This from dawkins:

Reagan's face proposed to replace FDR's on dimes

House Republicans are introducing a bill (the "Ronald Reagan Dime Act") that would replace FDR on the dime with Ronald Reagan. But Democrat James McGovern of Massachusetts -- who's been seditiously drumming up support for an opposing bill that keeps Roosevelt on the ten cent piece -- points out that Reagan has "already been honored in many ways - he's got an airport named after him, and a building, and there are schools and roads and bridges and other things.''

Nice try, McGovern. But I'm siding with Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif.: "I feel more connection with Reagan. He's a Californian, also closer to us now in history.''

Yep: "Closer to us now in history."

To that end, I think it's time to start getting rid of these other deadbeats taking up space on our loose change. Jefferson. What's he done lately? Lincoln. Washington? Any reason the nation's capital is still stuck with his name? I mean, how many tax cuts did Washington push? How many Communist regimes did he single-handedly bring down?

This Republican fervor for naming everything Reagan is never going to stop, and in fact is only going to heat up once the good man finally meets the Creator.

So I'm suggesting Democrats head them off at the pass with a simple swap that will stave off any more "Ronald Reagan Dime Acts."

Change "Washington, D.C." to "Reagan, D.C."

That way, Reagan National Airport could revert back to its original name, National Airport, yet still be known as Reagan National. And we wouldn't have to bother with any more piddling building names or currency effigies.

And if the Republicans still want Reagan on the dime, let 'em have it. Us blue staters will keep FDR on ours. (We've had separate currencies before, you know.)

This from dawkins:

2 Groups Try to Block Charity Tied to DeLay

Stuart Roy, a spokesman for Mr. DeLay, said, "The only people who will benefit from the Celebrations for Children are abused and neglected kids, and the only people who benefit from vile partisan attacks by Democracy 21 are the Democrats."

Pardon me, but I think it's a little disingenuous of Mr. Roy to say that abused and neglected kids are the only people who will benefit from "the" Celebrations for Children. Because after they endure all those tedious golf tournaments and yacht cruises and dinners with members of Congress that their $500,000 soft money donations get them, the big donors also do get to enjoy the altruistic satisfaction of having provided the "Celebrations" for children.

And, c'mon, Democrats aren't really the only ones who benefit from the vile partisan attacks by Democracy 21. Surely, Satan and his legions somewhere are getting a big kick out of those.

Blicero adds: Yes, Senator Daschle is indeed "celebrating" these attacks.

See for yourself: check out the new Celebrations for Children website!

Takes One To Know One
In the chutzpah war, Dean has Bush's draft number.
By William Saletan

Let's recap. A guy who has no foreign policy experience, opposed the war in Iraq, and went skiing after he escaped the Vietnam draft because of a bad back is calling a wartime president soft on defense. And despite cries of outrage from Republican pundits, luminaries, and party organs, he isn't letting up. Monday on Hardball, Dean said, "This president, I don't believe, has any idea how to fight terror. …This president has wasted 15 months or more doing nothing about the fact that North Korea is almost certainly a nuclear power, [and] we can't tolerate North Korea as a nuclear power." On Crossfire, Dean adviser Steve McMahon reiterated that Bush had tried to cut veterans' benefits. Coming to McMahon's aid, Democratic pugilist James Carville charged that Bush has "stretched our military to the point that we're weaker today. And he's created terror."

Where did Dean and his lieutenants get this kind of gall? Maybe from the guy they're attacking.

Full story.

Hack the Vote
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Why isn't this front-page news? In October, a British newspaper, The Independent, ran a hair-raising investigative report on U.S. touch-screen voting. But while the mainstream press has reported the basics, the Diebold affair has been treated as a technology or business story — not as a potential political scandal.

This diffidence recalls the treatment of other voting issues, like the Florida "felon purge" that inappropriately prevented many citizens from voting in the 2000 presidential election. The attitude seems to be that questions about the integrity of vote counts are divisive at best, paranoid at worst. Even reform advocates like Mr. Holt make a point of dissociating themselves from "conspiracy theories." Instead, they focus on legislation to prevent future abuses.

But there's nothing paranoid about suggesting that political operatives, given the opportunity, might engage in dirty tricks. Indeed, given the intensity of partisanship these days, one suspects that small dirty tricks are common. For example, Orrin Hatch, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently announced that one of his aides had improperly accessed sensitive Democratic computer files that were leaked to the press.

This admission — contradicting an earlier declaration by Senator Hatch that his staff had been cleared of culpability — came on the same day that the Senate police announced that they were hiring a counterespionage expert to investigate the theft. Republican members of the committee have demanded that the expert investigate only how those specific documents were leaked, not whether any other breaches took place. I wonder why.

The point is that you don't have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate election results. Why expose them to temptation?

It's becoming clear that we have only one option left:

speakingcorpse writes: Come next summer, we will be "terrorists." We won't have a choice. The war on terror will have become one with the war to preserve an ordered Republican National Convention.

The War on Dissent
by Naomi Klein

The FTAA Summit in Miami represents the official homecoming of the "war on terror." The latest tactical and propaganda techniques honed in Iraq -- from a Hollywoodized military to a militarized media -- have now been used on a grand scale in a major U.S. city. "This should be a model for homeland defence," Miami Mayor Manny Diaz proudly said of the security operation that brought together over 40 law-enforcement agencies, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

With the activists recast as dangerous aliens, Miami became eligible for the open tap of public money irrigating the "war on terror." In fact, $8.5-million spent on security during the FTAA meeting came directly out of the $87-billion President Bush extracted from Congress for Iraq last month -- a fact barely reported outside of the Miami press.

But more was borrowed from the Iraq invasion than just money. Miami police also invited reporters to "embed" with them in armoured vehicles and helicopters. As in Iraq, most reporters embraced their role as pseudo-soldiers with unsettling zeal, suiting up in ridiculous combat helmets and brand-new camouflage flak jackets.

We can expect much more of these tactics on the homeland front. Just as civil liberties violations escalated when Washington lost control over the FTAA process, so will repression increase as the Bush crew faces the ultimate threat: losing control over the White House.

Already, Jim Wilkinson, director of strategic communications at U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, (the operation that gave the world the Jessica Lynch rescue), has moved to New York to head up media operations for the Republican National Convention. "We're looking at embedding reporters," he told the New York Observer of his plans to use some of the Iraq tricks during the convention. "We're looking at new and interesting camera angles."

The war is coming home.

Full story.

speakingcorpse writes:

This ("The gathering storm around Richard Perle") is a very revealing article, one that gives us a good idea of what we have to hope for. We CAN hope for the eventual humiliation and possible imprisonment of Richard Perle. (He will be implicated in the implosion of Conrad Black's media empire.) We CANNOT hope for peace and justice on this earth, because world affairs are run by remarkably simple and yet impossibly entrenched feedback loops of money and power. The fact that Conrad Black's utterly corrupt arms-dealing/newspaper-selling operation will go under is good news. But just think what its very existence says about the way things work: you get a board of friendly businessmen, most of whom are arms dealers (like Perle); you buy already profitable newspapers, and find brain-damaged professional ideologues to justify war and mass death, perpetrated by soldiers using your weapons. That's it. That's all you do. There's no vast network of contacts and influences and subtle ideological justifications that ramify across the public sphere, rendering invisible the material base of our systems of thought. All you do is pay people to say, "We must buy weapons and kill people with them," and you've got yourself a media-industrial war machine. Do you think the Washington Times is that different? The Washington Post, for that matter? How many degrees of separation are there between the corporate board that governs the Post and the one that governs Martin Marietta? Not many. That's the essence of corporate conglomeration: blood-money.

As ever,
speakingcorpse

This comes to us via Atrios:

Bush's Drinking Daughter Goes 'Pansy'