GET UP, STAND UP
Paul Begala warns what we can expect if there’s a second Bush term:
Who will be the next unlucky enemy targeted under a second Bush term? I’d put my money on any Democratic swing-state legislator who seeks to accommodate him. Moderates like Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) might feel an even […]

Read Full Post »

FAIR AND BALANCED, ETC.
Yep. There’s that Librul Media for ya:
(New York City) CNN is refusing to run a television ad campaign produced by the Log Cabin Republicans.
In a letter to the gay Republican group the Cable News Network said that images in the ad are “too controversial.”
The 30-second commercial aims to counter what the […]

Read Full Post »

BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM
While they’re all busy patting themselves on the back for what a great little war they have, what about this?
His team has documented abuse dating from July 2003 to as recently as last month, when an Iraqi boy just fifteen years old says his captors at an American facility […]

Read Full Post »

GOSSIP FIX
Kitty Kelley’s new book comes out in two weeks:
The book leads us through Prescott Bush’s first entrée into government at the state level in 1950s’ Connecticut, to George Herbert Walker Bush’s long and winding road to the White House, to his son’s quick sweep into the same office. Along the way, we see the […]

Read Full Post »

OOPS
You know, it’s looking more and more interesting all the time:
FBI agents on Friday copied the computer hard drive of a senior staffer at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who has been questioned in relation to the case of a Pentagon official suspected of turning over a classified document either directly to Israel, or […]

Read Full Post »

OOZING
Laura Rozen has lots more on what Doug Feith and company may have been up to:
We know there is an FBI investigation of Larry Franklin, an Iran analyst who works in the office of Doug Feith, the undersecretary of Defense for Policy, for allegedly giving classified US documents to the lobby group Aipac. And we […]

Read Full Post »

THE OTHER SIDE
What the Vietnamese think of Kerry:
“It was very fierce fighting,” said Sinh, 52, who lost his left eye during the war and still has shrapnel embedded in his arm. “Each side tried to eliminate the other.”
Sinh and John Kerry (news - web sites), the U.S. Democratic presidential nominee, were fighting along the […]

Read Full Post »

View from the Vine Street expressway in downtown Philadelphia. 

Read Full Post »

CALM DOWN
Donkey Rising explains why the poll numbers, contrary to popular misperception, haven’t changed. Plenty there to chew on:
What do the Gallup numbers show? As Gallup’s release on their latest poll succinctly puts it: “No Change in Presidential Race Despite Attack Ads”. Just so.
In fact, to the extent their numbers show change, it’s in the […]

Read Full Post »

NATIONALISM
Digby does a great compare-and-contrast with John McCain’s speech.

Read Full Post »

EVEN THE MEDIA HATES THE MEDIA
A take on the media scene in New York:
Whatever paperwork discrepancies exist between Kerry’s paperwork and diaries and so on are not commensurate with the Swift Vets’ flat-out intentional and politically motivated falsehoods. Contrary to the dogma of J-schools across the country, there are not always two sides to a […]

Read Full Post »

WIDER?
Josh Marshall has more on the Pentagon spy scandal:
The key seems to be — and this has been reported in other articles — that Franklin has been “cooperating with investigators for several weeks”, as the Post puts it. There’s only utility in getting someone like Franklin’s cooperation if there are other people in the mix. […]

Read Full Post »

SCUM
If you could bring yourself to watch the GOP convention, you might have noticed many of the delegates wearing Bandaids.
It’s to make fun of John Kerry getting a Purple Heart for a “scratch.”
As opposed to the one Bush’s mommy gave him after he fell down drunk, I suppose.

Read Full Post »

SCUM
If you could bring yourself to watch the GOP convention, you might have noticed many of the delegates wearing Bandaids.
It’s to make fun of John Kerry getting a Purple Heart for a “scratch.”
As opposed to the one Bush’s mommy gave him after he fell down drunk, I suppose.

Read Full Post »

WHY WOULD THEY BE ANY SMARTER THIS TIME?
Krugman points out the obvious problem:
another thought. President Bush says that the troubles in Iraq are the result of unanticipated “catastrophic success.” But that catastrophe was predicted by many experts. Mr. Cordesman says their warnings were ignored because we have “the weakest and most ineffective National Security Council […]

Read Full Post »

TWO FACES
Why Emperor Greenspan has no clothes:
What other channels exist? If the government cuts Social Security benefits, what will the pending retirees do? Will they save more? In the first place, they mostly can’t do that. Most Americans live hand-to-mouth, and if they do manage to save something at one point or another in their […]

Read Full Post »

FREQUENTLY WRONG BUT NEVER IN DOUBT
“If we don’t stick with him [Bush], we’re going to reap the whirlwind.” - Sen. Orin “Weasel” Hatch.
He then proceeded to say he warned Bill Clinton about Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, “but he didn’t listen to me.”
Other convention highlights:Swift Boat Veterans = people who have a right to […]

Read Full Post »

ARTIST AS ASSASSIN
Here’s an excerpt of the Rolling Stone interview with Michael Moore:
Doing what’s right, for Moore, at the moment, means one thing: unseating George W. Bush. With Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore is not simply promoting a movie. He’s campaigning against a sitting president. Moore turned down an offer to do a one-man show on Broadway […]

Read Full Post »

SIGNS WE NEED REGIME CHANGE
Why is the Bush campaign calling people and suggesting they use an absentee ballot? Two Democratic activists (one from Minnesota) have posted so far tonight on DU complaining about a recorded message from Bush.
Young man’s voice: “Hold for an important call from President George W Bush.”
Bush:
“Hello. This is George W […]

Read Full Post »

SHAMELESS
My 81-year-old mother hates Bush and gets a lot of angry email from elderly Bush supporters around the country. (You know how these seniors are in the chat rooms…)
Tonight she told me she got one accusing John Kerry of having raped a 13-year-old girl in Vietnam. I asked her to forward it to me, and […]

Read Full Post »

OUR PET GOAT
Looks like Bush isn’t as likeable to New Yorkers as he is to the rest of the country:
On the eve of a Republican National Convention invoking 9/11 symbols, sound bytes and imagery, half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall say that some of our leaders “knew […]

Read Full Post »

DIARY OF A NYC STRIP CLUB WAITRESS
From the Village Voice:
When I returned with an answer, his indignation had subsided. “Why aren’t you up there dancing?” he asked me, gesturing to the woman gyrating. (On the list of questions frequently asked of a strip-club waitress, this one is rivaled only by “Can we see some girls […]

Read Full Post »

ONE DOWN, ? TO GO
Ed Schrock, that wingnut Virginia Beach congressman who was outed by BlogActive because of his opposition to gay marriage, has suddenly announced his retirement.
RICHMOND, Va. — Republican U.S. Rep. Edward L. Schrock abruptly announced today that he will not seek a third term, citing unspecified allegations that have “called into […]

Read Full Post »

ME AND MY SHADOW
I saw Tom Brokaw interview Karl Rove on MSNC today. Rove’s comments went something like this: Clinton’s numbers were only 39% before his reelection, shadowy groups, billionaires who want to stop this president, shadowy groups.
I think Karl can’t conceive of the notion that billionaires weren’t bought off by a tax cut.
UPDATE: Someone […]

Read Full Post »

OR IS IT ‘GLUTTONS OF POWER’?
From Amy Sullivan, over at the Washington Monthly:
“God’s Official Party”?….That’s what the good souls in the G.O.P. are apparently calling themselves these days, according to Mike Crowley’s report from a morning meeting of the Iowa Republican delegation in New York. Ah, humility. Sounds like perhaps they need a reminder that […]

Read Full Post »