I’m guessing Tom is too busy with his tour preparations to plug a certain book that’s coming out today….

Looking at the book’s page on Amazon, I noticed this slightly disturbing association :



I don’t know who would be interested in a book by a torture-loving goober like Horowitz and a book of hilarious political cartoons, but apparently there’s at least one of you out there. Since you already know how great This Modern World is, I’ll forgo the sales pitch and offer this bit of advice :

Don’t buy The Professors by David Horowitz

Seriously, it’s the same “radical professors” crap that conservatives have been whining about for years. We’ve seen this argument a million times before and it’s still as simple-minded as it was forty years ago. To conservatives like Horowitz, liberalism on college campuses is the result of political bias and intolerance for alternative views. While cherry-picked examples of political correctness run amok can certainly be strung together to support that thesis, there’s a more obvious answer that’s being overlooked by the egomaniacs on the right. When educated people disagree with you, it has nothing to do with political bias. They disagree with you because you’re wrong. If Horowitz and his peers had the slightest bit of humility, they’d take the unpopularity of their views among intellectuals as a sign that they might need to reevaluate their views. But that would require flip-flopping and we all know how wingnuts feel about that.

So now that you know which book you shouldn’t buy, lemme highlight part of what Giant Magazine had to say about Hell in a Handbasket :

It also showcases how infuriated he is with the current administration. We probably don’t need to tell you that Tomorrow’s opinions lean to the left–the book’s cover, which features President Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove sporting devil horns, speaks volumes. Yet he never falls into blind partisanship. Even as Tomorrow rips into the president’s buffoonery, his political advisors’ twisting of the truth and fox news’s insulting and divisive rhetoric, he comes off not as a vengeful sour-grapes Democrat but as an articulate and thoughtful man who is genuinely concerned about the future.

Daniel Perkins has been making cartoons for over 20 years, and his work has never been sharper. This Modern World stands out as a voice of reason, pointing out the trouble we’re in and providing comfort to those who already recognize it. Who knows–maybe someday we’ll be able to look back on all of this and laugh.

So pick up Hell in a Handbasket and catch Tom next week on tour.

For those of you who watched American Idol tonight and saw somebody in the audience cheering and holding a sign with a pickle on it, that wasn’t a photo of contestant Kellie Pickler, it was Associated Press hack Nedra Pickler :

Look familiar American Idol fans? Since it’s the most popular show in the world or something, lemme point out that the graphic was originally made to highlight the fact that the press routinely gives Republicans a free pass while holding Democrats to a higher standard. Atrios in particular was all over this a couple years ago and described Pickler’s style as such :

Nit Picklering being the writing of news stories admonishing Democratic candidates for daring to not explain their own inconsistencies, as demonstrated by Nedra Pickler by the inclusion of some utterly irrelevant detail.

Matt Yglesias later expanded the Nit Picklering phenomenon into an article for the American Prospect :

Pickler, a 28-year-old Washington-based reporter who covered the auto industry before moving to the campaign beat last January, took Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to task for telling the story of a New Hampshire couple whose water supply was rendered unsafe for drinking or showering due to the presence of a gasoline additive, MTBE, without noting that they now, in fact, had potable water from an alternate source. Was Kerry remiss? Certainly no more so than Pickler, who failed to mention that the senator’s remarks came up as he was discussing the Bush administration’s efforts to shield manufacturers of the toxic substance from lawsuits. (MTBE has a propensity for poisoning groundwater). A revised version of Pickler’s story was released on the wires the next morning, now leading with the Kerry-bashing in the first paragraph, insinuating that the senator had inflicted emotional distress on the victims of his “dishonesty.” Actual harms caused by the chemical didn’t make the cut, however.
. . .
Pickler’s tic is a source of amusement, but it also has quite serious ramifications. While most discussion of media bias focuses on elite outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post, stories put out by The Associated Press form the backbone of national political coverage in the small- and medium-sized newspapers whose combined circulations far exceed the majors. These early campaign reports, moreover, set the larger story line that constrains later coverage of events. Once Al Gore got the “liar” label on the 2000 campaign trail, he was unable to shake it no matter how unfair the charges were or how much worse Bush’s behavior was. This is a movie we’ve all seen before, and it doesn’t have a happy ending.

And now her photoshoped mug has become a prop on the most popular show on TV. It’s fitting that the audience, producers, network, hosts, and contestants seem to be unaware that the sign that drew so much attention was a case of mistaken identity, since American Idol’s Pickler is dumber than a bag of hammers, but the original pickle sign was a humorous way to protest the media’s continual double-standard towards liberals. It would be nice for this to be used to shine a light on the talking points-recycling Pickler and her Republican-boosting colleagues. but since Idol is on Fox, don’t hold your breath waiting for Ryan Seacrest to point out the mix-up.

UPDATE : In case you thought I was mistaken, here’s a screengrab from the American Idol segment that features the Pickler :

I argee with Atrios. This isn’t as weird as Evil Bert, but WTF?!

Via BoingBoing, I see that there’s a new video floating around that supposedly shows Sasquatch. Here’s a screengrab from the vid :

Wow! A grainy, shot from behind video of what appears to be a fur-covered hominid stumbling around in the snow? I’m convinced, but it seems odd that in this age of camera-phones, we still haven’t seen a good pic of bigfoot. Now I didn’t want to waste this on a blog post, but I was there when the video was shot and got a pretty good photo of the missing link in question :



I was trying to sell this photo to the Weekly World News, but they decided to bump the story after Hitler’s ghost showed up to testify at Saddam Hussein’s trial. I have it on pretty good authority, however, that Saquatch has been asked to be John McCain’s running mate in 2008, so you’ll be hearing a lot more from our furry friend soon.

I’ve got a real “hate the sin, love the sinner” attitude about Catholicism. On the one hand, I have no problem with the religion itself and think Catholic commitment to social service puts most protestant denominations to shame, but I think the church leadership is hypocritical to its core (as well as corrupt, mob-like, etc..) Case in point, the church is ending a great program because their hatred of gays apparently outweighs their love of children.

The Boston Archdiocese’s Catholic Charities said Friday it would stop providing adoption services because of a state law allowing gays and lesbians to adopt children.

The social services arm of the Roman Catholic archdiocese, which has provided adoption services for the state for about two decades, said the law runs counter to church teachings on homosexuality.
. . .
Archbishop Sean O’Malley, who had sought an exemption from the law, said the church was faced with a choice between its faith and the state law.

“Sadly, we have come to a moment when Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Boston must withdraw from the work of adoptions in order to exercise the religious freedom that was the prompting for having begun adoptions many years ago,” he said in a statement.

Archbishop O’Malley. It would be one thing if you were taking some principled stand here, but your adherence to Catholic tradition and morals doesn’t seem to be strong enough to survive “green beer day” :

Sticking to a voluntary meatless Lenten penitence gets tricky for Catholics when St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Friday.

Traditionally, Catholics substitute fish for meat on Fridays during the 40 days of Lent as a reminder of the sacrifices of Christ.

However, for the second consecutive year, the Irish Catholic observance — celebrating the patron saint of Ireland — falls on Friday, March 17, the day many Catholics of Irish descent enjoy customary corned beef and cabbage meals.

Realizing the potential dilemma, Bishop Robert J. Carlson, head of the 132,000-member Catholic Diocese of Saginaw, is giving parishioners permission to eat meat to celebrate St. Patrick’s.
. . .
Many Catholic bishops across the country are giving permission to parishioners. But some bishops have refused to let their congregations off the hook.

For example, a telephone poll of church leaders giving the go-ahead includes New York’s Cardinal Edward Egan, Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk and Covington, Ky., Bishop Roger Foys, Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Bishop Thomas Dailey and Boston Cardinal-designate Sean O’Malley.

And just like you’re exercising your religious freedom by puting your prejudices above your commitments to helping children, I’m going to excercise my first amendment right to call your beliefs complete bullshit. Apparently the flexibility of Catholic doctrine is dependent on the whims of the church leaders, not the best interests of the people they’re trying to help.

Before I started guest posting at This Modern World I was a super fan. I’ve been reading the strip at Salon.com for almost ten years now, so you can imagine that I’m really looking forward to the newest collection. Especially since it’ll be longer than most of the previous collections and in full color :

Also, if you’re so inclined, contact the folks at The Daily Show and ask them to book Tom Tomorrow. They’ve got the whole “humorous slant on the news” thing in common, seems like a natural fit to me.

Every once in a while, I look through the political cartoons of Dr. Seuss and find some that perfectly capture what I’ve been wanting to say That and they’re pretty damn funny.

This is one I wanted to post last year as a comment on the rampant war profiteering under the Bush Administration. I’m glad I didn’t now, beacuse the metaphor has a relevance now that’s shocking.



Even though these two are about WW2 appeasement, they do a good job summing up my frustrations with the Democratic leadership.

A commenter over at Firedoglake dissed my earlier post saying comparing the censure vote and the President’s approval ratings is like “comparing apples and oranges”. Fair enough, I suppose, but that was the best data we had to work with. Now that there’s been some actual polling on the censure issue, here’s further proof that the Democrats in D.C. are completely out of touch with the American people and their own base (via Kevin Drum) :

I’m increasingly frustrated by the fact that the vast majority of what we liberal bloggers write is written off by the Dem establishment. These guys probably haven’t even seen a blog except for the rare occasion when one of their aides prints out a post and attaches a Post-It with the warning “The plebs are getting restless, sir”, yet every word we write seems to be disregarded as uninformed and naive missives from the outer fringes of the far-left. As blog readers you probably agree with me that this simpleminded confusion of the medium with the message is much more idiotic than the stereotype that applies to us, but I can’t help but think that there’s a willfull ignorance among many in the Democratic establishment about our true gripes.

What they don’t seem to get is that the vast majority of campaigns undertaken by the liberal blogosphere aren’t intended to change the minds of Democratic leaders, but to encourage action on ideals we think they have, but don’t have the political will to actually do anything about. For the most part I could care less about where most Democrats fall on the moderate/liberal spectrum, I just want them to stand up for what they believe in. For lack of an equally-powerful, gender-neutral term, here’s my message to Democrats :

Don’t be a fucking pussy, just say what you believe in.

Do you honestly think the President’s lawbreaking isn’t as big a deal as Clinton’s perjury? Then stop dicking us around and actually say it. I might not agree with you, but I’d at least respect you for taking a stand. The way things stand right now, the Democratic party is so emasculated and so well-trained by the Republican majority that they’re terrified of siding with a plurality of Americans on a clear-issue.

There’s no ambiguity here. The President eschewed Congressional overtures to amend FISA and promised Americans that we don’t spy without a court order, while blatantly ignoring the law. The President committed crimes, continues to commit those crimes, and has admitted to all fo this. This is clearly wrong and the vast majority of your base agrees. If you’re afraid of taking a popular stand on an important issue, why the hell should anyone vote for you? If this is a preview of what a Democratic majority in the Senate will look like (and 2001-2002 was a similarly embarassing indicator), then we aren’t that much worse off with the status quo.

Wow. I never expected to see something this crazy in a pop-up ad :

Jeez, and to think I felt bad for jumping to the conclusion that Cheney tried to cover the shooting up because he was drunk.

I think every time I read an article like this…

The Senate voted Thursday to allow the national debt to swell to nearly $9 trillion, preventing a first-ever default on U.S. Treasury notes.

The bill passed by a 52-48 vote. The increase to $9 trillion represents about $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. The bill now goes to President Bush for his signature.

The measure allows the government to pay for the war in Iraq and finance Medicare and other big federal programs without raising taxes. It passed hours before the House was expected to approve another $91 billion to fund the war in Iraq and provide more aid to hurricane victims.
. . .
The debt limit will increase by $781 billion. It’s the fourth such move _ increasing the debt limit by a total of $3 trillion _ since Bush took office five years ago.

…I’m going to forego the obvious commentary and just print this quote from George W. Bush :

“I also want to talk about the national challenges we face. I believe that — I’m an optimist. I’m an optimist about our economy. And I should be. The fundamentals are strong, interest rates are low, monetary policy is sound. I can assure you I will work with Congress to control excessive federal spending. One reason they give the President the veto power is to make sure the Congress doesn’t over-spend. Over-spending could serve as an anchor on economic vitality and growth.”

We’re still waiting for the boy who cried wolf to veto something.

Wanna see something really scary? Here’s a video that leaked online last year of a fake news broadcast that was part of the Department of Homeland Security’s TOPOFF 3 terrorist attack drill. The level of detail completely freaks me out.

While my mind is stuck in 9/11 mode, does anyone who was glued to CNN on that evening remember seeing them cut to an empty street scene and hold on it for a few seconds before their reporter popped into frame from the bottom of the screen like a jack-in-the-box? After spending an entire day in crushing despair, that little moment of levity was really cathartic. I wish I had a clip of that to share with everyone.