What's bringing a 'smile' to my face today? Impotent whining.



Some good analysis of what's been going on with this committee here.

Tuesday!

* Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in jail on Monday. I think what I enjoy most about this is the absurd dialogue, oddly ubiquitous, over whether the punishment is "too lenient" or "too harsh"—as if, that is, it were a sentence one might possibly serve out and not more years than any human being (much less any 71-year-old human being) has ever lived. They might as well have sentenced him to a million jillion years.

* Uranium on the Moon! We need to secure it before the Russians Chinese Martians Islamofascists get their hands on it; clearly we have no choice left but to blow up the Moon.

* The World Clock will depress you in any number of ways. Only 14,766 days of oil left; forty years, less than a third of Madoff's prison sentence. (via @charliejane)

* Obama spoke today to the controversies over gay rights that are rapidly disillusioning so many of his supporters. Via LawDork, who seems reasonably pleased with the speech, if at the same time anxious for real action to be taken.

* 'Iraqis jubilantly celebrate U.S. troop withdrawal': U.S. forces handed over formal control of Iraq’s major cities today ... “a defining step toward ending the U.S. combat role in the country.”

* Twitter Politics: With the Iranian election, we've seen a privately owned technology becoming a vital part of the infrastructure supporting political activity. That's a problem.

* Debating the public option: Will it just turn into a giveaway to the private insurers? Do you really have to ask?

* It seems like only yesterday that Obama was being accused of orchestrating the coup in Honduras. Now he's a communist for opposing it.

* And Ezra Klein has your chilling vision of things to come.

Sunday night links.

* Is Twitter the Drudge Killer? We can only dare to hope.

* The Art of the Movie Poster. (Thanks, Ron!)



* Accusations from the left that Obama was behind Honduras's coup seem completely unfounded.

* Sanford says he won't resign. Okay, then, impeachment.

* Steve Benen against bipartisanship. Also at Washington Monthly: early movement towards fixing the Democratic primaries for 2012 and beyond.

* Krugman has had a very good series of posts this weekend trying to bash denialist talking points on climate change. Here's the chart that dismantles the "we've been cooling since 1998" canard:

Obama 1, smear artists 0: CNN is reporting that Sonia Sotomayor will be Obama's first nominee to the Supreme Court. On Drudge, naturally, the freakout has already begun.

I'm 4.6% as terrified since the World Health Organization announced that there are only seven confirmed cases of swine flu fatality in Mexico, not 152. But I'm 2100% more angry at sensationalistic media hype and cynical fear-mongering from people who, by now, should at least be pretending to know better.

The government has announced the first swine flu fatality outside Mexico, a two-year-old child in Texas. Drudge, needless to say, is reporting this news with the sense of decorum and responsibility he is so rightly famous for.



Having gotten suitably excited about Typhoid Maria, we can now move on to the discovery of patient zero.

Five-year-old Edgar Hernandez survived the earliest documented case of swine flu in an outbreak that has spread across four continents.

His family lives in the 3,000-person village of La Gloria in the state of Veracruz, where a flu outbreak was reported on April 2.

Lab tests confirmed that Edgar was the only patient in Veracruz to test positive for the swine flu virus; the others had contracted a common flu. Health officials had returned to Edgar's sample only after cases of the new flu strain were spotted around the country.

...Edgar has recovered and playfully credits ice cream for helping him feel better.

He can have his ice cream after he tells us who helped him engineer the virus.

The Washington Independent has a great piece on how poorly sourced half-truths and outright lies are laundered through the British press before appearing on Drudge and right-wing cable news programs. Via Attackerman.

Drudge, reverting to form since the Palin pick, is trying to hype Obama's slim lead in the Nickelodeon.com primary, pointing out Kerry took 57% of that poll in 2004. And you know what? He's got a point: while the Nickelodeon poll is entirely unscientific, in this day and age of poll manipulation it might be the most accurate...

It hasn't aired in North Carolina yet, but TPM reports that disgraced former Secretary of State American hero Colin Powell did indeed endorse Barack Obama this morning on Meet the Press. More at TPM Election Central.

UPDATE: Within a half hour, Drudge is there to pull the inevitable lever:



UPDATE 2: MSNBC has the video.



UPDATE 3: As I wrote in the comments, contrary to my expectations before watching it I found this a very eloquent and moving endorsement that among other things completely eviscerates the smear campaign McCain has run, most devastatingly the neo-McCarthyism of people like Michelle Bachmann and the really vile disparagement of Muslim-Americans from high-ranking officials in the Republican party. It's one hell of an endorsement from a figure who still matters to a lot of people, if not to lefty bloggers.

Despite chants of "Denver! Denver!" from angry supporters at the RBC meeting, and despite Harold Ickes's spittle-flecked diatribe that same night, Huffington Post and Drudge (1, 2) are running with stories that Hillary Clinton will in fact suspend her campaign tomorrow, with supporting evidence pouring in from such sites as The Field, Daily Kos, TPM and Politico. At long last.

Meanwhile, in other political news, the Politco has an interesting piece making the case that support from the Drudge Report has boosted Obama. (Via The Stump.) There's three things to keep in mind here: first that Drudge has just as often gone after Obama, especially about the Wright nonsense; second that Drudge made his name taking down Bill Clinton and that there's no love there, even given the Clinton campaign's attempts to cozy up to Drudge this cycle; and third that Drudge is a complete and unrepentant scumbag and one of the single worst actors in both American politics and media culture.

As the Clintons learned very well this primary, the scorpion lets you take him halfway across the river first.