The news just gets better and better...

Coffee may help to protect liver:

"'Consuming coffee seems to have some protective benefits against alcoholic cirrhosis and the more coffee a person consumes, the less risk they seem to have of being hospitalised or dying of alcoholic cirrhosis. We did not see a similar protective association between coffee and non-alcoholic drinks', explained one of the researchers, Dr Arthur Klatsky of the Kaiser Permanente's division of research."

This news, combined with yesterday's report gives me hope!

Top 11 Seminars At The Yearly Kos Convention

Heh!

Ann Coulter is not alone in her distaste for the "Jersey Girls"

This from Dorothy Rabinowitz's Media Log:

"That shouldn't have been surprising. The hearing room that day had seen a substantial group of 9/11 families, similarly irate over the Jersey Girls and their accusations--families that made their feelings evident in their burst of loud applause when Ms. Rice scored a telling zinger under questioning. But these were not the 9/11 voices TV and newspaper editors were interested in. They had chosen to tell a different story--that of four intrepid New Jersey housewives who had, as one news report had it, brought an administration 'to its knees'--and that was, as far as they were concerned, the only story."

...dated: April 14, 2004!

This says that either Ann Coulter is late, and taking advantage of other's work, or she is only repeating an under-reported phenomena in the MSM. Read another quote from Ms Rabinowitz:

"The venerable status accorded this group of widows comes as no surprise given our times, an age quick to confer both celebrity and authority on those who have suffered."

Sound familiar? "Liberal's Doctrine of Infallibility"

Later still, Ms Rabinowitz does something that the left hates. She put the current issue in historical perspective:

"From August 1940 to May 1941, the Luftwaffe's nightly terror bombings killed 43,000 British men, women and children. That was only phase one. Phase two, involving the V-1 flying bombs and, later, rockets, killed an additional 6,180. The British defense, was, to the say the least, ineffectual, particularly in the early stages of the war--the antiaircraft guns were few, the fire control system inadequate, as was the radar system. Still, it would have been impossible, then as now, to imagine victims of those nightly assaults rising up to declare war on their government, charging its leaders, say, with failure to develop effective radar--the British government had, after all, had plenty of warning that war was coming. It occurred to no one, including families who had lost husbands, wives and children, to claim that tens of thousands had been murdered on Winston Churchill's watch. They understood that their war was with the enemies bombing them."

This is not to say that 3,000 murdered Americans isn't relavent compared to nearly 50,000 Brits. It is to re-enforce the reaction of the Jersey Girls and the way the MSM embraced them.

Byron York on YearlyKos

Byron York on Daily Kos on National Review Online:

"The reason bloggers might do well on TV and radio, Trainer 1 continued, is that they aren't afraid of speaking their minds. And they can stand up to some well-known media figures. "If you're on with John Gibson, Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews --

"You're in hell!" said someone in the audience.

"They are hosts with a point of view," Trainer 1 said. And by the way, Trainer 1 continued, liberal bloggers shouldn't avoid appearing on the Fox News Channel. "If Fox TV asks you to go on, you should go on. The American people are smart, and they can see what's going on."

Not everyone in the group found that terribly convincing. "I was just wondering what world you were living in," said one man who raised his hand, "if you said the America people are smart..."

Oh those smug intellectuals over at Kos and the enlightened left. How much better this world would be if it weren't for those ignorant American people!

Lileks: In the mind of the left

It's been a while since I've visited Lileks. I have to remember to get to his site more often:

"But wait. You read that the suspects were not connected to al-Qaida, and you're confused for a moment. Maybe it won't be over if they get Osama bin Laden (provided he isn't really in an supersecret Idaho prison). What if the 'terrorists' hate you for their own reasons? The evildoer-in-chief said 'they hate our freedoms' -- as if we have freedoms, really, just try and get a bike-messenger job that has full health benefits. But what if rights and mixed-sex education and an economy based on sustainable hemp-based art installations mean nothing to them?"

It is a predicament!

Lessons for Liberals in California

RealClearPolitics has some thoughts:

"Progressives have a lot to think about. For one thing, there remains a deep skepticism about government spending, even for the best purposes. On the same day that the two propositions went down, voters in five California counties rejected sales tax increases, mostly to fund transportation projects. Attacks on tax and spend sound old and tired, but they still have force.

Higher taxes on the wealthy are a logical way to finance necessary programs because the best-off Americans have been posting much larger gains in income and wealth than the rest. But the well-to-do can still fend off such tax increases by creating rational doubts about what the money will be used for."

Maybe the "best purposes" and "necessary programs" need to be re-thought. Too often, progressives view government as THE answer to everything - even if the majority (government by the people, for the people) don't have a problem!

Greenpeace's fill-in-the-blank public relations

The Philadelphia Inquirer has this, an excerpt from a Greenpeace PR template:

"We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: 'In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE].'"

Once again, "fear" is okay to use - if its for the "right" cause. Isn't that so, Mr Gore?

An underlying problem for the left?

Byron York in the National Review has a review of the YearlyKos convention in Las Vegas. The story discusses an interesting dichotomy within the ranks of Kos-followers. Its worth reading. However, the last paragraph contains a quote from Markos himself, delivered in a keynote that might be a tip-off to one of the left's problems:

They can't keep us out any longer, Moulitsas said. We're going to crash the gates. "People power is a wonderful thing. Everyone can be a leader. Everyone can be a strong voice. Everyone can make a difference. There has been far too much talent, far too much passion, far too much intelligence in this country marginalized by the establishment currently stinking up Washington D.C. And now, that talent has an outlet. It can no longer be marginalized." (emphasis mine)

No. Everyone cannot BE a leader if you want to be effective. Everyone has the ability to lead, at some time, but unless everyone agrees where the group is going, they cannot all lead - and be effective.

This seems to be the left's biggest problem. They all have their cause(and on the left, that includes hundreds of them). Even when their cause is the same, they have a difficult time accepting that someone else believes it too. Perhaps it's part of the "me" personality trait which many of the left seem to have. This is why many of the left are content to spend hours discussing the intricacies of the "problem" and, in many cases --like the commenters on DailyKos -- whine and complain about everything. Conservatives, on the other hand, are truly grounded in common sense and common good. They see a problem, they fix it.