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Showing posts from September 13, 2004
Okay, so maybe they won't win Having been roundly admonished by readers for writing from the convention floor that the Republicans were going to win the presidential election, your blogstress wishes to reconsider her prediction, however certain she is of her supernatual powers. "It's just not productive," said your cybertix's lifelong friend, Karen from Jersey, of your Webwench's oracle of doom. (Karen spoke as her daughter protested something at the U.N. and her son returned from playing football on what Karen described as "a normal day in heterosexual suburbia.") Yeah, but if it scares the cr*p out of people, maybe it is productive. Witness the windfall the other side is getting out of fear-mongering. Along similar lines, Michael Tomasky has a more nuanced piece appearing on The American Prospect Web site today. Since we already offered a sentence of the week several days ago, let us today serve up, from Tomasky, the graf of the day:
McCarthy's ghost She comes to this late, your blogstress admits, but a peculiar development is worth noting. Last month, it seems, a phase of the USA Patriot Act kicked in that all but demands a loyalty oath from the non-profit organizations to which federal government employees can donate via payroll deduction, a program known as the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). Under the USA Patriot Act (an Orwellian bit of nomenclature if there ever was one), organizations participating in the CFC must provide employee rosters to be matched against so-called terrorist watch lists. Any matches between names disqualifies the organzation's participation unless it fires the branded employee. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asserts that most such watch lists employed so far in other homeland security endeavors have been riddled with errors, and so it has withdrawn from the CFC program rather than comply with government vetting of its personnel rolls. The ACLU stands to lose
Department of self-promotion Just to demonstrate that she toils not entirely alone in her garrett, your blogstress offers proof of her live interaction with actual media people. The occasion was the launch of TV Newser by MediaBistro.com . TV Newser is the product of media wunderkind Brian Stelter, who created the famed CableNewser site from his dorm room. Kid is way too smart for the good of us age-before-beauty types.