Since George Stephanopoulos requests, over at PERRspectives Blog, Jon Perr has come up with a list of ten questions for Stephanopoulos to ask McCain this Sunday:
4. Given your past adultery, should Americans consider you a moral exemplar of family values?
You are the nominee of a Republican Party which claims to support so-called "family values." Yet you commenced an adulterous relationship with your current wife Cindy months before the dissolution of your previous marriage to your first wife Carol. Should Americans consider you to be a moral exemplar of family values?
You can read the other nine questions below the fold...
Tell Air America to give Sam Seder a daily show, sign the petition here. And here's one of Seder's best moments to get you into the petition signing mood, Seder on the War on the War on Christmas:
The criteria should be to bring [troops] home as rapidly as possible...
Date certain is not the criteria... the criteria ought to be immediate and rapid withdrawal...
And if we don't do that, and other Americans die or are captured because we stayed too long... then I would say that the responsibilities for that lie with the Congress of the United States...
The mission has been accomplished...
The American people do not support nation building...
The argument that some how the United States would suffer a loss to our prestige... I think is boloney.
... I tell you what can hurt our prestige... that's if we enmesh ourselves in a drawn out situations which entails loss of American lives... more debacles... with a failed mission... that then will be what will hurt our prestige...
John Edwards was on PBS's "News Hour with Jim Lehrer" and, well, the man was on fire, seriously. Listening to Edwards one can easily image how his administration would be transformational. More importantly, as far as his candidacy is concerned, if Edwards is able to speak with the same clarity with which he spoke during tonight's show, his policies and vision for our country can only resonate with the general electorate.
I'll spare you further commentary and let John Edwards speak for himself (audio is available here):
Based on mainstream media (MSM) coverage and on comments by the religious right (read republican party), one gets the sense that the Jewish public is supportive of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq and of its other policies in that region of the world. Of course, as with anything that comes out of the right wing (read republican party) and its supporters in the MSM, the facts demonstrate a liberal bias that simply don't support the claim.
The Gallup Poll is reporting: Among Religious Groups, Jewish Americans Most Strongly Oppose War -- opposition goes beyond Jewish Americans' political affiliations.
I trust that you'll not be shocked to learn, yet again, that there's more evidence indicating that Bush & Co. with the help of their poodle across the pond, Tony Blair, deceitfully lead their respective peoples to war.
Of course, just before the invasion of Iraq we were constantly told by Bush and Blair that Hussein posed an imminent threat against the U.S. and U.K. -- there was something about mushroom clouds -- if I recall.
America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
The incoming Democratic chairman (Rep. Charles Rangel) of the House Ways and Means Committee said yesterday that he will push to renew the military draft, as lawmakers in both parties sharpened their criticisms of the situation in Iraq and struggled for consensus and solutions.
Rep. Rangel explains his motivations for reinstating the draft:
MYTH: Joe Lieberman's victory proves the netroots don't matter.
REALITY: The netroots had some key victories.
MYTH: Democrats won because they carefully recruited more conservative candidates.
REALITY: Democrats won because their candidates were conservative about their message.
MYTH: The losses Republicans suffered this election were no different than what you usually see in a President's sixth year in office.
REALITY: Redistricting minimized what might have been a truly historic shellacking.
MYTH: The election was all about the war.
REALITY: It's the dishonesty, stupid.
MYTH: Republicans lost their base.
REALITY: The base turned out, they just got beat.
Republican Senator George Allen, whom until recently was considered a serious GOP presidential hopeful for the upcoming 2008 cycle, that is, until his foot-in-mouth racist stumbles got in the way (ie, referring to a young Indian-American as "Macaca," and reports of his fondness for the confederate flag and for nooses), has launched a ridiculous attack against his Democratic challenger, Jim Webb, for Virginia's Senate seat.
In George Allen's conservative bizzaro world being a writer is a liability, and a disqualification to serving in the Senate. In a recently released statement, George Allen's camp establishes that his opponent, Jim Webb, is a writer:
Republicans are so desperate to retain control of congress that the GOP leadership, including those in the Bush administration, forced -- yes, forced -- Republican Mark Foley to run again for his safe congressional seat. Apparently Rep. Foley was ready to retire, but top Bush adviser, Karl Rove, intervened and ultimately convinced Rep. Foley to run again.
Can someone please explain to me what high level Democratic party operatives working with the 2004 Sen. Kerry presidential campaign were doing passing on insider information to the Bush-Cheney ticket?
According to Bob Woodward's STATE OF DENIAL, James Carville and Mike McCurry passed on information to the Bush-Cheney camp at a sensitive time when Sen. Kerry was deciding whether to challenge the Ohio vote.
I came across this disheartening and eye-opening bit of information via MyDD.com, where Matt Stoller writes:
Like Carville, McCurry owes an explanation to his fellow Democrats.
It's important for any "opposition party" to be flexible, current, relevant, visible and vocal -- as is often remarked, "90% of success is just showing up." Over the long term, yes, "It's About Iraq, Stupid." However, at the moment, the Republican Predatorgate scandal (aka., Mark Foley preying on teenage boys) throws in sharp contrast the differences between Democrats and the scandal ridden Republicans. That's why it's important that our nascent Liberal Noise Machine continue hammering the Republican Predatorgate scandal; because it's one more nail, of many, in the coffin of corrupt Republicans.
This is an important moment. We've heard a lot about the potential electoral repercussions of Predatorgate against Republicans. In fact, our own in-house Republican, MC71, provides some anecdotal evidence illustrating the impact of this scandal on his party -- when asked when it was that he lost faith on Republicans, he wrote:
Here's a cause worth supporting: an Iraq war veteran walking across Utah in support of our troops and against the war. As he put it, After a year in Iraq, I owe it to my fellow soldiers to bring them home.
The soilder's name is Sgt. Marshall Thompson, and this is what he plans to do:
Like a lot of Americans, I don't stay abreast of news from south of the border; however, since the Mexican presidential elections, held earlier this year, I've sporadically followed the headlines coming out of that country. And, again and again, I've reacted in awe and admiration at how liberal Mexicans have defended their democracy and demanded that their constitutional rights be respected. Since the bitterly divided presidential elections, where the liberal candidate López Obrador was denied the presidency due to alleged fraud, liberals in Mexico have held mass rallies demanding that every vote be counted. And, yesterday, just as Vincente Fox was about to deliver Mexico's state of the union speech before the legislature, supporters of López Obrador prevented Fox from taking the podium. This is how the NYT reports it (as an aside, I find the NYT's frequent use of the qualifier "Leftist" curious):
Leave it to the miserable establishment media to predictably rely on their out-of-the-box, already-assembled "objective journalism" artifact as a tool of covering any story, that is: weighing opposing arguments as if they merited the same factual standing, and thereby failing to inform the public.
This Washington Post article presents just one more example of how, by resorting on the "he said, she said" story covering ploy, these so-called liberal media stenographers (posing as journalists) misinform and often provide cover to the conservative/republican frame of reference. Incredulously, the Washington Post stenographer (see Steven Colbert's comment on the media, "He's the decider, he announces the decisions, and you type them up and report") begins with:
There's some talk around the liberal, Democratic leaning blogsphere about what it is that the Democratic party can do to energize and motivate the base, given the apparent grassroots passivity that some observe. The apparent grassroots passivity seems counter intuitive, given how poll after poll shows that Democrats are preferred over republicans to take control of Congress after the November elections; and, yet, Democratic voters do not appear to have turned out in large numbers in the recent CA-50 special election for. Understandably, one wonders, What can the Democratic party do to motivate the grassroots and the general public?
Many around here have asked, how can I show solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of immigrants that marched across the country over the last few weeks?
Well, here's something you can do without leaving the comfort your home: stand up for the 15 women that were fired for attending the marches.
A manager at a Detroit meatpacking plant said Monday that 15 immigrant women were fired last month after attending a protest for immigrant rights.
[...]
[A]bout 20 union officials went Monday to Wolverine Packing Co. offices on Rivard to inquire about what happened.
[...]
[A]s Wolverine knows, the workers were documented, but an employment agency does the actual hiring. He said the workers had been told, "written and verbally," on the Friday before the protests that their attendance was mandatory on the day of the protest.
They were fired "for standing up for their rights."
The fired workers were natives of Mexico and many had worked at the plant for several years. Most have children and are worried about supporting their families, Herrada said.
This is pretty upsetting... unfortunately, if it were up to social conservatives and to the republican party, ideally (from their point of view), one day the United States will exist under a similar anti-privacy regiment as El Salvador:
Ever imagine what it might be like to live in a place that voted to thoroughly criminalize abortion? A place that sent abortion providers to jail? That policed hospitals? That investigated a woman's uterus? Welcome to 21st-century El Salvador, the state of anti-abortion.
This is how a New York Times photo gallery introduces us to a series of dramatic black and white shots, with equally dramatic and even more moving captions. For example:
The Incarcerated: Carla Herrara, 11, clutches pictures of her mother, Carmen Climaco, who was given 30 years for an abortion that was ruled a homicide.
