Categorical Aperitif

I'm not feeling well today. Bleh. So here's the coolest jack-o'-lantern I've ever seen.

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// posted by nash @ 8:07 PM 1 comments

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// posted by nash @ 10:40 AM 0 comments

My friend jules has been telling me about some really cool no-kill animal sanctuaries, such as ARFHouse in Texas and The Cat House on the Kings in California. She also passed along this nice little video about the latter:

Like Bach concerti, space telescopes, and Monty Python episodes, things like this make me proud of my species.

// posted by nash @ 10:37 AM 1 comments

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// posted by nash @ 1:55 PM 0 comments

"Crazy from the Ground Up": a chilling collection of wingnut threats.

"Stupid People with Guns": never before has a national epitaph stood in such need of both proofreading and factchecking.

// posted by nash @ 1:52 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 10:07 PM 0 comments

I was catching up with my truthout feed and realized that I'd almost missed a minor gem: William Rivers Pitt live-blogs the Tea Party Express on Boston Common. Hilarity ensues:

10:15 a.m. - Wow. A guy wrapped in a yellow Don't Tread On Me flag just tried to use the "Render unto Caesar" line from the Bible to justify not paying taxes, but he got the quote wrong. I gave him the correct line, and said "It means pay your taxes." He turned beet red and fled into the crowd. I love this job.

// posted by nash @ 10:02 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 8:50 PM 0 comments

Sometimes the Howler can turn a damn fine phrase, too.

I don't know what to make of this anecdote:

Over by the jambalaya, Alan Greenspan picked up some Mardi Gras beads and placed them around the neck of his wife, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who bristled and quickly removed them.

// posted by nash @ 1:59 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 4:25 PM 0 comments

One thing I love about Matt Taibbi: he doesn't mince words. Another thing: he doesn't mince ideologies. The battle over Goldman "great vampire squid" Sachs really is between the mad anti-ethics of Randianism (according to which people who amass fortunes by pushing fabulous abstractions around in cyberspace are "producers" while people who do honestly productive but less-well-compensated labor for a living are "parasites") and, well, "the whole idea of civilisation—which, after all, is really just a collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even when we can." Go read.

// posted by nash @ 4:18 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Well, not exactly, but he has a great letter to the editor that reminds me of it.

// posted by nash @ 9:10 AM 3 comments

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// posted by nash @ 8:52 AM 0 comments

Wow, Mika Brzezinski really gives the game away in this inexplicable altercation with Joan Walsh. When Walsh asks an honest question—Which prominent voices on the left are comparable in extremism to people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck [and the list could easily be lengthened] on the right?—Joe Scarborough immediately tries to change the subject and Mika Brzezinski becomes what I can only call "desperately insulting":

MIKA: I think it's all very obvious.

WALSH: Is it obvious? Who on the left is comparable to Rush and Glenn on the right?

MIKA: Okay, Joan, if it's not obvious to you I'll talk to you off-set. I mean, my God! Alright so let's read from the Washington Post...

SCARBOROUGH: We'll talk off-set.

WALSH: Okay...

MIKA: Seriously, it's like BLIP... BLIP... BLIP... right in front of you and you're like [imitates willfully clueless Walsh] "I'm sorry, I don't see it!"

As is often the case, digby has a great response when Newsbusters offers up a list of supposed equivalents:

What, no Dixie Chicks?

But hey, I'll bite. I hereby admonish Rosie, Mike (is he still around?) Bill "the bomber" and Mrs Bill "the Bomber," Van, Dylan, Rachel and Keith for their extreme rhetoric.

Now maybe The Left will disband all their militias, stop all their death threats, stubble the revolutionary rhetoric and accept the fact that democracy means they have to accept majority rule. In fact, now that I've called out our "leaders", I'll bet it will be as if all that stuff never happened.

// posted by nash @ 8:48 AM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 8:41 AM 1 comments

Man, what happened to Frontline? Now they're not only excising single-payer advocates from the discussion of health care reform, they're carefully editing 'em into public option supporters. Furthermore,

This is not the first time that Frontline has decided that a conversation about healthcare reform should exclude single-payer from the discussion. The March 31, 2009 Frontline special Sick Around America avoided discussions of national healthcare plans. This omission led Frontline correspondent T.R. Reid--who had hosted a previous Frontline special (4/15/08) that examined various public healthcare models-- to withdraw from the project.

PBS ombud Michael Getler agreed with those who thought the show missed a chance to discuss single-payer. It looks like the program has done so again.

// posted by nash @ 8:38 AM 1 comments

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// posted by nash @ 1:46 PM 0 comments

The Washington Examiner neglects to mention that, while only 22% of Americans in a recent Pew Research poll confess to having "trust in government," that number was actually at 17% when Bush II left office—and it actually rose from 23% to 45% during the Clinton years.

And so do the Washington Post, the New York Post, USA Today, the Des Moines Register, and ABC News.

Oh, that liberal media. Sigh.

// posted by nash @ 1:32 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 1:50 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 9:31 PM 0 comments

PZ revises some anti-abortion billboards to better reflect the facts of biology—and the results are quite interesting.

// posted by nash @ 9:19 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 3:51 PM 0 comments

The good Generik ventured out into a Tea Party rally last week and returned with a worrisome post and some nifty pictures. Check 'em out. One quickly notices some recurring themes: old white people, visceral hatred of Nancy Pelosi, and a resort to tried-and-false old-school far-right rhetoric, like the "Silent Majority" poster and this one, my favorite:

I doubt that Columbia- and Harvard-educated, U of Chicago-teaching, Wall-Street-friendly President Mandates and Bailouts has even met that many actual communists, let alone had close relationships with them, but never mind. This Zombie Rhetoric just goes to show how right Rick Perlstein is when he points out that the Tea Party is nothing new under the sun: movements of "angry, ill-informed, overwhelmingly white, crypto-corporate paranoiacs" have cropped up with astonishing regularity every time Republicans have lost power over the last fifty years. (I'm sure it's just coincidence.) There ain't much new about them—not even their slurs.

// posted by nash @ 3:48 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 8:32 PM 0 comments

Once again, a comedy show schools a "fair and balanced" news network in how to, you know, learn stuff:

Mention of the hydrogen atom reminds me of one of my all-time favorite Doonesbury jokes.

Q: What's the difference between Rush Limbaugh and the Hindenburg?

A: One is a flaming Nazi gasbag; the other is a dirigible.

// posted by nash @ 7:34 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 2:06 PM 2 comments

Good friend jules sends along notice of this recent appearance by three wonderful MST3K alums on Keith Olbermann's show. Whatever else you can say about KO, he's obviously a MSTie in fine standing:

// posted by nash @ 1:55 PM 2 comments

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// posted by nash @ 9:05 AM 0 comments

Highly, highly, highly recommended.

I swear, we need a new word to describe the odd art these guys practice. Spoof, prank, parody, satire, impersonation, guerrilla theater—none of these really capture their astounding ability to blend in at gatherings of the rich and powerful (and of toadies of the rich and powerful), to fake their way onto TV, to convincingly imitate the websites and media outlets of corporate civilization, etc. "Identity Correction" just doesn't cut it, I think. "Deconstructive Mimicry"?

Here's a DN! segment about the film from last July:

// posted by nash @ 8:56 AM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 2:29 PM 2 comments

David Leonhardt's "Economic Scene" column debunking the 47% of Americans Pay No Taxes The Leeches!!?! talking point that's been making the rounds of the right-wing cable/radio/blogosphere has itself been making the rounds today (h/t Michael Tomasky and The Daily Howler)—and that's a very good thing. It turns out that even for just federal taxes, that 47% figure is nonsense; Leonhardt agrees that, thanks to the economic downturn and the stimulus programs pushed by both Bush II and Obama, 47% of households receive enough credits to have no federal income tax liability, but when you factor in other federal taxes—e.g., payroll taxes and capital gains taxes—that number is more like 10%. And this doesn't even count state taxes, local taxes, sales taxes, etc.

So: When you hear someone claim that almost half of Americans pay no taxes and are leeching off the hardworking other half, the person telling you this is either trying to spread their own ignorance or lying to you. I leave it to you decide which is most likely in the case of the well-compensated "journalists" and "commentators" on Fox.

// posted by nash @ 2:26 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 10:07 PM 2 comments

Michael Tomasky points to a recent profile of Glenn Beck which notes that he hauls in about $32 million from books, TV, etc. and that he claims to be merely an entertainer, not really interested in politics:

I wonder if Beck is telling the truth there. If he is, the whole business is amazingly cynical and actually quite contemptuous of his fans. And he has said these kinds of things before, so it may well be the case.

At the other end, he has spoken lovingly of right-wing books like this rambling and paranoid malignity by this clown named Cleon Skousen that Beck has said changed his life. Of course, maybe he just meant it changed his life in that it showed him what kinds of crazy conspiracies about the world people were willing to believe and therefore what he should say on the air and in books etc. for the purpose of hauling in $32 million a year.

// posted by nash @ 10:01 PM 0 comments

Wasn't sure what to do with this one.

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// posted by nash @ 9:31 PM 3 comments

Head it off at the pass with this great post from Jon Perr.

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// posted by nash @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Even I'm a little surprised at how blatantly Gingrich, Hannity, Bachman & Co. misstate Obama's nuclear policy to fit their standard mythos (appeasement!!! he wants us defenseless before our enemies!!!) about Democrats, liberals, etc. I've seen pictures of Tea Partiers carrying signs that say things like "Thx Fox for telling us the truth"; how on Earth do they square that fantasy with this reality?

I think that fackles may be my new favorite word.

// posted by nash @ 12:59 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 12:30 PM 0 comments

I almost missed this telling anecdote from William Rivers Pitt about a cell phone call he took while driving in Boston back in the pre-war winter of 2003:

On the line was a producer for an MSNBC news show; she told me she had read my book and really enjoyed it, and was inviting me to come on the network to talk about Iraq. Specifically, she wanted me to come on and talk about Hans Blix and his weapons inspectors, who at that point had been in Iraq for less than 100 hours. They hadn't found anything yet, but were still looking. Very specifically, she wanted me to come on MSNBC and say that Blix and his inspectors were doing a terrible job, that Iraq definitely had WMD and 9/11 connections, and that Bush should blow off Blix and do whatever the hell he wants.

I very nearly put my car into the river. You couldn't really have read my book, I said to this MSNBC producer, because if you had, you'd know that the very last thing in the world I would ever say on television or anywhere else was the inspectors were not doing their jobs and that war in Iraq was a necessity. Let's allow Blix and the inspectors to do their jobs, I said, so maybe we can avoid a costly and unnecessary war that would certainly kill thousands and thousands of people.

The MSNBC producer chortled—literally, a deep, throaty too-many-cigarettes chortle—and hung up on me.

// posted by nash @ 12:14 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 8:58 AM 3 comments

Is it a bad sign when you've gone most of your life hardly ever seeing a police helicopter and then, three times within three months, you find one orbiting your neighborhood?

Back in January we had one circling overhead for a good half-hour—and a streetful of police cars as well—as the cops chased some guy who'd abandoned a vehicle and taken to ground on a nearby street. A few weeks ago we had one circling the neighborhood just south of here; we never learned what that was about. And then, before dawn this morning, I was awakened by the unmistakeable roaring chop-chop-chop again circling nearby. We don't know the cause of that bit of excitement, either, but at least it didn't last long; the chopper vanished right after I got up to take a look.

I do not like where this trend is heading.

// posted by nash @ 8:55 AM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 9:26 AM 0 comments

An organization called Jewish Funds for Justice is using the awesome power of haiku to respond to Glenn Beck's bizarre denunciation of "social justice"—and they're asking for our help (h/t digby).

My contribution:

Beck phenomenon:
Familiar to those who've seen
A Face in the Crowd

// posted by nash @ 9:23 AM 3 comments

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// posted by nash @ 8:36 AM 0 comments

Robert Parry argues:

Washington’s conventional wisdom for explaining the intensity of Republican obstructionism toward President Barack Obama breaks down one of two ways: either it’s a philosophical disagreement over the role of government or a desperate need to stay in line with a radicalized right-wing base.

But there is another way to view the GOP political strategy, as neither principled nor reactive to the rantings of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Partiers. It is that the Republicans are following a playbook that has evolved over more than four decades, to regain power by sabotaging Democratic presidents.

They undermined Carter's attempts to get the hostages out of Iran in 1980—and thereby helped put Reagan in office.

They undermined Clinton with a talk-radio delegitimation campaign, relentless scandal-mongering (not that Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky helped), a sudden wave of black-helicopter-fearing militia madness, etc. Funny how that militia madness pretty much vanished for eight years under Bush the Younger, huh?

And now here we are with another Democrat in the White House and an even freakier delegitimation campaign, revamped militia madness, a "tea party movement" that seems to have come out of nowhere, etc. (I mean, really: the economic issues that supposedly motivate many of the tea partiers—corporate bailouts, deficit spending, etc.—trace back to well before Obama took office; where were these hordes of concerned Americans when the Bush tax-cuts-for-the-wealthiest first started destroying the Clinton surplus?)

There is nothing new under this sun. More.

// posted by nash @ 8:32 AM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 7:26 AM 1 comments

I think that may become my favorite question re. Christian dogma. P.Z. Myers points out that the most moving thing about the Jesus story—the horrendous self-"sacrifice," like a soldier throwing himself on a live grenade for our sins—is vitiated thanks to that whacky doctrine of Original Sin:

Ask a Christian, and they'll tell us he's saving us from Original Sin, our flawed, weak, inherently wicked natures. But what that sin is is an act committed by a pair of mythological ancestors (they didn't even actually exist), and the sin was being willful, curious and disobedient to an imaginary man in the sky — it was a non-existent crime. I don't believe in being held accountable for my ancestor's weaknesses (as Patti Smith sang, "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine"), and in this case I don't even consider what they did to be wrong. So Jesus suffered for an act that I would consider a virtue, committed by myths against a myth? That's no hand grenade, that's a fairy tale. Nobody needs to die to protect me from a fairy tale.

Next problem: what Jesus did didn't even protect me from that fairy tale! Imagine that in some metaphorical sense it was true that there was some heritable taint infecting the entire human race, passed from generation to generation and making us more prone to do wickedness. Instead of a hand grenade, we've been fed a poison that's going to hurt us slowly and horribly.

How does having the sick butcher the doctor make us better?

// posted by nash @ 9:29 AM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 9:04 AM 0 comments

The first of the last four Shuttle missions lifted off shortly before sunrise this morning; the sky was nice and clear, clear enough that we could see the boosters as they separated and fell away, resulting in this shot, where Discovery seems to be running away from a pair of scare quotes:

// posted by nash @ 9:00 AM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 3:21 PM 0 comments

I almost forgot that a week or so ago, the Krugmeister mentioned seeing a new one-woman show, Red Hot Patriot, featuring Kathleen Turner as the late, great Molly Ivins. It sounds like a serious hoot.

It strikes me that our culture could use a female version of what Hal Holbrook does with Mark Twain. Perhaps we've found it! If anyone deserves a second life, Molly does.

// posted by nash @ 3:17 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

If you haven't perused this "open letter to conservatives" yet, do.

// posted by nash @ 7:24 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 7:04 PM 0 comments

Heh. Indeed. Etc.

I don't have cable and wouldn't watch much CNN if I did; I did not realize that they'd been hemorrhaging viewers so badly. I'm sure that passing off a mean-spirited, meat-headed right-wing blogger as some sort of insightful, authoritative voice on American politics will lead to floods of new viewers, though. What audience would not respond favorably to being treated with such respect?

// posted by nash @ 6:36 PM 0 comments

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// posted by nash @ 7:38 PM 0 comments

It wasn't much of an April Fool's Day for me otherwise, but I must say that I ran across some magnificent phraseology on the intertubes today.

First, Michael Tomasky dismissed pedophilia apologist Bill Donohue as "an identity politics ambulance chaser." (Honorable mention goes to P.Z. Myers: "Donohue is resorting to arguing that because a 13-year-old had pubic hair, he had the full autonomy of an adult and the abuse of the priest was simply a love affair between equals. And that is bullshit.")

Second, Jon Chait wrapped up a piece on the Nate Silver dissection of rightthink-tanker Veronique de Rugy (h/t Krugmeister) with this most trenchant observation: "There are hundreds of people like her in Washington, most of them conservative, living well-compensated lives of pure ideological hackery."

I think we just found a title for Elizabeth McCaughey's memoir.

// posted by nash @ 7:33 PM 0 comments