Beware cell phone-using drivers of Philadelphia: Police will be pulling you over and fining you Tuesday and every day after.The law banning the use of non-hands-free cell phones while driving in the city of Philadelphia went into effect in May and will finally be enforced, starting Dec. 1.“A distracted driver is a dangerous driver,” Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said in a public service announcement.

via City Cell Ban Begins Tuesday | NBC Philadelphia.

A good start, now lets hope they crack down mercilessly. Philadelphia is, ironically, a top ten “walkable” city with two of the top ten worst intersections for auto safety in the nation and any rule that discourages and/or punishes bad driving practices is sorely needed.

KRUGMAN: There is tremendously more money in being a [climate change] skeptic than there is in being a supporter. It’s so much easier, come on. You got the energy industry’s(sic) behind it. There are 20 times as many believers [in climate change] as there are skeptics in the scientific community. They get almost equal time in the media.

via Paul Krugman Takes Will to Task Over Hacked Scientists’ Emails-Not a Single Smoking Gun | Video Cafe

“Almost equal time”. Credentials are never edited prior to hosting self proclaimed or propped up “experts”.

This Superintendent is simply delinquent and should be removed by the Secretary of the Army or the Chief of Staff . Where is the Obama Administration on this?

The top official at Arlington National Cemetery claims he was unaware of the most recently reported burial error at the cemetery, possibly, he says, because he was away at the time it occurred. Cemetery employee records, however, show Superintendent John Metzler present and working at Arlington when the cemetery discovered this most recently disclosed burial foul-up, which resulted in digging up and moving the remains of one service member the cemetery had accidentally buried on top of another.

via Arlington National Cemetery Investigation – Salon.com.

Barack Obama will announce this escalation in Afghanistan eight days before picking up his Nobel Peace Prize In Oslo.

via FDL News Desk » Obama’s Tuesday Speech To Have A Non-Exit, Non-Strategic Exit Strategy.

Tom Schaller at FiveThirtyEight.com gives us some homework regarding the already misguided and excessive news coverage of the idiots that crashed the Obama administration’s first State Dinner.

And, you know what? We can do something about it. We can let the producers of whatever crap program agrees to pay these creepy, pathetic, attention-starved goons for the rights to interview That Couple that not only will we tune out that specific broadcast, but we will tune out that program in the future as well. We can compound the effect by identifying the companies that sponsor the airing of the interview, and boycotting their products or services.

via FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: That Couple.

The not to be named Dinner Crashers shouldn’t be the most infamous pair from this incident. To me…nothing beyond their picture and punishment, (for criminal trespass maybe?), needs to be known. The real focus of the cable news talking heads should be the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano and the Director of the Secret Service. The US Secret Service is DHS’ responsibility and this is on their watch. An utter embarrassment when this President has been under threat since early in the 2008 Presidential campaign. If they can’t put together a detail for a state dinner that is as competent as a nightclub bouncer or liquor store clerk at screening identification than they should be relieved of their duties as soon as possible.

DaveNoon at Lawyers, Guns and Money is blogging Palin’s new memoir “Going Rogue” and it doesn’t disappoint.

The funniest sentence thus far in Going Rogue occurs about a third of the way through the second chapter when our heroine — speaking through the Palinese translator Lynn Vincent — declares that “life is too short to hold a grudge.” This is a warm piece of advice that Sarah Palin predictably spends much of her time ignoring as she recounts her contentious early years in local and state politics. Few pages are allowed to turn without our deposed governor reminding us of the bêtes noires who interfered with her efforts to bring “common-sense conservatism” — a phrase she’s been loading into the wingnut beer bong for the past few days — to the people of Wasilla and, soon enough, their fellow Alaskans. As Palin revealed in her first chapter, the first “big word” she learned how to spell was “different.” And because different people are sometimes scary — perhaps not President Black Man Terrorist scary, but scary in that ordinary, non-Negro way — Palin knows that she’ll have to deal with resistance along the road to glory.

via Lawyers, Guns and Money: Going Rogue, Chapter 2.

Palin appears to feel that anyone who even seeks to verify her previous statements is a menace, driven by the desire to trap her into some snobbery powered iron maiden. Palin not only must but is entitled to say anything to escape. There is no mess to clean up once she uses nonsense, lies or babble to evade a seemingly benign debate moderator, interviewer or pool reporter. The courtesy to atone for gaffes or lies would be wasted upon nefarious, unprincipled people who want to see her fail.

One must agree with Palin’s correctness or risk being included in her list of menaces who function to destroy her. A person is not safe from reproach even after Palin decides they are agreeable enough. News stories are littered with former friends, aides and subordinates attempting to defend themselves from Palin’s negative characterizations. To the general voter, there is no useful policy she can hold because there is no public principle that is fluid and abstract enough to coincide with unchallengeable definitions of logic or fairness. To agree with Palin is an approval of politics for the sake of the politician.

Food Stamp Usage Across the Country – Interactive Map – NYTimes.com.

A Hint: It’s ironic that the high food stamp recipient counties are marked in dark blue.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell, usually a contributor for Countdown with Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow Show, pops up on Morning Joe. Apparently she ran into Morning Joe folks on the plane down and that is how she ended up as a guest. She is an excellent advocate for African American and Urban issues. She does point out that the Obama Administration has sent many department heads (Department of Education, HUD, Homeland Security) to New Orleans. Even though President Obama only made one visit, he has competent and diligent cabinet members who are actually qualified to do their jobs.

Here is a non-profit news cooperative that has the New York Times as one of its clients. Let’s see where this all leads. Hopefully a viable option for boots on the ground professional journalism.

“Let’s put it this way, it’s not my paper,” Mr. O’Shea said of The Tribune. “I wish them all the luck in the world, I don’t want to see them get hurt, but it doesn’t have the heft and the seriousness that it had.”

That is mild compared with the assessment of Mr. Warren, dismissed from The Tribune last year and now the publisher of The Chicago Reader, a weekly.

“In their mind, they’ve made it a more populist, local, utilitarian paper, and I think they’ve made it narrower, more lightweight, fueled by reflexive suspicion of the traditional ideas of serious journalism,” he said. “It’s a different value system. There’s a fabulous staff at The Tribune, but I think they’re just underserved by their leaders.”

Even so, “I’ve got no desire to weaken anybody” or exact retribution, he said. “I want as many healthy news outlets as possible.” He and Mr. O’Shea said the idea for the news cooperative came from Peter Osnos, a journalist and author who never worked for The Tribune.

via Ex-Editor of Chicago Tribune Leads Upstart Competitor – NYTimes.com.

Remember this debate? Then Sen. Hillary Clinton was all: Meet me in Ohio! and then Sen. Barack Obama was all: fine then.

Monday November 23, 2009 Dave Winer.
I assumed that because we elected Obama to end the war in Iraq that it went without saying that the war in Afghanistan would be ended as well.

Apparently not so.

via No escalation in Afghanistan. (Scripting News).

This is a rather odd assumption considering Obama’s own pro Afghanistan escalation rhetoric throughout his campaign and Presidency. Obama even said it was his job to scale down the “uneccessary” war in Iraq to have the proper resources to devote to the “necessary” fights in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan.

I have been very clear in talking to the American people about what I would do with respect to Afghanistan.

I think we have to have more troops there to bolster the NATO effort. I think we have to show that we are not maintaining permanent bases in Iraq because Secretary Gates, our current Defense secretary, indicated that we are getting resistance from our allies to put more troops into Afghanistan because they continue to believe that we made a blunder in Iraq and I think even this administration acknowledges now that they are hampered now in doing what we need to do in Afghanistan in part because of what’s happened in Iraq.

Now, I always reserve the right for the president — as commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad. So that is true, I think, not just in Iraq, but that&’s true in other places. That’s part of my argument with respect to Pakistan.

via The Democratic Debate in Cleveland – New York Times.

Can you oppose Obama for escalating the war in Afghanistan and not pulling out of Iraq fast enough? Of course. Can you say you didn’t think an escalation was coming? No. President Obama as a candidate made clear he wasn’t a peacenik. Even in his anti-Iraq war speech as a senator, he distinguished between his idea of a worthwhile war and a mistake.

Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances.

The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don’t oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.

I don’t oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income?—?to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

via Barack Obama’s Iraq Speech – Wikisource.

At an anti-war rally and made it explicitly clear he was anti-Iraq war, not anti-war. That was the famous speech in 2002 that endeared him to war skeptics across the nation and was derided as Obama’s only qualification by then candidate Clinton. If one thing Winer can take comfort in, his opposition to ever getting involved in Iraq has been as consistent as his support for Afghanistan.

Apparently, Michael Steele and the RNC is gearing up for the dirty fight through 2010 by recruiting the creator of the infamous and yet effective “White Hands” political advertisement:

Update 6:03 p.m.: Alex Castellanos, a Republican media consultant, will take over as a senior communications adviser to RNC Chairman Michael Steele, according to a source familiar with the move. The announcement of Castellanos’ role comes hours after communications director Trevor Francis announced he was leaving the committee. But, Castellanos is taking on the strategic role on a permanent — not interim — basis, according to the source.

via The Fix – RNC loses communications director, Castellanos signs on.

Advice to Dems? Get health care passed, get climate change passed and find a way to direct stimulus and any available funding towards creating jobs. And for the good of your campaign? Stay above board and show some class.

Now you tell us:

Former Gov. Sarah Palin’s book, “Going Rogue,” blames her first legislative director for moves early in her term that helped poison her relationship with state lawmakers. But the ex-aide, John Bitney, calls Palin’s account a fabrication and said he wishes his former boss would leave him alone.

via Portrayal in Palin book irritates former aide: Former Gov. Sarah Palin | adn.com.

We are still lucky Democrats didn’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, because none of these folks, save Shannyn Moore and Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, were saying anything about how empty and dishonest Palin was in October 2008.