Free advertising

I just got blogads but I probably won't be getting any real ads for a while. So I'll run ads for free for about a month or so. Let me know if you want to advertise on A Grand Illusion.

Andrew Sullivan on Terri Schiavo

After a few weeks in the wilderness, Andrew Sullivan has returned to the fray, galvanized by the Terri Schiavo case. Like George Will and William F. Buckley, he considers the legislative branch's determination to circumvent the courts a heinous breach of conservative principles:

What this case comes down to is the right of a spouse to determine his or her incapacitated spouse's fate in the absence of a living will. Civil marriage is indeed a unique and special legal bond. The social right believes this. But they only believe it when it suits them. If it can be used to marginalize and stigmatize gay couples, they are insistent. If it is an obstacle to their absolutist views on feeding tubes for human beings who have ceased to be able to feel, think or emote, then they discard it. Here's a Tom DeLay quote that says it all:
"I don't know what transpired between Terri and her husband. All I know is Terri is alive. ... Unless she has specifically written instructions in her hand, with her signature, I don't care what her husband says."
So much for the "sanctity of marriage." With each passing month, the cynicism and power-lust of these people become clearer and clearer. Here's a principle: the government should stay out of living rooms, bedrooms and marital bonds. That used to be called conservatism.

Design Help

I'm trying to redesign the sight and give it something of a more original look--maybe some background color, and so on. Also, I want to create a sidebar on the left side of the screen. But I haven't the time nor the knowledge to do all these things. Can anyone help me with it?

I can't really pay you because I'm poor, but you would have my lifelong sycophancy.

And Now A Word From Our Favorite Fascist Feminist

From Crooksandliars.com:

Coulter: "Canada used to be one of our most loyal friends and vice-versa. I mean Canada sent troops to Vietnam - was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than Saddam Hussein?"

McKeown interrupts: "Canada didn't send troops to Vietnam."

Coulter: "I don't think that's right."

McKeown: "Canada did not send troops to Vietnam."

Coulter (looking desperate): "Indochina?"

McKeown: "Uh no. Canada ...second World War of course. Korea. Yes. Vietnam No."

Coulter: "I think you're wrong."

McKeown: "No, took a pass on Vietnam."

Coulter: "I think you're wrong."

McKeown: "No, Australia was there, not Canada."

Coulter: "I think Canada sent troops."

McKeown: "No."

Coulter: "Well. I'll get back to you on that."

I think if she ditched her whole uberbitch disposition and ate more sweet potato pie, she would make a great faghag despite having a female hard-on for Hannity.

Antonin Scalia

Anyone with even a passing interest in jurisprudence should read Margaret Talbot's excellent New Yorker profile of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the most conservative, most outspoken, and most intelligent of the justices. Scalia classifies himself as an "originalist" -- one who not believes that judges should adhere to the precise words of the Constitution, but also, according to Talbot, "believes that the meaning of those words was locked into place at the time they were written." Talbot posits that Scalia's literalist interpretation of the Constitution is a product of the New Criticism which dominated English and American critical theory through the end of the 1950's (Scalia's father Eugene earned a Ph.D. at Columbia and worked as a language professor and translator at Brooklyn College) -- a critical approach whose efficacy was whittled, like originalism itself, by the increasing influence minority and gender studies. Talbot questions how Scalia might have voted in the Brown vs Board of Education decision, in which the Court's opinion shaped judicial policy for the next 40 years (for the record, Scalia says that he "would have voted with the majority in Brown"). More importantly, Talbot wonders whether living judges using the Framers' original intention was even the Framers' intention:

The Constitution, it should be noted, does not stipulate th rules for its interpretation -- and the idea that the framers would have welcomed scrutiny of its provisions in the light of changed circumstances is at least as plausible as the notion that the framers intended to freeze, for all time, the meaning of due process or cruel and unusual punishment [two more Court decisions from which Scalia has dissented]

Thomas Jefferson would have agreed.

And Starring Beyonce as Bob Dylan.

Todd Hayne's Bob Dylan biopic is going forth. Considered for the role of Dylan: Beyonce, Venus Williams, and Oprah Winfrey.

Not a joke.

Wall of Shame

Here's the list of House democrats who voted for the Schiavo bill.

Baca, Baird, Barrow, Bean, Berry, Bishop (GA), BorenBrady (PA), Chandler, Costello, Cramer, Cuellar, Cummings, Davis (TN), Edwards, Engel, Etheridge, Fattah, Ford, Green, Al, Herseth, Higgins, Holden, Jackson (IL), Kanjorski, Kildee, Langevin, Lipinski, Lynch, Marshall, Matheson, McIntyre, McNulty, Meek (FL), Melancon, Michaud, Mollohan, Oberstar, Pomeroy, Ross, Scott (GA), Serrano, Skelton, Snyder, Stupak, Tanner, Wynn

Special mention: notice Florida's own Kendrick Meek on the list.

The Diaz-Balart brothers and Ros-Lehtinen also voted for it.

Not that I have any emotional stake in Terri Schiavo...

But this whole debate really underscores why I gave up on the Republican party. One of the fundmental pillars of the Republican "ideology" is state's rights. It was why they, supposedly, opposed states being forced to recognize same-sex marriages (that rationale, of course, was deep-sixed by Dubya's push to pass a constitutional ban). But here they go and once again expose a good heap of hypocrisy by forcing a federal effort to reverse a decision already made (several times) by a state court.

The question everyone is asking (and was asked several times before this morning's vote) is why make this mess over one person? Well, that's pretty simple to answer: Mid-term elections!

If they can appeal to just a few more right-to-lifers and Southern Baptists and gain just a bit more leverage in the legislative branch, it's not asking too much to disregard the core values of their party. Because, afterall, values are very important to the Republican party and their voters....

Did anyone else find it painful watching the party with the most blood on its hands in the United States defend a "Culture of Life"?

It's a good thing Schiavo is brain dead. At least she's not cognizant of the circus they've built around her.

The Rights of Woman

Feministing has a post on the Equal Rights Amendment on which I commented that the provisions of ERA--especially the one being proposed by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (see text below)--are already covered by the 14th amendment.

Text of the Equal Rights Constitutional Amendment

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of
ratification

I was laughed off. This is one of the comments: "Ha ha ha ha ha. Good one. What are you, a first year law student?" Yah, I wish.

My point is that the 14th Amendment, which is probably my favorite amendment, does cover gender equality. Here's the text:

Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the
provisions of this article.

("No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." If that's not poetry, I don't know what is.)

Okay, I know the amendment has a clause advocating gender inequality--though not explicitly--but that was mended by the 19th Amendment. I also happen to think you need not look further for constitutional support of gay marriage.

So why is the ERA necessary? Thoughts?

Cowboy Up!

So, Blake's not guilty. As one who has seen his old interviews on the Tom Snyder show.... um.... well, I won't be saying anything disparaging about the fella! Matter of fact, I'll venture to say he is, above all, not a SPAZZ (like the Pope or that Dom bloke)!

From CNN:

BLAKE: I'm going to get a job. I'm broke. Right now, I couldn't buy spats for a hummingbird. What did Johnny Carson say? You're innocent until proven broke. Well, by the time Gerry and these troops got here, it was the bottom of the barrel. I was a rich man. I'm broke now. I got to go to work.

But before that, I'm going to go out and do a little cowboying. Do you know what that is? No, you don't know what that is.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

BLAKE: Cowboying is when you get in a motor home or a van or something like that, and you just let the air blow in your hair, and you wind up in some little bar in Arizona someplace, and you shoot one-handed nine ball with some 90-year-old Portuguese woman that beats the hell out of you.

And the next day, you wind up in a park someplace playing chess with somebody. You go see a high school play where they're doing "West Side Story." And you just roam around and get some revitalization…

He seems like a swell ol' geezer, in his own right. He should be in a David Lynch movie....

Oh, wait! He already was in a David Lynch movie!

John Gibson is an ass. How's that for name-calling?

John Gibson's amusing rant on marriage.

"...Marriage is something men and women do. They don't always do it well — you only have to look at the divorce rate, or the number of pregnant women killed by their spouse to realize that."

Ouch! Take that, Scott! Other than that, I wonder what the number of "pregnant women killed by their spouse" IS.

Another brilliant quote:
"The first knuckle-dragging people recognized they didn't want to raise their kids like the monkeys, so they set up another system."

Is that EVOLUTION you're hinting at, Gibson? Tsk, tsk. What are you, a Godless liberal?

Is the World hungry for the Wolf?

Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's assistant secretary of defense, is his choice to lead the World Bank. I want to laugh. Let me be clear: if he'd chosen Bill Clinton or, God help us, Jimmy Carter it would still have been laughable. An acquaintance who used to work for the federal government once told me that the World Bank is the most corrupt organization in the world, responsible for saddling the Third World with debts it knows those countries can never repay.

With Wolfie -- as hawkish as they come -- helming the Bank, I suspect that the administration's predilection for quasi-imperalist gestures will keep the developing world from ever clawing out of the economic mire.

Definitely Maeby

All we are saying is burn your teevee! From TV Squad:

Arrested Development is a non-traditional, genre-bending, richly layered and intellectually complex character-based comedy. Plus, there's a character named Job, but they spell it GOB - and that's just blasphemous. For all of these reasons and many more, we think Arrested Development must be cancelled. Shows like this make us work hard, and that makes our brains hurt, and we don't like that. We don't need Arrested Development, and we don't want it.

Who has time to watch television when there's so much internet porn out there?

Disappointed?

Me on Public Image Ltd. Funny how now they seem essential.

The ballad of Prince Rogers Nelson

Michaelangelo Matos, music editor at Seattle Weekly, wrote a book for Continuum about Prince's Sign 'O' The Times, the Purple One's best album and certainly the best double album in rock. Matos, who's a contemporary, is probably my generation's foremost Princeling. As for the book: no startling insights, just lots of fresh responses to a record that never stops astounding. Matos keeps up with Sign 'O' the Times' protean shifts; when he analyzes the proto-Timbaland track "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker (the most influential song of the last 20 years?), he manages to pin the song down, wriggling:

What's surprising about "Dorothy Parker"...is that its drum part sounds through-composed rather than programmed; it keeps twisting around, upending and then righting itself, keeping a constant groove without subordinating itselt to a monolithic beat the way "When Doves Cry" or "1999" or "It" do. The rest of the track mutates in the same way; the oddly detuned-sounding spider-web clavinet patterns and fluid bassline work in tandem with the drums. The groove twists and turns without ever seeming to resolve itself. When the radio's on and Joni Mitchell sings "Help me I think I'm falling" and the phone rings and it couldn't be as cute as you, the beat's stop-starts shadow the lyric perfectly.

Gone a'gay-marryin

By now I'm sure we've all heard about yesterday's same-sex marriage ruling in California.

In the interest of obtaining both sides to every story (and poking fun at the crazies), I visited the site of the one of the groups opposed to the ruling, The Campaign for California Families, and came across this fascinating tid-bit from California Senator Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside):

Contrary to the judge's twisted legal logic, this is not an equal protection case. Every adult Californian already has equal access to marriage as provided by law, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. Instead, this actually is the establishment of a completely new privilege that never existed before.

I'm sorry. Did I miss something? Is he seriously arguing the state already gave equal access to marriage regardless of sexual orientation? I can't help but be reminded of a response I once read to The Onion's "What do you think?" section: "I suppose it's okay for to homosexuals marry--so long as they don't marry each other of course."

Oh, no! It's Mario!

Link.

And it's all an elaborate plan to a) raise attention while b) evading the not that profitable (and highly restrictive) "American Idol" contract. Somewhat smart. I know we were all wondering.

"American Idol" is technically culture...right?

But does the entertainment world need any more Marios?

"Bitch poured beer in my weave"

My considerable esteem for Nancy Franklin only increases when she pays witty and noncondescending attention to shows like Supernanny and, more recently, America's Next Top Model (which, as I have been forced to point out in publication before, is a really good show).



Speaking of which: the ouster of the thoroughly gorgeous Brita is a travesty of the highest order, and I don't say that simply because she is an inch shorter and the same weight as I, and yet was basically booted from the second episode for being too fat. Now, I'm a good five pounds overweight right now, but I, unlike Brita, am not carrying it around in the form of a fabulous rack. Travesty. Especially when they keep that fugly wrestler freak around.

The Towering Wisdom of Dr. Phil: "You can't keep a child in a closet with a bed."

The best Dr. Phil episodes focus on either hideous marriages (such as the awesome one earlier this week about the psychotically controlling husband who told his wife to “shut [her] suckhole” and regularly administered lessons on how to properly brush her teeth and shower; my long and detailed recap was tragically lost to the cruel mistress that is Blogger) or hideously behaved children. This conveniently gives Dr. Phil the opportunity to plug one of his two presumably (I have not read them) most fantastic books, Relationship Rescue and Family First. Thursday’s show fell into the hideous-child category, and how.

So there’s this scary girl, 15, who wants to kill everyone. Specifically, it seems, her weeping whale of a stepmother (see above). The girl has a “hit list” with 27 people on it, and the dad says occasionally the whale stepmom’s rank slips a few notches, but eventually she’s always back to being crazy-bitch enemy no. 1.

The parents have decided to deal with this by building what amounts to a cell in their house. As Dr. Phil explains it, speaking for the parents, “We can’t let her roam around. She’s putting chemicals in our food and drinks; she’s planning our death and demise.” The mother has taken to hiding the cleaning products the crazy daughter is fond of using as poisoning devices. And they have an alarm attached to her cell that plays, with apparently no irony whatsoever, “Pop Goes the Weasel” whenever the girl leaves her room. Pop. Goes. The. Weasel.

Only parts of the daughter’s face are shown for her taped contributions to this insanity, but she appears to have a very close-cropped white-girl Afro, which I firmly believe may have a large part to do with her mental instability. There’s also an excellent moment in which the stepmom talks about how her daughter – whom she has legally adopted – was taking the stepmom’s heart pills. “She looked right at me and said, ‘Well, if you don’t have them, then your heart’ll stop and you’ll die.’ And smiled.” There is then, in perhaps the best part of the show beyond the “Pop Goes the Weasel” revelation, an awesome cut to black-and-white close-up of said weasel’s jacked-up teeth, exposed in a vicious, step-matricidal grin. Oh, and we learn that the daughter – who is, also, naturally, A Cutter - has some disturbing hygiene problems: “She would smell so bad. She wasn’t wiping at school.” In the words of David from The Real World: Seattle: "Wow. Thank you for telling me that."

So basically Dr. Phil’s reaction to all of this is one of understandable but controlled horror. The parents blather on a bit about some syndrome called “reactive attachment,” which is apparently the cause of the girl’s issues. But Dr. Phil isn’t really interested in that. “She has planned to kill you by bashing your head in with a car part,” he helpfully reminds them. The ultimate solution seems to be to ship the girl off to a special school where she can learn to stop wanting to bash people’s heads in with car parts. Unfortunately, this school is located in Provo, Utah, so I firmly suspect it has some Mormon ties and this girl is really being served up as the future wife of a polygamist. She could single-handedly bring down that religion, come to think of it, if she can get her hands on enough car parts or Drano. Time will tell!

The politics of high school

Both Hudson at Kos and Digby have brilliant posts on the same subject. This is from Digby:

Hudson over at Daily Kos has posted a provocative piece about a Republican tactic he calls "fencing." He accurately describes this process of ritual humiliation that's become a standard part of the Republican playbook over the last few years, the purpose of which is to "fence off" voters from feeling comfortable identifying with the Democrats and candidates who are widely seen as socially marginalized objects of derision --- effeminate geeks. I suspect this tactic works particularly well with certain sub-sets of white males whose identity is wrapped up in machismo and high school jock style social hierarchies ---- and the women who buy into those simple heuristic methods of determining leadership capability.(Old Mudcat pretty much came right out and said it. "It's a macho thing.")

Clearly, this tactic has been used to great effect in the last two presidential elections and I think it plays particularly well into the existing stereotypes of the two parties with respect to national security. Of course, one of the reasons this works so well is that it is partially designed to appeal to the media's puerile sense of bitchy good
fun, as well. It would not be nearly as effective if the MSM could resist the immature temptation to side with those they perceive as "real guys" and help them deride Democrats as weirdos and sissies.

Like Vonnegut said, everything is high school. The jocks from high school didn't go away; they went to college and joined fraternities. They're still worshipping the grunting ribald faggotry that they try to pass off as male bonding, and voting for Bush. The Republican party has been masterful at appealing to these people. At saying to this goons and they women who go for dudes like that, the democrats, homosexuals, metrosexuals, intellectuals, academics, lesbians, feminists are out to get you and your lifestyle. Well, both Hudson and Digby have fat better posts--read them. I need to go home. It's friday.

I'd like to watch this play about Silvia Plath--if the status of the old wallet is not a complete flat line--called Edge. Anybody seen it? Let me know how it is.

Friday Dog (and mythical creature) Blogging

I know these dogs well. They wake me up at 6 a.m. every weeekend.

This is Maggie.

And this is Paco.

And this is a fierce jackalope.

Byrne on Dylan, and then some

At the end of his March 8 tour journal entry, former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne dishes out a mini-review of Dylan's recent autobiography:

I finished reading Bob Dylan's book. It's beautifully written, though I think it should probably be filed under fiction. I always thought his persona, which early on was that of a young Woody Guthrie, was just that, a persona. It worked as a way of delivering those songs, so who cares?...and he partly, but only partly, abandoned it later. But this book is, in my opinion, pretty much written from the point of view of that imaginary guy. What a conceit! It's a brilliant literary idea, but I hope people take it with a grain of salt...and humor. It's as if Mr Rogers wrote his autobiography and continued to talk the way he does in the TV show. Some of the writing, the language and the metaphors that this character comes up with are brilliant. Moving and unexpected I mean, for example he describes rappers and "serious, throwing horses off cliffs" (Call me skeptical, but a Jewish guy from Minnesota talking and writing like a backwoods hick/poet, huh? What's that about?)

The main thrust of the post, though, focuses on Byrne's presentation of his latest book, which puts the magnifying glass on PowerPoint. Yes, that PowerPoint.


I find it interesting, though, that Byrne brings up Dylan writing from a make-believe/imagined persona, which was pretty much the gist of author David Bowman's mediocre-but-informative Heads bio This Must Be The Place. In it, Bowman paints Byrne as a socially awkward art school dropout who slowly evolved from someone who was trying to be eccentric, arty and different into someone who was genuinely that way, with a stronger sense of self (that, some would argue, made it easy for him to shrug off the other Heads when they became too cumbersome). It's worth reading just because it's probably the only functional Talking Heads/Byrne bio you're gonna find. Anyone else wanna help me write one?

But don't bother buying the PP book. Instead, whip out your credit card and welcome these albums into your home, before the rapture comes:

Remain in Light

David Byrne

The Name of this Band is Talking Heads

I hate Jim Derogatis

This splendidly awful review comes from the ever-reliable Chicago Tribune's Jim Derogatis. The solution is worse than the problem. Count the cliches and hasty generalizations per column inch. Keep in mind that Derogatis was drummer in Ex Lion Tamers, a cover band who played the old punk anthems that Wire -- reunited in their mid 1980's synth-pop incarnation -- had too much self-respect to play.

Billboard mise-en-scene

(Via Andrew Sullivan--yes, not all his posts are shit.)

Tall Tales...

Raise your hand if you're telling the truth. From 13WHAM.com, Rochester, NY:

A former U.S. Marine who participated in capturing ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said the public version of his capture was fabricated.

Hmmm...

"I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced," Abou Rabeh said.

Curiouser and curiouser. I wonder if he, too, was somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold?

So, what's to become of Uncle Duke, now?

I'm probably going to get some flack over this, but I found this effin hilarious!



Señor Trudeau tickles me funny shanks.

Reid v. Kerry

From WP:

Reid and Kerry crossed swords two weeks ago at a closed-door meeting of the Senate Democratic Steering and Coordination Committee with a group of labor leaders, and while accounts vary, there's little doubt that things got tense between the new Senate Democratic leader and the party's 2004 presidential ominee.

Kerry was unhappy with the posture of the Democrats and told Reid that they needed to be far more aggressive in fighting President Bush, needed to set up what amounted to a perpetual campaign and needed a plan to prevent Bush from seizing the middle ground in the Social Security fight.

Reid responded that he had set up a campaign-style war room and taken other steps to put the Democrats in fighting mode and made it clear he wasn't going to change course just because Kerry thought something different was needed.

The most extensive account of the exchange noted that Reid had questioned how Kerry had run his presidential campaign in Nevada last year -- he lost the state -- but two other sources say that did not occur.

But several of those in the room described it as an awkward and tough exchange that left no one in doubt as to who was in charge of Senate Democrats. "Reid kind of shot him down," said one person privy to the exchange, adding, "You would never have seen [former Senate Democratic Leader] Tom Daschle do that."

I was going to comment on this, but I think Kos pretty much summed up what I would have said.

One of the toughest jobs a Senate party leader has must be managing the various egos of presidential aspirants. In the current Senate, Reid has to contend (at minimum) with Clinton, Feingold, Bayh, Biden and Kerry. Good for him for slapping down Kerry.

Also, if Reid can be this stalwart with members of his own party, then look foward to more conflicts with the republicans.

I think right about now I'd like to make a correction to what I said about Reid calling Greenspan a "hack." Attacks like that one, which are warranted but not very, let's say, civil can only work if the Democrats stand by their words instead of apologizing during the next news cycle which makes them look weak and spineless. If thay're able to do that, instead of giving in, then the outrage seems legitimate and so their commitment to the issue at hand. Reid has yet to apologize for his despcription of Greenspan and for that I applaud him, even though I still think he could have been critical in a slightly less hostile fashion.

Get the schmuck out

Hit the road Joe. A worthy cause.

Lieberman's an inept senator and definitely a democrat in name only (DINO). Let's kick his ass out.

Maybe he'll join Andrew Sullivan's revue, Sullivan and the Backers of Freedom.

It's déjà vu again in America

The Republicans in the House just proposed a budget that would cut benefit programs by $69 billion over the next five years. These cuts will supposedly reduce the federal deficit.

The spending plan would trim $69 billion from benefit programs over the next five years. While decisions about which specific programs will be targeted will be made in separate bills later this year, the Republican-led House is expected to cull savings from Medicaid, student loans, farm programs, veterans and perhaps welfare and unemployment insurance.

I love the provision that the specific cuts would be decided later on in the year. It's very convenient to pass a bill that doesn't go into specifics. Republicans don't have to fight battles on multiple fronts, or deal with anyone pissed off lobby and Democrats who vote for it can always say that they didn't know which programs were going to be cut, or that they were promising not to cut from certain programs... blah blah blah.

But of course.

Domestic programs, excluding benefits, would be cut by 0.8 percent. Such programs range from national parks to food safety protection, but final decisions on exactly where the cuts will fall will be made in later bills.

Defense spending would grow by 4.8 percent while spending on domestic security programs would grow by 2.3 percent. Overall, spending on security and domestic programs that Congress must approve annually would grow by 2.1 percent to $843 billion next year.

And the details for tax cuts are in the air too.

The House budget calls for $106 billion in tax cuts over the next five years, about the same as President Bush proposed. But only $45 billion of those cuts would be granted procedural advantages that would let them avoid Senate filibusters, procedural delays that could kill them.

While the details of tax cuts, too, will be decided in later bills, the budget leaves room for reductions that Bush proposed for capital gains and dividends taxes.

Yes, it's morning again in America.

Damn that's cold.

And people think we need tort reform:

Heaven can wait, Italian court tells dying man. With six months to live, man told to return to court in 14 months.

Carmelo Cisabella, 39, has an inoperable spine disease and is anxious to pick up some 450,000 euros ($596,300) in already-agreed damages from his insurers to help ease his final months of life, Il Messaggero newspaper reported on Tuesday.

In a bid to speed up the process, Cisabella turned to the Sicilian courts to put pressure on the slow-moving insurers, but was told to return next year to hear their decision.

In his frustration, he chained himself to the gates of the law courts to bring attention to his plight.

You have to give this guy some credit for being resilient--paralyzed and dying of a lethal spine infection and still willing to chain himself to a gate. It's almost enough to make me feel guilty for being too lazy to attend that RNC protest I passed on my way home once. Almost. Chaining yourself to a gate is one thing, but a drum circle is really something you have to be in the mood for.

It's a blog off!

Iron Blog!!!--yes, it's exactly what it sounds like. Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise is challenging Iron Blogger Culture, Joel Caris.

Here's how it works:

As on Iron Chef, each bout features a theme ingredient. This week's ingredient is...

Objective Journalism

Once the ingredient is announced, The Iron Blogger and The Challenger have 24 hours to compile their 3-6 dish menus. Each "dish" is a topic for a blog post on some aspect of the theme. I hope readers will post topic suggestions below.

Final menus are submitted in secret to the Chairman. Every day for the rest of the week, The Iron Blogger and The Challenger will each post no more than one "dish" on Iron Blog website. The first posts will appear tomorrow. Submissions will be scored by an esteemed panel of judges.

Exit, stage left

This is why I love The Onion:

'I'm pleased to announce that the Department of Defense and I have formulated a plan for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq,' Bush announced Monday morning. 'We'll just go through Iran.'

Bush said the U.S. Army, which deposed Iran's longtime enemy Saddam Hussein, should be welcomed with open arms by the Islamic-fundamentalist state.

'And Iran's so nearby,' Bush said. 'It's only a hop, skip, and a jump to the east.'

Sad thing is, I could see him saying something like this. Or, like this.

Sullivan and the Backers of Freedom: A Musical

Today's reason why Andrew Sullivan is not very smart.

I'm with David [Brooks] on the assessment of Paul Wolfowitz. I've never understood the demonization of this man, whose integrity has always struck me as unimpeachable. He truly is a sincere backer of freedom around the world, has taken many lumps defending that increasingly vindicated principle, and been subjected to the usual obloquy from the reactionary parts of the left. The only moral question that hangs over him is the deployment of torture. I have no idea what his involvement in that shameful chapter of the war has been. But it would go against everything I know about the man to think he would approve. Or am I being naive?

Even if the deployment of torture were the only moral question hanging over Wolfowitz's head, you'd think that'd be enough to hold praising him as a "sincere backer of freedom." Sullivan doesn't seem to realize that sincerity in backing freedom does not make one exempt from backing it with heinous acts--you could make a very superficially convincing argument for backing freedom with questionable methods, where essentially the end would justify the means and sound very fucking sincere. Actually, aren't fanatics the most sincere backers of stuff? But no, Andrew knows better. Everything he knows about the man--I'd like to know exactly what that is--tells him that Wolfowitz could not have approved the torture of detainees. No Andrew, you're not naive, there's a word for what you are, and naive is not even a euphemism for it.

Round up

This is some measure of inconpetence, isn't it?

The Democratic amendment was defeated, with 46 votes for and 49 against. The GOP alternative fell by a wider margin, 38 for and 61 against.

What clusterfuck of a bill gets more votes against than the one proposed by the minority part?

There's the left, and then the fanatical left. Evo Morales, a labor leader and arguably Bolivia's most powerful man, has kept his country in economic apoplexy for years now. He's a rambling communist--actually, he's not even a communist; he's more reactionary than anything else--who doesn't understand exactly what he stands for but that doesn't stop him from denouncing neo-liberalism and capitalism with the kind of populist retrograde nonsense rhetoric that gets the poor riled up but doesn't accomplish much else. Morales has brought down the Bolivian government once again with the threat of widespread protests and that's all he seems capable of doing.

LA PAZ, Bolivia - President Carlos Mesa submitted his resignation to Congress on Monday after warning that a wave of protests against his 15-month-old government may soon leave Bolivia's largest cities isolated by road blockades.

Legislators could decide as early at Tuesday whether to accept the resignation, which followed several days of street protests calling for a privatized water company to immediately stop operating and demanding higher taxes on oil companies.

"I cannot continue to govern with threats that strangle the country," Mesa wrote in his letter, referring to plans announced by opposition leader Evo Morales to stage a nationwide blockade of roads, a traditional form of protest in Bolivia.

Of course, Morales is not responsible for the economic situation of his country--nor is he solely responsible for its lack of progress--people like him are the resutl of that poverty. He's had the opportunity to inflict real change but he's either not smart enough to understand how to do it, or just can't because people like him need to be constant victims. Instead he unleashes cliche anti-American attacks that only result in chanting crowds. Like Chavez, he yaps about pan-Latinamerican solidarity while at the same time appealing to his people's antagonism of Chile. I don't think I have a real point, or a solution. Oh well.

'Marriage 911'

I'm delighted to learn that the spectacular Nanny 911 franchise has been expanded to include help for people who not only haven't a clue how to manage their spawn, but also their own relationships. If only that help were doled out by Dr. Phil, it would be a perfect ... marriage! Ha ha!

The Towering Wisdom of Dr. Phil, installment no. 1

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Sell me

Target's "Say Something New" TV spots make up the single best advertising campaign since the iMac "She's a Rainbow" juggernaut of many years ago. Nothing else has come close. Not even that "we're for dogs" Pedigree campaign that makes me weep like the soft-brained child I am.

Fedor-on

Could I have anymore of a hard-on for Anatole "Anthony" Fedorov? Baby, you can wear blazers that appear to have been fingerpainted by epileptic 7-year-olds. You can be four feet tall. I'll always love you, as long as you share a last name with Sergei and you perform songs like "Against All Odds." And the childhood tracheotomy only helps.

A better way to call Greenspan a hack

I'm not a big fan of Ron Brownstein. He's usually too careful with this words to move beyond cliche and popular wisdom. I still resent his sappy description of Bush on MSNBC when he was informed of the 9/11 attacks.

But even he can see, and call out, the ridiculous irony in Greenspan's recent economic caveat.

Is he kidding?

That's the only possible reaction to Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan's conclusion last week that the massive federal budget deficit accumulated under President Bush was "unsustainable." Declared Greenspan: "The principle that I think is involved here … [is] that you cannot continuously introduce legislation which tends to expand the budget deficit."

That would be an entirely reasonable — even urgent — warning from someone who didn't bear so much responsibility for the problem he's describing. Greenspan lamenting higher deficits is like New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner complaining about inflated baseball salaries.

Alas, it is no more.

Alas, a Blog is down again. What's going on? Is there a new URL? I really like that blog. Amanda?

Sonny Bono Overdrive

I always knew the fucker was evil! Bet he stoned poodles, too! Check it:

Only the first four volumes of the new translation [of In Search of Lost Time]—from Swann's Way through Sodom and Gomorrah—are available here [in the U.S.]. For this we have Sonny Bono to blame.

Who would've thunk it?

What Would Dr. Phil Do? (first in a series)

So today's Dr. Phil is about the "biggest $$$ mistakes families make," because apparently families can't spell out "financial" or "money." This has the potential to be a great show, because it will inevitably feature really dumb people making really dumb (yet, if you're me, relatable) decisions and Dr. Phil yelling at them. I do like it when Dr. Phil yells. We'll see. Only an hour and a half to go!

Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out ways to get on Dr. Phil. Among the current options:

Are you secretly a prostitute? In the sense that I have reached a point in my life where I trade blowjobs for pizza and wine, yes. (If only I hadn't made all those $$$ mistakes in my early 20s, I could maybe buy my own. Where were you then, Dr. Phil?)

Wish you could show the world the real you? The real me that is currently in pajamas, under a blanket, with a notebook computer on my lap, eating leftover pizza acquired through virtual prostitution? Not so much, no.

Parents hate your fiance? This is the most convincing argument yet for getting engaged.

It's a democracy, stupid.

I occasionally wonder exactly how much of a masochist I truly am, usually around the same time I find myself reading “newspapers” like the New York Post. After reading today’s editorial, the cleverly titled "It’s War, Stupid,” I’ve decided I must be a glutton for punishment. The article, which centered on the ruling of a South Carolina judge last week that alleged terrorist Joseph Padilla’s imprisonment was illegal, featured arguments like:

“Furthermore, giving individuals who seek to kill Americans access to smooth-talking lawyers is a prescription for suicide.”

And:

“If the War on Terror requires a suspension of habeas corpus in certain circumstances, then Congress must give the president that power.”

Um, no. How about we don’t give him that power. The fact is we give citizens who kill or attempt to kill other Americans access to “smooth-talking lawyers” all the time in murder and attempted murder cases, which are not strictly confined to terrorism. It’s called the American legal process. Far more dangerous than the editorial’s assertion that, “cases like Padilla's will pose unnecessary — and dangerous — obstacles to the successful prosecution of the war against terror,” is the precedent the suspension of habeas corpus would set. But most of us already knew that, you know, on account of not being stupid.

Three Terms I Never Want to Hear Again

Dear Liberals. Usage of the following three terms must stop inmediately.
1-"Pro-Life."
It is inconceivable that we've allowed the term "pro-life" to enter discussion of abortion issues. If you're not Pro-Life, then you're Pro-Death, and NO ONE wants to be pro-DEATH. Solution to this problem: STOP SAYING PRO-LIFE. DO NOT USE THIS TERM. Acceptable substitute: Anti-Choice, fetusphiliac.
2-"Heartland"
Do NOT talk about the "heartland." EVER. Because if you don't live there, you're living in the "heartless-land." And that's no place for a bleeding heart liberal.
3-"Black on Black Crime."
Second to Jim Crow in terms of racism, and carries with it the hideous assumption that somehow blacks killing blacks is worse than blacks killing whites. Stop saying "black-on-black" crime. It's just plain, colorless CRIME.
Pheeew. Had to rant.

Vengeance, thy name is page design

I'm a little late on this, but I really like to believe that Lindsay Lohan threw some massive coke-fueled hissyfit in the W offices, leading to this none-too-subtle juxtaposition of cover teases. Because it's awesome.

Shut up. This is totally culture. And media.

Here Comes the City

The new Go-Betweens album Oceans Apart, their third since reuniting in 1999, is released on LoMax Records the first week of April. You can watch the video of "Here Comes the City" on the label's website. The song adheres to the structures that leaders Robert Forster and Grant McLennan established on their previous comeback albums: unobtrusive acoustic/electric strumming, mild-mannered singing, unexpected lyrics (here it's Forster namechecking Dostoevsky in a way that's funny and unpretentious). What's a shock - besides how infectious the melody is - is the rhythm is for once propulsive; the Go-Be's haven't swung this confidently since 1987's Tallulah. By now their devotion to the pop song transcends their by-now considerable craft: McLennan's romantic plaints and Forster's droll reflections on middle age reassure us like conversations with old friends. Here's hoping that, I don't know, the Shins or the Wrens or Fountains of Wayne record music this rich when they reach their late forties.

If you still haven't bought a Go-Betweens album, the last three from their golden age (1983-1989) were just rereleased in November. Here's my review.

As for the video, check how adeptly Forster channels Bryan Ferry, down to the mincing and sartorial panache. All he's missing is a plumed hat.

People who need people

Political Site of the Day has a very good idea. Designate an International Liberal Blogroll Day in which all liberal bloggers help each other with traffic by surfing the blogrolls.

More Friday Cat Blogging

This is Zanzibar.

I have no real association with this cat--it belongs to a person named Alexa who apparently goes to KSG and my girlfriend claims is her nemesis.

Friday Cat Blogging

And old picture of my roommate's cat, David Byrne, taken with my girlfriend's camera phone.

Prussian Blue

Meet the blindingly white girls of Prussian Blue.

What do you think is the most important social issue facing the white race right now? Do you have any songs that address this issue?

Not having enough white babies born to replace ourselves and generally not having good-quality white people being born. It seems like smart white girls who have good eugenics are more interested in making money in a career or partying than getting married and having a family. And yes, we are working on some new songs about this issue.

Oh my Holy God, bring the Apocalypse on NOW.

Galois on gay marriage

This post on Galois is a little dated, but I keep going back and reading it, and thinking it more and more brilliant every time. Gabriel's posits that prohibiting same-sex marriage is in essence gender discrimination. I'll say no more. Read this.

Hacking at Greenspan

I don't think Alan Greenspan's job performance is unimpeachable. My knowledge of economics is very limited, actually nonexistent, so I'll try not to opine too much on this. I think however that it is at least suspect that Greenspan has been very lenient with the policies of the administration until that testimony a couple of weeks ago. For years people have been saying that the deficit would eventually become insupportable, I find it hard to believe that Greenspan wasn't even close to that pedestrian prescience.

But still, Harry Reid calling him "one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington" is just bad politics and takes attention away from the issue. By the time Reid apologizes due to Republican pressure, nobody's going to remember why this whole thing started in the first place. They're only going to remember that Reid acted like an asshole and then gave in to Republican demands.

UPDATED TO ADD: A very good post about Greenspan on Bull Moose.

Bad moon rising?

I like the modesty with which liberal Fred Kaplan acknowledges that perhaps the Iraq campaign has had a transformative effect on the region - and that the president deserves at least some credit:

It's a huge stretch to view these uprisings as a seamless wave of democracy; but it would go too far in the other direction to see them as strictly discrete events, each unrelated to the other. The evidence suggests that we're seeing at least a stream of wavelets; that the participants in one country have been inspired to take action, at least in part, by the example of participants in other countries.

I'm not one of those guys who believes "Reagan ended the Cold War," but it would be churlish (not to mention poor history) to overlook the fact that dissidents in Roumania, Poland, and the Soviet Union drew inspiration from Ron's best Clint Eastwood moment, the tear-down-this-wall speech (a speech whose timing dovetailed almost perfectly with the release of a wonderful Billy Ocean album of the same name!).

Mindful of the efficacy of past American expeditions to make the world safe for democracy, still a believer that the Iraq campaign was poorly executed but necessary, I remain cautiously optimistic.

Andrew Sullivan: self-involved fuckball

Read his "E-mail of the Day" where a devoted reader describes how he's disagreed with him for years, but now is starting to come around after realizing that the revolutions in the Ukraine and Lebanon are all due to President Bush.

"Neener, neener, neener," responded the Senate majority

Losses mounted this week for Democrats as Republican senators voted down bankruptcy law changes such as allowing elderly individuals filing for bankruptcy to remain in their homes while undergoing the process. According to CNN.com,“also rebuffed, 58-39, were two proposals focused on people whose significant medical expenses for illness force them to file for bankruptcy.” All this from a party lead by a man who claimed in his convention speech, “I'm running with a compassionate conservative philosophy: that government should help people improve their lives, not try to run their lives.”

I suppose they figure repossession doesn’t constitute interfering with the lives of Americans. What does a terminal cancer patient need a home for anyway? In light of this special form of “compassion,” I’m reminded of the refreshing frankness of the federal student loan program, which in addition to the ever-appealing choice of bankruptcy for the forgiveness of debts, offers this attractive alternative: “Option B: You die.”

Two degrees of Henry Kissinger

Gibbons vs. a gibbon, next on The Weakest Link

Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV)--whose last name is also the name of any of several small arboreal apes of the genus Hylobates of southeast Asia and the East Indies, having a slender body, long arms, and no tail with an IQ commensurate to the congressman's--has refused to appologize for proposing that "those liberals, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals... go make their movies and whine somewhere else." Where's somewhere else? According to this simian-brained Nevadian, they should be used as "human shields" in Iraq.

His reason for not apologizing: "It was all said for the soldiers. I support our troops, and don't apologize for that."

UPDATED TO ADD: Apparently there's a blog called Vote Gibbons Out! I hope they're talking about the congressman and not the adorable primates of equal intelligence.

Also, Gibbons vitriolic speech appears to be plagiarized. Check out Eschaton.

The Court and the Commandments

Excerpts from today's arguments:

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor: It's so hard to draw that line. If the legislature can open its own sessions attended by the public with a prayer, you say it cannot, in the same building, display the Ten Commandments.

Chemerinsky: That's right, because the message from the government is quite different. The message with legislative prayers, as this Court found in Chambers v. Marsh, is a recognition of a long historical practice. But when it comes to the Ten Commandments, it really is different than even a legislative prayer. This declares not only there is a God, but that God has proclaimed rules for behavior. The Ten Commandments come from sacred texts.

So true. In fact, there's never really been a historical practice of displaying the Ten Commandments in government buildings. One of the displays in question, for example, was donated to the State of Texas by Cecille B. DeMille as a way to promote his movie, The Ten Commandments. But the behavioral point is a good one too. While the vague prayer sessions that usually start legislative proceedings, as well as the proclamation before any Supreme Court session, don't really endorse any religion, or religion at all, simply the existence of God. The Ten Commandments are a lot more specific.

Justice John Paul Stevens: Would it equally be permissible to have a crucifix of the same size in the same location on the Capitol grounds?

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott: I seriously question whether or not a crucifix would be constitutionally acceptable in that same location, and for the very same reasons which I'm articulating why the Ten Commandments would be acceptable in this location. The crucifix is not like the Ten Commandments in that it's not an historically recognized symbol of law. It doesn't send a secular message to all the people, regardless of whether they are believers or not believers of the important role the Ten Commandments have played in the development of law.

Justice Scalia: It's not a secular message. I mean, if you're watering it down to say that the only reason it's OK is it sends nothing but a secular message, I can't agree with you. I think the message it sends is that our institutions come from God. And if you don't think it conveys that message, I just think you're kidding yourself.

Again, the Ten Commandments are not a "historically recognized symbol of law" in the United States. Show me in the Declaration of Independence, or in the Constitution, the part that references the Ten Commandments. Those documents purposely distance themselves from the Ten Commandments. Remember that the original draft of the Declaration of Independence read "we hold these truths to be sacred" and it was Benjamin Franklin who convinced Jefferson to change it to self-evident to distance the new republic from religion, which they thought wasn't too far off from divine right and tyranny.

Support for Bush’s Social Security plan

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press:
46 percent, down from 54 percent in December
53 percent of respondents trust the AARP over the president
Only three in 10 people approve of Bush’s plan
65 percent feel the president has not explained his proposal clearly enough

CNN-USA Today:
Only 35 percent approve of the plan, that’s down from 43 percent only three weeks ago

AP:
39 percent approve of the plan

Can't say it surprises me....

From Yahoo News:

U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond and his staff tried to get the FBI to build a case against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 on the grounds that King was "controlled by communists," according to a recently released FBI memo on the late senator from South Carolina.

I know he fucked black chicks, but I wonder if he ever fucked any rotten doctor commie rats?

Matthew Yglesias, your secret is out

Look at this picture:

This is ostensibly a picture of the very talented and successful blogger Matthew Yglesias, but look closer and you will notice an uncanny, undeniable resemblense to Erneste "Che" Guevara. Of course, this couldn't be Che because he was killed 40 years ago in the jungles of Bolivia, and it couldn't be an old picture of Che because of the anachronistic presence of a laptop computer in the shot, not to mention the empty bottle of Gatorade.

My theory: Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and the ubiquitious Dr. Mengele got together to clone Che a la The Boys from Brazil. You will remember the defunct revolutionary's remains were returned to Cuba not long ago--you think all the Cubans did was bury him? The clone's purpose: attend Harvard, become an influential blogger and insidiously change American foreign policy from inside the blogosphere. And he would have gotten away with it if AGI hadn't outed him.

Yeah, I know. It's a silly post. But I'm bored at work.

Minor Crime

The Supreme Court has barred the execution of minors (USAT). (The court had banned the execution of those 15 and under; this decision adds ages 16 and 17 to the ban.) The decision was 5-4 with Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas and surprisingly, Sandra Day O'Connor voting to uphold states' right to decide in the matter. The whole transcript of the decision is not up yet, but parts of Scalia's dissent are:

The court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: 'In the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty.'

The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards.

Scalia has been making the same Eighth and Ninth Amendment argument for 20 years. But you know what, I don't care. I'd rather the court be arbiter of the nation's moral standards than the state of Florida.