In 2000, the Bushies decided to use any tactic available to stop Sen. John McCain in South Carolina. American politics reached a new low as the hate spread. During that smearfest, a flier that included a photo of McCain's adopted South Asian daughter circulated. The implication, of course, was that McCain had a mixed race child. The target audience was Republican racists, but I repeat myself.

Today, we see Sen. Hillary Clinton has ripped a page straight from the Rovian playbook. Her rival Sen. Barack Obama, clad in traditional Somali wear, is splashed across the Drudge Report.

The right-wing noise machine previously known as FOX has been supplanted. Yes, the swinging dick for corporate America has been officially decided.

It is CNN.

Yes, John, there is a Corporate Republican Party and a Corporate Democratic Party.

Yes, Joe, you do get a word in edgewise. It ain't here, though.

And Senator BO: I will still vote for you. But the wolfpack has made certain I am a national minority. At least the folks in Iowa get to make an impact the biz pigs cannot.

Bless the rabble.

I have flinched and squirmed and kept my mouth shut all day long as the new and improved immigration bill has been "debated". The parenthesis are obviously for an ironic effect, because:

No one likes what has been put forward. There is an absolute consensus of "no way in hell".

Yet people want to blame or attribute or whatever the progressive movement for the bill's contents, good and ill. I have heard claims that the Left has abandoned environmental goals, labor standards, yadda, yadda, yadda. My Latino co-workers claim it would hurt their famlies. My boss claims it would get him off the hook about unpaid taxes. I work in construction. I hear things.

I have reached the only rational conclusion. We must wait until we have a Democrat in office in '09 to agree to any immigration legislation. My analysis is both practical and political.

The winner of last night's "debate," which was more or less a civil photo opportunity, didn't even appear on the stage. His issues are the ones Americans desire to see addressed, and to an extent they were.

So I do not hesitate to declare the winner of last night's gathering as none other than:

Al Gore.

An illustrious group of Democratic senators and representatives routinely appear on the Imus in the Morning hatefest. Also, this racist, two-bit disc jockey constantly pumps his audience for money to support a putatitve charity he and his wife run, the Imus Ranch.

It is time for any Democratic officeholder politely to tell Don Imus' producers to burn in hell whenever they try to book appearances. And it is time for all Democrats, progressives and other decent Americans to turn off this show and close your pocketbooks whenever Imus tries to raise funds for a "kids' ranch."

Thank the gods for Senator Russ Feingold. As McJoan blogged today, Sen. Feingold continues to be almost a solitary voice on really ending this immoral war.

Too bad the rest of the Senate Democrats waste too much time on empty gestures and too little time on substance. Too bad that even on their non-measures Bush can make the Senate Democrats his bitches and look very foolish to the outside world.

I am tired of spin on this issue. If Bush wants to veto an appropriation bill, let him. But hell, people, at least make him cast the veto. Listen to me, and hear me well: if our caucus lacks the courage to cease funding this nonsense, we will go back to the wilderness in 2008. Don't give me any happy horseshit about how the failure of non-binding resolutions helps the party; tell me how to get out of this war and relegate the Republican chickenhawks to permanent irrelevancy. The people, who overwhelmingly oppose this war, cannot be happy with us today.

I didn't vote for this horseshit:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 — Democratic leaders said Tuesday that they intended to hold symbolic votes in the House and Senate on President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Baghdad, forcing Republicans to take a stand on the proposal and seeking to isolate the president politically over his handling of the war.

Senate Democrats decided to schedule a vote on the resolution after a closed-door meeting on a day when Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts introduced legislation to require Mr. Bush to gain Congressional approval before sending more troops to Iraq...

The office of Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, followed with an announcement that the House would also take up a resolution in opposition to a troop increase. House Democrats were scheduled to meet Wednesday morning to consider whether to interrupt their carefully choreographed 100-hour, two-week-long rollout of their domestic agenda this month to address the Iraq war.

In both chambers, Democrats made clear that the resolutions — which would do nothing in practical terms to block Mr. Bush’s intention to increase the United States military presence in Iraq — would be the minimum steps they would pursue.

To be honest, we far exceeded my expectations.

Yet I feel we have been lulled to sleep.

Only one senator is required to flip the Senate (asshole nominations need not exceed one). Only 15 members are needed to lose the House, and the Thugs already claim 12 or so of them are "rented."

The bottom line is we are about to be led down the all-so-friendly path to slaughter--again. Oddly, victory has brought about hubris with a tiny majority in both branches of congress. By fuck, we have been lulled to sleep. And while we dose, and bend over to be fucked in the ass by the neo-Clinton goons, we lose.

So wake up. Give me another Jim Webb, another Bernie Sanders, and then I'll worry about the Chimp's replacement. And not one day sooner (memo to James Carville, dinosaur: we won, fuck you).

Needless rant off.

I made several posts over the last 24 hours about why the outing of gay Republicans simply because they are gay is wrong. I continue to stand by those posts, and believe that tactic not only is wrong but it could backfire and could be used against some of our senate and congressional candidates in this and future elections.

I noted the difference between outing gay Republicans who are hypocrites and those who are simply in the closet. This seems to be a view widely shared here, and it makes me proud of DailyKos.

Yet I just read Andrew Sullivan's latest Daily Dish column and was treated to this headline: The Left vs. Gays. Every time I think this hysterical fool has started to return to the reality-based world, he reminds me of why I would never trust David Brock, either--once a wingnut, always a wingnut.

If you want a progessive idea, turn to a real Progressive, uppercase "P." Exhibit A: Gov. Howard Dean's 50-state strategy.

Things look good right now. It is no time to get cocky as everything can slip away overnight, as we have seen in the past. Nonetheless, I have something I want to say tonight as races across the country and not in select regions, states, or districts will determine whether the Bush Administration is brought to heel:

Thank you, Governor Dean!

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has an odd affinity for congressmen caught up in scandals. Hell, he's even bipartisan when it comes to crimes and corruption on behalf of his fellow Members of Congress.

Remember when we jumped up and down and demanded one of our own, William Jefferson, resign when he looted the public treasury? Well, Hastert reached across the aisle to protect Jefferson.

And when his fellow Republican Tom DeLay turned fundraising into racketeering, does anyone recall Hastert being particularly troubled?

We all know the Democratic Party's inherent problems and weaknesses. This mid-term election should be a cakewalk but remains a struggle because the party establishment has really done a lot of damage over the years.

Yet the Netroots have stepped up to the plate and started to remove the deadwood and collaborators. We have worked hard and will increase the number of Democratic representatives and senators. We may even obtain majorities but will have to continue to plug along and donate our money and time to attain that goal. No one said it would be easy, but no one from this universe backed away from the challenge, either.

One could only wish the Washington press corps had the same type of reformation. If such were to occur, a good place to start would be showing David Gergen and David Broder the door. These two worthless fucks are trotted out everytime the D.C. press corps needs a "respectable" comment on something obvious or someone to whom an outright falsehood can be attributed.

The corporate media has gone batshit crazy over the prospects of an imminent Democratic takeover of Congress. More and more we read and hear contrived stories about "GOP surges" no one else sees or detects.

The latest entrant is the Congressional Quarterly. And what better source to spew propaganda than Craig Crawford.

In his latest CQ column, Crawford finds a remarkable reason for GOP optimism: Bush's invocation of Iraq in his 9/11 speech. I shit you not.

Fresh off its anti-Clinton smear campaign, the Mickey Mouse network a/k/a ABC continues to work furiously to ensure the GOP wins in the mid-term elections. As if rank lies and distortions about 9/11 weren't enough, ABC now attempts to spin a poll to show huge Republican gains.

At first blush, the ABC News poll sounds bad based on their on-line headline: "Republicans Inch Close To '06 Preference." Dig a little deeper, though, and you find this isn't the case at all.

In fact, even in a poll that should be viewed with skepticism because of where it originated, the Democrats continue to hold a commanding preference edge. You just wouldn't know it if you didn't read deeply enough.

If there ever were a bigger pig and more dishonest "Democrat" than Martin "Marty" Peretz of the New Republic, he must have been sacrificed and eaten on some obscure Pacific island. Why I chose that region soon will be apparent.

In his latest vent--after a vigorous defense of Joe Lieberman's "indpendent" run, Zionist attacks on Lebanon, and his refusal to tell wingnut radio hack Hugh Hewitt whether he wants a Democratic majority in Congress--Marty Peretz reveals the person responsible for the Plamegate scandal.

The New Republic pubisher reveals it was none other than the Wilsons themselves.

This may not be popular--at first blush--but I think it needs to be said: we may have inadvertently helped ABC and Disney increase its viewership of "The Path To 9/11."

I haven't seen Nielsen ratings yet. Further, even if I did, it would be hard to speculate about what the results would have been without the furor. Nonetheless, does anyone here seriously think the fuckwads at ABC didn't temporarily benefit from our justified outrage at the network?

This isn't to say we shouldn't have criticized the mini-series and won't win economically in the long haul. After all, this basically is a five-hour lie. But from a purely political standpoint, the average clueless American probably didn't want to watch this piece of shit anyway. And now it looks like, to the uninformed and unwashed, we wanted to hide something. So they stayed tuned, even after it became apparent even as fiction it sucked.

It has been a joy to watch the Republicans hoisted on their own racist petard on any number of issues, including some aspects of illegal immigration. Unfortunately, they seem prepared to throw a sucker punch on the latter.

And if we aren't ready, it just may work.

The latest signal came this morning during a Today show interview with Majority Leader Bill Frist. Catkiller evaded a question about why a comprehensive approach to immigration he advocated has failed, and then launched into his new and improved plans to deal with the matter. Frist's proposal isn't designed to increase national secuirty, of course, but to develop a wedge issue for the mid-term elections.

I am so pissed these words barely come out.

Ray Nagin is right.

I am sick and tired of seeing white boys and girls, and those who serve them, criticize the mayor as he works diligently to restore New Orleans. And when he says something that is undeniably true, it gets distorted because some who live in their fantasy center of the universe, New York, don't like to be called on the carpet when they act like pigs. The "controversial" quote: