The worst person in sports, and perhaps in a whole realm of endeavors, is Dick Pound, the autocrat charged with running the World Anti-Doping Agency. Case in point: yesterday's one-year suspension of American medal hopeful in the skeleton, Zach Lund. Mr. Lund was booted out of the Olympics following detection of the anti-baldness medication, Propecia, after a blood test last November. Propecia has an ingredient that can be used to mask steroid use, although it would take an intake of massive proportions for it to have that intended effect.

And Lund, 26, is clearly an individual who has reason to take the drug, a conclusion reflected in the Court for the Arbitration of Sports, which upheld the penalty in spite of issuing a finding Lund to "be an honest athlete, who was open and frank about his failures", and ruling that "it was entirely satisfied that Mr Lund was not a cheat". In fact, Lund had disclosed his use of the drug for some five years before the hammed came down this time, and it took more than a year for the drug screeners to even find the trace amounts of the masking ingredient in his system.

Enter Mr. Pound, whose previous notoriety on this site came last summer, in his role in backing a fraudulent attempt to "test" Lance Armstrong, as well as his frequent attacks on the sports of baseball, soccer, and ice hockey for not dishing out lifetime bans to first-offenders. Pound, exulting over his ability to crush the dreams of an athlete over a technicality, stated that whether or not Lund was a cheat was beside the point:

There have to be other treatments for hair loss, for hair replacement, than stuff that is a masking agent — that are on the prohibited list. I think he was lucky to get one year, frankly. (emphasis mine)

Damned lucky, I'd say; now he won't miss any big competitions in 2007.

In addition to being a clueless asshole, Pound may have done more than anyone to completely discredit his movement for the public to take performance-enhancing drugs in sports seriously. If Lund is not a cheat, if he's taking Propecia to stop male-pattern baldness, without the high blood pressure side effects that other drugs (like Rogaine) have, and not to mask the use of anabolic steroids, which is what the regulation is designed to stop, he shouldn't receive any suspension, much less one that will take him out of a competition he's spent his lifetime gearing for. And he shouldn't have some smug little hitler suggesting that he should have gotten a hair transplant instead.

Reading between the lines of this story, I'd say that the police are looking into The Great One's role in the Tochet Ring, not whether his wife (ie., "actress" Janet Jones) was a degenerate gambler. That is to say, was Gretzky using his spouse to place his action the same way Pete Rose used various sleezeball friends to do the same. If that turns out to be the case, Gretzky's role as Canadian sporting icon and current head coach of an NHL team would take this story out of the curiosity file and into another galaxy altogether.

BTW, it's just a hunch, but what sort of odds do you think we might have a gambling ring, started by and including past members of the Philadelphia Flyers, and not hear the name of John LeClair coming up at some point? Interesting story, that....

LIBRARY TOWER "PLOT" FOILED !!! Or so you might believe if you've been asleep during the last four years. This sounds like more bullshit from the White House, like the use of illegal wiretaps to stop the Brooklyn Bridge "plot". If this is what the Bushies really fear, then they learned nothing from 9/11.

Is there anyone on this planet, with, let us say, an I.Q. over 80, who cares about who wins the Grammy Awards? Can anyone name who won "Best Song" last year? Who won "Best Record" (which, believe it or not, is a different category) two years ago? Is anyone's opinion of Neal Young going to change because he got his gold watch this year, rather than being honored back when he still made music people listened to?

Everyone has fun mocking some of the jokes that were declared the Best New Group (ie., the Milli Vanilli Award), but an even better exercise is to figure out who was sweeping the Grammys the year some seminal band or album broke through. 1956? Wasn't Elvis. 1964? Tain't the Beatles. Never Mind the Bullocks? In Utero? Forget it. But Christopher Cross cleaned up one year....

I suppose the most interesting thing about this story isn't that another celebrity couple has called it splitsville, but that, until recently, Ralph Fiennes was shacking up with a 61-year old woman. [link via Defamer]

Hero of the Day: Bankruptcy Judge Frank Monroe.

We're All Good Germans Now: This is the type of thing that makes me want to surrender my U.S. Passport. It's not that we have a government that would do such things, it's that most of the American public clearly doesn't give a damn. We're going to get blowback from Guantanamo and our other torture camps that would defy the imagination of Noam Chomsky.

UPDATE: A statistical breakdown of who is being held at G-mo, here. [link via TalkLeft]

Within the margin of error? According to the Cook Report, that's the likelihood of the Democrats retaking control of the House in November....

Mickey Kaus points to some interesting focus group data, which seems to suggest that Americans have returned to the historic fallback position of blaming black people for everything, this time concerning the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. Kaus puts his annoying Lord Haw-Haw spin on the topic, but his underlying point is true: that no American political party can win at the ballot box if it relies on the compassion of the American public for the downtrodden. Ours is a selfish nation.

The individualism that fuels the American Dream requires some segment of the public to be exploited. Historically, that role has fallen upon African-Americans, although immigrant groups have also filled the role nicely, and it has been a cornerstone of conservative/libertarian political thought that they deserve their exploitation and poverty (nowadays, of course, it is spoken more in terms of code than in any explicit manner). The shocking scenes and wrenching poverty we witnessed from New Orleans last September temporarily jolted the public, but it takes a lot more than levees collapsing to change ingrained habits of many decades; urban slums, redlining, and "benign neglect" didn't go away just because of temporary outrage over Selma or Birmingham.

Poor people don't vote, at least not in numbers large enough to matter, and they don't otherwise impose their political will upon the rest of society. Their interests don't count, their voices are silent, and the liberal Democrats who represent them tend to do so as a matter of public charity, rather than as the type of constituent service most politicians perform. Events like the '92 riots in Los Angeles initially raise questions about what type of people we are to tolerate such poverty, but inevitably shift over time to what savages "those people" are. It's easier, and cheaper on the wallet, to dehumanize others, rather than actually doing something worthwhile on their behalf. It's the American Way, and liberals better understand that if they want to win elections in the Red States.

Eunochrats: The ever-excellent Digby, on the ruling party:

I've watched this invertebrate GOP caucus since 2000 as they submitted themselves to this lawless administration again and again, shredding every bit of self respect, every figment of institutional pride, every duty to the constitution. The look in their eyes, which is somehow interpreted as strong and defiant by the equally servile media, is actually a window to empty little men who have given up their manhood to oblige their master. The only reward they seek is unfettered access to the taxpayers money for their own use.

We are looking at fifty-five of the most powerful people in the country. Collectively the Republican Senators represent almost a hundred and fifty million citizens. And they have allowed a callow little boy like George W. Bush along with his grey eminineces Karl Rove and Dick Cheney to strip them of their consciences, their principles and their constitutional obligations. What sad little creatures, cowardly and subservient, unctuously bowing and scraping before Karl Rove the man who holds their (purse) strings and dances them around the halls of congress singing tributes to their own irrelevance at the top of their lungs. How pathetic they are.

Barry Goldwater is rolling over in his grave.

Read the whole thing. Unfortunately, there are 19 or so Democrats in the Senate who belie the notion that spinelessness in the face of power is a partisan affliction.

Free Press Kicks Ass: More Muhammed cartoons, here.

With the Rolling Stones scheduled to perform at halftime Sunday, the New York Times notes an earlier, infamous performance by the band, on the same night as the first Super Bowl:

When the first Super Bowl was played on Jan. 15, 1967, it was called the world championship game and the halftime music was performed by the marching bands from the universities of Michigan and Arizona.

But the Stones were also on TV that day, a few hours later, on "The Ed Sullivan Show." They wanted to sing "Let's Spend the Night Together," but Sullivan insisted they change the lyrics to "Let's Spend Some Time Together."

Jagger consented, reluctantly, but rolled his eyes while he sang. A videotape of the telecast seems to reveal him mumbling one chorus as "Let's Spend Some Night Together." At the end of the sloppy performance, the tape shows Jagger and Sullivan solemnly shaking hands and exchanging what can be best described as cold smiles.

The Times also trots out the inevitable interviews with the actual participants for Sunday, many of whom are young enough to be the grandchildren of the Glimmer Twins, who claim never to have heard of the group.

Just the thought that John Kerry apparently pissed off so many of his comrades in the party caucus, by leading a filibuster that was fated not to succeed, is reason enough to take him seriously in 2008. I mean, really, who cares what Chuck Schumer or Barbara Mikulski, or that matter, any of the other careerists that have put the party in the situation it finds itself in today, think about what is politically opportune?

The filibuster not only exposed what an empty shell the lefty blogosphere is when it comes to mobilizing and effecting political change (snark and mau-mauing the media is easy; politics is hard), but it also proved an eye-opener for revealing what a worthless political vehicle the Democratic Party has become. A party that won't stand and fight in opposition has nothing to offer the public in the unlikely event it ever gains a majority. For all the slams Kerry took after the last election, it should be noted that at least he came within an eyelash of winning, while Reid, Schumer and their compatriots were cratering, losing four seats.

Kerry has learned, a year too late, to fight back, even if it is ineffectual. Too bad the rest of the Party in D.C. hasn't.

OIL FOR FOOD!!! OIL FOR FOOD!!! OIL FOR FOOD!!!: I wonder how much play this story is going to get from our Brethren on the Right:

In the United States, a former official has admitted stealing millions of dollars meant for the reconstruction of Iraq.

Robert Stein held a senior position in the Coalition Provisional Authority, which administered Iraq after American and allied forces invaded in 2003. In a Washington court, he admitted to stealing more than $2m (£1.12m) and taking bribes in return for contracts. He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

Robert Stein's story is one of extraordinary corruption and excess amid the ruins of Iraq. He was in charge of overseeing money for the rebuilding of shattered infrastructure in south-central Iraq in 2003 and 2004.

Mr Stein admitted in court to conspiring to give out contracts worth $8m to a certain company in return for bribes. He also received gifts and sexual favours lavished on him at a special villa in Baghdad.

But it didn't stop there. Robert Stein admitted to stealing $2m from reconstruction funds. Some of that money, the court heard, was smuggled onto aircraft and flown back to the United States in suitcases.

Book him a slot on "Big Brother"...but wait, there's more:

Robert Stein, 50, was entrusted with the reconstruction of the central city of Hillah despite a fraud conviction that was apparently overlooked in his Pentagon background check. The former contracting official admitted yesterday that he had conspired to steal more than $2 million in reconstruction money and take kickbacks worth more than $1 million in the form of cars, jewellery, cash and sexual favours. Stein used the money to buy a single-engine Cessna aircraft, a Porsche and a Lexus, as well as other cars, grenade launchers, machineguns, jewellery and property. In a plea deal, he agreed to plead guilty to five felony counts: conspiracy, bribery, moneylaundering, possession of a machinegun and being a felon in possession of a handgun.

The case, which was initiated by a US audit of reconstruction spending, provides a stark look at corruption inside the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that governed Iraq after the invasion in March 2003 until June 2004. Five US Army Reserve officers were also allegedly part of the conspiracy. Two have been arrested. An American businessman based in Romania has also been charged.

Stein admitted accepting at least $1 million in cash and cars, jewellery and sexual favours from women, provided by a co-conspirator previously identified as Philip Bloom. Stein said that he helped to steer more than $8.6 million in contracts to companies controlled by Mr Bloom.

The New York Times has even more on Mr. Stein, who apparently was under the impression (accurately, if only for a time) that he didn't have to make any effort to hide what he was doing. Considering that a little under $9 billion disappeared from the control of the CPA, what this guy did was the proverbial drop in the bucket.

Spiteful bastards: At the same time that they were feverishly seeking to discredit Joseph Wilson, the Vice President and Scooter Libby were armed with a report from then-CIA Director George Tenet, stating that Amb. Wilson was correct as to the substance of his report. Rather than humbly acknowledging they were mistaken, they blew the cover of Mrs. Wilson instead. No freaking honor....

Too little, too late: Why is NARAL being taken to task for its endorsement of Lincoln Chafee, but not for its support of the equally-flaccid clockpunchers Daniel Akaka, Maria Cantwell, and Joe Lieberman? There were enough votes to sustain a filibuster against Justice Alito if 1) a groundswell of support had developed weeks ago; 2) the Democratic minority in the Senate had stuck together (even without the four members who ended up voting for the nominee; and 3) fencesitters within the party had realized there would be hell to pay if they didn't take a stand. What the hell does Chafee have to do with this?

UPDATE [2/2]: More post-mortems, here, here, here, here and here, as well as fellative pats-on-the-back and/or whines about NARAL and Senator Chafee, here, here, here, and here.

Is there some rule that requires us to blog about the State of the Union address? Are we even required to watch the damn thing? ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz.

Barack Obama (D-IL):

"There's one way to guarantee that the judges who are appointed to the Supreme Court are judges that reflect our values. And that's to win elections."

Does anyone honestly believe that the Democrats would have stopped this nomination even if they had a majority in the Senate? When you're a minority party (and remember, Democratic Senators, as a whole, were elected by more people than the GOP "majority"), the filibuster is one of the few tactics that allow you to have any influence. If you're not willing to use it now, then what difference does it make how many Senators you elect? Unless, like the junior Senator from Illinois, you intend to make a career of it in the Senate, and kissing ass and going along with the program becomes more important than, say, defending a woman's right to privacy, or preventing a President from abrogating the Fourth Amendment.

There were nineteen Democrats who voted to end debate this afternoon, who weren't even prepared, like Obama, Biden, Mikulski, et al., to go through the motions of opposing Alito. Five (Lieberman, Akaka, Cantwell, Carper, and Kohl) face the voters in Blue States this year, (btw, all four are pretending to "oppose" the nomination) and both Lieberman and Akaka have strong primary challenges. Support the challengers, and/or encourage said opponents to run as independents in the fall. There should never be a tent large enough to include a Vichy Wing in any political movement.

As a real Democrat once said, I wouldn't piss down their throats if their hearts were on fire.

The time to have mobilized support for a filibuster of Samuel Alito was in early-January, not the final weekend before the vote. If lefty bloggers seem ineffectual and whiny right now, it's their own fault for being more concerned last week with hurt feelings caused by Beltway pundits, rather than the pending approval of the swing vote on the Supreme Court. Setting priorities, then sticking to them, matter.

Filibusters aren't won by convincing a bunch of people to jam the phonelines of Senators at the last second; careerists like Landrieu and Salazar need to be shown that a political price would be paid, that putting a unreconstructed Princeton bigot like Alito on the Supreme Court would not be forgotten, just like Al "The Pal" Dixon's vote for Clarence Thomas wasn't forgotten when he lost his Senate seat in 1992. An angry fax by a non-constituent just doesn't work.

Abramoff is trivial, another D.C. crook in a town notorious for bipartisan corruption. Alito isn't trivial.

UPDATE: Filibuster quashed, 72-25.

Going where the traditional media refuses, Kevin Drum asks, "Is Charles Logan a Republican?" I would guess that it's his deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression and his substitution of bluster and arrogance to mask his inadequacies that give the strongest hint....

So there will be a filibuster against the Alito nomination after all. Although it doesn't look like the Democrats have the votes to sustain the gesture, it will be useful, if only to expose the losers in our own party whose "opposition" is a tad insincere. Being a part of a permanent minority can be liberating, and knowing who can be counted on to stand and fight is a good thing, if only to know where our limited resources should be spent in contesting (and defending) Senate seats.

Long Blonde Line Redux: The infamous photo of the SC song girl, which showed her leaping in the air after an apparent Texas touchdown after a goal line stand, is starting to look more and more like a fraud. Biggest problem: neither Longhorn touchdown on that side of the field caused a goal line scrum, as was depicted in the picture. The fallback position may be that it was on the two-point conversion that followed the winning TD, but that only serves to make the poor girl seem less stupid (after all, she's supposed to be getting the fans back in the game, not mourning a loss that hadn't yet happened). [link via LA Observed, which has been on top of the controversy from the start]

Tough Love: It's a testament to the barren irrelevance of the pre-Welch LA Times Op-Ed section*, and Joel Stein's place therein, that it took me two days to find out that this column had even been published, even though I perused the section on the day in question. But now that he's been the target of attacks from the whole gamut of blogospheric punditry, from Malkin to Atrios, it behooves me to argue that Stein's logic is inescapable. Those young men (and women) who volunteer to serve in the U.S. armed forces either have a pretty good idea of what they're getting themselves into, or are willfully blind about the consequences. As Stein wrote:

But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake.

Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by the cast of "Laguna Beach."

The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that.

(snip)

The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

Our volunteer military is not supposed to be an army of mercenaries. They're supposed to be defending the ideals and principles of America, not just the ideological objectives of a cabal of political hacks. Holding people accountable for their actions may be politically incorrect, but it still needs to be done. Stein's demand that we act as if our soldiers have some degree of self-agency is a useful reminder to those who contemplate enlisting in the Armed Forces during the remaining years of the Bush Administration, that they will be sent to fight on missions, like "Operation Iraqi Freedom", that are wholly unconnected to the defense and service of their country. In the long run, his column will save lives.

*Notwithstanding the Times' outstanding Sunday Current section.

If true, this is absolutely lame (and all the more reason why the blogosphere's unwillingness to unceasingly engage in the debate over the Alito nomination, in favor of more trivial concerns last week, was so critical). I don't have much of a megaphone, but I wish I had done more. What he says.

Come to think of it, Lynn Swann is starting to look better and better....

Someone named Peter Daou presents a Grand Unified Theory of Everything, on the topic of why Democrats lose elections. Of the three hypotheses that get trotted out as to why we lose elections (the other two being that conservatism has historically been the fallback ideology that prevails in American elections, or that some dark conspiracy operates to thwart the true will of the electorate), the one trumpeted by Daou, that it’s due to massive brainwashing of the public by the MSM, is the one that I find most frustrating.

Daou writes:

The same holds true for the Swift-boat sliming of Kerry: much has been made of the Kerry campaign's response or lack thereof, but there's another angle less discussed: the story was a cable staple for days and weeks, unchecked. Had the cable nets and other media outlets covered that story with more balance, more dignity, more judiciousness, more responsibility, it would have been a sideshow. And this has nothing to do with deflecting blame - the Kerry campaign should have known that their enemy wasn't a vindictive crackpot like John O'Neill, but the many 'journalists' and media outlets who rammed the story down our collective gullets.

To suggest, as Daou does, that the allegations made by the “Swift Boat Vets” were “unchecked” by the media, including cable news outlets like CNN (the “news network” run by Rupert Murdoch clearly doesn’t operate under the same standards of purported impartiality as its competitors; its useless to whine that its not being fair to liberals, since that its entire reason for existence), is ludicrous. In fact, the media (incl. that noted totem of the loony left, Chris Matthews) went after the story more vigorously and with greater determination than John Kerry did (see here, here, here, here, and here); in fact, it did so more devastatingly than the lefty blogosphere. If you don't like the fact that when the ads first were aired, CNN could do little more than report the controversy, rather than dig up government records discrediting the claims, repeal the First Amendment.

I know Kerry’s defeat is still a bitter pill to swallow, and that his tepid, lackluster response to the sleazebags who alleged that he was a traitor who faked his military heroism still rankles, but the media’s response to the Rove-generated attack ads was almost universally negative. It may have taken a week or two, but the media did its job. The ads ended up hurting Kerry because he refused to fight back during a crucial period, making him look weak even to voters who were skeptical of the SBV claims, while providing ammunition to those who didn’t like him in the first place.

Furthermore, to imply that those allegations were trumpeted in the same obsessive fashion as the Holloway disappearance or the Lewinsky investigation is disingenuous, to say the least (if you don’t believe me, just compare the number of Nightline episodes involving Monica, or the number of Larry King shows about Ms. Holloway, with the number of times either show focused on the SBV’s during the summer of 2004). In August, 2004, the media, presented with a particularly nasty set of ads, as well as a “victim” who seemed reticent about defending himself, gave the story appropriate play, When, after a few reporters performed the hard, arduous work of examining events that occurred some thirty years earlier, it came down heavily against the SBV’s, to devasting effect against those who had so loudly trumpeted their claims.

Media bashing (or, to use the more dignified term, “media criticism”) is cathartic, easy, and provides ambitious bloggers with a convenient scapegoat to kick. But working the ref is no substitute for having a gameplan for winning. Revisionist history is best performed when the principal actors have been dead for a few decades; it ill-behooves us to perform it immediately afterwards, when the record is much easier to check.

Arsenal 2, Wigan 1 [2-2]: Fever Pitch, my ass...The Latics are through to their first-ever Cup Final (albeit the less-prestigious Carling Cup), after upsetting the Gunners on the "away goals" rule. Wigan, which had won the first game in the home-and-home series, 1-0, came back two weeks later to hold mighty Arsenal to a similar result on their home pitch, saving a penalty kick in the process, then fell behind in extra time, only to score in the last minute to secure the "win". They will play either Man United or Blackburn next month in the Final.

It is no surprise to those of us who have followed his career from the outset that John Doolittle (R-CA) has been one of the Congressmen most caught up in the Abramoff imbroglio. To those of you who are just discovering what a frightening little man he is, here's a taste from the early days, when he was just a State Senator.

To summarize, back in 1984, his state senate district having been reapportioned into the ether by the legendary Phillip Burton, Doolittle moved into the district of a moderate Republican incumbent, Ron Johnson. Johnson, sensing the rightward shift of his party, decided to run as an independent, while the Democrats, significantly outnumbered in the district, put up (if that's the right word; the state party was unofficially backing Johnson, and the nominee barely campaigned) a sacrificial lamb.

Trailing in the last weeks of the campaign, Doolittle hit upon a cagey proposition. As the California Fair Political Practices Committee later put it:

Shortly before the election, Doolittle campaign consultant John Feliz coordinated the production of a mass mailer sent on behalf of Doolittle's Democratic opponent, Jack Hornsby. The consulting services of Feliz and a Doolittle fundraiser, Jim Grubbs, along with 60,000 mailing labels, were contributed by the Friends of John Doolittle Committee to the Friends of Jack Hornsby Committee. The mailer was sent to Democratic households as a tactic to bring Democratic candidate Hornsby into the three-way race with Doolittle and former state Senator Ray Johnson, thus pulling votes away from Johnson to Hornsby for the benefit of Doolittle.

Doolittle ended up winning the election by an eyelash, paid a token fine for his lack of ethics, and has slimed his way to bigger and better things ever since. As with the early career of Richard Nixon, whose campaigns against Jerry Voorhis and Helen Douglas portended even more egregious acts later in life, Doolittle's lack of anything that even remotely resembled an ethical core was evident from the start.

Another perspective on the first six seed to reach the Super Bowl:

Local Boy Makes Good: Congrats, Mr. Welch, on a long-overdue position with the Local Paper of Record !!!

Wouldn't it be nice if lefty bloggers cared as much about the possible confirmation in the next week or two of Samuel Alito, as they do about their hurt feelings generated by a newspaper ombudsman's error? That the question even needs to be asked shows how unready we are to wield power in any positive way.

It's a test of priorities, of what is important and what is trivial, and we're failing it badly. "Working the ref" is something a coach does when his team has the talent to play competitively, and a little bit of verbal bullying on the margins might make a difference. Liberals aren't at that stage yet, even if we can successfully mau-mau the Washington Post into seeing things our way on the tangential issue of Jack Abramoff, his lobbying, and the highly disingenuous qualifier about whether he personally gave money to Democrats (bloggers' spin), merely directed tribes to toss them a dime (Post's spin), or convinced them to give less money to Democrats, without cutting them out (the truth).

What's really important is the corrupting influence of money in political campaigns, something that has been known to afflict a Democrat or two. Bullying newspapers into pretending that Abramoff's style of crookedness is some kind of uniquely conservative ailment, encoded in the genetic structure of Republicans, kills any effort to address that problem. To that end, real liberals back public financing of campaigns, a policy that the bloggers obsessed with Deborah Howell don't seem to care about.

Partisan media criticism is not an inevitable direction for blogs to take; witness the success of substantive bloggers like Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum, or the community building/organizing at Daily Kos. The fact that writing hate mail to newspapers seems to be the popular fad among liberal bloggers nowadays is a cancerous trend, which we must overcome to be worthy of power, in 2006 and thereafter.

LXXXI: There's something about 81 points in a game that concentrates the mind. Like Wilt in the early-60's, Kobe has to play the role of a one-man team, and last night, his heroics were forced in large part by the fact that the Lakers had to overcome an 18-point second half deficit against one of the worst teams in basketball. If he stays healthy and keeps clear of the roadskanks, breaking Chamberlain's single-game scoring record is within the realm of possibility, something I never thought I'd be contemplating.

Over two million people filed bankruptcy in 2005, a 32% jump from the year before, or approximately a half million more filers than in 2004. That's a nice round number, a half million: the number of people who filed the week before YBK last October was just over a half million. Chapter 7 filings were up almost 50% from the year before; about one in 53 households filed for bankruptcy protection in 2005.

At least one Democratic Senator is going to have to face a strong primary challenge this year, but it's not (yet) the one you're thinking of. In Hawaii, Representative Ed Case has tossed his lei into the ring in an effort to unseat the 81-year old incumbent, Daniel Akaka. With a popular GOP incumbent governor, having two octogenarian Senators is increasingly risky for the Democrats, putting at risk any chance the party might have of recapturing (and keeping control of) the U.S. Senate over the next four years.

Case, however, is from the Lieberman "New Democrat" school, with an ambitious streak to boot; after running (and losing) a run for governor in 2002, he won a special election to fill the seat of the late Patsy Mink in 2004, defeating her widower. Having him replace the dependable liberal stalwart Akaka (who himself was appointed to replace a deceased Senator, Spark Matsunaga, in 1990) would be a bitter pill to swallow. Chalk it up to the perils of gerontocracy.

Cuba, si !!! Reversing course, the Bush Administration has o.k.'ed the participation of Cuba in the upcoming World Baseball Championship. Now, the big question is whether Japan will send a real team....

Trivial Pursuits? I know it's not as important as, say, the Washington Post ombudsman deciding not to respond to LGF-style spamming from lefty bloggers, but it appears the battle may finally be joined in the Alito nomination:

A procession of Democratic senators, including two who supported the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., said yesterday that they will oppose the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. They warned that he would not provide a judicial check against the expansion of presidential power or be properly vigilant about protecting the rights of ordinary Americans.

The mounting Democratic opposition underscored the sharp partisan divide that has developed over Alito's nomination, after Roberts was confirmed with 78 votes and solid bipartisan support. But although Democrats appear increasingly united in their opposition to Alito, they remain divided over whether to pursue a filibuster against the nomination.

A filibuster is increasingly less likely, Democratic strategists say, despite pressure from some liberal interest groups for Democrats to keep the option alive. But Democrats are more united in their desire to seek an extended floor debate over Alito -- even as they acknowledge that his confirmation is virtually assured -- because they believe polling shows that the more the American people learn about Alito's record and writings on civil liberties and other subjects, the more they will oppose his addition to the high court.

The newly announced opponents included Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.); Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee; Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the Democratic whip; and Sen. Ken Salazar (Colo.). Leahy and Salazar had voted in favor of Roberts. On Wednesday, Sen. Max Baucus (Mont.), another Roberts backer, said he will oppose Alito.

Baucus' opposition is a pleasant surprise, indicating that it will be very hard for Strip Search Sammy to reach 60 votes. Regardless of what anyone is saying now, once a filibuster (or, shall I say, "extended floor debate") is started on the Senate floor, all bets are off. No Democrat is going to want to be the one who effectively ends Choice by voting for cloture.

Our long national nightmare? It's so over !!! After seven years and $21 million, the inquiry into whether former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros did something horrible enough to justify spending $21 million, Independent Prosecutor David M. Barrett has finally called it a day:

Mr. Barrett began his investigation with the narrower issue of whether Mr. Cisneros lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he was being considered for the cabinet position. He ended his inquiry accusing the Clinton administration of a possible cover-up.

His report says Justice Department officials refused to grant him the broad jurisdiction he wanted; for example, Attorney General Janet Reno said he could look at only one tax year. And after Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington took a Cisneros investigation out of the hands of district-level officials in Texas, the agency deemed the evidence too weak to merit a criminal inquiry, a conclusion strongly disputed by one Texas investigator.

Former officials of the Justice Department and the I.R.S. dismissed Mr. Barrett's conclusions in appendices attached to the report, saying the findings were the product of an inquiry that was incompetently managed from the start.

After being indicted on 18 felony counts, Mr. Cisneros pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor charge of lying to investigators. He was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Barrett kept his office open more than six years after the law that created the independent counsel system was allowed to die. Lawmakers in both parties had wearied of the many inquiries that had failed to achieve the goal of removing political influence from criminal investigations of administration officials.

BTW, the "lie" Cisneros told to FBI investigators during a background check was not whether he paid off a blackmailing mistress, but the exact amount. Needless to say, it was well under the amount spent to investigate him; the entire debacle arose out of the bitter relationship between President Clinton and then-FBI chief Louis Freeh, whose obsession with the President on this and other matters inevitably hampered his agency's ability to handle somewhat more arcane matters, such as fighting terrorism.

Reading between the lines, it seems Mr. Barrett didn't have the goods on the "tax evasion" charge either, hence the obligatory attack on Clinton, Reno, etc., in his final report. In the words of a Justice Department attorney quoted in the article, it was "a fitting conclusion to one of the most embarrassingly incompetent and wasteful episodes in the history of American law enforcement."

So what was the point again? Three months later, we are beginning to see some trends:

Three months after a new bankruptcy law took effect, the overwhelming majority of debtors seen by credit counseling agencies are filing for bankruptcy instead of using repayment plans envisioned by the law's supporters.

The law requires debtors to see credit counselors before they file for bankruptcy protection. It is a prerequisite that banks and credit card issuers hoped would steer consumers away from bankruptcy court and into plans that would allow them to repay debts over a few years.

But so far, that is not happening.

The counseling agencies say most debtors are in such deep financial trouble that they cannot qualify for a debt-management plan.

"Typically, consumers are too far gone when they get to us," said Ivan L. Hand Jr., president and chief executive of Money Management International Inc. (MMI), the nation's largest credit-counseling organization.

(snip)

The pre-bankruptcy credit-counseling requirement was initiated by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) during the 10-year battle to enact a new law. He said in a recent interview that it was "disappointing" to learn that so few consumers have signed up for a debt-management plan. He said he intends to monitor the law's progress and was "not prepared to give up on this."

This bears out what I've been seeing as well. I have yet to see the mandated credit counseling do anything more than confirm the debtor's first instinct: that he needs to file bankruptcy pronto. All that's changed was the time and paperwork...and the explosion in filings engendered by the pre-YBK panic in October.

It's one thing to constantly rehash a bad call that costs your team a game, but to act like a whiny-ass bitch over a bad call in a game your team won is pathetic. C'mon, it didn't affect the outcome of the game, unlike the bad call last week in Tampa, where a game-tying fourth quarter Bucs TD was ruled incomplete. The Steelers still won, by the same margin they likely would have won by had the interception stood (assuming the Colts would have picked up a concession touchdown at the end); unless you had some weird teaser action, it didn't mean anything even if you had your house and car wagered on the game. So who the f*** cares?

Yet there has been more complaining, by the winning team and the media, about an unimportant call that ultimately meant nothing than there was by the losing team, last fortnight, over two botched calls in the Rose Bowl that actually decided the national championship (Young's forward lateral whilst on his knee in the second quarter, and a Polamaluesque catch/fumble by Texas early in the fourth), both of which were even worse than the call on Sunday. The first bad call gave Texas a gift touchdown, the second prevented SC from blowing the game wide open, but both plays were forgotten in the afterglow of the memorable comeback win by the Longhorns.

Memo to the Steelers: if you're going to restart the habit of winning big games again, try showing some class in victory.

Don't Mess with Texas: Last month, over 15% of the new foreclosures nationwide were in the Lone Star State. One out of every 631 households are in some stage of the foreclosure process in Texas, encompassing 12,753 homes, and the numbers rose 61% for the month of December. In comparison, California, which also saw a significant jump in December, reported only 7,674 homes in foreclosure. Other states joining Texas at the bottom of the heap are Utah, Indiana and Ohio, which regular readers of this site know have also seen the smallest increase in property values over the last five years, as well as the highest bankruptcy rates.

Prof. Kleiman, on getting CAPPED:

conservatism has never gone through the process of separating itself from the bigots, as liberalism separated itself from the communists during the Cold War period. Conservative politicians are delighted to receive the support of bigoted voters, the dollars of bigoted contributors, and the endorsements of bigoted TV preachers, and reluctant to do anything to alienate that large chunk of the 'base.'

He's right, but then again conservatives have not seen any political reason to do so. In fact, throughout the history of American politics, the side that best speaks the "code" of racial politics is the one that wins elections most frequently. Bigots outnumber blacks in the electorate, and for the GOP to renounce the "code" would place them in the same situation that LBJ perceived for the Democrats after he signed the Voting Rights Act.

Forget what anyone is saying right now about the chances of a filibuster over the Alito nomination. They are mainly commenting on whether a filibuster has a chance of success, which isn't the same thing as actually attempting one; once it gets started, with the debate centering on the nominee's membership in a white supremacist group, as well as his more recent lying about same, it will take on a momentum of its own. Even Democrats like Nelson and Baucus will have to take a stand when the time comes.

In any event, Lieberman's announcement this morning that a filibuster is definitely in play for him is far more important. It was the then-rookie Senator's decision to renounce a filibuster, while at the same time publicly opposing the nominee, that allowed the Thomas nomination to squeak through fifteen years ago. Without Lieberman, it becomes a lot harder to find at least five Democrats (and that's assuming the GOP can hold all of its caucus) to vote for cloture.

In spite of what may have transpired at the hearings (which it is safe to say that no one watched), I think Alito is in worse shape than Clarence Thomas was in 1991 at the same point in time.

Obviously, the right does not hold a monopoly on political criticism of the Stalinoid variety. To wit, David Sirota:

If you want to know why many people believe the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) severely hobbles the Democratic Party and gives cover to the worst right-wing stereotypes, just take a look at a guy they employ named Marshall Wittman. Now, I tend to think giving any publicity to people who are hacks gives them undue attention - but in this case, Wittman provides a cautionary tale about Democrats' "big tent" mantra, where everyone gets accepted no matter how idiotic, dishonest, uninformed or dangerous their blather is.

Wittman is a former Republican operative and Christian Coalition official who now purports to speak for Democrats from his post at the DLC - an institution that has over the years been funded by, among others, Enron, Philip Morris, and Chevron. He is now trying to make a name for himself defending President Bush's illegal domestic spying operation - again, while pretending to speak for Democrats. Here's what he says:

"There is absolutely no evidence that [Bush] was attempting to do anything else but protect America...We can have a reasoned debate about this issue without impugning the motives of a Commander in Chief who was attempting to defend the nation."

Earlier today, I wrote a piece about a new form of journalism sweeping the nation: it's called Rectal Journalism, and it features reporters and supposedly objective experts basically pulling things out of their asses and peddling it as fact - when it is anything but. Wittman represents Rectal Punditry - the art of commenting on current events without bothering to actually look at the facts, and instead relying only on what the pundit pulls out of their ass. And Wittman does it in a way that exposes his own ideological motives, which are clearly to undermine the courageous Democrats who have questioned the President's behavior.

(snip)

...Wittman wants us to forget all the facts that provide ample reason for us to suspect the White House was trying to do something other than protect America when it ordered the illegal surveillance operations and refused to get warrants. He wants us to simply swallow what he's pulling from his ass - no matter how smelly the turds of dishonesty are.

This is why the DLC is dangerous. For all their claims of supposedly wanting to help Democrats, they employ people like Marshall Wittman who specifically try to undermine the Democratic Party, even if it means he has to publicly defecate out the most rank and easily-debunkable lies. They reguarly give credence to the right wing's agenda and its worst, most unsupportable lies. They are the real force that tries to make sure this country is a one party state and that Democrats never really challenge the Republicans in a serious way. [Emphasis mine]

Those damned Weimar Democrats...acting as if they had as much right to criticize liberals as, lets say, someone else might have in stabbing a Fighting Democrat in the back who's running for the Senate in Ohio.

Memo to David Sirota: Democrats have been winning statewide elections in Montana for more than a century. Almost every person who's ever been elected to the Senate from that state has been a Democrat. Hell, Dukakis almost won that state in 1988, and he got killed everywhere else. Your gravytraining off of the victory of a multimillionaire last year doesn't impress. You bring nothing to the table.

Any inclination I might have toward giving Judge Alito a break is tempered by the fact that he just isn't credible on his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton. If he had answered this morning that thirty years ago, he was an inmature sexist bigot, but that through the normal passage of life, having to witness what his wife and daughter go through every day (for example), he had come to regret such dealings, and become more sensitive to the difficulties people outside his privileged circle face, I would say it was a non-issue, in the same way I treat Senator Byrd's role as a recruiter for the Klan sixty years ago. Now is now.

But to pretend that he not only has no idea why he joined, but that he can't recall why he listed his membership in the organization ten years later in his c.v., that doesn't pass the giggle test. When he applied for a job with the Meese Justice Department, he knew who his audience was, what sort of code they paid attention to, and stating that he belonged to CAP spoke volumes. No Democrat could possibly vote for this guy in good conscience.

UPDATE [1/11]: "Armando" from DK, who has been a must-read since the hearings started, has more on why CAP (and Alito's mendacity) is important.

Michael Hiltzik's follow-up to last week's critique of media critic types in the blogosphere can be found here. He seems to have generated a great deal of heat, if not a lot in careful rebuttal. While he goes overboard when he ascertains motives to others (ironically, since his targets base most of their obsessive behavior on proscribing ideological motives to journalists), and he seems to have no problem ignoring the same problems when they occur on the left, the reaction to his post does seem to indicate that certain bloggers have a problem when the factchecking spotlight is focused on them.

Those who pore over every front-page article, cherrypicking any picayune example of ideological bias (such as whether an item of news is placed on page one, or inside the paper), are engaged in an attempt to subvert journalism, whether they do so from the right or left. To use the analogy Eric Alterman is so fond of, they are playing the role of a coach who paces the sideline, constantly yelling and getting in the face of the ref, in the hope they can plant a seed that will lead to a more favorable call later in the game. Whatever "working the ref" is, it's not designed to produce a fairer or better officiated game. And particularly since conservatives holds the reigns of power at almost every level of our society, any effort to mau-mau journalists into putting government spin on an equal billing with objective fact will fundamentally limit all of our freedoms.

What Hiltzik did here was to apply objective analysis to the task of reviewing the work of a blogger. The hysterical reaction from the right is a sign that the blogosphere is not ready to deal with constructive criticism, or even a factchecker.

A good rundown of the obstacles facing Judge Alito en route to confirmation, here. The first day of hearings are always the best for the nominee. He gets to put on his best face, introduce his wife and family, pablumate his great love for the Constitution and America, etc., while his adversaries always shoot themselves in the foot, by making long-winded, pompous opening statements. The polling is decisively in his favor right now, although that seems to be based on the erroneous notion that he would vote to preserve privacy rights, not limit Roe, etc..

Memo to Charles Schumer: if you can't say what you need to say in 30 seconds or less, STFU !!! This nomination is important to the rest of us; the last thing we need is for you to be sabotaging the opposition because you love the sound of your own voice.

The Guardian reports that George Galloway is a contestant on a British celebrity version of Big Brother. I think I'd rather have him as a housemate than Norm Coleman, but prefer him less to Hitch the Snitch. Actually, whichever of the three hogs the TV the least would be best, so never mind.

UPDATE: One of Gorgeous George's housemates, it turns out, is none other than the Worm.

UPDATE [1/13]: According to someone who has actually watched the program, the show also features actress Rula Lenska, most famous in this country (if that's the right word) for having done Alberto vo5 ads in the '70's, in which she was referred to as an "international film star", even though no one had actually heard of her. As a fan of obscure British TV actresses, I salute her.

Texas 41, USC 38: The computers nailed this one...but I'm still trying to figure out this analogy:

So the Trojans are denied a second straight championship. Not a third. USC and its fans have been talking a lot about a "three-Pete" -- as in Pete Carroll, you see -- because the Trojans were No. 1 in the final Associated Press poll in 2003.

But the 2003 national champion was LSU. The Bowl Championship Series is a lousy system, but it's the system USC signed up for. You can't agree to play for a championship under one set of rules, then, when you don't win the championship, say, "Well, we won the championship under these other rules."

Unless you think the accountants at Enron were straight shooters.

Huh?!? Does that go the same for people who think Raging Bull was a better pic than Ordinary People? I guess they're screwed too, since the Academy had the final say in 1981.

Last time I checked, there is no official "national champion" in college football, since, unlike every other Division 1 college sport, there is no playoff. The BCS has a system that's supposed to match-up the two best teams, and remove most of the controversy, but it didn't work out in 2003. The best-ranked team that year failed to make it, so the vast fraternity of college football fans outside of Baton Rouge, Lousiana, treated it the same way boxing fans have learned to ignore the machinations of the WBC when determining who the "real" heavyweight champ is. They went with the best team, the team that earned it on the playing field, phony system be damned.

In fact, the same writer observed at the time:

This is of course what's so great about the BCS: It's complete nonsense. It was supposedly designed to end these end-of-year arguments over who should be named the national champion by presenting a championship game between the top two teams. It does no such thing. But here's a shocking secret: That wasn't the real purpose. You mustn't tell anyone.

The BCS ought to be used in business schools as a lesson in how not to approach problem solving. The Cliffs Notes version is that the people trying to solve the problem have to have clear, attainable objectives, and they have to be free of conflicts of interest.

The professed objective of the BCS is to crown a true national champion. If that were really the goal, the plan would be to figure out a way to have a playoff system, same as they have in Divisions I-AA, II and III. Simple. But the real purpose is to crown a national champion using a system that increases profits and consolidates power for the six biggest conferences, the four biggest bowls and the TV networks, the parties that created the BCS. That's a very different thing, and an impossible one.

Two years ago, he was as apparently deluded as Enron's investors. Thank god Vince Young made it safe for him to jump on an another bandwagon. Not even Plaschke is this loathsome.

Although this may come as a surprise to those who watched last night's thriller, it has been scientifically proven that soccer is the most exciting spectator sport, sayeth the Beeb.

We're all MSM'ers Now: Kos has a point.

With the Rose Bowl coming up in 15 minutes, check out the site of USC's number one gay conservative blogfan.

The press will take the ABA's rating of Judge Alito as "Well Qualified" more seriously than it deserves. No matter the ideology, most of the candidates for this position are, by definition, exceedingly "qualified", that is, they have graduated from elite schools, worked at the right law firms, and held the standard jobs within government. The GOP's efforts of late to paint the nation's bar associations as liberal cabals ignores the plain fact that they're all old boys' networks, run by wealthy corporate shills and entirely comfortable with the status quo.

It's when they withhold the highest rating that there's a story. Once Clarence Thomas received only a "Qualified" rating from the ABA in 1991, his nomination was destined for trouble; it gave the fencesitters in the Senate, like Howell Heflin, a way to vote against him without having to fear any political repurcussions. The "Not Qualified" rating Janice Rogers received from the State Bar of California when she was first nominated for the state Supreme Court (based mainly on a lack of judicial temperament) has trailed after her ever since, symbolizing her as just another in a long line of empty suits the GOP trots out to prove they aren't racists. All Alito has done is clear a very low hurdle.

Texas 36, USC 34: Or so the computer says. The Longhorns win three-quarters of these match-ups, by an average margin of two touchdowns; in this one, they came back from an early 13-point deficit. And this doesn't take into account the fact that the Longhorns are a hungrier team, or that so much of the pre-game hype has been in the form of a victory lap for the Trojans. Ouch.

The real game is hours away....

Marc Cooper's out to lunch on this one if he thinks the Abramoff indictment is an indication that the stench of corruption in the Beltway is somehow bipartisan. Needless to say there are crooked Dems, but Abramoff was the money man financing the DeLay money machine, the K-Street Project, the objective of which was to shut out Democrats from the filthy lucre of corporate giving. This was a scam on a level quite a bit different from AbScam, the "House Bank", or the Keating Five. Who cares if a few Democrats also got a taste of Tribal Casino Booty.

By turning state's evidence, Abramoff has assured that the issue of corrupt, out-of-touch Congressmen will be front-and-center this November. Too bad for Cooper that it's always the party in power that gets bled to death over this sort of thing.

Blind Date with Ilsa? There's hope for me yet !!!

Much of the criticism of blogging from mainstream media sources has the tone and feel of pre-1960 criticism of Rock and Roll; the critics don't get it, they don't speak our language, so they end up looking like idiots. Michael Hiltzik, an LA Times reporter who also blogs, is an exception, as he shows here. His critique, while focused on conservative "media critics" in the blogosphere who cherrypick their way through the daily newspaper looking for any evidence that will support their position that biased reporters and editors are in cahoots with Satan, is equally valid against most of their counterparts on the left. As such, it is the type of "media criticism" that one would expect out of lawyers.

O-Ver-A-Ted: Jonathan Chait, one of the new op-ed columnists for the local paper of record, has a fine piece on the 2005 USC Trojans. Considering that there is nothing to indicate that the PAC-10 was a particularly deep conference this season, or that the Big-12 was particularly weak, I don't see why Texas should be such a significant underdog next week. USC has a spectacular offense, led by the winners of the last two Heisman Trophies, but their defense (Pete Carroll's strong suit, after all) is not that impressive. Besides the now-legendary game with Notre Dame, they almost lost to Fresno State and Arizona State, teams with four and five losses, respectively, and were a bad call away from being 17 points down to Oregon.

Texas is a hungrier team, had only two close calls (both against schools named "O.S.U."), and actually know how to play good defense. They would be hard to beat even if they were playing an opponent that wasn't undeservedly being included among the greatest teams of all time. As the author alludes to, the last time we had a match-up like this, Ohio State knocked off Miami, the defending national champion, in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl.

One of the drawbacks about being a single, 40-ish guy is that I always stay home on New Years Eve. That, and the infrequent sex, the assumption by some that because I haven't gotten married, I must be gay (not that there's anything wrong with that), the fact that most of my friends are functioning alcoholics, the realization that my life is never going to get any better...yeah, I admit: I'm drowning in a torrent of clinical depression right now, one that massive quantities of Prozac won't cure. Life sucks.

Loneliness is a terrible burden, and there's no amount of rationalization that's going to sweep it away. December 31 always brings this issue to the forefront. It's the one occasion that people, no matter what creed, race or socioeconomic class, find the time to just have a blast. No presents to buy, no fake ethnic tie-in, like March 17 or May 5, just an evening to stay up all night and party. And I never get invited.

Going on a year-end cruise has been one way out of the thicket. I don't get to be with friends, either, and the other party-goers are either blue hairs or teenagers, but at least there's festivity everywhere. I don't have to drive home, and the cruiseline is usually generous with the champagne. For me, it's as good as it will get, and I'm only out a month's income.

This year, that isn't an option. So while everyone else is having a blast, I'll be at home, watching cable reruns and trying to figure how my life took such a wrong turn.

Ewwwww.....

A liberal blogger discovers, to her chagrin, that conservative bloggers take care of themselves. Here's a hint: it has nothing to do with banging a tin cup and asking other people to beg for money on your behalf.

It should come as no shock that for a blog to be both popular and good, it requires a great deal of time and effort on the part of the host. When I first started this site, back in April, 2002, it seemed that most of the people doing this sort of thing were either freelance journalists, professors, college students, or lawyers with their own practice. That is to say, bloggers were people who already wrote for a living, and who had the time to post frequently and write deliberatively. To them, blogging was a hobby that could supplement their normal routine.

Once blogging became "hip", it drew in a lot of people who had writing talent, and were not in any of those professions. Those bloggers included a tremrndous amount of undiscovered talent, but only a few who will ever be hired to write for a living. As a result, once the high of writing something for a public audience wore off, making money off this gig became paramount for the neophyte. Unfortunately, bloggers don't have anything to sell but their work product, so unless you can find a sugardaddy willing to support you, or happen to be independently wealthy, you better be writing about something that can turn a profit for somebody else.

With almost no exceptions, political blogs can't turn the trick. Moreover, perhaps inevitably considering the string of recent defeats Democrats had in the aftermath of the 2000 election, liberal blogging has become dominated by a style of rhetoric that ensured that such blogs would never make mucho dinero: an in-your-face, abrasive, attack-oriented style that focused most of its wrath primarily on the media, and secondarily on the Bushies and neocons. People who were comfortable with the status quo weren't going to turn to this newfangled medium anyway, but for the significant number of people who weren't, those blogs were a godsend. The more extreme the invective, the more rhetorically violent the site, the greater the page visits. While it was cathartic to finally have someone take the fight to the other side, it does tend to be even less successful in generating a cash stream than it has been in winning elections.

And alternatively, bloggers who hoped to use their access to this public forum to formulate policy alternatives got the short end. Ironically, it was the bloggers who actually had something, in the form of ideas and policy prescriptions, that might be of value to the marketplace, that lacked the volume of traffic necessary to make the sale, while the ones who did have the traffic only sold snark and invective, products that nobody's buying.

Why television may be on the verge of making motion pictures as passe a form of entertainment as radio drama....

November totals for the Central District of California are out...and they show that the number of bankruptcy filings fell by more than 90% from the totals of one year ago. The large drop in Chapter 13 filings after October 17 (remember, that's the provision favored by the new law) is perhaps the strongest indication that it's not so much the new law scaring people away as it was the end of the old law drawing a high number of people out of the woodwork, who then filed before YBK.

Last night's much-hyped final episode of ABC's Monday Night Football (won, incidentally, by the Patriots, 31-21, over the Jets, the same score the Jets lost the first MNF game thirty-five years ago) included the airing of several clips featuring one of the most important figures in the development and popularity of that show in its early years. I am, of course, referring to John Lennon, the ex-sidekick of Paul McCartney with the Beatles, who allegedly made at least one appearance in the booth in the early-70's, where the most-overrated figure in rock history suffered the indignity of being interviewed by the most-overrated figure in TV sports history.

I say "allegedly", because after an hour or so of googling, I can't pinpoint an exact game, date, or season that the "Smart Beatle" actually appeared on the broadcast. I have seen references to him showing up at the '71 game at Candlestick Park (famous for being the site of the last Beatles' concert) between KC and Frisco, a '73 game at the LA Coliseum between the Rams and New York (where he supposedly said, according to one account, that while he still gives peace a chance, he couldn't say the same thing for the Giants, who lost 40-6), and a game in '74, between the Rams and Washington. The latter game would appear to be the best bet, since he had famously separated from Yoko Ono around that time, and was living in the City of Angels.

Also, he apparently befriended the then-governor of California, Ronald Reagan, that night; according to Frank Gifford, the Great Communicator also visited the booth, and during a lull before they were to be interviewed, explained the rules of what we Yanks call "football" to the Walrus (Lennon, not Craig Stadler). Nevertheless, the actual details of what happened don't appear to have been studied by any Beatles historian with any depth, no transcript of the Cosell-Lennon interview seems to have survived, and so we are left with what appears to be an "authentic" videotape of the artist known for such treacly classics as "Imagine" and "In My Life" comparing that night's crowd to a rock concert.

More detailed information does exist about the other famous MNF link to John Lennon: the announcement of his death in 1980, late in a game between Miami and New England. Like many other Beatles fans, I still remember Cosell, with his very unique delivery, intoning the words, "dead on arrival" to punctuate his scoop. I doubt that it was actually the first notice by which many of us received the horrible news; in Los Angeles, ABC's local sports anchor, Ted Dawson, had announced the bulletin several minutes earlier, and in all likelihood other local stations broke the news the same way. But Cosell being Cosell, we were bound to remember his announcement more.

We must be do something right...: Matt Welch, wintering in Paris, has some interesting thoughts on the world's two oldest democracies, and why they stay that way.

Festivus Reading: A sanguine analysis of the topic of impeachment, by Michelle Goldberg of Salon, and a brief rundown by Josh Marshall of an op-ed piece by former Bush advisor John Yoo, now a Boalt Law Professor.

The prevalent view among his apologists seems to be that President Bush must have absolute power during "wartime", and that any Congressional or judicial oversight is unnecessary. Regardless of the merits of the claim that permitting the executive branch to review any telephone call, e-mail, or personal communication without a search warrant is an effective way to stop a terrorist attack, the notion that fighting a war necessitates giving a single man absolute power is, quite frankly, a noxious one. It is not only un-American to expect that the Constitution be suspended every time a President decides to start a war, it is counterproductive to the goal of actually winning that war, once our troops are so committed, when the Commander-in-Chief who has been vested with those powers is so completely incompetent.

Moreover, Yoo's argument, that the Constitutional mandate limiting the power to declare war to Congress alone has no substantive meaning, and can therefore be ignored by Presidents, is one of the most frightening claims ever made by a sitting law professor. A declaration of war isn't some legalistic archaism left over from eighteenth century political theory; it's a principal that requires that any war we fight be subject to the approval of the people, by way of the one branch of government that is directly chosen by the people. It's not a condition for committing troops, but you better damn well have a declaration in hand if you want to act as a "war President".

In the military actions taken since 9/11, there was no exigent circumstance requiring the President to bypass Congress, no immediate necessity that forced us to take up arms against Iraq, or even the Taliban. Ignoring the Constitution was Bush's way of saying "screw you" to coequal branches of our government, making them as relevant in the checks and balances within our government as the British monarch is in that country. If the Republican Congress does not wish to put the brakes on Bush's folly, then the Democrats must press the issue of impeachment, or we'll losing something more important than our lives.

Mr. Kos grows tired of the Bay Area real estate market, and a conservative attempts to gloat:

Attention Markos Moulitsas Zúniga: did it ever occur to many in Blue state America that Houston (that doesn't have zoning) is a lot more affordable than let's say Berkeley, California. Also, Houston residents don't have a state income tax that they are paying. It appears Kos can't afford the very values he promotes, which is regulation of markets which leads to artifically high real estate prices.

Or, to put it another way, the "values he promotes" enable ordinary people to attain wealth through home ownership, while living in a diverse community that values the environment, stable growth, a low crime rate, etc.

Although it is unfortunate that Kos missed the boat by a few years when it comes to buying a house in the Bay Area, the policies that enabled the value of homes to soar also make it a very desirable place to live, work, and raise a family. The Berkeley Hills are dotted with the homes of people who never made a huge income, but through happenstance, hard work, and good fortune, have become wealthy, all because they bought homes in a city that followed progressive policies that made the community desirable for people who had money to live in. And in the fullness of time, once this blogging thing starts to become big, someone as ambitious and entrepreneurial as Kos will also be able to buy a share of the Blue State dream as well.

Of course, Houston is a lot more "affordable" than Berkeley, California. So is the Aceh Peninsula, the Sunni Triangle, and the Gulf Coast. That's the great thing about the Third World: housing bargains are always available for people with a few dollars to spend, as long as you don't care about that whole "quality of life" thing. [link via Instapundit]

A thought on last night's Blue State v. Red State showdown (an appetizer to hold us until the Big One on January 4), inspired by the words of a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor:

The University of California during my student and faculty years has been denounced for godlessness, debauchery, freethinking, subversion, coddling communists and radicals, and exposing students to radical and unconventional ideas.

Whenever I hear those charges made, I shout, "Go Bears!"

--Prof. Leon Litwack

Merry Christmas, Building & Loan !!! Among the presents Congress was able to sneak under our collective Festivus Pole yesterday is a long overdue hike in the tax filing fee for individual bankruptcies. I say overdue, since it's been less than nine weeks since the last hike went into effect. Fortunately, Congress refused to touch the filing fee for corporate bankruptcies, which will remain at the same level.

A provocative (and potentially defamatory) profile of Marcos Moulitsas, the self-admitted "asshole" proprietor of the Daily Kos blog. The comparison of Kos with Bill James is an apt one, although I think the Old Guard he's challenging isn't the punditocracy (that battle is being fought by the likes of Atrios, Kevin Drum, Steve Gilliard, et al.) , but the politocrats within the Democratic Party, as well as the adherents to the increasingly obsolete "grassroots" model used by progressives since the 1960's. Kos treats political advocacy as something more than a hobby to be pursued every election night, and the country owes him a debt of gratitude for the unexpected partisan feistiness of the Democratic Party, only a year after one of its most devastating losses.

Of all the apologias for the rather innovative approach the Bush Administration has apparently taken to the constitution, the one that rankles me the most is the claim that we have to condone the policy, since we haven't been hit by a terrorist attack in five years. It was made by the Vice President yesterday, and has been seconded by certain bloggers and pundits.

It rankles, because it both cheapens the events of September 11, 2001, and is almost certainly wrong. As I pointed out in February, it says nothing that we have not been hit by an attack in x-number of years. Prior to 9/11, we had not been hit by a major (or for that matter, a minor) terrorist attack in six years, and that wasn't even an Islamoterrorist attack; for that, you have to back eight years before 9/11. Since many of the people with the skill, background, motivation and patience to plan such a spectacular attack were, in fact, killed on 9/11, and since Al Qaeda's M.O. has favored spectacular, cataclysmic attacks overseas, as opposed to the suicide bomber-in-the-shopping mall favored by other thugs in the Middle East, it shouldn't surprise anyone that we haven't seen a repeat since then.

But what especially bothers me is the viewpoint that because we haven't had an attack, that somehow means we should view the last five years as an unqualified success in battling terrorism. For one thing, two of our allies, Spain and Great Britain, have been hit since 2001 by the minions of Osama, not to mention the many victims of the Intifada in Israel. For those who give allegiance to OBL, blowing up the Tube is just as good as hitting a subway car in New York City. All Westerners look alike.

Presuming it to be that our national objective is to crush the use of terror as a political tool used by our adversaries, no matter where it sticks its head (and considering the billions we're spending on adventures in the Middle East, I think that presumption is shared by the Neocons as well), this isn't supposed to be a war we can claim to be winning just because the Lower 48 hasn't been hit recently. What Cheney is admitting when he makes this argument is that the "War on Terror" is little more than a rhetorical gimmick for domestic consumption. It is akin to FDR claiming WWII as a success in May, 1944, just because Pearl Harbor hadn't been repeated.

KOBE: The greatest basketball player in the world scored 62 points tonight...in 29 minutes !!!

Seeing as how there's nothing more pathetic than a blogger campaigning for an award, I think it's fair to ask some obvious questions:

1. Why name the award for best "lefty" blogger after someone who could only fairly be described as the third or fourth greatest southpaw pitcher in history? Wouldn't the "Grove" be more apt? The "Spahn"? The "Big Unit"? Tying their award to a famous L.A. athlete might have been done to draw from the prestige of this region in the blogosphere, in much the same way that a DVD rental store in Flyover Country might use a picture of Tom Cruise or John Wayne in the store window. But still, couldn't they find a better local athlete?

2. While pondering the above, do the people who run the awards have the permission of Sandy Koufax to use his name and likeness? Frankly, not receiving clearance to run photos of a public figure is pretty common in the blogosphere (I don't, for example), but this seems to be a few degrees beyond that. Is there any reason to believe that Koufax is a progressive in real life? If I had to guess, he probably isn't...most athletes hew as far to the right as Hollywood actors do to the left, and are as equally out of touch. But he's also famous (if that's the right word) for being very private. His sexual preference has always been the most-whispered about in all of sports, and his only recent venture into the headlines came when he took on the Murdoch publishing empire over some slimy allegations concerning same in the New York Post two years ago. Although I could be wrong, I would be surprised if he had given his permission.

3. Shouldn't there be some quality control? These particular awards, like most blogging awards, are popularity contests. Blogs that draw a lot of traffic are more likely to win. To that end, the Koufax Awards have more in common with the People's Choice Awards then, lets say, the NY Film Critics Association. And although there are some blogs that attract tons of eyeballs that coincidentally happen to be good (Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum, of course, and especially Kos), most are still living whatever rep they developed three or four years ago, and win these awards now not because they are good, but because it would be too impolite to suggest otherwise.

Another problem such awards have to deal with is the truism that extremism and rhetorical excess seem to be an accurate barometer of popularity in the blogosphere, no matter the ideology. Since that threatens to poison the well for those bloggers who, for example, don't believe that leaking the name of a CIA agent necessarily makes one a traitor, or that Rudolph Giuliani isn't the American version of Reynard Heydrich, it would help to have some way of wheat from the chaff, the assholes from the uber-pricks, as it were.

Historically, progressivism has always been a minority ideology, so any chance of electoral success depends on forming tactical alliances with factions that do not support many of our core principles. Anything that violates our version of the Eleventh Commandment, such as a high-profile blogger resorting to personal attacks against those he disagrees with, is counterproductive to the end of achieving power to enact those ends. If we're ultimately going to start winning elections (that is, actually getting more votes than the other guys, and not simply whining that Karl Rove and Diebold foiled us again), our blogs need to develop an indoor voice.

Anyways, go vote for Crooks and Liars and The Left Coaster for any and all relevant categories.