In late December I blogged that all I wanted for Christmas was to hear Bill O’Reilly say “Senator Al Franken”. Looks like I will finally, finally get my very late Christmas present:

Al Franken, a satirist known for his biting political humor, is headed to the U.S. Senate, the survivor of an epic legal struggle that opponent Norm Coleman finally conceded he couldn’t win.

Franken’s triumph followed a 5-0 decision Tuesday by the Minnesota Supreme Court declaring him the winner and a quick concession by Coleman. Franken, a Democrat, could be sworn into office soon after the July 4th holiday.

“I don’t know if it has really sunk in,” said Franken, appearing at his home in Minneapolis shortly after receiving a congratulatory call from Coleman, a Republican. “He said it was a very hard-fought campaign. I said, ‘Norm, it couldn’t have been closer.’

“It was a nice way to end this.”

Read on, happily.

Tom Lehrer once quipped that if there were going to be any great songs from WWIII, we’d better start writing them now. The same is true for propaganda posters.

Having trouble keeping track of all the GOP sex scandals? So are we! Luckily, Talking Points Memo has made up this handy flowchart.

With the GOP so strongly touting family values, I know you’re amazed when yet another one fesses up to having an affair.

But man, it’s like they want to get caught when, you know, they simply disappear from the map for several days. Then get caught at an airport.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday, amid speculation over his whereabouts for the last several days, that he has been engaged in an extramarital affair with an Argentine woman.

Read on.

Roger Ebert writes:

Bill O’Reilly has been brought low by the same process that afflicted Jerry Springer. Once respected journalists, they sold their souls for higher ratings, and follow their siren song. Springer is honest about it: “I’m going to Hell for what I do, and I know it,” he’s likes to say. O’Reilly insists he is dealing only with the truth. When his guests disagree with him, he shouts at them, calls them liars, talks over them, and behaves like a schoolyard bully.

I am not interested in discussing O’Reilly’s politics here. That would open a hornet’s nest. I am more concerned about the danger he and others like him represent to a civil and peaceful society. He sets a harmful example of acceptable public behavior. He has been an influence on the most worrying trend in the field of news: The polarization of opinion, the elevation of emotional temperature, the predictability of two of the leading cable news channels. A majority of cable news viewers now get their news slanted one way or the other by angry men.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, triggered a diplomatic row today when he publicly singled out “evil” Britain as the foremost enemy of the Islamic republic.

Truly, these are hard times for America when the Brits steal the coveted title.

Read on at the Guardian.

Boston peeps, progessive talk is back on the air in the Hub! Tune in to Revolution Boston on 1510 AM from 6am to 6pm.

In “Tuned In” at Time Magazine, James Poniewozik asks:

Suppose two men committed separate acts of extremist murder in the United States within a month. Suppose the gunmen attacked a church and a national landmark, motivated by politics and religious prejudice, targeting a nationally controversial figure and innocent civilians. Suppose there was a history of attacks by similarly motivated men in America, ranging from individual shootings and bombings to an act of spectacular violence that destroyed a federal office building.

Suppose two Muslim men had done this.

Is there even a question that we would be using a particular term to describe this behavior? Might reporters and news anchors be terming these horrible acts, say, “terrorism”?

The Webster definition of terrorism is “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.” Now, one could argue that the shooting at the Holocaust Museum and the murder of Dr. George Tiller were not systematic acts. But they were no less systematic than other acts of “disturbed individuals” that are routinely described as terrorism. When some embittered sad sack is convicted for hatching a fanciful, possibly unexecutable, “aspirational rather than operational” plan to knock down the Sears Tower, or buy missiles, or blow up an airport, we go to the term “terrorism” quickly.

While I hope that Bray readers are not fans of Rockstar energy drink to begin with, here’s another reason to avoid the stuff:

Did you know ultra-conservative talk radio guy Michael Savage has intimate family connections to Rockstar Energy Drink? If lawyers for the company have their way, you wouldn’t, because over the past week they’ve started going after people who have publicized the connection. They managed to get one guy’s “Boycott Rockstar” facebook account closed without warning, and threatened him with a business libel lawsuit if he didn’t publicly apologize. A gay news website, gaywired.com, has had to publish a partial retraction. None of this changes the fact that Michael Savage’s son is listed as the founder and CEO of Rockstar, or that Michael Savage’s wife is listed as the director, treasurer, and secretary of both Rockstar and Savage Productions. Or that both companies share the same address.

For those who don’t know who he is, Michael Savage—whose real last name is Weiner—is a shock jock who likes to make outrageous statements about, among other things, gays and immigrants. Specifically, he doesn’t like either of those groups, and occasionally pops up in the media for (real examples) telling a gay caller to get AIDS and die and calling for the banning of all Muslim immigration to the U.S.

Traditionally conservative New Hampshire today became the sixth state in the nation — and the fifth state in New England — where same-sex couples will be allowed to marry.

“Today we’re standing up for the liberties of same-sex couples by making clear they will receive the same rights, responsibilities, and respect under New Hampshire law,” Governor John Lynch said before signing the legislation in a State House ceremony at about 5:20 p.m.

Read on in the Boston Globe.

Chicago radio host Erich “Mancow” Muller decided he’d get himself waterboarded to prove the technique wasn’t torture.

It didn’t turn out that way. “Mancow,” in fact, lasted just six or seven seconds before crying foul.

…The upshot? “It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,” Mancow told listeners. “It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back…It was instantaneous…and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.”

“Absolutely. I mean that’s drowning,” he added later. “It is the feeling of drowning.”

“If I knew it was gonna be this bad, I would not have done it,” he said.

Read on.

Dick Cheney continues to undermine the morale of this great nation with his attacks on the administration:

“If I don’t speak out, then where do we find ourselves? … Then the critics have free run, and there isn’t anybody there on the other side to tell the truth,” Cheney said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday…

The former vice president has has repeatedly criticized Obama’s decision to release four memos from the Bush presidency that discuss tactics such as waterboarding.

Why shouldn’t you speak out, Dick? Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the eight Bush years, it’s that we are at war and that criticizing the President during wartime gives comfort to our enemies. Do you want the terrorists to win, Dick? Do you want them to be comforted during this war on terror? No? Then please enjoy this nice piping hot cup of STFU that you spent eight years warming up all nice and toasty.

We here at Bray New World look forward to your continued, patriotic silence until the war ends. You know, when there is no more terror.

“Get Aids and die, you pig,” the American radio “shock jock” told a purportedly homosexual man who once badmouthed his teeth.

He has plenty more vitriol to go around. Latinos “breed like rabbits” , Muslims “need deporting” and as for autistic children, “in 99 per cent of cases it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out”.

Quite what he might say to Jacqui Smith if she called in is unclear, but it might just be: “Thank you very much”.

Shock jocks thrive on controversy and notoriety, and the Home Secretary must have exceeded Savage’s wildest dreams this week when she included him on a list of undesirables banned from entering Britain.

The 16 names were people who “fomented hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way” as to cause violence if they were allowed into the country, she told the BBC.

Read on at the Telegraph.

The Huffington Post has a great clip from Letterman, wherein Letterman responds to Cheney’s attacks on Obama by taking a little look at Cheney’s own record.

Sen. Snowe, writing from the Federal Reservation for Moderate Republicans up in Maine, opines in the Times:

There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.

It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”

I couldn’t agree more. We can’t continue to fold our philosophical tent into an umbrella under which only a select few are worthy to stand. Rather, we should view an expansion of diversity within the party as a triumph that will broaden our appeal.

The GOP’s drift to the far right reaps what it sows:

Veteran Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party on Tuesday, Sen. Harry Reid said.

The Specter party switch would give Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate majority of 60 seats if Al Franken holds his current lead in the disputed Minnesota Senate race…

Specter… has been part of a dwindling group of GOP moderates from the northeastern part of the country.

One wonders what will remain of the two remaining GOP moderates up in Maine; will they continue to tilt at windmills within the GOP’s shrinking tent, or will they follow Specter and further the blueness of Blue England?

Fox “News”(sp) anchor Shepard Smith seems not to have gotten the memo from his corporate superiors.

(audio NSFW)

Dear George Will,

For some reason, I read your insufferable biweekly column in Newsweek, which is either about how campaign-finance reform is against the First Amendment, or how baseball is emblematic of our national character, or both.

For some reason, I have also just read your latest screed against America’s most pressing current issue: adults wearing denim.

Denim. Complaining about how kids are wearing jeans instead of suit pants is like complaining about the Beatles and their mop-top haircuts and their senseless rock-and-roll music.

You’ve demonstrated just how in touch you are with this classic quote:

For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don’t wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.

Good taste can also be defined as taking social cues from someone who’s been alive since 1987.

Apparently your problem with denim is that it is associated with youth, and it’s therefore inappropriate for grown-ups to wear it. You compare the wearing of jeans to the watching of animated entertainment, even though animation nowadays is aimed at all age groups. Granted, I wouldn’t expect you to know this, since animation in the Astaire/Kelly era was either Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny, and not groundbreaking, Oscar-winning film. Similarly, you criticize anyone over 18 who plays video games, an entertainment industry that’s also reached complexity and maturity. I suppose we could instead sit out on our front porches in our seersucker suits and listen to the Brooklyn Dodgers on the AM radio instead, but nowadays, we grownups are able to enjoy video games — ones that have us socializing and interacting with one another, instead of passively sitting in a chair, listening to a narrator describe a slow-paced sports game.

In short, please enjoy a nice, piping-hot cup of STFU.

Sincerely,
Jeff

Over at Talking Points Memo, Robert Reich refutes a bunch of right-wing myths about taxes. An excerpt:

No one likes to pay taxes, so tax day typically attracts a range of right-wing Republicans, kooks, and demagogues, all of whom tell us how awful we have it. Herewith a short citizen’s guide (that is, a citizen’s guide that’s short rather than a guide for short citizens) responding to the predictable charges:

1. “Americans pay too much in taxes.” Wrong: The United States has the lowest taxes of all developed nations.

2. “The rich pay too much! The top ten percent of income earners pay over 72 percent of all income taxes!” Misleading: The main reason the rich pay such a large percent is they’ve become so much richer than the bottom 90 percent in recent years. If you look at what they pay as individuals — the percent of their incomes over and above the highest rate below them — you’ll see a steady decline over the years. When Republican Dwight Eisenhower was president, the marginal rate on the highest earners was 91 percent (after deductions and tax credits, closer to 50 percent); by 1980 it was still up there, at 70 percent (an effective rate of closer to 45 percent); under Bill Clinton, it was 38 percent (an effective rate closer to 28 percent).

He also provides this anecdote:

An acquaintance from law school, now a partner in one of Washington’s biggest and wealthiest law firms, explained to me one day over lunch how he and his partners use tax rules to create offsetting taxable gains and losses, and then allocate the gains to the firm’s foreign partners who don’t pay taxes in the United States. That way, they keep the losses here and shelter their income abroad. I noticed he had an American flag lapel pin. “You’re supporting our troops,” I said, referring to his pin. “Yup,” he replied, entirely missing my point.

True patriotism isn’t cheap. It’s about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.