Sadly, No!

Hold on to your seats, folks, ’cause Chuck Baldwin’s penned yet another masterpiece:

[Gavin adds: Wait, let’s fix that picture first. This time let’s put Chuck in the Bogotá Gay Parade:]

Whatever happened to masculinity?

Chuck Baldwin
January 27, 2006

The recent Hollywood infatuation with homosexuality is only the latest example of how true American manhood is being systematically dismantled.

I agree. We should fight back by distributing a nudie calender featuring all of Renew America’s hottest male writers:

Hm, on second thought…
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Atrios provides a great reason to filibuster Alito- one that I hadn’t even thought of:

Cruising into Tuesday evening next week there will be two possible storylines:

1) The Democrats are a bunch of losers, as are all of their supporters. Bush and his giant codpiece looked magnificent at the state of the union, and Mrs. Alito was very happy and smiling sitting next to Mrs. Bush safe and content now that the magnificent and mighty President Bush made that bad Ted Kennedy go away.

2) The Democrats shocked Washington today by holding together, dropping a mighty turd in the punchbowl of the Bush administration, dealing a deadly blow to his nomination of Alito. The president won’t be too happy tonight as he gives the 2006 state of the union speech.

Those are the choices.

That’s actually a very good idea. Even if the filibuster has no shot of working for very long, it’d be a great way to foul up Bush’s SOTU address. Go for it.

Kaye, has “published” — a “new”… column today. “Let’s”… read, it:

Judges in–judges out . . . lock the door behind them!

Kaye Grogan
January 27, 2006

Senator John Kerry is trying for one last “hurrah” using Judge Samuel A. Alito as his whipping post — calling for a filibuster. Where were you Mr. Kerry when Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Steven Breyer, two liberals nominated by former President Bill Clinton as they were awaiting confirmation and a full senate vote? Oh wait a minute . . . I’m confused. Let me see if I can get this straight. It’s hard to keep up with folks who change their minds like they change songs on their Ipods. I remember now: Ginsburg and Breyer were your kind of judges.

Kaye seems to “think” — its hypocrisy to… be against confirming “judges” you, don’t like.
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Only five because we’d better stop fiddle-faddling and make a good showing for the Koufax already. Although, in any event, we’re prepared to inaugurate a new category:

The Dils — “Mr. Big”
Futureheads — “Le Garage”
Louis Armstrong — “Bear Necessities”
O’ Jays — “Love Train”
Futureheads — “False Conversations”

There’s an essay to be written on the Futureheads — on, among other things, their near-faultless instincts about which tricks to steal, and which not to try stealing, from influences such as Wire, XTC, the Jam, the Gang of Four, and less-remembered bands like Blurt and the Pop Group (and the whole rest of that discordant, Telecaster-using cohort).

But I’ll go out on a limb and say that the band they remind me the most of, in terms of their total aesthetic as well as the subtle cadences they throw into their songs, is the Ruts. You’re laughing. If you watch the ‘Decent Days and Nights’ video — the first version, not the newer one or the live one — on their website, you might see what I mean.

Reading this story literally made me froth with rage:

The US government will complete just a fraction of the planned massive reconstruction projects in Iraq before $18.4 billion in federal funding runs out next year, according to a government audit released yesterday.

The audit by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, which oversees the rebuilding budget, states that only 49 of 136 planned water projects will be finished by 2007, the deadline Congress has set for the allocation. About 300 of 425 electricity projects will be done by then, according to the audit.

Projects addressing water and sewer problems and electricity shortages had initially attracted the largest US commitment among public works projects.

OK, so the administration fucked up the Iraqi reconstruction. That’s old news. But here’s the kicker (emphasis mine):
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Yes, with Judy Miller out of commission, the NY Sun can now scoop the Times!

Then on the Syrian side, government agents gave the Republican Guard big sacks marked ‘$,’ and everyone drank from a clay jug with ‘XXX’ on it.

More likely, here’s what just crashed through the wall at the Sun:

Nice mise en scène, standing up barrels of WMDs in airliners, labeling them with a generic skull-and-crossbones, and nobody wearing hazmat suits or anything — while using as cover a flood in Syria eight months earlier. And this worked 56 times without a major disaster? When even Powerline hedges its bets on a story like this, you know you’ve got a Kool-Aid Klassic.

Bradrocket adds:
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…but I seriously doubt the Alito filibuster’s gonna go anywhere.

You’ve got 55 Republican Senators who are going to vote for him. Democrats Bill Nelson, Bobby Byrd and Tim Johnson have gone on record supporting him. Mary Landrieu has said she will oppose a filibuster. That means the Republicans need only one more vote to knock down any attempt at blocking Alito’s confirmation, and I guarantee you Joe Lieberman will help them out…

…I’d like to add that blocking the Alito nomination isn’t a bad idea in and of itself. Indeed, I think that Mark Kleiman convincingly argues that Alito is very, very dangerous. But I just don’t think it’s gonna work.

It seems that Steven Milloy, the resident right-wing junk-science propagandist at FoxNews.com, has been taking money from the tobacco industry.

Milloy: over $180,000 in doggie treats

There’s a story behind the subscription wall at The New Republic, and more details no doubt on the way. But in moments like this, one’s thoughts drift naturally to a menagerie of other folks including, for instance, John Stossel. Does all that moustache wax really buy itself? We ask merely in the spirit of free inquiry.

Why would anyone even think that?

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The U.S. military said Thursday it would release five Iraqi women detainees, a move demanded by the kidnappers of an American reporter to spare her life, but an official said the release was coincidental.

Got coincidences?

Remember that crackpot neoconsevative belief that we could defeat terrorism by spreading democracy? Well, it’s not lookin’ so hot this morning:

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and his Cabinet ministers submitted their resignations Thursday as the Islamic militant group Hamas appeared to have captured a large majority of seats in the Palestinian elections — a shocking upset sure to throw Middle East peacemaking into turmoil. […]

The result could have a devastating effect on the peace process with Israel. Mushir al-Masri, a senior Hamas official, said Thursday that recognizing Israel and negotiations with Israel are “not on our agenda.�

Israel, the United States and the European Union have classified Hamas, which has carried out nearly 60 suicide bombings in the Jewish state since a Palestinian uprising began in 2000, as a terrorist organization.

Things in the Middle East are about to get a whole lot nastier.