gabe. babe.

AMDOM
* william kristol cops a pie in the face. "Of Kristol's aplomb after the incident, Mitchell-Olds said, "I have a lot of respect for him."" LINK
i wonder if it was aplomb pudding?

* "The World Bank unanimously approved Paul Wolfowitz as its president... not a single European government spoke out against his candidacy." LINK
then i too will be silent. or speechless.

* everyone is freaking out about this wapo ed on wolfowitz. LINK
then i too will be silent. or speechless.

* "Democrats are likely to vote unanimously against John R. Bolton when his nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations comes before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next week" LINK
feingold looks like he might switch. call his office if u are in CA. or maybe we could send in the 12 schiavo protestors. complete with signs.

* "Morton Blackwell, Republican National Committee member from Virginia and a member of ACU's board, said Republicans are being told support for Mr. DeLay is mandatory if they want future support from conservatives." LINK

* josh: "When Democrats go corrupt, they betray their principles. And certainly it's happened enough times. With someone like DeLay, there are no principles to betray. It's just money and power from the git-go. And really that means just power. A cash-and-carry operation.
Nothing changes from the alpha to the omega save that you eventually run afoul of the law." LINK

* hersh on the neocon democracy-bringers: "“That 8 or 9 people can change so much...Where was the military, the Congress, the press? What has happened raises the question about the thinness of the fabric of democracy.”" LINK

* "Doctors upgraded the Rev. Jerry Falwell's condition from critical to stable on Wednesday and removed the Moral Majority founder from a ventilator." LINK i trust they are talking about his physical condition, and not his mental state.

* " President Bush has nominated the vice president's son-in-law, Philip J. Perry, as general counsel of the Homeland Security Department, where he would oversee 1,500 lawyers who work on legal matters like Coast Guard maritime laws and immigration." more nepotism. fun. his wife of course is " the second-ranking United States diplomat for the Mideast." LINK

* ""Early Tuesday afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) sent an appeal over the Internet urging people to contribute to the re-election campaign of Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV)," the Charleston Gazette reports. "In less than 24 hours, more than 15,000 contributors gave $634,000 to Byrd’s campaign."" LINK

* today is april fools day. its gonna be real difficult to separate the real news from the faux news.

* dobbs/simon/baiman et al have a new exit-poll piece out. among other things from the report, reverse-engineering the data seems to suggest that blinky voters responded the highest in the bluest precincts, and jonk voters responded at the highest rates in red precincts. pdf here.

* parently, giuliani got paid $80k for the tsunami benefit. sweet. LINK

* "I am convinced Bulldog got into the press corps because someone was deeply in love with him, i.e, with the fantasy he provides. Others in the game saw what he could be used for. Jeff's client wanted more of Jeff, he wanted preferential status, he wanted promises. Gannon, like any pro with a big fish on the line, was growing weary of diamonds and furs." LINK
this is a reasonable hypothesis of course - but at the moment, im not even prepared to accept as fact that notgannon was in fact a hooker, or if he is, that it is conceivably cover for something else. "Fake name. Fake reporter. Fake news agency. Fake Marine. And now this ... Fake nonprofit." why not fake hooker? like ive mentioned before, there seems something odd (to me) about a $200/hour 47 y.o. hooker (notwithstanding that he was advertising himself as younger). also, the blogpost quoted above references the purported customer reviews on notgannons website as evidence/support for the thesis - surely those reviews need to be taken with a grain of salt.

* gabe caggiano interviews notgannon again. "Finally, I would like to put to rest a rumor in the blog universe that has swept like a California brushfire in a high wind, and that is the belief Jeff Gannon and Gabe Caggiano are the same person. We are not." LINK
gabe forgets to mention the suggestion that maybe they are related or something - given that some have suggested they look similar. gabe (like notgannon) is also an actor, and does 'gabe caggiano' sound a screen-namish?

* "Stephen Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security program, defended the administration's assumptions. "Keep in mind that we are trying to make projections over a very long time, 75 years," Mr. Goss said. "I would suggest that 5 percent at the moment makes perfect sense. But if you buy at another time, when the price-earnings ratio is 10, you would expect a higher return over time."" LINK
lol - i think andrewsullivan had the same idea. 'we'll invest when the mkt is cheap, and then the mkt will go up and we'll all be rich, and we'll all get out at the top, and then the next generation can buy in, and their retirements will also be secure'

* i just saw a lonelyplanet thing on sf 'this is the america thats different to the one that everyone hates' - lol. im miss sf. i miss america

* happy birthday michelle.