I really wanted to get into issues of class, gender, race, and LGBT this week, mostly because, except for certain narrow topics, many liberal bloggers won’t talk about them. So I invited some guest bloggers, and here’s the first one. (He happens to be my brother Mark.)
What If …?
* What if all the gay [...]

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This certainly can’t hurt - and it might help. How funny would that be, if Al Gore won the Iowa caucuses?
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Grassroots supporters are ramping up their efforts to encourage Al Gore to run for president in 2008.
The Draft Gore Committee launched its first radio ad today in Iowa. The 30-second [...]

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So it looks like The Decider picks what color crayons he wants to use - out of the ones Cheney lets him see. Part 3 of the Washington Post series:
Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., who served as Bush’s budget director from 2001 to 2003 and is now governor of Indiana, said that during his tenure the [...]

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God bless ‘em. Of course, Bush explained to them we don’t torture. Boy, weren’t they embarrassed! Then they all had a good laugh:
While meeting with a group of high school seniors from the Presidential Scholars program in the East Room of the White House, President Bush received an unexpected surprise: a letter signed by 50 [...]

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After all, we keep spreading democracy:
A group of villagers in Iraq is bitterly disputing the US account of a deadly air attack on 22 June, in the latest example of the confusion surrounding the reporting of combat incidents there.
The BBC’s Jim Muir investigates:
On 22 June the US military announced that its attack helicopters, armed with [...]

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I don’t expect it to make a damned bit of difference in any meaningful way, but you never know. My guess is, this is part of the campaign to save Congressional seats next year:
Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, tonight announced his support for an immediate shift in Iraq [...]

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I saw Hall & Oates perform this live at the Main Point in Bryn Mawr. Yeah, that’s how damned old I am:

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Well, kids, I’m one of the bloggers who were credentialed for Thursday night’s live PBS presidential debate with Tavis Smiley. (Basically, I’ll be sitting in a media room with the rest of the other bloggers and journalists during the debate. You might spot me on TV.)
The Secret Service is doing my background check even [...]

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That big “story” about a handful of copy editors and TV personalities who gave a few bucks in political contributions?
Turns out, of course, that the corporate media PACs gave much, much more - and almost all of them gave more to the GOP.

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David Sirota really gets the larger issues Michael Moore brings out in “Sicko.” (It’s probably no coincidence that Great Britain also has a much more aggressive press.)
What I found most profound about the film was not the details about other countries’ health care systems in comparison to our own, but Moore’s very subtle point about [...]

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See, now this is just wrong. You just can’t impose your publication’s code of ethics on a freelancer.
“Interestingly, during my ‘you’re fired’ phone conversation with the editor and editorial page editor on Friday afternoon, they mentioned that the Journal Star code of ethics covered freelancers as well as full-time staffers. I responded that it would [...]

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From the Center for American Progress:
In his new documentary SiCKO, filmmaker Michael Moore exposes the deplorable tactics practiced by some health insurance and pharmaceutical companies who deny coverage to individuals who are insured.
Moore is now facing “a multifaceted counteroffensive” from front groups supported and funded by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
FreedomWorks, for example, [...]

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Joe Bageant:
Meanwhile the Republicans, like the Biblical King Balthazar and his court magicians, are watching in terror the writing on the wall by the mystic hand: “You’re finished guys. Too many Halliburton and Diebold concubines hath drank from the golden cup.” Thus the Democratic Party leadership headquartered at the Westchester Country Club will claim credit [...]

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One of the easiest class markers is weight. If you see someone who’s fat, chances are, he or she didn’t grow up as a member of the upper class.
Now, close your eyes and picture Michael Moore.
He’s fat, rumpled and as working class as they come. He didn’t graduate from college, and he has little patience [...]

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Because most of us know women like this - or we’ve been through it ourselves. Or we know women whose husbands still wake up screaming. We know that, once begun, the war is never, ever over.

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Nothing we didn’t suspect, but boy, he sure is consistent. Go read Part 2 of the Washington Post series on Cheney:
Geneva rules forbade not only torture but also, in equally categorical terms, the use of “violence,” “cruel treatment” or “humiliating and degrading treatment” against a detainee “at any time and in any place whatsoever.” The [...]

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More progress:
BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber blew himself up in a central Baghdad hotel on Monday, killing seven people, police said. At least 12 other people were reported wounded.
A man wearing a belt of explosives walked into the lobby of the Mansour Hotel, approached the reception desk and detonated his bomb, said a police official, [...]

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They hate us for our freedom:
US university students will not be able to work late at the campus, travel abroad, show interest in their colleagues’ work, have friends outside the United States, engage in independent research, or make extra money without the prior consent of the authorities, according to a set of guidelines given to [...]

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WashPo at war over the Cheney story? Sounds like it.

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How very… meta.

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But that would assume they owned consciences.

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Bob Kerrey, running?

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Military careers are no longer an option in many families:
WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of blacks joining the military has plunged by more than one-third since the Afghanistan and Iraq wars began. Other job prospects are soaring and relatives of potential recruits increasingly are discouraging them from joining the armed services.
According to data obtained by [...]

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Hank Medress, 68, lead singer with The Tokens on “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”:

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Because I can’t discuss it with you until you’ve seen it. Download it here and get Google Video Player while you’re at it. Really simple!
By the way, Michael Moore has made it clear he doesn’t mind downloaders - it’s more important to him that he gets the message out.
UPDATE: By the way, I strongly recommend [...]

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Josh Marshall:
In 2000, when Bush, an inexperienced governor in a state where the governor has limited power, sought the presidency, his supporters insisted the nation need not worry — Bush had assembled a team of capable “advisors” who would help guide his hand.
What the equation didn’t consider is what happens when the advisors disagree and [...]

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Apparently the country’s full of them.

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And I thought this was interesting:
Moore contrasts the U.S. system with the systems in France, Britain and Cuba, where care is free. He claims there’s no waiting, and you can choose your own doctor. And in France, he says, there are doctors who make house calls in the middle of the night. How accurate are [...]

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For this unnecessary war:
More than 800 of them have lost an arm, a leg, fingers or toes. More than 100 are blind. Dozens need tubes and machines to keep them alive. Hundreds are disfigured by burns, and thousands have brain injuries and mangled minds.
These are America’s war wounded, a toll that has received less attention [...]

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Still waiting for Republican “leadership” to stand up against the war.

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