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Jim Wallis, evangelical Christian, progressive, and author of God’s Politics, has a blog. Currently it features a dialogue with Ralph Reed, the right-wing former leader of the Christian Coalition.

Has potential.

Hey, a new movie! Al Franken: God Spoke. (The website uses a Flash application that doesn’t want to run in my regular browser. C’mon, guys. A little less fancy, a little more accessible, please.)

Distribution seems to be very limited. It will be here in Columbus, Ohio for one day next month. What, did they only make one print?

The trailer and clips look interesting, but distribution and that strange Flash application make it look like they’re trying to hide this movie.

Update: When I bought my ticket, I was told Franken was originally supposed to appear in person, but wouldn’t be here in Columbus. Maybe that’s why the movie’s showing in just one city at a time.

George W. Bush’s polling numbers remain positive in one area: the War on Terror. Naturally, in this year’s elections, Republicans are running on this one great strength. How do you measure the Bush administration’s success against al Qaeda? Here’s one way:

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Gary Weddle followed the news so closely he forgot to shave. After a week he decided not to shave until Osama bin Laden was caught or killed.

If he’s not careful, Mr. Weddle might get rounded up by the Bush administration and shipped off somewhere for torture.

Atrios on the Republicans’ complaints about Democrats:

They’ve been telling us to clap louder for 3 and a half years, and this is the consequence.

Abraham Lincoln’s Annual Message to Congress on December 1, 1862:

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

The current Republican leadership has chosen “dishonor,” and they don’t want to let go of it.

The Washington Post reports that John McCain’s fight to respect the Geneva Conventions and oppose legalized torture is gonna cost him:

Sen. John McCain’s bid to position himself as the natural heir to President Bush as a wartime commander in chief and to court conservative leaders in advance of his likely 2008 presidential campaign has threatened to run aground in recent days, as the two men clash over how to detain and try terrorism suspects.

…

In a reprise of criticism showered on McCain during his 2000 campaign, some prominent conservatives are branding him a disloyal Republican and an unreliable conservative because of his assertiveness on the detainee issue.

Let me understand this. Torture is now one of the core values of the Republican Party, and you’re not a good Republican if you’re against it?

Bill Frist (he of the Fristian Bargain) says Republicans will filibuster an interrogation bill if it contains McCain’s anti-torture language:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist signaled yesterday that he and other White House allies will filibuster a bill dealing with the interrogation and prosecution of detainees if they cannot persuade a rival group of Republicans to rewrite key provisions opposed by President Bush.

Frist’s chief of staff, Eric M. Ueland, called the dissidents’ bill “dead.”

You know what’s dead? The Party of Lincoln.

Bob Geiger:

How did Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) commemorate Constitution and Citizenship Day, when he returned to the Senate floor on Monday? In an odd twist of logic, he blamed the minority party for how little work has been done in the 109th Congress.

September 17, which fell on Sunday, celebrated the ratification of the United States Constitution and Frist used that occasion to announce that Senate Democrats are actually the reason that the last 20 legislative months have been proclaimed the “Do-Nothing Congress.”

…

Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who has endured this Congress with control of no committees, an inability to pass any meaningful legislation and no say over the Senate’s legislative agenda, was on Frist faster than Halliburton snaps up a no-bid contract.

“For more than 3 years, this Congress, which has been given the name of the ‘do-nothing Congress,’ has turned a blind eye to the intractable war in Iraq, ignoring the administration’s many mistakes and allowing it to stay on a failed course,” said Reid. “Here we are, with 6 days left in the 109th Congress, and the Republicans, who control the House and Senate and the White House, have not held one hearing — not one — into the President’s wartime failures.”

…

Reid went on to give the Senate leadership a quick history lesson on how Congress is suppose to work and how it indeed operated before the current crop of Bush rubber-stampers took over:

During the Civil War, President Lincoln was faced continually with oversight hearings by his Congress. Of course, we know during World War II, there were a number of commissions. The most famous was that conducted by Senator Harry Truman of Missouri, which led to his becoming Vice President. Some say, but for that he would not have been chosen as Vice President.

…

“This Republican Congress has wasted 20 months on horse slaughtering; the Schiavo case, dealing with someone’s personal relationship, which should not even have been before this body; gay marriage; the nuclear option; flag burning; repealing the estate tax,” said Reid. “But they could not find a day for some time to look at the President’s mistakes, missteps, and misconduct, which have hurt American security and plunged Iraq into a civil war — not a day.”

There’s more. Go read the whole thing. There’s video at Alternet — click the picture of Liza Minelli and Joel Grey. (No, I don’t know why it’s a picture of Liza Minelli and Joel Grey.)

Some physicists have speculated that there might exist countless parallel universes, each different in some small or large way.

Intrigued by this idea, I’ve done some exploring, and discovered a parallel earth almost identical to our own, except that Americans were greeted as liberators after invading Iraq. With a crude telephone constructed with two tin cans and a piece of string theory, I’ve been able to communicate with this alternate world’s version of myself.

He wasn’t surprised to hear from me because he had been working on an identical telephone himself. In several long conversations we established just how similar our two worlds were: I described a dust bunny under his coffee table, and he told me where I’d left my VCR remote.

“Okay — who’s your vice president?” I asked.

“Dick Cheney,” he replied. “Former congressman from Wyoming. He was Secretary of Defense for Bush’s father, Chief of Staff for Jerry Ford. Real jerk.”

“Same guy. Did — did he shoot a guy with a shotgun earlier this year?” I asked.

“Yeah, in a hunting accident. Fortunately the guy survived. Cheney apologized for being so careless.”

“Cheney apologized?” I said. “In this world, the guy he shot apologized to Cheney.”

There was a long silence. Then my alternate self said, “Ha ha. Very funny. Who is this, really?”

“Really, really, it’s true,” I said. “See, there’s a difference right there. But what I really want to know is why Americans were greeted as liberators in your world and not here. Let’s run through it again.”

“Okay,” my other self said. “War starts. Dubya was president, Cheney vice-president. Colin Powell was Secretary of State, now it’s Condi Rice. Rumsfeld at Defense.”

“Yeah, just like here,” I said, frustrated. “And before the invasion, Rummy said he would fire the next man who said we needed a post-war plan.”

“All right, funny guy, I’m hanging up right now,” my other self said angrily.

“I wish I was joking, but I’m not,” I said.

“Good Lord!” he said. “I mean — the military’s very tough on mistakes, you know? Admiral Kimmel and General Short lost their commands after Pearl Harbor. Colonels Geraghty and Gerlach were raked over the coals after the Beirut truck bombing even though they hadn’t been given adequate intelligence. The navy can throw a sailor in the brig just for smoking on deck at night, because the glow might give away the ship’s position. It’s a tough culture, because one mistake can get a lot of people killed. But deliberate obstruction of essential planning — that’s a whole other level. That’s criminal. So, what happened to your Rumsfeld when it came out that he actively interfered with post-war planning? Hanging? Firing squad? I’ll bet, since he’s a civilian, that he got off with just life in prison.”

“He got off, alright,” I said. “He’s still Secretary of Defense, still calling the shots in Iraq, and calling those who criticize him ‘appeasers’. Some retired generals have called for him to resign, but Bush is sticking with him.”

“Okay, Charlie, joke’s over,” said my counterpart. “You didn’t fool me for a minute. Parallel worlds I can believe, but next time, if you want to string somebody along, you’ve got to make the story at least half-way believable. I’ve never heard anything so stupid in my life.”

I felt a sharp tug on my tin-can telephone, and it vanished.

From Crooks and Liars, Bill Maher on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country:

Let me suggest that in a world turned hostile to America, the smartest message we can send to those beyond our shores is, “We’re not with Stupid.” Therefore, I maintain that ridiculing this president is now the most patriotic thing you can possibly do.

…

And by the way, when people like me ask questions about “does it still make sense to have these troops under fire?” That is supporting the troops. Asking for a plan is supporting the troops. Sitting around and parsing the meaning of “civil war”, that’s not supporting the troops, that’s supporting the President, and he’s not a troop, he just plays one on TV.

Here’s a blog about Ohio’s 15th congressional district, where Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy is challenging Republican incumbent Deborah Pryce.

Via Crooks and Liars: Jesus Camp.

Worshipping to a picture of President Bush.

…

Pastor Becky Fisher: This means war! …

I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places.

Kid: You know a lot of people die for God and stuff and they’re not even afraid.

Girl: We’re kinda being trained to be warriors, only in a much funner way.

What a great idea. Let’s make America more like Pakistan and the Middle East, because things are going so well over there.

Six months from “Wanted Dead or Alive” to “I truly am not that concerned about him.” Earlier this year the CIA made plans to shut down their bin Laden unit.

And yet we’re supposed to believe the Republicans are the best team to fight the terrorists?

A few snippets from the new PBS program AIR: America’s Investigative Reports illustrate the difference between real reporting and the journalistic stenography that tries to pass as reporting:

Bryan Lonegan, Immigration Attorney:

He [NPR investigative reporter Daniel Zwerdling] didn’t believe anything I said until I proved it to him. If I said something happened, then I’d better be able to prove that, either with documents or a witness. And then, wouldn’t you know, he’d go back and check with that witness to make sure.

…

I deal with a lot of journalists. Invariably, they call me up; they say “I’m doing a story on XYZ, what do you think?” I give them three or four sentences of, you know, a sound bite or a nice pithy quote to put in a story, and then they call up the government and they get a counterpoint. And so you have point, counterpoint: Bryan Lonegan says this, the government says that. There’s your story.

Daniel Zwerdling, Reporter:

That doesn’t do anybody a service, because we’re all bombarded with different points of view that all have equal weight. Well, every point of view does not have equal weight. Lies should not get the same amount of weight as the truth.

Opinions are not facts. Facts are not opinions. Facts are susceptible to test and verification. But that’s a lot of work, and in the 24-hour news cycle, too many so-called reporters have decided it’s easier to treat facts and opinion as interchangeable.

No wonder the Bush administration ridicules the reality-based community.

If you’re having trouble with your PC and you call for help, one of the first suggestions you’re likely to hear is “reboot.”

Before I began my current life of leisure, I was a professional Computer Guy. I helped support big OpenVMS servers with hundreds of simultaneous users. When our systems were acting flakey, we couldn’t just reboot. Instead, we took a careful look at the status of the system. Memory low? Running out of disk space? Any processes hung up, or running wild? Network trouble?

Sometimes we could fix a problem with a quick command or two. Sometimes we discovered configuration tweaks or software patches to fix the root cause and prevent similar problems in the future. And sometimes we were forced to throw up our hands and simply reboot.

A simple reboot doesn’t actually fix anything. It wipes the current current state of things from your computer’s memory and tries to start fresh, but the fundamental defects that led to your troubles haven’t been fixed, and it’s usually only a matter of time before everything’s snarled up again.

At The Washington Monthly, a number of conservatives are saying it’s time to reboot the conservative movement — Time for us to go:

Christopher Buckley:

Six years of record deficits and profligate expansion of entitlement programs. Incompetent expansion, at that: The actual cost of the President’s Medicare drug benefit turned out, within months of being enacted, to be roughly one-third more than the stated price. Weren’t Republicans supposed to be the ones who were good at accounting?

Bruce Bartlett:

As a conservative who’s interested in the long-term health of both my country and the Republican Party, I have a suggestion for the GOP in 2006: lose. Handing over at least one house of Congress to the other side of the aisle for the next two years would probably be good for everyone. It will improve governance in the country, and it will increase the chances of GOP gains in 2008.

Joe Scarborough:

When The Washington Monthly reached me at my office recently, a voice on the other side of the line meekly asked if I would ever consider writing an article supporting the radical proposition that Republicans should get their brains beaten in this fall.

“Count me in!” was my chipper response. I also seem to remember muttering something about preferring an assortment of Bourbon Street hookers running the Southern Baptist Convention to having this lot of Republicans controlling America’s checkbook for the next two years.

William A. Niskanen:

Divided government is, curiously, less divisive. It’s also cheaper. The basic reason for this is simple: When one party proposes drastic or foolish measures, the other party can obstruct them. The United States prospers most when excesses are curbed, and, if the numbers from the past 50 years are any indication, divided government is what curbs them.

Bruce Fein:

The most conservative principle of the Founding Fathers was distrust of unchecked power. Centuries of experience substantiated that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Men are not angels. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition to avert abuses or tyranny. The Constitution embraced a separation of powers to keep the legislative, executive, and judicial branches in equilibrium. As Edward Gibbon wrote in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.”

But a Republican Congress has done nothing to thwart President George W. Bush’s alarming usurpations of legislative prerogatives. Instead, it has largely functioned as an echo chamber of the White House.

Jeffrey Hart:

Today, the standard-bearer of “conservatism” in the United States is George W. Bush, a man who has taken the positions of an unshakable ideologue: on supply-side economics, on privatization, on Social Security, on the Terri Schiavo case, and, most disastrously, on Iraq. Never before has a United States president consistently adhered to beliefs so disconnected from actuality.

Richard Viguerie:

If Big Government Republicans behave so irresponsibly and betray the people who elected them, while we blindly, slavishly continue backing them, we establish that there is no price to pay for violating conservative principles.

In the Washington Post, Scarborough suggests that Republicans should just blame George W. Bush:

How exactly does one convince the teeming masses that Republicans deserve to stay in power despite botching a war, doubling the national debt, keeping company with Jack Abramoff, fumbling the response to Hurricane Katrina, expanding the government at record rates, raising cronyism to an art form, playing poker with Duke Cunningham, isolating America and repeatedly electing Tom DeLay as their House majority leader?

How does a God-fearing Reagan Republican explain all that away?

Easy. Blame George W. Bush.

I can’t help thinking that what these guys want most is, before the 2008 elections, to wipe from the voters’ memory the fact that Republicans got us into this mess.

A simple reboot doesn’t actually fix anything. It’s not enough to put the Democrats into a position to share blame for the deeply screwed-up state of the nation. We’ve got to root out the fundamentally defective ideas that have got us into this state.

PC World has a list of the 25 worst web sites:

From unforgettable flame-outs to some of the most popular destinations around, no one is safe from our look at the world’s dumbest dot-coms and silliest sites.

I hate it when I lose out on an award just because I wasn’t even considered. Oh, well. There’s always next year.