The Truffle

You can find out from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. IAVA grades senators and congresscritters according to their votes on veterans' issues. Thus far, AM New York picked up on the story. I'm happy to find out that New York State's senators both get high grades--a B+ for Schumer and an A- for La Hill. Arch-conservative Rep. Peter King earns a measly C+, proving that his actions don't match his bluster. To be fair, there are some Democratic congresscritters who earned a C from the IAVA. But in the US Senate, it's much more cut and dry. Democratic senators receive high grades, never slipping below a B-. Republican senators, on the other hand...well, check out Bob Geiger to find how much they really support veterans.

When I was a little girl, watching cartoon reruns in the early morning hours before school, Bugs Bunny was my hero. Saturday morning was the time for "Yogi Bear's Laffalympics" and "Scooby-Doo" spinoffs, but Yogi and Scooby could never match Bugs for cleverness and cool. In 2002, TV Guide ranked Bugs Bunny #1 on the list of the greatest cartoon characters of all time. How does one explain his appeal? You could say it's a combination of brilliant animation, clever catchphrases, smart writing, and cheerfully irreverent nods to high and popular culture. But it's also because Bugsy is a quintessentially American icon. He could've only been conceived, written, and drawn right here in the USA. He epitomizes street smarts and resourcefulness. He's unflappable and fearless. He makes mistakes, like that wrong turn en route to Pismo Beach, but he always bounces back. He's the cartoon icon for those who grew up believing in the American drea...

Below is an early-1970s TV appearance from Caravan, a flagship band of the so-called "Canterbury scene" that also spawned Soft Machine. (Various Softs and Caravans played together in a band called the Wilde Flowers.) Caravan were poppier and more accessible than the Softs--that is, when they weren't doing side-long album suites. As you can see, Caravan sported the long hair, loose-fitting hippie shirts, and bell-bottoms that were ubiquitous among 1970s proggers. They also had the same frequent lineup changes as their fellow proggers. One other thing they had that their fellow proggers most definitely lacked was a sense of humor. Below is "Golf Girl," a droll tune sung by bassist Richard Sinclair.

Tonight on CNN: "Where the Right Went Wrong." Prominent right-wingers, from Bruce Bartlett to Andrew Sullivan, fretting about the state of American conservatism. It's just awesome watching!

The Gothamist weighs in on Noo Joisey's ruling for gay couples, with the following, erm, eye-opening passage: The three dissenting voices that wanted to push for gay marriage were all appointed by Republicans, while three of the four justices on the majority were appointed by Democrats. Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz, who was Christine Todd Whitman's Attorney General, emphasized in the dissenting opinion that it was important for gays to to have the word marriage in their vernacular as well: “We must not underestimate the power of language...Labels set people apart as surely as physical separation on a bus or in school facilities." She also wrote a "1999 decision, later reversed by the United States Supreme Court, requiring the Boy Scouts of America to retain a gay assistant scoutmaster. And she wrote for the majority in a 2000 opinion striking down a parental notice requirement for minors seeking abortions."

Today's wounded soul is Tucker Carlson, who's really upset about that Michael J. Fox ad: It's a form of moral blackmail. No matter where you stand on stem cell research, I look at this ad and say I can't disagree with Michael J. Fox. Because his illness is so sad it pulls on me emotionally so much that it feels immoral to me to disagree with him.... Oh boo-sy, woo-sy hoo. Try imagining life with Parkinson's or cancer or paralysis before you open your mouth, Bowtie boy. Li'l Tucker told Senate candidate Claire McCaskill that it was "unfair" to run the ad. Wait'll he finds out about all the Republicans who support stem cell research. Including Missouri's former senator, John Danforth, whose brother died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (aka Lou Gerhig's disease). "When you see somebody you love suffer and die from one of these diseases, and medical researchers say this could be the key to finding the cure, then you want the research...

I admit that Van der Graaf Generator is an odd choice for casual iPod listening. But hey, if band's ghostly organs, scattershot saxophones, and primal, proto-punk howls can't keep you awake during the morning commute, what can? 'Sides, I find myself listening to those 1970 arty prog whatever tracks and nodding in agreement. For a 1970s arty prog whatever band, these guys managed to write some songs that are surprisingly...well...relevant. Forget about dusting off those Vietnam protest songs . Who needs 'em when you've got... We have looked upon the heroes and they are found wanting; we have looked hard across the land but we can see no dawn; we have now dared to sear the sky but we are still bleeding... --"Lemmings," Pawn Hearts Live by sword and you shall die so, all your power shall come to nought, every life you take is part of your own: death, not power, is what you've bought. --"The Emperor in His War Room," from H to He, Who Am the...

It's almost the end of the month and it has yet to materialize. Instead, Bushco promises more of the same regarding Iraq. It must be tiresome to try and sound so upbeat about Situation FUBAR.

Kevin Federline is playing Webster Hall on November 4. The only way to explain it is that he must own incriminating pictures of the club owners.

Just in case anyone's keeping track... AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl AZ-01: Rick Renzi AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth CA-04: John Doolittle CA-11: Richard Pombo CA-50: Brian Bilbray CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave CO-05: Doug Lamborn CO-07: Rick O'Donnell CT-04: Christopher Shays FL-13: Vernon Buchanan FL-16: Joe Negron FL-22: Clay Shaw --ID-01: Bill Sali IL-06: Peter Roskam IL-10: Mark Kirk IL-14: Dennis Hastert IN-02: Chris Chocola IN-08: John Hostettler IA-01: Mike Whalen KS-02: Jim Ryun KY-03: Anne Northup KY-04: Geoff Davis MD-Sen: Michael Steele MN-01: Gil Gutknecht MN-06: Michele Bachmann MO-Sen: Jim Talent MT-Sen: Conrad Burns NV-03: Jon Porter NH-02: Charlie Bass NJ-07: Mike Ferguson NM-01: Heather Wilson NY-03: Peter King NY-20: John Sweeney NY-26: Tom Reynolds NY-29: Randy Kuhl NC-08: Robin Hayes NC-11: Charles Taylor OH-01: Steve Chabot OH-02: Jean Schmidt OH-15: Deborah Pryce OH-18: Joy Padgett PA-04: Melissa Hart PA-07: Curt Weldon PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick PA-10: Don Sherwood RI-Sen: Lincoln Chaf...

Via the Defeatists, we discover what everyone else already knows and Bush has yet to figure out: Iraq is an utter disaster. The US media is too busy covering the World Series, so it's up to the BBC to fill us in on Bush's video conference with the generals over in Iraq. No plans for withdrawal. Just a change in tactics for handling the insurgents. It has been a lousy Ramadan for the Iraqis and it's going to be a lousy Eid. Won't someone have the guts to laugh in Cheney's face next time he tries to paint a rosy picture of what's going on over there? To wit: not only are insurgents killing kids who only want to celebrate the holidays, but the Iraqi police can't handle them: [T]he Iraqi president's security adviser said Iraqi forces trying to improve security in Baghdad were under-funded, badly trained and poorly equipped. Wafiq al-Samarra'i said that sometimes the insurgents and death squads had better weapons than the security forces trying to ...

Yup, it's the only prog band that the punks ever liked: Van Der Graaf Generator, fronted by the inimitable Peter Hammill, performing "Darkness 11/11" from The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other. Judging from the program, I'd say they're on the German show "Beat Club." VDGG reunited last year, but copies of their reunion album are hard to come by--at least copies that don't cost under $30.00. Sigh. Any US distributor wanna distribute the thing? Anyone? More on the band's history at THE greatest VDGG fan site on the web. Also, see Sofa Sound, Hammill's official homepage.

Yes, you got it. WaPo has noticed those Kansas Republicans jumping ship and running as Democrats. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as colossal overreach. Proof of this can be found in Kansas, where moderates find themselves out of place in the American Taliban Party. A typical race between an American Taliban and an ex-Republican is as follows... Paul Morrison, a career prosecutor who specializes in putting killers behind bars, has the bulletproof résumé and the rugged looks of a law-and-order Republican, which is what he was until last year. That was when he announced he would run for attorney general -- as a Democrat. He is now running neck-and-neck with Republican Phill Kline, an iconic social conservative who made headlines by seeking the names of abortion-clinic patients and vowing to defend science-teaching standards that challenge Darwinian evolution. What's more, Morrison is raising money faster than Kline and pulling more cash from Republicans than Democrats. The ...

The aforementioned Gun Toting Liberal points to this Nation piece featuring the whacked-out ravings of the whacked-out religious right. Now that it's painfully apparent that gay Republicans do indeed exist, the Rev. Wildmon is babbling about secret gay cabal in the party. It's not of the same comedic caliber as AIM's "Gay Republicans Are Really Dems" argument, but it's pure comedy gold nonetheless. Wildmon got his hands on a list of gay GOP staffers and he's maaaaaaaad. Wildmon is convinced that a secretive gay "clique" boring within the Republican-controlled Congress is responsible for covering up Foley's sexual predation toward teenage male House pages. Moreover, Wildmon calls on the Republican Party leadership to promptly purge the "subversive" gay staffers. "They oughtta fire every one of 'em," Wildmon told me in his trademark Mississippi drawl. "I don't care if they're heterosexual or homosexual o...

The link says it all. This is truly ugly, IF it's true.

The crash was a tragic accident and the investigation is still ongoing. The two men killed, Cory Lidle and his flight instructor, Tyler Stanger, are described as decent people. Doesn't sound like a case of reckless flyboys here, folks. Toxicology reports are still to come, but people remember Lidle as a good ballplayer and a good guy, while Stanger was supposed to be an excellent flight instructor whose students said good things about him. Gothamist has the basic info. Basically, there are still questions, not only about what happened, but about the rules for aircraft flying over NYC. And here's more: And, in a strange, strange twist of fate, the plane landed in the bedroom of Kathleen Caronna. She is the woman who was in a month long coma after the Thanksgiving Day parade Cat in the Hat balloon hit a streetlamp and fell on top of her, fracturing her skull. Caronna was on her way home.

The Gun Toting Liberal points to wingnut watchdog group Accuracy in Media (AIM), who've offered this, erm, odd take on the Foley scandal. To wit: the gay Republicans involved are closeted Democrats and Foleygate is a "Democratic dirty trick." As far as I can see, the AIM article is not satire, and it was written with a straight face.

A plane crashed into a high-rise. Of course, the report gets the geography all wrong. Police say an aircraft has crashed into a building on Manhattan's Upper East Side at 72nd Street and York Avenue. It is near Rockefeller Center. There was no word on casualties. Video from the scene shows at least three apartments in the high rise fully engulfed in flames. It's unclear if it was a small plane or a helicopter. Uh, folks? York Avenue and 72nd Street is NOT near Rockefeller Center. Still, reports like this give me the willies. More news to follow, I'm sure. Update: NY1 has more on the crash. It's not terror-related, but the details are still awful.

Surfing on into Kos, I was pleasantly surprised to stumble on this editorial from the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, New York. From the aforementioned editorial, by business editor Douglas Cunningham: I've had it. The Republican leadership in the House, beginning with Speaker Dennis Hastert, has got to go. As in now. I'm thinking we need to plow through four or five people right below Hastert, too. If the Republican members of the House had any guts, they'd have ousted these people last week. If the Republican leadership had any shame, they would have quit last week. Apparently, not very many people these days have either, at least in Washington. Anyone who knew anything about the scandal, I want them gone. If the Republicans come to be known as the party that protects gay sexual predators, we're finished. I am not ready to abandon the party of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater to the likes of Mark Foley. The Hastert storyline is one in which there's no percen...

Via Avedon Carol's Sideshow, I have discovered Cliff Schechter's How to Talk to a Republican (Because You Absolutely Must) . He says, "Democrats, Independents and Republicans of character, who have rightly abandoned this party of circus freaks, don't be afraid to tell them exactly what they are." (Emphasis mine) It should go without saying that plenty of conservatives are disgusted with what the GOP has become. That said, it's heartening when conservatives acknowledge that--yes!--there are areas where they can agree with liberals re Bushco. Take Karen Kwiatkowski, retired Air Force colenel, Pentagon whistleblower, and conservative libertarian: Progressives and traditional conservatives share a respect for the individual over the state, and they share a love of the freedom of thought and action that made this country the great place it has been. Both have been appalled at the restriction in civil liberties, including infringements on free speech, proper...

So proclaims Time. And when a right-leaning newsweekly like Time makes a bold statement like that, you know there's a problem. Time has been very GOP-friendly, with Karl Rove writing about Teddy Roosevelt and a glowing cover story about Ann Coulter. It's telling that the magazine doesn't have a single progressive, left-wing columnist in its pages. In other words, this is not the "liberal media." At all. It's the beginning of the end for this generation of GOPers.

The full text of tonight's special comment is here. But these are some choice bits: Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, “177 of the opposition party said, ‘You know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.’” The hell they did. One hundred seventy-seven Democrats opposed the president’s seizure of another part of the Constitution. Not even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn’t be listening to the conversations of terrorists. President Bush hears what he wants. Tuesday, at another fundraiser in California, he had said, “Democrats take a law enforcement approach to terrorism. That means America will wait until we’re attacked again before we respond.” Mr. Bush fabricated that, too. And evidently he has begun to fancy himself as a mind reader. “If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party,” the president said at a...

This is beautiful. Just beeeeeee-yoooooo-ti-ful! Denny "soon-to-be-has-been" Hastert knows who to blame for the Foley scandal. When asked about a groundswell of discontent among the GOP's conservative base over his handling of the issue, Hastert said in the phone interview: "I think the base has to realize after a while, who knew about it? Who knew what, when? When the base finds out who's feeding this monster, they're not going to be happy. The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by [liberal activist] George Soros." He went on to suggest that operatives aligned with former President Bill Clinton knew about the allegations and were perhaps behind the disclosures in the closing weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections, but he offered no hard proof. When in doubt, blame Clinton. That's the party of "personal responsibility" for you. Hmmmmmmmm. An aide warned Hastert a...

Now their whole family values schtick has been blown out of the water, you can't help but wonder--do these guys ever stick to their principles? You know, the ones Democrats don't have? Folks? Denny the soon-to-be-has-been Hastert has no reason to be surprised by Mark Foley. An aide told him THREE YEARS AGO that Foley was behaving inappropriately toward the congressional pages. The aide, Kirk Fordham, said he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene" several years ago. The claim drew a swift, unequivocal denial from Hastert's chief of staff. "What Kirk Fordham said did not happen," Scott Palmer said through a spokesman.... Fordham resigned Wednesday as chief of staff to Rep. Thomas Reynolds (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y., the House GOP campaign chief who says he alerted Hastert to concerns about Foley last spring. The longtime Capitol Hill aide said that more t...

Okay, those weren't his exact words. Here are his exact words: U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government. The Tennessee Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated by military means. "You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished we'll be successful." Yes, that Taliban. The same guys who protected bin Laden and think flying kites is a sin. That Taliban. And this guy wants to be president in 2008. Oh, who am I trying to kid. Yo, Bushbots! Everyone knows you hate McCain, so if you want a viable candidate--a nice, cave-in-to-the-nutcase-fringe can...

I usually don't spend much time at Democratic Underground, but this is funny.

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of my fave hangout, DailyKos, is now making the case for the libertarian Democrat. A caveat: I'm a little mistrustful of libertarians, as all too many of them seem to be, in the words of one Kossack, "Repubicans who like to smoke dope and fuck." Others are conservatives who adopt the libertarian label because it seems edgier and less scary than "Republican" or "conservative." Tucker Carlson and Mary Matalin both have called themselves libertarians, but if you believe them, I've got property on Mars to sell you. Matalin in particular is a stooge for the big-government BushCo--i.e., NOT a libertarian AT ALL. There's also the blind spot that some libertarians have regarding big business. They deplore a social welfare state but have very little to say about government subsidies to big business. They pooh-pooh environmental laws as impediments to the free market, yet they forget that why we have those laws in...