I have been puzzling over the recent story by the National Enquirer about the alleged rendezvous between John Edwards, the former presidential candidate, and his purported "mistress" as well as the blurry now-accompanying photo that is allegedly of John Edwards, holding what National Enquirer reporters also maintain is the "love child" that he fathered with Rielle Hunter, who shot a few video shorts for Edwards for his 2008 presidential campaign.

Most curious to me has been the blurry factor of the "current" photo. The Enquirer chose to clear up the curtains to "prove" it was the Beverly Hilton instead of clearing up the face of the man holding the child. This was a bit odd. I had considered that perhaps there was an area size issue, but in my closer scrutinization of the "current" photo, I have come to the conclusion that it is indeed faked. Let me walk you through the evidence. And there’s quite a bit of it.

This is a weekly diary diary I do over at the EENR blog, and since some of you may be interested in it, I figured I'd post it over here once and let you know that it gets posted at 11:30am Eastern/8:30am Pacific every Monday morning on the EENR. Here is today's edition in full:

(photo by Cam in Van on Flickr)

Hey there all you folks out there on the EENR this Monday! This is the Critter Watch, and we do it because, of course, we all know that we have to keep a close eye on those Congress Critters of ours; you never know what they'll vote for sell auction off give away next. For more, scroll down and bring tissues...

Well, by now we all know that the House passed the shameful (and inherently unconstitutional by just about any study of the Constitution) disgrace that is the current FISA bill with a whopping 105 Democrats supporting its passage. This is the bill that makes the warrantless wiretapping legal as well as provides immunity for the telecom companies who knowingly provided the Bush Administration with our conversations illegally.

Many of us know that a filibuster is the surest way to kill a bill in the Senate and that there are 49 Democratic Senators, nine more than are needed to sustain a filibuster. By now, many of us also know that Obama intends to vote for the bill, as of course does head capitulator Harry Reid and other assorted Senators including some Democrats. And we are starting to hear the gurgling forth of excuses from a few of them, much of it akin to what we heard in the House last Friday.

(cross posted at the EENR blog)

Senators, please follow me below the fold...

I know that there has been some talk about disgruntled Democrats and Independents who are considering voting Republican in the upcoming election.

(cross posted at The EENR blog)

This alarms me greatly as I worry about what John McCain and Congressional Republicans will do (and are doing already) to this country. Issues such as the Iraq War, a possible war with Iran, honestly affordable health care, the restoration of the Constitution, the makeup of the Supreme Court, energy policy, the state of the economy, the growing rich/poor gap in this country, etc... I could go on for a while, but I'm sure you'd rather me not... :D

Well, I received a forward from a friend of mine that had this brilliant video as well as it's companion website in the body. It was done by SyntheticHuman Pictures and it's positively dripping with lovely snark. This is a video that really needs to go viral. The nice thing about it too is it is a great response to any Republican propaganda and spam you may receive.

It's called "I'm Voting Republican."

Every May 12th is Fibromyalgia Awareness Day. It is celebrated by raising awareness of the disease in the hopes of giving those who may be suffering with it some hope as well as provide opportunities for anyone to express support for those suffering with the disease.            

So what exactly is Fibromyalgia? It sounds kinda funky, maybe even pretend? Isn't this some sort of cop-out for lazy people or people with hypochondria?

The answer to the above is a resounding NO!

Fibromyalgia is a largely misunderstood disease that afflicts anywhere from 2-6% of our population (depending on source), primarily women but there have been concerns that the gender disparity may be that men tend to under report pain and fatigue.

Follow me below for more...

cross-posted at the EENR blog

In today's OpEd section of The New York Times, Elizabeth Edwards delivers a very well expressed and unfortunately, very necessary, critique of today's press regarding the picking of a president.

Opening with a mention of the media's (lack of serious) coverage of the Pennsylvania primary, Elizabeth hits the nail on the head and calls the press out for what it has become: shallow. She also notes that she is not alone in this observation.

I’m not the only one who noticed this shallow news coverage. A report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy found that during the early months of the 2008 presidential campaign, 63 percent of the campaign stories focused on political strategy while only 15 percent discussed the candidates’ ideas and proposals.

The picking of our president is too important a task to approach without good, solid analysis of a candidate's policies and positions.

I actually wrote this last April, but unfortunately, the series of events at Northern Illinois University make it still pertinent (and pretty much unlearned). This diary is about an issue near and dear to my heart as well as important in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting, and the recent suicides by comedian Richard Jeni and musician Brad Delp.

Often the first reaction in the wake of such incidences is shock; shock that it happened, and shock that the person could do what they did. But after all the surrounding knowledge comes to light, it’s really not that surprising that it happened or that the person in question could do it. Such is mental illness; only visible when we choose to see it.

crossposted from the Edwards blog with author dmortell's permission

I just sent the following email to Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews (ha!), Brian Williams, another NBC email address, and CNN.... since the media all want to know where John Edwards' supporters are going, I thought I'd let them know.

The media continue to speculate about which of the two remaining Democratic candidates will receive support from John Edwards' supporters. The answer is neither.

Considering that John Edwards has only "suspended" his campaign and did not outright quit, and given that he has already won delegates and that he can retain those delegates until the convention, and knowing that John Edwards' name is still on the ballots in primaries and caucuses across the country, John Edwards' supporters are choosing John Edwards.

Hey All!

Well, we're just a few hours away from our one day John Edwards Fundraiser now and I am hoping we can really make a dent in our goal of $200,000.

First you should know that our grassroots fundraising site goes directly through the Edwards campaign site, so there's no middle man, and the first $250 matching rule does apply if you haven't exceeded that amount yet.

If you want to keep track throughout the day on how we are doing, you can just go to the page and it gives you the stats and has that nifty thermometer as a gage. I like this both for that fact and that it'll be easy for us after tomorrow to see how much we brought in for JRE.

Hey All!

Valhalla had a great diary Saturday night on Dkos about having another unofficial grassroots fundraising day for John Edwards. Here's the link to his diary:

Valhalla's Diary

Valhalla's intro paragraph captures how most of us JRE supporters feel toward John:

                                                     (jump with me)

Hey all!

I’ve been around Dkos for about a year (don’t know what took me so long to find ya) and I must say that I really enjoy reading the diaries – even the primary diaries – though some are a bit more entertaining than others... :D

Anyway, this is a huge community with people located all over the world who have a very wide variety of opinions, and I am fast coming up to a decision on which I would like your input.

Jump with me if you’re game on giving me some advice...

I haven't written a diary in a long time, and though I thought this one may not seem terribly issue-y (ok, let's be fair, not at all issue-y), I just wanted to see who here is going road tripping...

Also, I know there are a lot of us who are volunteering and/or working for presidential candidates and I thought it might be nice for those of us who were going to the same area to maybe meet up one evening while we're all there. Now I am not talking about splitting us up into camps (we do that enough here), I am talking about maybe an unofficial New Year's night get together or something like that for ALL the Kossacks in the region. Just at some randomly picked restaurant/bar/home; whatever works...

It would be nice to meet my fellow Kossacks; I wasn't lucky enough to be able to go to Yearly Kos nor does it look good for me for Netroots Nation either (though I'm hopin'.) So I guess I am hoping to put some names to faces out on the campaign trail...

They are doing their own presidential poll on which candidate is the best/most pro-choice candidate.

Here's the official intro paras:

"The 2008 elections are an absolutely critical opportunity to roll back Bush’s assaults on a woman’s right to choose by electing even more pro-choice lawmakers, especially a pro-choice president."

"It’s your turn to choose. One year-out, which pro-choice candidate gets your vote? To narrow the list of candidates, we selected those pro-choice candidates who returned a statement to NARAL Pro-Choice America earlier this year."

Hey fellow Edwardians! As many of you have heard, John won the straw poll that was taken at the California Democratic Council convention this past weekend by a convincing margin. John also won a straw poll last month taken by the Progressive Caucus at the California Democratic Party’s Executive Board Meeting last month, again by a convincing margin.

The significance of these polls is that they show that not only does JRE have strong support among progressive Democrats, but that he has strong support among establishment "boots on the ground" Democratic Clubs and County Committees as well. Basically, he has wide appeal amongst ALL Democrats.

So, we are mounting a call-in offensive this Tuesday and Wednesday to let the Air America hosts as well as the KTLK hosts (out here in California) know about John’s wide-reaching appeal.

There are many things the GOP has either trumpeted, co-opted, been inadvertently given, or outright stolen during the past 15 years: terms of language, ideologies and philosophies, even tangible things. These things are either now found to be somewhat (and that’s being nice) lacking in the GOP; some are even blatantly contradictory. As a Democrat, and actually as an AMERICAN, I say, LET’S TAKE THEM BACK!

I’ll start with the somewhat obvious things and go from there; feel free to add to the list.

The Constitution, in all its glory: Let’s TAKE IT BACK!

I have been thinking lately about that old quote from Nobel prizewinning author Sinclair Lewis: "When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

Thinking in terms of the past several years of the Bush 43 Administration, I can’t help but draw many parallels; from the claims of "compassionate conservatism" to the current occupier of the White House consistently trotting out his faith, in a way to reassure that we’re on the side of the angels and being led by a guy who is a really devotedly religious fellow. And we all know about the patriotism, or lack thereof, that has been regularly employed in an attempt to stifle any dissent. "Wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." How easy it would be to take over this country simply equipped with well-crafted and sellable rhetoric...

Found this on a blog I keep up with on myspace. Original writer is LA from Missouri and it's a good list that folks have been adding to. LA gave me permission to post it around... Thought it might brighten a day here and there...

Here's the link to the original blog:

http://blog.myspace.com/...

If anyone wants to add feel free too and I will make sure they all get posted up to the original blog...

So without further ado:

A really good diary by blogger OklahomaVoter over on the Edwards blog. They asked me to post if for them here. So here it is:

I think this country needs someone like John Edwards, who in Bill Clinton's words could "talk an owl out of a tree." There might not be enough Southern male white owls ready to hop out of the tree and down to the voting booth for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Edwards can connect and explain well, and he's a fighter with good instincts who can win over the jury.

Because I'm very tight with my hard-earned money, I have been doing some research. How can I best invest my political donation dollars for the good of the country? (Between Internet cable service and the library, one can do this at no extra cost!)