alternative hippopotamus

I was looking around the web for reactions to the federal funding cuts for PBS. I thought this blogger had an interesting take:

كاندوليزا رايس، وزير امورخارجه آمريكا در مصاحبه اي گفت نتيجه انتخابات رژيم از پيش روشن است و رژيم از همگام با تحولات در خاورميانه گام برنميدارد. او گفت در ايران ملايان مشخص ميكنند چه كسي در انتخابات شركت كند.كاندوليزا رايس وزير امور خارجه آمريكا در مصاحبه اي با خبرنگار شبكه تلويزيوني غير انتفاعي PBS كه قرار است به ايران سفر كند به سؤالاتي درباره برنامه اتمي رژيم و انتخابات در ايران پاسخ داد.رايس در قبال سؤالات در مورد برنامه اتمي رژيم گفت من مذاكراتي با فيشر وزير امورخارجه آلمان داشته ام و ما با سه كشور اروپايي در تماس هستيم. آنها تا كنون قادر بوده‌اند كه ايرانيان را در چارچوب توافق نامه ماه نوامبر در پاريس نگه دارند. كه بر اساس آن، در طول مذاكرات برسر ارائه تضمين در زمينه پايبندي به تعهدات بين المللي، به تعليق غني سازي ادامه خواهند داد.

That pretty much sums up how I feel about it.
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Alas, it is my duty to inform you that some progressive NGO's are, well... challenged in the publicity department.

A case in point: did you know that tomorrow is Arctic Action Day? Okay, the folks that peruse this particular nook of the blogosphere are a bit more news savy than most, so you may have heard that. But you'd pretty much be the few, the proud.

After I read about Arctic Action Day on ANWRNews I dutifully wrote to the AWL, and yesterday got my shiny new Activist Kit in the mail (sorry, no decoder ring). It has all sorts of helpful advice about publicizing an event. Except for this one which I'll throw into the mix: start your publicity campaign a month in advance of your event.

That said, I will, as the old saw goes "go whole hog including the postage" and put together an event including a screening of Being Caribou, the documentary on the Arctic Region that's been getting a lot of attention from the indie film crowd.
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DLer Keith has put together the Drinking Liberally DC blog. For right now it's just myself, Keith, and Cory, but we'll be adding others as time goes on.

I hope you'll stop by.
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Are folks still squawking over Howard Dean? Yes, I see the Bull Mouse is up to his usual shenanigans, but remember that he's a DLC hack. Occasionally amusing, absolutely, but still a hack.

If you want to gripe about something, how about how Bush is looting the treasury to pay off his buddies:

"This transaction is an outrage," said Montana Senator Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee. "Apparently, the department allowed the taxpayers to be fleeced for $70 million to $80 million, and then authorized a tax deduction for the fleecing."

The Dean thing is still bothering you? Well, how about how the Bush administration is hacking out Global Warming one environmental report at a time:

A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.

If Dean is still what's bothering you, perhaps you should consider the Republican takeover of PBS (emphasis mine):

Neither Harrison nor Ferree returned calls seeking comment. Tomlinson yesterday said, "We appreciate the concerns expressed from within the public broadcasting community." But he added, in an indirect defense of Harrison's candidacy, "We also appreciate the high regard some of our candidates have in official Washington."

Harrison, who has been assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs since October 2001, did not return calls seeking comment. She has been an entrepreneur (she founded with her husband and later sold a Washington lobbying and public relations firm, E. Bruce Harrison Co., that specialized in representing companies with environmental issues), but has no experience in public broadcasting.

If Dean's recent remarks are still your issue du jour, I'd just go ahead and register as a Republican.
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One of the things I'll never understand is why the extreme right, who has probably never had so much power as they do now (I wasn't alive during McCarthyism, so it's hard for me to compare) yet sees themselves as victims, as the persecuted.

Take for instance this screed on planning for a Ground Zero exhibit, which managed to ooze itself out the inkwell of candidate for freeperhood Michelle Malkin:

In fact, the IFC's list of those who are shaping or influencing the content and programming for their Ground Zero exhibit includes a Who's Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world:

• Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the world-wide "Stop Torture Now" campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld's refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is "irresponsible and dishonorable."

• Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.

• Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." This is the same man who participated in a "teach-in" at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus." The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner's statement warning that future discussions should not be "overwhelmed" by the IFC's location at the World Trade Center site itself.

• George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib "hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."

Concludes Burlingame: "Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?"

I will give Malkin this: she managed to write a whole page without using the expression moonbats.

What exactly makes Malkin think that Ground Zero is the province of the right? Maybe this is something she heard on Fox News, or read in the Washington Times: This just in. The President has designated the former site of the World Trade Center to be far-right Republican only. No Democrats will be allowed to visit or view what has come to be called Ground Zero.

Or maybe those of her ilk believe that the results of the last election mean it's now her country and she should be able to do what she wants with it.

A number of the Drinking Liberally folks in DC work at Human Right First. They should get a kick out of this.
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Actual sign from an actual MARC (Maryland commuter rail) station.

Nothing vaguely fascistic to see here folks. Move along, move along.

From articulatory loop.

Update: Bill Coughlan does what I should have done before posting this photo: checked out that it was legitimate. As Bill mentions in the comments MARC contracts with CSX for these posters.

Ironically, CSX has been leading the fight against securing train shipments of hazardous waste, a key homeland security issue.
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From Amber Pawlik:

MOAD - Mother of All Desserts.
I didn't have a name for this dessert, so my boyfriend's friend named it the Mother of All Desserts. It is. Make sure to get a big glass of milk. [ed: and a gun]

INGREDIENTS
1 thing of cookie dough from the store
8 oz. Cream Cheese
Sugar
Chocolate pudding mix
Half and half

No one escapes the Cream Cheese Blamonge.
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[ed: sometimes there's something that you want to say, but you can't get all the words out. That's where I'm at.]

When I was in college I was in a small fraternity at Cornell. Remarkably, there are principles that we lived by in those halcyon days gone by that are still part of how I practise this thing called liberalism. To whit, our fraternity creed:

To strengthen the ties of friendship one with another; to prepare ourselves as educated men [ed: also women, cats, and alternative hippopotami] to take a more active part and have greater influence in the affairs of the community in which we may reside; above all to seek the Truth, and knowing it, to give Light to those with whom we may be associated as we travel along life's pathway.

I thought of this today when I heard that irksome old saw about liberals hating America. For me, the acid test of your love for America is how you show your love for where you live.

Occasionally, I get the treat of flying from coast to coast during daylight hours. In those moments you can grasp the idea of loving America. You see the hububb over Los Angeles, the grandeur of the Rockies, the desert, the plains, expanses of forest, and the final descent along the coast of Boston, or more recently for me, the dramatic drop as you glide along the Potomac.

That's a rare pleasure, though, and more often our experience of America is the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the place we call our bed.

For the record, I've never met a liberal who hated America. By that, I mean the principles of the country. The values of freedom of thought, orientation, and religion.

If liberals hate anything, it's the active work of principals in the current government to undermine those principles. What bothers me is that those who are currently running this experiment we call a democratic republic, want to make it more of an enterprise run by a handfull of special interests. And from what I've seen, those interests do not have the welfare of the majority in mind, and don't care about the progress of the country, and may even be antithetical to it.

My starting point was one of focusing on the community. I mean your community. Where you live. This may be a time where the federal government will use our tax dollars on what benefits the corporate state. Instead, you and I have got to figure out how to make our community the best possible.

I look through my blogroll, and I see that this may be the unifying factor in why I look at these sites everyday. I believe you have the same vision. There's nothing wrong in preaching to the choir, if it happens to be a really good choir.
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A commenter at Wizbang takes on the Downing Street Memo:

The reason the memo wasn't taken seriously, there is no there there.

Even the moonbats should be able to think through the rational for finishing off Iraq. It starts with the ceasfire, seventeen UN resolutions, and resumption of hostilities when the ceasefire was no longer adhered to by Iraq. Oh, I forgot, there was 9/11 -- remember that?

Then there is the whole Oil for WMD scam and bribery parade. But who cares about that, this nothing memo is much more important to the hate America people. Just ask the NYSlimes.

Good thing we don't have a 'toon for a President, you know the giant sucking sound that was the oral orifice. Come Monica, I can't be bothered with that Laden fellow.

Case closed.
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Everytime I look at this Newsweek article, I have to giggle:

Meanwhile on CNN, Liddy tells Paula Zahn: "I view him [Felt] as someone who violated the ethics of the law enforcement profession." Then, back on MSNBC, Liddy brags that not only had he plotted the burglary of the Democratic Party's Watergate offices but, "I planned the Brookings break-in." It wasn't done, Liddy said - "too expensive."

This suggested the following comic premise: picture the Huffington Post or TPM Cafe, but with authors uniquely unqualified to write on their assigned topic, for instance Genghis Khan on Human Rights, Judas Escariot on Friendship, or Liddy on Ethics.

Some others that come to mind: Condi Rice on Humor; Dick Cheney on the Environment; George Bush on Grammar, Style, and Pronunciation; John Bolton on Working Well with Others, and Matt Yglesias on Returning Emails Promptly.
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