Dailykos will help give us more Democrats; Accountability NOW will help make them better Democrats.
Today, on the anniversary of the day of when outrage among the American people and their Congress held a President accountable and he resigned; today on a day when the Congress is mute when the President is accused of forgery to support an illegal war, and violation of US statute and international treaties while waging that war, make a pledge to change this all.
I interviewed Kargo X, of Daily Kos fame and fortune, for the ins and outs of what happened this week. As you may or may not remember at the beginning of this week, FISA looked like a slam dunk (sorry, I couldn't help myself) but by the middle of the week, it had lost a significant amount of steam. Senators Dodd and Feingold stood up and spoke out. Interestingly, we never heard a firm statement from Senator Leahy which I think is important. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee is silent on this subject. Curious.
Elizabeth Edwards Calls Racist GOP Wright Ad an "Assault Weapon"
Taking time off from her family vacation in Florida, Elizabeth Edwards commented on the GOP racist ad, "Extreme," during an MSNBC interview, calling it an "assault weapon." Elizabeth went on to support Obama’s decision to separate himself from Reverend Wright.
Longtime Hillary supporter Jane Hamsher from FireDogLake may not be a Hillary supporter after today.
The Huffington Post headline reads "Hillary Slams Democratic Activists." I'm being told that Hillary Clinton was caught on tape disparaging Barack Obama because he's being supported by MoveOn, and that they opposed military action in Afghanistan.
I've tried to stay out of the pie fights of late, but as a long-term defender of MoveOn and other progressive organizations -- this is completely unacceptable.
I defended Hillary Clinton when she refused to bow to right wing pressure and condemn MoveOn over the "General Betrayus" ad (and was sad when she finally capitulated). MoveOn are valuable progressive partners, who have been with us on Donna Edwards, net neutrality, trying to bring an end to the war, FISA and other issues we've been fighting for. - Jane Hamsher
Today April 10 I was driving home and had to turn my car radio off. I'd been listening to All Things Considered, and they ran not one but two stories outrageously pimping John McCain.
First they ran a story by Peter Overby relating how McCain and Obama are battling over public financing of their campaigns.
McCain intends to take public funds. He accuses Obama of breaking a promise to do the same. But the cash machine built by the Obama campaign may dwarf the $84 million federal grant that he would get from Washington under public financing.
Except Overby never mentions it's McCain who's breaking the law.
As I understand it, the economy is in trouble because people have stopped spending money. People buying stuff gets sellers to sell stuff and make money, and order new stuff so suppliers make money, and hire people to make the stuff so they make money, so they can buy stuff. Lather, rinse, repeat - sort of like a perpetual motion fur farm.
Leaving aside for the moment the fundamental flaws inherent in that whole economic model, one of the things that broke down in that chain is that the last guys mentioned above weren't getting paid enough money to keep up, BUT they could borrow money - against homes - to keep up, and the government and the banks loosened up the rules to make it easy to lend to them. Then they tied a ribbon around all the loans - some of them not very good - and magically declared them really good deals and resold the total package. Kind of like making sausage - really tasty as long as you don't think about what goes in to it. (more)
Sorry for interrupting your regularly scheduled candidate rancor, but check out what Glenn Greenwald has to say on the looming telecom immunity fight:
The only way for there to be any prospect of impeding Bush's most extreme demands for vast warrantless eavesdropping powers and immunity for lawbreaking telecoms is for the presidential candidates -- Obama, Edwards and Clinton -- to demonstrate (rather than speak about) real "leadership" and take a stand in support of Chris Dodd and his imminent filibuster. Any efforts to stop warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity is almost certain to fail without the active support of the presidential candidates, who these days have a virtual monopoly on the ability to set agendas and shape media attention.
Want to establish your gravitas as a leader, Obama? Step up.
Want to prove your vote isn't bought and sold with lobbyist lucre, Hillary? Here's your chance.
Want to differentiate yourself as a steward of not just the poor, but our beloved Constitution, Edwards? Stand up tall.
Jane Hamsher was bagging on Obama over at Huffington's coast the other day, now Taylor Marsh of the anti-gravity hair does so.
Oh Huff Po. What have you done.
Disclosure: I support John Edwards, Bernie Sanders, Howard Dean, and Russ Feingold for President.
Warning: This diary has been rated R and may contain ICB (Insensitive Candidate Bashing) or IFLICB (It Feels Like Insensitive Candidate Bashing). Reading this article backwards may channel Hillary. Other possible side effects include high blood pressure, heart attack, heart palpatations, smoking ears, and blindness. Only go below the fold if you are over 21 or accompanied by a parent or a legal guardian. Do not read this diary standing on a ladder erected on a hill or while driving with hot coffee between your legs. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Over at Le Dog, things look very funny indeed.
First, the "bedlam is dreaming of rain" thing is gone, that quote from Bad Religion.
Second, the whole format is gone: if you don't remember it, including an actual fire and lake, here's a mini-version.
(The flame is still there, but there's some red-white-and-blue thing infusing the word "Firedoglake" now, no lake, no "bedlam".
Has that site been "mainstreamed" now? Ouch.)
What's really kool is that Daily Kos has been dropped from the [permanent; see comments] blogroll; Margaret Cho is there, though. Who knew.
Finally, the same small photo of Jane Hamsher appears on the site now, that appears on Huffington Post when Jane posts there. As if people reading the F-Dog don't know what she looks like? Has Hamsher been Huffed?
Today Greenwald and Hamsher reveal exactly what I believed was the problem from the get go. We can correctly go after Klein for his bologna, but we should also be directing our attention to those who enable him – Time's editors.
"With Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall—along with his obsessive band of political reporters—is building the prototype of what an Internet-based news-gathering organization might one day look like. Don’t believe us? Just ask Alberto Gonzales."
Well, actually, Jane Hamsher doesn't call her brilliant strategy for fighting the rightwing noise machine the 11th Commandment for Democrats. I'm calling it that. Because it's just so spot on. The strategy itself is nothing new, and has been advocated by many Democratic bloggers. But I've never seen that strategy presented so simply and so powerfully until now. In my opinion, every Democrat, be they a candidate or elected official, blogger or citizen activist, what have you, should make Hamsher's statement their mantra.
What is this "commandment"? It's just over the fold.
...discussion of Matt Stoller's process of deciding to support the challenge to Lieberman is almost surreal, as if the involvement of Stoller, Jane Hamsher and even Daily Kos's Markos Moulitsas, was necessary to drive the challenge to Lieberman. ...
Today the netroots faces a new challenge of avoiding being seen as a top-down driven movement. This month is a pivotal time in the fight to end the Iraq debacle. Yet organizations like MoveOn and netroots "leaders" like Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers are more interested in launching campaigns for the 2008 elections than in organizing to pressure today's Democrat-controlled congress to do all it can to end the Iraq war now, during the Bush presidency. ...
Many of us have known for some time that Jane Hamsher is battling recurrent breast cancer. She's been writing about it on Firedoglake.
I have no doubt that the indignities Jane is enduring are identical to those of tens of millions of Americans who believed if they became ill, their private, for-profit insurance would protect them from financial ruin.
Some days the stuff I read makes me think my eyeballs are going to bleed.
This afternoon after a long bike ride along the Hudson River, I returned home to read on Open Left that Matt Stoller can come out of his house again. He's been semi housebound for a few months.
Matt wrote in Open Left that he had to put his life on hold for about four months while he was uninsured and worried that one wrong move and he might find himself in the E.R. which of course could lead to financial ruin. Now that he's insured again, he can do things like swim and play baseball because he got lucky and scored some affordable health insurance.
Indiana 6th Congressional District Democratic candidate Barry Welsh will be speaking at the Indiana Democratic Club Statewide Picnic in Indianapolis Tuesday, August 28th, in Ft. Harrison State Park at 6pm EDT. At that time Welsh will report that his campaign website at www.barrywelsh.org is live on the internet and will announce the first two fundraising events that will take place in his campaign to replace current Representative Mike Pence (R-Iraqi Markets). More after the flip.
