Bush v Moby Perch, Laura Bush v Herself in less than 25 seconds, Howard Dean joins MySpace, MoveOn.org kicks off a new movement to support mothers and families, and Stephen Colbert just won’t go away. And I thought the week was off to a slow blog start!
Things That Make The World laugh At George W. Bush and His Republican Party AmericaBlog has the funniest Bush "Big Fish Story
update." And
A Liberal Dose has found the original interview transcript, in which bush describes his man-made lake:
I put 600 black bass in there a few years ago, and about 30,000 bait fish. And they're about 2 1/2 to 3 pounds now. A bad time to fish, because the fish are lethargic during the cold. We've got bluegill and shad and perch.
How many more times will the president's fish story change?
The Rove-Melhman 2006 election mantra,"Vote Republican Or Else," doesn't seem to be working. From The
Progressive Daily Beacon:
Wishing the GOP 'Good Luck' With That 'Vote For Us or Else' They'll Impeach Bush Scare Tactic
It was supposed to be the GOP's saving grace come November. Having been found to be former Soviet-Kremlin-style corrupt, utterly incompetent, possessing neither morals nor values, and oil-company prostitutes the threat, should Democrats be elected, of Bush's impending impeachment was to be the Republicans' savior. They had nothing else upon which to base their 2006 campaigns. Congressional Republicans have allowed Bush to run roughshod over the Constitution, torture human beings, ignore more than 750 laws, defy the international community at America's expense, spend the nation into crippling debt while passing out 14 billion dollars in tax-breaks to big energy, and have become the sort of lapdogs for the president that would have made Stalin green with envy. Scaring their base and America into voting for them in order to avoid an ugly impeachment was the GOP's only hope.
NEWSFLASH: It isn't working and it isn't going to work.
Be sure to read the comments after the editorial. Republicans simply can't comprehend satire, sarcasm or snarkiness.
Stephen Colbert simply refuses to go away. Republicans should be able to figure out how effective Colbert's press dinner thwacking has been by reading Technorati.com's own Weblog post,
Stephen Colbert: Bloggers 1; Mainstream Media 0.
Remember hearing last week that Laura Bush's approval rating was in the 80's? Well, everyone's laughing now that she's the flip flop queen on matters of national anthem singing.
Think Progress has the story, the transcript, and the video link. Here's the screen capture:
Things That Make Republican Hair (What's left Of It) Curl Howard Dean has joined
MySpace. Speaking of MySpace, MadCasey (at Daily Kos)
is tracking The Colbert Effect. Every day, more and more citizens are speaking out against BushCo, and even more are voicing their opposition online. Which brings us to this week's...
Notable DU Quotes DUer
villager: new Bush nickname? "Il Dunce"
pronouncing that last "e" as if it had an accent on it, etc...
Best reply:
DUer RedG1: Il Duncé...I love it
Sugar Smack gives us Bush’s new backdrop:
Thanks, DUers! I needed those laughs!
Biting The Dust, Big Media? Whiskey Bar's Billmon
notes the slow death march of the newspaper dinosaur in his post, Why Big Media Hates Us. According to Billmon's sources, newspaper print readership is down, social networking and blogging site clicks are waaaay up, and Technorati.com's readership has doubled. In a somewhat related vein, I noted the New York Time's failed attempt at merging blog post style and MSM SOP reporting (on my blog,
Delilah Boyd):
Is The New York Times Trying To Blog? This article certainly looks like a blog post: catchy headline; Photoshopped photos with balloon callout Condi Rice quotes; and a distinctive BushCo smackdown "look"...
So why does this NYT article miss the blogging mark? Bloggers take a stand, damn it.
Pick a side, NYT. By continuing to follow the Republican recipe for Bear & Squirrel Stew (1 Bear= massive amounts of Republican shenanigans; 1 Squirrel= one Democrat saying or doing something remotely similar- on a much smaller scale-- at some point in the distant past; and a pot of boiling water), your attempt at luring blog fans as readers falls flat.
AAAAACKKK. Thanks for trying, NYT. Please play again.
Things That Make You Go Hmmm Duck, Duck, Goss! On the same day that Rep. Patrick Kennedy had a minor fender bender, CIA Director Porter Goss suddenly resigns. No replacement waiting in the wings. No lame "to spend more time with the fam" reason. Several uncomfortable hours later, the official story: Goss was fired. Hm. Does George W. look like he's just fired Goss?
This story is far from over. Justin Rood at
TPM Muckraker and Joseph Cannon at
Cannonfire have been keeping tabs on Goss and his specious trifecta of "trick"-iness (Cunningham- Wilkes- Foggo in Limos with Hookers) for quite a while now. But don't expect any more insight on the matter from Scott McClellan, whose last day was Friday... except for this cryptic message (Note the backdrop hint):
Things That make you say, "Oh, God!" DCist's Ryan Avent notes that Washington DC is poised to become Scientology's #3 holy site:
...the church appears ready to expand beyond its current headquarters in the city. According to the Washington Business Journal, growth in the church, which we presume is due to Tom Cruise's bizarre ravings and terrifying impregnation of Katie Holmes, has pushed traffic at Fraser Mansion, the current Washington center for the church, beyond what the north Dupont building can handle. Last November, an organization connected to the church purchased a 50,000 square foot building on 16th Street in NW, just north of Scott Circle, which should be a functioning church property by the end of this year. The Journal notes that the acquisition will make D.C. the "third-largest collection of Scientologist facilities in the nation, in terms of square footage, behind Los Angeles and Clearwater, Fla."
Plans for the new building include a large auditorium and a rooftop cafe. DCist also speculates that the building will house a secure library for the religion's sacred texts, a silent birthing room, lots of inscrutable shit, and a large vault for money swimming, because good lord that church has a lot of money. And maybe a mind control laser of some sort. We're just guessing; we're glib.
While the blog post on Scientology on 16th ST is fun, the ensuing comment war is even more fun! Enjoy!
Dick Is From Mars; Jane Blogs Guess what, Kids! While Dick was dicking around with Spot, Jane was raising her daughters to be sexually autonomous. Need proof? If you aren't aquainted with
Feministe yet, you're in for a real eye-opening blog experience. This week,
Feministe hacks through the MSM "pro-life" codespeak and exposes the ugly anti-birth control underbelly of today's anti-abortion groups' leaders and supporters:
Part of what is so scary about this new version of conservatism is how anti-intellectual it is. Facts don’t matter. What’s been proven effective doesn’t matter. What matters is what we believe. We see this everywhere from our international policy to our sexual politics. Pre-Enlightenment perspectives are nothing to be proud of. Trying to push us back in time is not a good idea.
Of course, what’s particularly interesting is to see these same conservatives railing against people in some Muslim countries for embracing these exact same ideas. In the same breath they’ll accuse Muslims of being backwards because they don’t embrace women’s rights, and then argue that women in our country are out of control, and we need to curtail their rights.
At a White House press briefing in May of last year, three months before the F.D.A.’s nonruling on Plan B, Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked four times by a WorldNetDaily correspondent, Les Kinsolving, if the president supported contraception. "I think the president’s views are very clear when it comes to building a culture of life," McClellan replied. Kinsolving said, "If they were clear, I wouldn’t have asked." McClellan replied: "And if you want to ask those questions, that’s fine. I’m just not going to dignify them with a response." This exchange caught the attention of bloggers and others. In July, a group of Democrats in Congress, led by Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York, sent the first of four letters to the president asking outright: "Mr. President, do you support the right to use contraception?" According to Representative Maloney’s office, the White House has still not responded.
That says something about who the president believes to be his base. He doesn’t want to alienate average Americans by opposing contraception, given that 98% of American women will use some form of contraception in their lifetime. But he’s beholden to a set of fundamentalists who he feels will desert him if he supports birth control. Birth control. Which century is this?
You go, Girl!
Things That Make Russert, Matthews, & Their Pals Quake Jane Hamsher (
Firedoglake) so loves Patrick Fitzgerald's tight, brutal single-paragraph smackdown of Tim Russert that she repeats it whenever she needs a quick reminder of pundit hypocrisy and pundit fear of Democratic Party success in November. Blogging at
The Huffington Post, Jane asks:
Are Americans trembling at the notion that the GOP might have its dirty laundry tossed by the Democrats? It all sounds a bit Tell-Tale Heart to me. Now I understand why DeLay doesn't want it to happen, but why are Matthews and Russert quaking at the very thought of Congressional oversight?
Also quaking are Republicans who want to punish mothers and families.
Evergreen Politics notes that MoveOn.Org has joined the effort to "support mothers and families by focusing on changing laws to make it easier for Moms and families to thrive in this society." Way to go, guys!
There are many more anti-Bush things to celebrate out there in the blogosphere. Each day brings us closer to some long-awaited frog marches, and the heavily Republican-weighted approval polls are about to sink to Nixonian levels (if they already haven't). Be kind to your maternal role models this weekend and keep posting those future favorite anti-Bush blog bites!