It looks like Henry Cuellar is going to take the Democratic nomination in Texas 28, but I just want to say how brave, how inspirational the participation of everyone on this site and across the blogosphere has been in the Ciro Rodriguez race.
It took Rove, Reed, Norquist and the College Republicans 20 years to gain power. We like to think of the Presidency of George W. Bush as an aberration of the Florida vote in 2000 but that doesn't take into account the ground war that the Republican party has been waging since the 80s. The extreme right wing of the GOP gained power because they put up extreme right wing candidates in every race and backed them to the limit, win or lose. And they did it virtually unnoticed by the American public until eventually, they prevailed.
We did that in this race. We sent a very loud, long message to the Democratic party about what we're willing to fight for. It's extremely difficult to defeat an incumbent and we took a race that wasn't even close in January and made it competitive. That's huge.
As much as we look for a hero to ride in on a white horse and deliver us all from this mess that's not going to happen. Many count on Bush to eventually screw things up so badly that the electorate simply jumps ship but that doesn't ever seem to happen either, no matter how bad it gets. The sad, hard truth is that the GOP has gamed the system so thoroughly that we're going to have to challenge it brick by brick from the bottom up and that's going to take a lot of commitment, a lot of patience and a lot more time than many will comfortably admit. But that is the reality of the situation we're in.
Wyonate supplies
this Chomsky quote:
"John Hamilton, who drove from Ithaca to see Chomsky, stood up to ask a question during the question-and-answer period following Chomsky's speech. "My question is, what do you find hopeful?" Hamilton said.
"I think one should be very optimistic for the reasons I just mentioned," Chomsky said. "The large majority of the population already agrees with the things activists are committed to."
The talking heads would have you believe that we're so far out of the mainstream that we're just marginal, angry extremists. In point of fact we only seem extreme when measured by the yardstick of those they themselves have allowed to dominate the debate.
Cuellar is an example of the latest GOP tactic -- run a Republican as a Democrat in a district that will never elect a Republican. He represents a creeping cancer within the party that has to be fought if we're not going sit back and let it be overtaken by the GOP too. We had to draw a line in the sand and actively
show them we're willing to challenge them on that front. We did that. It was important. We showed up for the fight.
There are no quick fixes. We're not going to be able to match overnight the ground game that was put in place by the right over the past twenty years and beyond. The Ciro Rodriguez race may be a short term defeat, but it's a necessary part of a long game. Thanks to everyone who showed up, who contributed, who took part in the battle. Thanks to Kos and Atrios and MyDD and the Swing State Project, to Tracy Joan and all the people in the Rodriguez campaign, and especially to Redd and all the people here at FDL.
You're my heroes.
Update: By special request,
our Act Blue page -- where you can give to Ned Lamont.
Uupdate II: Email from Ciro:
"As far as I am concerned we are in a run-off. We will be picking up our signs from the polls and re-using them in thirty days. Until we know exactly what happened today in Webb County, this race is not over.
I wouldn't be here if I hadn't gotten the support of the online community. It's been overwhelming to see how people can make a difference, and make things happen by coming together, even if it an hour of blockwalking, a few phone calls or $20 and $40 dollars at a time. We must have the final word in who our leadership will be, not the
special interests, and we must keep up this fight. I want to think the thousands who have given their time and resources to push this campaign forward.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for each and every kind word, dollar bill and one cent.
Update III: Gilliard, via email:
Let's understand two things:
One, we DO NOT RUN CAMPAIGNS.
All we can do is give them a fighting chance. That's it. We can give them the resources, but that's it. How they use it is up to them.
Two, EVERY race is a learning lesson. Rodriguez was going to get blown off the map without that money. Please, please keep that in mind. This way, we made this a race.
Look, we've moved a lot faster than the GOP has or can. We've done in two years what took them 20 to do.
We will win races, but it will take time. It may well take until 2008 or 2010. Because it took the conservatives from 1964 to 1980. So if we win in 2006, great. But this is a marathon, not a sprint. One race is just another fight, it isn't the war, it isn't even the battle.
So, we did a lot more than anyone else was going to do. And that's it.
Update IV:
Bowers:
I'd like to point out that Texas apparently has an open primary system, where Republicans can actually vote in a Democratic primary, and vice versa. Given this, Ciro almost certainly won the day among registered Democrats, and at the very least would have forced a runoff in a closed primary. As someone who has always been an advocate of clsoed primaries, I submit this election as Exhibit A. As disgusting as it sounds, if Cuellar wins the Democratic primary without a run-off, it will be because of the Republican vote. I love it when Republicans select the Demcoratic nominee! Someone please tell me again why we should have open primaries.
|
Polls closed at 8pm EST/5pm PST. You can watch the results as they are posted
here.
Kos is following the race closely, and Tracy Joan is live blogging over at
Swing State Project. She is reporting that at 7:30 pm that:
According to Commissioner's Court sources in Webb County they are unable to report Early Voting because their systems are down.
Let's just hope Webb County doesn't wait to see the votes that they need to win before reporting. Locals claimed it has happened before.
In fact Webb County was a deciding factor in
Cuellar's last win over Ciro:
An abnormally high number of voters in Webb County aged 90 years or older prompted an attorney for the Ciro Rodriguez congressional campaign to request an investigation by the Texas Secretary of State. During the first 4 days of early voting, 93 votes were cast by people 90 or over and 51 were 100 or older.
In a message addressed to Kim Thol, Programs Specialist for the Elections Division of the Secretary of State, Luis Vera requested “an immediate appointment for an inspector for Webb County.” Vera reminded Thol, “Webb County has a long history of allegations of voter fraud.” In the 2004 primary election, Vera added, “the fraud made national news.” He was referring to the controversial election between Henry Cuellar and Rodriguez in which ballots, “discovered” days after the polls closed, eventually swung the election to Cuellar by a narrow 58 votes.
Vera also requested an investigation by the Voter Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice.
Fasten ye olde seat belt.
Update: The Austin Statesman is reporting quite different totals from the Secretary of State site.
Update II: Tracy Joan says that "Two representatives from the AFL-CIO have been sent to Webb County to deal with the developments" (where they have touch screen voting).
Update III: Cuellar has a history of screwing around with Webb County voting. In the last election Ciro charged that 500 of the votes that put Cuellar over the top came from people who were registered in vacant addresses or homes where they did not live in Webb and Zapata counties -- including Cuellar's campaign manager, Colin Strother, who was registered at the address of Cuellar's parents.
From
The San Antonio Express News, 2004:
The Cuellars, in an interview with a reporter Monday, said no one named Strother lives there.
Told of the allegation, Cuellar spokesman T.J. Connolly said that when Strother agreed to work on Cuellar's campaign, he was given a salary and the option to live in a rental property at Cuellar's parents' home.
Strother reportedly registered and voted at that address, although he has been living with his wife in another location outside of District 28 as part of her employment compensation. The two have been planning to relocate to the Cuellar residence, but furor over the campaign has kept them from doing so, Connolly said.
"He knew that's where he'd be residing long term," he said.
Well I'm convinced.
Update: Bowers is tracking the race over at
MyDD.
|
Last week Olympia Snowe said she would vote to investigate George Bush's NSA wiretap crimes as part of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In December
she said:
“Revelations that the U.S. government has conducted domestic electronic surveillance without express legal authority indeed warrants Congressional examination. I believe the Congress – as a coequal branch of government – must immediately and expeditiously review the use of this practice,” said Snowe.
Today she caved like a cheap suitcase.
Glenn Greenwald:
Nobody who has lived outside of a cave for the last five years could possibly be surprised by any of this. One of the reason we are at the point we're at in our country -- where we have a President who not only breaks the law but claims he has the right to do so, while the media barely finds any of it worthy of much attention -- is because the Congress has completely abdicated its responsibilities at the altar of cult-like obedience to White House decrees. That's just one of the many rotted roots in our government.
From
Bloomberg:
"This committee is basically under control of the White House," Rockefeller told reporters after the two-hour meeting today in Washington. "It's an unprecedented bout of political pressure from the White House."
Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts said any inquiry would be detrimental to national security.
"We should fight the enemy, not fight each other," Roberts, a Kansas Republican said. "The program is extremely important."
After negotiations with the Bush administration, the panel voted to create a new subcommittee whose seven members, out of the committee's 15 total lawmakers, would receive full briefings on the program. Those briefings had been limited to just Rockefeller and Roberts.
Emptywheel (from
the comments):
Interesting note: Roberts has announced the 4 members of SSCI that will be part of this "oversight" committee (and I use scarequotes advisedly). Roberts, Bond, Hatch, and DeWine.
So the three people who invented anti-Wilson conclusions for the SSCI, plus DeWine, who seems like he's going for double wingnuttery or nothing in OH.
Georgia10 has a few words on the topic. Pat Roberts' announcement is
here. And emptywheel has more on
GOP Eunuchs.
|
CNN is reporting that the Intelligence Committee has knuckled under to Bill Frist, shirked their responsibility for oversight, collaborated with the criminal Bush cabal and voted not to look into the illegal NSA wiretaps. Ed Henry says that they agreed to propose new legislation requiring a 45 day reauthorization cycle.
Proving once again --
there is no such thing as a moderate Republican.
Our hopes for the immediate future now seem to lie with the Judiciary Committee. The
Roots Project will be having an action later this week in Pennsylvania to put pressure on Arlen Specter so if you live in Pennsylvania or have some connection to it and would like to be involved in the action please send me your email
here and I'll add you to our contact/discussion list.
We're also planning to do a little fundraising shortly to expand the Roots project and hire a full time person to oversee it. It's an effective mechanism we are just beginning to fully exploit so keep the faith and pass the ammo.
Update: Josh of
Thoughts From Kansas reports (via email) that Snowe, DeWine, Hagel were all on board.
|
Mike Stark sent an email to Andrew Wilkow letting him know he was
making him famous in the blogosphere with his
radio call-in clip about saving the 2 year-old child vs. the 5 blastulae in the burning fertility clinc (which quite deservedly got links on
Atrios and
Kos as well).
Mike got a response:
Mike ya know I thought you were a good person to bounce things off of. But you really a little baby. You sit home all day and call talk radio. Then you take you pathetic excuse for a "win" and you go running around beating your drum. Dude...you're a loser. Anyone can plan to get someone hot under the collar. Fine, maybe you did that...whoopee. In the real world you lost that asinine argument. Don't ever contact me either by phone or e-mail. Take as a way to tell your 5 friends that you go to me.
-Andrew
Andrew won that one like he won the spelling bee but everyone is entitled to his own opinion, I suppose.
And Laura E. writes:
Here's an extension of the 5 blastulae or the 2-year-old question. Do first responders, like fire fighters, have training and equipment to rescue petri dishes? Would they run into a burning building to save them even if there weren't any 2 year olds? Do they have protocols? Will they need to train in South Dakota? What are the emergency evacuation policies in fertility clinics?
And then there's the classic from
Yes, I'm Crazy on the topic of naturally conceived embryos that are
flushed out in a woman's normal menstrual cycle:
Personally, I'm not going to be happy until we create little cemetaries for all the sanitary napkins carrying what's left of all those fertalized eggs Dr. Opitz talked about. We'll call the cemetaries Kotex Necroblastocropoli and they'll have teeny-tiny angel statuary which we make out of match sticks and pipecleaners and hangers. I can hardly wait!
It will be dark but yes, there will be much South Dakota humor.
|
Somebody needs to get ahold of the people who book Meet the Press and throttle them.
When their normal Republicans-only schedule is occasionally peppered with Democrats it's either the henpecked James Carville who won't say a thing against the Vice President (and as Digby has noted this sure didn't hold true for Mary Matalin during the Clinton years), Joes Klein or Lieberman who spews GOP talking points so Tim won't have to, token "liberals" like Doris Kearns Goodwin who tell knee-slappers about the Van Buren administration while John Meecham's grenades against Howard Dean go unanswered, or people like Joe Biden and John Edwards who are so busy running for president they won't utter anything even slighly contentious about the administration.
But they should at least do some due diligence about the people they invite on to discuss a particular topic. Jack Kemp
was in full-throated support of the Dubai Ports World deal yesterday. But
as Arianna notes, there's quite a bit he left out:
"It's the right thing to do," he said, calling the UAE a "valued ally" and reiterating the claim that canceling the deal would, as he put it in his column, "weaken our own national security and our chances for peace and liberation throughout the Middle East and Africa" (Shades of Andrea Mitchell, another die-hard member of the establishment, who suggested on Hardball that killing the ports deal could lead to rioting in the Muslim world).
What Kemp didn't say is that the UAE has invested millions in Free Market Global, an energy-trading company that he chairs.
You think all those zeroes might have had some influence on his opinion? Maybe not. But I'm pretty sure that a disclosure of his financial connection to those he was so fulsomely praising would have had some influence on the opinions of those watching.
Especially if viewers learned that Gen. Tommy Franks, whom Kemp used as his debating trump card -- quoting both in print and on Meet the Press the General extolling the Emirates -- is on the advisory board of Free Market Global, and stands to profit from maintaining good relations with the oil-rich emirs.
I called Kemp to ask him why he hadn't mentioned this intersection of interests, but I haven't heard back, even though I said why I was calling. Or perhaps because I did.
If Meet the Press was anything more than the New Pravda, they'd open the next show by saying "last week, we invited Jack Kemp on to speak on the UAE ports deal, and he did not disclose his close financial ties to the owner of Dubai Ports World. We apologize."
Don't worry, I know it's not going to happen. But it should.
|
Digby, via email:
I just realized that those nuts in South Dakota might be having an unanticipated effect. I am working today and this guy said to me over lunch, "I can't believe that these people are really serious." He's a bit of a putz and he admitted that he'd believed women were exaggerating the threat. I said "I hope you're ready to be daddies, boys. Last time abortion was illegal they didn't have DNA testing" and they all looked stunned.
These are the new totals for Ciro Rodriguez's Act Blue pages:
$25535.15 firedoglake
$25054.44 Eschaton
$21474.06 Netroots Page
Remember what Democratic consultant
Steve Elmendorf said to the Washington Post?
"The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections," said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left."
We're now the number one blog fundraiser for Ciro Rodriguez, and that money is 100% pro-choice (not that the others are not, BTW). These totals speak in a language so simple even Elmendorf can understand it -- if candidates want to harness our energy and our money, they better have their pro-choice credentials in order.
Bob Casey need not apply.
|
Alex at
Wonkette writes today about web sites that are being blocked by military computers in Iraq, as opposed to those that are deemed "acceptable":
Wonkette - blocked
O'Reilly -- OK
Air America -- blocked
Limbaugh -- OK
ABC News "The Note" -- OK
Al Franken Show -- blocked
G. Gordon Liddy Show -- OK
And despite this
72% of US troops want out of Iraq within the year. You have to wonder what those numbers would look like if they weren't being blocked from alternative news sources.
Update: I'll be on the
Young Turks radio show tonight at 5:05pm discussing
Russert Watch.
|
I brought up one of my favorite forced birth conundrums the other day, guaranteed to make wingnut "life begins at conception" heads explode. If a fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you can only save a petri dish with five blastulae or a two-year old child, which do you save?
We just love Mike Stark, who takes this stuff to the streets. He called
Andrew Wilkow's radio talk show and put the question to him, and Wilkow's head did, in fact, explode. He was reduced to a sputtering rage, screaming that he would not, in fact, save the two year-old child. Mike hung right in there with him and the results are predictably hilarious. You can just feel Wilkow's listeners flipping the channel and saying "fuck that noise, that guy's insane." It's a brilliant little sound clip.
Over at
our new blog (which we will be populating any day now, we just have some graphics issues that we're addressing) I put up a test of my old "Is Heaven Filled With Blastulae" post, where I mention that that between 60 and 80 percent of all naturally conceived embryos are simply flushed out in a woman's normal menstrual cycle in the first 7 days after fertilization. One anxious commenter does a Jesus' General and takes internal wingnut logic to its natural conclusion:
Is Heaven Filled With Blastulae?
My God, you don't understand fundamentalists at all, do you, Ms. Hamsher? Any fundy will tell you that Heaven is most definitely NOT filled with blastulae. The fires of Hell, on the other hand, are smoking with the little fellers, along with all the other unchristened souls whose bodies never uttered the magic phrase, "Jesus is God".
I apologize for my error, Bullgoose is absolutely right and as a minister's daughter I should've remembered this fine point of fundamentalist theology. The fundies have always conveniently kept swarthy people out of heaven by insisting that if you have not accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior that you will not be able to enter the gates of heaven. When others (such as my 12 year-old self) would argue that this is unfair to those in non-western countries who might never have been exposed to the gospel, those concerns were dismissed as "God's will," because God in his infinite wisdom would've managed to get the word to them if he wanted them in heaven.
So. Unless embryos are a lot more chatty than we have been given to believe, Bullgoose is right, in vitro fertilization produces embryos that will only suffer the eternal hellfires of damnation.
I thank you for the opportunity to amend my faulty headline.
Update: We crashed Mike's server so the clip is
now hosted at C&L.
|
I know you must all be gripping the edges of your seats, shivering with anticipation. So without further ado, by popular vote, the winner of the most irrefutably stupid Joe Klein quote of all time is:
13. "People like me who favor this [NSA wiretapping] program don't yet know enough about it yet. Those opposed to it know even less -- and certainly less than I do."
The prize goes to SanGuevara who went dumpster diving into Klein's ouevre and brought it forth for the benefit of us all. We owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude.
But this was only part of the glory. The Charles P. Pierce Award for Excellence in Klein Snark, chosen by Mr. Pierce himself, goes to
Wesgpc for a comment on Klein Quote #6:
"I'm a so-called journalist
[irrefutable confirmation that he did write one thing containing an empirical fact]
who views his job as doing the legwork
[showing his great care and precision - he did not say headwork or investigation, did he?]
and then calling them as I see them.
[Credit him with brutal honesty. He specifically said "them." And how does he see them? Well the Democrats are old out-of-it chumps, losers, very "industrial age", and fun to use for some wordly-wise cynical cred, by beating up on them with stereotyped, canned, pre-cooked snark. Democrats are also earnest and frumpy, so clearly good target for calling hypocrites. The Republicans are kewl, very "information age" "with-it" innovative hipsters who are fun to hang with if you'll play. He was careful not to say "call IT as I see it" because that would falsely imply that he was talking about, you know, out-of-it "industrial age" unhip things with old person smell, like facts and stuff.]
And I'm tired of civilians of the left and the right who, in their infinite wisdom, spew vituperative nonsense instead of asking substantive questions when they have the opportunity.
[I can't figure this out at all, but it sounds like something, you know, real deep, so it must be profound and very hiply wise-ass and immensely knowing, in a knowing sort of way. So, points for style on the landing -he nailed it going to the radical center and hit the bulls-eye, not a jitter not a half step. What a dismount! The word "civilians" is genius, it implies some deep socio-philosophical subtext that we would hesitate to admit we do not get -almost worthy of the NRO]
As Charles says, "The Tim Daggett-ish 'What a dismount!' put it over the top." A superb effort.
But we are also awarding honorable mentions. One comment by
Thesaurus Rex didn't make it in under the wire last night but was definitely worthy of note nonetheless:
"Calling George Bush a minimalist is like calling a potted palm an environmentalist."
Another goes to
Bullgoose, who maintains that the Klein Snark award deserves to go to Klein himself:
I vote for take-your-pick, and nominate the master, Joe Klein himself, to be the recipient of the first annual Charles P. Pierce award. No one is more deserving of the maiden Snarky than Joe. His work speaks against itself with an immediacy and authority that no third-person invective could ever hope to achieve. It stands on its own, as writing that is not merely bad, but blatantly, shockingly, grotesquely bad. Its inherent ugliness flies in your face like a handful of shit out of a baboon cage. And just as surely as it is unnecessary to crawl up a baboon's ass with a suppository to be covered in baboon shit, it is unnecessary to probe deeply into Klein's work in order extract analytical evidence that he is a bare-assed stupid, shit-slinging baboon. The evidence is clear the moment his work is put on display. Piss on it, if it makes you feel better, but you will only improve it by dilution. Dump on it to your heart's content, but your most vicious shit only serves to sweeten the stink of Joe's best. To give the Pierce prize to anyone other than the creator of this steaming pile would be as unfair as to honor the chumps at the cage for the shit on their faces, rather than the shit-slinging baboon with the unerring aim. Give Vogon Joe Klein his prize. Give it to him as undiluted and unsweetened by thoughtful commentary as he gave his dreck to us. Klein bows to no one in the domain of the Vogonsphere. We are unworthy.
Yet another goes to Dover Bitch, for her efforts to channel the altitudinally and follically challenged Klein over comment #3 and the anguish of Dick Cheney:
"I am an abysmal judge of character of epic proportions. I contracted mononucleosis from kissing my sister in seventh grade and missed the week when our English teacher taught the rest of my classmates the meaning of the word "irony." I never even considered, in the absence of such a word, the occurrence of hilariously incongruous events and statements. My conversations with combat veterans have made me an expert in the field of distinguishing between the trauma that comes from war and the agony of having to talk to Brit Hume."
And Bentley Stanforth III, for oh so many quotes, but who can forget:
This isn't just wrong. It's wrongness encased in incoherence and swathed in bullshit.
And then of course the memorable "Joke Line."
Thanks to everyone who took the time to participate, who waded through the swamp of Kleiniana, were willing to momentarily pollute their eyeballs such that we could drag Joe onto the shore and create some context and awareness of way he represents "Democrats" on a daily basis. Thanks also to Charles P. Pierce for officiating the snark contest. Both SanGuevara and Wesgpc will be taking home copies of the DVD of
Action, so please send me your emails and I will send them off to you soon.
You are all great Americans.
|
I have to say I'm liking the glamor/train fashion redux but Naomi Watts looks like she just took a stroll through the cobwebs of Peggy Noonan's mind. Jessica Alba, on the other hand, looks fab.
Generally I hate writing about Hollywood so I defer to people like
David E.,
John Rogers and and James Wolcott who do it and do it well.
Wolcott says:
[T]he 'Hollywood doesn't reflect mainstream America' argument is one of the oldest and phoniest in the playbook, with Michael Medved making the same case that Catholic organizers did in the 30's to push for a decency code. The truth is that Hollywood has almost never reflected heartland values, from its birth it's reflected urban energy, cosmopolitan taste, social conscience, and pagan fascination, and when it's conformed to conventional pieties, as during the dreariest stretches of the postwar period, when disillusionment and subversion had to sneak in through the shadows of film noir as the topline product stayed shiny, bright, and chipmunk cheerful. Do you really think the racy, wisecracking, night-owl-edition, socially conscious crime dramas and comedies of Warner Brothers in the thirties reflected heartland values? Or those Lubitsch comedies with their flirty innuendos and musky intrigues so redolent of Paris and Budapest? Or the Astaire-Rogers "white telephone" musicals, with their French farce plots and Manhattan-skyline sparkle? MGM manufactured an enduring neo-Victorian mimicry of smalltown America in the Andy Hardy movies and others, but that didn't so much reflect heartland values as reflect the immigrant vision of what the white-picket-fence country they imagined lay east of the Hollywood hills.
Think of the movies now considered classic (or semi-classic) from the great grunge stretch of the late Sixties and Seventies, movies such as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, The Last Detail, Five Easy Pieces, Blazing Saddles, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, on and on--do these movies speak to the pieties and platitudes that William Bennett holds dear? Even back then during all the noise and excitement I remember sweet old ladies wondering why they didn't make nice movies like The Sound of Music anymore, and they're still asking that same question today. It may be the same old ladies, having gone through two generations of floral muu-muus. Get over it, grandma! They're not going to make movies like Sound of Music anymore, they barely made them back then.
Amen.
The only thing I have strong opinions about are the best documentary category. Love love love
Murderball, love Street Fight (gave Marshall an ad in the sidebar, please click), and I absolutely LOVED “
The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club” (nominated for best short documentary). That was some of the most remarkable storytelling I've seen in years, I was on the edge of my seat and I'm pulling for Dan Krauss.
|
I'm on
Russert Watch over at the HuffPo for Arianna this week while she covers the Oscars.
John Edwards fans: don't bother.
|
The fact that Bill Frist is threatening to neuter the Senate Intelligence Committee is probably a pretty good sign that he doesn't have enough votes on March 7 to keep them from looking into the illegal NSA wiretaps. His actions (buried in the weekend news cycle) are no doubt meant to put pressure on wobbly Republicans like Hagel and Snowe.
Kyle Michaelis at
The New Nebraska Network blog is urging Nebraskans to contact Hagel's office as part of the Roots project:
Glenn Greenwald provides a full rundown on Frist's supremely partisan maneuvering, which might well include stripping the Senate Intelligence Committee of the 30 year-old safeguards intended to prevent precisely these sorts of abuses of intelligence for political gain. Taking a page from Tom DeLay's playbook in the House, Frist might even resort to removing any Republican Senator from the committee who won't do his bidding.
That leaves Committee member Chuck Hagel, Nebraska's Republican Senator, in the spotlight and perhaps even in the crosshairs of his own party's leadership. To be honest, Hagel's been uncharacteristically quiet about the situation, so he obviously doesn't think it's ripe for the type of media attention that he seeks. What the situation is ripe for, though, is proving that Hagel is the independent-minded patriot he tries to present himself as to the American public -doing what's right, not what he's told.
Kyle has all the contact info for Hagel's office, so everyone who's concerned about the future of these proceedings -- and I've heard from a lot of you, so I know the numbers aren't small -- please click through and help Nebraskans urge their Senator to do the right thing.
Therisites2 has contact info for Olympia Snowe and Pat Roberts as well, and Josh from Thoughts From Kansas reports that he thinks our Roots Kansas action
has been getting to Pat Roberts.
That's pretty cool.
|
I thought we would announce the winner of the
Joke Line Joe Klein mental midgetry award tonight but I fear that the varying amounts of traffic/participation we have had on each night make a cumulative vote total a bit skewed, so we find ourselves in the interest of fairness conducting a runoff. Tonight the top vote getters from each of the previous heats will advance and tomorrow we will have our counter-Oscars when we will award the gold.
Since it was Digby's relentless skewering of Wee Joe that inspired this particular contest in the first place, it is only fitting that
Digby be the wind beneath our wings tonight:
Has there ever been a more useful Republican idiot than Joe Klein? I don't think so. If you don't believe me, check out the huge array of idiotic statements he's written over at firedoglake. Jane says, "No one man can claim credit for the minority status of Democrats today, but Joe Klein can certainly rest easily knowing that he has done more than his fair share." I think he and all his fake liberal pundit friends are the most responsible of all. They are killing us. People on both the left and the right confuse Joe Klein with a real Democrat and mistake his incomprehensible political philosophy for that of the Democratic Party. If there is nothing else that the liberal blogosphere can do, we must make it clear to the American people and the Democratic politicians that Joe Klein speaks only for his elite, insider cadre of cocktail weenie addicts. His opinions are irrelevant to serious Democratic politics.
We humbly accept the challenge. And with that here are tonight's finalists in Joe Klein: In His Own Words:
3. "The possibility of vice-presidential anguish was barely mentioned by most commentators at first. Cheney is a tough customer; Oprahfied "sharing" isn't his way. But then, there he was, with that haunted look in his Fox News interview, saying, "[T]he image of him falling is something I'll never be able to get out of my mind. I fired, and there's Harry falling ..." Hunting had given him "great pleasure" in the past, but he wasn't so sure now. In fact, he sounded a lot like the combat veterans I've spoken with over the years, for whom the living nightmare of firing a weapon under questionable circumstances is a constant theme."
13. "People like me who favor this [NSA wiretapping] program don't yet know enough about it yet. Those opposed to it know even less -- and certainly less than I do."
25. "I've never seen George Bush lose a debate. He is a brilliant minimalist.
36. "Abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, and so interpretations are all we have. One way to solve this--perhaps the best way--is to put abortion to a vote, as a constitutional amendment or on a state-by-state basis. Issues this important should be decided democratically, don't you think?"
Tough contenders all. Who will wear the coveted crown? Judges the burden is upon you. Since we have all snarked on these particular entries before, tonight is simply a victory lap -- freestyle snark for the fun of it. We will also be announcing the winner of the
Charles P. Pierce Award for Excellence in Klein Snark tomorrow, the winner currently being held in a sealed envelope by the firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Please vote by number, vote early, and since this is not Florida, only once.
|
Margot has found
the perfect job for Amy Ridenour (no, not Dennis Hastert impersonator).
Angie lets us know she was
a real piece of work during her testimony before the Indian Affairs Committee.
Valley Girl gives us
this link to an article about the NCPPR entitled "Tom DeLay's Right Arm" and quotes from The Hill, June 23, 2005:
The Center's chief executive officer, Amy Ridenour, a friend of Abramoff's from their time as College Republicans in the early '80s, testified that Abramoff told her the money was part of an "educational project to tell the American people ... the very impressive story of the ... Choctaw Indians." She accepted an additional $1.5 million contribution in 2003. Abramoff directed her to route that money to the Capitol Athletic Foundation and a company named Kaygold.
And it looks like
Pam Spaulding has been on this one for a while.
Yet another College Republican. What a pernicious mutant breeding ground that turned out to be.
Update: Digby chimes in:
Amy has long been jack, ralph and grover's personal bitch. From Frank Foers great piece about the College Republicans:Back in 1981, Abramoff and his campaign manager, Norquist, promised their leading competitor, Amy Moritz, the job of crnc executive director if she dropped out of the race. Moritz took the bait, but it turned out that Abramoff had made the promise with his fingers crossed. Norquist took the executive director job and named Moritz his deputy. That demotion didn't last long, either. After discovering the talented Ralph Reed, Norquist handed the Christian Coalition godfather Moritz's responsibilities and her office space. They placed all of Moritz's belongings in a box labeled "amy's desk." Even 25 years later, she hasn't shed her role as College Republican doormat. Abramoff used her think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research, to funnel nearly $1 million into a phony direct-mail firm with an address identical to his own.
Poor Amy. Never cool enough for the real Ratfuckers. While the three little pigs were making millions, she was still doing college republican level dirty tricks: Bilking old people.
Her "think tank" was also used last year by the allegedly liberal NPR to explain why social security privatization was such a great idea. They actually referred to it as non-partisan. I wrote about it here.
I was told by a reader who complained that the executives of the show were appalled when they realized that their producers had no idea that they were dealing with a right wing organization.
I was appalled that NPR producers didn't realize they were broadcasting partisan swill just by the content alone. I had heard the program while driving down the 405 and almost swerved off the clover-leaf when I realized it was going to be unrebutted.
I guess that particular College Republican chestnut of ripping off the elderly is something passed down from generation to generation.
The GOP. They're all about tradition.
|
In January, 2005 Raw Story
published a letter sent by Amy Ridenour of The National Center for Public Policy Research to elderly people under the pretense that they were "saving" their endangered Social Security benefits:
"Should we put most of our time and effort into fighting to prevent liberal big-spenders from draining an estimated $100 billion from the trust fund?" Ridenour asks. "Or should I go head to head against the left-wing's reckless use of $70 billion tax surplus when they promised to put our Social Security first?"
It was one of many "scare letters" designed to terrify the elderly. And it worked. According to the
San Francisco Examiner:
The letters so distressed Shelby, who is 86 and lives in a senior center, that she often sat up nights, fretting over which crisis most deserved her help. Fearful that her benefits might expire, she regularly responded with small donations.
"I didn't know that I could just turn them down," Shelby said. "I was thinking it was something I had to do. . . . I thought if I didn't correspond about Social Security, I wouldn't get my checks."
Shelby is one of millions of seniors nationwide targeted by so-called "fright mail," computer-generated by self-proclaimed public policy organizations in mostly legal but controversial campaigns to raise cash.
(snip)
Amy Moritz Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, says that emotional pitches get results, and insists that would-be donors don't want the details.
"It's just that you're competing with a lot of other organizations. People seem to respond better to emotion than they do with letters that have lots and lots of facts," said Moritz, who said her letters were written by a direct-mail firm, Response Dynamics, but read by her before they were sent. "You have to give something that is light enough that people will be willing to read it upon receipt. . . . If they don't read it right at that moment, all the studies show they never will."
In the Ridenour letter printed by Raw Story, she tells her elderly victims that:
Inside your sealed envelope is information regarding the potential collapse of the Social Security system -- and how it can endanger you and the entire United States senior citizen population."
It is also critical that you share this pertinent information ONLY [sic] with other trustworthy individuals.
In other words don't tell anybody who might tell you this is a scam and interfere with our right to fleece you. A typical tactic used by those who exploit children and the elderly.
Raw Story noted at the time that NCPPR were the group that paid $64,000 in travel expenses when Hot Tub Tom went to Moscow in 1997, and over $70,000 for a trip made by DeLay and his aides in mid-2000 to Europe. Oh and they mention that one of the NCPPR's directors at the time was Jack Abramoff.
Suddenly the NCPPR has
decided that Raw Story has "violated their copyright" by printing the letters, which is such unmitigated bullshit it's hard to know where to begin. The publication of the letters would be a rather text book case of Fair Use, but the point of the cease and desist email doesn't have anything to do with the merits of their claim (virtually none) -- it has to do with the fact that most small organizations don't have the funds to hire lawyers to battle this stuff so it is easier to comply with the request than to fight it.
You can read the excerpted letters
here and
here.
There is a bright side to all this -- it gives the story a whole new life cycle, and awakens people to the machinatians of social mange/professional GOP crooks like Amy Ritenour. Who will not doubt be making a more prominent entry onto the Abramoff stage in the near future.
Nice to be able to accelerate her debut.
Update: Pigboy tells us
Amy has a blog -- and it is quite possibly the ugliest blog I've ever seen. Funny that.
I wonder -- can you blog from the slam?
|
I didn't expect
my post about Michael Brown to cause as much controversy as it did. But it got a conversation going that I think is actually quite interesting so I'd like to carry it a bit further.
Josh Marshall is right -- the release of the new tapes show simply that Brown cared about what was going on, was aware of the potential danger of Katrina and tried to do something to address it. It does not absolve him from a host of other sins we've all devoted much time to documenting from the time Katrina hit. And
as Atrios notes, his current candor does not make Brown a hero. It would have been heroic to step up at the time and tell the public what was happening, at a time when it could have made a difference. That didn't happen.
And
as Digby notes, Michael Brown really didn't have many other options. He was so thoroughly discredited, so completely goated by BushCo. that he didn't have much alternative but to turn on them if he wanted to have a future at all as anything other than the guy who forever fucked New Orleans.
Still, his current actions took some nerve. The kind of nerve people quite frequently can't muster on their own and are much more likely to discover when they know they have people who will back them. Which raises an interesting point of speculation.
As a veteran of many PR trench warfare campaigns, I can tell you that the first thing I would've done once it became apparent that BushCo. was going to throw him under the bus would be to go after Brownie. If I was, say, a big politician who had been targeted by the GOP and lost my seat, or was given to a pugilistic bent, or had an axe to grind over any high-profile Rovian rat-fuck delivered by BushCo. over the years I would've looked at the Katrina disaster, recognized that it was the single worst blow to George Bush's credibility in the public mind and gone immediately to work on the guy who had the potential to deliver me a blue dress moment.
I have no knowledge of what actually happened but the push to rehabilitate Brown does have, at moments, something of an organized feel (particularly the superb timing). And right now, Brown has the ability to do what no other person can -- keep Bush's Katrina inadequacies in the headlines, kicking him when he's down and damaging his poll numbers such that it both paralyzes him and emboldens his opponents.
None of which can work, mind you, if nobody is willing to listen to Brown's story. That Bush let someone with the goods on him get so far out of the fold is an incredibly stupid mistake; Brownie above all others should've been kitted up with some cushy job and bankrolled to into abject silence. It was an outrageous stumble on the part of a beleaguered and embattled administration, one I'm more than willing to take advantage of.
So if you're still speaking, Michael Brown, I'm all ears.
|
And thus we arrive at this, the final night of our semi-final round to see who will take home the gold for finding the most gallingly stupid Joe Klein comment of all time. If the past three nights have taught us nothing else, it is that there is no agony of defeat here; each and every comment proffered for entry seems to supersede the one before it for pure noxious flapdoodle.
No one man can claim credit for the minority status of Democrats today, but Joe Klein can certainly rest easily knowing that he has done more than his fair share.
So without further ado, here are tonight's contenders in "Joe Klein, In His Own Words:
29. "And yet, for the moment, Bush's instincts -- his supporters would argue these are bedrock values -- seem to be paying off. The President's attention span may be haphazard, but the immediate satisfactions are difficult to dispute. Saddam Hussein? Evildoer. Take him out. But wait, no WMD? No post-invasion planning? Deaths and chaos? Awful, but ... Freedom! Look at those Shi'ites vote!"
30. "As for Bush, a hopeful sign is that he spent more time talking about poor people when he ran for president than any Democratic nominee I've watched -- since, er, McGovern. His domestic policy was the most creative of any Republican I've ever covered, far more creative than Gore's."
31. RE: Bush's "incredible instincts": "But expertise and deliberation have never seemed more stodgy, unappealing and unconvincing than they do right now."
26. "I think private accounts a terrific policy and that in the information age, you're going to need different kinds of structures in the entitlement area than you had in the industrial age."
33. "Kerry, like many other Democrats, never truly understood this reality. He did not bother to visit the Southern Baptist Convention or any other fundamentalist group to say, Look, we're going to disagree on some issues, but there are lots of things we have in common, and I want to hear your point of view. He did not take a "listening tour" through rural Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi; he simply ignored the South. When Whoopi Goldberg lewdly compared the President to a body part in her southern hemisphere, Kerry -- who was in the audience -- came onstage and said entertainers like Goldberg represented "the heart and soul of America." He did not criticize the mayor of San Francisco when he broke the law to perform gay marriages. He condoned late-term abortions. He had nothing to say about Janet Jackson's Super Bowl breast flash. Unlike Al Gore, he did not even give a speech supporting faith-based social programs. To religious conservatives, he seemed a secular extremist. The Democrats have paid a heavy and honorable price for their support of equal rights -- first for African Americans and now for homosexuals."
34. "I'm not nearly as smart as Eric [ Alterman], to have opinions without bothering to report first. Instead let me react by speaking to the facts. After all, I've lived my life by seeking out facts and then reporting them. One advantage I think I have over other columnists is that I do reporting."
35. "Given the circumstances, there is only one possible governing strategy: a quiet, patient, and persistent bipartisanship."
36. "Abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, and so interpretations are all we have. One way to solve this--perhaps the best way--is to put abortion to a vote, as a constitutional amendment or on a state-by-state basis. Issues this important should be decided democratically, don't you think?"
37. "I watched the President go through his public paces last weekÂa joint press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, speeches touting Social Security reform and the Patriot ActÂand his stubborn consistency was both admirable and annoying. His unwillingness to drop Social Security reform in the face of lousy polling results is certainly admirable. He has changed the emphasis from semi-privatization of old-age pensions (although he still favors that change) to the solvency of the system, and he has proposed a creative solution, progressive indexing, which would modulate benefits according to income, with the poor receiving proportionately more than the wealthy. This is an idea Democrats would embrace if they had the courage of their "progressive" convictions. But the donkeys appear to be more obsessed with social issues (like abortion rights) than with programs to benefit the poor, and most obsessed with short-term tactics to thwart Bush, regardless of the quality of his proposals."
Remember to vote only once and by number, and that your comments are also being evaluated for snark factor as they contend for the Charles P. Pierce Award for
Excellence in Klein Snark. Mr. Pierce will be selecting the winner of this award from entries made in the comments section, so please defend your choice with craft and passion. The winner of this coveted crown will likewise be awarded a DVD copy of the darkly funny and late lamented show
Action.
Show Joe some love.
First night semi-final roundSecond night semi-final roundThird night semi-final round
|
Mike Stark's O'Reilly action makes it to Olberman. Mike reports he now has dozens more volunteers for a Monday call-in, and that he has told O'Reilly he will cease and desist if he takes down his anti-Olberman petition and apologizes to Keith.
I know, I know, when pigs fly. But it's good old fashioned entertainment for the rest of us in the mean time.
Crooks & Liars has video of the glue coming out of O'Reilly's cracks. Watch if for no other reason than the former prosecutor who says the only person who's done anything actionable here is O'Reilly, and that she thinks he needs to be investigated.
|
Michael Browne's willingness to be honest about what happened during Hurricane Katrina and not be just another ass-coverer for the sins of BushCo. has facilitated one of the most amazing image rehabilitations in blogger history. Over at
The Moderate Voice Joe Gandelman wrote an apology to him, and received this in his comments (Joe believes it is legitimate):
Dear Joe:
I have religiously avoided responding to any of the blogs, but feel compelled to respond to you. Apology accepted. And thank you, too, for the apology.
I have stated on numerous occasions the mistakes that I made and accepted responsibility for those mistakes. And, I hope now that the public, Congress, and especially the Administration, will heed the warnings I wrote to them in 2003, 2004 and 2005, that this kind of disaster was inevitable because of the way the Department of Homeland Security was functioning. I would be glad to provide you copies of those memos if you're interested.
In January, 2005, I came to the conclusion that FEMA was doomed to failure. But rather than quit immediately (which my wife reminds me constantly was a huge mistake for our family) I commissioned an internal study (the "Mitre Report") in order to leave a legacy of how FEMA could make things work that were broken - logistics, supply chains, communications. We were never able to finish that study because of a lack of funding and of course, impending disasters.
The Mitre Report is now in the hands of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and I hope they make good use of its initial findings and recommendations.
Best regards,
Michael D. Brown
I'll pick up that baton from Joe -- Michael Brown was in over his head but contrary to what I snarked about at the time, the tapes show that he did appreciate the threat and he was trying to get the government to respond. They wouldn't, and they deserve to absorb every bit of scorn that was heaped on Brown at the time for their failure to do so, so I would officially like to transfer my snark. It is to Brown's credit that he's being honest about it now and refusing to be the BushCo. goat. I offer my apologies and hope that others are encouraged to follow in his footsteps.
Update: FWIS "
Michael Brown" responds in the comments.
|
Just got an email from
Mike Stark. One of the people he organized into an O'Reilly call-in, whose crime was uttering the name "Olbermann" on Bill's radio show, was contacted by someone who identified himself as Tony Burdy of Fox Security. For the record,
this is what was said on the radio show:
O'REILLY: Orlando, Florida, Mike, go.
CALLER: Hey Bill, I appreciate you taking my call.
O'REILLY: Sure.
CALLER: I like to listen to you during the day, I think Keith Olbermann's show --
O'REILLY: There ya go, Mike is -- he's a gone guy. You know, we have his -- we have your phone numbers, by the way. So, if you're listening, Mike, we have your phone number, and we're going to turn it over to Fox security, and you'll be getting a little visit.
HILL: Maybe Mike is from the mothership.
O'REILLY: No, Maybe Mike is going to get into big trouble, because we're not going to play around. When you call us, ladies and gentleman, just so you know, we do have your phone number, and if you say anything untoward, obscene, or anything like that, Fox security then will contact your local authorities, and you will be held accountable. Fair?
HILL: That's fair.
O'REILLY: So, just -- all you guys who do this kind of a thing, you know, I know some shock jocks. Whatever. You will be held accountable. Believe it.
So Mike called Fox Security back:
I took the number and called Tony. We had a ten minute conversation. I explained that I run callingallwingnuts.com and that I am recruiting callers to join me in calling Bill's show to protest his smearing of Keith Olberman. Tony explained to me that if he can use his years of experience as a NYC Police detective as a guide, that it can be considered harassment if you repeatedly call somebody. I told him that i was no lawyer, but it would probably take a pretty novel argument to convince a judge that a person was harassing a talk show host by accepting their invitation to call... I also explained that he can sample the wares on my site and see for himself that I've never been rude or disrespectful.
I asked him to tell O'Reilly that we'd be happy if he took the anti-Olberman petition down and apologized to Keith. Tony said that would be an unlikely turn of events, and we left it at that.
Then Mike received another email from
another caller:
I just got a phone call from the head of Fox Security, Anthony Burti, #212-XXX-XXXX. I got the call on the phone I used to call him from the head of Fox News security. He said that harassing phone calls were coming from my phone. I asked him how many? He did not know. I asked him what was said that was harassing? He said that he did not know but that it did not have to be what was said, but how many calls were being made. He tried to make like I made 20 phone calls instead of one, and that I cursed O'Reilly out. All I said was that I was grateful to O'Reilly for turning me on to Olberman. Then he hung up.
I guess O'Reilly was telling the truth, the Falafosphere
does have its own personal storm troopers.
Fifty bucks says Loofah Boy likes to parade around in lace panties and jack boots.
Update: Mike gets more emails from yet another caller:
I called back Fox Security, (unfortunately was not able to tape the call), but Tony was very pleasant, and told me that my phone number had come up on a list of having called Bill "numerous times". I interupted and said "Numerous times? I had to call several times to get through, but today was the first time that I called the Bill O'Reilly show."
He seemed surprised and said that "If that's the case than I apologize for calling you." (I paraphrase here...) Some people have called numerous times and it can rise to the level of harassment based on the number of calls, and it varies from state to state. (it "can" not that it "does"!)
I asked him why security at Fox News was handling an issue that happened at Westwood One. He didn't have much of an answer, accept to say that Bill wanted them to look into it, and they work for the same company. Honestly, he really didn't sound like he wanted to be doing this at all. Then he told me that "you're entitled to like or dislike whoever you want, you know, freedom of speech, but if it rises to the level of harassment, then they have to take it seriously. I commented that "Ol' Bill has some pretty thin skin, huh?" He didn't really answer, then I assured him that I was no threat to Bill O'Reilly.
That's a very good question. If O'Reilly's show is on Westwood One, what the heck does Fox Security have to do with it? And what right would Fox have to be taking legal action?
|
Romenesco:
We've been having some vigorous discussion here -- and have been in correspondence with the ombudsmen of The Washington Post and New York Times -- about various ethical and journalism issues. We thought you'd be interested in these issues, and we'd appreciate your thoughts about them. We also think some of this should raise caution flags for your gatekeeping editors as they assess whether to use copy from competing national news organizations.
First, in this post-Jayson Blair era, we believe newspapers must be more transparent then ever about the sources of their stories. That includes acknowledging when others have beaten us to a big story. The Washington Post and New York Times each failed this standard in recent weeks.
On Feb. 7, Warren Strobel reported on a State Department reorganization that sidelined career arms control experts who don't share the Bush administration's mistrust of international arms negotiations and agreements. Exactly two weeks later, The Washington Post published a virtually identical story by Glenn Kessler. We say "virtually identical" only because the stories were written with different words. There was not a single fact in Kessler's story that was not in Strobel's, the product of weeks of careful enterprise reporting and interviews with 11 current and former government officials. We have asked, through the Post's ombudsman, Deborah Howell, who was once executive editor in St. Paul, for a published acknowledgement of the Knight Ridder story. To date, it hasn't happened. We understand that there has been vigorous opposition from the Post reporter, who has claimed, in essence, that the "trade press" had already widely reported the story, a contention that is in fact not correct. We're waiting to see what happens.
Lil' Debbie is on the case. When she's done covering the local pie eating contest and flogging Dana Milbank for his fashion gafs I'm sure she'll be all over this.
Meanwhile our Roots radio advisor
Mike Stark had scored a
direct hit on Bill O'Reilly with his team of radio callers. At the very mention of the word "Obermann" O'Reilly said Fox Security would personally order the police to deal with it. C&L says Keith will be covering it tonight on Countdown. More must-see TV.
Update: Howie Klein is over at Kos
giving Lieberman a whipping. If you're a Kos member please go hit the "recommend" button.
|
From
aRealPatriot, per
me to me:
There is something known as a [sic] Judah sheep.
These are sheep that lead their own brothers and sisters to their doom and slaughter, then they get out of the way just before they themselves are slaughtered.
The rest of the sheep follow the "Judah" to their own doom, even through the slaughtered screams of their kin before them.
Clearly, there are not only "Judah sheep" among animals, there are those among men that would lead their own to slaughter as well.
The question arises;
Do Judah sheep know what they are doing and what will become of their brothers and their sisters?
I would think most of these "Judah sheep" both sheep and men, probably not, for these sheep and and these men have been conditioned to do what they do. They don't exactly see or understand where they lead those behind them, they think it's their calling in life
However among men there ARE Judah sheep that DO know what they are doing.
They are part of the very plot.
I don't believe people that support this administration even through the legislation that flies in the face of their own best interest, and people that try to convince others that these are good policies actually know that they have become Judah sheep.
Supporting these policies that attack the fiber of the middle class demonstrates the how effective the corporate propaganda machine really is.
I believe most of the middle class in America who vote republican are just sheep, and victims of the corporate propaganda machine, they are shallow and lazy, and they are hypnotized by the marketing strategies of corporate enterprise.
HOWEVER;
The politicians and the media personalities who repeat things like "talking points" do know what they are doing.
People that protect and defend those who forge data and initiate unprovoked war against countries that they know pose no threat to our country.
And people that protect and defend policies that would actually siphon vital resources FROM our fight against terrorism, and take the equipment and funding FROM the boys and girls that desperately need those resources if they are to succeed.
And people that protect and defend policies that create terrorism in countries where none existed before, and policies like those that deliberately destroy the infrastructure of the country we overthrow.
(snip)
And policies that would take our very own money which we invested for generations and giving those assets to the richest people on the planet, people who will never ever spend it...our hard earned money which we earmarked for our retirement, we earmarked your parents health and drug care, and most important, investments we earmarked for our children's college education.
Even your kids future is not a sacrifice too great to these Judah sheep.
It's mind boggling the damage that can be done to this country before the people that enable it realize what's happening.
Name your favorite Judas Sheep.
(
Anonymous pointed out in the comments that it's actually "Judas Sheep." But the point is the same.)
|
I think it's great that a guy who normally gets 200 hits a day can terrify a sitting U.S. Senator just by telling the truth, but how petrified must Lieberman be of Ned Lamont to try and strongarm the Huffington Post into censoring their bloggers?
I guess that "Vote Lieberman: Warmonger" slogan must not be testing out too well.
Anyway, go read about how
Howie Klein is giving Joe Lieberman the running shits. It's a scream.
Update: Howie has more Lieberman
graphics love here, and he's got two more musicians giving statements about
their opposition to Holy Joe. I guess I understand why he's now in the Imodium brigade.
|
The competition has been fierce this week to discern which comment by every B-list Bush apologist's favorite "Democrat" takes the title of Most Revoltingly Stupid Joe Klein Comment of All Time. Project Runway has nothing on the drama heating up in our comments section, just a few more bugle beads and bloomers.
From week to week people like Atrios and Media Matters do a very good job of pointing out the all-Republican, all-the-time composition of most TV news shows. Many in our comments section often wonder "where are the Democrats?" like they have anything to do with it.
The person who gets the coveted slot of "token Democrat" is usually of the Joe Klein ilk. We then get a break from Republicans endlessly repeating GOP talking points to hear a self-professed Democrat endlessly repeating GOP talking points. It's not like the Democrats are telling the bookers "sorry, I'm too busy." This guy gets the air time.
And what does he do with it? Here are tonight's entries for "Joe Klein: In His Own Words:"
19. "One can only imagine the Republican wrath and utter ridicule—the Rush Limbaugh fulminations—if, say, John Kerry had proposed a similar policy: Let's pin our Middle East hopes on the statesmanship of Hizballah and Hamas. But that is where the democratic idealism of the Bush Doctrine has led us. If the President turns out to be right—and let's hope he is—a century's worth of woolly-headed liberal dreamers will be vindicated. And he will surely deserve that woolliest of all peace prizes, the Nobel."
20. "I bow to nobody in my disdain for bloggers. You know, they're all opinions and very little information." (video here)
21. "And I've got to say, Bob, that, you know, usually at this - at this stage of a campaign, with a whole big field of a lot of candidates, you know, it's easy to look on them as a bunch of dwarfs or buffoons, but the Democrats have some really serious and substantive and - and effective candidates out there. Of course, there's another whole brigade of buffoons that are led by Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich and Carol Moseley-Braun, none of whom really have a chance to become president, and - and are kind of cluttering up the stage at this point, but there - there are some good, serious candidates out there, too."
22. The Democrats have for the last 10 or 15 years blatantly, shamelessly demagogued this issue. They've offered nothing positive on Social Security or on Medicare or on Medicaid, and it's time for them to compromise here. It's also time for the Republicans to compromise here. One area where you might see, you know, some--one possibility is the old Washington standby, the demonstration project. We might try privatization for some younger, you know, Social Security recipients--not recipients but, you know, contributors, or we might try it in a city or a couple of places. We haven't--we don't know how it's going to work."
23. "But these concerns pale before the importance of the program. It would have been a scandal if the NSA had not been using these tools to track down the bad guys. There is evidence that the information harvested helped foil several plots and disrupt al-Qaeda operations.There is no such thing as a pure political product. The two existing political parties are amalgams of passion and sanity, traditional liberalism and conservatism. Those who win the presidency create harmonic majorities by plausibly balancing these strains."
24. "In less than a second, less time than it takes to tell," Dick Cheney mused last week, his quail-hunting expedition had gone "from what is a very happy, pleasant day with great friends in a beautiful part of the country, doing something I love—to, my gosh, I've shot my friend. I've never experienced anything quite like that before." It was perhaps the most eloquent, emotionally unguarded moment from the notoriously buttoned-up Vice President. He seemed stunned, uncertain for once. And the haunted look in his eyes reminded me of what soldiers in Vietnam used to call the Thousand-Yard Stare—the paralytic shock that comes from seeing the impact that even low-caliber weaponry can have on human flesh.
25. "I've never seen George Bush lose a debate. He is a brilliant minimalist.
26. "And then there is her husband, a one-man supermarket tabloid. A few weeks ago, the New York Post ran a photo of Bill Clinton leaving a local restaurant with an attractive woman, and the political-elite gossip hounds went berserk."
27. "Look, this is a debate we're going to have in this country. And the rules may well change and they maybe should change. But to do it in the way that this has been done, to send the message that we're sending, you cannot guarantee me that we're not creating more militants, more -- and more problems for ourselves."
28. "If Lee does hook large black audiences, there's a chance the message they take from the film will increase racial tensions in the city. If they react violently--which can't be ruled out--the candidate with the most to lose will be David Dinkins."
Remember not only to vote by number, but to vigorously lobby for your choice because the winner of the best Klein snark in the comments section will also receive The Charles P. Pierce Award for Excellence in Klein Snark (to be awarded by
Charles P. Pierce himself) and will also win a copy of the
DVD of Action.
Now is your chance to do to Joe what he does to us every time he opens his mouth. Don't waste it.
First night semi-final roundSecond night semi-final round
|
The latest meme from
TBogg. I'd say it's right up there with his best work -- "The Clenis" and "101st Fighting Keyboardists" (so omnipresent nobody remembers he originated them.) I think "Bush cargo culters" is a perfectly succinct description of those who don't have to have the slightest idea about what Fearless Leader is doing before they know they like it.
Latest case in point --
Ole 60 Grit O'Beirne:
I heard the fellow in front of the weather map saying we can't predict this could happen and then I heard Michael Brown telling us what his gut was telling him. Unfortunately, when I watched, I guess The National Weather Service fellow at his map, we all bring a lot of skepticism to weather reports, Chris. We're habituated to thinking weather reports are wrong....
That woman would get on her knees and blow a tail pipe if Bush asked her to.
(via
TRex)
|
As
mcjoan notes over at Kos, all of Bush's polls are in free fall. Periodically Gosprey sends me bits of interest from the subscription-only conservative
Stratfor report, and I always feel like I'm getting a look into the belly of the beast. Behind all the lies and spin and absurd attempts to put a good face on things, they're freaked:
The point here is not to argue the merits of the Dubai ports deal, but rather to place the business deal in the context of the U.S. grand strategy. That strategy is, again, to split the Islamic world into its component parts, induce divisions by manipulating differences, and to create coalitions based on particular needs. This is, currently, about the only strategy the United States has going for it -- and if it can't use commercial relations as an inducement in the Muslim world, that is quite a weapon to lose.
The problem has become political, and stunningly so. One of the most recent opinion polls, by CBS, has placed Bush's approval rating at 34 percent -- a fairly shocking decline, and clearly attributable to the port issue. As we have noted in the past, each party has a core constituency of about 35-37 percent. When support falls significantly below this level, a president loses his ability to govern.
The Republican coalition consists of three parts: social conservatives, economic conservatives and business interests, and national security conservatives. The port deal has apparently hit the national security conservatives in Bush's coalition hard. They were already shaky over the administration's personnel policies in the military and the question of whether he had a clear strategy in Iraq, even as they supported the invasion.
Another part of the national security faction consists of those who believe that the Muslim world as a whole is, in the end, united against the United States, and that it poses a clear and present danger. Bush used to own this faction, but the debate over the ports has generated serious doubts among this faction about Bush's general policy. In their eyes, he appears inconsistent and potentially hypocritical. Economic conservatives might love the ports deal, and so might conservatives of the "realpolitik" variety, but those who buy into the view that there is a general danger of terrorism emanating from all Muslim countries are appalled -- and it is showing in the polls.
If Bush sinks much lower, he will breaks into territory from which it would be impossible for a presidency to recover. He is approaching this territory with three years left in his presidency. It is the second time that he has probed this region: The first was immediately after Hurricane Katrina. He is now down deeper in the polls, and it is cutting into his core constituency.
"In effect, Bush's strategy and his domestic politics have intersected with potential fratricidal force. The fact is that the U.S. strategy of dividing the Muslim world and playing one part off against the other is a defensible and sophisticated strategy -- even if does not, in the end, turn out to be successful (and who can tell about that?) This is not the strategy the United States started with; the strategy emerged out of the failures in Iraq in 2003. But whatever its origins, it is the strategy that is being used, and it is not a foolish strategy.
The problem is that the political coalition has eroded to the point that Bush needs all of his factions, and this policy -- particularly because of the visceral nature of the ports issue -- is cutting into the heart of his coalition. The general problem is this: The administration has provided no framework for understanding the connection between a destroyed mosque dome in As Samarra, an attack against a crucial oil facility in Saudi Arabia, and the UAE buyout of a British ports-management firm. Rather than being discussed in the light of a single, integrated strategy, these appear to be random, disparate and uncoordinated events. The reality of the administration's strategy and the reality of its politics are colliding. Bush will backtrack on the ports issue, and the UAE will probably drop the matter. But what is not clear is whether the damage done to the strategy and the politics can be undone. The numbers are just getting very low.
Karl Rove did not just arbitrarily decide that "national security" would be the battle cry for the 2006 elections. Losing the "national security" conservatives is an unmitigated disaster for them, and they know it.
The Dubai Ports World deal is set to go through on Monday. Another manifestation of Bush's "hang tough and fuck'em all" leadership strategy? This isn't just another garden variety scandal for the GOP. The implications are much greater. But it would seem that the Administration is treating it as such.
|
I don't want Cecile Richards, head of Planned Parenthood, to feel left out by giving Nancy Keenan all the credit for the new
Mississippi Rapist Rights Bill, so The General has
a few words for her, too.
Feel the love.
Update: Digby on the Utah law which requires parental notification for abortions even if the father molested the girl:
These Republicans admit that women give up their rights when they have sex. Good to know. And they believe a child molesting father's parental rights are more important than the daughter he impregnated. Also good to know.
Thanks, Sammy Alito. You make this all possible.
|
As a direct result of Samuel Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court, Mississippi now falls in line behind South Dakota to pass a
Rapist Rights Bill:
Gov. Haley Barbour said Wednesday he would probably sign a bill under consideration in the state House that would ban most abortions in Mississippi.
The measure, which passed the House Public Health Committee on Tuesday, would allow abortion only to save a woman's life. It would make no exception in cases of rape or incest.
Barbour, a Republican, said he preferred an exception in cases of rape and incest, but if such a bill came to his desk: "I suspect I'll sign it."
The full House could vote on the bill next week, and it would then go to the Senate.
And yet NARAL and Planned Parenthood continue to support Joe Lieberman and Lincoln Chafee. I'm hearing that they are greatly annoyed at having to deal with "attacks from the left" on this "one little point" that we seem to disagree on. They're catterwauling that this is "just what the right wants."
Number one -- if you're rubber stamping the people who put Alito on the bench, how EXACTLY does that qualify YOU as the left?
Number two -- it's not "one little point." If another vacancy comes up on the Supreme Court, how do NARAL and Planned Parenthood plan to fight it? If it was okay for Lieberman and Chafee to vote for cloture on Alito, what's going to be different the next time? Are they waiting for someone WORSE before they put up a fight?
Number three -- "just what the right wants?" I'll tell you "just what they right wants." They want to be able to steam roll their fundie freaks onto the bench with no organized opposition, which is exactly what they got. I really don't see how we can make them much happier.
Most big feminists, I'm finding out, have no idea that NARAL and Planned Parenthood are supporting Chafee and Lieberman, or that they told their memberships to thank them both for their Alito votes. When they find out they go appropriately apeshit. They've been contacting a much-irritated Nancy Keenan who seems to think choice is a fine price to pay to maintain her own personal access to Republican cocktail parties.
We get coathangers so she can have cocktail weenies.
Not one more penny for either organization until they agree to stop giving it to people like Lieberman and Chafee who put Alito on the bench.
If there is any hope of stopping this juggernaut, I urge everyone to put your money where it will do some good -- to send a wake-up call to the Democratic Party, NARAL and Planned Parenthood that this is bullshit, people are angry and they better smell the fucking coffee.
Give to
Ciro Rodriguez and Ned Lamont.
The fight starts now.
(hat tip to
Joe from Americablog and not to NARAL, whose blogger mailing list I am on)
|
Reuters:
Dubai Ports World's $6.85 billion acquisition of Britain's P&O will close on Friday or Monday, despite an additional 45-day review by the U.S. government in response to security concerns, a U.S. Treasury Department official said on Thursday.
"My understanding is that the deal will not close today," Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt told a Senate panel. "Although they had announced March 2 as the closing date ... that deal will not now close until tomorrow or Monday."
Kimmitt made his statement in response to a question from lawmakers on the Senate Banking Committee.
Can I just say how unhappy I am that Dobbs is allowed to own this thing?
|
