Sunday Blogroll!!

That's right...everybody's favorite Friday tradition has moved to Sunday. How was everybody's Saturday? Let's see...mine was busily unproductive. I finished Mysteries of Pittsburgh, read 75 pages of Mind Game, read another 75 pages of On Writing, watched Dazed and Confused, tested the new Quiznos BBQ brisket sandwich (thumbs up!), watched two Simpsons episodes on DVD, caught every episode of Feasting on Asphalt on Food Network, worked for about an hour on a new song to post on MySpace, worked out for 90 minutes...I did everything, I did nothing. I laughed, I cried. Anyway...more of the same today, hopefully! On to the linkiness!

We'll start off with some strange polling (Digby). 35% of those polled are worried that Democrats will weaken our terrorist defenses, but 46% are worried that Republicans will involve us in more conflicts...thereby presumably weakening our terrorist defenses. Woohoo! We win!

Not saying Israel was ever particularly good at this stuff, but apparently when you side with the United States, you immediately become just as bad at diplomacy and public relations as we are (Susie). What a disaster. Susie's right--war doesn't work. But we'll continue trying it anyway. Speaking of public relations, what's sadder...a 38% dive in about a month, or the fact that he's still more popular than Dubya (Wolcott)?

Chris is right--Dems really are going to have to respond by playing hardball with their "good friend" Joementum, and I don't think they're capable of it. Dems are nothing if not "incredibly naive or purposely self-destructive." Meanwhile Atrios and Jane give their takes on the "What do we do now?" issues of Lamont/Lieberman, and both are worth reading.

All I can say about the TNR defending Coulter this week is that, well, it was to be expected. There's a reason they endorsed Lieberman in '04...they're supposed leftists who want to do nothing except take down the Left. Just like good old Joementum. It doesn't even make me angry anymore...it just makes me sad. Echidne, on the other hand, has plenty to say about it.

There are plenty of posts out there about the warrantless wiretapping issue, but Len's post here is one of the best. Love this:

If we had wanted a monarchy, we had one! It didn't work out! Moreover, the one we had —King George III —was better than the cretinous would be King that arrogates unto himself powers he doesn't have and doesn't deserve. King George III was wrong and mad, but George Jr is merely ludicrous and slow witted.

Up is down (TBogg)! Left is right! Black is white! Stable is unstable (Billmon)! Gaining in the polls is freefalling (Alicublog)!

Here's a nice "Iraq v. Vietnam: why they're different" post from Dana. Meanwhile, here's a nice "Iraq v. Vietnam: why they're relatively similar" post from BooMan.

Pandagon's always very reliable at discussing articles and issues about which I never would have otherwise thought. Here's one for the weekend. Hef's almost universally loved now, but this make me realize that I actually have no idea who/what he really is. The "Divorce in '54 is, like, so unfair to men" article tells me more than I wanted to know.

Karl Rove, comedian extraordinaire (Rising Hegemon)!

Gadflyer, in response to inevitable "lefties are conspiracy theorists" outcries, provides a nice summary of the shaky timing of the England arrests last week.

It's always sad when relationships end (Left Coaster).

Before going on vacation, David discusses being a radical moderate. A good friend of mine in Oklahoma is the same way. He wants to be bipartisan, and he feels he's pretty conservative on a lot of issues...but in the current political environment he ends up feeling just as mad and outraged as the so-called shrill left extremists do. As an anonymous poster wrote in the comments to David's post...the Bush administration 'radicalized' a lot of people.

Whenever I get around to writing another "Fraud in the Land of Telenovelas" post, I think I'll have to call it "Fraud, Corruption, Murder, and General Sleaziness in the Land of Telenovelas" (Mercury Rising). Seriously...there's some really creepy stuff down there, and nobody's paying attention.

Avedon has a great thought in regard to the bubble discussion I linked to yesterday:

[A]s we have seen time and again, these same pundits will go into optimistic overdrive over the next big thing, once again advising us that there can never be a crash because it's all different now, and then when their projections prove false, blame the rest of us for having (they claim) believed such an unrealistic thing.

Sometimes I think they must do it on purpose: Their claims about the wonderful, Everything Has Changed-type economic miracle-of-the-moment make no sense, so people get the idea that economics is way over their heads and don't bother to follow it. Then when some moron claims that the economy can never go bad again because It's All Different Now, their alarm bells don't go off, because they figure it's just too complicated for them to understand. (I guess it's kind of like our foreign policy, then.)

Via Lefarkins (and Roxanne), here's an excellent piece from the LA Times on a journalist who tried to expose something even other journalists couldn't get behind. This does remind me that I've been wanting to write a good post about the crack epidemic for some time. Time to put on in draft status...and likely forget about it for another 3 months or so. I suck sometimes.

I'm enjoying this far too much (Great Society).

I don't know what's sadder for me, that the fear mongering is working, or that, I admit, a small part of me would have reacted the same way (Greenwald).

This just further proves (via Fired Up! Missouri) my thoughts that Myspace and YouTube have allowed the Internet to change the world a second time.

Wow, is this funny (via First Draft). Denis Leary was by far my favorite comedian when I was in high school, and it makes me happy to see him jumping on good causes, from helping fire fighters to slamming Mel Gibson.

And finally...I'm sorry, but they really need to stop making these lists (Mannion). And by the way...Arnold Schwartzenegger and Ben Stein were in Dave for a total of about 5 seconds (honestly, I don't even remember Ahhnold being in there at all, but I haven't been awake for all that long), and that was enough to make this #2 on the list? Seriously, you're just embarassing yourselves. Please stop.