Jim Webb’s son has been called up for duty in Iraq.
Archive for August, 2006
If you check out Michael Steele’s website, you’ll note the section called “On the Issues“.
He does not mention Iraq.
Ben Cardin says we need to bring the troops home.
Kweisi Mfume clearly states that George Bush is wrong on Iraq.
But Michael Steele just doesn’t bother with it. It’s clearly not an important issue to him. He’s just plotting to come to Washington to be another right-wing rubberstamp on the Bush agenda anyway.
Thank you Rhode Island Republicans for purging your party.
If the September 12 primary were held today, 51 percent say they will vote for Steve Laffey, 34 percent support Senator Chafee, and 15 percent are undecided. A BGRS survey of Republican voters conducted in June had Laffey at 39 percent and Chafee at 36 percent. Chafee’s base is virtually unchanged since the June survey, while the number of Laffey supporters has grown 12 percentage points.
While he is ahead of both Republicans in the polls, Rasmussen shows that the election would be solid for Sheldon Whitehouse with Steve Laffey as the GOP nominee.
Go Laffey!
What we’re up against
Cons breathe hate as easily as they breathe hate, embattled Senator Conrad Burns is no exception.
Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, whose recent comments have stirred controversy, says the United States is up against a faceless enemy of terrorists who “drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night.”
Thankfully, Montana has other choices like Jon Tester.
If you wanted even more proof that the GOP is desperate and that their rhetorical well is as dry as the Sahara, look no further.
President Bush and his surrogates are launching a new campaign
intended to rebuild support for the war in Iraq by accusing the
opposition of aiming to appease terrorists and cut off funding for
troops on the battlefield, charges that many Democrats say distort
their stated positions.With an appearance before the American
Legion in Salt Lake City today, Bush will begin a series of speeches
over 20 days centered on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks. But he and his top lieutenants have foreshadowed in recent
days the thrust of the effort to put Democrats on the defensive with
rhetoric that has further inflamed an already emotional debate.
The only way the line of attack works is for Democrats to use the same idiotic responses they’ve used since 2001 - either not responding at all or just parroting the right. Neither works. Americans are looking for backbone, and while the Republicans stand only for disaster, death and continued mayhem and insecurity - they’re standing for something.
Democrats, at long last must stand firm. They must not allow Republicans to continue the appeasement of terrorists and the unnecessary unwarranted killings of our troops in a flawed, failed, and ill-fated Iraqi engagement. Democrats must at long last fully engage the Republican party on the central issue of national security and educate America that the party that led us through the greatest war man has ever known is the party that is more interested in killing, capturing and punishing America’s true enemies than in conducting a all-hat and no cattle photo op policy that is getting people murdered.
Terror is the central issue of our time. Five years ago Al Qaeda attacked us in New York City, Washington D.C, and Pennsylvania. To this day, that mass murder remains unavenged thanks to Republican dithering and appeasement of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. The Republican party fought John Kerry with more vigor and vitality than they attack Al Qaeda.
They use rhetoric and win elections but do nothing to lead and govern. Democrats wish to defend, secure and unite Americans. The clear choice must be made or we are doomed to continued Republican led "heck of a job", "bring ‘em on" failures.
It’s kind of sad that it takes a journalist to clearly point out the truth in the words and deeds of odious people like Donald Rumsfeld, but I’m glad someone is doing it.
Conservatives are just outraged that the recently released Fox News reporters aren’t joining them in their crusade against the Muslim hordes.
Some Republicans are so tied in to the Bush cult, they will never admit that they lie as they breathe — but Mother Jones magazine has compiled each incident of deception regarding the idiotic invasion of Iraq.
Can we stop calling him “Dr.” Frist now?
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist did not meet all the requirements needed to keep his medical license active — even though he gave paperwork to Tennessee officials indicating that he had, his office acknowledged Tuesday.
Tennessee requires its licensed physicians to complete 40 hours of continuing medical education every two years. Frist, a heart-lung surgeon who is considering a 2008 presidential run, submitted a license renewal with the Tennessee Health Department stating he has fulfilled that requirement.
Some sterling comments on how the American Family Association would prefer Americans to speak about the 9/11 attacks when they’re done censoring the 9/11 documentary:
“Oh [fudge] those [nasty men] are crashing their [darned] airplanes into the towers. Oh, [stink] the [mucking] building is coming down on me.”
I just want the righties to work it all out amongst themselves and get back to me. Am I supposed to think we’re fighting (islamo-) fascists but we’re not supposed to swear while we do it this time? It’s hard enough trying to grasp one of their nonsensical world-views without having to try and reconcile them with each other…
But I have not written a single word on that story that seized the entire press for the last two weeks only to fizzle into nothingness.
You know what? Pat. Pat.
Even more proof that George Felix Allen Jr. is just another Republican racist.
Only a decade ago, as governor of Virginia, Allen personally initiated an association with the Council of Conservative Citizens, the successor organization to the segregationist White Citizens Council and among the largest white supremacist groups.
In 1996, when Governor Allen entered the Washington Hilton Hotel to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservative movement organizations, he strode to a booth at the entrance of the exhibition hall festooned with two large Confederate flags–a booth operated by the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), at the time a co-sponsor of CPAC. After speaking with CCC founder and former White Citizens Council organizer Gordon Lee Baum and two of his cohorts, Allen suggested that they pose for a photograph with then-National Rifle Association spokesman and actor Charlton Heston. The photo appeared in the Summer 1996 issue of the CCC’s newsletter, the Citizens Informer.
According to Baum, Allen had not naively stumbled into a chance meeting with unfamiliar people. He knew exactly who and what the CCC was about and, from Baum’s point of view, was engaged in a straightforward political transaction. “It helped us as much as it helped him,” Baum told me. “We got our bona fides.” And so did Allen.
When people start predicting 25-30 seat pickups it makes me want to stop joking around and get really pessimistic. Democrats have shown in the last 3 elections that they do not have the heart to fight Republicans. I haven’t seen anything that shows otherwise in this election.
Democratic gains have come thanks to Republicans screwing up, not any great tidal wave into the Democratic column.
Get giddy at your own peril.
Great roundup of Katrina stories. Don’t forget what happens to our people when the people in control hate our government.
The publisher just sent me these two books, which I think should be interesting.
Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right
I’m also reading something I bought with my own dime:
One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century
Michael Steele, the republican Bush apologist who laughably is trying to run as a reform-minded outsider, is once again showing the “momentum” of those black Republicans.
Democrat Josh Rales, who began a multimillion-dollar TV advertising blitz last month, is leading Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele in the race for Maryland’s open U.S. Senate seat, according to a poll released yesterday.
Mr. Rales, a Bethesda businessman and political newcomer, was favored by 45.7 percent of voters in a head-to-head matchup with Mr. Steele, the top Republican candidate, who had 42.2 percent, the poll conducted by Zogby International and distributed through the Wall Street Journal found.
“We’re very excited,” said Alyson Chadwick, a spokeswoman for Mr. Rales. “That’s a very reputable source, the Wall Street Journal.”
Two other Democrats had bigger leads on Mr. Steele, in separate head-to-head matchups.
Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, a 10-term congressman from Baltimore, had 50.3 percent to Mr. Steele’s 41.4 percent. Kweisi Mfume, past president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had 47.4 percent to Mr. Steele’s 42.7 percent, the poll shows.
Oh sure, we had big protests in Florida about the disputed (and fraudulent) results of a presidential election, but unlike Mexico we didn’t have freaking masked luchadores carrying coffins in the street.
This round goes to you, Mexico.
I’ve got a ton of open spots still in the OW.com Fantasy Football League. If you haven’t gotten an invite you’re not in yet and somehow I missed your email. So send me an email at owillis@gmail.com with your email address if you want in. It’ll be fun!
On the coming anniversary of 9/11, CBS plans to broadcast the film “9/11″, a documentary of that fateful day in American history. But our domestic Taliban is upset. You see, CBS plans to show “9/11″ in an uncut format on the air. But Don Wildmon and the religious right army he commands is trying to censor the broadcast.
Why?
Because there are some dirty words being used.
That’s right, because when confronted with terrorist bastards who sought to kill thousands of us, a firefighter, a cop or a regular citizen might have been compelled to use a four letter word.
Because they are human.
But the “American Family Association” is a soft-minded association of nincompoops whose slavish devioton to censoring the world knows no bounds. And so they’ve launched a campaign to censor CBS’ broadcast of 9/11 because - oh no, someone is going to use a naughty word.
Given a prominent spot on Newsweek’s pages, former official Bush propagandist (aka speechwriter) Michael Gershon makes the idiotic argument that Bush and science can meet “in the middle”.
What he hell? This is the eventual outcome of people who seek to create their own reality. Up is never down, not even if George Bush authors an executive order saying so. But the con cultists will believe it, because that’s their whole value system in one tight ball of idiocy.
Ted Strickland is crushing religious right “year of the black Republican” Ken Blackwell in yet another poll in Ohio, even after a gang of con bloggers in Ohio tried to insinuate that the married Strickland was gay. (check out this loser slamming Strickland for having Boyz II Men at a campaign event - I mean, they only sold 45 million records…)
Clearly this is a figment of the imagination.
At least 28 gunmen and civilians were killed when the Iraqi army clashed for hours today with members of a militia loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, in the southern city of Diwaniya, Iraqi officials said.
In Baghdad, a car bomb killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens at a checkpoint just outside the Interior Ministry’s headquarters.
The United States military also announced the deaths of seven American service members in attacks over the past two days.
Seven people dead for what? How much longer do we keep up with this stay and die strategy in Iraq that is accomplishing nothing?
I just watched the excellent World Trade Center, one of the more moving films I’ve seen in a long time - and its a high crime that we have not avenged this mass murder in the heart of America.
Probably way too optimistic, but here you go anyway.
Barring an unexpected and big event, Democrats will win control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November and conceivably the Senate, too. Whether it’s a tsunami or just a powerful wave, the political dynamics are moving in that direction, or more accurately, against the Republicans and President George W. Bush.
Democratic insiders, who months ago thought their chances of winning a majority in the House were no better than even, and that the Senate was a lost cause, have become far more optimistic. Now, they say, winning the House is a lock, and the Senate is within reach.
“We have to go back to 1974 (during Watergate) to find such a favorable environment,” says James Carville, who ran Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. “If we can’t win in this environment, we have to question the whole premise of the party.”
More telling is that the smartest Republican political minds agree. “The issue matrix and political dynamics are not good for us,” says Representative Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican. “Only some big national or international event before the election can change that.”
