I'm off to the airport for a hearing in another state tomorrow. See you all back here Friday. Here's an open thread.

Big Tent wrote yesterday about Tuesday night's debate between Bill O'Reilly and Hillary Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson.

Crooks and Liars has the video. The You Tube version is here.

Peter Daou, Hillary's Internet Communications Director, has a post-show diary on Daily Kos pointing out this statement by Wolfson:

"I think it's unfortunate that in the last week or so you have cherry picked some comments on the Daily Kos site that you or I or others might find objectionable and decided to smear an entire community - hundreds of thousands of people who go to the site every day, who talk to one another, who participate vigorously in our democracy; and you are urging Democratic presidential candidates to stay away from their yearly conference. And unfortunately with all due respect for you, the days where you can dictate where Senator Clinton and other Democrats go, who we talk to, are over.

I'm getting excited about Yearly Kos. I'll be there for all of it. If you can't make it, you can still watch and participate through Second Life. The sign-up sheet is here.

So many readers responded by comments and e-mail to my Powerbook woes and request for help getting a new Macbook with helpful hints on how to save a failed hard drive, select a back-up system and transfer music and video files from an iPod to a new computer, and with donations, I thought I'd post a follow-up.

Things are looking up. Here's what happened.

After receiving the failed diagnosis from the Genius Bar at the Apple store on Sunday, I took the Powerbook in to the local authorized Apple repair shop on Monday. Hard drive failure diagnosis confirmed.

The options were: Buy a new hard drive and have them install Tiger on it and transfer the music and videos from the iPod to the new hard drive, for a cost of $400 (and maybe throw in a few hundred more for additional memory since the Powerbook only had 512 mb memory and then think about still more for an external hard drive).... or give them the Powerbook and they'd give me $400 for it, which I could then put to the cost of a new Macbook.

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last call

If you haven't contributed to TalkLeft in a while, and can spare a few dollars, I'm hoping you will do so now so I can get this new Macbook. All amounts are welcome and appreciated.

If you'd rather donate anonymously, please use Amazon here.

If anyone would like to buy it for me, I've put it on my Amazon Wishlist.

Thanks, everyone.

Charles Johnson knows that the administration of daily kos is not the authors of the diaries there, just as he is not responsible for the many racist, sexist and offensive comments at his site Little Green Footballs, but apparently he lacks the integrity to be honest about it. John Cole is a man of integrity and explains why what Johnson has posted is so foul:

Just in case you were keeping score- some anonymous wingnut wrote a nasty anti-military screed on DKOS, had it promptly deleted by the folks at DKOS [It turns out the diarist himself, an crime author named Corey Mitchell, first time diarist with no history at all at daily kos, himself immediately deleted the diary], and that is somehow proof that the left hates troops. . . . A quick refresher- anyone can post a diary there [daily kos]. I could log on to my account and write nothing but BUSH SUCKS BUSH SUCKS BUSH SUCKS BUSH SUCKS. In fact, I just did. . . .

(Written Sunday night.) What a lousy day. Last night, out of nowhere, my Powerbook G4 just went and died. No matter how many times I tried to boot it up, I never got past the gray screen with the Apple logo. I spent most of the night on Apple's website, doing all the things they said, pressing control-option this and command-option that, resetting things called PRAM and PNU, all to no avail.

Today I called the local Apple Store that has a "Genius Bar" and got a 3:45 pm appointment. It was 100 degrees outside, but off to the mall I went. The geniuses hooked it up to their equipment and confirmed the hard drive failed and the data can't be read.

For $150, they would remove the hard drive so I could take it to a data recovery specialist who would charge hundreds more to try and recover stuff. For $400, I could get a new hard drive put in, but my data would be lost.

To make things worse, it turns out that even if I buy a MacBook or MacBook Pro as a replacement, I won't be able to transfer my music and video(other than that purchased from the iTunes store) to the new computer. Apple licensing prohibits it. iTunes only allows the downloading of music from iTunes on your computer to iPod, not from iPod to iTunes.

This totally sucks.

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Crooks and Liars is hosting a live-chat with Michael Moore today between 4:00 and 5:00 ET.

The movie has opened in about 500 new cities across the country this weekend and is the # 5 grossing documentary of all time so far……

Michael Moore's SiCKO site is here.

Via Think Progress, which has the video and transcript, the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol said on Fox News Sunday this morning:

“Every Democratic presidential nominee is going to the DailyKos convention,” said Kristol. “That’s the left-wing blogger who was not respectable three or four years ago. The Howard Dean kind of sponsor. Now the whole party is going to pay court to him and to left wing blogs.”

First, the convention is put on by Yearly Kos, an organization separate from the Daily Kos blog and separate from Markos.

More importantly, Markos is and always has been respectable. I'll repeat what I wrote a few years ago:

Markos is a friend of our's. We've spent hours with him - and his wife. He even designed TalkLeft for us, gratis. We've watched him grow from trying to get a few hundred hits a day to getting a thousand hits by noon (another landmark) to where he is now: the largest and most widely read liberal political blogger in the blogosphere.

He's earned every visitor to Daily Kos with his hard work, intelligence and uncanny grasp of all things related to politics and the internet. He grew up in war-torn El Salvador and served as an enlisted U.S. soldier in Gulf War I. He has a law degree. He is an incredibly talented pianist. He and his wife just had this beautiful baby. He's our friend.

Respectable means "worthy of respect or esteem." I think it's Kristol who is lacking in this department, not Markos.

Most of the Democratic presidential candidates and as well as many top Congressional leaders are attending Yearly Kos and participating in forums where they will answer questions from the attendees, 1,500 people from all walks of life concerned about the state of our nation.

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"I'm gonna knock you out
Mama said knock you out"

This kept popping into my head today while writing about the Government asking the Court to impose the maximum sentence on Joe Nacchio.

Atrios notes that we have 18 months to go in the national nightmare that has been the Bush Presidency. (And yes it does bring to mind the famous Onion headline.) He then reviews what he was writing about 18 months ago - silly Deborah Howell's awful performance on the Abramoff coverage, Joe Klein, of course, and one of many Iran scares we have been subjected to.

On the flip, I'll remember what I was writing about.

JetBlue has sure engaged in the strangest string of decisions one can imagine.

It all started when JetBlue provided free airline ticket vouchers to the YearlyKos convention. JetBlue was attacked by Bill O'Reilly. Jetblue responded to O'Reilly that it had only given free airline ticket vouchers for YearlyKos. O'Reilly trumpeted as a huge cave-in by JetBlue/Victory for Billo, even though nothing had changed.

Update [2007-7-20 18:4:45 by Big Tent Democrat]: Boy this Barger fellow is stupider than I thought:

. . . I personally have never condoned and abhor anything hateful towards anyone and am fully confident that JetBlue's crewmembers share this view. . . .

You believe Mr. Barger, that the Pope is NOT a primate? Are you as dumb billo?

More.

Whatever is going on in the world today, here's a place for you to discuss it. It's a court day for me, I'll be back here tonight.