The Work Week Is Ending,

so why don't we spend a bit of time having a little light discussion, real or imaginary.

Background: Rumor-meme du jour is about Karl Rove's supposed paramour. Ack! I should have warned you first! I'm soooo sorry. Oh well, you can see a picture of her at Patriotboy's blog Official Organ of the Glorious Christian Conservative Revolution.

The question: Cinnamondog, in Patriotboy's comments says " I just don't understand what she sees in Karl. He's about the only man on this earth who could make Rick Santorum look hot." So who is hotter? Karl or Rick? (I'd give you photos, but that seems particularly unkind.)

The Wretched Heat

may have broken where you are, but it is likely to be back soon. Wheezus, in Arizona where the homeless are dying reminds us "We can all do something about this, can't we? Even if our nation's president cares little for the less fortunate, that does not absolve the rest of us."

Morgaine suggests "Check on your neighbors. Make sure they have what they need to cope with the heat.

In 1995, the people who died in Chicago were the ones that didn’t have anyone to check in on them. Community is a person’s best chance of survival in a heat wave or almost any other emergency. If you don’t know your neighbors, now is the time to get to know them, especially if they are elderly, sick or have small kids.

Water means everything – clean water to drink, or taking a bath or shower in cool water, or a spray bottle of water or wet washcloth used in front of a fan can keep people from having heat exhaustion or stroke."

You don't have to do much to help a lot. Water and a bit of shade makes a huge difference.

Original Sources

If, like me, you enjoy reading original sources, you might want to peruse the PDF of John Roberts financial disclosure form for 2003.

The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC)

is the single greatest barrier to progressive politics in this country. Extreme, you say? Follow along and then we'll see.

The DLC has appointed Hillary Clinton to define a party agendy for the 2006 and 2008 elections. (Who made the DLC keepers of the party agenda?) Apparently some believe that this means a united party. After all, the senator immediately said " I think it's high time for a cease-fire -- time for all Democrats to work together based on the fundamental values we all share."

I expect she does. However I continue to believe that the DLC and Mr. Clinton's presidency, in spite of the attractiveness of his charm and wonkishness, paved the way for the reign of George W. Bush. I've said this before, but let me remind you. Mr. Clinton, actually a rightish Democrat, was painted as a liberal by the right. By allowing them to do so, the perception of where the center of the political spectrum was shifted. What was once perceived as the extreme right -- Barry Goldwater right -- became to be seen as centrist by many Americans. The DLC and Senator Clinton seek to retain this erroneous presentation of the spectrum of ideas.

If you doubt the Republicanness of the DLC, follow me to Will Marshall's screed on the DLC's official website arguing in an incomprehensible and roundabout way that Democrats aren't patriotic enough. I'm going to defer a more extensive critique of this piece to Digby who has articulated the key points in his usually masterful manner. Let me, however, quote from Mr. Marshall's final paragraph where he says "Democrats need to be choosier about the political company they keep, distancing themselves from the pacifist and anti-American fringe." Bill O'Reilly, who also can't tell the difference between patriotism and jingoism, couldn't have said it better.

Senator Clinton should begin by looking within, at the DLC, and ask that they stop taking pot shots at non-right wing Democrats. And those of us who actually hold centrist and left of center views need to hold our values closely, say what we mean, and articulate our vision of a better America, instead of calling those who don't agree with us 'anti-American'.

Updates and Follow-ups

John Roberts Jr., Federalist Society Member

I predicted that whoever was nominated for the vacant Supreme Court slot would be a Federalist Society member. (I'm still not going to link to them.) Mr. Roberts claimed that he remembered no such association. But, as things go here in Your Nation's Capital, it isn't what you did. It's the coverup. Today The Washington Post finds that he appears in their 1997-1998 leadership directory. That was one clever piece of reportage, don't you think?

Ahhh, you say. He didn't say he wasn't a member. He said he didn't remember. Ok, I'll give you that. So don't you think the Senate Judiciary Committee should ask for a medical report? Perhaps he is suffering from early onset Altzheimer's. We would want to know that about a court nominee.

Hillary and Grand Theft Auto

If you haven't yet found out what all the fuss is about, thanks to Salon here is a Media Player version of the modified game part. It runs about a minutue and a half. (There are other versions around, but they all seem to take forever to load.) As always, if you are delicate, you might want to skip it. But if you aren't and this turns you on, you need ... um ... something. Very badly. And if Hillary thinks this is worth hearings, her reputation as a cold fish is well deserved.

Tucker Carlson, Ubiquitous

Ok, I didn't write about this. I meant to. Really. Instead Landru has been relentless in his pursuit of The Tucker. First he wanted you to punch Tucker in the gob then he begged in Tucker Carlson's gob, revisited. He followed that with 24/7 Tucker. He seems almost as obsessed with Tucker as Atrios is with Rick (Steve Gilliard has an excellent visual synopsis of this little problem.) Then today Landru says he is Up. To. HERE. with Tucker.

You'll all be glad to know that Radar Online has declared Tucker rich, but essentially DOA. Here's a bit of what they have to say.

"Propeller-necked pundit Tucker Carlson may have found a platform for his towel-snapping brand of conservatism on MSNBC’s The Situation, but industry insiders are predicting a dim future for the critically-lambasted show. Positioned dead last in prime-time cable news ratings, the political rant-fest has been a disappointment from day one, sources say—a sentiment echoed by New York Times’ TV critic Alessandra Stanley, who last month suggested MSNBC pull the plug on the crapulent show and “end the misery.”

If the notion of Tucker's video demise brings you great joy, you might want to read more.

For a While Now - A Rambling Rant

I have been beyond fed up with feeling like everything I say here is reactive. There is a part of me that thinks the left in general and me in particular shouldn't be spending so much time engaged in the nonsense of the opposition. If we are going to (although this might not be the best context in which to quote Lyndon Johnson) win their hearts and minds, we have to give them something appealing to move toward. We have to articulate a vision and explain how to get there.

But every time I get ready to begin such an effort, they do something so aggregious that it can't be ignored. So now I am struggling with how to do both. How do we point to their flaws, try to stop them from accomplishing the total destruction of my country and its constitution before right minded people can take back some of the power?

Do we let some folks be like harridans while others rise above the fray? By this model Howard Dean is the attack dog and others, like Harry Reid, gets to be reasonable. The problem with this is that Howard Dean and others like him get rare press coverage. In fact the only time the most outrageous of the current administration's escapades are reported is after bloggers and the rest of the resistance make so much noise that the traditional press can no longer ignore it.

(This is not exactly linear, is it? Well I'm not exactly linear, I suppose.)

The press. So a big part of this problem is not only articulating ideas, but making them heard. And the press, protected by the Constitution and instituted therein as an essential part of a free nation, does not do its job. Katherine Graham is dead and The Washington Post sucks up to the executive in power. Izzy Stone is dead and he has no one to step into his very large shoes. Ramparts Magazine is gone and those who would follow in its footsteps are concerned about being acceptable, being mainstream.

If we are to appear mainstream, we need extremists to make us seem reasonable. We need loud dirty socialists, communists, and utopians, demanding their place at the table. Instead we have accepted the view of the far right, have learned to agree the rightist Bill Clinton, a man the right has managed to paste with the 'liberal' label is our moderate. It wasn't that long ago that the DLC was considered the right wing of the Democratic party.

I don't have answers. However I know some of the pieces that are needed. We need to get back to what we believe. I know that my friend, progressives all, have a set of core beliefs. We know that people struggling to live decent lives and to feed and clothe their children should not be preyed upon by right corporations, especially with the help of government. We know that babies should have immunizations without their parents having to give of meals to provide medical care. We know that government shouldn't take the children of the working class and send them halfway around the world -- it doesn't matter whether they are going eastward or westward -- to die while the children of the rich are protected. We believe that the government should be us, and that it is there to help.

I also know that courage is needed. The right has become a cacophony of squalking, with Ann Coulter inheriting the mantle of Newt Gingrich leading the parade. Next to her, all of these obscene attack dogs seem oh so reasonable. And they have managed to establish ownership over the nature of the discourse, the content of the message. And we must react because they are so outrageous they force us to. But we absolutely must find a way to spend more time and more public voice on what life would be like if progressives ran our country. We must paint a picture that people can see, not write like policy wonks. And we have to be willing to be hit with the accusations that will quickly and violently accrue, dust ourselves off, and go back to the painting. And soon.

Friday Factoid

John Roberts once played Peppermint Patty in a school production of "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown."

A Liberal Apology

What follows was printed in the European and Mideast editions of Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense-authorized daily newspaper distributed overseas for the U.S. military community.

"I — and my other second-rate colleagues on the faculty of University of Maryland University College — would like to apologize to the author of “Leftist ideas rule academia” (letter, July 2) for our spreading of liberal doctrine in our classrooms.

We have been unbelievably inconsiderate in failing to take into consideration the havoc that having to consider alternative points of view creates in the conservative mind. Accordingly, these changes to the UMUC curriculum will be made:

* As an English teacher, I take responsibility for promoting what we liberals smugly refer to as “literature,” with its tendency toward asking questions rather than supplying answers. To accommodate conservatives, questions will be mostly eliminated. Hamlet’s “To be or not to be, that is the question” will now be taught as “To be. Yep, that’s the answer.” Trashy liberal novels such as “Huckleberry Finn” will be replaced by “Aesop’s Fables” and “The Collected Writings of Bill O’Reilly.”
* History. At no time will America be shown to have done anything morally questionable at any place or under any circumstances. Slavery never happened; or if it did, it was invented by the French.
* Geography. Maps will show only the United States and those countries currently supporting us, such as Great Britain and Guam.
* The sciences. As every good conservative knows, the universe was created on April 23, 6004 B.C. at 9:23 a.m. Central Standard Time by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh. Everything was perfectly constructed and therefore there is no need for the liberal concept of “evilution.” Other liberal notions to be removed from the classroom will include gravity, the heliocentric solar system (the absurd idea that the Earth goes around the sun — a heresy for which liberal propagandists Galileo and Copernicus were rightly condemned), and the concept of the “round Earth.”

We hope this clears everything up, and, again, we’re really sorry for confusing everybody.

Peyton Glass
Harrogate, United Kingdom"

Via Doucheblog

The French Fry Case

From Legal Times
"In the unanimous ruling last October in Hedgepeth v. WMATA, Roberts upheld the arrest, handcuffing and detention of a 12-year-old girl for eating a single french fry inside a D.C. Metrorail station. "No one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation," Roberts acknowledged in the decision, but he ruled that nothing the police did violated the girl's Fourth Amendment or Fifth Amendment rights. "

Lock up your daughters for more than one reason.

John Roberts, A Man With Two First Names

and member of The Federalist Society (which I refuse to link to).

Oh I might as well say a few words now because by tomorrow everyone else will have and I'll be bored. Let me start with Karl Rove, because everything about this nomination has Karl Rove, college dropout, stamped all over it.

What I Should Have Expected:

In a grand Fuck You to women, minorities, and anybody who doesn't look like George Bush, we have a White Guy Who Looks Like George.

His wife looks so Republican that just looking at her medium blonde dyed hair and too large, too gaudy pink suit hurts my eyes

Karl set it up to tantalize the press with a woman, bobbed, weaved, and finally hit us between the eyes with -- somebody totally predictable

Karl did everything right to take the focus off of his little pecadillos

In typical college dropout from Texas fashion, Karl heavy handed all of it

What I Totally Missed:

John Roberts is Ken Starr's protege

A few details from the Independent Judiciary:

"Mr. Roberts co-wrote a Supreme Court brief in Rust v. Sullivan,1 for the first Bush administration, which argued that the government could prohibit doctors in federally-funded family planning programs from discussing abortions with their patients."

"Mr. Roberts wrote two law review articles arguing for an expansive reading of the Contracts and Takings clauses of the Constitution, taking positions that would restrict Congress' ability to protect the environment."

"While working with the Solicitor General's office, Mr. Roberts co-wrote an amicus brief on behalf of the Bush administration, in which he argued that public high schools can include religious ceremonies in their graduation programs, a view the Supreme Court rejected."

The Alliance for Justice report opposing his confirmation for the court of appeals is in PDF.

My only hope is that the loyal opposition has the cojones to make sure the American public understands what these people are about before the 2006 elections.

My Humble Prediction

The Supreme Court nominee that Our President will nominate at 9PM my time will be a member of The Federalist Society.

If You Aren't Doing Anything Wrong
why would you worry about the government snooping? I hear it every day. I heard it again this morning on C-Span.

This is why. "FBI agents monitored Web sites calling for protests against the 2004 political conventions in New York and Boston on behalf of the bureau's counterterrorism unit." It seems that they have "collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration".

It should come as no surprise that the bulk of the documents are from groups the Bush administration vigorously opposes, namely 1,173 pages on the ACLU and 2,383 on Greenpeace.

According to the Times the executive director of the ACLU said "I'm still somewhat shocked by the size of the file on us. Why would the F.B.I. collect almost 1,200 pages on a civil rights organization engaged in lawful activity? What justification could there be, other than political surveillance of lawful First Amendment activities?"

Of course this comes as no surprise to those of us who have watched them for more than five minutes. But according to the sycophants on the right, the fact of the file is evidence enough to demonstrate bad behavior. I'm so sick of them.

I Have Never Been a Hillary Fan

I think she botched her health care task force badly and set the cause of increased accessibility to health care back decades. And, in my view, the cause of said botching was a deadly combination of hubris and naiveity. She thought because her ideas were better than everybody elses, she didn't need to cooperate, listen, or compromise with others who didn't agree. She saw no need to sully herself by convincing others, one by one, of the value that could be found in her project.

There is a lot to criticize Hillary for, not the least of which is not calling out Bill for sticking his dick in an intern's mouth on her watch. She is distant where her spouse is warm, she is intellectual where her spouse is empathetic, and she is narrow in her political policy. And I do not want her massive loss in a presidential campaign to set back the cause of progressives and the notion of successful women in politics. So I think she should keep herself out of the next presidential campaign. And I think she should say so. Soon.

But now she's gone too far.

Before I proceed, a little personal disclosure. I own Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I enjoy playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. In fact I believe that engaging in this passtime allows me enough of an outlet for much of my hostility that it prevents real world violence. More disclosure. I am female (as if you couldn't figure this out). I am a feminist.

Now the junior senator from New York seems to have discovered a code that unlocks 'sexually graphic images' in the game. First, I doubt that she discovered this while looking for cheat codes to get past her own inability to get past a particularly diffcult place in the game. Nope, someone related this information to her. And, knowing nothing of the game (or any other video games, I'll wager) she got all "woo hoo ain't it awful" about it. Took a page from The Tipper Chronicles. The only problem with that is that even though Tipper was way off base in trying to protect the little children from bad words on records (back in the day), everybody knew that Tipper was a nice lady but a blonde ditz, so they kind of humored her in a condescending way. Like patting her on the head and saying "There, there, Tipper. It'll be ok. Why don't you go bake some cookies?"

But Hillary -- nobody thinks of patting her on the head.

Let me make myself clear. Hillary is whining about adults -- the game is rated "M" for those 17 and older -- doing research on the internet and finding a hack that allows them to view CARTOON SEX. She says that said CARTOON SEX is a major threat to morality. This is me, rolling my eyes. Yep, that's what this is about. Adults who did enough research to let them view cartoon sex. Written by independent folks as an add on to the game.

So the woman is messing with my gaming. She is trying to compete with all those whackjob focus on the family people. And in the process she has made herself look like a nutjob too.

Isn't it time we got her off of the stage?

Wingnut Whinging

John Stossel a supposedly libertarian member of the mainstream media (and if I ever start calling it by the cute label of MSM, please shoot me) is unhappy about how his wife's ex-boyfriend has a bigger penis than John does got more book publicity. "the same month "Give Me a Break" came out, my publisher released a book by my wife's ex-boyfriend. His book was not political, but he is well-liked in the liberal media world. After our books came out, I turned on the radio, and the first thing I heard was Imus gushing about how wonderful my wife's ex-boyfriend was. Even my wife rolled her eyes. My publisher couldn't get me on Imus. "
Poor baby.

Oh and there is the eternal Wicked Witch of the West, Hillary, who -- horror of horrors -- said "I sometimes feel that Alfred E. Neuman is in charge in Washington," Sen. Clinton said referring to the freckle-faced Mad Magazine character. She described Bush's attitude toward tough issues with Newman's catchphrase: "What, me worry?" It is hard to understand how they can hold up under the onslaught.

And how can I forget the pain that Michelle Malkin endures? She serves as the exemplar for sniveling over the fact that Julianne Malveaux called the United States a terrorist nation on Hannity's show. Personally I think that anyone should be given free reign to say anything on Hannity's show because the impulse to do him bodily harm must be overwhelming, but the right does not. As a matter of face this meme is all over the place.

How do they bear up?

I Wonder

how many times I will have to return the membership renewal notice for my local public radio or television station, using their postage, to present messages such as "Not until you get rid of the fascists" or "Bring back Bill Moyers" or "Not as long as you are shills for the administration" before they will stop sending the damn renewals to me.

Mr. Fish's offering
from Harper's

Cindy Sheehan's Son Died in Our President's War

Cindy Sheehan's Son Died in Our President's War

A few months after her son was killed Our President met with her. She reports on that meeting:

"I met with the President in June of 2004, a couple of months after my son was killed. We were summoned up to Fort Irwin, Washington state, to have a sit down with the president. So my entire family went. And I was on CNN last night with Larry King talking about this, and there was another mother who had met with him, and she said that she supports the war and the President, and she said he was so warm and everything and gentle and kind, and when my family and I met with him, I met a man who had no compassion in him. He had no heart. Like Karen said, he cares nothing about us. We tried to show him pictures of Casey. He wouldn't look at them. He wouldn't even acknowledge Casey's name. He called me “Mom” through the entire visit. He acted like we were at a tea party, like it was something fun, that we should just be so pleased that we got to meet with the President who killed our son."

"The first thing, he came up to me, and he goes, “Mom, I can't imagine your loss. I can't imagine losing a loved one, you know, whether it be a mother, a father, a sister or brother.” And I stopped him, and I said, “You have two children. Try to imagine them being killed in a war. How would that make you feel?” And he got a little bit of -- just a little bit of human flicker in his eye, like he might be connected for a minute, because this is a man that's disconnected from humanity. And he had just got a little flicker in his eye, and I said, “Trust me, you don't want to go there.” And you know what he told me? He goes, “You're right, I don't.” And so I said, “Well, thank you for putting me there.”"

I don't know where to begin. He called her "Mom." He didn't even have the decency to learn her name. I don't have the words ...

Sasha Undercover, An Online Magazine

Sasha Undercover, An Online Magazine

The blog is no more. Welcome to my online magazine.

The FEC is reformulating its regulations regarding communication on the internet. There is a great deal of concern in the blogger community that under the proposed regulations "the FEC has taken that narrow concern and exploded it into a mandate to regulate all aspects of political activity on the internet."
However the FEC seems to be saying magazines are beyond regulation while blogs may be regulated as political speech.

Atrios (Duncan Black in the preceeding letter) asks "Why is somebody who prints up and mails out weekly vanity newsletter entitled to the media exemption but not me?
Why is Michael Savage entitled to the media exemption but not me?
Why is Salon.com entitled to the media exemption but not me?"

Through various hearings and details that are not worth going into here, the answer to that question has become increasingly muddy. As a result, however, I am joining my brethren and sistren in the online community -- Jeralyn is tracking this trend better than I could -- and ending my blog known as Sasha Undercover. As of today I am launching an online magazine called Sasha Undercover.

I shall explain in greater detail, borrowing some of the particulars from The Talent Show.

I will continue to be the primary writer for Sasha Undercover, but blog posts will be replaced with articles of varying lengths on topics of my choosing. The section labeled 'comments' will actually be article specific message boards. The look of the site, the writing style, the subject matter, the content, and the technological back-end will be virtually identical to what I'm using now, but the change (as least as far as the FEC is concerned) will be drastic. I am no longer a blogger; I am a writer. I have business cards that say so.

Sandra Day O'Connor

deserves a rest. We all knew she wanted to retire five years ago. I know everybody on our side of the aisle is in mourning, but let her go. Nicely. She has class.
The most interesting piece I heard today on her retirement was Judy Woodruff on "Politics Now" saying " "didn't feel comfortable with President Bush's strongly ideological judicial appointments." Dembloggers has the video.

I Like Ike?

I try to spend some time each week mingling with real people. The ones who drive taxis and take their kids to day care and do nails for a living. I do this in real life, hanging out in diners and such, and on the internet. I frequent message boards where I have no interest in the topic of the board and listen.

In the past week or so I saw a thread wherein folks talked about the time in which they would like to live. An amazing number of folks wanted to live back in the fifties. They saw it as a quiet, safe, predictable time. They acknowledged that there was more social control and fear over Sputnik, but all in all thought the illusion that children were all virgins and everybody was nice was worth the cost.

Flash to Our President's recent speech, and all the ones before. The only thing he has to offer is the illusion of fear. "Defeat Them Abroad before they attack us at home. Destroy their bases so that they can't attack us from them. " he said. No one with the tiniest modicum of knowledge or with an IQ bigger than his or her shoe size believes that Iraqis are about to attack us from their bases. Yet he persists in this broad-based fear mongering followed by that smarmy smirk as if he knows something we don't know..

Now these people are not stupid. So when they seem supremely stupid it is time to dig a little deeper. I have been pondering the persistence of this meme in spite of Our President's plunging poll numbers.

It is my growing perception that Mr. Bush is trying to restart the cold war. Cold War II, the "War on Terror", is intended to be an endless period of vague fear, domestic obesience and apparent harmony, and the mass infusion of tax money into military hardware and sketchy ventures. We aren't supposed to ask questions. But we are supposed to pretend that we are happy happy happy.

I said they aren't stupid, and I believe that, but they are more than a little nutty. So I think they believe if they can convey this fear then they can get people in line, get them to act the same. And there is some bizarre connection between this and social control. Ultimately we can all maintain the illusion that everyone is a virgin until marriage, that everyone will happily vote Republican, and that all tax dollars will go into the military.

Ladies, put on your nylons and your lipstick and make hubby those pancakes before he goes off to work.