They say it better than I can

Friday Flotsam

Tom Tomorrow: a Year in Crazy part one.

Peak food and peak oil?  We're all gonna die anyway!

Omg, they've killed Sean Bean!  Again.  And again.

Mistakes were made...

Those duck guys are really yuppies... with beards.

The 'poorest' president may actually be the richest.

The future is now.  Really.

Hacking your education.

The good, the bad and the daft

Gabby Giffords.  Grow strong and come back.  We need you.

The downward spiral of the European Union.

Chemists find new material to remove radioactive gas from spent nuclear fuel

Isn't it interesting that when scientists create something for military use, it is often turned against our own citizens? 6 Creepy New Weapons the Police and Military Use To Subdue Unarmed People

Is India investing in a future health crisis by importing asbestos from Canada?

The liberal media.

Gingrich wants the audience to be able to applaud.  Because everything is about him, isn't it?

I read the news today oh boy...

Daily Kos discusses the reason Citizens United included unions... so they could be attacked. (h/t to mahakal for the scary link.)

Koch brothers own America.

Glenn Greenwald on why the military and the media are attacking journalist Hastings for his reporting.

Think before you drink? Water?

The women of the legislature who are actually helping run the country.

How Gabrielle Giffords and husband Mark Kelly are doing.

David Corn exposes Fox News' Roger Ailes' lies: Roger Ailes' Sex-and-Lies Tale: There Is Something Different About Fox

Finally. Our national attention is caught by this fact: You Have More Money In Your Wallet Than Bank Of America Pays In Federal Taxes

Something to celebrate

The site.

If a candidate is running an ugly campaign

It reflects his desire to run an ugly campaign. John McCain is not an honorable man forced to do what he doesn't want to do. That would indicate a) he's not even able to control his own staff and campaign aides or b) he has no clue what is being done in his name or even worse 3) he's totally clueless because of the onset of senility.

John McCain clearly knows what he is doing. He is playing both sides and playing them for all they're worth.

John McCain may have been at one time honorable. He is no longer.

Glenn Greenwald:

Time's Ana Marie Cox, in a Bloggingheads discussion with Ann Althouse, does an excellent job of expressing what is still, amazingly enough, the prevailing media view of John McCain: namely, that this deeply honorable and principled man is vehemently opposed to running an ugly, dirty campaign against Barack Obama, and that is happening despite McCain's deep opposition to such campaigns and the way it profoundly violates his code of honor.

[snip]

The national press corps continues to revere John McCain despite what is widely acknowledged to be the toxic and ugly campaign he's running because they still think that this campaign is being run despite McCain's character and wishes, not because of them. The idea that someone should be judged by their actual conduct never seems to occur to them, nor do they accept what ought to be the rather self-evident proposition that someone who repeatedly does dishonorable things is, by definition, dishonorable. By their fruits ye shall know them. Or, as former/long-time McCain lover Andrew Sullivan put it:

I'm afraid that [Atlantic Editor] Jim [Fallows] is dealing with what we're all dealing with: the fact that the myth we had of McCain is, in fact, a lie. The real McCain - dishonest, dishonorable and despicable - is now in plain sight. To say I'm disillusioned would be an understatement. The last six weeks have shown us all something we'd rather never have found out. But we can't ignore it now, can we?

Some obviously can -- and are.

Exactly. People in the media would come away from an interview with George Bush declaring he was really a nice guy. As if they couldn't see that both Bush and McCain are ultimate professionals who know how to finesse the media. We who stand back and watch are stunned that the media falls for this trick every single damn time. Cox is just the latest one to fall.

Killing the messenger

Pentagon punishes soldiers for complaining about care in Walter Reed:

Soldiers say their sergeant major gathered troops at 6 p.m. Monday to tell them they must follow their chain of command when asking for help with their medical evaluation paperwork, or when they spot mold, mice or other problems in their quarters.

They were also told they would be moving out of Building 18 to Building 14 within the next couple of weeks. Building 14 is a barracks that houses the administrative offices for the Medical Hold Unit and was renovated in 2006. It’s also located on the Walter Reed Campus, where reporters must be escorted by public affairs personnel. Building 18 is located just off campus and is easy to access.

The soldiers said they were also told their first sergeant has been relieved of duty, and that all of their platoon sergeants have been moved to other positions at Walter Reed. And 120 permanent-duty soldiers are expected to arrive by mid-March to take control of the Medical Hold Unit, the soldiers said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Army public affairs did not respond to a request sent Sunday evening to verify the personnel changes.

The Pentagon also clamped down on media coverage of any and all Defense Department medical facilities, to include suspending planned projects by CNN and the Discovery Channel, saying in an e-mail to spokespeople: “It will be in most cases not appropriate to engage the media while this review takes place,” referring to an investigation of the problems at Walter Reed.

As Mustang Bobby asks: It will all go away if you don't talk about it, right?

Update: Think Progress shows us where the wounded soldiers live and where the Walter Reed commander lives.

Update: Crooks and Liars notes that military families are sinking into debt and some vets are homeless.

Update:

Last October, Joyce Rumsfeld, the wife of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, was taken to Walter Reed by a friend concerned about outpatient treatment. She attended a weekly meeting, called Girls Time Out, at which wives, girlfriends and mothers of soldiers exchange stories and offer support.

According to three people who attended the gathering, Rumsfeld listened quietly. Some of the women did not know who she was. At the end of the meeting, Rumsfeld asked one of the staff members whether she thought that the soldiers her husband was meeting on his visits had been handpicked to paint a rosy picture of their time there. The answer was yes.

When Walter Reed officials found out that Rumsfeld had visited, they told the friend who brought her -- a woman who had volunteered there many times -- that she was no longer welcome on the grounds.

ABC denies that it backpedaled on the 9/11 movie

But that's coming from ABC, you realize:
"In a January 15 post on his weblog, Changing Channels, Miami Herald television critic Glenn Garvin wrote that, when "[a]sked during his appearance on the TV critics' tour if he was embarrassed that the network had to 'backpedal' on its Clinton-unfriendly movie The Path To 9/11," ABC Primetime Entertainment President Stephen McPherson rejected the notion, replying: "We didn't backpedal. We aired the movie. We didn't change anything for those guys. We aired it as planned on the dates that were planned." In fact, in the face of widespread criticism regarding the film's factual accuracy, ABC retreated from its original claim that the film was a "dramatization of the events detailed in The 9/11 Commission Report" that "get[s] it right" and ultimately conceded that the miniseries "contains fictionalized scenes.""

Which reminds me to bring up this post, and this graphic:

Al Franken

Via Rook's Rant, Al Franken talks of the impossible task we have given our soldiers and the fact the media is not responsible for the downward spiral of Iraq. We can talk about outreach or we can talk about disaster, but neither speak of what really needs to be said:

"The truth of the matter is that the Bush administration has made enormous and tragic mistakes at every stage of this debacle. It overplayed the threat from Iraq and undersold the price, in lives and resources, of a war. It failed to plan for a post-invasion Iraq, ignored the threat of an insurgency and allowed a shoddy reconstruction rife with fraud, abuse and sheer amateurism to sabotage our efforts to put the pieces back together. Worst of all, it has failed to admit to its mistakes or adjust to emerging realities along the way, leaving us in what now seems to be a no-win situation."

Warmongering 101

"The only lessons that are valid for Iraq are the ones that we learned in Iraq:

1) We never should have gone there in the first place.

2) There's not much we can do, short of leaving, that will make it better."

Also: The reporting did not cause us to lose in Iraq:
"But bad news doesn't lose wars. Losing wars creates bad news."

Journalism: British style

Via David at SupremeIrony:
"Long live the British press! In contrast to the small-bore questions that American reporters posed to President Bush yesterday about his Iraq policy, two British journalists cut right to the central issue of the president’s credibility.

In his joint press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush spoke of embarking on a “new course” in Iraq — even as he effectively rejected all the major recommendations of the scathing bipartisan Iraq Study Group report.

American reporters dutifully but fruitlessly tried to get Bush to explain what he meant. Their colleagues from across the pond took a different tack.

Why, the two Brits asked Bush in slightly different ways, given your track record on Iraq, should be believe you now?

Not surprisingly, Bush failed to provide a persuasive answer."

David goes on to say:
"What is surprising, to me anyway, is that the members of the American media are still surprised that members of the media in other parts of the world aren't deferential to Bush.

Frankly, this only goes to prove that in the United States, despite the claims of an open and free news media, we have no such thing."

Damn right.

Ten fallacies about the war in Iraq

"The distortions about the violence in Iraq persist even as the mayhem increases. Here are ten of the worst myths being spread in the media.

1. The U.S. is a buffer against more violence.

2. The killers do it to influence U.S. politics.

3. The "Lancet" numbers are bogus.

4. Syria and Iran are behind the violence.

5. The "Go Big" strategy of the Pentagon could work.

6. Foreign fighters, especially jihadis, are fueling the violence.

7. If we do not defeat the violent actors there, they will follow us here.

8. The violence is about Sunni-Shia mutual loathing; a pox on both their houses.

9. The war is an Iraqi affair, and the best we can do now is train them to enforce security.

10. Trust the same people who caused or endorsed the war to tell us what to do next."