Don't know if you caught this, but Politico's Michael Calderone runs the video of Jessica Yellin breaking astounding news to CNN's Anderson Cooper: Apparently corporate media executives pressured the White House reporters to kill negative stories on Bush, especially when Bush's approval ratings were high.  (I know!  Unbelievable!)

(Let me know if this has already been diaried.)

What was most amusing to me, though (aside from Cooper's naivete), were the right-wing commenters on the Politico, who figured the only censorship imaginable was probably to take out Yellin's inate liberal bias and "Bush hatred":

"Where in the MSM have we EVER seen positive stories about this administration or the war?? Its just not there."

"Maybe her stories were already biased by her hatred of Bush and her editors were trying to balance the story...which she found objectionable."

Yeah, that must be it.  Link and pull-outs from Yellin are below the fold.

I swore I would not write a candidate diary.  I'm so sick of them.  But it seems necessary to document that my pro-Obama stance is one that I arrived to slowly.  I have become too cynical over the Bush years to be easily moved by any candidate's speeches.  I resent the implication by some that supporting Obama is a naive stance or arrived upon through feeling at the exclusion of rationality.

I also resist the accusations that by being against Hillary I am somehow anti-feminist or playing into patriarchal frames.  I did not start out anti-Hillary.  Like my support for Obama, it was an evolution, not a revolution.

I've come to a realization.  Not earth-shattering, pretty obvious, actually.  But in processing yesterday's all-too-typical staff meeting at work, I came to see how my control-freak fear-mongering boss resembles the miscreants who  "run" (term applied loosely) our current government.  

They say that just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean people aren't following you.  Surely the inverse must be at least partially true: just because people are following you, that doesn't mean you have to be paranoid.

My boss: paranoid.  Me: I choose not to be.  At least, not to an unhealthy degree...if I can help myself at all.

Sunday night, after being tucked into bed, my eight-year-old son came running out into the living room, crying because he felt sick to his stomach.  No fever; he was vague, contradictory on his symptoms -- they seemed to change every few minutes, apparently trying to find which were the right answers that might make me as distressed about this as he was.  We are fortunate in that he is healthy and rarely ill, so as a result, he reacts with fear and dread all out of proportion to the actual possible ailment.

I calmed him down, gave him a child's antacid, and a few minutes later, held him as he threw up into a towel.  He felt better.  Apparently it was something he ate.  (Likely culprit, a Kid Cuisine frozen dinner that, unlike wine, did not age well.)

Last night, more drama.  Once again, after being tucked in, he came out running and crying again, this time with blood on his hand.  

Today I had a kind-of argument with a liberal friend of mine.  I say "argument" because while we don't actually disagree on politics in a substantive way, I do tend to get impassioned on certain topics, and this somewhat animated discussion started with her questioning why do I read blogs?  What's the appeal?  Aren't I limiting myself to one point of view?  

And isn't that as bad as those who only get their news from Fox?

Okay, so really I was defending my addiction to DailyKos and similar progressive blogs like Josh Marshall, Hullabaloo, Firedoglake and Glenn Greenwald.  But it got me to thinking...

The head of the Church of England, Rowan Williams, spoke out firmly against the teaching of creationism in schools, according to The Guardian.

Williams is the Archbishop of Canterbury - the equivalent of a pope for the worldwide Anglican Communion which includes the U.S. Episcopal Church, the third-largest Christian denomination.

The Anglican faith has always emphasized bringing reason and rationality to faith decisions, so this isn't a huge surprise.  Still, I found it a refreshing reminder that not all people of faith are against science.  Pull-outs and link are below.

I'm kind of embarrassed to even post this, but I'm in a panic, and it's too late in the evening to start making calls for help, so here I am, tapping into the considerable resources of Kossacks for some advice, some reassurance, anything I can get.  (and please don't beat me up for stupidity - I can't hack that now.)

I got tricked into signing a contract I didn't realize I was signing with a prominent, supposedly reputable, "GET IT DONE" home improvement company here in Michigan, and today they told my husband they intend to hold us to it.  

The beginning of life is not a switch that is flipped.  It is a process, a continuum.  It is an intensely personal experience that is unique to every woman and every pregnancy. She is a FULL PARTICIPANT.  Every emotion, every body substance, is shared.  If she is happy to be pregnant, the fetus feels that, and she will endure discomfort because the love is there.  

If she does not want to be pregnant, the fetus is bathed with stress hormones, and the process is painful.  If you try to remove the WOMAN part (with all her emotions and experiences) out of the pregnancy, you may as well gestate the child in tupperware.  

(good luck with that.)

Last night my 8-year-old son said, "Remember those kids I played with last summer, and sometimes they were mean to me?  Is that because they were black kids?"

With Martin Luther King day coming up, I find myself once again educating my son Shawn on the sensitive dynamics of race relations while knowing, if I do it wrong, he'll be in for some rough treatment in his predominately black school.  I hope I'm up to the challenge...

First, some background below the jump:

Just in:
http://rawstory.com/...

First graf:
John Bolton, the former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs who is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was contacted by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in late May 2003 to find out who sent Ambassador Joseph Wilson on a fact-finding mission to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from the African country, lawyers involved in the CIA outing investigation told RAW STORY over the weekend.

The Detroit Free Press this morning has a profile of Keith Butler, a pastor of the hugely successful Word of Faith church in Southfield, suburb of Detroit, Michigan.

Apparently the GOP is hoping it can get the outstate rightwing racist vote with a black man who is against gays and reproductive rights, and hoping to collect some of the local African American vote that traditionally votes Democratic. He represents a departure in that he is not traditional corporate repub material, but he's all for tax cuts.

Stabenow has been an excellent Senator imo except for the grievous bankruptcy bill.  link is below.

I don't know if this has been shared already but I thought it was important enough to post.  This list of progressive charities comes via the Detroit MetroTimes http://tinyurl.com/anvv7 from Don Hazen of AlterNet at www.alternet.org

for maximum exposure, I am running the whole piece -- hope that's okay.

"What follows is one list of 10 great things happening in response to Hurricane Katrina. These are deserving places for your support, whether it is to give housing, use your tech skills, volunteer or give hard cash...."

Atrios just linked to a Workbench blog article with more details on the Gretna police actions preventing refugees from leaving New Orleans on foot.

The link to the article:
http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/2748
"Police Trapped Thousands in New Orleans"

Atrios link:
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_04_atrios_archive.html#112628551184863229

snip of the Workbench piece below the fold.

Columnist Jack Lessenberry gives a plug to DailyKos today in Detroit's alternative paper, Metro Times.  The article is titled "The war hasn't started yet" and is about Iraq, Sheehan, and GOP hypocrisy (what else?).

He calls DK "one of the very few blogs worth putting down your Superman comic book for."

here's the link:

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=8154

My 7-year-old son has Asperger's.  Yes, it sounds like something you'd get at a deli -- something with sauerkraut on rye, maybe. Asperger's is a neurological disorder, related to autism, that makes kids respond different than "normal" to sensory input and to other people. The incidence of Autism and the less severe Asperger's has risen at least fifteenfold (15 times!!) since thimerosal (mercury) was added to infant and children's vaccines as a preservative between 1989 and 2003. My son, born in 1997, is a member of the "thimerosal generation."  

After years of discounting the rumored link between autism and vaccines, I just read the salon.com article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about thimerosal in vaccines, specifically how the government (CDC, FDA, for starters) has conspired NOT to protect children but to cover up evidence to (naturally) protect BIG PHARMACEUTICAL.  I'm not surprised.  But somehow, when I read about DR. Frist's role in this conspiracy, I got too angry to continue reading.

More on what pushed my buttons below:

I don't know if this has been posted already.  I just received it as an email from my mother-in-law and LOVED it!

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

I, being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by some ungodly, unholy artificial means. When my number comes up, then it's my turn to go. Under no circumstances should my untimely fate be put in the hands of a bunch of peckerhead politicians who couldn't pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it. If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to sit up and ask for a big piece of chocolate, or a good ice cold beer, it should then and only then, be presumed that I won't do so ever again. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day.

(continued below)

I didn't see this diaried yet but this is too shocking not to post.  The Washington Post and Salon have pieces on just how far Bush Administration's hatred and prejudice are willing to go:

A federally funded conference on suicide prevention had scheduled a talk on preventing suicide for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals, and some bigot from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that is funding the conference, warned the conference to REMOVE those four offending words -- gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender -- or risk losing their funding!

How far will these dangerous nuts go?  Is there no limit?

It's Wednesday, and Detroit's weekly alternative newspaper the Metro Times is out.  Columnist Jack Lessenberry does not disappoint.  In a piece called "The New McCarthyism," he details the recent shredding of Eason Jordan, and says the real scandal is that "if you're a right-winger, you can say or do virtually anything, no matter how outrageous....

"The media disgraces itself daily, and hourly looks more like the sort of lapdog press that we used to be accustomed to seeing in fascist dictatorships."

He ends by referencing the Gannon story: "Still, Mithras, or whoever the god is who is running the world these days, does have a sense of humor. One of the most obnoxious reporters at White House press conferences was one Jeff Gannon...."

Complete quote and link to story, below the jump.