year to a DINO, Henry Cuellar, but got another chance after the Supreme Court threw out part of the 2003 Texas gerrymander. Henry Bonilla, the Republican (and the only non-Cuban Hispanic in the GOP caucus), saw his election-night percentage shrink from 48% to just over 45% last night, an ominous sign for the new minority party.

The opponent in Mike Tyson's last two great fights has his own website. And Razor Ruddock is now an inventor !!!! [link via Deadspin]

I guess I shouldn't be surprised at anything that appears on the WaPo editorial page, which continues to see a need to publish the 21st Century's own version of Walter Duranty, Charles Krauthammer, but this tribute to one of South America's most vile tyrants bears attention. In effect, Gen. Pinochet earns the Post's affection because the Chilean economy boomed in the decades after he left office, as if that was imporant. And did you know Hitler built the Autobahn? [link via Matthew Yglesias]

Since his demotion as a columnist/blogger, Michael Hiltzik has been earning his paycheck, with a series on the scientific fraud masquerading as "performance enhancing drug tests," here and here. His findings:

"Athletes are presumed guilty and denied routine access to lab data potentially relevant to their defense.

Trivial and accidental violations draw penalties similar to those for intentional use of illicit performance-enhancing substances.

Anti-doping authorities or sports federations have leaked details of cases against athletes or made public assertions of their guilt before tests were confirmed or appeals resolved.

Arbitrators, theoretically neutral judges, are bound by rules drafted and enforced by the World Anti-Doping Agency and its affiliates, including the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. They have almost no discretion to adjust penalties to fit individual circumstances."

One sad case involved Zach Lund, an athlete cheated out of a chance to compete in the last Winter Olympics:

Accused athletes find that challenging a system stacked against them can be extraordinarily costly, prompting some to abandon any effort at defense.

"It wiped out my life savings and my college savings," Zach Lund, 27, a world-class skeleton sled racer from Salt Lake City, said of his effort to clear himself of doping charges.

In 2005, a drug test found traces of finasteride, an ingredient in anti-baldness medication, in his urine. The substance had been banned only that year over concerns that it might mask the presence of steroids in urine samples. That concern, however, was based on a single study by a WADA lab that had not been peer-reviewed by a medical journal. And Lund had been taking the hair restoration prescription for five years.

"I lost all my sponsorships and my funding" from the U.S. Olympic Committee, Lund said in an interview. "I even had to get money from my family and friends. The system is broken. Right now, it's catching people who make mistakes."

An arbitration panel acknowledged that the finasteride came from Lund's medication. In upholding a one-year suspension that deprived him of a chance to compete in the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, which opened on the very day of the ruling, arbitrators called him "an honest athlete" and acknowledged that the substance had no performance-enhancing effect.

They conceded that they had reached their decision "with a heavy heart": Although Lund had faithfully disclosed his medication on anti-doping forms at every event, no official had ever alerted him to the change in finasteride's status.

Moreover, the conflicts of interest abound: scientists who work for the labs in question are forbidden from giving expert testimony in favor of an athlete who challenges the tests, and the arbitrators who hear appeals have professional and pecuniary relationships with the anti-doping agencies, making it nearly impossible to find an impartial judge.

In other words, it's a racket, the exposure of which should give Mr. Hiltzik a shot at another well-deserved Pulitzer Prize.

Turns out Brownie wasn't the bottom of the Bush Crony Barrell:

A top Air Force lawyer who served at the White House and in a senior position in Iraq turns out to have been practicing law for 23 years without a license.

Col. Michael D. Murphy was most recently commander of the Air Force Legal Operations Agency at Bolling Air Force Base in the District.

He was the general counsel for the White House Military Office from December 2001 to January 2003, and from August 2003 to January 2005. In between those tours, he was the legal adviser to the reconstruction effort in Iraq, an Air Force spokesman said.

Murphy later served in 2005 as commandant of the Air Force Judge Advocate General's School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala.

He was relieved of his command at Bolling on Nov. 30 after the Air Force learned that he had been disbarred for professional misconduct in Texas in 1984 but hadn't informed his superiors, according to Air Force Times, an independent newspaper that first reported the action. It said that his status was discovered in the course of an unrelated review.

In fact, Michael Murphy's status as an attorney has been publicly available for some time at the Texas State Bar website; anyone performing due diligence could have obtained his status in seconds. [link via Balloon Juice]

The prognosis for one of L.A.'s best-loved (and wittiest) bloggers/journalists has taken a turn for the worse. Any kind words and thoughts for Cathy and Maia would be greatly appreciated.

A handy spreadsheet of the first-ever census taken specifically of my hometown, the San Fernando Valley (well, it's not a town, yet, but that's the way the tide is shifting), here. By itself, the Valley would be the fifth largest city in the U.S., with over 1.7 million people, while L.A. would slip to fourth, just behind Houston, were it to lose its better half. Far from being the epitome of white suburbia it may have been back in the Yorty Era, the Valley is now over 40% foreign-born, and almost 60% speaks a language other than English. (link via L.A. Observed)

Pro sports teams are usually owned by a narrow cross-section of our society, typically those who've made (or inherited) fortunes in oil, entertainment, investment banking, real estate, etc. Only in the WNBA, though, can a new owner of a team be a public school teacher from Van Nuys, California.

It's hard for me to argue with Prof. Foner's assertion that George Bush is the worst President of all time; his competition can be mainly separated into qualified-disasters-with-important-accomplishments-on-the-side, like LBJ and Nixon, or Civil War Era boobs who presided in the White House at a time when the power of their office was weaker, and the U.S. was nothing more than a regional power (Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Buchanan). Bush lacks the very real accomplishments of Johnson in the domestic arena (Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, Medicare, etc.) or Nixon in foreign policy (reproachement with China, detente with the Soviet Union), so he has much more in common with the latter group of men, with the important difference being the scale of American global power when he assumed office. Buchanan and Pierce may have been slow to react to Confederate treason, but at least they didn't jeapordize America's role as a superpower by their actions.

In short, Bush managed to hit the trifecta: our economy stagnated, our relations with the rest of the world worsened, and our nation is weaker than it was before he became President. Those points are important, since they go to why we elect people to lead us in the first place. We elect our Presidents in the hope that they will make the country a better place, not to follow some ideology or to act as a national role model. While the rankings generally reflect the political leanings of historians, which currently tend to skew left-of-center, there is little doubt about the men at the very top; it's Washington, Lincoln and FDR, and whatever shortcomings they may have had concerning African-Americans or women, or whether their views would be considered palatable today, is irrelevant to the totality of their ranking. A liberal historian might judge Jimmy Carter more kindly than William Howard Taft, or might rank Ronald Reagan worse than he deserves, but the true greats are not debated.

And the same thing is true at the bottom. It isn't just that James Buchanan was a pro-South sympathizer who hated blacks. The same thing could be said about almost all of the Presidents before Lincoln, and most of the Presidents that followed him up until the end of WWII. Bush, like Buchanan and Pierce, is a disaster because he followed policies that proved cancerous to the nation.

Greatest Blog Post Title Ever: Ken Layne's influence is being felt at Wonkette.

Looks like we know who Jerome Armstrong is supporting in '08....

UPDATE: Welcome Kausfilets, although I have to say I disagree with his premise (ie., that Senator Obama is somehow doomed if he loses a couple of the early primaries in 2008). Bill Clinton didn't win either Iowa or New Hampshire in 1992, either, and George McGovern didn't get moving in '72 until mid-Spring (he also lost New Hampshire). As with Clinton, I suspect Obama will need to win the southern primaries to become the frontrunner, but those won't be right out of the gate.

Humorless Feminazis: Actually, I think this might be Mr. Samgrass' nadir. I'm beginning to think that our society really needs more political correctness.

Famous Last Words:

UCLA's only hope is they can distract them next week with something shiny on the end of a stick.

--Tony Pierce, LAist (11/26/2006), on the Bruins' chances against USC.