Michelangelo's David is returning to Italy

...after a two year visit to the United States.

His Proud Sponsors were:

LSB: This is the first email joke I've received that I have posted, but it was simply too good to pass up. Enjoy the break from the political news. (P.S. "Alleged sponsors" - don't sue me!)

A Week In John McCain's Shoes — His $520 Ferragamo Loafers, That Is

Isabel Wilkinson, HuffingtonPost.com: This summer John McCain is traveling in style. He has worn a pair of $520 black leather Ferragamo shoes on every recent campaign stop — from a news conference with the Dalai Lama to a supermarket visit in Bethlehem, PA. The Calfskin loafers, with silver-tone "Gancini" buckles, are imported from Italy.

In response to Barack Obama's foreign tour, McCain spent much of his energy last week emphasizing his focus on domestic issues. What better way to show his American pride than to tour the country in Italian leather?

Click here for more pics.

Christopher Hayes, The Nation:

If I were a right-wing blogger, and I found out that Barack Obama was wearing Ferragamo loafers that cost $520, I would spend about 50% of my waking hours making sure everyone knew this. I would mock him for being an out-of-touch elitist and make jokes like, "If you think that's a lot, you should see how much his purse costs " I would send the link to Drudge and wait for Instapundit to pick it up, and then watch gleefully as Fox News ran segments about how Barack Obama's $500
loafers vitiate his entire economic platform. But of course, I'm not a right-wing blogger. And the $520 shoes belong to John McCain. And frankly, I don't think how much his shoes cost matters one whit for how he'd govern the country.

LSB: Sorry, Christopher, I believe you are wrong. As we've seen with McCain's deceitful ads in the past week, the Straight-Talk-Express jumped the track a while ago. The cost of his shoes doesn't matter for McCain, the private citizen; but as a candidate for the highest office in the land, I wonder how this "alleged" man of the people, who spends $520 on footware and fishes in the private lake on his property, is going to treat our tax dollars if elected.

Barack Hits Back: Ad Says McCain Taking Low Road

John Amato, Crooks and Liars: Here’s Barack Obama’s new ad that calls out McCain’s latest round of juvenile attack ads. It was Cindy McCain that said this - Political Base:

“What you’re going to see is a great debate. Which is what the American public deserves. None of this negative stuff, though. You won’t see it come out of our side at all.”– Cindy McCain, Today Show, May 8, 2008.

What happened, Cindy? This ad is simply moronic and smells of desperation... and it's not even August.

Hope: It Could Happen To You

Rachel Maddow: "There's a difference between being a veteran and supporting a veteran as a politician."

John Aravosis (DC), AmericaBlog.com: Olbermann and Maddow eviscerate McCain over his lack of support of vets and the troops. Olbermann details all the pro-troops legislation that McCain either opposed or refused to even show up for a vote. You really need to watch this, then send it to your friends. These are actual votes that McCain opposed, actual legislation that would have helped the troops, and he was against it. McCain likes to talk about how he's all about the troops, but he doesn't like to talk about the specifics of his record. Well the specifics are here (h/t Jed).

Who's Lying? John McCain or Andrea Mitchell?

John Aravosis (DC), AmericaBlog.com. From DKos:

From John McCain's appearance last night on Larry King Live, when asked about
Barack Obama's canceled visit to Landstuhl:

KING: Why do you think he didn't go?

MCCAIN: I have no idea except that I know that according to reports that he
wanted to bring media people and cameras and his campaign staffers...

That's not spin, that's a blatant, outright lie, and John McCain knows it's a lie. Here is what Andrea Mitchell had to say about the claim that Obama planned to bring cameras and the press:

MITCHELL: That literally is not true... Now the point is, Obama had no intention of bringing any cameras with him. I was there, I can vouch for that... he wasn't planning to bring an entourage...

So there you have it. John McCain outright lied in his new ad, and he's outright lying in continuing to promote the message of that ad. After Andrea Mitchell weighed in and said that she was there, there isn't any wiggle room anymore. The ad is a lie, McCain is lying. When do McCain's friends in the media plan on calling him out on this. Why has he decided to go so negative? Is he that desperate? Has he given up any notion of being a maverick? Why would John McCain outright lie and then continue to spread the lie? A real media would ask these questions, and they'd certainly be asking them if Barack Obama were the candidate to enter the gutter like McCain has.

From Karen Tumulty, national political correspondent for TIME:

This front-page account in the Washington Post is absolutely consistent with what I know, based on my reporting, about Obama's cancelled visit to Landstuhl. So how many more times are the McCain campaign and the Republicans going to repeat what is a thoroughly baseless charge?

The problem for McCain, as I noted [above], is that if you're going to lie in an effort to defame your opponent, you'd better hope you don't get called on it. McCain and his staff and his surrogates have repeated this lie so many times, including airing a false TV commercial, that McCain can no longer blame it on a mis-speak or a staff screw-up. He said it himself. He approved a TV ad. McCain approved of a coordinated strategy to falsely slime Obama as un-American. That only works if the media is willing to play along. And clearly, now it isn't. McCain is going to have to go into major damage control on this one. But that may not be enough. The maverick has left the building. Whatever moron on McCain's staff came up with the bright idea to lie about Obama's patriotism, to use our troops as political props, is about to witness John McCain's fabled temper. Of course, in the end, McCain approved of this strategy and embraced it, so he has no one to blame but himself.

FactCheck.org: A McCain TV spot falsely insinuates that Obama canceled his visit because "the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras."

But it was a very tasteful strip joint where conservative family-values Republican Pete Sessions held his fundraisers

John Aravosis (DC), AmericaBlog.com: From MarketPlace we learn that family-values conservative GOP Congressman Pete Sessions (R-TX) has been holding fundraisers at a strip club in Vegas. Sessions was publicly livid over Janet Jackson's "liberal values" when she bared her covered boobs during the SuperBowl a few years back (Pete Sessions... scolded Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake for forcing "their liberal values upon the rest of the country" after their infamous 2004 Super Bowl halftime striptease). Sessions was less upset about the boobs shown at his fundraisers at a Vegas strip joint. Here is how Sessions described the affair to the media... It's priceless:

Sessions: That's right, we do a Las Vegas fundraiser every year and not only raise money, but see Las Vegas. It's a beautiful town.

Henn: Forty Deuce is a strip club.

Sessions: You know, I've never seen that. It is what I would call a burlesque show where there's a woman who comes out and has a dress on... Uh, she never get's naked. There's no nudity, there's no nudity in there.

This is how the club's owner, Ivan Kane, describes his brand of burlesque.

Ivan Kane: The key component would be to have girls who were dancers taking their clothes off, not just girls taking their clothes off.

Sessions spent more than $5,000 at Kane's club that night in March, according to federal disclosures. Those reports show Sessions spent another $2,100 on his hotel.

More photos from the strip joint here.

LSB: This toad, although not my asshole Congressman, is from my area. Republican = Hypocrite!

China & IOC lied - Internet access for media to be censored for Olympics

Chris in Paris, AmericaBlog.com: Congratulations to the IOC for allowing China to censor journalists from around the globe. In fact, Reuters says the International Olympic Committee actually cut the censorship deal with China. Wasn't this a key issue when the decision was made to give Beijing the Olympics? Beijing lied when they said they would provide uncensored internet access for foreign journalists and the IOC pretended as though China might live up to its promise. And how ridiculous is China, to think that they can even block real news stories from getting in or out?

On Tuesday, [foreign media in Beijing] were unable to access the website of Amnesty International as it released a report criticising China's human rights record.

Besides telling lies about this in order to win the Olympics, a block on foreign media is not likely to be effective and only draw even more attention to the issue.

Chinese officials say foreign journalists covering the Beijing Olympic Games will not have completely uncensored access to the internet.

A top spokesman said sites relating to spiritual movement Falun Gong would be blocked. Another said other unspecified sites would also be unavailable.

China enforces tough internet controls, but said when it bid for the Games that journalists would be free to report.

Journalists have complained they cannot access some news or human rights sites.

A senior International Olympic Committee (IOC) member confirmed that while journalists would have free range to cover the Games, the IOC was aware some sites would be blocked.

Richard Blair, AllSpinZone.com: Sen. Sam Brownback is hopping mad that the Chinese government is requiring all international hotels in China to install internet monitoring software prior to the Olympics. Apparently, a few of the hotel chains have made a fuss.

Listen, it’s not like the Chinese government (unlike the American government) hasn’t been right up front about controlling use of the internet / world wide web within the borders of their country. In fact, back in 2005, China forced Yahoo! to give up email records on dissidents, and Google was forced to redesign their search engine software to make it easier for the Chinese government to spy and conduct oversight:

…However, some [U.S.] lawmakers at the hearing thought this argument dubious at best. Choices to operate in China have also led to Yahoo’s cooperation with Chinese authorities to arrest a dissident and Google’ redesign of its search engine to reflect Chinese censorship.

“U.S. technology companies today are engaged in a sickening cooperation decapitating the movements of Chinese dissidents,” human rights subcommittee chair Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said at the hearing. Smith will soon introduce the Global Online Freedom Act of 2006 that aims to “protect United States businesses from coercion to participate in repression by authoritarian foreign governments.” …

So, Sam Brownback is now carrying the anti-spy water for the hotel chains operating in China. As I said at the outset of this post, that’s quite laughable, coming from one of the strongest proponents of FISA, warrentless wiretapping, and internet surveillance. Glenn Greenwald has the details, but this stands out:

“These hotels are justifiably outraged by this order, which puts them in the awkward position of having to craft pop-up messages explaining to their customers that their Web history, communications, searches and key strokes are being spied on by the Chinese government,” Brownback said at a news conference…

At least you get a pop-up message in China. In the U.S., DHS just pops up at your door.

No funds to lend to 40,000 students

Beth Healy, Boston Globe:

The Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority yesterday said it will not be able to provide student loans this fall for the first time in its 26-year history, leaving more than 40,000 families without an important source of tuition funds just weeks before college classes begin.

The nonprofit lending authority, which last school year provided $510 million in loans, said it has been unable to secure funding to provide private student loans due to the ongoing turmoil in the nation's credit markets. The agency had already disclosed in April that it would no longer offer federally backed student loans.

It is now contacting the tens of thousands of students to whom it has made loans in the past, urging them to seek other options.

"As a result of our problems and the continued dislocation of the capital markets, we have been unable to raise funds for the coming academic year," said Thomas M. Graf, the authority's executive director. ...

John Aravosis (DC), AmericaBlog.com: Democrats, the issue has been handed into your lap. What you do with it, or don't do with it, is your problem. This is the kind of issue the public is worried about. This is the real-world impact of the chaos the Republicans have wreaked in our economy. And ABC reports that this, not surprisingly, goes far beyond Texas.

RAND STUDY: War on Terrorism fundamentally flawed and doomed to fail

Robert Arena, AmericaBlog.com: Today's Washington Post covers what amounts to a near complete repudiation of the Bush administration "terrorism" policy since 9/11. The fact that the study is coming from the RAND Corporation (SourceWatch profile) is huge. RAND, while technically non-partisan, has a long history shaping a hawkish US strategic policy. (To get a flavor of just what type of organization RAND is, Donald Rumsfeld has sat on their Board of Trustees.)

The Bush administration's terrorism-fighting strategy has not significantly undermined al-Qaeda's capabilities, according to a major new study that argues the struggle against terrorism is better waged by law enforcement agencies than by armies.

The study by the nonpartisan Rand Corp. also contends that the administration committed a fundamental error in portraying the conflict with al-Qaeda as a "war on terrorism." The phrase falsely suggests that there can be a battlefield solution to terrorism, and symbolically conveys warrior status on terrorists, it said.

"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors," authors Seth Jones and Martin Libicki write in "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al-Qaeda," a 200-page volume released yesterday.

But the authors contend that al-Qaeda has sabotaged itself by creating ever greater numbers of enemies while not broadening its base of support. "Al-Qaeda's probability of success in actually overthrowing any government is close to zero," the report states. ...

The authors call for a strategy that includes a greater reliance on law enforcement and intelligence agencies in disrupting the group's networks and in arresting its leaders. They say that when military forces are needed, the emphasis should be on local troops, which understand the terrain and culture and tend to have greater
legitimacy.

In Muslim countries in particular, there should be a "light U.S. military footprint or none at all," the report contends.

"The U.S. military can play a critical role in building indigenous capacity," it said, "but should generally resist being drawn into combat operations in Muslim societies, since its presence is likely to increase terrorist
recruitment."

You might remember that back in 2000, the Republicans and George Bush criticized the Clinton administration for treating terrorism as a law enforcement problem instead of a military problem. RAND confirms the Clinton strategy as more effective.

Note that last item about the U.S. military taking little to no role on the ground in Muslim countries. This is exactly what opponents to the Iraq war tried to say ahead of the invasion.

Bottom line, the war on terror is the real fight - on the war in Iraq Barack Obama was right and John McCain was wrong. McCain's willingness to stay in Iraq "maybe one hundred" years shows his complete lack of understanding of the root cause of terrorism.

David Letterman: “Can a case be made that George Bush’s administration is clearly guilty of war crimes?”

SilentPatriot, Crooks and Liars: Dave interviewed investigative journalist Jane Mayer Wednesday about her new book, The Dark Side, which chronicles the Bush administration’s use (and denial of use) of torture, and asks her a simple question that we all want to know the answer to.

During the Nuremberg trials Robert H. Jackson said:

“To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

By that standard — you know, the internationally agreed upon one — I think the answer is clear.

UPDATE: (Nicole) Actually according to George W. Bush himself, he agrees: (h/t JR)

President Bush signed an executive order on Friday to expand sanctions against what he calls the “illegitimate” regime of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and his supporters.[..] “No regime should ignore the will of its own people and calls from the international community without consequences,” Bush said in a statement.

You heard him, Congress. Get to work.

Daily Show: Obama in Berlin vs. McCain in the supermarket

SilentPatriot, Crooks and Liars: Jon Stewart juxtaposes how the two candidates spent their Thursdays. [Click the pic for the vid.]

“But watching Senator Obama address a crowd of 200,000 in Germany while Senator McCain addresses a crowd of two in the frozen food section…”

That about sums it up.

LSB: This is laugh out loud funny!

McClellan: White House gave FOX commentators talking points

SilentPatriot, Crooks and Liars: This just in from the Department of the Obvious: Scott McClellan admits to Chris Matthews that the White House made a deliberate effort to use FOX News commentators like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly to disseminate White House talking points. [Click the pic for the vid.]

Matthews: “Did you see FOX television as a tool when you were in the White House? As a useful avenue to get your message out?”

McClellan: “I make a distinction between the journalists and the commentators. Certainly there were commentators and other, pundits at FOX News, that were useful to the White House.” […] That was something we at the White House, yes, were doing, getting them talkng points and making sure they knew where we were coming from.

Matthews: “So you were using these commentators as your spokespeople.”

McClellan: “Well, certainly.”

Straight from the source. Enough with the “fair and balanced” crap already.

Another Bright Idea from Andrew Dimbart

Sadly, No!: It seems like it was just yesterday that Andrew Breitbart [on the left] was over at the Moonie Times lamenting that the liberals in Hollywood were using their car keys to scratch the Beemers and Bugatis of Mel Gibson and all the other Hollywood conservatives who, for fear of further car damage, now stay locked up in their homes in Brentwood, occasionally calling Breitbart to detail another indignity visited on them by Hollywood liberals. Yards tee-pee’d. Invitations to gay weddings maliciously stuffed in their mailboxes. Gay teenagers driving by their homes and yelling “Breeder” at them.

Well, he’s baaaack. Today’s column from Breitbart at the Moonie Times proposes perhaps the dumbest idea since France parked its entire Navy in the Bay of Aboukir while Napoleon took a tour of the pyramids. That idea — are you ready? — is affirmative action for young Republicans in Hollywood.

Surely there’s an affirmative-action program that can put Republicans to work in the entertainment industry at ratios similar to our numbers in the general population.

I think that program is called Fox News.

Or how about a “Fairness Doctrine” that extends beyond talk radio to TV, film and music?

But, which, of course, wouldn’t apply to Fox, because it’s already fair and balanced enough.

If we encouraged our young to consider careers in the arts, … we’d have a new
generation of players pushing their scripts - and truth be told, their reality-show gimmicks - through the development process right now. The College Republicans, Young America’s Foundation and the Leadership Institute, not to mention countless alternative campus newspapers, all exude a rebel spirit that greatly resembles the motivations and enthusiasms of the liberal counterculture of the ’60s and ’70s.

Film and television scripts from College Republicans: imagine the excitement and box office success that these ventures would engender. Consider some of the possibilities:

• What about a historical pageant about how manly men overcome an effeminate gay prince. You could even have the effeminate gay prince’s effeminate gay boyfriend defenestrated by the king! Two thumbs up! Oops. Been there, done that.
• Or a television show about how all the Arabs are conspiring to blow us up with nukes. Been done. Twice in fact.
• Or a made-for-TV movie about how 9-11 was all Clinton’s fault. That too?

Dimbart not only wants the CRs to write the new scripts for Hollywood, but he wants returning war vets to be hired for actors:

There are tons of low-level jobs that lead to greater opportunities for industrious young adults. Our armed forces coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq provide us with a source to replenish the Hollywood creative bloodstream, too. Soldiers should vie for leading roles - especially with all those Laguna Beach swimming-trunk-laden shows.

At least the soldiers who returned with all their limbs could vie for those swimming-trunk parts.

Obama in Europe: “People of Berlin. People of the world. This is our moment. This is our time.”

SilentPatriot, Crooks and Liars: Senator Obama delivered a soaring speech today in Berlin before an estimated crowd of over 200,000 in which he called for a renewed trans-Atlantic — indeed, trans-global — alliance to fight the common threats we all face. Appealing the ideals America was founded on and has tried to promote since it’s inception, Senator Obama stated that whether it’s terrorism and global warming, or genocide and disease, there is no problem we cannot overcome nor enemy we cannot defeat when we are united in common purpose.

“People of Berlin - and people of the world - the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.”

Watch the entire speech here. Read the transcript of the speech here.

UPDATE: It looks like US Foreign Service personnel were banned from the speech. And not by Senator Obama.

With His Blog Kaboom, a Young Soldier Told of His War. Last Month, the Army Made Him Shut It Down.

washingtonpost.com: He was an unlikely warrior, this scrawny boy from Reno, Nev., the son of two lawyers, raised in the suburbs.

He had a way with words, this boy. When his Stryker unit deployed to Iraq last winter, he was a rookie platoon leader who had never seen combat. And like many other soldiers before him, he decided he'd chronicle the war on a blog. Intending to keep family and friends abreast of the follies and pitfalls of soldiering in a five-year-old war that now relies less on gunfire and more on diplomacy, this boy, under the pen name Lt. G, launched "Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal."

An indictment of the war it was not. Lt. G's dispatches -- at turns hilarious, maddening and terrifying -- provided raw and insightful snapshots of a conflict many Americans have lost interest in.

Word got around, and more and more readers closely followed the postings of 25-year-old Lt. Matthew Gallagher, with the site drawing tens of thousands of page views. By the time Kaboom went kaput last month -- Lt. G was ordered to take down his blog -- it had a following that would be the envy of many a small-town paper.

The blog's downfall was a May 28 posting that, in violation of military blogging rules, Gallagher failed to have vetted by a supervisor. (That the posting depicted an officer in the unit unflatteringly might have played a role. Gallagher declined a request to comment.)

The blogosphere, as it's wont to do, went berserk. ...

The content remains on an archive blog one of his friends created: http://kaboomwarjournalarchive.blogspot.com/. The old blog site is now controlled by City Girl, Gallagher's fiancee, who occasionally pens updates on the Gravediggers. (Full story)

An interactive guide to the White House's crimes and misdemeanors

AmericaBlog.com: Great new interactive guide to corruption in the Bush White House. From Slate. (You'll need to go the site and click the image to make it work.)

"John McCain's Neverending War"

The Colbert Report: Barack Obama Snubs Fox News

Nicole Belle, Crooks and Liars: Stephen Colbert looks at the media maelstrom surrounding Barack Obama’s trip to the Middle East and how there is one particular media outlet who doesn’t seem to be involved. Hmmm… which one could it be? [Click the pic for the vid.]

COLBERT: You see, in recent months, McCain boxed Obama into a corner by saying it was important that Obama visit Iraq. Checkmate. No way out of that one. But now Obama is cheating, by visiting Iraq. The good news is there’s so much media attention, there’s always a possibility of a huge gaffe doing irreparable damage to his campaign. [..] Now I was not invited on this trip. But, that’s fine. But I am not the only one who was snubbed.

[video of FOX & Friends] DOOCY: Why are you not on Barack Obama’s airplane heading to the Middle East right now? WALLACE: Well, I called the Obama campaign several weeks ago and said that I’d like to go and my invitation has apparently been lost in the mail.[end video]

COLBERT: Well, maybe that’s what this is. Here you go. [holds up envelope] Oh my God, it’s Chris Wallace’s invitation to the Obama trip! They sent it to me by accident. This could be my ticket to cover Barack Obama’s historic trip! All I have to do is…oh…and then people might think I was Chris Wallace. [shudders] Just not worth the risk.

Kind of makes the whole narrative that Obama is playing to FOX News Channel viewership in the general election a lie, doesn’t it? I think that anytime we see Democrats treating FNC rightfully as the propaganda arm of the GOP–as Netroots Nation did last week–they deserve a little pat on their back.

Please send Obama a note of congratulations for his FOX snub here. That’s not weak on defense, Colbert, that’s a strong offense and one all Democrats should be emulating.

"Wall Street Got Drunk": 'Banned' Bush Video Surfaces

Greg Mitchell, HuffingtonPost.com: An ABC-TV outlet in Houston, and now the Houston Chronicle, have posted a video taken at a political fundraiser for Pete Olson, featuring George W. Bush last week -- capturing some embarrassing/revealing moments after, he noted, he had asked cameras to be turned off.

The first moments form the July 18 event find him speaking almost incoherently in admitting, for once, that his friends in big business had screwed up: "There's no question about it. Wall Street got drunk ---that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras -- it got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments."

Then, making light of the foreclosure crisis, he said: "And then we got a housing issue... not in Houston, and evidently not in Dallas, because Laura's over there trying to buy a house. [great laughter] I like Crawford but unfortunately after eight years of sacrifice, I am apparently no longer the decision maker."

No one is saying how ABC's Miya Shay got the video or how it emerged. (The YouTube version of the video is now axed, but it is easily viewed at ABC site here.)

CBS Covers Up McCain's False Iraq Assertion

HuffingtonPost.com: In an interview with CBS News' Katie Couric tonight, John McCain made the false assertion that the Surge brought about the so-called Anbar Awakening. Except, as MSNBC"s Keith Olbermann points out, the Surge was announced after the Awakening. Olbermann also explains that CBS News edited the gaffe out of the final interviewed that aired Tuesday night.

Watch the video.

HuffPost blogger Ilan Goldenberg points out that this is not some minor gaffe, but a fundamental misunderstanding of the Iraq situation:

This is not controversial history. It is history that anyone trying out for Commander and Chief must understand when there are 150,000 American troops stationed in Iraq. It is an absolutely essential element to the story of the past two years. YOU CANNOT GET THIS WRONG. Moreover, what is most disturbing is that according to McCain's inaccurate version of history, military force came first and solved all of our problems. If that is the lesson he takes from the Anbar Awakening, I am afraid it is the lesson he will apply to every other crisis he faces including, for example, Iran.

Let’s ask Andrea

John Amato, Crooks and Liars: On Hardball today, Matthews talked about Obama’s excellent interaction with the military in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Politico’s Roger Simon, a Villager extraordinaire said that the middle east trip is going swimmingly so far. Andrea Mitchell did confirm that Maliki indeed backed Obama on his Iraq plans because he brought up Obama’s name by himself in his interview over the weekend earlier in the interview, but then she said a very odd thing about his “message management” as some footage of Obama played in the background on MSNBC. [Click the pic for the vid.]

Andrea: Let me say something about his message management. He didn’t have reporters with him. He didn’t have a press pool. He didn’t do a press conference while he was on the ground either on Afghanistan or Iraq. What you’re seeing is not reporters brought in, you’re seeing selected pictures taken by the military, questioned by the military and what some would call fake interviews because they’re not interviews with a journalist so there’s a real press issue here. Politically it’s smart as can be, but we’ve not seen a Presidential candidate do this in my recollection ever before.

From an AP article during McCain’s March trip:

McCain’s visit was not announced and he was believed to have been in the country for several hours before reporters were able to confirm his arrival. It was unclear ho he met with and no media opportunities or news conferences were planned.

Let’s Ask Andrea a question. Why wasn’t John McCain attacked for giving “fake interviews” during this trip up until he held a presser in Jordan?

...She was upset because she wasn’t “present” during these interviews. You mean you weren’t able to get a gotcha moment? When she says “what some would call” I guess she means herself. Will Andrea go on a limb and say every interview on FOX News is not legitimate when Cheney, Bush or McCain appear? How about when she joins O’Reilly? Or when someone is interviewed on a blog? The Daily Show has some very interesting interviews, does that not count? Is the military not capable of performing interviews? Where does she draw the line? Saying they are “fake interviews” really goes too far. I’ve emailed Obama’s campaign for a response.

Frank Rich Tears Apart McCain’s Economic Ignorance

SilentPatriot, Crooks and Liars: Frank Rich takes McCain to the woodshed in typical Rich style.
New York Times:

THE best thing to happen to John McCain was for the three network anchors to leave him in the dust this week while they chase Barack Obama on his global Lollapalooza tour. Were voters forced to actually focus on Mr. McCain’s response to our spiraling economic crisis at home, the prospect of his ascension to the Oval Office could set off a panic that would make the
IndyMac Bank bust in Pasadena look as merry as the Rose Bowl.

“In a time of war,” Mr. McCain said last week, “the commander in chief doesn’t get a learning curve.” Fair enough, but he imparted this wisdom in a speech that was almost a year behind Mr. Obama in recognizing Afghanistan as the central front in the war against Al Qaeda. Given that it took the deadliest Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul since 9/11 to get Mr. McCain’s attention, you have to wonder if even General Custer’s learning curve was faster than his.

Ouch.

John Amato’s virtual online magazine…OK, It’s a blog!

Silent Patriot, Crooks and Liars: The speculation before Senator Obama left for Iraq that he would possibly commit a presidential-bid-ending gaffe was deafening. So naturally the media was caught off guard when John McCain managed to beat Obama to the punch. [Click the pic for the vid.]

Stewart: Come on! This guy is a newbie! You can’t snag one faux pas, one misstep, a blunder, a boo boo, a brainfart? Something small…a geography mix-up?

McCain: It’s a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border.

Stewart: The Iraq-Pakistan border, otherwise known as… IRAN.

Red State Update: McCain Can't Work Internet

75 percent of Americans support gays serving openly in the military

ThinkProgress.org: A new Washington Post-ABC News poll released today shows 75 percent of Americans polled “said gay people who are open about their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military” — a dramatic rise from the 61 percent who supported the notion in 2001. Support has increased across party and ideological lines:

Support from Republicans has doubled over the past 15 years, from 32 to 64 percent. More than eight in 10 Democrats and more than three-quarters of independents now support the idea, as did nearly two-thirds of self-described conservatives.

Today is the 15th anniversary of the “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy. At that time, a majority of all Americans — including 75 percent of conservatives — supported a ban on gays in the military.

McCain Aide Scheunemann Linked To Bush Library ‘Cash For Access’ Scandal

ThinkProgress.org: Earlier this month, the Sunday Times caught longtime Bush associate Stephen Payne on tape offering access to top Bush administration officials in exchange for “six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency.” Payne, who is now being investigated by the Homeland Security Department and the House Oversight Committee, made the offer to Kazakh politician Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov, who is also known as Eric Dos.

The Times reported that Dos had previously worked with Payne to arrange a 2006 visit by Vice President Dick Cheney to Kazakhstan. Dos claims that in exchange for arranging Cheney’s trip, “a payment of $2m was passed, via a Kazakh oil and gas company, to Payne’s firm.” Payne denies that any such arrangement existed.

But the Times reports today that Payne may be lying about his business dealings and that the money may have been funneled through a sister company to Payne’s lobbying firm:

The Sunday Times, however, has discovered the existence of a channel through which funds from the Kazakh government could have been readily transferred.

A sister company to WSP, Worldwide Strategic Energy (WSE), of which Payne is also president, has a subsidiary, Caspian Alliance, which is the sole US representative for KMG.

The Times reports that a top adviser to Sen. John McCain, lobbyist Randy Scheunemann, has direct ties to the company that is alleged to have funneled the funds:

In a further link, Randy Scheunemann, chief foreign policy and national security adviser to John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, was listed in the WSE brochure as part of its executive team. Scheunemann and Associates, his lobbying firm, is reported as having represented the Caspian Alliance in 2005.

At the undercover meeting last week, Payne said Scheunemann had been “working with me on my payroll for five of the last eight years”. When confronted over the link to KMG, Payne declined to comment.

During his trip to Kazakhstan, Cheney ignored the country’s bad record on human rights and declared his “admiration for what has transpired here in Kazakhstan over the past 15 years.” Earlier this month, Payne told an undercover Times report that Cheney was more interested in what Kazakhstan “could do on energy” than “making them toe the line on human rights.”

General Petraeus: Al Qaida May Be Shifting Focus Back To Afghanistan From Iraq

Robert Burns, AP:

After intense U.S. assaults, al-Qaida may be considering shifting focus to its original home base in Afghanistan, where American casualties are running higher than in Iraq, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Saturday.

"We do think that there is some assessment ongoing as to the continued viability of al-Qaida's fight in Iraq," Gen. David Petraeus told The Associated Press in an interview at his office at the U.S. Embassy.

LSB: C.Y.A. ("cover your ass") big time! After years of false reports, only at the 11th hour before a new administration kicks in, does he change his tune about where al-Qaida may be. He's toast when the Obama administration takes over in January.

Elizabeth Edwards on The Colbert Report

Nicole Belle, Crooks and Liars: Elizabeth Edwards faces Stephen Colbert [click the pic for the vid] to stump for on behalf of the group Health Care for America Now! trying to raise the awareness of the campaign to bring affordable health care to all Americans.

Colbert: You’re talking about Universal Health Care?

Edwards: Universal, meaning everybody gets health care.

Colbert: Okay, but we already have a form of universal health care, it’s called prayer. Okay? Everybody can do it, and the Lord of the Universe hears all prayers, but sometimes the answer is, ‘I’m sorry, you’re not covered for that.’

Edwards: Right. A little too often it’s ‘you’re not covered for that.’ And unfortunately, there’s just too many Americans who currently prayer is their only form of health care.

Rachel Maddows Schools Noah Oppenheim

SilentPatriot, Crooks and Liars: Attention liberals and progressives: This is how you shut down Republican foreign policy talking points. During the “Face Off” segment on “Race for the White House” today, Rachel absolutely eviscerated every pre-packaged argument Noah Oppenheim had to offer about McCain’s supposed strong suit.

Here is just a small taste of the smackdown:

Maddow: “Noah, when it gets down to concrete issues, and when it gets down to making a judgment call, I think if people are looking at Bush and McCain in deciding to go after Osama bin Laden by invading and occupying for five years a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 — or — actually going after Osama bin Laden where he is, probably in Pakistan, I think people will probably go with the latter judgment.

Oppenheim: “Are you suggesting an invasion of Pakistan?”

Maddow: “He hasn’t said he would invade Pakistan. He said he would go after Osama bin Laden where he is instead of outsourcing the fight against al Qaeda to General Musharraf who happily took our billions of dollars worth military aid and then gave al Qaeda and the Taliban safe haven in the tribal regions. So go after bin Laden or fight Iraq? I’d take the former.”

Ouch. Remember when President Bush said this in his 2004 State of the Union address?:

“America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.”

The same people who defended President Bush and attacked Senator Kerry back then are now attacking Senator Obama for stating that, as President, his policy will be to pursue Osama bin Laden wherever he is, even if that means we have to go into Pakistan against Musharraf’s wishes. How is that possibly a controversial concept? Are these right-wingers really arguing that we need a “permission slip” in order to hunt down the man responsible for 3000+ Americans?

Thank the media gods for Rachel Maddow.

Send Karl Rove to Jail

Petition: We call on the the House Judiciary Committee to cite Rove with contempt for
failing to comply with a Congressional subpoena. Since Rove regards the
law with such contempt, it's high time the law and Congress hold him in contempt
as well. We demand the HJC let Rove know he can't decide which subpoenas
he obeys and which he ignores.

This sounds like a dream, doesn't it? Well, it's not. We have a unique opportunity right now to send Karl Rove to jail, but only if we take immediate action.

All we have to do is pressure the 40 members of the House Judiciary Committee, make them hold Rove in contempt and send him to jail. We've never had such a direct opportunity to hold Rove accountable. No, this is not enough punishment for his years and years of crimes, but it's a huge start, and will send a very clear message to the entire Bush administration.

Sign the petition here.

UPDATE: Don Siegelman just challenged McCain to compel Rove to testify.

MORE: Marcy Wheeler explains the Karl Rove situation:

• DOJ apparently doesn't know whether it told Fielding that Rove's "Official Duties" include witch hunts
• The significance of the "Official Duties" claim
• Why absolute immunity is so audacious
• Bush did NOT invoke executive privilege for Rove

Oops! White House Accidentally E-Mails to Reporters Story That Maliki Supports Obama Iraq Withdrawal Plan

Jake Tapper, ABC News: The White House this afternoon accidentally sent to its extensive distribution list a Reuters story headlined "Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan - magazine."

The story relayed how Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the German magazine Der Spiegel that "he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months … ‘U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,'" the prime minister said.

The White House employee had intended to send the article to an internal distribution list, ABC News' Martha Raddatz reports, but hit the wrong button.

The misfire comes at an odd time for Bush foreign policy, at a time when Obama's campaign alleges the president is moving closer toward Obama's recommendations about international relations -- sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, discussing a "general time horizon" for U.S. troop withdrawal and launching talks with Iran.

LSB: Ouch! That's has to smack, when you base your legitimacy (and legacy) on your foreign policy expertise and then inadvertently tell your entire press list the opposite party’s candidate is pursuing the policy you SHOULD have been pursuing all along. Damn that’s gotta hurt, especially coming so close on the heals of Obama calling for talks with Iran, your administration declaring those remarks 'an appeasement', and then your State Department actually does sit down with the Iranians when it is shamed into it by their EU counterparts. (Video of Sec. Rice confirming the flip-flop.) It must suck being the Bush administration when you see how a real president would handle the situation.

Nancy Pelosi: “Two oil men in the White House” are responsible for high oil prices

SilentPatriot, Crooks and Liars: Who knew Nancy Pelosi was such a straight-shooter? [LSB: Click the pic for the vid.] When Wolf Blitzer tries to pin part of the blame for the current energy crisis on the Democratic Congress, Pelosi shoots back by saying her House did everything it could to institute a sensible energy policy, only to have “run into a brick wall” in the form of Senate Republicans — you know, the ones who broke the filibuster record for a full term last year.

“The price of oil is… is attributed to two oil men in the White House and their protectors in the United States Senate.”

While it might be easy (and typically accurate) to blame everything on President Bush and Vice President Cheney, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to lay the current crisis at the White House’s doorstep. Sure, there are some uncontrollable market forces at work, but both Cheney and Bush are oil patch guys; it would be the height of naivete to assume that they would have an energy policy that didn’t benefit Big Oil.

From Day One, Dick Cheney was plotting how to take over Iraq oil fields. Before the war, it was obvious to everyone that the invasion or Iraq, and the instability it would caused in the region, would only drive prices up further. For all the lip service President Bush pays to his commitment to renewable energy, the fact is spending has been on the stagnant since the mid-1990’s.

What we really need is a leader with the wisdom to acknowledge the magnitude of the problem and the courage to tackle it head on. “Green Screen” John McCain is clearly not that leader.

McCain declares ‘we have succeeded’ in Iraq

Steve Benen, Crooks and Liars: Here’s a video of an informal press conference McCain held in Michigan.

The audio is a little tough to hear, so to clarify, McCain insisted that “we have succeeded” in Iraq. In fact, he said it multiple times: “I am happy to stand in front of you to tell you that this strategy has succeeded. It has succeeded. It has succeeded.”

(It reminds me of the time Marge Simpson told Bart that Springfield is “a part of us all. A part of us all. A part of us all.” She then explained it would help him remember and believe the line if she repeated it this way.)

OK, McCain probably misspoke again. He must have meant that he thinks Bush’s strategy is “succeeding,” not has “succeeded,” right?

Wrong. He’s now referring to Bush’s Iraq policy in the past tense, as if the war is over.

McCain added on the campaign bus: “I repeat my statement that we have succeeded in Iraq — not we are succeeding — we have succeeded in Iraq.”

Gotcha. It’s over. We won. The policy worked — not is working, but worked. Good to know.

In a political context, McCain had a series of rhetorical options. He could say that we will succeed in Iraq, but Americans have grown impatient. He could say that we’re in the process of succeeding, but that’s not quite good enough, either. So, McCain just made up his mind — we’ve already succeeded. We may not know it, and this victory may be limited to McCain’s over-active imagination, but it happened. Just trust him and don’t ask any questions.

Can we get out of Iraq, then? Apparently not: “The success that we have achieved is still fragile and could be reversed.”

I have to say, I thought “success” was going to look a little more successful, but maybe that’s just me.

McCain, like Bush, considers this “mission accomplished.” I guess neither want to be taken especially seriously.

NOTE: In this same informal McCain press conference (7/17/08 Grand Haven, MI) McCain commented on the unannounced timing of a high-security trip by Barack Obama to Iraq, "saying he believed his Democratic rival was going this weekend."

... Obama said last month he would go to both Iraq and Afghanistan soon. But his campaign has given no dates, seeking to cloak the trip in a measure of secrecy for security reasons.

"I believe that either today or tomorrow -- and I'm not privy to his schedule -- Sen. Obama will be landing in Iraq with some other senators" who make up a congressional delegation, McCain said...

John Aravosis, AmericaBlog.com: There's a reason these trips aren't announced in advance. We don't want to give our enemies in Iraq a heads up on when to attack the coming American dignitaries. It's beyond indiscrete. It's obscene that McCain would leak something like this. Imagine the uproar if any Democrat ever leaked details of an upcoming trip to Iraq by Bush or Cheney or McCain or any of that crowd. There'd be hell to pay. Just more evidence that McCain is no longer the level-handed man that many once thought him.

Psychology: Will it pay YOUR bills?

Nicole Belle, Crooks and Liars: Phil Gramm is officially gone from the McCain campaign, but not without a little whining of his own:

Former senator Phil Gramm announced last night that he has stepped down as cochairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign to end the “distraction” caused by his remarks the nation was filled with “whiners” who complain about the economy.

“It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Senator McCain on important economic issues facing the country,” Gramm said in a statement the McCain campaign issued. “That kind of distraction hurts not only Senator McCain’s ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country’s problems, it hurts the country.”

However, even if he is gone from the campaign, MoveOn PAC doesn’t want you to forget that Gramm’s policies live on in McCain’s economic platform.

McCain’s campaign co-chair Phil Gramm had to step down because of controversy over his comment that we were in the middle of a “mental recession.” But the truth is, John McCain threw Phil Gramm under the bus for saying, less artfully, what he himself has said repeatedly.

McCain’s crude Gorilla joke: 'It’s McCain Being Authentic'

John Amato, Crooks and Liars:

Olbermann repeats McCain’s Gorilla/Rape joke. McCain’s camp says that he’s just being himself.

“This kind of stuff is an example of McCain being McCain.”

Blogger Comments:

• If it were Obama telling such a joke back in 1986 (when he was in college and not a sitting member of the House of Representatives) he would be crucified.
• Bottom line: yes, it was simply a crude joke… but it was also not funny in the least (when is RAPE ever funny?). Let’s not forget about McCain calling his WIFE a C-NT. And also made a joke about Janet Reno being Chelsea Clinton’s father. This man is a total mysogynist. You’ve got to wonder what he really says behind closed doors about Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and any other woman in a leadership role.
• You would think that almost 8 years being embarrassed by Bush should be enough .
• Gee, if Obama told this “joke,” do you think it would get a little bit of coverage? Maybe on O’Reilly, Fox and Friends, etc?
• Whenever this sick old fuck gets cornered with something awful he’s said, he breaks out his best Ronald Reagan with the “I don’t recall” bullshit or he tells us to “move on”. And how many weeks did we spend on Obama’s “bitter” comments? This mean, stupid old fool is truly a worthless candidate.

Dubya's Turn

HYPOCRISY ALERT: McCain, who had London fundraiser with British Lord, says Obama's trip overseas is political

Joe Sudbay (DC), AmericaBlog.com: Remember this?:

McCain is already on the verge of breaking U.S. campaign finance laws by busting the spending cap. He's been having trouble raising money in the U.S., too. But, this borders on the absurd:

Sen. John McCain plans at least one campaign event on his week-long congressional trip to Europe and the Middle East: a March 20 fundraiser in London. An invitation sent out by the campaign says the luncheon will be held at Spencer House, St. James's Place, "by kind permission of Lord Rothschild OM GBE and the Hon Nathaniel Rothschild." Tickets to the invitation-only event cost $1,000 to $2,300. Attire is listed as "lounge suits."

Given that, McCain's latest swipe at Obama is even more absurd:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Thursday he believes
Democrat Barack Obama's upcoming trip to Europe is tantamount to holding
political rallies abroad.

So, it was okay for McCain to hold political fundraisers abroad? McCain's a hypocrite. But, the traditional media loves him, so he gets away with it.

HYPOCRISY ALERT: McCain Attended Zero Afghanistan Hearings In Last Two Years

HuffingtonPost.com: ABC News reports that McCain has attended zero of his Senate committee's six hearings on Afghanistan in the last two years:

The McCain campaign criticism of Sen. Barack Obama's hearing record on Capitol Hill led us to put the shoe on the other foot.

It turns out that presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, has attended even fewer Afghanistan-related Senate hearings over the past two years than Obama's one. Which is a nice way of saying, McCain, R-Ariz., the top Republican on the Senate Armed Service Committee, has attended zero of his committee's six hearings on Afghanistan over the last two years...

...The findings are surprising given the fact that the McCain campaign loudly criticized Obama this week for failing to schedule any hearings on Afghanistan in the last year and a half. Obama chairs the European Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has oversight of military operations in Afghanistan.

The American public believes the war in Afghanistan is far more essential to the war on terror than the war in Iraq: 51% believe the U.S. must win the war in Afghanistan to succeed in the war on terror, whereas only 34% feel the same about the Iraq war.

Magazine Covers We'd Like to See!

PFLAG Pissed Over McCain's Anti-Gay Adoption Comments

Joe.My.God.: From Sunday's New York Times interview with John McCain:

Question: President Bush believes that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt children. Do you agree with that?

Mr. McCain: I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption.

Q: Even if the alternative is the kid staying in an orphanage, or not having parents?

Mr. McCain: I encourage adoption and I encourage the opportunities for people to adopt children I encourage the process being less complicated so they can adopt as quickly as possible. And Cindy and I are proud of being adoptive parents.

Q: But your concern would be that the couple should a traditional couple?

Mr. McCain: Yes.

LSB: Even if someone in that traditional couple is a drug addict? (like Cindy McCain)

PFLAG responds:

“In a country where more than 125,000 children are waiting for foster parents, Senator McCain would deny loving homes to children who desperately need them simply because of an outdated prejudice about what a family may look like,” said Jody M. Huckaby, executive director of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). “We are disappointed and saddened that a public leader who is himself an adoptive father would deny the children in America’s foster care system the opportunity to thrive as part of a welcoming family. Love makes a family, but short-sighted positions like Senator McCain’s can certainly tear families apart, too.”

Obama: My Plan for Iraq

Barack Obama's Op-Ed in The New York Times: The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.

The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.

Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.

As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.

It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.

McCain Defends Czechoslovakia, A Non-Existent Country -- Again

Rachel Weiner, HuffingtonPost.com: At a press availability today, John McCain expressed concern about relations between Russia and a country that hasn't existed for quite some time. According to a rough pool report transcript, he said:

"I was concerned about a couple of steps that the Russian government took in the last several days. One was reducing the energy supplies to Czechoslovakia. Apparently that is in reaction to the Czech's agreement with us concerning missile defense, and again some of the Russian now announcement they are now retargeting new targets, something they abandoned at the end of the Cold War, is also a concern."

Czechoslovakia, of course, split into two separate countries in 1993.

It isn't the first time McCain has made this mistake, as TPM's Greg Sargent points out:

Around three months ago, McCain told Don Imus that he would "work closely with Czechoslovakia and Poland and other countries" to install the European Missile Defense System in Poland, according to the Democratic National Committee. (The slip-up was referenced elsewhere, too.)
And during a GOP debate in October 2007, McCain said: "The first thing I would do is make sure that we have a missile defense system in place in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and I don't care what his objections are to it."

There are more: in 1994, McCain suggested NATO be expanded to include Czechoslovakia. At a dinner in 1999, he "twice thanked the ambassador from 'Czechoslovakia' for his efforts," according to the Washington Post.

In fact, George Bush himself dinged McCain for this blunder back in the 2000 primary. Steve Clemons writes:

Second, before Republicans condemn Dems for being picky on this, let's not forget that in the 2000 campaign, when McCain also screwed up Czechoslovakia, it was none other than George W. Bush who said it deserved to be a campaign issue: "A guy gets up and quizzes me [on world leaders] ... but John McCain says something about the 'ambassador to Czechoslovakia.' Well, I know there is no Czechoslovakia [there's a Czech Republic and a Slovakia], but yet it didn't make the nightly national news."

This longstanding confusion persists despite McCain's numerous visits to both the Czech Republic and Slovakia (he described his 2001 meeting with Czech President Vaclav Havel as "an experience . . . I can tell my Grandchildren about.") In fact, the former U.S. ambassador to Slovakia endorsed McCain's candidacy for president. Maybe he should offer the candidate some geography lessons too.

Bush And Father Do Golf Fundraiser For McCain

Rachel Weiner, HuffingtonPost.com: George W. Bush famously claimed to have given up golf out of respect for soldiers in Iraq:

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in
chief playing golf," he said. "I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

But this great sacrifice has taken the backseat to a more urgent concern -- raising money for John McCain:

If you're a high-flying Republican, and you can afford to take next Monday off to fly to Maine, have we got a treat for you.

On that day, former President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush are hosting a high-dollar fundraiser for John McCain near their home in Kennebunkport.

According to a solicitation sent by the McCain camp, for the low, low price of $5,000, you can play a round of golf at Cape Arundel Golf Course, Bush's home course.

"Both President Bush and Governor Jeb Bush will be stopping by to greet the foursomes," the missive promises. "The course is reserved for this private group, and VIPs will be visiting during your round of golf. This event is a great way to end a weekend getaway, and we would be honored if you can attend."

LSB: I guess Bush doesn't feel he owes the families of the soldier lost in Iraq anything anymore. What a shithead!

Is Corruption In Afghanistan Somehow Worse Than Corruption in Washington, DC?

DownWithTyranny: Last week Bush signed a heinous piece of legislation that gives the Executive Branch unimaginable powers to spy on American citizens. It's straight out of Orwell's 1984, Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia, except it happened in the United States and enough Democrats joined the Republican Party to pass something that would make every patriotic American puke. One giant step towards fascism.

Friday night Air America's Peter B. Collins asked me to explain why so many members of Congress voted for this travesty. The simple, one-word explanation I told his audience: Bribery. Rampant, uncontrollable, unregulated corruption has so inundated our political system that the public takes for granted that most of our political class-- every single Republican without exception plus the whole Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- is unafraid to utterly sell out the Constitution and our liberties for a handful of cash.

The management of the big telecoms were frantic to make sure Congress acceded to Bush's vow to grant them-- the management of the big telecoms-- retroactive immunity for the laws they clearly broke in massive spying on the American public. So far this year they have laid out at least $6,249,940 in "donations" to political campaigns to make sure that happened. The two most guilty telecoms, AT&T and Verizon, handed out $3,017,654 and $1,443,344 (respectively) alone. And who was the biggest recipient? John McCain, of course, the most corrupt politician in America. They gave him $365,955. Obama symbolically voted against retroactive immunity in a doomed amendment by Chris Dodd but once that lost, he went on to vote for the bill (and feel dandy about the $220,789 in donations his "clean" campaign took in. So how, exactly, does his campaign differ from the criminal lobbyist filth that makes up John McCain For President?

But forget the presidential candidates for a moment. Who were the biggest recipients of bribes from the telecoms-- and no sane person could define these pay-offs as anything but bribes-- this year? First and foremost, the man who guided the bill through the Senate and made sure there were enough Democrats joining the GOP to guarantee passage and guarantee that Dodd's amendment would fail: Jay Rockefeller (D-WV-$51,500) and the man who guided the bill through the House and made sure there were enough Democrats joining the GOP to guarantee passage: Rahm Emanuel (D-IL-$49,950). After that came the regular suspects, a veritable hall of shame of corrupt political hacks from both parties who are always willing to sell their votes to corporate interests regardless of the detrimental effects it has on the constituents who theoretically employ them (but don't pay close attention). The worst of the worst (and keep in mind this is just this year's haul):

• Ted Stevens (R-AK-$41,400)
• Rick Boucher (D-VA-$36,700)
• Terry Lee (R-NE-$36,650)
• Susan Collins (R-ME-$35,850)
• Greg Walden (R-OR-$34,000)
• Mark Pryor (D-AR-$32,350)
• Cliff Stearns (R-FL-$31,000)
• Eric Cantor (R-VA-$30,200)
• Baron Hill (D-IN-$28,900)
• Max Baucus (D-MT-$28,000)
• Gordon Smith (R-OR-$27,750)
• Lindsey Graham (R-SC-$26,700)
• Roger Wicker (R-MS-$26,600)
• Chris Cannon (R-UT-$26,250)
• Nathan Deal (R-GA-$25,000)
• John Sununu (R-NH-$24,600)
• Zach Space (D-OH-$22,000)
• Ed Whitfield (R-KY-$21,500)
• Bart Stupak (D-MI-$20,800)
• Leonard Boswell (D-IA-$20,750)
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY-$20,250)

All of these corrupt politicians accepted large donations from the telecoms and then voted, in an obviously unconstitutional manner to grant retroactive immunity to the very people who authorized the pay-offs. Why am I mentioning this today. Well, the L.A. times has a story about Admiral Mike Mullen bitching about corruption in Afghanistan. I spent a couple years when I was younger living in Asia, quite a bit of it in Afghanistan. It is easy to define their social system as corrupt. I drove from Turkey to India and one word never changed: baksheesh. It could be as benign as a tip or as insidious as the police bribe I had to pay to get out of prison when the police found 50 kilos of the finest Mazar-i-Sharif hashish in my van. It's not nearly as insidious as Senator Susan Collins accepting $35,850 from the big telecoms in return for voting to let their chief executives off the hook for spying on the American people without lawful warrants. Many telecom companies were asked and told the Bush Regime their request was illegal and refused to go along. They didn't participate in the gigantic pay-offs to politicians like Susan Collins this year.

Afghan police, Mullen said, "have a history of corruption, and they've had challenges with this in every local area and district. Up until now, they haven't been trained very well, and so we start with a significant deficit, and it's going to take some time to catch up."

Mullen is known for straight talk.

I'll believe that when he has some straight talk with John McCain (R-AZ-$365,955), Barack Obama (D-IL-$220,789), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV-$51,500), Rahm Emanuel (D-IL-$49,950), and Ted Stevens (R-AK-$41,400).

John McCain: 300 Economists Support My Economic Plan…NOT!!

SilentPatriot, Crooks and Liars: Sam Graham-Felsen of myBarackObama.com writes in:

For the third time in two days, Senator McCain repeated the false claim that his economic plan has been endorsed by 300 economists.

FACT: Many of the 300 economists don’t support McCain’s whole economic agenda. On Monday, John McCain’s campaign released a statement signed by 300 economists who “enthusiastically support” his “Jobs for America” economic plan, providing a heavyweight testimonial to the presumptive Republican nominee’s “broad and powerful economic agenda.” There’s just one problem. Upon closer inspection, it seems a good many of those economists don’t actually support the whole of McCain’s economic agenda. And at least one doesn’t even support McCain for president. In interviews with more than a dozen of the signatories, Politico found that, far from embracing McCain’s economic plan, many were unfamiliar with - or downright opposed to - key details. [Politico, 7/9/08, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11618.html]

FALSE McCAIN CLAIM: “And by the way my economic plan has been signed on to by 5 Nobel laureates and by over 300 economists, so I have my own supporters as well and again the Congressional Budget Office and others of do their calculations on static economic conditions, i don’t except that.” [McCain tele-town hall, 7/10/08]

FALSE McCAIN CLAIM: “Our economic plan has been supported by 300 economists and five Nobel laureates.” [McCain avail, 7/9/08]

FALSE McCAIN CLAIM: “I’m saying that there is five Nobel laureates and 300 economists who think my economic plan is a good one.” [CBS Evening News, 7/9/08]

When John McCain and reality square off, reality wins. Every time.

The Chris Matthews Show: Do McCain’s Campaign Shake Ups Equate To A Shaky Presidency?

Nicole Belle, Crooks and Liars: John McCain’s campaign is struggling, and this was a particularly hard week for them. But never fear, McCain’s Media is here to spin this as well as possible for the MaverickMan. After all, there’s no need for them to go over and over ad nauseam all of McCain’s verbal gaffes from this week. They did that during the Democratic primary when they talked about Clinton’s Bosnia story and Obama’s relationship with Rev. Wright for weeks on end. It’s so done. Let’s instead focus on him bringing in new staff. But don’t look too hard at the fact that he’s brought in the people from Karl Rove’s shop that destroyed his candidacy in 2000, because that might indicate some sort of desperation for the dirty politics that Rove is so famous for using. So let’s invent a more mild concern, like a messy desk analogy for his management style. And we all know that can be turned around to be a positive, since Nixon had a neat desk. But above all, let’s ask if this is a fair question to evaluate a supposed McCain presidency. (Click the pic for the vid.)

MATTHEWS: NY Times reporter Adam Nagourney wrote this week that quote even former McCain associates think voters now might be getting an early glimpse of the messy, unstructured way in which McCain and his White House might be managed. Howard, is this a fair problem for people to be worried about, staff shakeups, firing people, layering people, bringing in new bosses to run the campaign?

FINEMAN: Well, John McCain is not a systems thinker. He’s a leader by personal will and force of personality. He’s gathered a sort of constellation of people around him. Nobody ever actually leaves the orbit, it’s just different planets fly closer at different times.

MATTHEWS: Well, who are these former staffers that keep dumping on him in the NY Times?

FINEMAN: There are a couple who have escaped…who had escaped gravitational pull.

McCain Media, hard at work to make you not think at all.

Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) goes blank trying to find differences between McCain and Bush’s economic policies.

John Amato, Crooks and Liars: Obama ran an ad calling McCain—McSame in the economy. Republican Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina went blank trying to think up any differences between John McCain and George Bush’s economic policies when Blitzer asked him to name some. After stammering for a minute, he brought up NAFTA? Say, what? Blitzer then said they had no differences on NAFTA. Oh, and then Sanford mentioned McSame’s opposition to earmarks. That’s sure going to cut your gas prices. (Click the pic for the vid.)

Blitzer: Are there any significant economic differences between what the Bush administration has put forward over these many years as opposed to John McCain’s support?

Sanford: Yea, I mean for instance take, you know, ummm, ahhh, take for instance the issue of, ahhhh... (knocks on table) I’m drawing a blank. I hate it when I do that, particularly on TV. Take for instance the contrast between NAFTA. I mean, I think the bigger issue is credibility in where one is coming from. I mean, to that position are they consistent where they come from? John McCain has consistently stood against earmarks throughout his tenure in the US Senate. Regrettably, the President has not been exactly busy with the veto pen.

Blitzer: Let me get back to, you raised the issue of NAFTA. He’s a huge supporter of free trade John McCain. The Bush administration supports free trade. I don’t see a big difference between the two.

Sanford: No, I was going to go to a point, I was going to go to a point which is what you’d want is consistency with regards to that position.

Blitzer: that’s a major difference between Obama and the President, but as far as NAFTA is concerned McCain and Bush are on the same page.

Sanford: They are—for free trade.

What an embarrassment. Sanford started out by saying McCain was against the Bush/NAFTA position and then said they were the same. Thanks for justifying Obama’s new ad. Sanford couldn’t think of any because there really aren’t any. He just Gramm’d himself…

LSB: So sorry, Gov. Sanford, but your try-out for McCain's VP is now over - and you're out!

New 'Ironic' New Yorker Cover Depicting Conspiracists' Nightmare of Real Obamas

Jake Tapper, Political Punch: The sophisticates at The New Yorker have come up with a cover that is sure to get the magazine a lot of attention. Negative attention. From their friends.

An illustration by Barry Blitt depicts Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and his wife Michelle in the Oval Office, revealing their "true" selves: Michelle is in full revolutionary garb, an enormous afro making her look like a millennial Angela Davis, holding an automatic weapon and wearing military pants.

In the cartoon Michelle is giving dap, or fist-bumping, with her husband who is wearing a turban and is dressed in garb perhaps more appropriate for a madrassa in Lahore than the Oval Office.

A painting of Osama bin Laden hangs above the fireplace, where the American flag is being burned. ...

Said Obama [spokesman], Bill Burton:

"The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

Knowing the liberal politics of the magazine, I believe the magazine's staff when they say the illustration is meant ironically, as a parody of the caricature some conservatives (and some supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.) are painting of the Obamas.

But it's still fairly incendiary, at least as these things go. I wonder what the reaction would be were it the Weekly Standard or the National Review putting such an illustration on their covers.

Intent factors into these matters, of course, but no Upper East Side liberal -- no matter how superior they feel their intellect is -- should assume that just because they're mocking such ridiculousness, the illustration won't feed into the same beast in emails and other media. It's a recruitment poster for the right-wing. ...

LSB: Hilarious! I can't wait until the magazine turns its artists loose on McCain. Won't it be funny to see John and Cindy in their adulterous boudoir, with Cindy popping the pills she stole from her charity, and the senator giving the starting line-up of the Dallas Cowboys (his favorite football team - at least while he's in Dallas) to the North Vietnamese, and all the while McCain's first family is on the other side of the door? What a riot! And surely the Radical Right can’t have a problem with that kind of image - it's just satire afterall. Sheesh! Obama not only has to run against McCain, but the media as well.

Church Cancels Teen Gun Giveaway

Channel 5, KOCO.com: An Oklahoma church canceled a controversial gun giveaway for teenagers at a weekend youth conference.

Windsor Hills Baptist had planned to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle until one of the event's organizers was unable to attend.

The church’s youth pastor, Bob Ross, said it’s a way of trying to encourage young people to attend the event. The church expected hundreds of teenagers from as far away as Canada.

“We have 21 hours of preaching and teaching throughout the week,” Ross said.

A video on the church Web site shows the shooting competition from last year’s conference. A gun giveaway was part of the event last year. This year, organizers included it in their marketing.

“I don’t want people thinking ‘My goodness, we’re putting a weapon in the hand of somebody that doesn’t respect it who are then going to go out and kill,'” said Ross. “That’s not at all what we’re trying to do.”

Ross said the conference isn’t all about guns, but rather about teens finding faith.

Friday evening, Ross said the gun giveaway had been canceled. Pastor emeritus Jim Vineyard, who ran the event, injured his foot and wouldn’t be able to attend. The gun giveaway was also removed from the church Web site.

Ross said the church would give the gun away next year instead. He said the church spent $800 buying the gun for the promotion.

LSB: Nothing says PRAISE THE LORD like an assault weapon! I was not raised in a rural community and my family has never owed a firearm, but still - no one anywhere along the way thought there might be something odd about this type of church promotion, or that spending $800 of church donations for an assault weapon for a teenager might be problematic? Really, no one? Score one for the NRA!

U.S., Iraq scale down negotiations over forces

Karen DeYoung, WashingtonPost.com: U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.

In place of the formal status-of-forces agreement negotiators had hoped to complete by July 31, the two governments are now working on a "bridge" document, more limited in both time and scope, that would allow basic U.S. military operations to continue beyond the expiration of a U.N. mandate at the end of the year.

The failure of months of negotiations over the more detailed accord -- blamed on both the Iraqi refusal to accept U.S. terms and the complexity of the task -- deals a blow to the Bush administration's plans to leave in place a formal military architecture in Iraq that could last for years.

Although President Bush has repeatedly rejected calls for a troop withdrawal timeline, "we are talking about dates," acknowledged one U.S. official close to the negotiations. Iraqi political leaders "are all telling us the same thing. They need something like this in there. . . . Iraqis want to know that foreign troops are not going to be here forever." (more)

LSB: You know Cheney-Bush are pissed with themselves that they pushed for free elections in Iraq a few years ago. Now they have to live with those freely elected officials. (Now who's going to be watching out for the oil interests of Bushco?) Electing Obama is paramount, as we don't need a McCain administration negotiating this deal - he wants U.S. forces in Iraq for 100 years.

Packers GM, Coach Say No To Brett Favre's Release Request

Chris Jenkins, HuffingtonPost.com: The Packers aren't about to let Brett Favre become a free agent. And while he's now free to return to Green Bay for another season, there's no guarantee he'll be the Packers' starting quarterback if he does.

In an interview with The Associated Press Saturday, Packers general manager Ted Thompson and coach Mike McCarthy said they don't plan to grant Favre the release he is seeking from his contract and are committed to Aaron Rodgers as their starter. ...

Favre, who led the Packers to a Super Bowl title after the 1996 season, held a tearful news conference to announce his retirement March 6. Favre has made high drama out of his waffling over retirement in the past several offseasons, but it seemed to be for real this time.

... if Favre wanted to play for the Packers, he had the chance when he told them a few weeks after his tearful goodbye news conference that he was having second thoughts. With Thompson and McCarthy preparing to board a private plane to fly to Mississippi and seal the deal on a comeback, all Favre had to do was say yes.

He didn't. (more)

LSB: I don't follow sports that closely and rarely post on a sports story, but I read this and thought, 'Good for them!' During those years since the '96 Superbowl win when they might have looked elsewhere for a winning QB, the franchise stuck with Favre. When he announced his retirement, the franchise was still willing to stick with him for another season - despite his "advancing years." Now, as summer camps are starting and Favre feels the yearn and Green Bay has made plans to move forward, he's changed his mind and wants to be let out of his contract. After all the franchise has done for him, Favre was willing to toss their loyalty to him for another chance to grab the gold ring. It's time team owners are making their players stick to their contracts and show their over-priced talent that they can't do anything they want, whenever they want. Favre has had his time. Time to move along.

Pakistan: US Not Allowed To Search For Bin Laden

John Heilprin and Peter James Spielmann, HuffingtonPost.com: Pakistan's top diplomat said Saturday there are no U.S. or other foreign military personnel on the hunt for Osama bin Laden in his nation, and none will be allowed in to search for the al-Qaida leader.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi (pictured) said his nation's new government has ruled out such military operations, covert or otherwise, to catch militants.

"Our government's policy is that our troops, paramilitary forces and our regular forces are deployed in sufficient numbers. They are capable of taking action there. And any foreign intrusion would be counterproductive," he said Saturday. "People will not accept it. Questions of sovereignty come in."

The United States has grown increasingly frustrated as al-Qaida, the Taliban and other militants thrive in Pakistan's remote areas and in neighboring Afghanistan, and has offered U.S. troops to strike at terror networks. Critics in Washington also have expressed frustration with the new Pakistani government's pursuit of peace deals in the region.

Bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere along the rugged and lawless Afghan-Pakistan border region.

Pakistan's newly elected civilian government is negotiating with tribal elders to secure peace with militants along the Afghan border in hopes of curbing a surge in violence. It is a step back from the heavy-handed tactics pursued by the previous government led by supporters of President Pervez Musharraf. (more)

LSB: With friends like this... Although, to be fair, would the U.S. accept the reverse - allowing another government loose within our borders with all sorts military hardware to hunt their terrorists? Still, we've been supporting this puppet regime for years and have been promoting their partnership in the war on terror. You know this isn't making ("Vice") President Cheney very happy.

Meet Obama’s new travel partner

The Carpetbagger Report: There have been rumors all week that Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) might hit the campaign trail with Barack Obama. I expected that might include a rally in Nebraska or something.

That’s not quite what these two had in mind.

The buzz this week that Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of
Nebraska is planning to join Sen. Barack Obama on an up-coming visit to Iraq is correct, two sources with knowledge of the trip confirmed Friday. […]

While it is standard practice for such trips — known as CODELS, or congressional delegations — to be bipartisan, in this highly charged election year it is likely to raise eyebrows that the retiring Nebraskan senator — a prominent Iraq War critic — is the Republican expected to join the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee on what is sure to be a closely watched visit to the region.

Adding to the intrigue is the fact that Sen. Hagel has not yet endorsed a candidate in the race, and he has offered kind words for both Obama and Republican rival Sen. John McCain, although the two Republicans differ greatly on the war. […]

In a Tuesday interview with MSNBC, senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod also offered kind words for the Nebraska senator. “Sen. Hagel, I think, has been very courageous in speaking out on this issue of Iraq and the misguided policies that we’ve had from the beginning.”

Quite right. No Republican in America has been as solid or as reliable in his criticism of the Bush/McCain Iraq policy as Chuck Hagel. Plus, as Andrew Sullivan added, “How f*ck-you to McCain-Lieberman is that?”

Of course, this will probably renew speculation about Hagel joining the Democratic ticket. He said a few weeks ago that he’d “consider” such an offer, but I really don’t think it’s going to happen.

Douchebag Quote of the Day

ThinkProgress: During the last two days, the McCain campaign has gone into damage control over top economic adviser Phil Gramm’s belief that America has “become a nation of whiners” and is only “in a mental recession.” McCain tried to disavow the remarks by saying that “Phil Gramm does not speak for me.” But McCain’s distancing doesn’t change the fact that Gramm is considered his “econ brain.” McCain thinks so highly of Gramm that he was even the chairman of his failed 1996 presidential bid.

As it turns out, this is not the first time that Gramm, a self-styled “foot soldier of the Reagan revolution,” has advocated controversial views on the economy. In the past, he has criticized public works projects, the existence of a minimum wage, and the federal welfare program. Here are some highlights from McCain’s “econ brain,” as compiled by the Houston Chronicle [2/20/95]:

• “Until we are on a pay-as-you-go budget, until we have stopped inflation, I do not intend to support any public works project in the United States.” — Gramm, 10/9/75
• “Minimum wage laws tend to cut the bottom rung off the economic ladder. The plain truth is there should be no minimum wage law in this great land of free enterprise.” — Gramm, 5/17/89
• “We’re the only nation in the world where all our poor people are fat.” — Gramm, 9/6/81

In addition, Gramm is an advocate of the flat tax and wants to cut taxes on capital gains. [Concord Monitor, 9/26/96] As the Wonk Room has noted, such capital gains cuts would mostly benefit millionaires. Joe Conason writes on Salon that Gramm’s deregulation policies “helped spur the mortage crisis.”

But it is not only on the economy that Gramm is out of touch. During a 1984 Senate debate, he criticized his opponent’s stance on gay rights by saying, “I do not want homosexuals teaching my third-grade boy.” [Houston Chronicle, 2/20/95] He also reveled in the defeat of Hillary Clinton’s health care bill by saying that it would pass only over his “cold, dead, political body.” He then called it “deader than Elvis.”

This is all from a man that John McCain said has a “rare intellect that grasps complex issues and explains them to others in plain language [Washington Times, 2/27/95].”

LSB: Sadly, another Republican asshole from Texas. It's embarassing!

Red State Update: Obama's Balls

Jackie and Dunlap on Jesse Jackson and Obama's nuts.

Who has the Secret Service been shielding with its refusal to release visitor logs?

David Stout, New York Times: The Bush administration was dealt a setback on Friday in its efforts to keep records of White House visitors under wraps when an appeals court refused to throw out a lawsuit seeking access to the material.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that it would be premature to consider reversal of a lower court ruling last December that the White House visitor logs were public records, and that the administration should stop withholding them from scrutiny by outside groups. ...

The appeals court conclusion arose from a ruling Dec. 17 by Federal District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in a suit brought by a left-leaning watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has been trying to determine how often several conservative religious leaders entered the White House during the Bush administration.

Judge Lamberth rejected administration arguments that the visitor records should be shielded under executive privilege. “Because the Secret Service creates, uses and relies on, and stores visitor records, they are under its control,” Judge Lamberth wrote. “Knowledge of these visitors would not disclose presidential communications or shine a light on the president’s or vice president’s policy deliberations.”

The appeals court said that “it is entirely possible that the government will never have to turn over a single document” because orf the possibility that the Secret Service might prevail under exemptions spelled out in the federal Freedom of Information Act. In any event, the appeals court said, the watchdog group’s request is narrowly drawn and should not create a burden for the Secret Service.

The White House had no immediate comment, and unless there is a final decision in the next six months, the issue will become academic, since President Bush will leave the White House in January. ...

LSB: Wow! Maybe now we'll find out who in the White House was hiring Republican male prostitute Guckert/Gannon for sleep overs!

Bush’s G8 Farewell Message: “Goodbye From The World’s Biggest Polluter”

SilentPatriot, Crooks and Liars: In case you needed to know why America’s image abroad is in the toilet, look no further than ridiculous quotes like this from our Disgrace-in-Chief.

Telegraph:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, is there any doubt left that this guy is an utter clown? I meant that rhetorically, of course.

Ex-Bush spokesman Tony Snow dies of cancer

Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press: Tony Snow, a conservative writer and commentator who cheerfully sparred with reporters in the White House briefing room during a stint as President Bush's press secretary, has died of colon cancer, Fox News reported Saturday. Snow was 53 years old.

Snow, who served as the first host of the television news program "Fox News Sunday" from 1996 to 2003, would later say that in the Bush administration he was enjoying "the most exciting, intellectually aerobic job I'm ever going to have."

Snow was working for Fox News Channel and Fox News Radio when he replaced Scott McClellan as press secretary in May 2006 during a White House shake-up. Unlike McClellan, who came to define caution and bland delivery from the White House podium, Snow was never shy about playing to the cameras.

With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster's good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook — if not always a command of the facts — he became a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses.

He served just 17 months as press secretary, a tenure interrupted by his second bout with cancer. In 2005 doctors had removed his colon and he began six months of chemotherapy. In March 2007 a cancerous growth was removed from his abdominal area and he spent five weeks recuperating before returning to the White House.

He resigned as Bush's chief spokesman six months later, in September 2007, citing not his health but a need to earn more than the $168,000 a year he was paid in the government post. In April, he joined CNN as a commentator.

In that year and a half at the White House, Snow brought partisan zeal and the skills of a seasoned performer to the task of explaining and defending the president's policies. During daily briefings, he challenged reporters, scolded them and questioned their motives as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing.

Critics suggested that Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation. He was the first press secretary, by his own accounting, to travel the country raising money for Republican candidates. (More)

LSB: Not to speak too ill of the guy, but Snow was an asshole. (No pun intended, given the way he died.) Now we'll have an unending number of Republican assholes deifying him and FAUX-News will spend the next week idolizing him the way NBC did with Russert. (At least I won't have to watch it, as I have FAUX-News blocked on my cable.) Will McCain show up at the wake at the same time as the President? Will Obama be invited to this state funeral? Oh, the chest beatings and lamentations that will occur for another vociferous enabler of this pathetic president! Sympathies to the family, but I'll not shed a tear for this asshole.

25% of the world's corals are facing extinction

Catherine Brahic, NewScientist.com: Within one generation, diving on coral reefs could be a very rare holiday opportunity. The first comprehensive review of tropical coral species reveals that over one-quarter reef-building coral species already face extinction.

This means corals join frogs and toads as the most threatened group of animal species on the planet.

There are 845 known species of corals that build reefs and live in symbiosis with algae. Not enough is known about 141 of these to determine how threatened they are. But of the 704 remaining species, scientists say 32.8% are at risk of extinction. ...

Humans directly threaten corals by dumping fertilisers and sewage into the oceans and by overfishing with destructive methods. ...

In 1998, a world-wide coral bleaching triggered by unusually warm seas irreversibly destroyed 16% of the coral reef area worldwide.

Coral reefs are home to 25% of all fish species, and as many as 2 million species of animals and plants.

In this sense, they are the tropical rainforests of the oceans and the 1998 bleaching event can be compared to irreversibly wiping out 240 million hectares of forest – equivalent to half of the Amazon. ...

"Conserving corals will require doing more than addressing the causes of climate change, but the benefits will be considerable. Reef fish feed more than 1 billion people in the developing world and the overall value of coral reefs is estimated at more than $30 billion a year. (more)

Flashback: 2004 Bush Interview that was Banned in America

Logan Murphy, Crooks and Liars: This 2004 interview should be required viewing for every journalism student. I admit that I had not seen this video until today, but apparently over a million people already have and I hope that millions more will watch it as well. If the American press corps and our corporate media had asked tough questions like this of President Bush and his administration during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that public support for it would have plummeted. This interview was done in ‘04, but was never aired in the U.S., and it’s quite possible that it could have affected the outcome of the presidential election that year. Imagine the outcome if a journalist dared to interview John McCain in this way today.

The Huffington Post:

While surfing the net on ‘Stumble‘, I came across an interview with President Bush on Irish television that caused a bit of a storm in 2004. The interview conducted by the tenacious Carol Coleman of Radio Television Ireland was not aired on American television, and Bush’s press officers apparently complained vociferously about the rigorous questioning.

The video shows Bush at the absolute peak of his arrogance — convinced of his own rhetoric about Iraq, flooded with confidence from international subservience to American power, and high off a crushing military victory that reinforced his childish fantasies of American power and preeminence.

The problem was, Coleman was having none of it, and what transpired was a unique insight into the warped brain of the least respected and most hated president in the history of the United States. Read on…

Swimmer to Compete in Beijing Despite Cancer

New York Times: When Eric Shanteau touched the wall second at the U.S. Olympic trials, he was overcome by the joy of reaching a lifelong goal. The celebration didn't last long.

Shanteau had barely locked up his trip to Beijing when he was forced to deal with a gut-wrenching choice: Should he have surgery for the testicular cancer hardly anyone knew about? Or, should he put it off for another month so he could swim at his first Olympics? ...

He's putting off surgery until after the Olympics because it would keep him out of the water for at least two weeks, ruining his Beijing preparations. The 24-year-old Georgia native will be monitored closely over the next month by U.S. Olympic team doctors and vows to withdraw if there's any sign his cancer is spreading.

''If I didn't make the team, the decision would have been easy: Go home and have the surgery,'' said Shanteau, who grew up in suburban Atlanta. ''I made the team, so I had a hard decision. But, by no means am I being stupid about this.'' ...

Seeking out advice from team doctors and other outside experts, Shanteau came up with own plan. He will have his blood tested once a week and a CT scan done every two weeks through the Olympics, hoping that will be enough to keep a handle on the disease.

''If something comes up abnormal,'' he said, ''then that's kind of a barrier I shouldn't cross.'' ...

It was found after Shanteau noticed an abnormality and was finally persuaded by his girlfriend to see a doctor in Austin, where he trains on a star-studded team that includes Hansen, Ian Crocker and Aaron Peirsol. ...

On June 19, exactly one week before he was scheduled to leave for the trials, Shanteau heard that awful word.

Cancer.

''It almost numbed me,'' he said. ''I'll remember that day for the rest of my life. Talk about a life-changing experience. That's as big a one as you can have, I think. You're changed for the rest of your life.''

If everything had gone according to expected script in Omaha, Shanteau would have already gone through surgery and be on the road to recovery. But the improbable happened in the 200 breaststroke, where Hansen -- considered a lock to make the team -- faded badly on the final lap. Scott Spann powered by to win the race, and Shanteau passed Hansen as well to claim the second spot on the team.

Shanteau was going to the Olympics.

But his thoughts quickly shifted to the cancer. ...

According to the National Cancer Institute, testicular cancer is relatively rare, accounting for 1 percent of male cancer cases in the U.S. It's often diagnosed in younger men. About 8,000 men are diagnosed and 390 die from the disease each year.

The cancer is usually slow to spread and highly treatable, but follow-up care is extremely important because of the risk of recurrence, the NCI said. Surgery to remove the affected testicle is the most common form of treatment. (More)

LSB: Several years ago, after my father had surgery for prostate cancer, I became familiar with an organization in the North Texas area called Team Nuts. "Team Nuts is a Dallas-based marathon team of testicular and prostate cancer survivors and supporters who have raised more than $200,000 for cancer treatment, prevention, and awareness. The group runs marathons to raise funds for and awareness about prostate and testicular cancer." If there isn't a group like this in your area, start one. Although not nearly as big as the Komen Foundation and their Race for the Cure, Team Nuts is doing a lot to raise awareness of male cancers in our community. If your area doesn’t have an organization like this, please contact them for information about starting a chapter.

“Tight” Race

TIME magazine recently asked fashion guru Tim Gunn about which potential first wife he prefers, Michelle Obama or Cindy McCain. His reply: "Oh, no contest, Michelle Obama. From a fashion viewpoint, Michelle Obama looks so comfortable and relaxed in her style and her fashion, and she exudes that. She has a presence that gives you confidence in her. Cindy McCain looks like someone has twisted her pony tail into a knot and tried to give her a face lift."

LSB: Snap!

Anti-Gay Alabama A.G. Caught Being Gay (Allegedly)

Wonkette: This may come as a shock, but a prominent anti-homosexual Republican attorney general has apparently been caught having homosexual sex intercourse with his homosexual gay male assistant. Bonus: The dude’s wife caught him, in their bed. This is the rumor that the AG’s office has officially denied, so now of course everybody is spilling the sordid details.

AG in question is Troy King, who, of course, is only interested in outlawing homosexuality and sex toys. His gay lover is either a college “buddy,” or a very young youngster and “Homecoming King” from Troy University. What are the odds of a dude named Troy King getting caught in bed with a Homecoming King from Troy University? This seems like a wacky sitcom plot, on a gay porn channel. (Is this what that Will & Grace was about?)

Some of the comments left at Wonkette:

• wonderfulwonderful: No way. This is unprecedented.
• Casse-toi pauvre con: Wait? A bed!? Not a truck stop or a bathroom stall? What a conservative.
• Eyegoneblack: Remember when things like this came as a shock? Yeah, me neither.
• Doglessliberal: When does something move beyond cliché into guarantee? He is 1) against homosexual gay sex, 2) Republican, and 3) married; thus he is 4) gay, 5) will be caught at it, and 6) he will repent and ask God to make him a non-homosexual gay man and everything will be fine.

Rove Avoids Subpoena by Fleeing the Country

ThinkProgress.org: This morning, Karl Rove refused to appear before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about the politicization of the Justice Department, despite a subpoena. During the hearing, Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) revealed that Rove had not only skipped out of the hearing, but had skipped out of the entire country.

When ThinkProgress contacted Rove’s lawyer, his office confirmed that Rove was out of the country “on trip scheduled long before the subpoena was sent.” Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) said Rove’s attorney “never mentioned” this trip to the committee. Rove’s bogus claims of executive privilege were rejected by the Committee as “not valid” by a 7-1 vote. The committee gave Rove five days to comply with the subpoena.

Update: emptywheel notes Bush Did NOT Invoke Executive Privilege for Rove.

LSB: Not to worry. Just as Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton ignored Congressional subpoenas without repercussions, this toothless Congress will once again cave to this lowlife. Rove will continue to thumb his nose at the rule of law for a long time to come.

Bush: No Greehouse Gas Regulation Until I'm Gone

Juliet Eilperin and R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post: The Bush administration has decided not to take any new steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions before the president leaves office, despite pressure from the Supreme Court and broad accord among senior federal officials that new regulation is appropriate now.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce today that it will seek months of further public comment on the threat posed by global warming to human health and welfare -- a matter that federal climate experts and international scientists have repeatedly said should be urgently addressed.

The Supreme Court, in a decision 15 months ago that startled the government, ordered the EPA to decide whether human health and welfare are being harmed by greenhouse gas pollution from cars, power plants and other sources, or to provide a good explanation for not doing so. But the administration has opted to postpone action instead, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

To defer compliance with the Supreme Court's demand, the White House has walked a tortured policy path, editing its officials' congressional testimony, refusing to read documents prepared by career employees and approved by top appointees, requesting changes in computer models to lower estimates of the benefits of curbing carbon dioxide, and pushing narrowly drafted legislation on fuel-economy standards that officials said was meant to sap public interest in wider regulatory action.

The decision to solicit further comment overrides the EPA's written recommendation from December. Officials said a few senior White House officials were unwilling to allow the EPA to state officially that global warming harms human welfare. Doing so would legally trigger sweeping regulatory requirements under the 45-year-old Clean Air Act, one of the pillars of U.S. environmental protection, and would cost utilities, automakers and others billions of dollars while also bringing economic benefits, EPA's analyses found.

"They argued that this increase in regulation should be on the next president's record," not Bush's, said a participant in the lengthy interagency debate, referring principally to officials in the office of Vice President Cheney, on the White House Council on Environmental Quality, on the National Economic Council and in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Several EPA officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that throughout the process, White House officials instructed the agency to change their calculations with the aim of reducing the "social cost of carbon," a regulatory term that reflects the economic burdens stemming from greenhouse gas emissions. (More)

Ten Campaign Fiascos In One Week: The Week That Should Have Ended McCain's Presidential Hopes

Max Bergmann, HuffingtonPost.com: This is the week that should have effectively ended John McCain's efforts to become the next president of the United States. But you wouldn't know it if you watched any of the mainstream media outlets or followed political reporting in the major newspapers.

During this past week: McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made -- TWICE. All this and it is not even Friday! Yet watching and reading the mainstream press you would think McCain was having a pretty decent political week, I mean at least Jesse Jackson didn't say anything about him.

But let's unpack McCain's week in a little more detail.

McCain distorts his record on veterans benefits

LSB: A war hero, maybe - a liar, for sure! Why does the majority of the press continue to give McCain a pass on these outrageous claims?

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)

LSB: Just because every now and then I need to lighten up!

NPR.org: Matt Harding has gained a cult following for making and posting YouTube videos of himself in various exotic locales — dancing badly.

Harding ditched his job as a video game designer in 2003 to backpack around Asia. The recordings of his international jigging soon gained him Internet fame. Corporate sponsorship followed, funding more travels and new dancing videos.

In 2007, with backing from a gum company, Harding announced his intention to circle the globe again. He received more than 20,000 invitations from fans around the world to come dance with them in their hometowns. He took them up on their offers and roped others he encountered on his travels into boogieing with him as well.

The video Harding made from these travels, of communal bad dancing, went instantly viral when it was posted on YouTube at the end of June. Fueled by blog postings and e-mail forwards, the video garnered more than 3 million views its first week up.

We talk with the Internet sensation here:

So who are you besides the crazy dancing guy?

My name is Matt Harding. I live in Seattle and I used to work as a video game designer. But it's been a few years now since I've had any employment that didn't involve dancing badly.

How did the idea evolve for this latest video?

I realized my dancing isn't terribly interesting and it was getting kind of old. My favorite clips have always involved dancing with other people, so I decided to make that the focus. I just think it's usually pretty entertaining to see what people do when they're put on camera and told to act ridiculous.

You got more than 3 million views on YouTube within a week of posting this video. What is it about your video that you think resonates with people?

Well, what I'm doing is fairly universal. It's one of those things that all humans do and all humans enjoy watching. Music and dancing. Those are two big ones. Sex is a third. I left that out.

I think people are looking to be reminded that we are all the same and essentially good.

What did the planning involve to pull this off, and how long did it take you?

The video looks and feels spontaneous, but of course there was an enormous amount of work involved in creating that spontaneity.

Melissa Nixon, my girlfriend, produced the video with me. She organized the 40 or so dancing events we held around the world. I have a list of over 20,000 people who've contacted me about dancing in the video. She wrote to locals in each city I visited and worked with them to pick an ideal meeting location that people could get to easily and where we could dance without getting in trouble. She also managed the invite lists and sent out all the mass e-mails.

That system worked well for modern cities where lots of people write to me. Then there were places like Madagascar and Zambia where I don't get any e-mail. In those places, I would sometimes visit schools and make small donations in exchange for some time with the kids. Getting them to dance with me was never very hard.

And sometimes things happened that were totally unplanned. I shot the clip in Fiji in all of five minutes. I was driving along the coast and I saw a bunch of kids playing in the ocean. It felt a little weird, but I pulled over and thought "I'm going to be kicking myself for days if I don't go out and see if those kids want to be in the video." They didn't need much convincing. As soon as they saw themselves on the display screen, they were ecstatic. It's one of my favorite clips in the video.

The video took 14 months to make. I spent about half that time traveling and the other half at home, recuperating.

Who or what inspires this dance? Do you have a name for the dance?

Nope. It's just what my body does.

How did you pick your locations?

For this video, a lot of the locations were determined by where I get e-mail from. If I thought I could draw a good crowd, I went there. It was a mixture of that and my natural curiosity about places like Tonga, Bhutan and Papua New Guinea.

You've done this dancing-around-the-world shtick before, but how did the dynamic change with so many other people involved?

If it was just me dancing in front of famous monuments, it would've gotten old a long time ago. Dancing with other people is a lot more fun, and I'm able to feed off their energy. It kept me going and it kept me excited for each new event.

Any fun or interesting anecdotes from your trip?

The dance in Tokyo with the girls dressed in French maid outfits.

When I went to Japan, a local talk show invited me on and they hosted me while I was there. One of the producers took me around for a couple days. He asked if I wanted to go to something called Maidu coffee. I asked what that was. He explained that the waitresses dress up in French maid costumes and serve you coffee.

"What else do they do?" I asked.

He said they make conversation and play board games.

"What else?" I asked.

He said that was it.

I decided it was probably something we should check out, so we went. It was exactly as he said. We played a Pirates of the Caribbean board game and the loser, one of my hosts named Reijiro, had to wear kitty-cat ears as punishment.

Afterwards our maid/waitress started talking to me in English. She asked where I was from. My other host, Daisuke, said "he is a famous American dancer."

At that, the waitress covered her mouth and stepped back slowly in awe. She finally opened her mouth and screamed "YouTube!!!"

All the other waitresses came over. They all had autograph books on them. We took some pictures and then I asked if they'd be willing to dance in my video. They were very excited.

You've seen a lot of places that other people only fantasize about traveling to. What do you think you've gained or learned from all this traveling? From this recent project in particular?

I've learned a lot about what I'm capable of as a person. I tend not to worry as much as I used to, and I trust in my ability to survive whatever situation comes along.

On this particular video, I've also learned a lot about managing large groups and speaking in public. I am an expert in controlled chaos.

What did you encounter on your travels for this latest video that surprised you?

The degree to which our right to free and peaceable assembly has eroded in the U.S. You need to get permission to gather large numbers of people in any public place, and the tendency is not to give it — for a variety of reasons, and to be fair some of them are pretty understandable. Basically, liability supersedes civil liberty in the modern world.

I was stunned that we were forbidden to meet in front of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. The Department of Parks and Recreation was not interested in hearing why Jefferson's involvement in crafting the Bill of Rights made their policy ironic.

[The Washington, D.C., Department of Parks and Recreation says it is unable to grant permissions for the Jefferson Memorial because that falls within the domain of the National Park Service.]

What do you hope people come away with after watching your video?

A wildly exaggerated view of the natural joyfulness and goodwill of our species. I make humanist propaganda. I try to trick people into thinking the world is wonderful so they will act accordingly.

For more information about Matt and his travels, visit his website: www.wherethehellismatt.com

Arlington Cemetery official fired for honoring the wishes of the families of deceased Iraq war soldiers. The Bush admin. wants no media coverage.

Joe Sudbay (DC), AmericaBlog.com: Usually, Dana Milbank's column in the Washington Post is a snarky take on Washington politics and politicians. Not today. He writes about Gina Gray, who got fired from her job at Arlington Cemetery. It's a must read about the continuing disrespect shown to the men and women who gave their lives for this country in the Iraq war.

After more than five years, the Bush administration still tries to hide the dead from Iraq -- refusing to let the families fully honor the soldiers who died. Right across the Potomac River from the White House, in a city crawling with press and t.v. cameras, the funerals of the fallen are conducted in a news blackout -- even when the families want the coverage. Gina Gray, who tried to change the procedures, got fired. If it's not the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed, which is just down 16th Street, from the White House, it's dishonoring the dead at Arlington. Yet, George Bush still claims to support the troops. It's beyond appalling:

When Gina Gray took over as the public affairs director at Arlington National cemetery about three months ago, she discovered that cemetery officials were attempting to impose new limits on media coverage of funerals of the Iraq war dead -- even after the fallen warriors' families granted permission for the coverage. She said that the new restrictions were wrong and that Army regulations didn't call for such limitations.

Six weeks after The Washington Post reported her efforts to restore media coverage of funerals, Gray was demoted. Twelve days ago, the Army fired her.

"Had I not put my foot down, had I just gone along with it and not said regulations were being violated, I'm sure I'd still be there," said the jobless Gray, who, over lunch yesterday in Crystal City, recounted what she is certain is her retaliatory dismissal. "It's about doing the right thing."

Army Secretary Pete Geren, in an interview last night, said he couldn't comment on Gray's firing. But he said the overall policy at Arlington is correct. "It appears to me that we've struck the right balance, consistent with the wishes of the family," the secretary said.

They've struck the balance ordered by the Bush administration.

On the disparity between Viagra v. Birth Control, the Straight Talker said "I certainly do not want to discuss that issue"

Joe Sudbay (DC), AmericaBlog.com: McCain and reporters usually have such fun on the Straight Talk Express -- as long as no one asks a difficult question. Someone broke the rules today and asked John McCain about a controversial issue raised by his top adviser, Carly Fiorina -- the different treatment by health insurers of Viagra, which is a benefit, and birth control, which isn't:

Maeve Reston of the Los Angeles Times, the pool reporter on the bus, asked McCain about comments advisor Carly Fiorina made earlier this week, calling it unfair that insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control.

"I certainly do not want to discuss that issue," McCain said to nervous laughter, according to the pool report. He went on to say he did not know what he voted for on the issue.

"I'll look at my voting record on it," he said, before an extended pause. "I don't recall the vote right now. But I'll be glad to look at it and get back to you as to why."

Surely, Ms. Reston will be banned from the Straight Talk Express -- and none of the other reporters will talk to her anymore.

McCain may not know his record, but neither does Fiorina. They can, however, both read about it in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the nation's leading abortion and reproductive rights group, told The Chronicle that she sent Fiorina a copy of McCain's voting record on women's health issues this week after Fiorina publicly misrepresented McCain's positions.

Fiorina made the comments - reported by the Washington Post - during a speech about women and health insurance, in which she argued that "many health insurance plans cover Viagra but won't cover birth-control medication. Those women would like a choice."

Keenan said a McCain presidency would offer women no such choice. "Obviously, she doesn't know his record," she said. "He really did vote against a proposal that would have required insurance companies" to cover prescription contraception in the same way they pay for Viagra.

So, McCain doesn't know his own record and doesn't talk about this issue -- and Fiorina got McCain's record wrong. Not such Straight Talkers after all.

Blogger's Comment: Then McCain yelled, "Donuts with Sprinkles for everyone!" They all laughed and ate their donuts and forgot all about it.

Photoshop of Horrors: The Frightful Faces of Fox News

Vanity Fair: Last week, Media Matters pointed out that Fox & Friends, the Fox News program hosted by Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, had aired doctored photos of two New York Times reporters who had dared to write semi-critically of Roger Ailes’s right-leaning cable network. See for yourself:

Then, on Monday, Times media columnist David Carr followed up with a scathing exposé on Fox News’s hardball tactics, which Ailes allegedly adapted from his days working as a flack for Richard Nixon and other Republican presidents.

What the Times was far too polite to do was fight fire with fire. Others have tossed a match or two, but in the interest of fairness (and balance), VF.com has commissioned an expert in the dark arts of malevolent retouching to imagine what the famous faces of Fox News might look if they ever had the misfortune of crossing Roger Ailes. Here is a show of the results (L to R, top to bottom): Gretchen Carlson, Geraldo Rivera, Greta Van Susteren, Bill O’Reilly, Shepard Smith, Neil Cavuto, Brian Kilmeade, Fred Barnes, Steve Doocy, Sean Hannity, Brit Hume, Chris Wallace, and William Kristol.

Report: Because of Bush obstinance, civil liberties board exists 'in name only'

Raw Story: President Bush is refusing to nominate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's pick to serve on a government privacy and civil liberties board, raising the prospect that the board will remain member-less and inactive until his term is over.The report from Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, ironically came the same day the Senate voted to approve a controversial surveillance bill decried by civil liberties advocates.

Without any public announcement, the White House recently sent a letter to Capitol Hill stating it would nominate only one of two names recommended by congressional leaders to sit on the five-member civil liberties panel. The candidate whose name it would not forward: Morton Halperin, a veteran and sometimes controversial civil liberties advocate who has a famous role in the history of modern debates over government wiretapping. While serving on the National Security Council during the early days of the Nixon administration, Halperin's phone was secretly wiretapped by the FBI because his then boss, Henry Kissinger, suspected he was leaking to the press. The White House gave no explanation for why it had vetoed Halperin from serving on the civil liberties panel. But the move prompted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to tell the White House that the Senate, in retaliation, will not move any of President Bush's three candidates for the panel (one of whom, Ronald Rotunda, was once a legal adviser to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). "How would we ever get our nominees confirmed if we could only confirm Republicans?" explained Jim Manley, Reid's spokesman, when asked about the majority leader's hardball stand.

The five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Board was created in 2004 after being recommended by the 9/11 Commission. President Bush initially refused to nominate anyone at all leaving the commission vacant since the previous board's term ended in January.

"Although it was first mandated by Congress in Dec. 2004, and reauthorized with newly independent powers nearly a year ago, the civil liberties board exists today in name only," Isikoff and Hosenball write. "It has no office, no staff and no members."

Will Anyone Contact Bill Frist for a Diagnosis?

Richard Blair, AllSpinZone: In 2005, Terri Schiavo lay brain dead in Florida nursing home, with only a feeding tube standing between her and release to what the religious right would terms as “home”. More than anything, that’s what I didn’t understand at the time about the evangelical movement that drove congress into a special session to draft a law to prevent removal of her feeding tube. The fundamentalists turned what should have been a private family affair into a national media circus, and prevented a suffering woman from “going home”.

Today in Florida, a 15-year old young man waits for a liver transplant. He’s been diagnosed with advanced liver disease, and apparently stands virtually no chance of recovery without a transplant. But a Florida hospital has denied him a spot on their transplant list, because the boy is not from a stable home. Yes, you read that right:

A disabled foster child whose liver is failing has been removed from a Central Florida hospital’s organ-transplant waiting list because hospital administrators fear the state’s shaky child-welfare system cannot ensure he has a permanent home in which to recover.

Shands Hospital in Gainesville removed the boy, 15, from a waiting list for organ recipients after administrators determined the boy’s unstable living conditions make him a poor candidate for a transplant, said Nick Cox, the Department of Children & Families regional administrator in the Tampa Bay area, where the boy lives…

Ok, so, where are Tony Perkins and James Dobson and the other fundamentalist leaders who were making such a stink when Terri Schiavo’s case was making headlines? Where is congress in terms of making a new law, exclusively for this boy, who has the chance at a long, full life if he receives the transplant?

Yes, we’ve been this way before. But something even more interesting struck me about this young man’s situation. He’s the son of a crack addict, who gave him up to family care shortly after he was born. He’s been in and out of the foster care system for his entire life. Most likely, he’s in an ethnic group that isn’t Caucasian. And according to the Miami Herald article:

He has been diagnosed with a developmental disability and often has difficulty controlling his behavior.

Bells and whistles went off immediately when I read this sentence. Children with these types of issues are frequently given medication to control their behavior (think Ritalin and other psychotropic drugs). One of the side effects of some of these types of medications is the potential for liver damage. So, as the boy bounced in and out of foster homes, was any pharmaceutical treatment he was receiving for his behavioral issues, no doubt sanctioned by the state, responsible for his liver problems? It’s a question that needs answers - is the State of Florida responsible for his condition?

One also has to wonder if Shands Hospital removing him from the transplant list was driven as much by medical economics as any true concern for the ability of the foster care system to ensure he receives adequate follow-up treatment.

There’s a lot to unpack in any story such as this one. But the bottom line is that the boy needs a liver to have any shot of reaching adulthood. The boy needs an advocacy group (religious or otherwise) to take up his cause. Will Family Research Council or Focus on the Family come to his aid? Will Bill Frist at least do a video diagnosis?

Don’t bet on it.

LSB: Where is the main stream media on this story?

Turley: It’s ‘A Very Inconvenient Fact Right Now’ To Say Bush Committed A Felony With His Wiretapping Program

ThinkProgress: Last night on MSNBC’s Coundown, George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley noted that just this week, a federal judge rejected President Bush’s claim that his “constitutional authority as commander in chief trumped” the FISA wiretapping law. Judge Vaughn Walker explicitly stated that the President is bound by FISA:

Congress appears clearly to have intended to — and did — establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence activities to be conducted. Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch’s authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities.

In other words, when Bush contravened the FISA law by authoring warrantless wiretaps through the National Security Agency, he broke the law. Turley said last night that this is an “inconvenient fact” for many in Congress to admit:

Nobody wants to have a confrontation over the fact that the President committed a felony – not one, but at least 30 times. That’s a very inconvenient fact right now in Washington.

Bush has acknowledged that he reauthorized his illegal wiretapping program “more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks.”

Raw Story adds: MSNBC's Rachel Maddow ... expressed amazement at the sweeping victory that is being handed to President Bush. "I'm betting that his wildest dreams did not include the prospect that Congress -- a Democratic-led Congress -- would help him cover up his crimes," she stated. "That is exactly what the US Senate is poised to do."
In Senate debate, Patrick Leahy (D-VT) argued strongly against telecom immunity, because it would make it almost impossible to ever find out what really happened and "the American people ought to know who in the White House said, 'Go break the law.'"

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) noted that, "We're considering granting immunity when roughly 70 members of the Senate still have not been briefed on the president's wiretapping program. The vast majority of this body still does not even know what we're being asked to grant immunity for."

Maddow spoke with Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley, who explained, "What the Democrats are doing here with the White House is they're trying to conceal a crime that is hiding in plain view." ...

"The Democrats have learned well from Bush," Turley said in amazement. "They're just going to change the rules. ... It's otherworldly. ... I am completely astonished by Senator Obama's position -- and obviously disappointed. All of these senators need to respect us enough not to call it a compromise. It's a cave-in."

"It's like all those stories where someone is assaulted on the street and a hundred witnesses do nothing," continued Turley. "In this case, the Fourth Amendment is going to be eviscerated tomorrow, and a hundred people are going to watch it happen because it's just not their problem. ... There's not an ounce of principle, not an ounce of public interest in this legislation."

Turley added that even though the telecoms could still be prosecuted criminally, it's unlikely to happen. "The fix is in," he concluded. "Tomorrow night, there's going to be a lot of celebrating among telecom lobbyists. ... What we will lose tomorrow, it's something very precious."

Raw Story UPDATE: On a 69-28 vote, the Senate approved an administration-backed update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act after striking down amendments to modify its immunity provision. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) voted for the FISA update, while his former primary opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) voted against it. Republican candidate John McCain skipped the FISA vote altogether. Opponents of legal amnesty for telecommunications companies that facilitated President Bush's extra-legal warrantless wiretapping program were dealt a decisive blow Wednesday, but advocates vowed to challenge the bill in court.

LSB: Apparently it is alright to impeach a president for lying about a blow job, but impeachment is ‘off the table’ for committing 30+ felonies. We know Bush doesn’t take his oath of office seriously, but why aren’t we holding our representatives in the House and Senate to the oaths they swore – to faithfully execute the responsibilities of their office and to the best of their ability, “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”?

Obama says he regrets TV interview of his children

AP in USA Today: Barack Obama says he has had second thoughts about allowing his daughters to give a TV interview and he wants to keep them out of the media spotlight.

The Democratic presidential candidate and his wife, Michelle, allowed the cable entertainment news show Access Hollywood to interview their daughters, Malia and Sasha, as Malia celebrated her 10th birthday. Segments of the interview began airing this week.

On Wednesday, Obama said he questioned his decision after seeing how much attention the interview had received. The Obamas had been keeping Malia and 7-year-old Sasha mostly out of the spotlight.

"It was an exception, it was Malia's birthday, we were in Montana, everybody was having a good time," he told Good Morning America talk show on ABC. "I think we got carried away a little bit. Generally what makes them so charming is the fact that they're not spending a lot of time worrying about TV cameras or politics and we want to keep it that way."

Asked if he regretted the interview, Obama said: "A little bit of pause, Michelle and I, particularly given the way it sort of went around the cable stations. I don't think it's healthy and it's something that we'll be avoiding in the future."

LSB: How refreshing! He regrets an action he took – he didn't dodge the question, or blame his opponent, or question the motives of the reporter asking the question. Yes, the kids should be left out of the process, but it's only natural that there is some curiosity about them. Not since Amy Carter have we had kids this young in the White House. (I think Chelsea Clinton was a couple of years older, but even that was 16 years ago.) From a political point of view, this was brilliant move, even if it was spontaneous: put the kids out there for a moment so the electorate – especially the white electorate – can visualize the Obamas as a “normal” family; and then yank them back in so they look protective. But if they put the kids out there again, look for the Repugs to make an issue of them.

The Flip Flopper on Iraq? McCain

Jon Soltz, Co-Founder and Chair of VoteVets.org: You'd think with all the media consternation with the non-existent "flip flop" of Obama on Iraq (you know, the one where he didn't change his position at all), reporters would be blowing their stack at the true flip flop from John McCain on Iraq.

Late yesterday, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki said it's time for the US to leave, or set a timetable to leave.

There you have it. The Iraqis are basically telling the US that they endorse Obama's policy -- they want us to set a timetable to bring the troops home. John McCain in 2004 said we'd respect such a request, telling the Council on Foreign Relations:

Well, if that scenario evolves than I think it's obvious that we would have to leave because -- if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we've been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government then I think we would have other challenges, but I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.

I just checked the McCain campaign website, and so far, he hasn't announced today that he will respect the sovereign government of Iraq, and adjust his Iraq policy to include a timeline for bringing troops home.

Well, maybe he said something but it wasn't on the website yet?

According to theWashington Post:

"McCain was silent on the comments Monday."

So the potential commander-in-chief has no answer to the prime minister of Iraq. Not even like, "Hey, Nouri, Roger that."

While McCain refused to answer questions on Iraq, today, his top foreign policy advisor said:

"Senator McCain has always said that conditions on the ground -- including the security threats posed by extremists and terrorists, and the ability of Iraqi forces to meet those threats -- would be key determinants in U.S. force levels."

That, my friends (as Senator McCain would say), is a flip flop. It is a major policy reversal. Saying "conditions on the ground" will determine when you start to bring troops home is an indefinite commitment, not a timeline with a goal for redeployment. And, McCain's lack of consistency or clarity of vision on Iraq is trickling down. I was on Hardball just a short time ago with Pete Hegseth, my counterpart and Iraq War veteran who runs Vets for Freedom.

Did you catch that? In one short segment, Pete took two positions on Iraq. He was against timelines at the beginning of the segment, but was OK with timelines at the end of the segment.

This is not the way to formulate policy on Iraq, and if in the White House, this kind of waffling on the major issue of our time from McCain would have disastrous consequences. When you send a signal to a foreign nation that you will leave their land when asked, you better do it, when asked. If not, you only bolster the notion that you are an occupier, and the idea that the only way to get rid of us is with deadly force.

John McCain's silence on the issue is severely troubling -- it's as if he doesn't know what to do now. His advisor saying McCain will stick to his guns -- Iraqi wishes be damned -- is a flip flop from his previous position. Combined, it is a very bleak and discouraging view of what a McCain administration would look like on what is, supposedly, his biggest strength.

Jesse Ventura To Run for Senate?

Jake Tapper, Political Punch at ABC News.com: In an interview with NPR's David Welna that ran today former Gov. Jesse "The Body" Ventura, Ind-Minn., sounds like he may run for Senate, challenging incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., whom Ventura defeated for governor in 1998, as well as Democratic nominee and former Saturday Night Live humorist Al Franken.

Ventura, born Jim Janos, tells Welna that the main reason he would run is because of Coleman's support for the war in Iraq. "That's the reason I run," he says. "I run because it angers me... All you Minnesotans take a good hard look at all three of us. And you decide: if you were in a dark alley which one of the three of us would you want with you?" ...

"I'm not a politician, I'm a statesman," he told Wineheads. "I do one term, and then I go back to the private sector. If I get back into the fray again this year, it's only because I've been gone five years back to the private sector. That's what I did when I was mayor. That's a statesman. That's not a career politician."

Ventura said of Coleman, "the guy has not had a job in the private sector his entire adult life. He's been collecting government checks since the day he got out of law school and went to work for the attorney general's office. So when Norm Coleman tells people in the private sector he feels their pain, how? He's never been in it. At least Al Franken knows what the private sector is. I would like to send him out and get a real job in the private sector."

Ventura called Franken an opportunist and a carpetbagger. "He hasn't lived here in 30 years, and he's only coming back to Minnesota for the convenience of his own political agenda. Why didn't he run in the states he was living in? Clearly, for being a Harvard graduate, he's not too smart on taxes, is he? Everybody laughs, saying I came from wrestling. But at least I knew when I wrestled in 40 states, I had to pay taxes in those 40 states. You just have to do the paperwork. I find it unbelievable that someone who could go to Harvard didn't know that or let it slip. Blaming his accountant is worse, because now he's turning into a politician. He's not accepting responsibility for his actions."

LSB: Smackdown in Minnesota! Let's rumble, boys!

Raw Story UPDATE: Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura is shooting down media reports that he's decided to run for Senate. National Public Radio today reported that Ventura says he's running for the seat, quoting him as saying "I run" because of Senator Norm Coleman's support for the Iraq war. But Ventura tells the Associated Press he had been speaking hypothetically. Ventura says in responding to the NPR reporter's question about why he would run, "I gave him the reasons why I would run. But I said ultimately, it will come down to whether I want to change my lifestyle and go to that lifestyle or not."

LSB: Filing deadline is next week, so let's see if Jesse decides to run.

Errors en Español

Rachel Weisel, factcheck.org: McCain's new radio ad, in Spanish, aims to show Florida would benefit from the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which he supports. But every number in the ad is wrong, except one, a prediction of job gains taken from a group favoring the trade deal. And even that number is rounded upward so generously as to flunk third-grade arithmetic. ...

The false figures begin with the ad's claim that "three-quarters of Florida's exports are with Latin America." That's wrong. According to the trade statistics generator from the U.S. Department of Commerce, all of Florida's international exports totaled close to $45 billion dollars in 2007, and the state's exports to Latin America AND the Caribbean last year equaled nearly $24 billion. That means 53 percent of Florida's exports go to the region, much closer to half than three-quarters. Exports to Latin America by itself would be even smaller.

This also means the ad's assertion that "last year, Florida's exports to Latin America reached almost 45 billion dollars" is false. As we just pointed out, that was the figure for the state's exports to all countries, not just Latin America.

Finally, the ad trips up when it claims: "Colombia is Florida's third most important export market." While we don't know how to measure the "importance" of a market, we can quantify the dollar value of exports sent to each. And by that metric, Colombia ranks fifth – not third – in Florida exports, according to figures from the Commerce Department, as well as from the Census Bureau. But McCain should know this already, because he said it himself on May 20, in an article he wrote for Miami's Latin Business Chronicle.

McCain, Latin Business Chronicle, May 20, 2008: Colombia today stands as Florida's fifth largest export market – Florida exported $2.1 billion worth of goods there last year – and now the Colombians are offering to drop their barriers to American goods. (More)

LSB: Three-quarters or half, a third or a fifth – when you're talking about tens of billions of dollars the importance of the trading relationship and its economic impact on the region is already enormous – beyond what most of us can truly comprehend anyway, – so why inflate the numbers unnecessarily? These numbers are simple to verify, especially when six weeks earlier you used the correct information in an article McCain's campaign wrote – so why inflate the numbers when you know that the media (and bloggers) are fact checking everything you say? Confused (ala Sunni or Shia) or lying? After 7+ years of this behavior from the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, this is beyond worrisome.

Bush: polar bears will be killed by global warming, so drill!

Chris in Paris, AmericaBlog.com: You can't even make this stuff up it's so bad. The Bush administration isn't concerned about the new laws protecting oil companies related to the impact on polar bears because hey, they're going to die from global warming anyway, so just let Big Oil be Big Oil and do what they do. Then, the administration pretends (as Republicans always do) that industry will somehow monitor themselves when it comes to the impact on polar bears. Really? What is the incentive for them to do so? What is the penalty for fudging the numbers, as they will?

Big Oil is going to look back at these times as the golden years, when every wish and every dream came true. Hell, they even got the oil field rights they wanted in Iraq. For the rest of us, well...

White House's hostile rhetoric fails to stem flow of exports to regime under sanctions

Ewen MacAskill, Guardian.co.uk: US exports to Iran have risen dramatically during George Bush's years in office in spite of his tough rhetoric against Tehran and the imposition of fresh economic sanctions.

Analysis of US government trade figures published yesterday by Associated Press revealed a near tenfold increase in US sales to Iran over the past seven years. Goods included cigarettes, aircraft spare parts, bras, musical instruments, films, sculpture, fur, golf carts and snowmobiles.

Although the sums involved are small, the disclosure is a political embarrassment for the US, coming at a time when it has been putting pressure on European governments, banks and companies to cut ties with Tehran. ...

AP found data suggesting military equipment had been exported, even though there are sanctions to prevent this. The Treasury is still investigating but [US treasury spokesman John] Rankin said initial findings indicated there had been no such sales and described the data as a "clerical error". ...

One of the Bush's administration's main instruments for putting pressure on Iran has been sanctions. Yesterday the White House announced fresh financial sanctions against Iranian officials and companies allegedly involved in its nuclear programme. But Tehran is awash with US goods mainly imported indirectly, usually through the United Arab Emirates.

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian specialist at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: "You can get everything from an iPod to a Chevrolet in Tehran. I think this is a good thing. The more the Iranian population is exposed to American culture, which includes American products, the better for Iranian progress."

... US export records show $148,000 worth of weapons and other military gear were exported, including $106,635 in rifles and $8,760 in rifle parts and accessories shipped in 2004. At least $13,000 in equipment needed to launch jets from aircraft carriers were also exported. The treasury suggested yesterday the data had been reported incorrectly by officials.

Rankin denied there was a contradiction between the rise in US exports and calls on Europe to cease trading with Iran. He said European companies were involved with finance but US exports involved food and medicine. He said: "Food and medicine are not tools we are going to use to put pressure on the regime."

LSB: “…in spite of his tough rhetoric…” – how many times have we heard that about this President? All bark, no bite – and here’s to hoping there is no bite anytime soon. Sanctions only hurt the population – both Iranian consumers and the U.S. manufacturers – not the Iranian regime. Sending our bras, films and golf carts to a young population would be a lot more destabilizing to the current regime than sanctions. Exporting aircraft small parts, presumably for domestic aircraft and with strict controls, should be controlled, an certainly exporting military parts – if this is not a “clerical error” – is counter-intuitive to our national interests. But honestly, who would have a problem with sending musical instruments, sculptures, snowmobiles or home consumer items to Iran? This helps U.S. manufacturers and workers, it doesn’t undermine our national security, and exposing the Iranian population to American culture and goods can only be beneficial in the long run.

American Flight to LaGuardia Cancelled Over Booing

John Del Signore, gothamist.com: An American Airlines flight from Miami to LaGuardia Sunday night was canceled due to the passengers' collective rudeness. Fox 5 has it that a flight crew was so late getting to the plane that upon arrival they were greeted with raucous booing from the impatient passengers. So the crew decided to teach the rabble a lesson in manners and refused to work the flight for the “hostile mob.”

A replacement flight crew could not be assembled, and the passengers were put up in a hotel for the night, which was nice except for all the “barbed-wire all around it,” according to one witness. They didn’t end up getting to LaGuardia until the following evening, on a flight that was presumably marked by pin drop silence and perfect etiquette. But American wasn’t done with them yet – as one final kick in the teeth, the airline sent their luggage to JFK by “mistake.”

LSB: Let me get this right - nickled and dimed for things that were formerly included in the price of a ticket (luggage handling, curb service, meals/snacks, drinks), limited overhead baggage space (because of the luggage handling fees – who was the Einstein that thought that up?), delayed and held in a confined space for hours, rude attendants, and finally lost luggage – it is any wonder the passengers booed? Any retailer knows that the customer may not always be right, but they are always the customer. It is not only supreme arrogance but bad business to treat customers like disposable tissues. Given the rising ticket costs and decreasing services of the airlines, the traffic and parking fees at the airport, the long lines at security, and the unpredictability of departures, I’ll be checking out the Amtrak schedule for my next vacation.

Is McCain campaign illegally coordinating media strategy with outside groups?

Joe Sudbay (DC), AmericaBlog.com: It's illegal for federal campaigns to coordinate with outside groups. Looks like we're dealing with more illegality from the McCain campaign:

Politico has a story up showing the clearest indication yet that the McCain campaign is illegally coordinating television advertising with an outside group. The short-story is this: on July 2, the McCain campaign placed $1.5 million in advertising in the Virginia area. The next day -- July 3 -- the McCain campaign canceled that media buy. On the very same day -- July 3 -- the outside group made a large media buy in the same region, filling the gap created by the McCain campaign's cancellation.

What a coincidence...or not. Watch this video of McCain and his lap dog, Lindsey Graham, parrot the talking points of the same outside group, Vets for Freedom.

Yeah, that was McCain calling Vets for Freedom "a wonderful organization." Lap dog Lindsey and Joe Lieberman were leaders of that group, too. But, there's no coordination....sure.

Hey, McCain's already broken the campaign finance laws. Why stop there?

Dance With The One Who Brought You

Pat Bagley, St. Lake Tribune - Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Barnes to McCain: 'Revive Your Struggling Campaign By Using Gay-Bashing As A Wedge'

ThinkProgress: Discussing Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) struggling campaign on Fox News Sunday today, Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes argued that McCain “needs to pay attention to the right.” “Here’s what he needs to do, he needs to touch on some of the social issues which energize the right,” declared Barnes.

Barnes specifically said that McCain is “going to have use” gays in the military and gay marriage as wedge issues:

BARNES: In particular, gays in the military for one. We know Barack Obama is for allowing gays in the military, and Bill Clinton tried to do, but backed off. This is not a popular issue. Gay marriage is another one. These are both issues that I think McCain’s going to have to use. You can’t ignore the right. If he does, he’ll lose.

Watch it:

Barnes is advocating that McCain embrace the well-worn right-wing tactic of discriminating against the LGBT community for electoral gain. But he has his facts wrong when he claims that letting gay men and women serve in the military “is not a popular issue.”

Polling consistently finds that the public supports allowing openly-gay people to serve in the military. In fact, that support is growing even stronger with time:

The poll also finds less opposition to gays serving openly in the military and a greater public willingness to allow gays to adopt children. A 60% majority now favors allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, up from 52% in 1994, and 46% support gay adoption, up from 38% in 1999.

It wouldn’t be shocking if McCain takes Barnes advice, especially since his chief strategist, Charlie Black, has previously acknowledged the use of gay issues as a wedge. It’s “a game of margins” that “could make a difference,” Black told the New York Times in 2006.

LSB: Demonize the LGBT community when you have nothing constructive to contribute. Typical of Freddie.

McCain campaign: ‘Victory in Iraq’ will pay off the deficit.

ThinkProgress.org: In a paper released today, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) made the laughable claim that a McCain administration would pay off the enormous deficit through “savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations.” The claim comes on the same day McCain’s campaign vowed to balance the budget in four years — while refusing to name any specifics on how to go about achieving that goal.

LSB: Loony Tunes is missing one of their characters!

Administration Rebuffs Maliki’s Timetable As ‘Artificial’

ThinkProgress.org: President Bush has long maintained that if the Iraqi government wants the U.S. to leave Iraq, then the U.S. would do just that, as he said in May 2007:

We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It’s their government’s choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave.

Today, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki suggested having a timetable for the withdrawal of coalition troops. “The direction we are taking is to have a memorandum of understanding either for the departure of the forces or to have a timetable for their withdrawal,” Maliki’s office quoted him as saying.

But the administration has rebuffed Maliki’s request for a timeline. Asked about the prime minister’s comments today, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman hedged on whether the administration would follow the Iraqi government’s request, criticizing timelines as “artificial“:

WHITMAN: [I]t is dependent on conditions on the ground. … But timelines tend to be artificial in nature. In a situation where things are as dynamic as they are in Iraq, I would just tell you, it’s usually best to look at these things based on conditions on the ground.

The State Department also hedged on whether the Bush administration would listen to Maliki. In a briefing today, spokesperson Sean McCormack said the remark may have been a transcription error:

McCORMACK: Well, that’s really the part — the point at which I would seek greater clarification in terms of remarks. I’ve seen the same press reports that you have, but I haven’t yet had an opportunity to get greater clarify as to exactly to what Mr. Maliki was referring or if, in fact, that’s an accurate reporting of what he said.

As multiple press accounts – as well as Maliki’s office — have indicated, Maliki did indeed suggest a timeline for withdrawal in negotiating a security agreement with the United States.

“I’ve got confidence in him,” Bush said in 2007 about Maliki’s leadership. But despite its rhetoric, it seems the Bush administration could care less what the Iraqi people or the Iraqi government want.

LSB: We can't leave - despite what the Iraqi people want - until we get the oil contracts signed. The United States of Halliburton won't have it any other way!

As we continue on the long, hard slog until Election Day, John McCain and his supporters are going to claim again and again that the surge has worked.

ThinkProgress.org: Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan appeared on CBC Radio One’s “The Current” this morning to discuss his recent memoir, in which, he asserts that the Bush administration waged a “propaganda” campaign in order to “sell the war” in Iraq to the public.

Inquiring about Vice President Dick Cheney’s motivations to go to war, host Jim Brown noted that Cheney “doesn’t strike me as someone who would be particularly motivated by idealistic visions.” McClellan agreed, adding that Iraq’s oil occupied Cheney’s mind more than anything else:

MCCLELLAN: Certainly you can’t discount the large oil
reserves inside Iraq and how much that plays into our national security interests and I don’t think you can discount how much that plays into the vice president’s thinking.

BROWN: Or his portfolio for that matter.

MCCLELLAN: Or his portfolio for that matter, absolutely with that being a former chief executive officer for Halliburton and that certainly played heavily into his thinking more so I think than the idea of transforming the Middle East into a beacon of democracy.

McClellan later added that he believes that Bush never “would have made the decision to go in and invade Iraq” if “he could see what had happened.” But when asked if Cheney “would do it differently a second time around,” McClellan said flatly: “No.”

BROWN: Do you think Dick Cheney would do it differently a second time around?

MCCLELLAN: No. Well he might have done some military things differently but I think he was determined to see Saddam Hussein removed from power and would have continued to encourage that.

During a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last month, McClellan suggested some book titles for Cheney should he choose to write a memoir of his own after leaving office: “The Lies I Told,” or “I Upped Halliburton’s Income - So Up Yours.”

LSB: Of course the oilman was looking out for #1 instead of those serving in the armed services. Like any good despot, he used the military to do his dirty work. Cheney's a lot more like Mugabe than different.

Surge Amnesia: The Media's Newest Affliction

Arianna Huffington, HuffingtonPost.com: John McCain, aided and abetted by his loving protectors in the media, is running a victory lap on Iraq. To hear them tell it, the surge has "worked" -- indeed, it has been a huge success -- and this, like a last second Hail Mary pass, has vindicated the entire disastrous Iraq misadventure.

Buoyed by a reduction in violence in Iraq, war supporters are crawling out from the shadows and beating their chests.

"I am proud of the decision of this administration to overthrow Saddam Hussein," Condi Rice told Judy Woodruff last week. This echoed the comments of her boss, who crowed at a GOP awards dinner at the end of June: "The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision at the time, and it is the right decision today."

Bush even felt emboldened to dust off blast from the past and claim: "Democracy is taking root where a tyrant once ruled."

And the media -- and even a number of Democrats -- are swallowing this triumphalist nonsense whole, and washing it down with a pitcher of revisionist Kool-Aid. The result: a collective case of political amnesia. Everyone seems more than happy to forget what the president's own stated goal for the surge was: to create "the breathing space [the Iraqi government] needs to make progress in other critical areas."

But here we are, 18 months later, and McCain and the GOP are being allowed to change the goal. And, surprise, surprise, the retroactive goal they've chosen is remarkably similar to the current situation in Iraq: violence is down while the "progress in other critical areas" is sorely lagging.

So, even though Bush originally claimed that "a successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations," the surge is now being judged exclusively on the success of "military operations."

And since that's what the surge is all about, the surge is working. And since the surge is working, maybe we need to rethink this whole idea of ending the war, right?

Using Bush-McCain logic, since the surge has succeeded in reducing violence, there is no need for us to leave. Indeed, we can stay forever.

But here's the thing: while McCain and the Republicans may have been able to win the PR war among the American media, there is still that nagging problem of the lack of reconciliation among the warring factions in Iraq.

Last month's GAO report offered chapter and verse on all the ways the Iraqis have failed to reach the benchmarks that were the actual goals of the surge (see HuffPoster Mitchell Bard's comprehensive breakdown of the report). ...

As we continue on the long, hard slog until Election Day, John McCain and his supporters are going to claim again and again that the surge has worked. And it looks like the media are going to let that patently false assertion go unchecked. Which is pretty much how the war got started in the first place. So it is up to Obama, the Democrats, and all of us, to insist on holding the advocates of the surge to its original goal.

And while we are at it, we should also hold them to the original justification for the war itself.

Despite the revisionist re-writes, we didn't go to war because we were committed to demonstrating that America could unleash violence in Iraq and then, five years later, curb it through the use of reinforcements. We went to war because we were told Iraq posed a grave and imminent threat to our national security and, secondarily, as a means of fomenting democracy throughout the Middle East.

Of course, the "imminent threat" turned out to be non-existent, and our presence in Iraq has strengthened the hand of every bad actor in the region: al Qaeda is safe and adding recruits, Hamas has come to power in Palestine, Hezbollah has reasserted itself in Lebanon, and Iran has become the strongest player in Iraq. Meanwhile, the reduction in casualties in Iraq is starting to be offset by increased casualties in Afghanistan -- once again showing the fatal ignorance of stealing from Peter to stop-loss Paul and keep him in Iraq.

So, tell me again: how is the surge working?

G8 Summit that's Hard to Swallow: World Leaders Enjoy 18-course Banquet as They Discuss how to Solve Global Food Crisis

James Chapman,DailyMailOnline.co.uk: Just two days ago, Gordon Brown was urging us all to stop wasting food and combat rising prices and a global shortage of provisions.

But yesterday the Prime Minister and other world leaders sat down to an 18-course gastronomic extravaganza at a G8 summit in Japan, which is focusing on the food crisis.

The dinner, and a six-course lunch, at the summit of leading industrialised nations on the island of Hokkaido, included delicacies such as caviar, milkfed lamb, sea urchin and tuna, with champagne and wines flown in from Europe and the U.S.

But the extravagance of the menus drew disapproval from critics who thought it hypocritical to produce such a lavish meal when world food supplies are under threat.

On Sunday, Mr Brown called for prudence and thrift in our kitchens, after a Government report concluded that 4.1million tonnes of food was being wasted by householders.

He suggested we could save up to £8 a week by making our shopping go further. It was vital to reduce 'unnecessary demand' for food, he said.

Last night's dinner menu was created by Katsuhiro Nakamura, the first Japanese chef to win a Michelin star. It was themed: Hokkaido, blessings of the earth and the sea. (More)

LSB: Hyprocrisy knows no national borders!

U.S. deserter could qualify as refugee: court

CBC News:

An American war deserter could have a valid claim for refugee status in Canada, the Federal Court ruled on Friday.

In a decision that may have an impact on dozens of refugee claimants in Canada, Federal Court Justice Robert Barnes said Canada's refugee board erred by rejecting the asylum bid of Joshua Key. He ordered that a new panel reconsider the application.

Key was sent to Iraq in 2003 as a combat engineer for eight months where he said he was responsible for nighttime raids on private Iraqi homes, which included searching for weapons.

He alleged that during his time in Iraq he witnessed several cases of abuse, humiliation, and looting by the U.S. army.

When Key was back in the U.S on a two-week leave, he said he was suffering from debilitating nightmares and that he couldn't return. A military lawyer told him that he could either return to Iraq or face prison.

Instead, Key took his family to Canada and applied for refugee status.

While the immigration board concluded that some of the alleged conduct by the U.S military included a "disturbing level of brutality," it said the conduct did not meet the definition of a war crime or a crime against humanity.

Barnes said the board erred “by concluding that refugee protection for military deserters and evaders is only available where the conduct objected to amounts to a war crime, a crime against peace or a crime against humanity."

Citing a case from the U.S. Federal Court of Appeal, Barnes said officially condoned military misconduct could still support a refugee claim, even if it falls short of a war crime.

"The authorities indicate that military action which systematically degrades, abuses or humiliates either combatants or non-combatants is capable of supporting a refugee claim where that is the proven reason for refusing to serve," Barnes wrote.

Barnes said the board imposed a legal standard that was "too restrictive" on Key, who lives in Saskatchewan.

Key's lawyer, Jeffry House, said the ruling expands a soldier's right to refuse military service.

"It's a huge victory for numerous soldiers who are here and maybe others who are thinking of coming here," House said.

A spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Diane Finley said they were reviewing the court decision.

LSB: Wow! Our national reputation borders on "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity," and I'm sure Canada isn't the only nation that thinks so. Thank you, Bush Co., for making us so much safer and respected around the world!

The McLaughlin Group: The Toxic Legacy of George W. Bush & Dick Cheney

Nicole Belle, Crooks and Liars: I admit I get a slight case of schadenfreude in watching the mainstream media get forced to come around to what we in the liberal blogosphere have been saying all along: the Bush administration will be looked at as the worst ever. As we come mercifully to the final months of the Bush presidency, The McLaughlin Group asks its panel (made up of one “liberal” - Eleanor Clift and three conservatives - Monica Crowley, Mort Zuckerman and Michelle Bernard, naturally) just how toxic the legacy of Bush & Cheney will be. Try as they might to spin it to a more positive bend, none of the conservatives can truly deny McLaughlin’s list.

McLaughlin: Let me…let me go ahead with this exit question and you can fill it in with your own point now. Exit question: Is it too soon to conclude the following about the Bush/Cheney legacy? One: They destroyed the GOP Congressional majority. Two: Tanked the value of the dollar. Three: Created unprecedented red ink in the federal budget. Four: Drew us into a quagmire in Iraq. Five: Left us with a recession and inflation. Six: Then skedaddled out of town. The question is, is it too soon to conclude that the foregoing constitutes the Bush/Cheney legacy? Zuckerman.

Zuckerman: Well, I think you probably have weighted the case just slightly, John.

Actually, there’s so much more he could have added, Mort, as Eleanor Clift points out:

Clift: Well, the notion that the terrorist threat would have been worse if he had not acted the way he did does not excuse a war of choice in Iraq that was then needlessly and poorly managed. And also you left off the list ‘shredded the US Constitution’. I thought your list was pretty good [laughter] and that’s why President Bush has a 29% approval rating. He deserves it!

Big kudos to Clift as well for challenging Monica Crowley’s mindless “we’re winning in Iraq” meme. The clueless award goes not to Zuckerman for his equally mindless “at least we haven’t had another terrorist attack” either, but to Michelle Bernard, who seeks to give credit to Bush for bringing our collective attention to education and women’s rights, especially in the Middle East. Say what? I guess the fact that the conversation is about how lacking the Bush policies are in those areas doesn’t negate that we’re at least talking about them.

(Transcript)

See No Evil? Censoring the Truth of Iraq

Siun, Crooks and Liars: This week US Marines censored an award winning photojournalist – continuing the efforts to make certain we do not see the real results of our actions in Iraq. Zoriah was embedded with a Marine unit documenting the reasons so many soldiers are suffering from PTSD. He was only a block away when another Marine unit was caught up in a suicide bombing in Anbar province:

My hands still shake and my heart pounds despite my fatigue. A combination of depression, fear, and adrenaline makes my thoughts race with the realization that a simple decision was the only thing that seperated me from a body count that grows daily. I look at the images I took on the 26th of June, and realize they do nothing to capture the emotion of being an eyewitness to the aftermath of the Al-Qaeda suicide attack in Karmah/Garma… the smell… the sound of screams and crying.

Zoriah and his unit arrived on the scene shortly after the bombing and he witnessed and photographed the aftermath – including the corpses of 3 US Marines. His photos met all standards set by the agreement embeds sign with the military but he was told to remove the images from his blog. He refused – and he is now being sent out of Iraq.

I truly labored with the decision to post these images and I still do. But in my heart of hearts I know that people need to see and feel the reality of this horrible situation. How can things change if all that comes out of Iraq are sanitized, white-washed images of war designed for mainstream media outlets who focus on making money, not on the quality and truth in what they report?

To the families of the Marines, the interpreters, the Iraqi police, and the civilians killed in the attack: you have my deepest condolences. These men were attending a city council meeting and working together to better their community. Something terrible happened to them when they were in the midst of doing a good thing.

Zoriah’s photographs are graphic – but this is the reality we have created with our war and occupation of the people of Iraq. If we do not see even this small glimpse of the reality of Iraq, how can we, as citizens, understand the actions our government is taking in our names? As he wrote immediately after the bombing:

I want you to observe and comprehend what others live through on a daily basis — to see what the Iraqi civilians and foreign soldiers see. I want people who follow my photography to understand that although I am able to bring images of war to the world in a form of art, what actually goes on here is horror. My message is not that war yields great photography. My message is: War yields human misery and suffering.

Photo credit © Zoriah/www.zoriah.com : blog use permitted

Goode Grief!

JohnCos, Raising Kane: The Fourth of July Parade in Scottsville provided a telling story on the differences between Democrats and Republicans, and 5th District Nominee Tom Perriello and Rep. Virgil Goode.

Perriello, flanked by bluegrass musicians and volunteers, rode around in a float pulled by a bio-diesel tractor. Perriello threw candy to those he passed and was greeted warmly by all.

Now after Perriello and Smokey the Bear came Congressman Goode. This is what Goode has said on his own website about alternative energy:

"The United States must develop various alternative fuel sources. I am pleased to have sponsored legislation that has brought almost $2 million to the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Southern Virginia for a project that includes deriving biofuel from switchgrass, miscanthus and hybrid poplars. When fully developed, the results of this program could significantly enhance agriculture and forest products throughout the 5th District of Virginia."

The average price of gas in Virginia is $4.02. Tom Perriello has come out advocating that this country needs to be energy independent within a generation. Congressman Goode talks a lot about alternative energy. What were the Republicans in the Scottsville parade driving?

That looks like a Hummer H3. An H3 gets about 13 miles per gallon in city driving. Rep Goode also walked around followed by a red PT Cruiser.

It's easy to talk about gas prices and alternative energy, but the Scottsville Parade showed who is serious about the price of gas, and who doesn't seem to get it.

McCain and his gang of 300 economists

Steve Benen, Crooks and Liars: Last month, when economists, en masse, concluded that John McCain’s idea for a “gas-tax holiday” didn’t make a lick of sense, McCain told a group of voters that economists aren’t to be trusted.

This morning, McCain decided that he actually loves economists.

U.S. Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign today released a statement signed by over 300 professional economists in support of John McCain’s Jobs for America economic plan. The list includes Nobel Prize winners, business economists with experience in the private sector, policy economists with experience in government and academic economists from major universities and state and community colleges.

Considering the fact that McCain’s economic plan is rather ridiculous, I suppose it’s rather impressive that his campaign pulled together over 300 professional economists (I’m going to assume that’s accurate; I didn’t check the credentials of the names) to endorse this nonsense.

But as it turns out, there’s a catch. As Ben Smith reported, “The statement [signed by the economists] leaves out two big chunks of McCain’s economic argument: the gas tax holiday and his promise to balance the budget by the end of his first term — there’s literally nothing in the release that mentions the deficit or national debt.”

In other words, the economists didn’t endorse his economic plan; they endorsed his plan after taking out two of the more transparently stupid centerpiece ideas of the plan.

Doesn’t that tell us quite a bit? The McCain campaign couldn’t even get like-minded economist allies to endorse his economic plan without quietly allowing them to ignore two of the proposals McCain claims to take seriously?

For that matter, here’s another question. For the next four months, how many times will the McCain campaign and his media base argue, “This economic plan must be pretty good if it’s been endorsed by over 300 economists”? If anyone’s willing to set an over/under, bet on the over. Trust me.

Barack Obama and Bill Clinton Phone Call Leaked

McCain = Bush = Get a Ticket & Court Date

Richard Blair, All Spin Zone: We’re all quite used to George Bush’s cloistered public appearances, which have, in recent years, been mostly limited to military bases. When he’s actually at a public function, it’s all GOP sycophants & supporters. On the campaign trail in 2004, his public appearances were accompanied by the need for signing “GOP loyalty oaths”, although a few dissenters managed to sneak in under the radar.

It looks like John McCain is taking the same approach - only on public property. A 61 year old librarian was cited in Denver today for carrying a sign into a McCain town hall discussion that said merely “McCain = Bush”. After McCain’s campaign team complained to the Secret Service, she was apparently asked to leave. When she refused, the Denver police cited her for trespassing, and issued her a court summons. Even more amazingly, the whole thing was captured on video (courtesy of Progress Action Now):

Keep in mind, this “town hall” was being held in a public forum, owned by the City of Denver.

As Carol Kreck said: “All I did was carry a sign that said McCain = Bush, and for everyone who voted for Bush, I don’t see why it’s offensive to say McCain = Bush.” Apparently, it’s offensive to McCain, who has done everything possible to avoid being associated with George W. Bush.

Maybe so, but it would seem as if McCain’s campaign staff has recently leased George Bush’s bubble from its owner, Dick Cheney.

Study: Military gays don't undermine unit cohesion

Anne Flaherty, Associated Press:

... The study was conducted by four retired military officers, including the three-star Air Force lieutenant general who in early 1993 was tasked with implementing President Clinton's policy that the military stop questioning recruits on their sexual orientation.

"Evidence shows that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly is unlikely to pose any significant risk to morale, good order, discipline or cohesion," the officers states.

To support its contention, the panel points to the British and Israeli militaries, where it says gay people serve openly without hurting the effectiveness of combat operations. (More)

If the McCain campaign is such a disaster, how could he run the country?

Joe Sudbay (DC), AmericaBlog.com: In today's NY Times, Adam Nagourney takes a look at the snake pit that is the McCain campaign. It's a primer for all the other political reporters and pundits so they can figure out who is up and who is down on the Lap Dog Express. Political reporters love this kind of internecine intrigue, which does not exist in the Obama campaign. But, the article, of course, misses the larger point: John McCain is a terrible manager. Instead of providing a scorecard, Nagourney should be asking: If his campaign is this screwed up, how could he ever run the country?:

After a period of relative calm on that score, it is becoming clear that his campaign is once again a swirl of competing spheres of influence, clusters of friends, consultants and media advisers who represent a matrix of clashing ambitions and festering feuds. The cast includes the surviving members of Mr. McCain’s 2000 campaign, led by Rick Davis and Mark Salter; a new camp out of the world of Karl Rove, led by the recently ascendant Steve Schmidt; and on the periphery, the ever-present Mike Murphy, Mr. McCain’s strategist in the 2000 presidential race who has been dispensing advice to the candidate to the annoyance of the other camps, and is the subject of intensifying rumors in Republican circles that he is about to re-enter the campaign.

Mr. McCain is uncomfortable firing people or banishing them entirely. His orbit remains filled with people who have been demoted without being told they are being demoted, like Mr. Davis, who continues to hold the title of campaign manager even as Mr. Schmidt manages the campaign. Yet, Mr. McCain inspires uncommon loyalty in those who serve with him — hence the willingness of Mr. Murphy to consider coming back into the McCain campaign, despite his own rather brutal history of enmity with Mr. Davis.

Okay, if there was a "matrix of clashing ambitions and festering feuds" on the Democratic side, the punditry would be agog, constantly challenging Obama's capacity to lead. Yet, with McCain, they treat this like their own personal side-show. The political reporters covering McCain are like the old Kremlinologists hunting for any sign of change or intrigue. It's all a game for them, but it's not a game for the rest of us.

Put McCain, who has never managed or run anything besides his campaign, to the same test Obama set for himself: Watch how McCain manages his campaign for clues as to how he will govern. If that's the test, McCain has already failed. Big time. The country can't afford a President whose management style borders on mayhem.

LSB: Just what the country does NOT need - another "manager" who can't manage and is asleep at the switch. Too old to govern effectively, McCain had better have an effective VP nominee if his campaign is to be taken seriously.

Former EPA adviser says VP's office was wary of linking climate, health

Associated Press: Vice President Dick Cheney’s office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, a former EPA officials maintains.

When six pages were cut from testimony on climate change and public health by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last October, the White House insisted the changes were made because of reservations raised by White House advisers about the accuracy of the science.

But Jason K. Burnett, until last month the senior adviser on climate change to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson, says that Cheney’s office was deeply involved in getting nearly half of the CDC’s original draft testimony removed.

“The Council on Environmental Quality and the office of the vice president were seeking deletions to the CDC testimony (concerning) ... any discussions of the human health consequences of climate change,” Burnett has told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. (More)

McCain has a new plane to replace the "legendary bus" but reporters have to be "good" to sit up front with McCain

Joe Sudbay (DC), AmericaBlog.com: In a report with the date-line "ABOARD THE STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS" that reinforces just about every concern we have about the media's love affair with John McCain, the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin gushes about McCain's new campaign plane:

Monday morning marked the inaugural flight of Sen. John
McCain's (R-Ariz.) new campaign plane, even though the presumptive GOP nominee wasn't on it. His wife Cindy and the traveling press corps tested out the airplane equivalent of the McCain's legendary bus, by hopping a short flight from Dulles to Harrisburg, Pa., where the senator had spent the night.

The Boeing 737-400, operated by Arizona-based Swift Air, represents a serious upgrade from the Jet Blue charters McCain has been using for several months. Specially configured for the candidate, it features a special area toward the front where McCain will conduct group interviews with the press, in the same way he does on his chartered bus. That section features a couch and two captain's chairs, along with an area where cameras can film him. McCain stopped conducting press interviews on his plane several weeks ago, with his aides saying he preferred a setting where he could sit down with reporters rather then while journalists thronged him in the aisle.

McCain senior aide Mark Salter quipped this morning that "only the good reporters" would get to sit in the specially-configured section for interviews. "You'll have to earn it," he said.

Now, that statement from Salter probably sent shivers down the spines of the political reporters. None of them can imagine not getting into that special section with McCain. What a horror. But, clearly, Salter was joking. The political reporters have already been good. They've earned a seat up front with McCain, but watch how they all just work harder to prove it.

The big question is who is bringing the Dunkin Donuts. From Eilperin's report, it sounds like AP's Liz Sidoti might have some competition for biggest kiss-ass on the McCain plane.

Charlie Crist "Engaged" For Fifth Time

Joe.My.God.: Well, that didn't take long. Florida Governor Charlie Crist became engaged today to Carole Rome, 38, a woman he met only nine months ago on a trip to New York. Rome has two daughters, 9 and 11 years-old, from a marriage that ended in 2007. She is president of the Franco-American Novelty Company, a century-old Glendale, NY-based Halloween costume wholesaler owned by her family. (Maybe he was first attracted to her by the music that plays on her company's site? GAY.) The company's motto is "Where Fashion Meets Halloween." Rome currently lives on Miami's exclusive Fisher Island, an artificial island in Biscayne Bay formerly owned by the Vanderbilts.

Crist, 51, says Rome accepted his proposal "without hesitation" and that he hopes he and Rome can have a child of their own. Crist has been single for nearly 30 years after a six month marriage in 1979. Crist's father has claimed that his son has been engaged three other times since then.

Most of you skeptics will say, "Oh, come on! Crist is clearly a closet case who is rapidly engineering a sham marriage in order to amplify his chances of being chosen as John McCain's running mate!" What, a 30-year bachelor who used to patronize gay bars can't coincidentally fall in love with and marry a zillionaire "socialite heiress" at the same time he's being considered for Vice President?

HEH.

LSB: At least Crist is single and doesn't have to throw a lover under the bus in order to marry his zillionaire socialite heiress. *Snap!* And could you imagine Crist showing up with the IML winner on his arm to a state dinner?

Wingnuts Launch McDonald's Boycott

Joe.My.God.: The American Family Association has launched a boycott against McDonald's (with its own website, no less) in protest that an openly gay McDonald's executive has joined the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.From the [AFA] site:

What the boycott of McDonald's IS NOT about:

• This boycott is not about hiring homosexuals.
• It is not about homosexuals eating at McDonald's.
• It is not about how homosexual employees are treated.

What the boycott of McDonald's IS about.

• It is about McDonald's, as a corporation, refusing to remain neutral in the culture wars. McDonald's has chosen not to remain neutral but to give the
  full weight of their corporation to promoting the homosexual agenda, including homosexual marriage.

The AFA's site provides a petition for fellow wingnuts to sign and deliver to their local McDonald's outlets. Me, I having a Big Mac for lunch.

LSB: I'll be joining you later for a Happy Meal. BTW, who can explain to me what the homosexual agenda is, how it is different from the American agenda, and how buying a Big Mac promotes homosexual marriage? I read the letter from McDonald's and I missed that.

A Modest Proposal for the 4th: Take Back Old Glory

Paul Slansky, HuffingtonPost.com: …Of all the stupid things done by the anti-war crowd, the most gratuitously moronic was allowing the sanctimonious hypocrites of the right to co-opt the nation's most basic icon, its flag. The emblem of the country's highest aspirations was mindlessly ceded to the holier-than-thou zealots who used it as a bludgeon against the less fanatical.

Having unburdened itself of patriotism, the left proceeded over the years to also give away religion, national security and, finally, the elections themselves, but this devolution, into the pathetic puddle of unprincipled, acquiescent wimpiness that the Democrats have become, started with – or rather, without – the flag. It's hard to remember a presidential election in which that cavalier surrender hasn't exacted a serious price.

Eventually the lapel was established as the battlefield, and the degree of one's patriotic fervor is now presumed based on whether or not said lapel sports a flag pin. The flag pin wearer clearly loves his country – for Christ's sake, he's wearing its flag! – and as for the flagless, well, one can only wonder why they hate America so much that they won't allow its proudest symbol on their persons.

Republicans love to demagogue the flag, and this year that and fear-mongering are all they have. The presence or absence of the mini-Stars 'N' Stripes has the potential to erupt into a weeks-long October distraction, with the contemptible castrata of the media not just providing the stage but also trilling in the chorus. But we can prevent it, and so easily that there's really no excuse not to.

All of the conventional political wisdom of decades is mere rubble in the wake of the Bush-Cheney catastrophes. Whether or not they have health insurance or can afford the gas to drive to their jobs is more important to many past "values" voters than whether or not homosexual couples can call their unions "marriage." Significant numbers of previously intolerant evangelicals are now focusing on saving the earth instead of merely hating hordes of its occupants. Formerly dark red states are purple and may well turn blue. The right is reeling, they can't find a single thing to point to that's better than it was before Bush, so while they're busy dealing with issues of basic survival, let's just slip in there and take back the damn flag. Take it back from the war criminals and their apologists and enablers that have wrapped themselves in it even as they've been methodically destroying the republic for which it stands.

Barack Obama, who earlier took some flack for his empty lapel, is on the cover of the latest Rolling Stone with flag pin gleaming. We should follow his lead. Everyone who's voting for Obama – and especially those who are public figures (i.e. Keith Olbermann, Jack Cafferty, Rachel Maddow) must immediately procure a flag pin and not be seen without it before November 5th. If you can't do it with pride, do it as an act of subversion.

When everyone's wearing the flag it will be neutralized. It will cease to provide cover, and then all those with a need to display their moral superiority will have to find a new symbol to set them apart. A new image to mount on a pin and attach to fabric that says, "I am, in my essence, better than you."

Rush Limbaugh On His New Deal: "I'm Not Retiring Until Every American Agrees With Me"

HuffingtonPost.com: On his radio show Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh commented on the news of his astronomical new contract estimated at $400 million. Limbaugh told his audience, "I'm not retiring until every American agrees with me." The deal pays Limbaugh to keep dishing his views through 2016.

LSB: One look at this picture and there is no doubt that Satan has ahold of him! $50 million per year for this blowhard to spew his racist, sexist, homophobic drivel? Guess the nutcases need someone to feed them some red meat during the Obama years. He'll need to extend that contract through the end of time if he's not retiring until every American agrees with him, as I don't ever forsee a time when I could agree with anything this toad believes. What a tool!

GOP Anger: Bush Being "Reduced to Child's Play"

HuffingtonPost.com: US News and World Report printed a short piece about GOP fears that the President's relevance is shrinking beyond already dismal levels.

Some of President Bush's allies tell the Political Bulletin they are embarrassed and angry that the White House seems to be wasting Bush's time on frivolous events when much of the country is suffering through economic hard times.

"Look at the schedule for Monday," says an outside Bush adviser. "A highlight of his day was witnessing a tee ball game. ... He is being reduced to child's play."

The adviser says Bush also signed a supplemental appropriations bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on Monday, but he adds that it didn't get much coverage and that the tee ball game set the wrong tone.

There is growing concern among Bush allies that the Democrats will effectively portray the President and GOP candidate John McCain as out of touch. Some GOP insiders now predict that the Republicans will lose at lea