I never point out other bloggers' typos unless there's something unbearably funny about the wording of the mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, and bloggers aren't paid to proofread themselves. You get that for which you pay. And any post mocking a typo is guaranteed to contain an even more embarrassing typo, no matter how many times you reread it.

But when your output lacks any substance whatsoever, shouldn't you use spellcheck just to make yourself look a little less stupid? I give you Kathryn Jean Lopez:

I HOPE NO ONE OUT THERE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
is playing this. It's Saturday for Pete's sake. That's strickly weekday material.
Posted at 02:34 PM

FROM BRITIAN [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Robin Cook, the official who famously resigned during the run-up to the Iraq war, has died. RIP
Posted at 02:25 PM

Of course, when Lopez does attempt a thought, it's an abortion of both style and substance:

I CERTAINLY KNOW LIFE DIDN'T BEGIN IN THE FALL OF 2001, BUT... [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Am I wrong to be justifiably uncomfortable with the Hiroshima headline in the Washington Post today? "The Original Ground Zero." Anyone who's lived in America in the past few years knows what "Ground Zero" conjures up. What we dropped in Japan is such a complicated question. What was done to us on 9/11/01 has no reasonable-people-can-disagree justification. I am pretty sure I am reading way too much into that Post headline, but it left me feeling like it should have been written some other way.
Posted at 02:17 PM

No reasonable people can disagree that Lopez is a moron. The centers of the sites where American atomic bombs were dropped on Japan have been called Ground Zero since at least 1946. To suggest that using the original meaning of the term is improper reeks of arrogance born of cult-like devotion to the Miserable Failure and the myth that his greatest failure was a triumph. It's also a pathetic attempt to sanitize this Nation's history and, indirectly, the indiscriminate use of bombs by the current Administration.

Meanwhile, Cliff May just gets stupider and stupider.

It's Hard Work

A spokesman for the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation said that neither the council nor Bush had any way of knowing that the person they were honoring was a condemned multiple murderer.

Today's Republican Party: It's Hardcore!

Readers of Atrios and Ed Cone already will have heard about Republican Klansman Heritageman Doug Hanks, who sought to represent the Republican Party on the Charlotte (N.C.) City Council.

Here's the story of Doug and his pals at stormfront.org:

Doug Hanks said the postings on the site were fictional and designed to win white supremacists' trust as he researched a novel he was writing.

"I needed information for the book and some other writings I was doing," Hanks told The Associated Press on Friday. "Obviously, when you go to a site like that as a reporter, nobody's going to give you the time of day. I did what I thought I needed to do to establish myself as a credible white nationalist."

Hanks' 4,000 postings to the Web site over the past three years were first reported Thursday by The Rhinoceros Times, a weekly newspaper.

In a June 1 posting, Hanks wrote: "When Blacks start acting equally, only then will they enjoy the benefits of being treated equally. I treat a rabid dog differently from a healthy one. In fact, this gives me a terrific idea! Let's treat all the Blacks like the rabid beasts they are. 'Yeller! Here Boy!'"

Mr. Hanks ain't no ordinary racist peckerwood. No, according to his bio at "Patriot Publications," he's

a licensed general contractor, legally ordained minister, and the chief conservation officer of an experimental redwood reforestation project in the North Carolina mountains. He is presently an honorary co-chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee's Business Advisory Council, and received an award for environmental protection achievement from the President of the United States. He is currently working on a series of pro-Second Amendment novels.

He's not only a Republican racist, he's a religious bigot too:

Described as "'Unintended Consequences' and 'Harrison Bergeron' meets 'The Turner Diaries'," "Patriot Act" foretells of a future where a Zionist-controlled government eliminates all freedom and individual thought; where patriotism is akin to terrorism, and being proud of one's heritage is criminal.

Hanks is no namby-pamby either, according to his fans:

I finished reading "Patriot Act" ... AWESOME! It's the Turner Diaries for the 21st century. It's better than I had hoped. I was thinking it was more of a pro-Constitution, pro-Second Amendment novel which only touched peripherally on the race and Jewish problem. Not so, it's hardcore! It's a really compelling read because of your extensive character development and the way you tied them together in the end.

Billy in North Carolina

Does Dennis Prager know about this?

But don't take Billy's word for it -- here's the "Overview/Forward" (.pdf) to Hanks' racist and subliterate novel.

Hanks has already taken down his campaign website, but it's cached here.

On his site, the closeted Klansman boasted that "[i]n conjunction with the historic preservation group, HPEPC I climbed to the top of the 50-foot tall pole in freezing temperatures" to replace a Confederate flag taken down by the city council. He claimed, "[t]his was not an issue of North vs. South; it was about right versus wrong, and the fact that taking down any flag of heritage is inherently wrong."

If you wish contact the loathsome bigot by e-mail, he requests that you send your feedback via the links listed here.

If you wish to congratulate the National Republican Congressional Committee on its discernment in selecting advisors, you can do so here.

Peggy Works Blue In The Red States

Now that Bob Novak has given legitimacy to the art form, Peggy Noonan has decided to work blue as well.

I end that sentence with a preposition to segue into my favorite story this summer of cultural tensions and differences as navigated by two American women. A Southern lady sees a vacationing society lady from the Northeast. The Southern lady is gregarious: "Where y'all from?" Society lady is put off: "I'm from a place where they don't end sentences with a preposition." Southern lady smiles, nods her head: "Beg your pardon. Where y'all from, bitch?"

It's fun to see cultures collide, because that's one of the ways you know they still exist.

Such fun. Almost as much fun as when the Southern lady saw three law-abiding Muslim men and up an' called the po-lice men.

And it's a true story, too. Barbara Bush tried to have the woman killed for her insolence, but Peggy distracted Bar with some gin.

We've gotten ahead of ourselves.

Peggy's foul-mouthed joke is featured in the opening paragraphs of her most recent WSJ Online column. After a well-deserved absence, Nooners has returned to her column with her verbal vacation slides from West Virginia, the Nation's Ashtray.

Reading Peg's ramblings, blogger Tristam Shandy points out that Peg never takes a vacation from inaccuracy. Quoting Peg, Tristam writes:

Someone else said, approvingly, "Everyone keeps a gun in West Virginia. Crime is low." Later I would be told it has the lowest violent crime per capita in the United States. It is very nice, when traveling, to see your beliefs and assumptions statistically borne out.

Something about this didn't ring true, didn't jibe with Peggy's usual strict, zen-like adherence to accuracy. Hmmmm, what could it be? Yes, the careless use of easily accessible statistics! In this case, we refer to violent crime numbers.

Peggy, we say this with all the love and admiration in the world: whomever "told you" that little nugget of heartland bushwa is retarded. Because there are eight -- count 'em, eight -- states with lower numbers than West Virginia.

As our contribution to this essay, we point out this emerald Peg dug from the turds:

We went to a little old coal-mining town, where we visited what used to be the company store and is now an antique shop. I saw the scrip with which the operators paid the miners. I thought scrip was paper money, but it's thin metal ovals like quarters and nickels, with the number of the mine the miner works in stamped through. In a side room was a picture of the company store as it had been circa 1900. The whole right side of the store was a long polished bar, with rows of whiskey bottles along the walls. This in a place that was relatively impoverished. The other half of the store sold dry goods.

You can see the whole beginning of the Ladies Christian Temperance Union right in this picture, I thought: Maybe Prohibition was a Protestant movement and not a Catholic one in some part because the Catholics of the East weren't paid in scrip but with green money, so an edge of coercion -- We'll work you to death and then force you to pay high prices for our whiskey as you pour out your woes -- and the resentment coercion brings, was missing.

Besides, Irish Catholics would sell their children before giving up the drink.

PegAnon means to refer to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, but we'll cut her some slack because...well, you know.

But I'm not sure what to make of her incoherent theory that temperance crusades began as a Prot revolt against overpriced booze in company stores. The WCTU tells a different tale:

Hillsboro, Ohio is credited with being the birthplace of the Woman's Temperance Crusade. Dr. Dio Lewis gave a lecture on Temperance at the Hillsboro Music Hall on the evening of December 23, 1873. On the morning of December 24, 1873, under the leadership of Mrs. Eliza Thompson, daughter of a former governor and wife of a highly respected judge, seventy women arose from their knees and started from the Presbyterian church to the saloons.

Peg will be glad to hear that the modern WCTU opposes stem cell research, equal marriage rights and human cloning. Peg could get elected president of the U., if not for one thing.

Okay, two, three, tops.

Finally, there is no rational explanation except advanced dementia for this final set of Peg anecdotes:

At the store the man behind the counter was friendly, intelligent and missing an eye. He had no artificial eye, no eye patch, just a red space where the eye would be. When I asked his name he said, "Jack, but my friends call me One Eye." I nodded at this information and remembered what a friend told me. He works with a local man who was complaining about his lazy brother-in-law who's on welfare. "He wouldn't take a job in a pie factory!"

Congratulations To The Residents Of Ohio's Second District

Good news. Joe Braun has not been gagged.

Campaign manager Joe Braun, who is overseeing Schmidt's transition, said her campaign office would remain open so it can gear up for next year's re-election campaign.

In the meantime, Schmidt made herself at home in her new office.

"Can I get an outside line? How do I do that?" she called out, then dialed her husband, Peter, a financial adviser for the investment firm Legg Mason.

"Guess where I'm sitting?" she asked. "I'm sitting at my new desk in my new office in Washington, D.C."

Schmidt also called her daughter, Emilie, who worked in the same office as an intern for Portman. Braun worked there as a Portman intern in 1995.

Obscenity

Fuck that asshole Bob Novak, as those pricks Bush and Cheney would say if Novak wasn't their whore. CNN allows Novak to spew bullshit for more than a decade, then shitcans (but only temporarily) his saggy ass when he says the word "bullshit" between his lies.

To hell with all those pricks, the dickwad Novak, the dickless CNN and the fucking death-loving shitstains in the Administration. To hell with them.

"Today" is generally more substantive in the first half hour, with more Washington news and international stories. Even when "Good Morning America" or CBS's "The Early Show" run the same story, they usually devote less time to it. However, the similarities are probably greater. All three programs are partial to tabloid stories, whether it be the tragic disappearance of a teen-ager in Aruba or a finger found in a bowl of chili at a fast-food restaurant.

There's no substance to Today. Yesterday, the program's first hour hit the WTWWA trifecta - Natalee Holloway (she thought she was getting into a cab!), Laci Peterson (someone saw a length-wise indentation on her bedspread!) and the Mentally-Ill Bride (her on-line registration at Crate & Barrel (?) had an error on it!) . G.E. loves to keep the viewers stupid.

From the Boston Herald:

Cambridge-based Forrester Research reported yesterday that fewer than 2 percent of Americans who go online read blogs once a week or more.

Even among tech-savvy pioneers - those with laptops and WiFi networks in their homes -just 4 percent say they read blogs.

The surprising figures were uncovered after an exhaustive survey of 68,664 households.

How is this surprising? Is it surprising to the 98 percent of Americans who don't read blogs? Do those people think they're the exception, hold outs against a national blogmania?

And how was the survey exhaustive? 68,664 doesn't come close to exhausting the number of American households. Did they pester the "households" they did interview? ("Are you sure you don't read blogs more than once a week? Think hard! We want you to review all the sites you visited last week, just to make sure. No, we're serious. We're not hanging up until you do.")

Hooray for Peckerwood

The only thing I want to know about the Dukes of Hazzard movie is if they kept the Klan flag on top of the car.

The Lunde Hop

Mr. Ed goes down with the ship.

In an effort to backfill and fend off the "trolls" who have boarded his dinghy, Mister Ed cites Brian Lunde as proof that the American Center for Voting Rights isn't the creation of Bushlicking shills. You see, Lunde once worked for the Kentucky Democratic Party (in the Carter era) and for the DNC.

But Mister Ed's spyglass doesn't work so well. His Google search apparently didn't turn up "Brian Lunde, National Executive Director of 'Democrats for Bush.'"

Linking to opensecrets.org, Mister Ed also asserts "His [Lunde's] only campaign contribution in the past four years went to Congressman Mike Ross (D-AR)."

According to Fundrace.org, a Brian A. Lunde gave $2,000 to George Bush in the 2004 Presidential election and Barbara A. Lunde of the same address gave another $2,000 to Bush. (The Fundrace Bri has the same middle initial and city and zip code as the opensecrets link.)

And, per Ed's own opensecrets link, Lunde gave money in 2003 to Freshmen PAC, a G.O.P. political action committee whose goal is to "Maintain A Republican Majority." (That's the dream of all true Democrats, don'tcha know?)

(Or, you could even do this opensecrets search and find Lunde's 2004 Bush donation.)

In his own comments, Mister Ed says he "think[s] we have established that the two co-signers to the report are activists from each party," which "buries the notion that it was a put-up job by the GOP." Yes, the bipartisanship of a Bush/Cheney lawyer and a Bush/Cheney donor who wants to maintain a Republican majority is impossible to argue with.

Seems Ed's still blowing smoke up your porthole.

Update: Opensecrets links added.

Mr. Ed Takes It In Shorts Again

The world's most gullible pretend Captain proves again there's nothing he won't swallow. And why he's well qualified to write for the Daily No-Standards.

Linking to a fake memo, Mister Ed disclaims:

I missed this when it first came out in yesterday's Arizona Central Bizwire, but an independent report from the new American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund identifies far more incidents of voter intimidation and fraud on behalf of Democrats and their candidates than it did on behalf of their opponents.

Independent, Mr. Ed?

If you'd bother to do the work that Steve M. and Jesse Taylor at pandagon and Brad Blog and others too numerous to mention did, you'd know that the "independent report" of the august ACVR (established, Feb. 2005) was penned by a Republican shyster.

In fact, you should read the whole Brad Blog series.

Rather pathetic, Ed.

And Mr. Ed changes his soiled shorts even as we type:

UPDATE: Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice says that the ACVL has some controversial and potentially partisan financing. He's checking into it now. It's worth maintaining some skepticism on this report until more is known about the organization, which came into existence this past February and describes itself as a non-partisan effort to ensure clean elections. I'd consider Joe to be a pretty solid resource on this type of issue. I don't think all the mea culpas he issued on his post were warranted -- after all, we could get most of the information in this report from media accounts -- but he does have a point about ensuring that the group isn't acting as a front.

I guess the fact that the original "article" was clearly identified as a friggin' press release wasn't enough to stop Ed from linking without thinking.

Be sure to read Mr. Ed's entire post, so you can "judge the vanishing credibility of" the fake seaman.

Update: Here's the Google cache of the "article," clearly identified as a press release (via Steve M.); here's the original press release; and here's a "report" on the story by Greg Pierce of the Moonie Times, whose writing style is astoundingly similar to that of a p.r. hack writing a press release.

It's A Beautiful Day

Rush Limbaugh must be in heaven today, as fourteen pukes have given their meaningless lives for the glory of the George W. Bush. Fourteen losers who won't be able to return to American soil and smear the Republican Party. That news should stir the desiccated Little Pharma more than it's stirred in decades.

Meanwhile, el-Brent Bozell rails against the traitors who even mention the deaths of these Americans in "the war on terrorists in Iraq."

Cliff won't be happy 'til the network begins running "The Situation With Reed Irvine's Decaying Corpse."

God Says Don't Let Your Roast Beef Touch Your Mashed Potatoes

...humans are separate from animals (see part XV); and man is separate from woman. Blurring any of these distinctions is tampering with the order of the world as created by God and leads to chaos. So important is the notion of separation that the very word for "holy" in biblical Hebrew (kadosh) means "separate," "distinct."

This helps to explain one of the least known and most enigmatic laws of the Torah, the ban on wearing linen and wool together in the same piece of clothing (sha'atnez). Linen represents plant life, and wool represents animal life. The two are distinct realms in God's creation.

And that is why the Torah bans men from wearing women's clothing.

It's all so clear now.

By the same logic, men shouldn't wear clothes made from either plants or animals. Which might explain Prager's wardrobe.

Frankly, any clothing blurs the distinction between man and woman. Take off your pants, Dennis, or shut the hell up.

(Link via Pandagon)

Judy Miller Died For Your Sins

DLC Dick Cohen is the latest to install Judy Fucking-Miller on a pedestal, albeit one constructed of sand:

Before Judith Miller of the New York Times went to jail for not revealing her sources, I offered her my services. I suggested that she tell me her source and then, once she was in jail, I would reveal that I knew, and the special prosecutor would jail me as well -- but not before I told another journalist. After four score and seven of us were in the calaboose, the prosecutor would -- like the British facing the indomitable Gandhi -- collapse before our moral force and leave us to honor our solemn commitments as we have done since time immemorial. I now know my plan would have failed. Apres moi, as the late Louis XV once said, too much of the press would still be writing about how Miller deserves her fate.

The way to honor a confidentiality pledge is to betray your source to Richard Cohen. Frankly, no one would care if Cohen was locked up. And the WaPo editorial page would improve considerably.

The most oft-heard and fervent denunciation of Miller amounts to a political indictment: She was wrong about the war in Iraq. By that, these people mean that Miller wrote stories for the Times that buttressed the administration's argument that Iraq possessed fearsome weapons of mass destruction -- none of which were ever found. Miller, however, was not the only one writing such stories. It seems that much of the press, not to mention the Bush administration itself, was relying on a clique of ill-informed or outright deceitful sources who maintained that Saddam Hussein had these weapons by the barnful. Contradictory evidence was ignored.

It's possible that Miller came across dissenting arms experts or intelligence officials and failed to take notice of them. It is also possible that after the war she had a stake in perpetuating the WMD canard and failed to report that none of the weapons existed. These and other allegations have been brooded about in journalistic circles and on blogs where the usual journalistic standards of proof are for some reason suspended. I do know that Miller was not, as some irrationally insist, solely responsible for taking the United States to war -- no matter how influential her newspaper may be. Let me go out on a limb: George Bush would have gone to war without Judith Miller.

Do you mean, Dick, the usual journalistic standards of proof that Miller followed? Apparently Cohen is only bothered by half-assery (to put the most charitable spin on it) not committed by a friend and colleague.

Yes, Richard, some may be happy at Miller's fate because she was a dishonest reporter. But the reason she is in prison is that there is no journalist/source privilege. That, and not Miller's well-deserved unpopularity, is the real story.

The Highest Compliment

Markos may disagree, but I think this ranks as one of his greatest accomplishments:

Of course it helps her, both because attacks from the left make her look centrist and because Kos is one of the few people on the planet with a personality so unappealing he allows Hillary to seem warm and enchanting!

What exactly does the demented hack hate about Kos? His success? His lucidity? His full head of hair?

I can't imagine Markos would spend two seconds with Kaus if he had a choice. Maybe the midget cornered him at one of Arianna Huffington's bashes and Kos was too polite to step over him. In any event, this is the equivalent of a lifetime acheievement award. Well done!

Dumb As A Post

A freeper conducts a covert operation:

POST'S profile was deleted from the Web site following Friday's interview, but on Thursday night included this message: "F the Democrats! I am a former Republican Committeeman in the Town of Plattekill/County of Ulster in New York State. School Board Elect member of the Hyde Park School Board. I will eventually be a Republican Committeeman in the Town of Hyde Park/County of Dutchess in New York State."

The Hyde Park School Board must be so proud.

(Link via BuzzFlash.)

Can We Impeach This Idiot?

As a general matter, I think blog triumphalists are tools -- particularly when they're Instacracker/Jeff Jarvis types whose beliefs are fueled by liberal media fantasies. (Waiting, checkbook in hand, for that Pajamas Media IPO? Thought not.)

But Judge Dick Posner takes it to the other idiotic extreme:

How can the conventional news media hope to compete? Especially when the competition is not entirely fair. The bloggers are parasitical on the conventional media. They copy the news and opinion generated by the conventional media, often at considerable expense, without picking up any of the tab. The degree of parasitism is striking in the case of those blogs that provide their readers with links to newspaper articles. The links enable the audience to read the articles without buying the newspaper. The legitimate gripe of the conventional media is not that bloggers undermine the overall accuracy of news reporting, but that they are free riders who may in the long run undermine the ability of the conventional media to finance the very reporting on which bloggers depend.

Those accursed bloggers! Allowing blogreaders to read for free on the internet the newspapers that they'd, uh, otherwise be able to read for free on the internet.

You can thank me later.

But it's not all doom and gloom for Posner. The upside is a blogs as flypaper theory:

The argument for filtering is an argument for censorship. (That it is made by liberals is evidence that everyone secretly favors censorship of the opinions he fears.) But probably there is little harm and some good in unfiltered media. They enable unorthodox views to get a hearing. They get 12 million people to write rather than just stare passively at a screen. In an age of specialization and professionalism, they give amateurs a platform. They allow people to blow off steam who might otherwise adopt more dangerous forms of self-expression. They even enable the authorities to keep tabs on potential troublemakers; intelligence and law enforcement agencies devote substantial resources to monitoring blogs and Internet chat rooms.

The good isn't freedom of expression, the exchange of ideas or political empowerment; it's keeping the looneys where we can see them.

I know blogging keeps me and my high-powered rifle off the roof. Most of the time.

And I'm glad to learn the feds are keeping an eye on the likes of 7thcircuitpozzstud6969@aol.com.

Perhaps the real reason Poz loathes bloggers is that even unprofessional wackos like myself can kick the ass of the Posner/Becker Blog. That's gotta hurt a public intellectual. Particularly one who doesn't give too much thought about what he publishes.