The summary of Dick Cheney's 2004 interview with the FBI about the outing of Valerie Plame reveals the former VP never heard anything about that. If he does know anything about that, he sure doesn't remember what that could be.
In the following clip from The Young Turks, Democratic U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson from Florida talks to Cenk Uygur about his fiery rhetoric.
I wish I could say that the only people that seem to be put off by Grayson's rhetoric are Republicans and the media. Fellow Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who usually knows his shit, said of Grayson, "Is this news to you that this guy's one fry short of a Happy Meal?"
UPDATE: Weiner apologized to Grayson for saying that. That's right, Grayson's got Democrats apologizing to him.
Even those in the media who didn't think Grayson's initial salvos at the Republicans were worthy of outrage, opined that Grayson went too far when he called former Enron lobbyist and Bernanke advisor Linda Robertson a "K Street whore." Excuse me, but the phrase "K-street whore" is about fifteen minutes from getting into the Oxford dictionary. This is not an offense against gender. If he called a man a "K-street whore" no one would have even blogged about it. And people blog about ANYTHING.
Grayson's bomb throwing s not the equivalent of Republican bomb throwing. It is a response to it. They set the rules. Grayson is just the politician who finally decided to kick their ass at their own game that actually had the ability to do it. As Grayson said in The Young Turks clip, when it comes to the issues that we're currently "debating" there is a right and a wrong answer.
Not only is he fighting fire with fire, but he's doing it where the GOP bomb-throwers--like Republican Rep. Paul Broun, who, in this clip, claims, on the floor of the House, that the public option will kill people--have done the most damage.
Grayson's strategy is to change the tone of the entire debate, which, when it comes to the mess that is the American health care system, never should have gotten away from the Democrats in the first place. Grayson has the Republicans on the defensive, which puts a lot of strain on the flimsy house of lies they've built over the course of this endless debate.
Dave Anthony at the blog Stop All Monsters writes:
The GOP attempted to fight back but they had built their entire health care argument on lies and nonsense. Greyson was cutting through to the meat of the matter: You don't care about people dying or you do. Republicans had no answer because their argument wasn't about people dying, it was about money and big government. The entire debate shifted. Win for Greyson.So, when Grayson comes along and hoists a lying jerk like Broun on whatever a petard is, it's not only deeply satisfying, it's actually helpful because all the false premises are actually rebutted on television.
Jon Stewart imagines the splendor that will be the Lieberman filibuster of the public option--reading the script of Benjamin Button.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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The health care saga has suddenly become a microcosm of the history of the last decade of Democratic self-destruction--if Harry Reid doesn't fuck things up, Joe Lieberman will. In what would be the final death blow to any hopes Lieberman has of rejoining the Democratic party for real or of being re-elected to the Senate in 2012, Holy Joe says he would join a filibuster of any health reform bill that includes a public option.
I don't like to reduce this blog to simple ranting and cursing, so I'll just leave this post as it is. See you good folks later on.
Okay... I am amazed that Harry Reid managed to not deliver the worst possible scenario at a big moment in history. Nevertheless, putting an opt-out option into the Senate bill is still one massive concession. Don't get me wrong, the opt-out plan is infinitely better than getting nothing, yet again, after nearly an entire year of work. The people in states with governors and state legislators that are so completely controlled by anti-reform interests are going to be second class citizens. They may be a bit lonely too, because a lot of people will be moving the moment their governor signs the bill that opts his state out of the public option.
In 2001, Portugal ended all criminal penalties drug possession for personal use. Time's Maia Szalavitz looks at the results.
She writes:
Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.Portugal's plan works because money saved on enforcement was spent on treatment instead. People found guilty of possession go before a panel, not to be confused with a death panel, made up of a psychologist, a social worker and a legal adviser, who recommend an appropriate treatment, which is never jail or prison. Also, if the drug user doesn't want treatment, they are free to opt out with no penalty.
University of Alaska professor Rick Steiner talked to Democracy Now about the possible corellation between his criticism of the oil industry and his university pulling his $10,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the massive power and influence the oil industry has over everything in Alaska, including the universities. Then again, what's a professor doing thinking independently anyway?
On Monday, infamous pranksters The Yes Men pulled a hoax of the non-boy-in-a-balloon variety. These guys took on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, staging a press conference where they claimed to represent the group. Their fake spokesman went on to announce the Chamber of Commerce's new found support for climate change legislation.
This went on until the real spokesman showed up, and he was pretty pissed. Watch:
The hoax was picked up by Reuters and rippled through the media all the way to the far edge, where Fox Business Network picked it up and promptly dropped it:
In fairness, FBN weren't the only ones to bite on the delightful scam.
I blogged at Les Enragés last week about what a good idea I thought the Franken Amendment was. Attached to the defense budget, it will prohibit the Department of Defense from doing business with firms like KBR*, who append riders to their employees' contracts basically requiring them to sign all legal disputes with the company into the hands of the company's own arbitrators. Quite a sweetheart deal for the company, but not so much for employees like Jamie Leigh Jones, as I fumed over back in December of 2007 here and here. The Agent's posts on the same story are here and here. All of those posts to some degree point out how the Bush administration deliberately created a zone of lawlessness in Iraq, with the country being beyond the ordinary legal jurisdiction of the USA, and the contractors therein also being outside the special military jurisdiction of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that governs the armed forces wherever in the world they may be.George W. Bush and wife Laura are going to be motivational speakers! Rachel Maddow explains.
It's good to see the Public Option is gaining momentum. The fact that it reduces the deficit along with positive polling should make this a no-brainer politically. Make it robust, ladies and gentlemen in Congress. Make it robust.
By the way something, Heather Graham is a great pick to embody the public option. This ad should go national.
About once a week I see an editorial about how screwed the Democrats are going into the 2010 election. I understand why these pundits are saying this--it's because they just can't help getting shit wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if the Republicans don't make some modest gains, simply because so many distracts have gone Democratic, but the landslide they hoped they would get by denying President Obama even the slightest cooperation, will not happen.
Nate Silver looks at all the moving pieces here. Nate isolates the most important factor in determining the outcome of the 2010 election--enthusiasm. And while the teabagging phenomenon has been depicted in the media as a real movement, we will see that by election time the metrics that measure enthusiasm will be a lot closer than people think.
Greg Sargent writes:
As DemFromCT points out that in this poll, only 20 percent of adults identify themselves as Republicans, the lowest in this poll since 1983. They can be as enthusiastic as they want, they're only 20%. I would also like to point out that with the delayed effects of the stimulus kicking in more heavily in 2010 and with the looming passage of some semblence of health care reform, enthusiasm could be high on both sides.If you look at the generic Congressional matchup in the internals of the new Washington Post poll, you’ll see that the Dem advantage over the GOP is virtually identical to what it was heading into the two previous Congressional elections.
Right now, the poll finds that when respondents are asked whether they will vote for a Dem or a GOPer in the 2010 elections, 51% pick the Dem and 39% pick the Republican.
In June of 2008 (the most recent historical data in the WaPo poll), Dems led the generic matchup 52%-37%. And in early November of 2006 the Dem lead was 51%-45%. Today the spread is largely unchanged.
Last night I was editing some sound from a movie I helped make back in 2004 that had footage of one of the Bush-Kerry debates in the background. Hearing Bush talk at length for the first time in nine months brought forth a profound and visceral reaction.
Take a look for yourself:
Gradually America is forgetting what that administration really was like. This makes it easier for the corporate media to take unfair shots at President Obama and it makes it easier for a master revisionist like Poppy Bush to say that Dubya was treated unfairly by the media.
In this clip from The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur takes issue with the utter lack of evidence in Rush Limbaugh's insane conspiracy theory. I, however, am utterly amazed at the projection on Limbaugh's part. Everything he's making up about Obama's approach to elections is true of the GOP. It's as if Ohio 2004 and Florida 2000 never happened.
The Connecticut Democratic Party is actually taking the Senate run by Linda McMahon seriously.
The Politico's Glenn Thrush writes:
Connecticut Democrats are Bible Belting Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon for all the evil, nasty, fun, weird stuff that happens at her husband's WWE wrestling events, Meredith Shiner reports.I haven't seen any polling, but this kind of weak attack makes me think that the Connecticut Democratic Party really thinks that McMahon has a shot at winning the Republican nomination. I've seen some crazy shit go down in American politics, but nominating the wife of Vince McMahon to a position of power should be beyond the bounds of reason even for Republicans.
In a priggish release sent to reporters today — reminiscent of the GOP's morality stand against old Al Franken routines — Democrats attacked McMahon, wife of WWE mogul Vince McMahon, for condoning "simulated rape, public sex and necrophilia."
As proof, they included several YouTube clips of male and female wrestlers in compromising positions — including footage of a male wrestler getting frisky with a fake corpse — which suddenly disappeared from the Web minutes after the Dems called out McMahon.
Vince's WWE has legal copyright authority over all the clips.
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I don't think the president expected such a tough question from a 4th grader. What the clip didn't show was the 4th grader's ruthless follow-up where he got Obama to admit that he was born in Kenya.
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Just when Alan Grayson is starting to make the Florida Congressional delegation look a little bit better, the best legislator the state has to offer, Rep. Robert Wexler, announces he's retiring from Congress in January to lead the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation.
Now I'm all for a think tank beneficial to the situation in the Middle East, in fact I plan to monitor their website for employment opportunities, but this is a progressive Democrat with courage--among the rarest commodities in all of American politics. Only sensible Republicans are more rare. And he's walking away to run a think tank?
I really hope there's no other shoe poised to drop here. No reason to think the worst about such a good politician, but he is a politician. TPM offers up several possible reasons why Wexler is walking.
I've never been convinced that immigration is the problem the media portrays it as. We did steal half the country from Mexico in a war that makes Iraq look legit. Well, good news, Lou Dobbs, census data indicates that more than 1 million illegal immigrants left last year. That trend was noticeable before the Bush recession really took off in September '08.
This news comes at a time when immigration reform has disappeared from the Democrats agenda. John Arivosis claims this is because Democrats don't do controversy. I get what he's saying, they do shy away from just about every bloody battle out there, but let's wait until we see what fills the void left by the resolution of health care reform to judge. Health care reform remains a high priority, controversial, bloody battle. There is so much to fix from the last thirty years that it's easy to focus on all the reforms we haven't gotten yet. We need to channel that rage in more productive ways.
When the Neil Rogers Show blew up earlier this year, South Florida became like much of the rest of the country--a radio wasteland of nothing but sports and right wing talk. The last vestige of talk radio that did not carry a corporate message was gone. The last show that could carry an audience large enough to represent the community--including members of the community that, like me, left the area long ago, but still have roots there--died. Local radio really died in South Florida when WIOD's line up that featured Rogers, Phil Hendrie, Rick & Suds and Randi Rhodes among others was broken up in the 90s.
Listeners in other major markets can tell the same tale. The ashes of KLSX in Los Angeles resulted in the rise of several very popular podcasts including Adam Carolla's podcast which has dizzying numbers. These shows have been quite fruitful, they often reference and cross over with one another. The communal feel is alive and well. In fact this group has been referred to as a podcluster.
But it's not a radio station.
In a post hyping his upcoming piece about the endeavor that intends to replace doomed terrestrial radio in South Florida and beyond--So Flo Radio.Com--William Skordelis writes:
Local radio is back in South Florida with Sofloradio.com. Led by Jorge Rodriguez, it is the creation of a group of “recessionist” entrepreneurs who watched themselves get squeezed out of their talk radio jobs by corporate media’s decision to save money, by broadcasting the same “national” radio shows in all markets, and in the process they tried to and almost killed grassroots, local talk radio in South Florida.Jorge Rodriguez spoke to Skordelis on his daily show which airs live noon-3pm daily. You can download that episode here. In a sprawling two hour interview that begins one hour into the show, Rodriguez outlines in detail his vision for the future of the station and the incredible story so far.
The communications conglomerates which control all of the major audio and video media providers have taken this more national approach to radio programming because of the enormous cost savings of having to pay one voice compared to paying local talent big bucks in hundreds of markets. The largest holdout for local talent is sports talk, which is relatively safe, especially in markets with one or more local major sports franchises.
Enter Sofloradio.com. Using the low cost bandwidth of the internet, Rodriguez and his group of local radio professionals have banded together to create a true grassroots, authentic radio media outlet to provide a voice for Joe Working Guy. It could be Jane Working Gal, or even Chuck Creative Guy, it doesn’t matter, SoFloRadio.com by nature just somehow identifies with the world’s “Doers.”
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Jon Stewart calls for CNN to spend more time fact checking claims made by politicians, rather than claims made by comedians doing sketches.
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Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic isolated this comment from Rush Limbaugh's media blitz.
From Jamie Gangel's interview with Rush on the Today Show:
Gangel: "Glenn Beck. Do you worry about the new guy on the block?"Conservative media? Holy shit! I thought the media was communist as fuck. I thought the whole lot of them were to the left of Bertolt Brecht.
Limbaugh: "No. In 1988, I'm the only national conservative voice. Now look at conservative media. Look what I have spawned. Glenn Beck, to me, is right on, daddy-o. Glenn Beck is a result of my success."
Waitrose, a supermarket chain in the United Kingdom, pulled it's advertising from Beck's show, which recently began airing in that country on Rupert Murdoch's Sky Network. The company made the decision after getting complaints about comments made by Beck about President Obama.
Beck has already lost 62 sponsors in the US, but he's willing to say anything, so his job is secure.
In this post, Steve Benen of The Washington Monthly covers the questioning Robert Gibbs received in the wake of the president winning the Nobel Peace Prize. CBS's Chip Reid lived up to his name by chipping away at Gibbs with annoying questions about the award being a "partisan thing" and asking why Obama won the award when Reagan never did.
Benen writes:
Reid's fears that a Nobel prize the president did not seek might "widen the partisan divide and make things even more difficult to accomplish on every front" are almost comical. It reminded me of the scene in "Life of Brian" when Matthias says, "Look, I don't think it should be a sin, just for saying 'Jehovah.'" Shocked, the official overseeing his execution says, "You're only making it worse for yourself!" To which Matthias responds, "Making it worse? How can it be worse?"This is a brilliantly simple point that I hope is not lost on the White House. Partisan rancor coming from conservatives can't be worse. Chip is just predicting something negative the conservatives probably will say and asking why the Democrats didn't avoid the situation that they had no control over in the first place. The Republicans have decided a long time ago to do their worst. Motivating them to do political damage need not be a concern.
By way of Digby and Kevin K. at Rumproast comes this gem of an, ahem, editorial, calling for Hillary Clinton to go all rogue on the Obama admnistration and confirm what the birthers already know to be true--Barack Obama cannot be President. It can't be excerpted from, you just have to go read the whole thing.
I just watched this exciting speech by Alan Grayson, who has become the avenging angel of health care reform.
By the way, this guy's background is very impressive. I look forward to seeing him straightening out Florida and America for many years to come.
Everyone seems all surprised that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. The president joins Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter as the only American Presidents to win the award. Carter was the only one to win it after leaving office. Al Gore was the only man elected president to win the award without being allowed to serve as president.
Obama himself even seemed surprised in his speech responding to the award. But this is not the least bit surprising when you consider the world has watched President Bush win eight consecutive Halliburton War Prizes. Ending cowboy diplomacy alone was worth a Nobel Prize. Lowering tensions with Russia so much that Iran can be contained without war and his passionate campaign to secure loose nuclear materials were just gravy on the main dish--he beat the guy who set his intentions to bomb Iran to song. For that alone, congratulations Mr. President.
The president is going to need a cause to donate the $1.4 million he just won. I'm sure he knows that. Look for the donation to be announced within a week. Joe Klein has a good suggestion:
I'm sure there are other things he can and should do--starting with finding an appropriate place to donate the $1.4 million that comes with the award. I'd give it to Greg Mortenson or someone else who has a successful track record of building schools in difficult places.
Russ sent me a disturbing clip, by way of Daily Kos, that shows an investigator going undercover to buy guns at a gun show in Nevada. The investigator asks each vendor if he needs to take a background check. The vendors tell him he doesn't. He then expresses his relief and tells them that he couldn't pass a background check. Almost all of them respond the same way, "I couldn't pass one either."
I'm not saying anything, but maybe get yourself one of these.
And now, for no reason, Guns n' Roses:
Former Rep. Charlie Wilson believes we should get out of Afghanistan in a hurry.
Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC has become one of my favorite voices in media. Recently Ratigan, whose name rules, has been using the phrase corporate communism.
Brilliant.
The right has made it their lives work to demonize certain words like "communism," "liberal," "trial lawyer." They even had a go at community organizers. Well, when the demonization of a word is so full that everyone accepts it, and your political opponent continues to tar you with that demonized word, then go ahead and jam that word up your opponent's ass.
Ratigan plays the health care game quite well here, wearing down a capable, yet very annoying, opponent.
Ratigan also recognizes that the only way to get anywhere in a political world where hosts shout down their guests is to become a host. Well done.
Rep. Louie Gohmert touches all the bases in this ridiculous rant on the floor of the House. It can only be responded to with this footage from Billy Madison.
My favorite line was about what a great president Alan Keyes would have been. Best speech EVER.
Russ emailed me this bit of anti-Obama hysteria. I think this kind of thing is starting to define our time the way disco and grunge defined their times.
In this clip from Fox News, we see William Kristol actually say that the president tried to bully the Olympics committee the way Bush bullied people. This mofo spent the last administration licking the previous president so hard his tongue shines. I know... big surprise. Not worthy of note.
In reaction to the glee exhibited by conservatives when Chicago lost their bid to host the 2010 Olympics, Paul Krugman writes:
So what did we learn from this moment? For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.Not the most poetic put down ever, but that image has staying power. These people are fucking jerks. When I say "these people," I just mean the conservatives we can see and hear.
These people must have read a different Bible than me.The Virginia gubernatorial race took an ugly turn this past weekend when a prominent endorser for Republican Bob McDonnell mocked the slight stutter of Democrat candidate Creigh Deeds.
At a rally for McDonnell's campaign, Sheila Johnson was taped discussing the importance of communication skills in the state's next governor.
"We need someone who can really communicate," she said. "And Bob McDonnell can communicate. The other people that I talk to, especially his o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-opponent... could not articulate what needed to be done."
Is it a good idea to tase a bro on a bike from a moving cop car? Maybe, maybe not, but it didn't work out very well for Pensacola Officer Jerald Ard. It worked out far less well for the suspect fleeing on a bicycle that Ard alledgedly tried to tase from his patrol car. After ending up under the patrol car, the suspect died when the officer drove over him.
How did cops catch people before tasers? Someone find out and spread the word, because we may have to go back to the old tactics.
A week after legislation to triple non-military aid to Pakistan passed Congress, a pair of army generals tells AP that of the $6.6 billion we sent to Pakistan since 9/11, only $500 million of the money went to the Pakistani military to fight militants.
Former dictator Pervez Musharraf regularly diverted these funds to other uses, including buying weapons to use if the country went to war with India. His spokesperson claimed that "he has answered all the questions."
There were signs that this was happening.
For more than a year, the Pentagon paid Pakistan's navy $19,000 a month per vehicle just for repair costs on a fleet of fewer than 20 vehicles. Monthly food bills doubled for no apparent reason, and for a year the Pentagon paid the bills without checking, according to the report.Also, we didn't get bin Laden. This was the bin Laden money. Unless he's in St. Louis or something.
Stephen Colbert congratulates the Democrats who killed the Public Option. Well, if it is actually dead. There are wildly varying takes on that.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
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The media was shocked... SHOCKED I say... to learn that companies are betting on your life. Against you.
Joe Scarborough, safely employed by someone other than Fox News, has managed to maintain some modicum of ideological consistency during crazy season, which means he's at odds with his party... occasionally.
This time around he's set in opposition to his fellow conservatives because they think it's hilarious that the president was unable to personally swing the decision of the International Olympic Committee from Rio to Chicago.
On, of all places, The Huffington Post, Scarborough writes:
The President was right to fly to Copenhagen to try to land the games, not for the sake of his city, but for the good of his country. The fact President Obama failed makes me respect him more for taking the chance, and the fact many right-wing figures opposed the President's mission shows just how narrow-minded partisanship makes us all.Not bad, but is our Joe Scarborough learning?
For the better part of 20 years, a bitterness has infected our politics that has weakened our country.Drawing this kind of monumental false equivalence is a much bigger far more dangerous lie than the transparent crap these amateurs are pushing about an American city losing the Olympics.We Republicans spent eight years trying to delegitimize Bill Clinton.
Democrats spent the next eight years doing the same to George W. Bush.
Now that a Democrat is in the Oval Office again, it is the GOP who is trying to delegitimize a sitting president.
When I try to talk to Republicans about the need to break this cycle of viciousness, some cite the chapter and verse of every hateful left wing attack against George W. Bush.
Whenever I attempt to have a conversation with some Democrats about the need for us respect our president-- whether he be an Obama or a Bush-- I am told that Bush deserved whatever he got because he was a lying war criminal who hated the Constitution and loved torturing
people.Fortunately, there are a growing number of Americans who believe we cannot continue going on this way.
