Emptywheel has the latest on Payola Patty:

In all, Ceci presents a landscape in which the most important players--aside from two Senators who have been slighted in the process thus far--are trade industry groups. And the most important issue for them is the profit they stand to make off of taxing America's middle class to make them wealthier.

I would love to know if any of the private industry sources for the article has ties to Warren Buffet.

If you haven't seen this yet, brilliant parody of the WaPo's Clinton beer video (h/t Shakesville):

THE ANSWER LIES IN THE WORLD OF WEYMOUTH! Weymouth was going to stage a soiree. To manufacture consent?

THE ANSWER LIES IN THE WORLD OF WEYMOUTH: By complete happenstance, Lally Weymouth’s first salon was going to be about health care.

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Washington Post

Our Readers Who Comment express great skepticism this morning about the news that health-care industry groups are promising the White House that they will use "efficiencies to trim the rise in health-care costs by 1.5 percent a year," as Michael A. Fletcher and Ceci Connolly report.

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When you get mildew, it's never just one plant. Whatever rotted Broder's sensibility and conscience infests everything. Take a look at this front page teaser today from Pravda on the Potomac:

It's all here, isn't it? All wrapped up in one little compact package.

Trawling through the Pravda web site reveals more juicy amusingness. Yes, I know, it is not news that it is a buffet of nuttiness. This time it is Sir Cabbagemallet, keeping the dream alive:

Having thus bravely rallied the international community and summoned the United Nations -- a fiction and a farce, respectively -- what was Obama's further response? The very next day, his defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean ICBMs. Such is the "realism" Obama promised to restore to U.S. foreign policy.

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*BOOP*

Greg Sargent

I can't believe I'm writing this, but for the foreseeable future this is my last post at TPM.

I'm heading over to The Washington Post, where I'll be writing the lead blog on a new site that WaPo is launching. This will drive you mad with curiosity, unfortunately, but the details on the new site and blog will only be forthcoming when it launches the week after next.

Let's take trip down memory lane:

More evidence that the Village really is a sack of pus comes from Saturday's Washington Post:
AIDS Funding Binds Longevity of Millions to U.S.
Open-Ended Commitment of Money Is Implied

President Bush plans to sign a bill next week that commits the United States to spending about $40 billion over the next five years to fight AIDS overseas, a major expansion of what many consider his most successful foreign policy initiative.

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The plainest way to say it is that everything, every last fucking thing, is "constructed" in the SCLM product/discourse/fairy tale. Someone thinks about what it is in it, and what is not, and how, one word at a time. So when this happens, people should remember it's a feature, and not a bug. What is funniest to me is that the WaPo, and the District, are queer havens, places where queer culture and thought and activity are open, vibrant. I guess I've just never been a part of that group of self-hating types who want to play these games.

But guys: trust me when I say, str8 America is over all this silliness. I look forward to the day, and indeed I believe it will come in my lifetime, when this sort of stunt is uncommon and quickly forgotten.

As the Blade reported last week, Maj. Alan Rogers, by all accounts a hero for his brave acts while serving in Iraq, was killed in January and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Rogers lived as openly gay a life as he could, given the military’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. He had many gay friends in D.C., patronized gay businesses and even worked as treasurer for the D.C. chapter of American Veterans for Equal Rights, a group working to overturn the military’s gay ban.

But the mainstream media accounts of his death omitted any reference to his sexual orientation. These were not benign omissions. The Washington Post, in particular, worked overtime to excise any mention of Rogers’ sexual orientation. It did not even report his work for AVER. Several of Rogers’ gay friends told the Blade that they were interviewed by a Post reporter at the funeral, but their memories were not included in the paper’s coverage.

I say this as only one of my age and "race" can: there comes a time when people decide to hate others for different reasons. No construct lasts forever, and nothing cannot be changed. Yes, blah, I know it works 'both ways,' but in this case, working with younger people and knowing what they tell me about sex and sexuality and gender, I'm confident that this country is on the verge of finally shedding our particularly vulgar and unimaginative form of homophobia. And that's a good thing.

Feh, I'll chalk it up to yet another example in which the WaPo reminds me that I'm not sorry I don't read them. /tosses hair/ So tired, they are.

From L'il Debbie's online chat today:

Arlington, VA: Here's two useful ways the Post can rebuilt its credibility. First, get rid of editorial race-baiters such as Eugene Robinson. What a mean, offensive writer! Second, at least TRY to balance a blatant partisan like Dan Froomkin. While he should have free-reign, he should also have a counterpart that expresses the White House perspective without a cloak of paranoia and breathless skepticism. Unless and until the Post addresses these glaring affronts to fairness, your little sessions here online will never do much good.

Deborah Howell: I disagree about Gene Robinson. I am a fan of his. I will tell the Web site editors about your comments on Froomkin.

Notice the immediate support for Robinson.

And notice the immediate complete lack of support for Froomkin. I guess she's not a "fan," eh?

Tell them so.

Got a lot to get to today, so here are some links to interesting reading.

Please check out this Sibel Edmonds blog. There is so much going on in her case. She's a CT foiler's wet dream: a high ranking intelligence official who is spilling the beans. Everyone should keep in mind what she is talking about, because it touches on so much of what is happening in our government today.

It just gets more and more absurd in the Padilla case. Now the government is claiming they "lost" interrogation tapes. What are they hiding? He was torutured interrogated over 80 times. More here.

Think you're good at slavish devotion to the ones you love? You've got nuthin' on Libby.

It is sometimes called a bubble or a boomlet or a bandwagon. A new political figure arrives on the national stage and audiences swoon. Suddenly, mysteriously, and without anybody knowing much about him, he is The One, the next hot thing, eclipsing all other presidential wannabes.

When Sen. Barack Obama descended on New Hampshire earlier this week, the crowds were rapturous. The Illinois Democrat was compared to JFK and Elvis, and one woman told Slate, "I'm not comparing him to Jesus Christ, but . . . "

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Newberry is Shrill! And not without reason:

Why is the Post printed on paper?

To wipe the drool off their chins when talking about reactionary racist Republicans.

Michael D. Shear and Tim Craig turn in an unprofessional, biased and blatantly inaccurate piece on "The Rise and Fall of George Allen", blaming "Washington" and not Allen.

Note that there is not one quote from anyone to the left of Attila the Hun. Note that the entire series of "accusations" are framed as being absurd - when, in fact, they were given reality by the lies Allen told trying to explain away the remark. It wrapped racism along with bigotry along with ignorance - the target was a young man born in the United States - in a way that made it clear that not only has George Allen not caught up with Virginia's changing politics, he hasn't caught up with the 20th century.

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Our Seb, yesterday. Let's pass by his Beltway-standard pissing and moaning about the polarization of American politics--making one's way to the cocktail weenie table is so unpleasant lately. You never know who you'll run into! Ain't it awful?--and make our way, as few before us have, to the end of his column, where we find this gem:

I'm not predicting the end of the American era, not by a long shot. The U.S. business culture is as pragmatic and effective as its political culture is dysfunctional. But has there been a worse moment for American power since Ronald Reagan celebrated morning in America almost a quarter of a century ago? I can't think of one.

Well. The news, today:

Former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling was to learn Monday how long he will have to spend behind bars for orchestrating one of the nation's biggest financial scandals.

The [Enron] collapse wiped out thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in market value and more than $2 billion in pension plans.

That's some "pragmatism", eh? Real "effective", right, Seb?