Anti-gay brouhaha hurting "Grey's Anatomy" in the ratings

I think someone's not long for this TV world. If the advertisers start to go - and it wouldn't be hard to get them to go, considering what's happened - the guy it toast. Read More......

US war plans envision all out war with Iran

Bush is certifiably insane. If he keeps up the arrogant-crazy-moron routine, his low popularity could soon turn into calls for him to resign. And it won't come from the left, it will come from the middle - the independents (and newly independent Republicans) who threaten to send the Republican party into election purgatory in 2008. From Reuters:

U.S. contingency planning for military action against Iran's nuclear program goes beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former U.S. intelligence analyst said on Friday.

"I've seen some of the planning ... You're not talking about a surgical strike," said Wayne White, who was a top Middle East analyst for the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research until March 2005.

"You're talking about a war against Iran" that likely would destabilize the Middle East for years, White told the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington think tank.

"We're not talking about just surgical strikes against an array of targets inside Iran. We're talking about clearing a path to the targets" by taking out much of the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles that could target commerce or U.S. warships in the Gulf, and maybe even Iran's ballistic missile capability, White said.

"I'm much more worried about the consequences of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear infrastructure," which would prompt vigorous Iranian retaliation, he said, than civil war in Iraq, which could be confined to that country.

Thank God we have Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi standing in the way of this nutcase. Read More......

Romney's got troubles

Great opinion piece about Mitt's woes.

It does Romney limited good to play the martyred conservative forced to govern in ungodly Massachusetts. Running against the people who put you in office is not a pretty thing. Besides, how strong are his convictions if he'd sacrifice them for political office?

Romney's positioning is further complicated by his membership in the Mormon church, which many Christian conservatives consider a cult. In a recent Rasmussen poll, 51 percent of evangelicals said they would never vote for a Mormon. The sort of people who don't care whether a candidate is Mormon are the sort of people who live in Massachusetts.

Read the entire essay, it's quite good. Read More......

3 Minutes with John and Joe

We've decided to start experimenting with more video, and so Joe and I will be hosting a weekly three-minute-long show about the hot topics of the week - appropriately called, "3 Minutes with John and Joe" (and sometimes Rob - he's the schwa of sidekicks). We don't want stellar production values - we're a blog, not NBC. But having said that, hopefully we won't screw the sound up too much in the weeks ahead (and we'll figure out where to look while the other one is talking).

Read More......

Cliff's Corner

The Week That Was 1/19/2007

Another week. More preposterousness to report.

So the Republicans initially decided ethics reform would not be prudent to support this past week. I totally understand, because those 49 pyogenic bacterial infections known as GOP Senators obviously must have correctly thought to themselves, you know, things worked out pretty well in 2006 for our guys like Mark Foley, John Sweeney, J.D. Hayworth, Conrad Burns, Tom DeLay, George Allen, Bob Ney, the BTK killer...(don't even try and argue with me, I mean Bind, Torture, Kill, he was such an Abu Ghraib Republican).

The GOP was led in this display of moral myopia and political partisanship by walking copyright infringement of Orville Redenbacher's face Mitch McConnell, who when not finding ways to wine and dine Chinese dictators likes to make sure he can continue to display the ethical acumen of Machine Gun Kelly. But hey, David Broder said McConnell was going to be "bipartisan," or maybe he got that mixed up with bi.

So as you can see, with John McCain backing a "surge," which really means escalation of the War in Iraq, and Republicans rejecting reform (at the first bill before they had to accede), we can all see they learned a whole lot from the midterm disaster.

Maybe next, to prove they really understood what the people were demanding with that electoral bloodbath, the GOP can bomb Iran or hand over The Subcommittee on Missing and Exploited Children (Mark Foley's old haunt) to NAMBLA. I hear they're planning to do one of those two things, I'll leave it up to you to guess which would be more stupid.

As for McCain, it sure is a shame those numbers are tanking in New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada. Amazing that Independents might decide they don't fancy you much anymore, when you hug Jerry Falwell closer than George W. Bush and Joe Lieberman playing two minutes in the closet. And, of course, support getting more Americans killed in the Middle East, when in 1990, you had this to say about a ground war in Iraq:

If you get involved in a major ground war in the Saudi desert, I think support will erode significantly. Nor should it be supported. We cannot even contemplate, in my view, trading American blood for Iraqi blood. [New York Times Aug 19, 1990]

John McCain and Mitch McConnell--let's call them the McSenators--making Democracy safe for those who choose to ignore the will of the people.

NOTE: This week's Republican Sexcapades on The Young Turks. Read More......

More action by Pelosi - fighting global warming now on the agenda

Who ever would have guessed that Congress could ever do anything besides praise the president and dismantle democracy? It's nice to see democracy coming back to the US.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi created a special committee Thursday in an effort to jump-start long-delayed government efforts to deal with global warming.

Pelosi, D-Calif., said the committee would hold hearings and recommend legislation on how to reduce greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide generated by fossil fuels, that most scientists blame for a gradual warming of the earth's climate.

Dingell - who opposes this and is unwilling and unable to see the global benefits nor the business possibilities - can go pound salt. Knuckle draggers like him are why Ford and GM are where they are. Quit helping Detroit stay in the dark ages and get with the program. It's a win-win, but some are just too stubborn to admit they were wrong.

Also, a coalition of leading American companies have joined enviro groups in calling on Bush to save the planet before it's too late. Read More......

Art Buchwald says goodbye

His goodbye column.

UPDATE: If you haven't yet, read Buchwald's famous tale of the first Thanksgiving, as explained to the French ("Kilometre Deboutish"). Read More......

Funniest movie trailer ever

Watch the trailer here. It's for real, and coming soon. Read More......

VIDEO: Colbert on O'Reilly, O'Reilly on Colbert

First, Colbert on O'Reilly's show:



Then, much better, O'Reilly on Colbert's show:



The White House Correspondents Association is right, the guy is just not funny.

PS I'm posting this now, since we know Comedy Central doesn't like us giving them publicity. How many hours before Comedy Central has YouTube censor this?

(Hat tip, Raw Story) Read More......

White House Correspondents Association calls Rich Little a liar

This is getting fun. And if Rich Little lied, then how did he know that the White House Correspondents Association got a lot of letters last year complaining about Colbert's performance? I didn't know that. How did he? Or did Little just lie about everything? And if so, then Little was letting known his own bias - that HE thinks Bush is embattled, that HE thinks Bush is worrying about his legacy, and that HE thinks it's unfair to say any jokes about Bush or Iraq, and if so, then why is this conservative Republican Bush-lover partisan being invited at all? Read More......

Thanks, Ken, for all your work

Yesterday, Ken Mehlman gave his last speech as Chair of the Republican National Committee. We need to thank him for all his hard work in the 2006 cycle. He helped bring us many new Democratic Governors, control of state legislatures, Democratic majorities in the House and Senate -- there's so much he did:

Ken Mehlman, the departing chairman of the Republican National Committee, warned on Thursday that his party would suffer even more devastating losses in 2008 than it did in 2006 if it did not reach out to minorities and address voter concerns about ethics.

In his farewell speech after two years as chairman, Mr. Mehlman said that the 2006 elections, in which Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress, was not a fluke that could be attributed to the calendar, a few scandal-tainted candidates and the tough going in Iraq.

“Each of these factors combined to create an environment that was unfavorable for Republicans,” said Mr. Mehlman, one of the chief architects of President Bush’s two national election victories. “But, folks, these factors cannot be an excuse.”

Of course, Ken missed the point. The unfavorable factor for the GOP was his boss, George Bush. Read More......

Taxpayer welfare to Big Oil is going, going...almost gone

I'd say Big Oil has done well enough on their own and don't really need any welfare to support their business. The Soviet-style handout system to Big Oil somehow (shockingly) managed to go unnoticed by the GOP rubber stamp Congress but those days are over. What a bunch of anti-free market freeloaders, not to mention their enablers in the GOP.

The bill is largely aimed at recovering an estimated $10 billion that stands to be lost to the government because of an error in deep-water drilling leases for the Gulf of Mexico issued in the late 1990s. Congressional auditors and the Interior Department's inspector general have said the mistake was ignored for six years by the Minerals Management Service, which oversees the leasing program.

As the House began debate on the energy measure, Interior Inspector General Earl Devaney told a Senate hearing Thursday that the minerals bureau showed "a shockingly cavalier management approach" in dealing with the leasing error, although the problem was known within the agency as early as 2000.

Now it's over to the Senate where my favorite hater of all Americans living overseas, Senator Grassley, thinks this is a bad idea. Apparently Grassley thinks Big Oil just hasn't had enough handouts and that taxpayers owe Big Oil something. Ever hear of capitalism, Chuck? Why does the US give so much more to Big Oil compared to other countries? Read More......

Friday Morning Open Thread

The House Democrats finished the First 100 Hours agenda in just over 40 hours. Nice work. They did more for the American people in a matter of hours then the GOP did in 12 years. Elections matter. A lot.

Start the thread. Read More......

Global CO2 rose rapidly last year

The earth is struggling to absorb carbon dioxide so a strong shift in environmental policy better be happening quickly for the sake of us all.

New figures from dozens of measuring stations across the world reveal that concentrations of CO2, the main greenhouse gas, rose at record levels during 2006 - the fourth year in the last five to show a sharp increase. Experts are puzzled because the spike, which follows decades of more modest annual rises, does not appear to match the pattern of steady increases in human emissions.

At its most far reaching, the finding could indicate that global temperatures are making forests, soils and oceans less able to absorb carbon dioxide - a shift that would make it harder to tackle global warming. Such a shift would worsen even the gloomy predictions of the Stern Review which warned that we had little over a decade to tackle rising emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Read More......

Strong winds slam northern Europe

It's pretty calm now but lots of noise last night. Fortunately for those of us in Paris the winds were not that bad, especially compared to the Christmas storm a few years ago (1998?) when Versailles lost thousands of trees and we even had two trees in the yard snap. The storm yesterday was quite serious, not to mention highly unusual, for those in the UK, Netherlands and into Germany. Any signs of the winds where you are for the early morning crew? Read More......

Energy, ethics and lobby reform bills passed

This is what your government is supposed to look like. Read More......