Tarheel Blue [North Carolina - update 15!]

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday November 04, 2008 · 10:07 PM PST

2008/11/04 · 22:07

~~Not much of a diary, but~~ I wanted to announce that North Carolina is [not yet quite] officially BLUE.

It was a long night. First we easily felled Dole with her odious Godless ads. YES! Then we re-claimed the governor's mansion. YES! Then Larry Kissell (who lost by 329 votes last time) kicks Robin Hayes out of Congress in his second go-around. YES! (Diary on Larry's win here.)

Now, after all the votes have been counted, it came down to a measly ~~13505~~ 11246 vote difference out of almost 4.2 millions votes cast. North Carolina follows Virginia and joins the chorus of states longing for change. North Carolina is officially Tarheel blue. Results via WRAL.

I give a big thank you kiss to the fine residents of this state. Wmmmmuuuah!

Updates under the fold - but me and the wife are calling it... .BLUE!

muji

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday October 28, 2004 · 11:44 PM PDT

2004/10/28 · 23:44

It started the other day, when James Wolcott noticed Fox News talking heads start to bring up the same points.

It is pretty obvious that this election will turn into a full blown battle in the court system, though luckily, the courts aren't falling for early Republican antics.

But New Donkey has seen the trends, with articles this week here and here talking about how the early Republican antics are setting the stage for a huge advantage in manipulating the media later. And he smells Rove all over it:

Now I have no direct evidence that Karl Rove has planned and is executing this voter suppression strategy, though it's interesting that every Republican hack and pundit in the universe started singing like a cicada about "voter fraud" about a week before the Ohio story got into the national news. But it sure as hell fits Rove's M.O. like a glove.

The wholesale manipulation of the election is in the works. Don't say that we weren't warned this time.

Poor poor misunderstood Sinclair

muji

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday October 19, 2004 · 1:26 PM PDT

2004/10/19 · 13:26

Sinclair released a press release today: Read More

Rove is in a corner. It's gonna get ugly.

muji

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday October 19, 2004 · 1:00 PM PDT

2004/10/19 · 13:00

Read The Atlantic article by Josh Green about Rove? Excellent piece.

It details how Rove is truly at his slimeball best when backed into a corner. That is when the smear machine starts up, doing things like anonymously releasing huge smears about HIS candidate to generate public backlash against the "dirty tricks" of his opponent. Or the whisper campaign calling an Alabama judge who ran a children's fund a pedophile (attacking the greatest strength), or calling McCain "mad", unbalanced and saying he has a black child in the SC primaries in the last presidential race. Rove cuts to the bone.

It's too late for whispers in this national stage, and while Rove has Washington locked up by Republican operatives, he dosen't have a national network to disseminate his "whisper" tricks.

But you can see shades of all the rest of his trick book. SBVT & now Sinclair attacking Kerry's patriotism, conceivably his greatest strength. We've watched as the Republican Media Machine takes to the airwaves after any major event, each with exactly the same message to push.

More thoughts below the fold... Read More

Supreme Court protects both church AND state

muji

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday October 18, 2004 · 1:03 PM PDT

2004/10/18 · 13:03

In case you aren't scared enough of another George Bush presidency, read this NYT op-ed outlining how the president can shape the Supreme Court for decades to come. Scalia and Thomas are already scary enough -- more justices like them and America is going to be a very different place.

As PFAW summed it up in an action email:

It's frightening to contemplate, but before going to the polls next month, all Americans need to think about what just one more right-wing Justice on the Supreme Court will mean:

George Bush being allowed to deny any citizen due process;
Dick Cheney running a secret government accountable to no one; and,
John Ashcroft grabbing more unchecked, unconstitutional powers.

...

From the right to privacy that serves as the foundation of Roe v. Wade and every American's reproductive freedom, to the separation of church and state that keeps government out of religion (and vice-versa!)... from protections against discrimination in the workplace, courtrooms and voting booths, to bedrock environmental laws, we could lose it all if anticipated Supreme Court vacancies are filled with far right ideologues.

I think my highlighted passage above really needs to be made clear to those in the religious right who want the government pushing their moral agenda -- they never think their policies through to the other side, where the government is pushing mandated RELGIOUS beliefs on the people.

Separation of church and state is for the protection of BOTH sides.

GeorgeWBush.com blocks foreign viewers from seeing site

muji

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday October 14, 2004 · 11:29 AM PDT

2004/10/14 · 11:29

I have not been able to access http://www.georgewbush.com all week long. I thought it was a fluke at first, but after a few days began to have a suspicion that it was blocking my foreign IP.

I am accessing the web via DSL in Baja Mexico and have a clearly identifiable IP as Mexican origin, as Google routes me to a Latin American version, CNN goes to International Edition and I get a continual stream of ads in spanish on websites I visit.

All along, I figured George's reelection site maybe had problems, a DOS attack or something. Today I decided to log into my web server in Colorado and found it could access George's site just fine.

Why in the hell would the Bush campaign BLOCK the world outside of the US from seeing his information? Last week I was in there fine. This week, I get nothing but a timeout when I try to access his site. What gives?

Is he blocking ALL non-US viewers from the site, or just Mexico? There are lots of Republicans down in these parts that he could be alienating with this action (which is fine by me), but it really just looks suspicious in my view.

Maybe he's blocking people from applying that "global test"...

Update [2004-10-14 15:5:12 by muji]: So far Costa Rica and Brazil are also blocked. UK and Canada are not. So it looks like a complete block of Latin American viewers so far.

Drudge: FCC commissioner criticizes Sinclair [not full FCC]

muji

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday October 12, 2004 · 2:10 PM PDT

2004/10/12 · 14:10

Drudge alert:

FCC COMMISSIONER COPPS CRITICIZES SINCLAIR CORPORATE DECISION TO PREEMPT LOCAL STATIONS FOR POLITICAL BROADCAST

Commissioner Michael J. Copps reacted to reports that Sinclair Broadcast Group will preempt more than 60 local stations across the country to air an overtly political program in the days prior to the Presidential election.

Copps stated: "This is an abuse of the public trust. And it is proof positive of media consolidation run amok when one owner can use the public airwaves to blanket the country with its political ideology -- whether liberal or conservative. Some will undoubtedly question if this is appropriate stewardship of the public airwaves. This is the same corporation that refused to air Nightline's reading of our war dead in Iraq. It is the same corporation that short-shrifts local communities and local jobs by distance-casting news and weather from hundreds of miles away. It is a sad fact that the explicit public interest protections we once had to ensure balance continue to be weakened by the Federal Communications Commission while it allows media conglomerates to get even bigger. Sinclair, and the FCC, are taking us down a dangerous road."

Not verified.

BTW, I'm compiling another "centralized" post on attack stradegies that have been floating on the various Sinclair posts at DKos. Stay tuned.

Oh, yeah, we're at war...

muji

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday October 10, 2004 · 12:34 AM PDT

2004/10/10 · 00:34

All this hubbub about debates and elections has distracted us from the real news -- Iraq. What in the hell IS going on in Iraq these days? Two articles captured my attention this evening.

WaPo has an article interviewing Marines, and their viewpoint is that Iraq is a major diversion from the fight against Al Queda. Also, Juan Cole breaks down the history of the Bush's "War on Terror", and why the whole concept is this administration's wet dream -- an easy way to con the American people into supporting anything that the Bush administration wants by wrapping the flag around it and labelling it "War on Terror".

Much more from the articles and my thoughts below the fold....

[originally posted on schadenfreude] Read More

Ashcroft on the way out?

muji

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday September 16, 2004 · 5:42 PM PDT

2004/09/16 · 17:42

Mark Kleiman reports that White House isn't happy with Ashcroft and may replace him after reelection. He reports:

My source reports that the President is "very disappointed" with his Attorney General, and that the White House Counsel's office regards him as "a boob."

Via Digby comes the perfect button to sum up this situation...

[from my schadenfreude blog]

Abu Ghraib independent probe report available

muji

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday September 08, 2004 · 1:25 PM PDT

2004/09/08 · 13:25

I haven't seen this mentioned on DKos and I just came across it today. It was released on Aug 24 and I've been travelling, so pardon me if it's been thoroughly discussed already....

Final Report of the Independent Panel to Review DoD Detention Operations (full PDF via FindLaw)

At first glance it seems pretty tame. But it names names and has all the pertinant information all in one summary. It squarely puts the blame on individuals like Miller and Sanchez as well as CENTCOM and DoD for their confusing and conflicting orders, especially since Bush determined Taliban in Afganistan weren't subject to the Geneva Conventions (and here I thought it was an official war, meaning they are lawful combatants duly protected under the Conventions).

The PDF is unfortunately just an image capture so I can't quote it here easily, nor can you search it for keywords like 'rape' or 'torture'.

Suffice to say, it makes clear that the buck doesn't stop with Sanchez and Miller and those in direct command of the prison in Iraq. CENTCOM and DoD had conflicting orders and the non-Geneva sanctioned treatment of the Taliban & Al-Queda slowly moved from Afganistan into other arenas without any direct commands from superiors in Washington to supress it.

I think I know where the buck stops and it is even beyond Rumsfeld (on whose watch this all occured). Perhaps if Bush hadn't officially null & voided the Geneva Convention for the war prisoners in Afganistan, this type of activity wouldn't have permeated out into our other arenas of combat. I think the buck stops squarely at our Commander in Chief.

There is also the Taguba Report if you feel like reading up on it all.

Update [2004-9-8 16:30:31 by muji]: Damn, I searched the Diaries on the wrong term. This was talked about a lot back on Aug 24. There are stores here and here and here and here. Doh! Okay, consider this diary to be the round-up!

Garrison Keillor rips Bush a new one

muji

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday August 31, 2004 · 12:25 AM PDT

2004/08/31 · 00:25

Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegon fame rips Bush a new one in In These Times this month. He starts by wondering how the party of Lincoln "transmogrified" to the current right-wing, big business bible thumpin' party.

He goes on to nail Bush's platform to the wall in this incredibly accurate description:

Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy--the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president's personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

Read it.

CNN actually gives both sides of Swift Boat story.

muji

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday August 19, 2004 · 12:23 PM PDT

2004/08/19 · 12:23

In an article today on CNN, they finally manage to sum up the entire Swift Boat affair, presenting both sides of the story for once, as well as showing the hypocrasy from author Thurlow.

www.cnn.com :

Thurlow's account differs not only from those of Kerry and Rassmann but also that given in the Navy's letter awarding Kerry the Bronze Star. The letter finds Kerry exhibited "great personal courage under fire" in rescuing Rassmann, an Army officer who recommended Kerry for the decoration.

The Navy citation for Thurlow's Bronze Star also said that "all units began receiving enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire from the river banks."

Thurlow said Thursday he did not even know he had received a Bronze Star until after he left the Navy, and he had not seen the citation in 30 years.

Let's hope this is a trend -- actually quoting other sources (in this case, Rasmussen), and getting a response from the Democratic candidate before printing the RNC talking points.

Too bad it didn't happen like this until Kerry was above Bush in CNN's polling.

Newer
Older

RSS