I watched the stream today of the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. After Steve Jobs had finished his presentation, he introduced a musical guest - friend and Academy Award-winning songwriter Randy Newman.

I was fairly floored by the song he chose to sing. It was a masterpiece of bitter, righteous political sarcasm. A sly backhanded "compliment" to the current leadership of the United States. I am frankly amazed that Jobs permitted something so subversive.

Lyrics after the flip.

New overflow diary is here - might be better for dialup users:

LIVEBLOG PART II
(thanks everyone for updating the story and providing such valuable info with your comments)

Breaking news on MSNBC right now, they say an interstate bridge in Minneapolis over the Mississippi has fallen into the river, sending both cars and pedestrians into the water.

From the video they are showing on TV, this bridge looks to be over 100 feet high. (Update: correction from Lashe below in the comments - 50 to 65 feet above the water)

Awful, I hope maybe some of the families in those cars miraculously survived.

I delivered about 5 copies of SiCKO on DVD to friends and relatives a week or so before its release. Not one of them has watched it yet.

What's going on?

This one is particularly biting against the MSM and mirrors much of what we have all been saying for years, if not decades. It's high time someone made an effective satire of it, and Jib Jab's latest video hits the mark, dead center.

Embed below the fold.

(Video and Transcript links at the bottom)

Howard Dean just finished a generous, respectful, powerful and entertaining speech at the Liberal Party leadership convention in Montreal. When I was watching it, it made me proud to be an American again, even though I transplanted myself to Canada years ago.

I wonder who is responsible for this crap? Got this one in the inbox today, and it's so full of falshoods and wrong assumptions that it nearly makes my head explode. How does one best retaliate in kind to this garbage? A point-by-point refutation?

UPDATE: Added a link to the diary by fbihop which refutes at least one of the points about taxes! Thanks fbihop!

Got my forms in the mail last week for doing my taxes in Canada for the first time, after becoming a Permanent Resident last year. After growing up and living most of my life in the U.S., with regard to Canada all I ever heard was how they're all crushed to death under the burden of taxes they have to pay to support their eeee-villll socialist, multicultural agenda.

(more below the flip)

Surely I've not been the only one following the recent dust-up over the book (promoted by Oprah Winfrey to the top of the bestseller list) which turned out to be a fraud, A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey. The Smoking Gun did some investigative work which the publisher apparently (or maybe deliberately) failed to do, and found that the majority of events depicted in the book simply never took place. In fact, large parts of the book may have been crudely plagiarized.

I thought some of you might like a diary which covers a subject not as immediate and pressing as the Alito confirmation, but that does illustrate the general movement in our society that it's not Truth or Lies that matter, only the exposure of such. Nothing wrong with illegal wiretapping, it's the whistleblowers who are to blame for exposing it! This absurd drama surrounding Oprah and James Frey only serves to emphasize the trend.

Much more below...

Couple times today I spotted cable news droids floating the idea that since this administration has "hit bottom" with the indictment of Libby, the only way for them to go is up... Cited lowest ratings of Bush ever, etc. As if they are actively trying to jumpstart opinion to start moving in Chimpy's favor again.

The implication of this attitude is reminiscent of the first reports that New Orleans had been "spared" or had "dodged a bullet" when in fact it had been fatally wounded. Libby may ib reality be only the beginning, but I do sense in the press an attempt to "back off" the pressure on this administration's neck.

I predict a flurry of "Dubya Rebounds, better than ever after cleaning house of that rat Libby!" stories will appear soon.

We must keep the boot on his throat.

Disgusting, shameful, disgraceful... How to describe it. An AP cameraman catches some cops in New Orleans beating an old black man who appears to not be resisting in any way.

Now, I know that since The Chimperor brought this issue to the fore yesterday, many of you who do not have the time or inclination to research the particulars are simply going to assume that if it's good enough for 85, then it must be a looming disaster for the country. I am here to instead remind you that even a stopped clock is right by coincidence twice a day (once a day if you're in Europe and use a 24hr clock), and that the sole fact of Dubya's support of nuclear power is not a good enough reason to oppose it. George probably supports the wearing of pants, and while I oppose some of his policies I don't think that particular policy is unreasonable (at least in my case).

I just finished watching Ashley Smith outline her ordeal with Brian Nichols (the Atlanta courtroom killer) on CNN. Her press conference has to be seen to be believed. He kept her hostage for what I understand to be more than 7 hours, and after this astonishingly brave and thoughtful woman talked to him, he gave himself up peacefully.

I still can't quite understand it.

I can only imagine what the O'Reilly/Hannity/Limbaugh crowd will say about her story - they'll probably label her an accomplice.

I came home tonight and was flipping thru the guide on my StarChoice satellite receiver, and there was a channel that was not there earlier today - 503, Fox News Channel.

Caught the end of O'Lielly talking to Tom Wolfe about Wolfe's new book on sex on college campuses. After that Bill plugged his "kid's book."

I wonder if it had as a bonus the falafel transcripts.

Any canadians here who also spotted FNC on their cable system, or Bell XpressVue satellite systems?

They will do it early so as to create that "seed of controversy" that will inform a fresh he-said/she-said media narrative. It will also cause all their lawyer surrogates to fight that much harder and to push past all ethical lines.

In other words, to create a frenzy of confusion, hoping that the ensuing chaos, combined with the public's inability to pay attention for more than 25 seconds at a time, will somehow put them on top, or give them some purchase in the courts.

Irrational to be sure, but predictable.

p.s. - "accordingtofoxnews.com" is available for registration according to Network Solutions, for the parody-minded among you...

What would be the most damaging question asked of Kerry?

We must all try to develop some worst-case scenarios of questions asked of Kerry during the debate, so we can come up with effective defenses.

There will be leading questions, questions with false presumptions, attacks disguised as questions, and probably several other permutations.

I can think of one or two, but I wonder if airing them will provide ammunition to our opponents. But if we are to have any hope of preparing for them, we must identify all possible lines of attack.

I'll let you folks come up with the best questions and defenses. Here are two of my own 'hard questions':

1. If you believe that moving focus from Al Queda to Iraq was such a grave mistake, then why aren't you advocating an immediate withdrawal from Iraq with a repositioning of our forces to Afghanistan? Wouldn't such a plan address that error?

2. How can you say that tax incentives for companies to stop offshoring of U.S. jobs will be effective, when countries like India and China are paying their workers one-tenth the wages that U.S. workers receive? How can any corporate tax break compete with that?

Head on over to the friendliest place in Progressiveland, on EFnet IRC Channel DailyKos.

It's easy, just download an IRC client for your machine - mIRC for Windows or Conversation for Macintosh OSX.

Their directions are easy to follow, but here is my own quick-start guide for Conversation, since I am  Mac user:

This is gonna be a pretty simple glossing over, for more details, visit the Conversation Homepage at:

http://homepage.mac.com/philrobin/conversation/

 Go to the above website, scroll down a page or so, and click the arrow under "1.4.2 for 10.2"

 Once you download the program, you will have an icon titled "Conversation1.4.2.dmg" in the spot where your web browser downloads normally end up.

 Double click it. On your desktop will appear another icon, this time titled "dossier sans titre" (?). Double click on it, and there's the program (icon titled "Conversation.") Drag it to your applications folder.

 Double click on it. Up will appear a "Connection" box. Enter a nickname that you think will be unique, and 9 characters or less. No spaces allowed, but underscores (_) are ok. You should not need any password, leave that blank.

 In the line where it says "Server" put in this, only because it seems to be working okay today:

 efnet.demon.co.uk

 If that one will not let you in, there is a page that has a list of known working servers for you to try until you find one that will let you in:

http://www.erienet.net/~circle/links.html

 Once you have entered the server (leave the port box alone), click on the Connect button.

 if successful, you should see a scroll of a lot of text explaining the rules for using their server. To summarize them, use common sense.

 To join #dailykos (The pound sign is IRC-speak for 'Channel' which is another way of saying "chat room"), go to the File menu, choose "New Conversation", type "dailykos" into the box labeled "Channel" and hit the join button.

 The channel window appears, with the list of who's already there in a pop-out panel on the right. Start talking by typing, when you're ready to send your text to the channel, hit Return.

 Now you're on your own!