Daffodil Lane

April 28, 2007

It's Amazing

I've been extremely busy the last week or so with school and work, so I've been behind on my Jon Stewart Daily Show episodes. Today while Alexis was napping I decided to watch a week and half worth of shows one right after the other. I'm baffled yet again that in pretending to be a reporter Jon Stewart regularly is a better reporter than the best the corporate media has to offer. Tragically the fourth estate has so abandoned its most basic responsibilities to be the caretakers of the people that we'd be better off having 50 Jon Stewarts working the news than nearly the entire MSM corps we have now. The vast majority of reporters literally have nothing of value to offer the American people. I've put Jon Stewart's interview with McCain below the fold if you're interested in seeing. Note how he starts out with the veiled threat about putting an IED under his desk. That's probably how wingnuts talk to reporters to keep them in line. You'll note that Jon is unimpressed with the threat.

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Posted by: Bill at September 20, 2007 11:13 PM

March 27, 2007

White House spokesman's cancer returns

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Doctors have removed a small, malignant growth from presidential spokesman Tony Snow's abdomen, but they determined the cancer had spread to his liver, the White House said Tuesday.

Snow underwent surgery to have the growth -- about the size of his pinky fingertip -- removed from his pelvic area, and doctors found that his cancer had metastasized, or spread, to his liver, said Snow's deputy, Dana Perino.

I had hoped that the initial scans would prove to be true, but it looks like Mr. Snow's cancer has returned and has also metastasized. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Snow and his family.

Found via CNN.

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March 26, 2007

Gossip Site TMZ Focuses on Washington

For those of you that don't know TMZ is like the Enquirer of the Internet. If you want to see a star doing something crazy, this is the place you go. Not really my cup of tea, but according to NPR it's all the rage among men, which I was going to dispute and then I remembered all the pictures of the wardrobe malfunctions on the site and when put in that prospective I guess I could buy that argument. Anyway, I digress.

TMZ has decided to expand their operations from the West Coast to the nations capital. That's right folks the same kind of "impeccable" journalism will now be applied to our nations most powerful group. Not sure there is going to be the same draw for wardrobe malfunctions when dealing with the oldest Congress in American history, but it might be useful if the people back home got to see some of the rampant misbehaviors of their politicos. They claim that they are going to be including their staff members as well in their investigations and if you happen to catch a politico in some sort of misconduct make sure you ship them the video. You get how this goes I suspect.

In the end, I think this will probably be most devastating to the Republicans, who have been used to their friends in the right wing media covering up all their missteps for them, but it will provide endless fodder for bloggers and the likes of Wonkette. We shall see how it works out.

Listen over at NPR.

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Pew Study: Democrats Open Up Huge Gap Over Republicans

Few things made me snicker more last week than Pew research releasing the poll that said that people couldn't identify with the radical ideology of the Republican party much anymore. On one level this was completely predictable to me, I've pretty much said all along that America's brush with radical conservative ideology was a doomed exercise. There is just something fundamental about being an American that makes it impossible for us to accept that our founding principals should be abandoned to turn America into a cheap third world dictatorship. I know a lot of Republicans have screamed at me for years that I was wrong and they were going to establish a thousand year empire of imperial Republican rule of this planet. Yet here we are once again, with me being proven correct and the American people seeing the Republican party for the godless monsters I've always said they were.

For me the exciting part is starting to happen, the real Republicans, not the monsters like Delay and Bush, are starting to reestablish themselves and instead of trying to destroy America they are starting to stand up for our country again. They are resisting the radical ideology that has strangled the Republican party for the last decade and are starting to do what Republicans did when I was a child, they are starting to represent honest hardworking Americans for the first time in a very long time. It's really a new concept for them, so it will take a while before they get back into the groove, but I'm starting to see it and it makes me happy. As for the radicals, they will be increasingly marginalized and ignored, which is good for America.

Read more over at Raising Kaine.

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February 23, 2007

Fox Attacks

It's pretty much known around the world that Fox is nothing more than the propaganda wing of the Republican party. From the local affiliates on up to the puppet master himself, Fox does nothing but support whatever talking point they get from the Republican party today.

Yet again they've been exposed as nothing more than a partisan hack machine with their fabricated reporting on one of the Democratic Presidential candidates Barak Obama. I'm not even going to to into the hundreds of times that they've just flat out lied to support the radical right wing hate ideology of the Republican party. So we all know this, so why is it important to repeat it now? Fox is slipping rapidly in popularity as the disconnect between the lies they are regularly reporting and what even brain dead conservatives can see on the streets of America gets so far apart that people just stop taking them seriously.

For reasons that baffle good sense the Nevada Democratic party has decided to turn over the first debate of Democratic candidates in their state to Fox. That's right, the claim being that it will be the first time that Fox viewers will have a chance to see an "honest" depiction of Democratic candidates. You will recall in 2004 Democratic Presidential candidates were in a debate covered by Fox, and Fox put up insulting graphics and GOP talking points as the Democrats were talking. Then they went the extra step to cut off the candidates to allow right wing pundits to attack the Democrats at any point in their speeches with the same GOP talking points.

Basically the Nevada Democrats have allowed the GOP to host the first Democratic Debate in Nevada. This verges on insanity of the highest order. Radical extremists that take Fox seriously will NEVER vote Democratic. I go back to the 2006 election quote "I wouldn't vote Democratic if Jesus Christ was running." That sums up just about every Republican watching Fox. There is no way to reach them because they've have abandoned reality folks. It's time for the Nevada Democrats to realize that decent people aren't watching Fox, only the most vile of the vile are watching. Nothing we can say or do will ever be enough for them, all they have is their hate of this country and Democrats to drive them each and every day.

Read more over at Fox Attacks, MyDD and Crooks and Liars.

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February 15, 2007

Somewere O’Reilly’s Head Is Exploding

NEW YORK - Keith Olbermann will continue to be a thorn in Bill O’Reilly’s side for at least four more years.

NBC News announced Thursday it had agreed to a “second term” with the MSNBC “Countdown” host, whose contract was due to expire next month. The extension will take him into 2011.

Keith Olbermann is one of the few newsmen out there that actually reports the news. His steadfast effort to stand toe to toe with those who don't makes him one of the greatest newsmen of our time. It's a good thing that he will continue to be on the air for at least 4 more years. We need more truth telling and less right wing media spin. We need more newsmen out there like him and a lot of people could take lessons from his example!

Found via Think Progress.

Read more at MSNBC.com.

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February 5, 2007

VoteVets.org Leads The Charge Against Escalation

We were watching the game last night waiting to talk to Darlene and this commercial came on and it was staggering. All the radical right wing drones talking, hearing straight from American soldiers speaking out against the Republican escalation is just something to see. My thanks to the VoteVets organization for both of their great services to their country.

Read more over at VoteVets.

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January 19, 2007

Colbert Smacks Around O'Reilly...Yeah Baby!

Via Shakespeare's Sister.

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January 12, 2007

More "Good" News

Scientists prepare to move Doomsday Clock forward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The keepers of the "Doomsday Clock" plan to move its hands forward next Wednesday to reflect what they call worsening nuclear and climate threats to the world.

The symbolic clock, maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, currently is set at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight marking global catastrophe.

The group did not say in which direction the hands would move. But in a news release previewing an event next Wednesday, they said the change was based on "worsening nuclear, climate threats" to the world.

"The major new step reflects growing concerns about a 'Second Nuclear Age' marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing 'launch-ready' status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the U.S. and Russia, escalating terrorism, and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks," the release reads.

The clock was last pushed forward by two minutes to seven minutes to midnight in 2002 amid concerns about the proliferation of nuclear, biological and other weapons and the threat of terrorism.

When it was created by the magazine's staff in 1947, it was initially set at seven minutes to midnight and has moved 17 times since then.

There isn't much to be said about this, other than it doesn't come as much of a surprise given the state of our world on all fronts. Very sad indeed.

Found via Yahoo! News.

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Are You Thinking At All?

As always Keith does an excellent job of laying out Bush's complete incompetence and utter lies.

Found via Crooks and Liars.

Transcript below the fold.

And lastly, as promised, a Special Comment about the President's address last night.

Only this President, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even Messianic certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq, by offering an entrance strategy for Iran.

Only this President, could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say "where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me" — only to follow that, by proposing to repeat the identical mistake in Iran.

Only this President could extol the "thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group," and then take its most far-sighted recommendation — "engage Syria and Iran" - and transform it into "threaten Syria and Iran" — when Al-Qaeda would like nothing better than for us to threaten Syria, and when President Ahmmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us.

This is diplomacy by skimming; it is internationalism by drawing pictures of Superman in the margins of the text books; it is a presidency of Cliff Notes.

And to Iran and Syria — and, yes, also to the insurgents in Iraq — we must look like a country, run by the equivalent of the drunken pest, who gets battered to the floor of the saloon by one punch, then staggers to his feet, and shouts at the other guy's friends, "ok, which one of you is next?"

Mr. Bush, the question is no longer "what are you thinking?," but rather "are you thinking at all?"

"I have made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended," you said last night.

And yet — without any authorization from the public who spoke so loudly and clearly to you in November's elections; without any consultation with a Congress (in which key members of your own party like Senator Brownback and Senator Coleman and Senator Hagel are fleeing for higher ground); without any awareness that you are doing exactly the opposite of what Baker-Hamilton urged you to do, you seem to be ready to make an open-ended commitment (on America's behalf) to do whatever you want, in Iran.

Our military, Mr. Bush, is already stretched so thin by this bogus adventure in Iraq, that even a majority of serving personnel are willing to tell pollsters that they are dissatisfied with your prosecution of the war.

It is so weary, that many of the troops you have just consigned to Iraq, will be on their second tours, or their third tours, or their fourth tours — and now you're going to make them take on Iran and Syria as well?

Who is left to go and fight, sir?

Who are you going to send to "interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria"? Laura and Barney?

The line is from the movie "Chinatown" and I quote it often. "Middle of a drought," the mortician chuckles, "and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.!"

'Middle of a debate over the lives and deaths of another 21,500 of our citizens in Iraq… and the President wants to saddle up against Iran and Syria.'

Maybe that's the point: to shift the attention away from just how absurd and childish, is this latest war strategy (strategy, that is, for the war already under way, and not the one, on deck).

We are to put 17,500 more troops into Baghdad and 4,000 more into Anbar Province to give the Iraqi government "breathing space."

In and of itself, that is an awful and insulting term.

The lives of 21,500 more Americans endangered, to give "breathing space" to a government that just turned the first and perhaps the most sober act of any Democracy — the capitol punishment of an ousted dictator — into a vengeance lynching so barbaric, and so lacking in the solemnities necessary for credible authority, that it might have offended the Ku Klux Klan of the 19th Century.

And what will our men and women in Iraq do?

The ones who will truly live — and die — during what Mr. Bush said last night will be a "year ahead" which "will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve"?

They will try to seal up Sadr City and other parts of Baghdad, in which the civil war is worst.

Mr. Bush did not mention that while our people are trying to do that, the factions in the civil war will no longer have to focus on killing each other but rather, they can focus anew on killing our people.

Because last night the President foolishly all but announced that we will be sending these 21,500 poor souls over — but, no more after that — and if the whole thing fizzles out, we're going home.

The plan fails militarily.

The plan fails symbolically.

The plan fails politically.

Most importantly, perhaps, Mr. Bush, the plan fails because it still depends on your credibility.

You speak of mistakes, and of the responsibility "resting" with you. But you do not admit to making those mistakes.

And you offer us nothing to justify this clenched fist towards Iran and Syria.

In fact, when you briefed news correspondents off-the-record before the speech, they were told, once again, "if you knew what we knew… if you saw what we saw…"

"If you knew what we knew," was how we got into this morass in Iraq, in the first place.

The problem arose, when it turned out that the question wasn't whether or not we knew what you knew but whether you knew what you knew.

You, sir, have become the President who cried wolf.

All that you say about Iraq now, could be gospel. All that you say about Iran and Syria now, could be prescient and essential.

We no longer have a clue, sir. We have heard too many stories.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just shuffled the Director of National Intelligence over to the State Department, because he thought you were wrong about Iran.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just put a pilot in charge of ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because he would be truly useful in an air war next door in Iran.

Your assurances, sir, and your demands that we trust you, have lost all shape and texture.

They are now merely fertilizer for conspiracy theories.

They are now fertilizer indeed.

The pile has been built slowly and with seeming care.

I read this list last night, before the President's speech, and it bears repetition, because its shape and texture are perceptible only in such a context.

Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said nation-building was wrong for America. Now he says it is vital.

He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control. Last night he promised to embed them, in Iraqi units.

He told us about WMD. Mobile labs. Secret sources. Aluminum tubes. Yellow-cake.

He has told us the war is necessary because Saddam was a material threat. Because of 9/11. Because of Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda. Terrorism in General. To liberate Iraq. To spread freedom. To spread Democracy. To prevent terrorism by gas price increases. Because this was a guy who tried to kill his Dad.

Because 439 words in to the speech last night, he trotted out 9/11 again.

In advocating and prosecuting this war he passed on a chance to get Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. To get Muqtada Al-Sadr.
To get Bin Laden.

He sent in fewer troops than the Generals told him to.

He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government "De-Baathified."

He short-changed Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for widespread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence.

He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. Gave jobs to foreign contractors, and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.

He and his government told us "America had prevailed", "Mission Accomplished", the resistance was in its "last throes".

He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary.

He has insisted it's up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary.

He has trumpeted the turning points: The fall of Baghdad; the death of Uday and Qusay; the capture of Saddam; A provisional government; a charter; a constitution; the trial of Saddam; elections; purple fingers; another government; the death of Saddam.

He has assured us: we would be greeted as liberators with flowers; as they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course; we were never about "stay the course." We would never have to go door-to-door in Baghdad. And last night, that to gain Iraqis' trust, we would go door-to-door in Baghdad.

He told us the enemy was Al-Qaeda, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria.

The war would pay for itself. It would cost 1.7 billion dollars. 100 billion. 400 billion. Half a trillion. Last night's speech alone cost another six billion.

And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.

Oh, and one more to add, tonight: Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Mr. Bush, this is madness.

You have lost the military.

You have lost the Congress to the Democrats.

You have lost most of the Iraqis.

You have lost many of the Republicans.

You have lost our Allies.

You are losing the credibility, not just of your Presidency, but more importantly of the office itself.

And most imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives, and more families their loved ones. You are guaranteeing it!

This becomes your legacy, sir: How many of those you addressed last night as your "fellow citizens" you just sent to their deaths?

And for what, Mr. Bush?

So the next President has to pull the survivors out of Iraq instead of you?

Good night and good luck.

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December 17, 2006

Time's Person of the Year: You

An interesting choice to say the least! The rise of digital democracy is a powerful force. What I find sort of disappointing is that there was no acknowledgment by Time that there are dark forces working night and day to stifle the very thing they are pointing to as the most important thing going on this year. I mean the discussion of the rise of blogs, YouTube and MySpace has to include a conversation about the radical right and their corporate masters working to destroy these things with extreme prejudice. As we speak Darth McCain is now working in the legislation to destroy blogs and the free flow of ideas in the name of "protecting" us from bad people. Because folks Republicans hate freedom and the free flow of information, because they can't contain their lies anymore. They easily corrupted and controlled corporate media, but the truth spread like a virus that they couldn't stamp out and destroy. The fourth estate may have abandoned it's job as the caretaker of the people, so the people rose up to do the job of protecting their neighbors. No revolution of course is without problems, but there must be an acknowledgment that there are problems and then there is the evil standing outside the revolution trying to destroy it. Time's failure to acknowledge that is a reflection on their own compromised state as a corporate media outlet.

How long will we be able to stand against the bad guys? Who knows? We have an army of vipers in our own midst that happily work with the bad guys trying to destroy our way of life.

I have some hope because so many of my fellow Americans have started to stand up and started to act to protect their fellow man in spite of the lack of enthusiasm to support us. When asked why I blog, I tell people it's because I have to stand against evil. I have to make sure the truth gets out to people that are willing to listen. Everyone willing to sacrifice a part of their life to follow such an important endeavor deserves a lot of credit from my point of view.

Read more over at Time.

Posted by Jamison at 10:13 AM

December 1, 2006

Oh Mr. Olbermann I Fall More In Love With You Each Day!

Keith Olbermann did another excellent Special Comment section last night, this time dealing with Newt Gingrich and his completely asinine comments early this week that free speech should be limited. Keith lays it out as only he can. I am in complete awe of him!

Found via Crooks and Liars.

The transcript is in the extended entry below.

The video is still uploading over at Crooks and Liars so as soon as it's complete I'll link to it here.

Watch the video here.

And finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment about free speech, failed speakers, and the delusion of grandeur.

"This is a serious long term war," the man at the podium cried, "and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country."

Some, in the audience, must have thought they were hearing an arsonist give the keynote address at a convention of firefighters.

This was the annual Loeb First Amendment Dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire — a public cherishing of Freedom of Speech — in the state with the two-fisted motto "Live Free Or Die."

And the arsonist at the microphone, the former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, was insisting that we must attach an "on-off button" to Free Speech.

He offered the time-tested excuse trotted out by our demagogues, since even before the Republic was founded: widespread death, of Americans, in America, possibly at the hands of Americans.

But updated, now, to include terrorists… using the internet for recruitment… end result, quote "losing a city."

The Colonial English defended their repression with words like these.

And so did the Slave States.

And so did the policemen who shot strikers.

And so did Lindbergh's America-First crowd.

And so did those who interned Japanese-Americans.

And so did those behind the Red Scare.

And so did Nixon's Plumbers.

The genuine proportion of the threat is always irrelevant.

The fear the threat is exploited to create… becomes the only reality.

"We will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find," Mr. Gingrich continued about terrorists formerly Communists formerly Hippies formerly Fifth Columnists formerly Anarchists formerly Redcoats.

"….to break up their capacity to use the internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech."

Mr. Gingrich, the British 'broke up our capacity to use free speech' in the 1770's.

The pro-slavery leaders 'broke up our capacity to use free speech' in the 1850's.

The FBI and CIA 'broke up our capacity to use free speech' in the 1960's.

It is in those groups where you would have found your kindred spirits, Mr. Gingrich.

Those who had no faith in freedom, no faith in this country, and, ultimately, no faith even in the strength of their own ideas, to stand up on their own legs, without having the playing-field tilted entirely to their benefit.

"It will lead us to learn," Gingrich continued, "how to close down every website that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear and biological weapons."

That we have always had 'a very severe approach' to these people is insufficient for Mr. Gingrich's ends.

He wants to somehow ban the idea.

Even though everyone who has ever protested a movie or a piece of music or a book has learned the same lesson:

Try to suppress it, and you only validate it.

Make it illegal, and you make it the subject of curiosity.

Say it cannot be said - and it will instead be screamed.

—

And on top of the thundering danger in his eagerness to sell out freedom of speech, there is a sadder sound, still — the tinny crash of a garbage can lid on a sidewalk.

Whatever dreams of internet-censorship float like a miasma in Mr. Gingrich's personal swamp, whatever hopes he has of an Iron Firewall, the simple fact is — technically, they won't work.

As of tomorrow they will have been defeated by… a free computer download.

Mere hours after Gingrich's speech in New Hampshire, the University of Toronto announced it had come up with a program called "Psiphon" to liberate those, in countries in which the internet is regulated…

Places like China, and Irahn, where political ideas are so barren, and political leaders so desperate, that they put up computer firewalls to keep thought and freedom out.

The "Psiphon" device is a relay of sorts that can surreptitiously link a computer user in an imprisoned country to another in a free one.

The Chinese think the wall works, yet the ideas — good ideas, bad ideas, indifferent ideas, pass through anyway.

The same way the Soviet Bloc, was defeated by the images of Western Material Bounty.

If your hopes of thought-control can be defeated, Mr. Gingrich, merely by one computer whiz staying up an extra half hour and devising a new "firewall hop," what is all this apocalyptic hyperbole for?

"I further think," you said in Manchester, "We should propose a Geneva convention for fighting terrorism, which makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction, and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules, that allow us, to protect civilization by defeating barbarism…"

Well, Mr. Gingrich, what is more 'massively destructive' than trying to get us, to give you our freedom?

And what is someone seeking to hamstring the First Amendment doing, if not "fighting outside the rules of law"?

And what is the suppression of knowledge and freedom, if not "barbarism"?

The explanation, of course, is in one last quote from Mr. Gingrich from New Hampshire… and another, from last week.

"I want to suggest to you," he said about these internet restrictions, "that we right now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren't for the scale of the threat."

And who should those "impaneled" people, be?

Funny I should ask, isn't it, Mr. Gingrich?

"I am not 'running' for president," you told a reporter from Fortune Magazine. "I am seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be president, it will happen."

—

Newt Gingrich sees, in terrorism, not something to be exterminated, but something to be exploited.

It's his golden opportunity, isn't it?

'Rallying a nation,' you might say, 'to hysteria, to sweep us up into the White House with powers that will make Martial Law seem like anarchy.'

That's from the original version of the movie "The Manchurian Candidate" - the chilling words of Angela Lansbury's character, as she first promises to sell her country to the Chinese and Russians, then reveals she'll double-cross them, and keep all the power herself, waving the flag every time she subjugates another freedom.

Within the frame of our experience as a free and freely argumentative people, it is almost impossible to conceive that there are those among us, who might approach the kind of animal-wildness of fiction like that — those who would willingly transform our beloved country into something false and terrible.

Who among us can look to our own histories, or those of our ancestors who struggled to get here, or who struggled to get freedom after they were forced here, and not teer up when we reed Frederick Douglass's words from a century-and-a-half ago: "Freedom must take the day"?

And who among us can look to our collective history, and not see its turning points — like the Civil War, like Watergate, like the Revolution itself — in which the right idea defeated the wrong idea on the battlefield that is the marketplace of ideas?

But apparently there are some of us who cannot see, that the only future for America is one that cherishes the freedoms won in the past, one in which we vanquish bad ideas with better ones, and in which we fight for liberty by having more liberty, not less.

"I am seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be president, it will happen."

What a dark place your world must be, Mr. Gingrich, where the way to save America, is to destroy America.

I will awaken every day of my life thankful I am not with you in that dark place.

And I will awaken every day of my life thankful that you are entitled to tell me about it.

And that you are entitled to show me what an evil idea it represents — and what a cynical mind.

And that you are entitled to do all that, thanks to the very freedoms, you seek to suffocate.

—

Good night, and good luck.

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Posted by: Jamison at December 1, 2006 11:37 AM

Posted by: Dianne at December 1, 2006 1:11 PM

November 18, 2006

If feel sorry for Russert tomorrow.

Tim Russert is going to be in for his own thumping tomorrow. Honestly the right wing media doesn't have the mental capacity to deal with one of these guys, let alone the two powerhouses of the New Democratic revolution in the same room. Expect Russert's standard right wing spin and expect it to go down in flames folks. It's going to be an amusing segment.

Read more over at MSNBC.

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Posted by: Jason Black at November 18, 2006 9:00 PM

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November 17, 2006

Countdown sifts through the mud

Once again, Olbermann comes in with a healthy dose of reality and points out the entire right wing media slant is a load of crap. Meanwhile, things on the other side of the isle promoted the following comment from one of the freepers.

"But hey, who better to lead the GOP minority than the men who helped create it?"

I can't say that I can disagree with them there. GOP corruption and criminality always leads to the same place because they lack any sort of moral and ethical footing to work from.

On the subject of the Rahm/Carville assault on the great Howard Dean, Hotline decided to actually review the races that they are claiming were failures because of a lack of money. Well it turns out that of the wild claims it appears that 4 races lacked for money the rest had plenty of money were just lost for other reasons. So the DLC hype on the subject is yet again, all hype and no substance, much like the membership of that organization.

Read more over at Hotline OnCall.

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November 16, 2006

Amusing the slant of the right wing media

For the last couple of days, the right wing media has talked incessantly about the "bitter" divisions between Democrats over the Hoyer vs Murtha fight. You would think that there was some sort of massive blood letting going on. Basically faced with two bad choices (DLC K-Street puppet verses Ethical Compromised Conservative) the Democrats chose the lesser evil and called it a day. But it's much harder to find out information about how things are going on the other side of the isle. I mean if you were to believe the right wing media the Republicans are back to their perfect Borg-like unity of mind now. The reality, people's ranking on Committees is bring threatened to bring people into the party line. The racist Redstater folks are complaining about the fact that their more radical choices are getting squeezed out by the more extremist elements of the party. Folks the battle in the Democratic party is about sending messages about behavior. Steny spent a great deal of time stabbing Pelosi in the back in the name of his DLC Blue Dogs who would rather see the Congress run by the Republicans rather than Democrats. Pelosi sent him a message, hey I don't have to put up with your crap, so straighten up and fly right and put America first. What remains to be seen is if Steny got the message. While the Democrats lack all the rigid and ruthless party discipline of the Republican party, they make up for it by working together for the common goal of representing America. You just won't find that kind of focus in the Republican party ever. The DLC Blue Dogs don't like that kind of behavior, but hopefully we can get it to grow on them after a little while. If they can't get on board with putting the American people first, we'll just have to do a little house cleaning next election cycle.

Read more over at Taegan Goodards Political Wire.

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November 14, 2006

Pretty much sums it up

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Posted by: Moni at November 15, 2006 7:48 PM

Posted by: Wayne at November 16, 2006 10:56 PM

Posted by: Jamison at November 17, 2006 7:45 AM

November 9, 2006

Faux News Lite

During the live broadcast of CNN's Larry King Live, Bill Maher suggested to Larry King that Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman is gay.

When CNN re-aired the interview later that night, they edited out Larry King and Bill Maher's discussion of Mehlman's potential homosexuality.

You can't change reality. He said what he said and taking it out of the transcript doesn't change the fact he said it. Get a grip! You are a news organization and as an news organization you should stand by reality! What are you Faux News or something?

Hop on over to Huffington Post and see the clips.

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November 7, 2006

CNN's Election Result Page

If you havent' seen it, check it out.

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First Results

Among the early winners in the Senate projected by CNN are Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd in West Virginia, Republican Sen. Richard Lugar in Indiana and independent candidate Bernie Sanders in Vermont. Sanders has said he will caucus with the Democrats, as did his predecessor.

Via CNN.

CNN is also calling West Virginia for Robert Byrd and the Democratic candidate Ted Strickland in the Ohio gubernatorial race.

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More Exit Polls From CNN

Check out more early exits polls from CNN via ThinkProgress. These are just preliminary, but things are moving along nicely.

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Early Exit Polls

These aren't confirmed, but this is how it's looking so far:

EXIT POLLS (WITH A GRAIN OF SALT) AND MORE: SENATE EXIT POLLS AS OF 5:30 EST: Democrats Leading: Virginia (D52-R47), Rhode Island (D53-R46), Pennsylvania (D57-R42), Ohio (D57-R43), New Jersey (D52-R45), Montana (D53-R46), Missouri (D50-R48), Maryland (D53-R46)…GOP Leading: Tennessee (R51-D48), Arizona (R50-D46)

Not bad!

Via HuffPo.

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Laura Ingraham Is A Horrible Person!

Laura Ingraham, just like Ann Coulter, is simply a horrible person! Today she is encouraging her listeners to prank call voting hotlines so that voters who might actually need to report voter intimidation or disenfranchisement can't get through. Now that's "values" for you people! I just feel the "morals" flowing from her!

UPDATE: Laura Ingraham has asked her listeners to call the Dem Voter protection hotline — and they are now being flooded with calls from crank callers. Please call Laura and tell her what you think about this: 800.876.4123. You can e-mail her here. Apparently, voter intimidation and fraud are a joke to Laura Ingraham. Let's let her know that it is no joke.

UPDATE #2: More on Laura Ingraham: "caller indicated she is running a tape of Bill Clinton over and over saying "call 1-888 Dem Vote to report problems" — and then making fun of him, thus producing a spike in crank calls to the number" Protecting voter integrity is no joke. And I am not laughing. If anyone has audio of this, I'd love it.

Laura Ingraham you are Daffodil Lane's naughty person of the day! You should be ashamed of yourself! This is not a joke, this is not elementary school, this is a national election, in which EVERYONE has a right to vote!

Found via Firedoglake.

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Posted by: Qusan at November 7, 2006 5:40 PM

Posted by: Dianne at November 7, 2006 7:25 PM

Don't Miss ''Indecision 2006': The Midterm Midtacular' A Live, Election Night Presentation

An hour of Stewart and Colbert live with their take on the election. They've even got Dan Rather on board!

Check it out or set your TiVos. Come on...You know you want to! ;o)

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Keith Olbermann Special Comment: Election Edition

I'll find the transcript and post it later, for now enjoy his eloquence above once again.

Updated 11:20 am: The transcript is below the fold. Via Crooks and Liars.

And finally tonight, a Special Comment about tomorrow's elections.

We are, as every generation, inseparable from our own time.

Thus is our perspective, inevitably that of the explorer looking into the wrong end of the telescope.

But even accounting for our myopia, it's hard to imagine there have been many elections more important than this one, certainly not in Non-Presidential years.

And so we look at the verdict in the trial of Saddam Hussein yesterday, and, with the very phrase "October, or November, Surprise" now a part of our vernacular, and the chest-thumping coming from so many of the Republican campaigners today, each of us must wonder about the convenience of the timing of his conviction and sentencing.

But let us give history and coincidence the benefit of the doubt — let's say it's just "happened" that way — and for a moment not look into the wrong end of the telescope.

Let's perceive instead the bigger picture:

Saddam Hussein, found guilty in an Iraqi court.

Who can argue against that?

He is officially, what the world always knew he was: a war criminal.

Mr. Bush, was this imprimatur, worth the cost of 2,832 American lives, and thousands more American lives yet to be lost?

Is the conviction of Saddam Hussein the reason you went to war in Iraq?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the Weapons of Mass Destruction that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to break the bonds of tyranny there — while installing the mechanisms of tyranny here?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because you felt the need to wreak vengeance against somebody — anybody?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to contain a rogue state which, months earlier, your own administration had declared had been fully contained by sanctions?

Or did you go to war in Iraq… to keep gas prices down?

How startling it was, Sir, to hear you introduce oil to your stump speeches over the weekend.

Not four years removed from the most dismissive, the most condescending, the most ridiculing denials of the very hint at, as Mr. Rumsfeld put it, this "nonsense"…

There you were, campaigning in Colorado, in Nebraska, in Florida, in Kansas — suddenly turning this 'unpatriotic idea'… into a platform plank.

"You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources," you told us. "And then you can imagine them saying, 'We're going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following."

Having frightened us, having bullied us, having lied to us, having ignored and re-written the constitution under our noses, having stayed the course, having denied you've stayed the course, having belittled us about "timelines" but instead extolled "benchmarks"…

You've now resorted, Sir, to this?

We must stay in Iraq to save the two-dollar gallon of gas?

—

Mr. President, there is no other conclusion we can draw as we go to the polls tomorrow.

Sir… you have been making this up as you went along.

This country was founded to prevent anybody from making it up as they went along.

Those vaunted founding fathers of ours have been so quoted-up, that they appear as marble statues: like the chiseled guards of China, or the faces on Mount Rushmore.

But in fact they were practical people and the thing they obviously feared most, was a government of men and not laws.

They provided the checks and balances for a reason.

No one man could run the government the way he saw fit — unless he, at the least, took into consideration what those he governed saw.

A House of Representatives would be the people's eyes.

A Senate would be the corrective force on that House.

An Executive would do the work… and hold the Constitution to his chest like his child.

A Supreme Court would oversee it all.

Checks and balances.

Where did that go, Mr. Bush?

And what price did we pay because we have let it go?

Saddam Hussein will get out of Iraq the same way 2,832 Americans have, and thousands more.

He'll get out faster than we will.

And if nothing changes tomorrow, you, Sir, will be out of the White House long before the rest of us can say… we are out of Iraq.

And whose fault is this?

Not truly yours. You took advantage of those of us who were afraid, and those of us who believed unity and nation took precedence over all else.

But we let you take that advantage.

And so we let you go to war in Iraq. To… oust Saddam. Or find non-existant Weapons. Or avenge 9/11. Or fight terrorists who only got there after we did. Or as cover to change the fabric of our Constitution. Or for lower prices at The Texaco. Or… ?

There are still a few hours left, before the polls open, sir, there are many rationalizations still untried.

And whatever your motives of the moment, we the people have, in true good faith and with the genuine patriotism of self-sacrifice (of which you have shown you know nothing)… we have let you go on…

Making it up.

As you went along.

Un-checked… and un-balanced.

Vote.

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Start Your Morning With A Song

Joe in DC over at AMERICAblog had a good idea. Why not start election day with a song that sums it up so well. So I present to you the Dixie Chicks:

This song still gives me chills everytime I hear it, because the message is so powerful! Enjoy!

And for good measure here's the official video for the song as well:

Go forth fellow countrypersons and vote! Help restore my faith in mandkind!

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November 3, 2006

Olbermann's Been Speaking Truth For Years

So this, ultimately, is my point. You are about to go out there and be confronted with choices. This is a real world and you may actually only be able to do this one time out of 10. But that seems to be about one time more out of 10 than those of us out here are pulling off.

Remember that everything you despise, every evil company, every corrupt politician (and I don't care if you think I mean Bill Gingrich or Newt Clinton) — every single bad decision that affects life for the worse, has been made by a human being who, because he needed to eat — or maybe because he was greedy — or maybe because he hadn't used the spark of humanity that rests inside all of us for so long that it had burned out — a human being who chose to do what he knew … was not right.

Each time you see a decision like that made, do not point. Each time you see someone's personal venality or failure or slippage exposed, do not gasp. Make yourself a mental note that if faced with participation in such a decision, or such an exposure, you will try to face it with your Moral Force prominently displayed.

This speech was given at Cornell's graduation years ago. Even then he told it like it was. I really, really admire this man for speaking up and speaking out.

Found via Crooks and Liars.

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Keith Olbermann: When Will Bush Aplogize?

Part One:

Part Two:

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Coulter In Jail?

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has refused to cooperate in an investigation into whether she voted in the wrong precinct, so the case will probably be turned over to prosecutors, Palm Beach County's elections chief said Wednesday.

Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson said his office has been looking into the matter for nearly nine months, and he would turn over the case to the state attorney's office by Friday.

Coulter's attorney did not immediately return a call Wednesday. Nor did her publicist at her publisher, Crown Publishing.

Knowingly voting in the wrong precinct is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

This would be poetic justice at it's finest, though I'm sure she'll worm her evil little self out of the whole mess. One of the most vile, hateful right wing nutters out there ending up in jail for something so simple as lying about her address and voting at the wrong polling place intentionally. I most definitely think she deserves this and much more.

It's called Karma Ann. In short you do bad things and the world brings bad things back upon you. I have a feeling this won't be your only visit from Karma and it won't be your worst either. Perhaps you need to make a list like Earl and get busy on making yourself a better human being.

Found via the Washington Post.

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October 27, 2006

Shut Up And Sing

A must see. The trailer alone gives me chills.

Update: Apparently NBC is refusing the air the ad for the documentary because it bashes Bush. Oh my God! How stupid! Harvey Weinstein had this to say:

It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America. The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is profoundly un-American.

Very well said Mr. Weinstein!

Found via ThinkProgress.

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October 24, 2006

Special Comment:GOP Fearmongering

Yet again Olbermann takes on the GOP headfirst and it's a must see for everyone. He eloquently points out how Bush Co. on one hand rattles the terrorism flag to scare the American public, yet denies they are the ones spreading terror. In essence they use propaganda to fear us into voting for them, when it is so obvious to anyone with half a brain that we are not safer under their own reign of terror. Sadly the people who need to listen to this won't, but it doesn't change the fact that Olbermann speaks truth once again in a way only he can.

Click on the picture above to watch Mr. Olbermann's special comment.

Found via Crooks and Liars.

The transcript is below:

And lastly, tonight, a Special Comment on the advertising of terrorism.

The commercial, you have already seen, it is a distillation of everything this administration and the party in power have tried to do these last five years and six weeks.

It is from the Republican National Committee, it shows images of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. It offers quotes from them, all as a clock ticks ominously in the background. It concludes with what Zawahiri may or may not have said to a Pakistani journalist as long ago as 2001, his dubious claim that he had purchased suitcase bombs. The quotation is followed by sheer coincidence, no doubt, by an image of a massive explosion. "These are the stakes" appears on the screen, quoting exactly from Lyndon Johnson's infamous nuclear scare commercial from 1964, "Vote November 7th".

There is a cheap Texas Chainsaw Massacre quality to the whole thing. It also serves to immediately call to mind the occasions when President Bush dismissed Osama bin Laden as somebody he didn't think about, except, obviously, when elections were near. Frankly, a lot of people seeing that commercial for the first time have laughed out loud, but not everyone. And therein lies the true threat to this country.

The dictionary definition of the word ‘terrorize' is simple and not open to misinterpretation: "To fill or overpower with terror; terrify; coerce by intimidation or fear." Note please that the words ‘violence' and ‘death' are missing from that definition. For the key to terrorism is not the act-but the fear of the act. That is why bin Laden and his deputies and his imitators are forever putting together videotape statements and releasing virtual infomercials with dire threats and heart-stopping warnings.

But why is the Republican Party imitating them? Bin Laden puts out what amounts to a commercial of fear; the Republicans put out what is unmistakable as a commercial of fear.

The Republicans are paying to have the messages of bin Laden and the others broadcast into your home! Only the Republicans have a bigger bankroll.

When last week, the CNN network ran video of an insurgent in Iraq evidently stalking and killing an American soldier, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Mr. Hunter, Republican of California, branded that channel quote "the publicist for an enemy propaganda film," and added that CNN used it to sell commercials. Another California Republican, Representative Brian Bilbray, called the video quote "nothing short of a terrorist snuff film."

If so, Mr. Bilbray, then what in the hell is your party's new advertisement? And Mr. Hunter? CNN using the film to sell commercials? Commercials? You have adopted bin Laden and Zawahiri as spokesmen for the Republican National Committee.

‘To fill or overpower with terror; terrify. To coerce by intimidation or fear'

By this definition, the people who put these videos together: first, the terrorists and then, the administration, whose shared goal is to scare you into panicking instead of thinking, they are the ones terrorizing you.

By this definition, the leading terrorist group in this world right now is al Qaeda, but the leading terrorist group in this country right now is the Republican Party.

Eleven presidents ago, the chief executive reassured us that ‘we have nothing to fear, but fear itself.' His distant successor has wasted his administration, insisting there is nothing we can have but fear itself.

The Vice President, as recently as this month, was caught campaigning again with the phrase "mass death in the United States". Four years ago, it was the now Secretary of State, Dr. Rice, rationalizing Iraq with quote, "we don't want to be…the smoking gun to be the mushroom cloud." Days later, Mr. Bush himself told an audience that quote "we cannot wait the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

And now we have this cheesy commercial, complete with images of a faked mushroom cloud and implications of mass death in America.

This administration has derived benefit and power from terrorizing the very people it claims to be protecting from terror. It may be the oldest trick in the political book: scare people into believing they are in danger and only you can save them. Lyndon Johnson used it to bury Barry Goldwater. Joe McCarthy leaped from obscurity on its back. And now the legacy has come to President George W. Bush.

Of course, the gruel of fear is getting thinner and thinner, is it not, Mr. President? And thus, more and more of it needs to be made out of less and less actual terror. After last week's embarrassing internet hoax about dirty bombs in footballs stadiums, the one your Department of Homeland Security immediately disseminated to the public, a self-described former CIA operative named Wayne Simmons cited the fiasco as quote "The, and I mean, the perfect example of the President's Military Commissions Act of 2006 and the NSA Terrorist Eavesdropping Program-how vital they are."

Frank Gaffney, once a respected Assistant Secretary of Defense and now the president of something called The Center for Security Policy added "one of the things that I hope Americans take away from this is not only that they're gunning for us. Not just in a place like Iraq, but truly worldwide."

Of course, the "they" to which Mr. Gaffney referred, turned out to be a lone 20-year-old grocery bagger from Wisconsin named Jake. A kid trying to one-up some loser in an internet game of ‘chicken.' His threat referenced seven football stadiums, at which dirty bombs were to be exploded yesterday. It began with the one in New York City, even though there isn't one in New York City and though the attacks were supposed to be simultaneous, four of the games were scheduled to start at 1:00 pm Eastern time and the others at 4:00 pm Eastern time. Moreover, the kid said that he had posted the identical message on forty websites since September. We caught him in merely about six weeks, even though the only way he could be less subtle, less stealthy and less of a threat was if he bought an advertisement on the Superbowl telecast.

Mr. Bush, this is the what–100th plot your people have revealed that turned out to be some nonsensical misunderstanding or the fabrications of somebody hoping to talk his way off a waterboard in Eastern Europe? If, Mr. President, this is the kind of crack work your new ad implies that only you, and not the Democrats, can do, you, sir, need to pull over and ask for directions. The real question, of course, Mr. Bush, is why did your Department of Homeland Security even release that information in the first place? It was never a serious threat. Even the first news accounts quoted a Homeland spokesman as admitting strong skepticism. The kind of strong skepticism which most government agencies address before telling the public, not afterwards.

So that leaves two options, Mr. President: the first option, you and your Department of Homeland Security don't have the slightest idea what you're doing here. Thus, contrary to your flip-flopping between saying, "we're safe" and saying, "but we're not safe enough", and contrary to the Vice President's swaggering pronouncements about the lack of another attack since 9/11, the last five years HAS been just an accident.

Or there's the second option: your political operatives leaked this nonsense for the same reason your political operatives put out that commercial. To scare the gullible.

Obviously, the correct answer, Mr. Bush, is: all of the above.

There are some of us who could forgive you, for trying to run your candidates on the coattails of the Grim Reaper, for reducing your party's existence to "Death and the Tax Us." It's cynical and barbaric, but after all, it may be merely the extension of the gutter politics to which you have subscribed since you sidled over from baseball and the business world of other people's money.

But to forgive you for terrorizing us, we would have to believe that you somehow competent in keeping others from terrorizing us. Yet last week, construction workers repairing a subway line in New York City were cleaning out an abandoned manhole on the edge of the WTC site, when they stumbled on the horrific and impossible: human remains from 9/11. Bones and fragments, eighty of them. Some as much as a foot long. The victims had been lying literally in the gutter for five years and five weeks. The families and friends of each of the 2,749 dead, who had been grimly told in May 2002, that there were no more remains to be found, were struck anew as if the terrorism of that day had just happened all over again.

And over this weekend, they have found still more remains. And now this week will be spent looking in places that should have already been looked at a thousand times, five years ago.

For all the victims in New York, Mr. Bush, the living and the dead, it is a touch of 9/11 all over again. And the mayor of this city, who called off this search four and a half years ago is a Republican. The governor, with whom he conferred, is a Republican. The House of Representatives, Republican. The Senate, Republican. The President, Republican. And yet you can claim that you and you alone can protect us from terrorism?

You can't even recover our dead from the battlefield. The battlefield in an American city. When we've given you five years and unlimited funds to do so.

While citing a Military Commissions Act so monstrous that it has now been criticized by even the John Birch Society, you told us, Mr. Bush, quote, "there is nothing we can do to bring back the men and women lost on September 11th, 2001, yet we'll always honor their memory and we will never forget the way they were taken from us." Except of course, for the ones that have been lying under a manhole cover for five years.

Setting aside the fact that your government has done nothing else for those five years but pat itself on the back about terror, while waging pointless war on the wrong enemy in Iraq and waging war on the cherished freedoms in America, just on this subject of counter-terrorism, sir, yours is the least competent government in time of crisis in this country's history.

These are the stakes indeed, Mr. President. You do not know what you are doing. And the commercial, the one about which Zawahiri might say, "hey, pretty good, we love your choice of font style," all that further needs to be said about that is to add three words to Shakespeare. Mr. President, you and that advertisement of terror are full of sound and fury, signifying–and competent at–nothing.

Posted by Dianne at 9:17 AM

October 20, 2006

"Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is"

A very well written editorial by someone who has been on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan, who also just happens to be the brother of Pat Tillman. Everyone should have to read this heartfelt letter before they go vote, because Mr. Tillman very eloquently spells out the issues in a way that can not be ignore.

Somehow we were sent to invade