Washington Post Confirms Felt Was 'Deep Throat'

Washington Post Confirms Felt Was 'Deep Throat'. I know I thought it was William Safire -- so, I just may owe someone coffee on this.

On the upside-- this man is an American hero, and should be saluted.

He will never be praised by the government, and possibly villified by Bush. But he did the people of the United States an enormous service, at great risk to himself.

Mark Felt -- 91 -- is Deep Throat

The former number 2 man at th eFBI in the early 70s comes out to say he was the source Woodward and Bernstein called "Deep Throat" according to this Vanity Fair esclusive.


woo hoo! Suddenly, the day is more interesting.

PostSecret

The NYTimes has an article on confessional blog postsecret . The confessions posted there are hilarious, because to get posted there, you must write your confession on a 3x5 and mail it in -- a sufficient filter to keep out the lazy.

My favorite: "I got a parking citation and so did the car next to me. I replaced the ticket on the car next to me with mine. My ticket got paid. And the one I took? I mailed it to postsecret."

Coldplay? Nah, Cellphone

Superband Coldplay's song "Speed of Sound" might have been number one of the British singles chart, but a cross-over hit, "Crazy Frog Axel F" outsold it 4 to 1, and so took the top spot.

Never heard of "Crazy Frog Axel F"? Perhaps not surprising. Because it is a cellphone ringtone.

First Lady Endorses Mubarak Election Plan - Yahoo! News

Hosni Mubarak breathed a sigh of relief today when he heard thatLaura Bush is endorsing his election plan.

Mubarak is widely expected to run. When the First Lady was asked about the possibility of their plans falling through, Laura replied "To quote the great President and Statesman Abraham Lincoln: 'Fuck 'em! "

She Just May Fuck You Blind

Beware the literalists!

Agreement Between Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem

Both of them heckeled Laura Bush. Says George W.: "Boy, I'm sure glad I didn't go!"

Santorum in the NYTimes Magazine

An interesting article on Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA; that guy who likes talking about men having sex with dogs), number 3 of the Republican Senate Leadership in The New York Times Magazine

• In 1999, the family received a malpractice award after [his wife] Karen Santorum sued a chiropractor in Virginia. She testified that she sought treatment for back pain after childbirth in 1996 and suffered a ruptured disk from an improperly administered spinal manipulation. Santorum has been a vocal critic of large malpractice awards and has backed measures to limit damages. Karen Santorum asked for $500,000 and was awarded $350,000 by a jury. A judge finally reduced the award to $175,000, of which Santorum said they received about $75,000 after their lawyer took his share. ''I'm not against all lawsuits,'' Santorum said. ''I think they're appropriate where the case warrants it, and this one did. It was not frivolous.''"
  
  
• He has six children between 2 and 14 years old, earns $162K/year as a Senator, and claims he has no savings for their college tuition. He and his wife own a home in Pennsylvania, and one in Virginia. It seems that he is among the less well heeled in the Senate.
  
  
• He uses the term "experts" derisively. It gives the appearance that he equates trained competence with arrogance. This is not uncommon among those who have been disappoitned by trained competence.

Quebec Separatism

For those of you wondering if -- honestly -- a separatist movement in a G8 nation can be a real, honestly held one,
here's an article about Quebec separatists, and the fact that, for the past 25 years, they have enjoyed somewhere between 30-50% support in Quebec.

Dead End Job?

Scholarships available! Why stay down when you have options?

NYT to wall off the Op-Eds

Read it and weep, folks. Not so much because we will miss the columnists per se (or are you going to fork over $49.95 per annum?), but because it will make the NYT pretty much irrelevant in a world of omnipresent (if lower quality) content and omnipresent (if less intelligent) opinion.

The NYT were - are - world leaders, but the Company will find it impossible to maintain their leadership from within a walled bastion.

Believe-it-or-not quote from the Publisher, the 4th-generation Arthur Ochs "Pinch" Sulzberger:

The advertising growth on the Web has been just spectacular the last few years. But like any business, it's going to mature over time, and when that happens, it will flatten and then you'll get into the normal cycles just like we do it on print. And at that point you're really going to need to have another revenue model.

In other words, the main reason why they are switching to paid subscriptions now is that web advertising revenue has been increasing too quickly. Way to read the tea leaves, Pinch - charging for access is sure going to take care of that problem!

Raise a Glass to the SC

They have put an end to the nonsense that allowed New York and Michigan (and most other states) to ban out-of-state wine shipments while protecting shipments from in-state wineries. It's basic interstate commerce clause, folks (although apparently 4 out of 9 justices disagree with me - don't ask me to explain their arguments; ask Clarence Thomas).

Bob noted it here when oral arguments were made before the court. While the laws have obvious benefits for wine distributors in a state, they have been bad for consumers all around.

So let's all raise a glass to the Supremes - or 5 of 9 of them, anyway: We are become one nation, under Bacchus, with zinfandel and pinot for all.

Bush's Pastoral Bike Ride

Salon has a nice follow-up discussing media coverage of Bush's pastoral bike ride during the Cessna-induced emergency in our nation's capitol (see my initial thoughts).

New and intriguing factoid: The two Secret Service agents who were out jogging with the President knew about the emergency and did not tell him. Thus the subject of Scott McClellan's passive construction - a determination was made that the threat posed no danger to the President - is revealed to be... those two agents!

It's almost enough to make you wonder if they jog around with "I'm with Stupid" T-shirts on.

Voinovich, and the underhanded nod

Yesterday, I had unfortunately heard on NPR that the Bolton vote would go to the Senate floor despite the reservations of Voinovich.

Voinovich had previously prevented the Senate up-or-down vote , but allowed it out of committee this time after personally speaking with Condi Rice when she assured him that Bolton would be under her constant supervision.

The punchline is that later, Voinovich said he regrets not asking why she would back a candidate that NEEDS CONSTANT SUPERVISON.

Meanwhile, pundits are saying that the approval of this nomination will be an affirmation of the President's political mandate. If Bush can constantly feed the American public bullshit, then cram in this little piece of distasteful filth and call it dessert, what else can't he do? Let's remember here that Bolton couldn't even get a letter of recommendation from his former boss (Colin Powell), and that really speaks volumes.

Hasselhoff still winning awards for Knight Rider

Seriously, how is Bollywood supposed to gain credibility by handing out awards for international star of the year to David Hasselhoff?

When you're still winning awards for shows you did 25 years ago, it's called a "Lifetime Acheivement Award".

Hopefully, they'll get it straight next year.

President Bush Not Helpful in Crisis Situations

White House Press Spokesman Scott McClellan asserted a remarkable fact today. Asked at the daily press briefing why President Bush was not informed of the incursion of a Cessna into protected airspace above Washington, DC - and instead was "left alone" to finish his 50-minute bike ride in suburban Maryland - McClellan stated:

A determination was made that the threat posed no danger to the President since he was at an off-site location, and protocols were in place to protect people in the area of the threat. Those protocols did not require any Presidential authority.

Yeah; got it. In a crisis situation - plane threatens Capitol, White House, Mall, etc. - the apparatus of our Federal government worries not about whether Bush is in charge, but only about whether he is safe. In other words, he is more of a liability than an asset.

Just to drive the point home, let's note that Vice President Cheney was moved immediately to the underground White House situation room, and that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was informed of the incursion and - as the Pentagon spokeman put it - "was available to make any necessary decisions as the situation developed."

Reuters article

Museums: The New Movies

Movies are over. Wide, instantaneous distribution has killed them, along with a lack of innovation. "Have you seen the new blah?" "Of course I've seen the new blah! Everybody's seen the new blah!"

Their replacment is already happening: art shows, culture shows -- basically, museum shows. Their uniqueness to a specific place (once city at a time; with blockbuster shows rolling city to city over years) and the wide cultural embrace they enjoy (accompanied by books, TV shows, sometimes movies, certainly travel opportunities) offer the sought-after cultural cachet. And how do we know this is happening?Because the critics are complaining that museum shows are becoming too crassly commercial. Success!

The Republicans: A Party Without Decent People?

Ya know, this Bolton nomination thing, where the Republicans have a whole head of steam going to make him their head guy at the UN, makes you wonder: do the Republicans have anyone who both is an advocate for their values, and also *doesn't* chase subordinates around hotels, throwing shoes at them when they're pissed?

Or does holding Republican values and being an insufferable asshole have to go hand in hand?

Answers, anyone?

Well, Darn It.

At least I know now why she hasn't been returning my phone calls.

Last Stop Before Novak!

The Plame case progresses. Now that a federal judge has held Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine in contempt for not revealing the source of the Plame leak,their case has been appealed to the Supreme Court. The Court ends their term in a month, and likely won't hear the case until next fall.

So, after the Supreme Court rules that Miller and Cooper can indeed be held in contempt for not revealing the source of their leaks, they'll be imprisoned; and, the prosecuter will say, "Why, lookee here at this big club I got," and go to Robert Novak, to ask him definitively who leaked to him, knowing that if he doesn't roll, it's off to Sneddegar's Cottage. So, it looks like this will all come to a head before Thanksgiving.

join the party party!

Y'all definitely want to hear this. Spectacular Bush-inspired mash-up.

Krugman: The Final Insult

Paul Krugman does outstanding slapdown on Bush's new Social Security "plan", noting that if the economy grows in the next 50 years as it did in the previous 50, Social Security won't have *any* problems whatsoever,

Bush's new plan is supposed to be good for "middle-income" earners, by Bush's rhetoric. Krugman gives the numbers, in comparison to Bush's income tax cut:

Who are you?	What'd you get from Bush's Tax Cut?	What will Bush take from you in Social Security Benefits?
$17K/yr Wal-Mart Employee	nothing	nothing
$60K/yr office manager	$1000/yr	$6500/yr (post retirement)
$1M/yr Swell	$50,000/yr	$9400/yr (post retirement)

Bush's "Social Security Plan" is benefit cuts on the middle-class.

The Hottest Treo Accessory!

Want a nice Bluetooth accessory for your PalmOne Treo? How aboutan Audi A6?

A Full Blown, Truly New Political Tool

I've mentioned the website Tom Delay's House of Scandal before.

However, it's been expanded into something which is a full-blown, new political tool. What the DCCC has done is databased every House Republican's voting history and financial statements, and correlated them with Tom DeLay's.

Thus, they now have a page asking, How Tangled Up With DeLay is Your Member ? You select your state (say, California), and it gives you links to all the Republican House members in California. Click on, for example, "Dana Rohrbacher" -- a Republican from Southern California -- and you learn that Rohrbacher has taken $8583 from DeLay's ARMPAC; that he donated $5000 to DeLay's legal defense fund; that he voted with delay 89% of the time in the past year; that he voted to weaken the House Ethics rules so that DeLay could stay party cheif while under indictment; that he voted to turn back the Democratic attempt to fix this rule.

By using database and web technology, the DCCC has a tool which ties Tom DeLay's dirty politics directly to every single Republican member of the house -- and can tell you just how much money and backrubbing has been going on between your representative and Tom DeLay, with no effort whatsoever. This brings home the tie between DeLay and every single House member, so that his scandals have direct impact on how each and every one of them is perceived.

And that's a new tool.

Bush Fails Darfur

Nicholas Kristof has been calling for someone -- anyone -- to help stop the hundreds of thousands of people who are in slow-motion genocide (slow-motion, from the stand point that we've been watching them being systematically murdered, raped, and starved for years, and have taken no action to stop it -- that is, the slow-motion is ours), while George W. Bush fiddles. Kristof counts 113 days since Bush even mentioned Darfur in public -- negelcting to condemn Bush for his letter tellilng Congress to kill a bill which would stave off the genocide, in order to avoid angering a back-channel anti-terrorist connection with the Sudan's leaders. Fiddling, indeed.

And today, the OpEd writers trip over themselves pointing out the deaths happening again -- and not "never again", as we've promised so many times. Tom Malinowski in the WaPost OpEds calls Darfur Bush's Bosnia.

Cartman Victorious!

Frank Rich writes a nice OpEd on the culture wars in the New York Times today. The Right now claims South Park for it's mocking self-righteous Hollywood liberals. The left always liked its lambasting of censorious Right (most famously in SOUTH PARK: BIGGER LONGER AND UNCUT). Who wins? It seems, Cartman emerges, victorious!