Blog Box

December 17, 2004
Compiled by Bucky Rea, The Brown Bag Blogger

Undocumented Nannies of Well Documented Ninnies

It's been good this week to see someone besides the Democrats getting beat up.

The worst week ever had to belong to Bernard Kerik who blew not only the sweetest job offer in his life, but also put his marriage at risk, certainly lost at least two girlfriends, had to drop "saved Iraq" from his resume, saw nearly every dirty little secret of his life hit the front pages, and even had to say buh-bye to his most favoritetest babysitter, a flashy girl not from Flushing, the nanny named "illegal" (or possibly not).

Of course the feeding frenzy came only after he was useless to the administration. Our intrepid major media decided to hold their fire until after the man was down and could be safely kicked. The whole story's not being credited as such, but the fact is that once again a story that might have died stayed alive because bloggers refused to let it go. Leading the charge was Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall who lit a match off every flickering light on the Kerik scandalabra he could reach. By week's end both Marshall and blogger Steve Gilliard were starting to wonder if there ever even was a nanny. Could it be, Gilliard asks, that Kerik was "inventing a nanny to cover his legal problems"?

You heard it here first, people. "Undocumented nanny" is the new "spend more time with my family."

Yeh, legal problems like avoiding arrest warrants, stalking the son of one of his girlfriends', and hiring mobsters to redecorate his love nest. Only with Kerik out of the picture, who's gonna help George Bush restore honor and dignity to the White House?

"Hmmm," thinks Rising Hegemon blogger Attaturk, "maybe these two men can help."

Atrios, meanwhile, had the straight poop on famed publisher Judith Regan, the conservative publisher who "reluctantly" published all the dirt on the Lewinsky almost-scandal she could find. The moralizing Ms Regan, of course, was one of Mr Kerik's paramours. And, once again, the straight poop came straight out of the horse's mouth. Okay, we won't dwell on that image too long. Instead, let's contemplate Judith's morality:

REGAN: Well, I think that the social fabric of this country has become completely unraveled. I think the sexual revolution had a lot to do with that. I think that we are in terrible shape. I think we have a country where half the kids are being raised by single mothers. A lot of that has to do with male behavior. We look at the men in this country who do not want to be accountable to their wives, do not want to be accountable to their children.

Of course some of us got to get a much closer look at those "unaccountable" men, eh, Judith? To get the full effect, you really gotta read all the quotes from the Escheton. Regan's a literate, well spoken woman, of course. So, unfortunately, there's no smoking falafel this time; just tons and tons of hypocrisy hung out to dry.

Back to Ohio

Via Blue Lemur, The Brad Blog is all over the Ohio vote miscount story like Santa on a milk and rum cookie spread. The latest news is that the Kerry campaign has added "election tampering" to its lawsuit against the Ohio secretary of state.

While Blue Lemur and Brad Blog covered the sad news, Emmanuel Ortiz's Scam-o-rama was out to remind us what's really at stake and what's being lost in the Buckeye Votergate State. Grab a kleenex before reading the "Plea from an Ohio Activist" that Ortiz has posted. Then go and do something.

War and War

Laura Rozen's War and Peace blog continues to find a deficiency of the latter in favor of the former, while being one of the best round ups on the bad news about both. In addition to tracking all the wacky doings of arms smugglers in Iraq (who always seem to be KBR employees) and Doug Feith (Rumsfeld's lieutenant who is miffed about Israel doing arms bidness with China... just like he used to do), Rozen's starting to wonder who's behind the "dump Rumsfeld" movement. Senators McCain, Lott, Susan Collins, and Norm Coleman are calling for his thick skull and she smells Dick all over it.

Juan Cole was his usual indispensable self this week, giving us not one or two, but three history lessons on the history of Jews in Iraq.

Gloom Despair and Agony on Me

But let us not laugh at Bernie Kerik's exposure only to forget our troubles. Under a constant barrage of information about how thoroughly whomped the Democrats got last month (losing--oh my god!--a total of seven US House seats and only winning 48% of the vote against a sitting war time president--panic!), some folks in the blogoverse are turning to despair.

Joe Drymala at Not Geniuses.com argues, "It's time to face the facts: the United States is a one-party state." Which is true if you only count the 51% of the voters who voted for Bush and the 52.8% of the US House members who are Republican.

Drymala is among many pointing to the piercing series, already a modern blog classic, by Orcinus: "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism." This one's a keeper; print this whole series by Orcinus out and really read it. Even if you don't buy the whole neocons-are-protonazis argument -- and I don't -- this is thought provoking and very disturbing stuff that lets you see some what we're up against.

Over at the Daily Kos, DUer Tom Tech is keeping an eye out for the drift to the far far nuttier right with his brand new This Week in Fascism Report. Keep an eye out for this one.

But The Carpetbagger caught the dumbest story of the week. John McCain has found his winning issue for 2008: athletes' steroid abuse. Yep, that's what did it for Georgie. Along with rigging the machines in Ohio and Florida, that's pretty much how you win elections in the fabulous 21st Century.

The People's Choice

Now don't forget, the Sandy Koufax Awards -- those are the real weblog awards, by the way, not to be confused with the right-slanted Bloggies I mentioned last week -- are coming up again. Wampum's running the show again so send in your raves and faves to Wampum asap.

And finally, last week I ended my first column in this series with a general call for recommendations from people about blogs I oughta know about about. The blogger who got the most recommendations was a guy named The Rude Pundit. Well, the people have spoken then; and the people want cussing. Which leads us up to our quote of the week

From the Rude One:

G****mn, that must've been some hot f******g: Bernard Kerik, Police Commissioner of New York City, and Judith Regan, w**re of bookdom, b*lling like crazed weasels in that $6000 a month condo in lower Manahttan, the fin-de-siecle glow of the still burning rubble of the twin towers turning one of the bedrooms a tawdry red.

Um, pardon the French, of course.

Know a hot blog that needs some coverage? Send your recommendations to Bucky.

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