Howard Kurtz in yesterday's Washington Post said Daschle had gone crazy because of his criticism of Rush Limbaugh. Howie even quotes Rush in this excerpt:

Here's a sample of some of Limbaugh's "harsh" rhetoric:

"Guess who John F. Kerry is getting presidential candidacy advice from, ladies and gentlemen? None other than The Loser, Michael S. Dukakis. I don't think God is generous enough to give us another liberal Massachusetts Democrat to run against."

And: "Another interesting observation is a Sally Quinn piece from the Washington Post this past weekend titled, 'All Dough And No Mo'.' She's the only writer who called 'Bubba vs. Dubya' right. Before the election, the press billed it as a war between the two - but after the election, nobody reported how it went. Bubba just disappeared. Even though her column contains a whole lot of Barbra Streisand BS, she does mention that the ideas of Bush soundly defeated the non-ideas of Bill Clinton."

Golly gee. We've heard worse on "Crossfire."

As spinsanity points out in this piece, Limbaugh's rhetoric is anything but normal. To test out a theory I had, I went to his website and typed in "devil" into the search engine. What came up?

The first result that comes up is a page which implies not only that Tom Daschle should die, but includes this illustration which depicts him with devil horns, a bright pink tie(?) and holding a giant Soviet flag. The number three item on the search results page (again, using the word "devil") turned out to be some of Rush's favorite quotes. One of the more memorable? Try this on for size:

"Josef Stalin is an angel to liberals, while George W. Bush is the devil. The Chinese communists are angels, but in Wisconsin hunting deer is the devil. Any attempt to please or mollify these people is an exercise in futility."

Gee, I've never heard Begala or Carville on Crossfire say Josef Stalin was an angel. Or that the president or hunters in Wisconsin were devils. Or a love for Chinese communists. If it was that easy for me to find vitriol with a simple search, how hard could it have been for Mr. Kurtz?

From this article in the Post: some surprising stats.

The season finale of "The Bachelor" on ABC beat the underpants off CBS's "Victoria's Secret Fashion Show" show Wednesday night because women rule and CBS forgot.

The first hour of the finale -- the part that went head-to-head with CBS's one-hour skivvies show -- copped 27 million viewers.

In that same hour, the CBS special attracted only 10.5 million people. Millions more people were interested in Martin Sheen pondering the immense political ramifications of honoring a secret request from the hard-line faux Iranian ayatollah to allow his son into the United States for life-saving surgery than were interested in Naomi Campbell in a garter belt -- and what's up with that?

We know this because NBC's "The West Wing" flattened the lingerie show in the 9 p.m. time slot. Even stranger, more men were interested in the musings of Martin Sheen than in Naomi in a garter belt.

How 'bout them apples, eh? It just goes to show that if you have a good show, with a good following, that you'll do well in the ratings. Hell, 24 beat election night coverage two tuesdays ago. And it was way more uplifting, despite being about a nuclear bomb detonation in Los Angeles.

So I meet this lady from Texas last night, and somehow, on every single topic, she managed to take a position that seemed completely illogical. Well, except for liking Ann Richards. I agreed with her on that. But then again, I brought that up. Converting federal workers to contractors? She was all for it. (Being a contractor to the government, she said she was much more efficient than any lazy federal employee.) The homeless? According to something "she saw" some of them are making six figures and driving home to the burbs at night. Grr. I can never understand the whole welfare-queen alligators-in-the-sewers urban myth deal when it comes to the poor. For some reason people seem inclicned to believe that somehow, against all probability, the poor people on the street actually aren't doing that bad. It's some sort of denial, I guess. I pointed out that all the people begging and/or homeless near my workplace tend to sleep a few feet away in an alley behind a church. I thought it was ironic that across the street, at another church, there's a huge blue banner that says Faith Works Wonders! The Texan used this opportunity to say that she knew of an alley too, in Austin, where she used to see some homeless people. And that she was once playing golf and noticed a guy who had been in the alley, and she asked him about it and he claimed not to know what she was talking about.

For god's sake! Does anyone think that the homeless are merely drifting between absolute poverty and country-club shenanigans? Well, anyone else, at least? I tried to point out that if she'd made a mistake, that the guy on the golf course probably would've been a little upset that she thought he'd lived in an alley. She didn't seem to appreciate the dry wit. Okay, time to get back to work. My tasks continue to expand but the deadline's going nowhere.

So I'm flipping channels last night and after seeing the first episode ever of Daria (not a funny episode, at that) I saw the moment on the show the Bachelor (of course I'm not linking to it!) where he dumped the runner-up. She seemed pretty upset about it, and I recall thinking that, although fairly attractive, she didn't seem like a knockout. But the main bachelor didn't appear all that attractive either, so I thought, hopefully the winning woman was more attractive. Damn, was I wrong. She looked much much older and was even worse. Am I the only person in America who feels this way? Of course, the first girl breaking down in the limo didn't do anything to make her look better, so perhaps she looked better on the dates. But then, as I'm programming my vcr to record today's episode of dragonball z I notice that someone left the channel on good morning america, and sure enough, they're plugging the winner of the show. Not a great looking couple. For television, that is. Okay, back to my regular snobbish programming.

For some reason I've always been able to overheat quite rapidly in most environments, especially during winter. It's an annoying problem, to say the least, because although I enjoy the weather being cooler, fashion and common sense dictate an arsenal of heavy clothes, overcoats and gloves be worn at all times. Plus, unlike during the summer, when one can wear light clothing and expect that temperatures inside buildings will be much much cooler, during the winter building managers seem to take delight in cranking up the thermostats to much hotter than normal. And if you work in an office building, there's no way to open a window or adjust the temperature, unlike the summer when the level of the blinds can easy compensate for too much heat or too little warmth. And the most annoying aspect of all is that in all seasons, people with cold-blooded natures can simply wear more clothing to stay warm. Conversely, those of us furry mammals who are quite capable of generating our own heat can't remove all of our clothes unless we wish to be social ostracized, or fired. So it would only be natural that most places should keep the temperature at the lowest level anyone in the office desires. Well, maybe not natural, but definitely just. Okay, back to work in the old sweatshop...

In the midst of watching the third episode of 24 last night, which was quite enjoyable, I couldn't help notice a promotional for Fox 5 News which involved playing the audio recordings of people calling 911 in the midst of the sniper attacks. Damn. Considering that the snipers have been caught and that there's no newsworthiness to the story it was quite possible the most tawdry thing they've done. Being caught up in the political winds yesterday, I was equally surprised to see Connie Chung on CNN hype the Homeland Security Bill, and bookend it with something about Michael Jackson. I didn't watch the actual part of the show, but unless Michael has died, there's no reason that the biggest legislation in the last fifty years of the federal government should be bookended by the king of pop. No reason at all, even if it had something to do with a baby.

It's times like this that I find comfort in the cold, calculated neutrality of c-span. It doesn't farcically pretend to be objective, like fox news, or equally ludicrously attempt to be professional, like cnn or even worse, the network news stations. Bias is always going to be there...the only way to deal with it is to either cut out commentary (like c-span) or admit the bias and move on (no takers yet!) When journalists pretend to be "objective" they end up hurting neutrality by advancing tired arguments or presenting outright lies as "the other side" in an attempt to remain neutral. If we're headed for a budget disaster, and one side says we are, and the other says we're not, that's not a matter of opinion. Empirically speaking, the facts dictate one conclusion, and to bring up invalid arguments that strain editor's credibility undermines the objectivity the American public thinks is being presented. End rant.

The past several weekends have followed a fixed script: a warm, sunny week followed by two days (or three, for that recent holiday) of cold rain during the day. Since I get out of work each day while it's still dark, nothing's more depressing than to have to deal with cloudy skies for the two days that I'm free. It's absolutely spirit-crushing. Which is why I was happy to see that today, a weekday, was cloudy. Because hopefully this means that this weekend won't be. We'll see.

Yes, the Great Ampersand Problem has been fixed. This means that I now don't have to go back and check every article Brad and Helena post to make sure that every & is actually recorded as & instead. Got it? It's the details that count...

I've changed a few other items on the site, due to user requests. Check out the reviews section to see if the new timestamp/hyperlink title system looks better than the old one. You will have to click on an individual article to see the effect I'm referring to. I also implemented it over on the news side of things, although since the section itself hasn't been updated except for the blog, there's probably less going on there.

The week is going better than last, so hopefully by tomorrow I'll be fully caught up with all my work. These next two weeks are still looking fairly tortuous in terms of the amount of coding that needs to be done before the new site goes live. Ideally, any cool new features from my work there will trickle down to this side, such as my new method for ensuring that ampersands don't get improperly placed into articles. Yes, it's obscure. And yes, I know no one cares. That's why I'm getting back to work.

On a sad note, it appears that the Bull Moose has finally called it quits. It's unfortunate, as many of his viewpoints echoed my own. Sad to say, the Republican party just isn't interested in being the party of progressive national interests that assume America has not only the right, but the obligation to do what's best for the common man, the country and the entire world. If this means standing up to corporate power, so be it. His thoughts will be greatly missed.

It's always annoying to get up and realize that you're going to be late for work because of the split-second timing required to get into the shower before everyone else does. It's worse, however, to be late, jump in the shower and realize that all the hot water has been used up. Then, to top it off, the metro system decided to make me wait an extra thirty minutes for a train. Finally, it's far worse to make it to work and be told that you need to redo something that a couple thousand dollars has already been spent on. Something that you had to rush through just to make sure it happened on time. And now I have to plead with them to run the job again, correct the changes and not charge us any money. All for a project that I really didn't care about because, despite having two additional weeks left to finish the website, the stupid cards had to be sent out so far in advance that no other person has even seen the site yet. This week is really getting off to a bad start, considering that the amount of work I left here late on Friday evening has grown in the interim. Grr.