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Wednesday, Mar 09, 2005
false is the new true
"A former U.S. Marine who participated in capturing ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said the public version of his capture was fabricated."
digby goes down
hullabaloo adding blog ads. (i just needed an excuse to use the subject line.)
fishnet stalkings
"Britain's AdultWork website is plugging into the growing niche industry of sex-work dilettantes, people who spend a few hours a week in front of a camera, or in bed with a client, to augment their income -- or maybe even just because they like it."
Monday, Mar 07, 2005
not a journalist?
"Another signal moment for bloggers is to occur this morning, when Garrett M. Graff, who writes a blog about the news media in Washington, is to be ushered into the White House briefing room to attend the daily press "gaggle."
Mr. Graff, 23, may be the first blogger in the short history of the medium to be granted a daily White House pass for the specific purpose of writing a blog, or Web log. A White House spokesman said yesterday that he believed Mr. Graff was the first blogger to be given credentials."
right hook
"But success bred change. Along has come a new group of bloggers who aren’t mere “citizens” at all. On the left side, some of these became deeply enmeshed with political parties, “527s,” and campaign advocacy groups -- and are now a new generation of no-holds-barred partisans and major party fund-raisers, the liberal equivalent of George W. Bush’s “Rangers” and “Pioneers.” On the right, a number of these bloggers were already political operatives or worked at long-standing movement institutions before taking up residence online. They are, at best, the intellectual heirs of L. Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center and Reed Irvine, who founded the ultraconservative, media-hounding nonprofit organization Accuracy In Media (AIM) in 1969 as part of the first generation of post–Barry Goldwater right-wing institutions. At worst, they're the protégés of conservative fund-raiser Richard Viguerie and dirty-tricks master Morton Blackwell, who has tutored conservative activists since 1965, most recently mocking John Kerry at the Republican national convention by distributing Band-Aids with purple hearts on them."
Sunday, Mar 06, 2005
slap fight
"Confession: I used to find it exhilarating to read James Wolcott when he was writing in his fresh, careful, smart and unpredictable fashion about TV for the Village Voice and the exigencies of the cultural moment for Vanity Fair. But during the last few years, once he discovered his own simple, predictable, self-righteous, driving political convictions and decided to give them endless, repetitive vent, I have found myself wondering what ever happened to the terrific cultural critic he once was. Rage is easy. Preaching to the choir is easy. "Spouting the same old tailpipe exhaust," as he remarked recently about Charles Krauthammer, is easy. What Wolcott used to do is hard."
Thursday, Mar 03, 2005
god help us
"To be sure, neither document leaves any doubt about evangelicals’ opposition to high-profile issues like gay marriage, abortion, and stem-cell research. But what the essays in Toward an Evangelical Public Policy also suggest is that there are many evangelicals in the country who have looked at conservative Republicans’ co-opting of Christianity in recent years and found that they didn’t particularly like what they saw. Anyone uncomfortable with biblical justifications for public policy will find a lot to squirm over in the book -- but Democrats will also find many ideas that they can wholeheartedly agree with on a policy level."
Wednesday, Mar 02, 2005
el metrix
“Say hello to Omar."
Saturday, Feb 26, 2005
game, set, match
"Beyond a certain hour, the only games worth playing are those amenable to game theoretic models. Lo and behold, I should be up teetering near the crack of dawn with an economist intent on applying the stag hunt dilemma, a kind of assurance/trust/coordination game, to the rigors of modern dating. Far from being an expert, in fact, rather more of a dating dilettante for whom even the word seems like a slip of the tongue, I listened to his explanation in the hopes being struck by lighting or, at the very least, an appropriate revelation."
Friday, Feb 25, 2005
lancing, misperceptions
i had avoided lance mannions blog because his name reminded me too much of race bannon but i can ignore it no longer despite my johnny quest flashbacks.