Top Ten Rudy Giuliani Dating Tips

10. Refer to wife as "that other broad I been tryin' to lose".

9. Don't be shy about experimenting with combover styles.

8. Masturbate behind podium at next values-voter debate. Dare them to stop you. Who's the king? You're the king, baby!

7. Steam-clean the City Hall casting couch at least once a month or so, before you start sticking to it.

6. Make sure your date looks better in a dress and makeup than you do. This is not as easy as it may seem, if you rock the Carol Channing look as hard as Rudy does. Rrrrroowwwrrr!



5. Never pay for sex, if you can get the taxpayers to foot the bill.

4. Tell her that if she doesn't put out, the terrorists win.

3. Two rules for double-dating with Fat Bernie -- go dutch, and make sure he leaves that sweater at home.


Jesus. Did he get a free bottle of Old Spice with that thing? Everyone knows that made men are supposed to wear suits.

2. It's not really pity sex if they're afraid of you.

1. Trust me on this -- if Ed Koch asks you if you want "a ride in the Lincoln Tunnel", say no.

Fun Bonus Tip: If you have a hot cousin -- or even a mediocre-looking one -- give her a call. It's a good place to start for the first marriage, what with the common ground and all.

Fit to Print

Shorter Pravda by the Potomac:

You can pull shit out of your ass and smear it on the bathroom stall of teh intartubez, and we will literally put your bogus rumors on Page One.

The stupid "doesn't hold his hand on heart for the Pledge of Allegiance Sacred Jeebusy Fealty Oath" is just comedy gold. You couldn't make up something that ridiculous. Nicely done, serious media.

Class Act

Like I've been saying about Mrs. Doubtfire from day one -- the more you get to know this hump, the less you like him. Well, get to know him a little more.

I actually find it hard to get terribly moist about any of this; more than perhaps any candidate since Li'l Fredo hisself, Giuliani's primary skill set seems to be knowing how and where to wet his beak, and not only not get caught, but to convince people to thank him for being their daddy. It's not a fidelity issue, so much as a viewing-gubmint-as-a-big-trough issue.

People like Rudy do things like this because they can, and the people who want to vote for this prick will still do so, if only because they regard the electoral process as therapy, as a way to chip at their lingering projections of manifest failure and daddy issues. It's a sick symbiosis, made sicker by the fact that unless photos surface of Giuliani with his cock stuck in a dachshund -- and hell, maybe not even then -- there's always someone dumb enough to fall for his special brand of ego-affirming bullshit.

Update: Didn't realize Bill Paxon is an adviser to Giuliani's campaign, but I'm not surprised. If the fambly-valyews creeps were allowed to dance, they'd surely have a lifetime of it to do in explaining their acceptance of these people.

Bend Over Rover

The question is not whether Rove lied -- of course he did. That's what he does; it's probably an involuntary reflex at this point.

ROVE: One of the untold stories about the war is why did the United States Congress, the United States Senate vote on the war resolution in the fall of 2002?

CHARLIE ROSE, HOST: Why?

ROVE: This administration was opposed to it. I‘m going to talk about that in my book.

ROSE: Well, tell me.

ROVE: No.

ROSE: Come on, give me something.

ROVE: No.

ROSE: Give me something.

ROVE: I just did. I told you the administration was opposed to voting on it in the Fall of 2002.

ROSE: Because?

ROVE: Because, we didn‘t think it belonged within the confines of the election. There was an election coming up in a matter of weeks. We thought it made it too political. We wanted it outside the confines of it. It seemed to make things move too fast. There were things that needed to be done to bring along allies and potential allies abroad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: It‘s an untold story because it isn‘t true. Here is what really happened according to a Rove [ed. -- probably supposed to be "rogue"] Web site called Whitehouse.gov, despite Rove‘s claim that the White House opposed voting on Iraq in the Fall of 2002, on the first full day of Fall that year the president urged Congress to pass an Iraq resolution, quote, “Promptly.” A week later, the president and the House Republicans agreed on Iraq resolution. A week after that, President Bush was pleased with the House vote on Iraq. And a week after that, Mr. Bush signed the authorization for the use of military force in Iraq.

The real questions begged here are more fundamental, more substantial, and thus will never be asked. Why would Charlie Rose -- or any media figure who considers themselves respectable and responsible -- invite Rove on and not even bother challenging his obvious falsehoods? Why is Keith Olbermann the only member of the media bothering to follow up on this, when we keep hearing from the Keepers of the Journamalistic Flame how seriously they take their jobs, which as we all know are the very lifeblood of a functioning and free society? However would we manage to get by without these Princes (and Princesses) of Probity lobbing softballs at pimps and shills for no good reason at all?

Finally, what sort of mouth-breathing, window-licking sack of shit wants to buy a book written by a sociopath like Rove? And what vertically integrated media conglomerate might have a vested interest in the company which pays Karl Rove to continue lying, this time in print (aside from his new Newsweek column?

Jesus, this is despicable. It's been only five years, and it's not too difficult to fact-check this shit on the internets. And this smug little fucker waddles on like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, and fabricates and calumniates events which have led to the immolation of a country, hundreds of thousands of deaths, trillions of dollars of waste, and the subversion of the Constitution.

It should not be too much to ask that every reporter worth their salt takes a break from whatever shiny object has their eye at the moment, and just do their jobs and point out why this man is a goddamned liar, which barely scratches the surface. At the very least Charlie Rose himself might show some alarm at being greased over like that on his own program. For a trade whose currency is credibility, real or perceived, they do not spend or invest it well by giving ratfuckers equal slimetime.

Bearly Legal

More hijinks from religious fanatics:

Hopes that a British teacher could be cleared of blasphemy charges were raised after a Sudanese embassy official said the "minute" matter would be resolved very quickly.

Gillian Gibbons, 54, could be given 40 lashes or six months in jail after she let her seven-year-old pupils in Sudan name the class teddy bear Muhammad.

Hanh? Exsqueeze me? Are we talking about beating and imprisoning someone for naming a stuffed animal? Well, of course we are -- if it's a brutal, over-the-top punishment for a non-offesne, it must be an Islamic thugocracy. I suppose it's stereotyping, but if they wanted to buck the stereotype, then they'd stop brutalizing people for things like getting raped and naming toys.

Dr Khalid al Mubarak, a spokesman for the Sudanese embassy in London, told BBC Radio 4's PM the police had no choice but to follow procedure following a complaint from a parent, but added that the "minute" issue would be resolved amicably.

He said: "The police is bound to investigate just as is the case in any country in which there is rule of law. Our relationship with Britain is so good that we wouldn't like such a minute event to be overblown."

He added: "I am pretty certain that this minute incident will be clarified very quickly and this teacher who has been helping us with the teaching of children will be safe and will be cleared."

Asked about the potential punishments of six-months jail or 40 lashes, he said: "I hope people will not give their imagination free rein to think about such things. That is based on the premise that a person will be charged and the person will be after that condemned and then the judgment has to be passed. But these are all steps ahead of us and my impression is that the whole thing could probably be settled amicably long before we reach stages like these."

Right. Meanwhile, the teacher gets to linger in a Sudanese jail while these people "settle" things "amicably".

Let's also consider how these thugocracies operate. Even the more openly American-aligned ones (Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia) have an important common thread with Sudan and Iran. All of those countries are run by regimes which are despised by the majority of their citizens, but are cynically implored by these regimes to despise us even more.

So maybe the ridiculous interpretation of medival religious strictures is the wrong prism to look at this through. Sudan especially has been very canny in cozying up to China, thus insulating itself from any possibility that we might actually do anything about the slaughter in Darfur. The key here is in what Sudan thinks it may have to gain by using this weird case as leverage to talk to the British.

And as long as bozos like Romney -- who, as a member of a minority sect himself ought to know better than to pick on Muslims -- inadvertently help stoke the fire, there'll always be another tinpot asshole in the desert to leech off his own people while yanking our chain.

Update: 15 days for her brazen act of something-something, and of course hundreds of hillbillies have taken to the streets and demanded her head. Literally.

It would be a fucking shame if some natural disaster swept the street of these "protesters", who are really just Islamic Fred Phelpses further marginalizing a puckered bunghole of a country.

Down Feel Masturbation

I like Emmitt Smith, and it's mean to pick on a guy's poor enuncimatin', but damn, this is pretty funny.

People have been asking me, “How do you beat these Patriots? They are an offensive astronaut.” Well, I think the problem is that teams are not syphilisly equipped to deal with New England’s team speed downfeel. That’s something that you cannot stimulate in practice. No matter how hard you might antipasto it. They are a very prophylactic offense.

No, the key to beating the Patriots is to be able to run the ball. You take a look at a guy like Willie Parker. He has the dexatrim to be able to get past that first level of the defensive line and masturbate the ball down the feel. That’s the key to beating the Patriots, and really any other team: YOU MUST BE ABLE TO MASTURBATE THE BALL DOWN THE FEEL.

If you can’t masturbate the ball down the feel, you’re going to find yourself in many 3rd and long saturations. You want to be able to POUND it. Be perspiration in running that ball, masturbate it up the hole, and keep that Pats’ offense off the feel. Otherwise, that offense will DI-RECT you. I mean, just direct you and pick you apart all day.

I haven't seen enough of Smith's commentary to know if he's really that bad, though ProFootballTalk.com also gives him a hard time pretty regularly. Hell, Shannon Sharpe sounds like a Fat Albert character most of the time, and Terry Bradshaw, especially when he gets excited (which is whenever Jigglian Reynolds does her weather-bunny bit), becomes Boomhauer from King of the Hill.

That's all right. It's just football commentary, and it's more fun that they don't all sound alike with perfect oration, or come off like Howard Cosell -- or god forbid, Dennis Miller.

Anything for a Buck

Giuliani continues to troll the marshes for money. If he had an American Indian name it would be "Sleeps With Dogs", "Wakes Up With Fleas" or something equally catchy. Maybe he can make this his campaign song.

Hit and Run

Not to give the "Mexifornians is comin'" crowd any fuel, but even without this piece of shit being illegal, he deserves to be taken out back and fucking shot. Failing that, he can be a San Quentin cell-block puta for the next twenty years. Mowing down little girls, on Thanksgiving no less. It would really be a shame if this useless hump hung himself in his cell. I honestly boggle at what makes sociopaths like this asshole tick.

Update: Don't even get me started on these motherless fucks. Sorry to hear the stepdad tried to kill himself; clearly he just wasn't trying hard enough. Better luck next time, fuckface.

Billion Dollar Babies

Ben Stein has some querulous words for some of his loafing acquaintances.

As I near my 63rd birthday, I'm stunned at a phenomenon I observe among a number of my friends: They don't know how to work.

That is, they literally don't know how to get up in the morning, eat breakfast, get dressed, and then do a day's work for a day's pay.

One of them, who used to be dabble as a consultant at an advertising agency, quit a few years ago with a modest inheritance, and now has simply no idea of what to do to feed his family. Did I mention that he ran through his money in about 18 months?

Another friend, who was my college roommate and is one of the smartest, most well-read and witty writers I've ever met, hasn't held a regular job in his entire life -- and he's the same age I am. He has a well-to-do wife, luckily for him, and he teaches when he feels like it in local community colleges on a volunteer basis. What he would do if he had to earn a living I have no clue.

Yet another one is a former salesman of Internet ads. He's terribly smart, good-natured, and pleasant, but he simply has no clue of how to make a living aside from sales of somewhat dicey goods online, so now he just hangs out. How he pays the rent is beyond me.

It goes on like that. Stein, cheerfully disingenuous as ever, seems truly flummoxed that these folks are trying to hump a grift, rather than, say, use government connections, or write columns, or become well-known for having an amusing vocal intonation. Stein himself has done a variety of things over the years, to be sure, but most of those things have come from capitalizing on his name recognition. How did he achieve that name recognition? Luck. And that's what his "friends" are hoping for, to parlay something they like to do into something they can make money doing.

Americans have funny notions about what constitutes a work ethic anyway. We like our blue-collar class to grind themselves to a hardy nub and do what they're told, our low-level white-collar workers to be just worried enough about replacement or obsolescence that they don't squawk about health care, vacations, or pay, and our executives to be grossly overcompensated, showered with so much Scrooge McDuck pelf that they have to waddle sideways out of the boardroom under the weight of their golden parachutes.

We watch men in corporate uniforms strut around a baseball diamond for $25 million a year, football and basketball players hawking everything under the sun, while our legislators have given themselves more in raises in the past decade than the average American makes. People whose only actual skill is being related to the right person get all sorts of perks that the hardest, most diligent worker you can find will never even get a whiff of.

Given all that, why the fuck would anyone want to work? What's the incentive? Hell, Stein does stuff, but none of it's "work", and I'm sure he'd admit as much. He's never had a straight-up eight-to-five to trudge through, day after soul-deadening day with no opportunities in sight, and he's got no right to lecture people who have managed to find a way around being disaffected wage slaves.

Don't get me wrong -- I spent ten years as a professional and semi-pro musician, and I've met my share of truly lazy motherfuckers. But I think most people are just trying to find a way to get by, in the face of stagnant wages and rising costs. It's very off-putting to watch people with gravy jobs beat on the proles about their laziness.

On a day where the Dow dropped over 1.8% (and NASDAQ and the S&P 500 each lost well over 2%), it begs the question about what defines "work". (And it's not for nothing that American and European stock exchanges took the hit, while the Hang Seng exchange went up 4% -- and is up over a third just in the past six months. The Euros are carrying our CDO scrip, and log-rolling a cascading series of billion-dollar bailouts. The Chinese, conversely, are financing our debt, and slowly monetizing and re-apportioning it so as to not get dragged down with us.)

But none of that CDO shit is "work" either, not as Stein seems to define it. These guys are bookies, pure and simple, creating fungible assets out of fiat value. And while there is some skill involved in finding a statistical regression analysis that will make your high-roller customers want to plop six or seven figures into a bundled derivative put option, it's the same skill the guy on the street-corner with his three-card monte game has -- separating suckers from their money.

The difference here is that when the CDO grift finally goes south, it's considered Too Big To Fail, so the taxpayers -- the people who actually engage in the noble daily endeavors Stein so wistfully praises -- have to bail all the players out, starting with the grifters at the top.

I see enough of what Stein is talking about to know that he's not exactly wrong -- there are a lot of people whose work ethic plain blows. They don't show up to work on time, or they're hungover, or they don't pay attention to what they're doing.

If they keep up that kind of performance, they could be preznit someday.

Part of the Machine

Well now, I've got some advice for you, little buddy
Before you point the finger you should know that I'm the man
If I'm the man, then you're the man, and he's the man as well
So you can point that fuckin' finger up your ass

-- Tool, Hooker with a Penis

I think IOZ has the right idea, in what to make of a Joke Line, if perhaps a bit harsh on Greenwald:

I mean, not to suggest that the state is only a network of power structures, needless to say, best understood holistically and organically, not as a machine but as an organism, simultaneously divided against itself and unified in the common purpose of survival and growth, capable of mediating internal tensions and disagreements to that point, able to acquire new skills and competencies, adaptive and intelligent, sometimes rational and sometimes reactionary, instinctively but not universally territorial, with some physical centers of great importance and others of vestigial uselessness, a totality of abstract powers ideated and actualized by the collective action of human beings, themselves only the material functionaries of a self-perpetuating, self-referencing, self-defining, self-circumscribing, suprahuman entity. How do you like them fucking apples, Gleen Greenwald? To look at the state of human affairs right now and conclude that the real problem is that people like Joe Klein are willing to swallow a government line, when obviously the very purpose of the entire economic sector for which the Joe Kleins of the world toil is precisely to mold, variate, amplify, and disseminate a very particular kind of information, is to find yourself not only missing the forest for the trees, but the trees for one moldy leaf rotting in a puddle on the lee side of a dank Appalachian hill.

This is an existential problem I find myself mulling more and more frequently. Obviously, there are substantial differences in the platform various bloggerses have at their disposal, from a ginormous one like Greenwald has, to inconsequential bit players such as myself. But collectively, it's fair to say that most of us try on some level to sift uncomfortable facts from convenient fictions, to parse truth from truthiness.

And how's that worked? No matter how many people show Klein up for the tendentious hack he frequently is, he changes nothing. Indeed he, like many "respectable" journamalists, since reputation is their currency, coasts on his status as pseudo-moderate organ-grinder for Time, favorably comparing it with those who dare to call him on his bullshit. He'd rather be gulled by people who reify his importance, than be taken to task by his readers. And as angry as the common folk claim to be about things in general, they don't seem to be in much of a rush to do anything meaningful to disengage from the system which supports and nourishes their ideological foes.

BriarPatch sums up the predicament quite well:

The precarity movement seeks to diagnose and challenge the way that work is organized under neoliberal globalization. It speaks primarily to the forms that work increasingly takes in an era of closed borders and liberated capital—increasingly part-time, temporary, contract to contract, and imported from afar. But it also addresses the broader conditions of life that accompany this shift: people are uprooted, indebted, living pay cheque to pay cheque, with an increasingly thin safety net to catch them if they fall, and at greater threat of natural and manmade disasters in a world that is rapidly pushing its environmental limits to the breaking point. From the closing of women’s shelters to the proliferation of food banks, from the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble to the fallout from the overheated Alberta economy, risk and uncertainty are replacing human rights and prosperity—except, of course, for those who profit from risk and uncertainty.

There ya go. It has to have occurred to Greenwald that Klein's chronic obtuseness stems from his paycheck essentially depending his not understanding the more problematic aspects of the issues he writes about. We could all devote our energies to fisking every column from the rented-establishment-scrivener claque, and precious little would change. They'd just continue to insist that we were cyberstalking them, mischaracterizing their professional judgment and spotless credibility. And most of that never breaks out of the usual choir-preaching radius of influence in the first place.

It's going to take more than simply reiterating to the world at large that they are being mis- or disinformed by credulous bozos, people like Klein who earn a living by keeping their (and our) natural predators at a short-arm's length, that kind ol' Br'er Fox really just wants to help all us chickens, if only we'll stop our unserious clucking. It's going to take more than reminding them of their own roles in their predicaments; on some instinctive level at least, most people know. They've done the cost-benefit analysis and have, in the aggregate, decided to stay the course and just continue grousing about it while they drive to strip malls to scrounge a deal on more toys.

An Inconvenient Tool

Gee, how uncomfortable is this gonna be?

Forget the Mideast peace talks. A meeting that may require even greater diplomacy will take place Monday in the Oval Office, when President Bush receives America's Nobel Prize winners — including his one-time rival, Al Gore.

....

So, when they meet in the Oval Office on Monday, will they finally bury the hatchet? Don't bet on it.

"This is going to be a very uncomfortable moment for both of them," says Gore's former campaign manager Donna Brazile. "I think after the president looks at Al Gore and says 'congratulations,' Al Gore will probably depart the room."

That sounds about right. It's not like Junior's going to want to whip it out and compare legacies:

After years of obfuscation and denial on the length of the U.S.'s stay in Iraq, the White House and the Maliki government have released a joint declaration of "principles" for "friendship and cooperation." Apparently President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed the declaration during a morning teleconference.

....

A "democratic Iraq" here means the Shiite-led Iraqi government. The current political arrangement will receive U.S. military protection against coups or any other internal subversion. That's something the Iraqi government wants desperately: not only is it massively unpopular, even among Iraqi Shiites, but the increasing U.S.-Sunni security cooperation strikes the Shiite government -- with some justification -- as a recipe for a future coup.

I'm sure both sides will be polite enough not to bring up things like that.

Football Wankery

The lowly Iggles, of all teams, actually gave the Patriots a solid run for their money tonight. The Patriots have a better-than-decent shot at a perfect record, though it speaks volumes that a 24-point underdog could swoop into town -- with their backup QB, no less -- and take this Tecmo Bowl team down to the wire. Still, I think the only two teams that have a real chance at knocking the Patsies off their track are the Steelers and the Giants, and the Giants simply don't have a good enough secondary to cover effectively.

Whatever the case, it would be fun to watch New England run the table through the playoffs, and get busted by Brett Favre on the ultimate victory lap. I don't put huge odds on it, but it would be freakin' sweet.

And congrats to the Raiduhs; if I'm gonna kick 'em when they're down, I gotta give 'em props when they finally do right. And despite themselves, they did all right. A good end to a good long weekend.

Hayseed Dickhead

So a Times guest blogger thinks that the sung values o' de heartland have been nigh unto ignored. If only this could be explained in the context of a Connecticut-born prep-schooled fortunate son being elected (or hell, even being nominated) on a platform of jes' plain folks pablum.

Taken together, contemporary country western music paints a picture of an America committed to hard work and traditional family values. It is deeply God fearing but can be surprisingly compassionate and open-minded, sometimes when you least expect. The songs describe regular people striving to live better lives in the midst of temptations and daily reminders of failure.

....

Yes, even with its love for the vehicular and alcoholic, country western is the best place to start to learn a little something about what it means to have a family, to struggle making ends meet, to own a gun or a pickup truck, to support our troops unquestioningly, to enlist in the military and fight our country’s wars and to generally be very proud of what America stands for — and to profess confusion over just what all this fuss is about when it comes to our foreign policy choices.

As a musician and a music-lover, this is hard to digest. I'm not at all opposed to the earthy strengths of country -- I grew up watching Hee Haw, and genuinely enjoying their performers, as well as Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and other old-school paragons of the people's art form. Indeed, both Kurt Vonnegut and Michael Moore have sung the imperative praises of recognizing the importance of country music to its listeners.

But this fails utterly in describing the cognitive gap in which these niches overlap, where putative practitioners of heartland values are consistently and repeatedly bamboozled into voting against their own interests. On the one hand, your job is being outsourced to northern Mexico, on the other, fags are a-gittin' hitched. Is this coincidental? Studies conclusively imply, eh, not so much.

Look, the continuing plaint is that Dems disrespect or condescend to the salt o' the earth folk when they fail to genuflect appropriately to their loudly professed valyews (as if no one between New York and California is ever gay or gets an abortion). So let them make their points abundantly clear, that they do not get something for nothing, that their fuel and even their food comes at a very real price, that they need to find greater things besides Black Friday to strive toward. Write a fucking song around that shit, if you wanna get real.

It's really not that complicated. Either people want to learn and prioritize appropriately, or they don't. Politicians -- successful ones, anyway -- can ultimately only reflect those priorities.

Suite: Rudy Blue Lies

Here we go again:

As he seeks to court GOP primary voters, one potential sticking point has been his opposition to the Vietnam War in the early 1970s and his vote for Dem George McGovern in 1972. But Rudy has now concocted a new explanation for that vote: He didn't mean it.

....

The article also delves into Rudy's switch to the GOP, which came in 1980. In the piece Rudy seems to suggest that this was driven partly by his discontent with Dems on foreign policy. But as the Standard article accurately points out, Rudy's switch to the GOP neatly coincided with his desire to get a political appointment from the newly-minted Reagan administration.

So why is it that Romney is the official empty-suit flip-flop candidate in this? Giuliani sucks at least as bad; he'd repudiate the town he visited earlier any given day, if he thought there'd be just a couple extra votes in it. By the time he's done he'll have cobbled together the douchebaggiest niches in the American electorate, people who stand for nothing whatsoever themselves. It makes perfect sense that they'd throw their lot with this shameless creep.

Last Throe Update

Been a while since we did one o' these, but this one merits mention:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Three suspected al Qaeda militants, including two sisters, beheaded their uncle and his wife, forcing the couple's children to watch, Iraqi police said on Friday.

The militants considered that school guard Youssef al-Hayali was an infidel because he did not pray and wore western-style trousers, they told police interrogators after being arrested in Diyala province northwest of Baghdad.

This doesn't really reflect one way or the other on the surge, or whatever level of successmanship we're claiming this week. The monsters are unleashed, and they'll be doing this shit long after we leave, because we clearly can't discern one from the next. It's just ugly, and evil, and unnecessary, and one hopes that these fucks get what they deserve.

NAMBLAstan

You know, for a "culture" that seems to center so much of its brutal mores aorund sexuality and propriety, they shore do seem like a bunch of self-loathing fags:

They are known as "bacha bereesh", boys without beards, teenage boys who dress up as girls and dance for male patrons at parties in northern Afghanistan.

It's an age old practice that has led to some of the boy dancers being turned into sex slaves by wealthy and powerful patrons, often former warlords, who dress the boys up as girls, shower them with gifts and keep them as "mistresses".

....

The practice, called "bacha bazi" -- literally "boy play" -- has a long history in northern Afghanistan, but sometimes it does not stop with just dancing.

"I very much enjoy hugging a boy. His smell and fragrance kills me," said Yawar.

"I have had him for at least three years, since he was only 15. He was looking for a job and I gave him somewhere to stay," said Yawar, showing the boy's picture.

"I don't have a wife. He is like my wife. I dress him in women's clothes and have him sleep beside me. I enjoy him and he is my everything," he said, kissing the photograph.

....

"Having a boy has become a custom for us. Whoever wants to show off, should have a boy," said Enayatullah, a 42-year-old landowner in Baghlan province.

"I was married to a woman 20 years ago, she left me because of my boy," he said. "I was playing with my boy every night and was away from home, eventually my wife decided to leave me. I am happy with my decision, because I am used to sleeping and entertaining with my young boy."

Yeah, this sort of goes hand-in-hand (or, perhaps more accurately, hand-on-some-kid's-cock) with their hatred and fear of women. It's like a whole country full of priests with guns, drunk on boy-gravy and thinking that they are anything but utterly despicable.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these people?

Something Else to Be Thankful For

A Democrat doing his job.

Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota took on the task of gaveling the Senate in and out of session; the formalities lasted approximately 28 seconds and no other senators were present. Dorgan followed Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, who presided over a similarly brief meeting on Tuesday. By not going into recess, Democrats can prevent President Bush from filling federal government posts without going through the confirmation process.

Whatever it takes. It's good to see them fighting over the small stuff; the philosophy for the duration should be to not give up a single inch of ground. They've compromised quite enough, and gotten nothing for it.

Stenography

Returning to our usual "lazy Beltway media" trope is the implication from Martha Raddatz that some of her colleagues might be little more than stenographers. Oh noez!!1!1

Needless to say, this wasn’t taken well by some of those she sits with in the White House briefing room. So I reached out to a few reporters to see if anyone would go on the record to discuss Raddatz's quote.

I touched based[sic] with the Houston Chronicle’s Julie Mason, who responded via e-mail:

It's only stenography if you make it that way. The White House is a very controlled environment; it can be quite opaque and yeah, very frustrating. I imagine it must be very disorienting after a war zone, or the Hill. But with apologies to Martha, who I respect and like, it's lazy to dismiss the beat as merely steno work. There are many reporters at the White House doing serious, important work in spite of the limitations. There is also a lot of humor and pathos in covering the president, and to call it merely stenography misses something. For reals.

"For reals"? What the hell does that mean? It works neither straightforwardly nor as some sort of deflecting snarkasm. The fact that she considers the "humor and pathos in covering [Junior]" as having intrinsic value does not reinforce her defense; it undermines it. This is the problem with these people -- they have convinced themselves that their job is giving us a "sense" of what it's "like", what Fredo's mood or demeanor happens to be when he's lying to them and evading their questions. Their job (and really, no matter how many times I do it, I still can't believe I have to say it in the first place) should be piercing that opacity Mason mentions, stripping it bare, confronting non-answers and evasive denials with more penetrating follow-up questions. Some do, but most seem not to. And they get pissy when called on it.

CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller also sent an e-mail along, writing:

Sure, I view it as an insult if someone calls me a stenographer. Yes, I take careful notes on everything the President says. But my reports are far more than mere transcripts of those remarks. As a reporter, I boil his comments down to their essence, put them in context and challenge them for veracity.

If Raddatz gets cabin fever covering the President from the White House Press Room, I can understand that. But there’s important reporting to be done here by those willing to endure what can, at times, be a tedious beat. But it’s important work. Does anyone think we’d be better off if reporters didn’t record, analyze and report what the President says and does. Taking accurate notes is part of our job, but that doesn’t make us stenographers.

Well, maybe it's things like this that give off that impression.

Q I want to discuss Iraq at some length with you, but I don't want to rush you on that. So let me get a few other issues out of the way that we haven't spoken with you about in a couple of months. Do you want Attorney General Gonzales to keep fighting to keep his job?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I do. I'm a big fan of Al's.

Q Does he need to clarify his testimony?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'm not going to get into the specifics of it. I think Al has done a good job under difficult circumstances. The debate between he and the Senate is something they're going to have to resolve. But I think he has testified truthfully.

Q How do you answer even those Republicans like Senator Specter and Congressman Shays who say that in their view the Attorney General's credibility has been damaged?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't agree with them.

Q Can he remain Attorney General if the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Pat Leahy, says point blank he doesn't trust the Attorney General?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I've had my differences with Pat Leahy. I think the key is whether or not he has the confidence of the President, and he clearly does.

Q We haven't spoken to you in a hard-news interview since the verdict was rendered in the Scooter Libby case. Let me ask you, have you spoken to your former top aide since his verdict?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I have.

Q And can you tell us anything about that conversation?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I've seen him socially on a number of occasions.

Q Do you believe the commutation that President Bush gave Scooter Libby for his prison term was enough, or if you had been President, would you have granted a full pardon?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I thought the President handled it right. I supported his decision.

Q Did you disagree with the guilty verdict in the case?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I did.

Q Even though the President said he respects that verdict?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I still -- you asked me if I disagreed with the verdict, and I did.

Q Do you think Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald went too far in pursuing a prosecution of Scooter Libby?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't want to go beyond where I have already. The matter is still pending before the courts. There is an appeal pending on the question, and I don't want to elaborate further.

Q Another issue, why did your office stop filing reports about your handling of classified material with the National Archives?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, there's an executive order that covers that, that was issued in 2003 that makes it clear that the Vice President is to be treated the same as the President, and neither one of them is to file those reports with the National Archives.

Q There's no cover up?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Nothing to cover up.

Q There was an aide in your office who said that one of the reasons you weren't abiding by that executive order was that you're really not part of the executive branch. Do you have -- are you part of the executive branch, sir?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the job of the Vice President is an interesting one, because you've got a foot in both the executive and the legislative branch. Obviously, I've got an office in the West Wing of the White House, I'm an advisor of the President, I sit as a member of the National Security Council. At the same time, under the Constitution, I have legislative responsibilities. I'm actually paid by the Senate, not by the executive. I sit as the President of the Senate, as the presiding officer in the Senate. I cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate. So the Vice President is kind of a unique creature, if you will, in that you've got a foot in both branches.

Q But you are principally a part of the executive branch, are you not?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I suppose you could argue it either way. The fact is I do work in both branches. Under the Constitution, I'm assigned responsibilities in the legislative branch. Then the President obviously gives me responsibilities in the executive branch. And I perform both those functions, although I think it would be fair to say I spend more time on executive matters than legislative matters.

....

Q Okay. Mr. Vice President, on the issue of Iraq. In a speech last month you said the U.S. must stay in Iraq until we win. Isn't that the kind of open-ended commitment that could keep the U.S. there for years and years?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think it's absolutely essential that we succeed in Iraq. And the commitment we have made is to complete the mission, in effect, to get the job done, to establish security and to give the Iraqis an opportunity to be able to set up a functioning government -- which they've done -- and to be able to deal with the security situation themselves, which they're on their way of doing.

Q A draft of the joint campaign plan says the U.S. would have to remain there at least through 2009. Does that sound right to you?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't want to make those judgments. I think those really turn more on the kind of advice we get from the military. We're all waiting to see what General Petraeus produces by way of his report back, in September. But in terms of achieving our objectives, I think it's very important that the United States not withdraw from Iraq, not adopt a posture of some of our friends on the other side of the aisle who are calling, in effect, for accepting retreat as the outcome. I think that would be totally inappropriate. I think it's not necessary. I think we can prevail in Iraq, and I think Dave Petraeus and the troops that are there now are doing a very good job.

Q How long will the surge last?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, that depends on how long it has to last. It's set up so that it kicked in, really, this summer. We began to deploy the additional troops in the spring; the final deployment of additional troops occurred in late June, early July. And so the surge right now is at its maximum peak. How long that continues will be a decision the President will make based on advice he gets from General Petraeus.

You get the idea. Knoller can simply tell himself that hey, he asked the questions, it's not his fault if Big Time chose to respond in the usual boilerplate.

Then there's this:

I’ve got to admit I was stunned by the nature, depth and fury of the responses to my blog post yesterday (below) about the Bill Moyers Journal report on the news media and the War in Iraq.

....

Look, all I was saying was that reporters were not willing dupes of - or accomplices to - the President’s decision to go to war in Iraq.

Most of us try to report honestly and fairly on Administration decisions, intentions and statements. If there were doubts and reservations about those matters, it got reported too.

Clearly, many of you disagree. So at the risk of poking an angry lion – let me try this.

YOU be the reporter!

It’s March 6, 2003. Pres Bush is moving closer to ordering an attack on Iraq.

You’re in the East Room for his primetime news conference – and he calls on you.

What do you ask?

What finely-crafted question do you pose that both serves the public interest and will get a meaningul[sic] response?

Almost to a person, anytime a professionamal journamalist gets their panties in a wad over criticism of their form and function, it is directed at their (putative) customers -- you know, readers, viewers, that sort of thing. Not the editors who change or squash their stories if they're deemed unsuitable for popular consumption, not the politicans who yank their chains on a daily basis, not the clown at the top who routinely makes them the butt of his little jokes. And keep in mind that Knoller's defensiveness here is from seven months ago, way after the usually acceptable "if I knew then what I know now" line. They can't handle it, the notion that Bill Moyers and an informed chunk of the American public might know what they're talking about.

I'm actually inclined to give people like Knoller something of a break, simply because it's all an exercise in futility. Here's the thing -- every White House correspondent could conceivably, on the eve of aggression, asked unrelenting series of incisive, probing questions, and gotten to the real heart of the matter. And it wouldn't have mattered; these people were not going to be stopped by mere trivialities of facts, truth, morality, or any of that. They signaled their intent to invade Iraq with Bush's speech at West Point in June 2002. Everything after that was pro forma positioning, timing the marketing campaign, going through the motions of giving inspections a chance.

The only question I have for Knoller -- since he brought up March 6, 2003 as some sort of critical date -- or any of the rest of the WH press corpse, is what question do they wish they had asked on that fateful day, knowing then what they know now, and more importantly, what good do they really think it would have done. What good do they think they're doing now, knowing what we all know, doing absolutely nothing about any of it, wringing our hands as if some deus ex Obama will lift us out of our own muck?

The media's role is hopelessly debauched for a variety of reasons -- institutional laziness and cowardice, herd mentality, corporate priorities, the knowing gall of politicians, and our own expectations that someone else do something about all this, while we go deeper in hock to shop our way to orgasmic bliss. But if folks like Knoller want to know where to start, a hint is that it's not the thousands of ankle-biters who call him naughty names, but the Armani-suited motherfuckers who use him and his colleagues to circulate lies and burnish their credibility.

Getting Drafty

Probably a breach of netiquette, but I found a couple of recent drafts that hadn't been posted for whatever reason, and posted them as is under their original dates. This time of year I'm always crunched for time even more than usual (as are we all), and I actually ended up punting more drafts into the ether than I kept. Shit happens. I'm adding to a final one from last weekend, which will be up shortly, in current time given the added text. I'm sure this will cost me my press pass, and I'm not about to go the Jeff Gannon™ route, but them's the breaks.

Love Is Not A Big Enough Word

In which we did up the turkey right (brined and barbecued), watched Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and remembered to be thankful, and recognize what we appreciate about life, instead of worrying about all the other stuff.

Hopefully your Thanksgiving was a good one as well. Boycott Black Friday.