Gore Was Right

Vidal, that is. In an interview published 11 July 2002, he said the following about Mr. Soon To Be Living The Rest of His Dumbass Life In Agonizing Pain Continued Ignorant Bliss, Unfortunately:

Mark my words. He will leave office the most unpopular president in history.

(h/t: Instaputz)

__________

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll substantiates Gore Vidal's claim, just in case you had any doubt:

When asked about Mr. Bush’s performance over the last eight years, 22 percent of respondents said they approved.

He did beat Cheney though. Big Dick finishes at 13%.

Tuesday: Gone With the Wind.

(Apologies to Marcellus Wallace and Leonard Skinner.)

"The frat boy ships out"

The Economist, who endorsed Bush in 2000, looks back at the past eight years. Sober, detailed, and devastating.

(h/t: Andrew Sullivan)

WaPo Interview of Obama

This past Thursday, Barack Obama sat down for about an hour with the editorial board of the Washington Post (much to the dismay of the NYT). The audio of the interview is available for streaming.

A text summary of the interview is also available, along with several sidebars that focus on Obama's answers to specific questions, like issues of concern to DC residents. Links to the sidebar items and a transcript of the interview are on the same page as the general summary.

Most of the interview is serious, and there is some standard political hedging, but he does get off some funny lines, and overall, it's pretty interesting. It is fairly amazing to listen to some of his answers while trying to imagine George W. Bush in the same situation.

Universality

(click pic to enlarge)

(h/t: KK, via email)

Also

There have been some good nicknames come up with over the past few months. Bible Spice had been my favorite. Until I saw this:

There is an alikeness, isn't there?

(h/t: Jason Linkins/HuffPo) ← yeah, funny video there

Barack Obama: Official Portrait

Bob Cesca says it's the first presidential portrait shot with a digital camera.

See it a little larger by clicking it. Much larger high-res version available on Change.gov.

[Added] It was almost too good a story to check, but it turns out Bob's right.

Oh, and from the same page: photo credit to Pete Souza, "the newly-announced official White House photographer."

Democrats Pull Off Legislative Coup! (Entire Blogosphere Faints.)

Maybe we should promote all the Tennessee Dems to the big leagues.

Shoutout to Representative Kent Williams. Ballsy move. Always delighted to see a Republican stand up to the wingnut branch of your party.

Just in Case ...

... you haven't been following along, Doghouse Riley has spent this month doing a series of posts looking back on the W years. Really good stuff. Visit his home pages and look for "Bush Farewell Tour" in the Blog Archive column. Today's is especially good. And don't miss the comment by Julia.

Patch Tuesday

Reminder for Windows users: today is Patch Tuesday. If you don't have Windows Updates set to run automatically, you know what to do.

This month was a mild one, but make sure you're up to date. I've seen several stories lately reporting that millions of Windows machines are being infected with malware only because the machines aren't being kept patched with Windows Update. Microsoft has issued some serious patches over the past few months, and you want to make sure you've gotten them all.

Brian Krebs has a post on this month's patches from Microsoft, if you want details.

Scalia, Alito, Roberts, et al, Revealed to be In The Tank For Obama!!!1!

The first line from Docket for 08-570 (Philip J. Berg, Petitioner v. Barack Obama, et al.) reads:

Oct 30 2008  Petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment filed.

After a long lists of motions, applications, distributions, we come to the last line, added today:

Jan 12 2009  Petition DENIED.

(Some procedural details available on Ballot Access News.)

Standing by for Commenter Ted and the latest explanation of why this decision only strengthens … Donofrio's? … Lightfoot's? … well, somebody's case that Barack Obama is ineligible to be president.

[Added] Hey, wait a minute. Are you just copying and pasting all over the Web, Ted? Aw, and I thought I was special.

More Pushback Against Wingnut Pundits

Following up on my last, I highly recommend John Holbo's "Unintended Consequences" post over on Crooked Timber.

Let me put it to you this way: if a guy can get a laugh out of me using philosophy jokes, not to mention tying in Monty Python to an economic argument, he's got it going on. And there's meat there, too.

That Old New Deal Nonsense

You may have heard various conservatives reciting one of their favorite chapters of revisionist history lately -- the claim that FDR's New Deal was a failure, or even that it made matters worse.

In case it's not immediately obvious to you that this is wingnuttery, and in most cases wingnut-welfare wingnuttery sponsored by the likes of the Heritage Foundation, Adam Cohen has a nice rebuttal in today's NYT.

Remember that none of those bloviators worries where his or her next meal is coming from, how the mortgage is going to get paid next month, or what would happen if a medical emergency suddenly popped up. Not one.

And in case you missed it, see my earlier post quoting Brad DeLong on the Congressional GOP's "plan" for economic recovery.

Letterman's Top 10 George W. Bush Moments

I can't agree that these are absolutely the best, but they're pretty good, and most of them have the added virtue of being less overplayed.

(alt. video link)

(h/t: Bob Cesca)

Hard Times

In fact, no current or former member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers--Democrat or Republican, living or dead, sane or insane--has signed up for the Republican House caucus's list of economists opposed to the stimulus package. None. Zero. Nada. Sifr. Efes. Wala sero. Kosong sifar. 'Ole. Knin. Pujyam. Mann. Dim. Nocht. Null. Meden. Hitotsu. Sifuri. Ling. Sunya. Mwac. Ataqan. Saquui. Hun. Illaq. Wanzi. Wanzi. Pagh. Na. Uqua.

Nobody.

That should tell you something about today's Republican Party.
-- Brad DeLong

(h/t: Bob Cesca)

Horror (Not) P.S.

Following up from the last post: I should have listened to the whole show before blogging to append this. In any case, do not miss the closing piece, "The News Then and Now," embedded below for your listening pleasure. (After the lead-in forty-second sponsorship listening torture, I mean. (What was I saying about ad support being a reasonable price to pay?))

You can also listen to or download this segment on OTM's site.

The Horror. Not.

This week's On The Media has as one of its stories an interview with James Barron. Barron, a NYT reporter, has contributed to a new book, The New York Times: The Complete Front Pages, and besides pimping it, he and co-host Brooke Gladstone discussed the evolution of that most notable of pages.

One thing in particular interested me. They discussed something I think I've heard about elsewhere: apparently, the Times is now selling ad space on its front page.

Of its print edition, I mean.

See how I had to go retronymic there? I can well imagine that in days gone by, when I bought The Paper every day, how much of a stab through all that is holy it would have felt to see an ad running on the front page of The New York Times. I could tolerate the agate-type PSAs that ran across the very bottom ("Help the Neediest," or words to that effect), but anything more would doubtless have caused me to fire off an angry letter to the editor (or two!). "What is this, USA TODAY!!!???" I can imagine scrawling in my finest purple crayon.

And now? Meh. In fact, more than that. Good for them, I say.

Obviously, as someone who gets almost all of his news online these days, including several visits daily to nytimes.com, I am by now more than used to ads being the first thing I see on any front page. This seems a small enough price to pay for otherwise free content. And word 'round the campfire says that spot costs upwards of $100K. Per day. Which is probably almost enough to keep Bill Kristol in silk hosiery a team of good investigative journalists employed.

Here's a little further reading on the topic: The NYT's more or less official word on the matter; the NYT blog City Room with some interesting history about those tiny print ads I mentioned; and an article from a year and a half ago that someone more suspicious than I might read as the NYT laying the groundwork.

Oh, and one more thing on this whole newspapers-moving-online topic. I am hereby declaring it a definitive mark of old fogeydom if you say something like, "One thing I miss about reading the print edition is the serendipity of coming across articles I probably wouldn't have read."

Pish. And tosh. The number of links on a well-laid out front page like the NYT's, not to mention article page enhancements like "Related Stories" and "Most Emailed" and "Most Blogged," offer a far greater variety and chance of stumbling across the unexpected. Especially when you think about clicking a couple of links in succession. So, Brooke Gladstone, you're on notice. You might as well give up on scrubbing your birthdate from your Wikipedia page -- the cat's out of the bag, ya geezer.

On Significance

Remember: the Weblog Awards are not about winning. They are about making other people lose and then sitting back and watching as their disappointment over the loss of a meaningless award sends their lives into a downward spiral of depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and anonymous degrading sex in a Minneapolis airport bathroom stall. Or as I call it: Saturday Night with Ace of Spades.
-- TBogg

So, vote for TBogg, and help make wingnuts (and PUMAs) (as if there's a diff) cry. And vote for Rumproast and vote for Jon Swift. Every day.

[Added] And vote for driftglass, too. And read Kevin K.'s latest. And follow the link to Jesus' General's exposé.

Also.

On "Joe" the "Plumber" as "Mideast Correspondent"

They [Pajamas Media] cry and whine about "bias" and "facts", then they prance around the internets, sticking their hairbrushes in front of their stuffed animals' faces and asking really tough questions. And, yet, they want us to believe they're serious journalists.
-- Ripley/Whiskey Fire

Line of the Day: 2008-01-11

One of the inevitable consequences of any Middle Eastern conflict is the collateral damage caused by the unprovoked and disproportionate attacks which tend to be launched by Michael Walzer on his own credibility.
-- Daniel Davies

(h/t: claymisher)

Feeding Your Twitter Updates Into Your Facebook Account

Here's an answer to a question I was asked. I decided to post it here, thinking that someone else might find it useful some day. Bear in mind that I'm new to both of these applications, so the following may over-explain or otherwise be a little clumsy.

Assuming you have a Twitter account and a Facebook account, you can make your Twitter updates pipe into Facebook so that each tweet presents as a status update to those following you on Facebook. To do this, log in to your Facebook account and then visit:

http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/

Those familiar with Facebook can probably stop reading here.

If it's not intuitive what do do next (i.e., you're as much of a Facebook n00b as I am), here's the play-by-play. My wordiness makes the procedure look more complicated than it really is.

1. You'll be asked by Twitter: "Allow access?" Click the "Allow" button.
   
   
2. On the next screen, you'll be asked for your Twitter username and password. Enter those (NB: not your Facebook uname/pword) and click "Log in."
   
   
3. On the next screen, click the big gray button at the top of the screen labeled "+Allow Twitter to update your Facebook status." You'll get a confirmation screen; click "Allow status updates."
   
   

At this point, you'll be on a page that serves as an interface to Twitter through Facebook. You can tweet from here, read the tweets coming from the people you're following, and so on. But only if you want to -- you do not have to use this page for your future tweets to be posted on your Facebook page.

If you do like this way of dealing with Twitter, read on.

You can get back to this page of by visiting the same URL mentioned above; i.e., http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/. You may wish to bookmark this page.

Also, and perhaps better, you can add Twitter to your Facebook Applications menu permanently. (This menu is available via the "Applications" button in the lower left corner of your Facebook page.) To do this:

1. Start by hovering your mouse over "Settings" in the toolbar across the top of your Facebook page
   
   
2. Click "Application Settings" in the drop-down menu
   
   
3. On the next page, find Twitter on the list and click "Edit Settings" on that line
   
   
4. Click the "Bookmark" tab in the pop-up window
   
   
5. Check the box labeled "Bookmark Twitter"
   
   
6. Click "Okay"
   
   

[Added 2009-01-11 18:30] This may also cause the Twitter app to appear as a quick launch icon along the bottom of your screen. At least, that icon is there for me now. Could also be just because I've used it recently.

Note that there are other settings available for your fiddling pleasure in this pop-up window. As far as I can tell, leaving things as they were seems fine.

Finally, my starting source for this little adventure (see Notes below) says that tweets beginning with the @ sign won't display on Facebook. I haven't verified this, but it seems like the right design decision.

If/as I learn more about this, I'll add updates to this post. Please feel free to add questions, comments, corrections, and criticisms in the Comments.

__________

Notes:

• The Joshmeister has a blog post which I came across when I was first Googling to see if Twitter could be piped into Facebook. Thanks to him for pointing me in the right direction. Note that the main purpose of his post is to describe a problem (and solution) that I don't quite understand at the moment -- something he calls "the Double Feed-Post Glitch," but his post may be of interest to others.
  
  
• Going the other direction -- making your Facebook status updates pipe to Twitter -- is not something I've tried. Jeff Sandquist has a likely-looking page to get you started, as do others.
  
  

Excitement +!

I think I just imported this blog's feed into Facebook. This may or not be of interest to you. If you don't do the Facebook, I don't think you'll notice anything different (here, on my blog proper). If you do, maybe you'll like the idea of seeing my more of my blatherings in one convenient location. (And did you know that my Twitter feed now goes there, too??!!) And once I figure out how to get my comments from the Bloggingheads.tv forums to cross-post …

Wait, come back.

One minor irritation: doesn't look like the comments from the blog proper get piped to the Facebook representation, and I'd imagine comments left by Facebookers on the various posts don't come back here, either.

As Gwen DeMarco almost said, "Stovepipes. Why is it always stovepipes?"

Because I'm all about the cheap and obvious ...

... I am unable to resist pointing out an op-ed in today's NYT: "Cocaine and White Teens."

By Charles M. Blow.

Snort.

Insult of the Day

Your book? Once I put it down, I couldn’t pick it up.
-- Dick Cavett

Caption of the Day

College pics of Barry Barack Obama found!

Here's the President-Elect, during a period of time when he was known as "Kanye Blagojevich Obama." [Not pictured: the Weather Underground.]
-- Jason Linkins

(h/t: Sara K. Smith/Wonkette)

When I Say "Wingnuts," I Don't Usually Mean "All Republicans"

However ...

"Freedom of speech is under attack in this country," said Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican …

I know. Seems like no one gets to call the President-elect a "Magic Negro" anymore. Whatever shall we do?

... and co-sponsor of the Broadcaster Freedom Act.

No, wait. You can't possibly mean ...

"I am just committing today to use every rule, every tactic that we have at our disposal to keep the Fairness Doctrine from moving in Congress or to overrule it if it is implemented by the FCC."

Auuuugghhhhhh! Not the Fairness Doctrine again.

Maybe just a lone wacko? Ahhh, no.

"Bringing back the Fairness Doctrine today would amount to government control over political views expressed on the airwaves," said Rep. Mike Pence, Indiana Republican and a former broadcaster.

Joining Mr. Pence and Mr. DeMint were Sen. James M. Inhofe [R-"Greatest Hoax"] of Oklahoma and Rep. Greg Walden [R-Obviously] of Oregon.

The group did not cite any immediate effort to revive the doctrine …

... since, we suspect, they were too busy refilling their plates at the All-U-Can-Eat Paint Chips Buffet.

Any response from the other side of the aisle?

A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said he was unaware of any plans to revive the policy. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid went a bit further.

"We have enough real problems facing this country that we don't need to invent ones that don't exist," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said. "This is not even close to being on our radar screen."

Clearly, flunkies for the top two Stalinists in the country aren't going to admit their secret plans. Thank goodness for brave Congressional Republicans, and their unflagging love for preemptive war legislation.

(h/t: Blue Texan/FDL)

[Added] The other Instaputz says not to miss Atrios's warning.

For Your Contemplation

Here is Branford Marsalis reflecting on his music students. It is not possible for me to express how much I agree with him and how widely I think his words apply.

(alt. video link)

(h/t: The Angry Professor)

End of an Error

In case you haven't already seen this:

Five days after leaving office, former Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho, is also leaving the courtroom. A lawyer for Mr. Craig said Thursday that the departing senator would not pursue further appeals related to his misdemeanor conviction in an airport sex sting in Minneapolis.

Droll conclusion to the same article:

In interviews and public comments over the last several months, Mr. Craig has said he is starting a consulting group and working on a book about his time as a senator. A Senate historian, Donald Ritchie, said that a book by Mr. Craig “would be really interesting if he told a story about the workings of the institution from an insider’s perspective.”

“But you never know,” Mr. Ritchie said, “the parts of the book that would appeal to me might not be the parts of the book that would sell.”

Conspiracy Wider Than We Thought

ZOMG!!1! Never mind the IN THE TANK LIEbrul media. It looks like Dick Cheney is in on the cover-up, too!!1!oneeleven!!

Presiding over a joint session of Congress yesterday, Cheney gave the following opening statement:

Pursuant to the Constitution and laws of the United States, the Senate and House of Representatives are meeting in joint session to verify the certificates and count the votes of the electors of the several states for president and vice president of the United States.

And before you could say "Certificate of Live Birth," he said:

Barack Obama of the state of Illinois has received for president of the United States 365 votes. This announcement of the state of the vote by the president of the Senate shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons elected president and vice president of the United States.

[Added] Video of Cheney stabbing America in the back now available!

I am reporting this because it appears that my including the phrase "natural-born citizen" in yesterday's post attracted a member in good standing of the Cult of the COLB. Evidently, Philip J. Berg's spamming of Craigslist just isn't sufficient to get the word out, so Commenter Ted, no doubt Googling for kindred spirits (or dupes like me), dropped in to give voice to his inner demons set me straight.

I did know that Berg's "application for an injunction pending the disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari" will be discussed in conference today by the United States Supreme Court [update below --bjk]. I am pleased to be informed by Ted that Gail Lightfoot's "application for a stay pending the filing and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari" has been "distributed for conference of January 23."

I must say, however, that I am uncertain what good this will do, since I feel certain that by three days after Inauguration, all voices of dissent will already have been interned in reeducation camps. (Ted: Please review this important video documentary.)

Not since I was visited by LHC Truther JTankers have I been so entertained.

__________

Side note: Honorable^TM John McCain did not attend yesterday's Congressional proceedings. Classy right to the end, that's our Johnny.

__________

[Update 2009-01-09 18:12]: No news. Maybe Monday?

It Never Stops

The unintentional hilarity of the self-pitying right wing, I mean.

Swiped from the sharp-eyed TBogg. Which reminds me: you should vote for TBogg, because he has a large very large major blog.

And you should also vote for Rumproast because Kevin K. has a small blog. Wait, that didn't …

I would also recommend that you vote for Jon Swift, although I have to say, this part seems screwy. I looked for him under Best Conservative Blog but someone put his name in the wrong category. Oh, well. Vote for him anyway. (I hope it's the same guy.)

Oh, and Roy Edroso has some more voting advice.

Oh, and the fact that Roy's alicublog appears nowhere makes this whole Weblogs Awards mighty suspect. He's a natural-born citizen! I mean, as far as I know.

Oh, and one more thing. Something good did come out of my wasting time on that Weblogs Awards site: I got introduced to The Bloggess, who is hilarious. I think I am going to copy her idea and redesign my blog. I mean, how would you not keep coming back if my blog looked like this?

DFHs: Sign DFA's Message to the DNC

(I do love me some acronyms initializations.)

Add your name to Democracy for America's petition calling upon Tim Kaine, presumptive next head of the Democratic National Committee, to reinstate the 50 State Strategy.

It has already shown results. We can achieve more.