We have many, many, submissions here in The BigLeftOutside John Kerry Speechwriting Contest. Since late July's Democratic National Convention is fast approaching, I will queue up and post the entries very soon.

And I'll sweeten the pot: Now that the Narco News Coca Leaf Watches are ready for shipping, I'll buy one myself and throw it into the winner's gift bag of loot.

But I did in fact see the text of a good speech delivered by Kerry himself on May 17th, the 50th anniversary of the landmark civil rights decision, Brown v. Board of Education.

Kerry said:

So how do we honor the legacy of Brown? That question was answered some 20 years before that decision by a son of Lawrence, Kansas and one of America's greatest poets -- Langston Hughes. In one of his most soul wrenching poems, Hughes challenged the nation to "Let America Be America Again." He called that generation to fulfill the unmet promise of America:

O' let my land be a land where liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

And so we honor the legacy of Brown by letting America be America -- by reaffirming the value of inclusion, equality, and diversity in our schools and across the life of our nation. By opening the doors of opportunity, so that more of our young people can stay in school and out of prison. By lifting more of our people out of poverty, expanding the middle class, providing health care, and bringing jobs, hope and opportunity to all the neighborhoods of the forgotten America.

We must let America be America again.

Of course, the right-wingnut journals went nuts over Kerry's quotation of Hughes. Men's News Daily (the online magazine with the slogan of "Beat the Child Support System!" I'm not making this up...) informs that "Langston Hughes was a communist." FrontPageMag.com calls it a "Stalinist slogan." Also nostalgic for the Red Scare, the Moonie Washington Times' Insight on the News repeats the "Stalinist" charge and calls Kerry a "lunatic." (I don't know about you, but if I were writing for a paper known as a "Moonie" rag, I wouldn't be bandying about the word "lunatic" as a literary tool.) GOPUSA, meanwhile, gets past the feigned obsession about commies and cuts to the quick with the real matter that the wingnuts find disturbing: the poem's author was black.

I, on the other hand, think Kerry should just read the whole damn poem...

Let America Be America Again
By Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Langston Hughes may have been a communist... but at least, in contrast with the current generation of political speechwriters, the man could write!

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Add Hillary Clinton to the list of Democrats favorable to a Kerry-McCain ticket.

She said so yesterday on Fox News.

Senator Hillary Clinton said she could support John McCain, a leading Republican senator, as the Democrats' vice presidential candidate in November's presidential election.

"I'm a big admirer of John McCain's," Clinton -- the former US first lady and one of the most prominent Democrats in the US Congress -- told the "Fox News Sunday" program...

"I've spoken with Senator McCain and he assures me he's not interested, but you know, we'll see what happens."...

"No two people have exactly the same position on every issue," Clinton said.

"These are unusual times," she said.

I can't remember a time when Hillary spoke out of class or flippantly. She is one of the most disciplined, calculated, public figures in political life today. One can safely presume that she intended to say it prior to the interview on Fox News. That she says this now, at this precise hour, indicates that this little meme of mine launched 11 months ago by BigLeftOutside, has grown up to be a very big factor in the 2004 campaign.

What to watch? McCain himself. He has until early July (especially that bogus Bush-established June 30 "deadline" to bring "democracy" to Iraq) to make all the right moves. And from what I can deduce by watching him so far (especially in the hearings on the tortures in Iraq, in which he dressed himself in glory) he's keeping his option wide open.

(Via Wonkette, who has floated a similar trial balloon for ex Republican senate staffer Washingtonienne to be her running mate for 2004. Finally, a bipartisan ticket with true American family values!)

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Be a public citizen.

Make sure that a spoiler is deemed unsafe at any speed.

Get your politics out of PIRG-a-tory.

Link to this from all blogs and public online forums.

Ralph Nader.

That's first name Ralph, last name Nader.

Don't be green, party on.

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An email from Boston Globe columnist and political consultant Dan Payne:

I'm considering writing about all the reasons Bush haters feel as we do. Would love to get your favorite dislikes about Bush, personal, political or policy, large or trivial. (For example, I hate him for the war but also how he leans on podium and snorts when he thinks he's saying something clever). My list is long and grows every day. I'd like yours. Your reply will be kept confidential and anonymous. Thanks.

You heard the man! Help him out!

Dan's email: Payneco@aol.com

(Payne is good. He'll do right by your hate. He'll make love to your hate! And turn it into a thing of divine beauty!)

And for those who are the worst "haters" of all.. those un-self-aware hypocritical do-good-niks who these days are claiming to hate hate itself, while they cheer and cover-up for all atrocities and war crimes, I leave you with this quote...

"God put hatred in men's hearts for good reason: to ensure justice."

-- Thomas Paine

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I've broken down and gotten myself a "tip jar" via PayPal for this blog.

Los Angeles made me do it.

(By the way, for those who tuned in last week and now want the next chapter, Homeland Security did indeed give me the incoming commie treatment on my way into the country, searching all my bags, again. Sigh. I wouldn't mind it if they had, say, a smoker's lounge between the gate and the bureaucracy stations, but when you really, really, really just want a cigarette it's a real pain in the ass.)

Anyway, about this tip jar. Do you know, kind reader, how expensive it has gotten to go out drinking and whoring in the United States? (Fortunately, I was able to do much of that on the ACLU's tab this time.) Fifty bucks for a damn taxi, for starters (forty for a gypsy cab!). I don't know how anyone survives in that country anymore.

Anyway, I'm safe, now, again, back "somewhere in a country called América." Phew!

But I have to go back to the U.S. - to New York City - in July.

I can't in good conscience be asking The Fund for Authentic Journalism to cough up the, um, non-itemized parts of my gringolandia tourist adventures. And so I've sold out now for the BIG MONEY that everyone knows comes with having a tip jar on one's personal blog.

But I don't expect something for nothing. No sirree. I'm going to give something back. Because if you're kind enough to make yourself a little bit poorer by helping out a struggling Authentic Journalist, well, I can show you a thing or two about how to save money in daily life.

Introducing...

Al's Recipes for the Recession™

We will start with the basics. And then every time I hear that tip jar clink loud enough I'll spill another of my culinary yet budget-saving secrets.

Yes, now you can be just like me by eating exactly what I eat! And you can force it on your kids, barking, "Eat it! If it's good enough for Al Giordano, it's good enough for you!"

As you might imagine, the most common meal here at Chez Too-Many-Vowels-In-His-Last-Name is pasta. Here in the Narco Newsroom, we eat tons of spaghetti, penne, capellini, farfalle, etcetera.

I'll give you the quickie recipe for my basic tomato sauce, but first you gotta know how to make the pasta. That's the part that everybody gets wrong.

RULE #1: Use only imported Italian pasta. Sorry. I'd like to say "Buy Americano" but the pasta on this side of the Atlantic really sucks, unless it's homemade, but then it would be very expensive. Still, by paying just a few cents more for Italian boxes of spaghetti, you get a much better meal.

RULE #2: Boil the Water First. If in a "developing" land, achieve full boil for at least 20 minutes to kill the ameobas. (I've always suspected that ameobas were the secret key to the Atkins high protein "diet." I dunno. Just a hunch.)

While the water is getting boiled chop a half onion into little cubes.

Tip for the Tippers: How to chop an onion.

Cut the onion in half through the root tip to the stalk stump. Peel off the first layer. Lay one of the resulting half-onions flat on the cutting board. You can use a small knife or a big one, it doesn't really matter. Just make sure you cut away from your fingers on a downward slope (that means turning the half-onion around to do each side) until you now have thin slices. Then turn the slices 45 degrees to cut them again (repeating the downward slope finger-saving rule). And that is how to chop an onion. (Also, do not tell your date that you are moved to tears by her beauty and that's why you're crying, unless your date is a boy. Girls already know about onions and tear glands, gents. She will be impressed enough to see you following these artful steps in the kitchen... and if that doesn't work... show her my blog! And what will really work is if you let her watch you drop a tip into my blog cup!)

See? Aren't I just a virtual Library of Congress worth of knowledge?

Okay, by now your water is almost boiling but not quite. Take some olive oil and spread it so it covers the whole bottom of a pot. Then dump your chopped onions into it. Put it on a medium flame.

Peel six cloves of garlic. Toss them into a blender. (We're not PC in this kitchen. Blenders are time savers. We do not use microwaves, though. Not for political reasons but, rather, because food cooked in them really sucks.)

Now take six bell tomatoes (the pear shaped ones, not the round ones). Cut off the top part where it once connected to the plant. Take the rest and cut it into quarters. Then cut the quarters in half horizontally so you have, now, viola, eighths! (Aren't I good at math?) Now toss those 48 pieces (really, really, good at math!) into the blender above the garlic pieces.

Pour one cup of red wine into the blender. I recommend any cheap Chilean (sorry, California, but "buy american" don't work for wines either) Cabernet Sauvingon.

And a pinch or two of salt.

Pulverize it until it is liquid.

By now your onions on the fire should be translucent. Pour the contents of the blender pitcher over them, add generous sprinkles of dried basil and oregano to taste, plus some black pepper, and put a top on it.

By now your water is boiling. Add salt (a lot) to the water. Then, once dissolved, add olive oil generously to the water, and when it achieves boil again, add your pasta of choice.

Stir the contents of each cooking pot every 30 seconds or so (especially the pasta, so it doesn't stick).

Another Tip for Tippers: How to tell if your spaghetti is ready.

Throw a string of it against the wall. If it sticks, it is ready. (Note, this method not recommended with penne or other pastas.)

Now, this is VERY important. Do NOT dump all your pasta with all its water into the strainer. That is the hugest mistake most amateur non-goombahs make. Instead, you need to slowly pour the water out so as not to spill the pasta (a few strands may spill into the strainer and you can put them back). The trick is, you gotta leave just a little tiny one millimeter pool of water on the bottom of the pot. Then add more olive oil, stir the pasta just once, and leave it there, in the open air, with no lid on it, for five minutes.

While waiting for your pasta to "breathe" stir the sauce, wash the cutting board, blender pitcher, lid, and knife, and set the table. Put the pasta in the bowl or plate first, then add sauce with a large spoon. If you like, put dime store grated cheese on the pasta first.

Ciao, pasta!

Now eat.

(I don't ever let anybody share in the cooking duties. They can watch and listen to my jokes instead. I just can't tolerate watching an onion sliced the wrong way. So now y'all know the horrible truth: anarchist in the bedroom, but Nazi in the kitchen!)

Anyway, if you liked that recipe, give me money.

And if you thought that a recipe like that on a political blog like this was a waste of your and my time, then especially give me money so I won't have to keep publishing my recipes here.

And if you don't give any money, then next week you get my "Midnight Special" prison recipe for bread and water! MMMmmm good!

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(Welcome Wonketteers... you're probably looking for the Warblogger Suicide Watch... just scroll down one entry... Meanwhile, a quick announcement that warbloggers probably also will want to be censored... this one, from Haiti... the more things stay the same... they stay the same...)

The Black Commentator reports:

At 12:30 in the morning of May 10, approximately 20 U.S. Marines executed a military assault on the Port-au-Prince home of 69-year-old Annette Auguste, a.k.a. Souer Anne. Auguste’s residence is part of a compound that includes four other apartments that were also invaded by the U.S. military forces. The troops covered the heads of 11 Haitians with black hoods and then forced them to lay face down on the ground while binding their wrists with plastic manacles behind their backs. The victims of this terrifying U.S. military invasion included five-year-old Chamyr Samedi, 10-year-old Kerlande Philippe, 12-year-old Loubahida Augustine, 14-year-old Luckman Augustine, and seven adults.

Get it? The black hoods, the binding, are not isolated abuses. These are Standard Operating Procedure for an illegitimate administration gone mad.

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Warblogger Suicide Watch ™, in its continuing efforts to prevent the ultimate act by members of our loyal opposition over on the right side of the screen as their stupid "war" cookie crumbles, picked up a very worrisome cry for help today... from none other than Slate's Mickey Kaus.

Kaus - I'm not making this up! - is saying that the Commercial Media should have censored, and should now impose censorship of any any more, photographs of the torturing by U.S. soldiers of Iraqi P.O.W.s.

Kaus:

"...there is a large amorphous group of 'swing voter' Arabs who might support terrorism but who might also be persuaded to live in peace with the encroaching forces of globalization... you really didn't want these photos published, because they are what will lose us the swing voters and produce the blowback--if not in Iraq then elsewhere in the Arab world. Not only does it follow that the photos are best left unpublished; it also follows that the Pentagon was doing the right thing when it attempted to keep them secret. And it follows that the revered Senator McCain, who has been declaring that he wants all the remaining photos released, is acting like a posturing, media-mad fool.

Oh, c'mon. We're not stupid. He's not worried about "swing voters" in "the Arab world." He's worried about swing voters in the United States in November, who are coming very close to concluding "time to change the channel" on the Court Appointed administration that staged those photographs to begin with.

When warbloggers start sneering at John McCain (his name is what our trained professionals call a "trigger"), you know it's an advanced stage of suicidal depression.

I expect this censorious shit from Reynolds and Sullivan and the other faux-libertarians of the blogosphere, but I'm a bit surprised to see it from Kaus. You live by free speech, you die by free speech (unless you die from the ultimate self-censorship that War Blogger Suicide Watch ™ works so hard to prevent). You just can't have it both ways: celebrating the free speech of the blogosphere while calling for censorship of real photos of real events that really did happen paid for by real U.S. taxpayer dollars... It's a real suicide call for any blogger or journalist.

Kaus, inadvertently, isn't just threatening his own suicide, but also that of the entire blogosphere! After all, who is gonna get censored first? CBS? Or some kid's blog out there? And who is next in line?

(And besides, if we're going to start calling for taking down photos that have potential to incite violence, Kaus would be more credible on that point if he first called for removing the ugliest mug shot on the Internet: that of Jonah Goldberg, who started this whole suicidal trend of the blogosphere calling for censorship. Doesn't that photo just make you want to punch him in his puggy little nose? See what I mean? Slippery. Slope. Yada yada.)

Don't do it Mick! We feel your pain! There is still time for an intervention! Call the hotline, our trained professionals will talk you down from the ledge!

(via Wonkette, who suggests, "we can't help thinking that there's another option that would have really moved the 'Arab swing voters' to our side. Maybe, say, not turning their asses into human Lite Brite machines in the first place?")

Next logical slip: Kaus calls to censor Wonkette, blaming her calls for "more ass fucking" on the sodomic tortures in Iraq.

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Since we all have to pitch in to help the illegitimate government of the Court Appointed Bush administration save money, lower war taxes, reduce the war deficit, etcetera, and I'm coming to the United States this week for the first time since 2002, I thought I'd do my part by alerting the authorities as to my schedule.

That will save the need for lots of surveillance, undercover agents, stakeout crews, wiretappers in basements, all those people who I keep employed with overtime pay each time I do venture into my insecure homeland.

Plus, by publishing my itinerary, there is the added advantage that my friends can find me too.

And if I don't show up at a certain time and place on this itinerary, see the aforementioned Homeland Security goons, and look toward Guantanamo.

I will arrive in California on Thursday. Memo to Customs Agents: You should leave me alone this time (for a change). If my newspaper didn't fight to protect you, who would?

I will be carrying the following contraband: cigarettes. But that is not under your federal jurisdiction (yet). Leave my arrest for tobacco possession to the California state authorities, and to the Los Angeles municipal authorities, who just banned smoking outdoors along the coast (apparently the gazillion automobile drivers in that city complained that the smoke would sometimes waft into their SUV air conditioning vents while stuck in traffic). I will be smoking there on Thursday afternoon, while being interviewed for a documentary co-produced by Edward James Olmos about Plan Colombia, outside of the port facilities where the campaign manager for Colombia's current narco-president had his ship of cocaine precursor chemicals seized in 1997.

I hope to get off with a slap on the wrist (like he did), and pay my bail in time to dine with this year's LA-area Authentic Journalism scholarship winners and my rock star date. It would really impress my date if you busted me then. (You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, officer.) At some point that evening I expect, also, to rendevous with known subversive Barry Crimmins.

On Friday, the Narco News posse is forming, the most dangerous terrorist organization to hit LA since the LAPD. I might go on Air America (Live from Guantanamo?) with the aforementioned Mr. Crimmins. Salma Hayek will be on call to bail me out at any hour. Rodney King will be on hand to shoot the video.

On Saturday, there will be many photo opportunities for surveillance agents. Here is a press release and schedule from the ACLU of Southern California of all the glorious events surrounding The UPPIE Awards, named for Upton Sinclair… yeah, yeah, officer, I know, it kind of puts a crimp in plans to arrest me to have so many civil liberties attorneys as my gracious hosts. Nyah, nyah, nyah!).

The Eighty-First Anniversary of Liberty Hill promises to be the hottest celebration of civil liberties in San Pedro since Upton Sinclair got himself arrested and thrown into jail back in 1923.

That was a seminal date in US Constitutional history. It galvanized the American labor movement, while giving birth to the ACLU of Southern California and insuring that the name of San Pedro would forever be linked with the cause of union justice and human rights

On May 15, a coalition of union and community groups will sponsor a day long series of events that celebrate the critical role of our labor unions in the development of international commerce.

That role is to make sure that “free trade” is “fair trade”…for all involved.

MAY 15 Schedule of Events

10:30 AM: Seventieth Anniversary Wreath Laying to commemorate the murders of ILWU heroes Dickie Parker and John Knudson on the docks of San Pedro. This happened on May 15, 1934.

Gather at the Memorial in Gibson Park, near the Maritime Museum. (FREE)

12:00 Noon Fair Trade Rally with speakers and music at Liberty Hill Plaza. Steve Rohde, Art Almeida, Jim Brandt and others to be announced. (FREE)

1:00 – 4:00 PM Book Signing and Media Fair at the Harry Bridges Institute, Community Labor Room Library, with authors, journalists and film makers. Frank Dorrel and others tba. (FREE)

5:00 – 6:30 PM Muckraker’s Madness. Cocktail & Hors d’ oeuvre reception with the winners of the 2004 Upton Sinclair Freedom of Expression Awards. Music and Theatre. In the Arcade Building. (Blogger Note Inserted: Narco News Posse members, assemble an hour beforehand, at 4 p.m., at the safe house.)

$75. Includes Solidarity Circle Seating at Uppie Awards. Muckrakers Madness Cocktail Reception Only, $50.

7:-8:30 PM The Second Annual UPPIE Awards Upton Sinclair Freedom of Expression Awards presentations honoring artists, journalists, authors and citizen activists who exemplify the legacy of Upton Sinclair, including:

LAURA FLANDERS / AL GIORDANO/ AMY GOODMAN* / PAUL KRASSNER / THE REVEREND JAMES LAWSON

GREG PALAST*, THEO MACGREGOR & J. OPPENHEIM and “The San Pedro Nine”, the group organized by the Harry Bridges Institute Friends of Labor. At the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro.

$20. / General Admission ($10 / Senior, Student, Hardship).

$50. / Solidarity Circle (Preferred Seating in the Theatre)

$75. includes your choice of Muckrakers Madness Cocktail Reception OR Singing Jailbirds Buffet (One Only)

$125. includes premium ticket to all events, all day long.

9:00 – 11:00 PM Singing Jailbirds The Liberty Hill Day experience will end with a symbolic trip to the historic San Pedro Jail for a Whale & Ale buffet, a spirited salon and a short theatrical presentation of excerpts from Upton Sinclair’s musical play, Singing Jailbirds, written after his Liberty Hill Day experience in San Pedro. (Nyah Nyah Note: I will be armed with the Dobro guitar that narco-bankers coveted but did not win in their lawsuit.)

$75. Includes Solidarity Circle Seating at Uppie Awards. Singing Jailbirds Buffet Theatre only, $50.

Liberty Hill Day events are being co-sponsored by The South Bay Chapter of the ACLU of Southern California, The Harry Bridges Institute, The ILWU, Amalgamated Bank, Random Lengths News, The Whale & Ale Restaurant, The Living Newspaper Theatre, The Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed and the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. (Others to be announced)

For more information, call Dan Pasley 310.519.1500

On Sunday, May 16th, (once Salma bails me out again), comes my favorite event of the weekend: The Narco News Benefit Dinner and Cabaret, 6 p.m. to late, at Orchid restaurant in Korea Town (click aforementioned link for directions). There, we'll announce the names of the 2004 Narco News Authentic Journalism Scholars. We'll be joined at Orchid Restaurant by Barry Crimmins, Vessy Mink, The Boners, the Smiling Minks, Mike Gray, Sunny Angulo, George Sanchez, and other insurgents. There will be great food, drink, music, and revelry, with the usual Salón Chingón ambiance for which we are famous.

I would like to clear up some confusion. The $50 advance ticket price is for all the surveillance agents assigned to follow me around. (We will take attendance and alert your superiors, officer, if you don't show up or try to slip in without paying.)

But for all my friends without badges who can't afford fifty bucks, don't you worry: You can get in for a donation of any size, no matter how small, just by saying, at the door, "I'm a Narco News reader." You will probably be arrested for that, but, hey, at least you'll save fifty bucks. And Salma will bail you out.

But if you would be so nice as to help us give out more scholarships on Sunday night, please buy tickets, or just make a donation, online to The Fund for Authentic Journalism: http://www.authenticjournalism.org.

The comments section on this blog begins, always, with a quote from Uncle Bruno...

"First Rule: Do not bore the readers!"

- Uncle Bruno Fallaci

I accuse John Kerry, George Bush, Ralph Nader, and the entire North American media of breaking this rule!

It's so hard to get interested in that damn campaign these days, much less excited. So I've had little to say in recent days.

If you can't say anything interesting, don't say it!

What happened to make the contest for the presidency of the United States the most boring show on earth?

It's the Commercial Media, stupid!

It makes everyone act so friggin' carefully that nobody says anything new or has any news to make.

I have snoozed my way through the news in recent days, trying to get inspired enough to blog about something related to the U.S. campaign... but, alas... nothing real has been said, by anyone.

Fortunately, I have Narco News, which is kicking ass these days... and just as fortunately (and this is not the first time this has happened) Cynthia Cotts has come to the rescue, to yell STOP THE BOREDOM!

In her current Village Voice column, she explores what it might be like for the grand old lions of journalism - Edward R. Murrow, A.J. Liebling, Mary McGrory - to begin their careers in the current slumber-inducing Corporate Media environment. She cites a new biography by (recently "pushed out" NPR host) Bob Edwards about Murrow...

If Murrow had worked under today's conditions, he would have been appalled to learn that news programming is determined by market research. "The audience for news programs is an older audience," Edwards explains in his Afterword, "and one cannot imagine Murrow keeping his temper if lectured by the sales force to do more to reach the 18-to-35-year-old demographic so coveted by advertisers."

And David Remnick's March 29 New Yorker profile of A.J. Liebling...

According to Remnick, Liebling debuted by thumbing his nose at two venerable institutions, the Columbia School of Journalism and The New York Times. While enrolled at the J-school, Liebling studied French and translated erotica, according to Remnick, later dismissing the program as having "all the intellectual status of a training school for the future employees of the A&P."

I guess if these old school folks were around today...

...they'd be blogging.

But what would they find to blog about?

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I have to disappear from the screen for a few days.

In the meantime, here's some important weekend reading:

Editorial in the Black Commentator

Let’s be clear about the choices available to American voters in November. History – most notably the historical weakness of the U.S. Left – has dealt the cards. Yet a fraction of those who claim to be progressives – misreading history and oblivious to the evidence of their senses – pretend that there is no overarching reason to do everything humanly possible to defeat George Bush in 2004. They claim there is “no difference” between the contenders: it’s Tweedledum Bush or Tweedledee Kerry, and “nothing will change” whether one wins or the other.

Corporate media labor mightily to obscure the Bush Pirates’ historic departure from past methods of Rich Men’s Rule. It is their job to make what is singularly horrific, palatable to the public, as if nothing radically different has been happening in the nation and the world these past three years. Republicans also profit from the voices of those who willfully fail to recognize the uniquely rabid nature of the Bush regime. By proclaiming that there is no difference between the ineffectual, dishonest John Kerry and the Republicans, they are in practice preaching the futility of resistance to Bush.

The Bush men and Kerry’s crew are profoundly different.

The Bush-Cheney regime is a criminal enterprise following a blueprint for world conquest...

No words minced. Just how I like it.

See y'all early next week.

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Hey Kids!

Remember my March 30th report from the Usumacinta River bordering Guatemala and Mexico (the one with generous helpings of Eminem and KY jelly for Richard Holbrooke, Sandy Berger, and Rand Beers, as I emerged from the jungle)?

And how I mentioned that the nine foot crocodiles were safer and more reliable to be around than the humans?

Well, along that river, my riverboat chugged briefly by that of Dave Pentecost and a dedicated group of gringos and Mexicans who are doing yeomen's work to save that river and stop a terrible proposal to build an hydroelectric dam that would flood a grand swath of shrinking rainforest biodiversity and Maya ruins (not to mention Zapatista communities, who will, thankfully, be the last - and decisive - line of defense against that damn dam: another reason why environmentalists ought to be throwing their solidarity there, too).

It happened so fast - gringos on the river! (fewer gringos than crocodiles, but more unexpected!) - just long enough to shake Pentecost's hand and say "good luck, and ass-fuck the dam, comrades! By the way, love your blog!" (There ain't no hidin' place 'round here!)

Well, the good news is, the gringos doing the attention-getting river tour for a worthy cause didn't get eaten by our crocodile friends.

But, alas, the humans did cause them some problems.

Checking in with the Daily Glyph (I love The Daily Glyph because it blogs about a land that I love, although I don't always line up on the same side of the barricades except on environmental matters, which are its main bread and butter, along with Maya archeology, about which I am writing books of rebuttal), Pentecost reports that his crew and he were robbed at gunpoint a few hours after I saw them.

He blogs that the river trip was...

Wonderful, in spite of getting robbed in the middle of the night by gun and machete toting bandits. We camped on a beach that was fine last year, not this year. There is apparently an organized group that preys on the illegal immigrants passing through, fires shots at passing authorities and is now targeting tourists.

Note to future rafters and travelers - stay off of the beach on the Mexican side at a spot known as Anaite, just below the "Tower" guard post on the Guatemalan shore, a few hours below Yaxchilan. The beach is on a sharp right turn in the river, above Chicozapote rapids.

Beyond that we had no problems, no one was hurt, and we counted our blessings....

Best and safest current Usu trip - ask Willy Fonseca, at km 61 on the highway to Frontera Corozal, to take you to Piedras Negras and Busilha Falls by lancha. He puts in far below our trouble spot, and both sites are spectacular.

The Usu lives - still a frontier, still a cultural and natural treasure, still wild on many fronts. We will continue to work to preserve it.

Now, I'd say that's downright civil of him, keeping it all in perspective, not taking on the "victim mentality" that lesser lights adopt when they lose some material possessions in foreign lands, and keeping on with the fight. They hit an unexpected midnight toll booth along the river, that's all. In a world where such vast abysses are imposed between rich and poor, that sort of thing happens. Every day. It's built into the system. It's called "the capitalism tax."

And the crocodiles... they let our river-saving colleagues pass for free.

Is it any wonder which species I trust more?

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Oh no!

I've started another monster!

The Warblogger Suicide Watch *TM that I impetuously started on April 6th, just a dozen days ago, proves, once again, that free speech is dangerous!

Not since the 1979 Hollywood release of The China Syndrome (authored by our pal Mike Gray, who will be speaking at the upcoming Fund for Authentic Journalism's "Narco News Cabaret" May 16th in Koreatown in Los Angeles) influenced a young nuclear power plant... a poor, rural, impressionable, boiling water reactor from the farmlands, only three weeks old, named Three Mile Island, that after seeing the movie thought, "wow, I think I'll have a meltdown, just for kicks, like I saw in the movies!" have we seen the pure evil of an uncensored media wreak havoc on confused youths in the way that the BigLeftOutside meme is wreaking today.

First (see yesterday morning's bloggerville blockbuster), Michele Catalano's A Small Victory blog - part of the "Bloggers for Bush" webring - tossed the hair dryer in the bathtub.

The blogcorpse was in critical condition. But BigLeftOutside, being compassionate, and ever alert, revived her with our Faith Based Warblogger Suicide Watch *TM program (we accept zero government funds!), and she rose from the cross of silver, posting this ditty here at the BigLeftOutside reader comments section.

Miracle workers that we are, we brought her back to life. Hallelujah and pass the collection plate! (And the KY!) She then posted an update on her blog resignation, accepting The First Step of our Warblogger Suicide Watch *TM one step program: "I accept that I am powerless over my own oversocialization, and understand that Blogger Suicide *TM is not the solution."

Michele wrote:

"...the fact that my stopping blogging now is sort of like committing suicide after getting arrested - the last thing you do is what people remember you for..."

(Dangling participle forgiven... She's a good writer! She'll be back on her game soon enough! But, darling, lose the "Bloggers for Bush" logo! It's a "trigger" as we say here in the emergency room of Warblogger Rehab *TM.)

She's accepted her powerlessness over Blogger Suicide. Yay! Everybody say, "Hi Michele!"

Warblogger Suicide Watch *TM: Miracles performed daily!

But now we have an even more serious patient entering the MASH unit: "Hotlips Reynolds!" (We know nothing about the truth or falsity of whether his students or interns call him that: Things are always quite opaque at public universities, because, as loyal Insta-dittoheads, we know that everything related to the public sector eventually ends in stains on a blue dress, but that's just pure opinion, not based on any known facts.)

Just hours after we explained to WBS Watch *TM case #1, the aforementioned Michele, that it was Instapundit who did her dirt, by phrasing her "first time" with Wonkette - it could have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship! - as a "catfight," oh my... The Instapundit himself, the once and fallen blog king, this morning, started drinking the koolaid.

(I will alert Air America's Randi Rhodes immediately, because she is the coming future Talk Radio Monarch - she's really fucking good on radio *TM, we can't even get any work done around here on weekday afternoons anymore! - and Randi, like you and I, kind reader, is, after all, compassionate, and fast class *TM, and we will work together to talk Glenn Reynolds down from the ledge... maybe... we gotta figure out, still, if that's really a good idea...)

The Instapundit wrote today:

SICK TODAY: Cancelled a trip for a pro bono project I'm working on. I doubt I'll be blogging much... Life is short.

Does that read like a suicide note or not?

No, Glenn! Don't do it! Don't place the end of that toothbrush in the corner of your eyeball socket and run, fast!, into the wall! Don't succumb, please, to my svengali-like powers of suggestion!

Yes, it's depressing to be a warblogger at a time like this *TM" (Ari Fleischer, also on the WBS Watchlist)... What with Bob Woodward and Wonkette (and her big ten-inch) double-teaming y'all, and the worst yet to come...

Of course it's hard to dig your way out of the authoritarian traps you've all set for yourselves. But you can do it! Our Faith Based program can give you a hand-up and not a hand-out!

BigLeftOutside has arrived to bring the good news. There is a way out of Warblogger Hell! (But as Gandhi said, "you must raise a Muslim child as your own and raise him as a Muslim.")

We need an intervention. I mean, look at the Insta-Depression *TM going on over there on the right side of the screen! When Instapundit starts saying "life is short," that's like Jim Jones drinking the whole vat of koolaid all by himself (hmmmm, would that have been as bad?). Well, the public insists that could be an "acceptable risk" of the war on terror.

But, meanwhile, this is my compassionate worry: there might be some impressionable three-week-old "warblogger" (Passé *TM!) out there, who like the Three Mile Island nuke, sees the movie and decides it would be cool to meltdown in the same way. And we are out to save those lives, as we saved Michele today.

I mean, look at our fast results. Michele writes, just hours later:

"I cannot give up blogging entirely, as if that wasn't obvious to everyone from the very start.

"But...

"There will be no political rants. There will be no leftie bashing. There will be no warmongering. There will be no talk of the election, the war, Israel, anti-war demonstrations, Michael Moore, Iraq, Iran, immigration issues, political correctness run amok, nor will there be any pointing at other bloggers who do talk about those things in a way that runs opposite to my feelings on the subject.

"That part of ASV is over. It just has to be that way. It was not an enjoyable experience to write about those things...."

Memo to Michele Catalano: Paisana: You can still express political opinions and ridicule political correctness. Please don't stop. You're very good at it, in fact.

Plus, you've figured it out! That the Instapundit formula is hollow to the core (and he hurt you, bigtime, with that "catfight" comment, so, hey, turn your guns on the ones who really deserve it).

Uy. But what a moral dilemma.

Save Instapundit?

Is he (er, I mean his blog) really worth saving the way that Michele's was?

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Here's the transcript of John Kerry's Meet the Press appearance today, mano a mano with Tim Russert, regarding the Cuba embargo.

What is interesting is that, once again, left to his own devices, in a lengthy, focused, conversation (for TV), without those Clintonite assholes pulling him around by the nose-ring, I think we get a better idea of what Kerry really thinks.

I'll translate from Kerryspeak: He wants to lift the Cuba embargo, but without humiliating the oligarchs and oligarch-wannabes in South Florida, and with typical JK-like self-confidence he really believes he can push them into thinking it was their idea, like he and McCain did with Nam Vets when they opened relations, again, with the Vietnamese government.

Read it and tell me if you get the same impression:

MR. RUSSERT: We're here in Florida and relations with Cuba are a very important issue. This is what John Kerry said in 2000 about that situation. And John Kerry, "who's a member of the foreign relations committee said in an interview that a reevaluation of relations with Cuba was way overdue. We have a frozen, stalemated counterproductive policy that is not in humanitarian interests nor in our larger credibility interest in the region. There's just a complete and total contradiction between the way we deal with China, the way we deal with Russia, the way we have been dealing with Cuba over the last several years. It speaks volumes about the problems in the current American electoral process. ...The only reason we don't reevaluate the policy is the politics of Florida."

We don't have an embargo on China. We don't have an embargo on Russia. We have one on Cuba and what you're suggesting is because of the power of the Cuban-American lobby, that's why our policy's in place.

SEN. KERRY: I think in the year 2000, the politics are very different from where they are in 2004. I think there's been a dramatic change in the community in Florida itself. Now, I met with members of that community. All through the years I've been in the Senate, for 20 years, Tim. I have never suggested lifting the embargo. I don't suggest you just lift the embargo. That's not what I'm talking about. But for anybody to suggest that what we've been doing has worked, that it has somehow--I mean, look what happened with the Vallera program recently. A whole bunch of people got arrested and put in jail. What I want to do...

MR. RUSSERT: Why not lift the embargo and overthrow Castro...

SEN. KERRY: Here's what I'm going to do.

MR. RUSSERT: ...with trade and with kindness and have people simply say "You can't maintain your status as a dictator when people are traveling free and exchanging ideas and exchanging goods." And that is the kind of way...

SEN. KERRY: Tim, I've been before...

MR. RUSSERT: ...with China and Russia--as you point out, with China and Russia it has worked in terms of trying to break down some of those barriers, make it less totalitarian, certainly at least in Russia. Why not try it with Cuba?

SEN. KERRY: Well, Tim, as you know, I led the effort with John McCain to try to open up Vietnam and we moved against many of those kinds of arguments. I think I know how to do this. But in the case of Cuba, there are a lot of different crosscurrents that are important to be sensitive to. What I have done is sat down with members of the community and listened, and I find that there is a willingness within the community to begin to think about other alternatives and options. I wouldn't want to just announce a policy without sitting with people in the community, listening carefully, trying to build a consensus and see what we can do. But I...

MR. RUSSERT: We should keep the embargo?

SEN. KERRY: But I wouldn't just give something for nothing but I would begin to encourage travel. I've suggested that. I think that's appropriate. I think remittances might be considered and might be helpful in order...

MR. RUSSERT: But keep the embargo?

SEN. KERRY: For the moment I would like to see what we can negotiate, what we could try to move forward, and I'd like to see how the Cuban community itself might be able to build a consensus about an approach. I think that's a smart way to do it and that's what I'd like to try to do.

I think he's overestimating the capacity of ex-oligarchs and descendants of oligarchs for rational political dialogue and thought in the context of democracy which, although they use the word endlessly, they have nothing for contempt for it.

At the same time, he does appear to have a real plan.

Here's the problem (again): the Otto Reich wannabes like Richard Holbrooke, Samuel Berger and Rand Beers, vying for their Kerry administration sinecures, just like they did to counter Kerry's good instincts on Haiti, are now going to pop up like jack-in-the-boxes ("pop go the weasels!") to try and convince those spoiled brat Elian-kidnappers and coup plotters that Kerry didn't really mean that he's going to try and co-opt them. And, by doing so, they will try to put Jack back in the box in a way that limits his maneuvering room to do just that after January 20th.

In that context, another statement made by Kerry today on Meet the Press shows just how important it is to take Holbrooke and Berger out of the Secretary of State sweepstakes preemptively:

SEN. KERRY: ...I will have my secretary of state legitimately empowered to be able to be a full secretary of state, speaking for the administration, which we now know from Bob Woodward's book is not the case. The war within this administration over who's in charge of what and whose voice is being listened to is unlike anything I've seen in modern days.

If that Secretary of State is Chris Dodd or someone of real political savvy and stature, well, that will be what it takes to make sure that the bureaucrats are neutralized. But if Kerry puts a bureaucrat in - like Holbrooke, like Berger - as Secretary of State, he ensures the continuance of that very problem of administration in-fighting he claims to want to prevent.

"The war within this administration over who's in charge of what and whose voice is being listened to is unlike anything I've seen in modern days," he says. Not true. There is something else he has seen in modern days that exactly mirrors it: the war within his own campaign, waged by Holbrooke and Berger, with Beers and the circle-jerk conference-call committee as the jackbooted shock troops, to achieve their coup d'etat over Kerry's foreign policy before he has an administration, while it's still in embryonic stage as a campaign.

If Kerry doesn't put a stop to it now, if his better advisors who are all more immersed on the electoral victory side don't smack them down now, while they have the chance, the State Department under Kerry is going to look and act like Rosemarie's Baby.

I'm pro-choice, and we're still in the second trimester: Abort these bureaucrat babies now, Senator, while you still have the chance.

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BigLeftOutside World Exclusive! Must Credit BigLeftOutside!

"Wonkette has the biggest penis on the blogosphere."

- Al Giordano, BigLeftOutside

Or how about this lift-out quote:

"A sleeper cell of ass-fucking laughter infiltrates the Washington establishment."

Wouldn't one of those look nifty on Our New Queen's sidebar?

How else can I suck up to her? Let me count the ways...

If you need any more proof about why I kneel and lick Wonkette's, um, feet so shamelessly (aren't all us media doms, behind closed doors and starry-eyed, just tops fighting for the bottom position?), see today's Sunday New York Times.

That Wonkette is taking over the world at greater bwahahahaha speed *TM than all previous bloggers in the Book of Genesis is made evident by Julie Bosman's Times profile.

Alas, no references to "ass fucking" from Times Square yet, but it's still nice to see the staid Times be forced to use the term "penis" in a non-medical non-Supreme Court nominee confirmation hearing setting, as in today's reference (courtesy of Jack Shafer) to "penis jokes."

"Pissing On My Master's House!" More penis jokes, Massah, more, More, MORE! Why? Because the mid-level managers at the New York Times, as everybody knows, are penises, including many suit-and-tied types who obviously have very small ones (let's get out that ruler, Pat Lyons! You, too, Andy Rosenthal! Wouldn't Okrent serve the public better if he carried a ruler around the newsroom, whacking it loudly on desks and cubicles, shouting "there will be random inspections"?).

"Penis, penis, penis, penis!
New York Times! Penises!"

Sounds like a job for Radical Teen Cheer.

Not that the Times isn't funny even as it tries so hard not to be. Take this prosody from the Times profile on Wonkette:

"Washingtonians generally divide into two halves — politicians and journalists — and both halves are obsessed with reading about themselves."

(Um, shouldn't Daniel Okrent, while waiting for our charity ruler mail-in campaign to kick in, get right on that, with a memo and a link to U.S. Census data? Washingtonians generally divide, um, in an organizational-housing pattern more similar to that of an apartheid system: 60 percent black, 27 percent white, and 7.8 percent "Hispanic or Latino," notes the census. Methinks that Timeswoman Bosman is referencing "two halves" that are, at best, "two eighths," but, hey, if Timesmen understood math, maybe USA Today and its daily numbered lists wouldn't be beating them in circulation...)

Not that Wonkette (she already went postal and married a Washington Postman - hey, are we witnessing the rise of the next Nora Ephron?) is such the outsider. Like all of us professional outsiders, the blogger known to Times readers as Ms. Ana Marie Cox has her insider tribe. Picture this:

"Last month, a party celebrating the start of her site was packed. Held at the Dupont Circle town house of Peter Bergen, the CNN terrorism expert, the party's heavily mediacentric guest list included Michael Isikoff of Newsweek; a former Clinton mouthpiece, Joe Lockhart; the political blogger Mickey Kaus; and a former Howard Dean spokeswoman, Tricia Enright. This is her devoted fan base…

"'She pushes the envelope and goes where the other gossip columns don't go,' said Debbie Berger, the director of media strategy for the liberal policy group Center for American Progress. Ms. Berger, a daughter of Sandy Berger, the former Clinton administration national security adviser, is noted for giving frequent parties. Ms. Cox 'does a really good job at poking fun at the institution of Washington and the stiffness of Washington,' Ms. Berger said."

Damn! So that's why I can't get Wonkette to link to my scoops on Sandy Berger, not even with all my gratuitous ass-fucking references. Oh well, so many assholes, so little time…

But, still, we love Wonkette for the enemies she does make:

"In a relatively short time, she has drawn her share of detractors. Mr. Leiby described her as a 'foulmouthed, inaccurate, opinionated little vixen.' Jack Shafer of Slate called Ms. Cox a 'heaving puke' in a column that also lambasted Gawker.com, the New York-based gossip blog created in 2002 by Nick Denton, the publisher behind Wonkette. 'Her enthusiasm for penis jokes cannot be as great as her blog suggests,' Mr. Shafer wrote."

And I found this little gem over in neocon bloggerlandia this morning (scroll down to comments section).

It seems that Wonkette is getting credit for A Large Victory over a small one…

"The closing of my blog is in no way, shape or form related to anything to do with the whole Wonkette saga. I've been at this for three years. I've written over 10,000 posts about subjects way more aggravating and way more important than the rise of Ana Marie Cox.

"I have a full time job, a family and I am in the process of buying a new house/moving. I just don't have the time or energy to put into the blog right now, given my mental health status at the moment.

"I've dealt with much bigger and more divisive issues than Wonkette. It's funny that out of three plus years of blogging, not to mention my work at Command Post, this is what people are going to think of when someone mentions my blog - that I'm the one who wrote that petty post about Ana Marie Cox."

Oh, this is too much fun! The warblogger known as Michelle can't even shut down her blog in peace without everybody blaming Wonkette! That's more proof that Wonkette is now the undisputed Red Queen of Blogostan. "Off with their penises!" She's getting blamed for every damn thing that happens. Why? Because, I repeat: Wonkette has the biggest cock on the blogblock.

Listen to Michele's post post-post (and she's not even trying to be funny, but my crocodile tears are killing me with that sad, violin-soaked musical score playing over there from the right-side speaker; it was her own neocon brethren who did her in! I'll explain that story later, but I'm too busy convulsing to type):

"While I have contended in many comment sections around the 'sphere that my hiatus/closure here had nothing to do with the Wonkette thing, but everything to do with my mental health, it is the backlash from the Wonkette incident that has me leaning towards the dark side.

"Six long days after I wrote that post, I'm still getting emails and trackbacks - it seems that everytime someone writes about Ana Marie Cox now, they feel obligated to link to my little rant as well, for...what? A warped perspective? I don't know."

Didn't I tell you, just days ago, that the Warblogger Suicide Watch *Tm had officially begun?

A Small Victory's Michele concludes:

"I was fucked."

"Ass-fucked by Wonkette."

I want a tee-shirt!

But here's the part that nobody, but nobody, here on the big, left, outside of the screen can or should resist about Wonkette. And I whack the New York Times often enough that I'll give them rare props today for noticing: With the coming of Wonkette, the Anti-Drudge has finally arrived on the Internet:

"The Columbia Journalism Review scolded Ms. Cox for covering the Kerry intern rumor as if it were true, a criticism Ms. Cox was eager to point out. 'They accused me of trying to out-Drudge Drudge,' she said triumphantly. 'Which I love, and I'd do it if I could.'"

Instead of out-Drudging Drudge, though, Wonkette was spotted near Washington DC on April 9th, well, outing Drudge.

Yup, she's the first blogger with a big enough schlong to take Drudge on head to head. I simply can't wait for Matt Drudge's "my final post" post in which he'll insist that he's really not quitting because of Wonkette. I'm saving the bandwidth. That one will be cached permanently here.

I'm inspired. So inspired, so happy that ass-fucking, left-right stereo, and the Warblogger Suicide Watch *TM, have all finally arrived in Blogolandia that I am donating an all new "Drudge Cheer" to the Radical Teen Cheerleaders, for whom I want to ghostwrite when I grow up…

"¡Dale a Drudge!
¡Dale, Wonkita!
¡Por el Culo, Dale!"

Wow. That was the funnest Sunday New York Times since last year's Jayson Blair fire, Massah!

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More from the Warblogger Suicide Watch *TM…

(They've imploded over this story.)

Here is the victorious Air America motion filed in the New York Supreme Court.

Victorious attorneys: Richard O. Mannarino of Marulli & Associates in New York, and Ross W. Wooten of T. Wade Welch & Associates in Houston.

NY Supreme Justice who issued the order: Judge Marilyn G. Diamond.

In the past 24 hours at least 160 blogs (900 in the past week!) have been talking about Air America.

Much of the banter shows clueless neo-conservative warbloggers really, really, upset and in denial that everything they claimed yesterday about this story proved to be factually wrong.

You can feel the frustration in their rants. They have no idea how to confront the phenomenon.

Reach for the little black pill, kids. Your nightmare has only just begun.

The Commercial Media is all over the story, too. (As of 10 a.m. Eastern Time today, 68 newspapers and publications listed on Google News had written, or published wire stories, about Air America in the previous 24 hours. You can't buy that kind of publicity.)

A lot of the Commercial Media (and "Mynah Bird Bloggers *TM" who simply repeat what the Commercial Media says, instead of doing the heavy lifting of reporting and analysis) got the story wrong yesterday, and now have to take their panties to the laundromat after soiling themselves.

In contrast, everything we told you, here at BigLeftOutside, would happen yesterday has already occurred.

That's becoming, sigh, almost a routine occurrence around here.

Figuring out what institutions and people are going to do based on what they've done before is losing its challenge. Everybody is so damn predictable. Doesn't this video game have another level for kids who have cracked the code on the first one?

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Two weeks ago, Air America radio achieved flight with its March 31st noon debut. A national project of this kind - a talk radio network that is openly oppositional to the wartime hegemony on the airwaves - has never before been attempted, and all of us who root for the network expected turbulence. But to see Arthur Liu, the businessman and prominent GOP donor who is, essentially, the network's Los Angeles and Chicago landlord, yanking Air America off the air in its second and third largest markets just two weeks later, imposes a silence that speaks volumes.

Liu told Reuters that he snipped the wires because the network, he claims, "bounced a check." The dispute is already in the courts, and the feisty young tenant may yet get the better of the Dickensian landlord when, as occurs in lawsuits, the whole truth comes tumbling out in document form. In the mid- to long-term, the free publicity generated by the litigation is just what Air America needs. They haven't been sued yet, per my prophetic recommendation, so finding some straw dog to sue is the next best thing. Which is also why it would not surprise me to see Liu, a perfect Mrs. Teasdale foil for Air America's Groucho Marx, reconnect those wires in a hurry before it gets that far. Otherwise, Artie, baby, here come the proctologists!

The latent hostility to free speech by too many free marketers comes out at moments like this, making a lie, again, of their faux-libertarian posturing. As long as dissent remains dispersed into small, local, ethnic, and "identity politics" market niches, keeping the political opposition compartmentalized, the neo-conservatives call it "diversity," a supposed benefit bestowed upon us by the "multicultural society." They disingenuously tell us that it is "the market" that provides us with that "freedom."

But let the potential of an oppositional media front begin to form as a national radio project, and begin to suggest it can take a sledgehammer to the market niche walls imposed by the so-called "laws of capitalism," and look how quickly the free-marketers become cheerleaders for private-sector censorship. Glenn Reynolds, the Instantly-Over-Pundit, still nursing his wounds from his steep and continuing fall from the Site-meter summit, could not hide his glee yesterday, proclaiming: "Adios, muchachos! Viva Multiculturalism!"

Oooh, now the warbloggers want to learn Español. ¡Que chido! Lets help them out! Get out el diccionario, kids and let the class begin...

PARENTAL ADVISORY: Kids! Do not let your parents (or speech cops from the left or right) read the following tracts, unless your father is Dick Cheney and his pacemaker might fritz out from the shock... That would be cool...

A pendejo who blogs by the wishful name of "Chaos Overlord" remarks, "I just can't believe that, even in this great country, dissent can be crushed over such a minor issue as not making a profit. What a bunch of heartless monsters. I weep for the future. Or not. Heh." This same imbécil, this morning, titled his (or her) update, "Air America has entered the Bermuda Triangle," but apparently so did his own capacity to come up with more original material, so he simply funnels readers to the fallen blog king for the morning line: "I don't know what else to say," he says (then why say it, punk?), "Instapundit, however, does know what to say and does so in his usual fashion."

See what I mean about these jackbooted idiotas? Another neocon payaso, Gregory Markle, jumps into the censorship-by-market-forces cheerleading squad, calling Air America "incompetent." You get the idea about these putos.

Hablando de la incompetencia..., why investigate the true facts when they can make them up? Another huevón blogging under the name Michael Van Winkle snores, "this proves… that the left doesn't understand markets." (No, marica, it proves that too many "free-marketers" don't understand the word "free.")

Let's do a quick fact-check on these pinches coños by going to the source. That's what Authentic Bloggers and Authentic Journalists, seeking truth, do, while these impostores fachas play make believe. (Wonkette, neither neo nor con, never lacking original material, is having great fun with this developing story: Drudge and his parrots could learn a thing or two from her about how the timely use of a question mark can go a long way toward being credible online. ¡Dales por el culo, Wonkita! ...which means, "ass fuck them some more, Wonkette!")

So, let's do what fact-checkers do and go to the source: Air America's Senior Vice President of Entertainment Programming, Lizz Winstead, opened her show this morning - streaming live from the network's website, still on the air even here in Latin America - and explained: "We're the lead story on the Drudge report yesterday, 'Air America bounces check.' This man who owns the Chicago and LA station was doing some pretty underhanded things. We found out he was stealing from the company… He was double billing for the time. Let's say you lease and apartment and then you couldn't move in for a couple months, which is what we did…"

Co-host Rachel Maddow jumped in: "So we're paying to put somebody else's content on the air?"

"Dude, you owe money," co-host Chuck D. towel-whipped the landlord.

It turns out the dispute didn't have anything to do with Liu's Chicago station at all, just the alleged double-billing at Liu's Los Angeles property. And that the liberals do understand cutthroat capitalism after all: They stopped payment on the check and are now going into court to get their rights enforced. And all the free publicity (hey, everybody is talking about it, now) is great for Air America. "Twice as many people are streaming on the web as before," Winstead noted. "It's driving people to the network."

Of course it is! Thanks suckers!

An important point: There was no bounced check, noted Winstead. "To stop payment on a check is not a bounce. We have money. That's why the right is scared."

Yup, this one's gonna pan out the same way Drudge's last "big scoop" did: When his claims of an affair between John Kerry and a reporter turned out to be false, beginning the online downfall of all the warbloggers who followed him into the shitpile. It's fun to watch the decaying neocon warbloggerdom take the bait once again, revealing both their fear of free speech, and their increasingly unmasked hostility to it. ¡Que chingan a sus madres!

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Read it and weep, Beltway Bandits!

Skeletons, rolling out of closets!

Key words for Google Bombing: Richard Holbrooke, Sandy Berger, Samuel Berger, Samuel R. Berger, Rand Beers, Randy Beers, Alberto Fujimori, Ernesto Zedillo, Plan Colombia, Massacres... Blood... Hands... yada, yada, and yada!

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My friend and fellow expat Stan Gotlieb, among others, takes me to task in the BigLeftOutside comments section for flirting with a Kerry-McCain ticket.

It's always good to be challenged. It helps one refine one's view and understand one's feeling behind it better.

The following remarks are a somewhat fleshed out version of my reply to Stan...

The Vice President's job, I've always said, is the only job in government I am qualified to hold. Why? Because it has virtually zero authority, and nothing of substance to do. I'd love a job like that. But, alas, I'd never pass the security clearance! So we can rule me out right away. (That sound you hear is the national sigh of relief.)

So I think it only matters in helping to get elected (and, from my paranoid point of view, having someone you trust not to kill you to get your job). A vice president has never kept a president from sliding left or right. It is the most inconsequential job in government. The local dog catcher has more power. Who was it that said the job was worth "a warm bucket of spit"?

So, in that context, I ask, because we have been pouring over all the names being floated for Kerry's VP here in the BigLeftOutside Democratic Vice Presidential Pool, and I am not only unimpressed: I am bored with them all. Tell me, seriously: Who is the alternative? Name a single name please. Hard to do, isn't it?

These are the names floated so far by our readers, Democrats all: Edwards, Kerrey, Warner, Clark, Brown, Lincoln, Glenn, Rockefeller, Feingold, Bayh, Locke, Cleland, Richardson, Nelson, Napolitano, Raines, Feinstein, Franklin, Moseley Braun, Graham.

A lot of thought, creativity, searching, and wishful thinking went into each of those names. And the list is pretty inclusive of the general names being floated out there.

Well, Kerry's gonna have name just one guy or gal. And looking at the field, I see a bunch of Ken and Barbie dolls, automotons with a D next to their names... I see John Lewis and Max Cleland, who are real human beings but of marginal help in getting elected... if I thought Feingold had a snowball's chance in hell of being tapped by Kerry, I might push a little for that, but I don't see it... and I see McCain, who is a real human being.

I guess I've covered too many politicians to think that their "ideological" stances are anything more than posturing: the real ideologues of the Democratic party will never be chosen. I mean, it would be nice to fantasize about Barney Frank or Cynthia McKinney, but that ain't gonna happen. McCain's storming for the war the other day on the Senate floor I saw as nothing more than posturing, like a running play before the big pass... But let's get back to the question of the day: If not McCain, who?

In the current stagnated red-v-blue state dynamic, it's going to be some schlump like Bill Richardson or Evan Bayh or John Edwards on the D side... or it's McCain. In the field of the serious names being floated, McCain is the only one who I would invite to one of my parties in my own garden... He's flawed, he shoots from the hip sometimes, he certainly dances to his own beat, in other words, on the "short list" he's the only human being being mentioned. A human being with a flawed sense of ideology is better than a robot who simply pretends to be closer to mine because it's politically expedient.

But here's the money point. I don't expect every reader to understand it but I know that some of you will, so maybe you can help me find the words to explain it better:

A Kerry-McCain ticket would also bring the collapse of the red-v-blue state dynamic that freezes the country in an electoral narrowness that takes all life out of the campaign process. You would see Texas collapse, once and for all, as a GOP stronghold, among other shifts. And I think freed from that dynamic, both McCain and Kerry could be better human beings than they are right now, and the wheel would be in spin: the "stagnant center" in American politics would vanish into a vortex as a traditional, corrupted, biparty system collides of its own force and weight, and a vacuum emerges for Civil Society to fill.

Anybody who has read my recent postings knows that I'm deeply concerned about where the current dynamic is taking John Kerry. It presents us with the additional challenge of having to change the dynamic in a way that pulls Kerry back from the brink of creeping swingstate-itis, with all the predictable pandering that involves, and back into the ranks of the human race, where he'd rather be, but right now it sounds more like a soundtrack by David Bowie: "Can you hear me, Major Tom?" He's floating out there in a tin can, far, far away. Planet earth is blue and there's nothing we can do?

A Kerry-McCain ticket is the only thing on the horizon that can break the calcified Democrat-Republican dynamic. And the funny thing is, if you listen carefully to what average Americans are saying, they "get" it more than many of us "pros." I may be a pro, but I get it. As they say, think outside the box. As I say, then it's much easier to slam the hammer down upon that box and destroy it for good.

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On June 30th, 2003, I was the first blogger or journalist (correct me if I'm wrong, please) to suggest a Kerry-McCain ticket.

Now it's the hottest rumor of the campaign.

The Boston Globe reports today:

If there is a consensus among Kerry aides about who would be the boldest and most potent pick, it is Senator John S. McCain of Arizona -- a Republican...

The union of a Democrat and a Republican "would make good on the president's promise to be a uniter, not a divider," said one Kerry aide, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity. Such a ticket could offer Americans the prospect of a reduction in the partisanship that has increasingly gripped Capitol Hill during the past decade, as well as a return to the national unity experienced in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

Above all, the aides hypothesize that by choosing McCain as a running mate, Kerry would energize the election, create a weeks-long buzz in the media, and, perhaps most importantly, attract the support of swing and independent voters from both parties. Surveys earlier this year showed that many of the people who supported Howard Dean's insurgent candidacy for the Democratic nomination were the same "McCainiacs" who helped McCain win the 2000 Republican primary in New Hampshire against Bush.

"The narrative fits the country right now," a Kerry aide said of a potential Kerry-McCain partnership, while not ruling out other potential tandems and asserting that the decision is Kerry's alone...

The Hulk and Sgt. Fury!

Given the paucity of real talent on the various "short lists" of Democrats under consideration, McCain is looking better and better every day.

And to think, Glenn Reynolds claimed on March 10th - 2004! - that you had heard about a possible Kerry-McCain from the Instapundit "first." Well, he was sorta, maybe, kinda, close behind me, in a glacial passage of ages, or Blakean "eternity in an hour," context. He suggested it only 225 days after I did! (I zapped him my original link last month in response, but I guess a correction would have been too bitter a pill to swallow over there.)

And I guess that's another reason to like the Kerry-McCain scenario: It's embarrassing enough to the neocons that an intemperate red-and-black lefty like me told y'all who would be the presidential nominee when they had written off Kerry for dead. There will probably be some warblogger suicides if I turn out to have been the first to point to the Veep choice too! And just so we can get the scandal cycle jumpstarted, I'd like to go on record in advance of any such mercenary casualties and apply the greatest two words ever served up on the blogosphere: "Screw 'em!"

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Madeline Kane (official co-host with BigLeftOutside of the plotted July lefty bloggers' clandestine smokeasy invitational shindig in New York City... so clandestine that I'll announce it about twenty times between now and then!) has once again beat me to the punch with the only proper way to shed light on the absurdity of current events... She's broken into song!

Daily Kos Song (to be sung to "Mr. Ed")
By Madeleine Begun Kane

The Kos was "The Source,"
Of course, of course.
That powerful blog was a force, of course.
That is, of course,
Until the Kos made a
Famous blog misstep.

The right hit the Kos
With mighty force.
They piled on the libel, till they were hoarse.
Retraction mattered not of course.
Costly blog misstep!

Bloggers yakkity-
Yakked a streak
And scared Kos ads away.
Then Kerry yanked
His Kos-bound link,
As right wingers cheered, "Hooray!"

Now the left knows the force
Of blog discourse.
The right wing may rue what they've wrought, of course.
Will they be next with an
Ad divorce?
Well, listen to this:
We'll catch their missteps

Of course, I also liked Wonkette's take:

We just can't believe that John Kerry delinked Kos but keeps advertising with us! If this isn't a license for more ass-fucking, I don't know what is.

Ass fucking! Ass fucking! Ass fucking!

The blogosphere is already more interesting this week than it was last week. Kos should follow our lead and promise a prison rape for Rand Beers! That'll get him re-linked!

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