Truth-tellers are first:

That includes Howard and a whole raft of Progressives

Cindy Sheehan, Russ Feingold, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel..............

SIC'EM JOHN!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070802/edwards-news-corp/

John Edwards criticized Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday for taking more than $20,000 in donations from News Corp. officials, arguing that the company's Fox News Channel has a right-wing bias and Democrats should avoid the company.

Edwards led the Democratic candidates' boycott of Fox's plans to host a Democratic presidential debate. Now he is objecting to News Corp.'s purchase of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. and highlighting the relationships that Clinton and other rivals have with the company's executives.

"The time has come for Democrats to stop pretending to be friends with the very people who demonize the Democratic Party," Edwards said in a statement.

He challenged his rivals to refuse contributions from executives of News Corp., and return any they had already received. The Edwards campaign said it would return less than $1,000 in donations from three Fox employees _ a worker at a local Fox station in Florida and two staffers from Fox Cable Networks _ even though they are not executives.

A Political MoneyLine search of donors employed by News Corp. finds $20,900 in donations to Clinton's presidential bid from nine company attorneys and executives, including Murdoch's No. 2, Peter Chernin, who gave the maximum $4,600 allowed.

Chernin is a frequent donor to Democratic causes. He's also contributed $2,100 each to Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Chris Dodd, Political MoneyLine shows.

The Clinton, Obama and Dodd campaigns declined to respond to Edwards.

***************************************************************

I'll

SIC'EM JOHN!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070802/edwards-news-corp/

John Edwards criticized Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday for taking more than $20,000 in donations from News Corp. officials, arguing that the company's Fox News Channel has a right-wing bias and Democrats should avoid the company.

Edwards led the Democratic candidates' boycott of Fox's plans to host a Democratic presidential debate. Now he is objecting to News Corp.'s purchase of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. and highlighting the relationships that Clinton and other rivals have with the company's executives.

"The time has come for Democrats to stop pretending to be friends with the very people who demonize the Democratic Party," Edwards said in a statement.

He challenged his rivals to refuse contributions from executives of News Corp., and return any they had already received. The Edwards campaign said it would return less than $1,000 in donations from three Fox employees _ a worker at a local Fox station in Florida and two staffers from Fox Cable Networks _ even though they are not executives.

A Political MoneyLine search of donors employed by News Corp. finds $20,900 in donations to Clinton's presidential bid from nine company attorneys and executives, including Murdoch's No. 2, Peter Chernin, who gave the maximum $4,600 allowed.

Chernin is a frequent donor to Democratic causes. He's also contributed $2,100 each to Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Chris Dodd, Political MoneyLine shows.

The Clinton, Obama and Dodd campaigns declined to respond to Edwards.

***************************************************************

I'll

Composis interruptis above

Unbelievably, the Democratic leadership in Congress seems about to cave in to Bush and grant him, of all things, more power to spy on Americans. This, even as Alberto Gonzales continues to dissemble about the spying that has already been going on. But whenever Bush lights the scare fluid, the Democrats jump back in fear.

http://www.buzzflash.net/story.php?id=20571

TILLMAN COVERUP

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/truth-about-tillman-m_b_58952.html

Our old buddy Oler went ballistic when I suggested Pat Tillman might have been fragged. Read 'em and weep Robert!

Once again, the Administration is pulling the old magician's trick of misdirection, this time in the Pat Tillman case. And once again, the press is falling for it. Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers focused on "what they knew and when" -- to borrow the Watergate phrase -- rather than the core issue at the heart of the Pat Tillman matter, which is this:

Pat Tillman was almost certainly murdered, and fratricide is not "friendly fire."

Yet a Google News search on the terms "Tillman" and "friendly fire" yielded 1,044 hits today, all from the last 24 hours. That's after the facts behind the fratricide are widely known - and after a number of clues that suggest the entire command structure, from the White House on down, concealed a murder from the public and took no steps to investigate it.

There's your story.

Friendly fire is commonly understood to mean the accidental death of a U. S. soldier through weapons fired by U.S. or allied troops. (See this definition.) The facts in the Tillman case make friendly fire highly unlikely. He died from three bullet holes grouped together in his forehead, fired from a M-16 that was no more than ten yards away.

Three bullet holes. In the forehead. From a M-16. That was ten yards away.

That's not "friendly fire." That's murder.

Hey, everyone. Dispatch from YearlyKos again. I'm at the training session, night school for DFA. With Arshad, Chris Bowers from Openleft.com and Katrina Baker from Drinking/Living Liberally. Very good info about forming blogs and local blogging/progressive groups.

 Anyone listening to it?

No Indy, I missed it, DARN. I signed up, but I've been busy and I keep getting screwed up on different time zones. 5:30 Central is MY 4:30PM. SHOOT!

Sorry.


Just received an email that Sam Seder...one of my heros, is there. Look for him.

AND Remember, tomorrow night!

YearlyKos 2007
America for Gore meeting
Action Meeting

Friday, August 3, 2007
6:00 PM
Hyatt Regency McCormick Place Hotel M/X Lounge
Chicago, IL

26 Attendees

http://www.dfalink.com/search_events_res...+&type=&state=IL

This is almost unbearable to read.  There are no words.

War, it can just bring out the worst in people...

On Monday 22-year-old Army PFC Jesse Spielman pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, arson, and "wrongfully touching a corpse" (a gruesomely suggestive phrase heretofore unknown to me). Also "drinking." Court-martial on more serious charges awaits.

All this relating to the horrific rape and murder of teenage Iraqi girl and her family last spring.

Not the stuff to win hearts and minds. No, not a good guys M.O.

There was also the recent journal dispatch online at TNR by an American GI in Iraq, who describes himself and his buddies as behaving, well, very badly -- insulting and harassing a disfigured young woman at base (like Neil LaBute pigs in fatigues); going around wearing a piece of a dead child's skull as a wig; running over dogs for kicks.

Dear supporter:

Today, I gave critical testimony in front of the Committee on House Administration about the Election Assistance Commission's suppression of two important election-related reports.

My testimony detailed the extent to which individuals at the Department of Justice went to suppress these reports for partisan-political gain. I also detailed many of the deficiencies within the EAC that have hindered its ability to provide appropriate apolitical, uniform guidance to the states and tens of thousands of local election officials.

I concluded by saying:

...increased transparency and professionalism should quell what seems to be increased politicization at the EAC. As I discussed above, partisan policy positions - over emphasizing the degree of polling place voter fraud while under playing the degree of voter intimidation and discounting evidence of the discriminatory impact of identification procedures - trumped social science research in the conclusions reached by the Commission on critical research assignments. Moreover, the recent appointment to the EAC of a partisan election attorney with no election administration experience further call into question the EAC's commitment to non-partisanship. Though partisans recommend appointments to the EAC and the appointments are made by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, for the short history of the EAC most of the Commissioners had been professional election administrators or had worked on nonpartisan election efforts. That tradition should continue.

Despite the failure to live up to the promise that Congress envisioned for the EAC, there is time to turn the EAC around and put it to work on behalf of all eligible American voters. I do, however, caution this committee from looking elsewhere for the solutions that the EAC was designed to accomplish. While the EAC needs to professionalize in order to be effective as an agency, it is a worthwhile experiment that, with some key reforms, can be an integral part of improving election administration across the country. After these necessary reforms are implemented, either by the Commission itself or by the Congress, the EAC should receive vigorous support.

Visit our website to read the entire testimony.

Sincerely,
Jon Greenbaum
Director
Voting Rights Project
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

Ådolescents all!

I have frankly had enough! Karl Rove’s aide, J. Scott Jennings, who bemoaned the fact that he is only 29 is the most ridiculous thing that I’ve ever heard in my life. When I was 29 years old I had my finger on a nuclear (should I say “multiple” nuclear triggers) when I was a Sergeant in the Army in Germany. For this punk to claim:

"I hope that you can appreciate the difficulty of my situation," Jennings said. "It makes Odysseus' voyage between Scylla and Charybdis seem like a pleasure cruise."

This is patently ridiculous. He put himself in that position. (Being between two monsters, and if you row away from one, you’re headed toward the other.) If this aide believes that Congress is the same brand on “monster” that the Bush Administration is, then he should be considered “mentally defect” and be evaluated by a Congress-appointed shrink. Either the aide tells the truth about what Congress wants to know, or he should be held in contempt and serve time.

Critters are terrifed of Cheney?

For the past year, as the impeachable crimes of President Bush and Vice President Cheney have mounted, Democratic members of Congress have scrambled to present a whole array of explanations for why they can't support impeachment.

Chief among these has been the argument that "we don't have the votes to convict" in the Senate. This has been closely followed by the argument that impeachment would "take too much time" and that it would "divert attention from the important legislative work" of the Democrats in Congress. Right behind this, and linked to it, has been the argument that "the important thing is ending the Iraq War," and that "impeachment would interfere with that goal." Then there has been the argument that impeachment would be "divisive" and that the voters want the Congress to "work constructively" on the nation's problems. Finally, there has been the argument that impeachment is not necessary because Congress under the Democrats would be conducting "investigations" that would serve the same purpose of impeachment in rooting out the administration's wrongdoings.

Tell Arshad about this blogs clock and posting problems in the forum Indy Steve and maybe the embarassment will get HQ's to act.

Oh good god, how do we get rid of such irresponsible journalism?

— from TomDispatch

Under the headline, "A War We Just Might Win," the New York Times on Monday published an op-ed by Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution and Kenneth Pollack, both referred to as critics of the way the Bush administration has "handled" the war in Iraq. (Pollack had, in fact, been a major cheerleader for the Bush administration's invasion in 2003.) After eight days in Iraq "meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel," the two claimed that "the debate in Washington was surreal," and that "[w]e are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms." The President's surge plan, as carried out by General David Petraeus, was, they added, working. Their carefully cobbled together formula for where it might take American forces went like this: It had "the potential to produce not necessarily ‘victory' but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with." They concluded: "[T]here is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008." Of course, O'Hanlon's and Pollack's ideas about what "Iraqis could live with" and Iraqi ideas on the subject may turn out to differ somewhat.

He may be the most beloved man in Iraq right now. Younis Mahmoud, the Iraqi soccer team captain who scored the winning goal in Iraq's final win over Saudi Arabia in the Asian Cup, triggering mass jubilation in his tortured country, is a symbol of Iraqi nationhood.

Mahmoud, a Sunni Muslim on a majority Shiite team, scored on a pass last Sunday from Mulla Mohammed, the team's only Kurdish player, for a 1-0 victory. I can only imagine how moving that was to the secular Baathists, the Sadrist nationalists, and others worried about civil war provoked by the invasion, or partition as openly suggested by some U.S. politicians like Joe Biden. All kinds of people are saying that Iraqis should learn from the soccer team and unite to achieve national goals. Praise for the team vents contempt for the corruption and lethargy of the compromised political class.

Keith in 10, left coast.

(From the diaries. I can't wait to see video of this. O'Reilly and Fox set out to wedge the netroots from the Democratic Party and to try and destroy its funding sources. Instead, they have helped unite us in a way I didn't think would be possible until after the primary. Way to go, Fox! -- kos)

offensive comments O'Reilly has made in the past including when O'Reilly suggested that Al Qaeda "go ahead" and "blow up" Coit Tower in San Francisco (Media Matters).

The word I got from our communications director Hari Sevugan, who as at the taping and had also previously issued a strong statement on O'Reilly's lack of standing to criticize Daily Kos for offensive comments was that it was a confrontational interview:

1.) O'Reilly cut the interview short.  They told us seven minutes, it was around 4 1/2.

2.) It was quite confrontational -- Dodd consistently rejected the premise of O'Reilly's questions.

3.) Dodd hit all the important points: selectively picking a micro-sample of comments that are not representative; 500,000 people a day visit the site

4.) O'Reilly's bluster about Yearly Kos is about O'Reilly not liking the ideology and he ought to be honest about that

5.) Dodd called O'Reilly on making comments that were even worse, then mentioned the Coit Tower piece, when O'Reilly urged terrorists to blow it up.  O'Reilly asked Dodd when he said that, and Dodd apparently gave him the date.

6.) Finally, O'Reilly ended the interview abruptly by saying that Dodd "was no Joe Lieberman."

Heh, indeedy.

I heard that Roger Clemons was booed off the mound today at Yankee Stadium.

Well, I say bravo Roger.  Encore!  Encore!

I like Rocket, but the Yankee fans being in turmoil brings me pleasure.

Go Sox!

BAL  4

BOS  7

So far this is half an hour late starting, but Howard is supposed to be giving a keynote speech at Yearly Kos. Streaming here.

I hope Howard announces he will run as an Indy !    dream on, but we (the people) could raise the $.                           Impeach.                                    Bring them home.                                         

Dreams are good.

It is all good Chuck.

http://www.yearlykosconvention.org/themes/yearlykos/images/sponsors/Teamsters_logo_sm.gif

Hey everybody.  This post is a shout-out to Indy-Steve.  If anybody at YearlyKos or Steve himself gets this, Thankful and I are trying to reach him.  (Thankful may not be able to get online until late tonight or tomorrow.  She just phoned me.)

We are trying to see if we can get together with Steve and any other Dean people who may be in Chicago for the convention.  Thankful and I aren't attending, but we would love to meet somewhere to say hey.

Disclaimer:  The above post sounds like a singles ad.  It is not meant to be.  We just want to get together with Dean folk who are in town.

So, if Steve does not have Thankful's phone number, you can bet I'm not about to post it on the Internets.  Instead, Steve can reach me at donnainevanston at yahoo dot com.

28.

donna in evanston
"the above post sounds like a singles ad"

LOL

Maybe that's why I was reading it too. :)

Huron - If Tillman was murdered, what was the motive?

Indy - No specific questions, but take good notes and blog early and often.

I'm catching up on my reading and saw 2 good articles in week before last's Newsweek. One is Jane Bryant Quinn's article (she is one of their financial columnists) and she supports single payer -- in fact, Medicare for all. In her article she shoots down in simple terms all the usual arguments against 'socialized medicine.'
Tear this out and give it to anyone you know who doesn't support universal health care.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19886686/sit...

The other great article is by Sharon Begley and she explains quantum physics so I can understand it lol. She is talking about how the act of observation AFTER SOMETHING HAS OCCURRED can change the result -- in other words, the future has an effect on what happens in the present. Huh? Talk about ramifications. Any good Presbyterians out there (as in predestination)? Talk about destiny. Of course the fallacy of all this is generalizing what is happening (or they say is happening) on a quantum level and generalizing that to a macro level. imo.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19875410/sit...

That's enuf thinking for one night -- Goodnight y'all -- it's rainy here -- great sleeping weather I hope.

Dynamite Dean Chix seeking fellow Dean activists for coffee and taking back our country. LOL 

8,
Sorry John..three shots in the head grouped together most certainly does not mean murder. Ten yards is pretty close but there may have been bad guys near by. Somebody was doing lots of shooting.
Depending what was going on..lots of activty...Tillmann supposedly stood up (bad move) and was shot with a short burst.
He may have been mistaken for a bad guy and somebody panicked.
As I said earlier..Raangers are so close to each other they can almost breathe for one another.
The coverup is the military hid the truth and made him out to be something he was not.
In VN, we killed a lot of our own guys.
My own experience..I started to shoot up a hut and didn't notice someone in my field of fire until I pulled the trigger and had a jam. Lots of activty, noise and people dieing tends to numb the senses.

Even if Tillman was a jerk, every gun is needed in a firefight. If there are issues, they are settled later.

the only thing islamists have to sell is the notion that the west has come as invaders and occupiers, had we just gone after al Queda that wouldn't have been true because in any value system understood there an attack like 9-11 justifies a response of like kind

 an attack into Pakistan would be more counter-productive than the invasion of Iraq 

leave me out of that cheering section

new thread