America Sold Down the River

It looks like its official. Congressional Democrats have finally joined their Republican cohorts in selling America down the river. A deal has been struck on a new Surveillance Bill, one that includes immunity for the telecom companies that have helped the Bush Administration illegally and Unconstitutionally spy on Americans. This is another dark day for the nation. We should all be ashamed.

19 June 2008

Lincoln Would Puke

My title for this piece of the Grand Old Party says it all. /weep

17 June 2008

McCain is McSame

The New York Times has a handy guide to just how closely McCain's policies mimic George W. Bush's.

That's not change we can believe in. He-he, he-he, he-he...

17 June 2008

Remembering Tim Russert

Tim Russert, NBC Washington Bureau Chief and moderator of Meet the Press, died suddenly of a heart attack last Friday. He was only 58. My wife and I were both long-time fans of Russert and his reporting. Watching Meet the Press, as well as his self-titled program that always aired on Saturdays, had long been staple parts of our weekends. Russert was, I believe, the best political reporter/pundit on television. He was also uniformly known as an all-around good egg. His devotion to his family and to his Catholic faith was legendary. There have been many, many retrospectives of his life and work over the past few days. We watched several hours worth and it was time well spent. If you missed them, here are some other avenues to look back at Russert.

MSNBC Announcement
TPM Announcement, including video of Tom Brokaw making the official press released for NBC
TPM Sunday (15 June 2008) Talk Show Round-up
TPM details of the cause of death

Russert was the author of two recent books that garnered a lot of attention. Big Russ and Me was an ode to his father their their relationship. That book had such a profound affect on so many of its readers that they spontaneously wrote Russert letters about their own fathers. He later turned those letters into another book, Wisdom of Our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons.

I will miss Russert's television presence and his take on the political matters of the day. His absence will have an effect on this year's presidential election. Surely, he would have moderated one or two of the debates between Obama and McCain, as he would have hosted both candidates and their minions many times on his programs.

This is a huge loss for his family, for his profession, and for American politics.

/salute

16 June 2008

Brad Schlozman Grand Jury

Our old friend Bradley Schlozman, the man who helps politicize the Bush Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and who was the topic of several of my first posts in this blog, is back in the news. The Justice Department has convened a grand jury to investigate...

...Schlozman's involvement in improper prosecutions during his time running the DOJ's civil-rights division in general. The referral appears specifically tied to possible perjury in his 2007 congressional testimony.

While this is good news on its face, let's not put the cart before the horse. We are still talking about the Bush Justice Department. There are many who believe that this investigation is simply another form of a cover-up. The investigation could be a set up as a whitewash before a new Attorney General comes in with the next administration. Also, this investigation could merely set the stage for a presidential pardon for Schlozman to allow Bush to cover his own back side.

Here is to hoping that the AG means business... but I'm not holding my breath.

16 June 2008

King Corn

My wife and I watched a documentary last night, King Corn, that deals with the dominance of corn in the modern American diet... and the detrimental effects of this on our society. (Both the health and economic effects are covered.) This movie doesn't explain the situation as well as do many books, but if you want a good overview in 90 minutes, I recommend this.

16 June 2008

Personal Presidential Money Management

From Eric Kleefeld of TPM:

In an interesting peek into John McCain's personal finances, it turns out that John and Cindy McCain -- in spite of their personal wealth -- are carrying well over $100,000 in credit card debt.

The Hill took a look at the latest Senate financial disclosure forms and found that a joint card held by the two has between $10,000 and $15,000 in charges, while a card that is solely in Cindy's name has between $100,000 and $250,000 in debt. Another card for a dependent child has between $15,000 and $50,000 in charges.

This is despite Cindy McCain having sold a property in California for a profit of more than $1 million.

Barack Obama, who has become wealthy in recent years thanks to book royalties, did not report any financial liabilities.

This kind of stupidity does give one pause.

13 June 2008

Fight the Smears dot com

The Obama campaign has set up a new web site specifically to counter lies about the Illinois senator and his wife coming directly from the McCain campaign and from its surrogates. There is a new sheriff in town!

12 June 2008

McCain to Troops: Why Go Home?

Here is the clip of John McCain saying that "when" troops come home from Iraq is "not too important." The McCain campaign, realizing that their guy had really, really put his foot in it, began scrambling to make it clear that McCain hadn't said what he'd clearly said. Indeed, I counted three separate and totally different explanations of what the Arizona senator actually meant! Further explanation of the incident, including some info on the McCain punch-back, can be found here.

12 June 2008

Fox News' New Low

You decide if this racist, sexist, or the whole enchilada.

12 June 2008

Edit: Fox Spews deserved to be mocked in this fashion.

Election 08: Tax Policy

From David Kurtz at TPM:

The Tax Policy Center has released a report comparing the Obama and McCain tax plans. You can read the report, "A Preliminary Analysis of the 2008 Presidential Candidates' Tax Plans," here (.pdf). A sampling:

If enacted, the Obama and McCain tax plans would have radically different effects on the distribution of tax burdens in the United States. The Obama tax plan would make the tax system significantly more progressive by providing large tax breaks to those at the bottom of the income scale and raising taxes significantly on upper-income earners. The McCain tax plan would make the tax system more regressive, even compared with a system in which the 2001-06 tax cuts are made permanent. It would do so by providing relatively little tax relief to those at the bottom of the income scale while providing huge tax cuts to households at the very top of the income distribution.

At his TaxProf Blog, Paul L. Caron hits the highlights of the report and rounds up early reaction, some of which centers on the fact that both plans would dramatically increase the national debt.

There is also a video from CNN at the TPM link.

12 June 2008

McCain: "I'm Impotent"

Barack Obama, being the man he is, has set a goal of shutting down so-called 527 groups and their third-party attacks on competitors. John McCain, having much less moral fiber -- to say the least -- and displaying a huge lack of backbone, has said that he's impotent in the matter. As noted at TPM:

GOP presidential contender John McCain says he can't control every attack ad aimed at Democrat Barack Obama and fully expects he'll face a similar barrage, sounding the bell for a raucous general election brawl.

"I can't be a referee of every spot run on television," McCain told the Herald in an exclusive interview. "I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments, but we all know there are groups who want to attack me."

The Arizona senator's hands-off posture on attack ads by now-infamous tax-free and unaccountable political groups called 527s marks a softening of his view on the negative campaign tactic -- and opens the door to a no-holds-barred five-month scramble.

What a maverick this guy is!

12 June 2008

Edit: Just to show you how a real leader takes charge. Grow a pair, McCain!

Lieberman: Traitor Anew

From Greg Sargent at TPM:

Now that Joe Lieberman has emerged as John McCain's lead attack dog against Barack Obama -- even going so far as to suggest that Obama's judgment could pose a danger to our safety -- there's some very interesting behind-the-scenes back-story to the Lieberman-Obama relationship that you should know about.

Specifically, a top official on Joe Lieberman's 2006 Senate reelection campaign tells me that Lieberman's staff practically begged Barack Obama to come in and endorse him at a critical moment -- requests that Obama agreed to, helping Lieberman minimize the damage from challenger Ned Lamont's recent entry into the contest.

This back-story is particularly relevant right now in light of Lieberman's harsh assaults on Obama's national security credentials.

The top Lieberman official, who was directly involved in securing Obama's help, tells me that the campaign was desperate for Obama to come to Connecticut in March of 2006, soon after Lamont entered the race.

"We needed him to strongly validate us as a candidate that liberal Democrats should not desert," the official tells me. "We went to the Obama operation with a very urgent plea for him to come out for us."

The rest of the article can be read at this link.

10 June 2008

McCain: Go-Go Wiretapping!

McCain has formally endorsed the Bush Administration's use of illegal wiretapping and its plan for telecom company immunity during said wiretapping program. McSame rolls on.

6 June 2008

Bush Media "Coverage"

More on how the media covered for Bush before and after the Iraq war started.

6 June 2008

McCain: Fore!

Another classic from McCain that is sadly, unintentionally a hoot.

5 June 2008

False Pre-War Claims

The Phase II report from the Senate Intelligence Committee has been released and what do you know, it provides more proof that the Bush White House outright lied to us in the run-up to the Iraq war. (The report is in PDF format as Part One and Part Two.) The story is outlined on TPM by David Kurtz. Senator Jay Rockefeller released a summary of the report's key findings, as noted at the TPM link above.

--Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

--Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

--Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.

--Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.

--The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.

--The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

Let me just remind you, however unnecessary that may actually be, that we have 4,000-plus dead Americans, 500,000-plus dead Iraqis, uncountable casualties from both peoples, hundreds of billions of dollars spent, and decades of infrastructure demolished... for nothing. Unforgivable.

5 June 2008

McCain & Katrina

John McCain has been spending the last few days in and around New Orleans. Indeed, he kicked off -- formally at least -- his general election bid there yesterday. I have yet to figure out why he focused on this area for this moment in the campaign. After all, if the Republicans can't win Louisiana in November, this thing is already over.

Other reasons that he might have rethought his geography were the inevitable questions regarding Hurricane Katrina. From Eric Kleefeld at TPM:

During his press conference today in Baton Rouge, John McCain declared in strong terms that he's voted for every investigation of Hurricane Katrina.

The only problem, as the DNC has been pointing out to reporters, is he voted twice against Democratic proposals to investigate the levee failures.

After a local reporter at his Baton Rouge press conference asked why he voted against forming a commission to investigate the levee failures in New Orleans, McCain insisted that he supported every investigation -- and added that he was "not familiar" with what the reporter was talking about[.]

McCain voted against establishing a commission to investigate the levee failures, in a September 2005 party-line vote in which all Republicans voted against the Democratic proposal. He then repeated that party-line GOP vote against a similar Dem proposal in February 2006.

Note that TPM has video of the exchange at the original link.

Note that a reporter actually asked McCain a tough, valid question. That never happened during the Republican primary campaign. It gives me hope that some of the press might actually do its job.

The best part is the e-mail that the McCain campaign sent to TPM about the incident in question. Somehow, they have morphed the press asking a question into Obama asserting the facts as a smear campaign. What fun!

"It doesn't bode well for Senator Obama's pledges to run a campaign of hope and change when on the first day of the general election he's launching the same tired negative attacks that the American people are so sick and tired of. As Sen. McCain said, he wasn't familiar with the specific votes the questioner was asking about. Instead he was speaking to his strong support for the Homeland Security Committee's comprehensive, bipartisan investigation of Hurricane Katrina, which was already fully underway when these other proposals were suggested."

.

4 June 2008

Calling All Democrats

Now that Senator Obama has secured the nomination of the Democratic Party for President of the United States, his campaign is requesting that Democrats write to the superdelegates from their state of permanent residence who are either still uncommitted or who have previously supported Senator Hillary Clinton. You can find a list of such people on the Obama web site. Just click through the "States" portal at the top of the home page to find your state. Note that this information is not listed for all states. Letters should be sent to the individuals in c/o the Democratic National Committee in Washington, DC.

For those of you in New Mexico, here is the letter that my wife and I will be sending.

4 June 2008

Mayor Martin Chavez, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Lt. Governor Diane Denish, New Mexico
Ms. Mary Gail Gwaltney, DNC Committee Member, New Mexico
Ms. Annadelle Sanchez, Vice-Chair Democratic Party of New Mexico
Mr. Raymond Sanchez, DNC Committee Member, New Mexico
Ms. Christine Trujillo, DNC Committee Member-at-Large, NM
Congressman Tom Udall, New Mexico

c/o Democratic National Committee
430 S CAPITOL ST SE
WASHINGTON DC 20003

Re: New Mexico Superdelegate Support of Senator Barack Obama

Dear New Mexico Superdelegates:

Yesterday, Senator Barack Obama secured the delegate total necessary to earn the nomination of the Democratic Party for President of the United States. This was an historic and proud day for our nation. The Democratic race was a long and often bitter one and it is now time for us as Democrats and as Americans to come together and support Senator Obama in his quest for the presidency. To be true to our party and to our country, we can do no less.

To Representative Udall, we request that you cast your vote as a superdelegate for Senator Obama. To the rest of you named above, we respectfully request that you withdraw your votes as superdelegates for Senator Hillary Clinton and recast them to support Senator Obama. While we know that this will not be easy for you, and we respect your support for Senator Clinton during her campaign, we urge you to set aside earlier differences to focus on helping Senator Obama defeat Senator John McCain in November.

A united Democratic Party will do great things in the 2008 election. Divided, we will miss out on an historic opportunity for our party.

Thank you for your time. We appreciate your consideration of our request.

Respectfully yours,

Jane and John Doe
123 Main St
Albuquerque NM 87103

4 June 2008

McCain Speechification

If you have a free moment today, take a look at this video. You'll wet yourself laughing.

4 June 2008

Obama Wins Nomination

Last night, Senator Barack Obama secured the Democratic nomination for president. My wife and I were watching primary coverage on MSNBC and honestly, I had tears in my eyes when the announcement came that he had secured the necessary delegates. I had my doubts that I would live long enough to see an African American in this position. That the man who now fills this role seems most worthy of my support only makes this victory for America all the sweeter.

Now, we must secure an even greater milestone: President Barack Obama!

You can view Obama's speech from last night here.

4 June 2008

Fix Global Warming Bill

From CredoAction:

Even after heroic efforts by Sen. Boxer and leading environmental groups to produce a serious global warming bill, it is time to recognize that the current legislation, sponsored by independent Sen. Lieberman of Connecticut and Republican Sen. Warner of Virginia, does not meet any serious test.

Not only that, unless dramatically improved, the legislation provides massive giveaways to the worst polluters while guaranteeing that greenhouse gases will be reduced less than the scientific consensus requires.

Not surprisingly, insider politics have taken over the global warming debate in the Senate. Progress is now being defined as how many votes the legislation can muster, rather than the cost of the deals made to get each vote. Real progress on global warming is no longer the goal. Now the goal is simply votes without progress. For example, Sen. Lieberman is trying to entice John McCain to support the legislation with even more billions for nuclear power. And senators from states that rely heavily on coal burning industries want special bonuses so that they won't be penalized for polluting choices of the past.

The dollar cost of compromise is simply too high - literally hundreds of billions of dollars.

The American people need to know which senators want real action on global warming. We hope that the Senate will vote on an amendment to Lieberman - Warner that adopts the scientific standard of 80 percent reduction without massive handouts to polluters.

If such an amendment fails, it is time to ditch Lieberman-Warner. We can do better.

Please sign the petition to your senators by clicking on the orange button at right. And then be sure to tell your friends who are concerned about how we're going to address the climate crisis.

3 June 2008