Politics

He appeared on Charlie Rose, ostensibly to promote the new Lord of the Rings movie, while wearing a No More Blood For Oil t-shirt.

From the People For The American Way auction:

Madonna — Ray of Light platinum award, signed personally to buyer

From ABCNEWS.com:

Here is what Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, said yesterday at Senator Strom Thurmond’s birthday party, according to ABCNEWS’ O’Keefe. "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead we wouldn’t of had all these problems over all these years, either."

Thurmom was running as a Dixiecrat, a pro-segregration party whose platform stated that for a black person, “his racial constitution has been fashioned to exclude any idea of voluntary cooperation on his part. “

Read Eschaton for more.

Trent Lott is one of the most powerful men in our country. We don’t have much room to criticize other countries for their right-wing politicians.

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There is another article here.

Not that most of you want to read more political blogs, I suspect, but she is really good. On the state of the Washington Post:

The point is, it just feels like such a waste of time to try to read stories by journalists who are really just reporting on what’s going on inside their own heads. Fair enough for me to do it on my own weblog, but no one’s paying me for this. But in The Newspapers of Record? It’s like a horrible joke, except that it’s not funny.

[via Rittenhouse]

Danziger on Leave No Child Behind.

[via TBOGG]

Bin Laden Used Your Gas Money

Sept 12: Sell Your SUV Day

Protest Bumper Stickers

US troops are losing battle of the bulge

As American troops prepare for war in Iraq a report is about to reveal that more than half of them are overweight.

A panel of nine medical experts commissioned by the Pentagon is expected to say that 53.9 per cent of US military personnel over the age of 20 would be classified as too fat to fight under federal obesity standards.

A fifth of those aged under 20 would also fail the fat test, The Times has learnt. Iraq may not have such sophisticated weapons, but its soldiers at least fit their uniforms better.

…

A successful method used to recruit teenagers is to allow fast-food chains such as McDonaldÂ’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken to operate restaurants on bases. Mess food is no longer obligatory.

[Via TBOGG]

Maybe these guys can provide some fitness tips.

I was just walking by the High School of Fashion Industries on West 24th Street and saw a small demonstration — about 15 or 20 students and 5-10 teachers — protesting war against Iraq and the provision of students’ private contact information to military recruiters. The chant I heard: “No Child Left Behind is the new draft!”

FYI: Bush cut the latest budget’s education funding below the previous year’s funding.

Why do so many gay men, and scary right wing people, link to Andrew Sullivan? A number of the scariest religious posters to Jim’s site link to him on their blogs. I also see gay men who otherwise don’t seem delusional putting links on their pages to him. Ugh.

This is a man that writes a column for the Washington Times, owned by Revered Sun Myung Moon. He shills for the pharmaceutical industry while having them sponsor his web site. He, a gay Catholic ex-pat from Britain, seems to consider everyone who doesn’t support Bush a traitor. He also has rather shoddy analytical skills when it comes to America’s “enemies”. He uses “Islamofascists” — a horrid neologism — to refer both to Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, even though the latter is a secular dictator. I suspect Mr. Sullivan can’t tell his Arabs apart.

A few useful sites for people as they work on removing Mr. Sullivan from their web sites and their lives:

Smarter Andrew Sullivan

SullyWatch

Eschaton

David E’s Fablog

TBOGG

There. That’s the last time I ever intend to mention him.