Daily Kos

MI and FL delegates: '72 McGovern precedent

by queerbklynboy

Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 08:04:07 AM PDT

There’s been much conjecture about what’s going to happen with those Michigan and Florida delegates at the Convention if the race remains this close.   Since this election dominates my everyday discourse and thought, I’ve been researching the finer details of the contest including the MI and FL situation. Specifically, I wanted to know if there was a precedent that could clue me in as to what could happen at the Convention.

There are many past examples of delegates being challenged, but the ’72 California delegate situation is probably most relevant to our ’08 quandary.  Much of the following information was gleaned from an old old Time magazine article and a book by fellow Brooklynite Joe Califano, a lawyer who worked for three Democratic administrations.

An American Hero: Mike Jones

by queerbklynboy

Thu Nov 16, 2006 at 11:43:24 AM PDT

As the world debates who should get the most credit for our big win last Tuesday - Rahmbo, Schumer, Dean, George W. Bush - there's one regular joe that had something to do with the victory and he's all but been forgotten.  The cruel pop culture funnel will lump him in with the likes of Fawn Hall and Jessica Hahn, and if he's remembered at all, it will be in punch lines.  But he deserves way better.  His name is Mike Jones. And he could use some cash.

More after the jump.

gift for Angry Mom: The Case For Impeachment

by queerbklynboy

Fri May 12, 2006 at 12:29:48 PM PDT

I know the impeachment issue has been debated on this site to the hilt, but I wanted to bring your attention to a recent book that frames the argument for impeachment quite nicely.

The Case For Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office

Good Mama's day present? For the Mom that's starting to realize that accountability for these criminals would be a wonderful gift.

My Bob Casey Jr. fundraising dilemna

by queerbklynboy

Mon May 08, 2006 at 10:02:33 AM PDT

I held a fundraising event for Kerry on the night of his convention speech in 2004 and it went really well.  I would like to do something similar for 2006, and for a while I thought an anti-Santorum fundraiser would be perfect.  My gay brothers and sisters, even the non-political ones, despise him due to his inane comparison of homosexuality to beastiality, and also due to  Dan Savage's brilliance. There's a gay bar near my Brooklyn, NY apartment where I would hold the event. It fits about 150 people and I know I can pack it and raise $1000 based on Santorum hate alone.  Easy money for his opponent, Bob Casey Jr.

But then I started reading about Casey's faults on atrios, and researching his positions on issues.  Oy.

laptop addiction

by queerbklynboy

Sat Apr 15, 2006 at 08:59:34 AM PDT

It is now common for me to sit on the toilet with my laptop on my bare legs.

I used to have Tivo and watch about 20 hours of television, including several hours of shows like Match Game (yay, Brett), Golden Girls, Food Network and football. Now I'm down to one hour of Amazing Race, one hour of Top Chef, and the occasional Olbermann or Daily Show.  Actually, I started downloading episodes of Top Chef from google last week.

I used to talk on the phone when I got lonely or bored.  Now I IM.  I used to read the paper: now it's dailykos or hullabaloo or atrios or msnbc.com. I used to read a book a week.  Now maybe it's every other week (and that's pathetic because I work in publishing); now i read blogs.  I now know the details of my friend's cousin's trip to Europe without ever speaking with her or sitting through a slide show.

Poll

Do you spend too much time on the computer?

33%7 votes
52%11 votes
9%2 votes
4%1 votes

| 21 votes | Vote | Results

Why the Times finally published the Spygate story

by queerbklynboy

Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 01:35:15 PM PDT

There's been much conjecture as to why the Times held the Spygate story for a year and decided to publish it now. Freepers say the story was timed to sway public support against the Patriot Act so it wouldn't be renewed. Yeah, right. Bill Keller says he was finally "convinced there was no good reason not to publish it".  Yeah, right.

The real reason that the Times published the story is that a book by a journalist employed there that reveals the same information is going to be on sale 1/16.

An article in yesterday's L.A. Times reveals this.

New book coming in March - The Case For Impeachment

by queerbklynboy

Mon Nov 07, 2005 at 09:53:34 AM PDT

As we struggle to start a discussion about impeachement in the media and across the country, following is information about a promising new book making the case for impeachment coming out from a publisher I work for. Got excited when I found out about it this morning.

Title: The Case for Impeachment: How to Get Rid of President George W. Bush

Authors: DAVID LINDORFF, journalist for three decades (The Nation, BusinessWeek, Salon) and author of the book This Can't Be Happening: Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy. BARBARA OLSHANSKY, the Director Counsel for The Center for Constitutional Rights who is currently managing habeas litigation on behalf of 300 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, who has also published Joe Conason's Big Lies and Truth and Duty by ousted 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes.

Kerry considering "unconceding"?

by queerbklynboy

Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:14:34 AM PDT

OK - take this with many grains of salt, like everything we've heard concerning election fraud during the past week. I recieved the following through an email from a yahoo group called Democratic America, which existed to form a "Drinking Liberally"-type group (to which I've never been).

Bev Harris and Ralph Nader just also announced on Air America that they're requesting a recount in certain Ohio counties.

The next couple of weeks could get really crazy.  

expatriates helping us out

by queerbklynboy

Fri Oct 22, 2004 at 11:20:27 AM PDT

Yahoo article - "U.S. Expat Voters Out in Record Numbers in Germany"

Times UK article - "Americans abroad flock to vote in cliffhanger election"

Not only have American Democrats been GOTV in full force; seems our brothers and sisters abroad are also.  According to the Times article, expats usually vote Republican 3 to 1, but Democrats Abroad in London, an arm of the Democratic Party, has registered 200,000 expats since the last election and is overwhelmed with new registration requests.

Let's rerun the debates.

by queerbklynboy

Tue Oct 19, 2004 at 11:19:59 AM PDT

What if a major national television station re-aired each debate a week before the election and publicized it?  What if it ran opposite the Sinclair broadcast?

One can dream.  It would be beneficial for the following reasons:

  • less spin!  People wouldn't be on the edge of their seats waiting for Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough to declare who won.  It would be a relatively clean look at the candidates again, for the benefit of the still-undecided.

  • of course, Kerry did measurably better than Bush and we would win new voters.

  • whatever network aired it would probably score in the ratings.  These were the most watched debates in recent history, right?  I bet ratings for the reruns would be better than most normal programming and I don't see why they couldn't run commercials this time around. It might be better for the debates to be broken up, to give the audience a breather.

  • knowing millions of people were watching Bush's 1st debate performance might cause Rove to lose a bit more sleep.

This is why we need the television equivalent of Air America.  But maybe CSPAN could run it and we (Kerry supporters across the nation) could publicize it and convince our undecided/Libertarian/unmotivated-to-vote friends and acquaintances to watch.

Eh, just an idea that probably could never happen, but if Sinclair is going to air that bile, maybe a network would step up to the plate and counter-program biased programming with unbiased programming?  I think it would work as a publicity stunt.  

If there are networks that show Dharma and Greg reruns every day, why not rerun the most important broadcasts of the year just once?

60 minutes postponed Niger document piece

by queerbklynboy

Thu Sep 23, 2004 at 04:57:10 AM PDT

Will anybody take this seriously?

In its rush to air its now discredited story about President George W. Bush's National Guard service, CBS bumped another sensitive piece slated for the same "60 Minutes" broadcast: a half-hour segment about how the U.S. government was snookered by forged documents purporting to show Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium from Niger.

A team of "60 Minutes" correspondents and consulting reporters spent more than six months investigating the Niger uranium documents fraud, CBS sources tell NEWSWEEK. The group landed the first ever on-camera interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist who first obtained the phony documents, as well as her elusive source, Rocco Martino, a mysterious Roman businessman with longstanding ties to European intelligence agencies.

Wonder who made the decision to pull it hours before it aired?  It makes their debacle even more embarassing. Every hack pundit will question their credibility, and it's shameful that they dumped this for the Guard records mess, but I hope they still air it soon.

Overseas Voters Shut Out

by queerbklynboy

Tue Sep 21, 2004 at 09:22:43 AM PDT

This smells fishy.  But maybe I'm just paranoid.

Americans abroad, whose votes could be crucial if the Nov. 2 presidential election proves close, are being denied access to a U.S. Department of Defense Web site designed to make it easier for them to cast absentee ballots.

The problem concerns blocks placed on access to the Web site of the Federal Voting Assistance Program, a Defense Department division to help expatriate American voters, including servicemen and women. The site's address is www.fvap.gov.

In an e-mail, a site Web manager, Susan Leader, said access is being refused to some Internet service providers that were used by hackers to attack U.S. government sites.

Here's the link: Yahoo News story about overseas voters

Seems really easy to set up a safe site just for downloading a form.  And if someone wanted to hack, I'm sure they could find one of the ISPs that our government does allow in 5 minutes.  This makes no sense.

Great that the Democratic Party set up a site to counteract our government's negligence.

9/11 talking point courtesy of Rep. Jerrold Nadler

by queerbklynboy

Sun Sep 19, 2004 at 09:38:08 AM PDT

Talking point:  "Because of Bush administration and EPA lies after 9/11 and the continued government neglect, the health of the heroic First Responders and residents living near the World Trade Center site is suffering. The administration has the power to correct this horror, but is turning a blind eye even though cops, firefighters and WTC survivors could die."

Not only is the national media ignoring this story, but the NYC media has barely touched it. Don't the people that the world saw as heroes three years ago at least deserve the decency of the EPA telling the truth about the toxins in the air after the attack, and a commitment from the federal government to treat their related illnesses for life?  Right now, the government is providing limited testing, no treatment and they're still not coming forth with the truth.

Here's a link to the Jerrold Nadler Congressional hearing statement on the matter:

Nadler statement

From his statement:

For almost three years, I have been investigating the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) response, and that of other federal agencies, to the terrorist attacks in New York City. In April 2002, I published a White Paper documenting EPA's malfeasance, and in August of 2003, the EPA Inspector General issued a report documenting that the EPA gave false assurances to the people of New York regarding the air we were breathing and that the EPA refused to take responsibility to decontaminate indoor spaces, such as apartments, offices, and schools, despite the fact that they are federally mandated to do so. Earlier this year, residents, workers and school children filed a class action lawsuit against the EPA in an effort to finally get the agency to do its job, and do it right, as well as to request medical relief....

The GAO Report under consideration today provides more disturbing evidence of the extent of the health impacts following September 11, and the gaps in medical treatment for those afflicted. According to the report, ninety percent of the firefighters and EMS workers at the WTC site had respiratory ailments. Of the 332 firefighters in the study that reported "WTC Cough", only about half have shown any improvement. The GAO Report also found that the people living and working in Lower Manhattan experienced health effects similar to first responders, and that almost 75% of respondents living near the WTC site experienced respiratory symptoms. The only assistance for these residents is the health registry, which does not provide any actual medical treatment.

The term "WTC Cough" send shivers down my spine.

Also, here's a link to the recently released GAO (Government Accountability Office) report on 9/11 health effects:

GAO report

the one book swing voters should read? - with poll

by queerbklynboy

Fri Sep 17, 2004 at 10:11:44 AM PDT

I thought I wouldn't encounter friends and family that were on the fence about voting for Kerry in my liberal bubble during the election season, but I have.  I work in publishing and get a big discount at a local bookstore.  I was thinking of sending my undecided/lethargic/disenchanted friends one book before the election to help affect their decision, but which one?

I'm reading Intelligence Matters by Bob Graham and think it's excellent, but maybe not the most damning to the Bush administration.  Although the Saudi-related administration coverup of FBI evidence makes me want to cry.  

Any suggestions?

Poll

What's the one book swing voters should read before the election?

2%1 votes
8%4 votes
4%2 votes
0%0 votes
8%4 votes
4%2 votes
8%4 votes
21%10 votes
4%2 votes
17%8 votes
2%1 votes
19%9 votes

| 47 votes | Vote | Results

Kerry Convention Party advice request

by queerbklynboy

Sat Jul 17, 2004 at 08:22:08 AM PDT

I'm hosting a party the night that Kerry's speaking at the convention.  I've never done anything like this before and thought maybe some Kossacks could offer some pearls of wisdom.  I'm cooking baked ziti and other Italian fare to lure attendees - other than that, I don't know.  Some thoughts I had:
  • putting together a little handout guide to key Senate and House races across the country is probably a good idea since most of the people I invited don't know much about them.  Or maybe that's a bit much, and I should concentrate on the Kerry campaign?  Maybe do up a little guide to the issues instead?
  • how aggressive should I be in soliticing donations and having people fill out the volunteer cards?  Any particularly graceful way of doing that?
  • any other troubleshooting advice?
Of course, all Kossacks are invited.  Here's the link to my party - it's in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY.  

Martin's convention party

reduced network coverage of conventions - good thing?

by queerbklynboy

Tue Jul 13, 2004 at 06:34:45 AM PDT

There have been many valid complaints concerning the networks drastically reducing the amount of hours devoted to the infomercials/conventions, but at least two networks are providing access to the entire event on digital cable and more importantly, streaming video on the internet.

yahoo article on network coverage

It seems to me the more people that watch on the internet, the better. I only regularly go to msnbc.com, but the depth of coverage on any given issue exceeds any of the one-dimensional Tom Brokaw broadcasts.  The power of interactivity to fact-check the politician's speeches as they speak, or even just the accessibility of watching on and off while you work at the computer makes it really valuable.  

The more the public has to go the web for these large events, the more they're directed to get their news from the web, and eventually America is better informed? If I were head of a network news division, I'd be nervous about the possibility of lower ratings, not to mention the loss of control of what the public thinks and who they'll vote for.

Is McCain actively campaigning for Kerry?

by queerbklynboy

Wed Jun 16, 2004 at 09:34:30 AM PDT

In a Today show interview, McCain brings up the issue of the Saudis supporting terrorism.  How often have Republicans mentioned Saudi Arabia and terrorism in the same sentence?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5196406/

Is it me, or does this seem strategically timed to introduce this obvious Saudi/terrorism/(Bush administration) connection into the media conversation just as Farenheit 911 will finally force the issue nationwide?

McCain's strong criticism of the prisoner abuse, his public praise of Kerry and defense of his military record, criticism of the use of 9/11 images in the Bush ads, etc. of course drive the Bushies crazy.  I just wonder how much of this is coordinated with the Kerry campaign.

Is is possible that the recent Kerry/McCain meetings weren't about the VP position at all, but collusion to overthrow W., and that McCain's strongly-worded rebuffing of the Kerry VP idea is a smokescreen for what's actually happening?  I hope so.  It gives me hope for November.

Gore's speech at NYU today

by queerbklynboy

Wed May 26, 2004 at 11:47:35 AM PDT

This is my first diary entry, and Atrios has already posted this, but the speech is so rousing and spot on I'd thought I'd post it here.  I don't think the media can ignore the call for resignations - MSNBC has broadcast portions and newsday.com has reported it.  

Enjoy.

http://www.moveonpac.org/goreremarks052604.html/


:: Next 18