what you heard last night on NBC Nightly News

(c/o Glenn Greenwald)
Really, marriage is under attack? By whom? And will it hold Charleston?

I have to confess: I actually watched this segment last night and didn't even notice. That's how utterly infected with rightwing tropes our news media is.

And if that surprises you, here's a fun question: What does Brian Williams listen to in his car?

Answer: Rush Limbaugh. No, seriously.

"Call it, friend-o"

As most of you no doubt know, I'm a huge fan of the Coen brothers, even of their new stuff (I don't care what anyone says, Intolerable Cruelty was a great movie). Even setting that aside, however, I don't remember the last time saw reviews this consistently stellar.

I can't wait for No Country for Old Men.

a review of the greatest pizza ever.

With pictures!

You can thank me in the comments section.

Ru9/11dy!

Rudy Giuliani: "We really don't mention September 11 as much as people think."

What a disgusting little authoritarian.

American Chickenhawks presents:

This week, Mitt Romney, who was too busy braving the dangers of fresh-made coq au vin (it's alcoholic, ya know!) to be bothered with such trivial threats as the Epic Cold War Against the Global Communist Threat.

Reading the NYT article, is it just me or does young Mitt Romney sound like the nerdiest little rich kid ever? Writing like a cartoon character... at 19? What's that about?

"Strength and Opportunism"

Funny.

culture and politics, a poll

Check out this poll from Zogby and the Norman Lear Center on politics and culture, examining how liberals, conservatives, and "moderates" enjoy TV, the news, movies, music, and video games.

What surprised me most: "Fox, the home of anti-authority satires like The Simpsons, Family Guy and MADtv, draws daily more than three times as many conservatives as liberals." There is such a thing as a liberal who doesn't like the Simpsons? I'd never thought of FOX as particularly ideological, though I do associate it with a certain "trashiness," I guess from the days when it tended to delve further into the risque than other networks.

Nevertheless, rather than "anti-authority satire" being the turn-off for liberals and turn-on for conservatives (since when were "support the troops!" police-state conservatives anti-authority?), I would imagine it's the rest of their programming, nearly half of which consists of reality TV (I counted eight, including COPS and "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?"), that turns off liberals.

What I would really like to know: have we always been this culturally divided? Was it always the case that conservatives and liberals didn't listen to the same music, didn't see the same movies, and didn't watch the same TV (or even the same news, for God's sake!)? Combined with the fact that conservatives are now taking their kids out of public schools, is our society starting to pillarize?

Judi Giuliani: worst. candidate's wife. ever.

Oh my God! From a Salon breakdown of the candidates' spouses:

Judi Giuliani, wife of Rudy Giuliani: Judi is Giuliani's third wife, the woman he left second wife Donna Hanover for in a televised news conference. She sits at the front row of fashion shows, had a secret marriage she only came forward with when her husband announced his nomination, which was around the same time the couple announced that she would sit in on cabinet meetings were he elected. It has been reported that while her husband was still mayor of New York, if aides referred to her as "Judi" instead of "Judith," she would bawl them out. She buys extra seats on planes for her Louis Vuitton handbag. She has inspired an open rift between the candidate and his children: Andrew, who helpfully explained to reporters that he is estranged from his dad because "a problem exists between me and his wife," and Caroline, a Harvard student who demonstrated the froideur earlier this year by admitting on her MySpace page that she was supporting Barack Obama. But it is the fact that Judi Giuliani once held a job in which she demonstrated medical equipment on puppy dogs who often died after or during the demonstrations that really kicks her up a notch and puts her head and shoulders above the rest of the pack.

And to think, Republicans used to bitch about how disagreeable first lady Hillary Clinton was!

the Huckabee files

Here is an article on the problems with Mike Huckabee by an Arkansas journalist. It's mainly small stuff, but there's enough of it, and enough big stuff, that you see certain patterns emerge, particularly 1. a willingness to play the moderate when he's really a hardcore Dobson-style Christian rightist, 2. a certain "moral flexibility" when it comes to other people's money, and 3. an inability to accept responsibility for mistakes.

the Ron Paul phenomenon

Atrios notes some good paradoxes re: the media's treatment of the Ron Paul "issue":

I find the Ron Paul candidacy interesting, but that has nothing to do with support. It's interesting because I don't quite understand it. It's interesting because he highlights the unacknowledged-by-the-Villagers fact that anti-war sentiment has long since spread from dirty fucking hippies like me into other parts of the population. It's interesting because despite having significant fundraising and some early poll (New Hampshire) showing, his candidacy is largely ignored by the Village. It's interesting because Ron Paul is crazy but Norman Podhoretz and Rudy Giuliani are very serious (that is, there are certain types of crazy that the Village loves and certain kinds of crazy they marginalize).

I'll add one: it's interesting because, while the Village (and many blogs, for that matter) have been fixated on whether the hoary old kingmakers of the Christian Right will sit this election out, there's been a burgeoning, well-financed and planned, threatening-to-get-independent libertarian rebellion in that party. I think people just aren't getting the fact that the powerful Republicans contributors of the future-- the young, white, male, upwardly mobile, college-educated technocrats who have taken bought into Reaganite bootstrap theory "hook, line, and sinker"-- are not only being attracted to the Ron Paul movement in huge numbers, but are becoming something like converts to it. They're donating huge amounts of money to the campaign (you heard me, right? They're DONATING money!), they're volunteering time, and then they're harassing anti-Paul bloggers on the left and right in their spare time.

And their own party is bound and determined to beat them down, all in hopes of keeping in tow a fractious and utterly discredited Christian conservative movement whose anti-Roe triumphalism is virtually guaranteed to cost Republicans any hope of winning the presidency. Yes, women will turn out in a BIG way if they know that Roe v. Wade is on the line, which it unquestionably is, and the GOP knows it or they wouldn't suddenly be so minimalist about the end of Roe (I'm hearing a lot of "no, it simply returns it to the states!" b.s. from d-bags like Andrew Sullivan). Which is doubly ironic, because Ron Paul is rabidly anti-Roe (don't ask me how that jives with his "libertarian" cred).

But Bill, you told me you were a libertarian!

From last week's New Rules:

But, you know, the days when a shop girl in the big city could support herself working a full 40-hour week, or a family of four could live off a single blue-collar breadwinner, are as bygone a fantasy as malt shops or heterosexual wizards. If you're living hand-to-mouth, and still buying into the con that the big threats to America are socialized medicine, Mexican immigrants and tax increases, then you're not being kept down by the rich. You're being kept down by you.

In America, it's not the haves and have-nots. It's the haves and the been-hads. If you, the citizen, deliberately vote for someone who won't give you health care over someone you will, you need to have your head examined. Except you can't afford to have your head examined.
...
Now, I know socialized medicine sounds like Stalin himself is going to come over to your house and perform a forced sterilization. But, really all it is, is universal health care. Which means everybody - not just the rich - gets to see a doctor when their erection lasts longer than 72 hours.

And I just hope that one day, ten or fifteen years from now, one of Rush Limbaugh's "Ditto Heads" is going to wake up in his cell in debtors' prison - because that's where President Giuliani throws you when you can't pay your Visa bill - and he'll turn on the Fox Financial Channel, and as he watches some CEO gloat over his $200 million in stock options, he's going to suddenly realize that he's been had. And on that day, that man will begin the great middle class uprising of the 21st century.

Sounds like somebody's seen the light.

"...then we wrap it all in a blueberry pancake..."

Reminds me of the Taco Town commercial from SNL. From Gizmodo:

Pizza Hut Japan's exclusive Double Roll pie is 646 calories per slice, with little bacon wrapped sausages littered across the crust, and mini hamburger patties on top of the mushrooms, soy beans, corn, paprika, garlic chips, green peppers, and pepperoni. As for cheese, it has mozzarella, cheddar and parmigiana. BTW, this comes with ketchup and maple syrup for extra flavor, and is recommended for kids.

Safe home, Grimsaburger

Hope your trip back goes smoothly!

WGA strike, day 3

As explained by Sandra Oh, who is awesome, even if her show's not on my watch list.

Here is a pretty good article explaining the reasons for the strike from Forbes.

Atrios on the emerging argument that you shouldn't support the writers because they are well-paid, and therefore, I guess, greedy:

I'm always surprised how many people fail to be sympathetic to striking workers simply because they perceive them to be "well-paid." Certainly one can always find a more worthy cause, a more desperate case, someone more "deserving." But ultimately this is about whether management gets to screw workers, and that's something we can all be concerned about whether it's janitors, Hollywood writers, or even millionaire baseball players.

Support the strikers. Stop watching TV until this blows over. And especially stay away from soap operas; they've started hiring pseudonymous scabs to replace the strikers until the strike blows over.

you sure 'bout that, Mr. Commander-in-Chief?

President Bush: "You can't be president and head of the military at the same time."

another reason to love The Office

Scab-free viewing.

Lueck'ed

Congrats to Mayor Steve Luecke on his almost overly successful re-election bid, 60%-38%. Anyone else think the South Bend Tribune oversamples Republicans a wee bit?

Congrats as well to Jeff Rea, who isn't too bad as far as Republicans go.

Kucinich introduces resolution to impeach Dick Cheney

Go DK!

Also, looks like other people are catching on to the Kucinich conspiracy to rig online candidate-matching quizzes.

But remember, guys, the important thing about Kucinich is not that this legislation, nor that he's the only candidate who's never voted to fund the war (and is actually for defunding it), nor that he wants to start a "Dept. of Peace," nor that he believes we should pull out of NAFTA or turn Medicare into a single-payer government health insurer of all Americans.

No no no. What is important is that he once saw a UFO with Shirley MacLaine and has a smokin' hot wife. Those are what are important to know about Kucinich, and thus must be the beginning and end of every conversation about him, like Edwards' haircut and Hillary's pantsuits.

"a different experience"

From TPM:

Do you know more about torture than John McCain?

RUDY GIULIANI: ...I have had a different experience than John. John has never been -- he has never run city, never run a state, never run a government. He has never been responsible as a mayor for the safety and security of millions of people, and he has never run a law enforcement agency, which I have done.

Now, intensive questioning works. If I didn't use intensive questioning, there would be a lot of mafia guys running around New York right now and crime would be a lot higher in New York than it is.

Have you ever heard an answer so crammed to the top with bullshit? Rudy was responsible for the safety and security of millions? As the mayor? Are you kidding me? Rudy personally waterboarded mafiosos, chained them naked to the floor while lowering the temperature to 40 degrees, and made them sit in stress positions for 12 hours, pistol-whipping them every time they moved? Does anyone really believe this wanker?

Greg Sargent notes:

"A "different experience" than McCain? Hmmm -- that strikes us as kind of a casual, offhand way for Rudy to be describing what McCain went through. After all, McCain was tortured regularly for five years in Vietnam, while Rudy secured five draft deferments, according to preeminent Rudy biographer Wayne Barrett. Indeed, as Barrett wrote in Grand Illusions, his book about Rudy and 9/11, Rudy got one deferment for every year that McCain was tortured."

That Rudy, he's a real hero.

Hoosier politics: in which Juan Manigault cries me a river

Is it just me, or are these Republican mayoral candidates fragile little wilting flowers? Jeff Rea has at least not been in the mudfight, but for Juan Manigault to cry foul about negative campaigning and "personal attacks" (which is, apparently, GOP-speak for criticizing a Republican's job performance) is pretty rich.

Sauce for the goose, Juan. Sauce for the goose.

[post edited to unmix the metaphors and add clarity.]