Archive for the 'open thread' Category

• The Carpetbagger reports on the rightosphere: On the one hand, they don't believe global warming is caused by humans.  On the other hand, most of them realize that a border wall between the US and Mexico will never be completed.  So they're partially reality-based.
• The Nation reviews the recent history of progressive film and television in Remembering 'Norma Rae'.
• The Daily Mail shows how the world looks proportioned according to HIV rates, alcohol consumption, military spending, housing prices, and other measures.
• Political Wire: Biden trails in Delaware.
• Chuck Todd's new campaign race rankings for the Democrats.
• TPM Muckraker continues to follow the US attorney "resignations" story.
• Ava's own diary points us to a Mother Jones article titled Are You There, George? It's Me, Ava.

  A decade earlier, a teenage girl out of the local political mainstream might have held her tongue until she could leavelabama. But these days the Internet provides a means out—a community of like-minded people, albeit a virtual one. Ava's website averages 30,000 hits a day and is recommended by Michael Moore's. It remains to be seen, however, whether such virtual, viral efforts can serve as a replacement, or even a stimulus, for face-to-face networks such as church groups or labor unions. Ava's rally/birthday party was a small test of what Internet activism can look like on the ground.

• The wingnuts are meeting in D.C., and they're on a "mission from God" yet again. Josh is actually watching and keeping tabs, in case you are dying to know what they're doing. (mcjoan)
• Is McCain's heart really in it? Reading Craig Crawford who notes three major flubs by the candidate in recent days, you have to wonder. (mcjoan)
• Henry Waxman has issued his first subpoena, to Major General George W. Weightman, former Commander of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, "regarding the privatization of support services at Walter Reed and its impact on the conditions at Walter Reed." (mcjoan)
• Meanwhile in Iraq, all hell breaking loose continues, with 14 Iraqi abducted police found dead, 18 Interior Ministry employees seized, and two U.S. soldiers and an interpreter killed. (mcjoan)

(Tonight’s selections are brought to you courtesy of the Rescue Rangers. SusanG)

March 1 is traditionally a day for media circuses and prominent, public steps to bring hope, entertainment, and sometimes despair, to the masses: previous todays have seen the Lindbergh baby kidnapped (1932), the Salem Witch Hunt begun (1692), the Zimmerman Telegram published in the U.S. (1917), and JFK establishing the Peace Corps (1961).  

(Tonight's Rescue Ranger crew is Dump Terry McAuliffe, Elise, Got a Grip, jennyjem, Truth of Angels, and vcmvo2, with Unitary Moonbat editing)  

• British to Withdraw All Troops - from Bosnia and Herzegovina, that is. londonbear gives us a glimpse into what may be the future of the Middle East, given some patience and some diplomacy. (jennyjem)
• silvercedes writes a touching installment in the series "I Got The News Today" about the latest casualty in the Iraq War and what that news means to her and her husband, who is also serving in Iraq, in IGTNT(2/28/07): "Irwan was Killed...". (vcmvo2)
• ConspiracyJack tells an amusing story of how a fifth-grader is smarter than President Bush in A Bush joke courtesy of my 11-yr old son... (vcmvo2)
• After watching two political heavyweights face off in NYC, mojotroll concludes that progressives are more willing to listen to opposing views. Find out what happened in Why we are better: the Mario and Newt debate. (Dump Terry McAuliffe)
• DrSteveB shows us how reverting to individually-purchased insurance misses the mark in Universal Health for Insurance Companies (Health Care Thursday).(jennyjem)
• MarketTrustee summarizes how the Home Efficiency Act will improve energy savings, reduce Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and decrease fossil fuel dependencies inENERGIZE AMERICA: Home Efficiency Act. (vcmvo2)
• PolitiCalypso's diary, Buying Up the Coast for Fun and Profit--LOTS of Profit, explains how politicians allow the rich to buy up the Gulf Coast while victims of Hurricane Katrina continue to suffer. (Dump Terry McAuliffe)
• The administration's recent about-face on "negotiating with terrorists" inspired Bill Prendergast to serve up the snark in What bitter satire! Bush Soprano style sit-down with Iraq and Syria. (Dump Terry McAuliffe)
• The San Francisco DCCC pass a resolution calling for Congress to revoke the IWR, reports Paul Hogarth in S.F. Democrats Tell Congress to (Seriously) End the War. (TruthOfAngels)
• What happens when the government wants to wrongfully deport you but you have nowhere to go? Step Beyond tells us in Elias Faddoul: Immigration Injustice. (Got a Grip)
• I don't know how to categorize this, except to say that it made me guffaw out loud. I think it's a snarky rant, or perhaps ranting snark. Whatever you call it, you're going to enjoy HeadkickingForFreelance's The Next Two Years Are Gonna Be Awful: On The Road To The Republican Nomination.(jennyjem)

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• Right wing efforts to destroy Nancy Pelosi are failing miserably.

  [I]deological liberals HAVE thrown their lot with Pelosi as an individual, giving her a 68-19 approve/disapprove rating among the group.

  And moderate voters who tilted away from Bush, the Iraq war and congressional Republicans last fall -- who've yet to fully embrace the new Congress as a whole -- are in some cases are voicing a more than 2-to-1 approval of Madame Speaker.

  Ideological moderates approve of her job performance 55-26, while self-identified independents support her work 45-34 so far.

  In fact, Pelosi is far more popular amongst moderates and independents than the overall Congress -- a lesson to Blue Dogs who think they alone represent "the center". They do not.

• Reps. Boucher (D-VA) and Doolittle (R-Corruptionville) are introducing legislation to reform the DCMA. It's clear copyright owners have been able to trash Fair Use rights, and the balance must be restored.
• Dear Brian Lamb, claiming that C-SPAN holds copyright on footage of congressional committee meetings is undemocratic.
• North Korea has nuclear weapons today because of George Bush. This may not be a foreign policy disaster on the scale of Iraq, but it's a disastrous one nonetheless.

  Because of a weapons program that may not even have existed (and no one ever thought was far advanced) the White House the White House got the North Koreans to restart their plutonium program and then sat by while they produced a half dozen or a dozen real nuclear weapons -- not the Doug Feith/John Bolton kind, but the real thing.

  Idiots.

• Now Michigan is trying to move up its primary schedule. They should just give up and have a national primary. And yeah, that'll cost a lot of money. But if a candidate can't raise money, he or she has no business running for president anyway.
• Funny how the same people who get the vapors over the Clenis, don't seem to have a problem with Giuliani's multiple marriages, marriage to a second-cousin, rampant womanizing, and general mistreatment of his ex-wives.

  When Giuliani met Hanover on a blind date in the early 1980s, his first marriage to Regina, his second cousin, was already over. Hanover, who went on to appear in the television series Ally McBeal, was a glamorous soulmate who seemed to enjoy the spotlight as much as he did.

  They had two children, Andrew, 21, and Caroline, 17, but in 1996 Hanover stopped calling herself by his last name and a year later Vanity Fair magazine said that he was having an "intimate relationship" with a senior member of his staff.

  In 2000, without telling Hanover first, Giuliani announced at a press conference that he was separating from her. She retaliated by accusing him of being unfaithful with the employee, but he was already with Nathan [...]

  Yet however vicious the personal attacks on Giuliani, they are unlikely to dent his reputation for competence. He did, after all, handle the September 11 attacks while bunking with gay friends in the midst of an affair and a divorce battle.

  Digby wonders what happened to the culture war?

  The Christian Right supporting Rudy Giuliani proves that the culture war is nothing but a GOP scam and we can stop obsessively worrying about offending these people with our godless, fancy-pants, big-city ways.

• Did you hear the latest slam against Hillary? She gives money to charity! Only an independent counsel can get to the bottom of this nefarious plot!
• (mcjoan) Arthur Schlesinger, historian, Kennedy White House staffer, and unabashed liberal, has died at age 89.

  In his last book, "War and the American Presidency," published in 2004, Mr. Schlesinger challenged the foundations of the foreign policy of President Bush, calling the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath "a ghastly mess." He said the president’s curbs on civil liberties would have the same result as similar actions throughout American history.

  "We hate ourselves in the morning," he wrote.

(Tonight's selections are brought to you courtesy of the Rescue Rangers. SusanG)

February may be the shortest month of the year, but it was long enough to claim the lives of 78 Americans serving in Iraq. Highlighting one of them at random - 21-year old Spc. Lorne Henry Jr. of Niagara Falls, New York. He graduated from high school in 2004, was dating his high school sweetheart, and left behind an 11-year-old brother who idolized him.

This evening's Rescue Rangers are BentLiberal, my global conscious, paragraph, jlynne, Rippen Kitten, and smokeymonkey, with dannyinla as editor.

• Painting This War with Tears is JeeniCriscenzo's moving story of Carlsbad's Bring Their Buddies Home Vigil. Read her well-written, first person account of a quiet but visible protest against the reality of what "casualty counts" represent: wasted lives. (BentLiberal)
• attytood contextualizes the deafening silence and how it is broken for some in America with Doorbells. (my global conscious)
• If you're a fan of the TV show 24, or even if you're not, don't miss Vyan's truth is stranger than fiction essay, Troops turn to TV for Torture Techniques. (Rippen Kitten)
• In BEAUTIFUL MINDS: The Bush Family Compassion Deficit, Avenging Angel examines the Bush family's claims of compassion versus evidence of the same. (Rippen Kitten)
• Xpatriated Texan returns, calling the culture of life to the carpet with "It is Finished" And We Must Not Let It End. (my global conscious)
• Ampersand writes a compelling diary on institutional racism in the court system. Well written and well thought out, this diary refutes some simplistic assertions by right wing bloggers. Please check out The Long Beach Beating Case And Race (BentLiberal)
• Want to stop the war? Follow the money. Stranger in a strange land explains that Money Makes the World - and the Iraq War - Go Around. (jlynne)
• Nonpartisan kicks it back to the real issue at hand-sound judgement-and the obscurity of wordiness in Rhetorical Nukes, and When to Use Them. (my global conscious)
• In Focus On The Family: Say One Thing, Say Nothing Else, Jim Burroway tells the story of Andrew Anthos, a 72-year-old gay man who was beaten to death two weeks ago, and ponders discrepancies in public reaction. (Rippen Kitten)
• OrangeClouds115 gives her personal take on habeas corpus and why we need to reclaim what she never dreamed we could lose. Restoring Our Constitution: Land of the Free... except for that little "habeas corpus" detail (BentLiberal)
• In Canada Goes Sane: Two "Anti-Terror" Laws Scrapped, diarist Wreck Smurfy tells us the news that Liberals, New Democrats, and the Bloc Quebecois have come together to defeat the extension of two controversial anti-terror laws favored by Canada's Conservative government.(BentLiberal)
• Alegre reminds us that the genocide in Darfur continues in Updated - Fitzmas At the Hague (w/ resource guide). Alegre has compiled recent news and resource links on Darfur, so please hotlist this diary and do what you can to help the victims of Darfur. (Rippen Kitten)

cskendrick has Top Comments.

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• Lieberman's acolytes in the Connecticut legislature seeks to regulate political blogging. The proposed legislation is so unconstitutional it's laughable, but can you expect anything less from the professional thugs and liars in the Lieberman crowd?

  Connecticut bloggers should target these officials in primaries. Every last one.

• The Philly Daily News polls 2008 general election matchips with Giuliani, Obama, Clinton, and McCain going up against each other. The verdict? Republicans win (PDF) all four matchups.
• The Politico let itself be used by Dan Gerstein to settle old political scores.
• Who knew that Keith Olbermann was killing Democracy?
• The Internet kills.
• James Cameron says he found the Jesus family grave.
• What was the first thing bought on eBay?
• NJ-Sen: With Lautenberg's numbers not looking great (as with the numbers for every single politician in New Jersey), let's encourage Republicans to sink a new round of millions into a state that they simply will not win.

• Gary Trauner, the Democrat who came within 1,000 votes of winning the House race in Wyoming in 2006, muses on partisanship over at the New West Network.

  I knocked on nearly 20,000 doors across Wyoming last year. The question I was asked most often was simple yet searing in its message: "How do I know you’re not going to become one of them?" This question came from people across the economic and political spectrums. "Them" did not have a label attached to it – it did not mean Democrat or Republican or Libertarian or whatever. It meant DC. It meant professional politicians who had lost touch. It meant putting blind partisanship ahead of doing the right thing.

  Despite our overt partisanship, I think this "outsiders" versus "establishment" dynamic fuels the netroots above all else.

• The RNC's former eCampaign director compares the 2008 field's online organizing tools. His verdict? Obama laps the field by a country mile.

  The Bush campaign learned from the Dean folks in 2004. We saw the power of lateral organizing and empowering our supporters. We didn't, in my opinion, go far enough, but we moved the ball as much as the GOP system would allow.

  We focused our attention on finding and recruiting supporters, and giving them tools to reach voters, whether by phone, e-mail or door knock. We allowed them to host events, but more importantly, we allowed them to open the doors to other volunteers. Their invite lists wasn't pulled from their personal address book. It included other Bush Volunteers who lived nearby. It connected neighbors who had never met, and allowed them to work together for the benefit of the campaign.

  The current crop of Republican sites indicates that nothing was learned from the success we had. Nobody is building on what was done before. Nobody is taking the last generation and making it better. Nobody saw, in that model, the power you can have by opening the system and giving control to the user.

  On the Democrat side, the only one I see who has actually learned from 2004 is Obama. He has taken the best of the Dean model, and the best of the Bush model, and come up with a very good package.

• Check out these winners -- sorority Delta Zeta at DePauw University kicked out all members that were overweight, asian, or black. They were trying to improve their image. Only the hot ones "popular with fraternity men" were kept around.
• The Top 11 subway systems in the world. Number 1 is London's Tube.
• Sharpton's connection to Strom Thurmond:

  But last week Sharpton learned the two did have a connection after genealogists found he was a descendent of a slave owned by relatives of Thurmond in South Carolina.

• Woah -- Wimbledon didn't pay its male and female winners the same? For a sport in which the women's side has been more interesting for years, that was bizarre. That disparity is no more.
• The market is tanking today -- at one point, the DJIA was down over 500 points, and as of 3:30 EST, it's back down over 400.  (Trapper)

(Tonight’s selections are brought to you courtesy of the Rescue Rangers. SusanG)

This evening you'll find selections highlighting various positive grassroots activities, examples of government doublespeak on judicial and economic affairs, poverty, the mental health of our Veterans, judicial activism, and of course, no rescue would be complete without some healthy discourse on the war.

And now, from the Rescue Ranger Academy, presenting the nominations for the Koscar award for "Most Rescuable Diaries" on Monday, February 26, 2007, are: claude, my global conscious, buhdydharma, dannyinla, Dump Terry McAuliffe, and BentLiberal, with joshalot as editor.

• AmericanRiverCanyon presents a sterling example of local political event reporting with photos and links to background context as he follows his Representative to constituent meetings, Part II, It was Friday, Doolittle Does da 'Burbs in 37 minutes. (claude)
• In grass-roots impeachment news, NM Kossak barbwire has been closely following the progress of an Impeachment Bill moving through the NM Legislature and gives us this report of a well-attended Committee meeting. NM Impeachment Passes 2nd Committee. (claude)
• lowkell writes about Raising Kaine and ActBlue joining forces in Time to Act Blue in Virginia! Among those giving the Dems a chance to make some gains in the state are a former teacher, a firefighter and a Naval officer. (dannyinla)
• dsjwriter brings to light the decisiveness in capital punishment and how it brings out the flip-flop (who woulda thunk?) of Chief Justice Roberts in Roberts a judicial activist after all. (my global conscious)
• Winners and losers. DeanDemocrat does a very nice job of exposing the soft white underbelly of Bushco's "good economy" in his Report: Millions in SEVERE POVERTY. (buhdydharma)
• eteraz gives us a déjà vu moment, pondering, is history repeating itself? The Crusades & The War On Terror Become One. (my global conscious)
• Dont Tread on Me asks, If the consequences of this war are so great..., why aren't we seeing a mobilization on the scale of great wars of the past? (Dump Terry McAuliffe)
• testvet6778, a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, has seen the quality of care deteriorate as the war has dragged on. So it's no surprise to him that the APA finds military mental health system is stressed beyond needs. (Dump Terry McAuliffe)
• What made five Western Governors Work Together to Address Global Warming? According to fbihop, it's a response to the inaction of an administration in the thrall of Big Oil. (Dump Terry McAuliffe)
• In Breaking the Box of the Bush Budget, NoMoreLies argues that this administration's obsession with war is starving the country, and calls for a dramatic reordering of priorities. (Dump Terry McAuliffe)

Cronesense has Top Comments.

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• David Broder scratches his head, wondering why people don't just agree to agree with each other.

  I contacted Bailey recently to ask what had happened to this bold gamble, and he was the source of that 35,000 figure for the number of people who have lent support to the scheme. They obviously have a long way to go before they can claim to be a viable political force, but they are making slow, steady progress.

  When I called Bailey, it had been just a week since the group announced that anyone who was interested could sign up at http://www.unity08.com as a voting delegate to a national convention planned for June 2008. Most of the sign-ups came before that formal start, Bailey said, in response to last year's publicity about the formation of Unity08.

• C-SPAN continues to claim copyright over congressional hearings, even demanding Nancy Pelosi take down a YouTube clip of a committee hearing. Any entity that claims it owns the proceedings of our democracy is on dangerously thin ice.

  It's time for Pelosi to end that undemocratic monopoly.

• Cheney admits the truth -- Democrats are forcing the Bush Administration to do its job on terrorism.

  Vice President Dick Cheney made an unannounced trip to Pakistan on Monday to deliver what officials in Washington described as an unusually tough message to Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda.

• Lindsay Beyersten (a.k.a. "Majikthise") writes why she passed up the opportunity to blog for Edwards. Great call.

  The Edwards campaign wants decentralized people-powered politics. Ironically, by hiring well-known bloggers to manage a destination Web site, it was actually centralizing and micromanaging. Every campaign needs a blog, but the most important part of a candidate's netroots operation is the disciplined political operatives who can quietly build relationships with bloggers outside the campaign. And the bomb-throwing surrogates need to be outside, where they can make full use of their gifts without saddling a campaign with their personal political baggage.

• As an aside, I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say (in DC and outside it) "I wish Elizabeth Edwards was running instead of her husband." I don't take that as a knock on John, but testament to how much of a star Elizabeth could be.

(Tonight’s selections are brought to you courtesy of the Rescue Rangers. SusanG)

No fancy dresses, no hype, no red carpet, and no little gold men, but in our opinion, the following diaries all deserve Oscars.

(Tonight's Rangers are vcmv02, nyc in exile, Unitary Moonbat, Got a Grip, and srkp23)

• With beautiful prose, Brahman Colorado explores the meaning of the word "vulgar" in Vanities and Vulgarities. (Got a Grip)
• First-time diaristsilent no more analyzes how important U.S. elections have become in this anecdotal diaryI Was Wrong. How many of our political leaders still take our elections and our political process for granted? (vcmvo2)
• In a scathing treatise, new diarist notanamerican educates us on how the left gets shut out of the information game in Then They Came For The Liberals. (Got a Grip)
• In Shining a new Light on the Subject: Pt 3 of series, Dcoronata illuminates the energy-saving potential of LED lighting. (srkp23)
• fortherecord235 traces $100mm in WWII loot through post war Japan to the current day GOP in What happened to $100 billion in WWII loot? Ask Rev Moon. (nyc in exile)
• skymutt puts a different kind of frame around Republican fairy tales: Enron and Global Warming. Leave it to the foe to make the dead guy the scapegoat/villain. (Unitary Moonbat)
• OhioNative reports on what happens when Republicans are allowed to run amuck in In Ohio: New Reports Reveal Republican Legacy of Destruction. (nyc in exile)
• OrangeClouds115 had a diamond get lost in the rough this morning – Cloudheads should be sure'n check out Lost in Translation 2: Liberating Iraq. (Unitary Moonbat)
• A young soldier dies in a mysterious fashion, and her death is ruled a suicide. Was justice done? The Angry Independent brings this question to our attention in ATTENTION KOS READERS:YOUR HELP IS NEEDED. (Got a Grip)
• Light on fluff and heavy on informative links, Newsie8200 brings us news we can use in Newsie's Media News Report: Tabloid editor to MSM: Where's the beef? Note: There are no links concerning Anna Nicole or Britney Spears here.... (Got a Grip)

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