The email I will cut and paste below the jump was sent to a relative of mine re social security today. It of course reeks of a last minute election dirty trick to stir up people about the Senate voting to give illegal aliens social security benefits. Indeed, I suspect that it is being sent around to support the ads that the GOP are running claiming various Dems are going to give Social Security to illegal aliens. Can someone please point me to an authoratative debunking of this ruse so that I can give the CORRECT information to my relatives. My relatives are in NJ and FL, so they are important votes in key House and Senate races. They are also undecided voters - they dislike what the GOP has done with the country - but are also disposed to distrust the Dems, especially on issues of taxation and immigration. Just me saying the email is not true will not convince them - I need some backup support. Please help. Please join me after the jump for the text of the email.
I won't bore you with the 197th recitation of why the actions by the government and telecoms at the heart of the growing NSA scandal are clearly illegal and outrageous. It's been diaried much better than I could over and over again here, and there are many insightful and educational posts about it throughout left-blogistan.
What I would like to do, however, is urge all of you to do what I just did, and speak to the giant telecoms in the only langauge they understand.
Profits/Money!
Speak with your wallet - TODAY! Cancel the services (that you can) that you have with the "bad guys" now.
A short ancedote after the flip . . .
Did anyone else feel like puking listening to Chris Matthew's unwatchable regular guest John Meacham from Newsweak. Oh my god, I reallly felt the bile well-up in my mouth.
"The Preident did what he did in Iraq with a good heart, I am from NY, and never want another 9/11 to happen there, this is a noble cause, blah, blah, blah"
(I am paraphrasing above obviously).
First he's a heart reader now? Are you frickin kidding me? I cannot stand this guy.
Then lets cut to another unbiased source . . . Bowtied Idiot Tucker Carlson.
Oh wait, here comes someone from the left, right . . . TONY FUCKING PERKINS!!!! What the FUCK!
Can Tweetie get ANY frickin worse?!? Is he showing off in the hope that Rupert will purchase his show for Faux or something? Unbelievable. Simply pathetic.
Well, our hard work is beginning to bear some fruit -- the Downing Street Minutes are getting more play. Today Pumpkinhead Russert questioned the (un)ambiguously gay head of the GOP Ken Mehlman about them on Meet the (Corporate) Press (although he did refer to it as a "memo" to Apian's shegrin I am sure). Like Mehlman's response to virtually every other tough question he got he "respectfully disagreed" (anyone keep a count of how may times he used that phrase this morning??) with the "memo". His only line of attack was, of course, an outright lie -- he claimed the conlusions in the "memo" had been "thoroughly discredited" by subsequent investigations such as the "9/11 Commission" (which issue as we in the reality-based community know was specifically NEVER looked at by the 9/11 Commission or any other). Unfortunately Pumpkinhead didn't call him on the lie, but at least the DSM was discussed, and later on Pumkinhead even used the phrase "nuclear option" when discussing the filibuster issue.
. . . and deaths of all those who have died as a result of the folly in Iraq.
Well, no, of course you know that Loony Peggy didn't actually say all that. But, as Tom at Corrente pointed out in a brilliant post today, using the same "logic" the "brilliant" Loony Peggy did in her outrageous column yesterday for the WSJ, that argument can be made. And a lot better then the argument Loony Peggy tried to make that Mark Felt is the reason thousands died in Cambodia and Vietnam.
I am very impressed with Harry Reid and company thus far, and their more rapid reaction and increased partinsanship as of late. However, Harry and friends need to start sending out party line talking points immediately, ESPECIALLY on an issue as important to the party, and the country, as Social Security. Now, I understand you can't make a Senator say something, especially a Senator who is probably as set in his ways as Sen. Kennedy is, but I just watched Sen. Kennedy allow pumpkinhead Tim Russert take him to the woodshed on Social Securitry on MTP, and frame the issue as there is a crisis, what will you do about it!
We must keep the pressure on the BCMW (Big Corporate Media Whores) and continue to "work the refs" (like the right-wing has been doing for 30 years), if we are to see any change in the wholly unbalanced and biased coverage we now all suffer with.
As I again noticed this weekend, and as Paul Waldman at the Gadflyer describes here -- Fair and . . . well whatever -- Tim Russert and MTP has once again put forth a panel at the end of its show that was "skewed" to the right. The panel included "neutral" (at best) journalists Broder and Thomas, alongside HYPER partisans Safire and O'Beirne.
I just got off the phone with my mother, a FLorida voter, transplanted New Yorker and fairly savy voter, although not one who closely follows the ins and outs of politics -- and the conversation was somewhat disturbing. She called to tell me with glee that she voted in early voting today, and the good news was that she voted for Kerry.
The bad news however, is that she didn't vote for Betty Castor, because, until I explained to her otherwise, she had believed the nasty GOP spin that Castor did not do anything about a professor connected with terrorists at her former school. She says the news of that has been all over the place in FL - and, that she thought that that made Castor a "bad, terrible" person. What is so disturubing is that my mother has voted straight Dem for years - and a simple smear campaign like this can cause her to not vote for the Dem. Troubling. Obviously, Betty's great recent ads notwithstanding, the "Betty is a bad person for not doing anything about a terrorist" tag has apparantly stuck in FL. My mother also informed me that, all the little old ladies in Century Village are talking about this. Bad. She was devastated when I told her the truth about the smear, but its too late for her -- her potential vote for Castor is lost.
This is a warning to the rest of you, to get the word out as much as possible and QUICKLY in FL about this smear. We NEED to hold that Senate seat in FL to take back the Senate.
If Kerry can win FL, then assuming he can hold PA and NJ, then he could lose CO, NV and OH, 2 out of 3 of IA, MN and WI, and 1 out of 2 of NH and ME, and still win the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to win!
I believe there is a unique issue that is bound to resonate with FL voters, especially right now. Here is a question: what have almost all Floridians been most concerned about for the past few weeks, possibly to the exclusion of all else, even the election?? . . . I would guess its been the unending slew of hurricanes that have racked that state. Its been all hurricanes all the time the past few weeks there. This issue can, and should, be used to Kerry's advantage. To find out why read the extended copy . . .
I know, I know I shouldn't expect anything better from Lil' Russ - but really, shouldn't some producer at MTP be trying to keep SOME semblence of balance on his program?? I am watching MTP right now, and the roundtable panel they have on consists of: the rabidly partisan Bob Novack and Bill Safire, the supposedly non-partisan, but really right-leaning David Broder, and the non-partisan historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. WTF?? Are you kidding me?? Is there even a whiff of balance in that kind of panel? Of course every single on of them is killing Kerry. Time to flood Pumkinhead and NBC with some letters/emauils . . .
I am in a debate with some wing-nut "friends" about John Kerry. The debate revolves around his 1971 testimony before the Senate. I contend that while he didn't specifically refer to his crewmates, or other Swifties, much of what he said about the atrocities that went on in Vietnam were true. They say otherwise - specifically questioning the references to beheadings and severed limbs. Other then the Toledo Blade series, do you guys know of any other definitive (and uncontroversial) articles, sources, etc. online which detail the atrocities committed in Vietnam? I wouldn't care that much about rebutting these guys, except there are several moderate/idependents involved in the discussion, and I'd like to prove it to them at least. Thanks.
I have been receiving emails from my wing-nut friends about how Edwards is really a slime-ball because he made all his money suing doctors for causing CP in babies, a theory which has supposedly since been scientifically discredited (funny how they cite science now!). The argument goes something like this:
"Edwards used junk science to win millions of dollars from doctors, claiming that the failure to perform C-sections caused cerebral palsy. Now doctors perform something like four times as many C-sections, but there has been no decline in the incidence of cerebral palsy."
I'd like to be able to respond to them rationally to rebut this charge. Is anyone aware of an effective rebutall to this argument? And any cites to specific sources discussing Edwards or his supporters response to these charges?
