saturday reads

A study of the Pentagon's satellite imagery concludes that ethnic cleansing -- not last year's surge of U.S. military forces -- is the main factor in the reduction of violence in Iraq.


Think Progress: Bush Compares The Financial Crisis He Created To The Terrorist Attacks He Never Saw Coming

Paul Kruman: Crisis Endgame

McCain on banking and health

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

False charges dropped against Democracy Now journalists.


A far-right group was forced to abandon a press conference launching a campaign against plans for a new mosque and Muslim immigration in the German city of Cologne yesterday, when protesters targeted them with stones and paint.


The freakshow that is 'Blacks Against Obama'.


Public Integrity, Redefined


America's new growth industry - show trials.


Dave, you can count me out too.


People with strongly conservative views were three times more fearful than staunch liberals.

friday reads

Hurricane Ike briefs

• Curfews remain in place for Orange and Jefferson [TX] counties.
• On day 6 of the largest blackout in Greater Cincinnati history, the number of area residents still without power was down to 129,654.
• Bolivar [TX] residents not allowed back in...yet.
• Texas a grim tableau nearly a week after Ike.

Avast! It's Talk Like a Pirate Day.


Glenn Greenwald: The Bush/McCain/Palin contempt for subpoenas and the rule of law


Steven Pearlstein: Scrambling to Clean Up After A Category 4 Financial Storm

What we are witnessing may be the greatest destruction of financial wealth that the world has ever seen -- paper losses measured in the trillions of dollars. Corporate wealth. Oil wealth. Real estate wealth. Bank wealth. Private-equity wealth. Hedge fund wealth. Pension wealth. It's a painful reminder that, when you strip away all the complexity and trappings from the magnificent new global infrastructure, finance is still a confidence game -- and once the confidence goes, there's no telling when the selling will stop.

Tomgram: Steve Fraser, The End of a Gilded Age


A local candidate in Vermont has promised to charge and prosecute President Bush for murder if elected as that state's attorney general.


Products Placed: How Companies Pay Artists to Include Brands in Lyrics


PSA (via Fleshbot)

friday random ten

Photo by Ryan McManus





















Bonus track:

wednesday reads

Eight people, including four attackers, were killed in a car bombing outside the US embassy in Yemen today, a Yemeni security source said.


Bush Regime's Parting Gift To America: Socialism

What DDay Said

Yes, that's right, you've got a troubled insurance giant with billions of dollars tied up in worthless pieces of paper masquerading as securities. Yours for the low low price of $85 billion dollars!

You know, if this was Bolivia, the State Department would put out a strong statement declaiming the nationalization of industry and the stifling of private enterprise. But of course, in this case, industry made horrible decisions, so that justifies the Communism. It's unclear to me that it's even legal for the government to structure this absent legislation, but we're in a brave new world.

To be clear, AIG perhaps was too big to fail. And the hash that has been made of the financial markets cannot plausibly be worked out without government intervention. But can this be the end of the "drown government in the bathtub" rhetoric we've heard from conservatives since Goldwater? They eliminated regulation and oversight, ignored the maddening decisions made by the big banks who gambled with borrowed money and lost, and then obliged as the corporations came begging for a handout.

Richard Blair - Hurricane Ike: Myanmar Redux in the USA?


Tomgram: Tariq Ali, Has the U.S. Invasion of Pakistan Begun?

tuesday reads

Media restricted from covering Hurricane Ike’s devastation.


Glenn Greenwald: What Illegal 'Things' Was the Government Doing in 2001-2004?


Chris Hedges: For Palin, It’s a (Christian) Man’s World


Richard Coen jumps off the tire swing.


Larisa Alexandrovna: What is Jeb Bush's role in the Lehman Brothers meltdown?


Bob Herbert: McCain's Radical Agenda


The Drug War's Latest Tally: 872,721 Pot Arrests, an All-Time High


The global market panic


Hey Dick, it's called a war crime.

monday reads

Good news for McCain-Palin: The Big Shitpile gets bigger.


Responding to the Bush administration’s recent decision to privatize portions of the new G.I. Bill, House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner (D-Calif.) blasted the VA on Thursday, saying the outsourcing plan will end in “disaster.”


Tomgram: Frida Berrigan, The Pentagon Legacy of the MBA President


Bill Moyers Journal: Reclaiming Civil Discourse


The Sarah Palin Lipstick Collection


The Broncos become just the third team in NFL history, and first since the Buccaneers in 2005, to score the game's winning points on a 2-point conversion.

sunday reads

John Dean: Palin Falls Short of VP Standards


Rove tricks? McCain absentee ballots raise questions


Border Wall Out of Time, Out of Money


R.I.P.¹ David Foster Wallace²


Sugar N. Spikes knows all the words

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¹ The abbreviation for “rest in peace,” often found on gravestones or in obituaries. From the Latin, requiescat in pace.

² David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California.

Wallace is well known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, a novel Time Magazine included in its list of 100 Best English-language Novels.