Sins of Omission: Without any pretense of objectivity, Fox News ignores Obama's presser

What I did with Photoshop today ...

In the same way the GOP seems to be knowingly turning its back on mainstream America, Fox gave the White House the cold shoulder today, declining to broadcast Pres. Obama's press conference marking 100 days in office. (They chose instead to enrich our cultural landscape with episodes of "American Idol" and "Lie to Me.")

It's the first time that a major news agency declined to air a prime-time presidential press conference. Fox News did send reporters to the presser, but coincidentally, I'm sure, no members of the Fox press were invited to ask the president a question.

In the last 100 days, Fox has provided a forum for any vituperative wingnut desirous of attacking Obama, no matter how unfounded the accusation, unproven the conspiracy, or unkind the personal insult. (Take a look at FAIR: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and their monthly magazine, Extra!, for sustained and in-depth criticism of Fox News' tactics.)

You can see numerous examples of Fox-sponsored mudslinging over the past 100 days in this video made by ThinkProgress.org. As the video's creators explain:

"On the first 100 days of the Obama presidency, the conservative movement has undergone a period of radicalization. From knee-jerk opposition to the President's policies, to petty insults and conspiracy theories aimed at smearing Obama, to the embrace of the radical tea party protests, the Republican party has responded by lurching further to the right."

Where are the Republicans headed with all the demagoguery? Nowhere good. During the last 100 days, as the Obama administration worked on bailouts and foreclosures and health care and equal pay and foreign policy and more, the GOP has decreased its support base and the damaged Americans' opinion of the Republican Party.

Still, in a two party system, lack of overall equilibrium is disturbing. If Republicans continue to stampede, frenzied as lemmings by paranoia and knee-jerk opposition to anything they didn't think of first, will they take the rest of the country with them of the cliff?

• The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released today showed that only 31 percent of Americans approve of how Republican leaders in Congress are handling their jobs, down 13 percent from February.
• Millions of whites who voted against President Obama in November have changed their minds and now support him, according to a new national poll from Quinnipiac University.
• In a poll of registered voters conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press during the first two months of 2008, just 27% identified themselves as Republicans, the lowest percentage of self-identified Republican voters in 16 years of polling by the Center.

You wouldn't know any of this from watching Fox News, which is living in a fantasy world of its own making. Media watchdogs like MediaMatters.org have a full-time job keeping track of the falsehoods streaming out of Fox News on practically an hourly basis, as demonstrated by the list of MediaMatters.org stories in the category Attacks on Barack Obama from just the past two days:

• The "Worst Media Moment of Obama's First 100 Days" is... Wednesday, April 29, 2009
• Rush calls Obama "cold" and "partisan" for commenting on Fox-sponsored tea parties Wednesday, April 29, 2009
• Limbaugh on Obama's view of American values: "We're not gonna waterboard Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, we're going to murder a million babies a year" Tuesday, April 28, 2009
• Limbaugh on Obama comment that Al Qaeda not constrained by constitution: "he's basically again saying 'Look, I kind of envy al Qaeda' " Tuesday, April 28, 2009
• Limbaugh on auto bailout: "Don Obama has made Don Corleone look like Daffy Duck" Tuesday, April 28, 2009
• Limbaugh, Beck assign political motives to response to swine flu Monday, April 27, 2009
• Limbaugh: Obama is "poison to prosperity" Monday, April 27, 2009
• Limbaugh says his friend believes "Obama is terrorist attack number 2; Obama is the follow-up to 9-11" Monday, April 27, 2009
• Limbaugh and friends speculate on who's really "running the show": Axelrod, Soros, King Abdullah, or Alinski? Monday, April 27, 2009
• Limbaugh on swine flu: "President Bamster is going to exploit it" Monday, April 27, 2009

Astounding, isn't it?
(For more links to media watchdogs and critics, visit Stephen Macek's Media Criticism page. For more on Fox, see Robert Greenwald's "Out-Foxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.")

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Your caption here.

Can anyone provide a caption for this photo?























H/t to Alvis Dunn and photo credit to letsgoeverywhere.

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Marcia Fudge's excellent take on the stimulus bill

I was happy to hear Congresswoman Marcia Fudge of Ohio's 11th Congressional District talking about the $789 billon dollar stimulus bill on WCPN's The Sound of Ideas this morning.

It was the first time I'd heard her speak at length and I was delighted to find her well-informed, smart, upbeat and politically savvy.

Her counterpoint, Rob Frost, chairman of the Republican Party of Cuyahoga County, was dour, ill-informed, half-baked and yet inexplicably smug for a man who clearly didn't know what he was talking about.

To callers, Marcia Fudge had to repeat in as many ways she could think of, "Yes, we wanted there to be more __________ in the bill, too (fill in the blank with: mortgage help for homeowners; job creation; investment in the infrastructure, etc.) but Senate Republicans wouldn't pass the bill unless we dumped all that and added more tax cuts."

At one point, Frost misstepped by critizing the bill for not providing enough stimulus to do much good (contradictorily, he'd just criticized the bill for heaping debt upon our children and our children's children).

And Fudge's answered back with, of course, "We wanted the bill to be larger, but for some reason Senate Republicans set an arbitrary limit of $789 dollars" (I'm paraphrasing).

Frost managed to stumble back to the faulty party line by saying that what he MEANT was that the stimulus package didn't include enough TAX CUTS, which as far as he was concerned was the only way to stimulate economic growth.

Fudge's rejoinder: We tried tax cuts for the last eight years, and ended up 3 trillion dollars in debt.

At which point moderator Michael McIntyre couldn't resist jumping in to point out that the tax cuts in the approved bill would amount to a little over $7 a week per person.

"How are each of you planning to spend your $7?" he quipped.

"Exactly," said Fudge.

It was lively. (But I'm still missing Dan Moulthrop.)

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Newsweek wants us to appreciate the legacy of Dick Cheney. Good luck with that.

I don't know why anyone would, but if you're tempted to drift into nostalgia or sympathy for Dick Cheney, as Newsweek magazine does in its recent cover story, consider the evidence of his Cheney's inhumanity to (non-white) man offered by (one-time Newsweek press critic) Charles Kaiser in the Columbia Journalism Review .

Newsweek suggests that Obama may find that the expanded presidential powers which Cheney pushed for too good to relinquish. While Cheney is often vilified as "a creature of the dark side, a monstrous figure who trampled on the Constitution to wage war against all foes, real and imagined," his methods, says Newsweek, "kept the nation safe and secure."

Plus, says Newsweek, Cheney probably never intended any of this torture stuff to go so far:

The issue of torture is more complicated than it seems. America brought untold shame on itself with the abuses at Abu Ghraib. It’s likely that the take-the-gloves-off attitude of Cheney and his allies filtered down through the ranks, until untrained prison guards with sadistic tendencies were making sport with electric shock. But no direct link has been reported.

This, says Kaiser, doesn't just strain credulity; it's just plain wrong.

Leave aside for a moment the comforting image of “making sport with electric shock.” (The ACLU has documented the deaths of at least 160 prisoners in U.S. custody during the Bush administration, of which more than seventy were caused by “gross recklessness, abuse, or torture”: an unfortunate side effect of that “sport,” I suppose.) Let us focus instead on that tossed-off assertion of “no direct link” between Cheney and his allies and what happened on the ground in Iraq and Guantánamo.

The truth is, we know for a fact that all of the most heinous methods of torture used by this administration were aired at White House meetings attended by Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet. George Bush confirmed that those meetings took place in an interview with ABC correspondent Martha Raddatz last year. And just one month ago, Cheney boasted to ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl that he had personally approved of the program which led to waterboarding of alleged terrorists.

He's a very, very scary man. Which reminds me -- can't they prosecute Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld for something? His arrogance in the face of his mistakes -- like launching an invasion with no occupation plan or exit strategies and failing to adequately arm and armor troops -- offended even the hawkiest of hawks high in the Pentagon.

Hattip: The Daily Kos

Technorati tags: Dick Cheney, Newsweek, torture, presidential powers, Barak Obama, Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq war

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Dick Cheney Lie Count On David Letterman

The title really explains itself, as Letterman says.



Regarding clips of Cheney, my personal favorite is this amazingly prescient clip of 1994, in which Cheney explains why invading Iraq and toppling Saddam would be disastrous. If only he'd listened to himself.



For more fun with Dave and Dick, don't forget Letterman's contention that Cheney "just couldn't care less about Americans" and has sold them out to the oil companies in return for "some great annuity when they're out of office."




Ah, what will we do when we don't have grim-jawed Dick to kick us around anymore?

Technorati tags: politics, justice, Dick Cheney, corruption, oil industry, energy companies, lie count, Iraq, invasion, George W. Bush

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Cokie Roberts tops poll for Most Inane Punditry of the 2008 campaign

"I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place ... He should be in Myrtle Beach, you know, if he's going to take a vacation at this time."

Cokie Roberts, ABC's This Week, Aug. 10

By an overwhelming margin, Cokie Robert topped the polls in Media Matters for America's poll for Most Inane Punditry of the 2008 presidential campaign.

Roberts, NPR contributing senior news analyst and ABC political commentator, was critical of of then-Sen. Barack Obama for choosing Hawaii, the state of his birth, to take his August family vacation.

On the August 10 edition of ABC's This Week, Roberts criticized Obama for "going off this week to a vacation in Hawaii," which she said "does not make any sense whatsoever." Roberts repeated her criticism of Obama's vacation destination during the August 11 broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition, asserting that Obama's choice of Hawaii for his vacation "makes him seem a little bit more exotic."

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The definition of "too clever by half": Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R) hangs up on Obama

There's no fooling this keenly vigilant member of the House Foreign Relations Committee. Forget diplomacy -- she's not even going to TALK to you until she's sure you know the secret handshake.

After all, imagine the calamity should a member of the US House of Representatives make a fool of herself on the radio. Compared with that horror, dissing the president-elect and his chief of staff is clearly the lesser evil.

I'm just wondering after that how "constructive" her subsequent discussion of foreign affairs with Obama could really have been

The BBC reports

Ms Ros-Lehtinen thought the call was a prank

US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen thought she was being hoaxed when a man who sounded a lot like Barack Obama called her - so she hung up on him.

In fact, the man at the other end of the line was indeed President-elect Obama himself.

...

"I thought it was one of the radio stations in South Florida playing an incredible, elaborate, terrific prank on me," Ms Ros-Lehtinen told the Miami Herald newspaper.

...

Mr Obama was calling to congratulate her on her re-election, and to say that he looked forward to working with her ... on the House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee.

After a minute or so, Ms Ros-Lehtinen cut Mr Obama off, telling him she was not fooled by the hoax ...

Shortly afterwards, Mr Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel called Ms Ros-Lehtinen back to persuade her to take the call, but she hung up on him as well.

It was only when Howard Berman, a fellow member of her committee, called her that she was persuaded to take the call.

...

Mr Obama then called her back, and was amused by the incident ...

The pair then had a constructive discussion about foreign affairs, according to the congresswoman.

Okay, then. Next time perhaps the President's office should just email her.

Technorati tags: Barak Obama, humor, politics, foreign policy

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Dick Cavett on "The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla"

The "serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High"

We can thank Dick Cavett for his witty, succinct opinion piece on NYTimes.com on Sarah Palin's "victory tour." Of her impact on the Republican presidential ticket, Cavett writes:

"I suppose it will be recorded as among political history’s ironies that Palin was brought in to help John McCain. I can’t blame feminists who might draw amusement from the fact that a woman managed to both cripple the male she was supposed to help while gleaning an almost Elvis-sized following for herself. Mac loses, Sarah wins big-time was the gist of headlines.

"I feel a little sorry for John. He aimed low and missed."

Cavett dubs Palin "the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High," and backs that up by citing some of Palin's mind-bendingly convoluted answers in interviews. He's not without admiration for Palin's speaking style:

"It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any."

Would that Palin had a tenth of Cavett's intellect and rapier wit. Cavett describes Palin's avoidance of a question put to her by Matt Lauer, adding,

"If it happens again, Matt, I bequeath you what I heard myself say once to an elusive guest who stiffed me that way: 'Were you able to hear any part of my question?'”

There's more of course, but I wouldn't want give away ALL the funny lines. Read the whole thing here.

H/t to a tweet from @jayrosen_nyu.

Technorati tags: Dick Cavett, Sarah Palin, NYTimes.com, syntax, public speaking

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Say what, Mr. President? One thing we might miss about President George W. Bush

Cut from last night's Rachel Maddow's show due to time constraints is this little review of Bush's unique misuse of the English language.

Vote for your favorite Bushism on Maddow's site. I'm fond of "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." But there are oh-so-many more to choose from.

Or watch some of his famous fumbles on tape (sometimes the funniest part is his delivery):



Naturally, pundits have been tracking Bush's flubs since he took office (it's one of those "laugh-to-keep-from-crying situations"). Some of good lists can be found at:

• Slate's The Complete Bushisms: updated frequently by Jacob Weisberg
• The 50 Dumbest Things President Bush Said in His First Term
• My Top 50 Bushisms by Tocarra McConnell

Or peruse a whole compendium of Bushism sites on blogtoplist.com.

Technorati tags: George W. Bush, Rachel Maddow, Bushisms

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McCain may (or may not) have been a maverick, but Obama is THE Renegade

According to the website Jossip.com ("the gossip's gossip sheet"), the Obama family has been assigned "The Best Code Names in History of White House."

The Obama family has already been given delightfully awesome nicknames, and by "nicknames" I mean code terms the Secret Service uses to refer to members of the family, although since this shit is already leaked on the Internet it's not so much a "code" now and just more of an "awesome nickname," so my original point stands.

• Barack Obama: Renegade

• Michelle Obama: Renaissance

• Malia Obama: Radiance

• Sasha Obama: Rosebud

They're darling names, aren't they?

Read Jossip.com's whole post here.

(hattip to MarketingProfs.)

Technorati tags: politics, Obama, Secret Service, President-Elect

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Homemade Obama Signs & what they tell us about this election

"Someone stole our Obama for President sign from our yard last night. They stole nearly all the Obama signs in our neighborhood. The ones they didn't take they spray-painted black. So I made this sign today and staked it in the yard. I fully expect it to be trashed by morning. At least they know the result of their pranks: we give more money to Obama's campaign." Credit

Obama lawn signs were in short supply the past couple months, for a few reasons.

1. The Obama campaign gave out fewer free ones. They encouraged supporters to buy the signs at the Obama website to support the campaign financially.
   
2. People who did order lawn signs reported delays in receiving them.
3. Obama signs were stolen in droves across the country, particularly in small towns and suburbs.
   

So people made their own signs, and those homemade signs often expressed much more than support for Obama.

Homemade signs expressed people's opinions on the economy, the environment, the war, and foreign policy.

People expressed outrage at the incidents of theft and vandalism that made it necessary for them to make their own signs in the first place. credit: Eriepressible

Around the internet, blog posts went up explaining how to build a sign that can't be stolen and how to use cameras and video equipment to catch thieves in the act. (Several thieves have caught that way, including a couple in Bath, Ohio.)

The Wall Street Journal reported on a 16-year-old Portland boy's attempt to video -- and stream live -- the theft of his family's sign. Somehow, the live stream at CCTV gained an audience. Now dozens of people around the world are now taking shifts so that the family and its sign stays safe (they call themselves CHAOS, or Citizens Hanging Around the Obama Sign)



Just say no to intimidation

The thefts went on everywhere. In Sacramento, one family plastered their front yard with 100 handmade "Obama '08" signs after several previous campaign signs were stolen. After the first few signs were stolen, the family put up a sign saying, "If you take our sign we will donate money to the Obama campaign." When that sign was stolen, the Jeglie kids made 100 "Obama '08" signs on index cards and put them in the front yard, while Ginni Jeglie donated money to Obama's campaign for every sign that was previously stolen.

There were news stories about tool-wielding citizens building quasi-permanent signs to thwart thieves:

Credit

Credit: SilencedMajority.com

Credit: Marin Independent Journal

These lawn signs were especially creative (and tough to steal):

Austin, TX Credit: BurntOrangeReport.com

Pennsylvania Credit: a35mmlife

Hampton, VA Credit: Gary L. Cooper

Signs of admiration and hope

Many homemade convey a level of excitement and admiration rarely shown toward politicians:

Credit: richardrodriguez1977

Credit: beaucolburn

Some of the most charming signs are the handiwork of kids:

Credit: JamesOClark


"The local office was out of Obama signs, so Samson's sister, Aster, made one herself."
Credit: daddy2samson

Credit: Granite Shavings blog

And then there were the originals:

Credit: Carolina Victory

Credit: Prometheus Unbound

Credit: Carolina Victory


Credit: Dangerous Intersection

This is really just the tip of the iceberg. You'll find lots more original Obama signs, art, and crafts collected on the free photo-hosting site Flickr.com. Try:

• The Obama Craft Project Pool on Flickr
• The Obama Street Art Pool on Flickr
• The 2008 Election Graphics Pool on Flickr
• The Crafters for Obama Pool on Flickr
  
  

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Letterman hands O'Reilly his hat

This video went up on YouTube yesterday, Oct. 30, and has already been viewed 1,430,610 times. Why? Because it is incredibly gratifying to see Letterman deflate O'Reilly's bloated ego and rhetoric. My favorite lines:

O'Reilly: Do you want America to win in Iraq or not?
Letterman: [heaves a sigh] First of all ...
O'Reilly: It's an easy question. If you don't America to win in Iraq ...
Letterman: (exasperated) It's not easy for me, because I'm thoughtful.



Technorati tags: David Letterman, Bill O'Reilly, Iraq war, humor, politics, YouTube

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To help the poor, let's stop idolizing the rich

"Worst of all is the rich politician who 'suffers' for the common man."

Taylor Caldwell, Answer as a Man (1980)

I don't have anything against rich people -- heck, some of my friends are rich people. They'd be even better friends if they'd share the wealth with me a little more, but for some reason most rich people don't like to do that.

What I do resent is the widespread assumption that rich people -- particularly those who inherited wealth, like George W. Bush or John McCain -- make better leaders.

The only thing we know for sure about the very wealthy is that at some point in history, they or one of their ancestors was in the position of and of the temperament to take advantage of their fellow man's labor or natural resources.


By and large, they are rewarded for this behavior with lives of luxury, the best academic and vocational choices for their children, secure retirements, and general approbation.

But let's not keep handing them the keys to the country. There's no doubt that richest 1% of Americans (who currently hold wealth worth $16.8 trillion) know what kind of leadership is good for them. But there's no evidence that they know what's good for the other 99% of us.

Or, as Barbie Snodgrass of Columbus, OH told George Packer, author of a recent New Yorker article titled "The Hardest Vote: The disaffection of Ohio’s working class":

“Someone who makes two hundred or three hundred thousand a year, who eats a regular meal, who doesn’t have to struggle, who doesn’t worry if the lights are going to be turned out—if he doesn’t walk in your shoes, he can’t understand.”

Today, on Blog Action Day, more than 10,000 sites are blogging about poverty, but I find I can't write about poverty without also writing about wealth and privilege.

It may seem petty to skewer McCain for his inability to remember how many homes or cars he owns or the outfit that Cindy McCain wore at the Republican convention, which Vanity Fair estimated cost between $299,100 and $313,100 -- more than the cost of the average American home, which costs $266,000.

But it's very relevant. If poverty and fiscal restraint are merely academic concepts for you -- if you have no visceral experience of living on a budget, delaying purchases, juggling bill payments, bouncing checks, or not being able to afford to give your children things you'd like them to have -- then you only understand one side of the dynamics of economic power in America.


Poverty is really a lack of power -- not just economic, but also political, physical, and social -- and the least powerful suffer the most: children. Among the 21 most affluent nations, the United States has the highest percentage of children living in poverty. Our rate is more than double that of the country next in line.

Average, ordinary guys

The insult added the injury of politics has got to be rhetorical posturing of rich politicians who pretend to be average Joes. Remember George H.W. Bush's well-publicized love of pork rinds?? This was a man who, as a presidential candidate in 1987 or so, had never seen a grocery store scanner before.

John McCain: "Celebrities don't have to worry about family budgets. But we sure do."

We? We? John McCain's net worth is is $40.4 million, not including Cindy's estimated worth of $100 million (she won't share her tax returns because "she's not a candidate.") The Obamas net worth is $1.3 million, most of it book royalties earned in the past year.

Sarah Palin: "I know what Americans are going through. Todd and I, heck, we're going through that right now even as we speak, which may put me again kind of on the outs of those Washington elite who don't like the idea of just an everyday working class American running for such an office."

The Palin's combined income of nearly a quarter-million dollars last year was five times the median household income for Wasilla's 7,000 residents. They own a single-engine plane, two boats, two personal watercraft and a half-million-dollar, custom-built home on a lake that is worth three times the average of other homes in town.

"If you're pulling in a quarter-mil, own a plane and two boats, and live in a half-million-dollar, custom-built lake house, don't have the audacity to call yourself "an everyday working class American," and then whine about the condescension of the "Washington elite," writes Steve Benen.

Technorati tags: Advocacy, elections, health, politics, social justice, writing: blogging: journalism

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Bailout failure yields scariest NYTimes front page since 9/11

Thus sayeth the New York Times:

Checking the #bailout meme during the last few minutes on twitter:

• jeffjarvis: I come out from my editing cocoon and find the world falling apart. We are so fucked.
• brownspider: Conspiracy theory #1: Republicans killed bailout deal so that on Thursday people will be talking about the deal and not about the VP debate.
• Reuters_TopNews: U.S. bailout rejected; fear seizes markets 
  
• sgraven: I was totally into twitters #bailout that I didn't realize I was supposed to leave work 11 mins ago.
• hbeeinc: #bailout folks - this is not a red and blue issue - it's about greed - that doesn't know party lines
• danielerossi: Why don't they #bailout the homeless?
• colinjohnston: @ricksanchezcnn if house republicans want to blame pelosi 4 stalled bailout, when 2/3 of their rank & file voted no, what's a citizen 2 do?
• Moer: Oil plunges $10 as US bailout plan voted down
• wondermade: Fun fact. The stock market lost $1t in value today, the bailout plan was for $700b.
• Diva_Ali: They keep calling the bailout the "failed plan". It didn't fail. We didn't institute it. The media needs to get Hooked On Phonics.
• 3business: Harvard economist says bankruptcy is better than bailout
• NEWZOF: [Videos] Bailout's main leverage is psychological

Technorati tags: politics, #bailout, social media

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McCain campaign needs a time out

The Daily Kos is keeping a running list of responses to McCain's ploy to reschedule the presidential debate scheduled for Friday. [Update: word's just in that he'd prefer to reschedule the presidential debate in the slot reserved for the vice-presidential debate, and push the vice-presidential debate back to, well, never.]

Reactions to McCain's proposal kindly gathered for us on the Kos:
Rep. Barney Frank told a group of reporters outside the House chamber:

"It's the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys." (MSNBC)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

David Letterman:

"You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves... I think someone's putting something in his metamucil."


"He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she?"


And my personal favorite:


"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jesse Walker, of Reason magazine offers "The Shorter John McCain":

"I'd rather debate pressing issues behind closed doors with my colleagues than on national TV where voters might see me."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Daily Kos reader SteamPunkX:

McCain Suspends Campaign Due to Lack of Interest

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reid to McCain: Don't Come Back to Capitol

ABC news reports that "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that it would NOT be helpful for him to come back to Washington, D.C., to work on the Wall Street bailout bill."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Senator Schumer on CNN: "Well, I thought what Sen. McCain did was just weird."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Finally, the Daily Kos has some fun facts about McCain's attendance in this session of the Senate:

• Of all senators, John McCain has been the most absent.
• There have been 643 votes taken in the current Senate session: McCain has missed 412 of them.
• McCain has not voted in the Senate since April 8th. Since March, he has missed 109 of the last 110 votes.
• He missed votes on the GI Bill, energy policy, and in 2007 he missed all 15 critical environmental votes in the Senate.

Technorati tags: absurdity, elections, politics, social justice

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Read MY Lipstick: White Woman 4 Obama!

I have imported this blog post wholesale from E Pluribus Media, with thanks to and many cheers for TXsharon. She writes:

"Are you as sick as I am of hearing the media say that white women won’t vote for Obama?

Are you as sick as I am of hearing white women say that Palin is just an ordinary mother, just like them?

Do you remember when white men were saying they could have a beer with George Bush?
ENOUGH!

Please join me in this effort to prove the media wrong!

If I can drive around in the reddest county in Texas with this on my car, surely you can join me.


If you are not a white woman, please feel free to edit appropriately.

White Black Woman 4 Obama.
White Latina Woman 4 Obama.
White Brown Woman 4 Obama.
White Woman 4 Obama.

And etc."

I love this subversion of the scary quid-pro-quo identity politics Americans fall into so reflexively.

You wouldn't choose a brain surgeon or a defense lawyer based on whether you'd enjoy having a beer with them. You'd choose the person who is most qualified, whose professional integrity you trust.

And that's how we should vote for our politicians -- according to how well they can understand and articulate our concerns, analyze obstacles, organize others and act with efficacy and ethicality -- not according to whether we'd feel comfortable having them over for a potluck.

Technorati tags: advocacy, campaign, elections, media, Obama, politics

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"Reckless Actions" in Pakistan: Like Cambodia All Over Again

How NOT to make friends and influence people....

CNN reports that Bush approved Pakistan raids

President Bush secretly approved U.S. military raids inside Pakistan against alleged terrorist targets, according to a former intelligence official with recent access to the Bush administration's debate about how to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban inside the lawless tribal border area.

The former official spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity to describe the classified order.

The former official told The Associated Press that Bush signed an order this summer giving new authority to U.S. special operations forces to target suspected terrorists in the dangerous area along the Afghanistan border. More recently, the administration secretly gave conventional ground troops new authority to pursue militants across the Afghan border into Pakistan, the former official said.

The new authority allowed last week's unprecedented U.S.-led ground assault into the volatile region known as the tribal areas. The U.S. forces were apparently seeking specific Taliban or al Qaeda leaders...

The September 4 raid left at least 15 people dead, and embarrassed Pakistan's new civilian-led government. Pakistani officials have also said U.S. forces were involved.

Bush's decision to endorse cross-border attacks from Afghanistan without alerting Islamabad leaves Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari with a major foreign policy challenge....

Zardari and other politicians have called the cross-border attacks unacceptable and a violation of their country's sovereignty. Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the powerful but media-shy army leader, took things a step further Wednesday, when he said Pakistan's territorial integrity would be "defended at all cost."

"Reckless actions" which kill civilians "only help the militants and further fuel the militancy in the area," Kayani said, reflecting the views of many Pakistanis.

Read the whole thing here.

Pakistanis in Multan protest what they say was a U.S. attack using Predator drones.

Technorati tags: justice, military action, politics

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Arresting journalists as well as protestors at the RNC?

Hattip to BrewedFreshDaily, who tweeted "Amy Goodman of Democracy Now was arrested in St. Paul today. They're arresting JOURNALISTS now. Seriously. "

Follow along with video footage at The Daily Kos, Feministing and TheUptake.




UPDATE 9/3/08:

"Goodman has been charged with interfering with the administration of a police officer, and her two producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, face felony riot charges. They were all three released from jail after a few hours."

That's from Amy Goodman's arrest: When journalists are the story, by Marisa Helms on MinnPost.com. Helms' is a good account of what happened Monday outside the RNC in St. Paul.

Technorati tags: absurdity, politics, media

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Stephanie Tubbs-Jones passes away

Big bummer: Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones passed away about 90 min. ago.

Family, hospital confirm congresswoman's death - (The Plain Dealer)

There's a great set of photos of STJ on the PD's website here.


Also from the PD:
Stephanie Tubbs Jones' life was filled with many "firsts": first African-American woman to serve as Common Pleas judge in Ohio, first to serve as Cuyahoga County prosecutor, first to represent Ohio in Congress.

And PD reporters Olivera Perkins, Robert L. Smith, and Margaret Bernstein do a great job of conveying Tubbs Jones's popular appeal in

Stephanie Tubbs Jones leaves a legacy of friendship

Even people who didn't know U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones responded to her as if she were a friend.

"Stephanie, Stephanie," was the constant refrain that followed the congresswoman as she traveled her district.

It could have come from a voice in the crowd at public events, like the annual 11th Congressional District Labor Day picnic in Luke Easter Park. Or maybe it was from the person behind her on line at a local takeout. Despite the air of familiarity, people calling out her name often barely knew her.

That didn't matter to the congresswoman. She always responded with that high-wattage smile that drew people to her -- a smile that made them feel comfortable enough to start off on a first-name basis. So Wednesday, when they learned that Tubbs Jones was gravely ill, many people felt as if a close friend had fallen.

That describes my reaction to the news that she'd been hospitalized. I didn't know the congresswoman personally. I did hear her speak a few times and admired her competence: this was a politician who could get things done. The PD called her " both principled and pragmatic," which seems exactly right.

Technorati tags: Cleveland, politics

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John Edwards admits affair

John Edwards /John Edwards/John
Please keep your pants on.

Seymour Glass, the complexly tragic older brother in J.D. Salinger's fictional Glass family, wrote the following poem at the tender age of eight (the poem is introduced by his younger brother Buddy after Seymour's suicide):

"John Keats/ John Keats/ John/Please put your scarf on."

Seymour's poem takes the form of a familial nagging: its poignancy comes in part from the naive assumption the Romantic tragedy of Keats's early death could avoided if he'd simply dressed more warmly.

My little parody, however, is quite different. There's nothing poignant about John Edwards' extramarital affair with novice filmmaker Rielle Hunter, about which he now admits he lied repeatedly. In an interview for Nightline tonight, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 42-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.

The poignancy all belongs to 52-year-old Elizabeth Edwards, his wife of 30 years.

A lawyer and writer, Elizabeth Edwards accompanied her husband on the campaign trail in 2004 (when Edwards was John Kerry's running mate). She was beside him for the 2008 campaign, despite the fact that her breast cancer, previously in remission, had returned had advanced to stage IV (metastatic), spreading to spots on her ribs and hip.

Although neither of the Edwards is being too specific about dates, the timeline published by various newspapers indicates that Edwards was indeed having an affair with Hunter at the time Elizabeth was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

December 2006 Rielle Hunter is hired by Edwards' campaign to produce a series of webisodes for which she is paid $100,000.

March 2007 Elizabeth discovers her cancer has returned.

October 2007 The National Enquirer first reports Edwards-Hunter affair; Edwards publicly denies it. "The story is false," he told reporters then. "It's completely untrue, ridiculous."

"I've been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years and as anybody who's been around us knows, she's an extraordinary human being, warm, loving, beautiful, sexy and as good a person as I have ever known. So the story's just false."

December 19, 2007 The Enquirer publishes follow-up story that includes a photograph of a visibly pregnant Hunter.

Feb. 27, 2008 Hunter gives birth to daughter named Frances Quinn Hunter. No father's name is given on the birth certificate filed in California. (An Edwards campaign worker claims to be the baby's father).

July 21, 2008 Edwards visits Hunter at the Beverly Hills Hilton, leaving the hotel at 2:40 a.m. Spotting National Enquirer reporters, Edwards hides in the men's room until he's ousted by hotel security. His wife had not known about the meeting.

Aug. 8, 2008 John Edwards releases statement admitting his affair with the filmmaker.
"In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic. If you want to beat me up -- feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself."

Aug. 8, 2008 Elizabeth Edwards stands by her huband in a posts on the Daily Kos, pleading for privacy.

"John made a terrible mistake in 2006. The fact that it is a mistake that many others have made before him did not make it any easier for me to hear when he told me what he had done. But he did tell me. This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well."

Fine. What else can she say? She's only the gazillionth political wife this decade whose husband can't keep his pants on.

Problem: How to keep male politicians from feeling so "special, egocentric and narcissistic," they no longer feel obligated to behave morally or responsibly?

Solution:
Immediately upon submitting their name as candidates for ANY public office, male politicians will be required to attend a course on the pitfalls of power, for their own safety as well as that their his loved ones.

1. They will study -- and be tested on -- the nature of power: the way is gilds the holder with a false allure that attracts male and female power-junkies and offers never-before-encountered opportunities for dubious, if not downright immoral, sexual, financial, social behaviors.

2. As in Driver's Ed classes, students will watch gruesome documentary footage of the horrible wrecks other politicians have made of their careers and lives, including public confessions, impeachment hearings, and police mug shots.

3. They will memorize the following definition of political power:

"Election to public office is not an indicator of personal worth, let alone omnipotence, infallibility, or irresistibility. Public officials only don -- temporarily -- the mantle of institutional power with which voters have entrusted them."

4. Before bedtime, they will repeat to themselves the following caveat:

"I will not fall in love with the illusion of my own personal power; I will not allow others to fall in love with the illusion of my personal power; and most of all, I will never exploit anyone who has falls in love the illusion of my power."

Technorati tags: campaign, elections, family, gender, politics

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