I was in the middle of, actually, hopefully, the tail end of posting a comment over at Frameshop, (you see, I've been typing this for awhile, although it looks to you, humble reader, as if I'd just started), when the wonders of trackbacks just occurred to me. I can have my content and Jeffrey Feldman can, too. And how often can you have and eat the same cake? Plus I'm not sure if my links would display in the Frameshop comments.

So, the following is my commentary on PBS Should Fire Brooks, Apologize, and David Brooks' appearance on The Lehrer Report, where he equated lefty bloggers with terrorists. He wouldn't be the first to commit such a smear, but maybe the first on PBS.

...

It's unlikely that there will be an apology. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting board has a Republican majority of 5 out of 9 members, selected by the President and approved by the Senate. The current remaining board consists of two Democrats and one independent. There is one open seat, which surprises no one, as obviously President Bush will not select a Democrat to fill that final post, and the Public Broadcasting Act prohibits him from tapping another Republican, by limiting the number of board members from one political party to 5. (Interestingly, enough Bush nominated Democrat David Pryor for the board. I'm as shocked as you.)

This party of five is headed by Cheryl Halpern, who was mentioned in her Wikipedia entry as "outstanding in her field as a propagandist". I noted this in a previous entry, but it has since been removed from Wikipedia , but it is still listed in a Search.com entry about her.

The following quote from the current Wikipedia entry looks to be a translucent spin on the earlier passage.

"She has extensive experience with overseeing pro-American media campaigns abroad."

According to SourceWatch, Halpern contributed to the 2000 and 2004 Bush election campaigns. And in 2004 was also ranked among the Top 100 "hard money" donors by Mother Jones with donations to numerous Republicans, including Trent Lott, Sam Brownback, and Conrad Burns. Lott and Brownback also happened to sit on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. The same committee which approves all Corporation for Public Broadcasting nominations.

Oh, and by the way, Patricia Harrison, the President of the CPB, is the former Co-Chair of the Republican National Committee.

What was that whole thing about an apology again? That said, there is still every reason to ask for an apology, but given the background of who's running the CPB, the odds of hearing one are quite low.

I went to a couple sites to find some perspective into average home size in the United States to possibly shed some light on the concerns regarding Al Gore's electrical bill.

Google Answers responded to a question about average home size in 2002. The average U.S. home size in 2001 was 2,300 square feet. I realize this is five years ago, but it takes some time for the majority of the country to upgrade the size of their homes, so I would suspect the 2006 number to still be below 3,000. Google Answers also listed their sources for determining the answer.

I actually escaped chatter about Bald Britney and Deceased Anna Nicole for a whole five minutes, and heard about something that may have some relevance to something else. It was difficult, but it actually happened.

Some no-name right wing group attacked Al Gore over his electricity bills, saying they are 50% higher than the national average.

Yet they don't say how Al Gore lives in a 10,000 square foot house. I could count on one hand (with fingers to spare) the number of people I know personally (do mySpace friends count? cus' I haven't been to too many of their homes) that live in such homes.

I think this blog is too small for the smear machine to try to extract from my brain all the people I know personally to cross-reference their names in some super computer that will match this info up with their property tax bills and compute the square footages (footages? feetages? overall square footage was better, but this sentence was on a roll like I haven't had in awhile, so let's get back to it, shall we?) of their homes just to get to the number six and call me a liar. I doubt they would do their due diligence to be certain I don't have six fingers on my hand, because a bell curve would probably show that the likelihood of me having five fingers on the other hand would fall within two standard deviations.

I am not going to do my due diligence, cause I'm sensing the inherit truthiness in claiming that Al Gore's home is at least 70% larger than the national average. Elementary school students could make the clear determination, that indeed, even while making steps to ceonserve energy, Mr. Gore would still have a bill much higher than the national average.

Can he not be an advocate for green energy because of this? Rush Limbaugh apparently believes environmentalists want to downsize the American lifestyle. If Rush makes a claim that Gore should live in a smaller home, he would contradict himself? Walking contradiction occasionally do such things, by the way. I'm just sayin' is all.

I'm pretty sure Rush doesn't live in a glass house.

And, I'm just wondering, are our electric bills public knowledge?

Blogs I've read reporting on this include:
The Anonymous Liberal
Seeing the Forest
Crooks & Liars

At State of the Day.

Found by Crooks & Liars.

The president and vice president often meet with Henry Kissinger as an adviser. They do this in person, I would suppose so they can all compare hands and see whose hands have the most blood on them. Then they talk about the merits of certain brands of soap for removal of said blood. Unless of course they like to leave the dried blood on sometimes to remind their underlings of their unchecked power. This from CBS News:

Woodward also reports that the president and vice president often meet with Henry Kissinger, who was President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, as an adviser. Says Woodward, "Now what’s Kissinger’s advice? In Iraq, he declared very simply, ‘Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.'" Woodward adds. "This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will."

Quite disturbing.

And I'm ashamed that both New Jersey Democrats, Lautenberg and Menendez both supported the Torture Bill. Thanks guys. When's Ned Lamont moving to New Jersey?

I've been doing a million different things and nothing at all lately. But I'm glad I popped over to see what Warren Ellis has been talking about lately. And his words were not needed. Keith Olbermann said it all.

If I have any duty as an American, it is to link to Olberman's commentary.

And here's a link to the Bill Clinton interview on Fox News.

Like most of America of been distracted and sometimes unconsciously sought distraction, so here's something back to anyone who still wanders my way.

A true test of how oblivious we often are. What may affect us the most, may not always be "news".

The article pulled the Top 10 from the Top 25 at Project Censored.

The comedian-in-chief clearly did not ask, "Is this thing on?" with a tap of the microphone. So the world gets a private moment between a couple leaders of the free world. There's a lot of talk about this around the blogosphere, and I'm sure there will be a piece on The Daily Show, followed by its posting YouTube. That's just the nature of these things.

Links:
Guardian Unlimited: NewsBlog
Transcript by Adam Boulton
Crooks & Liars
Ezra Klein

Oh and a little bit of Guess who's coming to dinner. Will the White House open the door to thug/oil baron? The answer may be inidicative of upcoming US policy in the Middle East since Kazakhstan opened airfields to us previous in the US conflict/bombing with/of Afghanistan. (Sorry I get a little slash crazy here and there, and that time it came while I was actually trying to make a point.) But it could also be that there's lots of oil in Kazakhstan. And people do crazy things for that black stuff.

Listen to Ted Stevens describe how the Internet works (courtesy of The Daily Show), and decide for yourself if he should have any say in any legislation involving the Internet. I would venture to guess that given a Tivo, Senator Stevens would figure that the technology was reverse engineered from some technology found out in Roswell.

We've had Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley, but I'm not sure which Internet/Tech hotbed exists in Alaska. I would guess it would be the Silicon Pipeline, but unless data's in the form of black gold, it's got to find some other way to travel.

But since Stevens has been all for further oil drilling in Alaska and the rest of the frozen tundra, his use of "tubes" as a metaphor for the Internet should not be a surprise. Tubes and pipes have very similar technology. He knows how pipes work, so those "tubes" must work the same way.

This is the same Senator Ted Stevens vehemently opposed cutting off funding of his "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska, when some selfish senators, even fellow Republicans, wanted to divert the money to assist Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts. How dare they.

This $223 million bridge would connect the 8,000 people on one side to the 50 on the other. The Gravina Island Bridge (proposed name for the bridge) would apparently be nearly as long as the Golden Gate Bridge and as high as the Brooklyn Bridge. The last time I checked a lot more people use those bridges, perhaps during the New York City Marathon alone.

(Upon further research, it looks like the bridge is no longer earmarked to receive its federal funding, although Alaska would still receive the money to spend on something else.)

This is also the same state that spent $500,000 in tax dollars to paint a giant salmon on an Alaska Airlines plane. This was to help promote the Alaska fishing industry in their battle against salmon farms. $500,000 could have been better spent elsewhere. How many people can even see ? I don't see too many planes pulling along side me on the highway, usually I'm underneath them, and their pretty high up. And even if it looked like a flying fish over my head, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to run out to the fish market shortly thereafter.

Save the Internet, folks. It's still ours. It doesn't belong to Ted Stevens. I'm not sure he even knows how to turn an Internet on. For shits and giggles, let's hand him a solar calculator duct-taped to a toaster oven, and tell him it's the Internet. Although he'd probably be sharp enough to ask where the "tubes" were.

Rush Limbaugh has the rocks to charge people $49.95 to donate a 1 year subscription to his web site and newsletter. Considering that he's going to be doing the content anyway for people who subscribe to it, basically he's war profiteering under the guise of charity. Nice job, Fatty.

Ultra-conservative to insane viewpoints are one thing. Doctor shopping for prescription drugs is another. But please, oh please give me one good reason why I shouldn't send troops some non-perishable food that no matter the trans fat content will taste infinitely better than rations, or perhaps the much reuested clean underwear and socks (Mom wasn't kidding when she said to always make sure you have clean underwear. Particularly when you're thousands of miles from home and finding a laundromat not your top priority.), but instead give them access to a web site, since the guys on the front line need to know how you think Clinton is still responsible for today's problems. Because that's exactly what they need when they're picking up pieces of debris off the ground to weld on to their humvees. You know, the one's that use the armor.

I heard about this on Howard Stern this morning, and then read more online. I visited Rush's site hoping that it was already taken down with an apology for letting greed get in the way of charity. Perhaps if Mr. Limbaugh owned an oil company or weapons manufacturer this would not have happened. But since he doesn't he aparently needed some kind of way to cash in.

I noticed he wasn't on the air this afternoon. Hopefully someone was trying to talk some sense into him about this. There's no picture in this post because I don't want to look at him. But here's the obligatory link to his "Adopt a Soldier" program.

And here's a couple e-mail addresses that are attached to the site. In case you want to send "fan mail":
eibcollection@rushlimbaugh.com
memberservice@rushlimbaugh.com

Vote early and often, kids. Polls are not open at 4:20 AM, but will be open at 4:20 PM naturally. If this is the first time you've heard of Ed Forchion, I guess you didn't look at the ballot you received in the mail.

Ed is only running for governor of New Jersey, for those of you who were wondering about the NJ preceding WEEDMAN.

There's no way President Bush could have expected anything except Jeff Gannon size softballs to hit out of the park, but my guess is Matt Lauer saw an advance of that new George Clooney movie, Good Night and Good Luck, and fired up by Edward R. Murrow, he came out of it like I did as a kid after watching the Rocky movies. Lauer set his sights on the president, made light of the "photo-op", and went on to ask questions about Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and why the government doesn't want to ever forgive the Katrina debt.

Bush handled the interview better than I would have imagined. (Translation: 85% less stuttering and stammering, Andy Dick would be disappointed.) His handlers must have prepared him already for some other audience. But still his sometimes incredulous expression simply said, "WTF?"

Lauer must want Dan Rather's job or something. I always thought Matt Lauer just came across as completely dull and uninteresting, but he had his argument with Tom Cruise a few months back and has now showed the president another vertebrae in the news media backbone.

The president's comment, "Last night, Laura and had dinner with Mayor Nagin and a group of distinguished New Orleans citizens from all walks of life." intrigued me. Was Robert Davis one of those distinguished citizens?

All in all a fun time was had by all...but President Bush.

The Left Coaster is doing a bang-up job compiling the data. Although even with all this information, I'm still not sure how she'll vote. Although it looks pretty clear that she's quite loyal to the Bush family. And that only means more fun in the Middle East, and less privacy for Americans. Attytood's post on the subject hints at that, as well as use of the military as a police force. I believe the term for that is martial law. It's been done before in places none of us would want to live.

Topical and edgy. Comedy Central does better reporting than your local news. You know, that show that they advertise at every sitcom commercial break with those permasmile newsreaders shuffling papers engaged in faux conversation that has much less to do with current events, and more likely regarding moisturizers, since that's what news people do. (By, "that show", I meant the "local news", but you knew that, right?.)

Jon Stewart may actually have exceeded Eric Cartman as the biggest celebrity at Comedy Central. Who would have thought The Daily Show would end up doing the most journalism on television.

Blah blah blah. Funny stuff at the Emmys. A Kilborn says what? What's a Kilborn anyway, does that have something to do with post-delivery abortions?

When he's Tom DeLay.

Indicted for criminal conspiracy in campaign financing, he's stepping down from his position as Speaker of the House.

I had to re-read the article before I realized it wasn't about the SEC investigation of Bill Frist. He sold his family's shares of HCA, which his family founded, one month before an announcement of weak earnings. So it very well may be insider trading. I wonder if Dr. Frist would get more assistance from the executive branch, if he fell in line with the party on stem cell research.

Anything on Roberts?

I wonder if he had to get a hall pass. Crooks and Liars is my favorite-est blog ever for right now. And that's a long time in ADD-riddled America, and I'm not talking about the kids.

This clip of Dick Cheney is a lot of fun. Please don't tell me he doesn't deserve it. Perhaps Patrick Leahy was the man off-camera. And a nice job by the CNN reporter asking, "Are you getting a lot of that Mr. Vice President?"