Leave it to right-wing evangelicals to take the Holiday Season, a time for celebrating, giving, and spending time with our families and neighbors, and turn it into a cynical excuse for a divisive cultural conflict. Jesus would be so proud of this flock. Stupid flockers. (Note to liberals in Washington, there's your talking point. Minus the "flocking" thing. Git 'em!)

In the comments of the story on primary reform, I made the suggestion that rather than suggest solutions first and hashing out what's good or bad about them, we use an engineering approach and focus on requirements for the system first, then see what we can come up with that addresses those requirements. That thread's already headed in other directions, so I thought I'd throw it up here and see if folks are willing to give their input. Because if there's one thing that Kossians are more than willing to do, it's give input.

Following Toque and MSO's entries (and excellent threads, good spirited discussion all), I caught this from Brad DeLong, via Atrios, as I'm sure many of you have already seen, and I think it's worth noting.

Pursuant to Digby's post regarding taking the fight to the right, Brad Plumer's post on open-source politics, we've got an honest-to-god silver-platter laden with ammo in the disaster that was the attempted Kerik appointment.

It hits Rudy real hard and could strip the bark off his reputation as the 9/11 mayor, as well as opening up an investigation into his cough company. If we're lucky, indictments may follow, and if we're luckier could kill two birds with one stone by getting Elliot Spitzer into another high-profile corruption case.

But perhaps more importantly, it shows a complete lack of seriousness on behalf of the Bush administration about protecting America, and it requires no qualification or explanation, it's right there in black and white.

I just got a call from the DCCC asking for a donation to get started early on the '06 campaigns. I told her I'd have to check and see if I could afford the amount she was asking for, but that I'd be interested in setting up an automatic monthly donation. I already give to a few organizations that take 15 or 20 a month, which I can always spare.

But she said they don't have that capability. It seems to me that having a steady flow of monthly recurring revenue would be a better for them as far as being able to count on it for budgeting. And of course, it's better for us as patrons in the sense that giving 10 or 20 bucks a month is easier to do than say a 150 bucks at once (especially coming into a bleak holiday season), and also in the sense that they wouldn't have to keep calling every so often (which gets kinda tiresome and ends up feeling like being pestered no matter the cause).

So if anyone here has connects to the DCCC's techie or fundraising folks, could they get a hold of them and ask them about setting up the same system that (for example) Greenpeace/HRC/SaveTheChildren/etc have?

Robert "Valerie Plame Was Asking To Be Outed, Did You See What She Was Wearing?" Novak (via Political Wire) is reporting that "influential Democrats" are pitching Biden to Kerry for VP.

For those interested, read this article and tell me that's not someone you want on the ticket. Even if it doesn't happen, I'm going to have a very nice afternoon imagining the Biden/Cheney debates...

via TBogg, via Southpaw, from comments in this post by LeftCoaster: JFK, if you're reading, do this today, in front of lots of cameras.

The ever growing debate over gay marriage, inspired by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome's decision to grant same-sex marriage licenses, is just absurd.

On one side, you have the argument that the right to marry is just as fundamental as the right to vote, associate with who you please, speak freely, own guns, what have you. This would seem to be a debate about extending constitutional rights to all members of society. We have to do this every so often when the gradual process of societal enlightenment catches up with the our Constitutional principles.

And then there's the counterpoints. according to Mark Morford (via Atrios), he claims that the majority of the hate mail and arguments he gets revolve around the idea that if we allow just anyone to marry just anyone else, this will grease up the slippery slope to all sorts of horrible disgusting things becoming the norm (eg: bestiality, snuff films, etc). Of course this is ridiculous, but not nearly as completely nucking futs as the president's rationale:

"I have watched carefully what's happening in San Francisco, where licenses were being issued, even though the law states otherwise," Bush said. "I have consistently stated that I'll support law to protect marriage between a man and a woman. Obviously these events are influencing my decision."

"I am watching very carefully, but I am troubled by what I've seen," Bush said.

Someone needs to explain to our appointed president, reeeeeal slow and in single syllable words, that recognizing gay and lesbian couples' right to marry doesn't mean that heterosexual couples can't get married anymore. Straight couples that want to get married can do so in every state in the union, without fear of reprisal, and with the blessing of the whole community. They require no defense.

Perhaps Bush is concerned, and troubled, over rumors about a certain sanctimonious GOP Governor who's about to be at the center of a scandal involving adultery and homosexuality. George, I swear to you that this isn't happening because people in San Francisco want to exercise their right to the same legally recognized committed relationship that you and Laura have, so put that out of your mind. (cross-posted at 2071.org)

There's been a lot of enmity on this board over the primary season. There's Dean folks, Clark folks, Kerry folks, and some portion of each of them go after the others with a fair amount of vitriol. There's pragmatist folks and ideal folks and we go at each other pretty good too.

Then I'm reading this over on american street:

We had a shot at populists and liberals like Kucinich, Edwards, and Dean, and we ended up with a guy more heavily enmeshed with special interests than anyone else in the US Senate.

I'm worried.

Not about Kerry--despite those special interests, he's still got one of the most liberal voting records in the US. He's clearly amenable to following the people; after a yawner of a campaign, he adopted Dean's strategy and took off like a shot. What really worries me is that all the Deaniacs, Kucitizens, and Edwardsians (did they come up with anything catchy?) who came into the electoral process for the first time will now be disillusioned. Or that the old unyielding left will throw eggs at the process because they feel the Democrats have sold out.

As if anyone needs more reasons to just dig on Juan Cole, just caught this gem:

Kay did not find "the capacity to produce weapons" if by that is meant factories and laboratories set up to begin production. There are no such factories or laboratories. If Bush means that the Iraqis have the capacity to produce chemical weapons, well, sure. All societies do. These are all weasel words of the most contemptible sort.

I saw "weasel words", which made me think of "ferret face", which is of course Frank Burns' nickname on M*A*S*H. And then it hit me, his veneer of authority, his core incompetence, his delight in dishing out punishments and getting "payback"...

Am I the only one who missed that we've been living through the Frank Burns Presidency?

While the blogosphere is erupting with responses to David Kay's call for an independent investigation into the intelligence failures that led to the war (as well as his apologist stance that the CIA has some 'splainin' to do to the administration), no one's pointed back to Sy Hersh's article back in October about how the administration stovepiped raw intelligence to justify it. Seems like that'd be a great place to start the inquiry, no? At the very least, Mr. Kay should give it a perusal...

A friend of mine just posted a translation from French of a story that just came out on Paris Match Magazine, in which a reporter unwittingly "embeds" with the group that hit the DHL Airbus close to Baghdad on Nov. 22nd.

According to this article, the reporter and his photographer had been with the group for several days.

"They had been asked to come see caches of arms very close to Baghdad and didn't discover the real reason for the operation until the last minute," Genestar said.

Over the course of the conversation with the reporter, it becomes clear that the leader of this small group is not a foreign fighter, a Hussein loyalist, nor a fundamentalist of any kind. He's very pragmatic as far as accepting the fact that Americans will be in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

But he's also steadfast about Iraqi's regaining a measure of respect and freedom:

"I am Sunni, like the majority of the members of the resistance, but I accept, like my companions, that the next president of Iraq will be Shiite, or even Christian. That has no importance once freedom and justice reign finally in this country. I have already proposed this project to some politicians, but they have replied that the Shiites and the Christians will massacre me. I am ready to sacrifice myself for the sake of my idea. Only justice will save us. If the Americans accept our proposals, there will be an immediate armistice. But it will be necessary to show proof of good faith on both sides."

The translation's not perfect, but it's definitely worth a read, if nothing else to get a better look at the face of the Iraqi resistance that American news won't cover.

Any Clark lovin' techies wanna put their money where their mouths are, or get money for their mouths, or something like that:

http://jobs.perl.org/job/1073

 Description:  Experienced Perl programmer needed with extensive database/data parsing experience, to support a major database development project (and ancillary projects) for the General Wesley Clark for President campaign. Position is on site at Clark headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas, as part of a dedicated and competent technical staff drawn from across America.

Required skills: Extensive knowledge of working with Perl DBI with MySQL and MS SQL is required. You must be willing to work in the highly energized but chaotic environment of a national political campaign headquarters, as part of a tightly bound tech team carrying a heavy workload under intense time pressure. (We love it here, but it's not for everybody!)