Ms. Carol doesn't get mad often.

But dammit she looks good when she does.

So Digby and Atrios are bemoaning the lack of media action to hold the Bush administration to account. Their criticisms are, of course, valid. But they have apparently learned nothing from our experiences of the last 20 years.

Remember the "coverage" of Iran-Contra, the H.U.D. scandal, the S&L; scandal, the BCCI scandal, and all the other crimes of the mid- to late-80s. Iran-Contra exemplified the "coverage" best: As evidence emerged that Reagan and his minions had sought to subvert the very foundations of our government, the press not only backed away but also managed to paint Oliver North as some sort of hero. The lesson learned by most of the media was that it pays handsomely to not look too closely at what the government does, and it pays even better if you just regurgitate whatever the rightwing spin is.

This same behavior now masquerades as "balance." By 1992, "balance" came to be defined as simply presenting both sides, and reporters were actively discouraged from providing any context or analysis. Indeed, those who did often found themselves back working the police blotter.

By the late 1990s, this had degenerated to the point where "journalists" no longer even feigned making an attempt to uncover facts. Vince Foster murdered? Why bother talking to the park police when Joe Journalist has just received this nice FAX from the RNC spelling it all out?

Which brings us to today. The malfeasance, incompetence, and even blatant criminality of the Bush administration is so obvious as to make one's blood boil. Yet the press sits on the sidelines waving its pom-poms. Mainstream media is no longer capable of doing anything else. Laziness, fear, avarice, and the need to be part of the scene make it physically impossible for The Washington Post, New York Times, or any other media outlet to even attempt to hold government accountable.

If the press had even the slightest spark of public interest, Bush and Cheney would have been impeached three years ago when it was immediately evident that they were lying to Congress and the public about the "threat" of Saddam.

The lesson that reporters all over the country learned from just the Iraq war is simple: Regurgitate whatever the White House tells you and your byline appears on Page 1 above the fold. Make even the slightest attempt to uncover the facts or provide context and you'll be lucky if your story appears on page A13.

And thus our press is worthless in Washington.

American gymnast Paul Hamm was awarded the gold medal in the men's all-around because the judges mistakenly did not give the bronze medalist a tenth of a point that nobody disputes he was entitled to. As a result of this fiasco, the gymnast who got the bronze actually should have gotten the gold, Hamm should have gotten the silver, and the silver medalist should have received bronze. The gymnastics federation says it has no power to change the results, but its head has asked Hamm to give the all-around gold medal to its rightful owner.

In a real sense, commentators who blame the gymnastics big-wigs for abdicating responsibility by pressuring, instead of commanding, a young, sheltered and inexperience athlete to give up his gold medal are correct. Adults indeed should tell children what to do; that's what grown-ups are for.

However, in a larger sense, this is not a complex or unfair problem to lay on Hamm, and I'm sure he knows what the right thing to do is. It's not like people are asking Secretariat to consider returning his Kentucky Derby blanket of roses after crushing his competition by furlongs; instead, Hamm, unlike Secretariat, fell onto the judges' table after his vault. Hamm then pulled off an amazing comeback from 12th place, and finished essentially tied for first with two other gymnasts. Let's be clear: this was not a dominant performance by any of the three men; rather this was a photo-finish between three supremely talented athletes, with Hamm having especially distinguished himself by virtue of his historically unprecedented come-back on the two apparatuses left after his fall on the vault.

Hamm knows all this, and he knows that his rival's pommel horse routine was improperly scored by incompetent judges. Whether Hamm does what he knows he should, of course, is another issue.

Certainly, however, Hamm is entitled to ask the silver medalist to turn over Hamm's proper medal, which is not something I've seen anyone mention.

But all this is a side issue with nothing but honor at stake. The real central issue this story exposes is that the Olympics should include only sports that do not require judging.

Even in the legitimate, non judge-scored sports, any time a team is involved, there is a lot of subjectivity and unfairness to the athletes in choosing the team and determining who from the team competes. But still, even there, the team that makes the most baskets, or swims the relay the fastest, is indisputably the top performer. So I'm willing to sign off on non-individual sports in the Olympics, because the best (or luckiest) team clearly and objectively wins, despite the fact that there is no completely objective and fair way to select a team of athletes, and that it is not uncommon for athletes that should be on Olympic teams to stay home.

But to make Olympic defeat depend on thousandths of a point awarded only on the say-so of sometimes incompetent judges? Always ridiculous, sometimes tragic.

Gymnastics, diving, synchronized swimming, ballet and other dance, instrumental music -- these are difficult athletic endeavors. They are worthwhile, or at least harmless, endeavors; they may be entertaining; it it entirely appropriate and healthy for a society to support these activities economically.

But they do not belong in the Olympics, because achievement in these fields cannot be objectively measured, and when things can't be measured, they shouldn't be.

Does the readership of Bad Attitudes include any members of the food service industry in Manhattan?

If so, please comply with the following request: do NOT spit in the food of Republican convention-goers next week, especially members of Congress. This would be wrong. Do not do it. Let me explain.

The fact that these wealthy white men have devoted their careers to making sure that you and your family do not have health insurance should not come into play in your thinking on this issue. Nor, in the quiet, private moment after you pick up your order but before you shoulder open the door to the dining room, would it be appropriate to reflect on the fact that these men have specifically directed the IRS to crack down on waiters, while their leader repeatedly jokes in public about how rich people, like him and like them, don't pay taxes.

I'm begging you here, in those private moments of decision, do the right thing. Show you're a big person, not a small person. It is true that they will never know and it won't hurt them. I don't dispute it. But these people are just trying to get dinner before heading back to the convention. There is no need to even think about it. Thank you for letting me get this off my chest.

Forget the Russian shot-putter, has anyone tested Atrios for performance-enhancing drugs?

Ripping the lid off the real reason MSNBC canned Phil Donahue, kicking Bob Dole in the gonads, finding out who got W his cushy spot in the National Guard ... the man is all over the field with amazing moves!

If only Eschaton were an Olympic sport, Atree would be standing in front of a crowd, on a podium, wearing a crown of olives -- and praying for clean pee just one more time.

John the Warrior has challenged Shifty George to weekly debates. And quite right too.

This brings to mind earlier posts around the time Shifty agreed to speak to the 9/11 commission, but only if he could bring his blankie and sit on Uncle Dick Cheney's lap. I suggested then that Kerry might have better luck getting W to debate if Kerry offered to let Bush bring Cheney.

And I'm also reminded of my earlier suggestion that John Kerry challenge not W, but rather the top man, Cheney himself, to debate. (Edwards can challenge Bush.)

Both ideas still remain good options to highlight Cowardly George's continuing avoidance of combat -- in this case, hand-to-hand debate with John the Warrior.

The idea that a small group of arid, backwards, economically incompetent third-world countries, such as Iraq, Iran and Syria, poses the most significant current long-term security threat to our nation and the democratic way of life has of course always been absurd.

Yet a second judge has reluctantly upheld late-term abortions. That’s because if the matter is examined at all — which is precisely what the Fetus Photo Album people are trying to prevent — it emerges quickly that this procedure is never resorted to unless the fetus is doomed. There is no such thing as a third-trimester abortion that is done for family-planning purposes.

No such thing.

The judge calls the procedure “gruesome” and cites pain to the fetus, but in fact, the fate of the very few fetuses involved here — where those fetuses are still even alive — is gruesome and pain-filled even if the woman is forced to carry to term.

The families involved with late term-abortions always are in the middle of a tragedy. To inject the state, rules, regulations, and criminal penalties into the scenario makes it all that much more unbearable and inhumane.

The un-Christian right and its gruesome Fetus Album have in a PR sense taken charge of this argument. Politicians of all stripes have run screaming from this issue.

But not all politicians. For those looking for evidence of a core to John Kerry the man, you should know that he has been one of the very few U.S. senators who has stayed absolutely reliable and steady on this issue, even though electorally, it has no upside, especially in heavily Catholic Massachusetts. He deserves credit.

…a headline in the paper reads, “U.S. REPORT TURNS FOCUS TO GREENHOUSE GASES.”

In a striking shift in the way the Bush administration has portrayed the science of climate change, a new report to Congress focuses on federal research indicating that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are the only likely explanation for global warming over the last three decades…

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 — The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday that fish in virtually all of the nation's lakes and rivers were contaminated with mercury, a highly toxic metal that poses health risks for pregnant women and young children…

Defending gold medalist wrestler Rulon Gardner, after losing in overtime to Georgiy Tsurtsumia of Kazakhstan:

“Darn it,” Gardner said. “I wasn’t even tired. I’m not even tired now. I could go another hour. But he got me in a position and that’s the rules. I feel I’m one of the better clinch guys in the world, but he got a good lock and three inches make the whole difference in the world. My mistake.”

Margaret Thatcher’s 51-year-old boy, Mark, has just been charged with bankrolling “a foiled plot to overthrow the government of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea.”

Thatcher studied accounting but then pursued an undistinguished career in motor racing. In January 1982, he was lost for six days during an auto rally across the Sahara Desert, causing his mother to weep in public for the first time.

He started his own company and moved to Texas in April 1984 after a lengthy controversy over reports that he represented a British construction firm that won a contract worth $600 million in Oman while Prime Minister Thatcher was there on a trade-boosting trip in 1981.

He moved to South Africa two years ago and has been involved in various ventures after business troubles in the United States, including a civil racketeering lawsuit in Dallas that he settled for an undisclosed sum and charges from the Internal Revenue Service for his role with a Dallas-based home security company that went bankrupt.

Thatcher also was under scrutiny in Parliament in Britain in 1994 over allegations he was involved in international arms deals while his mother was prime minister.

George Vecsey, in the New York Times:

“In 1972, there were 40 democracies in the world,’’ one [Bush] commercial said. “Today, 120. Freedom is spreading throughout the world like a sunrise. And this Olympics there will be two more free nations. And two fewer terrorist regimes.”

The Iraqi players voiced their anger at being used in a political campaign. “There is so much hate on this team for America,” said Bernd Stange, the German who coached the Iraqi team until he resigned in July.

Martha is on fire lately. Lookit this one:

One of the good kind of protest ideas for New York: this PFAW "Unemployment Line" protest. Good things about it: it's original, a lot of passers-by will see it in person, it's not at the convention center, it won't create a claustrophobic crowd, and it can't easily be labeled as "disorder." That, and it has a specific time set for dispersing and an easy way of doing so. Good, good. It's the aimless milling around at the end of an event that often makes for problems.

Terrific New Yorker article by Louis Menand about who undecided voters are, and how they act.

Excerpts:

“very substantial portions of the public” hold opinions that are essentially meaningless—off-the-top-of-the-head responses to questions they have never thought about, derived from no underlying set of principles. These people might as well base their political choices on the weather. And, in fact, many of them do. ....

“2.8 million people voted against Al Gore in 2000 because their states were too dry or too wet” as a consequence of that year’s weather patterns. Achen and Bartels think that these voters cost Gore seven states, any one of which would have given him the election.

Just shows we are right to worry about this election, and every future election of consequence in America, and right to focus on building our base -- because the mushy middle will always stay that way and be in large part unreachable by reason or fact, based on immutable laws of human psychology, including, in no small part, sloth and ignorance. The point is not that people are dumb; most of us are of average intelligence. The point rather is that most of us have never been told or have just not noticed that politics (a) matters a great deal to our day-to-day lives; and (b) unlike the weather, can actually be controlled by an individual human action called voting.

Thanks to Demi-Semi for reminding me about the article in a comment yesterday.

Richard Cheney, noted civil libertarian, discusses gay marriage during a campaign stop in Iowa yesterday:

”My general view is freedom means freedom for everyone except in Gitmo."

Okay, he didn’t say the last three words. He really said, "in my immediate family." Okay, okay, he didn’t say that either.

Just opened a piece of spam headlined, “IS A UNIVERSITY DEGREE HOLDING YOU BACK?”

Damn, I knew it was something.

See Southerly Buster’s posting on an article from Slate arguing persuasively that — odd as it seems — we’re entering into an arms race with North Korea which we can only lose. Nixon was smart enough to figure out the equation. Bush? Well, warhogs don’t do nuance.

My nephew Jason thought I might be interested in this detailed and illustrated recipe from Iceland. It purports to make rotten sharks edible, which seems to be something that Icelanders occasionally feel the urge to do. I pass the instructions along in case you ever find yourself in the last, desperate stages of starvation with nothing to eat but the putrescent corpses of Carl Rove and his Swift Boat Liars.

Tom Tomorrow scores another direct hit.

Buck sends this link to an article called “Bush Wants to Be Your Shrink,” in Intervention Magazine. Actually I don’t want Bush to be my shrink, no. But I’m incompetent to judge what his proposal really amounts to, and would be grateful for any help from persons more knowledgeable.

From television we learn of price-gouging in the wake of the recent hurricane. As Americans, we are of course appalled by these heartless, greedy white-collar looters. What’s wrong with people, anyway? Where are values?

From Iraq we hear also of white-collar looting, but on an astronomically larger scale. As Americans we are indifferent, although losses may mount into the billions of dollars.

The chief war profiteer is Halliburton. Its former president is now vice president of the United States, Dick Cheney. Admittedly and as a matter of public record, he receives a six-figure income annually from the leader of the looters, Halliburton.

Another Republican vice president, Spiro Agnew, was driven from office when he was found to have received payments in the very low four figures from Maryland contractors. What has changed in America since then? What’s wrong with us? Are we dumb or just numb?

What use would Harry S Truman have made of these thieves in Baghdad, and their great and good friends in Washington? Would Lyndon B. Johnson have been able, somehow or other, to make an issue of such massive official indifference to such stupendous embezzlements? Then what the hell is wrong with the Democrats?

So will you please for God’s sake snap out of it? Hundreds of millions of dollars meant for the rebuilding of Iraq have been stolen by the vice president’s old company, while the president himself stood by, vacantly smiling. Who’s on his knees giving what to whom in the Oval Office now?

Does anybody care? Somebody? One person? Maybe you over there in the corner? Yes, you. Kerry.

Olympic gymnastics all-around gold medalist and second-place finisher Paul Hamm of America needs to have a heart-to-heart with President George Bush, runner-up in the 2000 presidential election, about how to keep his chin up and his chest out, despite the unfortunate unpleasantness surrounding his coronation.

But then again, maybe that wisdom was imparted in a congratulatory presidential phone call, because Hamm already has mastered the Bush 2000 whine: “I shouldn’t even be dealing with this,” Hamm said Sunday. “The rules can’t be changed after the competition is over.”

As if the rules in gymnastics did not contemplate that the person with the most points wins.

A couple of months ago Moe Blues suggested that we add TBogg to the Bad Attitudes blogroll. Which I had been meaning to do along with so many other things, and now TBogg has added us to his. I can’t find an email address on his site, but perhaps he will see this and thereby know that I have finally got myself a round tuit. Visit his excellent blog for a daily dose of snark.

Here’s yesterday’s story by Chicago Tribune editor William B. Rood, who captained one of the other Swift boats in the action that won Kerry the Silver Star. Compare Rood’s efforts to be fair-minded and accurate with the vicious and intentional lies generated by the Bush campaign.

Not generated by the Bush campaign? Merely the independent work of outraged fellow vets? Imagine then that Carl Rove had called John O’Neill and told him that the Swift Boat Smear job was beneath the dignity of even George Bush. Would O’Neill have kept the ads on the air? Do pigs fly?

Now and then I return to H.L. Mencken, for the exhilaration of reflecting on how far America has evolved from those primitivist days of yore. This is from the sage’s obituary of William Jennings Bryan, in The American Mercury of October, 1925:

“Heave an egg out of a Pullman window, and you will hit a Fundamentalist almost anywhere in the United States today. They swarm in the country towns, inflamed by their pastors, and with a saint, now, to venerate. They are thick in the mean streets behind the gasworks. They are everywhere that learning is too heavy a burden for mortal minds, even the vague, pathetic learning on tap in little red schoolhouses. They march with the Klan, with the Christian Endeavor Society, with the Junior Order of United American Mechanics, with the Epworth League, with all the rococo bands that poor and unhappy folk organize to bring some light of purpose into their lives. They have had a thrill, and they are ready for more…

“Bryan came very near being President of the United States. In 1896, it is possible, he was actually elected. He lived long enough to make patriots thank the inscrutable gods for Harding, even for Coolidge. Dullness has got into the White House, and the smell of cabbage boiling, but there is at least nothing to compare to the intolerable buffoonery that went on in Tennessee.

“The President of the United States doesn’t believe that the earth is square, and that witches should be put to death, and that Jonah swallowed the whale. The Golden Text is not painted weekly on the White House wall, and there is no need to keep ambassadors waiting while Pastor Simpson, of Smithsville, prays for rain in the Blue Room. We have escaped something — by a narrow margin, but still safely.

“Such is Bryan’s legacy to his country. He couldn’t be President, but he could at least help magnificently in the solemn business of shutting off the Presidency from every intelligent and self-respecting man.”

As a fair and balanced blogger, I offset the entry above with this stanza from a funerary ode to the Great Commoner. It is called “A Nation Undefiled,” and was written by James K. Shields, a dry bard. Or at least a bard for dries.

It’s been gratifying to see the media finally pointing out that Bush’s campaign appearances consist of hand-picked audiences who have to sign loyalty oaths before they’re allowed in. It’s even more gratifying that the press has picked up on the fact that the questions the audience gets to ask during these events are written beforehand by the campaign itself.

So what makes any Bush campaign event worth even mentioning in any news report? Campaigning is, after all, the exercise of convincing the electorate to vote for you. But since Bush is making it a point NOT to speak in front of audiences that are not 100% committed to him, he’s really not campaigning at all.

And giving any news coverage to these events is not reporting. It is giving Bush/Cheney ’04 free commercial air time. No self-respecting news editors should allow themselves to be played in this manner.

This op ed in the New York Times talks about the relevance of Thoreau’s thoughts in Walden and elsewhere to the criminally trivial information that passes as news these days. Of course you can turn it off but most Americans get their “news” from TV and this impacts the quality and nature of the political process, including its outcomes.

I have read Walden several times. It is time that I read it again; the stench of the slime that we call American politics and news has become more than I can take.

From this article in The New Republic, we learn of the truly horrible environmental results of totally unregulated economic activity in China. Let’s send Bush, Cheney and their cronies to China and make them stay there. They will be able to achieve a state of economic bliss unconstrained by environmental wackos. Send Rush too!!