You can listen to some of her work here.

Voting has opened.

I'll be blogging them in real time too.

In order to make up for the lack of content lately, I've invented a concept that will revolutionize blogging as we know it. It involves blogging a live event as it happens. I call it: blogging in real time. As far as I can tell, it's never been done.

This is going to be big, my friends. Big!

To start out slowly, I'm going to blog-in-real-time (or "birt") Sunday night's Oscar telecast. The Oscars may seem far afield from this blog's core mission -- whatever that is. But every "C" list wingnut has offered a curdled opinion on the proceedings. Every one. Every one. etc. (Warning: Links contain spoilers. And whiners.) el-Bent Bozell already has the baby oil, the baby wipes and the baby defibrillator at his bedside in case anything homosexual wins. So there is a tie-in.

What will make this event even more revolutionary is that I haven't seen a single 2005 movie, either in theaters or on DVD. That's at least two less than TBogg. I am less qualified to have an opinion on 2005 films than anyone on any subject, with the exception of Michelle Malkin on any subject.

Come Sunday night, Roger Ailes will be the place to be for cineastry. (Hey, that's a new word!) The Governor's Ball will be unattended, except for Mickey Kaus begging for a job of some sort, and Swifty Lazar's no longer with us. The Vanity Fair party was canceled due to Prop. 65 violations.

For added excitement, I'm going to use the word Oscars without the permission of AMPAS. Bite me, AMPAS!

Don't miss it.

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones/AP) - The New York Times Co. paid Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. a salary and bonus of $1.6 million for 2005.

The New York-based media company also said he received options on 150,000 shares and got a grant of restricted stock units valued at $817,500.

That works out $25,000 per worthless David Brooks column, or $2.00 per Judy Miller-martyr reference. Or half the fees of Floyd Abrams and Bill Bennett.

Bad Column Writing

Can one graduate from Harvard with the writing skills of Kaye Grogan? Michael Kalin makes the case:

Throughout his formal education, Goldberg stayed up-to-date on national politics through nightly coverage on "The Daily Show" and even led a petition to protest the genocide in Darfur.

Led a petition?

The tragedy of this portrait is not that investment banking corrupts young souls (although one could argue otherwise), but rather that the students who abandon politics out of a naive self-consciousness often represent our country's most idealistic minds.

That's Abe Rosenthal bad!

Observers since the days of de Tocqueville have often remarked about America's unique dissociation between politicians and citizens of "outstanding character."

You just can't shut those observers up once they get started on that topic.

Although Stewart's comedic shticks may thus earn him some laughs Sunday at the Oscars, his routine will certainly not match the impact of his greatest irony: Jon Stewart undermines any remaining earnestness that liberals in America might still possess.

I hate it when shticks undermine earnestness.

Stewart's daily dose of political parody characterized by asinine alliteration leads to a "holier than art thou" attitude toward our national leaders.

Hmmmm... this almost sounds like a parody.

Of a Stanford grad.

Sadly, No! has more.

Update: One of the commenters at Sadly, No! already made the Grogan comparison. Advantage: Commentosphere!

I Bought It On (R)Bay!

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced the opening of the largest internet auction site in history. The site is called (R)Bay, and it will feature auctions of the ill-gotten gains of convicted Republicans.

Randy "Duke" Cunningham's ill-gotten French antique commodes and other furnishings will be auctioned off in three weeks, authorities said yesterday.

The commodes -- a type of chest of drawers -- drew snickers from late-night comedians when the former congressman pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion last fall.

The furnishings were among the more than $2.4 million in bribes that the former congressman admitted taking from defense contractors.

Dozens of pieces of furniture and rugs that once stuffed his Arlington, Va., condominium and later were moved into Cunningham's Rancho Santa Fe mansion were turned over to the government as part of his guilty plea.

They are scheduled to be auctioned off March 23 at a warehouse in Rancho Dominguez, near Long Beach, with prospective buyers able to preview them two days earlier and on the Internet now.

"The only people who are restricted from bidding on this are Congressman Cunningham or anyone acting on his behalf or any of the other defendants," said Britney Sheehan, a spokeswoman for auctioneer EG&G Technical Services.

Although experts have estimated the value of the items, she said she couldn't reveal that because she didn't want it to affect bidding.

The proceeds will go to the agencies that investigated Cunningham. They are the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation branch and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

Bidding on the Ney and DeLay collections begins later this spring.

(And coming this fall to RNCAmerica: "Plea Bargain Hunt," "Graft In The Attic" and "The Hammer Under The Hammer.")

Jack Shafer says The New Republic has become Joe Lieberman Weekly. Shafer appears to mean it as a compliment.

I think I'd rather subscribe to The New Lamont.

Kneel and Moon

It's the end times. Dogs and Santorums, living together in sin. Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media linking to John Gorenfeld. Cliffie writes:

The skirting of the law has enabled critics of the deal, such as Lou Dobbs of CNN, to suggest that Bush family ties to the UAE are involved. CNN reporter Christine Romans did a report on Dobbs' show alleging that the President's brother, Neil Bush, has reportedly received funding for his educational software company from UAE investors. Neil Bush, however, is a loose cannon in the Bush family, and recently showed up on a tour with controversial Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon after going through a messy divorce. It's hard to believe that this black sheep of the Bush family would have that much influence. If there is a connection between Neil Bush and the deal, the controversy could quickly turn into "Portgate."

The laughable premise here is Cliffie's suggestion that Kneel is the only Bush with ties to Moon. Ha!

The Nation Speaks As One

"Miserable failure," it says:

Mr. Bush's overall job rating has fallen to 34 percent, down from 42 percent last month. Fifty-nine percent disapprove of the job the president is doing.

For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn't care, compared to 47 percent last fall.

Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low.

By two to one, the poll finds Americans think U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going badly -- the worst assessment yet of progress in Iraq.

Even on fighting terrorism, which has long been a strong suit for Mr. Bush, his ratings dropped lower than ever. Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he's handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve.

And there's good news for Dead-Eye Dick:

In a bright spot for the administration, most Americans appeared to have heard enough about Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

And this:

Still, the incident appears to have made the public's already negative view of Cheney a more so [sic]. Just 18 percent said they had a favorable view of the vice president, down from 23 percent in January.

The Dick is still more popular with the public than pedophiles and Tom DeLay. So that's encouraging.

"It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously cited American soldier that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each others' throats."

Buckley lacks the balls to attribute that opinion to himself, so he puts the words in the mouth of a hypothetical soldier. And tortures the language to do so. The truth is, it wouldn't be noteworthy to learn of a solider having such an opinion. (Nor can you learn a fact from an opinion.) But if any serviceman or woman expressed that belief, the NR crowd would demand the punishment of that soldier for criticizing the Commander-in-Chief.

Go ahead Bill, say "I understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and Shiites from each others' throats." Don't be such a coward your whole life.

Sherwood Schwartz (over 125k)
Christie Brinkley
Michael Douglas
Michael Crichton
Bob Saget
Albert Brooks
Roy Horn
Ron Silver
Harold Ramis
Nancy Sinatra

Exclusively Republican:

Bob Barker
Sammy Hagar
Dean Koontz
Bobby Knight
John Elway
Alex Rodriguez
Mario Andretti
Al Michaels
Curt Gowdy
"Dr." Phil
Wink Martindale
Vince McMahon
Lou Pearlman
Merv Griffin
Jack Abramoff

Steve Forbes (The sole D recipient was named Forbes)

Nader Supporters:

Noam Chomsky
Danny Goldberg
Ben Stein

The original:

Strangest of all is the scenario of such a person disliking an author for defending Western civilization against radical Islam -- when one of the first things those poor, persecuted Islamists would do, if they ever (Allah forbid) came to power in the United States, is crush suspected homosexuals like him beneath walls.