Sunday talk

LiberalOasis' Sunday Talk Show Breakdown is my "don't miss" weekly feature and one of the reasons I admire Bill Scher and Liberal Oasis so much.
Scher is one of the clearest-thinking writers on the web, and his analysis of the political "tilt" in the US Sunday talk-shows provides a frame for the stories of the previous week and for the upcoming spin.
On Democrat motions to try to stop the Iraq war, Scher writes:

Bush will ignore whatever Democrats do. That's not the point. He's going to keep us in Iraq come 2008 no matter what, so long as he's President.
The point is to make it clear to the public that Democrats are trying to change the course, have a plan to change the course, and if the course isn't changed, that's all on the shoulders of Bush and his supporters.
Then the public knows what it has to do to change the course. Change the occupant in the Oval Office.

There's the message for the next two years.

Blog for Choice

Tomorrow is blog for choice day.

Where is Matt?

This has been viewed something like 4 million times. See why. (h/t Americablog.)

Great line of the day

From Glenn Greenwald:

The reason [U.S.] foreign policy has been so incoherent, amoral and bloodthirsty is because the people behind it are.

Denny Doherty died

Ve must see your papers, old man!

Yes, I know -- its this man's own fault that he let his passport expire.
And its his own fault that he lost his proof of citizenship card, without which he cannot get a new passport.
And he should have known better because he knew his mother in England was getting old and he knew that he might need to get over there fast to see her if she got sick.
But after reading his story, I was still left with a bad taste in my mouth. I think it was the line about how "the application process is necessary to guard against fraud". Yes, indeed -- but the man is 74 years old, and he only wanted to see his mother before she died.
So, like the lead said, couldn't we show a little compassion?

I don't get it

I don't understand the point of this story: Canadian snowbirds without passports won't get stuck in U.S., says Chertoff
Well, of course not. It's not up to Chertoff to decide whether a Canadian can come home to Canada without a passport -- that's up to Canada Customs.
But no snowbird should expect to be exempt from the US rules -- the excuse that they were just flying home briefly and now want to fly back to the US isn't going to cut it.

I read the news today...

Well, I had a positively brilliant post just about ready to go, including environmental stuff with a seque to Abu Gonzales, when my browser died and took my post with it.
So just go read Saskboy instead -- his post is better than what I wrote anyway...

Maps of war

Check out this fascinating website: Maps of War which I found out about at Corrente Wire.

Great line of the day

Ken Levine:

. . . should players who are suspected of illegally enhancing their performance be denied entrance into the hallowed hall? Does this mean we keep out Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmiero, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, and Jason Grimsley?
Just think, if the Rock n’ Roll Hall-of-Fame had a drug restriction its only members would be Debby Boone and the Singing Nun.

Emphasis mine. And I'm not so sure about Debby.
Then Levin continues into this terrific rant:

. . . Since Hall-of-Famer, Ty Cobb first captured the stolen base crown by spiking infielders at second base, players and teams have always looked for an edge. They steal signs, they cork bats, juice balls, tilt foul lines, hire a midget, water down basepaths, wear reflective jewelry, play “Pop Goes the Weasel” and show fountains spouting on Diamondvision Boards when Viagra spokesman, Rafael Palmiero comes to the plate. I’m not saying I condone it (well…maybe the last example) but that’s just part of the game. Baseball is built on tradition and that’s one of them.
Gaylord Perry’s in the Hall-of-Fame. He never threw a pitch that didn’t spray the first four rows of the grandstands . . .

Read the whole thing.

Great line of the day

From August J. Pollak:

It's totally unfair to address someone's personal life when it pertains to a political debate unless they work undercover at the CIA.

Check out the new links

I finally did some updating on my sidebar -- deleted some old links, and added more to my "new links" list.
UPDATE: Also, I just did some Comment cleanup, too. Buh-bye "James Halifax" AKA "sirBruce" and "Carla" AKA "ootpootfizzfizz" -- I don't like astroturfing, nor will I tolerate being called names. Start your own blog, and you can call me whatever you want.

A yarn tale (sock, that is)

I love the Internets.
Could you have ever guessed that yarn fans and knitting fanatics have connected on-line and form clubs for the knitting of socks and for the purchsing of the specialized yarn which is used there-for? Well, one bank didn't (guess, that is) -- read all about it here (h/t The Sideshow).

"Controversy"

Sunday's Doonesbury - brilliant:

Upchucking the koolaid

Glenn Greenwald has a great post quoting conservative columnist Rod Dreher about how he grew up while watching Bush's speech:

As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.
I had a heretical thought for a conservative - that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word - that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot - that they have to question authority.
On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn't the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?
Will my children, too small now to understand Iraq, take me seriously when I tell them one day what powerful men, whom their father once believed in, did to this country.

Yes, nothing like a stupid war to convince Americans that the hippies were right!
Greenwald also links to Mahablog describing how we are all influenced, perhaps overly so, by the political events of our teenage years in determining whether we are "liberal" or "conservative".
Too often, I think, we pick one point of view when we are young, then we spend the rest of our lives editing reality to fit.
Easier, I guess, or more comfortable, or something.
But sometimes, as Dreher has now realized, there is a limit to how much we can ignore, how far we can stretch. Sometimes, reality just crashes through.
The political experience of Iraq may well produce a new generation of Americans who will rediscover "liberalism".
Maybe they'll start singing Kumbaya and wearing flowers in their hair. Maybe they'll even start supporting health insurance.
And when I think about my own background and the political events which shaped me, I guess one of the key events in my young life was the Doctor's Strike in 1962, which showed me the importance of people acting together to implement what we believe in. When an aroused public supports something as much as we supported Medicare in 1962, well then, we shall overcome. I saw it happen and I have never forgotten it.