Heh, remember that silly (to say the least) dkos diary about how progressives are not doing enough to save the planet by not sacrificing their livelihoods? The one everyone made fun of on dkos? Well MLW frontpaged it - There Are No Innocent Bystanders in America ... So here again I bring it to your attention - and yet another reason why I am sure kos removed the link to that blog. Good thinking because that is lunacy. Imagine that in charge of the Democratic Party.

[Edit] Check out this impressive House Floor speech by Sam Johnson (R-TX).

Sometimes I have these moments of confusion (you might say clarity but I know better) where I wonder if I really could be a liberal... Moments pass and then all these reasons pour into my mind that convince me that I posess an almost biological predisposition to the Right wing way of thinking. What are these reasons and are they rational or emotional or even biological?

Read on...

Three day weekend coming up for me - hope you all have as much rest time as well :) It's been incredibly cold here in the North East but will start to warm up this weekend and maybe closer to 40s sometime next week. I am tired of highs in the low 20s.

Congress will vote on the "surge" though I doubt that the Senate will actually go anywhere with it because GOP should be able to block it. Since I don't care for any of the Democratic bills on the issue, I would not be particularly upset if that happens.

What's going on with you guys?

A slow news day. The Libby Trial goes into the decision phase. "Conservatives" are complaining about the deal with North Korea. The big winter storm seems to have gone out to sea. What else is going on?

Ugly winter weather in the midwest and northeast. A similarly ugly tempest still blowing over at dKos. Wednesday stormy Wednesday... So many big egos and so much genuine talent looking for a place in the sun that the occasional set-to there is probably unavoidable. But, and here's where the right needs to pay attention, the percentage of users actually involved in the drama is actually pretty small; the place is nowhere near coming apart at the seams.

So what's on your mind?

A teen gunman went on a rampage in a mall in Utah. (link ) Another storm seems headed for New York. (link ) But today I want start a conversation about Iran. General Clark weighed in yesterday here . And General Peter Pace seems to doubt some of the stories we are being told about Iran. (link )

What do you think?

Update by Brendan: this piece at Obsidian Wings points out the failure to follow through on "support the troops" rhetoric.

As missliberties writes here , discussion of contracted employee's deaths in Fallujah opens up the whole "Iraq for Sale" can of worms. Robert Greenwald's film, Iraq for Sale has been much discussed this past week, even more than usual. I previously wrote about Dick Cheney's role in this briefly here . As of 2005, two years after the start of the Iraq War, this is one way Cheney was profiting directly, despite his denials of having any financial ties with Halliburton.

Elsewhere in the news, many of our soldiers still don't have properly armored humvees (link ) (Maybe the profit margin for armoring humvees isn't high enough?), Iran is denying the round of allegations recently flung their way about Iraq (link ), and Iraq is still a very ugly mess. (link )

One story shows that there is a growing rift in the Muslim world between Sunnis and Shiites. (link ) I'm not so sure of that.

Congratulations to the Dixie Chicks for sweeping the Grammys. (link )

Not a lot new going on today. Iraq is still a hellhole with very little chance of improving, the wardrums are beating ever louder on Iran, Obama is set to officially announce, and Democrats are seeing that controlling the Senate by a single vote is better than not controlling it, but not by much.

What's on yur mind?

I was talking to my dad this morning and he said something that doesn't often enter my mind but is very important. He said that since the Anna Nicole Smith's death that's mostly what the news networks have been covering (he likes Fox News but also switches to MSNBC and all the various local news/networks ABC, CBS, NBC, etc). Basically he was disgusted by all the coverage and said "It is sad that the media today focuses so much on what's unimportant - the deaths of morons, lives of stupid celebrities, etc - we spend so much time on it, but we hardly ever see anything about the people who truly created our society and are responsible for all the great things we enjoy in life - the scientists, engineers, bright businessmen, inventors, creators, builders, etc."

IXa8nk A round of applause for your blog.Really looking forward to read more. Cool.

I was editing my bookmarks the other day and trying to decide what to do with the ones that don't really fit anywhere. They're odd or interesting tidbits that I want to keep but they don't necessarily relate to work or hobbies. Since our current open thread is about which are more vile, right or left blogs, let me say as a liberal that one of the things I appreciate most about RedState is the random and cool links that are sometimes posted there in open threads or on RedHot. Which sort of begs the question... what would the bookmarks folder of a conservative look like? Is there a difference in what bits of weird news, science, or culture appeal to liberals versus those that appeal to conservatives? Let's have a completely unscientific poll, something light for a Thursday afternoon. What random links do you have, and how do you suppose they relate to your political ideology? Here are mine:

Personally I don't find LGF vile. Nor do I think Redstate is doing all that bad - I disagree with them a lot but it's far less offensive to my sensibilities than everything on left wing blogs - especially dkos. Dkos to me has some seriously vile stuff. Not everything of course, and I like quite a lot of people there, but overall I despise the ideas and feelings emanating from there.-- Ender

I thought that might be a good starting place for discussion. I'm not intending to call Ender out or anything, just to pick up where the last open thread ended.

It seems to be a slow news day so far. What about that astro"nut"? I think she must be going through some sort of mid-life crisis. And I hear it is still cold in lots of places. The Libby trial continues today with Tim Russert scheduled to testify.

What's on your mind?

Promoted by Brendan

Crossposted from DKos

Is it possible? After six years, two wars, hundreds of billions of wasted dollars, untold damage to the environment, dozens of extremist judges, one outed CIA agent, 3,000 dead soldiers, God only knows how many dead Iraqis, billions in giveaways to oil and pharmaceutical companies, and more lies than a super computer could keep track of?

Is it just possible that someone with a record like that might have actually slipped up and suggested something positive? Something downright progressive?

Bush's budget slices everything to make room for expanding costs of his war. Hospitals take a big hit. (link ) OK, he sliced everything except his tax cuts for the rich. Those are still in place.

Senate Republicans blocked discussion of a non-binding resolution against Bush's surge for Bush's war. (link ) I think the non-binding resolution was a dumb idea anyway, but they aren't even willing to discuss the even dumber surge idea. What gives?

It's cold out in lots of places. Bone chilling cold. (link )

The Libby trial is getting attention and may prove interesting. I heard Marcy Wheeler ("emptywheel") discussing it on NPR yesterday.

Have I missed anything important? What's on your mind?

Rw5q3b Great article.Thanks Again. Will read on...

Hello everyone! I was tied up yesterday morning with an abnormally long commute. What is normally an 80 or 90 minute drive took three hours because of traffic and ice on the road. After teaching my Friday classes I made it back home safe but exhausted. One big news item yesterday was the tornadic activity in Florida, and they are still talking about it today. Political news includes discussion of a budget battle (link ) and the President attending the Democratic retreat. (link )

So what do you want to talk about? What will the Super Bowl spread be? I'm looking for a close game similar to the one between the Pats and the Colts, though that one did look like a blowout in the first half. I'm thinking that both teams will score in the 20's and am calling Colts by a touchdown.

UPDATE by Mike P:: Bob Johnson has a dKos diary talking about what the surge really is: a surge in troop deaths.

P0Hiue Im grateful for the blog article.Really thank you! Want more.

Good topic for discussion, especially the "put your money where your mouth is" questions about individual lifestyle changes we'd consider -- promoted by Brendan

Scientists from around the world have re-affirmed previous reports that the planet’s average temperatures are increasing rapidly and will continue to do so for centuries. The results of this temperature change include rising sea levels, changes in seasonality, movement and extinction of species, and other similar effects.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6321351.stm

Although some Americans scoff at these reports, they are wrong to do so. They remind me very much of the doctors and scientists that testified before Congress that smoking was not demonstrably harmful or addictive and that there was no absolute proof that smoking caused cancer.

A great AEI-Brookings joint study by Clifford Winston (http://www.aei-brookings.org/publications/abstract.php?pid=1117 ) was released not too long ago presenting extensive evidence that government programs that claim to address "market failures" suffer extensively from a problem of their own: "government failure."

An additional thirty years of empirical evidence on the efficacy of market failure policies initiated primarily by the federal government, but also by the states, suggests that the welfare cost of government failure may be considerably greater than that of market failure. More specifically, the evidence suggests that policymakers have attempted to correct market failures with policies designed to affect either consumer or firm behavior, or both, or to allocate resources. Some policies have forced the U.S. economy to incur costs in situations where no serious market failure exists, while others, in situations where costly market failures do exist, could have improved resource allocation in a much more efficient manner.