Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

It seems the Brits are in a tiz over outrageous comments by Helen Mirren about rape trials.

Dame Helen Mirren was accused by the Solicitor General of making ignorant, absurd and dangerous comments yesterday after speaking out again about rape prosecutions.

In an interview, the 63-year-old Oscar-winning actress said that in such cases female jurors are deliberately selected by defence barristers because 'women go against women'.

She suggested that women jurors are less likely to convict a rapist since they tend to think the victim was 'asking for it'.

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

Well, if you can't get Bernie Ebbers:

Carly Fiorina, who has been headlining with the McCain campaign -- and was even discussed as a possible running mate -- is being touted as a super-successful vagina-person. A reigning authority on big business and the tech world, or so we're told. Last night she spoke to the convention audience about the wonders of John McCain and with reporters about the travesty of sexist attacks on Sarah Palin.

These days, Fiorina is usually described as a former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Sounds impressive, but it leaves out a few things. Like the fact she's the former CEO because she was fired, loathed by many board members and  shareholders, and handed a golden parachute worth over $21 million that resulted in a lawsuit against the company. On the day Fiorina was given her walking papers, HP's stock jumped 7 percent. That's a whole lotta hate.

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

I've always had a healthy disrespect for tabloids. In fact, throughout my college years, when I was ensconced in my studies of media and journalism, I considered the term "tabloid journalism" an oxymoron. Boy, is my face red. But, not so red as is the Gray Lady's, I should think. She's now playing catch up on news her editors did not think "fit to print."

Scandal has turned Mr. Edwards into a pathetic has-been. It's had much the same effect on the news bosses at the mainstream media, who used to be the gatekeepers for all things fit to print. When the Enquirer broke the story months ago - while Mr. Edwards was still in the race - they treated it like poison ivy. "Classically not a Times-like story," sniffed Craig Whitney, the standards editor of The New York Times. This was the same paper, you may recall, that recently ran an innuendo-laden story on John McCain and his friendship with an attractive lobbyist a decade or so ago. No wonder critics accuse the MSM of double standards - one for Democrats, and another for Republicans.

Indeed, the Enquirer turned up its nose at McCain non-story. It would seem, wisely so. This and other revelations from The New Republic -- they, of the Stephen Glass debacle. That The National Enquirer is burying the bona fide press corps in the sack, is shaping up to be the story of the year.

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

There has been a good deal of blogospheric chatter about the public antics of the leader of the free world, in full view of cameras, at the olympics. Much of it speculation about whether or not he's drunk off his ass.

The folks at BuzzFlash have been digging a little deeper into the trash heap, for a bit of the back-story. The tabloids have been dishing dirt about a potential split between George and Laura. Reason: his drinking.

If the Edwards scandal has taught us anything, it's that tabloids may traffic in sleaze, but their sleazy reporting is also often true.

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

For making a point I've been trying to make since Hillary began her heroic struggle for  Michigan and Florida's suffrage.

"My momma always taught me to play by the rules," she said, adding that "when you decide to change the rules, especially middle of the game ... that is referred to as cheating." Ms. Brazile said fairness dictated that the committee should take into consideration Michigan voters who might have written in a candidate or stayed away from the polls on primary day thinking that their vote would not count.

Thank you!!

How exactly is fair to voters of either of those states that their primary was misrepresented to them? How many, who would have otherwise made the time to cast a primary ballot, did not because they were told it was pointless. Even Hillary said it wouldn't "count for anything." But, no. Those Michigan and Florida residents who assumed that rules were rules didn't know Hillary Clinton, and the joke's on them.

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

I was venting my spleen last night about Dunkin' Donuts idiotic decision to cave to Michelle Malkin and her band of crazies in the right wing blogosphere. And the inimitable skippy stopped by to give me an action alert.

As skippy points out, by playing Malkin's game, Dunkin' Donuts not only insults one-time bohemian college students, like myself, who wore the ultra-hip keffiyah, but THE ENTIRE ARAB WORLD.

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

Can someone explain to me what the fuck Mike Huckabee thought he was doing here? This is a joke? Fantasizing about someone aiming a gun at possibly the first black president of the United States? And note that he's in Louisville, Kentucky; deep in the heart of  Hillary's (ahem) "key demographic."

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

It's no secret that I hate Hillary.  And everyday she gives me another reason. Her everything but the kitchen sink strategy continues and accelerates and now she's lobbed a toaster at Obama's head for stating the obvious.

"You have a real choice in this election. Either Democrat would be better than John McCain. And all three of us would be better than George Bush," Obama said.

Says Hillary:

"We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain, and I will be that nominee," she said.

Let me get in my time machine and go back a whole month and  half.

Hillary Clinton told reporters that both she and the presumtive Republican nominee John McCain offer the experience to be ready to tackle any crisis facing the country under their watch, but Barack Obama simply offers more rhetoric. "I think you'll be able to imagine many things Senator McCain will be able to say," she said. "He's never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002."

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

It's a bitter pill, but I have to admit that Nooner has offered some pretty stunning insight into the psyche and motivations of one Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I think we've reached a signal point in the campaign. This is the point where, with Hillary Clinton, either you get it or you don't. There's no dodging now. You either understand the problem with her candidacy, or you don't. You either understand who she is, or not. And if you don't, after 16 years of watching Clintonian dramas, you probably never will.

. . .

What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can't trace the line from "this moment's difficulties" to "my triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don't lose. She can't figure out how to win, and she can't accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn't know how he did it!)

She is concussed. But she is a scrapper, a fighter, and she's doing what she knows how to do: scrap and fight. Only harder. So that she ups the ante every day. She helped Ireland achieve peace. She tried to stop Nafta. She's been a leader for 35 years. She landed in Bosnia under siege and bravely dodged bullets. It was as if she'd watched the movie "Wag the Dog," with its fake footage of a terrified refugee woman running frantically from mortar fire, and found it not a cautionary tale about manipulation and politics, but an inspiration.

So what is it that I am struggling to accept? (Sigh) That the Clintons are a lot more like George W. Bush than I am comfortable considering.

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

As discussed here, Jim Webb's bill would have mandated "dwell time" to give our exhausted troops a break. It stood a good chance of passing until Senator Warner did a 180 and withdrew his support. In the end only 6 Senate Republicans showed that they give a damn about the well-being of our fighting men and women.

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

Glenn Greenwald, whose forthcoming book is on the meaningless chest-thumping of chicken-hawk culture, offers the following illustration. He quotes Fred W. Kagan, whose argument against Jim Webb's proposal for allowing our troops more time at home between deployments, is that it will be a bureaucratic nightmare.

So this amendment would actually require the Army and Marine Corps staffs to keep track of how long every individual servicemember had spent in either Iraq or Afghanistan, how long they had been at home, how long the unit that they were now in had spent deployed, and how long it had been home...

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

This is the opening sequence from what I believe is one of the most under appreciated movies of all time, "Joe Versus the Volcano." Protagonist Joe Banks undertakes a Joseph Campbellesque "hero's journey," which frees him from the illusory demands of wage slavery.  Anyone who has seen the movie will recognize the elements of Campbell's "monomyth."

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, My Left Wing, and the Independent Bloggers' Alliance.

This week the General Accountability Office slipped an  advance copy of its progress report on Iraq to the Washington Post. Their report was "strikingly negative." The GAO thinks that Iraq has failed to meet all but 3 of its 18 mandated benchmarks. But that's because the GAO is a bunch of girlie-men. Don't they know that we are all supposed to -- say it with me now -- "Wait to hear what General Petraeus has to say!"

Well General Petraeus is speaking, to The Australian, and guess what: The Surge Is Working!

Appearing at The Blogging Curmudgeon, My Left Wing, and the Independent Bloggers' Alliance.

From The Boston Globe:

At least two prominent board members of the regional Anti-Defamation League have resigned in protest over the national ADL's decision to fire the regional director for acknowledging the slaughter of Armenians during World War I as genocide.

Former chairman of the Polaroid Corp., Stewart L. Cohen, and City Council member Mike Ross told the Globe yesterday they could no longer be part of an organization with national leaders who refused to acknowledge the Armenian genocide and fired regional director, Andrew H. Tarsy, on Friday for taking a position in support of Armenian-Americans.

. . .

The resignations -- which may be the first of others to come -- were announced as members of the local Jewish and Armenian-American communities praised Tarsy and the regional board for taking stands recognizing the Armenian genocide and criticized the ADL's national director, Abraham H. Foxman, for taking a position out of step not just locally, but perhaps nationally.

If Foxman does not change his position and acknowledge the genocide, George Beilin, a past president of the North Shore Council of the B'nai B'rith Organization, called on the national leader to "resign immediately for the sake of the Jewish community in the United States and the world."