Sunday Evening Reading

I often run across a link that I want to write extensively about &mdash it ticks me off to that extent, or I just feel particularly moved about. Those comprise the bulk of my entries here on Running Scared — single-topic entries.

I read a lot of stuff, however -- my news aggregator has about 187 'feeds' in it that I usually try to get through every day or every other day. As I find something I might want to write about, I usually tag it with a certain tag, "to:rs", that lets me go back and see the pool I want to draw from.

Those sometimes fill up with a few links I don't feel particularly verbose about, but would nevertheless like to share. Those become the 'linkapalooza'-style entries that you see from me once in a blue moon.

So, here we go.

Bush's new budget would bankrupt Amtrak.

AmeriBlog seems to have rather convincing evidence that Jeff Gannon, the Neocons' Favorite Fake Reporter™, was evidently an escort as well.

Calculate how much you stand to lose under the White House's new Social Security plan.

I wonder if Russia will now be on the Axis of Evil after Putin's recent announcement that "[t]he latest steps taken by Iran have convinced [them] that Iran does not intend to produce nuclear arms." I could very easily see the neocons adopting an attitude of "the friend of my enemy is my enemy."

A recent quote by Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove (ehhh, my keyboard feels unclean after typing that): "The next time one of your smarty-pants liberal friends says to you, `Well, he didn't have a mandate,' you tell him of this delicious fact: This president got a higher percentage of the vote than any Democratic candidate for president since 1964."

(To which I'd reply to Rove: "The next time one of your smarty-pants conservative friends says to you, 'Well, he got a higher percentage of the vote,' you tell him of this delicious fact: This president had more people voting against him than any Republican ever.")

The list of issues to be decided by the Supreme Court in the second half of this year's term.

And, lest we think Bush has accomplished absolutely no good in his Presidency, he did get George Michael to quit show business.

No doubt the most tasteless advertisement for a video game that I've ever seen. It's sh-t like this that gives the neocons fodder for censorship.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg in a recent column mercilessly skewers Alan Keyes (who is considering again running for public office) with his own hypocrisy, "Keyes [...] believes that gays come into the world by being recruited by predatory perverts, or through the weakness of, in his words, 'selfish hedonists' or spring fully formed out a of a morally corrupt culture. [...] Why is your daughter a lesbian, Mr. Keyes? What did you do wrong raising her? Or perhaps -- just perhaps -- was she made that way by our Creator? Choose."

Molly Ivins points out that Bush's budget is incredibly anti-children: "Good Lord, what a nasty document. The cuts are in health care, childcare, Head Start, nutrition programs, food stamps and foster care."

On Ask MetaFilter, someone whose "political persuasion is to the left of Dennis Kucinich" asks, seriously and snark-free, what good things Bush has accomplished during his Presidency so far. It actually made for some interesting food for thought. Oddly enough, I now find myself agreeing that he's done some good things cited in the threads. Don't worry, though — I've not suddenly joined the Dark Side. :)

A hilarious excerpt from an O'Reilly show. (Don't miss how he offers, at the end, to give her the last word — and then promptly doesn't.) The guy is swiftly becoming inadvertent self-parody.

Finally, Libertarian Girl, shortly after its introduction, had the potential of swiftly becoming an A-list blog — until it was found out that the blogger wasn't a pretty perky twentysomething blonde girl. Nevertheless, it became quite popular in the interim.

Which leads me to introduce our new guest blogger, Bambi ...

EDIT: And I'd be shockingly remiss if I didn't point you towards this rather startling observation made by Shakespeare's Sister ...