Since pontificating like a third-rate Mr. Blackwell seems to be the modus operandi for the “most trusted name in news”, then I guess it’s perfectly sensible to point out that Jean Schmidt looks like she’s been shopping at the Von Trapp family’s garage sale…

…Rick Santorum looks like a color-blind televangelist…



…and George Bush still isn’t a cowboy, construction worker, or an army man. He’s just a fool.

Looking around on my hard drive for a photo of myself, I found this :

I don’t know where the hell that photo came from, but I can assure you it isn’t me. I’m not a doctor, nor am I a gun-slingin’, superhero/cowboy with a sidekick named Stuff, the Chinatown Kid. I’m not that cool.

But, of the people I share a name with, there’s one person I am cooler than, the other Greg from Tulsa whose Amazon wishlist has been confused with my own. That guy’s wishlist has five books on poker, two books on selling real estate, “The Self-Esteem Workbook”, and ” The Anger Control Workbook”. It sucks to think that my friends and relatives are looking for my wishlist and think I’m an emotionally-immature douche who believes in get rich quick schemes. My wishlist is here and it’s awesome.

Head’s up, everybody. With John Bolton announcing his “resignation” (or, acceptance of the fact that a Democratic Senate will never confirm a nutcase with anger-management issues to be our ambassador to the United Nations), you’ve only got a few more days to make fun of this glorious mustache :

If we chose our representatives based on mustache-milkiness, Bolton would get a lifetime appointment.

I’m not a blog-triumphalist by any means. I think anyone who entertains the notion that blogs and bloggers are better journalists or are more/less ethical than their mainstream counterparts is fooling themselves. Blogging is just another communications medium and as such can only be as good or bad as the person supplying the content. Given the unique aspects of blogging, there are certain things that blogs are better at than traditional media, but anyone trying to draw broad conclusions is going to look like a fool. Blogs are like television. For any bit of great content (Heroes or Unclaimed Territory) there’s a lot of shit (Studio 60 or Little Green Footballs).

Having said that, let me join the chorus of bloggers who think this NY Times op-ed is hypocritical bullshit. (via Atrios)

The Netroots.” “People Power.” “Crashing the Gate.” The lingo of liberal Web bloggers bespeaks contempt for the political establishment. The same disdain is apparent among many bloggers on the right, who argued passionately for a change in the slate of House Republican leaders — and who wallowed in woe-is-the-party pity when the establishment ignored them.

You might think that with the kind of rhetoric bloggers regularly muster against politicians, they would never work for them. But you would be wrong.
. . .
But this year, candidates across the country found plenty of outsiders ready and willing to move inside their campaigns. Candidates hired some bloggers to blog and paid others consulting fees for Internet strategy advice or more traditional campaign tasks like opposition research.

Nevermind the fact that the premise of this piece is built upon the ridiculous strawman that all bloggers are anti-establishment and that working within “the establishment” represents selling out. The thing that really irks me is that this is, as Atrios noted, an arbitrary standard that doesn’t seem to apply to mainstream journalists. The fact that bloggers are sometimes employed by campaigns is a matter of public record, but the same can’t be said about the multitude of ways journalists have sold out and cozied up with the subjects of their reporting.

The media elite are so deeply ingrained with the Washington establishment, it’s a wonder people even bother to rhetorically separate the two any more. Bill Kristol made the case for the war in Iraq with Cheney and Rumsfeld while NY Times writer Judy Miller helped sell it. Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, David Gregory and dozens of their peers are commanding top dollar to appear at private speaking engagements. NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell is married to former fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Barbara Walters is hosting dinner parties for war criminals. Tell me, again, why are blogger conflicts of interest more newsworthy than the far more numerous examples from the mainstream media?

One of the notions I keep hearing pop up from time to time regarding the clusterfuck that we’ve made of Iraq is that the Bushies, desperate for a way to pull out of Iraq and declare victory, will just pick a side in the civil war and go with it. As the Washington Post recently wrote :

The Bush administration is deliberating whether to abandon U.S. reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shiites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government, according to U.S. officials.

The proposal, put forward by the State Department as part of a crash White House review of Iraq policy, follows an assessment that the ambitious U.S. outreach to Sunni dissidents has failed. U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that their reconciliation efforts may even have backfired, alienating the Shiite majority and leaving the United States vulnerable to having no allies in Iraq, according to sources familiar with the State Department proposal.
. . .
A second danger is that the United States could appear to be taking sides in the escalating sectarian strife. The proposal would encourage Iraqis to continue reconciliation efforts. But without U.S. urging, outreach could easily stall or even atrophy, deepening sectarian tensions, U.S. sources say.

Of course, the term “sectarian strife” glosses over the most troublesome aspect of this scenario. If the United States abandons the goal of reconciliation in Iraq, we will appear to the Arab world to have picked sides in a thousand-year-old religious war. To the Islamic world (who actually know the difference between Shi’a and Sunni), this would be seen as American endorsement of the idea that the early Islamic leadership should have gone to Muhammad’s cousin Ali rather than the three caliphs who succeded Muhammad. To Western ears that may seem like not that big a deal, but this is roughly equivalent to taking an official stance on whether Catholics or Protestants are the true inheritors of Jesus’ legacy. Not only does favoring one religious sect over another seem to clash with the establishment clause of the Constitution (not that the Bush Administration gives a damn about Constitutional protections), but it puts us at odds with the vast majority of the Islamic world.

Then again, maybe American endorsement of Shi’a Islam will help calm down the tensions with Iran.