BUSH FIRED COLIN POWELL!! WHO KNEW?

Tomorrow's Washington Post puts it in black and white-- something few knew and many suspected: Bush fired his well-liked, somewhat too independent minded non-neocon Secretary of State Colin Powell. Bush, always the coward, didn't have the guts to do it himself, of course, and had Andrew Card do the dirty work.

Powell says he had already told Bush he didn't want to stay for what he must have known would be a catastrophic second term. But things could have worked out between the most popular man in Bush's Cabinet and the Regime if Bush would have fired the most loathed man in his Cabinet: Donald Rumsfeld. But, of course, Cheney would never have allowed that. "Powell had constantly found himself on the losing side of regular ideological combat inside the Bush administration, particularly against Rumsfeld and the powerful vice president, Dick Cheney, over Iraq and a host of other foreign policy issues. Though Powell had scored some victories, the rumored humiliations had been real. He had been purposely cut out of major foreign policy decisions more than once, and his advice often had gone unheeded or been only grudgingly accepted by the president... Time and time again during the administration's bumpy first year, Powell had seen Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney intervene to nudge a willing Bush away from moderation and diplomacy, and toward a hard line on foreign policy issues from North Korea to the Middle East. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda on New York and Washington, their attention turned sharply toward Iraq, and by the following summer it was clear that the administration was headed toward war with Saddam Hussein."

Powell never believed any of the ridiculous lies within the Regime about Saddam having had anything at all to do with 9/11. The last straw for Powell was probably when he was ordered to read to the UN General Assembly the pile of manure put together by Irving "Scooter" Libby, Chalabi and Cheney to deceive the world. The Post story is basically the drama around that speech. It's a great piece of living history.

LIEBERMAN GOES FOR THE JUGULAR-- WES CLARK'S

Lieberman has no real game plan to win in Connecticut except the Republican one: fear and smear. He has no ground operation to get out the vote and all he can depend on is that a large Republican turn-out for Governor Jodi Rell and the 3 rubber stamp congresscritters he was campaigning against 6 months ago, Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons and Chris Shays, will accrue to him as well.

During the primary his infamous vicious campaign tactics manifested themselves through ceaseless bleating that Ned Lamont is a closet Republican. Now that Connecticut's Democratic voters have rendered their decision of what they think of Lieberman's use of typically Rovian projection strategy, he has gone from calling Ned a Republican to calling him a dangerous left winger. (He also tries to insinuate Ned is backed by terrorists, something that is patently absurd, especially in light of the revelations how the Bush-Lieberman policies in the Middle East turned the jihadist movement there from a minor annoyance to a gigantic actor on the international stage.)

Anyway, it turns out Ned is hardly the only one being smeared by Lieberman these days. Last week he was on a right wing website attacking Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Chris Dodd. I doubt there are any suckers left in Connecticut who think Lieberman has any intention of caucusing with the Democrats if he wins the election in November. He has completely thrown off his disguise and has come out as a full-fledged neocon Republican in all but word; that would come after the election. Today the latest victim of the Lieberman hate and smear messaging is General Wes Clark, an actual Democrat, one who has been all over America campaigning hard and convincingly for other real Democrats, like Jon Tester, Claire McCaskill, Harold Ford, Charlie Brown, Joe Sestak...

If you recall, when they were both running for president in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary, Lieberman turned a debate from fairly collegial to a knife-thrust towards Clark, challenging his loyalty to the Democratic Party. (In retrospect, a perfect tableau for Lieberman's sick, sick politics.) Now Lieberman has told the Journal Inquirer that General Clark is a partisan, name-calling Democrat. Lieberman can only make up his mind about one thing: everyone is wrong and he's right.

So what set off the volatile and desperate Joementum today? Like all reputable Democratic leaders, from Mark Warner, Russ Feingold, Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy to Barack Obama, Barbara Boxer and Al Gore, Wes Clark endorsed Ned. Did he call Joe names? Did his endorsement disparage the reprehensible Republican shill Lieberman has turned himself into? You judge:

"In Connecticut, Ned Lamont is running the type of campaign all Democrats can be proud of. Standing up to President Bush's failed policy in Iraq, dispensing with self-serving and wishy-washy notions of 'independence,' and pledging to invest in America's future, Ned Lamont is a candidate for Senate who I am proud to endorse."

And for that, Lieberman has gone on an hysterical tirade of name-calling and accusations. The man is clearly cracking. It's hard to believe anyone but hard-core Bush dead-enders still support him.

Quotes of the day: House leaders' problem isn't that Mark is gay, but that he's one of the GOP's countless predatory homophobic closet cases

(1) "Only now have I learned that Congressman Foley was not honest about his conduct."
--Rep. John Shimkus (R-Illinois, right), chairman of the House Page Board, which oversees the House pages, commenting on his "investigation" of information he's had for some 11 months, it appears, about inappropriate online communications between Florida Rep. Mark Foley and at least one House page

Not going too far out on a limb here, are we, Congressman?

(2)"Now it turns out that the chairman of the committee that's supposed to look out for the welfare of abused children well may be a child predator. This is a replay of the Jim West scenario in which Washington State's best known and most rabid Republican homophobe--one who actually made his whole miserable political career campaigning against gay men and women--was all along getting into positions of power so he could seduce underaged boys.
"Normal, uncloseted gay men don't do this. This is what scared, mentally deranged right-wing closet cases do."
--Howie, in his early DWT reporting yesterday on the breaking Foley scandal

LEAVE NO CHILD'S BEHIND-- NEW GOP MOTTO? AND HASTERT CONTINUES THE COVER-UP

Republican Speaker Denny Hastert, Republican Majority Leader John Boehner, John Shimkus and Tom Reynolds knew Foley was a dangerous predator with a penchant for young boys for at least 11 months. And all they did was cover it up. Now we need an independent investigation, not more coverup from Hastert and Boehner.

There may also be cause to at least question another Republican member of the House for his own seedy past with underage boys: Phil English of Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, there will be a Republican running for Congress in FL-16 this November: Mark Foley. According to Section 100.111(4)(a) of the Florida Elections Code, "a party committee gets to name a replacement for Representative Foley, but Foley's name still appears on the ballot. Votes for Foley are deemed votes for his replacement. Given Foley's association with scandal, this surely will work against Republicans: voters who are more likely to have heard about Foley's scandal (and would vote against him) than have heard about the arcane Florida election law allowing votes cast for Foley to be counted for his Republican replacement."

Since the Foley scandal broke and especially since it has leaked out that Hastert has been directing a cover-up. over $7,000 has been donated to the Blue America ActBlue page, much of it to the campaign of John Laesch, the progressive running against Hastert and a young man who was raised by missionary parents and understands the difference between exploitive campaign slogans about faith and values and real faith and values.


IS HASTERT BECOMING A NATIONAL PARIAH FOR GOP, LIKE BUSH?

Chris Carney has demanded that Don Sherwood, another sexual predator, cancel his fundraisers with Republican cover-up leaders Hastert and Boehner. "Holding happy hour fundraisers with people who cover-up the cyber-molestation of children should be below even the questionable morals of Don Sherwood," said Carney campaign manager Andrew Eldredge-Martin. "Sherwood should immediately cancel his upcoming fundraisers with Hastert and Boehner. Don Sherwood has already brought Washington’s values back to the district, now he wants to bring a depraved cover-up home."


UPDATE: MORE DEMOCRATS DENOUNCING THE COVER-UP BY HASTERT, REYNOLDS AND BOEHNER

Today's South Florida Sun-Sentinel, which has long been aware that Foley is gay and running re-election campaigns on anti-gay messaging to religionist voters, but never spoke up about it, published a devastating story about the unbelieveable cover-up by the House Republican leadership. They quote Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, from a neighboring district, denouncing Hastert's complete and utterly shameful dereliction of duty.

"It's made more outrageous by the fact that Republican leaders knew about it a year ago and they kept it a secret, in order to protect their political lives instead of protecting the lives of pages," Wasserman Schultz said at a press conference at Palm Beach International Airport. She was flanked by former presidential candidate U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Tim Mahoney, the Democrat running for Foley's former Palm Beach County-based seat. Mahoney echoed her comments.

"The past 48 hours, people in the 16th District have been in the eye of a hurricane," said the Palm Beach Gardens businessman. "And it's now clear from all of the reports that have been coming in from across the country that the Republican leadership team has been well aware of this problem for well over a year."

WHEN WILL HASTERT RESIGN?

Like I said earlier, the Republican leaders can't get their stories straight about who knew what when. Last night Boehner said Hastert knew and promised "to take care of it" and today Boehner seemed to change his story. Hastert reacts like an enraged mother elephant if anyone suggests he knew. Unfortunately for the Illinois Elephant, Tom Reynolds decided he's not taking the rap for this one. Already sinking in the polls in his own re-election campaign, Reynolds went on the record today to say Hastert knew all along.

"National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) issued a statement Saturday in which he said that he had informed Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) of allegations of improper contacts between then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) and at least one former male page, contradicting earlier statements from Hastert. GOP sources said Reynolds told Hastert earlier in 2006, shortly after the February GOP leadership elections. Hastert's response to Reynolds' warning remains unclear. Hastert's staff insisted Friday night that he was not told of the Foley allegations and are scrambling to respond to Reynolds' statement."

Hastert is a real piece of work. He was, after all, the one who covered Tom DeLay's ass all these years-- remember he was a protege of DeLay's not the other way around-- even going so far as to fire the chairman of the House Ethics Committee, Joel Hefley, after the Committee gave DeLay a mild slap on the wrist, replacing him with a low-IQ bimbo shill, "Doc" Hastings. Even the right wing Chicago Tribune is asking why Hastert let Foley keep his child-protection job.


REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS WON'T GIVE BACK THE CONTRIBUTIONS THEY GOT FROM FOLEY

Loaded down with bribe money from Big Business, Foley has a leadership PAC he's used to buy affection from his Republican colleagues. Among the Republicans who are refusing to return the money that was given to them by the pedophile right winger are:

Vernon Buchanon (R-FL)
Geoff Davis (R-KY)
Jim Gerlach (R-PA), long rumored to be a "special friend" of Foley's
Nancy Johnson (R-CT)
Bob Ney (R-OH)
Deborah Pryce (R-OH)
Clay Shaw (R-FL)
Curt Weldon (R-PA)
Pete Sessions (R-TX)
Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Norm Coleman (R-MN)
Mel Martinez (R-FL)
Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL)
John Doolittle (R-CA)
Tom Feeney (R-FL)
Mike Ferguson (R-NJ)
Katherine Harris (R-FL)
John Thune (R-SD)
Mark Kennedy (R-MN)
Robin Hayes (R-NC)
Ric Keller (R-FL)
Tom Lathan (R-IA)
Mike Rogers (R-AL)
Rob Simmons (R-CT)
Heather Wilson (R-NM)

Why won't these Republicans give back the money? Whose side are they on-- ours or the child molesters'?


MORE PROOF OF A REPUBLICAN HOUSE LEADERSHIP PEDOPHILIA COVER-UP

There's one Democrat on the Republican controlled board that oversees the pages, Dale Kildee (D-MI). The Republicans carefully kept him out of the loop on all charges involving Foley's inappropriate behavior towards the underaged male pages. Here's Congressman Kildee's statement:

As the Democratic Member of the House Page Board, any statement by Mr. Reynolds or anyone else that the House Page Board ever investigated Mr. Foley is completely untrue. I was never informed of the allegations about Mr. Foley's inappropriate communications with a House Page and I was never involved in any inquiry into this matter. The first and only meeting of the House Page Board on this matter occurred on Friday, September 29 at approximately 6 p.m., after the allegations about Mr. Foley had become public.

So, it looks like Dennis Hastert, Tom Reynolds, John Boehner and John Shimkus conspired to cover-up for Foley, who they knew was a dangerous predator actively seeking out children. We're talking about a powerful 52 year old congressman coming on to 16 year old, insecure, confused pages, young men extremely impressed with what a congressman is. And Hastert, Reynolds, Boehner and Shimkus decided to cover it up. These people have no shame and no decency. They should be tried as accessories to Foley's crimes.


GOODNIGHT UPDATE: REPUGS AT EACH OTHER'S THROATS OVER FOLEY COVER-UP

Watch every endangered Republican incumbent turn Hastert into a gargantuan piñata. Tomorrow's New York Times signals the opening shots of a civil war inside the Republican House caucus.

Peter King, the Long Island Republican on the verge of losing his seat to Dave Mejias went crying to The Times that it was a "dark day" for Congress and demanding a full investigation of the cover-up. "Anyone who was involved in the chain of information should come forward and tell when they were told, what they were told and what they did with the information when they got it." No that wasn't Nancy Pelosi; it was the normally docile rubber stamp from Nassau County.

And the even more endangered Chris Shays went even further, claiming that if Hastert, Shimcus, Reynolds, or Boehner were aware of Foley's behavior and failed to take action they should step down. "If they knew or should have known the extent of this problem, they should not serve in leadership." John Sweeney is running around yelling "me too, me too."

While the GOP leaders, clearly nervous about their jobs and possible criminal liabilities, call, meaninglessly, for a criminal investigation of Foley, the pressure for a non-partisan investigation into what exactly Hastert, Boehner, Reynolds and Shimcus knew, when they knew it and why they covered it up, is building powerfully.

DR. STEVEN PORTER KNOWS HOW TO CURE THE AILMENTS BUSH HAS INFLICTED ON AMERICA

Today at 2 PM (EST) Dr. Steven Porter, candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania's 3rd congressional district, will be the featured Blue America guest at Firedoglake. Please come and meet him and ask him any questions you'd like.

I've been having a difficult time figuring out exactly who Steve Porter is. I mean politically I have it all figured out: brilliant, progressive true believer, hard-headed idealist, dot-every-i-and-cross-evert-t idea man. But personally... well he was in a pop-rock band called Free Press long, long ago and he's written 18 books and he reminds me of my college friend Helen's father, the guy who helped me understand what it meant in the real world to be progressive.

The contest in PA-03 is a rematch of the 2004 race pitting a pretty pathetic rubber stamp nonentity, Phil English, against Steve. The district gave Bush 53% in 2004 and English beat Steve 60/40, after blanketing the district in mud, going so far as to have a Young Republican Club denounce Steve, a scholarly Jewish professor, as a Nazi and a supporter of forced sterilizations. PA-03 is the extreme northwest corner of Pennsylvania. Erie's the biggest city. It's about 40% rural and it's overwhelmingly white and considerably poorer than Pennsylvania in general. The district could hardly be more poorly represented.

In fact when I asked Steve to tell me why he felt English is unsuitable for his job, he talked for 30 minutes, eloquently and factually, without coming up for air. "Phil English is a lockstep supporter of the war in Iraq," he began, "and he has never questioned anything about the misuse of intelligence or the misappropriations of billions of dollars."

Like so many Republican incumbents English's "I support the troops" line is just a meaningless slogan and he regularly has voted against extending assistance to our fighting men and women. Because of the composition of the district English tries to pass himself off as a moderate, which is patently absurd if you look at his extremist voting record and notice his complete subservience to the bought-and-paid-for Big Business agenda. An F/zero from DMI's analysis of legislation meant to help the middle class barely even begins to tell the story about English's disgraceful career at the public trough.

"Whenever there's a critical vote that the Bush Administration needs," explained Steve, "Phil English is available for his arm to be twisted. He always complies. Three important examples: HR-1 (Medicare, Part D)." [This is particularly significant in PA-03 because in 2000 English claimed he would fight for cheaper drug imports from Canada and it helped him win re-election]... He was the deciding vote on CAFTA-- after promising the Erie Central Labor Council that he'd vote against it. [Previously the AFL-CIO has supported English, although this year they have endorsed Steven]... And he was one of the deciding votes on HR-2045, the Budget Reconciliation Bill, the bill that is trying to fund the deficit created by the war in Iraq and tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans with cuts in funds for education, senior citizen housing, anti-drug school programs... It passed by 2 votes, 216-214."

But even with all that, Steve says the residents of the district have other things they are up in arms about. Out-sourcing of jobs has devastated PA-03 more than most districts and Alan Tomelson, author of Race To The Bottom, calls the district ground zero for the exportation of American jobs. "Phil English's votes on trade have cost-- according to the Department of Labor this district 9,700 jobs. "This guy has voted to give tax breaks to companies that outsource! He authored HR-767, euphemistically called the Homeland Investment Act, which allows American companies which have made profits overseas to bring the money back to the U.S. at a federal tax rate of 5.25%." If the companies had made the profit inside the U.S., the tax rate would be 35%. Obviously, this is a gigantic incentive for companies to ship business and jobs overseas.


Steve is well aware that English is a crook and a liar but he prefers to talk only about issues. The fact that English takes legal bribes from Big Business and then votes for the corporate agenda against the interests of his constituents is fair game. The fact that English has had more trips paid for by the taxpayers than almost any other member of Congress-- even more than the disgraced Bob Ney-- is fair game, as is his unbelievable taxpayer-funded dining bills-- more than what the next 10 big eaters charge the government combined-- is fair game. But even in light of yesterday's resignation of Mark Foley, Steve won't make an issue out of the widespread knowledge that there's a child predator scandal or two rattling around in English's closet.

Steve knows exactly what he wants to do when he gets to Washington. He has a plan for creating much needed jobs in NW Pennsylvania, revolving around wind power-- a Great Lakes Wind Farm-- and alternative energy. He is eager to get our troops out from "the middle of a civil war of our own making" in Iraq and is gung-ho on helping pass a Murtha-like solution. And he wants to put as much energy as he can into affordable health care. "On my first day on the job I would be the 73rd congressman to sign on as a co-sponsor to John Conyers' HR-676, American physicians' prescription to solve the health care crisis, which the Republicans have bottled up in committee, since their party is owned by the Insurance Industry, who have, not incidentally, given Phil English hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Steve talks about his idea for making Social Security permanently solvent, just by lifting the earnings cap so that every American, not just the middle class, pays in 6.2% of income. And his solution to our political mess is just as clear-minded: "We can end corruption in DC by electing people who refuse to take lobbyists money, who refuse to be bought by corporations and who support campaign finance reform based on public funding as in Maine and Arizona... The only way we're going to stop this is if we stop hiring the foxes who keep eating the chickens."

Like almost all the challengers we've met this year, the DCCC isn't paying attention to Steve and he's pushing on without them, running a grassroots campaign-- lots of lawn signs, unions halls, parades, civic clubs, senior citizens homes, colleges... Steve is a brilliant debater and he cut English to threads in 2004 and English is petrified to take him on one on one this year. There are 3 candidates forums coming up sponsored by non-partisan groups like AARP, CrimeWatch, the Butler County Chamber of Commerce, etc. It looks like Steve will be debating an empty chair (although there is a third party candidate, Tim Hagberg from the Constitution Party, even further to the right than English.

Media is pretty inexpensive in the district and I'm hoping we can buy Steve some 30-second cable TV spots in Erie today. The spots cost $26 each. If we can raise $2,600 amongst ourselves he'll have 100 targeted TV spots in the district's main population center. The Blue America ActBlue Page is open for business. I hope it will encourage you that today I have 20 autographed copies of the brilliant new book by Sidney Blumenthal, How Bush Rules-- Chronicles of a Radical Regime, one of the most important and best-written political books of the entire Bush era.

And as an extra treat, the first 5 people who contribute $250 or more will get a personally inscribed, autographed copy of Steve Porter's latest novel, Hannes Klar, which isn't even out in the U.S. yet. These are editions from the already sold-out first U.K. printing.

MAGS-- DIGGIN' DEEP TO COME UP WITH THE COURAGE TO KEEP BELIEVING THERE IS HOPE

There comes a point in time when courage becomes the by word of the times. These are those times. I feel gratitude toward Mr. Clinton and Mr. Olbermann today as I left sift down through layers of my psyche the information that George Bush will soon have the blessing of Congress to label anyone he pleases an enemy combatant, and that once named so any rights you thought you had cease to exist.

I worry even more in an atmosphere charged with fear where the labels "Al Qaeda" and "Democrats" appear in the same sentence for Tony Snow and Dick Cheney, in an atmosphere where the pResident of the United States calls Democrats obstructionists. Since this administration has such a terrible track record in catching real terrorists it makes me wonder what other phony terrorists they will round up next.

To speak out now, it seems to me, is an act of courage. It is no longer a hobby or something we do as part of routine. At this moment in time, to speak is to immediately put oneself in danger in this our homeland, in this our beloved nation which has been sold to a pack of dogs who do not understand in any way the value of freedom and dignity, even though these are the words they use to sell us hatred and fear.

And, election year worries have made cowards of more than the Republicans as we note that several Senators in tough election race this year did the bidding of Karl Rove and George Bush, and they came down on the side of torture and loss of habeas corpus. Yes, courage everyone! Thanks, well done, you paragons of virtue and morality. Thanks for shaking in your shoes. When the record is read back to you, if and when we get the chance to retake the House and the Senate, what will your excuse be? "I was against the torture before I was for it?" It disgusts me that I have no option than to vote for a coward over a tyrant. We deserve better. Should the rest of us, the voting public also shake in our shoes at the mention of Karl Rove and the Swift Boaters? Role models are you?

I am tempted today to throw in the towel, to give up on our Democracy, to say to hell with you and your whining and your ineffectiveness. How easy to climb into apathy and just forget about the loss of freedoms for the masses. I am main stream enough to pass. But, I won’t.

But, what I will do today is dig deep, and come up with the courage to to believe there is still hope. Today, I will have courage since you legislators cannot seem to muster any. Today, I will keep on fighting to tell the truth, and to live it. And, even though I cannot muster any media support and I cannot make any laws and I cannot influence the powerful, I will continue to do my part. I will continue to call the little dictator what he is. I will continue to call for the strong to guard our freedom. I will continue to be brave and hope they knock on your door before they knock on mine.

REPUBLICAN CLOSET CASE MARK FOLEY CAUGHT MAKING A PLAY FOR A YOUNG BOY?

It surprised me to read yesterday and today that closeted gay Florida homophobe, Mark Foley, was caught trying to pick up an underaged congressional page, a male, of course. Underaged boys have been more the domain of already-publicly-outed Republican Congressman Jim Kolbe (AZ), who is well-known in the Tucson gay community for his penchant for young latino boys. I don't know if Foley is a fan of U.K. alternative rockers, the Gang of 4 or not but, like them, he seems to love a man in a uniform. Not that he supports our troops-- he doesn't, at least not with his votes-- but he is famously known to be very fond of young men in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. He and disgraced/resigned Virginia Republican congressman Ed Schrock always shared a yen for butcher trade... or so everyone always thought.

So now it turns out that the Chairman of the committee that's supposed to look out for the welfare of abused children well may be a child predator. This is a replay of the Jim West scenario in which Washington State's best known and most rabid Republican homophobe-- one who actually made his whole miserable political career campaigning against gay men and women-- was all along getting into positions of power so he could seduce underaged boys.

Normal, uncloseted gay men don't do this. This is what scared, mentally-deranged right-wing closet cases do. I don't know what Pennsylvania congressman Phil English has been up to lately... but he has quite the colorful history of molesting young boys. But don't ask me what David Dreier does. Aside from grossly overpaying his husband/chief of "staff" and taking him on vacations to all the international gay hotspots-- at taxpayer expense-- I think he's more about collecting corporate cash than he is about preying on young boys.

Foley was denied the GOP U.S. Senate nomination in Florida because of his randy ways, the Republicans preferring a bribe taking, psychopath and sure loser to gay Foley. If you care to look at the actual e-mails between the 16 year old object of maf54@aol.com's (Foley's) amorous attentions, Raw Story printed the actual documents. CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is demanding that corrupt old Republican hack, Doc Hastings, Tom DeLay's handpicked shill on the House Ethics Committee investigate the child predator charges against Foley at once. The DCCC hack opposing Foley, a "former" Republican named Tim Mahoney, is also demanding an investigation.


INSTANT UPDATE: ANOTHER CLOSETED GAY REPUBLICAN BITES THE DUST-- FOLEY RESIGNING

CNN already reported that Foley is resigning. Associated Press seems less certain and only says he's "considering" resigning but that he would decide imminently. It's too late to replace him on the ballot, so this district will now be a Democratic pick-up. No one thought Mahoney would win.

MINI-UPDATE... ANOTHER "FAMILY VALUES" REPUBLICAN FADES TO BLACK

It's now official. Foley has resigned... effective immediately. Apparently there are more, far more incriminating e-mails, that are floating around out there.


UH OH... NOW THIS IS STARTING TO GET REALLY UGLY

ABC News just posted this:

Maf54: Do I make you a little horny ?
Teen: A little.
Maf54: Cool.

This is only going to get worse.

About a week ago I interviewed one of the most exciting progressive candidates I've talked to in this cycle, Colorado's Angie Paccione who is running against another Republican hypocrite trying to scare "faith-and-values" voters into electing morally bankrupt right wingers, the odious Marilyn Musgrave. Angie's heart-felt spiritual values loom large in her consciousness. She's the real thing, someone who understands Jesus' message of love and embraces it. "I'm a born again, spirit-filled, evenagelical Christian," Angie told me, "one who believes in living it, not legislating it."

People who vote for Republicans like Musgrave, Bush and Foley need to dig a little deeper. Talk is cheap. Actions speak much louder. Foley's are preying on young people over whom he has a great deal of power. Musgrave's are all about preaching Hatred and Bigotry.

Action items: First-- my friend James L. has a brilliant idea to help Foley get right with himself again. Foley has almost $3 million dollars in campaign cash. he ought to donate it to an organization that cares for abused children. Otherwise it will go to an organization that abets abusers of children, the NRCC. And second-- today would be a great day for believers to kick the GOP habit and find a real faith and values candidate to help out. May I suggest Angie Paccione, Larry Kissell and Roger Sharpe?





If you want to see why Foley resigned within hours of the revelations-- and why he will soon be getting to re-ignite his relationship with Duke Cunningham-- read the raw IM log from ABC News (but only if you're 21 or older or if you have parental permission): http://abcnews.go.com/images/WNT/02-02-03b.pdf

Jamie over at Crooks and Liars has the ABC-TV video and brings up an interesting point. All the pages were warned to keep away from Foley since it was widely known that he's a sexual predator. That's how they protected these kids? Karl Rove's party that runs for office every 2 years based on scaring church-goers that the gays are gonna get ya and they allow this kind of crap to go on inside their own party-- with children??

Oh and by the way, it's a federal offense to send dirty e-mails to a minor. He can't say he didn't know about the law. He wrote it!


GOODNIGHT UPDATE: HASTERT KNEW FOLEY WAS PREYING ON CHILDREN AND AS BEFITTING THE DO-NOTHING SPEAKER OF THE DO-NOTHING HOUSE... DID NOTHING

Hastert and Boehner can't get their stories straight about who knew what when, although Boehner told today's Washington Post that he had learned this spring of some 'contact' between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and that Hastiest assured him 'we're taking care of it.'" This sounds like it revolves around the incident Rodney Alexander reported to Tom Reynolds and the GOP leadership when Foley tried to seduce a young page from his district.

When cornered by reporters Hastert gave a classic closing the barn door after the horses had all gotten away statement. Hastert has refused to comment on why, even after finding out that Foley had a diseased attitude towards children, he still allowed him to chair the House caucus on missing and exploited children

Quote of the day: E. J. Dionne Jr. looks at the implications of Bill Clinton's refusal to stand by any longer while the Far Right rewrites history

"To this day I remain astonished at [Rush] Limbaugh's gall [writing in a 10/4/2001 WSJ op-ed piece, "If we're serious about avoiding past mistakes and improving national security, we can't duck some serious questions about Mr. Clinton's presidency"]--and at his shrewdness. Republicans were arguing simultaneously that it was treasonous finger-pointing to question what Bush did or failed to do to prevent the attacks, but patriotic to go after Clinton. Thus did they build up a mythology that cast Bush as the tough hero in confronting the terrorist threat and Clinton as the shirker. Bad history. Smart politics."
--E. J. Dionne Jr., in his Washington Post column today, "Why Bill Clinton Pushed Back"

After reviewing the familiar history of the post-9/11 period, when the country, including most Democrats, was in a mood for bipartisanship, and the Bush administration instead pursued a campaign of extremist ideological partisanship as savage, ruthless, uncompomising and dishonest as anything in the history of this country (well, that's my characterization, not his), Dionne focuses on former President Clinton's now-famous TV confrontation Sunday with that pathetic, useless hack Chris Wallace:
My canvassing of Clinton insiders suggests two things about his outburst on "Fox News Sunday." First, he did not go into the studio knowing he would do it. There was, they say, a spontaneity to his anger. But, second, he had thought long and hard about comparisons between his record on terrorism and Bush's. He had his lines down pat from private musing about how he had been turned into a punching bag by the right. Something like this, one adviser said, was bound to happen eventually.

Sober, moderate opinion will say what sober, moderate opinion always says about an episode of this sort: Tut tut, Clinton looked unpresidential, we should worry about the future, not the past, blah, blah, blah.

But sober, moderate opinion was largely silent as the right wing slashed and distorted Clinton's record on terrorism. It largely stood by as the Bush administration tried to intimidate its own critics into silence. As a result, the day-to-day political conversation was tilted toward a distorted view of the past. All the sins of omission and commission were piled onto Clinton while Bush was cast as the nation's angelic avenger. And as conservatives understand, our view of the past greatly influences what we do in the present.

A genuinely sober and moderate view would recognize that it's time the scales of history were righted. Propagandistic accounts need to be challenged, systematically and consistently. The debate needed a very hard shove. Clinton delivered it.

And it appears that the former president's shove may be having effects. Fox News itself has been surprisingly defensive, beginning with its hissy-fit ordering of the interview clip off of YouTube, and continuing with the retreat by Fox spokespeople to the position that it was "an overreaction" on the part of their Internet department. Even more entertaining is the latest psycho-Right response: accusing the former president of "feigning" anger. So his response would have been OK if he was really angry, but since he was only pretending, it's . . . uh . . . he was . . . er . . .

Hey, we only report this stuff. We don't try to explain it. (Well, we try sometimes, but we don't always succeed.)


ALSO TALKING--Roger Ailes sticks up for his "respectful reporter"

''If you can't sit there and answer a question from a professional, mild-mannered, respectful reporter like Chris Wallace, then the hatred for journalists is showing.''
--Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, in an interview with the Associated Press Wednesday

And of course who knows more about respect for journalism than the master of Fox News? (MediaMatters has a useful comment on the Ailes imbecilities.)

The next time anyone on Fox News is caught committing journalism, stuff the creature and send it to the Smithsonian.

MORE ON BUSH'S TORTURE BILL-- SUPPORTING POLITICAL INDEPENDENTS IS THE BEST ALTERNATIVE, BUT YOU DON'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

When big corporations pour tens of millions of dollars into Republican and DLC congressional candidates annually, they are making a purchase. They're buying very specific support for a very specific agenda. Big Oil bribed Dirty Dick Pombo with over $200,000. That's a lot of money for a money grubbing pischer like Pombo. But in return the Chairman of the Resources Committee, was able to deliver millions of dollars in favors to Big Oil. Just north of Pomboland, John Doolittle is at least as corrupt and Big Oil bought his ass for over $120,000 to get him to vote against proposals o restrict price gouging (among other things on Big Oil's legislative agenda). Both of these crooked politicians also took tremendous bribes from Big Pharma and both expressed their appreciation by supporting the Big Pharma-written Medicare Bill. Do you think senior citizens in Northern California appreciate John Doolittle and Dirty Dick Pombo shoving the doughnut hole down their throats? I just picked these two almost as random. Every single Republican congressman is on the take from Big Business. Big Oil and Big Pharma are two of the worst. Defense contractors have been bribing Republicans and making out like bandits, although several of the bandits are in prison and several more are headed that way. Buck McKeon is the Chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee and while he oversaw the rise on student loan rates by 2.4% and cut federal student loan programs by a staggering $12.7 billion, the very people who stand to benefit most from these policies, student loan vendors, were shoving over a quarter million dollars in bribes up McKeon's ass.

DLC Democrats are exactly as corrupt as Republicans. They just haven't had as much to offer lately. Just wait. But that's another story, one I follow avidly. But what about non-DLC Democrats, the ones who don't believe in selling votes for legalized (and otherwise) bribes? Well, those are our guys. And when I interview candidates I always ask them if they support substantive campaign finance reform. I had a great talk with Sherrod Brown a few weeks ago on the subject. I was very proud to support a man who could assure me that he never sells his vote. Period. I believed him them. And I believe him now. I donated some money to his campaign and urged my friends and DWT readers to do likewise.

So, at least on one level, Brown's out-of-character vote for Bush's Torture Bill shouldn't have shocked me. Our donations weren't buying Brown's votes, not even on this crucial a matter. By donating to his campaign-- and encouraging others to do the same-- I was making a gamble, based on a long and solid record, that we would be helping to elected a good Senator who would make the right decisions.

By voting the same way as Mike Dewine, Bill Frist, Trent Lott, Felix Macacawitz, Rick Santorum, Denny Hastert, Roy Blunt and Mean Jean Schmidt, Brown made a big mistake. He doesn't think so. Below you'll find Brown's rationale for his vote. Tom Curry's defense of him at MSNBC fell pretty flat to my ears. "Unlike Mike Dewine," Curry quotes him as saying, "I'm willing to stand up to my party when they're wrong." God... has Lieberman been mentoring him too? Anyway, I want to explain why I'm not writing any more checks to Brown's campaign and why I'm not asking anyone else to do any more than to vote for him on election day-- even if it means holding their noses when they pull the lever, or whatever you do these days with that Diebold crap.

A few days ago I was looking at Brown's 10 point lead over Bush rubber stamp Mike Dewine and I was writing how after January Sherrod and Russ Feingold would be able to help deprogram Obama from all that mentoring Lieberman had filled him with. I imagined the three of them could be a real "can-do" spearhead of progressive values aimed right at the heart of the U.S. Senate.

To tell you the truth, I still hope Congressman Brown wins his Senate race against Dewine. Brown has a better-than-excellent record and he has been an important leader on fair trade and other crucial issues. But, as I explained to his campaign today, we don't compromise on torture. Citing a crass, worthless, sell-out windbag like McCain as an excuse, doesn't make it any more palatable.

Yes, the House passed Bush's torture bill a couple days ago 253-168. And yes, all but 7 Republicans voted for torture. And all the Democrats except for 34 who decided they were Republicans when it comes to torture, voted NO. I basically don't care about fake Democrats who can almost always be counted on to support BushCheney in a pinch-- the John Barrows, Dan Borens, Tim Holdens, Stephanie Herseths, Chet Edwardses, Jim Marshalls, Henry Cuellars, Leonard Boswells, Gene Taylors, Collin Petersons (a fucking co-sponsor, the only Democrat who was willing to give the crooks a fig leaf of bipartisanship, of the doughnut hole Medicare Bill), Jim Mathesons, Harold Fords, Melissa Beans. I do, however, care about Sherrod Brown's vote.

I care for a number of reasons. I expect more, a lot more, from a leader like Brown, whose record has been so sterling and inspiring. But he's violated a core value-- Thou Shalt Not Torture Nor Tread On Habeus Corpus. No exceptions. Is Mike Dewine worse? Don't ask stupid questions. On his best day, Dewine will never be worth a bucket of spit and on his worst day-- 2 days ago-- Brown will always be better than the likes of Mike Dewine. But by voting with the pro-torture camp, basically Republicans and a few right wing or cowardly, unprincipled fake-Democrats, Brown took all the onus off Dewine to join Specter and a few others in the Senate to at least not wreck Habeus Corpus, an amendment that lost by 2 votes.

As Orcinus pointed out so eloquently today, it's important to remember who decides who is and who isn't liable to be tortured: George W. Bush. Sherrod Brown believes that's ok? I know he doesn't. He serves in the same body with Congresswoman Louise Slaughter who mentioned today that "No law enforcement agency ever came before Congress and said new wiretapping powers were needed to secure the homeland. And yet, this Republican Congress has taken it upon itself to roll over on some of our most basic constitutional rights so that the President can have even more power. Today, Republicans are poised to rubber stamp the Administration's latest efforts to legalize spying on American citizens. The Republican line is, trust us-- we're from the government. But after so many lies and distortions, why should we trust this Administration? It has sullied our reputation around the world as the torch-bearer of democracy by authorizing secret prisons, planting propaganda at home and abroad, and fighting attempts to ban torture. The last thing Congress should be granting it is more unchecked power." Trust George W. Bush? All Congressman Brown has to do is think about Iraq. Or think about New Orleans.

My Sherrod Brown/Russ Feingold fantasy is rich with irony considering how the two men handled the Bush Torture Bill. I printed out Feingold's Senate speech and tacked it up on my wall. I hope Congressman Brown reads it. Or maybe he could read what Senator Kerry says about the bill:

We've got to tell the truth about what's happening right now-- right now-- in our country. We must start treating our moral authority as a national treasure that doesn't limit our power but magnifies our influence. That seems obvious, but this Administration still doesn't get it. Still. Right now-- today-- they are trying to rush a bill through Congress that will fundamentally undermine our moral authority, put our troops at greater risk, and make our country less safe.

Let me be clear about something-- something that it seems few people are willing to say. This bill permits torture. It gives the President the discretion to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions. No matter how much well-intended United States Senators would like to believe otherwise, it gives an Administration that lobbied for torture just what it wanted.

The only guarantee we have that these provisions really will prohibit torture is the word of the President. But we have seen in Iraq the consequences of simply accepting the word of this Administration. No, we cannot just accept the word of this Administration that they will not engage in torture given that everything they've already done and said on this most basic question has already put our troops at greater risk and undermined the very moral authority needed to win the war on terror.

I contacted Congressman Brown's office early yesterday morning to let them know I was more than disappointed and that I had angry readers sending me e-mails and that I felt that I would probably not be an effective fundraiser for him any longer. They asked me to read a statement on his website:

Yesterday, Congressman Brown voted for a bill that creates a military tribunal to try those enemy combatants that have been held by the government since September 11, 2001.

This compromise is supported by Senator John McCain, a former POW who fought to ensure that this tribunal lives up to our national standards on human rights.

Unlike President Bush's plan, this compromise measure prohibits the degrading treatment of detainees and specifically lists the types of behaviors that are banned in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

The Washington Post wrote about the legislation, "The compromise legislation does not seek to narrow U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions in the treatment of prisoners, as Bush had hoped."

Those detained have been held for more than 5 years with no opportunity to prove their guilt or innocence.

It will provide that opportunity, so that those who are innocent can be set free and those who are guilty can be punished. 
   
The bill prohibits the use of cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of detainees. Because that evidence is often unreliable, it will not admit evidence obtained through torture.

Detainees will be entitled to Combatant Status Review, where they may challenge their detention within the confines of the military tribunal system.
 
And the bill will allow combatants to receive an edited version of classified evidence being used to convict them so that they can respond without putting our national security at risk.

Congressman Brown feels it has taken far too long for a legal framework to be developed – for the innocent who must be freed, the guilty that must be punished, and our homeland which must be secured.

Sherrod is a very smart man, smarter than most members of Congress I've talked to. And he isn't a naive man either. And even if he didn't understand, his brilliant wife certainly does. If he honestly thinks Bush's Torture Bill is a good piece of legislation, that's even more problematic than just admitting, at least to himself, that he voted for it-- alone among progressives-- as a crass political calculation, although who exactly torture appeals to (at least among people who aren't positively wedded to Bush and Dewine) in beyond me. Does Brown believe in the same Republican pile of crap that Dewine believes in? I'm certain he doesn't. He has a long record of accomplishment that shows he doesn't. I wonder if he thinks anyone is going to fall for his spin. No one I know is.

BUSH HAS MORE IN MIND THAN JUST TORTURE AND SHREDDING THE CONSTITUTION-- LIKE NUKING IRAN

Deep in your heart you think even Bush wouldn't dare attack Iran with nuclear weapons, right? Admit it. Paul Roberts, Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Ronald Reagan-- think about c.v for a second-- seems quite certain that the Bush Regime has every intention of nuking Iran.

Wow, and I thought I was depressed about Sherrod Brown going over to the Dark Side yesterday! This is way worse. Roberts, a dyed-in-the-wool old line conservative loathes the neocon bumblers as much as we do. If you don't want to read his lengthy, well-thought out essay, let me give you the Cliff Notes version.

"The neoconservative Bush administration will attack Iran with tactical nuclear weapons, because it is the only way the neocons believe they can rescue their goal of U.S. (and Israeli) hegemony in the Middle East." Bush lost both the wars he started; the generals are screaming for more troops and there ain't done to send. Europe has told the despised Bush he's on his own. Remember that make-believe coalition-- "assembled with bribes, threats, and intimidation"-- of Fiji and Slovenia? Yeah, neither do they.

"Bush's defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel's defeat by Hezbollah in Lebanon have shown that the military firepower of the U.S. and Israeli armies, though effective against massed Arab armies, cannot defeat guerillas and insurgencies. The U.S. has battled in Iraq longer than it fought against Nazi Germany, and the situation in Iraq is out of control. The Taliban have regained half of Afghanistan. The king of Saudi Arabia has told Bush that the ground is shaking under his feet as unrest over the American/Israeli violence against Muslims builds to dangerous levels. Our Egyptian puppet sits atop 100 million Muslims who do not think that Egypt should be a lackey of U.S. hegemony. The king of Jordan understands that Israeli policy is to drive every Palestinian into Jordan."

Roberts thinks Bush doesn't have the brains to understand he fucked up and can only fathom escalation. "Neocons believe that a nuclear attack on Iran would have intimidating force throughout the Middle East and beyond." Neocons, who have been consistently wrong about everything are certain "Iran would not dare retaliate... against U.S. ships, U.S. troops in Iraq, or use their missiles against oil facilities in the Middle East." They want to show it is futile to resist the will of the Empire. According to Roberts, "Neocons say that even the most fanatical terrorists would realize the hopelessness of resisting U.S. hegemony. The vast multitude of Muslims would realize that they have no recourse but to accept their fate."

Roberts doesn't deal with the obvious, that little things about neocons always being wrong about everything and never ever ever being right. Instead, he points out that "revised U.S. war doctrine concludes that tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons cause relatively little 'collateral damage' or civilian deaths, while achieving a powerful intimidating effect on the enemy. The 'fear factor' disheartens the enemy and shortens the conflict." Sound familiar yet?


The likely results? end of the Nonproliferation Treaty, countries scurrying "pell-mell" in pursuit of nuclear weapons, possibly a Chinese/Russian alliance, U.S. being a complete pariah nation (instead of just Bush being a rogue, lame duck, pariah head of state). Roberts has a few things to say about the impotence of American opposition, the mania of the neocons and he ends interesting, for a lifelong establishment Republican:

"It is astounding that such dangerous fanatics have control of the U.S. government and have no organized opposition in American politics."

THE TORTURE PARTY WINS A BATTLE... LOSES THE WAR?

Many Americans are too insular and too terrorized-- history will be the judge, of course, but come on: 6 years of BushCheneyRove-- to give a rat's ass about what Congress approved. And, according to Friday's Washington Post all it was was "landmark changes to the nation's system of interrogating and prosecuting terrorism suspects... [and] preparing the ground for possible military trials for key al-Qaeda members under rules that critics say will draw stiff constitutional challenges."

I'm sure many Americans think the "stiff constitutional challenges" are all bullshit. In the Senate a mere 33 Democrats (out of 45) and a one non-extremist Republican (Chafee) stood up to Bush. Virtually the entire GOP rallied round Bush, who was probably more eager to find a campaign theme with which to lambaste Democrats-- remember the pictures of Max Cleland with Osama bin-Laden?-- than he is in torturing per se-- although he is interested in making sure he and his cronies don't wind up at War Crimes Tribunals someday.

I was listening to Air America last night and whoever was yammering mentioned some factoid which was so astounding I promptly forgot it, although the gist of it was that around a third of Americans have ever been in a bookstore and only around a half of our college graduates ever read a single book after college. So who cares about the Magna Carta or habeus corpus? Certainly not Republicans. Turns out most Democrats in the Senate and the vast majority in the House actually do.
Do Americans?

I guess we'll find out in November. The polling I've seen isn't good (on that issue). Many Americans do not seem to understand the basic premise of the Geneva Conventions: you don't torture our prisoners/we don't torture your prisoners-- and anyone who tortures anyone is beyond the pale. Some of our fellow citizens positively revel in the very idea of torturing "Muslim terrorists," not unlike all those Germans who thought torturing "Jewish terrorists" was A-OK. The Post called this "a victory for Bush and fellow Republicans a month before the Nov. 7 elections as their party tries to make anti-terrorism a signature campaign issue."

But, believe it or not, there's something even worse than Americans not understanding the Geneva Conventions. And that's not understanding the nature of fascism and how that relates to the Bush Regime. I doubt many Americans understand that trampling on centuries of habeus corpus sanctity could directly impact us. Not "Muslim terrorists": us. You trust The Decider to decide who's a good person and who's a bad person? I know you don't; if you did you wouldn't be at DWT, would you?

"Democrats resisted both measures and nearly amended the detainee bill to allow foreigners designated as enemy combatants to challenge their captivity by filing habeas corpus appeals with the federal courts. But Republicans held fast, gambling that Democrats will fail in their bid to convince voters that the GOP is sacrificing the nation's traditions of justice and fairness in the name of battling terrorists and winning elections." The Post makes it sound so quaint too... "traditions of justice and fairness." To someone who's never ever wandered into a bookstore?


Are we fuct? I don't think so. Well, we are in some ways. I mean this thing passed and even if some of it will be thrown out by even this Supreme Court, some of it probably won't. But I meant we're not necessarily screwed in November. Today's votes should further energize an already pissed-off Democratic base, without necessarily inspiring Republicans to go vote for a rubber stamp Congress that has delivered nothing but higher gas prices, more corruption than anyone has ever seen, a doughnut hole that means a lot more than any Magna Cartas, an endless war that has little public support and a general feeling in every single part of the country that America is not headed in the right direction.

We're not fuct, election-wise, because people don't like Bush anymore, positively hate Cheney and like the Repubican-led Congress even less. Instinctively people feel in their craws that Bush and his cronies can't be trusted... they're just not sure how to balance that with Bush's Reign of Terror.

We need to remind everyone we know that the Republicans are the Torture Party, which they are. People are already sick of them. It will sink in. Democrats who run away from this-- and that includes Sherrod Brown and Harold Ford-- are making a mistake. The voters are uneasy. They know Bush is lying to us and Iraq, about gas prices, about the economy, about virtually everything.

DANGEROUS MUSE-- DANGEROUS FOR HOMOPHOBES?

My friend Craig manages an interesting indie band, actually more an electro pop duo than a band per se. They're called Dangerous Muse and they've been building a loyal underground following in NYC for a couple years now. Another friend of mine and Craig's, Seymour Stein, saw them and was positively smitten. Now, Seymour knows his stuff. He discovered-- what a concept-- Madonna, Fleetwood Mac, The Ramones, Talking Heads, The Smiths, Depeche Mode... Seymour helped Dangerous Muse get out their first single, "The Rejection" and it went to #2 on the iTunes Dance Chart. The video went to #1 on the MTV Logo Channel's "Click List." Today the singer, Mike Furey and instrumentalist Tom Napack, gave Crooks and Liars an exclusive clip that demonstrates their support for equal rights in the GLBT community. Tomorrow it won't be exclusive anymore but there's a reason to go to Crooks and Liars today. There's a totally cool contest there that I'm helping John with: Be one of the first 5 to name every Republicrook in the clip and win an Indigo Girls Rarities CD. Any DWT reader should be able to win this in a snap.

The song is so infectious that after you hear it on the video at Crooks and Liars you'll want to hear it all the way through. And you can do that here.

It's a bonus quote of the day! The one thing missing from the Superdome Monday night was our Brownie--so what else is new?

"The Saints' triumphant return to the Superdome for Monday night's 23-3 victory over the Falcons drew an audience of 10.85 million households, ESPN's highest rating ever. Strangely, the audience was estimated at only 10,000 by FEMA officials."
--from Pete McEntegart's "The 10 Spot" on si.com

And our own "Heckuva Job Brownie" was miffed that he wasn't invited to throw out the first ball Monday night--until he found out they don't do that in football.

GOP-PHOBIA SEEPING DOWN TO LOCAL REPUBLICANS-- EVEN IN TEAXS!

Unless you live in Texas, it's not likely you've ever heard of State Rep Martha Wong or her Democratic challenger Ellen Cohen, CEO of the Houston Area Women's Center. They are contesting the Republican-gerrymadered 134th state house district in Houston (which includes Meyerland, South Braeswood, Bellaire, Montrose, West University Place and the Medical Center). Wong is on the defensive for several reasons-- not the least of which was that she was exposed by the Houston Chronicle as having kicked off the campaign season by blatantly lying in her first political ad.


Wong represents parts of Montrose, a largely gay neighborhood, but she abstained when it came to voting for the anti-gay constitutional amendment, pissing off both gay constituents and parts of the Republican base. She also voted for a typically Texas loony plan that forces abortion providers to actually lie to women and tell them abortion causes breast cancer. And, probably the thing that is most likely to cause her to lose her seat, she voted to cut hundreds of thousands of children from the Children's Health Insurance Program (HB 2292). She also blocked funding for a stem cell research facility in Houston's medical center.

This is Houston, not Waco or Amarillo. The district is not some socially conservative hellhole-- it was one of the few in Texas to vote against the anti-gay Prop 2-- and Bush's staggering disapproval ratings are thought to be pulling down local candidates in urban areas like this all over Texas.

After winning the primary, Wong has been desperately trying to run away from being identified with the right wing Republican Party. A really funny aspect of this is her campaign team running all over the district covering up the word "Republican" on her campaign signs with red tape. Her record-- not independent, pure Republican-- can't be covered up with the tape and no one in this affluent, educated district is fooled.

Texas' Burnt Orange Report has a great video about the latest krefufle in the bone-headed Wong's desperate bid to fool her constituents.

Quote of the day: Amid the yammering of nitwits like George Allen and Connie Burns, Bob Herbert listens in vain for the GOP's "voices of reason"

"Where are the voices of reason in the Republican Party--the nonbigoted voices? Why haven't we heard from them on this matter? . . .

"You don't hear President Bush or the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, or any other prominent Republicans blowing the whistle on the likes of George Allen and Conrad Burns because Republicans across the board, so-called moderates as well as conservatives, have benefited tremendously from the party's bigotry."

--Bob Herbert, in his NYT column today, "A Platform of Bigotry"


ALSO TALKING--NYT: "Our democracy is the big loser"

Here's the start and finish of today's NYT lead editorial, "Rushing Off a Cliff," about the disastrous "compromise" bill racing through Congress on the detention and prosecution of "terrorists":

Here's what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans' fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws--while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser. . .

We don't blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they'll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won't remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They'll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation's version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

- - - - - - - -

Note: As usual, the full texts of both Bob Herbert's column and the NYT editorial will be appended in a comment.

A GUEST PERSPECTIVE BY JUDAH FREED: PROGRESSIVES AND LIBERTARIANS-- UNITE NOW!

Progressives and libertarians need to unite now to preserve our personal liberties in the face of renewed assaults by the Bush administration on our natural rights.

The latest example of the growing threat is the deal announced September 21 between the White House and three "rebel" Republican Senators over the interrogation and trial of detainees in the "War on Terror."

The fatal flaw in this compromise is that the legislation voids all habeas corpus rights for the detainees. If the bill passes, they will not be able to challenge the legality of their arrests in open court.

The proposed law would "legalize" the president's practice of declaring any foreign national anywhere on earth as an "enemy combatant" and then detaining that person indefinitely without any trial, without any evidence the detention is warranted.

Far worse, the White House has now added a provision to the Senate interrogations bill that would allow the government to detain U.S citizens as enemy combatants. The language is so vague that it may even apply to those who protest the war. By merely saying someone is a terrorist or else a supporter, the administration could toss that person into prison and throw away the key.

"Arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny," wrote Alexander Hamilton, the leading Federalist in the American Revolution. A darling of modern Republicans, Hamilton detested that King George III had declared the American colonies were not protected by England's Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 (based on the Magna Carta of 1215), which banned the same arbitrary power by the English king now being abused by the U.S. president.

As I asked in my book, Global Sense, an update of Thomas Paine's Common Sense, "Does labeling any group as evil "bad guys" give the government a right to treat them unfairly or to deny their natural rights?

When our leaders promise to 'hunt down the terrorists and kill them before they kill us,' are we willing to forfeit the presumption of innocence and to negate the right to a fair trial in open court?

"When people are secretly detained and tortured, are we willing to forego warrants based upon probable cause? Are we willing to forego habeas corpus, to let governments imprison people for years without charges, without bail, without an attorney, and without any real trial?
 
"We are told that the new 'homeland security laws' are temporary, but nowhere in any of the legislation since 9/11, including the Patriot Act, is there any guarantee that our civil rights one day will be fully restored. Why not? Is this because any secret police powers, once obtained, however obtained, are never willingly surrendered by the police?"

This is why I'm now calling for progressives, libertarians and genuine conservatives to unite our considerable forces in common cause to publicly declare that we are no longer willing to sacrifice our natural rights on the alter of homeland security, especially when that security is an illusion. (A recent National Intelligence Estimate, compiled from reports by 16 U.S. spy agencies, confirmed that the Bush administration's self-chosen war in Iraq has produced a greater threat of terrorism than before the invasion.

"Let all the kings wave their lies before the world like flags," I wrote in Global Sense, paraphrasing Paine. "Now is the time for humanity to throw off reliance on them, so we can live in peace. The misery of war ought to warn us against trusting any tyrant, whether in government or in our own unconscious minds."

And here we come down to the core issue. Too many of us tolerate abuses of power by Bush and others because of our culturally enshrined authority addiction. We dread accepting personal responsibility for making moral and ethical choices on our own. We dread standing up for what we know is right.

And yet a strong belief in our personal and social responsibility guides the activism of progressives and libertarians alike. Look at the loud outcry supporting habeas corpus, for example, at websites as diverse as TomPaine.com, CommonDreams.org, Reason.com, or Cato.org. All lovers of liberty duly feel appalled by the current trends toward despotism. 
  
To carry the point home, listen to Thomas Paine's own words: "Bring the doctrine of reconciliation [with arbitrary power] to the touch-stone of nature, and then tell me, whether you can hereafter love, honor, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land?"

Paine added, "Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavored to subdue us, is of all others the most improper to defend us. Conquest may be effected under the pretense of friendship; and ourselves, after a long and brave resistance, be at last cheated into slavery."

For world peace, I contend, "government by the consent of the governed" must move from abstract theory to concrete reality.

The sooner we have enough global sense to see how we're all inter-connected, the sooner we will govern ourselves sensibly. The sooner we let go of authority addiction as our path to security, the sooner we embrace the liberating power of mindful self rule and personal democracy, the faster our highest and best human potential may be fulfilled on earth.

Paine concluded, "Like all other truths discovered by necessity, it will appear clearer and stronger every day. First. Because it will come to that, one time or other. Secondly. Because the longer it is delayed, the harder it will be to accomplish."


Judah Freed is the author of Global Sense, an update of Thomas Paine's Common Sense to renew hope in these times that try our souls, voicing more than three decades of research and thought that unite personal growth and politics. A seasoned media and politics journalist, speaker and educator based in Colorado, his  publishing credits range from local newspapers like Westword, Rocky Mountain News  and The Denver Post to national magazines like The Sun, Cablevision, and Publishers Weekly. He's spoken on four continents so far about interactive media, literacy and men's liberations issues. Judah also is the host of the weekly public affairs radio program "Metro" on KGNU in Denver. For more information, please visit his website and blog at JudahFreed.com.

AND MUSHARRAF DOESN'T THINK WE'RE ANY SAFER EITHER-- AND HE THINKS OSAMA BIN-LADEN AND BUSH ARE ABOUT EQUALLY UNPOPULAR IN PAKISTAN

As usual, I missed Ken's QOTD Committee conference call this morning. Last night when I was drifting off to sleep, John Stewart was having a throughly delightful interview with Pervez Musharaff-- a single individual who stands between a nuclear arsenal and a pack of bin-Ladens who no doubt would like to get their murderous, martyrdom-seeking hands on it. I noted with satisfaction that for all the boldfaced lies we're hearing from Bush and Frist and that pack of scoundrels about how the National Intelligence Estimate doesn't say what is says, Musharaff was frank and unhesitating in mentioning, when Stewart asked him if invading Iraq had made America safer, that "It has led certainly to more extremism and terrorism around the world," followed, after minimal prodding, "No, we're not."

I was thinking there was plenty of stuff for Ken and the Committee in the interview. But then the payoff came. I said to myself, "Self, should I put on the light and look around for a pen and some paper and write it down? Nah... Ken'll get it. Or, if he doesn't, John Amato will." Neither seems to have. It was the Hot Seat question, or whatever Stewart calls that thing at the end of the show. He asked the president of Pakistan if his ally, George W. Bush, were to run for the mayor of Karachi against Osama bin-Laden, who would win. "They would both lose miserably," said Musharaff, candidly and amiably. Of course, what else could he say?

Surf's up, let's go waterboarding! After we salute the moxie of Sens. Warner, Graham and McCain (Nikita Khrushchev would've understood)

Masters of "compromise": Bushstooge Rep. Duncan Hunter with Sens. John McCain and John Warner (and Sen. Lindsey Graham in back)

I keep wondering, wouldn't Chimpy the Prez and Dick the Veep and our Rummy speak more credibly about torture if they'd all been through a "full Guantanamo"?

So I was reading Howie's recent note on waterboarding earlier, and I kept thinking: Doesn't waterboarding always sound like something fun to try on a surfy beach?

So now I'm thinking, when it comes to all the torture fans with which this administration seems to be overstuffed, wouldn't it be appropriate--as well as fun--if each and every one of them had to undergo what I like to think of as "a full Guantanamo" before opening his piehole again on the subject.

I suppose, actually, I don't mean necessarily what's been going on at Guantanamo, althouth I'm not so sure that any limits on interrogation practices have been observed there either. But what I really have in mind is what we have reason to believe has been going on in our CIA "black hole" prisons, not to mention in the torture . . . er, interrogation chambers of the foreign intelligence services to which we've extremely renditioned prisoners we really wanted to have fun with . . . er, to give a hard time.

Not that our government owns up to having actually done, or sactioned, any really bad things, of course. We don't torture. Nuh-uh. And we have the word of such honest, upstanding citizens as Chimpy the Prez and AG Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales.

At the same time, to judge by the great "compromise" hammered out between the warring Republican factions regarding the detention and trial of our detainees, even though the U.S. of A. would never do anything really naughty, it's apparently necesssary for us to: (1) trash the Geneva Conventions, (2) de-delegalize an assortment of things that we would never do (and that we can't specify anyway), and (3) immunize all our torture-mongerers . . . er, agents against all these naughty things that they, er, haven't done, ever. Honest!

Still and all, I might be more inclined to assign some seriousness to the views on torture of Chimpy the Prez and Dick the Veep and our Rummy if they could produce certificates showing that they'd been "given the works" by, say, one of Syria's Finest.

By the way, do you suppose those "heroic" senators--Warner, Graham and McCain--who forced the Administration to "compromise" on these great principles of military justice are feeling as to-the-core humiliated as they have every reason to be after the pathetic show of make-believe courage they just put on? Surely they must know that what they accomplished is a "compromise" that basically gives the deranged thugs running this administration everything they could have wanted. Do the heroic threesome know the depth of the shame they brought on themselves?

Well, maybe you can't really be ashamed if people are so stupid, they don't know you behaved shamefully, and think that you actually showed some guts. The result is sort of a giant bonfire in which we incinerate some of our bedrock principles, including some even more central to who we are than the Geneva Conventions.

If you think of the right of habeas corpus as just some abstraction or legal technicality, I urge you to read the really sensational piece Thom Hartmann posted a couple of days ago--explaining the principle, showing how deep it runs in our system of government (tracing back to the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215), and documenting how rigorously it has been upheld in U.S. history.

Even in the cases when habeas corpus has been suspended, the suspension was done with appreciation of the gravity of the undertaking and with at least some respect for the principles and procedures set out in the Constitution. It was never questioned, for example, that suspending habeas corpus requires the permission of Congress.

Now along comes this band of terrorist thugs and psychopaths, who should be rotting in prison somewhere but instead derive apparently instead-of-sexual thrills by throwing their weight around as the most powerful men on the planet. They flick away our bedrock principles as if they were specks of feces, tightening their dictatorial grip in the name of "freedom."

Hartmann concludes his piece with a story too good to pass up:

When I was working in Russia some years ago, a friend in Kaliningrad told me a perhaps apocryphal story about Nikita Khrushchev, who, following Stalin's death, gave a speech to the Politburo denouncing Stalin's policies of imprisoning people without trial. A few minutes into Khrushchev's diatribe, somebody shouted out, "Why didn't you challenge him then, the way you are now?"

The room fell silent, as Khrushchev swept the audience with his eyes. "Who said that?" he asked in a reasoned voice. Silence.

"Who said that?" Khrushchev demanded angrily, leaning forward. Silence.

Pounding his fist on the podium to accent each word, he thundered, "Who - said - that?" Still no answer.

Finally, after a long and strained silence, the elected politicians in the room fearful to even cough, a corner of Khrushchev's mouth lifted into a smile.

"Now you know," he said with a chuckle, "why I did not speak up against Stalin when I sat where you now sit."

Apparently Senators Graham, Warner, and McCain have about as much spine as did the members of Khrushchev's Politburo. One wonders what sort of Stalin-like threats Bush made to get them to so completely compromise their principles and betray the trust of their country.

ANGIE PACCIONE, ONE OF THE 4 OUTSTANDING DEMOCRATS AIMING TO PAINT COLORADO DEEP, BEAUTIFUL BLUE

Today Blue America's featured live guest is Angie Paccione, a progressive candidate for Congress from Colorado's great plains. She'll be joining us at Firedoglake at 5:30 PM (EST, 3:30 PM in Colorado).

Last week I saw a very disturbing movie called Jesus Camp. You can read my reactions and thoughts at the link. But one thing I have been pondering ever since, was who the hell is bat-shit crazy enough to buy into this severe form of mass psychosis? My interview with Angie Paccione was a little later on Sunday than I had wanted it to be because she was at church. A lot of Americans go to church on Sundays and Angie descrbed herself to me as "a born again, spirit-filled, evenagelical Christian, one who believes in living it, not legislating it." I think most Christians who see Jesus Camp will be revolted by many of the scenes: like teaching little children to worship a cardboard cutout of George Bush or the scene defending indoctrination and brainwashing or the scene lamenting that American children don't love their religion as much as suicide bombers from other religions and are willing to die more readily for those who manipulate religion for political ends. I mean who could relate to this crap?


Marilyn Musgrave (CO-04) is considered to be one of the most fanatic, off-the-wall extremists in the entire spectrum of far right loons running around in Congress. She was even endorsed by the KKK! This weekend, the widely read Coloradoan published a pre-election profile of their district's congresswoman. "Protecting traditional marriage is the most important issue Americans face today, Rep. Marilyn Musgrave said Friday, as she called on social conservatives to support candidates like herself who oppose same-sex marriages. Speaking at the Family Research Council's 2006 Values Voter Summit, Musgrave, a Fort Morgan Republican, said she agrees with those who say legalized gay marriage would destroy religious freedoms... The Colorado District 4 House member is sponsoring legislation that would amend the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriages. Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard is pushing a similar bill in the Senate. Neither measure has won enough votes to go to the states for ratification."

The cult gathering at which she spoke seeks to recruit mostly feeble-minded people obsessed with a pseudo-religionist mania to work for Republican candidates. Musgrave "urged participants to get involved in politics and elect leaders who share their world view."

Angie Paccione is a normal American. She is secure in her faith and has no problem telling people in her conservative district that she supports marriage equality and, like most Americans, and like most Coloradoans, doesn't have the same set of priorities as Musgrave. "It's one more example of how out of touch she is with Colorado. Holy smokes, we're at war, we've lost nearly 3,000 people and thousands more are maimed. We have over 46 million Americans without health insurance. Weld County, one of her counties, led the country in mortgage foreclosures. You think they care about the federal marriage amendment? This is a fear campaign. [Same-sex marriage] is a civil issue. The churches can decide what they want to sanctify." Angie supports marriage equality and compares the discrimination faced by gay couples to the discrimination faced by her parents, one of whom is white and one of whom is black.

Angie has spent her entire life building bridges. An educator, former professional basketball player with a Ph.D, she is the much respected Chair of the Democratic Majority Caucus in the Colorado House of Representatives. She looks forward to joining the Congressional Black Caucus and providing the impetus necessary to push through the long-stalled New Homesetad Act, crucial to revitalize devastated rural communities like the ones that dot Colrado's 4th CD, the Great Plains part of the state.

Unlike most of the Democrats we've been talking with at Blue America, Angie feels her race overwhelmningly revolves around local issues. "It's not the national sentiment alone that the district is feeling. There's a unique and very specific 'Musgrave fatigue' factor. People are just tired of her; I hear it from farmers, from ranchers, from small businesspeople, from Republicans, Democrats, independents... they're tired of her ineffectiveness in Congress... People see how she has marginalized her effectiveness with her extremism."

And "extremism" is no exaggeration. Musgrave has the most far right voting record of any of Colorado's representatives and, in fact, except for two other fanatic maniacs, Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Cathy McMorris (R-WA), has the most reactionary voting record of any woman in Congress-- even worse than Mean Jean Schmidt!

Interestingly, Angie thinks the district would let Musgrave slide on the extremism if she could ever get anything constructive done in Congress. But she's failed... consistently. Picking a nasty public fight with GOP pork barrel king Don Young (R-AK) she was able to guarantee that her sprawling rural district got no help with much needed highway projects. And that was just in Musgrave's first term. While she spent virtually all her time obsessed with the private lives of gay Americans, Colorado's Eastern Plains have been in the midst of a catastrophic drought, a major calamity for ranchers and farmers. While Ken Salazar, the state's Democratic Senator was able to get the Republican-controlled Senate to pass a $4 billion agricultural relief bill, he watched helplessly as Musgrave badly bungled the whole thing in the House while the GOP leadership rejected it. Musgrave's hostile relationship with Speaker Hastert is probably what killed the relief effort.


"People here know how tied she is to special interests and they've become acutely aware that she isn't doing her job... 200 wells were shut down; that means no growing and no harvesting... and no health care premiums. I know how to fight for the people I represent," Angie told me, who, unlike Musgrave, has a legislative record of major accomplishment

And Musgrave's 2 terms haven't only meant health care problems for farmers and ranchers. She's another Republican who talks about supporting the troops but then screws them with her votes. "She voted against healthcare for national guard and reservists," Angie explained. "We have to hold these incumbents accountable when they say they support the troops and then vote against adequate armor and healthcare. Just wearing a yellow ribbon isn't what I call supporting the troops."

So can Angie win? In 2004, even before Musgrave fatigue had sunk in, Stan Matsunkaka came close. Angie has raised far more money than he did, over a million dollars, almost all of it from within Colorado-- and 85% of it from people donating less than $100. All the recent polls show a deadheat within the margin of error. "The code of the West, says Angie, "is 'live and let live,' not 'my way or the highway.'" She's an extraordinary candidate and she would be great for Colorado and great for America. She should all do our part at the Blue America ActBlue Page. First 20 donors today get a signed copy of the new book by Judah Freed, GLOBAL SENSE, of which Thom Hartman wrote: "Freed asked himself, what would Tom Paine write today? The result is a provocative, inspiring essay that offers fresh hope for liberty."

ANN COULTER AND SEAN HANNITY WILL NEVER DESERT JOE LIEBERMAN. PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY JUST ENDORSED NED LAMONT

One of the most prestigious and efective of all the progressive advocacy groups in Washington is People For the American Way. Before the Connecticut primary many members were clamoring for them to endorse Ned Lamont over reactionary fake-Democrat, Bush's and Ann Coulter's fave, Joe Lieberman. They refused to take sides and preferred that Connecticut voters decide for themselves. It was very frustrating for me, especially watching former progressive allies like HRC, several labor unions and several pro-choice and environmental groups actually come out for Lieberman, despite a mediocre record-- at best-- on these groups' issues.

Today the People For the American Way Voter Alliance endorsed Lamont. This is especially important because People For the American Way, as an organization, concerns itself exclusively with domestic issues and does not take into consideration foreign policy issues. A dear friend of mine, Mary Jean Collins is the Executive Director of the Voters Alliance and she was eager to point out that Ned's progressive stances really stood out when compared to Lieberman’s on issue after issue. "After looking at where both candidates stand on the issues that are important to our members, it is clear that Ned Lamont deserves our support. We are proud to endorse Ned Lamont, a committed progressive who will help bring about much needed change in Washington. Ned Lamont strongly backs public schools, while Joe Lieberman has voted for vouchers. Ned Lamont fully supports privacy rights, while Joe Lieberman said legislative intervention was appropriate in the Terry Schiavo case. Joe Lieberman voted to confirm John Roberts to the Supreme Court and voted against a filibuster of the Samuel Alito nomination; Ned Lamont would forcefully oppose far-right nominees. And on other issues, from church-state separation to marriage equality to demonstrating a willingness to stand up to President Bush, Ned Lamont is clearly the better choice."

Right now polls show the Connecticut race a dead heat between a surging Lamont (D) and a sagging Lieberman (ex-D). If you'd like to help, the Blue America ActBlue Page is open 24/7.

Anyway, this makes me proud to be a member of PFAW, just like it did when they announced a few weeks ago that this year they were giving Green Day the Spirit of Liberty Award. Oct 10... L.A... I'll be there!

YOU MAY NOT GET TO HEAR MUCH WILCO MUSIC ON THE RADIO... UNLESS YOU HEAR SOME SHERROD BROWN CAMPAIGN ADS!

It always flips me out when self-important politicians think they can just steal songwriters' music and use it for their campaigns. Not surprisingly, while I was running Reprise Records it was always the Democratic politicians who would call up and ask if they could use our artists' music. Clinton/Gore were eager to use Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," but they were only going to do it with the band's blessing. Oddly enough, the political party that makes believe it stands for the sanctity of private property rights, the Republicans, never asked. They just used and hoped no one would complain. I remember when John Hall, who's iconic "Still The One," was stolen by Bush, did complain and told Bush to stop desecrating his song by playing it at his rallies. (I wish Hall would have done the same thing when Bush's favorite former Democrat, Joe Lieberman, in true GOP tradition, also illegally appropriated "Still The One." Hall let it slide since at the time Lieberman was still sort of making believe he was a Democrat.)

Anyway, it hardly surprised me when a friend in the Sherrod Brown for Senate campaign called me and asked me if I would contact my old pals in Wilco and ask them for permission for him to use "Monday" in one of his campaign ads. Having spent some time interviewing Sherrod and blogging with him as part of the Blue America campaign, I already knew he's a real person and a cool guy. But still... I mean Wilco hasn't exactly achieved the same level of mass recognition as Fleetwood Mac, and "Monday" isn't exactly... "Still The One."

But what Wilco is, is an unpretentious, Midwest, all-American band with an all-American sound that fits really well with Sherrod and with a campaign based around his all-American values. They also happen to be personal faves, musically, of Congressman Brown. And with taste like that... wow!

Yesterday I pointed out a Sherrod supporter's use of the classic "My Boyfriend's Back" in a clip about the interlocking relationships between George W. Bush and Mike DeWine. Today, Sherrod's campaign has a clip up on YouTube about who Sherrod is. It's very fitting that the music is Wilco's. Take a look:

HAROLD MEYERSON BEATS UP ON CHAFEE AS A FAKE MODERATE. OK, BUT WHAT ABOUT SUE KELLY, MARY BONO, NANCY JOHNSON, SHAYS, GERLACH, BASS, FITZPATRICK...

Yesterday I was interviewing David Roth, the progressive Democrat running for Congress against the rubber stamp robot who used to be married to Sonny from Sony and Cher. But Mary's not Cher; she's just some Republican hack who takes a lot of money from Big Business and votes for their agenda. Her voting record isn't as overtly bigoted and hateful as Mean Jean Schmidt's or Roy Blunt's but, substantively, it's not that far from theirs. She may have a less reactionary voting record than the other Republican members of the California delegation but the DMI has analyzed her voting record for impact on middle class families and she gets the same big fat zero (and an "F" grade) as the most fascist-minded right wing jerks like Gary Miller, Dirty Dick Pombo, Jerry Lewis, Buck McKeon, and the rest of the extreme right wing California Republican caucus. Her fake reputation for being moderate is absurd. Her abysmal voting record speaks for itself.

Roth explained that when the extremist leadership needs her, she's always there for them, no matter how badly it hurts her constituents. I mean you might think that someone who has the numbers of elderly retired people in her Palm Springs district might think twice about shoving the doughnut hole down their throats. Or you might think a district where everyone drives long distances might be somewhat reluctant to gorge herself on Big Oil legalized bribes and then blatantly do their bidding. But if you did think that way, you would be naive. And I just picked Mary Bono because I happened to be talking to her opponent last night.

I could easily have picked any of a few dozen petrified Republican incumbents who are desperately trying to distance themselves from Bush and the extremist Republican leadership-- which they all voted for-- in the Congress. Many of our Blue America challengers are running against out-and-out proud-to-have-my-head-up-Bush's-ass neo-fascist lemmings. Victoria Wulsin will never have to worry about Mean Jean Schmidt trying to pass herself off as a moderate. Angie Paccione is never going to have to worry about Marilyn Musgrave denouncing the support she receives from the KKK and neo-Nazi groups. Robert Rodriguez, Jerry McNerney, Larry Kissell are running against Buck McKeon, Dirty Dick Pombo, Coleen Rowley and Robin Hayes, 4 Republicans with voting records so extreme and fanatic that the word "moderate" could only be used as the punch-line of a joke. But some of our candidates, like David Roth, Lois Murphy, Chris Murphy, Steven Porter, and John Hall, are running against duplicitous Republican incumbents who are always there for the right-wing GOP leadership but go out of their way to vote against them when it doesn't matter-- just so they can run to the voters and say "See, I'm a moderate; I really am!" They're really not.

Today's Washington Post has a column by Harold Meyerson taking apart the whole fake moderate meme in regard to Rhode Island's on-the-ropes Republican incumbent Lincoln Chafee. There are few states as solidly blue as Rhode Island. Why should they re-elect a U.S. Senator who consistently votes to ensure extreme right wing domination of the country by supporting contemptible and odious leaders like Bill Frist, Mitch McConnell and Rick Santorum?

Chafee and Maine's Olympia Snowe and such deathbed converts to moderation as Ohio's Mike DeWine are seeking reelection to the Senate by claiming that they represent a Republicanism less rabid than the Bush-Rove strain. They point to individual votes in which they broke with the president and flouted the party line. But those votes have been negated a hundred times over by their votes to make Bill Frist the majority leader, just as they would be negated when the new Senate takes office in 2007 if the moderates backed any Republican unwilling to make a fundamental break with Bush and Bushism.

The issue isn't the individual voting records of Frist and McConnell, which are indistinguishable from each other and define the mainstream of today's gorge-the-rich, drown-the-poor, stay-the-course Republicanism. The issue is that under the control of the Republicans, both the Senate and the House have abandoned their constitutionally mandated obligation to oversee executive branch endeavors, most especially endeavors gone as awry as the war in Iraq. The issue is that under Republican control, both houses have abandoned any effort to address America's real problems.

Quote of the day: Shh! If we tell you a secret about the Taliban in Afghanistan, will you promise not to tell President Bush or President Karzai?

"Five years after the Afghan invasion, the Taliban are fighting back hard, carving out a sanctuary where they--and Al Qaeda's leaders--can operate freely."
"In her new book, Annie Leibovitz, our most famous photographer, places celebs side by side with surprisingly personal images of love and loss. An exclusive."
--cover story of this week's Newsweek (oh no, not the one at right, the one below)

As Al Kamen explains in his Washington Post "In the Loop" column:

We Can't Handle the Truth?

The same publication may at times use different cover stories in different parts of the world--usually because reader tastes vary widely. So the Oct. 2 edition of Newsweek's cover in Europe, Latin America and Asia features a jihadi fighter on the cover, headlined "Losing Afghanistan." The lead: "Five years after the Afghan invasion, the Taliban are fighting back hard, carving out a sanctuary where they--and Al Qaeda's leaders--can operate freely."

U.S. readers were spared that depressing blast. Instead, the Newsweek cover here was of photographer Annie Leibovitz and her three adorable children, headlined "My Life in Pictures." The lead said: "In her new book, Annie Leibovitz, our most famous photographer, places celebs side by side with surprisingly personal images of love and loss. An exclusive."

In a week when Afghan President Hamid Karzai is meeting with President Bush, the Taliban was moved inside? Well, gotta know your readers. Besides, if you have an "exclusive" . . .

ALSO TALKING--Fareed Zakaria plays the good corporate soldier

Newsweek's international editor, Fareed Zakaria, offered this explanation to the International Herald Tribune:

International editor Fareed Zakaria said the magazines often have different covers because they are tailored to different audiences overseas and in the United States. In the U.S., Newsweek is a mass-circulation magazine with a broad reach, while overseas it "is a somewhat more upmarket magazine for internationally minded people who travel a lot," he said.

"Afghanistan is sort of the first victory in the war on terror. For that to be going badly is tremendous," Zakaria said. International editions feature a photograph of what appears to be a Taliban fighter with a grenade launcher.

U.S. editions featured a photo of Leibovitz, one of America's premier photographers, on the cover with several children.

Zakaria noted that the Afghanistan story was also promoted on the cover of the U.S. editions, and that the magazine had negotiated an exclusive for Leibovitz's new book.

WELCOME TO 'JIHADISTAN'

Of course we know that our Annie wouldn't have been bumped from the U.S. cover even in the event of earth-shattering breaking news. You know, something like: "President Bush Declares Terrorism Really, Really Bad--and Democrats Who Support It Too."

Now if that Taliban fighter had been banned from the U.S. cover in favor of, say, a few really cute puppies, well, then who would complain?

Oh yes, one last question for Fareed Z: This business about the Afghanistan story being promoted on the cover of the U.S. editions--um, would that be the cover line: "AL QAEDA & 'JIHADISTAN'"? 'Cause we don't rightly know what the heck that means. Is it the same as "LOSING AFGHANISTAN"? That we get.

Uh, just asking. Of course Newsweek's broad, mass-circulation U.S. readers, being so much less upmarket and internationally minded than their international counterparts, probably have no trouble with "AL QAEDA & 'JIHADISTAN'"--we bet that cover line is making copies of the magazine fly off U.S. newssstands.

OH COME ON! IS WATERBOARDING THAT BIG OF A DEAL?

Do you even know what waterboarding is? I mean, why is George Bush, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Bill Frist, Denny Hastert, and the whole rubber stamp congress digging their heels in to preserve the right to waterboard? And why are the supposedly anti-torture Republicans-- McCain, Warner, Collins and Graham-- allowing Bush to do it? It's completely illegal according to the congressinally-passed Geneva Conventions. Let Robin Williams show you what Bush has made the theme of the Republican Party, 2006.



Vote No To Republican Values.

MIKE DEWINE'S BOYFRIEND IS BACK IN OHIO

No, I'm not talking about Alex Arshinkoff; he never left. I'm talking about DeWine's other boyfriend.



Sherrod Brown was just named Russ Feingold's PAC's newest Progressive Patriot. And, even better, the latest polling from Ohio shows him a full 10 points ahead of corrupt rubber stamp Republican Mike DeWine! GO SHERROD!!!! And what a team he and Russ will make in the U.S. Senate. Maybe the two of them can deprogram some of that Lieberman stuff out of Obama! Anyway, one of Sherrod's rambunctious supporters sent me that glorious little video that I thought you might enjoy as much as I did.

HOW UNSAFE HAS BUSH MADE OUR COUNTRY?

A few weeks ago I did a series of stories about national security candidates on Taylor Marsh's blog. The overall theme was to explain how getting rid of the rubber stamp Congress and replacing the leadership with Democrats would make America safer. I interviewed a dozen Democrats for the series, many of whom have military backgrounds, all of whom have national security priorities in their campaigns. Several of the ex-military men talked about what an abysmally bad steward, not to mention Commander-in-Chief, Bush has been. Several actually talked about how his regime has wrecked the military. In fact, you might want to take a look at the piece on Eric Massa, "What Has Bush Done To Our Military?"

Although Eric's immediate concern was about the Marine Corps, he was boiling about how "the misguided and misrepresented war in Iraq is sapping our military strength at an unprecedented rate. Both manpower and materiel are suffering across every branch of the service. The cost to replace critical equipment has already reached $50 billion-- for the Army alone-- and the tab is growing larger every day. The US Air Force is literally burning out its aircraft flying extended logistics and combat missions that were never anticipated in the pre-war planning. New aircraft are too expensive, and the latest generation fighters will not be available in time to bridge the widening gap. The Navy... is now reduced to its smallest size since well before the time when my father enlisted, back in the World War II era. Available ships are enduring double and triple deployments in hotspots around the world, with some on continuous duty in the Persian Gulf. Even regular crew rotations cannot change the simple truth: the equipment is wearing out and the people are wearing thin."

Today's Slate published a story by Fred Kaplan called "How Bush Wrecked The Army" and it goes beyond the retired generals who have been blowing the whistle on Rumsfeld's catastrophic handling of Iraq. Kaplan writes about the Army Chief of Staff, the current one, General Peter Schoomaker, and his concerns about the "Army's ability to keep functioning," something reported on yesterday in The L.A. Times.

President Clinton handed Bush a military force superior to anything the world has ever seen. Bush's inexperience coupled with the Know-it-all attitude of the neo-Cons with whom he surrounded himself, has severely damaged that force and made our country less safe and less potent. The rubber stamp Congress sat by and passively watched, while they gorged themselves on the easy fruits of corruption. Their deal from the White House was surely to steal whatever you want, just don't make any waves. It's beyond just calling on Rumsfeld to retire or be fired. It's time to throw all the rascals out. Harman and Pelosi are demanding Bush come clean and stop covering up Iraq intelligence to deceive Americans for partisan goals.

And the response from The Regime? Condoleeza has a bizarre, and probably career-ending, national hissy fit, viciously-- as well as misleadingly-- attacking Bill Clinton. Christy makes a lot more sense than Condi-- any day of the week.


UPDATE: IF YOU'D LIKE TO WATCH WHAT THE 3 MILITARY COMMANDERS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT HOW THE BUSH REGIME IS SCREWING UP...

Major General John Batiste: http://youtube.com/watch?v=jPxZLLLb3RY

Major General Paul Eaton: http://youtube.com/watch?v=DMqL82RK4V8

Col. Thomas Hannes http://youtube.com/watch?v=xM4wkcQEgdo

ADOPT A CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

The other day I woke up and Claire, someone I had never spoken to before but who cares a great deal about the direction our country has been going since Bush's usurpation of power, had donated $2,700 to the Blue America ActBlue page, spread out among 4 or 5 of our candidates. I e-mailed her a thank you and she responded by asking me to call her about an idea she had, which I did. We worked out her idea together, on the phone and in the course of a few e-mails.

I remember telling my friends how I feel exactly the same when someone contributes $5 or $1,000 to Blue America. I always assume that people donate what they can afford and they do it for the same reasons I do. It is very touching to me when I go down to the Blue America post office box and there's a $5.00 check from someone telling me they wish they could afford more after stretching their social security check to meet their basic needs. I feel so lucky to be in touch with these heroes.

But now it is the end of September and Claire pointed out that we barely have enough money in the Blue America PAC to be able to impact even one campaign, let alone the half dozen we had once hoped to. Happily some slack has been taken up by local bloggers and by some of the campaigns themselves using the materials we've made public. Still, I have to admit, the idea of going in with a week or two of ads and watching a few of our neck-and-neck candidates pull off an upset... well what a rush it would be! So... let's look at Claire's idea.

The basic premise is for progressives who live in safe Democratic districts in places like New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, San Francisco, etc to pick a district where a progressive Democrat is running a close race against a Republican incumbent. Through our Blue America PAC, we're permitted to collect as much as $5,000 per family member. All of the money collected will go to putting our targeted spots on the radio.

It's important to keep in mind that, although representatives are elected locally, the decisions they make affect us all. If the House Democrats pick up a net of just 15 seats they get to set the agenda and they get to name the committee chairmen. Out goes the human boil of corruption, Dennis Hastert, to be replaced by America's first woman Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. It's nearly as important as electing a president. Claire's proposal is for she and I to send letters to everyone we know who we think could afford to help us and urge them to adopt a congressional district. You could do the same.

I'm going to use Ohio's second congressional district, home of both the odious reactionary, Mean Jean Schmidt, and of the breathtaking progressive challenger, Doctor Victoria Wulson, as an example. Our Blue America band has customized "Have You Had Enough" for the race. Take a look at the video:



Jacquie, the Blue America media buyer, put together a very reasonable sample program that we think will go a long way towards helping to re-enforce Dr. Wulsin's positive message for change in some of the more rural and exurban parts of the sprawling district east of Cincinnati. For $5,000 we would wind up with 400 one-minute radio spots on 4 stations blanketing Pike, Scioto, Adams, Brown and Clermont counties, nearly the entire district. The plan includes 100 spots each on WNXT (Adult Contemporary and Gold), WPAY-AM (Talk), WPAY-FM (Country) and WRAC (Top 40 Country). [Note WPAY-AM is right wing talk radio and normally we wouldn't buy it but if you buy the FM they practically throw in the right wing talkers for free.]

Jacquie is working on designing similar $5,000 programs for most of the campaigns listed on our ActBlue Page. In effect, you can pick the district you're interested in, write a check, take up a collection among your friends, and possibly help the country by taking out a right wing rubber stamp and replacing him or her with a progressive challenger of integrity and vision. Try to imagine alternative energy expert Jerry McNerney replacing the worst polluter and one of the most egregiously corrupt people in the entire Congress, Dirty Dick Pombo. Or imagine replacing right wing fanatic John Kline with the extraordinary Time Magazine person of the year, Coleen Rowley. But don't stop there, John Laesch could replace Dennis Hastert, Robert Rodriguez could beat Buck McKeon... Larry Kissell replacing Robin Hayes will be great from North Carolina's 8th CD-- but a boon to anyone who believes in a bright and promising future for America. Take a look at the races and make a donation to the Blue America PAC or write a check and send it to Blue America PAC, P.O, Box 27201, Los Angeles, CA 90027. If you decide to adopt a district, send me a note at downwithtyranny@aol.com/


UPDATE: TIME TO THROW NANCY JOHNSON OUT

Last night I mentioned that Nancy Johnson didn't just vote for the doughnut hole, she was one of the 20 co-sponsors who forced this Big Pharma-written travesty down the throats of America's most vulnerable citizens. This alone should make everyone in northwestern Connecticut do everything they can to make sure Chris Murphy defeats her in November. The Enigmatic Paradox is taking the lead of collecting contributions to run the Blue America radio spots in CT-05.

Quote of the day: Since the Bushhawks have no respect for military competence, of course they dismiss the generals' shocking testimony on Iraq

"I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq."
--retired Army Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste (at right above with retired Marine Col. Thomas Hammes, left, and retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, center), to the Senate Democrats' forum on the war chaired by Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, who has been quietly emerging as one of the Senate's more serious members

We assume you've already seen this quote--and those of the other generals who testified. But we hope their words will be plastered all over the damned place. If ever there were "quotes of the day," these are it.

Of course you've got the usual counterpoint. From John Cornyn, the blight of Texas: "an election-year smoke screen aimed at obscuring the Democrats' dismal record on national security." From Mitch McConnell, the shame of Kentucky: "Today's stunt may rile up the liberal base, but it won't kill a single terrorist or prevent a single attack." And there's Mighty Mouth, Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter, telling the National Press Club that election-season politics are to blame for the failure to solve the Iraq mess.

These are people who are too stupid to live, and that's without reference to their psychopathic viciousness. There must be a prison psych ward somewhere that could shelter them.

And then there's another psychopathic liar, Secretary of State Rice, calling former President Clinton a liar. Of course she would do better to keep her trap shut, since--as Jon Stewart pointed out on last night's Daily Show--the media mites are paying no attention whatsoever to Clinton's rapid-fire presentation, following the supposed "meltdown" in his confrontation with Fox idiot Chris Wallace, of the facts about his administration's vs. his successors' attention to Al Qaeda.

Apparently we've reached the point where people in this administration feel not the slightest compunction about spewing total fabrications. Well, why should they feel any inhibition, let alone anything as quaint as shame? After all, their only concern is the possibility of getting caught in their lies, and how much chance of that is there when, in the grand scheme of today's "journalism," a pile of puke like Chris Wallace stands closer to the high end (at least on the TV side) than to the bottom?

WHY ISN'T REPUBLICAN WAR PROFITEER ERIK PRINCE IN PRISON?

I hope you've already had an opportunity to see the great new Robert Greenwald film, IRAQ FOR SALE. Even if you think you know all about the Bush Regime's scandalous shenanigans in Iraq, you will be shocked by the revelations in the film. I sure was. I mean we all know that Cheney's old company, Halliburton, plies GOP officials with bribes in return for billions of dollars in contracts. OK, they rip off the taxpayers and subvert democracy. But did you know that their activities have also led to the deaths and severe illnesses of not just Iraqi men, women and children, but of our own fighting men and women? And there are other villains in the film every bit as odious and contemptible as Halliburton.

Have you ever heard of Blackwater and it's trashy owner, Erik Prince? Blackwater is a vicious private militia-- mercenaries-- loathed by military professionals and spreading, by it's actions, hatred for America wherever it deploys. I may have mentioned that one of my neighbors, a very idealistic guy, is the head of a crucial project in Iraq. He goes there frequently-- at government expense, of course. He is always clear that he will never agree to being guarded by Blackwater and that having Blackwater mercenaries around is a deal breaker. He has told me countless horror stories about how disastrous this Republican militia has been in Iraq, turning friends into enemies by its needless, over-the-top brutality and racism.

Prince is an obsessed homophobe, mentally unbalanced and a dangerous fascist. None of that is illegal. But what about war profiteering? I know if won't happen while Bush and his rubber stamp Congress are still in power, but once the Democrats take back the government, I'll be looking forward to the Erik Princes of the world to learn about American justice. Here's a little film that will show you a bit about this character.

OLBERMANN SAYS BUSH ISN'T THE WORST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY! BUT HE IS A TEXT BOOK EXAMPLE OF COWARDICE

The Crooks and Liars video of Olbermann today cannot be missed. This is the absolute best I've ever heard him. And he thinks James Buchanan was a worse president than Bush. I'll have to think about that further. Meanwhile, my favorite lines:

Clinton was "bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster"

Our tone should be crazed. The nation's freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation's "marketplace of ideas" is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would've quit.

You now what... I could be here all night picking out quotes; there are so many. Just watch the video. MSNBC has it up too. You'll thank me. Of course, it's Keith Olbermann we should all be thanking.

IRAQ: ANGELIDES GOES ON OFFENSE

Julia Rosen is more than a brilliant writer, something you're about to experience for yourself. She is also a brilliant, and highly successful, online organizer for the Alliance for a Better California, the teachers, nurses, cops and firefighters who pummeled Schwarzenegger and his destructive propositions last fall. She has been blogging about our horrible Republican governor almost non-stop for a year over at BetterCA.com. I asked her to explain the significance of Phil Angelides' announcement that his very first act as Governor of California would be to tell Bush he wants to withdraw the California National Guard from Iraq. Here's her report:

On Sunday, Howie scooped most people with the announcement that Phil Angelides' first act as governor would be to request that Bush pull the California National Guard out of Iraq. It was the first bold move out of Phil Angelides and he is clearly hoping it will be a game changer. He has been down in the polls and his support from insiders within his own party Establishment has been lackluster. Angelides' team took Chris Lehane's suggestion from a blog post a month ago and ran with it. Predictably, activists are excited by this declaration and the press doesn't like it, or understand why it is so inspired.

Just because it would be next to impossible to actually withdraw the troops as a governor, it does not mean it isn't important to speak up. To understand Angelides' action, one must understand what the Democratic activists want out of their candidates and elected officials.

This announcement and subsequent anti-war rallies, is the clear action that progressives have been clamoring for out of Democrats nationwide. They want aggressive stances, which reflect what the polls show: the majority of Americans want to see the U.S. end the occupation of Iraq.

It is about playing offense on the most important issue of this cycle. They are sick of Republicans defining the debate as stay the course v. cut and run. Bush, Cheney and the Republican party are in charge. The war is a disaster. It has increased the terrorist threat and the Republicans are responsible. Arnold Schwarzenegger is culpable because he enabled the re-election of George Bush. He is complicit in the continuation of the war due to his silence and inaction.

Democrats and inependents and even some Republican voters desperately want someone to stand up and say "NO! This is not acceptable." They want bold moves, even if they are symbolic. Last week, when the news of the torture "compromise" between several Republicans and their dear leader broke, the comments and diaries at Daily Kos filled up with people encouraging the Democrats in the Senate to walk out. Or for Sen. Harry Reid to shut it down with parliamentary tactics.

Candidates and the party are starting to tap into that desire. Just look at the email Howard Dean sent to the DNC list today. It was a fundraising push titled "We're Going on Offense."

We're sick of playing defense against a Republican leadership that uses national security to scare people to win elections. We're not going to be pushed around, spun, and defamed by right-wing extremists and those whom they use to disseminate their propaganda.

Our plan for this election is to go on the offense-- to talk straight about the Republican failures and lay out a clear Democratic plan to take American foreign policy and national security in a better direction.

Angelides is going on offense on the war. It will fire up his base and it will also appeal to Decline to State voters. Once again, it isn't just Democratic partisans who oppose the war; it is the majority of Americans and the vast majority of Californians. If Angelides can force Schwarzenegger to take a position on the war that would be gravy. For now, people are happy to see Angelides taking it to Schwarzenegger and Bush.

There have been two excellent posts by California bloggers, thrilled to see Angelides leading on this issue. Go check out Randy Bayne's post over at GovernorPhil and dday's follow up at his blog. The Angelides campaign has listed the rallies for tomorrow (SF State and Burbank) and Wednesday (Sac City College) over at their blog.

Apparently fine lies, like fine wine, require time to develop--at least when the fine liar is Holy Joe Lieberman

I followed Howie's suggestion to read Mark Pazniokas's full Hartford Courant account of the awkward timing for Holy Joe Lieberman of the leak of the National Intelligence Estimate that the outlook for U.S. security has worsened drastically since 9/11, that U.S. policies have in fact turned Iraq into a hotbed of terrorism.

The obvious way in which the timing is awkward is that His Holiness already had a campaign speech scheduled for today in which he was going to come out guns blazing in support of his from-day-one support of the idea of invading Iraq, the only problem being some flawed execution by the administration. As we all know, the Democratic candidate for Senator Joe's seat, Ned Lamont, has staked out a very different position on the war.

But for poor Joe the bad timing has another dimension. The stories making public the N.I.E. judgment appeared in Sunday's New York Times and Washington Post. Meaning that:

The disclosure of the National Intelligence Estimate came at an especially awkward time for Lieberman, who refrained from campaign and official duties from sunset Friday to sunset Sunday in observance of Rosh Hashana.

"I haven't had a chance to talk to him. I don't know how we are going to treat this in the speech, because it is new," said the Gerstein Thing, Lieberman's communication director.

Presumably, therefore, word starts circulating on Saturday that the lid on the N.I.E. is about to blow, but the senator apparently refrains from lying, cheating and stealing--or at any rate conniving to lie, cheat and steal--on the Jewish High Holy Days. (God, it appears, doesn't care how much lying, cheating and stealing His boy Joe does on non-holy days.)

Think of that day-plus lost! All that time when His Holiness and his campaign cronies could have been making up pretty stories to lull Connecticut voters back into insensibility. So the fairy tales told by our Joe today, dating back no farther than sunset yesterday and being thus less than a day old, are likely to be crude and immature, not fit for consumption for at least another day.

There are two kinds of doughnut hole: the kind you eat (yum!), and the kind Republicans (abetted by too many Dems) use to say, "Screw you, old coots!"

I wasn't caught by surprise by the "doughnut hole" in the deceptively innocently named Medicare Part D, the so-called prescription drug benefit. (Well, I suppose you can call it a "benefit" in the sense that the insurance companies selling the policies and the drug companies selling the hard stuff should be making out like bandits.) But knowing about it didn't do me or my 87-year-old mother any good.

Maybe that's because I spent the months between the adoption of the program and the deadline for seniors to sign up without penalty trying to figure the damned thing out, in the increasingly panicky hope of eventually figuring out what the hell to do on behalf of my mother, who takes the typical American senior's laundry list of prescription drugs. (She hates taking all those pills, but her doctor--someone we think we have ample reason to trust--insists they're all necessary.)

I never did figure it out, and as the deadline came and went, I figured, well, somehow we paid for the stuff before, I guess somehow we'll just keep finding the money.

There were all those 800 numbers you could supposedly call, once you were armed with an exact list of all the prescriptions and dosages, and supposedly they would tell you which plan was best for your situation. I never called. One reason was the doughnut hole.

It never for a moment escaped my attention that, as best I could understand it, whichever drug plan you bought, you got your partial coverage up to a certain amount, and above that you got no coverage at all up to another certain amount, and then something else happened--like maybe full coverage? I could never quite get it straight in my head how it all worked, or where those "certain amounts" were going to kick in and out and in, even though it turned out that everybody involved with the plan had a pretty good idea of where: in September-October!

One thing I kind of "got" was that if you called one of those numbers, the people who were going to tell you which plan(s?) were best for you weren't taking the doughnut hole into account. Maybe it's just my natural "glass half empty" temperament, but I could hardly think about anything else.

If you recall, there was a flurry of talk a number of months ago about how the clock was ticking on the doughnut hole, which is how we found out that people in the know had always reckoned it to kick in in September-October. The news seemed to take everyone by surprise.

Well, as surprised as everyone else seemed back then, by some feat of magic they're managing to be surprised all over again now that it's happening.

"Doughnut hole" is of course much too benign a term for the arrangement. The idea was surely that this far into the year there would be no political fallout. In the months when Part D was still controversial, seniors would actually be getting what seemed like real benefits. By this late in the year, the thinking must have gone, the old coots would mutter and grumble, but who listens to old coots muttering and grumbling?

Who knows? Maybe the old coots will be one group of Americans screwed by the policies of the Bush administration who will strike back in the voting booth in November.

If there had been any will to design a fair and affordable prescription-drug benefit program for seniors, it could of course have been done. But since the program was always designed to make seniors cash cows for predatory drug and insurance companies, the thieves and hooligans who designed the program made sure that didn't happen--made sure, for example, that the obvious way of creating a program that would be economically viable and also actually benefit seniors, which is to say using the collective clout of Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, was expressly, absolutely and unequivocally forbidden in the enacting legislation.

And remember, the AARP provided crucial support to get the program enacted.

It's easy enough to see why most Republicans and shamefully many Democrats went along with the scam. It's what most Republicans and shamefully many Democrats do. In particular under the most recent Republican administrations, the business of America has been warped into the unapologetic robbery, rape and pillage of all groups who can't fight back. However, is it really the AARP's mission to abet the robbery, rape and pillage of America's seniors?

The fringe benefit for Republicans, as Paul Krugman has pointed out repeatedly, is that the debacle provides yet further "proof" that government can't do anything right. What it really proves, of course, is that people who believe that government can't do anything right--like these evil sons of bitches--will always be unable tot do anything right, or fair or decent.

I'd sure like to see every senior citizen, and every American with an elderly relative or friend, and for that matter every American who hopes to live to become a senior citizen, rise up in holy wrath and send these vermin packing for the long, lonely trek to Hell.


UPDATE FROM HOWIE, A NON-DOUGHTNUT HOLE EATER

As you probably know, I interview at least a couple Democrats running for Congress every week in preparation for 2 weekly blog sessions at Firedoglake on Wednesdays and Saturdays. They're from every part of America and, although they are all progressive Democrats, they have been a refreshingly diverse group of men and women. One thing, however, this isn't diverse at all. When I ask them what's the biggest issue troubling the voters in their district the all mention the medical care system either first or second, mostly first, and when they start talking about it the doughnut hole Ken is writing about above comes up... fast. Yesterday I interviewed Angie Paccione whose district encompasses all of sparsely populated eastern Colorado. (Her live blog session will be Wednesday at 5:30 PM EST, 3:30 PM in Colorado.) Angie's district, which has been suffering a 7 year drought, has all kinds of severe economic problems-- including the most mortgage foreclosures of anyplace in America-- but soon after starting to talk about the 200 wells that have been shut down she was talking about health insurance problems and the doughnut hole. The most chilling story came from Congressman Brad Miller (NC) who talked to me about how "hateful" it is for people to have to deal with the largely unnecessary medical bureaucracy.

Today's Washington Post talks about the plight of "millions of seniors" confronting this nightmare, actually, taking Representative Miller's views into account, a dual nightmare. The Post interviewed Robert Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, a nonprofit that helps seniors grapple with the Kafkaesque system. "Virtually everyone who calls to say they've been denied coverage, they're shocked. Trying to explain that this is the way the program was created by Congress angers folks who think it makes no sense. Many people feel blindsided."

Ken mentioned that there were some Democrats that helped the rubber stamp Republicans in Congress and these were the Democrats who also accept huge legalized bribes from Big Pharma in order to buy their votes to screw ordinary Americans who can't pay congressmen big bribes. These people-- along with all Republicans-- would be defeated in November (unless you like doughnut holes and similar nasty little tricks Big Business gets your representative to support from them. The Bill was proposed by Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), who takes more legalized bribes than anyone else in Congress. The co-sponsors reads like a rogues gallery of the most disgusting criminals in Washington: Roy Blunt (R-MO), Tom DeLay (R-TX), Jim McCrery (R-LA), Shelley Moore Caputo (R-VA), Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL), John Sullivan (R-OK), Devin Nunes (R-CA), Jennifer Dunn (R-WA) for starters. Many of the monsters that have foisted this bill on us have left or are leaving Congress-- Bill Tauzin, Bill Thomas, Porter Goss, Michael Bilrakis, Max Burns-- but there are several who are in vulnerable positions and these are Republican scum who can be and should be defeated. Let's start with New Hampshire rubber stamper Jeb Bradley whose challenger, Carol Shea-Porter, is one of the best Democrats running anywhere. Another slimy Republicrook sponsor for the plight of the elderly Deborah Pryce, Ohio's worst congressperson, and likely to be defeated by Mary Jo Kilroy. Ditto for Bush's two favorite Connecticut congresscreeps, Nancy Johnson and Rob Simmons. The only so-called "Democrat" on this list of shame is Minnesota's Collin Peterson, one of the absolute most reactionary Democrats in Congress. The bill passed by one vote, 216 to 215. The Democrats who acted as honorary Republicans that day were Rodney Alexander (LA)-- who soon after switched parties and made it official-- Leonard Boswell (IA), Bud Cramer (AL), Steve Israel (NY), Ken Lucas (KY), who was soon after defeated by constituents who were sick of his Republican ways and is currently trying to win his seat back (as a right wing Democrat, of course), Jim Matheson (UT), Earl Pomeroy (ND), and the aforementioned co-sponsor Collin Peterson (MN). Keep in mind that when the DCCC asks you for money, it is to keep crooks and traitors like these in office. A much better place to donate is at the Blue America ActBlue Page, where no candidates are sell-outs to Big Business and to the Bush agenda.

CLEAR AS NIGHT AND DAY: CAROL VOISIN v GREG WALDEN (OR-02)

I asked Rick Browne, a Firedoglake community member, to give us a run-down of the difficult race in his Oregon district between a shining progressive, Carol Voisin and a truly hideous and venal reactionary incumbent, Greg Walden. Rick, an independent, has never been involved in a political campaign before. He is a social studies teacher with a passion for current events and, like so many Americans, he has been thoroughly turned off by the corruption and money that goes into divisive elections.  Feeling that no one is watching the watchers, he became motivated to volunteer for two reasons: the backwards direction the GOP government is leading the United States; and, Carol’s passion and commitment to right the ship. He is a believer in the Apollo Project and the George Lakoff model of properly framing our values, and he is horrified by the systematic shredding of our Constitution. "George Bush says the terrorists hate us for our freedoms," Rick pointed out to me, "yet it is our President who seems intent on destroying these freedoms." Rick, like many of us, refuses to live in fear and believes the best response to these tactics, from within or without, is to proclaim our rights, our values, and our ethics not through empty rhetoric, but through actions that show we care about every human being on the planet. I hope you will find his report on OR-02 as enlightening as I did. And if you do, I hope you'll join me in making a contribution to Carol's campaign. It's a campaign for all of us.
 
Carol Voisin is running against Greg Walden in Oregon's 2nd district. It is an absolutely beautiful region of this great country: Cascade Mountains and lakes, dormant volcanoes, salmon-spawning rivers, lush old growth forests, glacier-carved valleys, and flora and fauna who's diversity rivals any in the country.   Needless to say, this prized beauty and diversity is also in need of protection, and yet Clinton’s designation of the  Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument was fought every step of the way by Walden. 


Our district is one of the largest districts, geographically, in the entire country. It is mostly rural, sprinkled with small towns that are suffering economically. Go back and read the first half of  this Down With Tyranny post on Pete Goldmark about rural farms and it describes perfectly the situation in eastern Oregon. Statistics show that this economy Bush keeps bragging about is really benefiting the very few at the top end of the income scale, and that inequality is magnified in our district. These small towns are dying a slow death, jobs are few and low paying. There is still an underlying sense of division here between the once-robust timber industry and the environmentalists trying to save the last strands of old-growth forest. Health care is a major issue as 600,000 Oregonians don't have health insurance and in eastern Oregon that rate is highest with 25% of its citizens lacking basic health coverage.
 
Bend and Medford are the biggest towns in the area, holding about 60% of the population of our district. These cities have done better economically than the outlying areas, largely due to the computer industry and the housing boom, but the economy statewide has been hard hit in the last 5 years (imagine that!). However, the soaring housing prices are largely due to non-Oregonians moving here and now many locals are priced out of the market. As yesterday's Medford Tribune explained:  A majority of Oregonians are not making a "living wage."
 
So what has 4-term incumbent Greg Walden done about the problem? Well, he's voted 94% of the time with the Delay GOP Corruption Machine including all those tax breaks that went to the  wealthiest 1-2%. These tax breaks have clearly not benefited the vast majority of the hard-working people of our district. He positions himself as working for the middle class yet according to the Drum Major Institute he gets a big fat 0, an F, on his middle class voting record.
 
He also pretends to care about the environment yet his voting record doesn't support his rhetoric.  The Republicans for Environmental Protection give Walden a lousy 12% rating, and the independent  League of Conservation Voters gives him an even worse 11% rating-- and that's his highest rating yet! He is proud of his Orwellian "Healthy Forests Act" that Bush signed into law despite all the  science that rejects their pro-logging position. Flatly, it is a bill that is a giveaway to Big Timber at the expense of our precious shrinking old growth forests. As if that wasn't bad enough, Walden has now pushed an even worse bill,  HR4200 through the House and is awaiting Senate action. This bill is opposed by scientists, hunters, fishers, firefighters and conservationists.  It is yet another giveaway to his corporate donors.

Walden also sponsored a bill with the corrupt Dirty Dick Pombo (R-CA) to gut the Endangered Species Act. No surprise here, but his votes actually support his biggest contributors: Big Oil, Big Agribusiness, and Big Pharmaceuticals.  Why voters would support someone who does not want to protect and preserve the very land we prize for its life-giving sustainability is a mystery.

On the other hand, the Sierra Club has enthusiastically endorsed Carol Voisin.

Walden has also voted for cuts to rural health care, education, college loans, veterans benefits, and he has voted against a $1,500 bonus for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, against improving fuel standards on cars, against investigations of wasteful spending and has failed to push for any level of oversight or accountability... You can see his whole disgraceful record  here.  So not only does Walden vote against our interests economically, he votes against taking care of the very veterans he voted into war, he votes against clean drinking water, clean air, and affordable health care for the very people he "represents."  Actions speak louder then words Mr. Walden, and it is clear your professed values are not borne out in the votes you make as our congressman.
 
The facts declare that Greg Walden deserves the title, “Rubber Stamper,” as much as anyone in Congress.  Walden's newsletters and mailings trumpet "Real solutions for today's problems" yet the only thing he actually talks about is how many times he flies back to our district. No mention of Iraq, Afghanistan, health care, the deficit, the economy, global warming... nothing.  Despite all these frequent trips home none of his constituents seem to be able to find him.  "Where's Walden?" is a refrain heard frequently here.

As one of his constituents I have lost count of the number of unanswered emails, letters and phone calls. Just yesterday, 9/18/06, I called about the Voter ID act (which would require a $97 passport and has a 6-week waiting period!), and the aide said Walden hadn't taken a position on it. She took my name and number and said she'd call me back. On 9/19/06 he voted for this awful piece of legislation, and I am still batting .000 in constituent responses from Greg Walden. He needs to go back to running his Rush Limbaugh-playing radio stations (he owns five of them), or possibly something a bit less divisive and of a more beneficial nature to the community at large. Don't hold your breath.

As for Carol Voisin, she meets all the criteria of a true progressive, someone for whom ethics and faith is a core value. Carol is a trained Methodist theologian with a Master of Divinity degree and a doctorate in Theology who currently teaches college freshmen "Ethics in the Twenty-first Century." She is intelligent, full of passion for the tasks ahead, and compassionately concerned about this country's direction. As our congresswoman she will work tirelessly for ALL of her constituents.  In Senator Ron Wyden's words: "Carol Voisin is a champion for restoring fiscal discipline at the federal level, improving public education, ensuring access to quality health care for all, and ending a too-costly war in Iraq. She brings fresh ideas to some of our nation's toughest challenges."
 
If you go to Carol's home page you will find her mission is straightforward and focused. 
 

Providing affordable and accessible health care for everyone
Ending the Iraq War responsibly and soon
Fast tracking research and development of renewable energy and alternative fuels
Reforming our public school system based on regional needs and resources
Protecting our ports, nuclear reactors, and chemical plants from terrorists
Balancing the budget and reducing our national debt
Representing my constituency and their needs, not big corporations and their greed.

We need a government that is paying attention to the needs of ordinary middle class Americans. We have record deficits, record bankruptcies, record uninsured Americans, and more citizens cycling downward into poverty every year under an all-Republican government.  It is time for a new direction.  There is nothing "conservative" about the national debt we are leaving our children, nor is there anything "compassionate" about 45 million Americans that can't afford health insurance and the fundamental respect that it affords. I am a firm believer in the values and common sense of a national health care program and Carol is ready to champion that cause. It makes sense economically and it makes sense ethically.  We need leaders who are actually ready to lead on health care for all Americans, and that means making critical changes to the status quo.
    
Carol lists the Iraq War as "the major issue facing our country today."  Staying the course in Iraq is killing 1,000 soldiers per year, Baghdad alone averages 30+ deaths per day, and yet where is Bush's and his rubber stamp Congress' solution? Troop deployments are increasing not decreasing, and the treatment of the boots on the ground is deplorable-- both in the war theater and when they come home. All the while, the GOP's biggest donors, like Halliburton and Bechtel, are raking in billions of dollars on unfulfilled reconstruction contracts. Yet there is no oversight, and a complete lack of realistic solutions from the governing party. They got us into this mess yet they have no plan to get us out.

Carol's is a 100% volunteer true grassroots campaign paid for by individual donors like you and me. Carol's campaign has a strong netroots presence. After winning the primary, she started with the traditional campaign model, but became frustrated by lack of support from the DCCC and other central democratic institutions, and wanted to find out how to engage with the creative netroots and grassroots energy like Ned Lamont's campaign was doing. She happened to meet a Roots Project member who had just returned from Ykos, and asked him to help her campaign become part of this new force. Her campaign makeover was completed when she asked him to take over management of the campaign at the beginning of September.  Several other Roots Project members have joined the team, and have worked to improve her website and create the tools to reach volunteers. We have essentially “Crashed the Gates” and Carol has embraced us! This is as pure a citizen's effort as you can get, and despite the late start and the huge financial disadvantage we face, this team of volunteers is getting out the word and making sure that the voters have a clear choice in the election.

We are here because we believe in Carol. She is beholden to no corporate donors, and vows to stay that way, but that means we need your help. You can donate to Carol's campaign through ActBlue  here.  Even better, if you are an Oregon resident, the first $50 ($100 for a joint return) is a straight tax deduction. We want to help Carol Take Our Country Back. She will serve Oregon's 2nd district with equanimity and candor, and she will serve all of America as part of a Democratic House of Representatives that will demand accountability from the Bush Administration and provide much-needed oversight on an ever more secretive and overreaching executive branch. Thank you for your support. Vote Voisin!

Quote of the day: Our debut stroll down "I Was Not Always As You See Me Now" Lane features Sen. Ted Stevens (Plus: Lewis Black on Sen. Felix Allen)

"As for helping to establish the Arctic [National Wildlife R]efuge, I did little except write a few letters. The refuge was basically set up by Alaskans. One person who did do a tremendous amount to have it set aside is now the senior senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens. He worked in the Department of the Interior at the time. Maybe that's something he'd prefer to forget."
--George Schaller, "one of the world's preeminent field biologists," interviewed by John G. Mitchell (for the October 2006 National Geographic) several weeks before returning to Alaska to re-create part of the trek he made--"most of it on the south slope of the Brooks Range"--50 years earlier with conservationists Olaus and Mardy Murie

And suddenly I for one have a very different image of at least the younger Ted Stevens, the man we know today as perhaps the most obnoxious and authoritarian blowhard in the U.S. Congress, which after all has been drained recently of such talent as Sens. Jesse Helms and Phil Gramm and Rep. Tom DeLay.

After minimizing his own role in the creation of ANWR, Schaller, now 73, longtime director of science for the Wildlife Conservation Society, notes that the refuge was finally established in 1960 and then enlarged by President Jimmy Carter under the Alaska Lands Act. "And now," interviewer Mitchell says, "the Bush Administration and Senator Stevens are looking for a go-ahead to drill for oil on the refuge's coastal plain. How do you feel about that?" Schaller replies:

It's a warning that you can never give up if you really treasure something. Nothing is safe. About 95 percent of Alaska's North Slope has already been opened for oil leases. Can't we save the rest? What kind of people are we if we don't? There are leased fields on the North Slope that haven't even been drilled yet. But now the oil companies are trying to get into the refuge, because if they can get in there, they can get in anywhere.

ALSO TALKING--Lewis Black on Senator Allen's, er, revelation

"We're not claiming him."
--the Jewish funnyman's phone response to a query by the Washington Post regarding the revelation that the mother of Virginia Sen. G. Felix "My Mother Made Great Pork Chops" Allen was born Jewish, meaning that by Jewish law so was the senator

Black, according to Post reporter Libby Copeland, "demanded DNA tests" of the senator. (Lewis, of course, is ranked in most of the most widely accepted polls as America's Funniest Jew.)

ANOTHER LEAKED NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE PROVES BUSH HAS BEEN LYING NON-STOP SINCE APRIL

I hope the Democratic leadership will pick up on this, but both The Washington Post and The New York Times have important stories today about how, as John Kerry put it, "The National Intelligence Estimate provides jarring confirmation that the disastrous policy in Iraq is a giant recruiting poster for terrorists."

This week it will sink in that since April Bush has known, has covered up and has lied his ass off about what his own Intelligence services told him: that the occupation of Iraq has increased Islamic radicalism, worsened the terror threat and made Americans far less safe. Completed in April the NIE is titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States." According to The Post "it describes the situation in Iraq as promoting the spread of radical Islam by providing a focal point, with constant reinforcement of an anti-American message for disaffected Muslims. The Web sites provide a narrative of a war with frequent victories for the insurgents, and describe an occupation that they say regularly targets Islam and its adherents. They also distribute increasingly frequent and sophisticated messages from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, urging Muslims wherever they are to take up arms against the 'Crusaders' on behalf of Iraq. Both Bush and bin Laden now consistently describe the Iraq war as the 'central front' of the global war, and both are depending on victory there to set the direction of future struggles far afield."

Rove, freaking out that the revelations will undercut the political arguments for staying the course-- and just when people are starting to think about Midterm elections-- had the White House (which normally never comments on classified intelligence leaks) try to rebut the NIE's potentially devastating impact on whatever is left on Bush's tattered credibility and on GOP policy in Iraq in general. Their efforts paled before the enormity of the revelations and 5 full months of Bush's blatant lies since he was briefed on the findings. which states flatly that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is "central" to the development and growth of the insurgency-- a not unnatural response-- and that it was the leading inspiration for an explosion of Islamic networks united by one factor: an anti-Bush agenda. Bush ignored his own NIE because it concludes, according to The Post "that rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position... 'It's a very candid assessment,' one intelligence official said yesterday of the estimate, the first formal examination of global terrorist trends written by the National Intelligence Council since the March 2003 invasion. 'It's stating the obvious.'"

Meanwhile, when Wolf Blitzer questioned Bush about Iraq on CNN today-- one would wish the House or Senate would do something like that, although it will take Democratic victories in November for Congress to turn from a rubber stamp outfit to a viable representative of the people's interests and concerns-- Bush stumbled badly. Apparently the pathetic imbecile had the colossal gall to say aloud what everyone knows his Regime believes anyway-- that to him, all the deaths and mayhem in Iraq, both American and Iraqi, will just be "a comma" in the history books. One can only pray to God that this whole episode will be a paragraph in the history books about the first American president to be tried, found guilty and imprisoned. Although Bush is currently seeking immunity for himself and his bandit regime from the War Crimes of which they are so clearly guilty.


UPDATE: HARRY REID GIVIN' 'EM HELL

Harry Reid has already lashed out at the pattern of Bush Regime lying exposed by the conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate. Reid released a statement this evening entitled "President Bush’s Recent Claims of Progress in Combating Terrorism Are at Odds with Today's Press Reports of the National Intelligence Estimate's Conclusions." Raw Story has excerpts from the release, which systematically lays out lie after lie after lie that Bush fed the American public after the NIE had already been read and explained to him.


UPDATE: CNN TRAINED MONKEY PATROL ON THE NIE BEAT-- ALTHOUGH NED LAMONT CERTAINLY GETS IT RIGHT

I was just upstairs getting dressed for my morning hike, and I switched on CNN. They had two trained in-house monkeys on talking about the NIE scandal. Well, actually they weren't talking about the findings or about Bush's deplorable 5-month coverup. The two trained CNN monkeys were talking about the timing of the leak and how it was done to help the Democrats. I don't even think they get checks from the RNC or Rove. They're just... trained monkeys and trained monkeys do what trained monkeys do.

Of course, you might want to choose to get your reality-based news from a non-CNN-trained-monkey source. Two bad Olbermann's not on all day. Today, though, a good source of news on the NIE can be found at Ned Lamont's website in the form of a letter her wrote to the Bush Regime's favorite Lieberhound. "With this report being released on the eve of your major address on Iraq, I and thousands of other citizens in Connecticut expect to hear your response to this news in your speech, considering you have echoed President Bush’s claim that the Iraq War has made our country safer, and that staying the course will help keep us safe. As the NIE now shows, that is absolutely not the case-- in fact, the Iraq War has and continues to unnecessarily endanger U.S. national security. Never again can a political leader claim otherwise, lest they deliberately ignore the concrete facts presented to us by our intelligence agencies." It's worth reading the whole thing.

CAN ANGELIDES TURN THE BEAT AROUND? HE'S GOT A GREAT IDEA... ABOUT IRAQ

I rarely get out. But last night I wound up at a dinner party with some very well-connected Democrats. I left at midnight and got home at 1 AM, a time I haven't seen in years. Between midnight and 1 AM I was really depressed. Maybe I just shouldn't go out any more at all. But as I rumaged around in my brain for the root causes of my depression, I stumbled across what was bothering me (most). Everyone there agreed, some rather too wholeheartedly, that Phil Angelides is not only going to be beaten by Schwarzenegger but that he would be beaten really badly and that he has no chance whatsoever. "No one will give him a dime," one of my dinner companions imparted with what seemed like a feeling of some kind of satisfaction. Put me right into a funk.

I haven't written much about the California gubernatorial race-- except when he made the fairly, and wonderfully, radical move to endorse the Clean Elections Proposition, 89. It's been kind of lackluster, with Schwarzenegger trying to pass himself off as progressive while footsie-playing-Democrats who want to run for governor in 2010 doing whatever they can to subtly sabotage Angelides. Angelides has had some good TV ads but the campaign doesn't seem to have taken off. It's what everyone seems to always talk about. But there was one thing that slipped out in the dinner chit chat last night and I'm pretty sure it wasn't told to me in confidence.

Angelides, they told me-- and they know-- is about the announce that on his first day as governor he'll call Bush and tell him he wants to withdraw all California's National Guard troops from the occupation of Iraq. Can this turn the race around? No one at the dinner party thought so. The mass media has been studiously avoiding Angelides' campaign and is 100% behind Schwarzenegger. Let's see what happens with the bombshell this week.


UPDATE: L.A. TIMES BEATS ME TO THE PUNCH

Within minutes of publishing the above, the phone started ringing and 3 calls in a row were about the L.A. Times scoop. Oh well... I hope it makes an impression.

TURNING EASTERN WASHINGTON BLUE-- MEET PETER GOLDMARK

The enormous 5th district represents a third of the state of Washington, but as far as the world of Microsoft and Amazon, Starbucks, Sub-Pop and Dan Savage... it's another country. Today a friend of mine from the district, AB, is celebrating a birthday-- but is far more eager to celebrate an election victory for Peter Goldmark in November. AB found the time to write up a really comprehensive look at the race in Washington's 5th congressional district.

In many respects the 5th is still the wild west. Cut off on three sides by mountain ranges, and even though the past 80 years have seen 2/3 of the farms disappear, its economic base is still agriculture. Population is sparse. As all the old towns like Ritzville and Sprague dry up and drop dead, it's now mainly concentrated in Spokane, only recently grown out of a violent and degraded youth as an anything goes frontier mining town-- Deadwood's sister city.  

Between the WTO, NAFTA and CAFTA trade agreements and the exhorbitant costs of the petroleum and petroleum byproducts currently necessary to operate farm machinery and transport food to market (and for non-organic farmers, to fertilize and de-pestify crops), farmers and all the jobs and families dependent on the agricultural economy have been squeezed beyond endurance. During the Bush administration the cost for an acre of wheat has jumped from $60 to $160+. Previously the price had stayed the same since 1948! Which is why the 5th-- notoriously conservative and kook-prone like next door Idaho with its homemade terrorist gangs and Wish We Were In The Land Of Dixie Aryan Nation diehards-- is going Democrat.  

When Pete Goldmark talks to ranchers, they like him and agree with him and are puzzled why he's not a Republican. Pete tells them he is not a Republican because he's not a crook; he refuses to associate with crooks; and he will not subjugate the interests of the 5th district to the dictates of the lobbyist pals of the hacktocracy that's planted its boots on the neck of our formerly representative government.  

But he will grapple with the challenges that face the interests of Americans, and he will not stand by doing nothing but whine and moan while the alleged representatives of the people defile our government with their venal self-serving schemes and then hand us the bill. He wants to re-establish the ties between country and city; he believes in science, and the need of food producers and food consumers to reorganise and revolutionize the production and distribution of food in this country to bring it into the 21st Century. Our current system is untenable. Not just utterly dependent on one rapidly depleting non-renewable resource, but three of them: oil and dirt (like diamonds and petroleum, it takes a long long time to produce arable soil) and fresh water (hello global warming, good-bye glacial icepack).

Local food producers have been abandoned by their missing-in-action representative government, Congressperson Cathy McMorris, who's got her hands full keeping her balance as a sincere really nice also harmless and wholesome country girl with the best intentions in the world, who has nevertheless voted for every single evil shameless retrograde vicious dastardly piece of legislation Tom Delay ever shoved under her nose, and whose designated role in the Republican Party oligarchy is dogsbody to the ineffable Richard Pombo. Her division of labour is eviscerating the Environmental Protection Act.   

Meanwhile back in her district, where making a ton of apple juice costs between $120 and $240 (which China now does for $80 or less) farms go bankrupt, homes are abandoned, and children (50,000 and counting) go hungry.  

Pete Goldmark was born in the 5th and has lived and worked there his entire life. He grew up in a remote valley near the Canadian border, on the family ranch, with neither neighbours nor indoor plumbing. Like all farm kids, he began working before he was old enough to go to school, hauling the stones from fields, ranching and roping and all. He started out in a one room schoolhouse on the Colville Indian Reservation and learned at public schools until he grew up and went away to college. In 1972, after obtaining a wife, and a PhD. in micro-biology from Berkeley, Pete brought his bride back to the Double J for their honeymoon and forgot to leave. He's been working it ever since, 33 years now; raised his own 5 children there, and organic beef, and strains of wheat (named after the aforementioned wife) specifically bred for eastern Washington, developed in a laboratory he set up in the barn for those long frozen winters when you don't want to get out much.

Like everyone in the Goldmark family, Pete's been an active citizen his whole life, serving as a volunteer fireman, on school boards and university boards; he's led farmers' aid organisations and the statewide effort to bring environmentalists and ranchers and farmers (and not just the organic kind) together around their common care for the well-being of animals and the land. Pete is devoted to the defence of civil liberties and a fair and equal shot at the justice system for every individual regardless of status, sex or income. But he had no yen to be a politician. That our government of entitled-without-bounds, lying, short-sighted, narrow-minded opportunists and bullies, self-dealers all, is forcing our country to it's knees and standing in the way of everything that needs to get done, while the leadership of the Democratic Party looks on slack-jawed; forced him into public life. Pete wants to go to Congress to work with his fellow genuine Democrats, hold hearings, use the power of subpoena, whatever it takes, to get our country out of the clutches of the extremist Corruptocrats who have smeared our nation and abused the public trust beyond all reason, and turn its attention back to the needs of everyday people.

In one sense the 5th is a far away wilderness dotted with farming communities. At the same time it is the nexus of critical issues facing the American people sooner than most of us realise. The 5th bestrides the basin of the Columbia River system and its kazillion dams, and will have critical say in the rapidly approaching time when our nation must face the hard choices between food (irrigation), international trade (waterways for shipping that food around the world), fish (spawning/reproduction), or power (lights up Seattle, Vancouver, Portland, Las Vegas), while fighting a race against time to stop 50 years of nuclear waste from seeping into the Columbia River water-table from the Hanford Reach. Representation by someone with a genuine grasp of reality, the fact and meaning of our finite resources, global warming and all its implications, and what steps need to be taken with our educational system, our energy, food and trade, civic and environmental policies, in order to protect our our fellow citizens, our civilization and our home on this earth, is not only critical for the 5th, but for every American who cares about the future of our country.

Pete opposes "the unending destruction of men and women and resources" in Iraq, and wants to bring back our troops as soon as possible. He's opposed to messing with medicare and social security. He is especially committed to encouraging and utilising alternative forms of energy, both for our national security and the maintenance of our rural culture. Short version: he stands for everything beloved of Down With Tyranny. Except health care. As of yet he does not endorse a single-payer, universal, non-profit, democratic health care system. And also, like every single other person who came up on the range, he likes guns. 

Because Pete wouldn't campaign in earnest until the ranch was secured and the harvest finished, it's only been in the last few weeks that much of the electorate has become aware of his existence.  And the more voters see of him, the more they like him. After all these years with the likes of George Bush (Incompetent, TX) and G. Felix Allen (Moron, VA) prancing around in their store-bought dude-ranch get-ups, aiming for a wannabe persona that appeals to the sense of self to which they would like to become accustomed, attempting to cloak their otherwise unacceptable real selves and policies in the symbols of our common cultural heritage; when Pete rides his horse, Regal (born, bred, raised and trained at the Double J), and wears his cowboy hat and drives his truck and flys his airplane, he's not playing dress-up. It's not vacation time. It's his life and always has been. Peter Goldmark is the kind of real-life cowboy/scholar/citizen of incorruptible character that Gary Cooper played, and Ronald Reagan aspired to play, in the ongoing narrative of American politics and culture.  
And he's going to whup the GOP in one of its strongholds. They be crying a big river over this one.   

Pete's doubled his money (not so easy when you refuse $$ from lobbyists, PACs and corporations; his campaign is funded 98% from individuals) in the past two months, but the GOP has a war chest of millions. Don't just take back Congress, get them where it hurts. Then maybe they'll think twice the next time they get a jones to play fast and loose with our our country, our reputation, our principles, our future. 

AKAKA KICKS SOME RIGHT WING ASS

Earlier today I talked about what a dipshit excuse for a Democrat the DCCC's Baron Hill (IN-09) is, a follow-up to a similar piece on another right-wing quasi-Democratic challenger, Mike Weaver. Another reactionary Democrat, Ed Case, who has a disgraceful record of coziness with big bribing corporations-- and in support for the Bush agenda-- was soundly defeated by progressive incumbent Daniel Akaka, 55-45%.

Case closed? Probably not. Cousin of right wing religionist nutcase/robber baron Steve Case (who founded and later gigantically ripped off AOL), Ed Case has every intention of running again, probably for the seat of octogenarian Daniel Inouye. Hopefully, he'll be beaten again, as the Democratic Party grapples with its soul and figures out it's the party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Wellstone, not the party of Al From and Joe Lieberman.

JIM AND CHRIS' EXCELLENT ADVENTURE AMONG REACTIONARY DEMOCRATS: MEET BARON HILL

First of all, anyone named Baron should have probably been a Republican. And anyone with Baron Hill's positions on the issues of the day, is a Republican in spirit if not by party affiliation. Chris Cillizza and Jim VandeHei, their minds rapidly deteriorating from too many Mike Weaver "Democrats" and too much fried food, take us to Indiana's 9th congressional district today, where there is a rematch between reactionary former Congressman Baron Hill (D, kinda) and far more reactionary current Congressman Mike Sodrel (KKK).

In 2004, Hill lost his seat by 1,500 and still has no clue that it was because he offered no alternative to Republicans. He's using the same losing game-plan to try to re-capture the seat and may well be swept up in the anti-incumbent fever sweeping the land. The clueless duo from The Post are still buying into Hill's crap about conservative Democrats being ticked off. In order to make sure they understand that Hill is as reactionary as they want him to be, he's come out swinging and everything remotely connected to the party he purports to be part of. "Hill campaigns as a social conservative, opposed to abortion, gun control and gay marriage... The Hill strategy is to emphasize his faith and family values, and talk basketball as often as possible to show his distinctly Indiana upbringing." Sodrel calls him a liberal.

The DCCC loves Baron Hill. He's exactly Rahm Emanuel's kind of Big Business-friendly hack who goes along with the filthy corporate agenda that screws ordinary Americans day in and day out. Whatever idealism or core values he may have once possessed are long in the past and his positions on crucial issues have nothing whatsoever to do with the Democratic Party. Take a look at this disgraceful, pure Republican video at the very top of his website. When you get a request from the DCCC or any of their shills asking for your money, please remember that, for the most part, the donations DO NOT GO to anti-war candidates or to progressives or to populists. A check to the DCCC goes to electing creeps like Hill and to put Emanuel into a position of power over the congressional caucus. Forget the Baron Hills and other Republicans-in-Democratic clothing candidates and support real Democrats like Ned Lamont, Coleen Rowley, Jerry McNerney, Victoria Wulsin, Tony Trupiano, Jay Fawcett, Robert Rodriguez, John Hall... candidates who make us proud to be Democrats.

OUR FIRST QUOTE OF THE DAY FROM CANADA: THEY THINK IT'S TIME TO THROW THE RASCALS OUT TOO

I know Ken is off on a well-deserved little vacation for the High Holy Days-- I hope I have my terminology correct; someone invited me to a dinner party last night and I discovered it was a holiday. Anyway, what I didn't realize is that the entire DWTQOTD Committee had taken off too. So this is a combination of yesterday's Quote of the Day along with a shameless plug.

Now DWT friend Christina sent this in. It comes from the Toronto Star, one of Canada's major newspapers. It's their weekly Anti-Hit List. And down at #6 we find our song for change, "Have You Had Enough?" Listen at the link; get all the info at our My Space page and donate to the cause-- getting 60 second targeted spots on the radio in time for the election-- here at the Blue America PAC.

Here's the Star review:

RICKIE LEE JONES, TOM MAXWELL & KEN MOSHER, "HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH?"

The musical brainstorm of a couple of alumni from swing revivalists Squirrel Nut Zippers, this free download pairs Jones' delivery of an earnest message (vote out the Republicans in November's congressional midterms) with what sounds like a cross between "Hit the Road Jack" and "Minnie the Moocher" but is actually the Zippers staple "Put a Lid on It." As impeccably produced by power-pop god Andy Paley, you'll be hard-pressed to find political rabble rousing that sounds this giddy.

And, for your viewing enjoyment... that $493,000 in legalized bribes Denny Hastert has taken to deliver Big Business' crushing agenda is neither a typo nor an exaggeration. That is what this swollen pimple on the ass of the body politick has openly accepted from corporations and their lobbyists so that he would consistently vote against the interests of his own constituents.

THE SUNDAY GOOD NEWS BAD NEWS

-by Mags

This week, it seemed to me like mostly bad news, but being the proverbial Pollyanna I am, I decided to take once more around the park just to see if I could find something to be positive about. Many of us feel isolated and we forget that the country and the world are quite large. We forget the sheer numbers of Americans and indeed others around the world who are sick and tired of the Bush regime. That the media is lopsided is no accident, and it serves the little dictator to create the illusion that he is the norm, and all else is fringe.

The good news is that the Big Dog gave Chris Wallace a run for his money. Clinton hit the nail on the head. I am not sure which was more fun, his setting the record straight on bin Laden or his setting the record straight on Chris and FOX news.

The bad news? Poor Mike Wallace has to claim this child publicly. If only he did not look like him, he could make up something about the postman. On second thought, Mike, it is worth a try.


The bad news is that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and President Bush almost got into it over Pakistan’s commitment to the war on terror. President Musharraf implied that Bush threatened to bomb his country back to the stone age, and that he was either with us, or against us (no, surely not!). But, the good news, is that after an awful lot of eye looking and flat out denials by Richard Armitage (CIA agent outer) the two leaders are once again BFF. Besides, who ever heard of Bush saying such an outlandish thing?

The good news is that the military will not use weapons against our enemies without testing them. The bad news is...
THEY ARE TESTING THEM ON US!!!! Yes, they are, and Mr. Bush has the right to do it without your knowledge.

The good news is that Osama may be dead


The bad news (for the GOP) is if it is true, it came out in September and not in October the way Rove planned it. Maybe, but you never know for sure now, do you? Nope. However, if it happened as reported here, it was a matter of mother nature doing the dirty work, and not the swaggering prez.

The bad news is that Al Qaeda still wants to kill Americans. The good news, as it turns out, only a few of us. And, not even the ones we like.

THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT-- WHEN THEY HAVE THEIR TANTRUMS, JUST STEP OVER THEM AND KEEP MOVING ON

When did this country start taking the right wing seriously? At what point did we decide that we should begin listening to a group of anal retentive religious nuts? This whining group of phonies protests everything from your favorite TV show to the funerals of our fallen military.

At first we were a bit worried about them since they started getting their own TV networks where they were able to talk little old ladies out of their life savings and they were getting big and looked like they were going to be pretty powerful, but even today, this fringe group seems to be only about 30% of the population. Hardly a majority of us.

They are always protesting something the rest of us are doing. They don’t seem to like anything, least of all freedom of speech. Last year when Ford motor company was found to be advertising in gay and lesbian publications they protested and boycotted Ford. It is hard to understand the basis for that sort of action, but even more difficult to sort out just why Ford listened or why it merited media coverage.

A year or so ago, they protested a television show, The Book of Daniel, about an Episcopal priest and his family. It was mildly entertaining, but for some reason this group figured they alone had the copyrights to Jesus, and that any other portrayal besides one they put their stamp of approval on was sacrilege.

And, today I read about this at NBC.

I live in a town where a local church gained some publicity for burning Harry Potter books, and sadly they were not the only ones around the country. Let us not forget the right’s obsession with
Sponge Bob Square Pants.

Right wing religionists are highly organized, yes, we know that is so. But, really what does that mean? Does that mean just because they can sign their name to a few thousand post cards during the Sunday sermon protesting something, that the rest of the world needs to listen?

Sure they are organized, but so? Organization alone does not entitle you to what you want. The KKK is organized. Al Qaeda is organized. There are oodles of nut cases organizing against something or other every day. We can hardly live our lives without tripping over these life-a-phobes. What gives? They don’t even like
their own political party, the one they helped put in office. They are the first ones on any occasion to call foul, to demand complete and total submission to their whims, while always convinced they are persecuted victims of everyone and anyone not indoctrinated into their narrow way of belief.

But, it does not stop there. This is a group of people willing to harm their own children for their ideological purity. Many will not permit their daughters to be vaccinated by the
HPV vaccine because they believe it will promote promiscuity. Never mind that 50% of the males within their ranks have problems with pornography. This is hypocrisy at its finest. And, here we are, a nation shaking in our shoes over every little whimper from foot stomping tantrum throwing group of fear ridden mixed up adults.

I once managed a bookstore where I received about 1500 post cards from local church goers protesting and boycotting my store because I was supposedly selling a book that was not even on my shelves. I am quite sure that none of those signing the cards cared to check my store to see if it was there.

If the Internet does nothing else, maybe it will give those in power a bit of perspective as the left also signs petitions and makes requests. Maybe if nothing else, we can normalize dissent in such a way as we go back to business as usual, to normal life without catering to a few crazed, albeit organized, whiners. Maybe we can go back to free speech.

Maybe somewhere someone might finally say, and with authority...."If you don't like it, don’t do it. If you don’t want to read the book, then don’t buy it. If you don’t like the program, just turn the channel."

I daily wonder why this group of people thinks they must make everyone just like them or why they MUST matter so. It is their right to speak out, but to cater to this minority is like giving in to the child who throws themselves onto the floor of the supermarket every week demanding a candy bar. Once you cave, they think they are entitled.

I suggest we as a nation do what I did when my little darlings pulled that stunt. I simply stepped over them, and kept on moving.

SORRY, HUGO CHAVEZ WAS COMPLETELY CORRECT

My favorite Satan is the gay one, always wracked with doubts and always second-guessing himself, from South Park. Personally, I don't believe in a red guy with cloven hooves and horns, stinking of sulfur, running around with a pitchfork. The concept of a physical Hell-after-death is pretty childish and primitive (for the kinds of people possessing intellects that find Karl Rove's vision of the world reasonable). There's a more subtle and nuanced concept of an allegorical Hell but... well, you know where allegory, symbolism and nuanced gets you in America.

So the other day, the wildly popular-- popular with poor folks, not with plutocrats and oligarchs and the kind of people from Venezuela a Bush would have any contact with-- populist president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, comes to the UN and complains about the acrid stench of sulfur up at the podium where Bush has been previously. He's pretty funny and dramatic and calls Bush "el diablo," a devil. The corporate media went bonkers. You would have thought Chavez, who barely escaped with his life from a Bush-backed military coup against him a couple of years ago, had just threatened to bomb the Empire State Building or... to cut off oil exports.

How dare he call our dear leader such an awful thing-- and from the very same podium from which our dear leader let lose with his Axis of Evil shtick before invading Iraq (under demonstrably false pretenses, proving a good deal of the substance of what Chavez actually said about him. Of course the substance isn't what corporate media bothered to cover.)

Now about that substance. Stephen Lendman at the San Francisco Independent Media Center had a lot more to say about it than a Hannity or a Limbaugh or any of the garbage. He mentioned how Chavez held up a Noam Chomsky book. It wasn't one of the books on Bush's summer reading list-- the one with the 3 Shakespeares and Camus. "Hugo Chavez delivered an impassioned speech yesterday to the assembled delegates who came to hear him. It's one likely to be favorably remembered many years from now. At its end, the delegates showed their appreciation and support by giving him a standing ovation (the longest one of all the leaders addressing the Assembly) in contrast to the cool and polite reception given George Bush the previous day who chose not to attend to hear the Venezuelan leader. Too bad he didn't as he might have learned from it if he stayed alert and paid attention. Citing the language in Chomsky's book in his hand, Chavez said: 'The hegemonistic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very existence of the human species (and) We appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our head.' He went on to explain that earlier the President of the US attended an Organization of American States meeting and proposed a NAFTA-type trade agreement in both regions that is the 'fundamental cause of the great evils and the great tragedies currently suffered by our people. Neoliberal capitalism, the Washington Consensus....has generated... a high degree of misery, inequality and infinite tragedy for all the peoples on (this) continent.'"


Why go into all this conceptual stuff when you can just report that Chavez called Bush a devil and crossed himself? Is it possible to expect anything more from the corporate media? And from the Democratic opposition? They were tripping all over themselves to run to the microphones to denounce Chavez... not even the regular suspects like Lieberheadupbushsass, but progressives who absolutely say far worse things about Bush and know he's a criminal and a traitor to all the good that America stands for. I mean Charlie Rangel?? The man who is famously quoted as having said that Bush is the living embodiment, the absolutely proof, that white racial superiority is a myth whose time has ended? Politicians are so... political. There was Nancy Pelosi making believe that Bush is a legitimate and respectable leader of a democratic country instead of... what he really is and what she knows he really is.

Markos said the whole thing isn't even worth talking about, an opinion I shared, until the media/Democrats/even bloggers anti-Chavez pile on began. Today The L.A. Times carries an opinion piece by Professor Todd Gitlin entitled "Renouncing Bush's Failures Is a Start." It's a far better frame than denouncing Hugo Chavez' hyperbole about the most hated man in the entire world, more hated, I am certain, than Osama bin-Laden, dead or alive. Gitlin doesn't say it the same way Chavez did-- but of course, Gitlin was never the victim of a Bush-sponsored coup attempt-- but he gets the point across. "Perhaps he is not a conservative at all but a deficit-mongering big-government advocate, a world-changing radical in disguise and a cultivator of global anti-Americanism. Perhaps, from Baghdad to Kabul to New Orleans, bungling is not the exception but the rule because he and his inner circle hold planning, the law, diplomacy and even reason in contempt."

Like Chavez, and like all the mealy-mouthed Democrats who strutted up to the microphones to wave the flag and attack him, I hold Bush in contempt. Sooner or later Amato will have the scene in Jesus Camp up on Crooks and Liars where all the little zombie children are being instructed by their neo-Nazi pastor how to worship a cardboard cutout of Bush. These are the only people with any excuse for not holding Bush in contempt-- since they have none of that reason stuff the Republicans are dead set on doing away with-- before it does away with them. Less than 7 weeks to voting time.

TONY TRUPIANO, A GENUINE VOX POPULI FROM MICHIGAN RUNNING FOR CONGRESS

If you go to Tony Trupiano's web site, the first thing you'll see is a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, "We must become the change we want to see." I don't think Tony's making a play for the small Indian-American population of Michigan's 11th congressional district.

Tony has had a devoted following in Michigan because of his popular radio talk show where he has given voice to the aspirations and frustrations of "regular Joe and Jane" middle-class Americans. He has a well-deserved reputation for standing up for the dignity of America's working men and women and never kissing ass to the corporate overseers. If you ask fans of Tony's radio show why they like him, the response you are likely to get is that he's a guy not afraid to speak Truth to Power.

It seems like Tony's been running for this seat for a long time-- longer than any of our other first-time candidates. I asked him why. He spoke, passionately, from his heart, for an hour. "There's so much pain... so many people who are angry and have no idea what to do about it. I felt I wasn't doing enough with my work on the radio. I wanted to do more to help my community... to help my country. I know how to lead and I know we need profound and clear change in this country." Last summer when he made his decision, he says two people were pushing him to do it: his wife and our own John Amato from Crooks and Liars.

I asked Tony what is the first thing he would do if he gets to Congress. He didn't hesitate for a moment. He went right to the roots of political evil. "The mother's milk of politics is money and there's something very sick about the way we raise money for campaigns. I want to sign on as a co-sponsor of John Tierney's clean money/clean elections campaign finance reform bill." Tony has identified most of the pressing problems that make Americans feel uneasy-- to put it in the most mild of terms-- about the direction our country is heading. He asks the residents of the suburbs west of Detroit (parts of Wayne and Oakland counties) to take a look at his positions and compare them to the bullshit his opponent has rubber stamped since drawing his own district boundaries and winning the seat in 2002.


I almost forgot to mention his opponent, probably because he's such a total nonentity, just a sure vote for Bush on every heinous proposal he and DeLay pushed down the legislative turnpike, from No Child Left Behind to Medicare Part D to the War in Iraq, all things where Tony's positions stand in stark contrast to Bush's and Thaddeus McCotter's. That's the clown's name, a weak, mama's boy, namby-pamby who a smart store owner wouldn't trust to leave by himself in a shop. McCotter, like so many Republicans in Congress, took a great deal of money from Ney, Cunningham and DeLay in return for his complacency on all their wheelings and dealings, but McCotter is one of the few crooked Republicans who have refused to return that money after each of these close colleagues of his was indicted, one being already in federal prison and the other two headed that way.

But worse than the dirty money from Republicrooks in Congress, is all the money McCotter takes from Big Business as a quid pro quo for supporting the corporate agenda no matter how badly it hurts his constituents. Big Pharma, for example, gave McCotter over $15,000 in legalized bribes and McCotter, as one of DeLay's assistant whips, helped make sure that the Big Pharma-written Prescription Drug Bill-- donut hole and all-- was passed. Billions in profits for Big Pharma, millions in comapaign contributions and bribes to Republicans like McCotter-- and for the elderly and sick in MI-11? No re-importantion of drugs from Canada-- an even bigger deal in the Detroit area than in most of the country-- and no bulk buying of drugs for the needy; oh, and then there are the annual increases in premiums and deductibles and a growing gap in coverage for the prescription drugs they buy.

When the voters in MI-11 look at McCotter's record that's what they see-- on every single issue. A similar series of legalized bribes from Big Oil and a similar record of supporting their predatory legislative agenda that has dircetly led to billions of dollars in rip-offs of ordinary Americans. That's been the GOP economic policy: tax cuts for the wealthy, gigantic price increases-- which even Bush admits is a tax increase-- for the middle class.

You won't find a clearer difference between candidates anywhere than between McCotter and Tony. But, can he win? In 2004 Bush won the district with 53% of the vote. His popularity in the 11th CD has fallen drastically to just over 30%. But Tony isn't the kind of man to sit back and wait for a tidal wave of revulsion against Republicans to sweep him into office. He's far too street smart for that. Tony's grassroots field operation is the envy of every politician in Michigan. His campaign may not have a lot of money for advertising and slick fliers, but when it comes to the nuts and bolts, on the ground, precint-by-precint organization it takes to get out the vote and win elections, Tony is more than prepared. I asked an old friend of mine at the AFL-CIO, which has enthusiastically endorsed Tony's campaign, to explain how Tony could win in the 11th, with McCotter rolling in corporate cash. "This is no exaggeration," he began. "Trupiano has the strongest and most potent field operation of any district in the state of Michigan. Right now he has the wind at his back. He has a very good chance to take this race."

Tony's the newest addition to our Blue America ActBlue Page. When I asked him what CD I should give away to donors, he got almost as passionate as when I asked him about getting out of Iraq or about creating new employment opportinuites. "Music is the tonic of my soul. I would be lost without music," he explained... and then went on to talk about all the musical greats he enjoys listening to, from James Taylor to hip hop, classic rock and classical. Well, since Canada is so close to his district and since a good friend our ours, Liberal Oasis founder Bill Scher, just happens to have an amazing new book out called Wait! Don't Move to Canada!, I decided that this week we'll be giving away autographed copies of Bill's books instead of CDs. The first dozen contributors to Tony's campaign on our ActBlue Page will get a signed book. (If you don't want a book, but still want to make a contribution to your nation's well-being, just add a penny to your donantion.)


UPDATE: McCOTTER SLITHERS OUT FROM UNDER HIS ROCK, SPITS SOME POISON, SLITHERS BACK AGAIN, DECLARES CAMPAIGN OVER

After steadfastly refusing to debeat Tony, the McCotter monster finally agreed to one-- and only one-- which also included 2 independent candidates. Predictably, Tony made mincemeat out of this sack of rubber stamp crap and McCotter short-circuited. He also defended the doughnut hole, which could lose him the election. Hugh Gallagher covered the debate live:


A League of Women Voters candidates forum Thursday erupted into an emotional and vituperative exchange between Republican U.S. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter and his Democratic challenger, Tony Trupiano.

McCotter and Trupiano participated in the forum at the Livonia City Hall auditorium with candidates John Tatar of the Libertarian Party and Charles Tackett of the U.S. Taxpayers Party. The exchange came during closing statements by the candidates. Trupiano criticized McCotter for campaign advertising showing Trupiano being abducted by space aliens with the tag "Far left, far out Tony" and saying that Trupiano favors "amnesty" toward illegal aliens. Trupiano called the ads "lies" about his position on the issue.

He said McCotter was out of touch with the district and offered to provide him with a map. He also challenged McCotter to a one-on-one debate. The League forum is the only joint appearance that McCotter has accepted.

A grim-faced McCotter shot back.

"Politics is the only place where a skunk says you stink," he said. "The only liar in this campaign in you."

McCotter said Trupiano had lied about McCotter's use of his franking privileges to mail out circulars to 11th District residents. Trupiano said the mailings were not done according to congressional rules. McCotter said he followed the accepted procedures, had full approval and that a phone call by Trupiano would have cleared up the matter.

McCotter said the offer of a map was an insult to him and to his family, who have had to put up with McCotter being away from home to attend numerous community events.

A segment of the sharply divided audience began to shout back at McCotter.

"You will not shout me down," he yelled.

He said he would not allow for amnesty and that Trupiano had changed his position on the issue and was a "chameleon." McCotter said he offered the "hard truth with teeth."

In response to Tackett calling him a Bush rubber-stamp, he said he has never been a rubber stamp for the president.

His comments were met with a loud mixture of cheers and boos. After the forum, the two major party candidates shook hands.

Prior to the closing verbal fireworks, the candidates drew strong audience reaction on their views on the war, and the budget deficit, key issues throughout the country where the Republican Party is trying to maintain its majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Department of Peace proposal also caused sharp response.

Despite being in his hometown, McCotter, running for a third term, appeared uncomfortable and grim during the entire forum, giving his views in a clipped, rapid-fire manner. This was in contrast to the loose, blunt-spoken delivery of Tackett, whose observations often drew chuckles from the audience.

On Iraq, McCotter said it was time to reduce the number of troops and create a counter insurgency that would more effectively fight the enemy and to work at creating a viable government from the town council level up rather than from the top down.

Trupiano drew a chorus of boos when he said it was necessary to separate the war in Iraq from the war on terror.

"We need to start to bring the troops home, certainly by the end of 2007," he said.

He was applauded by his supporters when he said the war in Iraq "has made us more vulnerable and less safe" since 9/11.

The candidates were asked their views on establishing a Department of Peace. McCotter has made known his opposition to the idea. Trupiano led the response by saying he couldn't see how anyone would not favor a Department of Peace. Tackett responded that he believed in love and Tatar said he would support such a department.

McCotter said the idea was a "secular panacea for a spiritual problem."

"We have things that promote peace, churches and families," McCotter said.

He said the idea was just an example of "radical secularism" designed to build a wall between church and state.

On the deficit, Tatar called it the number one issue in the campaign. He said the deficit was hurting everyone and that not enough was being done to cut government programs.

McCotter drew laughs when he said that the "Republican Congress has been responsible" on deficit reduction. He responded angrily to the laughter.

McCotter and Trupiano had sharp differences on the Medicare prescription law and on universal medical coverage.

"We need to take Medicare Part D and dismantle it. It was a flawed plan to begin with," Trupiano said. "No one should have to decide between medicine and other needs."

McCotter said there was no need to dismantle the program. "It was designed to help seniors pay for their drugs and this district had one of the highest signups," he said.

He called the payment gap, or doughnut, when prescription costs reach a certain point a necessary cost containment feature.

On medical coverage, McCotter said he opposed a single-payer government insurance system and favored efforts to bring more universal access to medical care through federal qualifying health clinics and medical savings accounts. He also favors tort reform to limit malpractice suits.

Trupiano said he does favor a single-payer system and that the current model isn't working.

When asked to name some important accomplishments of his time in Congress, McCotter cited an amendment to preserve community block grants, the establishment of an assistant secretary for manufacturing in the U.S. Department of Commerce and preservation of delinquent tax revenues for deficit reduction rather than for more spending programs.

FOR THIS MAN

The jury is still out on whether George Bush will indeed get his torture bill and his wire tapping bill. Neither is law yet. But, time is running short. Karl Rove holds out to GOP hopefuls promises of October surprises that will ensure their personal victories that will, no doubt come at the expense of the country’s well being.

Mr. Bush told us just a short time ago that we ignored people’s announcements at our own peril. He referred to Hitler in that speech. But, I wonder what Mr. Bush meant when he told us before being elected that he thought dictatorships were fine, as long as he was the dictator? Should we not be heeding his words? Sure looks like it.

Joe Scarborough wonders aloud if Bush is an idiot. Chris Matthews vehemently criticizes the lies that led to what he refers to as a bullshit war. And, yet GOP leadership works to hand this privileged son of Bush who has had no prior successes the keys to world domination and the right to torture at will anyone, and you read that right....ANYONE....he damn well pleases.

George Bush is a failed businessman who never did anything that his daddy did not have to set up for him to do. He never succeeded at the many gimmes that he was handed. And, yet through manipulation, payoffs, and corruption this n’er do well idiot is now to be considered worthy of this amount of power?

America... people... legislators... is this the man you want to give up your Democratic way of life for? Is this the person for whom we are willing to shred the Constitution? Is this the man we find worthy of turning back the clock on the lessons of human history? This man, this misfit who has bullied and bought his way to power?

For this man we will let Democracy die?

-Mags

ERIC CLAPTON & J.J. CALE LOOK AT BUSH'S WAR-- WHEN IT HAPPENS IN THE STREET, THEY CALL IT A CRIME

I'm not the world's most knowledgeable Eric Clapton scholar, just a garden variety fan, certainly since before I booked 2 of his bands, Cream and the Yardbirds, to play at my college. Later, by some miracle I wound up as the head of the record label that he recorded for. I don't recall him as ever getting too political with his music. So wasn't I in for a shock this afternoon when a mutual friend took me for a drive and played me The Road to Escondido the new Clapton/J.J. Cale album due out November 7, election day.

The "political" song is called "When This War is Over" and, like most of the album, it is sung by Eric and J.J.

When this war is over
It will be a better day
But it won't bring back
Those poor boys in their grave

I don't have a copy of the CD and I can't recall all the lyrics but I remember asking if they sat down and wrote some lines with Jack Murtha:

Gotta get a plan
Change our ways, you know

The album is chillingly beautiful at times and powerful and vibrant throughout. Anyone who's ever listened to Clapton's astounding covers of "After Midnight" and "Cocaine," might have guessed these two guys would work together someday. This someday has resulted in 14 songs that defy simple genre categorization. There's rock, blues, country, folk... even a gorgeous children's song I can't get out of my head that Eric wrote for his three daughters. (Eric also wrote a song with John Mayer, who plays on the album, as do Taj Mahal, Albert Lee and Derek Trucks.)

"This was the realization of what may have been my last ambition, to work with the man who's music has inspired me for as long as I can remember," said Clapton. "There are not enough words for me to describe what he represents to me, musically and personally, and anyway I wouldn't want to embarrass him by going overboard, for he is a truly humble man... I think it's enough to say that we had fun, made a great record, and I for one already want to make another."

Maybe next week I'll be able to get some music I can post. Until then, here's a great live version of Eric with J.J. and his band at the Crossroads concert doing "After Midnight" (which is not one of the Cale covers on the new album).



For anyone who wants the tracklisting: Danger, Heads in Georgia, Missing Person, When This War Is Over, Sporting Life Blues, Dead End Road, It’s Easy, Hard To Thrill, Anyway The Wind Blows, Three Little Girls, Don’t Cry Sister, Last Will and Testament, Who Am I Telling You, and Ride The River.

WISDOM ON THE WALL STREET JOURNAL'S EDITORIAL PAGE? YES, ABSOLUTELY-- AT LEAST TODAY

Discerning Americans have come to expect nothing but extremist, even fanatic, right wing claptrap on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Discerning Americans will be in for a surprise today.

Simply put, Howard Dean's commentary should be the Democratic Party message that every candidate runs on-- and it should be engraved on the political tombstones of professional DLC losers like Al From and Joe Lieberman. His case against Bush's economic warfare against the American people is so powerful and rings of so much Truth that it should be the deciding factor-- along with Bush's and his rubber stamp Congress' record-- in November.

We need a Democratic Congress to fight the war on terror-- and to end the war on America's families. Republican policies of the last five years have damaged our economy and failed Americans. Democrats believe strengthening the middle class is essential for a thriving economy that rewards work, provides economic opportunity to all and makes it easier for parents to devote time to their families. An economy that favors the top 1% at the expense of everyone else might be good for President Bush's politics, but a shrinking middle class is bad for capitalism, democracy and America. We need a new direction.

The Republican record on managing the federal budget is dismal. Republicans have turned surplus into debt, hope into lost opportunity; they have become the party of borrow-and-spend. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the total cost this year of the president's tax cuts is $258 billion. This means that even with spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the response to Hurricane Katrina, the federal budget would essentially be in balance if the tax cuts had not been enacted, or if they had been offset as required under the pay-as-you-go rules that Republicans allowed to expire. These economic policies amount to a war on American families:

• Under Mr. Bush and the Republican Congress, incomes today are $1,000 less for the typical household than during Bill Clinton's final year in office; incomes for the typical working-age household have declined every year since the president took office. Black and Hispanic households have fared worse over the same period: Black household income has fallen every year, after rising every year (except for a one-year $60 dip) under Mr. Clinton. Incomes for Hispanic households are down $1,000, after rising more than $7,000 under Mr. Clinton.

• Incomes have fallen because wages -- which provide 75% of income for typical families -- are stagnant for most workers. Under Mr. Bush, wages for college-educated workers increased only 1.3% between 2000 and 2005, as compared to 11.3% during Mr. Clinton's last five years. For the nation's lowest-paid workers, the situation is even worse, as the minimum wage is worth less now than at any time in at least 50 years.

• Health and retirement coverage have declined for most workers and their families, and workers' costs have increased. The share of Americans with job-based health coverage fell over the last five years from 62.6% in 2000 to only 59.5% in 2005, virtually erasing gains in such coverage under Mr. Clinton, when coverage rose from 57.1% in 1993 to 63.6 % in 2000. Workers are also paying more for their coverage. Between 2001 and 2005, the amount workers paid for family premiums grew more than 50%. These factors have fueled increases in the number of uninsured every year under Mr. Bush, to almost 47 million last year -- roughly one in six Americans.

• Retirement coverage has also declined. Only 19% of workers have guaranteed pensions today, compared with 39% in 1980. And under Mr. Bush, retirement coverage, including both guaranteed pensions and 401(k)s, fell almost three percentage points, to just less than 46% in 2004.

• Americans are taking on more debt just to keep up in the Republican economy. Last year, household debt was a record 132% of disposable income. Not surprisingly, home mortgage foreclosures are also up; in March of this year, the foreclosure rate was 63% higher than last year.

• While wages and incomes have slowed, health costs increased, debt increased and retirement coverage declined, the cost of sending kids to college has exploded. Between 1995 and '96 and 2005 and '06, the average costs for a four-year private college rose 32% and for a four-year public college, 42%.

• These dwindling economic fortunes have resulted partly from a decline in unionization, which has been exacerbated by the all-out assault of the Bush Republicans on workers' rights to organize and bargain. From stripping away union protections for whole classes of workers to intervening in labor-management disputes in various industries, Mr. Bush, backed by a Republican Congress, has done more to undermine workers' rights than any president in more than 70 years.

These bleak statistics explain why the overwhelming majority of Americans know our country is moving in the wrong direction -- despite the economic cheerleading of the Republicans. Americans know who has benefited in this economy -- and, for most, it isn't them.

The president's failures in Iraq are also hurting our economy, our country and our ability to fight the war on terror. We are spending $8 billion a month in Iraq -- that's $267 million a day. Consider that for what we spend in three weeks in Iraq, we could make needed improvements to secure our public transportation system; for what we spend in five days we could double the COPS program, and put more police on the streets to keep our neighborhoods safe, or we could put radiation detectors at all our ports.

Democrats offer America a new direction in fiscal policy, for the middle class, and in the war in Iraq. We believe that America should work for everyone:

We will restore honesty in government, starting with the pay-as-you-go discipline in Congress that served Mr. Clinton so well. Balancing the Federal budget will be a high priority with concurrent limitation of spending. We will ease the burdens on middle class Americans and reverse Republican cuts in college tuition aid and health care. We will ensure that a retirement with dignity is the right and expectation of every single American, including pension reform, and preventing the privatization of social security.

We will dramatically expand support of energy independence in order to generate large numbers of new American jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We will have a jobs agenda that includes good jobs that stay in America, a higher minimum wage and trade policies that benefit the global labor force, not just multinational corporations.

We will have a defense policy that is tough and smart, starting with phased redeployment of our troops in Iraq, and shore up our efforts to attack al Qaeda and fight the war on terror. We also will close the gaps in our security here at home by implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations.

We are ready to lead with a thoughtful, fiscally responsible long-term vision. We will reach out to all Americans who value hope over fear and begin moving the country forward again.

Quote of the day: David Sirota suggests that if all those "canny establishmentarians" are pooping in their pants, maybe there's hope after all

"When I get up everyday at 5:30am to start working, it is still dark out. I read through the clips and digest the daily dose of ever-more raw hatred coming from our nation's capital and directed at the majority of Americans. Then I try to have some breakfast without feeling totally demoralized. But as I look out on the darkness outside, I always remind myself of the famous parable: 'It is always darkest before the dawn.'"
--David Sirota, from his blog entry yesterday, "The tidal wave heading straight for the hall of mirrors"

Disclosure: I am cheating here. I'm sitting at my desk at 10:50pm, hoping to be able to leave in an hour or so and then have only a day's work still on my desk tomorrow, when I will be slipping out a couple of hours early to actually sneak out of the city for the weekend, where a friend is having a barbecue, which it will probably take me a month of diligent gym duty to work off. (Luckily I don't have to worry about wasting time on bathroom breaks, since after 8pm my electronic key card won't get me back into the office. I don't have such "privileges." It appears that some time back this decision was made by the company's wisest heads, who even though they are never here much into the evening seem to know who else is or isn't.)

Nevertheless.

Now here I am stitching together a QOTD for tomorrow! (This way I can just concentrate on work tomorrow! And maybe I can get through the most urgent pile if I take a batch of proofs home and actually read them tonight.) And it's plucked from a blog entry that was posted early today (Thursday) and has already been ripely commented on. It was in fact forwarded to me, and when I just paused from my labors to check e-mail I found it, and it somehow suited my mood. It is on the one hand as grimly despairing as one could imagine (and I pass it along on the theory that you don't have enough despair in your life). At the same time, though, there is the mad gleam of a flicker of hope.

About the limit of my hope is that, weather permitting, on Rosh Ha-shanah I will be eating ribs (my friend Richard, who is hosting the barbecue, makes the best ribs I've ever eaten) and lasagna and who knows what else.

As for the gleam of hope in this blog entry of David Sirota's, it has to do with his merciless lining up of the forces clinging so desperately to the diseased status quo in the country, and his explanation of why they're so freaked out by the storm clouds gathering in the distance.

The theory is that anything that freaks those people out might represent a gust of hope.

Here, then, is the full blog entry:

The tidal wave heading straight for the hall of mirrors

There are times every now and again where you just have to step back and behold the absurdity of it all. You have to step back from the day-to-day trench wars and just marvel at how entrenched power really is in this, the country where we still cling to Horatio Alger fables or "anyone can grow up to be president" myths. What I find particularly fascinating is the intricacy and careful calibration of the propaganda system that holds this whole structure up. Like a hall of mirrors, our political debate is, in every way, designed to perpetuate the status quo. But no hall of mirrors can withstand the impact of a big enough tidal wave, which is why those inside the hall are freaking out.

Consider, for a moment, the frothing, fulminating bile now being spit from the highest reaches of Washington, D.C.'s media establishment. A few months ago, we saw one major columnist at the largest newspaper in the world say voters should not have the right to decide elections in America anymore. Not only was he not shunned for his screed, he continues to appear regularly on television as an objective, god-fearing patriotic American. Soon after that, in the face of polls showing the vast majority of Americans oppose the Iraq War, a top Washington blowhard from one of the largest television networks in the country appeared on TV to label every Democrat who has questioned the war "as weak, Jane Fonda-type Democrats."

But really, that was only the beginning. Since then, as voter discontent with the war, stagnating wages, job outsourcing and the general direction of the country has escalated, Washington has battened the hatches, and gone from spitting bile to firing tank ordnance at the oncoming battalions of ordinary people who, goddamned them, dare to think they should be able to have some say in their own country. Washington Post columnist David Broder - the so-called dean of the Washington press corps - called voters who want change "elitist insurgents" - a not-so-subtle attempt to conflate American voters with terrorists. Then there was my personal favorite - David Brooks sitting there in his pink shirt with a smarmy half-grin in Northwest Washington telling the country "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Brooks breathed a sigh of relief that "the Clintonite centrists are reasserting their intellectual, financial and political supremacy" and that Hillary Clinton gave a speech that scholars at the fringe-right-wing American Enterprise institute "called remarkably centrist." Thank god, said Brooks, that the "renegades who rail against the establishment are being eclipsed by the canny establishmentarians" because, according to him, "They're the ones who know how to use the levers of government to get things done." Ah yes, with war raging in the Mideast, poverty rising in America, people struggling to pay their bills, Clinton-backed free trade deals shipping jobs overseas - thank the lord that the same old crew was supposedly reasserting itself because that record shows "they know how to get things done."

He's not 100 percent wrong, of course - these people do know "how to get things done" - but only exclusively for the fat cats who pay to get a seat at the table - the fat cats that people like David Brooks feel most comfortable with; the fat cats that way too many Democratic officials are more than happy to go brag to reporters about shaking down even as they deride the GOP's culture of corruption.

Incredibly, however, none of the establishment's old tricks seem to be working anymore. All of the Jedi mind tricks, all of the false storylines, all of the Clockwork Orange-style indoctrination efforts just don't seem to be sticking. And that's why it's gotten so ugly of late.

Today, we see David Broder quite literally losing control of his faculties on the pages of the Washington Post. You can almost see the veins popping out of that shiny white forehead you've gotten so used to seeing on Meet the Press. Like the bad, overdone stereotype of the crotchety senior who is angry that the world around him is changing, Broder declares that there needs to be "a new movement in this country" to "resist "the extremist elements in American society." Who are these extremists? Why, people who use the Internet to politically organize and engage. Yes, according to Broder, "bloggers" are the moral equivalent of "doctrinaire religious extremists" - yet again, another not-so-subtle effort to portray anyone who dares to excercize their democratic rights as an Osama bin Laden supporter. He then fires off a screed about various politicians such as Rep. Sherrod Brown. He calls him "a loud advocate of protectionist policies that offer a false hope of solving our trade and job problems." Right, becaue in David Broder's cloistered world, the "free" trade deals Brown has opposed have done such wonders for places like Ohio. In David Broder's world, those hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers who have been thrown out onto the street thanks to NAFTA and China PNTR are the filth of the earth that high and mighty elite Washington journalists like him cannot be bothered with. In David Broder's world, any request for our trade pacts to include restrictions on child slavery, environmental degradation, and pharmaceutical industry profiteering off desperately poor people, positively un-American. Why? Because David Broder lives in a place where all of these critical issues are merely just more fodder and gossip for a newspaper column - not real challenges in his life, nor in the life of the people he spends his time with in the Washington Beltway.

At the very least, Broder realizes that the American public is outraged at the twisted moral compass that govern him and his buddies. That's why he is freaking out. But there are still some who are prancing around, spewing happy talk, making a fast buck, totally unaware of what's really going on out here in the real world, and perhaps even more insulting, totally unconcerned about their own naked hypocrisy. For instance, just this week, we see former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, now the head of Citigroup, standing on a stage with a straight face and holding a seminar about the best ways to alleviate international poverty. That this man was the top architect of the international trade policies that have exacerbated both domestic and international poverty is an afterthought. That this same man holding this seminar still refuses to acknowledge the culpability of the trade policies he has jammed down the world's throat is not to be mentioned. All that matters to the fawning media and political establishment is that this much-worshipped moneyman is on stage saying we need to help poor people. It makes you wonder if at some point soon, we'll be seeing Jack Abramoff holding a seminar on ethics and morals in the political arena. Simultaneously, courageous reformers like Sen. Byron Dorgan (D) who has written a serious, bestselling book about how to really fix our economic policies are shoved to the side, barely getting mentioned in the press, while financial-industry-hack-turned-congressmen Rahm Emanuel and his buddy Bruce Reed who heads a corporate front group are given oodles of press attention for publishing a barely-selling pamphlet of warmed-over hollow talking points perpetuating the status quo and reinforcing negative stereotypes about those who want real change.

At this same conference, we see images of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman laughing it up with Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf. That's right, the columnist who piously champions his supposed commitment to spreading democracy is happily, publicly hamming it up with a brutal central Asian dictator. Ah yes, because it's all just so goddamned hilarious to a New York Times columnist who can sit back in his 12,000 square foot Bethesda mansion, count his $2 billion family fortune, tell the world how much he really truly cares about freedom, push American soldiers into the Baghdad shooting gallery, advocate destructive trade policies that he brags about not having even read, and blaming Americans whose economic lives have been decimated by those trade policies for not better educating themselves. It's all just so goddamned funny for Tom Friedman, because he gets to do all that, yet still also gets to ham it up every few weeks on national television with Tim Russert, and gets to be on stage with his good friend Bill Clinton and pretend to be serious.

Of course, Clinton, who convened the conference that featured Rubin and Friedman, was recently the recipient of a 20,000 word New Yorker article that was the journalistic equivalent of what Monica Lewinsky did to him in those steamy Oval Office days. In the article, New Yorker editor David Remnick proclaims from the mountaintop Clinton's supposed devotion to solving the African AIDS crisis, but never once - not once - bothers to take a moment in between lavish banquets and starfucking exchanges to actually ask Clinton why, if he was so committed to stopping this awful plague, he insisted on passing trade deals that included provisions specifically designed to allow pharmaceutical companies to inflate AIDS drug prices in the developing world? But then, if you are David Remnick and all that really gives you a professional hard-on is getting to eat barbeque in Bill Clinton's private apartment in his palatial presidential library, why would you ask such a question? Because really, the only ones who care about the answer to such a question are the millions of impoverished peasants who were never able to afford AIDS medications thanks to those trade provisions - and those aren't the people David Remnick hangs out with or is writing for.

The same disconnection from reality is prevalent among many politicians - which might explain why some of them now are reacting so angrily to the fact that yes, they do have to face voters for reelection. Take Joe Lieberman. When confronted with the fact that he skipped more than half of all U.S. Senate votes on the Iraq War and most of the votes on the destructive Medicare bill so as to attend fundraisers for himself, he angrily claimed there is a moral equivalence between him as a full-time, $160,000-a-year U.S. Senator skipping decisions on the most pressing national security and health care questions in American history, and his opponent missing 6 votes on a part-time town council 15 years ago. He also says with a straight face that the reason he worked so hard to stop health care reform in the 1990s was because he cared about small business - but then he conveniently forgets to mention that he authored legislation to raise taxes on small business health benefits.

Then there is Rep. Nancy Johnson (R) who is now airing television ads saying that asking President Bush to obtain search warrants after he's wiretapped phones as the law requires would dangerously slow down the original wiretapping. Put another way, she's actually asking audiences to quite literally believe that the basic laws of space and time do not exist. Meanwhile, chickenhawks who refused to serve in the military when they had the chance continue to sit comfortably in their Washington think tank offices and transform their sick insecurities of personal weakness and frailty into screams for more American soldiers to be sent to die in Iraq.

What you see here, folks, is that all of it - the elections, the public policies, the future of the country - is one big joke to the people in power, and they are willing to lie, cheat and distort anything to protect the integrity of that joke they are so happily enjoying. They don't want anyone asking questions of them. They don't want anyone thinking they have a right to use democracy to change things. They are fat and happy and putting the pedal to the metal in their sleek sports car on the great American highway overpass - and anyone who tries to slow them down, run them off the road or make them just glance at the blight below gets the big, road-raged middle finger.

When I get up everyday at 5:30am to start working, it is still dark out. I read through the clips and digest the daily dose of ever-more raw hatred coming from our nation's capital and directed at the majority of Americans. Then I try to have some breakfast without feeling totally demoralized. But as I look out on the darkness outside, I always remind myself of the famous parable: "It is always darkest before the dawn." Win or lose, November 7th isn't going to change everything. But win or lose, it's clear that things are already changing. The rising anger coming from the halls of power are a reflection of the establishment's deep understanding that change is coming. The screams from the angry pundits and the desperate politicians and the paying-to-play lobbyists are like the early warning sirens at a beach. And just over the horizon, they see that tidal wave coming.

WTNH EXPOSES ROB SIMMONS (CT-02) AS A PATHETIC HYPOCRITE AND A HACK

The News Channel 8 nightly news is THE big local news show in Connecticut's hotly contested 2nd CD, where rubber stamp Republican Rob Simmons is desperately fighting to save his job, after a long and consistent record of selling out his constituents to stay on the Big GOP/Big Business gravy train. There was one issue, however, where Simmons did join Connecticut working people and Democrats-- and that was to save the submarine base in Groton. After the base was saved from Rumsfeld, Simmons thanked Joe Courtney for not politicizing the battle and for the bipartisan cooperation. Apparently forgetting that he had left Courtney a voice mail expressing these sentiments quite clearly, Simmons put together a hypocritical and misleading TV ad claiming that Courtney didn't lift a finger to help. Last night Channel 8 exposed Simmons for exactly what he is-- and even played the voice mail. This should be the final nail in Simmons' political coffin.

Remember the old zaniness of Mad Magazine's "Spy vs. Spy"? The Republicans have revived it as "Morons vs. Morons"

With regard to this great "compromise" reached by warring Republicans on military tribunals, how do I know it sucks?

I don't have to read a New York Times editorial, although as it happens there's a good one ("A Bad Bargain" [note: the editorial is appended in a comment]). I know it sucks because, well, look at the people who agreed to it. Not least the Bush administration. I hope at this late date I don't have to rehash the thousand layers of illusion, delusion and garden-variety authoritariansm at play in the administration's "thinking" in this area. Surely by now it's enough to say that if they're for this "compromise," it has to suck.

Sure, it's fun to watch Republicans squabble, but it's useful to remember the overwhelming likelihood that they're all wrong. Look at the immigration mess, for example.

In today's paper Julia Preston reports ("Pickers Are Few, and Grower Blame Congress"):

LAKEPORT, Calif.--The pear growers here in Lake County waited decades for a crop of shapely fruit like the one that adorned their orchards last month.

"I felt like I went to heaven," said Nick Ivicevich, recalling the perfection of his most abundant crop in 45 years of tending trees.

Now harvest time has passed and tons of pears have ripened to mush on their branches, while the ground of Mr. Ivicevich's orchard reeks with rotting fruit. He and other growers in Lake County, about 90 miles north of San Francisco, could not find enough pickers.

Stepped-up border enforcement kept many illegal Mexican migrant workers out of California this year, farmers and labor contractors said, putting new strains on the state's shrinking seasonal farm labor force.

Labor shortages have also been reported by apple growers in Washington and upstate New York. Growers have gone from frustrated to furious with Congress, which has all but given up on passing legislation this year to create an agricultural guest-worker program.

Last week, 300 growers representing every major agricultural state rallied on the front lawn of the Capitol carrying baskets of fruit to express their ire.

This year's shortages are compounding a flight from the fields by Mexican workers already in the United States. As it has become harder to get into this country, many illegal immigrants have been reluctant to return to Mexico in the off-season. Remaining here year-round, they have gravitated toward more stable jobs.

"When you're having to pay housing costs, it's very difficult to survive and wait for the next agricultural season to come around," said Jack King, head of national affairs for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Now I don't know what the solution to the pear-picking problem is. I know it's not just: "Well, just let 'em hire all the cheap illegal labor they can." However, I do know that the chances aren't good of an intelligent solution coming from packs of squabbling morons. On the one hand you've got the moron faction that salivates at the thought of endless supplies of sub-minimum-wage labor, and on the other hand you've got the drooling-xenophobe morons who just know that it's them damn furriners that's ruinin' the country--that and them lib'rals and homos.

Shall we add a dollop of irony? As the NYT editorial reports, even what little ground the administration may have conceded to Senators Warner, McCain and Graham will probably disappear once the House weighs in, thanks to the administration's loyal point man there, Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter--the Man from E.A.R.M.A.R.K. As DWT readers know, ol' Dunc should be spending his time sweating over the fusilage of corruption charges he should be facing. Instead, he's going to be the man who helps the hoodlums and psychos of the Bush administration turn military justice into an arm of the campaign of terrorism that is making this country the world's most hated.

Who knows, maybe ol Dunc can find a way to make torture pay, the way he's made everything else that passes through his committee pay--for him.

JESUS CAMP-- HORROR FILM, SERIOUS SOCIOLOGICAL DOCUMENTARY OR DARK COMEDY?

When I asked one of my friends to come see an advance screening of Jesus Camp yesterday, he said he had to catch a plane somewhere. It took a few calls but I finally found someone to go with me, although he warned me that it was a Christian triumphantist movie that he read would be scary. I had been invited by People For the American Way; it couldn't be straight triumphantist.

It almost was. I mean, it's a documentary that follows a few very young kids from middle class homes in Missouri as they go off to get evangelicized brainwashed for the summer with a grotesquely fat lady pastor, one of the film's "stars," who starts the film-- with no sense of irony-- screaming about how Americans are fat and lazy and don't have the strength to fast... like Muslims. She also bemoans the fact that Muslims instill their young with the power to die for their religion.

Clearly psychotic, the movie revolves around this mentally deranged lady, who should be spending time at Weight Watchers group therapy, instead of preparing young children for a life of severe delusionalism who, she hopes, will become suicide bombers for J.C. "I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are in Palestine, Pakistan and all those different places," says the fat crazy lady. "Because, excuse me, we have the truth."

When she has nothing to say she starts bellowing "in tongues." She encourages the poor kiddies to do the same. The fat lady, by the way, loves the movie and is helping to promote it. Delusional people, obviously, don't realize they are delusional.

The kiddies in this movie are taught to worship George Bush-- or at least a cardboard cut out of him. They are taught to hate abortion. They are consciously brainwashed with a while vocabulary of perversion of the essence of Jesus Christ's message to man. Nowhere in the film is there anything about Christianity, just a lot of hate-filled bullshit about how self-professed "Christians" need to take over the country for J.C. Their enemies are scientists talking about global warming, anyone who favors public education or, of course, legalized abortion.

Last November I wrote about how the Bush Regime was harassing a mainstream Christian church in Pasadena because a guest pastor preached an anti-war sermon. The harassment seems to be turning into full-blown persecution, ironic in light of what comes out about Bush's relationship with the militant Christian right, more a political movement exploiting classic cult dynamics than anything to do with legitimate religion. One of the film's looniest characters is an hysterical, high-ranking, so-called "minister" named Ted Haggard (who consults Bush every Monday). He's more like a Republican ward healer than someone with something to do with Christianity but if there's anything to Jesus Camp and the super-churches like Haggard's sprouting up all over suburban America, this is the "religion" the Republicans want to enforce on America. Haggard, perhaps a mad man, but a powerful one with direct access to Bush, brags in the film that "If the evangelicals vote, they determine every election." A scary, even unlivable, prospect indeed.


UPDATE: SURE THERE ARE RELIGIONIST EXTREMISTS, BUT MOST PEOPLE OF FAITH AND NOT INSANE FASCISTS

Today People For the American Way released a new study based on a survey regarding religion, values and politics. It refutes
refutes some widely held assumptions about how Americans’ religious views and values influence their political behavior. The survey, part of a multi-year research project, was released on the eve of a conference on "values voters" convened by the Family Research Council and featuring a who's who of religionist wingnutia, from neo-Nazis like Ann Coulter and Marilyn Musgrave (KKK-CO) to the kinds of delusional cult leaders in the Jesus Camp documentary (Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Don Wildmon), and the hypocrites, scoundrels and political charlatans of the extreme right (Sam Brownback, Mike Pence, Macaca, Sean Hannity, Gingrich and, of course, Bill Bennett).
 
"There's been a lot of talk about values voters, and a lot of that talk is just plain wrong," said Dr. Robert Jones, executive director and senior fellow of the Center for American Values in Public Life.  "Most Americans do not think restricting access to abortion and keeping gay couples from getting married are the most important issues facing voters. When Americans think about voting their values, they're thinking primarily about candidates' honesty and integrity." Uh, oh-- even with Cunningham in prison, Ney and DeLay headed there and investigations on-going for dozens of Republicrooks associated with the Republican one-party state, even values-voters may be forced to think instead of react when they get to the voting booths in November.
 
Even among evangelicals, issues like addressing poverty and providing affordable health care handily trump restricting access to abortion and banning gay marriage.
 
The study claims "that hasty conclusions about the size and permanence of a partisan 'God gap' have been premature. While the most frequent church attenders are still most likely to vote Republican, the gap has shrunk dramatically, and it appears that Democratic candidates have an opportunity to attract majorities of every other group, including weekly worship attenders. 'It is simplistic and inaccurate to suggest Democrats have lost their ability to win support from religious Americans,' said Jones."

JOHNNY WENDELL, AN ANIMAL Y LOS LOBOS... AND 77% OF AMERICANS HATE CONGRESS

On Heroes, Disconnection and the Dislocation Blues
-by Johnny Wendell

"It's a hard world to get a break in", sang Eric Burdon way back when LBJ was the shot-caller and AM was not just the shizzle, but the universal ear-bomb. 40 plus years gone and no real change (other than AM being but one of a million conduits), but why would that be a surprise, it was a hard world to get a break in 40 years prior to "It's My Life", and will be 40 from today.

I met the self-proclaimed "long-haired gnome" Mr. Burdon this Monday at lunch and what a moment it was, staring at the face of a childhood icon for one of the few moments. I told him how much my 4 year old loves "When I Was Young" and he was most pleased. I confess, I have no heroes now; they all reside in memories. Heroes aren't merely created to be knocked down by a vicious media, the desire to surf atop the consciousness zeitgeist exposes most of our icons as attention-starved fools. But as someone whose day came and went over 30 years ago, the aged Animal seemed to be bemused and serene, as if he'd seen everything and not much could alter his perception now, having attempted that through lysergic chemistry so many years ago.

I don't want to have to make and lose millions to get to the point he's at. But I feel as disconnected and not a part of as I ever have, his ease and my unease might be because my brainpan's gears are still engaged. When we read that 77% of the people don't want Congress to remain as is (courtesy of Truthout) and that 66% of the nation believe something's seriously wrong, we know that the feeling of "aloneness" and the reality that we aren't is dissonant. We're all on the same leaking, listing vessel. Amazing to me that Eric Burdon is so sanguine-seeming with the city that made his fame in ruins and not looking to be rebuilt anytime soon, and me in perpetual gut-knots with L.A. (temporarily, anyway) intact. Makes no sense at all, as a latter day poet said.

The soundtracks of my youth, sung by Burdon, or James Brown, Marvin Gaye, John Lennon or Mick Jagger just don't resound anymore as anything but fleetingly comforting placebos. They're just too neat and familiar and the revolution they portended fell flat on its face and led to the reactionary nightmare of today, so frankly, fuck 'em.

Therefore, I'm asking, no, telling, DEMANDING that you prick up your ears to the new one from Los Lobos. They, like me, are disgruntled Angelenos, me because no figurehead ensconced in power speaks in my tongue, them, judging by the content of The Town And The City feel like there just isn't a place for them anymore, certainly not on the blessed radio. Check this astounding thing out-- if you loved their side thing "Latin Playboys" ten years back, they pick up where they left off right here. This is overheard, found music, with simple electronic rhythm patterns beneath guitar-based sound scapes. Not neat little tunes about chicks or "surviving wolves" or Richie Valens covers-- this is fragmented, uneasy, edgy shit of the highest degree.

Overdriven, busted out guitars crumble out of blown speakers a la Neil Young, but minus that kind of elephantine grandeur. Muted, soft, loving mother's voice vocalizing, pushing ever onward, this is insistent and pastoral at the same time. These are songs that have been disassembled and rebuilt as impressions, not zingy hits. They match my "standin' on shaky ground" mood. This is a soundtrack for me.

Eric Burdon's uplift (even if it was written for him by Carole King, John Lee Hooker, Wayne Cochran or Leadbelly) spoke to a time when all seemed possible. This new Lobos disc is about a period of acceptance and adjusting until the door opens a little and we can try again, or our kids can. If you're flagging and flailing and oldies don't hit the dendrites and hip-hop and all in between just reeks of corruption, this is your tonic. Get it and swim in it and let that loneliness fade into whatever dark canopy is above you.

 
(Johnny Wendell is on KTLK-AM1150, in LA, Saturdays and Sundays, 10A-12, PCT. He has been a punk rock musician, columnist, actor, TV talking head on CNN and Court TV and playwright, too, as "Johnny Angel"--one day, he'll have to get a real job).

BUSH OF ARABIA READY TO CHALLENGE BIN-LADEN TO A WRESTLING MATCH?

Musharaff claims he sort of knows where Osama bin-Laden is. Well, Wolf Blitzer snagged Bush for an exclusive and Bush mixed in with the partisan posturing Bush started bragging he'd go into Pakistan's sovereign territory and capture him. Of course, Bush is a physical coward and he meant he'd send some American soldiers in. Although I doubt he even has the guts to do that, unless it's all pre-scripted between Rove and Musharaff.

Musharaff, though, said that invading his country is a no-no. How many countries is Bush thinking the U.S. military can take on anyway. And, unlike Iraq, Pakistan actually does have WMDs, nuclear ones.

But even if Bush makes some kind of a deal with Musharaff, it is widely believed his clueless Regime still is largely in the dark about al Qaeda. But it being election time, Bush has suddenly turned into an Osama hunter again. Does anyone fall for his crap anymore?

AL WYNN BRAGS ABOUT STEALING THE ELECTION IN MARYLAND-- TO A BUNCH OF HIS RIGHT WING CONGRESSIONAL CRONIES

Election officials in Maryland's 4th CD are still counting ballots and sorting through all the problems that marred last Tuesday's Democratic primary between hack party boss Al Wynn and progressive heroine Donna Edwards. There is still no clear winner, even though far more people cast their votes for Donna-- another example of the kind of George Bush democracy his regime is trying to teach people around the world.

Donna, while insisting that every vote be accounted for and counted, is being very calm and collected about Wynn's egregious attempt to subvert democracy in the district. "Whether these flaws are attributable to incompetence, inefficiency, or fraud-- we may never know. Votes are still being tabulated in Maryland's 4th District-- provisional ballots arriving as late as Tuesday, September 19, a
truckload of machines and memory cards arriving 21 hours after the polls closed on September 12, changing estimates of absentee ballots to be counted, etc. Needless to say, the system is deeply flawed-- leaving voters with little reason to be confident."

Meanwhile, Wynn acknowledged his chicanery-- and criminality-- to a bunch of his congressional cronies on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by one of the furthest right and most vile and vicious Republicans in the whole Congress, Joe Barton (R-TX), an ally of Wynn's in their goal of serving the agenda of Big Business to the detriment of working people and consumers. This is the actual transcript, something a Federal Prosecutor ought to be examining:

BARTON: Down in Texas, we had a Democratic primary about 50 years ago that Lyndon Johnson won by 54 votes. And he got the nickname "Landslide Lyndon." We have Mr. Wynn next. He had a little bit of a tussle last week, but he did win. And so, I want to recognize "Landslide Wynn" for any opening statement that he wishes...

WYNN: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. In fact, they're still counting, but we're quite optimistic. And I did take a couple pages out of Lyndon's book, so if I win, it can be attributed to Texas know-how.

(LAUGHTER)

(UNKNOWN): Did you (inaudible)?

BARTON: I hope not. I hope you win fair and square.

(LAUGHTER)

WYNN: A win is a win.

An update: This morning the Board of Elections in Prince George's County opened up a machine with no tamper tape (so much for security), and at least one other machine that recorded votes for other offices but none for U.S. Congress.

Quote of the day: It's not too late for you to catch a repeat on Bravo. You can also see the premiere of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip online

"Oh, stop this. [Walking on the set, interrupting the sketch, some nonsense with George Bush and somebody else.] Stop this. [To one of the actors:] Let's stop it, Tom. [To the audience:] Listen, folks, we're going to stop this. [The actor asks, "Did we lose the feed?" To the actors:] No, we're live. I'd like both of you to clear the stage. I don't want anyone to think you were part of this. [Continuing audience laughter.] Go on, go on.

"[To the camera:] Uh . . . this is not going to be a very good show tonight, and I think you should change the channel. Change the channel, go ahead, right now. Better yet, turn off the TV, okay? [The audience keeps laughing.] Hell no, I know it seems like this is supposed to be funny. But tomorrow, tomorrow you're going to find out that it wasn't, and by that time I'll be fired. Now this, this is not sup- . . . this is not a sketch.

"This show used to be cutting-edge political and social satire. But it's gotten lobotomized, by a candy-ass broadcast network hell-bent on doing nothing that might challenge their audience. We were about to do a sketch that you've seen already about 500 times. Yeah, no one's going to confuse George Bush with George Plimpton. Now, we get it.

"We're all being lobotomized by this country's most influential industry, that's just thrown in the towel on any effort to do anything that doesn't include the courting of 12-year-old boys. Not even the smart 12-year-olds--the stupid ones, the idiots. Of which there are plenty, thanks in no small measure to this network. So why don't you just change the channel? Turn off your TV? Do it right now. Go ahead.

[Inside the control room, the squabbling drowns Wes out.] . . . trouble between art and commerce. Now, I'm telling you, art is getting its ass kicked, and it's making us mean, and it's making us bitchy, it's making us cheap punks. That's not who we are. People are having contests to see how much they can be like Donald Trump?

[The control-room battle escalates.] . . . We're eating worms for money. "Who wants to screw my sister?" Guys are getting killed in a war that's got theme music and a logo. That remote in your hand is a crack pipe. Oh yeah, every once in a while we pretend to be appalled . . .

[Control-room battle reaches fever pitch.] . . . and it's not even good pornography. They're just this side of snuff films, and friends, that's what's next, 'cause that's all that's left. And the two things that make them scared gutless are the FCC and every psycho religious cult that gets positively horny at the very mention of a boycott. These are the people they're afraid of. This prissy, feckless, off-the-charts greed-filled whorehouse of a network, I do believe, is thoroughly unpatriotic, mother . . . " [And now, finally, the plug is pulled on Wes. The director switches to the show's videotape opening.]

--about-to-be-former executive producer Wes Mendell (Judd Hirsch), stopping the opening sketch of the NBS network's long-running Friday-night comedy show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, in a 53-second meltdown while in the control room network Standards and Practices goon Jerry Jones (Michael Stuhlberg) tries to force director Cal Shanley (Timothy Busfield) to pull the plug on Wes

Okay, straight off, no BS: You have every reason to be pissed at QOTD. In the Wes Mendell spirit of straight talk, you should demand your money back.

Obviously we couldn't have brought you this quote before the pilot episode of NBC's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (not to be confused with the show-within-a-show of the same name that airs on NBS) aired on Monday night. But if we'd gotten it to you Tuesday or even yesterday, you could have caught the repeat last night on Bravo. [However, in late-breaking news, we can report that Bravo has another repeat scheduled for Sunday night.]

As soon as my friend Peter found out Tuesday morning that, instead of watching, I had recorded the premiere, he began hounding me to watch it already. So don't blame him.

What can I say, except that I guess I wasn't expecting lightning to strike three times?

I haven't done the math, but if I had to name the top ten series in TV history, there's an excellent chance that two of them would be the creations of Aaron Sorkin: Sports Night (sadly little-known) and The West Wing. Maybe someday we should talk more about them. For now, let's just say that Sorkin is back, with his collaborator on both previous shows, producer-director Thomas Schlamme.

Sorkin once said that he didn't know anything about writing for television when he started Sports Night--he just wrote, and Schlamme, the show's director, turned it into television. (That's Schlamme and Sorkin in the photo above in July 2001, accepting a TV Critics Association award for West Wing.)

The pilot episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, just as my friend Peter kept telling me, is not only brilliant but so incendiary that it's hard to imagine how it got past all those shiny suits at NBC and parent company GE. Broadcast-industry suits are, shall we say, not dealt with kindly here.

The point is not that Wes is a saint. He's gone along with the lobotomizing of his show for years, just hanging on to his job. In a heated argument as the show is about to go on the air live, Jerry the Standards and Practices guy forces him to cancel an edgy sketch referred to as "crazy Christians," even though it "killed" in the dress rehearsal. Jerry informs Wes that he won't be able to call either the NBS chairman (played by Steven Weber) or the newly installed president (played by Amanda Peet), who are at a dinner party celebrating her arrival--though in fact she isn't officially on the job till Monday.

"What happens if I say no?" Wes says. "What if I go on the air with the sketch?"

The S&P guy answers scornfully: "I'm not going to answer that. Because if you still had the muscle to do it, you wouldn't have asked."

Sorkin has always relished complexity--not to confuse or impress viewers, but to give us a taste of the real complexity of real life. He has shown by now that he's in a class by himself as a writer, and both Sports Night and West Wing were simply extraordinary for the way they used actors, familiar and unfamiliar, in both expected and unexpected ways.

My friend Peter pointed out, for example, that Steven Weber has never been used this way, as the network heavy--and so far he's just brilliant. But then so is everybody else. There's something delicious, for another example, about casting Ed Asner, who has a history of being found "difficult" by corporate brass, as the boss of bosses, the guy whose company owns NBS. It's been ages since Judd Hirsch got to sink his teeth into material as dazzling as what Sorkin has written for the short-lived role of Wes.

It's a heady combination: All these wondeful actors being handed Sorkin scripts, with director Schlamme there to make it great television. The obvious question is, will anyone watch it? And one equally obvious answer is: not if they don't know about it. I'm just suggesting that you do whatever you have to do to catch the pilot, either online or Sunday night on Bravo. And tell everyone you know.

HAS BUCK McKEON GONE INSANE? OR DOES HE JUST HATE OUR ACTIVE DUTY TROOPS?

Although Robert Rodriguez is one of the most spectacular candidates the Democrats are fielding in 2006, his race has gotten little attention. There are a variety of reasons for that and one is that his entrenched, garden variety rubber stamp Republican has managed to stay very much under the radar since first being elected in 1992, despite having caused quite a bit of damage during his incumbency. Suddenly this month McKeon crawled out from under his rock and started spitting venom in every direction before slithering off again. Russ Feingold worked with Senator Jeffords to get a provision accepted into the Defense Authorization bill to help military families. Predictably, it passed unanimously through the Senate but this week, it was stripped out by Buck McKeon for no reason that anyone, on either side of the aisle, seems to understand.

Feingold was perplexed and majorly pissed off. The provision, he explained, was meant "to help families cope with their day-to-day needs while a loved one is deployed to a combat zone. We owe it to the thousands of military families, who sacrifice so much for our country, to do everything we can to support them while a loved one is bravely serving in our Armed Forces."

When Feingold's proposal was passed it amended the federal government's donated leave program and encouraged-- but did not require-- private-sector businesses to also create flexible leave for people who are carrying for the children of deployed troops. It was meant to assist caregivers who were helping single parents or dual-service couples in which both the husband and wife were deployed.

Unfortunately for the Senate-passed bill when it got to the House, it fell under the jurisdiction of the always dictatorial, often irrational and, some say, "mentally unstable," McKeon, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. Normally he satisfies himself with making sure that children of working class parents can't go to college, but suddenly, albeit inexplicably, he lashed out violently against our troops, claiming he deemed it "unnecessary" and killed it over the objections of
George Miller (CA), the ranking Democrat on the committee. Imperiously, Congressman McKeon's office has refused comment and refuses to allow me to speak to ole Buck about it.

I was able to reach the far more accessible and communicative Robert Rodriguez for whom support of American young men and women fighting for our country is a major issue that he takes very seriously. "It is easy to say that we all support the military families of those putting their lives on the line for us overseas," Robert explained. "The real question is what we will do to actually help these families who are struggling to get by every day without the presence and support of one, and possibly two parents. We owe it to those children and families whose parents are out there on the front lines for our country every day. If we send these parents out to fight, we need to assume the responsibility of helping the military families here to the best of our ability. And I support every effort to extend that much needed assistance to our military families."

WHEN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY COMMITTEES ASK YOU FOR MONEY, DO THEY USE KY?

Why do we vote for Democrats? Because we believe these people who exist inside the Beltway and call themselves "Democrats" should have nice careers? I think some people think that way-- if only unconsciously. For some it's like a tribal thing or a family tradition. Me, I'm weird. I like Democrats because they stand for progressive values. When I interview people for our Blue America Page I ask them some very specific questions. I want to know if they'll stand up and fight for women's choice. I want to know if they're a bigot towards minorities-- or, more to the point, if they'll sacrifice minorities' rights and well-being in some compromise. And I want to know if they're going to get to Washington and became a corporate whore and a pawn for Big Business. Of course I also want to know if they back a Murtha-like solution to Bush's Iraq occupation. Some don't get on the page. Some who have asked have been perfectly nice folks too and I felt a little bad. But just a little.

There are no Democrats from Kentucky on our page. Today's Washington Post goes a long way towards making it clear why not. Jim VandeHei and Chris Cillizza write about the Democratic candidate in KY-02, Mike Weaver. Very proud of his military career, like many of the Blue Amerca-endorsed candidates, Weaver, unlike the candidates we endorse, is also eager "to share his views on abortion rights: opposed. Or gun control: opposed. Or same-sex marriage: very much opposed... Weaver's campaign revolves largely around convincing even his fellow Democrats that he is conservative enough. He also sounds like an asshole. There's not a thing in the story about him that makes me understand why he's in the Democratic Party instead of the Republican Party.

And what happens if Weaver and reactionaries like him get into Congress? The balance of power inside the Democratic caucus would shift and the party's branding would continue sliding right as well. One Republican Party is bad enough. Please believe me when I tell you, if you contribute to the men and women on the Blue America Act Blue Page, there are no Mike Weavers. You'll be contributing to Democrats who believe in-- and will stand and fight for-- the things that make us progressives.

There is a difference between Lieberman and Lamont. Lieberman is one of them; Lamont is one of us. Lieberman votes with Bush and the Republicans on crucial, life-or-death issues. Lamont will stand up for ordinary Americans. I would no sooner contribute money or in any way support Ben Nelson (D-NE) than I would Lincoln Chafee (R-RI). The two are about equal on the progressive/reactionary scale. They both vote against my interests and against the interests of my country. Chafee is probably more persuadable on key social issues. Nelson will in all likelihood vote to organize the Senate with Democrats, no small matter and one, were I living in Nebraska, might make me hold my nose and vote for him-- or maybe not.


UPDATE: KENTUCKY HAS A REALLY GOOD DEMOCRAT RUNNING TOO!

I thought they were all going to be like Weaver. I was wrong. John Yarmuth is running against Kentucky's very own Stepford congresswoman, Anne Northrup, a posterchild for the entire concept of rubber stamp. She has slavishly catered to even the most outlandish demands of the Big Business interests that have financed her career and was awarded a zero (F) from the non-partisan Drum Major Institute For Public Policy, which analyzes congressional votes for their impact on the middle class. Northrup's impact has been absolutely disastrous.

Unlike Weaver, Yarmuth, the founder of Louisville's alternative weekly, wants the U.S. out of Iraq-- fast-- favors universal health care, and demands that Congress re-address the catastrophic Medicare Part D billion dollar giveaway to Big Pharma (voted for by Northrup who greedily accepted legalized bribes from Big Pharma for her votes). She wants to abolish Social Security; he wants to strengthen it. She has voted to destroy public education; he wants to make it stronger and better. He wants to enforce immigration laws and protect our national borders. She votes with Bush to allow a flood of cheap foreign labor into the country to keep unions weak.

JANE HAMSHER, A GREAT FACE AND A GREAT VOICE FOR THE BLOGOSPHERE

What's the old saying? Behind every successful man there's a brilliant woman? Or did I just make that up? Whether I did or I didn't, the brains behind the astounding success of the Blue America ActBlue Page has been Jane Hamsher, the founder of Firedoglake and the person who conceived of Blue America. Jane's an old friend of mine from San Francisco punk rock days and she taught me htlm. I was so excited when our mutual friend Christina e-mailed me and said "Turn on Keith Olbermann; Jane's on." And was she ever!! Look how smart and poised and user-friendly! Even if she didn't have one of the best and most exciting, dynamic blogs anywhere, you'd probably want to sign on and see what she has to say. Right? Watch for yourself over at Crooks and Liars.

BOB NEY WILL STILL GET A FAT PENSION AFTER HIS WRIST SLAP SENTENCE

When I was a student at PS-197 in Brooklyn I had little in common with my creepy classmate Norm Coleman, except that we were co-secretaries of our class. Judging by how badly he's turned out, I suspect we had another thing in common-- and this is where I part company with almost all the liberals I know (if only theoretically)-- and that is our adherence to the death penalty. I actually won a borough-wide UN scholarship for an essay I wrote defending the death penalty. What a bloodthirsty little bastard I was/am-- although I need to say that I would almost never advocate actually using the death penalty because of the grievous nature of the criminal justice system. Anyway, it doesn't matter for this story since even I wouldn't advocate that Bob Ney get the death penalty. I hope some of the higher ups do, of course, but Ney... just a two bit mobster who should spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars with much of the rest of the Republican caucus. Although not before a trial jury. David Sirota should be judge.

It's more likely that he'll get 2 years and be pardoned by a much more culpable criminal, you-know-who, still eatin' bananas in the White House. But what pissed the hell out of me today was a story in the Columbus Dispatch about how the confessed bribe-taker will actually be able to retire on his substantial tax-payer funded pension when he gets out of prison.

Ironically, the crooked GOP slimebag voted just 4 months ago to deny pension benefits to members of Congress convicted of a felony relating to their official duties, he'll still be able to get his-- another case of Bill Frist's Do Nothing Senate not being able to get anything done. By my calculations, Ney has made a very good deal. He admitted some relatively minor crimes and other cases will vanish, cases that probably would have kept him in the slammer for decades-- even without a Judge Sirota presiding.

An Ohio candidate with a head on her shoulders, Mary Jo Kilroy, "called on Congress to 'strip Ney of his federal pension so that taxpayers are not left funding a felon’s future. That money should be donated to the U.S. Treasury to pay down the federal deficit.'"

It isn't clear how much Ney will get but it's probably around $100,000 a year. Crime pays-- if you're a white Republican member of Congress. By the way, he still refuses to resign, although embarrassed Republicans, hoping voters will forget how integral in GOP rule Ney has been in the last 6-7 years, are demanding that he do so.

Quote of the day: Would Chimpy be more credible if he had what he's going to say explained to him? (A: Doubtful, if he doesn't believe it anyway)

"At the start of the 21st century, it is clear that the world is engaged in a great ideological struggle, between extremists who use terror as a weapon to create fear, and moderate people who work for peace."
--President Bush, in the embarrassing farrago of fine-sounding platitudes he doesn't understand or believe in and lies which he regurgitated yesterday before a singularly unreceptive General Assembly

As Keith Olbermann asked on Countdown last night, which side are we on?

My goodness, when Chimpy talks about "freedom" or "democracy"--or "peace," for that matter--you really want to duck for cover.

BLUE AMERICA UPDATE-- 7 WEEKS OUT

Before I start this update about what's been going on with some of our Blue America candidates, I want to announce the winner of our competition last week for a pair of tickets to the People For the American Way awards ceremony featuring Ambassador Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame and Green Day. Ann Reinhart, a Firedoglake community member, won the drawing. I can't wait to meet her! I have another pair of tickets for the October 10th event. As I write this today, the Blue America PAC has collected $5,140.13. Whomever takes us over the $10,000 mark-- which could even be done with one donation since $5,000 is the maximum allowable for a PAC (different from a congressional candidate)-- gets the pair of tickets for the Los Angeles event. Donations, whether $5, $50 or $5000-- or anything in between-- are most welcome and can be contributed here or mailed to Blue America PAC, P.O. Box 27201, Los Angeles, CA 90027.

A couple of campaigns have decided to go ahead and finance radio spots on their own and I do believe "Have You Had Enough" will be working its magic for Coleen Rowley and Jerry McNerney in the next couple weeks, as well as for Stacey Tallitsch in Louisiana. Local blogs have been using the animated videos as fast as Mike turns them out and yesterday Jen from John Laesch's campaign sent me this. And several campaigns have submitted the videos to local TV news stations for those ad analysis segments they do on the 10 PM news. WCCO in Minneapolis gave Coleen's campaign some free airtime.

I was very excited today when CREW released it's brand spanking new update on the 20 most corrupt members of Congress (plus 5 up-and-comers). The report makes for some wonderful reading and I am very glad to announce that CREW has included several Blue America targets, including Conrad Burns (MT), John Doolittle (CA), Dirty Dick Pombo (CA), Curt Weldon (PA), Don Sherwood (PA), Dennis Hastert (IL)-- plus two examples of corruption run amuck who will be added to the Blue America target list in the next few weeks: John Sweeney (NY) and Marilyn Musgrave (CO). [Note: I wish he had a viable opponent, but Jerry Lewis (CA) is the single most corrupt person in the U.S. House and the Democrats have no game plan for challenging him; drives me nuts!] Two of CREW's original "Beyond DeLay" Republicrooks are no longer on the list-- Cunningham and Ney-- since they have both already pled guilty.

Of course, the overall thrust of the Blue America campaign is a call for change-- time to throw the rascals out. This hasn't stopped the always reliably deceitful Republican Party to try to co-opt it, lamely, as their own message. On the one hand, you have a kook like Do Nothing Senate Majority Leader/health care destroyer/cat killer Bill Frist claiming today that, despite the GOP controlling all the committees (usually with an iron hand), the agenda, the rules and having a majority to pass whatever heinous bills they want to, the reason the 109th Congress accomplished so little and is held in such low esteem is because of... the Democratic minority. On the other hand, you've got a Rove-run campaign in Iowa's open first congressional district, where Blue America candidate Bruce Braley is outpolling extreme right wing loon Mike Whalen, in which the rubber stamp wannabe is trying to convince voters that voting for him will "send the folks in Washington a message for change." Apparently, voters in Iowa like the idea of sending the time for a change message to Washington-- but realize that voting for far right Republican nuts like Whalen is a vote for more of the same.

After lots of foot-dragging Republican rubber stampers have been forced into debates with their Democratic challengers, although in all cases they are trying to have short (30 minutes), one-time-only debates since they are eager that no attention be called to their indefensible voting records. After George Macaca Allen's terminally inept campaign stumbled into a high profile debate with Democratic challenger Jim Webb on Meet the Press 3 days ago, a despairing far right blogger on Hugh Hewitt's GOP propaganda site wrote, "For conservatives wishing for Allen to retain his seat, their best hope is that Virginians were otherwise occupied this morning or that the state’s NBC outlets were having technical difficulties... Webb outclassed Allen in every aspect of the clash." Unlike the hapless Macaca, Repugs know they have nothing to offer at debates. This was amply demonstrated when rightist hack John Kline met up with our Coleen Rowley at a debate at the Minnesota state fair.

Upstate New York's Times Herald-Record ran an interesting piece on John Hall's stand on impeachment, featuring our Blue America chat with him last week! As Siun mentioned when she sent me the story, "It's neat to see FDL treated with respect-- a source of info on candidate not 'Hall hung out with rabid lambs and said...'"

We have less than 7 weeks to get our message out and take back Congress and stop the Bush Regime from further deprecations. What can we do as individuals? We've raised $197,000 as of today for our candidates-- the combined efforts of the communities that have grown up around Firedoglake, Crooks and Liars, Music For America, and Down With Tyranny. Obviously I'm hoping we bring in a lot more. And, obviously, money is only one way to impact the direction our country goes. I know Pach has written about the Do More Than Vote campaign. I want to reiterate the importance of that and remind everyone about the opportunities it offers us.

DMTV now has chapters in 30 different cities and regions across the country. From California to New York to Michigan to Texas, they're making it as simple as possible for progressive volunteers to get active. They've been gathering all the available volunteer opportunities for each city, organizing them by time commitment, and doing their best to match volunteers with campaigns' needs. These guys are totally worth checking out and DWT readers who have been in touch with them have told me it's a great system and that it's working.

So no special guest today. We can talk about anything at all relating to the midterms. I'm always eager to hear your suggestions. And, I want to tell you that Saturday we'll be featuring an old pal of John Amato's, Tony Trupiano, the Democratic challenger to hack incumbent Thaddeus McCotter (MI-11). Those of us who have heard Tony doing his radio show already know what a powerful and incredible voice he has been for progressive change. Getting Tony into the Congress would be the political equivalent of an 8.5 earthquake going off under the asses of Bush and his disgraceful rubber stamp sham-legislature. Don't forget-- right here at 2 PM (EST).


UPDATE: STATISTICAL DEAD HEAT IN OH-02! CURTAINS FOR MEAN JEAN SCHMIDT?

Victoria Wulsin was one of the best candidates we ever had blogging at Blue America. She's amazing and what a great congressmember she would make! Howard Dean told that too. And, apparently voters in Ohio's 2nd CD feel that way as well. Today the new SUSA poll shows a statistical dead heat between Dr. Wulsin and Mean Jean Schmidt, the walking disgrace who currently represents the district. This is such a clear cut race-- one of the worst Republicans against one of the best Democrats. Dr. Wulsin is as good as Schmidt is reprehensible. Let's help Dr. Wulsin go all the way!

Maybe I'm overreacting, but this tale of an unexpected turn of events aboard a routine Paris-to-New York flight has my blood boiling

Am I overreacting here?

The very fact that The New Yorker published this piece--about which I don't want to say too much before you read it-- in the "Talk of the Town" section of the new (Sept. 25) issue tells me that other people weren't just curious but were flat-out outraged.

I read it having no idea where it was going, and I'd like you to have the same opportunity. It starts out as if it's going to be one of those quaint, harmless ain't-life-somethin' stories, but turns out to be . . . well, again, I've probably already said too much. If you need some prompting as to whether this is worth your time and attention, you can skip to my notes at the end.

THE TALK OF THE TOWN
HERE TO THERE DEPT.
AIR KISS

by Lauren Collins

American Airlines Flight 45--departing Charles de Gaulle at 10:40 A.M., arriving J.F.K. at one each afternoon--is a tourist's delight: timed just right to avoid late checkout, leaving time for one last Kir Royale at Les Deux Magots. On August 22nd, the coach cabin was packed with vacationing New Yorkers. Ralph Jackson (21A) and David Leisner (21B) were returning from two weeks in France, while Huffa Frobes-Cross (21F) had stopped over in Paris on his way back from South Africa. Assigned to seats 20A and 20B were George Tsikhiseli, a television journalist, and his writer boyfriend, Stephan Varnier. "We've been together only four months," Tsikhiseli said last week. "So it felt like a honeymoon."

Twelve days earlier, British police had foiled a terrorist plot to blow up airliners. Heightened security had delayed the flight by about two hours, and passengers, by the time they boarded, were ready to relax. "I had a José Saramago book I was looking forward to reading," Leisner said. "And then I was going to take some melatonin and have a little nap."

Shortly after takeoff, Varnier nodded off, leaning his head on Tsikhiseli. A stewardess came over to their row. "The purser wants you to stop that," she said.

"I opened my eyes and was, like, ‘Stop what?' " Varnier recalled the other day.

"The touching and the kissing," the stewardess said, before walking away.

Tsikhiseli and Varnier were taken aback. "He would rest his head on my shoulder or the other way around. We'd kiss--not kiss kiss, just mwah," Tsikhiseli recalled, making a smacking sound.

In the row behind them were Leisner and Jackson. "They were like two lovebirds," said Leisner, who is a classical guitarist. Frobes-Cross, a Columbia grad student who was sitting across the aisle, had overheard the stewardess's decree, too. "First thing I catch is ‘You have to stop touching each other,' " he said. "And I'm, like, Whoa, that's really weird."

Leisner and Jackson, who were "astounded," leaned forward to ask if they'd heard correctly. When Tsikhiseli and Varnier confirmed that they had, the four men summoned a stewardess and asked to speak with the purser.

A little later, the purser appeared at Row 20. She was, by all accounts, calm and professional; to the men's surprise, she said that she knew nothing about the incident and had not instructed the stewardess to tell Tsikhiseli and Varnier to stop touching each other.

"Which stewardess was it?" she asked.

One of the men pointed out the stewardess--a woman with, as Jackson put it, "Texas hair, like from the nineteen-sixties." According to Leisner, the purser rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, say no more. I know."

The purser asked the men to describe what they'd been doing, and she acknowledged that their behavior had not been inappropriate. Tsikhiseli then asked if the stewardess would have made the request if the kissers had been a man and a woman. Suddenly, Leisner said, the purser "became very rigid." Contradicting what she'd told them before, she stiffly said, "Kissing is inappropriate behavior on an airplane." She then said that she was busy with the meal service and promised to come back.

Half an hour later, the purser returned, this time saying that some passengers had complained about Tsikhiseli and Varnier's behavior earlier. The men asked more questions. Who had complained? (She couldn't say.) Could they have the stewardess's name, or employee number? (No.) Would the purser arrange for an American Airlines representative to meet them upon landing at J.F.K.? (Not possible.) Finally, the purser said that if they didn't drop the matter the flight would be diverted. After that, Leisner said, "everyone shut up for a while."

Maybe an hour later, the purser approached Tsikhiseli and said that the captain wanted to talk to him. Tsikhiseli went up to the galley and gave the captain his business card. The captain told Tsikhiseli that if they didn't stop arguing with the crew he would indeed divert the plane. "I want you to go back to your seat and behave the rest of the flight, and we'll see you in New York," he said. Tsikhiseli returned to coach.

Tim Wagner, a spokesman for American, said that the stewardess's injunction to the men was reasonable, and would have been made whether the couple was gay or straight. "Our passengers need to recognize that they are in an environment with all ages, backgrounds, creeds, and races. We have an obligation to make as many of them feel as comfortable as possible," he said. (He added, "Our understanding is that the level of affection was more than a quick peck on the cheek.") But a customer-service representative named Terri, reached last week on the telephone, offered the opinion that kissing on airplanes is indeed permissible. "Oh, yeah! Sure. I've seen couples who are on honeymoons," she said. "They just don't want you to go into the bathroom together."

- - - - - - - - - - -

First there is the casual, reflexive homophobia. Whatever the actual behavior of the "offending" male couple, does anyone have less than 100 percent certainty that it is trivial compared with all sorts of genuinely offensive not to mention torturous in-flight behavior that flight crews will never interfere with?

As regards expressions of affection in particular, is there anyone who doesn't have in mind clear images of the order-of-magnitude difference in the "offenses" perpetrated by same-sex and opposite-sex couples which would be needed to produce this result?

Not to mention the way the offending behavior was dealt with. If in fact a passenger complained, and one of the crew members felt that some intervention was required, an attendant with some sense of proportion and tact (and perhaps even humor) could have said something like: "Sorry, guys, but some of the passengers are a little uncomfortable with your expressions of affection. Could you tone it down?"

Instead we got the lady storm trooper who comes armed with her own bigotry and a pack of lies. But then, lying seems to come naturally to the whole pack of American Airlines storm troopers. From here on in, it's all lying and stonewalling, except the part that's bullying and threatening.

You could say that the captain didn't actually lie; he acted on information provided by his crew, and it's hardly his fault that he has a crew of bigoted compulsive liars. Well, if Sky King is going to throw his weight around, then why isn't he responsible for the quality of the information he bases his bullying and threats on?

And speaking of threats, what is with this recurring threat to "divert" the plane? Like land the plane in Cincinnati instead of New York and hope that the "regular" passengers will be so steamed that they'll lynch the faggots responsible?

Finally, standing above it all is the gutless, lying airline itself, which from start to finish manages to maintain its distance from decency, truth and simple sense, not to mention the slightest hint of responsibility for its own behavior. Myself, I can't imagine ever taking an American Airlines flight again. Then again, I can't recall the last AA flight I took. The loss of my business isn't going to rock the bottom line.

In the end, I guess it's just the very casualness--okay, maybe that and the stupidity--of the bigotry that's so infuriating. And the fact that there appears to be no price to be paid. You know from the very first lie, which is to say the first flight attendant's lie about the purser demanding compliance, and then from the immediate closing of ranks behind the official AA stonewalling, that all the participants know they're engaged in something that's not only wrong but indefensible on the facts.

I don't have any problem with the idea that all of the AA personnel involved, with the lone exception of customer-service rep Terri (who seems actually to have been in an airplane), should be fired and banned from further employment in the airline industry. I suppose it's possible that as a result they'll wind up sinking into the gutter, rotting and dying. Wouldn't that at least teach them a lesson?

SO WHAT HAPPENED IN THAILAND TODAY? DON'T WORRY, NOT MUCH

I'm a huge Thailand hand. I stopped counting how many times I've been there long ago and I'm looking forward to my next visit right after the midterm elections here. When people ask me why I'm so enamored with Thailand I try to explain how peaceful it is and how loving and sweet the people are. I even write about the politics there on my travel blog rather than at DWT, although in April I did have reason to mention the fascist triumvirate of plutocratic clowns: Bush, Berlusconi and Thaksin.

This has been the longest period Thailand has gone without a coup in decades and decades. They used to have 'em all the time. This one was
an inside job by allies of the beloved and revered king against a crooked right winger with almost as little legitimacy as Bush. From what I'm reading and from what I'm hearing from friends in Bangkok, no one was hurt and there was no resistance. Thaksin is in NY at the same UN meeting as his pal Bush.

"Thaksin, who has faced calls to step down amid allegations of corruption and abuse of power, was in New York at the U.N. General Assembly, and he declared a state of emergency via a government-owned TV station... The coup came a day before a major rally-- the first in several months-- was scheduled to take place in Bangkok by a anti-Thaksin coalition that has been seeking his resignation. Massive rallies earlier this year forced Thaksin to dissolve Parliament and call an election in April, three years ahead of schedule. The poll was boycotted by opposition parties and later annulled by Thailand's top courts, leaving the country without a working legislature."

A couple of Thaksin cronies, the Thai versions of Cheney (Chitchai; really) and Rumsfeld (Thammarak Isaragura na Ayuthaya) were arrested. Cheney Chitchai already resigned. A friend of mine in Bangkok said this was not nearly as big a deal-- so far-- as when they arrested that John Mark Karr kook for kind of claiming he killed JonBenet Ramsey.

The Bush-Thaksin parallels are often talked about by Thais and many there oppose his policies promoting savage Bush-inspired privatization, free trade agreements and incompetent, greed-obsessed and uber-corrupt Bush-like CEO-style administration. Thaksin's cronies and family, like the Bush cronies and family have been embroiled in massive corruption. In January his family announced it had sold the massive telecommunications giant Shin Corp. to Singapore's state-owned Temasek Holdings for a tax-free $1.9 billion. The sale smacked of gross insider trading and is widely viewed as unpatriotic since it puts a key national asset in foreign hands. Thaksin has also screwed up his Muslim problem-- southern Thailand is Muslim majority and the rest of the country is predominantly Buddhist.


UPDATE; THAIS SEEM RELIEVED TO BE RID OF THEIR FASCIST-ORIENTED REGIME

"Thais poured into the streets of Bangkok on Wednesday in a sign of support for the military, which took power a day earlier in a bloodless coup... Democracy activists who had long sought Thaksin's ouster embraced the military's action, and even some opposition leaders acknowledged that Thailand must find some way out of its political crisis."

Of course, the Bush Regime expressed disappointment in the developments and is thought to be working behind the scenes to get Thaksin, or a similar stooge, back into power.

GEORGE W. BUSH SUCKS ROCKS SUCKS

Hard to imagine Bush as a rock singer-- or any kind of an entertainer other than a rodeo clown, right? But here he is singing the song Bono taught him (no, not Mary, the other one):

Confidential to former Rep. Randy "Duke" C.: Sorry, babe, but we're afraid that no, this doesn't mean that you can have your House seat back

Even Tricky Dick Nixon understood that being a publicly certified crook doesn't combine well with holding elective office in these United States--enough so that he left us the indelibly humiliating image of him asserting, not very credibly, "I am not a crook." And even His Trickiness understood that in the life of every crook there comes a time when, in technical terms, THE JIG IS UP! It's time for you to slink off to . . . well, wherever people link that slink off to.

And yet there sits Bob "Don't Make Fun of the Rug, It's Luscious to Walk On Without Slippers" Ney (pictured above at left, with, uh . . . some other guy) refusing to be moved out of his House seat.

Now, our sources tell us that a certain former congressman from the San Diego area of California, who has been granted anonymity on the ground that this is just really, unbelievably embarrassing for him, but whose initials are Randy "Duke" C., has been sounding out Washington sources for legal opinions as to whether he might now be in a position to reclaim the House seat he abandoned under similar circumstances, under the new precedent being established by our Bob.

Sorry, babe. This is just a no-go. Besides, life on Capitol Hill is probably no picnic these days for our Bob either. Why, we hear that in the cafeteria, those mean other boys have taken to throwing stockpiled "freedom" fries at him while chanting, "FRENCH fries, FRENCH fries, FRENCH fries."

WHO WOULD SPONGEBOB VOTE FOR? AND PLANKTON?

I love getting up in the morning and running downstairs to my computer to see who contributed to the Blue America ActBlue page while I was asleep. Sometimes someone donates $500 and the other day someone left $2,700. More often, a dozen small contributions come in, starting my day with a huge smile and a feeling of overwhelming inspiration. And sometimes it's an actor or a radio host or a writer or a rock star. And one day, not long ago, it was SpongeBob SquarePants. Yep, apparently Ned Lamont and Jerry McNerney are big favorites in Bikini Bottom; must be their environmental policies. Well, I'm half joking, of course. But only half. Actor, comedian Tom Kenny is the voice of SpongeBob and he's the Lamont and McNerney fan. He's also about to become a rock star.

Teaming up with producer/musician/songwriter Andy Paley, Tom has just released an album, The Best Day Ever by... SpongeBob SquarePants. The songs are all sung by the characters of the TV show-- and written from their points of view-- and I'm not sure if the album is more for toddlers or college age stoners. Both, I guess.

My all-time-favorite SpongeBob song, "The Best Day Ever," making a reprise from the movie soundtrack, always sounded like a suspiciously Democratic song to me. I ran into Tom in the hood yesterday and I got to ask him. Tom laughed; "I hope I'll be singing it in November, the morning after election day."

Tom reminds me that SpongeBob SquarePants isn't a political show. "He's a cartoon character on a comedy show. Of course," he adds with a smile, "your politics inform how you look at the world and how you interact with your fellow man and it's the same with the [writing of] songs for the album. SpongeBob's creator, Steve Hillenberg has a way of looking at the world that's reflected in the character and that has a lot to do with the popularity of the show. If there are any politics reflected in SpongeBob's character, it's the politics of inclusion. He's a complete oddball, outside the mainstream-- literally a square peg. It's a show about embracing your inner freak. He's really tolerant of the quirks and foibles of everyone around him and he sees the world in very positive, can do terms. Part of what makes SpongeBob so endearing and funny is how he embraces positivity in a way that drives the more cynical characters crazy."

The album's title track, "The Best Day Ever," is a perfect example. When SpongeBob gets out of bed in the morning, it's always the best day ever... and if it doesn't turn out to be, well... it will be tomorrow. "In our world today," explains Tom, bringing us back from Bikini Bottom to George Bush World for a moment, "if you don't believe positive change is a possibility-- albeit an extremely difficult one-- you just couldn't get out of bed in the morning. People who tilt at windmills, like SpongeBob, drive cynics, like Squidward, crazy."

Tom's really thought a lot about this talking sponge living under the sea. I ask him why the hell SpongeBob hasn't joined a labor union. I mean my second favorite song, "Employee of the Month," sounds like a plea for a good union! Andy and Tom both break into song:

I broke my back
I gave my all
Now that's my face
Up on the wall

"Yep, there are no health benefits at the Krusty Krab. Accidents," Tom warns me, "are unreported 'cause you'll get fired. This song's all about the loyal enthusiastic worker bee who's underpaid and over-worked and is proud to have a plaque on the wall. SpongeBob loves his job and he doesn't see any irony in that. He thinks it's a high honor to work yourself into an early grave and get an imitation gold watch. My dad was like that. You fought for your country in World War II and you were loyal to your job and you just thought the corporation was going to take care of you."

Some of the other characters' offer a sharp contrast to SpongeBob's charming naiveté. Mr. Krabs isn't exactly an evil villain; he's just a greed-obsessed Republican type. His song, "Fishing For Money," is like a celebration of Republican political philosophy-- amass all you can, just for the sake of doing it. "He's like Halliburton," laughs Tom. "He's unchecked, unthinking, unregulated capitalism. Everything is about the bottom line, not about what's socially responsible. I mean if you have to turn a couple school sites radioactive in the pursuit of profit or destroy a Great Lake or two... it's just business; nothing personal."

But there is a real villain on The Best Day Ever. Tom is sure he and Andy didn't write Plankton's song through Karl Rove's eyes. "Rove would never express it out loud. Plankton is a familiar type to political observers. The tiny, small-minded control freak who's certain that he's entitled to a disproportionate say over everyone else's lifestyle and destiny. But his plans for world domination are never all that well thought out so they stall and fail, luckily for us all. He's venal-- and just competent enough to get his evil plans in motion... and succeed to a degree."

Tom and Andy wrote each song in character. And Plankton's song, "You Will Obey!" clearly has someone in mind for Plankton to emulate. "He pretty much has only one goal: to take over the planet and dominate. We thought," Tom revealed to me, "he's like Dick Cheney. It's all about 'sit down, shut up, I know what's best for you; I'll do the thinking for you... I'll do the imagining for you.' Somebody like Dick Cheney would love the line 'What part of do it don't you understand?' The conservative Republican/Plankton construct is seriously befuddled by why we won't shut up and let them do the driving. We always pictured Plankton having a framed, signed picture of Cheney on his desk: 'We must go hunting sometime... to Plankey from Dick.'"

So tell us, Rep. Bob "I'm Here and Whatcha Gonna Do About It?" Ney: Just what the heck does it take to get a slug like you the heck out of Congress?

From today's Washington Post, page A20:

Correction

A Sept. 16 editorial incorrectly referred to Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) as a former member of Congress.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

As Washington Post editorials go, this one is hard to fault: simple, to the point, factually accurate, obviously necessary. (I mean, you can't go around calling people "former" members of Congress when they're still on the job.)

And yet, while I'm not usually a big fan of Washington Post editorials (which too often reflect an editorial policy that might be summed up: See? We're not all that liberal), I'm going to have to stick up for 'em here. When a congressman has fessed up to as much criminal behavior as Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) has, isn't his immediate resignation automatic?

Is it possible that the feds who negotiated his plea agreement didn't insist on his resignation? Or did they maybe just assume this was too obvious to require spelling out? After all, when you admit to using your office for corrupt purposes, not to mention repeatedly lying about it, you can't possibly expect to remain in office, can you?

Personally, I'm happy to see Ney still polluting the Congress that he and his fellow Republicrooks have worked so hard to turn into a cesspool of corruption. First, the more prominently the Republican "Culture of Corruption" is displayed, the greater the chance that the country will eventually come to give a rat's ass. And second, it establishes that the Republicans have now broken through another barrier in their attitude toward the law.

Until now we've been able to joke that to people like this, the only real crime is getting caught. Now it appears that even getting caught doesn't count. No, the new standard is: Don't count unless them pussies find 'em a crowbar strong enough to pry me the hell out.

Quote of the day: Stephen Colbert knows how to get stubborn horses to drink (Plus: Keith O has a problem with the president's ban on thinking)

"They say you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Well, I say pry open that horse's mouth, cram a hose down its gullet, and turn it on full-blast. Believe me, that horse is going to feel thirsty right quick."
--Stephen Colbert, on last night's Colbert Report

Okay, there might be a tiny methodological problem here. Like, you know, the way they now have to add those statements in tiny type after movies and TV shows that involve animals, swearing that no animals were harmed in the course of making this timeless extravaganza.

But come on, people, what's the big deal now that we've evolved to the point where it's okay to torture humans as long as we have a good reason, like maybe we don't like the way they looked at us, or perhaps talked to us?

Are you talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?

(My goodness, is that what this is? The Travis Bickle school of international relations?)


ALSO TALKING--Keith Olbermann says, "Bush owes us an apology"

"The President needs to regain our confidence, that he has some basic understanding of what this country represents--of what it must maintain if we are to defeat not only terrorists, but if we are also to defeat what is ever more increasingly apparent, as an attempt to re-define the way we live here, and what we mean, when we say the word 'freedom.'"

The bizarre press-conference tirade prompted by former Secretary of State Colin Powell's honest, earnest thoughts about the direction of American foreign policy got Keith's attention, and led to a "special comment" he delivered on-air last night, which you can, and should, read in full on his blog. Here's a taste:

In four simple words last Friday, the President brought into sharp focus what has been only vaguely clear these past five and a half years--the way the terrain at night is perceptible only during an angry flash of lightning, and then, a second later, all again is dark.

“It's unacceptable to think," he said.

It is never unacceptable to think.

And when a President says thinking is unacceptable, even on one topic, even in the heat of the moment, even in the turning of a phrase extracted from its context, he takes us toward a new and fearful path--one heretofore the realm of science fiction authors and apocalyptic visionaries.

That flash of lightning freezes at the distant horizon, and we can just make out a world in which authority can actually suggest it has become unacceptable to think.

Thus the lightning flash reveals not merely a President we have already seen, the one who believes he has a monopoly on current truth. 

It now shows us a President who has decided that of all our commanders-in-chief, ever, he alone has had the knowledge necessary to alter and reshape our inalienable rights.

This is a frightening, and a dangerous, delusion, Mr. President.

HOW SOON BEFORE EVERY SINGLE LIEBERMAN BACKER IS A REPUBLICAN OR A CORPORATE WHORE?

Other than a small handful of dedicated fellow corporate whores in the Senate, it doesn't look like there will be any Democrats supporting Lieberman by November. Every single day marks another day more Democrats realize that Lieberman is the Republican candidate. Yesterday one of Connecticut's biggest and more important labor union's, AFSCME, which had endorsed Lieberman in the primary, withdrew it's endorsement and switched to the Democratic Party candidate, Ned Lamont. The union's executive director explained the switch: "Since the Aug. 8 primary, we paid close attention to the remarks of both men. We saw Joe Lieberman moving closer and closer to Bush, while Ned Lamont held firm in his strong opposition to the direction Bush is taking us... In the end, our delegates realized that it boiled down to a simple question: Which candidate will stand up to George Bush and Dick Cheney? That candidate is Ned Lamont and only Ned Lamont."

The SEIU and the United Auto Workers, each of which had stayed neutral during the primary, have also now endorsed Lamont and are working for his election against the CheneyRoveBush-backed Lieberman. On the other side of the street for every labor union or consumer-oriented organization lining up behind Lamont, another corrupt Republican plutocrat rushes to Lieberman's defense. Pothole Al D'Amato, Jack Kemp and Michael Bloomberg have been raking in the dough from right-wing fat-cats and lobbyists who are desperate to keep so useful a corporate whore like Lieberman in the Senate.


UPDATE: LABOR UNIONS AREN'T THE ONLY DEMOCRATS LEAVING LIEBERMAN ALONE WITH HIS REPUBLICAN ALLIES

According to the new Rasmussen poll Ned and Lieberman are in a statistical dead heat, with almost all of Lieberman's Democratic support having abandoned him since the primary. The vast majority of people saying they will vote for Lieberman are Republicans who, like him, support the BushCheney agenda.

Update: Joan Didion's NYRB piece on Dick Cheney is now available online (free!)

And here's where to go to read "Cheney: The Fatal Touch," which we talked about here yesterday.

By the way, we should have found an opportunity in the earlier piece to mention the name of the book in which Didion recounted and grappled with the events of the cataclysmic year in which she lost her family (seen below in happier times): her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, and their daughter, Quintana. The title is The Year of Magical Thinking, and if you haven't read it, this is one case where you truly don't know what you're missing.

REASON FOR HOPEFULNESS OF THE PART OF THE REPUBLICANS?

Republicans are taking heart in a story in today's Moonie Times that GOP electoral prospects are looking up. Apparently Cheney and Rove have gotten their allies at Big Oil to lower the price of gasoline in the hopes of staving off a midterm disaster. Interestingly, Big Oil has been lowering the price of gas in states with the tightest races: Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Minnesota, Michigan and Kentucky.

The Moonie Times echoing feeble Republican talking points about how great the economy under Bush is, just reminds voters that the Regime is either bizarrely out of touch with reality... or liars. Even fiscal conservatives, half the base of the Party of Greed and Bigotry (the greed part), are starting to acknowledge that the Bush Regime has been their worst nightmare. Richard Viguerie is urging fiscal Republicans to stop donating to the party and to sit the midterms out. I mean how smart do you have to be to figure out that Bush is more a power-grabbing fascist than a small-government fiscal conservative when he took the huge Clinton budget surplus and turned it into the biggest budget deficit in history?