I'll keep this as short as I can. Two simple rules for comments here:

1. State your preferred candidate.

2. Say something unambiguously positive about the other candidates.

Up to it?

An update for those who have been following the Deborah Howell fiasco:

1. She posted a response on the Washington Post blog. She's completely unapologetic, and insists on her lies.

2. Once again the commenters in the blog were calling her and the Post on it. Last I saw there were already over 200 comments to her latest post.

3. The comments have now disapeared, replaced by an 'email your comments' link instead.

4. Even more scandalous, the nearly 1000 comments that her original column had sparked on the 'Maryland Moment' post have now also been removed (some other posts that also had related comments seem to have been purged altogether). Many people in those comments had thoroughly and factually documented her lies, and well as the partisanship and mendaciousness of Steno Sue, Kurtz, Willis, and Leen (it actually made for a great read: amusing but also one the most detailed factual accounts I've seen of Abramoff, K-Street Project, etc.)

This is nothing short of a scandal!

Link: Washington Post Blog

Cook / RT Strategies just came out with what seems like their first ever Bush poll. They report a -11 spread (approve minus disapprove), which is one of the best results for Bush in a while if you discount the Rasmussen stuff.

Does anyone know the background on this outfit? Are they independent or partisan?

From Crooks and Liars. There was an exchange on Fox News last night between Bill O'Reilly and Wes Clark. The issue was the release of further Abu Ghraib pictures and video.

O'Reilly was incensed that it "puts our troops at risk". Clark responded that what's putting the troops at risk is the chain of command letting, or even making, this happen in the first place.

O'Lielly was saying that it happens just like this in every war, with Clark rebutting that those were isolated incidents which were court-martialed.

And then, this:

Video of the exchange here.

The Malmedy massacre? Well, about that on the flip...

On the request of management, I'm making this diary with some notes I wrote to put them up for discussion.

These are ideas I've had for a while, but they relate to the recent discussions about the impact of this community. I'll skip much of the backgound and analysis that justify my suggestion, and give you a quick digest geared towards the practical side of things.

Meanwhile, in the values-battle front...

One of the most shocking things for me over the past week has been the extent of the demonization and dehumanization of the black and poor of New Orleans, even in the middle of the direst of tragedies.

The US media constantly played up and fed the wildest rumors of violence, looting, and rioting, never bothering to check, never correcting when they gave false information, and rarely pausing to give a balanced assessment of situation.

The Guardian has a damning article. It ends with this vignette, which summarizes things well:

More after the flip.

I'm getting frustrated with all this talk of not rebuilding New Orleans, and how it's economically unsound (which is wrong) and untennable engineering-wise (which is false) to have a city there.  This meme is being pushed hard by Bush supporters. It's a great way to deflect blame and avoid accountability. It's also, in effect, an exercise in blaming the victim.

Now that the federal government, in the immortal words of Mayor Nagin, finally got off its ass, it's time to start thinking about these issues. As noted by Chris Bowers at MyDD, based on the SUSA poll, 31% of Americans now say the city of New Orleans should not be rebuilt, up 7 points in the past 24 hours. The right-wingers' campain to shift blame is already working, and New Orleans is going to pay dearly for it if they get their way.

More on the flip, with meme-fighting LTE suggestions.

This is a request for comments from any statistician around here. Others please ignore, unless you want to gawk at geeks. However, since diaries scroll by so fast these days, would be nice if you'd call it to the attention of anyone you know might be interested.

A short diary for letter-to-the-editor writers, in Utah and otherwise...

Since the biofuel diary has shot to the top of the recommended list and you can't give negative mojo to a diary, I thought there ought to be a diary to recommend for those of us who want to respectfully dissent and note that biofuel is a really bad idea.

More below the fold, including things you can do that actually work.

Ok, I saved this a week ago, and have been meaning to post a little analisys.

When the generaly politic and press-shy Red Cross comes out and says that there is 'torture' going on in Guantanamo, you know there really are some horrifically evil things being done in your name.

On that day, I did an exercise that I've been amusing myself with on such news occasions. To get an unbiased sample of news from US vs. non-US sources, I go to Google News and collect the first page of headlines on the topic. This entry is about the sample from the evening of Nov/30, the first news cycle after the story broke.

The first shocking observation is how relatively little coverage this story got in the US. The second, even more telling observation, is the language used to describe the allegations.

US sources:
8 use 'abuse' or other; 1 uses 'torture'.

Non-US sources:
5 use 'abuse' or other; 16 use 'torture'.

The one headline from US sources which uses the word 'torture' does so in the context of Gen. Myers denying it.

Evidence below the fold.

The Financial Times' editorial bluntly calls Safire and co. liars, intellectually dishonest, and their campaign against Annan "a scandal".

But, of course, don't hold your breath for the 'liberal' NY Times, a key vehicle for this scandal, to have second thoughts about (and much less criticize!) its little freak-show of fanatic rightwing columnists.

Link to the Financial Times' editorial.

When even the British financial press is 'to the left' of the US's so-called-liberal newspapers, you know something in this country is rotten to the core.