Don't miss this video of Jon Stewart with his guest Bernard Goldberg. This makes me look forward to right-wing guests on The Daily Show, rather than dreading having to listen to them.

I like what Tom Moody has been saying about the Rove/Plame affair. Meanwhile, the Iraqi prime minister we're propping up just visited Iran and laid flowers at the grave of Ayatollah Khomeini.

I love this paragraph from Walter Robinson's news roundup on artnet:

New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who is running for his second term as a Republican mayor in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, is trying to ingratiate himself with New York City’s progressive voters by showering $20 million on 400 New York arts and social-service organizations, according to a report in the New York Times. Visual arts institutions on the list range from the American Folk Art Museum, Anthology Film Archive and Art in General to the Studio Museum in Harlem, Triple Candie and UbranGlass. Made through the Carnegie Corporation, the donations are for sums between $10,000 and $100,000. According to the Times, Bloomberg gave a total of $140 million to more than 800 groups in 2004. By contrast, the Bloomberg administration jailed peaceful protestors at the Republican National Convention and was only narrowly defeated in a scheme to turn over almost $1 billion in public funds for a private sports stadium on the west side of Manhattan.

From the invaluable Ray Sanchez at Newsday

Since 9/11, the aviation industry has received $18.1 billion for security from the federal Department of Homeland Security, according to the Washington-based American Public Transportation Association. By contrast, mass transit has received just $250 million. Americans take public transportation 32 million times a day -- 16 times more often than they travel on domestic airlines. About 4.5 million riders use the New York subway every weekday.

Of course, the MTA is probably too incompetent to spend the money they are given. Since 9/11, they have been given $600 million in state and federal funds for security improvements. They have spent $30 million, with very little to show for it. Most has been spent on planning and consultants.

Updated: I fixed the $300 million number. It is $600 million.

I found it sad, knowing that people like Muhammad Ali are there, to read that people went wild over Hillary Clinton's "star power." I was more than sad -- horrified was more like it -- to learn that one of the other people in Singapore to lobby for NYC to host the Olympics is Henry Kissinger. I guess it's one of the few places outside of the USA he can still visit without risk of arrest.

I don't want the Olympics here, and obviously no thinking person does either if they have that man representing us. I agree with Todd Gibson on what hosting them would mean:

a month of lockdown and police-state presence in 2012 that will make last summer's Republican Convention look like a fire drill.