2008: Another Potential Candidate to Forget

I refuse to engage in a pre-postmortem on why the election 2006 results won't make us as happy as a lot of press is predicting, if you know what I mean.

But when we do as poorly as I expect, I will give much credit for the last-minute turning-of-backs on the Dems on Kerry. He proved ultimately to run a true loser's campaign in 2004, has failed to show that he learned anything, and then that brilliant, unnecessary, stupid remark -- and as discussed here recently, he was also simply dead wrong.

Our Leaders: Freedom Means Ignorance; Continuing Down the Slippery Slope

The single lesson the wingnuts learned from Vietnam (and it's the wrong one): Keep us in the dark:

US stops audit of Iraq rebuilding

A US government agency that has exposed corruption in Iraqi reconstruction projects will close in 2007.

Washington lawmakers have reacted with shock at the discovery that an obscure clause in a military spending bill will terminate the work of the auditor.

Link.

And this proves one of the foremost reasons the 'publicans in Congress have to be kicked out: they rubber stamp everything this historically inept and arguably treasonous administration wants. They either voted for this bill thoughtlessly or knew that it was shutting down the agency and agreed with keeping voters ignorant. Neither is acceptable.

Who needs these enablers? Not us. They've done no good....

Olbermann: Our Leader Disses His Troops

Bush owes troops apology, not Kerry
Olbermann: Bush ‘appearing to be stupid’ about Kerry’s joke
SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
Countdown
Updated: 4:55 p.m. CT Nov 2, 2006

On the 22nd of May, 1856, as the deteriorating American political system veered toward the edge of the cliff, U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina shuffled into the Senate of this nation, his leg stiff from an old dueling injury, supported by a cane. And he looked for the familiar figure of the prominent senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner.

Brooks found Sumner at his desk, mailing out copies of a speech he had delivered three days earlier — a speech against slavery.

The congressman matter-of-factly raised his walking stick in midair and smashed its metal point across the senator’s head.

Congressman Brooks hit his victim repeatedly. Sen. Sumner somehow got to his feet and tried to flee. Brooks chased him and delivered untold blows to Sumner’s head. Even though Sumner lay unconscious and bleeding on the Senate floor, Brooks finally stopped beating him only because his cane finally broke.

Others will cite John Brown’s attack on the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry as the exact point after which the Civil War became inevitable.

In point of fact, it might have been the moment, not when Brooks broke his cane over the prostrate body of Sen. Sumner — but when voters in Brooks’ district started sending him new canes.

Tonight, we almost wonder to whom President Bush will send the next new cane.

There is tonight no political division in this country that he and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no anxiety that he and his party will not inflame.

There is no line this president has not crossed — nor will not cross — to keep one political party in power.

He has spread any and every fear among us in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears — some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency.

And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people is subtle and nuanced or laughably transparent.

Sen. John Kerry called him out Monday.

He did it two years too late.

He had been too cordial — just as Vice President Gore had been too cordial in 2000, just as millions of us have been too cordial ever since.

Sen. Kerry, as you well know, spoke at a college in Southern California. With bitter humor he told the students that he had been in Texas the day before, that President Bush used to live in that state, but that now he lives in the state of denial.

He said the trip had reminded him about the value of education — that “if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

The senator, in essence, called Mr. Bush stupid.

The context was unmistakable: Texas; the state of denial; stuck in Iraq. No interpretation required.

And Mr. Bush and his minions responded by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called stupid.

They demanded Kerry apologize to the troops in Iraq.

And so he now has.

That phrase — “appearing to be too stupid” — is used deliberately, Mr. Bush.

Because there are only three possibilities here.

One, sir, is that you are far more stupid than the worst of your critics have suggested; that you could not follow the construction of a simple sentence; that you could not recognize your own life story when it was deftly summarized; that you could not perceive it was the sad ledger of your presidency that was being recounted.

This, of course, compliments you, Mr. Bush, because even those who do not “make the most of it,” who do not “study hard,” who do not “do their homework,” and who do not “make an effort to be smart” might still just be stupid, but honest.

No, the first option, sir, is, at best, improbable. You are not honest.

The second option is that you and those who work for you deliberately twisted what Sen. Kerry said to fit your political template; that you decided to take advantage of it, to once again pretend that the attacks, solely about your own incompetence, were in fact attacks on the troops or even on the nation itself.

The third possibility is, obviously, the nightmare scenario: that the first two options are in some way conflated.

That it is both politically convenient for you and personally satisfying to you, to confuse yourself with the country for which, sir, you work.

A brief reminder, Mr. Bush: You are not the United States of America.

You are merely a politician whose entire legacy will have been a willingness to make anything political; to have, in this case, refused to acknowledge that the insult wasn’t about the troops, and that the insult was not even truly about you either, that the insult, in fact, is you.

So now John Kerry has apologized to the troops; apologized for the Republicans’ deliberate distortions.

Thus, the president will now begin the apologies he owes our troops, right?

This president must apologize to the troops for having suggested, six weeks ago, that the chaos in Iraq, the death and the carnage, the slaughtered Iraqi civilians and the dead American service personnel, will, to history, “look like just a comma.”

This president must apologize to the troops because the intelligence he claims led us into Iraq proved to be undeniably and irredeemably wrong.

This president must apologize to the troops for having laughed about the failure of that intelligence at a banquet while our troops were in harm’s way.

This president must apologize to the troops because the streets of Iraq were not strewn with flowers and its residents did not greet them as liberators.

This president must apologize to the troops because his administration ran out of “plan” after barely two months.

This president must apologize to the troops for getting 2,815 of them killed.

This president must apologize to the troops for getting this country into a war without a clue.

And Mr. Bush owes us an apology for this destructive and omnivorous presidency.

We will not receive them, of course.

This president never apologizes.

Not to the troops.

Not to the people.

Nor will those henchmen who have echoed him.

In calling him a “stuffed suit,” Sen. Kerry was wrong about the press secretary.

Mr. Snow’s words and conduct, falsely earnest and earnestly false, suggest he is not “stuffed,” he is inflated.

And in leaving him out of the equation, Sen. Kerry gave an unwarranted pass to his old friend Sen. John McCain, who should be ashamed of himself tonight.

He rolled over and pretended Kerry had said what he obviously had not.

Only, the symbolic stick he broke over Kerry’s head came in a context even more disturbing.

Mr. McCain demanded the apology while electioneering for a Republican congressional candidate in Illinois.

He was speaking of how often he had been to Walter Reed Hospital to see the wounded Iraq veterans, of how “many of them have lost limbs.”

He said all this while demanding that the voters of Illinois reject a candidate who is not only a wounded Iraq veteran, but who lost two limbs there, Tammy Duckworth.

Support some of the wounded veterans. But bad-mouth the Democratic one.

And exploit all the veterans and all the still-serving personnel in a cheap and tawdry political trick to try to bury the truth: that John Kerry said the president had been stupid.

And to continue this slander as late as this morning — as biased or gullible or lazy newscasters nodded in sleep-walking assent.

Sen. McCain became a front man in a collective lie to break sticks over the heads of Democrats — one of them his friend, another his fellow veteran, legless, for whom he should weep and applaud or at minimum about whom he should stay quiet.

That was beneath the senator from Arizona.

And it was all because of an imaginary insult to the troops that his party cynically manufactured out of a desperation and a futility as deep as that of Congressman Brooks, when he went hunting for Sen. Sumner.

This is our beloved country now as you have redefined it, Mr. Bush.

Get a tortured Vietnam veteran to attack a decorated Vietnam veteran in defense of military personnel whom that decorated veteran did not insult.

Or, get your henchmen to take advantage of the evil lingering dregs of the fear of miscegenation in Tennessee, in your party’s advertisements against Harold Ford.

Or, get the satellites who orbit around you, like Rush Limbaugh, to exploit the illness — and the bipartisanship — of Michael J. Fox. Yes, get someone to make fun of the cripple.

Oh, and sir, don’t forget to drag your own wife into it.

“It’s always easy,” she said of Mr. Fox’s commercials — and she used this phrase twice — “to manipulate people’s feelings.”

Where on earth might the first lady have gotten that idea, Mr. President?

From your endless manipulation of people’s feelings about terrorism?

“However they put it,” you said Monday of the Democrats, on the subject of Iraq, “their approach comes down to this: The terrorists win, and America loses.”

No manipulation of feelings there.

No manipulation of the charlatans of your administration into the only truth-tellers.

No shocked outrage at the Kerry insult that wasn’t; no subtle smile as the first lady silently sticks the knife in Michael J. Fox’s back; no attempt on the campaign trail to bury the reality that you have already assured that the terrorists are winning.

Winning in Iraq, sir.

Winning in America, sir.

There we have chaos — joint U.S.-Iraqi checkpoints at Sadr City, the base of the radical Shiite militias, and the Americans have been ordered out by the prime minister of Iraq … and our secretary of defense doesn’t even know about it!

And here we have deliberate, systematic, institutionalized lying and smearing and terrorizing — a code of deceit that somehow permits a president to say, “If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don’t have one.”

Permits him to say this while his plan in Iraq has amounted to a twisted version of the advice once offered to Lyndon Johnson about his Iraq, called Vietnam.

Instead of “declare victory and get out” we now have “declare victory and stay indefinitely.”

And also here — we have institutionalized the terrorizing of the opposition.

True domestic terror:

Critics of your administration in the media receive letters filled with fake anthrax.

Braying newspapers applaud or laugh or reveal details the FBI wished kept quiet, and thus impede or ruin the investigation.

A series of reactionary columnists encourages treason charges against a newspaper that published “national security information” that was openly available on the Internet.

One radio critic receives a letter threatening the revelation of as much personal information about her as can be obtained and expressing the hope that someone will then shoot her with an AK-47 machine gun.

And finally, a critic of an incumbent Republican senator, a critic armed with nothing but words, is attacked by the senator’s supporters and thrown to the floor in full view of television cameras as if someone really did want to re-enact the intent — and the rage — of the day Preston Brooks found Sen. Charles Sumner.

Of course, Mr. President, you did none of these things.

You instructed no one to mail the fake anthrax, nor undermine the FBI’s case, nor call for the execution of the editors of the New York Times, nor threaten to assassinate Stephanie Miller, nor beat up a man yelling at Sen. George Allen, nor have the first lady knife Michael J. Fox, nor tell John McCain to lie about John Kerry.

No, you did not.

And the genius of the thing is the same as in King Henry’s rhetorical question about Archbishop Thomas Becket: “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

All you have to do, sir, is hand out enough new canes.

Link.

But Kerry's still wrong. All I know, which puts me one up on just about every pol, is what I know: The only Iraqi vet I know is a practicing attorney. Whatever one might want to say about lawyers, you can't drop out of school and become a lawyer.

That said, doesn't mean our leaders aren't a bunch of despicable scumbags, one more disgusting than the next. And each and every one an America-hating traitor.

Thank God We Live in a One Party GOP State; They're Making US More Secure, Like Liberal Democrats Would Not!

A former nuclear weapons lab contract worker took home not only classified information on a portable computer storage drive, but also about 200 pages of printed documents, her lawyer said Thursday.

The confirmation of the papers follows a watchdog group's report that an internal memo from the Los Alamos National Laboratory indicates the amount of classified information found at the woman's home is substantially larger than first thought.

Link.

And then this makes one feel safe and grateful for Our Leaders:

U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: November 3, 2006

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Link.

Maher

New Rule: Now that we've sent "stay the course" down the memory hole, where Big Brother erases things, we've also got to retire: "The world is safer with Saddam Hussein out of power." "Don't you want America to win?" and "Wouldn't you torture someone if they knew where to find an atomic time bomb?"

One: The world isn't safer with Saddam out of power. The only people who are safer are the dead. A number which has, admittedly, increased. Saddam didn't have weapons, that he wouldn't give to Al-Qaeda, whose guts he hated. He might have changed his mind, built weapons he didn't have, and given them to people he hated, but then, so could Dairy Queen.

Two: Don't I want America to win? Are we talking about a war between Sunnis and Shiites, or the Winter Olympics? I thought we wanted democracy to win. 103 Americans died in Iraq last month. Was that winning? Would 1000 be a blow out? Also, didn't we already win? I remember reading about it on an aircraft carrier.

Three: The atomic time bomb that justifies torture. The Constitution specifically says you can't torture people, and we can assume they meant: Even if you really, really want to. Because you wouldn't make a rule against something people didn't want to do. The Eighth Amendment protects terrorists. The same way the First Amendment protects Dixie Chicks. The Framers thought protecting people from the government was more important than anything - even than protecting them from a mythical bomb. You can disagree, but that's not what our Constitution says.

Beyond the fact that it's, like, "illegal," the next problem with the pro-torture argument is that no one - in human history -- has ever been seconds away from defusing an atomic time bomb. You're not thinking of life on earth. You're thinking of "Goldfinger."

You can't make a reasoned argument against a law based on the most outlandish possible hypothetical counter-example you just pulled out of your ass. This is called the Fallacy of Accident. A twist on the old dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid. Like I have to tell you.

Link.

The Stealing of the Election 2006

Ain't freedom great? Certainly was back when we had it.

But that was then and this is now.

Goodbye, democracy, hello one party rule! All hail Our Leaders!

Debra A. Reed voted with her boss on Wednesday at African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale. Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.

That's exactly the kind of problem that sends conspiracy theorists into high gear -- especially in South Florida, where a history of problems at the polls have made voters particularly skittish.

A poll worker then helped Rudolf, but it took three tries to get it right, Reed said.

''I'm shocked because I really want . . . to trust that the issues with irregularities with voting machines have been resolved,'' said Reed, a paralegal. ``It worries me because the races are so close.''

Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot -- essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual.

Link.

And:

During the primary, memory cards were misplaced or lost and some poll workers were not adequately trained to operate the machines, the Associated Press reported. Approximately 18,000 absentee ballots had to be counted by hand because the machinery could not scan them, prompting a six-day delay in the final vote tally.

***

In Bexar County, there have been two major recounts since the installation of the ES&S system: the Congressional District 28 race in 2004 and the County Court-at-Law No. 9 race earlier this year.

In both cases, only the paper ballots were recounted. The electronic votes were not. That's problematic for a growing number of people who argue that without a paper record of the electronically cast votes, a meaningful recount is impossible.

Some states now require a VVPAT, or voter-verified paper audit trail. This system essentially takes the electronic ballot cast by a voter and creates a paper version for a voter to verify. The paper version is then held by the state and can be used as a backup in the case of a recount.

Texas has not certified a printer system, said Scott Haywood, spokesman for Secretary of State Williams.

"We have not seen a system yet that we feel comfortable certifying," Haywood said. He noted that some of the printer systems have issues with standards, ballot secrecy and accessibility.

***

In Cuyahoga County, a study done by the Election Science Institute found that problems with the attached printers and poll worker training on how to operate the printers had an impact on election day.
In addition, jurisdictions would have to take up the sticky issue of authenticity. If an electronic vote count and a paper ballot vote count differ, which one is the "real" result?

Link.

Our Leaders: Thank God, George W. Bush is President, He's Making Us Safer!

Screeners at Newark fail to find 'weapons'
Agents got 20 of 22 'devices' past staff

Anyone Interested in a Survey of Our Leader's (More Recent) Lies?

Not me but if the reader is... here.

Simple Solution to a Simple Problem: Pentagon Lies

The US defence department has set up a new unit to better promote its message across 24-hour rolling news outlets, and particularly on the internet.

The Pentagon said the move would boost its ability to counter "inaccurate" news stories and exploit new media.

Link. (The shame! This story comes from the BBC! Where's our American Big Media on this??)

Actual problem: The lies are not coming through to the satisfaction of the delusional wingnuts in charge.

Solution: Every journalist must correctly parrot the Pentagon line, making it clear that what they report are not facts, just what the Pentagon claims. The story is not what the Pentagon claims, the story is the Pentagon's claims.

Scum at the Top -- But What Else is New?

It's Vietnam all over again after all.

At campaign rallies in Georgia and Texas Monday -- hey, what ever happened to swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania? -- George W. Bush said that the Democrats' plan for Iraq means "the terrorists win and America loses."

Link to this wisdom.

Sorry, George; anything to weaken you and "your" administration can only help America. You lose, we, the people, win.

But wait a minute, here is exactly how voting GOP helps and enables the terrorists! A vote for the GOP is a vote for all enemies of America!

Twelve Years Later, Things are Different, Except They're Not: Pathological Liars Keep Lying

1994: The Contract with (or was that "On"? Turned out that way...) America:

I then pointed out that we're now 12 years past 2004, when the Republicans all signed the Contract with America, whose 10th plank was the Citizen Legislature Act, a proposed Constitutional amendment limiting all Congressional service to, you guessed it, 12 years.

[Link.] (And the Contract is here too.)

So for the record, here's how my Rep, Sue Kelly, stands on the matter:

Limit punitive damages; term limits on Congress.

Kelly signed the Contract with America:

[As part of the Contract with America, within 100 days we pledge to bring to the House Floor the following bills]:

The Common Sense Legal Reforms Act:
“Loser pays” laws, reasonable limits on punitive damages, and reform of product liability laws to stem the endless tide of litigation.

The Citizen Legislature Act:A first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators.

Link.

And here's her stand today -- with no explanation for her change:

Sue Kelly is trying desperately to be viewed as ANYTHING BUT A REPUBLICAN.

She even went so far as to get an endorsement from the "Independence Party of New York." This is not to be confused with "independent" voters, who are unaffiliated with any political party.

But, there is a problem here. Doesn't a candidate of a party run on the platform of that party?

Uh, oh!, one of the planks of the NY State Independence Party's platform is twelve-year term limits for House members. That's right, and Sue Kelly is completing her twelfth year in office! You would think that Kelly devoutly believed in this plank because she also signed Newt Gingrich's so-called "Contract With America", which was gung-ho about twelve-year term limits. That is, until she and her buddies got elected and dropped the idea altogether...

Link. (And see this too.)

Flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop,.....

And as a bonus, her goose-stepping, enabling record on important issues is here.

Just Another Big Media Dishonest, Dissembling, Crock-a-Crap

Republicans See Edge
From Early Voting

By JOHN D. MCKINNON and ERIKA LOVLEY
October 31, 2006; Page A4

WASHINGTON -- Down in the polls and with their majorities in Congress at risk, Republicans say they have some good news in early-voting statistics that suggest their voter-turnout machine is providing an edge in some tight races.

What's missing from this prominently placed article in the Wall Street Journal ($ sub. reqd.) is this: All the edge is is that apparently most or at least many of those to whom the GOP ops send absentee ballots have allegedly submitted them, in a greater percentage than the Dems. From this, one hopes, the assumption is that these were votes for the enablers of the destruction of our American democracy (that, as opposed to actually counting te votes).

In other words, there is nor clue whatsoever how any of these people voted.

In even fewer words: a prominently played non-story. Til the votes are counted.

Portraits of Our Leader

Our Leader loves dressing in uniform. Helps his supporters forget he was a draft-dodging chickenhawk and is still a draft-dodger at heart. Besides, unwarranted and inappropriate wearing of uniforms is a fascist thing....



Our Leader deep in presidential leadership thought. "What piece of the Constitution can we trash now? What more can I do to trash the great nation I twice swore to lead?"

Meet the Idiots who Lead Us

Meet one of Our Leader's Brains, the genius that is Karen Hughes, without whom W would be... well, not Our Leader.

A Thought for the Day, a Reminder

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke

Cleanliness and Godliness

Remember, President Cheney, cleanliness is only next to Godliness; it is not Godliness itself.

Like so many other people involved in politics these days, Mrs. Ryun has become obsessive about using hand sanitizer and ensuring that others do, too. She squirted Purell, the antiseptic goop of choice on the stump and self-proclaimed killer of “99.99 percent of most common germs that may cause illness,” on people lined up to meet Vice President Dick Cheney this month at a fund-raiser in Topeka.

When Mr. Cheney was done meeting and greeting, he, too, rubbed his hands vigorously with the stuff, dispensed in dollops by an aide when the vice president was out of public view.

From http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/us/politics/28dirty.html?ex=1162699200&en=882219dc897c078b&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Today's Arts and Crafts Project

Print out two-sided. Read and memorize. Carry with you. Remember: Worse president (and administration) ever.

(From http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/sites/hightowerlowdown.civicactions.net/files/2006_AugustPoster_letter.pdf)

Another Great Enabler of the Disaster that is Current American Leadership

[W]hile Shays may want his constituents to know about his first--and most daring--trip to Iraq, he apparently doesn't want them to know how he got there. Shays's moment of triumph in Iraq came about because he happened to already be in the Middle East--attending the third Qatar-American Conference on Free Markets and Democracy in the tiny oil-rich nation of Qatar. Shays's visit was paid for by The Islamic Free Market Institute, a nonprofit group founded by GOP ally Grover Norquist and run by a protégé of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff to help bring Muslims into the Republican fold. Days before he snuck across the border to cheer on Operation Iraqi Freedom, Shays was at the Doha Ritz Carlton, comparing Connecticut, a centuries-old, economically diverse democracy, to Qatar, a monarchy ruled by a single family since its independence in 1971. "This nation, like my small state, has always played a large role in advancing participatory democracy, civil discourse, and stable commerce," Shays told a well-heeled audience of Qatari politicians and businessmen over lunch.

Shays has been a strong advocate for public-disclosure rules over the years. "As public servants, we have a responsibility to uphold the ethics process, not weaken it," he told The Houston Chronicle in 2005, objecting to an effort to defang House ethics rules in the wake of revelations about Tom DeLay's overseas travels and ties to Abramoff. Those travel rules require members of Congress to file forms revealing all travel expenses paid by outside sources. But, despite his record of pushing for meticulous record-keeping, Shays's privately sponsored trip to Qatar was notably absent from his own annual federal financial disclosure form, filed in May 2004, in violation of House rules. Nor did he submit an amendment disclosing the sponsor of his Qatar trip until confronted in mid-October 2006 by The New Republic with internal Islamic Institute receipts for his plane tickets, which were provided by an Arab American source upset with Shays's foreign policy positions. Given his reputation and perennially contested district, it was a particularly foolhardy move.

From http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20061106&s=franke-ruta110606

Supporters of Values UPDATED

It turns out that the Republican National Committee is a regular recipient of political contributions from Nicholas T. Boyias, the owner and CEO of Marina Pacific Distributors, one of the largest producers and distributors of gay porn in the United States.

***

FEC.gov lists Boyias as contributing to the RNC three times in 2004 and two times in 2005. The NRCC got a little too. But only $250.

From http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/010647.php

Update:

There's a moment in the Republican National Committee's Harold Ford Jr. attack ad -- it comes smack-dab in the middle of the two bimbo eruptions -- when a sleazy-looking fellow eyes the camera from behind his sunglasses and says, "So he took money from porn movie producers. I mean, who hasn't?"

Who hasn't? Well, it turns out that the RNC has. As Josh Marshall reports, the RNC has accepted a number of campaign contributions from Nicholas T. Boyias, whom Marshall describes as the owner and CEO of one of the largest producers and distributors of gay porn in the United States.

Now, surely there must be a difference between the porn money Ford took and the porn money the RNC is taking, right? There is: Ford gave his back.

Link.

Such beautiful minds....

Gore Speaks

In describing the state of the union, Gore quoted German philosopher Theodor Adorno on the rise of the Nazis.

Adorno conducted a kind of autopsy on the Third Reich and he said the first sign of this descent to hell was when this happened, and these are his words: All questions of fact became questions of power.
...

And I'm not drawing an analogy to what happened there. I'm not. But it's dangerous when we allow questions of fact to become questions of power.

Gore said questions of fact become questions of power, though, when Republicans "censor the scientific reports and when they ... allow themselves to believe that they can create their own reality.

Aldous Huxley once said, "All governments lie. But when they start smoking the same hashish that they're giving out to others, disaster lies.
This crowd has apparently begun to believe its own lies.

From http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/davidpostman/index.html#012742

Of course, he couldn't talk like this if he was actually running....

A Tribute

Link.

Not Staying the Course is Per Se Cutting and Running; If You're not Staying, You're Going

Bush: U.S. Will Not Cut and Run in Iraq

The headline isn't funny but the link (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,103216,00.html -- Blogger's bouncing embedded links these days) is. Have a laff!

GOP Love that Doesn't Speaks it Name -- Only Shows it

Her daddy is happy to run really slimy ads against Harold Ford. So if the ads weren't sufficient proof of his unfitness maybe issues regarding child-rearing (Mark Foley's specialty apparently) might do the trick.

But let me elaborate: If the daughter's actually gay, not an issue. Issue is allowing a young child at a party with free drinking.

But the photo isn't even as slimy as the ads run on behalf of daddy.

Link (yes, there's a real story to this.)

Down the Slippery Slope: Now Easier for Our Leader to Declare Martial Law

This whole piece is essential reading. And tell me again why we shouldn't punish the guys who passed the bill in the first place. Here's the opening, read the rest:

Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
Written by Frank Morales
Thursday, 26 October 2006

In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.

Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is "martial law."

A Rhetorical Question

If Our Leader will never say "Stay the course" again, does it change policy? Are we staying the course or not? And if we are, how is one to say it without saying "Saty the course"?