Sleeping Dog Blog

The Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery

2006-02-07T16:09:00.000-08:00

At Coretta Scott King's funeral, the Reverend said:

"We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there," he said in a boisterous, rhyming oration. "But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here -- millions without health insurance, poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor."

Atta J. Turk at Rising Hegemon asks,

Not so nice when you leave your hand-picked crowds is it?

Fear Factor

2006-02-05T23:51:00.000-08:00

From Tom Tomorrow:

Strategery

2006-02-05T23:30:00.000-08:00

From the Illustrated Daily Scribble:

Objectivity?

2006-01-22T17:45:00.000-08:00

mcjoan's diary at dailykos points us to some numbers gathered by MediaMatters:

On January 22, the day after The Washington Post first broke the Lewinsky story, the paper ran ... a total of 11 articles, written by or using contributions from at least 20 reporters, and comprising 11,844 words dedicated to allegations that the president lied about a consensual relationship.

The New York Times gave the story similar treatment....a total of eight articles, written by at least eight reporters, comprising 9,044 words.

Now, here's what the Post did on December 17 -- the day after the initial disclosure of the Bush administration's use of the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct domestic surveillance that has been widely described as an illegal trampling of the Constitution.... Three articles, eight reporters, 3,227 words -- and that's generously including the USA Patriot Act article in the tally.

And from the Times, which had broken the NSA story the day before.... two articles, four reporters, 3,076 words.

All told, on January 22, 1998, the Times and the Post ran 19 articles (five on the front page) dealing with the Clinton investigation, totaling more than 20,000 words and reflecting the words of at least 28 reporters -- plus the editorial boards of both newspapers.

In contrast, on December 17, the Times and the Post combined to run five articles about the NSA spying operation, involving 12 reporters and consisting of 6,303 words.

Remember this the next time someone starts running off at the mouth about the "liberal media". As mcjoan says,

I'm just wondering when the traditional media is finally going to give up the pretense that it is objective in reporting the news. From Chris Matthew's (and the entire Fox gang's) hate speech to Deborah Howell's non-correction "correction," it's time they just admit the truth. They are Republican party organs. Most of the rest of the developed world doesn't operate on the false assumption that their media is unbiased. Why should we? Let's just get that out in the open, recognize who is on which side, and go on our merry way.

Musical goodness

2006-01-21T20:26:00.000-08:00

Joe over at My God...it's full of stars! sez:

Pandora.com is my favorite new website. You enter a song or band that you like and then they begin streaming songs to you that they have identified as being in the same genre. You give them the thumbs up or thumbs down and this helps the algorythim decide what to send you next. I've heard some really great music that I didn't know about. Check it out, peeps.

Ain't them Internets grand?

Well, duh.

2006-01-21T20:06:00.000-08:00

For a long time, I have believed that the cause of most problems in America today can be boiled down to the sheer dumbassery of a large percentage of the public. According to this study, it's only going to get worse.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than half of students at four-year colleges -- and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges -- lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found.

The literacy study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the first to target the skills of graduating students, finds that students fail to lock in key skills -- no matter their field of study.

The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.

Without "proficient" skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

"It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things," said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization.

Disturbing, indeed.

Photoshop goodness

2006-01-06T21:06:00.000-08:00

Nutty Uncle Joe

2005-12-20T22:30:00.000-08:00

See, Hitler had it all wrong with the whole purebred Aryan thing. Stalin knew that if you want the ultimate warrior, crossing humans with apes is the way to go.

The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.

Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.

From the trenches of the War on Christmas

2005-12-12T18:20:00.000-08:00

Sam Seder of Air America's Majority Report in head to head combat on CNN with Bob Knight from the Culture and Family Institute:

PHILLIPS: Let's start with the holiday card. What do you think, Sam?

SEDER: Listen, as far as the war on Christmas goes, I feel like we should be waging a war on Christmas. I mean, I believe that Christmas, it's almost proven that Christmas has nuclear weapons, can be an imminent threat to this country, that they have operative ties with terrorists and I believe that we should sacrifice thousands of American lives in pursuit of this war on Christmas. And hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

PHILLIPS: Is it a war on Christmas, a war Christians, a war on over-political correctness or just a lot of people with way too much time on their hands?

SEDER: I would say probably, if I was to be serious about it, too much time on their hands, but I'd like to get back to the operational ties between Santa Claus and al Qaeda.

PHILLIPS: I don't think that exists. Bob? Help me out here.

SEDER: We have intelligence, we have intelligence.

PHILLIPS: You have intel. Where exactly does your intel come from?

SEDER: Well, we have tortured an elf and it's actually how we got the same information from Al Libbi. It's exactly the same way the Bush administration got this info about the operational ties between al Qaeda and Saddam [...]

KNIGHT: These businesses are taking millions and millions of dollars in from Christians, in particular, and others who celebrate Christmas, giving gifts in the name of the Christmas season, and yet they're so worried about offending people like my opponent here that they don't want to mention the word Christmas. People are sick and tired.

SEDER: Bob, it's the holiday time, I'm not your opponent.

KNIGHT: Yes, you are. Yes, you are.

SEDER: I do agree with Bob. I think what should happen is companies should calculate how much money they're getting from people who are celebrating Christmas and provide exactly that much amount of Merry Christmas, because that is exactly how I would want any type of religious holiday to be celebrated [...]

SEDER: Hannukah is not a high holiday. Our high holidays are Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur, which I'm sure Bob has been protesting why there are not more Yom Kippur sales or Rosh Hashanah sales during those holidays. Why shouldn't there be, right Bob?

KNIGHT: If that was associated with that holiday, then maybe I would join you. But it never has been.

SEDER: Bob, have you ever protested Martin Luther King Day not being celebrated. Do you resent when people don't say "Happy Martin Luther King Day" a month out in advance?

Crooks and Liars has the video.

Please explain

2005-11-25T19:44:00.000-08:00

As he so often does, John at Americablog raises an excellent point.

So, tell me again how Bush is now claiming that it was the intelligence that was flawed, rather than the White house outright lying to the American people? Because I'm confused. How does the CIA allegedly so screw up that it leads the nation wrongly into war, and then the head of the CIA is given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the American equivalent of a knighthood?

When President Bush gave those medals to Tenet,Franks, and Bremer, I remember thnking. "well, we realy are living in Bizarro World - up is down, black is white, etc." I wish I could remember where I read the description of the ceremony in which the author remarked - as he watched President Bush present Tenet, Franks, and Bremer their medals - how uncannily he was reminded of old Cold War video of Brezhnev pinning medals on faceless old party hacks even as the USSR was crumbling around their ankles.

Why I live here

2005-11-22T21:28:00.000-08:00

Just go read blksista's diary over at Dailykos, and make damn sure you read the piece in The Nation about the people of Ville Platte, LA

Grey's Law

2005-11-20T01:03:00.000-08:00

From Greyblog, via My Left Wing:

Grey's Law: As a political discussion grows longer, the probability of a conservative comparing their favorite demon to Michael Moore approaches 1. Once such a comparison is made, the discussion is over, and whoever mentioned Michael Moore has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.

As someone at MLW noted, this is actually a variation of the venerable Internet axiom Godwin's Law, which states:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

Headline of the week

2005-11-20T00:25:00.000-08:00

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Big Dick is Watching You

2005-11-18T05:30:00.000-08:00

From Jesus' General:

The President lied again today

2005-11-11T19:44:00.000-08:00

In his speech today, President Bush said:

...more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate -- who had access to the same intelligence -- voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.

That is not true. As kovie at Dailykos points out, this article in The Nation completely debunks the President's claim that Congress had access to the same intelligence.

UPDATE: Today's Washington Post has more on this:

President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.

Neither assertion is wholly accurate.

The administration's overarching point is true: Intelligence agencies overwhelmingly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and very few members of Congress from either party were skeptical about this belief before the war began in 2003. Indeed, top lawmakers in both parties were emphatic and certain in their public statements.

But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material.
(emphasis mine)

Yo ho ho

2005-11-05T23:06:00.000-08:00

The scurvy dogs!

Pirates armed with grenade launchers and machine guns tried to hijack a luxury cruise liner off the east African coast Saturday, but the ship outran them, officials said.

Two boats full of pirates approached the Seabourn Spirit about 100 miles off the Somali coast and opened fire while the heavily armed bandits tried to get onboard, said Bruce Good, spokesman for the Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corp.
-snip-
Edith Laird of Seattle, who was traveling with her daughter and a friend, told the British Broadcasting Corp. in an e-mail that her daughter saw the pirates out the window.

"There were at least three rocket-propelled grenades that hit the ship, one in a state room," Laird wrote. "We had no idea that this ship could move as fast as it did and (the captain) did his best to run down the pirates."
-snip-
There has been a steep rise in piracy this year along Somalia's nearly 2,000-mile coastline, with 15 violent incidents reported between March and August, compared with just two for all of 2004, according to the International Maritime Bureau, a division of the International Chamber of Commerce that tracks trends in piracy.

Arrrrr.

Torture - we are debating torture

2005-11-05T21:27:00.000-08:00

Vice President Cheney made a personal appeal to Republican senators to exempt the CIA from a proposed ban on torture of terror suspects. That's right, the Vice President of the United States wants torture to be OK. For his part, Senator John McCain (who happens to be against torture, by the CIA or anyone else) is not budging, and has vowed to attach the torture ban wording as an amendment to each and every bill that the passes through the Senate until it is approved.

As John at Americablog points out, McCain's pledge is exactly the sort of thing we should be seeing out of the Democrats.

Crooks & Liars says:

A nation that has been a leader in the field of human rights has to have a Republican Senator stick his foot in the mouth of an administration that begs to act like the barbarians that it professes to despise.

I find it disturbingly surreal that in 2005, the government of the United States is debating torture. What the hell? Tonight, in cemeteries across this country, patriots are spinning in their graves.

Happy Birthday, WWW

2005-11-05T19:47:00.000-08:00

The web is 15 years old this month. It has become an everyday tool that many of us take for granted, but it's easy for me to remember what life was like without it, and to realize how lucky we are that it panned out this way.

James Boyle at FT.com:

...there are three things that we need to understand about the web. First, it is more amazing than we think. Second, the conjunction of technologies that made the web successful was extremely unlikely. Third, we probably would not create it, or any technology like it, today. In fact, we would be more likely to cripple it, or declare it illegal.

there's more...

Hat tip to Atrios for the link.

A Call to Ass

2005-11-04T19:25:00.000-08:00

The Full Moon Over the Klan blog has the scoop:

You are invited to join in the 2nd* Austin Mooning of the Klan, Saturday, November 5th, Austin City Hall (or nearby depending on where the police make us stand) from 1-3PM.

*The first mooning of the Klan was organized by Texas musician Steve Fromholz in 1993 and proved to be an effective means of making counter protesters smile and Klanspeople cringe.

Who: You, me, a few hundred of our closest friends, anyone you can double dog dare to get down there and drop trou. If this is your first time mooning, it can be easier to complete the deed if you have a good friend along for encouragement.

What: Mooning is a long standing Texas tradition of irreverant disobedience. Generally speaking mooning is a spontaneous event. Defined as exposing some part of one's ass in a gesture of friendly insult, Texas law allows for mooning as long as genitals are not exposed and there is no overtly sexual action involved. You may write a cheeky statement across yourself, but obscenities are a gray area, legally speaking.

Where: Counter protesters are going to be kept as far away from the Klan rally as possible. Given the geography of the site (South plaza of Austin City Hall) it will be difficult to avoid obstructing traffic and other arrestable offenses. Please try NOT to get arrested.

Why: Because one big ass deserves another (and they can't use footage of counterprotesters that includes naked butt). Mooning also defuses the potential for violence since it's nearly impossible to swing at someone when you are giggling.

Austin...my kind of town. =)

The Boondocks on TV

2005-11-04T18:43:00.000-08:00

The Boondocks, the hilarious and brilliant comic strip by Aaron McGruder, is coming to Cartoon Network's Adult Swim on Sunday at 10pm CST. Don't miss it.

Limbaugh lunacy

2005-11-03T19:48:00.000-08:00

Looks like El Rushbo is back on the hillbilly heroin. In the fevered imaginings of his narcoticized brain, Libby and friends are blameless - Joseph Wilson is the criminal.

Media Matters reports:

In an October 31 discussion of the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh stated, "The more the left talks about Libby's alleged perjury, the more you have to ask did Joseph Wilson commit treason." Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, was indicted on October 28 for perjury, obstruction of justice, and false statements. Limbaugh later continued, "Did Wilson lie about Niger? Did Wilson commit treason?" Limbaugh also stated, "You still can't convince me ... that this whole thing is not a CIA-hatched plot to destroy Bush, undermine the war effort."

Uh, yeah. Hey Rush, your tin-foil hat looks like it may be a little snug..

Truth

2005-10-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

After Lewis Libby's indictment today, Joe Wilson issued a statement through his attorney:

Today, however, is not the time to analyze or to debate. And it is certainly not a day to celebrate. Today is a sad day for America. When an indictment is delivered at the front door of the White House, the Office of the President is defiled. No citizen can take pleasure from that.

The Office of the President has indeed been defiled. While I am glad to see a certain measure of justice being delivered, I am not at all happy about the damage this administration has done to the reputations of the Office, the country, and its citizens.

The criminalization of crime

2005-10-28T05:20:00.000-07:00

Detroit Mark over at Dailykos nails it:

Tom DeLiar's big strategy to counteract the ill effects of his crimes is, of course, to blame everyone else. His buzzphrase: They're just trying to criminalize conservative politics."
http://www.usatoday.com/...

Well excuse me, Mr. Devilmademedoit. But laundering is a crime no matter your party leanings. Illegal campaign fundraising is against the law no matter who you voted for or supported.

So his big explanation isn't "I didn't do it" or "when the truth comes out you'll see it was all a big misunderstanding." No, besides coming out of the courtroom on day one with a litany of personal attacks on the prosecutor (a laughable strategy - imagine going before a judge with a drunk driving charge and your big defense is that the prosecutor is out to get you!! :lol ) ... but he then has his lawyer lie right to the judge's face.

He actually stood right there and told the judge he should recuse himself because he's contributed to a liberal organization that is "selling Tom DeLiar mug shot tee shirts"!

First of all - there's no crime in being a liberal (at least, apparently not as much of a crime as being a conservative as according to Tom DeLiar.) Secondly, everyone who even leans slightly left knows that MoveOn.Org is not selling Tom DeLiar mug shot tee shirts. They never have.

And most of us are not even trying to set the record straight. Because it's more fun to just give him all the rope he wants to hang himself with his own lies.

Although they would probably sell like hotcakes now.

So what is his big defense? "Liberals are making it a crime for conservatives to just conduct business they way they always have."

Just remember for later, Mr. DeLiar. We're not the ones who declared that conservatives always launder money, and always perjure themselves to cover it up. You are.

FEMA Follies

2005-10-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

Via Dailykos:

First this, from FEMA:

Hit Twice? Register Twice!
Release Date: October 21, 2005
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Residents of Louisiana who suffered damages and losses as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and/or Rita are reminded they must register for disaster assistance for each storm. Registering for aid for Hurricane Rita is separate from any past registration for Hurricane Katrina.

Then this:

Do Not File Duplicate Disaster Assistance Applications
Release Date: October 24, 2005

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Louisiana residents affected by one of the two hurricanes to hit the state this year are cautioned NOT to apply more than once for federal disaster assistance. Multiple applications will delay assistance.

Memories

2005-10-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

The Bush administration is awaiting indictments on exposing the identity of an indercover CIA operative. Tom Delay has been indicted for money laundering. Bill Frist is being investigated for insider trading. In light of all this, it is interesting to read the President's words from just four years ago:

Let me say a few words about important values we must demonstrate while all of us serve in government. First, we must always maintain the highest ethical standards. We must always ask ourselves not only what is legal, but what is right. There is no goal of government worth accomplishing if it cannot be accomplished with integrity.

Second, I want us to set an example of humility. As you work for the federal government there is no excuse for arrogance, and there’s never a reason to show disrespect for others. A new tone in Washington must begin with decency and fairness. I want everyone who represents our government to be known for these values.

I'd say that ship has already sailed.