prior to reagan taking office, disparaging the so-called mainstream media was strictly a rightwing sport. these days, proponents of every political position--including those at mid-center--seemed fully convinced print & broadcast journalists are simultaneously totally ignoring and actively targeting them and only them. ask 50 people to identify the dreaded msm and i've no doubt you'll wind up with no fewer than 50 ...
i dunno if you've recently seen one of those color-coded national weather maps so i'm posting one captured within the past hour. as you can see, the whole damn country is hot as hell. wouldn't surprise me if areas shown in that scary purplish color aren't, in fact, official hell remote locations. i don't recall from past summers seeing this sorta map totally saturated in orange, red and beyond (not that i can recall ever actually or intentionally focusing any atten...
six months after robert novak spotlighted valerie plame, our justice department--charged with determining who told whom when and why--launched its investigation. while wowin the yokels at a press conference, shortly thereafter, ol honest george told us exactly what he planned to do: "If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of." truer words was never spoke. i'm all for this k...
finally--after years of concerted effort and outrageous cash outlays to no apparent avail--some results! without having to do anything out of the ordinary (for, like, keith richards), i'm increasingly able to forget shit. pragmatist that i am, i'm not at all bothered by the possibility it may be nothing more than post-pre-early-onset senility. whatever works. thus it was doubly cool seeing former senator bill bradley last night (3/13/07) on bill maher's 'real time'.&n...
sadly, for as long as it remains standing, iraq's infamous abu ghraib prison is gonna be an haunting reminder about how combining hubris, executive incompetence and ideology can very easily and swiftly wrest defeat from the heart of impending victory. contemplate for a moment or two this report about abu ghraib's current status compiled and distributed by the associated press. The sprawling facility on the western outskirts of Baghdad wi...
christina applegate and jennifer tilly are two very smart, sexy, funny women who share a very unique talent. both are able to conjure up characters who say and do such incredibly stupid things with such finesse, it is sometimes difficult not to confuse christina with kelly bundy or jennifer with damn near a sorority of goofy sounding ditzy bimbos. brilliant as they may be, they have nothin on george w. bush. i may seem gullible and naive but i've done seed da light.&nbs...
day before yesterday i began--but then abandoned--a piece about generalissimo gonzales' attempt to strongarm google with a subpeona demanding a week's worth of user search queries as well as a random list of website urls from google's database. like the tools they are, yahoo, aol and msn appear to have already caved to government demands. gonzales--who seems at times to believe his job title is attorney tsar rather than attorney general--claims the information is needed to persuade ...
if the question is: "does the constitution provide for the federal government to own and administer the physical real estate of which these united states are comprised?'", the answer is very clearly spelled out in the second paragraph of article vi, section 3: "The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice a...
got some GOOD NEWS for all yall american conservatives (and others) who so fervently despise racial quotas, affirmative action and them damn non-european 'dash americans' (afro-americans, african-americans, mexican-americans,etc as opposed to perfectly good ol' german-, irish-, italian-, even franco-americans). and it don't have a thing to do with geico neither. fact is, you have an ideological ally in, of all places, france. in the aftermath of last...
(this is a response of sorts to rightwinger's strange view of the world located here: Link . more specifically, it's a reply to this statement: "You always seem to have a good grasp and command of some particular facts that I do not have. Admittedly, this often frustrates me because I just don't have the time to look everything up in order to give you a really good thrashing. That's all well and good, but as for this article, I'm not seeing you addressing the actual point of the po...
right in the middle of last year's crusade to keep christmas from being 'banned', an already ban-concious public was alarmed and outraged by news of a public school in cupertino, california 'banning' the constitution. as it turned out, the school hadn't banned anything (a teacher who made the claim after being disciplined by his principal for repeatedly violating a directive entered into a settlement in which the school denied any wrongdoing). despite a flurry of furio...
hbo's series 'the wire' is one of the best--if not the best--thing ever made for tv. on the surface, it's a story of cops trying to bring down a group of baltimore druglords; like all great dramas, its characters are driven, often by forces of which they themselves are unaware. the east side drugking is large, very pragmatic man known on the street as 'proposition joe'. the governor of california is also a large, very pragmatic man who should be known as ...
bad enuff, we as a society hafta endure a rapidly and constantly expanding sacred holiday gift-buying season (not so long ago, no respectable enterprise woulda crassed the line by transforming its facility into a red-green-and-tinseled gwb's smirk vision of yuletide one minute before 12:00:01 the day after thanksgiving; this year, i'd not be surprised to find santa, reindeer and elf suits being stealthed in as halloween costumes) without being subjected to ...
i very clearly remember the first time george bush proclaimed a national day of prayer. it was also in september, just a few days after those planes smashed into the towers, the pentagon and a wooded area in pennsylvania. prior to reading the official proclamation document and then hearing bush's address at the episcopal national cathedral, i disliked him both as a man and as president. by dislike, i mean exactly that. no less; no more. i didn't focus much e...
according to the la times saturday edition, 44 members of an elite louisiana army natioinal guard special response team, who'd been assigned to the superdome since arriving in new orleans before katrina hit, were in the first truck of the first convoy headed to the convention center. their orders were to retake the city. for the first time since the place went to hell, they were venturing out into the mean streets where they'd heard police had been killed, sn...