Daily Bloggerback
January 14, 2006
Candide's Notebooks

• Matthew Yglesias on the corruption-privatization link
• Digby's advice to Democrats over NSA/Abramoff scandals
• Australian artist Jodi Rose ruminates on Western civ. along the Danube
• TalkLeft on the broken liberal blogosphere
• Big Brass Blog on broken Democrats
• Outside the Beltway’s “center”-right petition for clean House leadership
• Raed on a little-noticed meeting between Saudi King and Iraq’s top extremist
• Baghdad Burning eulogizes CSM interpreter, recently murdered
• We mourn with the Angry Arab over the loss of his aunt to Lebanese murderers
• Empire Notes on Congo’s tragedy and western complicity
• The Mesopotamian says American means, not ends, are issue in Iraq
• Dean’s World confuses whistle-blowing with high treason
• Nitpicker shows why NPR is going to hell in a Liasson basket
• Easter Lemming on Tikkun Magazine's spiritual dimension in politics
• Bradford Plumer on Corporate governance
• Designer Karen Chang of Perth, Australia, on her quirky sister
• Talisma Nasrin on getting to know Talisma Nasrin
• Amals World View on Hizbollah’s fall from grace
• Hysterical blackness doesn’t laugh about the cheapness of black life
• A London Times blogger writes about Brunei misquoting him

Featured Blogger I: Lost Cause
The Confederate Flag:
Why I Don't Care
Palm Trees In the Ghetto

The Confederate Flag never affects me emotionally. I see it and it's just there. Oh I'm well aware of the symbolism of the Confederate Flag. Succeeding from the union, the African slave trade, the Civil War; I'm fully briefed. Yet I feel absolute nothing when I see it. Being the child of two former Black Panthers, you would probably think that I was ready to kick some serious ass when that flag is raised. Nope. All that false outrage is bad for the stomach.

Read the full post at Palm Trees in the Ghetto...

Featured Blogger II: Rabelais does Alito
The Rude Pundit Shakes Up Tree of Perfidy: "Democrats Are Pussies & They're Getting ..."
The Rude Pundit/January 11, 2006

[It's not been a good week for liberals. Alito's confirmation hearings turned into one more occasion to display Democrats' talent for self-destruction despite Republicans' mastery of the craven, the dishonest, the pathetic (viz., Mrs. Alito's Oprah moment). The Rude Pundit, America's Rabelais-in-Residence, sums it up.]

The Rude Pundit's not nearly as old as Sammy Alito, but he remembers the day a couple of hot Socialist college girls walked into the university newspaper office and asked to talk to whoever would listen about subscribing to The Militant, the Socialist Workers Party newspaper. So the Rude Pundit and a male friend went out for drinks with the hot Socialist college girls, who were touring regional universities to drum up business for the Socialists. At the end of an evening of teasing, pleasing, and free love, the Rude Pundit, who not only flirted with socialists, but with socialism, gladly signed up for a few months of The Militant. Someone told the Rude Pundit that simply subscribing to the newspaper assured the Rude Pundit a file with the FBI - it was the late Reagan era. Which the Rude Pundit took as a badge of honor (and probably wasn't true). After the months were up, the Rude Pundit had moved on to The Nation and mainstream liberalism, and, well, the memory of the evening dimmed when the re-subscribing bill came in the mail. The point here ain't that the Rude Pundit was blown into socialism. The point is that if someone asked him why he signed up for The Militant, he'd fucking remember it and remember why he did it. So when Sammy Alito says of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton that he has "no specific recollection of that organization," but then says why he may have joined it, he's a fuckin' weasel at best, a craven liar at worst. Read the full post at The Rude Pundit...