Are you like me? Do you ever find it strange that terrorist groups always seem to claim responsibility for their terrorist actions immediately after their actions? And that they often, according to our wonderful news media, post these claims to the internet? How convenient!

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I think you'd have to be a real sucker to believe that this happens as often as we're told it does.

"Hey Abu - after we cut this guy's head off, get on AOL will you?" Hamid says.

"But Hamid... the Americans may be able to trace our IP address right to our location, and then they'll bomb the living shit out of us," says Abu.

"Oh, you and your techno-speak!" replies Hamid sarcastically.

Take for example the recent brutal murders of two American troops, Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore.

This is a paragraph from a Times report on the incident:

The Mujahedeen Shura, an umbrella group that claims Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia as a member, said in a statement posted on the Internet that the successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had slaughtered the two Americans. The authenticity of the statement, like many that are posted on the Internet, could not be verified. The Arabic word used in the posting — "Nahr" — denotes the cutting of the throat, and it has been used by jihadi groups when they have beheaded their victims.

First of all, if the authenticity of the statement could not be verified then why the hell does the NY Times pass it on to its readers? Doing so is horribly irresponsible on its face. And its even more irresponsible considering what we already know - and what the Times has itself reported - that the Pentagon actively attempts to deceive the American people. This "posting" to the internet could very likely be just typical Pentagon Psyops garbage. It really does have all the marks of Classic Pentagon Horseshit:

We already know that the Pentagon exaggerated Zarqawi's role in the insurgency. Why the Pentagon did this I don't know. But a possible explaination is that if the American people believe that one boogeyman is responsible for all the horror, they're more likely to continue supporting the war effort. ("Hey, all we have to do is kill that guy and everything will get better!") Much better than telling the American people something like, "to be honest with you, killing Zarqawi doesn't really matter worth a shit. The violence will continue at about the same level after he gone."

At any rate, Zarqawi is dead, and within a short period of time after the public was informed of his death, the Pentagon, knowing that more violence would surely be occurring, needed a new boogeyman, this time a guy named al-Masri (AKA Abu Hamza al-Muhajir).

Days later, this boogeyman would come in handy when two American troops are found mutilated to death in Iraq. Who did this horrible thing to these troops? The military, about to investigate, gets lucky, because al-Masri actually admits he did it.

And it will go on and on just like this until the American people decide that they don't want to be lied to anymore.

Incredible. Now that Iraq is FUBAR, its early cheerleaders are scrambling to make us all Look On the Bright Side! And man, do they have to go down deep to come up with some of this sh*t.

Take, for example, this column in the LA Times by Edward N. Luttwak, where he argues, essentially, that Civil War might bring about "lasting peace by destroying the will to fight and by removing the motives and opportunities for further violence."

I found it interesting that he chose to compare civil war in Iraq with the Civil Wars of the U.S. and of England, but failed to consider the one in Rwanda. Here's his last sentence: "Iraq's civil war is no different from the British, Swiss or American internal wars. It too should be allowed to bring peace."

Hmmm... On May 7, none other than the LA Times published this report, and much of the violence described doesn't seem like anything that occurred during the Civil War in the U.S. that I studied:

BAGHDAD — More Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad during the first three months of this year than at any time since the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime — at least 3,800, many of them found hogtied and shot execution-style.

Others were strangled, electrocuted, stabbed, garroted or hanged. Some died in bombings. Many bore signs of torture such as bruises, drill holes, burn marks, gouged eyes or severed limbs.

[...]

Now the killings are systematic, personal. Masked gunmen storm into homes, and the victims — the majority of them Sunnis — are never again seen alive.

Such killings now claim nine times more lives than car bombings, according to figures provided by a high-ranking U.S. military official, who released them only on the condition of anonymity.

[...]

Gunmen operate throughout Baghdad — killing brazenly during daytime and moving with impunity during curfew. Because there is rarely any proper investigation of the deaths by either U.S. or Iraqi authorities, it is all but impossible to determine to what extent the killers are motivated by sectarian feuds or by revenge, money or tribal quarrels.

"I cannot say if the killers are trained professionals or just criminals, but the pattern we see is torture and beatings" before the victim is killed, "mostly by shooting or hanging," Razzaq said. Six of 10 bodies bear signs of torture, he said. Some appear to have been severely beaten; others have had one or more limbs cut off.

"There are no limits to the brutality," he said. He and his colleagues sew limbs and heads back onto corpses before burial.

On the day of the Samarra bombing, the Ubaidis, a Sunni family of teachers and students enjoying the lull of a midterm break, had just finished lunch when someone knocked on the door of their home in Shaab, a mixed Shiite-Sunni middle-class neighborhood in Baghdad. Six men wearing masks and dressed in black, demanded to see Ziad, 21, and his father, Tariq, 52. The men forced the two into the trunks of waiting cars as Ziad's mother, Muazzaz, watched from an upstairs window.

Four days later, their bodies were found in a Baghdad suburb.

[...]

"My husband and son were killed for sectarian reasons," said Muazzaz, a teacher who had lived in the neighborhood for 19 years. "In a while, this area will be 100% Shiite…. It's definitely sectarian cleansing."

On the other side of the sectarian divide, large numbers of Shiites fall victim to frequent suicide attacks. On April 7, three suicide bombers walked into the Bratha Mosque — one of the most important Shiite shrines in the capital — and detonated vests packed with explosives and ball-bearings, killing at least 78 people and maiming 150 during Friday prayers.

[...]

Evidence of the toll is visible in the black banners draped on walls around the capital.

"We never thought that we would reach a day when we would see Shiites and Sunnis fighting," said Halale Ubaidi, a Shiite who married a Sunni. Her 29-year-old son, Haitham, raised Sunni, was kidnapped along with his younger brother, Othman.

"My two sons were taken in front of my eyes, and one of them is dead," said Ubaidi, who is not related to the other Ubaidi family.

One night, attackers charged into the cramped apartment where the family squatted among Shiite neighbors.

"You, the Sunnis," said the gunmen, taking Haitham and Othman, said their sister, Maryam.

The attackers took the brothers to a house where, during their torture and captivity, they could hear the sounds of children and a woman cooking in the room next door, Othman told her.

Haitham was beaten and tortured to death in that house, said Othman, who managed to escape while he was being taken to a deserted area where, his captors had told him, he, too, would be killed.

Haitham's mutilated body was found five days later in a dump near the vast Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City.

Halale Ubaidi said she had spent her adult life living and praying alongside Sunnis. "I didn't care," she said, still stunned by her son's death.

Haitham's captors had gouged one of his eyes, cut his face with a razor, smashed his skull, broken his jaw, slit his back and cut off his penis, his sister and mother said. A copy of Haitham's death certificate says he was shot 14 times.

"We are living in a state of panic and fear," his sister said. "Maybe they'll come again…. Nobody knows when his turn will come to be captured and killed by these gunmen."

And here's some of that column by Edward N. Luttwak:

Will civil war bring lasting peace to Iraq?

History shows civil wars must be fought without foreign interference before stability prevails.

By Edward N. Luttwak

EDWARD N. LUTTWAK is a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

June 2, 2006

CIVIL WARS can be especially atrocious as neighbors kill each other at close range, but they also have a purpose. They can bring lasting peace by destroying the will to fight and by removing the motives and opportunities for further violence.

England's civil war in the mid-17th century ensured the subsequent centuries of political stability under Parliament and a limited monarchy. But first there had to be a war with pitched battles and killing, including the decapitation of King Charles I, who had claimed absolute power by divine right.

The United States had its civil war two centuries later, which established the rule that states cannot leave the union — and abolished slavery in the process. The destruction was vast and the casualties immense as compared with all subsequent American wars, given the size of the population. But without the decisive victory of the Union, two separate and quarrelsome republics might still endure, periodically at war with each other.

[...]

And so the massacres continue on both sides.

Physical separation is therefore the only way to limit the carnage. That process has begun, to some extent, because the violence is driving out the members of one sect or the other from the many mixed villages, towns and city districts. This is a painful and very costly way of interrupting the cycle of attacks and reprisals, but that is how civil war achieves its purpose of eventually bringing peace.

Back in the 17th century, if the kings of continental Europe could have prevented England's civil war, it would have been at the price of perpetuating strife by blocking progress toward stable parliamentary government.

If the British and other European great powers had sent expeditionary armies to stop the enormous casualties and vast destruction of the American civil war, they could have prevented the eventual emergence of a peacefully united republic, perpetuating North-South hostility.

That is the mistake that the U.S. and its allies are now making by interfering with Iraq's civil war. They should disengage their troops from populated areas as much as possible, give up the intrusive checkpoints and patrols that are failing to contain the violence anyway and abandon the futile effort to build up military and police forces that are national only in name.

Some U.S. and allied forces still will be needed in remote desert bases to safeguard Iraq from foreign invasion, with some left to hold the Baghdad Green Zone. But for the rest, strict noninterference should be the rule. The sooner the Kurds, Sunni, Shiites, Turkmen and smaller minorities can define their own natural and stable boundaries within which they feel safe, the sooner the violence will come to an end.

Iraq's civil war is no different from the British, Swiss or American internal wars. It too should be allowed to bring peace.

45 million people have no health insurance. But Chris Matthews has his panties in a wad about the state of Bill and Hill's marriage.

The time he's spent on the New York Time's recent tabloid on the Clinton's marriage is staggering.

But the thing that's most irritating is that Chris and his guests keep pretending that its the **American people** who care about this topic, when the reality is that only the millionaires in the PRESS (not worrying about lack of health insurance for themselves) want to waste time on.

As shocking as this video is, it really is nothing different than what we've seen for over a decade by this filthy degenerate media:

link

p.s. Tim Russert, and even Bob Herbert get right in on the act. Its truly disgusting.

During Campaign 2000 the mainstream media hounded Gore for all sorts of non-issues, not just the "Invented the Internet" nonsense. They invented all sorts of garbage to fling at him for their own amusement. And no, comparable treatment was not given to GW. And no, this degree of odd behavior by the press has not occurred in any other election I am aware of, at least in my lifetime.

Abyssmal screw-ups like the current occupant of the Whitehouse will continue to get elected over decent candidates if people don't understand why the screw-up won in the first place. The mainstream and even liberal press, to this day, pretend that Al Gore lost because he "ran a bad campaign," or "didn't appear authentic to the voters," or "listened too much to his advisors," or "played it too safe," or "didn't respond well to republican attacks." But these are all convenient rewrites of history that enable the press to ignore their own PRIMARY role in the political assassination of Al Gore. The press ALWAYS leaves that one off their list of Reasons Gore Lost.

Hundreds of examples of their astonishing behavior during Election 2000 can be read about in the Howler archives, but here are some popular samples, in case you're interested, of the kind of crap flung at Gore, a guy who genuinely did run a very clean honest campaign, by the mainstream press:

Naomi Wolf told Al to be an Alpha Male (http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh030503.shtml)

Naomi Wolf told Al to wear Earth Tones (http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh030703.shtml)

Al lied about Doggy Pills (http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh093004.shtml scroll to Still Gore-ing Gore)

Al lied about the Union Lullaby (http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh092403.shtml scroll to Howler History)

Al lied about inspiring Love Story (http://www.dailyhowler.com/h120699_1.shtml)

Al lied about discovering Love Canal (http://www.dailyhowler.com/h120399_1.shtml)

Al lied about doing Farm Chores (http://www.dailyhowler.com/h032599_1.shtml)

Each of these mainstream press fabrications did significant political damage to Gore, more damage than Karl Rove could have dreamed of doing by himself. These episodes most certainly put GW in the Whitehouse, but since the media will never tattle on itself, the public, even liberals, will continue to believe that Gore died of self-inflicted wounds.

You can't call yourself liberal and then not fully stand up for freedom of speech. On the Denmark-Cartoon-Muslims-Rioting issue, liberals are asleep at the wheel, hiding from their responsibility to vigorously defend the cartoonist and condemn the violent freaks burning down buildings.

On the most popular liberal blog, they've just about completely avoided the subject. Today, one commentator wrote briefly about it:

While only 12 cartoons were intially published, there are fakes circulating which are incredibily inflammatory.  Extremists have taken advantage of the situation and have fueled the flames with fake cartoons and dangerous rhetoric. But I don't care how damn offensive you find a cartoon, violence is unacceptable. Period.

My question: Where the hell is Karen Hughes, Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy for the Middle East?  Shouldn't she be, I don't know, working what little diplomatic mojo she has to try and quell this chaos?

Yes! Of course! The Bush Administration is responsible for quelling the chaos!

An example of the proper liberal response can be seen in this cartoon.

Michelle Malkin spoke with Brian Lamb today. I must admit, she is damn sexy, despite being a lying, right-wing shill. But you know, even lying right-wing shills can occasionally have some good insights and tell some truths.

I think she definitely made a couple good points about the pile-on that's going on against republicans in the media right now. But if she was a totally honest person, she'd preface that by admitting that over the past 15 years, starting at the beginning of the Clinton Administration, moving strongly through the Gore-Bush campaign, then fading a little bit after the election, jumping a LOT after 9/11, and not coming to a stop until the American public had turned COMPLETELY against the Administration, the mainstream media had been sucking up to republican power, eating and passing on right-wing lies like no one's business.

In the Clinton Admin we had bogus "scandel" after bogus "scandel": Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, Monica. Then in Gore's campaign new "scandels": Love Story, Love Canal, Farm Chores, Invented the Internet, Doggie Pills, and other Howlers.

I don't intend to read Malkin's book, because I get enough right-wing spittle from other sources. But if her conversation with the Great Brian Lamb is anything similar to her book, we can expect all kinds of great stories, probably true, of yes, liberals gone wild. But here's the problem: those liberals going wild are a bunch of fringe wackos who no one knows. She uses 4 pages of her books to print nasty emails from no-name left-wing morons.

But see the difference between the left and the right is that the the right has their nut cases in the top tiers of power. Our nut cases have no power, and no one knows about them or pays attention to them.

Think Al Franken gets hatemail from right-wing slobs? Does he then go ahead and waste precious space in his book printing it? Of course not. He fills his entire book with attacks against people who ACTUALLY HAVE POWER, probably because he cares a little bit more about the people influencing the direction of the COUNTRY, than selfish concern for whats in his own inbox.

And sorry, Michelle, the leftists who email you and call you a race traitor aren't being racist by doing so. It might not be nice of them, but it's not racist.

A middle-aged, regular looking woman handed me out a newspaper called "The Militant" and asked me for a contribution. I asked her, "Is your group one of the groups who wants to bring an end to capitalism?"

She said, "Yes."

I said, "Well, that's nice, but I have to tell you I'm not quite that far over to the left. I'm more of a 'healthy mix of capitalism and socialism kinda guy.'"

She said "Do you think they can exist together?"

I said, "Yes, of course."

I took her paper, and I gave her a dollar.

You could tell some other protesters (especially of the adolescent vareity), came there looking for trouble. They wore bandanas around their necks. This means that they came thinking that some shit was gonna go down that was gonna cause the police to throw tear gas at us. Why that would happen at a PEACE march, I have no idea.

Most of the people just wore them around their necks. Others actually wore them over their faces. I'm not exactly sure why. But I suspect it's just an even higher level of childish bullshit.

Among that 10% you'll also find some women who don't shave their armpits. I'm just not ready to support that. Sorry.

I mean if you ask me to support women who refuse to wear bras, I'll sign the petition. Right to an abortion? Sure. Equal pay for equal work? Yep! But shave your armpits ladies. It's nasty.

Yes, some of these people are leTt-wing cultists with the potential to be as dangerous as the current crop of right-wing cultists. Just give them the power they don't have now, and I'm sure they'll show you.

I have one more complaint that I want to get off my chest: PET ISSUES.

Listen, fuck nuts. I came here because this was supposed to be a rally against the war in Iraq. A rally to send a message to the pols to bring our troops home from that shitty dessert.

I did not come here to chant for Palestinian freedom. Nor did I come here to join your chants for Haiti, Cuba, or Venezuela. Nor did I come to free Mumia.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree with what these people have to say about the given issue, I just didn't come here for that.

By the way, I certainly don't want to forget to mention that there were a handful of counter-protesters, some of which (or probably most of which) were right-wing nuts.

One such asshole yelled at me when I walked by him. He yelled "Which war WOULD you support?"

I held up my sign to him, which said "I'm anti-STUPID-wars," and yelled back at him "ONES THAT AREN'T FUCKING STUPID!!!! READ THE FUCKING SIGN DUMBASS MOTHERFUCKER!"

He and I went back and forth screaming at eachother. Cops were between us making sure nothing unpleasant happened.

It did feel very good to yell at that right-wing fucker. I yelled, "YOU FUCKED UP OUR COUNTRY, MAN! YOU FUCKED IT UP!"

Another protester kinda pulled me away a bit and said "you're not gonna change their minds, man."

First of all, I wasn't trying to change their minds. I said something like this to the moron, "listen, I wasn't raised to take abuse and not give it back. These right-wing fuckers have done serious damage to my country for 5 years now. The last thing I want these assholes to believe is that I'm a pacifist. I'm not a pacifist."

Left-wing hippie asshole should have minded his own business. If he thinks peace-signs at a peace rally are gonna win back power, he's sadly mistaken. It's gonna take fighting.

Luckily, I believe we can win by doing the fighting with words. But you still have to fight. You can't let these assholes (or any assholes) bully you. When they scream at you and threaten you, you must stand your ground and return fire.

Can anyone help? I'm looking around the web for a fairly well-known charity that will enable me to send financial support to a soldier.

It would be really nice if the org also allowed you to meet the soldier and maybe write a letter of thanks and encouragement to him/her.

 

   

A certain conservative whose traffic I don't want to increase by linking to, said this:

Fact: Michael Schiavo only remembered Terri's "wish to die" seven years after she became bedridden in the condition we all witnessed, and after he had fathered children with a new woman. Fact: Terri's parents offered to assume responsibility for her care. Fact: Hospice employees and other witnesses submitted sworn affidavits to the effect that Terri showed signs of responsiveness. In light of those facts — on the ground at the time — Terri was removed from nutrition and water and allowed to die in circumstances contrary to Humane Society regulations for putting down family pets.

I'm fairly certain some of these "facts" could be better characterized as "lies", but I need some evidence. Can someone more familiar with the case provide some links?

 

 

Here's a segment from tonight's Hardball with Chris Matthews, which is typical of just about every show he does:

MATTHEWS:  You know, I said before, looking at the poll data, that you—and I know you’re not announcing for president any day soon—but the poll data shows that people are looking for moderates like yourself or John McCain, whosever ready to go.  And if it looks at the time, I suppose whosever winning the primaries, I guess.

Hillary Clinton is moving to the center in a way that it seems to be impressing some people.  She’s on Armed Services.  She authorized the president to go to war as a senator.  She seems to be talking tough.  She seems to be talking openly about some sort of—oh, I don’t know—colloquy or national conversation about abortion rights in a way that liberals of the past haven’t, more pro-life militants have not.

Do you think that she’s a credible moderate?

GIULIANI:  Well, I think that’s what she’s trying to prove.  And she has a few years to do it.

MATTHEWS:  Do you buy the act?

GIULIANI:  Do I buy the act?

MATTHEWS:  Yes.

GIULIANI:  Well, I have to see how it all ends up.  If this represents her position, if that’s the way she’s going to conduct herself in the Senate over the next year or two, if she gets reelected two years, she has an opportunity to do that.  She has an opportunity to define her position.  Everybody does.  And you...

MATTHEWS:  Well, Ronald Reagan, when you ran—you know how effectively he ran that brilliant ‘80 campaign, where he was able to take some of his sharper ideological positions and sort of pull them back.  I think people like Bill Casey and Donovan, the others got him to do it, and Deaver.

GIULIANI:  Right.

MATTHEWS:  And he really ran a very successful campaign, based on he could get the economy moving faster.  He almost ran a John Kennedy kind of campaign.  “I’m going to cut taxes.  I’ll get the economy rolling, get the country moving again.”  And he was able to discipline himself politically so that his best suit was showing and his more troublesome ideological pieces weren’t.

Is Hillary trying to do that, or is she trying to do a larger move than simply, oh, presenting a more cosmetic front?

GIULIANI:  I don’t know that Hillary—and you know, hard to speak for—I don’t know that she’s as ideologically rooted as Ronald Reagan was.  Ronald Reagan was probably the most ideologically rooted president that we had, until possibly, you know, President Bush, George Bush, the present President Bush, 43.

So I don’t know about Hillary, if this is much of a switch for her.  But I also think the election in ‘80 turned a lot on leadership.  I think that none of it would have worked if it wasn’t against the backdrop of a country in which they had lost some confidence in the leadership of the country. 

And people were willing to sacrifice maybe even their desire for moderation for a man they thought was a strong, principled leader.  I think they were correct.  He was the right choice. 

MATTHEWS:  Yes.

GIULIANI:  But I think that had a lot to do with it, too.

MATTHEWS:  I agree. 

Do you think Hillary’s less of an ideologue than maybe I thought she was?  Do you think she’s more pragmatic?

GIULIANI:  I think she is pragmatic.  I don’t know how much of an ideologue she is, or how much she’s going to be in this campaign.  I do think she’s pragmatic.  I think she’s tried to get things done in the Senate.

MATTHEWS:  Do you think she’d have a problem of what to do with her husband if she ran for president or were elected?

(LAUGHTER)

I mean, what would you do with a former president in the White House?  What would he do?  Would he do the parties, and organize the table settings, and the diplomatic stuff?  Or what would he do all day?

GIULIANI:  It would be very, very interesting.  I think they’re going to kind of—isn’t there going to be a show coming on television about a woman president?  We’ll find out...

MATTHEWS:  That’s be great...

GIULIANI:  ... someone else that ever has to be the first—what would you call it, the First Man?

MATTHEWS:  Yes, he’s sitting over there saying, “Who’s she meeting with now?”

GIULIANI:  The First Gentleman.

MATTHEWS:  And he’d be saying things like, “Hey, I know Putin,” and not to come over.  I mean, what kind of situation would that be?

GIULIANI:  I think the proper title would be First Gentleman.

MATTHEWS:  That would be great.  It sounds good to me.  He’d have to be a gentleman, too.  Mark that.

Hahahahahahahaha! Oh, Chris, you're so funny and insightful!

My god this is depressing. Oh, how these useless Media Millionaires fall in love with the sound of their own voices, the sound of their own jokes, the sound of their own tired, useless, pointless, forgettable scripts.

Look forward to hearing the same old useless crap for the next 3 years, none of which will have one goddamned thing to do with OUR interests - things like what Hillary plans to do about the growing crisis in Iraq, the explosion in deficits, our battered and bruised reputation among our allies, the medicare crisis, the 45 million people who have no health insurance, our growing energy crisis, the environment, the hundreds of people locked up in Guantanimo bay without legal representation, our falling status in the world in Information Technology, stagnant wages, and the Walmartization of our communities.

Non-millionaires like us are probably curious about those topics - at least I am.

But all Chris wants to do is rub his hairless thighs, and laugh it up all the way to the bank about useless bullsh*t, and then go summering in Nantucket, where he's got his $4.4 million home parked.

Look forward to years more of...

"She seems this"

"The polls say that"

"The strategists say this"

"Will Bill select the White House China as First Gentleman?"

"Will Bill play cards in his spare time as First Gentleman?"

"Will Bill have an easier time getting laid by interns given how busy Hillary will be?"

"Do you think Hillary's hair style indicates 'strength' or 'playfulness'?"

"If Hillary wins, will Chelsea run for president?"

"If Chelsea wins, will her not-yet-conceived child run for president one day?"

"Am I a fat, useless f*ck that makes millions of dollars dumbing down the American public?"

I truly hate being part of the choir. But the Bush Administration is so consistantly terrible that, unsurprisingly, I find myself agreeing with most of what the lefties have to say.

Luckily, this Quran abuse story has given me the opportunity to look at some liberals around me, scratch my head, and think to myself, "Wow, some of these people are almost half as stupid as people on the right."

Ah yes, it feels good to have independence of mind.

Sorry, but I've been listening to various liberals expressing outrage at the idea of a splatter of urine on a Quran.

Now, unquestionably, these acts of desecration of a Holy Book are bad for our image, thus putting our troops in greater danger.

But the reason they are bad for our image starts with the fact that there are crazy cultish religionists out there who believe piss on pages rises to the level of killing people.

These religionuts are far crazier than the religionuts in this country. Liberals should state the obvious! Unlike people on the right, liberals should try to be consistant!

Instead, they boo-hoo-hoo about some soiled scripture. Come on, libs! Talk about the 100 prisoners who DIED (DIED!!!!) in our custody, and I'll be there with you. But wet paper? I'd don't have enough tears left to waste it on something so insignificant.

I'll shut up right now, because the Rude Pundit summed it all up so much better than I ever could. 

You'll really enjoy what he had to say.

 

 

In the course of a year, I read 100s of different blogs and left-of center websites. There's good work being done by both professional, and citizen journalists/analysts all over the Net.

Not all of them are going to make a living at this. But it would be nice if the readers could come together and figure out a way to prop up at least maybe a few thousand of the top sites out there. It doesn't have to just be blogs. It can be magazines like the Nation, or the Prospect, etc.

Suppose there are 2,000,000 readers of lefty sites. If each of these readers donated $100/yr, we'd have a pool of $200,000,000.

Suppose we then determined that a decent living is $50,000/yr.

If we then divided that money equally out to all the bloggers, we could theortically support 4000 sites.

Blog readers and authors waste so much time fundraising. It would be nice if everything was more automated.

Suppose there was a website out there that you could go to that would always keep a list of the top, say, 4000 most-trafficked left-of-center sites.

You'd go to this website, and basically tell it, "hey, here's my credit card number. Every year, charge 100 bucks to it, and add it to the pool of money where every other donar's money goes."

Then, every month, the website would take 1/12 of the existing pool of money, and divide THAT evenly among the top 4000 most-trafficked sites that month.

And I'm not necessary saying that "most-trafficked" should be the standard. And I'm not necessarily saying that the pool should be divided "evenly" either. But for now, it helps me illustrate the point, which is that we as a community have the power to reward the good work being done in a more even way and a more broad way.

Comments?

Oh, and one more thing. Why is Kevin Drum too much of a wimp to ever bother responding to Bob Somerby after Bob takes the trouble to educate him? The least Kevin could do would be to say thanks.

 

Quick poll, Netizens: Is The Daily Howler...

A) The best work on the internet

B) The greatest work on the internet

C) The most important work on the internet

... I know, I know. This is a hard one.

Here's a pet peeve of mine:

Prominent "liberal" bloggers hardly do anything to promote progressive radio.

Some time ago, Air America Radio went on the air, and libs on the Net went through the motions, pretending that they hoped for a successful outcome.

But how can success come if two months after the debut, Net Libs disappear the young radio station from their comments?

Folks, liberal radio is extremely important. And guess what? It's good! We've got terrific choices out there. My gosh, have you listened to Mike Malloy? This guy has me busting a gut every day!

And, I'm sorry, but Al Franken is the best combination of funny and brilliant I have ever heard.

Al has terrific guests on every day, from the right and left. We could and should be having discussions about the interesting ideas talked about on his program.

And then there's the adorable Randi Rhodes.

And we've got Mark & Marc on Morning Sedition.

And recently, Springer on the Radio. Have you heard Jerry yet? It's so good! Give it a listen! Not just for their ratings, but for your entertainment!

And the list goes on.

Staring at your computer screen reading blogs and getting pissed off by the minute? Or listening to Mike Malloy refer to W as "Man or Money"? The choice is clear. Put your headphones on, and drown the horror of the world out by letting yourself laugh at it for a while.

It's good therapy.

Support progressive radio. Listen to it!