The Two Coreys Will Rock You
Bill Maher Censored
For saying Ken Mehlman is gay. Tune in to Larry King Live tonight when they censor Adrienne Barbeau for saying Swamp Thing wasn’t the best film of 1982.
McCain Suicide Watch: Day One
I almost forgot—now that the Democrats have gained control of the Senate, surely we can expect John McCain’s honorable fulfillment of the promise he issued in October:
"I think I'd just commit suicide." — Sen. John McCain on what he would do if Democrats take control of the U.S. Senate.
So, what’s it gonna be, Johnny-boy? Guns, pills, the noose? I await your decision with eager anticipation.
Quote of the Day
"The Bible teaches us there is a time and place for everything, and today I called and congratulated Jim Webb." — George Allen, conceding the Virginia Senate race.
Shorter James Dobson: Waaaaaaaaaaaaah!
What did [the GOP] do with their power? Very little that values voters care about. … They consistently ignored the constituency that put them in power until it was late in the game, and then frantically tried to catch up at the last minute. … Without the support of [our] specific constituency, John Kerry would be president and the Republicans would have fallen into a black hole in '04. In fact, that is where they are headed if they continue to abandon their pro-moral, pro-family and pro-life base. The big tent will turn into a three-ring circus.Blah blah blah. All Mr. Thumbsucky McPoopypants cares about is how much more difficult it’s going to be to generate enormous heaps of cash when he can’t trade on fear of the demonic Democrats. It’s a lot harder to accuse the Dems of hating families, outlawing Christmas, legalizing same-sex marriage across the land, and forcibly aborting Christian fetuses when they’re in power and, ya know, not doing any of that shit.
The cash cow got voted out of the barn, and now all Dobson’s left with is a mound of stinking manure. Which is exactly what the crackpot bigot deserves.
Bolton Nomination Dead?
As Shamanic mentioned below, the Not Ready for Bipartisanship Players are trying to ramrod through Bolton’s nomination while they still hold onto a slim majority. But Constant Comment just passed on this tidbit:
Another highly placed source has informed me that in just a few minutes Senator Lincoln Chafee is calling a press conference to state categorically that he will not support John Bolton's confirmation in the upcoming lame duck session.If this is true, I could absolutely kiss Lincoln Chafee for doing it, particularly since he just got beat by a Democrat and will soon be leaving the Senate. He should have switched parties last year.
The Bolton confirmation will be officially dead in a few minutes.
Must-Read
Everything you need to know about our soon-to-be new Secretary of Defense:
Those of us who had a front-row seat to watch Gates’ handling of substantive intelligence can hardly forget the manner in which he cooked it to the recipe of whomever he reported to. A protégé of William Casey, President Ronald Reagan’s CIA director, Gates learned well from his mentor. In 1995, Gates told The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus that he watched Casey on “issue after issue sit in meetings and present intelligence framed in terms of the policy he wanted pursued.” Gates followed suit, cooking the analysis to justify policies favored by Casey and the White House. And the cooking was consequential.Read the whole thing. Via BlondeSense.
…To Casey, the Communists could never change; and Gorbachev was simply cleverer than his predecessors. With his earlier training in our branch, and with his doctorate in Soviet affairs, Gates clearly knew better. Yet he carried Casey’s water, and stifled all dissent. One result was that the CIA as an institution missed the implosion of the Soviet Union—no small oversight.
Btw, I saw Joe Biden on Larry King last night blathering on about how he was totally going to vote to confirm Gates. Way to go, as usual, Joe.
Catching a Bullet
And here we go.
So. I wrote about my opinions on the "To Catch a Predator" Dateline series here, and followed up with an opinion piece on the "Sexual Predator" boogeyman here. Take a look, if you need a refresher. And let me just repeat the disclaimer:
1. I do not support or condone anyone that sexually assaults a child.Right.
2. I am not in any way suggesting that convicted sex offenders should not be punished for what they did.
3. I believe that extra caution and taking steps to protect children from being assaulted is a good thing.
I didn't want to rain on everyone's election parade earlier this week, so I sat on this until today. From Tuesday's NYT (bolds mine):
Prosecutor Kills Himself in Texas Raid Over Child Sex
TERRELL, Tex., Nov. 6 — A prosecutor in this North Texas town killed himself Sunday as the police tried to arrest him on charges of soliciting sex over the Internet from a person he thought was a 13-year-old boy.So, the usual "sting" is set up, talk "of a sexual nature" happens, the guy doesn't meet up with the child, although they claim he "planned to do so," the cops show up, camera crew in tow, and force their way into his house.
The prosecutor, Louis Conradt Jr., 56, had been caught in a sting operation set up by Dateline NBC, the television news magazine, and an Internet watchdog group called Perverted Justice. An NBC camera crew was outside the house to film the scene when the fatal shot was fired.
Mr. Conradt had refused to open the door when police officers arrived at his house, where he lived alone, said Sgt. Snow Robertson of the Police Department in Murphy, a nearby town where officers said Mr. Conradt intended to meet the boy he thought he had communicated with.
Officers eventually forced their way into the house, only to find that Mr. Conradt had shot himself in the head with a small-caliber semi-automatic handgun, Sergeant Robertson said. Mr. Conradt died later at Parkland Hospital in Dallas.
And he's blown his head off.
Allison Gollust, an NBC News spokeswoman, said the crew for Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” series was taping as the police approached the house. But Ms. Gollust added that no one from Dateline had had contact with Mr. Conradt and that there was nothing to suggest that he had seen the crew before he turned the gun on himself.Of course, there's also no evidence to suggest that he wasn't aware of the camera crew. Call me nuts, but I think a couple guys running with cameras, a boom operator, and Chris Freakin' Hansen would be kind of hard to miss. And of course they're not going to have contact with him before hand; that would have given the game away. We could also question whether he actually planned on meeting up with the "boy" he thought he talked to, or if he was just having some really sleazy underage cybersex. He could have forgotten about the conversation immediately after emptying the kleenex box, or he could have actually been planning on going over to the "boy's" house. We don't know. We could ask Conradt, but he's, well, dead.
“There’s absolutely no evidence that would suggest that he was aware of us,” Ms. Gollust said. “We don’t anticipate making a change to our reporting.”
And, of course, why should they change their
Xavier Von Erck, director of operations with Perverted Justice, said Mr. Conradt had made contact in an AOL chat room with a decoy from Perverted Justice who was posing as a 13-year-old boy. Mr. Von Erck would not disclose the details of the chat, but he said, “It was sexual in nature.”And, of course, the Myspace bugaboo rears its head as well. Couldn't have a pedophile story without Myspace; it's the lollipop in the stranger's car of 2006.
Unlike some suspects in pedophile stings that appear on “Dateline NBC,” Mr. Conradt had not actually met the person he thought was the teenager, but Sergeant Robertson said he planned to do so. Perverted Justice staff members found profiles from Mr. Conradt on AOL, Yahoo and MySpace.com, Mr. Von Erck said. He also said that he thought Mr. Conradt had tried to erase at least one online profile, on MySpace.com, a popular online social networking community used mainly by teenagers, in the moments before he shot himself.
Perverted Justice stings have led to the arrests of 260 people nationwide this year, Mr. Von Erck said.And if that means a scumbag or two takes his own life, well, that's just fine.
Several residents in this town of 14,000 about 30 miles east of Dallas said they were shocked to hear the accusations of pedophilia against Mr. Conradt, who had served two terms as district attorney.
Kirby Webb, an investment advisor from Terrell, said he never wanted to hear about people taking their own lives, but he applauded law enforcement’s effort to catch online child predators in the town.
“This is a good family town,” Mr. Webb said. “We want to preserve that image.”
Look, I hate pedophiles. The thought of what happens to their victims sickens me. But this is exactly what I talked about in my earlier posts. Sensastionalist television, witch hunt mentality, and greed caused a man to kill himself before anything had happened. I understand that he was allegedly soliciting sex from a minor, a criminal act, but this whole thing stinks to high heaven.
If you've watched the "Predator" shows, every segment, and I mean every segment, involves Perverted Justice getting some sicko to show up at a house where they assume a minor is waiting to have sex with them. Once they're in the house, Hansen pounces. He makes them squirm on camera for a while, then lets them leave the house, where they're promptly tackled by law enforcement and carted off to prison. Where they belong. Again, just because I think this sadistic televised lynch mob programming is disgusting doesn't mean I think the sexual offenders shouldn't be punished.
So,why the change in routine? Why go to the house this time? Why break down his door? Was he a particularly tempting target and he wasn't going for the bait? Was this a new style experiment in "catching a predator?"
I guess we'll never know the whole truth, because one side of the story redecorated his walls with his brains.
There is no way that Conradt didn't know about the television show. It's been one of the most popular Dateline series in history. And if you're a pedophile, I'm sure you're keeping tabs on the lastest ways to catch your slimy ass. He knew that capture meant public humiliation on national television, and I'm sure he knew what happens to pedophiles in prison.
Boom.
So, I'm not exactly shedding tears for a pedophile. But I do find it very disturbing that pedophile hysteria and crap T.V. have caused someone to take their own life.
Last night, I saw and advert for the latest (ALL NEW!!!) "To Catch a Predator."
I wonder if they got good audio of the gunshot.
(Cross-posts and broomsticks)
Ed Bradley, RIP
Ed Bradley passed away this morning.
(CBS News) NEW YORK Veteran "60 Minutes" correspondent Ed Bradley died of complications from leukemia Thursday morning at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. He was 65.
Bradley joined the staff of the venerable news magazine 26 years ago. His consummate skills as a broadcast journalist and his distinctive body of work were recognized with numerous awards, including 19 Emmys, the latest for a segment that reported the reopening of the 50-year-old racial murder case of Emmett Till.
[...]
Prior to joining "60 Minutes", Bradley was a principal correspondent for "CBS Reports" (1978-81), after serving as CBS News' White House correspondent (1976-78). He was also anchor of the "CBS Sunday Night News� (November 1976-May 1981) and of the CBS News magazine "Street Stories" (January 1992-August 1993).
Bradley joined CBS News as a stringer in its Paris bureau in September 1971. A year later, he was transferred to the Saigon bureau, where he remained until he was assigned to the CBS News Washington bureau in June 1974. He was named a CBS News correspondent in April 1973 and, shortly thereafter, was wounded while on assignment in Cambodia. In March 1975, he volunteered to return to Indochina and covered the fall of Cambodia and Vietnam.
Prior to joining CBS News, he was a reporter for WCBS Radio, the CBS Owned station in New York (August 1967-July 1971). He had previously been a reporter for WDAS Radio Philadelphia (1963-67).
Bradley was born June 22, 1941, in Philadelphia and was graduated from Cheyney (Pa.) State College in 1964 with a B.S. in education.
Purity Ballz
This may be one of the creepiest videos I have ever seen. The greatest masters of the horror film genre have nothing on CareNet and Clifhanger Productions.
My skin actually peeled itself away from my body and crawled away as I listened to this gem: “I was listening to…the author of And the Bride Wore White talking about a teenage girl sitting in the lap of her father, and she was telling her dad, ‘You know, Dad, I don’t know if there’s something wrong with me. All my friends want boyfriends, and they have boyfriends, but I don’t have a desire for that.’ And her dad looked at her and said, ‘Well, where are you?’”
At which point, had I been that teenage girl, I would have replied, “Eww! I’m sitting in my father’s lap talking about how I have none of the normal desires of teenagers! Seeya, Pops. I’ve got some cock to suck—and it ain’t yours!”
Mind you, I don’t disbelieve that a strong family network, particularly loving and attentive parents, is the best defense against young adults acting out in self-destructive ways (including ill-advised sex) in pursuit of lacking attention at home. I take no issue with that premise. But I do take issue with the premises that all sex before marriage is intrinsically bad, that only a father’s love and attention can keep a girl on the straight and narrow, and especially that the affections of a parent are a substitute for a romantic relationship.
My first serious boyfriend (who remains one of my best friends to this day) and I both came from loving, attentive families—and not only that, my parents love him and his love me. We hung out for years before we did anything sexual; it wasn’t until I was already away at college (and he was in his senior year of high school) that we finally fumblefucked our collective cherry away. But long before that, I was learning about who I was (and was going to be) as an adult through my relationship with him, in ways I wouldn’t have done if I were using my dad as a proxy boyfriend. Discouraging teenage girls from pursuing romantic relationships with the opposite sex (or, heaven forbid, the same sex), because it might—gasp!—lead to sex, diminishes their ability to become women. In my parents’ eyes, I will always be their little girl, and it was only as I moved into the world and away from them that I became a woman. Having romantic relationships was a part of that.
These virginity pledges aren’t just about asking girls to commit to not having sex until marriage; they’re asking girls to commit to never becoming women. A girl who goes from daddy’s lap to husband’s lap, without having experienced the self-realization that is afforded by early romantic relationships, sexual or not, learns only how to be loved by men in whatever way those men choose. A woman knows precisely how she wants to be loved, what she needs and desires, and that makes her a better—and equal—partner and a more fulfilled person. That strikes me as a lot to exchange for making daddy happy by never spreading your legs.
And So 2008 Begins
Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack announces a presidential run. We have our first Democratic candidate. (Duncan Hunter is the first Republican candidate.)
Vilsack is such an unfortunate name. It sounds like an obscure body part, somewhere near the spleen. “Oof! You got me in the vilsack!” “I’m sorry, Mrs. Burblenurtz, but we’re going to have to remove your vilsack immediately before it explodes.” “I’ve never had my tonsils out, but I had a vilsackectomy.”
Anyway, wev. Good luck, Tom. You’re gonna need it.
“Minutes upon minutes of soul-searching”
This is freaking hilarious. Check out this story lead in the WaPo today:
After minutes upon minutes of soul-searching, Republicans are now in recrimination mode. And the GOP's various factions all agree: This wouldn't have happened if the party had listened to us.That. Is. Awesome.
In the aftermath of the historic GOP losses Tuesday night, moderate Republicans quickly concluded that the party needs to be more moderate. Conservative Republicans declared that it should be more conservative. Main Street is angry at Wall Street, theo-cons are angry at neo-cons, and almost everyone is angry at President Bush and the GOP congressional leadership.Welcome to the club!
The rest of the article lays out all the various finger-pointing, which provides some amusement—especially for someone like me, who’s been accused of being “why the Democrats can’t win” after every election for years, for reasons generally in the area of “being too liberal” and “having the unreasonable expectation that Democrats not be sexists and homophobes.”
In any case, there are obviously a whole slew of reasons why the GOP lost—corruption, greed, out-of-control spending, unprecedented expansion of government, undermining civil rights, inflexible partisanship, cronyism, base pandering, corporate welfare, redistributing wealth upwards, ignoring the environment, wretched prejudices, the Iraq War, Katrina, Terri Schiavo, etc. The American voters had a litany of complaints, and they encompassed interests of all the factions who are now pointing fingers at each other. It was, in the end, everything.
And all of it goes back to a single mistake the GOP made: They forgot that Americans hate their government.
Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens—all of us. We hate our government, because it’s always doing either too much or too little, or simply the wrong things. Across the political spectrum, there is near-unanimous agreement that our government should stay the hell out of our business, unless and until we need them. Defend us and save us—that’s all we want. And we want other things, too, that we don’t associate with government, though we should—clean water, mail, fixed potholes. But we just want it done without having to hear about it. We want our representatives to represent us, and leave us the hell alone.
For good or ill, that’s the lay of the land. And the GOP started ruling as if it weren’t. They fancied themselves rock stars—flying to Scotland for a golf game, flaunting their pork barrel projects. Look at this bridge to nowhere—is this sexy or what? We’ve got a mandate, bitchez; the people love us, they really us! They crawled up their own arses and there they stayed, as if they were celebrities rather than civil servants, and believed they could do anything, because the people love their government.
Fools.
They completely lost all perspective, which is why they started getting everything backwards. They intervened in the Schiavo debacle, and didn’t intervene in NOLA. (At least not quickly enough.) They tried to privatize Social Security, and eschewed the idea of public healthcare. They gave themselves a raise and failed to increase the minimum wage. Backwards. All of it. Because they forgot that the Americans hate their government, except when we need it.
And boy oh boy do we need it now. We need the new government to fix all the disasters wrought by the old one. That gives the Democrats a sterling opportunity to remind America what a dedicated party of civil servants looks like—and let us hate our government again in peace, which is all we really want to do.
Don't Fall For It.
Yesterday, I wrote a post with some advice for Democrats. My first suggestion was "don't fall for it," with a link to a story about Bush & Pelosi's "make nice" lunch, entitled "Bush Pledges to Work with Democrats."
Anyone who honestly believes that Bush has any desire to work with Democrats needs to e-mail me immediately. I have a bridge to sell you.
Bush and the Republicans haven't the slightest desire to reconcile, or to work with Democrats on any sort of progressive change. For evidence of this statement, I could simply point to the last six years... hell, all the way back to the beginning of the Clinton administration, and really, that should be enough.
But really, visual aids are so much better.
Before the election, President Bush said on the campaign trail that if opponents of his Iraq policy were victorious, “the terrorists win and America loses.”So, in other words, "working with the Democrats" means the same old shit.
During his press conference earlier today, Bush returned to the same extreme rhetoric. Addressing “our enemies,” Bush said “do not be joyful” over the election results, or view them as evidence of America’s “lack of will.”
"The terrorists got what they wanted" is the message, and he couldn't make it through one day before blurting that out.
Democrats: Bush, the Republicans, and the Media are all rooting for you to fail. They will not hesitate for a second to trash you the second your back is turned. Don't give them any ammo.
(No more cross-posts ever!!)
Allen’s Going to Concede
MSNBC Breaking News: GOP's George Allen to concede race for Senate seat from Virginia.
(Hat tip Holly.)
All Your Senate Belongs to Us
In case there’s anyone who hasn’t heard—and had sixteen celebratory glasses of champagne already—the AP has called Virginia for Webb.
Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.
Question of the Day
Now that the Democrats have won (won, bitchez, won!), the question is whether they will—as the president, his party, and the media are imploring—reach out in a spirit of bipartisanship, go hogwild with luminous glee on a massive investigate-a-thon and concede nary so much as a kind glance in the GOP’s general direction, or something in between.
No matter what they do, someone is going to be unhappy…but who? Obviously, the last people they should take into consideration are their Republican peers, who have been unapologetically abusing them (and the American people) for a long time. That leaves the Dems to find a strategy that straddles satisfying the base and living up to the expectations of moderate voters, both of whom were instrumental in giving them their new majority. (And, realistically, the moderates' expectations clearly include A New Direction, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a perfect alignment with the base’s ideals. Finding the overlap is really key to this issue, I think.)
So, the question is: How do they achieve that balance? What would you recommend to the Democrats?
Conservative Smash!
So I read this at Talking Points Memo:
Our TPM intern Eric Kleefeld just pointed out to me that if Joe Courtney's lead holds up in Connecticut 2nd, this election will leave just one Republican congressman in all New England. That's a watershed.And I think to myself, That’s pretty cool, and then wondered what the current population of New England is. So I head over to handy-dandy Wikipedia to see if their entry on New England lists a population total, and this greets me at the top of the page:
Ooh, somebody’s unhappy. Looks like sour grapes to me! The kind of sour grapes that make a whole lot of red whine.
