The Sunday shows were worse than normal. Face the Nation was a half hour of Peter King smearing the ACLU as hating America, and after about twenty minutes of that I said to hell with it when they started talking about SCOTUS picks, and the moderator said, and I quote, “Isn’t empathy just code for an activist judge?”
I just give up.
Brien Jackson
I’m very glad ABC exists to put Liz Cheney on television to talk about how investigating law breaking is “un-American” and how we must have no investigations into people (i.e. her father) who might have been complicit in committing war crimes.
No conflict of interest there right?
Radon Chong
Isn’t “activist judge” just another word for nothing left to lose?
Max
They should change the name of Meet the Press to GOP Talking Points. David Gregory is a horrible hack. I wish we could trade him to Fox for Shep Smith.
Perhaps the networks think that dems aren’t up on Sunday mornings, after a late Saturday night of gay sex and killing babies, so there is no need to provide equal representation.
There isn’t a person under 100 on any of the panels.
Fareed Zakaria (sp) is the only good thing on Sundays.
hal
Why are conservatives even bothering to put up a fight over this justice. It’s not like Obama is replacing Scalia or Thomas (I wish). He could pick Bill Clinton and it put the court exactly where it was before.
SGEW
If you mean “I give up on watching Sunday talk shows,” kudos to you. They can only cause harm to your well being, in my opinion.
If you mean “I give up on all political discourse in this country because everyone seems to be a god damned moron who shouldn’t be allowed near scissors,” then hang in there, man! There’s still hope.
mcd410x
If there was any actual desire to watch these shows, they wouldn’t be on Sunday morning.
PeakVT
“Isn’t empathy just code for an activist judge?”
Did he also ask “Isn’t strict construction just code for a bigot?”
Didn’t think so.
Balconespolitics
Laying in bed under the weather, I watched the King-Romero discussion. You had ACLU exec director Romero talking about how the American system of justice is the best in the world … and King retorting that the ACLU just wants to tear down America.
Comrade Jake
@hal:
It’s an opportunity to raise money, full stop. Steve Benen had a post up on this over at The Washington Monthly.
Jim
“Isn’t empathy just code for an activist judge?”
Was that Schieffer? I gave up the Sunday shows during the 2000 election, but I always thought Schieffer was the best of a bad lot.
As to the rest, King and Gregory are almost bad enough to make me miss Blitzer and Gregory.
gbear
Good for you.
MN Public Radio (much better in every way than NPR) just successfully finished one of their pledge drives.
What we need is a pledge drive where people promise to stop watching network news shows and then write testimonials as to how much this has improved their lives, outlooks, and their grasp of the facts. Their ratings really need to be driven down to zero.
Comrade Jake
Zakaria’s show really does make the rest of these moderators look like they’re all wearing clown shoes. It’s the only show worth watching on Sunday, and it’s not even close. The only reason to watch MTP is if you have an interest in getting pissed off.
I would be curious to see what kind of ratings Zakaria is getting. I’d like to think they’re decent, but the cynic in me thinks it’s far too heady for Joe Average American.
gbear
@Max:
I’ve heard it called “Press the Meat’. That a pretty good description.
Comrade Jake
OK, I’ve no idea what triggered moderation there. Fucking A that’s retarded Cole.
harlana pepper
John, believe me, it really is easier to give up. But then, we need you to watch this shit so we don’t have to, because we got sick to death of it long ago (see my ramblings). Comfort vs. Sense of Obligation. You poor thing. You need some Tunch time.
Speaking of Tunch, just from seeing his pics, I think he’d do a much better job as “moderator” than Gregory. Just something to think about.
Anton Sirius
I’m pretty sure God explicitly said there was to be no parroting of talking points on His Sabbath.
Laura W
@gbear:
This has been on my mind this morning. In the movie thread I realized that I rarely watch a movie twice, no matter how much I like it the first time, and that I rarely watch movies anymore, period. I realized two years ago I don’t read books in their entirety any more. I skim, skip around, or I bail out if they bore me. (Although I’ve not cared much for fiction since I turned about 22 and I don’t do Sci Fi.) I blame cable news and the internets for my intellectual laziness and short attention span.
And for sure, this blog.
demkat620
What I hate is that they put on somebody like Liz Cheney, let her say what ever the hell she wants. Make up utter nonsense and then act offend when somebody mildly questions her, and that from Katrina who just always seems to be one talking point off the mark.
Question for Liz, if these programs were so legal and so effective why did they end after Abu Ghraib in 2005 and why did anybody from Abu Ghraib go to prison?
Oh and BTW Liz, it’s former Vice President Cheney.
Laura W
@Comrade Jake: Ah come on. You know it’s the word after clown, don’t you?
joe from Lowell
Peter King is working from the Republicans’ 2003 playbook.
He thinks he can lie with impunity and not get called on it, and he thinks that accusing an opponent of wanting to attack America and of sympathizing with terrorists is still politically potent.
Comrade Jake
@Laura W:
You know, I’d actually assumed it was clown. S h o e s does it, huh? I stand by my assessment.
arguingwithsignposts
@demkat620:
What I would love would be for them to put Amy freakin’ Goodman on a roundtable with dearest Liz and watch the Cheney spawn get her a** handed to her. Or, if they couldn’t have the balls to do that, then get Rachel Maddow.
El Cid
I enjoy watching KVH on ‘How Weak? This Weak’ making her points without once pretending to like any of these worthless, monstrous shitbags.
But if Republicans want to reach out to their ‘new generation’ by sending out Liz Cheney to defend Pops and talk about ho ‘da libruls want to make Uhmerika lessafe’, I’m all fer’ it.
MattF
I gave up on that stuff long ago on doctor’s orders due to hypertension. By the way, it’s not good for you to have your blood pressure going up and down all the time– lability is the first step towards ‘over the limit all the time’.
gnomedad
@Comrade Jake:
Testing moderation: hoe.
Nope, no moderation. I don’t get it.
Comrade Jake
” Does anyone else think that what the Cheneys are really after here is their own reality show?”-Karen Tumulty
Library Grape
“I just give up.”
Me too. I saw the lineup today and just couldn’t stand to watch. I deleted all the shows on my Tivo. There are some times where the wingnut-inspired talking points du jour are just too much to bear. If I hear one more day about “Well, Nancy Pelosi knew some stuff, so can’t we just wash our hands of this whole silly business once and for all? No harm no foul?”, I am going to scream myself hoarse.
ARGH!!!!
JenJen
George Stef’s roundtable was interesting. I can’t figure out what kind of chops Liz Cheney has that warrants an invitation to the roundtable, but I could probably say the same about George Will. That Liz, she sure is good at fillibustering so other guests can’t get their point across!
James Carville was phoning it in. Katrina did a good job, but she always comes across as too, too, too grave and serious for me. We need newer, younger pundits so badly.
@Max:
Indeed! You forgot flag-burning, though. It’s hard to get the soot out of your hair in time for the show.
Kevin
I gave up awhile ago. They always have a republican hack (I know there are some good right wingers out there…but they sure don’t get booked on TV) who can’t help but smirk while they spew their bullshit. i’m not a violent person, but every time I see that jackass William Kristol so obviously lying, barely able to control a giggle-fit, i want to smack the teeth out of his mouth.
Brick Oven Bill
Last night at the compound was spent looking at the stars. In the high desert the air is thin and dry, making the stars very bright. Of the seven liberal arts and sciences, Astronomy is the one with which I am the least familiar.
Some government yahoo taking pictures of the pretty stars through some space telescope is not Astronomy. Astronomy is the analysis of the motion of the stars, used to predict future events and to navigate.
Galileo was the greatest Astronomer, in my opinion. His findings ran counter to the dogma of the day, and he was placed under house arrest in 1634, dying in 1642. In many ways the modern left is similar to the Catholic Church-1600s.
In 1992, Pope John Paul II conceded that the earth is not stationary.
mclaren
America has lost its soul. The fact that we’re even arguing about torture tells us American society has become rotten to the core.
Remember, people: Fareed Zakaria was one of the architects of the Iraq invasion as a response to 9/11. Zakaria was in the same room with Feith and Wolfowitz and Perle and Zakaria pounded the table loudly for an Iraq invasion as a way to “teach a lesson” to the mideast tyrannies. Zakaria then lied repeatedly to support the Iraq debacle, and only when it went completely sour did Zakaria back away and distance himself from it. Now Zakaria has successfully erased all memory that he was one of the architects of pre-emptive war, along with Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. All the other liars and thugs who helped push America into a lost war for no reason on the basis of lies, like Judith Miller, have all lost their jobs… But Zakaria remains employed and he’s still a pundit. It’s shocking and disgusting, as if we were watching some goon like Levrenti Beria running a political talk show in the west after the fall of Stalin and holding forth as though he’s some kind of august pundit, instead of just a piece of human garbage who caused untold human suffering and got away with it.
“In State of Denial, Bob Woodward delivers this sparkling scoop: Fareed Zakaria attended a secret gathering convened by Paul Wolfowitz in late 2001. The task at hand, according to a fellow participant, was to draft “a forceful summary of the best pro-war arguments” which became a blueprint for the Bush Administration’s PR campaign. Although he was a columnist at Newsweek and was editor of the magazine’s international edition, Zakaria didn’t attend in a journalistic capacity—in fact, he signed a non-disclosure agreement beforehand.”
Gee. Mr. “urbane voice of reason” Fareed Zakaria didn’t tell you about that one on his wonderfully erudite TV show, did he? Gosh, I wonder why.
Maybe because Fareed Zakaria is a scumbag who has gotten rich by being not just insanely savagely maniacally wrong about the Iraq war, but one of the architects of the entire Iraq invasion policy, along with Perle and Wolfowitz.
I don’t usually use language like this, but this point has to be made forcefully enough to wake everyone up. Fareed Zakaria is not just an ignorant incompetent asshole, he’s one those piece-of-shit corrupt lying megalomaniacal motherfuckers like Dick Cheney and Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz who systematically planned and instigated and boosted and proselytized and agitated for the Iraq invasion back in 2001 as pure warmongering, an out-and-out Project For the New AMerican Century way of “throwing some crappy little country up against the wall to show the world who’s boss,” in Michael Ledeen’s thuggish words, long before anyone dreamed up any fantasies about WMDs or yellowcake uranium.
Could DeMuth quickly put together a skilled group to produce a report for the president, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice and Tenet?
…
DeMuth recruited a dozen people. He later said they agreed to serve only “if I promised it would all be kept secret.”
Included in the group were Bernard Lewis, a Cheney favorite and a scholar of Islam who had written extensively on Middle Eastern tensions with the West; Mark Palmer a former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary who specialized in dictatorships; Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International; Fouad Ajami, director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at SAIS; James Q. Wilson, a professor and specialist in human morality and crime; and Ruel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East expert. Rumsfeld assigned his consultant and general fix-it man Steve Herbits, to participate. Herbits, who had devised the original idea and encouraged Wolfowitz to push it, called the group “Bletchley II.”
…
“The general analysis was that Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where most of the hijackers came from, were the key, but the problems there are intractable…”
…
“Saddam Hussein was different, weaker, more vulnerable. DeMuth said they had concluded that “Baathism is an Arab form of fascism transplanted to Iraq.”
…
“We concluded that a confrontation with Saddam was inevitable. He was a gathering threat – the most menacing, active, and unavoidable threat. We agreed that Saddam would have to leave the scene before the problem would be addressed.” That was the only way to transform the region.
Copies of the memo, straight from the Neoconservative Playbook, were hand-delivered to the war cabinet members. In some cases, it was given a SECRET classification. Cheney was pleased with the memo, and it had a strong impact on President Bush, causing him to focus on the “malignancy” of the Middle East. Rice found it “very, very persuasive.”
[From State Of Denial by Bob Woodward]
Fareed Zakaria helped murder a million Iraqi civilian women and children to feed his twisted power fantasies about “full spectrum dominance” and America as “the world’s sole hyperpower.”
Fareed Zakaria should be on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity, not hosting a goddamn talk show about geopolitics.
“To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” — Robert H. Jackson, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crime trials.
gbear
And he was one of the more forward-thinking ones.
flounder
You gave up too early. Way to go easy on your blood pressure.
I am watching John King on CNN lob soft balls toward a Mr. John Boehner. Then, when Mr. Boehner whiffs limply, John King then sets the ball on a tee, stands behind Mr. Boehner, and guides his arms to strike the ball and bounce it a couple feet from the plate.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Brick Oven Bill: The stars are simply amazing from Pitcairn Islands because there is no ground lighting or smog associated with industrialization.
arguingwithsignposts
@Brick Oven Bill:
Are you now equating Bush/Cheney with Galileo, someone who actually had “evidence” for his convictions?
It’s funny, because the sad part is the modern left hasn’t been able to put a damned person behind bars for anything since, possibly Nuremberg or that felon G. Gordon Liddy.
(I know, I know, don’t feed the trolls.)
geg6
I told my man this morning to quit watching this shit, especially the way too much CNN and FoxNews he subjects himself to every day. Three hours after I left his house this morning, he calls me to state flatly that Obama is throwing Pelosi under the bus because she took that trip to Pakistan without authorization and the Panetta statement in re: to the CIA briefings was a straight up smackdown. I had to direct him to the actual statement to prove it was not quite how it was being characterized. And I also pointed out that the Speaker does not have to request permission from anyone to go anywhere and that there is no proof of any conflict on the Pelosi trip other than Villager gossip and wishful thinking. My man promised to go cold turkey on the punditry. I told him he better or I’ll stage an intervention. CBS Sunday Morning is the extent of my Sunday morning teevee. It’s bad enough I have to encounter the vile Jack Kelly in my local metro Sunday paper. I refuse to subject myself to the rest of the poison and ruin a lovely Sunday.
kay
@Radon Chong:
They’re incoherent, as usual. The new conservative legal argument is that they have a Gallup poll that indicates more Americans are pro-life than pro-choice.
They’re planning on using this poll number to filibuster Obama’s SCOTUS nominee.
Because the judge should ignore the law, as written over the last 40 years, and instead rely on the Gallup poll conducted from May 5th thru 12th, 2009.
kingubu
Hey, remember a few years ago when the producers of these Sunday shows used to justify the 2-to-1 Wingnut/non-Wingnut ratio by saying that, because the GOP controlled the levers of power, their opinions had more practical impact?
I wonder what their excuse is now.
The Raven
Some moderator. These people are going down the tubes, but they’re fighting every inch of the way. & WtF are we going to do to replace all the institutions they’ve destroyed?
El Cid
Damn skrate. If they’s anythings we know, it’s that asstronomy has always been about the free market and glibertarian craptrap; I mean, what damn ‘scientific’ astronomical stuff have we ever got from damn gubmit scientists?
I mean, okay, so the Hubble proves some shit. So? It ain’t tellin’ you whom you should marry, which would be a good use of the money that the gubmit steals out yer pockit.
Jim
I can’t figure out what kind of chops Liz Cheney has that warrants an invitation to the roundtable, but I could probably say the same about George Will. That Liz, she sure is good at fillibustering so other guests can’t get their point across!
It reallly is an unbelievable editorial decision to let her on, even by the standards of the last ten-fifteen years, especially on a ’roundtable’ that already has GWill and Steve Schmidt. As the Republican Party gets weaker, the MSM leans further and further to the right in the name of “balance”.
Let me also say, in the interests of taste as much as anything else, having Mr Mary Matalin on to scream and stammer is every bit as objectionable, even without his relationship with Stephanopolous.
Mark S.
I had to google Peter King. I thought for a second the crappy football writer had turned wingnut.
JenJen
@Jim: I really did think after watching her performance on “Morning Joe” that that would be the last we’d see of her. The way the producers of the show allowed that shrill snake to ambush Eugene Robinson was shameless.
I appreciate Carville for being one of the only people on the left to consistently defend our positions during the height of Bush’s first-term, post-9/11 popularity, but his time has passed. We need younger, fresher pundits. I’m of the school of thought that the only way you can deal with these GOP pundits, including their newest one, the daughter of the former Vice President, is with a healthy dose of derision and snark. There is no point arguing with them, there really isn’t.
Also, look for the Cheney Family Talking Points to show up en masse at the next Tea Party on the 4th of July. The GOP thinks they’re onto something with the torture argument, and it plays directly to the base. You heard it here, first. :-)
John Hamilton Farr
Now you’re talking. This is where real change can come in. Time to build NEW institutions, hmm? :-)
For the life of me, I can’t understand why the boundless energy and potential of the blogosphere has been tied up for so long in a doomed crusade to remake the old order. It just floors me, and has for years:
“Elect Democrats!” Yeah, right.
“The media is lying!” Duh!
Etc. etc. etc. etc.
In 1971 when I was 25 years old, I quit a college teaching job to go live in the Ozarks and build a new life for myself and help bring about a new world for all. It didn’t work out quite the way I expected, but we won anyway, dammit, because millions of people took the risk and made the leap, and a major part of the collective consciousness was forever changed.
What on earth are people waiting for now, permission from the establishment? Their mommies?!? Every time Atrios says “Document the atrocities,” I want to throw up. WE ALREADY KNOW WHAT’S WRONG, forgodssake.
Time to step out through the open door into the sunshine, which I’m going to do right now.
Max
@JenJen:
My fav Carville moments are when he just starts laughing at the opposing republican “strategist”. I especially like it when the two are on split screen.
Brick Oven Bill
This is the book that got Galileo in trouble: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.
Galileo had to obtain permission from the Catholic Church before publishing this book, yet he was still arrested following its publication. The book was presented as a series of discussions between a proponent of Copernicus (earth revolves around sun) and a proponent of Aristotle (sun revolves around earth).
Copernicus, Polish father, German mother, also was a theorist on monetary policy, and the debasing of currencies. His library was later taken by Swedes during a war.
There is too much humidity at low-latitude sea-level Just Some Fuckhead. The high desert is a better place to observe the stars. In any case, you need me here.
Laura W
@El Cid:
Which is precisely WHY I’ve been saying for years that the gubmit oughta fund Astrology instead!
gbear
Do you suppose that Will or Carville or Cokie ever go up to the producers before or after a show and ask WTF they were thinking when they invite someone like Darth’s daughter to appear on the show? They must see it as a bit of a personal insult to give equal time to the ex-VP’s spawn when, after all, they are important and respected pundits.
I’d love to hear the chatter when the weekly guestlist comes out (but I’m still not going to watch the show).
Laura W
@Brick Oven Bill:
That’s our Bill! Always givin’.
Give give give give give.
ChrisB
@Laura W: Couldn’t quite make it through your entire post but my lack of focus has never stopped me from vegging out on the couch watching a movie on TV. Going to the movies is much harder and actually getting a book and reading it is usually just too much of an effort.
JenJen
@Max: That’s exactly right. If you really want to rile up a person like George Will, you laugh at him. It is the only thing that works. Throwing your opponent off his game is a key part of effective debate, but instead, our “Dem” pundits try to throw gravitas and facts at people who are operating with an entirely separate reality to being with. It will never work.
It’s why someone like Matt Taibbi (who isn’t a Democrat and doesn’t claim to speak for or from the Left) is so effective on these shows; he just calls bullshit and he wins every time. Same goes for Lawrence O’Donnell, but only because he knows his shit, and he gives no quarter.
@gbear: Sadly, no! I can only imagine Cokie going up to Liz Cheney backstage and asking how her mother is, and oh wasn’t the DAR Luncheon just wonderful? Same goes for George Will, of course.
The Raven
“we won anyway”
Battles, not the war. A huge counter-attack is now ebbing away, but the retreating forces can still do great harm. You still haven’t won; you will have won when your grandchildren control the authorities. A counter-culture was never a solution for more than a minority, anyway; at most it could show the way.
BTW, the institution that I was thinking of in my last note was the press, which has been thoroughly corrupted. From Walter Cronkite to–this??
Krawk!
DougJ
Yup.
Sarcastro
I would have guessed dialect.
DougJ
YOU already know what’s wrong. I already know what’s wrong. But there’s plenty of reasonably intelligent people out there who don’t. Most of my parents’ friends (all PhDs, at least one of them quite distinguished in his field) think very highly of David Brooks and Tom Friedman. It took me about a year to convince my mom to stop reading them.
Not many younger people of their ilk think that. And it’s entirely because of blogs.
Not everyone is going to move to the Ozarks. But maybe we can get more of the reading class to stop listening to all the bullshit. Whether or not that will make a difference is open to debate, but I think it will.
Just Some Fuckhead
I told you they got teh intertoobs there.
EDIT: And do you know how close you’ll be to Indonesia? You can get to the bottom of the Obama-Indonesia-Satan birth conspiracy. Win-win-win.
Max
Obama is giving his ND speech in like 45 minutes. It will be televised. I’m sure the “liberal media” will focus on the protestors and not the message he delivers. I’m going to watch anyway.
Interesting tweet from @daveweigel… Fox News’ attempt to turn the ND campus into Terri Schiavo’s hospice is pretty frigging shameless.
I love Twitter.
Brick Oven Bill
Dialect is not a liberal art. In a similar conveyance of reality, the earth is not warming. Also, windwills suck.
Jim
Yup. My father is very well read and, for an eighty year old, pretty liberal, an atheist, a rationalist, hates Bush, hates the Iraq War, is morally offended by torture. He reads the NYT, The Wash Post (online), the Atlantic, TNYRB, gave up TNR about five years ago in disgust at their neocon drift. But in ’06 he was startled when I told him I was donating to Lamont (neither of us lives in CT). He told me he thought Lieberman was “not so bad”. He doesn’t watch cable TV and has probably never read a blog. (He does think Brooks is a self-important buffoon, and that Hitchens should be institutionalized.)
PeakVT
They must see it as a bit of a personal insult to give equal time to the ex-VP’s spawn when, after all, they are important and respected pundits.
I don’t see how Cokie could complain because her main qualification has always been that she was the child of a politician. Aside from that, they are probably happy because Lizzie won’t challenge their Villager version of reality.
JenJen
@Max: That is an excellent tweet from Weigel, thank you for that, because that is spot-on what is happening in South Bend today.
Most of my Republican friends have really given up on the pro-life argument. I often pointed out that if the National and State GOP wasn’t going to push the courts to get rid of abortion during the height of their power and popularity (2002 until summer 2005), it wasn’t ever going to happen, and at this point, they’re just using it for fundraising. It’s settled law, it’s a 1970’s debate, and you lost. Move on.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Brick Oven Bill:
Damn skippy. Windmills are wind-powered right? Who is gonna wind ’em up every day? Guess the pointy-headed ivory tower elitists haven’t got that far along in their planning.
kay
@Max:
I think the Mercer graduation was more to my liking. Tank tops, lolling around on the lawn, lots of laughing, little kids running around, crazed with boredom.
One of the students wrote to Michelle Obama and said she should come because they would get national media and the school needs the exposure.
They’re scrappy at Mercer, and they don’t take themselves all that seriously.
gbear
some windmills really suck.
Joshua Norton
Too funny not to pass on. There’s a website that will turn your web page into LOL Cat-ese.
http://lolinator.com/lol/www.balloon-juice.com/
Now Tunch can enjoy BJ. Also.
opium4themasses
@gbear: actually, I heard they blow.
@kay: shorter: yay boobs!
kay
@opium4themasses:
Get out of here. I just think I would fit in better at Mercer. The ND sanctimony is a bit much for this gal. It’s ALL about them, right?
Laura W
@kay: It’s Merced. I only know that ‘cuz I lived in the hell that is named “Fresno”. Twice.
@Joshua Norton: That is the CUTEST damn thing! Tried my web site but it’s not so funny. BJ is great translated.
kay
@Laura W:
Thanks so much. It felt wrong, but I was too lazy to google.
I like their school, in any event. Not for the tank tops, but for the kind of atmosphere that ALLOWS tank tops.
Max
And the stadium erupts in applause as the President enters.
The Rev on CNN just said that for the pro-life movement, life begins at conception and ends at birth (or something like this). Good on ’em.
I’m glad to be a lapsed catholic.
BTW – Angels and Demons was very good. I liked this book better than the Da Vinci Code.
Laura W
@kay:
That would be the “hell” part. Hotter than hell.
JenJen
@Joshua Norton: Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome!!
kay
@Laura W:
I felt as if Michelle was welcome and comfortable there. Obama looks grim and determined. His whole life is a freaking battle.
What the hell is he reading? A magazine? I take it back. He’s fine.
Max
Father Martin, the Rev on CNN, deserves a morning show on Sunday. He is AWESOME!
The wingnut, Arroyo, on with him is wrapped in hypocrisy and saying the protests aren’t political. Ummm.. sure.
Heck, the head of the DNC is pro-life and he’s also a proud Dem. Kaine didn’t seem worried about burning in hell for eternity on MTP this am.
AhabTRuler
@Laura W: The latest for you.
And for the ears. Only discovered this album last year (always late to the game), but it’s like good chocolate or the perfect comforter on a cold day. Order of magnitude better than his other two albums.
omen
what was more activist than when the supreme court decided bush v gore? which overthrew states’ rights.
Thlayli
@Mark S.:
Nope. Turns out there are two incoherent dorkwads named “Peter King”. They’re just incoherent on different subjects.
Representative King is a long-time supporter of the IRA. There’s no contradiction in that, because of course “terrorists” = “brown people”.
omen
for somebody who voted for bush twice, you give up easily.
;)
Laura W
@kay: He looks like some sort of geeky Super Hero in his robe and the…shields over his nipples? Do we have Wanda Sykes to thank for that?
Brick Oven Bill
Dialect is not a liberal art but is instead a subset of Grammar, which is a liberal art. Grammar is the art of using language to express ideas, in the dialect of a particular people.
For instance, on my road trip, I packed a suitcase full of clothes, but forgot to bring them with me. At Wal-Mart, I have just found many shirts on clearance sale. These shirts used to be $14 and had been reduced in price to $3. They are very nice shirts.
In the dialect of the high desert, this would be termed a ‘swinging dick deal’. One would think that Grammar would be a sub-set of the liberal art of Rhetoric, but it is not. Grammar is considered a stand-alone art.
Windmills still suck.
asiangrrlMN
@gbear: Damn right, gbear. I am a sustaining member to MPR, and it’s light-years better than NPR. I don’t watch network or cable news. I got better things to do with my time.
I believe Liz Cheney is positioning herself for a federal political office. Shudder.
freelancer
John, Mr. Farr may be suggesting you go Galt.
Brachiator
@gbear:
Probably not, because then the producers might figure out that Carville, Will and Cokie contribute nothing of value to the show, and are on only because they are recognizable brand names who coast along on their past reputations and connections as Washington insiders.
Zimmerman
“Isn’t empathy just code for an activist judge?”
What was the answer?
Laura W
@AhabTRuler: I do not know which gave me more vertigo and nausea…that photo of Momo or BOB’s ‘swinging dick deal’. Both wreaked havoc with my “inner ear”, let’s say.
Aunt Moe
I’m going to disagree with you John re FACE THE NATION. As awful as King is, this was the only show that considered the torture story to be about what THEY did, as opposed to what SHE knew. It was Harry Smith hosting and he did a fairly good job.
Little Dreamer
@hal:
Because Bush didn’t give them their conservative stranglehold on the judiciary which would of course only prosecute liberals to the hilt and approve all appeals from the GOP loons.
Little Dreamer
@omen:
Exactly.
Little Dreamer
@Anton Sirius:
Sunday isn’t God’s sabbath.
Steeplejack
@AhabTRuler:
“River Man”!
I have a soft spot for Five Leaves Left, but I first heard it back in the day. Agree that Pink Moon is excellent.
AhabTRuler
@Steeplejack: Oh, I have no complaints about his other albums, it’s just that Pink Moon is a masterpiece. I daresay as close to perfect as anything can get.
It is so achingly beautiful, Drake’s playing is so weird and haunting. And it’s short, ephemeral, leaves one longing for so much more. It’s like the perfect weekend romance, only in a depressing but cathartic way.
OTOH, right now I am listening to a 75 min D&B mix, which is about as far away from Nick Drake as you can get (and yet is from the same country).
Steeplejack
@AhabTRuler:
Haunting is the perfect word for Drake’s stuff. I’ve always thought “River Man” would be the perfect theme song/motif for a movie about a serial killer. Rural serial killer, for some reason. Or small-town.
freelancer
Ahab:
Got you covered.
peaches
John Walker Lindh.
Some of you should read the GQ article.
The Freedom Thinker
I wonder if he regrets using the word “empathy” it was a pretty bad word to use to describe a Supreme Court Justice if he didn’t mean “activist” judge. Any judge that would use empathy to decide a court case wouldn’t be worth their weight in salt anyways.
Darkrose
@kay: Welcome to California. When I graduated from Stanford, I had a t-shirt and shorts under my gown, because it was fucking hot out there on the stadium.
Merced is…interesting. When we’re doing ID verification for applicants, we ask which other UC’s they applied to. 80% of the time, the answer is “every one except Riverside and Merced”.
Paul L.
More truth from progressives.
Anyone who knows anything about PCs knows this is BS.