Coming Home

I want to see this first thing when I log on tomorrow...

Another Canary in the Coalmine

Scott Horton has been closely following the story of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, who is currently serving a seven-year, four-month prison sentence on charges of bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud. Horton is a Columbia law professor and a contributor to Harper's magazine. This is his interview with Amy Goodman.

Friday Music Blogging

Ace Frehley - Back In The New York Groove

Look out, NYC! I'm heading home!

Friday Kitten Blogging

Dadby's ushuwallee home by now!!!!!1

Nobady Asked Me, But

1) We probably need something like this in America: The Silly Season

2) Of course, we might have it already.

3) "Bend it like Beckham"...I don't think anyone thought it was about taking the money and running...

4) Well, I suppose it had to happen: smoking mittens.

5) Why the market crash isn't going away anytime soon.

6) Not that this is a new idea, but one can hope it will gain some popularity now.

7) Beware of Greeks bearing gifts...particularly if they're delivering for Austrians.

8) This movie might be worth seeing.

So Awesome!

I think I may have linked to this site before, but for my tax$$$, the Hubble is the best thing NASA does. First I wanted to link specifically to the gallery, then to "The Sky in Google Earth", with the latest news on the project with Google (the Orion Nebula is spectacular!), then to the breakthroughs in the Discoveries section..........
I can't decide.
So just go here
and decide for yourself
and oooo and aaaah.

An Interesting Editorial

In this guest essay, former Democratic congressional staffer Brent Budowsky challenges the party's Washington establishment to finally act on principle, not political calculation:

Here is my answer to Kenneth Pollack, Michael O’Hanlon and the latest tragic evasion and spin on the Iraq War currently circulating in high Democratic circles:

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

Because it's nearly Christmas....

Another Rudy Blunder

Likely, by the time you read this, Rudy will have retracted at least some of this comment, but it's worth talking about anyway:

DERRY, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, whose strained relations with his children have drawn unwelcome attention in the race for U.S. president, asked on Thursday that voters "leave my family alone."

The former mayor of New York conceded there were "complexities" among his relatives but said any troubled relationships were irrelevant to his performance in public life.

"I love my family very, very much, and I would do anything for them," he said at a town hall meeting. "The best thing I can say is, kind of, to leave my family alone, you know, just like I'll leave your family alone.

On the face of it, a fair statement to make. It's "none you busaness" as we say here in the city.

Except....

"If you want to judge me or I want to judge you, we'll judge each other on our public performance. I don't know your private life. You don't know my private life," he said.

Then why the gay bashing, Mr. Giuliani? Why the flip flop on a woman's right to choose? Indeed, if it works for you, that we should stay out of your personal business, then it works the other way, that people should be free to live their lives as privately as living in any society should be allowed, free from the burden of having to defend their (legal) choices and not be forced to hide behind cloaks and shutters in order to be who they are?

And, sir, we might point out that it was YOU who dragged your problems with Donna Hanover out into the public spotlight, announcing your adulteries and your intentions to divorce at, of all things, a press conference during your abortive run for Senator from New York! Who does that, drags his spouse through that kind of public humiliation and THEN a few years down the road decides, no no, it's my life, go lead your own life, leave me alone?

Is a press conference a private matter? YOU put your family history on television for the world to digest. Sorry, but you don't get a mulligan here: you took the shot and now you ought to expect to be questioned on it closely.

And I say that as someone who has tried (and admittedly failed) to keep stories about Jenna and NotJenna Bush off this blog, because frankly, they didn't run for President.

I'll be out of the country when this post runs, and I don't expect you'll have had a change of heart regarding this comment, but just know it will come back to haunt you if I have my druthers here.

Let's Ruin TWO Celestial Bodies!

Look, I'm all for space exploration AND for colonization of other planets. As Steve Hawking points out, it's foolish to have all our eggs in one basket when we can easily spread out a little and thus ensure the survival of the species.

But...:

The moon should be developed as a sanctuary for civilization in case of a cataclysmic cosmic impact, according to an international team of experts.

NASA already has blueprints to create a permanent lunar outpost by the 2020s.

But that plan should be expanded to include a way to preserve humanity's learning, culture, and technology if Earth is hit by a doomsday asteroid or comet, said Jim Burke of International Space University (ISU) in France.

Burke, once a project manager on some of the earliest American lunar landings, now heads an ISU study on surviving a collision with a near-Earth object.

First, I wouldn't trust anything this administration's "Space Agency" has to say. Second, it's not about preserving our learning, culture and technology, because in point of fact, that's precisely what has brought us to the brink of creating a world nearly inhabitable by us, and certainly by nearly any other species above the cockroach!

No, the point about colonization is to find new ways of answering old questions, to find better ways of solving the basic problems of life: sustenance, sanitation, shelter, and then getting those answers back to Earth.

To move us to the moon when we're threatened with doom (which is silly, when you think about it: no Earth, no more Moon, in all probability) is pretty dumb. It's like buying a new house and moving only because the old one is burning.

I want to see man expand his horizons, not drag them with him to some place with a better view.

Moron Rove

I see David Corn feels the same way that I do about Karl Rove: best present the Democrats have ever gotten!:

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of Tom and Daisy, "They were careless people...they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back to their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." Rove is certainly more careful than Fitzgerald's characters--careful when it comes to politics and doing whatever is necessary to win. But with Bush, he recklessly steered this country into a debacle in Iraq that has caused the death of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and that has ruined the United States' reputation abroad. Bush, Rove, Dick Cheney and the rest did so with little understanding and with insufficient planning, and they sold the war to the public with bad information and blatant misrepresentations. (Rove was part of the White House Iraq Group that devised the prewar messaging.) Rove deserves not reward but punishment. A fitting sentence would be for Rove to stay to the bitter end so he can sweep up the turds he is now leaving behind.

David, it would only give him more time to screw things up worse for the country.

Which would only be more good news for Democrats, although it would pretty much be a Pyrrhic victory in 2008.

Still, my faith in America and the American people remains unshaken: barring the entire country plunged to a depth of 200 feet under the seas, we can rebuild. We can restore. We can make it better than it was in 2000.

The Republicans threw Rove under the bus when it became clear he was a master at the short term but couldn't wrap his tiny mind around the fact that he'd actually have to get something done in eight years.

Bush has done nothing, and I do mean, nothing, to warrant any mention in the history books beyond the absolute basic "He was President for eight years, and managed not to get half the population killed" caretaker notice that was reserved for Presidents like Ford and Grant.