The Pakistani government is rife with liars, just like ours

Good thing the BBC World News is willing to set the record straight.

Skull fracture from bumping her head my ass.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Steve Gilliard

Those of you who don’t spend your waking non-working hours waist-deep in the Big Muddy that is Lefter Blogtopia may not know why I quote Steve Gilliard in the masthead and why I’ve posted about him, given that I never met the man, never exchanged e-mails, and was only linked by him once.

It’s because everyone who blogs on our side of the fence can trace his/her inspiration back to him, even if indirectly.

For those who don’t know what the fuss is about, Jesse Wendel, one of the Four Carriers of the Gilliard Torch, has a compendium of some of his best work. Pour yourself a cup of coffee, start clicking, read and enjoy. And know why although the Group Newsbloggers do their best to channel the man, someone who could blog coherently and in great detail about the history of colonialism and then wax just as eloquently about the foods we eat on Thanksgiving is just plain irreplaceable.

(UPDATE: And still more good stuff on the New York Times Magazine piece from The Gazetteer, James Wolcott, and B@B bud The Galloping Beaver.

And if you’re interested in how the Good Christians on the right speak of the dead, you can take a gander at this. There is no doubt about it — today’s right wingers are ugly, ugly, evil people. They have a fetid, ulcerating, suppurating cancer in their souls that no amount of Bible-thumping can possibly heal.

This is good, but it’s too late and doesn’t in any way make up for hiring William Kristol

Editorial, today’s New York Times:

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.

[snip]

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.

[snip]

These are not the only shocking abuses of President Bush’s two terms in office, made in the name of fighting terrorism. There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.

We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.

Now if whoever wrote this excellent editorial would inform the Powers that Be in the executive suite that every atrocity mentioned therein was applauded by the very man they’ve just hired as a columnist.

Thank you, Kate Zernike

Thank you for writing an article about John and Elizabeth Edwards that mentions neither haircuts nor houses nor hedge funds. Thank you for writing an article that doesn’t even allude to the kind of foul rumors that those afraid of having a president who might represent people other than the most monied interests have spread. Thank you for recognizing that there are still people for whom politics is a calling, a way to make a difference on a large scale, rather than a way to stuff one’s pockets or aggrandize one’s ego.

John Edwards has received precious little coverage like this, and rarely been covered with this little skepticism.

This is one of those times when I wish I’d been able to put away more money when I was young and could afford to retire. I’d be in Iowa right now.

New Year’s Movie Weekend: Why women love John Cusack

Ask any smart woman in the U.S. who the male celebrity she adores most is, and the chances are pretty good that the answer will be “John Cusack.”

When you think about all of the guys who were around during the heyday of John Hughes, and if you go back and watch Sixteen Candles, it’s hard to believe that that the sex symbol of mid-to-late boomers and gen-x women would be the gangly guy in this short collection of clips:

Now that’s a guy who would never embarrass you in public by telling you there’s a booger attached to your nose.

Let the other girls have the chiseled hunks. For us thinking girls, THIS is what a dreamboat looks like. Smart, progressive, funny, polite, never shows up in the gossip pages, and eyes that you could forgive just about anything for.

Sunday night toons

In which we learn that Daffy Duck is a Republican Uh….wrong caption, or wrong cartoon. But this one, by the late, great Tex Avery, is worth sitting through his trademark cruelty to get to the end, an anding that made me laugh so hard when I saw it at either the Thalia or at Leonard Maltin’s old history of animation class at the New School in the early 1980’s that I wondered how I’d ever get home:

Ali Baba Bunny Bad Luck Blackie

Note to Hillary: The plastic sheeting and duct tape crowd is NOT going to vote for you

In the closing days before the Iowa caucuses, Hillary Clinton, just like Rudy Giuliani, wants you to know that only she can keep you safe from the boogeyman:

Eldridge, Iowa – Barack Obama and John Edwards might want to change the world. But Hillary Clinton wants to protect you against it.

That’s the unmistakable message that Senator Clinton is pounding out in this final phase of the campaign to capture the Iowa caucuses. In a world brimming with danger and uncertainty, she argues as she blitzes the Hawkeye State, there’s no time to waste daydreaming about pie-in-the-sky promises of reform.

Instead, the American people must choose a leader ready to immediately start fixing the problems that already exist and one who is immediately ready to face the inevitable and “unpredictable” crises looming right over the horizon. And that would be Clinton.

“We know some of the challenges that await the next president,” Clinton told a packed crowd at a junior high school Saturday morning. “But no matter how much we know, we can’t possibly anticipate all the problems.”

The razzamatazz cheerleading, sloganeering style that punctuated her earlier campaign events has now been replaced by a sedate, somber, even grave tone coming from the podium. Clinton never raised her voice, never elevated the mood, and at times sounded like a concerned, responsible parent telling the kids that something terrible was taking place outside the door but not to worry because Mom and Dad – or in this case Hill and Bill- would take care of it.

Becoming president, she said in a hushed tone, is “an awesome responsibility. And it was thrown into relief with the events last Thursday with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.”

This may come as a surprise to the conservatives who have spent the last six years in a state of pee-in-your-pants terror that Islamic terrorists are plotting to kill us every single day, but those of us who are going about our lives are not uncognizant of the very real dangers in the world today. And neither are John Edwards and Barack Obama. But because nothing else has seemed to work, Hillary Clinton is spending the final days leading up to Iowa trying to tap the reptilian brain in Iowa voters by taking a page from the Republican playbook and playing the fear card. And it’s a distasteful sight.

Hillary’c campaign has played right into everything that those of us who will not vote for have found repulsive all along — that every move she makes, every statement out of her mouth, comes not from a place of conviction but from whatever the focus groups, polls, and Washington pundits say will work on any given day. One minute she’s being America’s Mother. The next she’s “the put upon girl being beaten up by the Big Mean Men. Then she’s ripping off John Edwards’ health care plan. Now she’s decided to try to out-Giuliani Giuliani.

When Bill Clinton was president, I thought the obsession with Hillary’s ever-changing hairstyles was petty, Mean Grrlz of the Press bullshit. But perhaps they were on to something, but that something had nothing to do with her hair. It has to do with the reason I can’t vote for: because I don’t know who the hell she is. I don’t know what she stands for. I don’t trust her to end the Iraq war. I don’t trust her to not bomb Iran and follow a neocon foreign policy. I don’t trust her to not negotiate away reproductive freedom. I don’t get the sense that there are any values she feels strongly enough about to take the heat when the Republicans and the Washington press corps line up against her.

We’ve seen many Hillarys during this campaign. But who the hell is she?

Firefighters for Dodd burst 9iul11ni’s balloon

How dare these firefighters question the leadership of a man who declares himself an expert on terrorism because he happened to show up on 9/11/01 to watch the command center he’d ordered placed in a building that had already been attacked once, and who had five years to get workable radios for firefighters and didn’t do it:

OK, so not all firefighters are gorgeous after all. But they’ve got guts and they dare to speak the truth.

Awesome.

Not that I would have known it if Melina hadn’t sent me the link (because my fucking New York Times delivery guy hasn’t delivered the Goddamn paper on Saturday since he got his Christmas tip and what’s the point of home delivery if you don’t get the fun sections a day early?), but the Grey Lady pays tribute to the late, great Steve Gilliard in its annual “Lives they Lived” edition of the Magazine.

Not, however, that this makes up for them bringing on WILLIAM FUCKING KRISTOL as a columnist….

And of course it would be even more awesome if Steve Gilliard were still here, but kudos to the Times for recognize how important he was to the blogging community. Now if they only got it right about his life. Group News Blogger Jesse Wendel sets the record straight. I never even knew the man and I miss him every day, though not as much as I would if the GNB-ers weren’t doing such a fine job carrying on his legacy.

More from Driftglass, Liberty Street USA, Tom Watson, Barbara O’Brian at Mahablog, BlueGal at Crooks and Liars, Lindsay Beyerstein, Matt Browner-Hamlin, Kevin Hayden, Pachacutec at FDL, and the usual suspects.

Just wonderin’, is all

I wonder: What percentage of those voters who say that Hillary Clinton is the most electable Democrat are confusing her with her husband and think it’s Bill Clinton who’s actually running?