Not sure about the date mentioned, so check your local listings, as they say.
Please Tune in Tonight at 8 PM EST to Watch CMD's Wendell Potter on MSNBC Discussing the Insurance Industry's Campaign against Michael Moore's SiCKO and Health Reform
Monday, November 29 8:00 PM EST MSNBC
In a post that went up last week, about deaths caused by the CIA’s Predator drone bombing campaign, this useful reminder from Charli Carpenter:
(Never mind the fact that as civilians, CIA agents are not entitled to wage war and would have to be considered ‘unlawful combatants’ if brought to justice.)
Of course, she's a university professor, so by definition, she's rooting for the terrorists.
P.S. Did you know that you can keep your body count of those accidentally killed by high explosives dropped from robot airplanes Collateral Damage™ down if you simply redefine all males over 13 as non-civilians?
KABUL — Afghans in two crucial southern provinces are almost completely unaware of the September 11 attacks on the United States and don't know they precipitated the foreign intervention now in its 10th year, a new report showed on Friday.
[...]
Few Afghans in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, Taliban strongholds where fighting remains fiercest, know why foreign troops are in Afghanistan, says the "Afghanistan Transition: Missing Variables" report to be released later on Friday.
The report by The International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) policy think-tank showed 92 percent of 1,000 Afghan men surveyed in Helmand and Kandahar know nothing of the hijacked airliner attacks on U.S. targets in 2001.
"The lack of awareness of why we are there contributes to the high levels of negativity toward the NATO military operations and made the job of the Taliban easier," ICOS President Norine MacDonald told Reuters from Washington.
Ya think?
"We need to explain to the Afghan people why we are here, and both convince them and show them that their future is better with us than the Taliban," MacDonald said.
Yep. But, really, no hurry. Any decade now.
Full ICOS report available here.
(h/t: John Cole, Michael Crowley | title: Hizzoner)
Remember Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell, the dynamic duo who wrote that op-ed saying that as Serious Democrats, they advised President Obama to announce immediately that he wouldn't seek a second term, because that "would grant him much greater leverage with Republicans," etc.?
Guess what they're planning to do this weekend.
(h/t: Right Wing Watch)
No One Could Have Predicted. (Except everyone who read this.)
Meanwhile, the Defense Department said Thursday Afghans may not be ready to assume full responsibility for security in their country by the target date of 2014 and some U.S. forces may need to remain beyond that date.
Hey America, want to see what you brought upon yourself by putting the Republicans in charge of the House? Stephen Colbert presents Joe Barton (R-Texas) and John Shimkus (R-Illinois), who will be big players in deciding energy and environmental policy for at least the next two years.
Did you know that wind energy would be bad, because turbines slow down the wind that cools the planet? But that we don't have to worry about global warming because God promised Noah "never again?"
(h/t: Ocean | x-posted)
If by some chance you missed the Parker/Spitzer show last week, Matt Taibbi was on. Here's a seven-minute clip that's worth watching.
CNN embedded videos are sometimes slow to start playing, so just hang in there. Or try the alt. video link.
Transcript for this show also available.
If you're curious about the source: Parker at one point quotes Taibbi as calling Sarah Palin a "narcissistic, money-grubbing hack." That lines comes from his new book, Griftopia. (I are a full-service blog.)
Want more Taibbi? Of course you do! See Rolling Stone's round table discussion about the election we just had (yes, we really had one) between him and a couple standard-issue Beltway insiders. Makes for some entertaining reading, and there may be some insights as well.
Hat tip to TBogg, who's got a choice excerpt, plus the added value of words and pictures as only he can bring.
Seymour Hersch has a longish article in the New Yorker that I recommend, especially in light of the recent reappearance in the news of the Stuxnet worm. Looks like not a few outlets have taken this news peg as an excuse to talk about how we're all going to die, because Chinese hackers, etc.
And it's not just media hype. Hersch makes a good case that we should be aware of three things: why "cyberwar" is often the wrong term to use; how making it a "war" has been a conscious choice by people hoping to gain prestige and clout, not to mention sweet government contracts; and most worrisomely, how this supposed looming "war" risks letting the military intrude further into domestic civilian affairs. (The NSA is part of the military, and the guy in charge sounds at times as though he'd be right at home on the set of Dr. Strangelove.)
Well, nominally, at least. In any case, I enjoyed it, quite a lot.
At least one person appears not to have made it past the first paragraph. Such is blogging, as I think they say at the Atlantic?
Or maybe it's just personality clashes from the past. I don't much care, probably because I am far enough removed to be able to admire and think fondly of this guy Hitch without feeling the need to agree with all his views (probably logically impossible) or even admire all of his life choices and mannerisms. Alterman's description of Hitchens the man, itself mostly fond, or at least fond exasperation, makes you understand why people are attracted to him, and I think his criticisms of both the man and the book are legitimate. (Or in the cases where I don't know enough about the particulars, at least seem to be.)
... at first glance ...
Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer and Star supermarket tabloids, filed for bankruptcy protection with a previously negotiated reorganization plan.
The Boca Raton, Florida-based publisher listed assets of less than $50,000 and debt of as much as $1 billion in its Chapter 11 filing today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. A separate petition of operating subsidiary American Media Operations Inc.’s lists assets of $100 million to $500 million and debt of more than $1 billion.
... but you also have to wonder what would fill the niche if the time they buy with this filing doesn't end up saving their checkout line rags. Something put out by Philip Anschutz, maybe?
(h/t: Chief reporter for dubious reports of Palin pregnancies. Besides Andrew Sullivan, I mean.)
There's tossing a bone to the other side, and then there's stuff like this. (via)
Somehow, Well, Not As Bad As His Son seems an insufficiently high standard to meet to make one eligible for "the nation’s highest civilian honor."
It's the maverick way -- spend a year studying whether soldiers deserve full civil rights, and a half an hour deciding who will be your presidential running mate.
-- Jon Stewart
Okay, so I stepped on one of the punchlines. But only one! So here is a five-minute clip that you will still enjoy, courtesy of TPM and Mr. Snaps.
(x-posted)
I mean, this is some serious refudiatin' to the lamestream gotcha media:
"Obviously, I am less cautiously optimistic than I was before."
-- Joe Not Yet Aware of the Fork In Him Miller
About that fork: anyone who reads, uh, all of them should have seen these headlines in Alaska's largest newspaper:
Murkowski claims victory in Senate race
Alaska GOP asks Miller to end campaign
Also.
(x-posted)
A better headline than I've seen in a while:
A rare instance of incomplete capitulation is the new defiant!
If the bumper sticker over there at the top of the sidebar looks a little faded … well, good-bye to all that, as the man once wrote.
Looks like it's back to choosing between the lesser of two evils. Such is the lot of the liberal in these United States.
(h/t: Riley Waggaman | x-posted)
[Update] Also.
[Update] Also too.
[Update] Also also too.
... teevee show? Really?
Forget everything I've ever said before about America having reached the nadir of Reality Teevee Nation. This is just. so. sad.
(h/t: Jack Stuef | title: cf. | x-posted)
Here is a thirteen-minute commentary from KO, written in response to an op-ed Ted Koppel wrote for the WaPoo. It makes a nice follow-on to the Maddow-Stewart discussion posted earlier.
If you're the sort of person who does not care for KO's presentation style, try to get past that at least this once. He's got a really solid case, and I thoroughly endorse his views on how to report the news and what it means to do a good job at it. Yeah, I too could stand if he dialed it down one notch in a couple of places and let the same words carry the ball, but so what. Call this 99% good:
(h/t: Twin)
Here is a fifty-minute conversation that I highly recommend. It was recorded and aired late last week. It begins as a follow-up discussion to some of the issues raised by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's late October rally in Washington, DC, and some of the criticism they received because of that. It then moves into a larger discussion of news media -- the cable teevee kind, mostly -- and what Stewart sees as its big problems.
I had many thoughts while watching this. Some of them appear below the fold.
I really do encourage you to watch this. This is not a schmoozefest. Maddow has a distinctly different point of view and doesn't hesitate to make it clear.
(h/t: Twin)
Leaving aside the terrible headline by the NYT, which makes it look to the casual reader as though Harry Reid is to blame, this bullet to the back of the head to hopes of passing the START treaty is just so typical of how the past two years have gone.
... a Senate Republican leader moved to block a vote in what could be a devastating blow to the president’s most tangible foreign policy achievement.
[...]
The announcement shocked and angered the White House, which learned about it from the news media. Both parties had considered Mr. Kyl the make-or-break voice on the pact, with Republicans essentially deputizing him to work out a deal that would secure tens of billions of dollars to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex in exchange for approval of the treaty. After months of negotiations and the addition of even more money in recent days, the White House thought it had given Mr. Kyl what he wanted.
They ask for concessions and the proverbial seat at the table while whining on Fox that they're being "shut out of the process" and having things "rammed down their throats," and no one of significance ever calls them on this bullshit while it's happening. Meanwhile, they actually do get what they ask for, they stall as long as they can, and then when they finally have to act, they go all Lucy on Charlie Brown once again.
Because who cares what's good for the country and good for the world? The only way these people are capable of seeing things is "let's make sure we deny Obama a victory."
(h/t: Wonderment | x-posted)
Americans overwhelmingly say that the midterm election results that gave Republicans control of the House represented a rejection of the Democrats and not a mandate for the GOP, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll conducted Nov. 11-14. (Story; Poll data).
(From.)
Over on Fred Hiatt's WaPoo op-ed page, they take a quick break from global warming denialism, Krauthammer warporn, and whatever you call that stuff Richard Cohen dribbles out to run a piece by two "Democrats" insisting that if Obama were to pledge right now to be a one-term preznit, "it would grant him much greater leverage with Republicans" and besides, this is "The only way" he can "lead."
Really, the only thing to do in a situation like this is to refer you to Tintin.
Who knew it was possible that anyone could write a worse op-ed than Evan Bayh? (Anyone not admitting to being a Republican, I mean.)
Of course, I say that, and I've probably just guaranteed that Joe Lieberman will be up tomorrow.
Another tale of physicists tromping into the biology department:
It has taken four highly qualified engineers and a bunch of integral equations to figure it out, but we now know how cats drink. The answer is: very elegantly, and not at all the way you might suppose.
From.
The five-minute sidebar video is delightfully dorky. And there's a great bit at the end about how they got more data.
(x-posted)
A nice line, in and of itself, separate from its context, on the SCLM:
Meanwhile, feckless Democrats continue to act as if they're waiting for the so-called mainstream media to save them: the same worthies that gave us eight years of bogus Clinton scandals, sold Saddam Hussein's imaginary WMD like breakfast cereal, championed invading Iraq as if it were the world's biggest Boy Scout Jamboree, then reacted with horror last year when the Obama White House suggested that Fox News might not be a proper news organization.
I just happened across a reference on Down With Tyranny to Rick Perlstein.
Great line:
When one side breaks the social contract, and the other side makes a virtue of never calling them out on it, the liar always wins. When it becomes 'uncivil' to call out liars, lying becomes free.
Say it again:
When one side breaks the social contract, and the other side makes a virtue of never calling them out on it, the liar always wins. When it becomes 'uncivil' to call out liars, lying becomes free.
Read Rick's piece "How Obama Enables Rush."
(x-posted)
This seven-minute clip is well worth your time, especially the concluding couple of minutes.
Next time people say to you, "Eh, MSNBC is just the liberal version of Fox," point them here.
Minor glitch: the audio and video drop out for about five seconds at about 5:50. Just let it go; they will come back.
(h/t: Twin)
Except for my usual emotional plea of "sure it's only a choice of the lesser of two evils, but less evil is still less evil," I am unable to rebut any of D2's argument.
Given that the Senate did not come out as bad as it seemed like it might, I can only say that I am glad I did not happen across it before the election.
Someday I will belong to a party that thinks paying attention to its (ostensible) base is worth doing on a consistent basis. After the Rapture, most likely.
On the other hand, there is Timothy Egan's "How Obama Saved Capitalism and Lost the Midterms," which if you haven't already heard from me through other channels that you should read, you should.
So ... when do the impeachment hearings start? That seemed to work surprisingly well for the forces of rationality last time.
One of the members of Super Duper writes to brag (?) that in a recent contest, they finished …
… dead last in the category of "most boring" band in Los Angeles.
