So I turned on NPR's Talk of the Nation Wednesday afternoon as part of the decompression process after YearlyKos (my diary on that amazing event is forthcoming) and what do I hear? Neal Conan and political commentator Ken Rudin talking about someone who wasn't there, namely, Hillary Clinton.

"Democratic activists and bloggers are giving their party's presidential hopefuls a piece of their mind at a convention this week in Washington, D.C," Conan said, effectively conflating the Take Back America and YearlyKos events into one convenient talking point.

The two went on to push - by appearing to debunk -  the tired meme that Hillary is the de facto frontrunner of the Dem's 2008 presidential contest, and that all other competitors must knock her off the top step first before they have a chance at the White House.

More TradMedia crap below:

I figured with the Great Trollrating Angst Party going on, a diary on a slightly sillier subject might be in order.

When I asked if there would be a dance party or two at YearlyKos, and if so, what music would be played, the Fabulous Fabooj suggested that I start a diary on the subject and get some suggestions. So I have. I don't know if there's be a party yet, but if there is, we'll have a playlist ready!

I've tried to list music suitable for fast and slow dancing (some protest songs make great listening but are lousy to dance to), and have some relevance in lyrics or title, however tenuous, to progressive politics, the netroots, the mendacity of Republicans and the Kool Kids media, and of course the slow-motion train wreck that is the Bush Administration. More below...

They asked for donations "to help strengthen the Democratic base statewide."

My husband, God love him, ripped the caller a new one. And he doesn't even read blogs (he hears about them secondhand from his crazy left-wing wife).

"Do you know where you're calling?" he said, his voice rising with a mixture of incredulity, anger and just a touch of amusement. "This is Massachusetts. The legislature is 95% Democratic. And you want me to give you my money WHY?"
He said the caller (in all likelihood a paid solicitor -- the DLC doesn't use unmanagable grassroots volunteers when you can hire someone to do the same job) was taken aback, but then went back to her prepared script.

"Look, I've never even heard of you folks, and I'm not going to give my money to you from a phone solicitation," he said. "Send me some literature, and I'll donate if I think you deserve my support for whatever it is you're supposed to stand for." And with that, my brilliant, darling hubby hung up, muttering, "Sheesh. Idiots."

And that, my friends, is in a nutshell why I loathe the DLC.

More after the flip.

No, it's not a right-wing religious justification for torture. Quite the opposite. In the March/April issue of Books & Culture: A Christian Review (unfortunately, the entire issue is not available online), Vermont Episcopal priest and writer Garret Keizer proposes a "modest project for the resistant church" as an antidote to evil:

Religious life and political life have this in common: the chief enemy of both is despair. Poison to church and state alike, despair comes as a conviction that while something ought to be done and probably can be done in the face of evil, we have neither the strength nor the will to do it. We're overcome, paralyzed.

More after the flip.

Chris Matthews' unrepentant hypocrisy, the latest example in a long list of offenses by the traditional media, has finally sent me over the edge. So I subjected Kathleen Parker's recent "critique" of bloggers to a heavy rewrite and turned it back on the chattering classes:
_______

Of all the stories leading America's annual greatest hits list, the one that subsumes the rest is the continuing de-evolution of information in the Age of Pundits.
_______

More after the flip.

I just saw Ebert and Roeper's recommendations for Fourth of July movies, among them, "Born on the Fourth of July," the story of Vietnam vet Ron Kovic, and "Yankee Doodle Dandy."

Me, I'm going to go all uber-patriotic in a different way and watch my new DVD copy of "All the President's Men" so I can remind myself what the MSM used to be capable of doing when it discovered criminal behavior at the highest levels of government. (And given the unveiling of the real identity of Deep Throat, it's timely in other ways, too.)

More below the fold...

The Bush Campaign has emailed its supporters announcing that Jenna and Barbara Bush will be holding a "first of its kind" live chat session at www.GeorgeWBush.com/chat on Friday from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm., where they will discuss the importance of "hitting" the polls this November. The chat center has a photo of the two, modestly dressed (and therefore looking very much out of their normal, alcohol-infused element) waiting, one assumes, to chat with you RIGHT NOW!

I assume you will have to be registered with the website to sign on for this momentous occasion, and that kinda takes the fun out of it. But let's pretend for a minute we could participate--what would be the one question you would ask the Doublemint Twins (as in "double your pleasure, double your fun" for all you youngsters out there) if you had the chance?