Friday Browsing Roundup

Talkingpointsmemo.com has a link up to a good anti-Bush ad. The makers of the ad are also asking for contributions to help buy air time.

TPM continues its Karl Rove Dirty Tricks Watch, today noting efforts in Ohio to misinform voters of the location of their polling places.

More on the religious front: New Donkey covers the news that the Vatican has said No, John Kerry is not a heretic. Good for them--they're getting much better at this sort of thing. It took them what, 400 years to decide that Galileo wasn't a heretic?

Some good things on DailyKos.com recently:

• Possible pick-up for the Dems in Nebraska congressional races
• Democrats overwhelmingly support card-check recognition for American workers; Republicans don't.
  
• Tracking the White House's efforts to scrub their (publicly funded) website of historical content possibly embarrassing to Bush.
• Comprehensive list of Republicans and Independents backing Kerry. A few more testimonials in this post here. And, just to be fair, a list of Democrats backing Bush (I have no idea how comprehensive this list is, but it's much, much shorter).

Middle East expert Juan Cole tries his hand at both psychoanalysis and dissecting US youth culture in this unintentionally amusing post on the rapper Eminem.

The hawkish New Republic endorses Kerry (registration required--check out BugMeNot site for public registrations). Without, alas, admitting the folly of their ways.

Finally, a piece from TomPaine.com on misconceptions of the racial and socioeconomic makeup of the US military. Useful to read before making arguments about how the armed forces prey on the American underclass. According to the author, David L. Englin, a recent Pentagon survey shows US military inductees are not significantly poorer or less educated than the US population as a whole. Interesting, though I wonder what the result would be if you looked at the services seperately? My guess is that Army inductees are significantly poorer, more likely to be black or hispanic, and less educated than the population as a whole. Also, Englin's contention that combat units are less poor, more white and more educated can also be read as a selection bias: Combat posts are the best way to earn advancement in the military; those serving for a lack of civilian employment opportunities are probably disproportionately channeled toward support units with less chance for upward mobility.