cuz

cuz
Originally uploaded by kelco

what a picture!

Recess appointment for AG?

This from TPM

Judged by the standards of our history, a recess appointment to replace Alberto Gonzales sounds like an incredible proposition. But don't be so sure. Just as we saw with the 'pardon scooter' movement, the word seems already to have gone out to the folks on the right to start preparing the ground for just such a move by the president. I've already heard a few just this morning saying it would be the right thing for the president to do. Watch for it.

Bloggers, not an alien race after all

Over at Daily Kos, Kagro X takes on an LA Times op-ed on bloggers chanllenging the assumption that bloggers didn't exist at some point.

But there never was a time when bloggers did not exist. Because -- again -- bloggers are not an alien race who fell from the heavens on a meteorite. They are people. And in fact, they are the very people for whom journalists have always been writing, and for whom they always will write. We have always been here, and we have always been a vital part -- perhaps the most vital part -- of the journalistic equation. You just didn't count us because you couldn't hear us.

Can you hear us now?

Good.

We were always talking to you. Always talking about you. Always had the exact same things to say about you and your reporting that we're saying now. We just lacked the technology to make you aware of it. Maybe you liked it that way. Maybe you'd rather it had stayed that way. But it didn't, and no amount of elitist scorn is going to change that, just as it was never able to contain it in the past. The "blogger's" disdain for shoddy reporting (and truthfully, sometimes even for quality reporting -- I have to acknowledge that) has always existed and likely always will. Blogs are just the most effective tool we've yet found to plug that disdain into.

No journalist who fails to grasp this will ever be able to write insightfully about blogs, bloggers or the blogosphere. It can't be done. You can write, of course. No one can stop you. But you can't be right. You can't be right about bloggers until you acknowledge who they actually are.

Daily show...

Its funny. But this study isn't... No-Vacation Nation

This report reviewed international vacation and holiday laws and found that the United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers any paid vacation or holidays. As a result, 1 in 4 U.S. workers do not receive any paid vacation or paid holidays. The lack of paid vacation and paid holidays in the U.S. is particularly acute for lower-wage and part-time workers, and for employees of small businesses.

This chart makes it more concrete.


















Why can the other industrialized nations afford to make sure their workers get vacation, and we can't?

An inability to grasp the concerns and struggles of average workers from very powerful sectors of the political class might be one reason. How else do you explain this...

While promoting Social Security privitization in 2005.

MS. MORNIN: That's good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.

THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?

MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)

Rudy Giuliani on Immigration: To End, or Not To End?

He makes some really good points about why ending illegal immigration isn't going to happen.

John Edwards - On Impeaching President Bush

morning news break...

Rangel On Draft: ‘It’s Easy To Talk About Supporting A War If Someone Else Is Fighting That War’ (watch it)


Kissinger: Iraq Military Win Impossible



Breyer Says Last Term Was Difficult

on war

From Tim O'Brian's vietnam memoir The Things They Carried via Brad Delong

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. Listen to Rat Kiley. Cooze, he says. He does not say bitch. He certainly does not say woman, or girl, He says cooze. Then he spits and stares. He’s nineteen years old—it’s too much for him—so he looks at you with those big gentle, killer eyes and says cooze, because his friend is dead, and because it’s so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back. You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty...

Henry Rollins - "This is how I protest the war"

Bush Admits Lying to the Press

FOX News and John Edwards

Why exactly would John Edwards not like FOx news? Bill asks such a good question. TPM pulls together a quick 2 min possible reason...

Everyone together now...

On the train this morning on my way to work (by the by I transferd stores from the Peachtree City location of a major American retailer to a new store near Atlantic Station in downtown) reading about the current economic woes of the market. And I was struck by one thought: while George Bush is showing reporters how well he can enunceiate the phrase "liquidity in the market" investors are busy moving into treasury bonds (I think...) taking all of that investment out of securities...

this post wasn't really about anything other than Bush's press confrence and his enunciation. He always enunciaties certain terms and certain circumstances more than others. I can't place my finger on it yet...

but I digress... anyways here is Dean Bakers thought for the day on the coverage of the recent economic news...

The coverage of the market meltdown includes many assurances from the experts that everything is just fine. I suppose it would be considered rude for reporters to ask why anyone should trust the assessments of people who apparently failed to see the current credit crunch coming.

I'm going to try feedbliz...

see if I like this one...

For those of you who use RSS feeds I'm trying to open up my readership. Twiddle dumb over here didn't realize who forign blogging and RSS feeds are to many people.

But that shouldn't hinder the spread of information.

Change...

I'm taking down the email subscribe button. I didn't like the tool... namely cause it didn't work for me. So I have to assume it doesn't for others as well. I'll work on finding another one that actually works! Any ideas?

Not looking good...

Iraqi government unraveling as more ministers boycott

Iraq's government, already unable to reconcile rival Sunni and Shiite Muslim factions, seemed headed for complete paralysis Monday as five more Cabinet ministers announced that they'd boycott government meetings.

Brownback to Romney: Facts Are Facts

Brownback helps solidify my view of Romney as one of the more reasonable candidates in the Republican party this year...

Ron Pauls debate response came right on the tails of this

yesterday over at Ezra Klien's blog on the "Genocide dodge" triangulation of many war supporters.

This is one of those "Still True Today" things where plenty of blog posts have been written, but it deserves repeating: asking withdrawal supporters, as Matt Bai did to Bill Richardson, "What about the genocide that will follow American withdrawal from Iraq", is what Mitt Romney might call a "null set". Political support for daily US casualties cannot continue indefinitely. At some point in the future, and probably within the next decade, US troops will either leave Iraq, or at the least scale back their day-to-day peacekeeping actions; there is no precedent for having an occupying force endlessly conduct regular patrols in a foreign land. At that point, given the current level of ethnic strife and civil unrest in Iraq, the level of violence will increase whether it occurs six months from now or sixteen years from now. The burden needs to be on occupation supporters to explain how they will reduce the level of violence while grinding through US military equipment and personnel. Otherwise, we're just postponing the inveitable, and at an enormous cost, and we would be better off negotiating away as much violence as possible while withdrawing.

All of this, of course, takes as a given the idea that a US withdrawal is certain lead to genocide, something that hasn't received any real scrutiny and might not hold up under closer examination.

Since one of the refrains from print journalists is that the blogosphere gets too "personal", and I can empathize with that, let me say that none of this carping is really Matt Bai-specific; the "withdrawal will lead to genocide and it will be America's fault" frame of reporting about Iraq has dominated the Beltway discourse since at least 2005.

Ron Paul at Iowa GOP Debate

great response...

PoliticsTV @ Yearly Kos '07: Markos' Keynote

Al-Jazeera News Aug. 3, 2007

civilian casualties in Afganistan...

Senator Dodd versus Bill O'Reilly

nice job Senator...

John Edwards - at YearlyKos

TPMtv: YearlyKos Chapter 16

Dodd on consolidation of media

Damn good film...

Der Untergang about Hitlers last secretary, and the last weeks of Hitlers reign in his bunker in Berlin. Very powerful. The horrors(and stupidity... though stupidity is quite a brash word for a 27 year old who has never had to deal with such realities) of war. The film does a great job of showing everyone come to the realization of what will become of them, and in a way what had deluded them for so long. Very brutal without being disrespectful or commercialistic. I highly recommend.

Gov. Huckabee on the YouTube Debate

good for him!

Site update...

I put an email notification bar to the right. Some people told me they don't use rss feeds so here is another option for keeping up with my blog.

I'm A Liberal

Conservative Eye for the Liberal Guy

Conservative, Christian, Right-Wing Republican, Straight, Wh

Brownback Girl

so much better than Obama girl!!

Charlie Cook on Dems...

Off to the races

Two conclusions might be drawn from all of this. First, the fundamentals are starting to rub off onto the specifics of the 2008 presidential contest. That cold wet blanket that has covered President Bush and congressional Republicans is increasingly weighing down on their presidential contenders as well; the tarnishing of the GOP brand is continuing. The upward movement of Edwards and Obama and the corresponding downward movement of the GOP contenders show that. But, for the more controversial and polarizing Clinton, the lines are just now crossing.

This conforms with other data showing Clinton is growing less unacceptable to voters inside and outside her party as the campaign progresses. What started out as nearly 50 percent of voters saying that they would never vote for her has diminished.

Clinton's negatives dropping is interesting, and exposes her strength as a political figure--which is something I've been intriuged by in recent weeks. This weakens the case for Obama in my book. I think Edwards is dead unless a strong showing in Iowa makes waves.

Amen...

Ezra Klien on "big government"

The question, of course, isn't whether government should be big or small, but whether it should be used for more than launching wars and abrogating rights. Rather than articles that accept the frame of big government as "bad" and try to protest that Republicans are for it too, I'd much prefer a movement to restore government's reputation, and simply underscore the Right's incompetence at managing federal affairs.

I've been interested in building a list of "Government failures"... that have occurred during the terms of those who are busy decrying Government as inefficient, incompetent, and wasteful. One would think those who are here to protect us from the big bad government would be the ones to be able to do things right. But that doesn't seem to be the case. As Krugman pointed out in a recent op-ed on Bush's Schip position

He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it's hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed.

And that is the crux of some conservatives. Its hard to want the government to intervene in the economy when one is walking out with wads full of cash in their pockets... at least I would think that would have more to do with the fight against "big government" than due to some passionate belief in liberty and personal responsibility.

Its one of those "pass it on" moments...

American Freedom Campaign

"We are Americans, and in our America we do not torture, we do not imprison people without charge or legal remedy, we do not tap people's phones and e-mails without a court order, and above all we do not give any president unchecked power."