Get out your red pens!

So The Raw Story has a copy of the GOP talking points surrounding Doughboy's time in the hot seat.

As a former copyeditor, this just makes me want to cringe. Why Does Everything Have To Be In Initial Caps? Is Everything A Proper Noun When Republicans Speak And Write?

I GuEsS iTs bEtTeR tHaN tYpInG LiKe tHiS.

Or something.

Everything you wanted to know about the Doughboy Debacle ...

... but were afraid to ask.

I love Salon because they do stuff like this. You know, for people like me, who sometimes need things spelled out for them.

Semantics, schmemantics.

Smug little ol' Doughboy is feeling all warm and cozy over there on Capitol Hill because he didn't actually refer to Valerie Plame by name. He just referred to her as "Wilson's wife. Does Doughboy have a point? That depends on how you look at it.

From a purely semantic point of view, yeah. The words "Valerie Plame" didn't exactly roll off his tongue. But that's a very simple argument for such a complicated issue.

Now, for the sake of argument, let's take a step back and look at what the law says for libel and defamation of character. Yes, I know, separate laws, and that there is already a law that says it's illegal for people to out a CIA undercover agent. Just work with me here. And yes, I know I'm not a lawyer.

For a plaintiff to win damages in a libel suit, most plaintiffs must prove:

• Defamation (presence of defamatory language)
• Identification (defamation was about the plaintiff)
• Publication (defamation was disseminated)
• Fault (defamation published as a result of negligence/recklessness)
• Falsity (this burden only for person suing for defamation related to matters of public concern)
• Personal harm (loss to reputation, emotional distress, loss of business revenues, etc.)

Plame is able to meet the burden of proof on every single one of these items.

If this were a simple libel case, Rove's lawyer's angle would focus on the "identification" portion of it - that's all he has to go on. Because he said "Wilson's wife," and not "Valerie Plame," he hopes that this will get his client off the hook. But I don't think any court would rule in favor of Doughboy based on this.

Because, if one were to do a Google search on "Joseph C. Wilson IV," you'd find a corporate bio on him written for Corporate & Public Strategy Advisory Group, in which it says he is married to "the former Valerie Plame." Anyone reading that Novak column would be able to make the identification if they tried hard enough.

Thanks to this article for the heads up.

"Scott, this is ridiculous."

Scott McLellan took a pounding today during this morning's White House press briefing. Here's an excerpt:

Q: Scott, can I ask you this; did Karl Rove commit a crime?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, David, this is a question relating to an ongoing investigation, and you have my response related to the investigation. And I don't think you should read anything into it other than we're going to continue not to comment on it while it's ongoing.

Q: Do you stand by your statement from the fall of 2003 when you were asked specifically about Karl and Elliott Abrams and Scooter Libby, and you said, "I've gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they are not involved in this" -- do you stand by that statement?

MR. McCLELLAN: And if you will recall, I said that as part of helping the investigators move forward on the investigation we're not going to get into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time, as well.

Q: Scott, I mean, just -- I mean, this is ridiculous. The notion that you're going to stand before us after having commented with that level of detail and tell people watching this that somehow you decided not to talk. You've got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium, or not?

MR. McCLELLAN: And again, David, I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said, and I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is when the investigation --

Q: Why are you choosing when it's appropriate and when it's inappropriate?

MR. McCLELLAN: If you'll let me finish --

Q: No, you're not finishing -- you're not saying anything. You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke out about Joseph Wilson's wife. So don't you owe the American public a fuller explanation? Was he involved, or was he not? Because, contrary to what you told the American people, he did, indeed, talk about his wife, didn't he?

MR. McCLELLAN: David, there will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.

Q: Do you think people will accept that, what you're saying today?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I've responded to the question.

I think this is the first time I've ever seen a press secretary badgered with questions like this. And I gotta say, it brought a tear to my eye. This is the type of questioning that should have been happening all along.

And of course - in this administration's most maddening fashion, it's quite obvious McClellan tried very hard to stick to the talking points:

• Nobody wants to get to the bottom of this more than the POTUS
• We've been asked not to comment on an ongoing investigation (even though we did before the Doughboy story broke)

Yawn. If it's one thing this administration is good at, it's staying on message. Even though it makes you look like an idiot and that you're obviously evading the question. I'd like to think that this is the beginning of the end of Doughboy and the rest of these miscreants. I'd like to think that mainstream America is opening its eyes to see what a horrible breach of ethics this is. We'll see, I guess.

Let me repeat the mantra again:

Karl Rove and others in the White House exposed an undercover CIA agent in order to cover up their lies about Iraq.

I hope journalists from all over rise up and get in touch with their inner Woodward and Bernstein. Let's make this administration crumble, dismantling its corrupt foundation brick by brick. And when it does, I want "The Architect" right there to witness the fruit of his dishonest, unethical, sleazy, and just plain evil labors come crashing down in front of his pasty, no chin-having face.

2005 AIDS Walk

It's coming up this Sunday. Would you like to sponsor me? Click here. Many thanks to those who gave very generous donations. Together, we can change the course of this epidemic.

I just threw up in my mouth a little.

While reading King of Zembla's blog today, I came across this sickening fact.

Doughboy and I share the same birthday.

Aside from the fact that the both of us both need air to survive, I'd like to think I have nothing in common with this man: His actions do not reflect my wants or needs as an American, and basically, he's just plain evil.

Okay, sorry. I know. I said I wouldn't post anything else today. But I just had to get this out of my system.

United We Stand

I heard about the London bombings this morning as I was getting ready for work. My first thought was about my friend Cecilia, who has been on assignment there for the past year. Thankfully, she's alright, and was just returning to London today via Copenhagen.

I wish I can say the same for the more than 30 Londoners killed in the explosions. My heart goes out to their families. I hope the perpetrators are found and are brought to justice. And I hope that this never happens again.

I also wish I could say more about this, but it would be in poor taste. I'll save it for another day.

What a dork.

I think Dubya gets the award for the Most Clumsy President of All Time. As BYO - the brilliant mind that brought this article to my attention - says:

Lance Armstrong, he is not.

What I wanna know is, did Doughboy get to kiss his boo-boo?

Om.

My new mantra, courtesy of Brother Kenya:

Karl Rove and others in the White House exposed an undercover CIA agent in order to cover up their lies about Iraq.

You're going down, Doughboy.

That is all.

Could this be the answer to my prayers?

Karl "The Architect" Rove is playing dumb.

Lawrence O'Donnell mentioned a few days ago on the Huffington Post that Doughboy was Time Magazine Reporter Matt Cooper's source rgarding the whole Valerie Plame thing. O'Donnell goes into the issue at length in his July 4 posting. In it, he says:

The next day, Luskin was forced to open the first hole in the Rove two-year wall of silence about the case. In a huge admission to Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, Luskin confessed that, well, yes, Rove did talk to Cooper. It is a huge admission in a case where Rove and Luskin have never, before Friday, felt compelled to say a word about Rove's contact with Cooper or anyone else involved in the case.

In what is being quickly known as the "But I didn't inhale" defense, Doughboy's in the clear because, well, he didn't KNOWINGLY reveal any confidential information. Doughboy Lawyer Robert Luskin emphatically asserts that his round-faced client didn't reveal any secrets, but basically - as stated in the LA Times article:

Newsweek magazine reported on its website Saturday that Rove was one of Cooper's sources identified in notes that Time turned over to Fitzgerald. And separately, MSNBC political analyst Lawrence O'Donnell said in a taped TV program that he had information indicating Rove was one of Cooper's sources. O'Donnell's comments were made in a segment of "The McLaughlin Group" that was set to air in Los Angeles on PBS Saturday night.

Either way, Doughboy is involved. In what capacity, remains to be seen.

My question is, even though Robert Novak was the first to break the story on Valerie Plame, why is the federal investigation focusing on reporters Cooper and Miller? Is anyone going after Novak? If not, why not? Or have they, and I just totally missed the memo? Someone school me.

In any case, if Cooper and Miller go to jail for refusing to reveal their sources, more power to them. They're doing their part to maintain whatever dignity journalists have left.

Props to Tamara over at T and A for the heads up.

Doggie Raper Turned Doggie Murderer?

I don't think I even need to comment on this. Do I?

SPARTANBURG, SOUTH CAROLINA (FOX Carolina News) - A Campobello teen is accused of raping one neighbor's dog and another neighbor's two little girls. Now the dog has died and charges against the teen have been upgraded.
[...]

Princess's little dog house is empty now. Sylvia Jones says she died of internal bleeding this past Sunday because of the rape. "The vet told me she had a little blood in her urine and that she was bleeding inside."

Sylvia says she and her husband would not have believed Cory Williamson raped Princess exactly two weeks to the day she died had they not seen it with their own eyes.

"When I got here we were laying on the deck looking at him and he had his pants down and he was doing sexual activity with the dog like a man would do to a woman."

The Jones family says Princess wouldn't eat or play anymore after the attack. "She (Princess) couldn't even sit down, her bottom was swollen sore."

Read more here.

Thanks (I think) to Lily for the heads up. I'm going to go barf now.

Out in the streets, they call it murder

I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm a huge reggae/dancehall fan. I first heard this Damian "Junior Gong" Marley song on the way to work one morning, and almost got into a wreck because I was feeling the music a little too much.

Anyway, here's a link to the video, courtesy of That Good Good, who made me as happy as a little girl - mystery solved, now all I have to do is figure out how to get a copy of this song for my very own.

Sidebar: Checked out the reggae night at the Shattuck Down Low. All in all, very mellow vibe, great music, $2.50 Red Stripes, and two - count 'em, two! - female selectors!

Hypocrisy abounds

So I'm at this bar with some new friends last night, having a few drinks and listening to some live blues band, when one of us asks everyone at the table if they've ever been married. My answer was that no, I've never been married, and the older I get - and at the failure rate of my relationships - the more I become resigned to the fact that I probably won't, and even if I did, I'd be afraid of the deep emotional fuckover it would be if the marriage failed.

So I guess the jury's out on whether or not I'd ever want to. At least, nobody has inspired me to want to. Yet.

So this morning, I'm reading yesterday's Morford op-ed piece about Spain, the latest enlightened country to make gay marriage legal, and he had a link to this other SF Chronicle columnist, Steven Winn, who said the following (emphasis mine):

One in two marriages, according to steel-plated conventional wisdom, ends in divorce. Recent numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics suggest the risk is even greater in red states, where the divorce rate is 29 percent higher than it is in blue states.

Oh, that sound? Don't worry. That's just my cognitive dissonance alarm going off again.

So let me get this straight: These people - these morally sound, Bible-lovin', no alcohol in the house havin', gay/black/latino/non-white hatin', George Dubya followin' , Defense of Marriage Act believin' people - get divorces at a much higher rate than people who live in blue states.

I see it now. I understand. The institute of marriage does need protecting - from them.

Friday Napoleon Dynamite Blogging

FINALLY. An online quiz I can agree with. Have a great weekend everybody.



I'm LaFawnduh. Why are you so sweaty?


Which Napoleon Dynamite character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Feel the bloat

Bank of America to Buy MBNA in $35 Billion Deal

I worked for BofA for almost ten years, and lived through the merger with NationsBank. Left the bank in 2001 to go to grad school. Since then, BofA has gotten OH SO big. Largest credit card issuer in the United States. The fourth most profitable company in the world. Scary.

Oh, and P.S., 6,000 working stiffs are going to lose their jobs over this.

My, how you've grown.

He must be stopped!

In my quest to rid this world of all that is evil, I urge you to sign this petition. Because, as my friend Erica so aptly puts it, Tom Cruise is a freak. Heh.

(disclaimer: text appears as is on the petition; I am not responsible for any typos or grammatical errors or anything that would glaringly fly in the face of my intelligence. smirk.)

Dear Mr. Spielberg,

We, the undersigned, wish to inform you that we are compelled to boycott your movie “War of the Worlds.” Our decision is based solely on the abhorrent behavior of Mr. Tom Cruise. We will not be spending our good money to support the ridiculous and potentially dangerous antics of this raving narcissist. Mr. Cruise’s actions and comments have been offensive and insulting when not downright laughable.

• We do not want to hear Mr. Cruise’s uneducated and unsubstantiated opinions on medicine and Psychiatry. His mean-spirited decision to use Brooke Shields as an example was unforgivable. The potential impact on those in need of treatment, who might heed the advice of a ‘celebrity’ over a trained professional, is dangerous. If Mr. Cruise believes that vitamins can cure mental illness, then perhaps he should consider increasing his dosage.
• We do not want to be enlightened about Mr. Cruise's ‘religion’ of Scientology. If he is so concerned about mind control, he should not be part of an organization that seems to use this tactic as its Modus Operandi. Mr. Spielberg, was the fully staffed Scientology tent you allowed Mr. Cruise to have on the movie set placed right next to the Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, and Muslim tents? Didn’t think so.
• We are sick of being force-fed his relationship with Katie Holmes which, if it isn’t the publicity hoax it appears to be, is a pathetic, juvenile, attention mongering display. Tom’s obvious control of his Stepford-Wife-To-Be is frightening.
• We do not want to watch his ‘out of control’ yet suspiciously manipulative antics nor listen to his condescending, holier-than-thou judgments. This man cannot even articulate a coherent sentence. He should stick to reading movie scripts.

It is revealing that the most compelling character Tom Cruise has ever portrayed is “Frank TJ Mackay” from Magnolia, a control-freak with a pathological need to assert his obsession over not just those around him, but the public as well, by exploiting his access to public media. Apparently Mr. Cruise was playing himself.

Perhaps he views the aliens he battles in War of the worlds as a metaphor for the aliens he and his Scientology friends believe inhabit we humans. Relax Tom, it’s just a movie. A movie we will not be paying to see.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

Ad nauseum

Do I really have to tell you what I think about Dubya's speech last night? I didn't watch it, but I'm reading about it right now.

Does he really expect me to believe that the American casualties in Iraq are "worth it"?

Does he think we can't see through the exploitativeness of all his 9/11 invoking?

And all these stories permeating the MSM - the missing blonde, white, pretty girl in Aruba, the bug-eyed runaway bride, shark attacks, raging pitbulls, etc. etc. etc. are supposed make us forget that our soldiers are still stuck in Iraq with no viable exit strategery.

Ugh. I can't stand it anymore. I don't even know what else to say.

UPDATE 6/30: How come nobody told me I spelled "nauseum" wrong?

Why I love Zeitgeist.

1. We found rock star parking, quickstyle at this bar.
   
2. Cute bike messenger guys.
3. Informal as all hell.
4. No yuppies.
5. $2.50 Pabst.
6. Bartenders with delicious attitude.
7. Kickass jukebox.
8. Clean bathrooms (at least, during happy hour).
9. Tamale Lady.
10. The "BBQ-at-a-friend's-backyard" atmosphere.
11. $2.50 Pabst.
12. The woman passing out beads with fuschia hair.
13. All the interesting crap they have on the walls, especially the "Wet Pain" sign behind the bar.
14. Hanging bike rack in the back.
15. Live mariachi.
16. That girl who gave me a free cigarette, even if I told her I'd give her a quarter for it.
    

To quote Drew @ Scamboogah/SFist: Liver ... out!

Tom Cruise is wack.

And here's proof. Courtesy of the folks at Suckful.

Okay, it's not really "proof." But it's hilarious as shit. Enjoy.

Tag, you're it.

Drew at Scamboogah! tagged me. He just sent me this questionnaire that has been going around and around and around. Kind of like a chain letter. But not. Anyway, wanna know more about me? Here goes:

1. What were three of the stupidest things you have done in your life?

• Ever sleep with someone you regret? Ever relive the embarassment and shame years later? Well, I dated this one guy who, even three years later, makes me say “doh!” And girrrrrrrrrl, the shame is painful!
• Having that fight with Andy back in high school. We’d probably be married right now if I wasn’t such a nerd.
• Quitting the swim team in high school after the first day of practice. (Note: I really don’t obsess this much over high school. Seriously.)

2. At the current moment, who has the most influence in your life?
My dad. He overcame a traumatic brain injury last year and his recovery has been amazing. You wouldn’t even know anything had happened to him if you looked at him. His tenaciousness, his refusal to give in, and his absolute determination to get better has touched me more than anyone will ever know. I admire this man so much. I still get choked up just thinking about it.

3. If you were given a time machine that functioned, and you were allowed to only pick up to five people to dine with, who would you pick?
Margaret Cho, my friend Dan, Rick James (bitch!), Jesus, and Hiltler (he's SO HOT right now!).

4. If you had three wishes that were not supernatural, what would they be?

• Some ugly, incontrovertible, un-spinnable sex scandal for the Triple-D team: Dubya, Dick, and Doughboy. Watch closely as people all over Jesusland wake up and smell the coffee.
• Being able to afford a house in the SF Bay Area.
• Finding a man that's not afraid to refer to me as “my girlfriend.” And actually meaning it.

5. Someone is visiting your hometown/place where you live at the moment. Name two things you regret your city not having, and two things people should avoid.
I’m just going to say San Francisco, because I was born there. People don’t come to “visit” where I live now.

I regret that SF has horrible parking. Not everyone can parallel park. And I hate to hear people bitch and moan about how there’s no parking in the City. I also regret that SF rents are too high for me to afford, because now I’m totally over my “I want to live in the City” phase.

When in SF, people should avoid Fisherman’s Wharf and that general vicinity, and “the Triangle.” Unless you’re into Paris Hilton wannabes. Then by all means. Go there. And stay there.

6. Name one event that has changed your life.
My dad’s injury last year totally changed my life. I seriously think that I’m going through post-traumatic stress or something, because it really rocked my world – and not in a good way. I mean hell, I started to tear up typing out my answer to Question #2. But, the good that came out of the entire thing is that my dad and I are much closer than we were before. And I have such a greater appreciation for life, and my parents, than ever.

7. Tag 5 people.
This outta be interesting.
Mike @ Jones of the Nile
Hoss @ Old Horsetail Snake
Virge @ so far ...
Tamara AND Allie @ T & A
Paul @ The Sun Keeps Rising