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Letter To a Young Person: I Ain't John Cusack, But You Better Vote
Posted by Jill C. on November 1, 2008 at 3:44 PM.

Dear young voter,

You and I have been arguing for years now about whether baby boomers are to blame for the state of the world as it is today. You've told me that we all sold out to Wall Street and greed, that WE are the ones who put George W. Bush in office, that WE are the ones who supported the Iraq War, that WE are the ones who threw your future away for short-term gain. You've put Dennis Hopper out there as representative of baby boomers even though he was born in 1936 -- a full ten years BEFORE the beginning of the baby boom -- just because he played what you think of as a hippie in a movie.

I have in my paper files a Tom Toles cartoon from 1987 called "The Reading of the Will." It depicts a lawyer reading to five young people from a piece of paper:

Dear kids,

We, the generation in power since World War II, seem to have used up pretty much everything ourselves. We kind of drained all the resources out of our manufacturing industries, so there's not much left there. The beautiful old buildings that were build to last for centuries, we tore down and replaced with characterless but inexpensive structures, and you can have them. Except everything we built had a lifespan about the same as ours, so like the interstate highway system we built, they're all falling apart now and you'll have to deal with that. We used up as much of our natural resources as we could, without providing for renewable ones, so you're probably only good until about a week from Thursday. We did build a generous Social Security and pension system, but that was just for us. In fact, the only really durable thing we built was toxic dumps. You can have those. So think of your inheritance as a challenge. The challenge of starting from scratch. You can begin as soon as -- oh, one last thing -- as soon as you pay off the two trillion dollar debt we left you.

Your parents

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Except that Tom Toles wrote that in 1987 -- twenty-one years ago -- when I, born in the peak years of the baby boom, was thirty-two years old and Barack Obama, born at the tail end of the boom in 1964, was twenty-three.

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Obama's Aunt? Here's Why the Leak Is Illegal, Not Important
Posted by dday, Hullabaloo on November 1, 2008 at 3:38 PM.

I don't know if these 11th-hour smears are going to work at a time when the total financial meltdown tends to focus the mind a bit. But if undecideds were looking for an excuse to vote against Senator Obama, they've been handed it. It appears that Obama has an aunt from Kenya who is living in Boston illegally after her request for asylum was denied four years ago. Illegal!!!1! By the way, Barack Obama doesn't seem to know this aunt well or have any sort of relationship with her.

(Also, she apparently gave a small amount of donations to the campaign, which Obama has just given back.)

The interesting part of this is how the asylum denial was discovered. The quoted portion is from this AP story.

"Information about the deportation case was disclosed and confirmed by two separate sources, one of them a federal law enforcement official. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release."

To quote Josh Marshall:

That's about as transparent a red flag as an outfit like the AP is usually willing to give. And there you have it. Quite likely working in concert with the McCain campaign, a Bush administration official is leaking details on an immigration case to try to help McCain three days before the election. It's shades of Bush I's riffling through Bill Clinton's passport files just before the 1992 election in a desperate last minute gambit as they were swirling down the drain.

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Palin's Movement Urges 'Godly' To 'Plunder' Wealth of The 'Godless'
Posted by Bruce Wilson on November 1, 2008 at 10:46 AM.

The McCain campaign, during the 2008 election, has repeatedly attacked Barack Obama for advocating that the U.S. federal government seek more wealth equality in America, by "spreading the wealth."

But McCain's running mate Sarah Palin is closely associated, as noted in a recent New York Times story, with "spiritual warfare", an aggressive approach to evangelizing developed by the leaders of a worldwide religious movement which promotes a religiously based wealth transfer scheme as a means to implement theocracy.

Sarah Palin endorser Bishop Thomas Muthee, in a speech he gave before blessing and anointing Sarah Palin as a political leader, on October 16, 2005 at the Wasilla Assembly of God, laid out the current agenda of the New Apostolic Reformation - how "God's kingdom" needed to "infiltrate" seven sectors of society. Muthee listed most of them: business and finance, schools and education, media and entertainment, politics and government.

Muthee also stated "The Bible says the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. Sarah Palin was in the audience. Minutes later, she was anointed, and blessed, with the laying on of hands.

Thomas Muthee is an internationally known celebrity in the New Apostolic Reformation and a personal friend of the movement's head, C. Peter Wagner. In June 2006 Wagner proclaimed that "God has declared through His prophets that the wealth of the wicked will be released to the Kingdom of God," and declared, threateningly, "the enemies' camp will be plundered."

The New Apostolic Reformation is not a small movement: an apostle of C. Peter Wagner, one of the 500 apostles in Wagner's International Coalition of Apostles, owns what will be one of the tallest buildings in the world, the Jakarta Tower. One of the NAR's branches is successfully supplanting the Catholic Church in Brazil. The movement holds international conferences on advancing Christian hegemony in the business sector [link to PDF].

A new 36 page report ( read online / PDF file / some of the highlights of the report ), from an independent research team that has specialized in studying Sarah Palin's faith, contains ground breaking information on a religious movement Sarah Palin is tied to and which advocates that its members "plunder" the wealth of the "godless".

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Poll: Republicans Want Palin in 2012
Posted by Steven Reynolds, The All Spin Zone on November 1, 2008 at 2:00 AM.

The latest Gallup poll of Republicans and self-identified Republican "leaners" is out. They asked the respondents who they wanted to run for President in 2012. Sarah Palin was the runaway winner. Here it is from Tampa Bay Online:

No sooner had Barack Obama won the presidential election than pundits started looking to 2012 and possible Republican challengers. A Gallup Poll asked people to rank the top 10 candidates they would like to run. Topping the list: Sarah Palin (67 percent), Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Second to last: Gov. Charlie Crist (23 percent), one below former Gov. Jeb Bush (31 percent).

Perhaps the Republicans who responded to this can understand Palin’s sentences, while the rest of us just stare in wonder as she speaks. Or maybe they are concerned for Tina Fey’s livelihood?

I suppose what is most interesting here is the poor quality of the rest of the named field. Charlie Crist and Jeb Bush? Both have substantial problems getting nominated. Otherwise, this list is a rehash of this last election and primary, a whole bunch of uninspiring choices.

Who's Getting Rich Off Prohibition? Just Look Who Opposes CA's Prop. 5
Posted by Paul Armentano, NORML on November 1, 2008 at 1:12 AM.

You can learn a lot about the merits of a proposal by taking a good, hard look at who's lobbying against it.

Take California's Proposition 5, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act, which would require the diversion of certain non-violent offenders to drug treatment and increase funding for state-sponsored rehabilitation programs. The measure seeks to expand upon the alternative sentencing programs initially enacted by Proposition 36, which is estimated to have saved taxpayers some $1.7 billion dollars and reduced the number of people incarcerated for simple drug possession by one-third. So who would oppose this proposal?

If you guessed: the folks who make their living arresting non-violent drug offenders, you'd be right! According to the 'No on 5' website, the California State Sheriff's Association, the California Narcotics Officers Association, the California Peace Officers Association, the Police Chiefs of California, and the California District Attorneys Association all oppose Prop. 5.

However, even more disturbing is who's bankrolling the 'No on 5'campaign. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, California's powerful prison guards union has spent close to $2 million dollars to lobby against the passage of Prop. 5.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Why Is Rep. Al Wynn Being Primaried? He's The New Joe Lieberman
Posted by David Sirota, WorkingForChange.com on November 1, 2007 at 3:00 PM.

This post, written by David Sirota, originally appeared on Working For Change

Why is Maryland Rep. Al Wynn (D) facing a strong primary challenge from Donna Edwards? Well, lots of reasons. For one thing, he voted for the Iraq War. But that's really only part of the story. Wynn represents part of the corrupt Washington Establishment - the Money Party that both Republicans and Democrats are a part of. Don't take my word for that - check out his campaign finance reports and his own campaign website.

Here is Wynn's Federal Election Commission report of donations from June of 2007. You'll notice that he pocketed a $2,000 contribution from something called the "Billy Tauzin Congressional Committee." Tauzin is the Republican who was formerly the chairman of the committee that wrote the infamous Bush Medicare bill - the one that gave over a trillion dollars of taxpayer money away to the pharmaceutical industry. Soon after that bill passed, Tauzin retired from Congress to become the chief lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry - and now, it seems, a campaign contributor to one Al Wynn.

Then there is Wynn's campaign website which tries to defend his vote for the credit card industry-written Bankruptcy Bill. As I document in Hostile Takeover and as Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren references here, the bill that makes it much more difficult for families to deal with medical debt, while actually making it more easy for corporations to declare bankruptcy and use bankruptcy status as a way to avoid paying back wages/benefits to their workers. Wynn flails all around trying to pretend the Bankruptcy Bill was passed as a way to actually help workers. Read here and here to see just how absurdly dishonest such a claim really is.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Crack Cocaine Sentence Reductions Finally Begin
Posted by Jeralyn Merritt, Firedoglake on November 1, 2007 at 2:00 PM.

This post, written by Jeralyn Merritt, originally appeared on FireDogLake

Finally, a little relief is at hand for the vastly disparate and draconian crack cocaine sentences meted out by federal courts. New federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine offenses went into effect today.

Starting today, many offenders sentenced in federal court for crack will receive a sentence about 16 months less than they would have yesterday.

By way of background, through mandatory minimum sentencing laws, the Feds have punished crack crimes far more severely than those involving powder cocaine. The U.S. Sentencing Commission followed suit by enacting guidelines that matched the mandatory minimums.

A crime involving five grams of crack cocaine carries a mandatory sentence of five years in prison, and 50 grams carries a 10-year penalty. However, it takes 500 and 1,000 grams of powdered cocaine to trigger the same five and 10 year sentences.

The 100 to 1 ratio between powder and crack cocaine penalties has no rational or scientific basis. (You know you're onto something when even Joe Biden agrees.) After years of debate and studies demonstrating this, and with statistics showing that the crack penalties resulted in great racial disparity in sentences, in May, the United States Sentencing Commission proposed dropping the penalties for crack offenses by two levels. Congress had until October 31 to oppose new guideline. It didn't object, so the new guideline became effective today.

This is a welcome step in the right direction. But let's be very clear. It's not time to open the champagne. This is a relatively minor reduction and it doesn't apply to all defendants.

There's two remaining problems: Retroactivity and mandatory minimum sentences.

First, the Sentencing Commission must decide whether the reduction will be retroactive and apply to the 19,500 currently serving sentences for crack offenses. Its analysis of the issue is here (pdf) and iincludes the statistic that of the 19,500 inmates currently serving federal sentences for crack offenses, 86% are black, 8% are hispanic and 6% are white.

In other words, Blacks serve far longer sentences than whites for a comparable offense regarding substances that are chemically identical. With 19,500 inmates still in prison serving these disparate sentences, retroactivity is essential for fairness.

However, even if the reduction is made retroactive, it will not result in either an automatic sentence reduction or a reduction for everyone.

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Bush Pathetically Panders to His Base By Bashing MoveOn, Code Pink
Posted by Faiz Shakir on November 1, 2007 at 1:00 PM.

This post, written by Faiz Shakir, originally appeared on Think Progress

In a politically-charged speech this afternoon at the Heritage Foundation, President Bush brazenly attacked congressional leaders for not immediately granting him all the funding he has requested for the Iraq war.

Lawmakers should stop listening to "Moveon.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters" and start listening to the "warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden," Bush said to a rousing ovation:

When it comes to funding our troops, some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the requests of our commanders on the ground, and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters.

Watch the video to your right.

Bush hardly has a leg to stand on when urging others to heed the warnings of bin Laden. More than six years after 9/11, bin Laden roams free and is "stronger than ever." His administration allowed bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora, shifted resources away from the search for bin Laden in 2002, dismantled the CIA unit charged with locating him, and on top of all that, claimed it didn't really matter if Osama was captured:

Bush: "So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him. ... And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him." [3/13/02]

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Secret Memos Reveal Rumsfeld Ordered Military to Link Iraq and Iran, Trashed Muslims
Posted by GottaLaff on November 1, 2007 at 11:00 AM.

This post, written by GottaLaff, originally appeared on Cliff Schecter's Brave New Films Blog

Boy-howdy! Rummy's little "snowflakes" (messages) sure conveyed some whiz-bang notions!

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and wrote of the need to "keep elevating the threat," "link Iraq to Iran" and develop "bumper sticker statements" to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.

Land-o'-Goshen, no wonder Big Foot Karen Hughes resigned. It's obvious. She couldn't turn a phrase.

Rumsfeld, whose sometimes abrasive approach often alienated other Cabinet members and White House staff members, produced 20 to 60 snowflakes a day and regularly poured out his thoughts in writing as the basis for developing policy, aides said.

Holy cow, forget Reagan! Donald's the one, the only Great Communicator.

Pessimistic news reports -- "our publics risk falling prey to the argument that all is lost" -- simply result from the wrong standards being applied, he wrote in one of the memos obtained by The Washington Post.

My stars! Nothing could deter Secretary Folksy's penchant for opening his big ol' "aw shucks" mouth:

Under siege in April 2006, when a series of retired generals denounced him and called for his resignation in newspaper op-ed pieces, Rumsfeld produced a memo after a conference call with military analysts. "Talk about Somalia, the Philippines, etc. Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists," he wrote.

Gosh and golly! Scare 'em to death! That's how to make America safe. Heckuva job, Rummy:

People will "rally" to sacrifice, he noted after the meeting. "They are looking for leadership. Sacrifice = Victory."

Um, what victory, Rums?

Based on the discussion with military analysts, Rumsfeld tied Iran and Iraq. "Iran is the concern of the American people, and if we fail in Iraq, it will advantage Iran," he wrote in his April 2006 memo.

"Bumper stickers" to determine policy... Darn tootin'! Keep it simple for the simple folks. Worry them sick, right into World War III.

In one of his longer ruminations, in May 2004, Rumsfeld considered whether to redefine the terrorism fight as a "worldwide insurgency." The goal of the enemy, he wrote, is to "end the state system, using terrorism, to drive the non-radicals from the world." He then advised aides "to test what the results could be" if the war on terrorism were renamed.

I've often renamed Rummy. Unfortunately, none of my renames are printable.

Now, about all that oil:

He also lamented that oil wealth has at times detached Muslims "from the reality of the work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world. Too often Muslims are against physical labor, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed," he wrote. "An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism."

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

White House Withholding 600 pages of Abramoff Docs
Posted by Steve Benen on November 1, 2007 at 8:08 AM.

This post, written by Steve Benen, originally appeared on The Carpetbagger Report

Nearly two years ago, then-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan promised the press corps that a "thorough report" would be released "very soon" documenting contacts betwen the White House and disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Not surprisingly, that never actually happened. The Bush gang thought they could just stall, reporters would eventually stop asking, and the scandal would eventually go away. Sure enough, that wasn't a bad strategy, at least as far as cover-ups go.

Of course, the questions never actually went away, they just hibernated thanks to a Republican Congress that had a philosophical objection to oversight. Roll Call reports today that the questions are making a comeback.

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is demanding hundreds of pages of documents from the White House that he says indicate the depths of contacts between Bush administration officials and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

In an Oct. 31 letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding, Waxman said the White House has released to the committee 3,700 pages of documents detailing Abramoff's contacts with the White House, but has refused to release about 600 pages that, according to the White House, "contain internal deliberations among White House employees, or that otherwise implicate Executive Branch prerogatives."

Waxman said the committee's investigation thus far indicates that "some senior White House officials had regular contact with Mr. Abramoff," and his letter demands production of the documents by Nov. 6.

Waxman has told the White House it basically has two choices: claim executive privilege or fork over the docs.

As Paul Kiel noted, Waxman added a sardonic little quip in his correspondence with the White House counsel's office: "Given the prior statements by White House officials, it is surprising that there would be this volume of documents of internal deliberations involving Mr. Abramoff."

Kiel added a helpful primer, for those rusty on the details and most recent revelations.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Bush Advisor Claims He Doesn't Know Whether the White House Approves Waterboarding
Posted by Amanda Terkel on November 1, 2007 at 7:36 AM.

This post, written by Amanda Terkel, originally appeared on Think Progress

Yesterday on CNN, White House adviser Ed Gillespie defended attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey's legal dodge on whether waterboarding constitutes torture. Mukasey called the technique "hypothetical."

Gillespie similarly tried to claim that waterboarding doesn't exist. "[F]irst of all, this technique, we don't know that it's used by the government or is used by the government," he said. "That's never been confirmed by the U.S. government."

Host John Roberts called out Gillespie's dodge, noting, "It's widely held that waterboarding was what broke Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to get him to divulge all of the information that he had." Gillespie simply replied, "[T]he fact is the government doesn't confirm techniques regardless of whether they're used or not used." Watch it to your right.

While Bush administration officials have refused to publicly say whether or not they waterboard detainees, CIA officials have repeatedly told the media that they have carried out this torture. Some examples:

- In one of the administration's most high-profile cases, al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reportedly endured waterboarding two minutes -- "far longer than any of the other 'high-value' terror targets who were subjected to the technique." A former CIA officer called it an "extraordinary amount of time for him to hold out."

- In 2005, the CIA subjected Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi to weeks of "enhanced interrogation." CIA officials stated that he "finally broke after being water boarded and then left to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals."

- In 2002, "a presidential finding" authorized a list of CIA interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. In 2005, current and former CIA officials confirmed to ABC News that they were trained to waterboard detainees, which entailed "handcuff[ing] the prisoner and cover[ing] his face with cellophane to enhance the distress."

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Slain Soldier's Family Wins $11 Million Dollar Suit Against Homophobic Phelps Family Church
Posted by TRex on November 1, 2007 at 6:45 AM.

This post, written by TRex, originally appeared on FireDogLake

Well, well, well.

A Pennsylvania jury has awarded the family of slain Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder some eleven million dollars in a court case against the "ministry" of Fred Phelps. To wit!

After members of Reverend Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church demonstrated at the funeral of Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder his father was justifiably upset. But Albert Snyder didn't just get mad - he got even:

A grieving father won a nearly $11 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals in the belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.

Albert Snyder of York, Pennsylvania., sued the Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified damages after members demonstrated at the March 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.

The jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned later in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress.

U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett noted the size of the award for compensating damages "far exceeds the net worth of the defendants," according to financial statements filed with the court.

Well, jump up and slap the mule. That's the best news I've heard in ages. That means that Westboro Baptist will probably go bankrupt and Reverend Phelps and his congregation (which is mostly made up of his extended family) are going to have to ship their little inbred, home-schooled brats off to real schools because they're all going to have to get real jobs, rather than travel the country intruding on the private grief of American families.

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Cross-Dressing Republican Caught With Male Hooker Resigns, But Still Won't Admit He's Gay
Posted by Howie Klein on November 1, 2007 at 6:25 AM.

This post, written by Howie Klein, originally appeared on Down With Tyranny!

I've seen one viciously homophobic Republican elected official after another get caught red handed (or something) with boys and men and one thing all the perps have in common is that they all claim they're "not gay."

After reading Bob Bauman's honest and insightful book into his own forced outing, The Gentleman From Maryland-- Conscience Of A Gay Conservative, which tells the tale of how a powerful right-wing congressman was arrested and went through the whole rigmarole until finally admitting his sexuality to himself, I realized that it is going to take a very long time for the Larry Craigs (R-ID), Bob Allens (R-FL), Mitch McConnells (R-KY), Richard Curtises (R-WA), Patrick McHenrys (R-NC), David Dreiers (R-CA), Lindsey Grahams (R-SC), etc to ever come to grips with their own natures. All of these men have been vociferous in denying their own sexual natures and each has voted against the interests of other gay men and women in a way that endangers regular American citizens trying to get on raising families and living their lives. Homosexuality has not made any of them more empathetic; quite the contrary. Non-closeted gay legislators, like Barney Frank (D-MA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) do stand up for equal protection under the law for all citizens. The Republicans seem to use virulent anti-gay stands as a way of proving "I'm not gay."

It hasn't been working out very well for Washington's Richard Curtis, a very conservative Republican state Rep from La Center. Although he was obviously messed up on drugs-- unmentioned in any news report I've seen until today-- all we heard from him yesterday was "I'm not gay. I've never had sex with any guys." He sure sounded like Bob Bauman (R-MD), Ed Schrock (R-VA), and Jon Hinson (R-MS) once did, like Larry Craig does now... and like Mitch McConnell probably will very soon. But, behind closed doors, he told the police quite a different story.

According to today's Columbian the police report states clearly that Curtis "admitted to having sex with a man he met at an adult video store in Spokane last week."

The police report offers a far different version of events from the brief account Curtis gave Monday to The Columbian, one that seems likely to threaten Curtis' political future.

The report is filled with graphic details of an encounter that began at a porn store on a Spokane Valley strip and concluded miles away in Curtis' room at the city's poshest hotel.

The police report contains an account of how Curtis allegedly donned women's clothing, red stockings and a black sequined lingerie top before engaging in a sex act at the store. He then continued to wear them throughout the night under his clothing, the report says.

Curtis, who has consistently voted in the most homophobic and bigoted manner, is 48 years old, married and has two daughters. He told the male prostitute he picked up that his wife knew when he married her that he liked men. I've read about people who crave-- and are willing to pay for-- unprotected anonymous sex but I've never talked to one. It seems like a pretty suicidal approach and from what I've heard it's almost always something people do in the context of severe drug problems. Curtis offered to pay a male prostitute $1,000 for unprotected anal sex but afterwards tried to weasel out with a $100 or $200 or $300 payment. (Unlike Larry Craig and Bob Allen, at least he wasn't a $20 gay Republican.)

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Olbermann: "Mr. Bush & his minions responded by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called 'stupid'" [VIDEO]
Posted by Evan Derkacz on November 1, 2006 at 8:26 PM.

Olbermann's latest Special Comment, the first video, addresses it all -- lies, terrorism, indolent media, the dissolution of our nation's greatness...

***
The second video focuses on the collective lie that is the misunderstanding of John Kerry's comments, for which he has now apologized...

Kerry f*cked up.

But he f*cked up a joke, while Bush did it to a nation. No matter. Bush, Tony Snow, and the GOP decided to take a word mix-up and run with it -- all sound and fury, signifying remarkable cowardice and stupidity (Hat tip: The Bard).

What Kerry meant to say, via a spokesperson: "I can’t overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq." - Senator John Kerry (via Kerry spokesperson)

What Kerry actually said: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq."

What Kerry then said to critics, see video:

"If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it. These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor.

Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men. And this time it won’t work because we’re going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their distortions. No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq."

Olbermann on Republican Assault of Marine Vet [VIDEO]
Posted by Evan Derkacz on November 1, 2006 at 5:51 PM.

Many of you saw yesterday's video of Virginia constituent and Marine vet, Mike Stark, assaulted by men wearing George Allen badges as Stark attempted to ask the Republican senator some tough questions.

This evening Stark appeared on Keith Olbermann's program [video parts 1 and 2 right] to talk about the ordeal and to clear up some of the, well, "lies" being peddled by the Allen campaign, such as Allen's confidently-spouted lie that Stark was working for the Webb campaign.

An interesting question though: Although Stark clearly wasn't working for Allen's increasingly popular challenger Jim Webb, would it have been okay to assault him if he were? Just asking. Rough transcript after the jump...

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Letterman v. O'Reilly II: [VIDEO]
Posted by Evan Derkacz on November 1, 2006 at 9:33 AM.

Thanks to reader Ken Pruett for notifying me that in my original post of the smackdown between Dave Letterman and Bill O'Reilly, I left out a major portion of the interview (transcript via A la Gauche).

In the clip to the right, Letterman smells O'Reilly's BS, telling him: "You're putting words in my mouth. Just the way you put artificial facts in your head."

And, in fact, O'Reilly's claim, in bold below, is unsupported by anyone who isn't a Bush apologist, including the CIA, the FBI, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the National Security Council.

***

Letterman: But why didn't we stay in Afghanistan? Why didn't we stay in Afghanistan. It seems to me that Afghanistan was more directly the source. I mean there has been no tie proven between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the Taliban, anything. Why didn't we stay there?

O'Reilly: You know what Ansar-al-Islam, do you know what that is? You don't. And I'm not saying this in a condescending way, I'm really not. Okay? I'm not going to call you a bonehead or a pinhead?

[laughter]

O'Reilly: Ansar-al-Islam was the al Qaeda affiliate in Northern Iraq who tried to poison the British water supply with Ricin. They operated with Saddam Hussein's okay. Again, complicated, but it isn't so black and white, Dave. It isn't, "We're a bad country, Bush is an evil liar."

O'Reilly: That's not true.

Letterman: I didn't say we were a bad country,

Letterman: I didn't say he was an evil liar. You're putting words in my mouth. Just the way you put artificial facts in your head.

Voter Fraud Alert [VIDEO]
Posted by Evan Derkacz on November 1, 2006 at 8:07 AM.

This is a dicey subject. Ignore it at your peril, but obsess and you erode confidence and the thing that makes a nation great: the belief that an individual can make a difference.

So watch the local Texas clip to the right, one of many to come no doubt, but read all the way to the bottom of this post. In this local Texas news clip, though the report doesn't dig that far, ES&S voting machines seem to lean right, even when voters don't. It's sort of astonishing that the clip insinuates that all "mistakes" favor Republicans, yet they quote an expert innocuously saying that he believes it's a programming error. But see, he can't know, because nobody's watching. See how that's the problem?

ES&S, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ES%26S">formerly CEO-ed by Republican Chuck Hagel (whose votes they also counted, hmmm) and with a list of problems a mile long, owns nearly half the voting machines in the nation. Here's the San Antonio Express-News:

There have been, however, significant problems with customer service in the past. These include failure to deliver balloting software on time and a lack of technical assistance during elections. At one point, Secretary of State Roger Williams had to deliver a pungent message to ES&S President and CEO Aldo J. Tesi. In a letter to Tesi in April, Williams decried the company's poor track record and threatened to decertify the company's equipment, withhold grant funding, or seek a legal remedy "if that is what it takes to get your attention."

But for the love of God, don't start down the slippery slope that ends with you on a porch with a shotgun across your lap, respirator strapped to your face, muttering something about the radio waves.

Join one of the numerous efforts to ensure that the vote is honest and legit, and read How to Stop the November Elections from Being Stolen.

Breaking: Alito's friends like him
Posted by Evan Derkacz on November 1, 2005 at 1:47 PM.

This isn't about a blog. Sue me. But I've got sand in the bathing suit, so to speak. I'd like to know who wrote, edited, assigned this totally worthless article for Bloomberg News on Alito? Isn't it a bit early for a Christmas gift?

First of all, can you think of anything less interesting or banal than an article titled: "Alito Is Described by Friends as Studious, Diligent and Modest"? I mean, they're his FRIENDS.

And what follows may as well be cribbed from Republican talking points. If he were even remotely good looking they would've hit that too. Thing is, the gist of the whole article seems to be that A. He's his own man, not anything like Scalia and B. He's not an ideologue.

Except, several paragraphs in we learn that he just doesn't have quite the same demeanor, "But he will be a conservative and I won't be surprised if he agrees with Justice Scalia a good portion of the time."

Oh, well, yeah... I guess those comparisons are unfair since their eye color is different and Scalia can't stomach Abba.

The article quotes not one, but two friends balking at the idea that Alito is an ideologue. Charles Fried: "He doesn't have some kind of rigorous ideological formula," and Mark Levy: "Alito wasn't a vocal or especially ideological conservative at the law school or in the solicitor general's office."

That's funny, an article from the non-ideological National Law Journal says, well, the exact opposite: "Judge Alito is described by lawyers as exceptionally bright, but much more of an ideologue than most of his colleagues."

Hmmm.

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Death be not proud... or tasteful
Posted by Evan Derkacz on November 1, 2005 at 12:29 PM.

My Lord. The latest eBay hijinks (they're almost passé at this point, no?) has James Curry auctioning off the opportunity to put a logo or message on his coffin and to program a song at the funeral. I'm not sure why anyone might be interested, but okay.

Constantine von Hoffman informs us that this isn't really all that groundbreaking:

"Collegiate Memorials of Forsyth, Ga., has been selling college-themed caskets since 2000. The caskets, available in wood or steel, bear the school colors and insignia for 46 schools across the country and 18 sororities and fraternities."

von Hoffman asks the obvious next question:

"given the ridiculously high cost of funerals how long until some for-profit-companies start underwriting the expenses?... I can see a NASCAR fan’s coffin covered in the logos of his favorite driver and the companies that supported him. It’s such a natural fit for Harley owners I can’t believe that someone isn’t already selling coffins big enough for both rider and ride to be buried in."

(CMO Blogs)

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Wal-Mar(keting)
Posted by Evan Derkacz on November 1, 2005 at 10:24 AM.

"Wal-Mart's not-so-good streak of publicity continues today, with both a rebuke from the Department of Labor's inspector general and the release of a new movie that shows the downside of Wal-Mart's famously low prices. Add that to the leaked benefits memo from last week, and the reasons that Wal-Mart has felt the need set up its own 'war room' become increasingly clear," writes Laura Donnelly.

Jonathan Tasini calls the child labor law agreement between Wal-Mart and the Labor Dept 'a sweetheart deal' saying essentially: "'Next time we want to investigate what laws you might be breaking, we’re going to tell you about the investigation before we do it'—just to give you enough time to cover your tracks, shred documents or muddle the trail."

AlterNet's New York staff will be attending the premier of Robert Greenwald's movie tonight, so expect some kind of report on that tomorrow.

Donnelly continues:

"The company has compiled an election-like action team that focuses on "swing voters"—what they call "consumers who have not soured on Wal-Mart"... Statistics show, however, that consumers' consciences are turning them away from the low-cost-is-everything mantra Wal-Mart peddles. One report from 2004 found that between 2 and 8 percent of former Wal-Mart shoppers had stopped shopping because of negative press about the store. Looks like there's more of that to come."

What I found fascinating about the war room is that former PR people for Clinton, Kerry and even Dean were on the case. I'm not naive enough to believe either that PR people for ostensibly more liberal politicians believe in, well, anything, nor that those politicians should necessarily only hire folks they agree with, but what does surprise me is why anyone would hire image handlers for Kerry or Dean, two candidates with massive image problems... (Uncommon Sense)

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Um, Italian is not a race.
Posted by Evan Derkacz on November 1, 2005 at 9:20 AM.

Desperately searching for way to portray Bush's latest divisive and frightening Supreme Court pick as a poor victimized do-gooder, right wing talking points hilariously claim that it's racism behind Democratic opposition to Sammy Alito. They point to the use of Alito's well-known and widely used nickname "Scalito" in a Democratic memo. You know, he's Italian and white and Christian and all; a downtrodden people in early 21st Century America, don't you know...

August J. Pollak smirks through this post: "So, let me get this straight. Republicans spent months bragging about the chance they'll have to to nominate the first Hispanic, and claiming in advance that opposition to Janice Rogers Brown or Condoleeza Rice is 'racism.' Then Bush ultimately decides to put two white Ivy Leage men on the Supreme Court. The result? Democrats are the ones being racist!"

"[Republican Senator Orrin] Hatch, to his credit, delivered a performance of mock indignation at non-existent racism unseen since Senator Geary gave his speech about Italians in The Godfather pt. II. Nonsense like this really does make me wonder how people like Hatch sleep at night..." (August J. Pollak)

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The pro-cancer wing of the Republican party
Posted by Evan Derkacz on November 1, 2005 at 8:10 AM.

Christian conservatives (note to trolls: I've no doubt that socially conservative Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, what have you, are equally pro-cancer. It just happens that it's Christian conservatives who lead the pack and have the numbers...) are battling to prevent teenage immunization against certain cancer-causing strains of the STD, HPV.

After all, the logic goes, if there's one less risk of fatality, mightn't the littl'uns be that much more inclined to get it on?

Paul Waldman wryly comments: "Because let's face it, if you let a boy put his dirty parts inside your dirty parts, you're nothing but a filthy slut and cancer is just what you deserve."

So why the headline? Waldman correctly points out: "And these are the people who just picked the next Supreme Court justice." (Fly Trap)

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That David Corn?
Posted by Evan Derkacz on November 1, 2005 at 7:20 AM.

Bloggers are up in arms at David Corn's decision to join the editorial board of Pajamas Media, a consortium of mostly conservative bloggers with a hazy mission and lousy design.

James Wolcott writes

"I don't understand why someone as politically keen as The Nation's David Corn would lend his name to the editorial board of Pajamas Media, the greatest assembly of conservative deadbeats since Jonah Goldberg's last fondue party. What an illustrious roster of ideological utensils make up Pajamas' masthead..."

Steve Gilliard adds: "I've seen their invite and wondered who would swim in this sewer."

Jeff Jarvis, wonders:

"I never fully understood what Pajamas Media wanted to be and I understand it even less now that they are holding a gala, four-and-a-half-hour intro in New York at the Rainbow Room on Nov. 16 with Judy Miller as their keynote. Judy Miller? Judy Miller!"

But is it really the worst thing in the world? Fine, sure, Corn provides a fig leaf for those who'll claim that PM is a partisan sewer, but is it just possible that Corn's presence will produce a dialogue, moderate the group, or at least expose readers to another perspective? Mayyyybe.

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