NC-Sen: Another day, another steaming stack of stupid emanating from the smiling empty seat that is the very senior Senator from the great state of North Carolina.

Which is to say, Elizabeth Hanford Dole.

Responding to criticism from her rather perceptive Democratic opponent, Kay Hagan, that Sen. Dole spends remarkably little time in the state she purports to represent, Liddy had this to offer.

After her speech, Dole said she’s spent lots of time in North Carolina lately.

"Lately", eh? Senator, it would have been nice if you'd paid a modicum of attention to the state at, you know, some point in the last 35 years, when not running for the Senate.

But one can't have everything, I suppose.

Dole said she also supports drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, where drilling would have a small footprint that wouldn’t harm much wildlife.

"Even the caribou like to snuggle up to the pipeline," she said.

Indeed. Every caribou I have interviewed in the past six months has expressed his support for banging a big fat honking pipeline through his home, so as to give him warmth and comfort as he sleeps.

Would there was oil in New York City, so that I, too, could snuggle up next to a pipeline as I lay me down to sleep. I think some pipeline would look great in my apartment. Really tie the room together, you know.

The overall goal must be to cut reliance on foreign oil imported from nations run by the likes of Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin, she said.

"A lot of that comes from people who don’t necessarily like us," Dole said.

Gee, it might help if our foreign policy had not been an outright fiasco of late, Liddy. And whose fault is that, anyway?

Amid Liddy's laments about gas price, by the way, she has given a boatload in tax breaks to Big Oil. Naturally, MoveOn is all over this:

AK-Sen: A hearing was held this morning in federal court in Washington, DC, to determine whether indicted Senator Ted Stevens would get to move his trial back to his home turf of Alaska.

Meanwhile, the Anchorage Daily News notes the role of new media in affecting public opinion on the Stevens scandal, to the point where new media are a screening point for potential jurors in the Stevens case:

Several joint questions seek to find out if potential jurors are political active or read about politics, especially the insider Capitol Hill publications. Do they listen to talk radio, read political blogs or go to Internet forums? The government, in particular, wants to know if they read the conservative Drudge Report or the liberal Huffington Post online.

Apparently, even Bush's Justice Department thinks reading Daily Kos is OK.

NH-Sen: Jeanne Shaheen is cooking with gas, as she seeks to unseat incumbent Republican John Sununu. Per Rasmussen:

Ras' 3-poll average puts the race at 51-41, while Pollster's average has it at Shaheen 52.6%, Sununu 42%.

Shaheen's double-digit lead has remained remarkably consistent this cycle, and she has proven to be a formidable candidate.

House Races

OH-15: Here's the first ad of this cycle from Democratic candidate Mary Jo Kilroy, as she seeks to take the open seat she nearly won in 2006 against incumbent Deborah Pryce.

MN-03: The Minnesota blogs have named this "Ashwin Madia Blog Day", in honor of a fine progressive candidate (and Netroots Nation attendee) in Minnesota's Third District.

If you'd like to learn more about Madia's candidacy on Madia Day, check out MN Blue or MN Publius.

WY-AL: As we noted last night, Wyoming's Republican State Treasurer Cynthia Lummis has won her primary in the state's at-large district.

The Hotline thought her primary opponent, Mark Gordon, was the more formidable of the two:

The party's been searching for a way to stem the growing Dem tide in the region, and a return to its libertarian roots may be the answer. In addition, his profile as a rancher seems to be a better match against '06 nominee Gary Trauner (D) than ex-Treas. Cynthia Lummis (R), with her years of gov't service, can provide.

The most recent Research 2000 poll for Daily Kos shows Trauner leading Lummis, 44% to 41%.

NH-01: Carol Shea-Porter is up on TV:

WI-08: Meanwhile, Republican John Gard is still feeding the debunked myth (perhaps we should just start calling it an outright lie) that China is drilling off the coast of Cuba).

NY-25, NY-26, NY-29: Today is the pre-primary filing deadline for New York House candidates. We have no more than three terrific New Yorkers on the Orange to Blue list, and here's a golden opportunity to help them finish the pre-primary period with a bang. They are Jon Powers in NY-26, Eric Massa in NY-29, and Dan Maffei in NY-25.

Please head to the Orange to Blue ActBlue Page and give them a little (or a lot!) of love, as they head towards election day.

On the web:
Orange to Blue ActBlue Page

Here's what the Obama camp and the Democrats need to do to win this election.  It is simple advice that unfortunately Democrats never heed to during a national election

New York has a pre-primary filing deadline for candidates tonight -- and wouldn't you know, the Orange to Blue list has three New York candidates on it: Dan Maffei, Eric Massa, and Jon Powers.

Maffei's fundraising has been dominating his Republican opponent for this open seat. But Massa and Powers face tough opponents. In the primary, Powers faces Jack Davis, a self-funding multi-millionaire who's engaged in a string of dirty campaign tactics and who on the issues is exactly the kind of Democrat we don't want to see elected. Meanwhile, for the general election, Massa faces Shotgun Randy Kuhl -- and if a Republican incumbent who's threatened his wife with a shotgun doesn't make you want to win, I don't know what will.

Powers' need is immediate: He faces a so-called Democratic opponent with bottomless pockets and a willingness to sink to the bottom of the slime pit in campaigning. We do not want Jack Davis in the House at all, let alone with a (D) next to his name.

As for Massa, he doesn't just face a Republican incumbent, he's being advertised against by Freedom's Watch. They've been on the radio in the district for a while, and a couple weeks ago the DCCC made an answering buy -- but Massa's campaign recently heard that Freedom's Watch is inquiring about buying TV time. Massa will need a lot of help to be able to answer Freedom's Watch].

These candidates are true friends of the netroots. They attend Netroots Nation, they post diaries here -- but more importantly, they're with us on the issues. We couldn't do better than to put Maffei, Massa, and Powers in Congress.

If you have a few dollars to spare, today is a great time to give since tonight's filing gives these candidates another chance to show big donors and the DCCC that they're doing what it takes and deserve further support.

Obama:

I want somebody who has integrity, who’s in politics for the right reasons, I want somebody who is independent. Somebody who is able to say to me, ‘You know what, Mr. President, I think you’re wrong on this and here’s why,’ and who will help me think through major issues and consult with me, would be a key advisor. I want somebody who is capable of being president and who I would trust to be president. That’s the first criteria for VP.  And the final thing is, I want a president (SIC) who shares with me a passion to make the lives of the American people better than they are right now.  I want someone who is not in it just because they want to have their name up in lights or end up being president. I want somebody who is mad right now that people are losing their jobs. And is mad right now that people have seen their incomes decline, and wants to rebuild the middle class in this country. That’s the kind of person that I want; somebody who in their gut knows where they came from and believes that we have to grow this country from the bottom up.

this comment from rfahey22 over at open left got me thinking

Maybe they're buying time
and trying to persuade someone on the fence (such as Warner) to accept the nomination.  Otherwise I would agree that a Friday/Saturday announcement would be strange.

obviously i have no inside knowledge but hey i'll give a shot for shits & giggles. i know trying to guess this is teh stoopid but f**k it, this is not speculation this is a prediction. follow me down the rabbit hole.

With all concern troll portions excised:

What is [   ] with the Obama Campaign?  Don't they know that [   ] means they don't have [   ]?  It's no time to [   ]!  Just because it's August doesn't mean [   ].  

If it were my campaign, I would [    ] immediately.  I would also [   ], fire [   ], and generally [   ].  I mean, there's no choice now but to [   ], even if Obama prefers to [   ].

How can you let McCain [   ]?  Even if [   ] happens, we still have to [   ], because [   ], [   ], [   ] and [   ] are at stake.

Several superfluous pictures, then jump, with what I really think.

Andrew Sullivan makes an excellent point.

In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the "intelligence" we have procured from "interrogating" terror suspects. Feel safer?

Crazy, huh?

It has become a constant theme in McCain’s speeches.  Taxes are not too low; spending is too high.  If we just eliminate “pork barrel spending” we can cut taxes and balance the budget – “no pain, all gain.”  Republicans have long loved claiming that the budget can be balanced without any sacrifice on the part of anyone.  In order to make his point, McCain has taken to constantly referring to 3 million dollars spent to study the DNA of bears in Montana as an example of government waste.  So what are the facts about this study?

CROSSPOSTED AT STRATEGY08.

I don't find much to quibble with on Slinkerwink's post critical of the Obama press machine (though I think the calls to fire Burton are premature). To my mind, the Obama Camp has been suffering though a number of missteps since returning from his overseas trip:

So over at the post announcing the launch of my book, I saw a couple of people freaking out -- freaking out!!!! -- that McCain has the lead in some national polls.

So I sauntered over to Pollster.com to see what all the hoopla was about, and clicked through to their national polls page.  Then I rolled my eyes when I saw that the poll causing such aneurysms was ....

A Zogby poll.

Some people are frackin' hopeless. Really. At the same time, a new Q-poll has Obama up five, Gallup has him up three (after being tied a couple of days ago), Ras has him up two, as does Bloomberg/Times.

Look, the race is tightening at the national level, but it's much less tight when you look at the state-by-state numbers that, you know, actually decide the presidency. So while it's not exactly a cakewalk, freaking out over single polls from shitty, discredited pollsters like Zogby is pretty pathetic.

We've got the veep announcements and the conventions to get through, and then the race will start in earnest. Be zen. Freaking out over crappy pollsters is just lame. Keep your eye on the composite -- Obama still leads that by 1.4 percent -- and maintain perspective -- McCain has never crossed the 45 percent threshold while Obama bobs between 45 and 50.

I'll be officially worried when McCain shows the ability to break that barrier of support. If he suddenly starts hovering in the upper 40s, then we might have trouble. But ultimately, this is a state-by-state battle. And in the electoral college fight, Obama still has a solid lead -- without even taking into account the ground machine Obama is building (pollsters aren't).

Like many others here, I have been loudly "encouraging" Barack Obama to physically attack the geezer, John McCain.

But, no.

Obama is all "pacifist" and shit and he, apparently, doesn't think knocking the snot out of that old goat is "the right thing to do."

Well, I have news for Mr. "I'll-play-nice" Obama:

                                   Nice guys finish last.

(And, yes, Obama camp, feel free to use that quote I just made up.)

When is Obama gonna', literally, punch McCain square in his pre-cancerous-scarred beak?

(more)

Someone who can call out to the throngs of disaffected and disenfranchised people; Democrat or Republican, black, white, brown, red, yellow, rich or poor, young or old.  Those who are completely and utterly fed up with the current political system.

The revolving door in the White House has ruined politics, ruined countless lives due to the malfeasance of the people in charge, ruined the hopes of lower middle class and lower class peoples who want to better themselves, ruined our national reputation among our allies overseas, ruined our ability to back up our words with actions when need be.

What we are witnessing today isn't the result of George W. Bush's mistakes and utter disregard for the rule of law.  On the contrary, this country has been on a slow downward decline and it began not just 8 years ago, but over 40 years ago when Nixon was running for office in 1968.  

These days you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an article speculating about potential vice presidential running mates for Barack Obama or John McCain. But today's entry from the New York Times does include one line that's worth noting, when the concerns of social conservatives about the possibility of McCain choosing the pro-choice Tom Ridge is dismissed by other conservatives who said:

...that Mr. McCain’s recent public flirtation with Tom Ridge, a former Pennsylvania governor who supports abortion rights, was as much to give the appearance that Mr. McCain had an open mind on the issue as it was an embrace of Mr. Ridge.

So, these anonymous conservatives cheerfully admit that McCain willingly misled people about a possible running mate to "give the appearance" of an open mind. There's some straight talk for you.

As you know.. This election has been close as heck.. A big Obama lead has slowly crumbled as people turn to their old fears of terra terra terra and greed and want of instant gratification..

I have noticed the Republican fans running from forum to forum touting democratic weakness, I have seen ads attacking on taxes and so on an so forth..

So while I had shunned Obama and supported Clinton after he backed down and voted for telecom immunity.. McCain's recent boldness has forced me back into the game..

I will discuss my views on the situation and what I think we need to do about it..

    Rasmussen released new Ohio results today showing McCain up 5 in the state. While this represents an improvement since the last Rasmussen Ohio poll which had McCain up with a 10 point margin, it's hardly cause for celebration.

    For one thing, the last Rasmussen poll had been dismissed in DKOS punditry circles as an outlier. It's much harder to dismiss this one, coming on the heels of a (D-leaning) PPP poll that shows the race dead even in Ohio. More disturbing, virtually all the polling shows that Obama is doing significantly worse in Ohio than in the comparable states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and even Michigan. Ohio is trending with Indiana, which is not where we want it to be.

   I did predict this -- consult my numerous diaries. I come not to gloat but to reinforce the message that fundamental changes need to be made in the Ohio campaign, and we are running out of time.

{{START OF THREAD
{PREVIOUS PAGE

DOOD. Whr R U?

wtf?

what u mean, wtf? we r takng off!

wtf?

oil rig. chopper. etc.

FAHK! that was 2day?

nvrmnd. Im going. u owe me.

tx.

On his blog, Michael Moore has posted a letter to Caroline Kennedy!  He urges her to "Pull a Cheney"!!

I'll let the inimitable Mr. Moore speak for himself...

Note: I posted this late yesterday, but I felt the need to post it again because this is that serious to me and hopefully to you. Thank you for any rec's and reading, and have a good day.

"The Best Political Team on Television", huh?

"The Most Trusted Name in News", huh?

"CNN= Politics", huh?

"More News than Other News in the Morning", huh?

Having a show that is "smart and independent", huh?

And finally, the kicker of all kickers: "We’re Keeping Them Honest," HUH?!

Cable News Network, correction, the neo-Cable News Network,  instead of saying you’re keeping someone else honest, I have a simple request for you:

Why DON’T YOU KEEP YOUR DAMN SELF HONEST!