The Torture Memos: A Very Good Catch by Marc Ambinder - clearly the option to prosecute did not just leap out of thin air.
Patriot Act Renewal Debate Kicks Off Over Party Lines - Democrats Not Falling In Line Behind White House on Keeping Controversial Amendments - it would be such a lovely thing if congress suddenly woke up to it's job as a legislature. In related news, there is a small hope that Obama to Announce New State Secrets Policy, Finally may offer something SANE. It could happen.
ACORN: The Most Cost-Effective Investment the Government (and Foundations) Have Ever Made - The real purpose of the right's attacks on ACORN is to destroy a remarkably successful 50-year-old grassroots model for defending the poor and workers. Offers us the backstory on ACORN:
In the late 1960s, a growing number of people looked to create a broad-based anti-poverty movement, an idea embraced by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Poor People's Campaign, in which NWRO played an important role.The idea remains a great one, in that it is trying to do the very 'winning the hearts and minds' work that is a core part of any solid counter-insurgency. But the big question then remains, should it be funded by the feds? or the state? or should it be a faith based institution as well? Yes I understand that it is easier for a kids from the Ivy League schools to get a $3k stipend from an investor, to do the journalism, than it is for the folks inside ACORN, but there is that matter of principles. Should these sorts of community activism be funded and supported as one more part of the National Defense Budget under the category near the strategic suburbs programs.
...
Wiley wanted to use the NWRO model to build a coalition of the working poor, unemployed, seniors and the lower middle class around issues such as national health insurance, consumer rights, housing and tax reform.
After a tragic accident took Wiley's life in 1973, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, created by two former NWRO organizers Wiley had sent to Little Rock, Ark., in 1970, became the primary vehicle for implementing his vision.
The ShrillOne offers up Econotourism in which he recommends that you visit Verdant Works in Dundee — a museum devoted to the history of the jute industry. Since that offers one of those interesting tales of actual economics. While he also offers The freshwater backlash (boring) in which,
Brad DeLong does a yeoman job of collecting the fallacies. As he says, they show famous economists making sophomore-level errors, again and again. They also show that the Chicago School has spent the past generation looking entirely inward — paying no attention to ideas and research elsewhere. Basically, their worldview has been frozen in amber since around 1978.Gosh, there is an understandable explanation for the mindless rage of those who are so upset that the emperor has no clothes, and that sort of Public Nudity is not at all acceptable, because those Evil Gays are Making Porno out of Economics by suggesting that the Emperor is Neked! And as we all know, all porno is Gay Porno, so liberals are bad!
And that, in turn, explains the sheer rage over my article. It was actually written in a fairly cool tone — but it did say that the emperor had no clothes, that people who have been posing as the sole guardians of sophisticated macroeconomics have, in fact, been revealed as being remarkably ignorant. Fury was the inevitable reaction.
Evangelist Kirk Cameron Plans To Distribute Darwin's Origin Of The Species With Creationist Introduction which offers this marvel moment Super classy guy, that Cameron. Tying Darwin to Hitler. And misogyny and racism. What, no pedophilia or necrophilia? - makes us wonder what next? New super cool editions of everything with a special frontice piece. Oh that's right Glenn Beck did that with his Ripping off Thomas Paine. Wow, reality is as the colours move dude!
Hey, I have a resume for that
Lou Dobbs has always been unrepentant in the face of proof of his many journalistic misdeeds. So it is not surprising that, in the face of a concerted campaign to have CNN remove him as one of its major news anchors, Dobbs defiantly embraces conspiracy theorists who argue, among other things, that President Obama is planning to round up conservatives and incarcerate them in concentration camps, and who feature pro-secession articles on their websites.So CNN, have yours call mine, we can do lunch, and sort out where we need to go with stopping the Alien Reptile People who have been using ACORN to find grannies to push under the flying saucers! No Seriously, call me.
[ cf Dropping Lou Dobbs: Unrepentant wingnuttery means CNN needs to choose between its credibility and its pride ]
The Daily Show on Tom DeLay's Dancing, Mike Schwartz's Confusing Homophobia - where we learn that BabaOhReilly was willing to accept the Media courage award, behind closed doors, with the media barred from the room. Amongst other bits of majik moments... Wild Thing...
Oh be still my beating heart:
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) -- my guest on Salon Radio today -- yesterday pointed out that the bill passed by both the Senate and House to de-fund ACORN is written so broadly that it literally compels the de-funding not only of that group, but also the de-funding of, and denial of all government contracts to, any corporation that "has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency." By definition, that includes virtually every large defense contractor, which -- unlike ACORN -- has actually been found guilty of fraud. As The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim put it: "the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops."Yeah, that would be the majik moment of our times....
[ cf Salon Radio: Rep. Alan Grayson on de-funding corrupt defense contractors ]
What is the dog whispering moment inside Picture This: Air Force Cop, Hard at Work where we get the coded message:
If you want proof of the safety culture that smothers some of the giant forward operating bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, look no further.Ah yes, pull out your secret decoder rings....
== This may not be the real world, but it was what I found at the time. ==