"And then I'll ask Which one of them Hates America Most!"

This weeks This Modern World is quite good.

And you may ask yourself

I have to refer you to the latest This Modern World, which looks at life in the Justice Departmant, circa 2005. Very very funny.

Automatic Lover

There's a story about a family with a family member on life support who got a call from one of those robo-callers. Apparently it added to their stress because they were unable to assure a connection with the medical professionals they might need. I wish I remembered where I had seen it (I think it was at Democratic Underground, but not sure).

The thing that drives me nuts about that story is that you know that nothing will happen to the people who orchestrated that, and double nothing will happen to the people who allowed it. A few "overzealous staffers" might end up paying a price, but the people who signed their paychecks won't.

If this gambit and others are successful, we might not even get that teaspoon of justice.

Grab Bag

A few interesting stories I'd like to point to.

First up, interesting information on former Christian Coalition leader and current candidate for governor in Georgia (if memory serves), from Garrison Kiellor.

The facts are fairly simple. Mr. Reed left the Christian Coalition in 1997 as it was sinking, and he was paid by Jack Abramoff to organize opposition to a gambling bill in the Texas Legislature, which would have opened the door to competition for Mr. Abramoff's client casinos in Louisiana. So Reed got the good Christians of Texas ("We have over 50 pastors mobilized, with a total membership in those churches of over 40,000 -- that includes Second Baptist, which has 12,000 members," he reported breathlessly) to bombard the Legislature with phone calls and letters denouncing gambling, for which Mr. Reed was paid millions of dollars in gambling money, by way of Abramoff's bagman, Grover Norquist.

So that's nice.

Incidentally if any body wants to pay me money to command my minions (by which I mean anybody who has even glanced at this website) to stay away from your competitor, I will be happy to take that money. I won't do it, of course. But I'll take the money.

Secondly, Ann Coulter is apparently in trouble for plagiarism. Or closer to being in trouble than she has been in the past. We'll have to see how this pans out.

Finally, you might check out this Tom Tomorrow Cartoon. Very funny and accurate. And it uses the word Blog-O-Fascist (although it uses the archaic spelling Blogofascist).

Another Command from your Beloved Fascist Dictator

Go check out this cartoon by Tom Tomorrow. Or "face the consequences" (TM).

You might also want to buy his latest book. It's got a number of very funny cartoons in it.

Tough Minded Conservatives

Tough minded conservative college students can't deal with being presented with views that do not line up with their own. Fortunately, Andrew Jones, an alumnus of UCLA, is there to help them, by encouraging them to tape their professors lectures and provide them to him, so that he can "expose their professors as liberal partisans who do not tolerate dissent in their classrooms."

Tough minded conservative film goers constantly complain about how movies are biased liberally, and have set up numerous organizations to protest this trend. But, as Zompist points out, you can easily make a case that Hollywood's product is Conservatively biased.

I'm starting to question how tough minded conservatives really are. Maybe Tom Tomorrow is on to something.

Victory through Bamboozlement

Working for change has a nice humorous faq up about how the Presidents current plan to win the war in Iraq is laid out.

Q. How does the president define victory?

A. According to a separate 35-page document accompanying the speech, titled “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq,” victory means creating the conditions that allow us to leave.

Q. Is he saying that getting out of Iraq is our only path to victory?

A. No. No. No. A lot of victories await us. Tiny victories and little victories and medium sized victories. Not to say we haven't experienced victories already. A couple tiny victories, a moral victory and an election victory. And if we string a bunch of these little victories together, it could add up to a nice medium-sized victory.

Very funny.

While you are there, you might also check out Tom Tomorrow's latest cartoon, which reflects the Irate Nation blog pretty neatly.

Bread and Circuses

Workers at an Omaha plastics factory are getting a special treat next week. They get a chance to see our President speak, and a specially coreographed media event. Their work is generously shutting down the factory so that President can visit and drum up support for his tax cut, and is generously offering to open on Saturday so they can make up the hours they missed. Isn't that great?

Story here. Got it from Tom Tomorrow.

The Cutting Dividend Tax Plan

Check out this chart, from a report prepared for Rep. Henry Waxman.

Link via This Modern World. Lot's of links, not much writing--I'm on the road, you should be lucky to get this much.

Get in on the Ground Floor

For those interested in giving the Statue of Liberty back to France, you can own the domain name. Link via This Modern World.

On the Peace Protestors

This commentary by Tom Tomorrow on the war is dead on. He is reacting to a discussion from Meet the Press.

MR. RUSSERT: And when we see pictures tonight of American men being executed, Michael Elliot, it’s very difficult to have any tolerance for people who are saying, "Wait a minute," although that is what America is all about.

And why is that, exactly, Mr. Russert?

Why is it "very difficult to have any tolerance" for the people who never wanted to send American soldiers into this battle to begin with?

In the exceedingly unlikely event that the anti-war movement had won the day, those servicemen would still be alive this morning.

It all unfolds with ritualized familiarity. The people who clamor for war downplay or ignore the obvious consequence of war--that human beings on both sides are going to lose their lives. Until the dying starts, and then their anger is focused on those who opposed the war from the start.

Right.

New Website

New Website there on the left. I should have added this a long time ago but didn't because I'm a dope. Today's cartoon was kind of hilarious. Check it out.

Two New Sites

Picked these up from This Modern World. It turns out the Republican Party has an apparatus where by they send out letters to various newspapers, getting the same "Letter to the Editor" in dozens of papers across the country. The letters are written by the Republican Party, and not by individual citizens as you might expect. This website has been tracking the phenomenon.

Then there is this website that is calling for a boycott of all the products that advertise on the Rush Limbaugh show. I don't know about that. I suppose if some people feel that way that's fine--but I suspect Rush will be fine in the long run, so I'm not going to worry about it. I wouldn't buy most of the products on the list anyway. So perhaps its a grey area.

One Other Thing

The President did tell the bone chilling story of a Scranton, Pennsylvania who was hounded by Pennsylvania malpractice laws, forced to move to Hershey, Pennsylvania. Dan Perkins over at This Modern World picked this up first--clever lad.

A Link

Today's This Modern World is particularly inciteful. Tom Tomorrow is brilliant regularly, but today's is particularly good. Check it out.