• From the Political Wire:
  

  When asked to name their favorite electronic gadgets, the AP notes Sen. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Fred Thompson picked their iPods while Sen. Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Gov. Bill Richardson chose their Blackberries.
  
  Rudy Giuliani was the least technologically advanced of the group picking his CD player.

  
  If only his other policies were stuck in the 90's . . .
  
  
• It's a relief to know that Mike Huckabee thinks that a consenting sexual relationship between two responsible adults of the same gender isn't quite as bad as fucking a corpse.
  
  
• Apparently there's talk of Chris Dodd ousting Dead Fish Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader. I would have a part in his honor if that happened. No one would come to that party, but I'd have it anyway
  
  
• Teflon:
  

  This Larry Craig guy. First he’s able to elude that embarrassing recant on his pledge to resign, then he dodges those Ethics Committee hearings McConnell told us we’d get, then EIGHT MEN relate their stories of gay sex with this hypocrite, and where does it bring him today? To the White House as an official guest for a signing ceremony. [Pause, so as to consider]. Larry Craig is the best politician of our era.

  
  
  
• If Bloomberg runs for the presidency under a centrist platform, does that liberate the Democrats to be actual liberals? Or do they stick to the MOR course and hope that their brand of heavily watered down liberalism sound better than Bloomberg's?
  
  
• I think Bob Kerrey has managed the unexpected feat of endorsing both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for president.
  
  
• Tom Tancredo has dropped out of the presidential race. I am very much hoping that his absence from the national conversation in this election will allow some measure of sanity to return on the topic of immigration.
  

Top 20

So, I did almost nothing worthwhile over the break. It was sort of magnificent. So magnificent, in fact, that today I decided to continue doing frivolous things and just publish my list of my favorite albums of 2007. Please note that I'm not calling these my "best of 2007" because there are probably better records that aren't on my list, but these are the ones that have made me real happy. Links are included to more detailed reviews (they're not all up at this time, but hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow, I'll have a complete set).

Honorable Mention (I can't put it on the list because it's a single and not an album): Vee Dee - Glimpses of Another World

Dishonorable Mention (Because it's just that bad, and the people need to be warned): The Stooges - The Weirdness

20. Marnie Stern - In Advance of the Broken Arm
19. Boris with Michio Kurihara - Rainbow
18. Throbbing Gristle - Part Two. The Endless Not
17. Terror Visions - World of Shit
16. Scott Walker - And Who Shall Go to the Ball? And Who Shall Go to the Ball?
15. Cornelius - Sensuous
14. Yoko Ono - Yes, I'm a Witch
13. MARVELKiND - State of the Artificial
12. Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond
11. Miss Alex White & the Red Orchestra - Space & Time
10. The Busy Signals - The Busy Signals
9. Grinderman - Grinderman
8. Enon - Grass Geysers . . . Carbon Clouds
7. The Book of Knots - Traineater
6. The Black Lips - Good Bad Not Evil
5. Thurston Moore - Trees Outside the Academy
4. The Coathangers - The Coathangers
3. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
2. Bobby Conn - King for a Day
1. The Veils - Nux Vomica

[EDIT: The list has been expanded to 20, because dammit, I just couldn't help myself. I couldn't stand to bump anyone out of the originally posted 15, but I couldn't bear to leave the others off the list. And while I did what I said I wasn't going to do and ranked them, every single one of these records is AWESOME and I had a hell of a time organizing this list. For example, it breaks my heart that Miss Alex White didn't get into the top ten, but there are too many people making good music these days. Bastards.]

Last year at Christmas, James Brown died. Today, Oscar Peterson died. Christmas is a bad time to be a legendary musician.

Alberto Gonzalez doesn't recall the last time he said something so memorable

Congratulations to one Senator Joe Biden of Delaware for being the most quotable man of the year -- not for topping the list of the most memorable quotations of 2007, but for being the only person to appear on it twice.

The list:

1. "Don't tase me bro" - Florida student Andrew Meyer as he was arrested for heckling Senator John Kerry.

2. "I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the US should help the US or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us." – Miss South Carolina Lauren Upton.

3. "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country" - was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comment during a speech at New York's Columbia University.

4. "That's some nappy-headed hos there" – shock jock Don Imus' comment about a university basketball team that cost him his job.

5. "I don't recall." - Former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' repeated response to questioning at a congressional hearing about the firing of US attorneys.

6. "There's only three things he (Republican presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani) mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11." - Senator Joseph Biden, speaking at a Democratic presidential debate.

7. "I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody (Vice President Dick Cheney) who has a nine per cent approval rating." - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat.

8. "(I have) a wide stance when going to the bathroom." - Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig's explanation of why his foot touched that of an undercover policeman in a men's room.

9. "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man." - Biden describing rival Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

10. "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." - Former President Jimmy Carter in an interview in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper.

Tunguska Event

I've just finished my last exam and posted my final paper, which heralds the end of the fall semester and the beginning of a month of personal reading time. Having written over 10,000 words in the last two days, and with the general feeling that my brain might at any time simply drain like chunky applesauce out my ears, I'll be going easy on the links tonight. Oh, yeah, and it's Friday.

• I don't agree with everything said in this piece, but if you're interested in one perspective on what is going on in Russia, I'd recommend you check out this TPMCafe post.

• Via this article on Wired.com:

• Insurance company denies a client payment for a liver transplant, stating the procedure was experimental and outside the scope of coverage.

• Doctors write a letter to the company saying patients suffering similar complications and undergo liver transplants have a 65% six-month survival rate.
  

• Ten days later, the insurer reverses the nonpayment decision, but the young woman dies a few hours later.

• Bill Clinton has an iPhone, apparently.

• Mars stands a pretty good chance at getting smoked by a massive asteroid next month.

• "The asteroid, known as 2007 WD5, was discovered in late November and is similar in size to an object that hit remote central Siberia in 1908, unleashing energy equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb and wiping out 60 million trees."

• If the space rock hits, astronomers predict it will create a hole in Mars the size of Meteor Crater.

Sounds like it should be a pretty good show as long as it stays the hell away from Earth. Tune in next month.

Now, get out there and enjoy the weekend.

Aw, Hell, it's Mike Gravel!

Due to a presently unfinished paper which is due later today, I didn't have an opportunity to write a post last night. In my view, the absolute weirdness of Mike Gravel completely makes up for this failing. This video's damn sure better than any of those other candidates' Christmas/Holiday ads that the media has been obsessing over for the last week.



Alright, that's it. Next Christmas we're spending it with Duncan Hunter.

Good evening, I'm Wyl. Tim has the night off.

Tim's taking the rest of the week off, so I'm going to try to fill in for him a bit. It's finals week for me here in Madison, which means I'm not going to go link crazy, but I thought I'd at least keep the chair warm for Tim until he's back.

• Time Magazine has named Russian president/Supreme Leader Vladimir Putin 2007 Man of the Year, edging out Nobel laureate Al Gore. A few thoughts:

• Since Mr. Gore has come up short before, I'm sure he's nonplussed by losing out on such a prestigious award. Yes, I'm being sarcastic.
  

• Putin is now tied at one award each with Adolf Hitler (1938) and former Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev (1957) and Yuri Andropov (1983, co-winner with Ronald Reagan). He is still behind notables Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942), Deng Xiaoping (1978 and 1985), and Mikhail Gorbachev (1987 and 1989), but at only 55 years of age and with an absolute iron grip on Russia, I think Putin has a shot at a repeat performance.
  

• On the other hand, at least they didn't give the award to runner-up J.K. Rowling, who should finally just go away already. How does she even meet Time's "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year" criteria? The ghosts of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Madeline L'Engle should be all come back and haunt Rowling for the next fifty years. I'm sure she'll write a book worth reading after that experience.
  

• According to the NYT, it looks like the Bush Administration's lawyers were significantly more involved in the CIA tapes scandal than the administration was previously willing to acknowledge. I wonder if any of those lawyers were over at Dick Cheney's office in the Old Executive Office Building today... Supposedly it wasn't a terrorist attack, but shouldn't we all be checking with Rudy Giuliani before we decide for sure?

• Congressional Democrats are once again flexing their collective spine.

• The Pentagon (with an assist from The WaPo) spins even better than Kool Herc:

• According to the WaPo, the Pentagon has concluded that "Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of 'occupying forces' as the key to national reconciliation, according to focus groups conducted for the U.S. military last month."

• Also according to the WaPo, this is "good news, according to a military analysis of the results. At the very least, analysts optimistically concluded, the findings indicate that Iraqis hold some "shared beliefs" that may eventually allow them to surmount the divisions that have led to a civil war.

• Sounds like Tom Tancredo's presidential aspirations have crashed to earth before they ever even took off. One would hope/imagine a similar announcement from Duncan Hunter isn't too far off. If this country collectively loses its mind and Rudy Giuliani is somehow elected I'm sure both of these fanatics would find jobs within his regime - Hunter as Rudy's SecDef, and Tancredo as head of the INS. Talk about the inmates running the asylum...
  

• Finally, on a sad note, Dennis Kucinich's youngest brother, Perry, was found dead today. I'm sure I speak for Tim as well when I offer condolences to the Kucinich family.
  

I know the world isn't fair, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?

Gore Vidal's column over on Truthdig yesterday brought back some feelings of resentment that had faded into the background over the course of the week (I'm in the midst of fall semester finals).

I don't agree with Mr. Vidal on the particular cause of Rep. Kucinich's exclusion, however. Please consider his assertion reproduced below:

Elements of right-wingism are keeping his voice from being heard, even though there are many millions of us (Kucinich is ahead of both Biden and Dodd in the national polls) out here who like to hear his voice. He is in the great tradition of the original People’s Party of the 1880s; he is in the tradition of George Washington and of Thomas Jefferson, and to silence him with a bunch of political hacks who have made such a mess of our political system, pretending these were the only voices who could talk as presidential candidates ... is it because of their campaign budgets?

Now, I know, as all of you know, that people can come in with millions of dollars, like Romney and so on, and can buy time in Iowa and in the North Pole or wherever it is they are running. They can buy it, but to get an honest member of Congress speaking out for the people of the country is a great and rare thing.

What Mr. Vidal is asserting here is quite a bit of a stretch, at least in terms of the exact particulars on which he chooses to focus. He has erroneously jumped to the conclusion that a vast right-wing conspiracy is excluding Rep. Kucinich from the Iowa debates in the face of a much more simple conclusion - that the mainstream media is not interested in devoting time to candidates which do not boost or maintain their ratings.

Every television minute or inch of column spent discussing the candidacies of Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Ron Paul, or yes, even Alan Keyes is a minute or inch that a competitor can use to steal the media market of Americans grown fat and stupid on the Hollywood headliner political mentality. For the sake of ratings (and thus, income derived from the selling of advertisements) the script must not deviate from the Safe Six of the Democratic side (Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Richardson, Dodd, and Biden in more or less that order of "importance") or the Foolproof Five of the Republicans (Huckabee, Romney, Giuliani, McCain, and Thompson in a somewhat more fluid order).

A much more egregious and recent example of this media glass ceiling for non-headliner candidates is the near-complete media silence after Ron Paul's record-breaking fundraising event on the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party this week. Dr. Paul, who pulled in a haul of over $6 million dollars in 24 hours last Sunday, was virtually ignored by the mainstream media the following day.

I had stayed up until 3am studying for a Russian exam, and throughout the night had monitored Dr. Paul's attempt to break John Kerry's record. Before I went to bed I had learned from Politico.com that Dr. Paul had been successful, but had I not looked specifically for that information I would have gone completely unaware of both the attempt and the ultimate breaking of the record.

No major news source which I checked via Google News - including MSNBC, CNN, FOX News, and the major American newspapers - gave a headline to Ron Paul. Some mentioned it well down in small print on their pages devoted to Politics, while others made no mention of it at all. Curious, I watched cable news that night to see if Ron Paul would make the headlines he might have missed due to the late hour and the nature of press-time deadlines (which would be a weak excuse at best in the age of 24-hour digital news via the Internet). Again, Ron Paul was stonewalled.

When I saw that Ron Paul was tied with Alan Keyes in the most recent Gallup poll of GOP candidates, it seemed pretty obvious to me that part of the reason for this is because the media won't give any exposure to Dr. Paul's campaign. When Ron Paul does seem to get media exposure, it comes from statements like this, or a calculated-to-be-damaging report like this, both of which are amplified by the media to antagonize the voting public and deprive them of any proper context in which to place Dr. Paul. In short, it's yellow journalism designed to mislead and shape the conversation in a way most appeasing to advertisers.

Reexamine Mr. Vidal's words for a moment, with minor changes made for an interesting effect:

Elements of media bias are keeping his voice from being heard, even though there are many millions of us (Dr. Paul is ahead of Fred Thompson in New Hampshire and tied with Rudy Giuliani in Iowa) out here who like to hear his voice. He is in the great tradition of the original People’s Party of the 1880s; he is in the tradition of George Washington and of Thomas Jefferson, and to silence him with a bunch of political hacks who have made such a mess of our political system, pretending these were the only voices who could talk as presidential candidates ... is it because of their campaign budgets?

Now, I know, as all of you know, that people can come in with millions of dollars, like Romney and so on, and can buy time in Iowa and in the North Pole or wherever it is they are running. They can buy it, but to get an honest member of Congress speaking out for the people of the country is a great and rare thing.

Given Mr. Vidal's reasoning, one would expect Ron Paul's $18 million in fourth-quarter earnings to be speaking louder than words. Sadly, Mr. Vidal is mistaken.

This is not to imply that Dennis Kucinich has not been wronged by the media. Last month Rep. Kucinich was running fourth in a Democratic primary poll and made a joint appearance with his wife on CBS' Early Show. In the course of the brief interview the ever-vapid Hannah Storm went to great lengths to repeatedly establish the existence of Mrs. Kucinich's tongue ring. Given the demographic likely to watch The Early Show, I'd say this qualifies as a similar attempt to shift coverage from a candidate's success or stance on issues to a topic which is calculated to be misleading or damaging. The exclusion of Rep. Kucinich from the Iowa Democratic debate is just a step further down the road.

While Mr. Vidal's resort to what I hope was hyperbole at the end of his piece was unfortunate, I was very much heartened to see at least one prominent American speak out against the exclusion of Dennis Kucinich from the most recent Democratic debate in Iowa. It is unfortunate Mr. Vidal hadn't been so moved earlier this year when NBC excluded Sen. Mike Gravel from a nationally televised Democratic debate. It seems from this that Mr. Vidal, while more than willing to bemoan the exclusion of his pet candidate, is willing to look the other way when it comes to the media's silencing of those individuals with whom he disagrees. That, too, should qualify as a form of yellow journalism.

1. The next pundit who uses the word "maverick" within the same article as the words "John McCain" had better have a helmet and some damn good private security.
2. I'm taking the rest of the week off. This week has been and is going to continue to be a marathon, and if I have any free time at work during that marathon, I'd rather spend it reading something more enjoyable than news of Mike Huckabee's dog-murdering son.
   

A Christmas present I wish I could exchange

I might be late to the party on this one, but I just now have found out about Billy Joel's latest composition, "Christmas in Fallujah." I initially caught wind via this TPMCafe post, which linked me to a Huffington Post article by IAVA founder/director Paul Rieckhoff. The Rieckhoff article contains the same video I'm embedding directly below:



My feelings are very mixed on this one. The song itself is interesting and not without merit. It echoes quite a few of the feelings that were going through my mind in the Summer of '04, particularly when contextualized with the neocon proselytizing of my unit by our Evangelical Crusader, Bible-thumping Commanding Officer.

The song's major weakness is simply that I'm not sure it's striking the right tone. Part of the problem is that Cass Dillon - the pipsqueak "singing" the song - is not up to the song from either a musical or maturity standpoint. As a vet, I don't feel like I can respect him or his image. I like that Billy Joel felt that he should give the song to someone of my generation, and I tip my cap to him for that consideration, but I'd have much preferred he give it to someone with more gravitas and testicular fortitude.

Dillon's performance reeks of an extremely unfortunate "pretty-boy newly gone solo from his Metallica tribute band" stench, something I'd expect from some lame douche bag with long hair who thinks a wardrobe rife with Hot Topic clearance rack Tatzenkreuze makes him a musical bad ass, and who is currently living in his parents' basement - but just until he gets the "big break" that is never coming (unless you count playing at every poser-dive bar in white bread suburban Chicagoland).

I sincerely want people to respect this song and who and what it represents (and not just because I'm part of that group). I simply don't think it's possible with the weenie Billy Joel put out there to front it, particularly when his grating, rangeless whine is upstaged by the "Oorah!" chorus.

Isn't there a young performer out there somewhere who has the stones necessary to record a song like this, no matter if they hang externally or not?

Last night I went to see Shellac, who many of you will immediately know is the band of noted analog snob Steve Albini. During the performance, I saw someone pull out a Blackberry. I groaned at the irony. And now I'm complaining about it on a weblog, and am once again groaning at the irony.

• Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY, not to be confused with Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence) is going to have some interesting competition. He's now being challenged by Lt. Col. Andrew Horne, a Marine and Iraq War veteran, who (duh) is running on an anti-war platform.
  
  
• Who watches the watchmen?
  
  
• Sadly, No breaks down a neo-con argument about how Mike Huckabee would be a god-awful choice for ultra-conservative GOP voters, and provides the counterpoint that most of those things would actually make him a better president than, say, George W. Bush. He's interested in social spending and isn't intent on war with Iran. This is why he scares me: he's got some good qualities, but if you buy into those, you get pro-life creationism for free. It worries me.
  
  
• In related news, Romney has acknowledged that he's getting his ass handed to him in Iowa.
  
  
• If any of you have a lot of money on your hands and want to buy me a Christmas present, Dennis Kucinich is selling off Palm Beach County voting booths from 2000, chads and all.
  
  
• Desperate to get his polling numbers above 2% in New Hampshire, Fred Thompson has begun pandering to female voters.
  
  
• I just really can't fucking stand Joe Lieberman. I've decided that I'm going to blame him for Al Gore's loss in 2000, and subsequently the last 7 years of catastrophe at the hands of George W. Bush.
  
  
• I still want Elizabeth Edwards to be president.
  
  
• I'm sorry, but when the man is hauling in over $6 million in a day, including donations from almost 25,000 new donors, you have to take the Ron Paul campaign seriously. I know he'll never be president, but he's tapping into a very potent desire for a lot of people that needs to be recognized by both parties.
  
  
• I cannot tell you how much I'd love to see a brokered convention. Regardless of the fact that it would hobble the GOP, I really like the idea of candidates making deals for support, taking each others' ideas onto their platforms, and generally being forced to compromise for the good of the party. That's why I've been encouraging people to vote their consciences in the primaries this year: voting for a longshot could actually give him some sway.
  

• The quote of the day is from The Onion: "I worry that if the campaign's common denominator gets any lower, it will create an improper fraction."
  
  
• The good news is that Leonard Cohen, Gamble & Huff, and the Dave Clark 5 are going to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The bad news is, so is John Mellencamp.
  
  
• How many bored Korean geneticists does it take to plug in a cat?

No, I will not give you any substantive news today. It's Friday.

In the last 30 minutes, I have received to pieces of god-awful news.

1) Mitt Romney is buying Clear Channel.
2) The Mitchell Report (re: baseball players and steroids) is in, and it's not pretty.

People wonder why listen to sad and/or angry music all the time.

We're all devo

• Sir Elton John, in his infinite wisdom, understands that the internet is not a truck. He does not, however, have any idea what it is or what it's used for, and thinks the tubes should be shut down for five years because music was better when we communicated by telegraph and carrier pigeon. Take that, Radiohead!
  
  
• Send Leonard to CPAC. I promise, it's an investment in making a brighter future for all of us.
  
  
• Democrats are learning from Ronald Reagan's approach to the Cold War: they're trying to get the GOP to spend so much money that they can no longer function.
  
  
• If you're a Christian in America and you feel persecuted because of your faith, Congress has a bill in the works that will help protect you from the godless hordes that make up a small minority of the U.S. population. Note: occasionally incurring the wrath of a deranged lunatic, while certainly tragic, doesn't count as "persecution." Other religions have to deal with the wrath of deranged lunatics too, who are often far more organized.
  
  
• Mitt Romney scores the endorsement of the National Review.
  
  
• In a shocking turn of events, Pope Benedict XVI has broken with millennia of Catholic tradition of nurturing scientific progress and declared global warming to be nothing but "scare-mongering."
  
  
• Mike Huckabee wants Duncan Hunter to be his Secretary of Defense. Eep.
  
  
• What will the political world do when David Yepsen dies and they don't have anyone to explain what's going on in Iowa?
  

And now, for your education, here are a series of informational links about America's Mayor, Rudy Giuliani (thanks to Leonard at Sadly, No, and an unnamed former NYC government employee for supplying some of these links):

1. Regarding his newfound hatred for illegal aliens.
2. Regarding his dubious knowledge of the Iranian Hostage Crisis.
3. Regarding his leadership on 9/11, and his dedication to law and order.
4. Regarding his business relationships with known terrorists.
5. Regarding his stellar handling of race relations in New York.
6. Regarding the police force of which he was so proud.
7. Regarding his views on freedom of the press.
8. Regarding his views on freedom of expression. (Quote of the day: “Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do,” Giuliani said early in his tenure as mayor. “You have free speech so I can be heard.”)
9. And for anyone who thinks they missed anything, you can review with this quiz.

As a bonus today, I will also offer you some choice quotes from presidential candidates in regards to global warming:

Fred Thompson: There are a lot of unanswered questions. We don't know to the extent this is a cyclical thing. This may or may not effect very much. The extremists are the ones who want to do drastic things to our economy before we have more answers as to how much good we can do and whether people in the other parts of the world are going to contribute. It's the fact that our entitlements are bankrupting the next generation. We're spending the money of those yet to be born and we can't continue that way.

Mitt Romney: I don't wanna have America unilaterally think it's somehow gonna stop global warming. They don't call it America warming. They call it global warming. And that means China, which is the biggest Co2 emitter in the world, as well as other nations like Indonesia and Brazil are gonna have to be a part of the global effort. So Kyotowas wrong, because it left major polluting nations out.

And my personal favorite, from Mike Huckabee: And we ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is.

• Tom Tancredo: his new ad may be considered tasteless by some. What effect will this controversy have on his promising presidential aspirations?
  
  
• If you're boxing, you don't wait until the fifth round to throw a punch.
  
  
• "But Mom! He started it!" Somebody send Wes Clark home and tell him not to come back to the campaign trail until he's gotten a clue.
  
  
• I can deal with crazy people on the street cursing loudly at an invisible man named George. The crazy people that scare me are the ones coherent enough to successfully argue their constitutional rights in court.
  

  A federal appeals court Thursday sided with a Kansas woman who believes that God’s hatred of homosexuality requires her to picket funerals for American soldiers holding signs that read “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “God Blew Up the Troops.”

  Shirley Phelps-Roper is part of a Topeka, Kan. church that contends God is punishing the United States for permitting homosexuality by killing soldiers. In response to a August 2005 protest by Phelps-Roper and other members of her church at the funeral of Army Spc. Edward Lee Myers in St. Joseph, Mo., the Missouri legislature passed a pair of laws that prohibited picketing near a funeral location or procession. [...]
  
  As an aside, a visit to the church's website reveals that the church doesn't simply show up funerals. Upcoming targets include Billy Joel (and not for continuing to release greatest hits packages), Ozzy Osbourne, R. Kelly, Mannheim Steamroller(!) and, for some unspecified reason, the University of Kansas basketball game against Ohio University.

• If you don't believe in a God, and don't belong to an organized group that claims to know the ins and outs of the nature of the divine, Mitt Romney thinks you just suck, and you should probably move to Cuba, you godless commie swine!
  

• Here's the question: if you're you going to do something of dubious legality and unambiguous immorality that you're going to have to protect yourself from, like planning the Watergate break-in or torturing someone, why the hell would you tape it to begin with?
  
  
• I don't know if there's such a thing as a "December Surprise," but this will have your jaws on the floor. Ready? Tom Tancredo did not participate in the Spanish-language GOP debate on Univision. I know. Your mind is blown, isn't it?
  
  
• The only reason Dana Perino has a job is because she's the most attractive aryan dumb enough to come near the Bush administration.
  
  
• Thanks to a single magical instance of collective non-hypocrisy (or possibly just good taste) by the Republican Party, Giuliani appears to have seen his presidential hopes annihilated by his inability to control his own penis.
  
  
• At long last, the White House answers all of your questions about Scooter Libby and the Valerie Plame leak debacle . . . if your only question was "has Dana Perino talked with the president about the matter since Libby made his announcement that he's not going to continue his appeals."
  

Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen is dead.

I think I was about 21 when I first heard "Kontakte." My roommate Kelly had decided that the Moog synthesizer was just about the coolest thing ever, and badgered me into reading Analog Days, which got me digging into early electronic music (so I could hear what they were talking about). A lot of it was shrill or boring, or just sort of ham-handed. Many of the early electronic "musicians" were innovators in technique and technology, but had no conception of how to make music out of the sounds they were discovering. Stockhausen was different. He was still leaps and bounds away from anything that resembled traditional composition techniques, but that's what made it so interesting. He had created a whole new musical vocabulary, and was using all of the tools at his disposal, all the sounds he was discovering, to rewrite the rules on how music could be built. It may sound crude in comparison to the electronic music that has come since, in a large part thanks to Bob Moog's efforts to make using that technology more accessible. But Stockhausen was there at the beginning, pushing the boundaries as far as he could.

I'm not sure what else to say about him, but I couldn't let it pass without mention. The man reshaped music as we know it, and I want to recognize that.

• United States foreign policy is now operating under the Code of the West:
  

  America has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

  A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it. […]
  
  “If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse — it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.”

• John Edwards: I care about autism enough to drop $500 on, but not enough to risk my hair for it.
  
  
• Want to know what's happening in Guantanamo Bay? Read a detailed analysis of the 2004 update to the Standard Operating Procedures manual. (From TPM)
  
  
• Some of Hillary's supporters are arming her with stories about being berated and getting angry calls from Obama supporters, which she's using to attack Obama. As far as I can tell, this is just a case of overzealous volunteers who've been stuck at a phone too long getting cranky, and should in no way be transferred to the candidate himself. To quote fictional journalist Spider Jerusalem, "There's one hole in every revolution, large or small, and it's one word long: people." If blaming Obama for his less tactful volunteers is legitimate, then I'd like to hold a posthumous trial for Jesus of Nazareth in order to hold him responsible by association for the Crusades, the Inquisition, all of the Matthew Shepards of the world, witch trials across the globe, and a other atrocities that have been committed in the name of Jesus and his God. However, I don't think it's legitimate, so let's just leave it at that.
  
  
• Wonkette sums it up nicely: "So we’re at a point now where a massive intelligence report says Iran is not making nukes, and Bush responds with they are going to nuke us tomorrow." If you want a really great read on this masterpiece of bullshit, though, check out Froomkin here and here.
  
  
• If anyone wants to read Mitt Romney's speech on being a Mormon president, you can find it here. I actually didn't think it was that offensive. Most of it is about how, as president, he becomes a representative of people of all faiths, of all Americans, and how it's his duty to uphold the law and the Constitution, and not to make religious judgments on behalf of people who don't hold his beliefs. I believe all of that is true. He does not, however, tackle the issue of his participation in a religion whose holy book describes dark skin as a sign of being cursed by God, and how Jesus left Israel in 33 AD and got to America to chill with the Nephites by 34 AD.*
  
  
• Speaking of unfortunate religious practices, the Pope is now granting indulgences to anyone who visits a shrine at Lourdes within the next year or so. They're not selling them, true, but was raised Lutheran, so I was thinking about trotting over to Holy Name Cathedral on my lunch hour and sticking 95 Post-Its on their door.
  
  
• Mike Huckabee defends a science teacher's to teach science, and postulates a heretofore unheard of form of rock and roll that incorporates neither sex nor drugs into the lifestyle around it.
  
  
• This probably won't be the last time I say this, but it deserves to be said and said often: possibly my biggest pet peeve in relation to current events is the term "playing politics." YOU'RE FUCKING POLITICIANS. THAT'S WHAT YOU DO. GET OVER IT. IT'S NOT A SLUR, IT'S YOUR JOB. SHUT UP. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.

This is as much fuming as I can fit in before lunch. More later.


*It's worth saying that I do believe in freedom to be Mormon. Believing that angels showed Joseph Smith where to dig up some golden plates with scripture on them isn't any more outlandish from a logical perspective than say, believing that God parted the Red Sea and every Jew living at the time walked through it without getting a drop on them. I will also say that in my own very limited personal dealings with Mormons, I have found them to be kind, generous people who are dedicated to the collective good of the human race. I don't necessarily think that a Mormon shouldn't be president. I just think Mitt Romney shouldn't be president.

I can see this going real well.

***

Dear Kim Jong Il,

How are you? I am fine. Say, would you tell us all of your nucular secrets? I am concerned about other countries having the same sorts of dangerous things as me. I want to be #1 keeper of dangerous things in teh world. You should tell me what sorts of dangerous things you have so I can tell you not to have them anymore.

Love,
George Bush

***

Dear George,

What are you, deficient? I've never heard anything so dumb come out of anyone that wasn't Portuguese. Do you know what a secret is? It's something you don't tell other people. I can't believe your stupid country would let anyone with hair as bad as yours run the country. And seriously, a letter? Come see me in person. I'll give you a cushy room at one of our finest imperial hotels.

Piss off.
Kim Jong Il

***

He must have gotten the idea to send a letter asking for information from Harry Reid. It always works so well when he tries it.

Back in the saddle

• Diabolical arch-fiend Paul Wolfowitz is back to Washington, this time with a cushy State Department job. One can only wonder what kind of mischief he'll be up to in the next year, but if he lives up to his resume, it will surely involve gratuitous loss of human life and/or abuse of government funds to help this unctuous little goblin get laid. Exciting!
  
  
• I hate to say it, but Karl Rove is a smart guy.
  
  
• The Clintons just can't get past that whole cheap sex fixation, can they?
  
  
• I like that the National Security Adviser is publicly trying to get Dick Cheney's finger off the trigger:
  

  “The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically — without the use of force — as the administration has been trying to do,” Mr. Hadley said.

  
  
  
• Someone at the Romney campaign made a wise choice: deciding that Rudy is only going to dig himself further into the hole he's in on this "shag fund" story, so they're just going to stand by and watch politely. For example, there's really just no good way to account for city police officers getting paid to walk your mistress' dog.
  
  
• It seems Hillary has a little more work to do. First of all, you don't try to explain the nuances of immigration policy in a stump speech: you lay out broad position statements and take care of the details after the election, or in detailed papers available to the press and to particularly diligent voters. Also, what you extra especially don't EVER EVER EVER want to do is attack your opponent for something he wrote in kindergarten. It's sloppy, it reeks of desperation, and it's just plain petty. I look forward to hearing about how her dad could beat up Obama's dad.
  
  
• I just got an email from the Biden campaign with the subject line, "I will eat Rudy Giuliani alive at a debate." If he means this literally, politics just got a whole hell of a lot more interesting.