i can barely watch.

* rudepundit: "So let's say you're a scotch-swillin' exec at a big ass corporate media entity, say a TimeWarnerCNN-type. You have to say, "Sweet merciful fuck, I'm a ratings whore. I gotta jack up that 25-49 demo like it's Bob Dole's dick. How am I gonna shove some Viagra down this throat?" Now, there's decisions to be made. Big fuckin' decisions. 'Cause every instinct that has guided you for four years now has been to wave that fuckin' flag, man, to repeat the government line like it's gospel. So your decision is this: do you keep doin' that shit, thinkin' that the only people sittin' on their asses and watchin' Wolf Blitzer and Lou Dobbs are the Bush-lovin' 40 percent (and sinkin' fast)? Or do you look at polls, since numbers are your game, motherfucker, and say, "Shit, we better ride this trend"?" LINK

* ftr, i actually observed and noted the tipping point. it happened on may 19. as far as i can tell, i was the first to call it :-) LINK

* "The original draft of the environmental analysis warned that the new rules would have a "significant adverse impact" on wildlife, but that phrase was removed. The bureau now concludes that the grazing regulations are "beneficial to animals."
Eliminated from the final draft was another conclusion that read: "The Proposed Action will have a slow, long-term adverse impact on wildlife and biological diversity in general."" LINK
why do they hate science?

* krugman on coingate LINK

* more from michael smith: "A SHARP increase in British and American bombing raids on Iraq in the run-up to war “to put pressure on the regime” was illegal under international law, according to leaked Foreign Office legal advice." LINK

* iraq is such a disaster zone that i can barely watch.

* btw, id love to see blinnky try to veto the library provision in the patriot act.

* bolton has tanked to even money at tsports. we could have made a killing here. thats 500% so far. id probably suggest selling now - or more accurately, right before the vote monday night. i dont think the cloture will work, but its only about an 80% chance. and theres the chance for a recess vote july 4, and theres a chance that the whitehouse will give in and respond to the document requests. all in all, take the money & run, and leave the rest for someone else. (actually ive just noticed that the contract expires jun30, so the price decline is largely time-value.)

* "Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said Thursday he will support a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in his state, the only one in the country where it is currently legal. " LINK

* id love to see hans blix brought into the dsm story.

* juancole gives us "Zarqawi and the Scarlet Pimpernel" LINK
freak. are they gonna nullify existing ones?

* "Turkey has reacted with concern and anger to a Washington Post investigative report of mass arrests of ethnic Turkomen in the Kurdish-controlled oil-rich Kirkuk region of Iraq... The Turkish foreign ministry, on Thursday expressed its concern over the allegations and said it would watch developments closely." LINK

* i dont quite understand the attack on the cpb funds. surely the repugs would be smarter to co-opt it. i wonder whether the idea is simply the commercial media companies trying to drive out competition as much as anything.

* "According to estimates by The Economist, the total value of residential property in developed economies rose by more than $30 trillion over the past five years, to over $70 trillion, an increase equivalent to 100% of those countries' combined GDPs. Not only does this dwarf any previous house-price boom, it is larger than the global stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s (an increase over five years of 80% of GDP) or America's stockmarket bubble in the late 1920s (55% of GDP). In other words, it looks like the biggest bubble in history." LINK
if this collapses, god knows what the future holds. if it doesnt collapse, we have another problem - the major determinate of wealth will be whether they owned a house before say 2003 (or whenever), and all by accident - ie theres nothing meritocratic about financial success. compared to house ownership, hard work, or intelligence, or education or salary are largely irrelevant. if theres no house price crash, then there will be an enormous wealth schism for a generation based around one factor - whether you owned a home in the first years of the century. even if house prices revert to normal growth rates today.

* downingstreetmemo.com/blog

* "Extraordinary efforts by the White House to scupper Britain's attempts to tackle global warming have been revealed in leaked US government documents obtained by The Observer.
These papers - part of the Bush administration's submission to the G8 action plan for Gleneagles next month - show how the United States, over the past two months, has been secretly undermining Tony Blair's proposals to tackle climate change... The documents obtained by The Observer represent an attempt by the Bush administration to undermine completely the science of climate change" LINK
if you ever wondered what sort of people would start a war for fun, it can categorically be said that people who put the planet and the species in jeopardy with bald-face lies are at least a subset of the sort of people would start a war for fun. this much we know.
i think the only moral/logic framework that could describe their behavior is that jesus is coming soon and our friends really need to be richer, and jesus doesnt care about animals or flowers. go read.