I love it when Republicans accuse each other of being predatory capitalists

At least nobody is going to accuse them of being socialists. These are screen captures from "When Mitt Romney Came to Town," the 28-min documentary that Newt Gingrich backers have put up on the web (and excerpts from which have been running as TV commercials in South Carolina). As a result, questions about Romney's track record as head of Bain Capital are starting to get some real traction in the campaign. Click here to see what all the fuss is about.


"When Mitt Romney Came to Town" turns out to be a powerful example of advocacy filmmaking. It paints with a broad brush -- and, who knows, Romney may be right about some details being off -- but the big picture is a scathing indictment of Mitt Romney and his colleagues in the 1% enriching themselves at the expense of the 99%. It's hard to discount the interviews with workers who lost their jobs when Bain Capital acquired their companies and basically ran them into the ground while Bain made substantial returns on its investment. The interviews, which are intercut with clips quoting Romney and illustrating his high-flying lifestyle (and mastery of French), are devastating. They could have been filmed by Michael Moore.

In the wake of Occupy Wall Street, this story about a corporate raider who wants to occupy the White House is bound to resonate with millions of Americans whose middle class jobs seem to have permanently gone away.

Jimmy Fallon covers Space Oddity with "Tebowie" lyrics

Jimmy Fallon does some amazing musical parodies, but this may be his best ever. The performance is spot-on, and the lyrics are perfect.

In an age of media "truthiness," the NYT's public editor wonders if the paper should even try to find out the truth

Curveball must be smiling, wherever he is. You'd think that the New York Times would have learned their lesson nearly a decade after their uncritical acceptance of official Washington's half truths and lies helped lead the U.S. into the Iraq War.

But they don't seem to have learned much in the years since then. They still seem journalistically challenged, at least by the standards of an earlier era, judging from their public editor's column titled Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante? Excuse me, but isn't that your job?

I've always enjoyed the NYT's "Public Editor's Journal." He's billed as the "readers' representative," although I'm not aware that we readers elected him. The column has always been a source of rich humor for anyone interested in the latest tortured twists and turns of the paper's institutional hypocrisy. By and large, the public editor's job seems to be to administer public lashings for minor infractions and the gentlest of slaps on the wrist for major offenses.

But public editor Arthur Brisbane's latest probing think piece really takes the cake. He asks readers to help answer this question:

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

That is, should reporters question lies and misleading representations that masquerade as fact in their stories. Who knew that was even an issue?

Don't get me wrong. The pages of a daily newspaper -- or, worse, a TV screen -- have never been a particularly promising place to prospect for absolute truth. Discovering the truth is hard under the best of circumstances, and daily journalism provides far from ideal circumstances. Plus, powerful corporate interests make life tough for reporters who probe too deeply. They risk losing a lucrative job and not being able to get another. The conventions of "objective reporting" as practiced in American journalism make it all too easy to slip into "on the one hand, on the other hand" reporting that favors truthiness more than truth. Joe McCarthy held up lists of imaginary Communists and made a career out of this sort of media laziness, so it's not a new problem. And it often seems the public itself has grown tired of facts and prefers the bloviations of bigfoot cable pundits.

Nevertheless, there have always been conscientious reporters who try to discover the truth and share it with their readers. Others have at least pretended to pursue the truth, and if hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, that's not necessarily a bad thing. At least it helps keep the idea alive that there is a truth out there, somewhere.

But Brisbane seems to be wondering whether it's even possible or advisable for a newspaper to pursue the truth or to hold sources accountable, whether there's even any point in trying. If truth has really become such an embarrassing issue for one of the icons of establishment journalism, perhaps the critics are right.

Maybe the mainstream media have become so compromised by corporate considerations they really are nothing but hidebound, obsolete dinosaurs. Maybe it's time to look for news to the smaller, more nimble mammals that are evolving in the new media landscape.

The snow really makes the Recall Walker signs pop

Finally, some long overdue snow. Governor's long overdue departure to follow.

Madison’s 1%’s Vision for Downtown

I stole my title from former alder Brenda Konkel's marvelous blog post about the Economic Development Committee's meeting the other day about the Downtown Plan. For most of us, the big downtown projects just happen -- by the time we hear about an Overture Center, an Edgewater redevelopment, or just another condo down the block, it's too late to have any input, if we even knew how to go about doing that anyhow. To follow the process from the beginning means sitting in on more meetings than most of us have the time or inclination to attend. That's where Konkel provides such an important service. She takes the time and reports back to the rest of us.

Looking at downtown development in Madison up close is like looking in a funhouse mirror or at Madison in some surreal parallel universe. It's a place where developers and bureaucrats and politicians meet and share their visions, which include frequent use of buzz phrases like "world class" and overreaching comparisons to cities much larger than Madison to promote flimsy concepts and ideas as lightweight as air. And they usually involve futuristic architectural dreams that combine grandiosity and post-modernist cliches with token reminders of Madison's past and present. End of rant.

Konkel writes, "Last night I checked in to the Economic Development Committee and got a really bizarre vision for the downtown. You gotta check this out." You really do. Here's the link.

The calendar says it's winter, but I find that hard to believe

This isn't winter, it's Novembuary. Normally by this time of year I've put on my big, warm winter parka to protect myself from the elements, but this year I haven't touched it. It's been jacket weather all the way. (Edgewood College nature walk, Madison.)



The drifts in Madison so far this winter haven't been snow, but cattail fluff. The cattails in the Lake Wingra wetlands haven't had to worry about being weighed down by snow, and they've been merrily shedding little blizzards of fluff.




The cattails have been basking in the Novembuary sun. This is the view from the boardwalk on the Edgewood College nature walk. Normally by this time of year, the cattails would have been beaten down by wind and weather, snow and ice -- but they're standing tall, happily shedding little mini blizzards of fluff.




In Edgewood's Lake Jewel spring, the duckweed has been thriving. In Madison, Wisconsin. In midwinter. Everywhere you look, bits of green are popping up. The plants just can't help themselves.




On the Edgewood boardwalk, this Wooly Bear caterpillar saw its shadow the other day. Does that mean snow is on the way? Maybe. The weather forecasts say it should start snowing late tonight and then snow all day tomorrow. Finally -- though it's not as if they haven't said that before. I'll believe it when I see it, and deal with it then. Meanwhile, I'll enjoy our unexpected spring.