Apparently conservative Democrats are a lot like Republicans in many more ways than we knew:

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus’ office confirmed late Friday night that the Montana Democrat was carrying on an affair with his state office director, Melodee Hanes, when he nominated her to be U.S. attorney in Montana.

According to a source familiar with their relationship, Hanes and Baucus began their relationship in the summer of 2008 – nearly a year before Baucus and his wife, Wanda, formally separated in April. The Senator has since divorced his wife.

Hanes ended her employment with Baucus in the spring of this year.

It just never stops. Is Baucus one of the “family values” creeps, too?

As fucked up our own criminal justice system is, this seems incomprehensibly insane to me:

An Italian jury has found American student Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito guilty in the stabbing death of British exchange student Meredith Kercher.

Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison and Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years.

Timothy Egan ably details what an absurd case this was.

This is something I can’t explain and perhaps it’s irrational: I realize that all kinds of terrible crimes occur all over the world all the time, but it always seems worse to me when the crime is perpetrated by a state. Especially when it’s the type of western, democratic, capitalist state that it is supposed to represent the last word in human civilization.

Thank God the Italians don’t have the death penalty.

Jeebus, you people fill open threads fast sometimes.

Apparently commenter Renato is polling us on the top ten films of the decade, since it is near the end of 2009. Place your picks below, and if I have energy, we will do a poll in the next couple of weeks.

*** Update ***

Camera battery is dead, but here is an old Tunch pic to soothe the afficionados:

I’ll have some more tomorrow, plus I am dogsitting Tammy’s Samantha, so there should be some fun pics there, too.

*** Update #2 ***

Please, no Monk finale spoilers, I forgot to watch last weeks and won’t catch up on both until tomorrow.

Been a long week for a number of reasons, none of which I want to go into. At any rate, planning on settling into a long night of sitting in the chair with a dog on my lap, reading and watching the last Monk episode. Pad thai is on the menu.

Oh, btw- I love craigs list. Bought a couple month old lazy-boy in mint condition for a hundred and fifty bucks (because I’m not married and I don’t have to color coordinate everything because that’s how I roll). They were given a new chair and did not have room for the old one, so sold it for dirt cheap. I think Lily likes it more than me, though. I have to put my drink down before I sit now, though, because Lily starts to jump up onto my lap before my butt even hits the seat. At any rate, she has figured out that wedged in between my thigh and the arm rest allows her to stay snug and warm and she can then rest her head on my lap. I’m cool with that.

Via Sully, this from Reihan:

Remember that the bitterest opponents of the Clinton-era U.S. interventions in Kosovo and Haiti were conservatives like Tom DeLay, who condemned the Clinton administration for treating “foreign policy as social work,” in Michael Mandelbaum’s evocative phrase. The post-9/11 moment represented a departure from this conservative suspicion of nation-building, as Jacksonian sentiments were yoked to the ambitious project of building democracies in the Muslim world. But now that Obama, a man most conservatives dislike and distrust, is the steward of that effort, those conservative instincts are making a comeback. Jason Chaffetz represents the beginning of a wave—and it’s not obvious that Obama can do anything to stop it.

Instincts my ass. What do Clinton and Obama have in common that separates them from Bush?

I already told you what is going to happen. There will be a growing right flank that opposes the escalation in Afghanistan that will become more vocal in the next couple of months. And then, after the “surge,” when Obama starts to draw down forces in Afghanistan, this right flank will become noticeably quieter and then start to yell “defeatist” and “soft on national security” and “Obama wants to lose” along with the rank and file.

We all know what is going on here. Chaffetz might be an outlier, and may honestly believe in bringing home the troops, but anyone who thinks there is a growing legitimate “dove” movement in the GOP is smoking crack rock.

While many were blithely discussing Afghanistan and the economy, one Tennessee mayor launched a brave assault in defense of Christmas:

According to The Commercial Appeal, Arlington Mayor Russell Wiseman posted the statements on his Facebook page and said the president is Muslim. Obama is Christian.

“We sit the kids down to watch ‘The Charlie Brown Christmas Special’ and our muslim president is there, what a load…..try to convince me that wasn’t done on purpose,” he wrote, according to the paper.

His Facebook page can only be accessed by people he has approved as friends. Arlington is a city of about 7,600 residents about 25 miles northeast of Memphis.

In the extensive posting, he also attacked the president’s supporters, saying “...you obama people need to move to a muslim country…oh wait, that’s America….pitiful.”

I didn’t know the wingers liked Peanuts so much. I thought some of the characters were rumored to be teh ghey.

I haven’t been following Crashergate that closely, so I only recently became aware of the grave threat that Desiree Rogers poses to our civilization. About half-way through this article (GOS via TNC), it hit me, she’s black, right?

The 50-year-old Rogers arrived in Washington this year to great fanfare, no small amount of it of her own making. She entered the East Wing in a whirlwind of media exposure. She was featured in the glossy pages of Vogue—beating the first lady’s appearance in the fashion bible by a month. For a profile in WSJ, the Wall Street Journal’s slick magazine, stylists outfitted Rogers in luxury fashions from Prada and Jil Sander and she posed in the first lady’s garden tossing a flirtatious smile over her shoulder.

Early in her tenure, Rogers made a trip to New York City during February’s fashion week. She sat in the front row of runway shows such as Donna Karan and smiled for the flock of photographers who descended on the striking Obama gatekeeper with her pixie cut, stylish wardrobe and high-altitude heels. She dabbled in a world of hipsters and art scene know-it-alls in her attempt to bring a contemporary gleam to the White House. And she seemed to thrive on all the attention. She has come across as a big-picture manager, not one focused on details.

It’s not entirely accurate to say that WaPo would never write about a white person this way, because they certainly wrote about the Clintons this way. It’s also true that they wouldn’t write about, say, Condi Rice, this way (what with all the figure skating and concert-piano playing and Stanford provosting and whatnot).

But what this article is really saying is that Desiree Rogers isn’t the right kind of person. That’s what Socksgate and Travelgate and all that other bullshit was about too—the Clintons weren’t the right kind of people. It’s what all the bullshit about Michelle Obama’s iPod and bare arms is about too.

I hate to go on and on about this, but it’s pretty remarkable that the media insisted the Clintons being investigated for using White House postage to send letters form from their cat and that the Obama White House be investigated because two weirdos crashed a White House party, but that the Bush White House should never be investigated for torture, politicizing the DOJ, falsifying intelligence, and (not that that I think this one is important but it is similar to the kinds of trivialities that are deemed important when they happen under Clinton or Obama) having a male prostitute show up to lob softball questions at Wthie House briefings.

It’s just plain weird.

I’m really sick and tired of this man:

But Nelson later told reporters that his amendment would not be ready for a vote until after the weekend, postponing a floor showdown over abortion rights.

The defeat of his amendment would be politically significant because Nelson has pledged to vote with Republicans to filibuster the health bill if it did not include the Stupak language.

“I’ve said at the end of the day if it doesn’t have Stupak language on abortion in it I won’t vote to move it off the floor,” Nelson told reporters.

Look, I understand the need for a big tent and all that, but you simply can not have members of your caucus threatening to filibuster a bill that everyone else in your party supports and not suffer repercussions. You just can’t. Maybe he is just grandstanding, and will say this, then very publicly agonize over it, and vote for the bill without the Stupak legislation. I understand the games these guys need to play in states like Nebraska.

But if Nelson does filibuster the health care bill because the Stupak language is voted down by the majority of his party, at the very least he needs to lose his prized chairmanship. At the very least. You simply can not have members of your caucus siding with the minority to filibuster your signature legislation. There is a time when it is better to have someone outside the “Big Tent” pissing in, and if Nelson filibusters, it is his time to be kicked outside.

Are we finally there:

In the strongest employment report since the recession began nearly two years ago, the government said Friday that the nation’s employers had all but stopped shedding jobs in November, taking some of the pressure off of President Obama to come up with a wide-ranging jobs creation program.

The Labor Department reported that the United States economy lost 11,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate fell to 10 percent, down from 10.2 percent in October.

The government also significantly revised its September and October job loss estimates. September’s data was adjusted to show a loss of 139,000 jobs instead of 219,000, and in October 111,000 jobs were lost, instead of 190,000. Even allowing for the November loss, the revisions added 148,000 people to the list of those employed in the United States in November.

Though the pace of job loss has been declining since a peak in January, the November number was surprising. Economists had been expecting a turning point to come in the late spring or summer, with employers finally adding workers as a recovery takes hold. The last time the number was so bright was in December 2007, when the economy added 120,000 jobs.

Only losing 11k jobs is hardly something to cheer about, but considering the past year, it at least warrants a sigh of relief that the end might be near.

Sarah Palin, birther:

Speaking to the conservative talker Rusty Humphries today, Sarah Palin left the door open to speculation about President Obama’s birth certificate.

“Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?” she was asked (around 9 minutes into the video above).

“I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers,” she replied.

“Do you think it’s a fair question to be looking at?” Humphries persisted.

“I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past association and past voting records—all of that is fair game,” Palin said. “The McCain-Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area.”

The modern GOP is just all class.

That is all.

From Bad Horse’s Filly:

Continuing our theme of quick and easy recipes for the holidays, here’s a slow-cooker meal you can set up the night before and have ready at the end of a busy day of holiday events. This is a recipe from a restaurant in Ouray, CO that was in an old bank. They gave it to me 15 years ago on my honeymoon and I make it all the time. This was my first experience at having to change a recipe for 60 into one for 6-8. It’s spicy, so ease up on the cumin and chili powder if needed, you can always add more during the last 30 minutes if needed. On the board tonight:

1) Spicy Black Bean Soup
2) French Bread
3) Red Grape Salad
4) Apple wedges & Cheese

Click on the blue highlight for recipes and shopping lists.

I figure everyone could use a laugh today, so I’m linking to this ridiculous post based on some kind of a right-wing chain-email hoax about a recent AirTran flight that was delayed. The gist of it is that someone’s been sending around an email saying that there was a bunch of Muslims watching porn, screaming into their cellphones, and calling people “infidel dogs” before take-off and that this indicates that the whole thing was a dry run for a terrorist attack. Because that’s what terrorists do: they try to draw attention to themselves when they’re preparing for an attack. Steve M. does a good job of dissecting all the craziness.

The comments are predictably funny in general, but this one stood out:

There’s far too much detail here for this to be a fabrication.

Maybe this is just the Diet Dr. Pepper talking, but I think that phrase may have legs.

My therapist told me to stop reading the Kaplan reporter Q&As. But Flounder pointed me to a real doozy:

Taxes are killing us.: The US at 26.1% pays less tax than any other industrialized country except Japan at 25.8%. Sweden is at 50.2%, the UK at 35.8%, and Spain at 35.5%, for example. BTW each of these three countries had higher growth (average per capita growth 1995 – 2005) than we did. 2.5%, 2.4% and 3.1% resp. compared to our 2.1%. Also Japan’s was 1% growth.

Frank Ahrens: But did you know our corporate tax rate is among the highest in the world? That makes a real difference if you’re a business and you’re thinking about locating in the U.S. or, say, India.

[....]

But did you know our corporate tax rate is among the highest in the world?: Dead wrong. Our nominal tax rate of 35% is among the highest, but because of loopholes our real tax rate of 18% is among the lowest real corporate tax rates.

Frank Ahrens: Back atcha.

Back atcha?

And this is an economics reporter at one of the country’s three most important newspapers? You know, I feel bad saying this when I hear about all the reporters getting laid off, but I can’t think of any other profession where someone this inept could rise to near the top. So I say this with all due respect to all the good, smart, tough hard-working reporters out there: we’ll be better off when this whole clown show goes bankrupt.

I’m fairly certain we’ve discussed the Conservative Bible Project before. I guess I’m a little surprised by some of the winger complaints about teh librully biased regular Bible:

For example, the conservative word “volunteer” is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word “comrade” is used three times, “laborer(s)” is used 13 times, “labored” 15 times, and “fellow” (as in “fellow worker”) is used 55 times.

I get why they don’t like “comrade”. But what’s wrong with “laborer”? And aren’t “volunteers” kind of like “community organizers” when you get right down to it?

This is even more mystifying:

identify terms that have lost their original meaning, such as “word” in the beginning of the Gospel of John, and suggest replacements, such as “truth”.

[....]

prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

[.....]

At Luke 16:8, the NIV describes an enigmatic parable in which the “master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” But is “shrewdly”, which has connotations of dishonesty, the best term here? Being dishonestly shrewd is not an admirable trait.

The better conservative term, which became available only in 1851, is “resourceful”. The manager was praised for being “resourceful”, which is very different from dishonesty. Yet not even the ESV, which was published in 2001, contains a single use of the term “resourceful” in its entire translation of the Bible.

Does shrewd really have more connotations of dishonesty than resourceful? Where do they come up with this stuff?