Fake is the new real. You may have already heard about fake is the new real's world subways to scale project, but the one that blows my mind is the Chicago: mile by mile photography project.

Sad but great name for the site, too.

{ 5:22 PM }

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Martha Stewart declared guilty — this is a disgrace in a country where Bush's #1 contributor, the Enron thief Ken Lay, roams free.

Here's a year-old post about Martha comparing her trades to those of Enron's Thomas White, former Secretary of the Army.

{ 2:10 PM }

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Low culture is bursting at the seams with great posts on sick, sick Ashcroft and the looting of Aristide's house.

{ 2:01 PM }

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Texas girls 16% more pregnant. More guns, more executions, and more teen pregnancies (TBOGG):

In 2002, a survey of girls age 15 to 19 found that 97 of every 1,000 girls in the United States was pregnant, compared to 113 of every 1,000 girls in Texas, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

Looks like those Texas Christian moms are doing a bang up job...if you'll excuse the expression.

You can't be a little bit pregnant, but you can be a little bit more pregnant.

{ 1:43 PM }

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A fighter, not a flighter. Josh Marshall identifies a pivotal Kerry quality:

...Kerry's always struck me as someone who was a fighter, someone who'd never give up, give in, let himself get hit without fighting back or flag in the home stretch.

Compare Kerry's competitive quality with the lack thereof in his opponent George W. Bush, who has managed throughout his entire life to win only on a playing field tilted in his favor. And, in Vietnam and in his political career, by having others do his fighting for him (Poppy, James Baker, Cheney, Scalia, Rove, etc.).

{ 12:56 PM }

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Speaking of misappropriated imagery, here's Dubya as an interstate highway logo.

{ 10:33 AM }

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Crematorium as campaign prop. The ubiquitous American flag in campaign commericals must now cover the corpses of unwilling victims, according to the new Republican rules of political engagement. The World Trade Center and Pentagon victims' families are not amused (FindLaw/Reuters):

Families who lost relatives in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks voiced outrage on Thursday at President Bush's first ads of his re-election campaign that use images of the devastated World Trade Center to portray him as the right leader for tumultuous times.

"Families are enraged," said Bill Doyle, 57, of New York, who is active in several Sept. 11 family groups. "What I think is distasteful is that the president is trying to use 9/11 as a springboard for his re-election."

"It's entirely wrong. He's had 3,500 deaths on his watch, including Iraq," said Doyle, whose 25-year-old son Joseph died at the trade center.

[...]

Ron Willett of Walnut Shade, Missouri, said he was disgusted when he saw the ads. Willett, who lost his 29-year-old son, John Charles, said he is now so upset, "I would vote for Saddam Hussein before I would vote for Bush."

"I think it is an atrocity," his wife, Lucy, added. "He should not be allowed to use those images at all."

With Republicans holding their political convention in New York in late August, victims said they hope Bush does not make it worse by speaking at the site now known as Ground Zero, which many view as sacred.

"If he does, there will be a protest and it could get ugly," said Doyle.

Several family members said their annoyance stemmed in part from Bush's refusal to testify publicly before the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"The Bush administration will not cooperate fully with the 9/11 commission and at the same time they are trying to invoke and own 9/11 and use it for his re-election," said Stephen Push from the Washington office of "Families September 11th." His wife died on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon that day.

The International Association of Fire Fighters, which has endorsed and campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, denounced the spots as "hypocrisy at its worst."

The 3,500 deaths on Bush's watch, including Iraq, neglect thousands of others: Iraqi civilians, Afghani civilians, and soldiers of other countries in the so-called "Coalition of the Willing" who were tricked into the Bush/Blair vortex of lies.

{ 9:30 AM }

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"People are poor because they are lazy." Oh, to be young, AWOL, and full of coke. Yoshi Tsurumi, one of Dubya's MBA professors (after he "worked it out" with the military to leave the Guard early) remembers him less than fondly:

At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago, George Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that "people are poor because they are lazy." He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to "free market competition." To him, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was "socialism."

[...]

[In the McKinley Gilded Age, which Bush is attempting to replicate] ...there was no Securities & Exchange Commission to check "creative accounting" and Enron-WorldCom like malfeasance of corporations. America had poor public schools and medical care. There was no minimum wage or labor standard. Both federal and state governments and courts were hostile to labor unions and civic groups protesting the "injustices" of the society. The natural environment was ravaged by railroads, mining, lumbering, and newly emerging oil and gas firms. Abortion was illegal. Women did not even have the vote. In the South, Christian fundamentalists were pressuring public schools to stop teaching Charles Darwin's evolution theories. During the McKinley-Gilded Age, America's democracy atrophied. And America embarked on her imperialistic expansions of colonising Cuba, Panama, and the Philippines.

Funny how his logic doesn't seem to work in reverse. Somehow, Bush is and was lazy but never poor.

Via the invaluable BADATTITUDES.

{ 9:20 AM }

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Mel Gibson is expected to make $300 million for his Jesus snuff film.

{ 12:40 PM }

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Edwards vs. Giuliani, or Clinton vs. Cheney? The vice presidential race may actually become more interesting than the presidential (Houston Chronicle):

Amid this conjecture [of Kerry's choice for vice president], however, one name is conspicuously absent: Bill Clinton.

Clinton's strengths would compensate for Kerry's weaknesses almost perfectly. Not only is Clinton the most talented campaigner of his generation, but he is also a Southerner -- and since 1948, when Harry S. Truman chose Sen. Alben Barkley of Kentucky as his running mate, every successful Democratic ticket has included a citizen of a Southern state.

Besides, people might even pay to watch Bill Clinton debate Dick Cheney. So why not?

The first objection, the constitutional one, can be disposed of easily. The Constitution does not prevent Clinton from running for vice president. The 22nd Amendment, which became effective in 1951, begins: "No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice."

No problem. Bill Clinton would be running for vice president, not president. Scholars and judges can debate how loosely constitutional language should be interpreted, but one need not be a strict constructionist to find this language clear beyond dispute. Bill Clinton cannot be elected president, but nothing stops him from being elected vice president.

True, if Clinton were vice president he would be in line for the presidency. But Clinton would succeed Kerry not by election, which the amendment forbids, but through Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which provides that if a president dies, resigns or is removed from office, his powers "shall devolve on the vice president." The 22nd Amendment would not prevent this succession.

Not that Bill Clinton would want the job, but the speculative weight of this idea is golden.

{ 11:11 AM }

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Xymphora on the Haitian coup: "The one good thing that has come out of the attempted coup in Venezuela and the kidnapping in Haiti is that all the peoples of the Caribbean and Central and South America now know that the United States is an enemy of democracy and human rights, and will act ruthlessly to continue its exploitation."

{ 10:04 AM }

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Cheney: "I hate my daughter." The big tent of the Bush administration excludes its own children (WSJ):

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday he supports U.S. President George W. Bush's call for a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages, even though one of his daughters is gay and he has said in the past the issue should be left to the states.

"The president's taken the clear position that he supports a constitutional amendment," Cheney said in an interview with MSNBC. "I support him."

Cheney said during the 2000 campaign, and again last month, that he prefers to see states handle the issue of gay marriage. His openly lesbian daughter, Mary Cheney, is an aide in the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, but the vice president declined to discuss her.

"One of the most unpleasant aspects of this business is the extent of which private lives are intruded upon when these kinds of issues come up," he said. "I really have always considered my private - my daughters' lives private and I think that's the way it ought to remain."

Private lives should remain private — exactly right. So why publicize your denial of her equal status with a constitutional amendment?

{ 9:55 AM }

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