Der Furor: A great dialogue between Jacob Weisberg and William Saletan on Bush's goofy campaign spot, "Kerry's Coalition of the Wide-Eyed." Weisberg's writing:

...the vileness ...must not be allowed to obscure its essential hilarity. What moron came up with this idea? What are they smoking in Karl Rove's office? C'mon, Will. This ad is the campaign equivalent of The Producers—an idea so egregiously tasteless and stupid that it might just succeed as camp.

Footage of Hitler shouting in German is juxtaposed with footage of Al Gore, Howard Dean, and Dick Gephardt getting worked up while criticizing Bush, Michael Moore getting booed for criticizing the Iraq War at the Academy Awards, and John Kerry using the phrase "kick your ass" (which is bleeped out, possibly in an effort to imply he said something worse). I know I should be disgusted by the attempted association of Democrats and Nazis, but it's too funny to get upset about. Cue the goose-stepping mädchen of the Brookings Institution!

What exactly does the Bush-Cheney campaign think that these Democrats have in common with Hitler? Basically, it's that they're too darned excited about politics.

No whiffleballs for Bush: After the prez sat for an interview with Irish journalist Carole Coleman, the White House complained that she "overstepped the bounds of politeness." Her crime, according to John Nichols, was not being "as ill-informed and pliable as the stenographers who 'cover' the White House." Read the White House transcript. More at BoingBoing.

Freedumb: Artist Steve Kurtz of the Critical Art Ensemble has been indicted not on bioterror charges, as the government initially implied, but for mail and wire fraud. After a 7-week grand jury investigation, prosecutors say Kurtz and Robert Ferrell, head of the human gentics lab at the University of Pittsburgh, schemed to illegally aquire a difficult-to-obtain bacteria. While a lesser charge than bioterror, a conviction could land Kurtz in jail for 20 years. Background on the case here and here.

Taping While Brown: I wonder if Purna Raj Bajracharya's crime is being Nepalese, by which I mean, looking vaguely Middle Eastern. While videotaping street scenes of his life in New York to send home to his wife, he accidentally taped a building that happened to house an FBI office. When they found out, the FBI threw Bajracharya into solitary confinement for three months, shackling him so fully at times he couldn't move and holding him in a 6 x 9' cell that was kept lit 24 hours a day, then deported him back to Katmandu. Now in Nepal, Bajracharya says he'd testify against those who mistreated him, despite his fears what the US government would do to him in retaliation. But he remains positive: "What happened to me could have been an isolated incident. I still believe the American government is the best in the world." (Via TalkLeft.)

WWJT? In a New York Times interview in which he says of Dick Cheney, charitably, "I don't think he's a mindful human being," Ronald Reagan Jr. weighs in on Abu Ghraib:

If you are going to call yourself a Christian -- and I don't -- then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is: Whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog's leash? How can Christians tolerate it? It is unconscionable. It has put our young men and women who are over there, fighting a war that they should not have been asked to fight -- it has put them in greater danger.

Why Google hates Michael Moore: You'd think that when you google "Michael Moore movie" or "Michael Moore film" you'd get, you know, the Michael Moore movie everyone's been talking about, or at least the filmmaker's website. You don't. You get a link to Michael Moore Hates America, a Moore-style documentary by Minneapolis amateur filmmaker Michael Wilson. The Unknown Soldier investigates why this search strand--and most others involving Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11--lead mainly to anti-Moore screeds.

Google's Gag Order: Perrspectives--a left-leaning website whose ads have been removed by Google for “unacceptable content” and “language that advocates against an individual, group or organization"-- explores Google's anti-liberal bias.

Out: From Joy Garnett--artist, activist, and editor of my new favorite Eyeteethesque blog, NEWSgrist--comes a new site, I'm Voting Bush Out.

The political cost of abortion: A really creepy opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal:

Abortion has caused missing Democrats--and missing liberals. For advocates so fundamentally committed to changing the face of conservative America, liberals have been remarkably blind to the fact that every day the abortions they advocate dramatically decrease their power to do so. Imagine the number of followers that their abortion policies eliminate who, over the next several decades, would have emerged as the new liberal thinkers, voters, adherents, fund-raisers and workers for their cause...

As liberals and Democrats fervently seek new voters and supporters through events, fund-raisers, direct mail and every other form of communication available, they achieve results minuscule in comparison to the loss of voters they suffer from their own abortion policies. It is a grim irony lost on them, for which they will pay dearly in elections to come.

(Via BoingBoing.)

Fahrenheit burns Bush: I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night--go see it!--and my opinion pretty much matches that of John Birch Society writer (and avowed "ultra-conservative") William Norman Grigg's:

It will have a HUGE impact because Moore – his facile leftist economics notwithstanding – has nailed his case against the Bush regime flush to the plank. It will be all but impossible for anybody who sits still and watches this film to view Bush the Lesser as anything other than a petty, spiteful, dim-witted, bloody-handed little fool – and the figurehead of a murderous power elite. This explains why the Bu'ushists are threatening to go Abu Ghraib on Moore: They're busted.

(Via Cursor.)

Remember Afghanistan? While Bush administration officials pooh-pooh the claims made by an anonymous CIA counterterrorism expert in Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror--among them, that the US waited so long after 9/11 to strike against the Taliban that terrorists were long gone by the time bombs started falling --news out of Aghanistan is increasingly bleak. While the Bush administration has focused on bringing "democracy" to Iraq, Afghanistan has seen the Taliban's power expand. Sixteen people were recently killed by the Taliban for possessing voter registration cards from the September election, and five employees of Doctors without Borders were murdered by the Taliban in early June. Plus opium production has gone through the roof; according to the UN, Afghanistan now produces 75% of the world's supply of illegal opium. Imperial Hubris' author also says we're probably far from catching Osama bin Laden and that al-Qaeda is probably stronger than ever. And: Home of the Not-So-Free, by the Dissident Voice's Kim Petersen.

Got Democracy? A new wave of appropriated images from Abu Ghraib is showing up around San Francisco, only this time the hooded man is featured against a tattered image of the American flag. "It's not pro-Democrat, it's not pro-Republican--it's supposed to make you think," says the poster's creator. "Do these people in Iraq have democracy? And do we have democracy? The Guantanamo Bay issue of suspending people's rights...smacks of McCarthyism, which is a kind of fascism. ...If (this) were any other country--and use the criteria that Bush uses toward other countries--we'd not be called a democracy now." And: God Less America!

Immoral Majority: What's the proper term for the GOP's moral malaise of late--moral relativism? Hipocrisy? Plain old bullshit? Whatever you call it, the Republicans seem to be full of it lately. A week ago, Bill Clinton lost his cool during a BBC interview, frustrated by questions about Monica Lewinsky. Rightwingers had a field day. Yet when Dick Cheney tells a respected senator to "Go fuck" himself, the GOP--not to mention the second highest officeholder in the land, who "felt better" having cussed out a colleague--says it's no big deal. And this on the day the Senate voted to toughen penalties for TV and radio stations who broadcast indecency. Likewise, a new commercial on George W. Bush's campaign site visually likens John Kerry and other Democrats with Hitler. Remember the hue and cry when one of a thousand citizen-made TV spots in MoveOn's Bush in 30 Seconds contest likened Bush's tactics--but not the man himself--to Hitler's? Responding to criticisms by the Democrats, the Bush commercial now features this explanation: "[John Kerry] has not denounced liberal supporters like Al Gore, George Soros, and many others who have made speeches comparing the president to Adolph Hitler." I could debunk the facts--neither Al Gore nor George Soros "compared the president to" Hitler; both made reference to our times as feeling like Nazi-era Germany, but compared only tactics and not leaders--but I'm more curious about their logic. Never the party to take the higher ground, they're saying: we can do it, because THE DEMOCRATS NEVER SAID IT'S WRONG. In an election between an incumbent who looks to his opponent's party for moral leadership, I know who I'll choose.

The Democrats are running an online petition drive to get the president to pull the offending spot from his site. (Aside from comparing passionate Democrats to "wild-eyed" Hitler, I don't think it's such a bad spot. Makes me like the few Democratic firebrands we've got even more. What do you think? Lemme know using the comment link below.)

OK, OK, I will challenge the facts: What Gore said:

The absence of enlightened nation-building after world war one led directly to the conditions which made Germany vulnerable to fascism and the rise of Adolf Hitler, and made all of Europe vulnerable to his evil designs.

What Soros said:

When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans. My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitised me.

The C Word: Cheney brings political civility to an all-time low, say columnists.

Paying the price: A new study by the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy in Focus finds that the war in Iraq--which has already has a $126 billion pricetag--will end up costing each American family$3,415. The "annual costs would be enough to provide healthcare for more than half of the 43 million US citizens who lack medical insurance," reports The Guardian. The IPSFPF study also does body counts (figures are for deaths prior to June 16 and therefore don't include death tolls from this week's nationwide attacks):

- Up to 11,317 Iraqi civilians have been killed
- 6,370 Iraqi soldiers or insurgents have been killed
- 952 coalition trips killed, including 853 Americans
- Around 694 troops were killed after George Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1, 2003
- 50–90 civilian contractors and missionaries killed
- 30 journalists

More math: Mayor Bloomberg assures New Yorkers that the inconvenience of holding the Republican National Cenvention in the city will pay off, bringing an estimated $250 million into the local economy over four days. Matthew Yglesias crunches the number and questions whether almost $7 per day per New Yorker is really worth it. "The city will, I assume, be spending a lot of money on police overtime, barricade construction, etc., which will probably bring the average net economic gain down even further. Then you've got to consider that beyond inconveniencing NYC's 8 million residence, there are millions and millions of people living in Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Westchester who work in the city and will also be paying the inconvenience tax."

Rubber Republican: From the Minneapolis Star Tribune's gossip column, Item World:

When you move into the Uptown location once occupied by Condom Kingdom, I.W. figures you’re gonna get some interesting mail. But nothing prepared Domain Architecture and Design owner Lars Peterssen for the letter that arrived on his doorstep earlier this month. It was addressed to Kondom King. And it was from President George W. Bush. "Will you join Laura, me and the entire Republican Party leadership as we gather… to celebrate my first term in office?" read the letter accompanying the White House invitation. "All of us want to recognize and honor the commitment and sacrifices you’ve made for our Party and our nation." Kondom—er, Lars—was gigantically amused by the mailing. "One of my employees suggested we send in the money and go in appropriate costume," he said. And that would be? "Rubber over the head with a big point on the top."

Soleless consumption: Nike is developing shoes bound for the trash--lightweight, disposable running shoes that only last for 60 miles. Price: $45. They're also developing a $250 shoe, "arguably the most high-tech shoe ever built... it is complete with a computer microchip and operating system that analyzes a runner's step and starts making cushioning adjustments in the heel of the shoe based on the runner's impact with the particular terrain after just three steps." Whew, just in the nick of time for both of these important manufacturing developments.

A "frank exchange of views": That's how Dick Cheney referred to his comments to Sen. Patrick Leahy on the floor of the Senate yesterday. When Cheney scolded Leahy for suggesting that the Veep was profiting from Halliburton's contracts in Iraq, the Vermont senator reminded Cheney that he'd once called Leahy a bad Catholic for his views. To which the vice president replied--all statesmanlike, I'm sure--"Go fuck yourself." These guys have really changed the tone, eh? And: A big "And how!" to this opinion by conservative talk show host Dennis Prager (via Atrios):

As for the liberals who think that using the f-word in public is no big deal, it is good to have them say so. Anything that clarifies the massive values-differences between the Left and the Right is helpful. We who are not on the Left think public cursing is a big deal, because we believe that people can pollute their soul, their character, and, yes, their society, just as they can pollute their rivers and their air and their lungs.

Bushies for Nader:TalkLeft posts this note from a reader in Oregon: "I am a Democrat who, a short while ago, gave my email address and phone number to the local Republican party to receive updates on what they were up to. Today I received a phone call from the local Republican party asking me if I wanted to go the Nader convention. They explained the need to get Nader on the ballot to help President Bush. The name on the caller ID on my phone said 'Bush Cheney' implying that they were calling from the Oregon Bush Cheney headquarters."

USDA held captive by industry? Get this: the USDA just decided that frozen french fries can now be legally classified as fresh vegetables.

What is art? (And what is bioterror?) The outrageous case of Steve Kurtz, the Buffalo, NY, artist who'll likely be charged under the Patriot Act for possessing harmless bacteria and lab equipment (part of his work with Critical Art Ensemble), continues to get ignored by major media outlets. Look for my new Adbusters feature on the case, and consider donating to his defense fund. An excerpt:

Critical Art Ensemble is an internationally recognized art group that explores “the intersections between art, technology, radical politics, and critical theory.” The biotechnology industry it has chosen to address in recent years contributes overwhelmingly to Republican candidates—nearly three-quarters of its $25.8 million in donations to date went to the GOP. The installation at MASSMOCA was to include a DNA extractor that would test food from the local supply for transgenic contamination. “There is no legal way to stop huge corporations from putting genetically altered material in our food,” says CAE spokeswoman Carla Mendes. “Yet owning the equipment required to test for the presence of ‘Frankenfood’ will get you accused of ‘terrorism.’”

Whether Kurtz’s story is a case of post-9/11 paranoia or a move intended to silence outspoken artists will probably never be known, but if it ends up in court, it will raise broader issues about free expression in John Ashcroft’s America. Artist Greg Sholette says Kurtz’s “art itself is going to be up on trial. Critical Art Ensemble has a strong tradition of critiquing capitalism and pushing the edges through its art, but always within constitutional boundaries.” Those boundaries, too, might be on trial: recall that it was Bush, who in 1999, reacted to a spoof site created by the conceptual art collective ®™ark by declaring, “There ought to be limits to freedom.”

Also: Thanks to Paul Shoebridge, the home page now has a pull-down index that features all of my art-related pieces (see "More art activism").

Culture-jamming war porn: Someone jammed a UK billboard promoting the Royal Air Force's "Air Tattoo," a big military airshow, inserting images of suffering from Vietnam, including "napalm girl," Kim Phuc. The term "war porn" is getting increasing usage, applying either to the titillation of violent war imagery or the near-erotic worship of war machines. Air shows are great entertainment, but if we forget that we're seeing equipment made explicitly to kill--"c'mon kids, let's go see the new electric chair exhibition at the fair!"--we're buying into what Salon calls the "military industrial porn complex."

And: I just got an email update from the excellent magazine, Orion, entitled "Weapons of Mass Illusion." OK, people, Weapons of Mass Deception was a great book (as was Danny Schecter's book of the same name, which came out just weeks after Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's), but isn't it time we give the "weapons of mass __________" trope a rest?

Terror teddybear: From The Smoking Gun:

The FBI has subpoenaed records related to the online sales of a teddy bear carrying the message 'Bush Kills Arabs Dead,' apparently as part of a probe into who delivered one of the plush toys to the Michigan home of a federal magistrate, The Smoking Gun has learned.

But, TSG has discovered, the Detroit U.S. Attorney's grand jury investigation will find that the teddy bear, pictured at right, wasn't some sort of a terror threat, but rather a gag gift purchased by a friend of Mona Majzoub, the federal magistrate...

Today's soundtrack: Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra's Who Is This America?--politically engaged, butt-shaking afropop in the spirit of Fela and Femi but straight outta Brooklyn.