Maron V Seder 3pm today

*****

Fuimus!

me likey last post 2!

MediaMattersAction.org

I pledge to do my part to hold the media accountable -- stay informed, spread the word, and take action to stop conservative misinformation from becoming the common perception.

Petition Time Again,Campers - Please Read & Sign - Thank You

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Ain't No Misty Mountain, mp3

HORSE SLAUGHTER BILL UP FOR COMMITTEE VOTE

AWI has learned that the Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act (H.R. 6598) will be voted on by the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, September 10th. The bill, which was introduced in July by Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Representative Dan Burton (R-IN), will criminalize the slaughter of American horses. While the vast majority of Americans, the United States Congress and members of the House Judiciary Committee support an end to horse slaughter there are some members on the committee who are staunch supporters of horse slaughter and will attempt to kill the bill through subterfuge.

What You Can Do:

Call and/or email members of the House Judiciary Committee (see full list below) TODAY and ask them “to support passage of the Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act (H.R. 6598) out of committee as introduced, with NO amendments”. Please also ask them “to cosponsor H.R. 6598 if they haven’t done so already.” Let them know that:

Every 5 Minutes an American horse is slaughtered for human consumption abroad. Visit www.every5minutes.org for the current number and to learn more about this industry.
Despite the closure of the country’s three remaining horse slaughter plants in 2007, tens of thousands of American horses continue to be slaughtered in Canada and Mexico in the absence of a strong US law banning prohibiting the trade.

MMRules! :)

those dolphin photos are very cool. Tanks

rockin' ma ass 4 y'all

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

(¯`*._(¯`*._(--)_.*´¯)_.*´¯)

Good comparison. Superman's home planet, Krypton, was destroyed by Krypton's sun, not by its inhabitants. Climate change on Earth is caused by the Earth's sun, not by its inhabitants.

*

Hiya smcgee43... yeah nice to wake up to a smiling mama dolphin today... :) How are you?

but Dems are in denial. I've listened all morning to callers trying to explain away Obama's collapse in the poll's. The polls are biased against us I know that. But they are not that wrong. We're ignoring what just happened. The Rethugs-- in ten days-- on the basis of the nomination of someone completely unqualified, swung the election twenty points! America is not ready for a black president. End of story. I suspected as much, but tried to ignore this, form the later part of the primaries until the present. Obama has very, very weak support among a large, crucial block of undecided, uninformed-- stupid- voters. He cannot win without this block. (And,forgot the "youth" vote. That's an old losing pipe dream.)
Obviously, this critical block is looking for any excuse not to vote for Barack. The Rethugs know this, and can exploit it at will. If they hadn't swung the campaign will Palin they would have done it with Wright or something else. Regardless, of whatever dirt is exposed about Palin (and don't hold your breath waiting with our "media") the racism of this voting block cannot be overcome. This block is default Rethug.
I hate the Clintons! And this will not happened. But, if the Dems want to reclaim the Whitehouse, Barack must step down in favor of Hillary. This wildcard move sounds-- is-- crazy. However, the Rethugs have openned the door for "American Idol," gimmick politics. In this absurb environment we could get away with.
The ctitical block of uninformed, I'm guessing "Reagen Dems," actually want to vote in their own interest this cycle, but in the end won't abandon their racism.
I hate to sound Lionel. Someone else I despise, but that's how I see it.
I'm working every Friday at our local Dem through November, but I'm convinced its a lost cause.

The destruction of the planet, caused by humans, allowed the sun to destroy the planet.

Making holes in the earth by taking out oil and coal and Gas and poking holes in it's atmosphere, cutting down the rain forests, adding noctious gases to the atmosphere all helps to destroy the earth.

You may want to do some research, or are you too lazy and closed minded to even try!

Democrats speak up for the less prosperous; they have well-intentioned policies to help them; they are disturbed by inequality, and want to do something about it. Their concern is real and admirable. The trouble is, they lack respect for the objects of their solicitude. Their sympathy comes mixed with disdain, and even contempt.

Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. How is one to account for this? Are those people idiots? Frankly, yes – or so many liberals are driven to conclude. Either that or bigots, clinging to guns, God and white supremacy; or else pathetic dupes, ever at the disposal of Republican strategists. If they only had the brains to vote in their interests, Democrats think, the party would never be out of power. But again and again, the Republicans tell their lies, and those stupid damned voters buy it.

It is an attitude that a good part of the US media share. The country has conservative media (Fox News, talk radio) as well as liberal media (most of the rest). Curiously, whereas the conservative media know they are conservative, much of the liberal media believe themselves to be neutral.

Their constant support for Democratic views has nothing to do with bias, in their minds, but reflects the fact that Democrats just happen to be right about everything. The result is the same: for much of the media, the fact that Republicans keep winning can only be due to the backwardness of much of the country.

Because it was so unexpected, Sarah Palin’s nomination for the vice-presidency jolted these attitudes to the surface. Ms Palin is a small-town American. It is said that she has only recently acquired a passport. Her husband is a fisherman and production worker. She represents a great slice of the country that the Democrats say they care about – yet her selection induced an apoplectic fit.

For days, the derision poured down from Democratic party talking heads and much of the media too. The idea that “this woman” might be vice-president or even president was literally incomprehensible. The popular liberal comedian Bill Maher, whose act is an endless sneer at the Republican party, noted that John McCain’s case for the presidency was that only he was capable of standing between the US and its enemies, but that should he die he had chosen “this stewardess” to take over. This joke was not – or not only – a complaint about lack of experience. It was also an expression of class disgust. I give Mr Maher credit for daring to say what many Democrats would only insinuate.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f1984d88-7cd5-11dd-8d59-000077b07658.html?ncli...

you gotta think we're finally wearing them down on the seriousness of climate change when they have to resort to a comic book to defend their reasoning.

since you obviously have your thinking cap on today, tell me about how big of an enclosed room it would take before you would feel safe sitting in it indefinitely with your car constantly running on an endless supply of gasoline.

Of course you can fill it up with plants and throw a few fans in there to simulate the biosphere, but, of couse, to also be true to that, you can't have any ventilation.

chew on that for a while little buddy

The problem in my view is less Mr Obama and more the attitudes of the claque of official and unofficial supporters that surrounds him. The prevailing liberal mindset is what makes the criticisms of Mr Obama’s distance from working Americans stick.

If only the Democrats could contain their sense of entitlement to govern in a rational world, and their consequent distaste for wide swathes of the US electorate, they might gain the unshakeable grip on power they feel they deserve. Winning elections would certainly be easier – and Republicans would have to address themselves more seriously to economic insecurity. But the fathomless cultural complacency of the metropolitan liberal rules this out.

The attitude that expressed itself in response to the Palin nomination is the best weapon in the Republican armoury. Rely on the Democrats to keep it primed. You just have to laugh.

The Palin nomination could still misfire for Mr McCain, but the liberal reaction has made it a huge success so far. To avoid endlessly repeating this mistake, Democrats need to learn some respect.

It will be hard. They will have to develop some regard for the values that the middle of the country expresses when it votes Republican. Religion. Unembarrassed flag-waving patriotism. Freedom to succeed or fail through one’s own efforts. Refusal to be pitied, bossed around or talked down to. And all those other laughable redneck notions that made the United States what it is.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f1984d88-7cd5-11dd-8d59-000077b07658.html?ncli...

Submitted by dan on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 1:46pm.

you gotta think we're finally wearing them down on the seriousness of climate change when they have to resort to a comic book to defend their reasoning.

--

Too funny! You just nailed your own clan:

Submitted by toniD on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 9:53am.
CC was it you that posted the comic
of Superman coming to earth from a dying planet?

That particular comic stuck in my mind. I've got to find it again and send it to my progressive group. I send them much of what is posted here and always get responses from the members.

It stuck in my mind because people are not considering this planet we live on. And that seemed to bring it to you in a very simple but powerful way.

wow, i guess we've been put in our place by none other than clive crook, noted author of right wing fluff pieces.

There you go with your elitism again, Toni!

When are you going to learn that most people don't look to books for information, they check with their guts and mambo's gut told him that after watching Superman, climate change was a no-brainer.

We might just have a nobel laureate right here in our own little corner of the Internet! I mean, for all we know, he still hasn't seen Supreman II, III or Superman Returns!

The potential is limitless.

Mombo pulls out parts of an article. If you read the whole article, this is Clive's opinion on how Dems should handle Palin. It's the writer's opinion. He's from England but stationed in Washington. The rest of the article hows he leans more liberal.

Nice try mombo.

Go do some research on climate change!

mambo jambo

son of Mumbo Jumbo!

"Defenders Of The Status Quo Rangers!"

coming soon to a comic book dealer by you!

Happe Talk

Some sample questions.

What is your favorite color?
I've heard you like moose burgers, do you also like bear sausage?
Should Cheney and Bush been impeached for their crimes?
Posted by:
me
Mark As Violation
=
re
Pressure Charles Gibson
new
Submitted by 60th Street on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 10:13am.

~`~`~`~`~`~
Jamesbennett

this is a quotation mark:

"

it is commonly used when quoting other people.

it gives credit to that individual for their unique thinking, speech and writing.

i encourage you to use it.

I just heard the loudest clap of thunder in a long time. And it's pouring here! Is it raining in your area?

mombo's not worth the post so I won't be addressing him any more! Just another right wing troll. It's depressing that people can be so empty and devisive.

I hate to sound Lionel. Someone else I despise, but that's how I see it.
I'm working every Friday at our local Dem through November, but I'm convinced its a lost cause

----------

I disagree Ghettofinder. You just fell for the okey- doke. Since I have been on this blog, I have begged for action against the media. Did you really think they were going to be fair? The same people that bought us stolen election, illegals wars, and a failing economy. Everything Obama has taken a step forward, they have smashed his foot. Obama's overseas trip was define negatively by the media and the McCain campaign. We did nothing. He made history with his inauguration speech. However, it was again discounted by the media and the Republicans. Again, we did nothing.

Our response for the most part to sit on our hands and hope that the truth will be told. That will not happen. They could care less about this country or the people in it. Signing some petition is not going to do it. We have to design a plan that will include more than one strategy.

By the way, before Lionel talk his way into Air America, he was very comfortable with the right-wing. We should get on his ass too.

last week. And we killed some people in Pakistan this weekend.
Official version:
U.S. drones kill 16 in missile attack in Pakistan
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSISL24250220080908?pageNumber=...

instructions:

Give this player about 120 seconds to load before panicing.

is panicing similiar to blogging?

wheres the software download?

The price McCain pays
GOP candidate forgoes honor of condemning 'agents of intolerance'

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26576696/

When one posts excerpts and then then link, you don't need quotation marks, they're redundant.

For example, look at these posts as just some example of no quotation marks.

Submitted by toniD on Sun, 09/07/2008 - 11:14pm.
Submitted by toniD on Sun, 09/07/2008 - 11:41pm.
Submitted by smcgee43 on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 6:20am.
Submitted by edna ellen poe on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 9:56am.

etc. etc. etc.

a topper to a really depressing day

Happe Talk

with the details of the 04 eliction fraud!

superb reporting from him.

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

-- Josef Stalin (1879-1953)
Georgian Soviet politician

Yep it rained here pretty heavily for about 20 min...still coming down, but not as hard...no thunder or lightning, though.

I loved mambo's "trap"! Oh the wingnut clown car of ideas never fails to impress!

ya,

so you don't know how or why to use them eh?

bout what i expected you to post.

so you don't know how to read eh?

bout what I expected you to post.

Mimboo is posting from the Financial Times...

I remember the day after the WTO riot. We were under marshal law, the streets were near empty that morning, quite a change from the usual hub-bub of a mid-week morning when rushes of people streamed to the downtown offices. There were police at nearly every corner checking for the company ID everyone was required to display...they needed to be sure anyone walking the city streets that morning had a `right' to be there.

On the corners that didn't have the cops, there was vendor from the Financial Times, handing out free copies of the oddly colored pinkish-orange rag to anyone interested.

I guess it all goes to show (and Mambo's presence here proves) "Sometimes you just have to catapult the propaganda."

Tammy Bruce is the author of "The New American Revolution" (HarperCollins, 2005) and a Fox News political contributor. She is a former president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women. A registered Democrat her entire adult life until February, she now is registered as a decline-to-state voter.

This article first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.

A Feminist's Argument for McCain's VP
By Tammy Bruce

In the shadow of the blatant and truly stunning sexism launched against the Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, and as a pro-choice feminist, I wasn't the only one thrilled to hear Republican John McCain announce Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. For the GOP, she bridges for conservatives and independents what I term "the enthusiasm gap" for the ticket. For Democrats, she offers something even more compelling - a chance to vote for a someone who is her own woman, and who represents a party that, while we don't agree on all the issues, at least respects women enough to take them seriously.

Whether we have a D, R or an "i for independent" after our names, women share a different life experience from men, and we bring that difference to the choices we make and the decisions we come to. Having a woman in the White House, and not as The Spouse, is a change whose time has come, despite the fact that some Democratic Party leaders have decided otherwise. But with the Palin nomination, maybe they'll realize it's not up to them any longer.

more here:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/a_feminists_argument_f...

OOOOOOH, *SMAK*!!!

I guess moo-boo really showed you, Sunshine Jimmer! ;)

>>Tammy Bruce is the author of "The New American Revolution"

my head is spinnin' from the spin!

Extra! May/June 2008

The Press Corps’ Unshakeable Crush on McCain
Some straight talk about the media’s favorite ‘maverick’

By Peter Hart

If you pay even passing attention to national politics, you know that presumptive GOP presidential candidate John McCain is a maverick who bucks his own party’s line and never wavers in his political beliefs. At least, that’s what the corporate media say—reality tells a very different story.

A candidate could only get away with such an elaborate and long-running con with the media as willing accomplices. “The press loves McCain,” explained NBC host Chris Matthews (9/10/06). “We’re his base.”

For much of the press, the early stages of the 2008 presidential campaign were a chance to fall in love all over again. “Those of us on the Straight Talk Express eight years ago got a breathtaking journalistic opportunity: to be inside the lively mind and heart of a leading contender for president,” Newsweek’s Howard Fineman recalled (3/3/08). “McCain was as joyously combative as Popeye and as earnestly confessional as Oprah.”

Fineman was actually restrained when compared to some of the coverage from eight years prior. “I know it shouldn’t be happening, but it is,” wrote Charles Lane in the New Republic (10/18/99). “I’m falling for John McCain.” Lane’s confession was in turn surpassed in awkwardness by another writer in the same magazine: Michael Lewis (9/30/96) declared that his feelings for McCain were like “the war that must occur inside a 14-year-old boy who discovers he is more sexually attracted to boys than to girls.”

The maverick is born

The origin of the McCain the Maverick storyline is hard to pin down, but it gained a serious boost after CBS’s 60 Minutes delivered a mostly fawning segment headlined “The Maverick From Arizona” (10/12/97) that celebrated his quest to reform the campaign finance system. CBS interviewed several of McCain’s harshest home-state critics, but that tape was left on the cutting room floor (New Republic, 5/24/99). And CBS’s allegedly tough-as-nails correspondent Mike Wallace was clearly enamored with McCain, going so far as to say that he was considering joining his campaign: “I’m thinking I may quit my job if he gets the nomination,” Wallace declared (Washington Post, 6/8/98).

It’s hard to overstate how vital this “maverick” meme is to media coverage of McCain.

“McCain is nothing if not a maverick,” declared U.S. News & World Report (4/7/08), while CBS host Bob Schieffer (7/15/07) called him the “most famous maverick of the last half of the 20th century.” Time magazine (1/21/08) dubbed McCain “a free-ranging, fence-jumping, kick-the-corral maverick.”

Contrasting McCain’s maverick ways with Barack Obama, New York Times columnist David Brooks (1/8/08) explained that McCain “is allergic to blind party discipline and builds radically different coalitions depending on his views on each issue.” ABC reporter Claire Shipman, meanwhile, once argued (7/15/07) that the McCain-as-maverick line is actually what the public prefers: “Look, that McCain is the underdog, the maverick, is the storyline the American public really likes for John McCain.”

The real record

McCain, of course, is actually quite conservative, with a 9 percent lifetime rating from Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal group that rates lawmakers’ voting records. But what’s most fascinating—and rarely discussed in the press—is not just that McCain is so conservative, but that, for a brief time, McCain’s voting record did line up with the media myth—before McCain reverted back to form.

New Republic writer Jonathan Chait produced one of the most detailed accounts of McCain’s ideological meanderings in the magazine’s February 27, 2008 issue. Chait, who was once an admirer, argued that the media storyline “gets McCain almost totally backward. He has diverged wildly and repeatedly from conservative orthodoxy, but he has also reinvented himself so completely that it has become nearly impossible to figure out what he really believes.”

Chait went on to argue that “McCain’s ideological transformation is unusual for two reasons: First, he has moved across the political spectrum not once—like Al Smith or Mitt Romney—but twice. And, second, he refuses to acknowledge his change.”

Chait pointed out that in Bush’s first term, McCain performed almost exactly like the media’s version of himself—voting against the Bush tax cuts, co-sponsoring a patients’ bill of rights and taking on his party over emissions standards and climate change. By Bush’s second term, however, McCain was more of a team player, sticking with the party on an estate-tax repeal and aligning with Bush’s position on immigration “reform.”

In other words, McCain wasn’t much of a maverick when the media affixed that label to him. He became one very briefly, and then returned more or less back to where he started.

McCain’s voting pattern bears out this analysis. Before the 2000 campaign, McCain was consistently among the party’s most conservative members. In the 107th Congress (2001–02), McCain was the sixth most liberal Republican senator, according to the VoteView statistical analysis of voting patterns. In the next congressional session, he was the fourth most conservative.

And he’s more or less stayed there since. According to VoteView, McCain’s voting record in 2005–06 made him the second-most conservative senator in the 109th Congress, and the eighth-most conservative in the 110th Senate. Outside of McCain’s brief tack to the middle, his overall voting record makes him a reliable member of his party’s caucus.

‘The renegade returns’

Indeed, for a brief time it looked as if many in the national press had arrived at the sad conclusion that McCain’s 2008 campaign would represent the end of his maverick ways. His turnabout on prominent religious right figures like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, whom he deemed “agents of intolerance” in the heat of the 2000 campaign, was early evidence that things might be different this time. A March 15, 2007 was headlined “McCain Fighting to Recapture Maverick Spirit of 2000 Bid.” Two days later, the Los Angeles Times was pondering the same question, under the headline “McCain Loses Some of His Rebel Edge.”

The most significant problem, as the press saw it, was that McCain had begun his 2008 campaign as the front-running candidate of the party establishment—the very opposite of the underdog McCain the press had come to admire. The campaign’s financial collapse months ahead of the Iowa caucuses nearly derailed McCain’s chances, but as the pundits saw it, this saved the day: The Maverick was reborn.

Under the headline “The Renegade Returns,” Newsweek (8/6/07) reported:

The scrappy war vet was never very convincing as the Anointed One anyway. Now he’s reverting to the formula that helped him win New Hampshire in 2000: a lean, insurgent candidacy heavy on retail politics and promises to take on Washington.

The magazine, somewhat self-consciously, noted parenthetically, “It’s the same underdog storyline the media, which McCain used to call ‘his base,’ once found so appealing.

And they would find it appealing again. Time’s Joe Klein turned in a piece (10/17/07) headlined “McCain Is Back,” which heralded this return to form. Klein wrote that McCain was “rising from the crypt, but not as a zombie. The foolishly conventional Republican McCain of last year was the zombie. No, this is the funny, free-range McCain reincarnated.”

The return of the Maverick McCain was important: Months later, Time’s Michael Scherer (3/3/08) was predicting that McCain’s nomination would transform the GOP and “shift its priorities on key domestic issues ranging from global warming to the cheap importation of prescription drugs”—before asking: “Does this sound too good to be true?” Standing in the way, complained Scherer, was not its inherent improbability but the fact that “liberal advocacy group Media Matters has been releasing broadsides against any journalist who dares describe the sometimes maverick McCain as a maverick.”

‘Who’s the greenest?’

With McCain’s maverick credentials a given, reality must be warped in remarkable ways by the press in order to maintain the storyline. Newsweek’s April 14 cover story, “Who’s the Greenest of Them All?,” reached the remarkable conclusion that the answer could very well be John McCain. Readers first learned that Obama and Clinton received high marks from the League of Conservation Voters before Newsweek finally noted sheepishly: “Admittedly, McCain’s 2007 league rating is zero, putting him in the company of eight other Republicans, including the global-warming denier James Inhofe.”

To soften that blow, the magazine offered that “a more relevant statistic might be his lifetime LCV rating, which is 26 percent, compared with an average of 16 percent for all Republicans.” Given that Obama and Clinton scored 96 and 90, respectively, it would be highly unusual for a group to offer its endorsement, as the magazine suggested the LCV might do, to a politician who mostly disagrees with their positions. But Newsweek wasn’t about to give up, crediting McCain with having “sided with environmentalists on fuel-efficiency standards and the talismanic issue of protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.” As columnist David Sirota pointed out (4/4/08), McCain’s position on Alaska drilling has shifted back and forth over the years; most recently, in 2005, the senator voted to support drilling.

Newsweek’s Jerry Adler sounded like he had convinced himself, at least, that McCain was actually the greener candidate:

So, ironically, McCain—with a voting record that would put him at the bottom of the heap among Democrats—is sometimes perceived as more passionate about the environment than his Democratic opponents, whose objectively much stronger records are viewed as a matter of party orthodoxy.

Such are the benefits of being a maverick; your actual record is much less important than how you are “perceived” by journalists.

Straight flopper

When John McCain unveiled his Straight Talk Express campaign bus in 1999, the rolling metaphor helped establish a political identity that would prove nearly impossible to challenge. The maverick storyline was seamlessly integrated with the theme that McCain simply stands his ground and sticks to his guns, no matter what the political consequences. When the 2008 campaign was still looking somewhat shaky, ABC’s Terry Moran (3/26/07) congratulated McCain for doing “what he’s always done, play it as straight as possible. A directness that still startles.” The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank declared (12/13/07): “He is the bravest candidate in the presidential race. While his rivals pander to primary constituencies, the former prisoner of war gives audiences a piece of his mind.”

For a more typical politician, McCain’s myriad flip-flops would be a serious liability. But McCain mostly manages to get along just fine. Next to his turnabout on Jerry Falwell, McCain’s highest-profile reversal might be on Bush’s tax cuts. McCain bucked the White House by voting against both the 2001 and 2003 packages, pointing out that they were tilted in favor of the wealthy. In the 2008 campaign, McCain is running in support of extending the very same tax cuts. McCain’s campaign talking point now is that he opposed the cuts because they were not accompanied by spending cuts, a boldly disingenuous argument that is rarely challenged by the press corps. (The Associated Press was one notable exception—1/31/08.)

McCain has even managed a flip-flop on one of his signature issues—immigration policy. Though he was cheered by some pundits for co-sponsoring legislation with liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), McCain would eventually distance himself from that bill. On NBC’s Meet the Press (1/27/08), he tried to avoid answering a direct question about whether he would sign his very own bill as president, saying the “bill is dead as it is written” and that “the lesson is they want the border secured first.” The “they” he’s speaking of would seem to be the right-wing of the party, whom McCain had angered by resisting such “security first” demands for many months.

U.S. News & World Report (3/24/08) signaled that McCain’s shift away from his own position was good news...for John McCain. The failure of his own bill “turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it gave McCain room to maneuver.” The piece even pointed out that days after McCain’s Meet the Press appearance, he more clearly declared he was no longer in favor of his previous immigration bill.
In the 2000 campaign, McCain won praise for speaking out against ethanol subsidies, a highly problematic position for anyone running in the Iowa caucuses. By the time the 2008 campaign got rolling, McCain had a distinct change of heart, which Fortune (11/13/06) dubbed “a flip-flop so absurd it’ll be a wonder if it doesn’t get lampooned by late-night comedians, not to mention opponents’ negative ads.” But the about-face was hardly an issue.

Flipping on foreign policy

On foreign policy, McCain has moved from being a non-interventionist conservative to one of the leading politicians embraced—and advised—by prominent neo-conservatives, a journey summarized nicely by John Judis in the New Republic (10/16/06). McCain went from questioning troop deployments to Lebanon, Haiti and Somalia to pushing for a ground invasion during the NATO bombing of Serbia.

In a major policy address in March of this year, McCain sounded a somewhat different tune, signaling a need to work more closely with international allies. Washington Post columnist David Broder (3/30/08) cheered that this “repudiation of unilateralism was just the first of many efforts to distinguish McCain’s approach from Bush’s.” It’s also different from McCain’s former approach, which for some time was to ridicule international objections to the Iraq War. As the website ThinkProgress noted (3/26/08), McCain once ridiculed the French by saying they “remind me of an aging movie actress in the 1940s who’s still trying to dine out on her looks, but doesn’t have the face for it.” The New York Times reported (2/13/03) that McCain derided French objections as “part of a continuing French practice of throwing sand in the gears of the Atlantic alliance.”

McCain is often portrayed as one of the vigilant critics of the Iraq War’s execution; less well known is the fact that McCain assured that the war would be “fairly easy” (CNN, 9/24/02) and could be won “in a very short period of time” (CNN, 9/29/02). He would later complain (8/22/06) that people “were led to believe that this would be some kind of a day at the beach, which many of us fully understood from the very beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking.”

And while he’s relentlessly congratulated for having the foresight to see the weaknesses in Donald Rumsfeld’s Iraq strategy, Judis pointed out that McCain certainly didn’t think so at first, writing in May 2003:

Thanks to a war plan that represented a revolutionary advance in military science, to the magnificent performance of our armed forces, and to the firm resolve of the president, the war in Iraq succeeded beyond the most optimistic expectations.

Crooked talk

At other times, McCain’s talk is so far from straight that it actually becomes difficult to parse. Journalist Matt Welch’s book McCain: The Myth of a Maverick recalls several striking episodes. In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, McCain seemed genuinely befuddled by an Arizona state initiative that would ban civil unions. In the course of a few televised moments, McCain declared he voted in favor of the proposition, but was not against civil unions—but then answered “No” when Stephanopoulos asked if he was for civil unions.

This echoed a 2006 appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball (10/18/06), when McCain announced, “I think gay marriages should be allowed,” only to change his tune moments later after an aide whispered in his ear. McCain’s new line was, “I do not believe that gay marriages should be legal.”

Perhaps most striking was when McCain was asked—aboard the Straight Talk Express, no less—an extraordinarily straightforward question: “Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

McCain responded by saying, “You’ve stumped me.” When the questioner offered some help (“I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”), McCain still wasn’t able to offer a response:

I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception—I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.

McCain would go on to plead with an aide to “get me [Sen. Tom] Coburn’s thing” to figure out his position. New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney wrote on the paper’s website (3/16/07) that “this went on for a few more moments until a reporter from the Chicago Tribune broke in and asked Mr. McCain about the weight of a pig that he saw at the Iowa State Fair last year.” That bit of press interference seemed to reflect the broader media trend, as McCain’s strange performance got remarkably little attention.

Playing defense

Given the media’s investment in McCain’s image, they have an incentive to not pay too much attention to his double-talk. Some opt to use soft language to describe this reality. Time magazine’s Michael Scherer noted (3/27/08) that McCain’s “self-image...as a saint operating in a sinner’s world” puts him in a certain bind—namely, the burden of actually practicing what he preaches. McCain the campaign reform advocate is also a “vigorous fund-raiser” whose “inner circle includes current and former lobbyists,” who has “begged discount private-jet flights from companies seeking his favor.” Scherer wrote off these contradictions as “nuance” that might get “lost” in the “free-fire information war of a presidential campaign.” Scherer concluded that “McCain is, in other words, not an easy man to judge.” Actually, politicians saying one thing and then doing another are usually labeled pretty easily.

When McCain undeniably shifts his positions, the press often looks for unusual ways to describe this. The Los Angeles Times (3/27/08) labeled a major McCain foreign policy speech as a “political pivot” because he was clearly changing his tune. When McCain changed his position on mortgage relief to appear more concerned about homeowners in trouble, the New York Times (4/11/08) labeled it a “pivot” and a “shift in tone.”

McCain has been praised in the media for opposing the White House and demanding an end to U.S. torture practices—which made his vote with the White House on a bill that could have limited CIA interrogation practices a surprise to some. Time’s Scherer (Time.com, 4/10/08) complained that “there is nothing the Democrats would like to do more than portray McCain as a rank hypocrite.” That charge was simply untrue, explained Scherer; the Democrats “turned a grain of truth into a misleading landslide of overheated accusation. A review of the record shows that McCain has neither changed his position on torture nor taken sides with President Bush on the substance of the issue.”

McCain may have gotten the most media help on his comment that it would be “fine with me” if U.S. troops were in Iraq for 100 years—a statement that has received significant media attention, much of it directed at the unfairness of McCain’s opponents for speaking about it. New York Times columnist Frank Rich began his April 6 column, “Really, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of themselves for libeling John McCain.” The Associated Press published a fact-check (2/29/08) that began bluntly, “No, John McCain is not proposing a 100-year war in Iraq.”

The problem, reported AP, was that “Democrats leave out a vital caveat.” That caveat, though, is McCain’s nonsensical argument that a long occupation is acceptable “as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed”—while occupying a country “in a very volatile part of the world where Al-Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.”

A Washington Post fact-check (4/3/08) also came down on McCain’s side, though the paper did note that McCain has managed to both endorse a comparison to the U.S. occupations of Korea and Germany and reject the same historical analogy. Apparently the Democrats have to be more careful about criticizing McCain—if they can figure out what his position is.

‘The world’s worst panderer’

For some pundits, it seemed necessary to deny that McCain could be suspected of any duplicity at all. “To be sure, no one can accuse McCain of pandering,” wrote the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz (4/26/07)—ironically, in an article that detailed other pundits’ disappointment with McCain’s shifting positions.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof dealt with all this dissonance by penning a February 17, 2008 column headlined “The World’s Worst Panderer.” Kristof admired McCain not for his positions, but for being “abysmal at pandering.” For example, Kristof wrote that McCain had denounced ethanol subsidies for years—and then abruptly reversed course in the early part of the 2008 campaign. This was acceptable, because “he was so manifestly insincere and incompetent in this pandering that the episode was less contemptible than amusing.”

Kristof went on to write that when McCain “does try double-talk, he looks so guilty and uncomfortable that he convinces nobody.” Kristof concluded: “In short, Mr. McCain truly has principles that he bends or breaks out of desperation and with distaste. That’s preferable to politicians who are congenital invertebrates.”

The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen (2/12/08) wrote a nearly identical column that seemed more personally sad than anything else: “McCain’s true virtue is that he is a lousy politician. He is not a convincing liar, and when he adopts positions that are not his own, they infect him, sapping him of what might be called integrity energy.”

It’s worth noting that Cohen and Kristof were beaten to the punch by another pundit, almost two years earlier. “Go ahead, senator, flip-flop away,” wrote Jonathan Chait in the Los Angeles Times (4/19/06), trying to explain McCain’s shifting positions. “I know you’re with us at heart.”

In the end, the question is not so much whether McCain will win the hearts—and votes—of the mainstream media. More important is what voters will think. The Washington Post (3/16/08) noted that a visit to several countries by McCain in March 2008 produced strikingly different press treatment: “Newspaper articles in Paris, London and Jerusalem raise questions about which McCain would become president: the moderate one who supports free trade and efforts to fight global warming; or the more conservative one, who vows never to let Iran acquire nuclear weapons.”

American journalists, by and large, long ago decided to sell a moderate, “maverick” McCain to the U.S. public.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3369

Alleged Abramoff Accomplice Kevin Ring Indicted
By Kate Klonick - September 8, 2008, 2:01PM
Kevin Ring, the former underling of jailed former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, has been indicted on ten counts of public corruption.

From the AP:

A 10-count federal indictment unsealed Monday charges Kevin Ring, 37, with conspiring with Abramoff to corrupt congressional and executive-branch officials by giving them things of value as a reward for helping Ring and his clients.
Prior to becoming a lobbyist with Abramoff, Ring worked for Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., who remains under investigation in the Abramoff probe.

. . .The Justice Department said the indictment was returned by a grand jury on Friday and unsealed Monday after Ring was arrested. Ring was to appear in court later Monday.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/alleged_abramoff_accom...

"Whether we have a D, R or an "i for independent" after our names, women share a different life experience from men, and we bring that difference to the choices we make and the decisions we come to. Having a woman in the White House, and not as The Spouse, is a change whose time has come, despite the fact that some Democratic Party leaders have decided otherwise. But with the Palin nomination, maybe they'll realize it's not up to them any longer."

stereotyping,

generalising,

reverse sexism,

and general ass smooching propaganda.

no examination of Palins flops or general ignorance.

none.

my bullshit alarm is making my dogs bark...

Judy Garland - Doin' What Comes Naturally
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY0U71qqPj0

Mark Fiore - Fun with John and Sarah
http://www.markfiore.com/fun_john_sarah_0
Shoot, shoot, shoot!
Drill, drill, drill!
Pork, pork, pork!
Not our fault!
Hide, hide, hide!

Always good advice
http://www.hells-handmaiden.com/images/DontPanic.jpg

I'm opening up the SammyCam page. As usual, I'll forget it's open, and when he turns on the mic, it'll scare the living daylights out of me. C'est la vie.

I have the player bar down at the bottom

Happe Talk

Iraqi leaders expressed surprise and disappointment at the recent revelation in a new book by Bob Woodward that the United States government has been spying on Iraqi politicians. A spokesperson for the Iraqi government said that the report, if true, "reflects that there is no trust" between the two governments. Other Iraqi politicians suggested that the report could make ongoing negotiations about U.S. troop levels more difficult. White House press secretary Dana Perino had no comment on the allegations. (Washington Post)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/05/AR200809...

I share your frustration, but, as I see it, we are doing something, and it is a collective. the fact of the matter is that the media is not only a corporate controlled entity, but one that absolutely depends on ratings.

It is in their interest that they help shape public perception into believing this race is a tug of war with the flag on one side of the pole one week and on the other side the next. This creates the edge-of-your-seat drama that stokes the ratings war.

As I see it we have made a pretty good impact on the media and I don't see any other reason for this impact other than Internet fueled by the progressive blogosphere's efforts to educate the public and level the playing field.

Having said that, we do a lot more than just sign petitions, we donate money, we write letters, emails, make phone calls, volunteer and organize protests. Everyone to their own capacity. By even just getting together each day we maintain a sense of community from which to launch our protests and share information.

It's tough to organize a protest, whatever you want, I'm on board, but what else do we need to do? We're up against corporate giants and we're working with everything we have.

Continue to watch and send letters of praise for Olbermann and Maddow, watch progressive media religiously and contribute to the ratings system and money if you can and push for more fairness and accountability...what else is there to do?

Leading members of Congress are demanding more information about the FBI's seven year investigation into the anthrax killings, unconvinced by the FBI's declaration that army scientist Bruce E. Ivins was behind the attacks. In a letter to FBI director Robert Mueller, Democratic congressional leaders argued that there were many lingering questions for the FBI to continue to investigate. Ivins committed suicide while under investigation this July. (New York Times)

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/09/07/voicing...

Of course not. The media is a mouthpiece of the Rethugs. Its owned by the largest corporations in the world, and they will do anything to make sure they pay no taxes and have no regulations to answer for. There is very little separation now between the GOP and MSM. They have a couple of token minor liberal players, but as KO just learned they are completely disposal (he's a gonner when McLiar wins too.)
Anyway, back to the polls, the MSM manipulates them to favor the corpoate candidate constantly. Moreover, I do believe, they are significantly undersampling Barack's support. Nevertheless, I don't believe- yet- the pollesters are simply making-up numbers wholesale. The problem, however, is that the poll movement we just saw, demonstrates the Rethugs can still push enough buttons to swing an election. They can dump Palin and still push the race card at will. With an endless occupation going and the economy literally on the verge of collapse Obama should have had a 12+ lead for two months. He got a bounce and that was destroyed overnight. To parrot the pundits: "He can't seal the deal."
For our sake, I hope the polls are wrong or just plain made-up. If, in fact, McLiar does win, the buyers remorse will probably be the fastest, and greatest in our history.
As far as Lionel, I've hated that shit for as long as I've heard him. Fortunately, XM yanked him and now I get to hear the amateur hours of Cenk and Stephanie instead.

You guys gotta talk about the point that Dan Savage brought up on Real Time on Friday...

Imagine how the media would be reacting if the family with the knocked-up 17 year old daughter bringing the baby-daddy on stage was Barack's daughter; the black family welcoming a thug who "doesn't want kids". They would be TORN APART and this election would be OVER. It makes me sad to think about how the media and people would react.

What's your guys take?

yup i'm mortified.

may not be able stop cringing

under my desk for months.

elections are like cars,

put em in R to go backwards,

put em in D to go forward.

I love that!

Happe Talk

WaPo's Howard Kurtz: New McCain Ad Contains "Whopper"
By Greg Sargent - September 8, 2008, 11:45AM
The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz gets it right on the new McCain ad's repetition of the Palin-blocked-Bridge-to-Nowhere falsehood:

The Arizona senator has made a crusade of battling pork-barrel "earmarks," but the whopper here is that Palin opposed her state's notorious Bridge to Nowhere. She endorsed the remote project while running for governor in 2006, claimed to be an opponent only after Congress killed its funding the next year and has used the $223 million provided for it for other state ventures. Far from being an opponent of earmarks, Palin hired lobbyists to try to capture more federal funding.

Let's hope the rest of the coverage follows suit. Kurtz also accurately notes something we hit here on Friday: Chiefly, that McCain is trying to swipe Obama's "change" mantra.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/wapos_kurtz_new_...

A lot of polls canvas `likely voters'. I imagine they don't poll as many democrats as republicans, because caging efforts by the GOP will keep a fair amount of democrats from voting.

Regardless how hard these democrats might try.

No!!!!!
It is in their interest that the Grand Oil Party wins. They don't give a fuck about ratings in this case. They want more consolidation. They want a monopoly on information. They want no taxes. No control. Murdoch would subsides FOX forever if necessary. Scaife will subsides the Pitt Gazette till he croaks.
This is not a ratings war. This is war between democracy and fascism. It's that simple.

*****

Fuimus!

Submitted by ghettodefender on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 2:39pm.
----

I hear ya, Friend. Stay strong!

welcome to the bloggie.

i'm the token republican.

we've been overdosing on hypocrisy for decades.

sorry, the rest of my party has a serious jones going.

i'm voting for Obama even with his all too obvious flaws.

sheesh!

they're in the same building!

What's your guys take?

Imagine a different country. A different time.

Americans dont care too much for beauty
Theyll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream
Theyll watch dead rats wash up on the beach
And complain if they cant swim

They say things are done for the majority
Dont believe half of what you see and none of what you hear
Its like what my painter friend donald said to me
Stick a fork in their ass and turn them over, theyre done

reluctant to say Palin has ‘enough experience’ on foreign policy.Filed Under: International Relations
By Matt at 10:28 am Rice reluctant to say Palin has ‘enough experience’ on foreign policy.
In an interview with CNN’s Zain Verjee this weekend, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice offered “a less-than-hearty endorsement” of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s foreign policy experience. “She’s governor of a state here in the United States,” said Rice. Pressed if Palin has “enough experience to handle the kinds of things” she handles, Rice added that “there are different kinds of experiences in life that help one to deal with matters of foreign policy.” Watch it: at link

Rice reluctant to say Palin has ‘enough experience’ on foreign policy.
In an interview with CNN’s Zain Verjee this weekend, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice offered “a less-than-hearty endorsement” of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s foreign policy experience. “She’s governor of a state here in the United States,” said Rice. Pressed if Palin has “enough experience to handle the kinds of things” she handles, Rice added that “there are different kinds of experiences in life that help one to deal with matters of foreign policy.” Watch it:

By comparison, Rice responded to Sen. Barack Obama’s pick of Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate last month by saying that “Biden is obviously a very fine statesman.” Similarly to Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney offered only tepid praise for Palin’s potential, saying that “each administration’s different and there’s no reason why Sarah Palin can’t be a successful vice president.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/08/rice-palin-experience/

break a leg!

DID THE PLEDGE
new
Submitted by smcgee43 on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 1:21pm.
MMRules! :)

*******

How sick are those people ? !

Why can't they just leave the Poor Horses alone ?

Oh my bad..Mo Money ! How sick is that !

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

you rock, edna!

Explain Olbermann and Maddow in that scenario...are they just a bone to the progressives? What about the successes and growing presence and popularity of Bill Maher or Democracy Now, LinkTV. How is the liberal blogosphere then allowed to shape so much of the public perception, TPM, Kos, HuffPo, Firedoglake etc. We are all chipping away at the establishment. We expose their lies daily and are literally tearing down the media establishment.

Where do you think people under 30 get their noews today? Cable news, newspapers? What percentage of people between 30 and 40 get their news from those sources?

Don't count us out yet ghettodefender. I sure as fuck am not going down without a fight and you'll never catch me giving the man any slack. I see a huge revolution happening and I am excited to be a part of it.

gee, do you suppose she's sitting thinking, hey, i'm black, i'm a woman, and gosh darn it, i'm smart too. why didn't he pick me.

Did you catch the cocky girl that worked at the hardware store reading a copy of The Shock Doctrine?

They apparently don't have enough upload there - hopefully they will be fixing that real soon.

Garet

Do you guys come here often ? ;)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

now! No wait...starting now. Okay okay okay...starting now!

ADHD NATION!!!

cheech and chong do video...

love those two and these two as well.

bloggie is sloooooooooow.

McCain’s Abramoff investigation was ‘pure political payback’ for 2000 election.Filed Under: Ethics
By Amanda at 11:52 am McCain’s Abramoff investigation was ‘pure political payback’ for 2000 election.
In “The Perfect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff,” journalist Gary S. Chafetz details how Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) pursued his investigation into the fallen lobbyist as “pure political payback,” rather than “the high-minded reform crusade he has made it out to be on the campaign trail.” McCain reportedly remained upset that Abramoff had backed Ralph Reed’s effort to defeat him in the 2000 South Carolina primary:

Chafetz argues that McCain nursed the wounds of that defeat for years, and in 2004 jumped on the chance to investigate Abramoff after the Washington Post published a damning expose of the millions of dollars in lobbying fees Abramoff had collected from his casino-rich Indian tribal clients.

Peppered with new quotes from Abramoff — who met with Chafetz while in federal prison in Cumberland, MD — the book alleges that McCain withheld the vast majority of emails he confiscated during the inquiry, many of which could be exculpatory to the former lobbyist or damaging to McCain allies.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/08/mccain-abramoff-payback/

U.S. Military Relied On Oliver North To Dispute Afghanistan Civilian Deaths
For weeks, the U.S. military has denied charges that its Aug. 22 attack on Azizabad, Afghanistan killed scores of civilians, despite the fact that Afghan witnesses, the United Nations, and other human rights and international officials all say roughly 90 villagers were killed. Yesterday, the military reversed course and requested an investigation into the strike in light of “emerging evidence.” Part of that evidence is cellphone images showing “at least 11 dead children,” according to the New York Times.

As Firedoglake points out, the Times of London revealed that the U.S. had been relying on accounts from an embedded journalist: Fox News’s Oliver North:

The US military said that its findings were corroborated by an independent journalist embedded with the US force. He was named as the Fox News correspondent Oliver North, who came to prominence in the 1980s Iran-Contra affair, when he was an army colonel.

Relying on North for a “fair and balanced” view is a major mistake. Even leaving aside his past as a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal under President Reagan, North routinely makes biased and unsourced claims:

– “There is no such thing as an Islamic moderate.” [LINK]

– “Every terrorist out there is hoping John Kerry Is the next president of the United States.” [LINK]

– Politicians who raise the issue of Abu Ghraib “have blood on their hands.” [LINK]

– Abuse of Iraqi prisoners is “the kind of thing that you might find on any college campus.” [LINK]

Dismissing accounts about the attack from witnesses, such as a village doctor who “said he counted 50 to 60 bodies of civilians, most of them women and children,” the U.S. military repeatedly “accused the villagers of spreading Taliban propaganda.”

Today, Human Rights Watch warned that by continuing air strikes and killing civilians, the U.S. risked a public backlash in Afghanistan. Seeming to codify the report, Azizabad’s district chief told the Times, “If they continue like this, they will lose the people’s confidence in the government and the coalition forces.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/08/military-oliver-north/

are going to be able to do call ins?

Are also angry because Keith's ratings. Brokaw & Williams suck.

thanks

uhhh, I'm not sure....

it's obvious that the elections have been rigged for decades.

they own the media

they count the votes

they control congress

they control the courts.

and the police they bring in.

My brother sent it to me.

is called "A Logical Analysis"

If anyone wants to see it, I will email it to them.

Palin miscarriage in 3, 2, 1 - in 60 days or less
Saturday, September 6, 2008

Bristol is shrinking - she's losing that baby fat. She no pregnant.

Watch for it - when she starts losing that baby fat, the story is gonna drop that she had a miscarriage - and Sarah Palin will DEMAND the MSM leave her and her family out of the spotlight. Guess what? The gullible MSM will stop digging and be gentle to Palin. She knows this - and she's gonna do it soon. Why? If she's showing now, she will have to either get bigger or lose the baby. Imagine the sympathy vote. Palin and the miscarriage are the October surprise.

Old Bristol from 2006: http://gov.state.ak.us/photos/pict0210.jpg

Bristol's had the milk breasts and baby bump since late last year.
http://gov.state.ak.us/photos/PalinFamily_Outside_v01.jpg

Then, her body at the VP nomination:
http://mccainblogette.com/postings/083008_0928/57.jpg
http://mccainblogette.com/postings/083008_0928/55.jpg
and ...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com//gadgets/slideshows/275/webpix//slide_275_...

And now, she's wearing dresses that show off her bod - and she's indeed getting smaller day by day.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com//gadgets/slideshows/275/webpix//slide_275_...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com//gadgets/slideshows/275/webpix//slide_275_...
and ...
the proud parents with their son:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com//gadgets/slideshows/275/webpix//slide_275_...

Ladies and gents, I've seen several pregnant women (including my wife) in my day and I have yet to this day to see a woman LOSE WEIGHT during her pregnancy. Based on these pics, I do believe one of two things - either she is pregnant AGAIN or she is losing that baby fat. Either way, this is gonna happen when it's time for her to show.

She WILL *LOSE* THE BABY. You heard it here - and please copyright Baby Trig for Obama 08 when it happens. It will be the ultimate October surprise. And really play to the dummies who will represent the sympathy vote.

There's only one real way to combat Sarah Palin. Sick Hillary Clinton on her. You can't have a black dude or an older white guy on Palin. She'll cry and add the miscarriage and ... you have a perfect storm. However, sick the pitbull from Scranton on her. I would pay cash money to have front-row seats to that bout.

As stated, please credit Baby Trig for Obama when the miscarriage happens. Don't be fooled - it is gonna happen soon - within 60 days - or I'll eat my hat.

Look for my complete breakdown on Baby Gate

con't
http://babytrigforobama08.blogspot.com/

>>The definition of insanity is...

Mambo?

Group dangles $50K for Jews who move to Ala. town

DOTHAN, Ala. (AP) - Larry Blumberg is looking for a few good Jews to move to his corner of the Bible Belt.

Blumberg is chairman of the Blumberg Family Relocation Fund, which is offering Jewish families as much as $50,000 to relocate to Dothan, an overwhelmingly Christian town of 58,000 that calls itself the Peanut Capital of the World. Get involved at Temple Emanu-El and stay at least five years, the group's leaders say, and the money doesn't have to be repaid.

More Jews are living in the South than ever - about 386,00 at last count in 2001, according to Stuart Rockoff, historian at the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson, Miss. But young Jews are leaving small places like Dothan in favor of cities like Atlanta and Birmingham, Rockoff said, and dozens of small-town synagogues have closed.

A Connecticut native, the rabbi halfway expected the Alabama of old with wide-open racism and dirt roads.

``The Northeast has a really warped perception of what the South is all about, and I found out it was all wrong,'' she said. ``The South is a wonderful place to be. The people are warm and friendly. There's very little traffic. And best of all, there's no snow.''
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/7783290

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A Republican effort has failed to unseat the Alaska state senator overseeing the ethics investigation into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power when she dismissed the state's public safety commissioner.

Democratic Sen. Hollis French was accused of manipulating the probe for political effect on the national and state elections. Republican Rep. John Coghill last week asked the Alaska Legislative Council to discuss replacing French as the probe's project director.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/7783349

Marc demonstrated the single camera split screen effect by putting his hand into Sam's space!

is potentially

12 TRILLION!

c'mon boys do your homework,

or at least read the bloggie!

U.S. Military Relied On
Submitted by toniD on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 3:17pm.
U.S. Military Relied On Oliver North To Dispute Afghanistan Civilian Deaths

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Who is the change agent, the maverick McCain or Obama! Just now.

Give me a break. McCain for Change?

Yes I did watch True Blood - and I did see that.... and I also thought it was a KICK ASS show!!!!!

Reality. TV. Two more reasons to read.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
---Ray Bradbury

1) Russia prepares to launch Iran's nuclear plant

MOSCOW (AP) - The Russian state-run company building Iran's first nuclear plant said Monday that preparations for the reactor's launch had entered their final stage.

Atomstroiexport chief Leonid Reznikov said that by year's end the company will take steps that will make the launch of the Bushehr plant ``irreversible.''
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/7783334

2) Bush administration yanks Russia nuclear pact

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Monday froze a lucrative civilian nuclear pact with Russia, the first big penalty imposed on Moscow after its war with Georgia but one that can be reversed.

"The president intends to notify Congress that he has today rescinded his prior determination regarding the U.S.-Russia agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation, the so-called 1-2-3 Agreement," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement read by spokesman Sean McCormack.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSWAT01000020080908

?

continually puts the cart before the horse.

i say they want the corporate candidates to win and they're setting up the scam.

c'mon you two. get real.

it's a set up!

Scholar: Cheney secrecy laying groundwork for possible 'history heist'
Nick Juliano

While they might not like to admit it, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are, at the end of the day, employees of the American people, and four generations of precedent -- not to mention US law -- require that the people be allowed to audit their performance once they leave office.

Scholars and open government advocates, though, are sounding the alarm that Cheney, perhaps the most secretive and influential vice president ever, who entered government service during Richard Nixon's administration, could be returning to Tricky Dick's disdain for open government. A lawsuit filed Monday would force Cheney to comply with the 1978 Presidential Records Act, one of an array of post-Watergate reforms meant to redress Nixon's abuse of the office.

The act requires outgoing administrations to hand over executive branch documents to the National Archives, where the records are preserved for future historians. Problem is, Cheney's crafty lawyers have argued he is not a member of the executive branch, and President Bush early in his tenure amended what could amount to a giant loophole to the act that would allow Cheney to simply toss his papers into the fireplace on his way out the door.

"I think we're at a crossroad," said historian Martin Sherwin, one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that would force Cheney to preserve and hand over his records. "There's a possibility here for what I call a history heist, or a historical theft from the American people."

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an open-government watchdog that filed the lawsuit, hosted a conference call Monday with Sherwin and other experts.

CREW's top lawyer, Anne Weismann, said concern that Cheney could dodge the requirements of the Presidential Records Act stems in part from a Bush executive order issued in November 2001.

The order amended the act to require disclosure of only the "executive records" of the vice president's office, meaning anything Cheney argued fell under his role as a member of the legislative branch could be kept secret indefinitely. Weismann noted that phrase does not appear anywhere in the Presidential Records Act itself nor are "executive records" mentioned anywhere in the legislative history of the law. More...

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Scholar_Cheney_secrecy_laying_groundwork_f...

now - for you multi-taskers

CNN now!

http://www.watch-movies.net/movies/super_high_me/

Genre: Comedy / Documentary
Release: 2008 April
Length: 1H., 29 min.

Obama said over the weekend that he might have to leave the Bush tax cuts in place because of the nation's economic difficulties. He has very little credibility left with me.

Well maybe not sweet but short. It was all about Religion and whould churches endorse a candidate.

Politics and Power

The Authoritative Trig Palin Conspiracy Time Line
by Vanity Fair September 5, 2008, 12:20 PM

The McCain campaign won’t countenance it, and Barack Obama has even declared it off-limits, but the question of Trig Palin’s parentage—whether his real mom is Sarah Palin or her five-months pregnant, 17-year-old daughter Bristol—has transfixed the blogosphere. To settle the matter once and for all, VF.com presents this handy timeline juxtaposing both the official narrative and the wingnut conspiracy theories. Vote for the most likely scenario after the jump.

Con't
Please check out Vanity Fair's chart.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2008/09/the-authoritative-trig...

"Obama said over the weekend that he might have to leave the Bush tax cuts in place because of the nation's economic difficulties."

he's compromised big time.

still better than Mc Same and Gidjidiot, queen of the north.

Bloomberg critic: Woodward's lips 'attached to Bush's backside'

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Woodward_tells_CBS_Military_brass_opposed_...

not quite, what he said is that he would let them lapse when they expire but that if the economy is in the tank, he might not accelerate getting rid of them.

(my personal opinion is that the neocons are cooking the books as quick as they can to defer the discovery of how bad things are till after they leave. the downside is that if mccain manages to steal the election he's going to be holding one big bag of burning crap)

Huskies for boys, Chubbies for girls

The email of Palin's Head on a hot body
Submitted by toniD on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 3:31pm.
is called "A Logical Analysis"

If anyone wants to see it, I will email it to them.

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Submitted by Kat-in-Manhattan on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 3:46pm.
Malloy on CNN
-------

Are they going to use him to trash Obama.

They call this segment Dueling patriots.

a phenomenon observed in the early 1990s in British elections in which conservative voters (Tories) had tended to be underrepresented in pre-election polling, perhaps owing to response bias. It seems plausible to me that some segment of conservative Republican voters had effectively been in hiding from the pollsters, either embarrassed by the performance of George W. Bush (and therefore disengaged from politics), or embarrassed to disclose to pollsters that they support him. Suddenly, with the selection of Palin, there has been a jolt of energy within this group, a release of pent-up frustrations, and they are coming out of the woodwork. If this is the case, then perhaps the partisan composition of the electorate had never shifted as much from 2004 as it has appeared to; rather, the conservatives were either reluctant to identify themselves as Republican, or reluctant to take a pollster's calls in the first place.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

I think this might be true. It explains why for two months I've seen 25 Obama bumper stickers to 1 McFeeble bs

getting down to the nitty gritty!

How do we IM Seder and Maron on the show?
Submitted by eric on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 3:42pm.
?

*******

Go here..

http://www.samsedershow.com/node/2109

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Stick to the basics, dude....

"Two guys walk in to a bar..."

:(

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

I sent you the email.

two very short segments covering too many topics

Malloy was rather restrained - he's supposed to do this all week, might be an 'audition' for more time on cnn

who was that other 'radio personality'???

I am aware of what he said. Is this the groundwork for justifying extension? What I am getting at is another significant reversal. Obama is a constitutional scholar who apparently does not value the Fourth Amendment. he is a community organizer who does not oppose the 'free' trade of NAFTA, et al. Now he has taken up the meme that tax cuts for the top 2% are beneficial to the economy. What is the change that we can believe in?

:)

>>Huskies for boys, Chubbies for girls

I sure am!

(pssst: spread the word, ok?)

Its nice to know I'm not alone! Thanks for having the dialog I wish the mainstream public was privy to. You guys are great. Keep up the good work.

-Marc
(ex morning sedition junkie)

Maron bring back Svetlana the film critic!

>>I think this might be true. It explains why for two months I've seen 25 Obama bumper stickers to 1 McFeeble bs

I have yet to see a single McCain bumper sticker here in Seattle! not one!

but lots of Obama bumper stickers and yard signs. a lot of the yard signs are homemade and have been up for months.

Wk 1: Vikings @ Packers 9/8 7:00 PM

great show!
*****

Fuimus!

one of you genius have to explain to me what that was all about'
marc moving around in his seat like that. he never does, what were they saying...is that english?

my impression was that what he was saying was that increasing the tax on the top 2% when everything is sucking wouldn't help the economy. maybe its splitting hairs, but i think there's a difference there.

Obama is still better than the alternative.

You can find reams of things that you don't agree with but measure it with the alternative.

Clinton is an example.

And I don't think Obama is for the complete NAFTA, he's for fair trade and he's said that.

@MM Rules: Thanks for the link!
new
Submitted by eric on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 4:04pm.
:)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Watching CNN...I missed Malloy...but now they are about how McCain's image of change.

Are people so stupid as to think that Bush and Cheney's personalities are responsible for the sad state of the nation, not their policies. Which, as we all know, McCain supports and will ramp up?

oh gawd Please bring her back!

but i can never get the sedermaron - maronsedercam

The woman that was on, I've never seen or heard of before.

I was trying to listen to Malloy and Marc V Sam so I didn't catch her name or even listen to her.

I don't have TIVO so I couldn't record that segment.

Let Me Count the Ways...

Last week's Republican convention sure made every superficial effort to come off as pro-Troop and pro-Veteran. And, of course, the media ate it up, not challenging a single thing. But to those of us who did serve, it was offense after offense after offense. Let's count the ways:

McCain Didn't Mention Veterans' Care: Maybe because it's because he has a terrible record, but not once in John McCain's speech did he talk about taking care of those who served their nation in the military.

Walter Reed: What a slap in the face. The first photo that John McCain stood in front of was Walter Reed. Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, California.

"Phony Soldiers": For the amount that Rush Limbaugh likes to rant on "phony soldiers," there was a big silence and others from the mainstream media on the fact that the McCain campaign used stock footage of actors pretending to be soldiers in a video, intended to show how pro-military McCain is. It's actually kind of fitting - phony soldiers to promote a phony record on military and veterans' issues.

...

It's things like this that caused those troops deployed to donate to Obama by a 6-1 ratio.

Though many in the media may lap up the lies, the distortions, and fake representations, troops certainly don't. We know the difference between fantasy and reality.

And that brings me to the last point. Speaker after speaker told the convention that the "surge worked" and we were on our way to "victory."

Except not so much. Bob Woodward, in his new book, explains what those of us in the military always knew - commanders on the ground were against the surge, and knew it would not work strategically. And, in fact, it hasn't worked in stabilizing Iraq's internal political problems, hasn't aided our global strategy, or helped strengthen our military.

Your getting way too much IM time ! ;-)

I kid,I kid ! :)

You ask good questions..

I can never think of anything good to ask except to ask about Jim Earl..Duh..

Maybe you can lob me a question or two to ask ? ;)

Not one of my strengths,obviously..

SJ..I'll try and remember to ask them tomorrow about Call In's.. :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Do you have the updated flashplayer? And I think if you are on anything lower than XP, you can't get the video.

Jim and others. You know more about this than I do.

you running win 98?

We interrupt your steady diet of panic and process talk to bring you the following news from the outside world.

On August 21st, something happened in Nawabad, Afghanistan. Everyone but the Pentagon agrees: US forces killed 92 civilians, including about 60 children. The Pentagon insisted that its forces had attacked a Taliban meeting, killing 35 Taliban and seven civilians.

Now that there is video of the slaughter, however, the Pentagon is reopening the investigation it just closed. In doing so, the Pentagon revealed the name of their star witness, denying the massacre:

Oliver North.

The US military said that its findings were corroborated by an independent journalist embedded with the US force. He was named as the Fox News correspondent Oliver North, who came to prominence in the 1980s Iran-Contra affair, when he was an army colonel.

And here we'd thought that embedded journalists, and FOX News generally, were just here to feed us the official line as a matter of state propaganda, not too different from journalism in North Korea. What we did not anticipate, that I know of, is the use of embedded reporters to maintain official disinformation in an official capacity, in this case as the star witness for an official lie.

Not nearly as much fun as hiding documents in Fawn Hall's panties, but shoving 60 dead children down the memory hole does have its rewards, for a Republican, anyway.

Now, aren't you glad MSNBC got rid of those nasty liberals? This is how a real, American journalist operates. When the Pentagon finally fesses up to five dozen dead children, you can still expect Oliver North to be a hero to Republicans everywhere.

toni - i have xp....

Must read.
FOX News Journalist in Civilian Massacre Coverup
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/8/1572/82153/661/591235

Iraq is a testing ground. What happened in St. Paul is only the beginning, certainly if McLiar wins, and possibly if Obama wins.
The round ups can begin almost at anytime now. Definitely, after the next 911. (Oh, btw, 911 this week, how convenient now to have a permanent minor "October Surprise" now ever single year.)

AP: Sarah Palin is a liar
John Aravosis (DC) · 9/08/2008 02:54:00 PM ET · Link
Make a comment · reddit · FARK · Digg It! · Stumble It!

The Associated Press just wrote about Palin's speech today. She lied in it. A lot. And they caught her.
John McCain and Sarah Palin are criticizing Democrat Barack Obama over requesting money for his home state of Illinois even though the Alaska governor's record is mixed.

At a rally, the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate accused Obama of requesting nearly $1 billion in earmarks.

In fact, Obama hasn't asked for any earmarks this year and last year, he sought $311 million worth.

Palin has cut back on pork-barrel requests, but in her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation.

Doesn't the AP know that quoting facts is sexist? Even more from AP on Palin's lies here.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ici5RhMkh6-9V07yckpLBEEjzf6QD932MU100

>>have a permanent minor "October Surprise" now ever single year

Iran...We're looking at you!

McCain, Palin criticize Obama on earmarks By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press Writer
36 minutes ago

John McCain and Sarah Palin criticized Democrat Barack Obama over the amount of money he has requested for his home state of Illinois, even though Alaska under Palin's leadership has asked Washington for 10 times more money per citizen for pet projects.

At a rally in swing state Missouri, the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate accused Obama of requesting nearly $1 billion in earmarks for his state during his time as a senator. The new line of attack came after Obama made his first direct criticism of Palin over the weekend, using the topic of earmarks, which are special projects that lawmakers try to get for their districts and constituents.

"Just the other day our opponent brought up earmarks — and frankly I was surprised that he would even raise the subject at all," Palin said. "I thought he wouldn't want to go there."

Obama hasn't asked for any earmarks this year. Last year, he asked for $311 million worth, about $25 for every Illinois resident. Alaska asked this year for earmarks totaling $198 million, about $295 for every Alaska citizen.

Palin has cut back on pork project requests, but under her administration, Alaska is still and by far the largest per-capita consumer of federal pet-project spending.

The governor did reject plans to build the notorious "Bridge to Nowhere" after Congress had cut off its financing.

McCain and Palin were presented as a maverick team in a campaign ad released Monday that played up their reputation for taking on entrenched interests. The ad credits Palin with stopping the bridge without mentioning she once appeared to support it.

President Bush, who came to Washington as a former Texas governor without national legislative experience, called the Alaska governor "an inspired pick" by McCain.

"She's had executive experience, and that's what it takes to be a capable person in here in Washington, D.C., in the executive branch," he said in a Fox News interview to be shown Tuesday. In Rome, Vice President Dick Cheney also sought to deflect Democratic criticism that Palin, a former small-town mayor with less than two years in the governor's office, lacks the gravity to be vice president.

"Each administration is different," he said. "And there's no reason why Sarah Palin can't be a successful vice president in a McCain administration." He said her convention speech was superb.

In attacking Obama on Monday, McCain said the Illinois senator's earmark total over the years amounts to "almost a million dollars for every single day he was in the United States Senate."

For his part, McCain doesn't seek pork projects and vows to do away with them as president.

While speaking to voters in Indiana over the weekend, Obama ridiculed the idea of McCain and Palin presenting themselves as reformers, and suggested Palin was distorting her own record on earmarks.

"I know the governor of Alaska has been saying she's change, and that's great," Obama said Saturday. "She's a skillful politician. But, you know, when you've been taking all these earmarks when it's convenient, and then suddenly you're the champion anti-earmark person, that's not change. Come on! I mean, words mean something, you can't just make stuff up."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080908/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_palin&printer=1;_...

Going GW once.
Going GW twice....

so convincing that same crowd that mcbush stands for change is a piece of cake

McCain promised not to use his and Obama's presence at the NY 9/11 anniversary celebration for politics.

yeah, he promised not to go negative, too.

He will use it to smear anyone who questions the forieng affairs status quo.

and Obama will probably stand by and let him...I hope not.

in lebanon about 40 miles from cincy. warren county dems are preparing a counter protest. its being hosted at a place called the golden lamb which is coincidentally owned by a certain portman family (as in rob and distantly natalie)

was Zoller, a 'radio host'

reminds me of when Randi was put on with some unknown radio hosts

we'll have to hear what malloy has to say tonight

Oh...jeez...the crawler on CNN (why is it still on my tv?) just informed that Comedian Stephen Colbert will have his DNA sent into space...

Sam? Marc? are you listening?

we must not have a DNA gap!

I gotta go catch a bus downtown. see you all later.

Olbermann and Matthews will remain as analysts during major political events, and officials at both networks, who declined to be identified discussing personnel moves, said Olbermann had initiated the discussions to clarify his role. They said Olbermann’s influence at MSNBC would in no way be diminished and that the shift would enable him and Matthews to offer more candid analysis during live coverage. Olbermann confirmed [Sunday] he had initiated the discussions.

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20080907_msnbc_sidelines_olb...

Happe Talk

maybe KO got sick of working alongside Tweety...I would

for various Operating systems and browsers:

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/

I'm getting slow at multi-tasking in my old age. either that or I'm just tired of listening to the right wing liars.

I keep hoping to see just a glimmer of truth from these people and am always disappointed.

FOX News Journalist in Civilian Massacre Coverup
Submitted by GBC on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 4:22pm.

*******

Once again,we have to go outside our country to get real information/news..(timesonline.co.uk)

All our M$M cares about is Rating & Profits !

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

would stay away from NYC on Thu. Sept.11th

unless, of course, they plan on announcing a full, independent investigation of what really happened on that day. . .yeah, we can dream

Deep Thought

Values update: Crowds and popularity are now good things.

-Atrios 16:07

"I look at the MSNBC brand as high-powered intellects," said Bill Wolff, a vice president for prime-time programming. "I'm not saying we're NPR, but there is an appetite for really smart discussion of the news. That's more about what I'm trying to make Rachel's show about than her position on a particular issue. I don't think you have to agree with Rachel in your views to really enjoy Rachel."

Although she happily holds up the liberal position in left-right debates, Maddow prides herself on being "cripplingly patriotic" - she signs radio-station bumper stickers "Your Country Needs You, xox" - and, the daughter of an Air Force captain, she has a yen for national-security issues.

The former Rhodes scholar, with a doctorate in political science from Oxford, is writing a book about military politics in postwar America and is famous at MSNBC for bringing a scholarly rigor to her preshow research and preparation. She has been known to arrive at Rockefeller Center from her Manhattan apartment nine hours before she is due to go on air, cloistering herself in a cubicle with an iPod as she reads and writes on the day's news.

"One of the things that separates Rachel from many people is the amount of fresh information she brings to her storytelling," said Wolff. "She really often isn't expressing an opinion as much as laying out facts that lead to the conclusion."

When Maddow took questions at the St. Paul cafe, it was clear her fans saw no limits to her potential expertise: Would Sarah Palin withdraw? How concerned was Maddow about voter fraud? Does human nature include an instinct for compassion?

"I'm not a biologist," Maddow cautioned. "But I think that we're naturally empathetic."

Maddow, who came out as a lesbian as a teenager, says that one of the galvanizing moments in her political development was Pat Buchanan's declaration of a "cultural war" at the 1992 Republican convention. Now the two are frequently used as good-humored, left-right sparring partners on MSNBC. Maddow praises Buchanan as a "gentleman."

"Pat enjoys debating, and I enjoy debating," Maddow told her fans in St. Paul. "When Pat is saying something outrageous, you know when you yell at the TV? I get to yell at him in person. I get to yell at the TV and it hears me."

As a host, Maddow says, she expects to continue debating on her show, but only as part of a broader repertoire of reported pieces, interviews, and commentaries. "I won't be Punch and Judy. I'm not into the fight for the sake of the fight. If it's not illuminating to present two sides of an issue, I don't want to," she said.

Maddow said she was particularly looking forward to taking on subjects of personal fascination - Kurdish politics and the failures of American infrastructure - that she says do not get covered enough. She wants to have debates on same-sex marriage and the need for more troops in Afghanistan, where the presidential candidates did not necessarily disagree in predictable ways.

"Where's the left and right on that?" she said. "Let's hash it out."

http://www.truthout.org/article/a-liberal-pundit-soars-a-prominent-perch

Happe Talk

right here on Escheton by Atrios:

Polls

Lots of polls are taken. Some are inevitably going to be outliers one way or another. Some are going to be impacted by likely voter models and other weighting. Obviously they provide some information, but it's noisy. More than that, national polls really don't matter much.

PANIC!!

-Atrios 13:53

just reading the thread at Atrios. I must say, ours is much more interesting and informative.

Happe Talk

Palin's religious beliefs are just plain scary

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Among other beliefs, Palin suggested that her work as governor would be hampered "if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God." This means that those who aren't Bible-believing Christians hinder the work of the state, harming their fellow citizens and the public interest.

http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2008/09/palins-religion-whats-sc...

Gallup: 63% believe McCain will
pursue policies similar to Bush

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It appears the Democratic strategy of strapping McCain to President Bush's back is still working. Though McCain gets a clear bounce in the latest USA Today/Gallup poll, 63% of respondents believe McCain will pursue policies similar to Bush.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/09/08/a_maverick_or_more_of_the_s...

from the Ground Up

by Clifton Ross / September 8th, 2008

Aldo Vera, from the Party of the Movement toward Socialism (P-MAS), has taken it upon himself to show me around Asuncion. That’s his role in the party, international and press relations, and he’s good at it: smart, quick and well-informed not only about Paraguayan politics, but also the nuances of the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela, where he lived for a year and a half, and most other processes taking place on the continent. He’s cadre, defying any stereotype of what that might mean, and in that sense he is like many others of the P-MAS: smart, independent and young.

P-MAS is one of Latin America’s newest Socialist parties — it’s barely two years old, and the average age of its members is 25 — but it has already hit the radar screen of those following the political processes of Latin America. “Conociendo al P-MAS,” a book of interviews with founding members of the party, was published earlier this year in Paraguay, edited by Marta Harnecker and Federico Fuentes of the Francisco Miranda Center of Venezuela. More importantly, P-MAS has become a force to be reckoned with on the political stage of Paraguay. Party militants there have been hard at work, particularly in the cities, building support at the base.
...

"98% of American voters convinced that the corporate press is full of shit."

McCain Endorsed by New York Post
It seems Sen. Barack Obama's secret efforts at courting Rupert Murdoch's media empire aren't working out very well: The New York Post gave Sen. John McCain an early and ringing endorsement today.

LINK

Electoral Map Update
NBC News updates its electoral map and finds Sen. Barack Obama still has a slight lead over Sen. John McCain. Obama has 228 electoral votes to McCain's 200, with 110 electoral votes in the toss-up column.

Key changes from last month: Missouri moves from toss-up to Lean McCain, Pennsylvania moves from toss-up to Lean Obama, and Wisconsin moves from Lean Obama to toss-up.

Likely Obama: CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NY, OR, RI, VT, WA (190 electoral votes)
Lean Obama: IA, MN, PA (38 votes)
Toss-up: CO, FL, MI, NV, NM, NH, OH, VA, WI (110 votes)
Lean McCain: AK, GA, IN, MO, MT, NC, ND, SD (64 votes)
Likely McCain: AL, AZ, AR, ID, KS, KY, LA, MS, NE, OK, SC, TN, TX, UT, WV, WY (136 votes)

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/09/08/1360524.aspx

The Votemaster has Obama leading McCain 301 electoral votes to 224.

http://www.electoral-vote.com/icon.html?

(full article)

Gov. Sarah Palin made her first potentially major gaffe during her time on the national scene while discussing the developments of the perilous housing market this past weekend.

Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." The companies, as McClatchy reported, "aren't taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization."

No Thanks (But I'll Keep the Pork)
Sarah Palin and John McCain are going all over the country saying how Sarah Palin killed the Bridge to Nowhere (not true) and that she said "No Thanks" to the Feds when presented with the money.

Really?

What happened to the $223 million Palin is saying she said "No Thanks" too?

She kept it. Once it was no longer earmarked for the Bridge, Palin kept it for other pork barrel projects of her own choosing.

--Josh Marshall
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/214718.php

Pats QB Tom Brady out for season with knee injury

By JIMMY GOLEN, AP Sports Writer

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - Tom Brady will miss the entire NFL season with a left knee injury that will require surgery, leaving the New England Patriots without one of the game's great quarterbacks, their Super Bowl hopes severely damaged. The 2007 NFL Most Valuable Player will be placed on injured reserve, the Patriots said Monday, one day after his knee was injured in the first quarter of a 17-10 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.

Con't

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

just helped push the negative spin on 'community organizer' in his last segment, along with Chuck not-so-hot Toddy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/08/michelle-obama-dances-on_n_1248...

Happe Talk

I just love Ellen...what a heart...

http://samsedershow.com/node/3727

Cholera outbreak south of Baghdad.
Cholera — a “gastrointestinal disease typically spread by drinking contaminated water” — has broken out in a province south of Baghdad. At least 20 cases have been reported, although local authorities “insist the real figure is much higher and have complained that the government in Baghdad has been slow in responding to the outbreak.” According to a March poll, only 38 percent of Iraqis rate the availability of clean water as “good.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/08/cholera-iraq-2/

Flashback: In 2006 Debate, Palin Supported ‘Bridge To Nowhere’-Related Earmark
Last night, C-SPAN re-aired the 2006 Alaska gubernatorial debate, in which Sarah Palin expressed her support for an earmark related to the famed “Bridge to Nowhere.”

Congress had already removed earmarked-funding for the Bridge to Nowhere in Ketchikan, Alaska. Despite the fact that the bridge was not going to be built, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski approved the construction of a $24 million gravel “access” road (the Gravina Island Access Highway) that would lead to a nonexistent bridge.

In the 2006 debate, Palin was asked whether she supported this earmark, or whether she would pledge to cancel it as governor. Rather than responding with “thanks but no thanks” to federal funding for this “access” road, Palin said:

I wouldn’t [cancel the project]. I’m not going to stand in the way of progress that our congressional delegation — in the position of strength that they have right now — they’re making those efforts for the state of Alaska to build up our infrastructure. I would not get in the way of progress.

Independent candidate Andrew Halcro responded that he would cancel the project, explaining “this isn’t progress. This is a road to a bridge that will never be built.” Watch it:

at link (must watch)

Flashback: In 2006 Debate, Palin Supported ‘Bridge To Nowhere’-Related Earmark
Last night, C-SPAN re-aired the 2006 Alaska gubernatorial debate, in which Sarah Palin expressed her support for an earmark related to the famed “Bridge to Nowhere.”

Congress had already removed earmarked-funding for the Bridge to Nowhere in Ketchikan, Alaska. Despite the fact that the bridge was not going to be built, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski approved the construction of a $24 million gravel “access” road (the Gravina Island Access Highway) that would lead to a nonexistent bridge.

In the 2006 debate, Palin was asked whether she supported this earmark, or whether she would pledge to cancel it as governor. Rather than responding with “thanks but no thanks” to federal funding for this “access” road, Palin said:

I wouldn’t [cancel the project]. I’m not going to stand in the way of progress that our congressional delegation — in the position of strength that they have right now — they’re making those efforts for the state of Alaska to build up our infrastructure. I would not get in the way of progress.

Independent candidate Andrew Halcro responded that he would cancel the project, explaining “this isn’t progress. This is a road to a bridge that will never be built.” Watch it:

In June 2007, Ronald Utt, a fellow at the conservative Heritiage Foundation, offered this recommendation for what Palin should do with the funds:

Gov. Palin could return the money for the gravel “access” road to Washington, perhaps even with a request that the money go to rebuild hurricane-ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi. While Alaska, or any state for that matter, naturally is reluctant to return money to the federal government, doing so is the responsible and ethical thing to do and likely would benefit Alaska in the long run.

Palin did no such thing. To this day, the state of Alaska “is continuing to build a road on Gravina Island to an empty beach where the bridge would have gone — because federal money for the access road, unlike the bridge money, would have otherwise been returned to the federal government.”

Also, CQ notes that there is “a second bridge, more than twice as expensive and just as controversial” as the canceled Bridge to Nowhere in Katchikan. Palin has expressed concern about the project “but hasn’t tried to kill [it] off.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/08/palin-bridge-access-road/

Read more in The Sarah Palin Digest.

http://thinkprogress.org/palin-digest/

Palin Makes Her First Gaffe
Submitted by 13ben on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 5:08pm

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

Heh! I dunno MMR, half the time I can't formulate a good question, either, so I share your frustration...a lot of times I don't even IM them questions. I just blurt out my a truncated version of my daily RAARRRR!!!

I just float a topic framed like this:

"Talk about CHUCK TODD and NOONAN/MURPHY-Gate!!! How can we ever trust that guy again?!"

Of course, I include the emphasis :)

I have loads of Raarrrr! So if you do want me to send over single sentence angry left rants, NO problemo, my friend!

hi-larious. A good example of how the masses are misdirected from who is *truly* screwing them over.

At least the guy's name is appropriate... "Clive [b]Crook[/b]"

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