Le Maison Blanc Showbar Revue

I started a joke, which started the whole world laughing,

Remember recently when a conservative organization, straining desperately to gain some relevancy and credibility, attempted to raise up a woefully under-qualified clown to some national prominence?

Psych! I'm not talking about the Republican Party/Palin debacle. I'm actually talking about Pajamas Media & Joe the Wurzelbacher going to the Middle East as a war correspondent:

By now many of you have heard that Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher is leaving for Israel tomorrow to be a war correspondent for Pajamas TV. This has created quite a brouhaha in the media - cable television, newspapers, wire services, etc. Everyone from CNN to gawker.com has something to say about Joe heading for the Middle East. He will appear on Fox and Friends tomorrow morning before his departure.

To be honest, some (maybe much) of this reportage is pretty snotty. Nora O’Donnell of MSNBC - herself a MA in international relations, lahdeedah - fairly frothed at the mouth at the prospect of the unqualified Joe having the temerity to report news in a foreign land. Those hipoisie over at Gawker weren’t too charitable either.

Evidently, a lot of people are annoyed that Joe’s fifteen Warhol minutes aren’t quite over yet. Or perhaps they’re threatened that a common man can be a reporter simply by asking common sense questions - no Columbia J-school degree required. (Hemingway didn’t have one. He didn’t even go to college, as I recall.) But the larger question is the role of expertise in general. Of course, experts are valuable, but so are those who ask the seemingly too obvious questions of the supposedly uninformed - dumb questions that can end up having more value for the public than all the experts combined. Sometimes, anyway.

Hemingway? Heming-fucking-way? Are you breathing air, or has your brain expired? And 'dumb questions'?

The comedy, it writes itself. But Roger Simon outdoes himself:

I must say I find amusing the idea of Joe lined up with all the telephoto cameras at that Gaza media overlook with Cooper, Amanpour, et al. It’s certainly the stuff of Frank Capra.

Frank Capra? Maybe when he directed Porky's. Wurzelbacher is no Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. For starters, he's not going to Washington. For 2nds, he . . .

He's nothing. Yet PJ Media has hitched onto his star . . .

Yep, they're also nothing.

Bastards.

At The Magic Negro Show

I feel fine

I'm ambivalent about the possible selection of Dr. Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General. He seems like a very bright, earnest fellow, but his, and CNN's cavalier treatment of Michael Moore following the release of "Sicko" was pretty tasteless.

Here's the video of the Moore/Gupta debate on Larry King:



Gupta came across, to me, as fanatically nit-picky, and his smug dismissal of Moore was obvious. Granted, Moore can be overbearing, but his points were never really in dispute, just parsed to death.

Gupta objected to Moore's using different sources for different statistics: he used a BBC report for the per capita medical expenditure in Cuba, and a US Government report for the same expense in the US. Ya think?

I doubt seriously that any US government bureau tracks medical spending in Cuba, based on our vast political relationship with Cuba, dominated by right-wing ex-pats in the Florida Cuban community. So why not go with the BBC, which actually pays attention to the rest of the world.

Others found fault with Gupta's treatment of Moore:

Another CNN correction followed on July 15 concerning the credentials of "Sicko" healthcare expert Paul Keckley. Gupta asserted that Keckley, whom he had quoted criticizing the national healthcare systems of France, Canada and Cuba during his fact check piece, was only affiliated with Vanderbilt University. It was his response to Moore's claim the Keckley was "a person from a think tank group who is a big Republican contributor."

Gupta's fact check piece listed Keckley as a "Deloitte Healthcare Expert." Yet further checking revealed Keckley had, indeed, served on the faculty of Vanderbilt University. He is also the executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.

Moore must have been beaming as he read CNN's apology: "Moore is correct. Paul Keckley left Vanderbilt in late 2006."

I know Gupta is a Very Busy Person™, yet the one fuck-up correction he admitted to, he blamed on transcription. By someone else. That means, he didn't do research on Moore & Sicko, he decided to do a hit piece and had an intern do the actual reading:

In Gupta's original piece he refuted figures Moore presented regarding Cuba's per capita spending on healthcare. Gupta alleged that the $251 per person cost reported by Moore was untrue.

Yet on "Larry King Live" Gupta admitted the error was his, not Moore's. "Michael correctly said $251 in the movie."

Gupta also made a correction statement on July 11.

"To be clear, I got a number wrong in my original report, substituting the number 25, instead of 251."

I hope he doesn't do neuro-surgery that way. But don't take my word for it. Take Paul Krugman's word:

I don’t have a problem with Gupta’s qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko. You don’t have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore “fudged his facts”, when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.

What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he’s uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It’s sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less “serious” than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion. And appointing Gupta now, although it’s a small thing, is just another example of the lack of accountability that always seems to be the rule when you get things wrong in a socially acceptable way.

As usual, Paul points out the inconvenient truth. Thanks.

The winner takes it all, The loser standing small

The 2008 Weblog Awards are up for voting, several really great liberal blogs are nominated. Also, several really crappy conservative ones.

Driftglass and Lindsay Beyerstein are up in the Best Individual Blogger category. Both are worthy people to support. And in the same category, Jules Crittendon? Eww, he's the creepy uncle that the female cousins ran and hid from. And the truly awful Anchoress elads the voting now. No link, I care about your eyes and brain.

And Hot Air is leading the Best Blog category. Damn. Clearly the wingnuts are voting their hearts out, never mind the luncay of their ideas.

Help out some worthy bloggers, go vote.


(Abba-The Winner Takes It All)

So with nothing to consider they forget my name

For me, music has always been about the melody, with rhythm and beat falling far behind. Commitment is important, as is overall competence, but a great melody trumps all.

And I've always maintained that that a good song survives transformation; a great song will work in any format: country, rock, etc. Witness Johnny Cash's last albums of wildly divergent covers, done in acoustic Man in Black style. Or Glen Campbell's recent cover album Meet Glen Campbell: The Time of Your Life-Green Day, Walls-Tom Petty, Jesus-Lou Reed, all done with sophisticated modern pop/ country arrangements. Trust me, it works.

Check out this video trailer for the new album:



And this live video of "Time of Your Life" that sadly contains no Glen guitar licks:



And the dude is 72!

And now, for a new, perfect marriage of melody, rhythm, beat, commitment, and witty lyrics, here are The Ting Tings, doing "That's Not My Name":



Fun.

The KP Casualty

Well... except for those pesky bombs going off.... Iraqis are fine!

While avoiding a general answer to "Are we better off?" Cheney did not hesitate to proclaim Iraqis better off because of the regime change initiated by the American invasion.

"I think Iraq is much better off than it was before we went in in '03 and got rid of Saddam Hussein," he said. "I think we are close to achieving most of our objectives. We've seen a significant reduction in the overall level of violence; it's lower now than virtually anytime since we've been there in the spring of '03. We've seen the elimination of one of the world's worst regimes. We've seen the Iraqis write a constitution and hold three national elections. We've now entered into a strategic framework agreement with the Iraqis that calls for ultimately the U.S. completion of the assignment and withdrawal of our forces from Iraq.

"All of those things I think by anybody's standard would be evidence of significant success. And I think we're very close to achieving what it is we set out to do five years ago when we first went into Iraq.

I'm sure the Iraqis would like to thank you in person, Dick. Because just today:

At least 38 civilians have been killed and 65 wounded in a suicide attack at a shrine in northwestern Baghdad, Iraqi government officials said.

An interior ministry official put the death toll at 40, including 17 Iranian pilgrims.

(Update: Mark Adams of American Street lists the deaths in Iraq since the New Year began. Better off, my ass.)

And just what was it that you were trying to achieve in Iraq, Dick? Because your excuses and reasons keep changing...

What does this looming concentration of Iraqi power at the top portend for U.S. oil interests? The omens are mixed at best. A tilt away from the United States may have come late in August, in the thick of negotiations over the U.S. withdrawal, when Iraq signed a 22-year contract in Beijing for development of an oil field southeast of Baghdad.

Without parliamentary approval, the al-Maliki government seems capable of making or unmaking whatever oil development arrangements it chooses to make. Thus, in September, it canceled six no-bid contracts it had awarded to big-name Western oil corporations. China provides the now cordially partnering Shiite governments in Baghdad and Tehran a clear alternative to Western companies.

Where America's politically unmentionable oil interests in Iraq are headed as the Bush administration leaves office remains anyone's guess, but out in the cold seems as good a guess as any. Back in 2002, the better class of commentator sniffed at the naiveté of "No Blood for Oil" - the chant of anti-war demonstrations around the country. But blood for oil may not be the worst of it. The worst, in the war's subdued and sorry denouement, may prove to be blood for no oil.

Because the war was about oil all along, wasn't it?

Several of the architects of the Iraq war no longer even bother to deny that oil was a major motivator for the invasion. On US National Public Radio's To the Point, Fadhil Chalabi, one of the primary Iraqi advisers to the Bush administration in the lead-up to the invasion, recently described the war as "a strategic move on the part of the United States of America and the UK to have a military presence in the Gulf in order to secure [oil] supplies in the future". Chalabi, who served as Iraq's oil undersecretary of state and met with the oil majors before the invasion, described this as "a primary objective".

Invading countries to seize their natural resources is illegal under the Geneva conventions. That means the huge task of rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure - including its oil infrastructure - is the financial responsibility of Iraq's invaders. They should be forced to pay reparations, just as Saddam Hussein's regime paid $9bn to Kuwait in reparations for its 1990 invasion. Instead, Iraq is being forced to sell 75% of its national patrimony to pay the bills for its own illegal invasion and occupation.

crossposted at Rants from the Rookery

All the way to reno, you’ve dusted the non believers

Janet Reno's reputation isn't entirely her own fault. The Right-wing spin machine, hard at work during the Clinton administration, made her one of its high priority projects.

But this isn't going to help her legacy:

Speaker Series 2009 w/ Alberto Gonzales, Janet Reno & John Ashcroft

Radio City Music Hall

New York, NY
Mon, Apr 20, 2009 08:00 PM

VIP tickets include a formal pre-show reception in the Roxy Suite with each evening's speakers. Cocktails and hors d'oeuvres will be served and each guest will have a photo opportunity with the speakers. Receptions begin at 6:30 each night. Instructions for entry will be sent to purchasers before each individual performance.

Appearing with war-criminal Gonzales and village idiot Ashcroft is just a bad idea, unless she hopes to creat a compare-contrast scenario. But that isn't likely to happen. No one who thinks even the tiniest good aobut Reno would pay $0.01 for a ticket to this event, so she'll likely be booed by the dead-enders who actually still support Gonzales.

Waste of time.

Though I want to be with you, be with you night and day, nothing changes on New Year's day

Because I have no choice; U2: New Years' Day: