The Rest Of The Week In Review

My afternoon activities took me right into the evening...

• Turns out that one of the girls who appears in the now-legendary "3 AM" ad filmed it 10 years ago, she's 17 now and she was a precinct captain for Obama in Washington state. Which is a completely meaningless, yet fascinating, turn of events. That would be the B story in the romantic comedy version of the Clinton-Obama battle, which ends with Barack and Hillary marrying, along with Bill and Michelle. Alas, in reality, you won't even see them on the same ticket.

• I never got my cracks in on Charlotte Allen's pathetic "Aren't Women Stupid" article in the Washington Post, or her even stupider chat session where she blithely said that "Katrina was the best thing to happen to New Orleans because it finally opportunity to a huge number of New Orleans residents living in passive dependency on welfare to get out of New Orleans and change their lives for the better." Katha Pollitt said everything that needed to be said about it, but it ought to be emphasized that misogyny is far too allowable in civil society, the real "last frontier" of public hatred. When you have a media where someone like Chris Matthews has to be warned on the air against calling a woman a bitch, and where Charlotte Allen can get that garbage published, this becomes even more pronounced.

• Not that other prejudices don't get blurted out in public from time to time. Like from Garrison Keillor, homophobe. Actually, if his show was as controversial as that article maybe I would have listened to it without falling asleep.

• I never read "The Merchant of Death" but I did see (and marginally enjoy) "The Lord of War," so seeing the guy on which the story is based, gunrunner Viktor Bout, arrested, it was something of a relief. Has anyone been at least indirectly responsible for more death and misery?

• As someone who unfortunately watches too much Hardball and then is too lazy to change the channel, news of the cancellation of smug loser Tucker Carlson is welcome news, although he won't be completely humiliated by being kicked off MSNBC, alas.

• When Paul Krguman has no idea what to do to avoid or even mitigate a recession, you know we're in a huge world of shit. George McGovern thinks it's about promoting individual freedom of choice rather than bailing out those who made bad decisions, but of course any bailouts aren't going to be about individuals, but the economic system at large. $325 billion in margin calls is a recipe for an absolute meltdown. That's how fucked we are.

• After the big win in IL-14 over the weekend, I'm ready for any good news on more Republicans set to go down to defeat. Here's one in MI-07, where Mark Schauer is polling ahead of first-term Club for Growth nutjob Tim Walberg.

• Gaza is a sewer right now, and this is the worst humanitarian crisis since 1967, in part because of the Israeli blockade, in part because of the Hamas-Fatah civil war. Anyone that thinks peace is possible right now is crazy. They just need supplies.

• This is a fine article about the dot-org boom that has sustained and advanced the progressive movement since the late-90s. This new generation of progressive organizations are not organized around a single issue but a general sense of civic engagement. You have to get people inside the tent before pushing any specific policy, so this is a good step.

• I await more revelations from David Iglesias' book. The first; he was specifically told by a fellow US Attorney that his firing was political.

• Finally, according to one researcher Moses was stoned when he brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai. The idea that psychedelics and hallucinatory drugs played a part in the creation of the Bible isn't exactly surprising, but I'm wondering what's the excuse of those true believers who AREN'T on drugs.