Did anyone else catch this line in McCain's speech earlier this morning to the Vets?  Did he actually say that the Iraqi government should be encouraged to use some of their budget SURPLUS?  Surely, I heard this wrong.  Surely the Iraqi government isn't running a budget surplus when we are footing the bill for the war and our economy is in the toilet.   Can that be possible?

As a busy graduate student, getting ready for comps, I don't have time to research this throughly but I found this throw away comment in his speech stunning. If it is true it deserves to be fully reported.  Would one of the amazingly smart members of the DKOS community please take this on?  If it is true, it could be a vital issue during the campaign.  Thanks to all of you who keep these issues in the forefront by blogging and researching.  Please forgive my brief posting.

I just heard a frightening story about a group of American students traveling abroad who were accosted last week in France.  Not, as was my first thought, because they were American or Bush supporters, but because the young women in the group were mistaken by a couple of French men for prostitutes.  The women, were making their way back to their hotel after a late evening and were stopped by the men and asked if they were available.  One of the young women in the group was shocked, "We aren’t prostitutes!  How dare you insinuate we are prostitutes?" The men explained to them that in France, this was how prostitutes dressed.  They pointed out that the women were out late, wearing very little so they assumed they must be prostitutes.  The Americans hurled insults and threats back at the French. Others join in the melee and the encounter escalated and the women and the one young man with them were beaten up.  One woman was almost raped.  They were taken to a French hospital were they were treated, free of charge.

Contrary to the beliefs of many, American colonists did not go to war against the British because of taxes.  Colonists went to war against the King because the British government had become so corrupt, so despicable that the colonist feared if they didn’t take drastic action, that corruption would flow across the pond to America.  Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1775:

. . . when I consider the extreme corruption prevalent among all orders of men in this old rotten state, and the glorious public virtue so predominant in our rising country  . . . I fear they will drag us after them in their plundering wars which their desperate circumstances, injustice, and rapacity [greed] may prompt them to undertake; and their wide wasting prodigality [living the high life] and profusion is a gulf that will swallow up every aid we may distress ourselves to afford them.  Here [Franklin was writing from England] enormous salaries, pensions, perquisites, bribes, groundless quarrels, foolish expeditions, false accounts or no accounts, contracts and jobs, devour all revenue [which will serve] to corrupt and poison us.

Quoted from The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn

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"God you're stupid, this diary has already been posted."

"There are at least 10 of these diaries out there."

"What have you been under a rock for the last three hours?"

These are a few of the responses I saw posted to duplicate diaries yesterday.   Okay, I get the whole try not to duplicate diaries thing, but most of us don't live on the Kos.  Most of us work or have families or go to school.  So, when we get home and turn on CNN or MSNBC and fire up Kos and get excited about something like Rumsfeld's resignation, the first thing we want to do is shout about it.  And where better to crow than to our fellow DK members.  When I looked at the front page and the scroll yesterday I didn't see the Rumsfeld story.  I even refreshed three or four times, because I thought surely someone has already written this.  This happened through out the afternoon and evening, to a couple of people who, like me, were met with the "what are you stupid" comments to their later diaries.  

In 2003, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks stunned the public by stating at a concert in London, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas."  After making this comment, Maines and the Dixie Chicks received copious amounts of hate mail and death threats.  Their previously number one record Home which was being played continuously on radio stations was banned from play.  Their CDs were burned and crushed with steamrollers.  Their concert dates were cancelled and their families were threatened.

In August of 2005 Cindy Sheehan, a mother who lost a son in Iraq, asked for a meeting with President Bush.  When told the meeting wouldn't take place, Sheehan camped out in Crawford, Texas.  Her stand was the beginning of a movement against the war.  Sheehan, could be you or me.  She wasn't a polished politician when she started out and was held up for ridicule by the right and found herself the brunt of late night jokes.  Yet she stayed and returned again and again to ask the President a simple question - Why?

According to an article in today's Guardian, England, Canada, and other US allies think Bush is the second most dangerous threat to world peace!!!  An image in the article places Bush squarely between Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong-Il.  

Your president, our president, a US American president is being lumped with Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong-Il.

John Kerry has been a victim of Mercury in Retrograde.  We've all been there, but you probably didn't know what to call it.  When the planet Mercury goes retrograde communications go haywire which more often than not, leads to miscommunication. Hogwash?  Mercury in retrograde also governs computers.  If you have ever had a computer crash, go back and look and the dates and I bet you will find that it was during a Mercury in retrograde period.

When was the last time we had Mercury in retrograde during an election?  2000  Talk about chaos and havoc.  We could be looking at similar scenarios again!

Follow me below the fold to see a list of the things that can go wrong during Mercury in retrograde from astroprofile.com

The  "Orange Revolution" of 2004-2005 was the Ukraine's response to allegations of massive corruption, voter intimidation and electoral fraud during the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election.   Wearing orange scarves and using public protests and political events the Ukrainians took to the streets to take back their government.  

And here in America, what do we do?  In the past we have wrung our hands, disavowed politics, and whined until time we start the cycle all over again.  Well, not this time.

In his editorial today David Brooks rings the death toll for conservatives:

It's clear that this election will mark the end of conservative dominance. This election is a period, not a comma in political history.

Whoo Hooo!  That should be reason to celebrate.  But then Brooks goes on to talk about what is next.  

This Congress leaves Washington having worked approximately 1.5 days a week.  100 days total.  That is the worst record ever, by any congress in recent history.  What are they doing the other 3.5 days and on the weekends?  Fundraising.

It is time to fix this seriously broken system.  When (not if) we regain the majority, the first thing we should do is do something about Campaign Finance Reform once and for all.  Think about it.  Good candidates like Webb would have died on the vine had it not been for Allen's implosion.  The party wasn't helping him out and he was struggling financially.  That is the reality.  We can't afford to let good people, people who want to serve and have good ideas be lost to a misguided and ill-conceived system.

Last night I attended a function in Tempe, Arizona to honor Arizona broadcasters.  On the way in, I saw J.D. Heyworth heading into the building.  Odd, because my husband and I were just discussing the article in Esquire magazine that goes state by state and makes endorsements about the candidates.  Here's what it said about Heyworth:

Heyworth is an unpleasant man who loves the sound of his own bombast.  That might be okay, if he were smart or ambitious or effective, but he's not.

A few minutes later, I was surprised to find myself, across the lobby from Heyworth.  In person, he has the mannerisms of a disjointed marionette.  I watched as he disjointedly worked the room, making his way toward us, shaking hands and patting backs as he approached.

I can't believe no one else picked up on this today.  I didn't have time to write it up this morning so I was shocked when I looked at DKOS a few minutes ago and found this going unreported.  This morning on the Today show, John McCain was being interviewed about his reaction to the Dems blaming Bush for not negotiating with North Korea and he actually said:

I only said something about Clinton because Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and others were blaming President Bush.

Am I the only one who finds this response is the intellectual equivalent of something a twelve year old might say?  He offered no other explanation for his assertion that Clinton was to blame for the current situation with North Korea.

John McCain continues to be an amazing disappointment.  He wants to be President so bad he has completely forgotten about integrity and self-respect.

This morning the following list of atrocities committed by Republicans popped up in my email. It was forwarded to me and I have no idea who the original author was.

Can this possibly be true?  I could easily buy it if a list of five or ten additional cases popped up but this list is extensive and if half of these allegations are true this list points to a "sick, sick sick" group of individuals.  Is there anyway to confirm the allegations? Some of them, after a breif Google search appear to be true.

And if so, what do we do with it?

If it isn't and can't be substantiated, I will delete this diary.

The list of creepy, nefarious and corrupt behavior by Republicans continues to grow. Let's work together to create a comprehensive list of the failures of the Republican leadership.  

Please feel free to add to the growing list of unbelievable behavior by those that the Republicans have chosen to lead us.  I know I have missed people and certain actions and behaviors by those listed below.  

The Brits are ready to leave and put the emphasis on Afghanistan where the emphasis should have been all along.  Our strongest ally in the war on terror and the war in Iraq are now sending signals that  this is an war that cannot be won.  For now, political pressure is keeping the pressure on to stay the course but according to a report today in the Guardian and on NPR, there are definitely cracks in the British armor.   Below is an excerpt from the Guardian article and a link.

John and Elizabeth Edwards have been everywhere in the last couple of days promoting her new book Saving Graces.  In the print stories about them, there is usually a picture of them with their three children, which reminds me so much of those early pictures of the Kennedy's.  Okay, Elizabeth isn't as glam as Jackie, she looks more like oh I don't know, me or my friends, making her real in a way Jackie never was.

And, like most of us, she has suffered loss and disappointment.  She has persevered through strength, love of family, and the love of a wonderful husband.  But the sympathy vote isn't what makes a John Edwards presidency interesting.  Picture this - beautiful family with small children running around the White House again, a wife who is real, who is someone most of us can relate to, and a President who is smart (Clinton smart) and who understands the issues confronting us.

Oh Condi.  Don't you realize that your words are on the internet.  It is so easy to find what you testified to and to verify what you said you knew and did.  You cannot rewrite history, especially when it is out there for us to retrieve at the click of a button.

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I just watched a rally on C-Span that Clinton attended for Claire McCaskill, the Democratic candidate in the Missouri Senate race.  President Clinton was passionate and eloquent and intelligent.  He speaks, not in sound bites, but in an engaging dialogic style that invites people to join him as he explains describes, and discusses the issues.   Clinton and Barack Obama don't waste time trying to distill their ideas down to quick sound bites.  They know that talk is power and that if you speak intelligently and passionately, people will get it.  

Oh you wacky self-defeating Dems!  We are such a disjointed, un-unified lot.  No, wait!  That's not totally fair.  We are unified in our dislike (some would say hatred) and total distrust of Republicans.  We have so bought into the idea that if we too can get in the quick jab, the nasty spin, or the trite sound bite people will get it.  But, will that win us elections?  NO!