John Good might be in Florida, but Left in Aboite has Paddy, Stan and Vic helping out. Paddy has posted a video of David Schuster taking Tennessee Rep. MArcia Blackburn to task:
So, to start your Tuesday off, I give you the brilliant David Shuster showing up Rep Marcia Blackburn yesterday. It would be beautiful if it wasn't so sad.
Lane Hudson, the man who filed the complaint against Fred Thompson running a campaign without announcing and who first posted the emails from Mark Foley to a 16-year old page is at it again. This time he has filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commision about Rudy. Read News For the Left:
Rudy Giuliani is a hypocrite who thinks he should live by rules different than others. He attacked MoveOn.org and the New York Times for the rate charged for a newspaper ad. Promptly, he ran an ad in response and paid….wait for it….the SAME amount.
Since the NYT says it was a mistake that they were charged the lower amount, MoveOn promptly paid the difference in an ‘abundance of caution’. Rudy refuses to.
The wingnuts filed an FEC complaint against MoveOn and the NYT, but didn’t include Rudy. That oversight has now been corrected:
File this story under PLEASE GOD NOT AGAIN! Read what John Aravosis is saying at AmericaBlog:
Is Ralph Nader planning to put yet another Republican in the White House?
Starting to look that way. The man is an egotistical idiot. He has done more than any man in America to destroy the environment and further corporate interests at the expense of the individual. Every single crime that Bush-Cheney have committed is on Ralph Nader's head. And now he may be planning to do it to us all again.
Perhaps we should all just walk around completely naked. Nothing to hide, no reason for any privacy. Over at Blognonymous, our little amphibian buddy, Kvatch wants us to know that even more of our rights and freedoms are being violated:
Let's start with the basics: FOIA requests filed by John Gilmore, the technologist and privacy advocate, reveal that DHS is storing information on where you travel (even when that travel originates outside the US), by what means, with whom you stay, and what you take with you (a.k.a., the contents of your luggage). Now you may say, "So what's the problem? DHS needs this information to identify terrorists." Well...the problems are two-fold. First, the Privacy Act of 1974, forbids the government from collecting data on how you exercise your 1st Amendment rights. So recording the contents of your luggage and the names of the people with whom you stay, is illegal. Second, building a database of "known associates" may expose those people--your friends and family, for example--to government scrutiny without probable cause. Consequently, civil liberties advocates have asserted, and I agree, that this system is ripe for abuse.
Let's head over to the Divine Democrat, where Mary Ellen discusses the idiotic Federal laws against medicial marijuana
Whenever you speak to a Republican about a federally funded health care program, they cry foul, and say that it should be up to the individual States to fund their health care. Yet, when some States had made the decision that medical marijuana was legal, the Federal government had decided that this should be the Federal government's decision and not theirs. The Federal government didn't prohibit their laws passing the legal use of marijuana, but they feel they can prosecute anyone within the State for following that law.
AZ Goddess' psyche is in a funk. Most of us are. We expected things to get better after the elections. We have been betrayed by the very people we helped get elected. Drop by I'm Sorry World:
feeling helpless?
i know i am
all this talk of more war
more people children dying
and for what?
oil? padding the rich man's pockets with more gold?
this has gotten insane to say the least
it's time that we did something constructive
i'm at a loss as to what that is right now
anyone got any ideas?
peace my friends tell the ones you love that you do!
The Invisible Woman is pointing us to a new way to read books:
If you have the attention span of a gnat ...
... then you might want to visit Book-A-Minute. Their "ultra-condensed" books save you the trouble of actually reading the books or even the Cliff Notes. Just reading the Cliff Notes of something like Moby Dick, for instance, is pure hell. (I hate that effing book. Halfway through, I was praying for Captain Ahab to effing stab me.)
Head over to the Katrinacrat Blog where we will watch a video that goes a long way to understanding why people like George W. Bush get elected:
Alicia Morgan is discussing fear at Last Left Turn Before Hooterville:
But we should be afraid - not of Republicans; not of 'Islamofascists' (after all , our long-time Cold War enemy the Soviet Union - which was much more of a threat than Iran could ever be - had nukes and we didn't attack them), but of losing our rights and civil liberties. And we need to be as willing to fight to keep them as the Repubs are willing to fight to get rid of them. We need to be as willing to fight for peace as the Repubs are willing to fight for war. We need to be as willing to fight for the well-being of the little guy as the Repubs are willing to fight for the well-being of the wealthy and the big corporations.
Lydia Cornell is talking about a few different subjects today, but this is the one that jumped out at me:
Why is the Republican party pushing Hilary to be the candidate? Newt Gingrich started pushing this plot, and if he's behind something you know it has to have a sinister design. I like Hilary and think she'd be a terrific president — as would Obama, Kucinich, Edwards, Gravel, Richardson, Biden -- but there must be a reason Bush and Rove want Hilary to be the nominee. What is up there sleeve? I think it's this: they do not believe the majority of men and women in the United States could stomach voting for a woman. I think they're counting on this archaic, mysoginistic view that the neocons share.
Proud Progressive is discussing the persecution of Burmese monks by the military. This is of special interest to me since Fort Wayne - where I live - has the largest population of Burmese outside of Burma. Read Some Notes on Living:
The BBC has an in depth report today on the on going situation and history of the fight for democratic freedom in Burma. Hundreds of thousands all over Burma are peacefully marching in the streets for democracy. The last time the people of Burma rose up in 1988, over 3000 were killed and injured. Democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest there for decades. At first the government said there was no danger of violence, but now as the general population comes out to support the Monks and the outcry expands across the entire country - the Military Gov. there is threatening to harm the demonstrators. Let us hold these courageous people in hearts and hope their own government does not mow them down in gunfire.
JJ at Unpentant Old Hippie tells us that the Homeland Security computers were hacked:
The lawmakers said committee investigators found dozens of DHS computers were compromised and the incidents "were not noticed until months after the initial attacks."
MONTHS?? Well, that should give Whoever a good head start on Whatever it is they plan to do with this information. See, this is what happens when you contract out important jobs to your buddies, instead of keeping them within the auspices of government. Not that government is that much more competent, but at least there's a modicum of oversight. Once things are in the hands of private contractors, anything goes. You'd think they'd know that by now. Oh well, the good news is that Unisys, the company responsible for this monumental fuck-up, will have it on their performance record if they compete for the contract again. HUH??!
When I think of Donald Trump, the first word that comes to mind is "obvious". It's obvious that he has the worst hair this side of Phil Specter and Don King, it's obvious that he's an egomaniac, and now he's stating the obvious about George W. Bush's liability to the Republican party. Read what Ron Chusid at Liberal Values has to say:
Donald Trump believes that George Bush is a “huge liability” for any Republican running for President and for the Republicans. He says that any Democrat running has a huge advantage due to Bush and for a Republican to win Bush should go into “hiding.”
Pamela Leavey at the Democratic Daily has what would normally be good news, but so far the Democrats haven't done the peace movement any favors:
Speaking of those disaffected Republican voters (see post below)… Politico reports that “Top Republicans are privately bracing for the possibility that they could lose additional House seats in next year’s elections as a result of untimely retirements, ongoing scandals and unexpectedly gloomy fundraising forecasts, according to several members and aides.”
At I Wish I Wish I Were in Paris, ParisL0ve2 is continuing coverage of the beating of Carlos Arredondo. Because of this 0 and the fact that it's a damn fine blog, I'm adding this blog to my blogroll:
I'm not surprised that I didn't hear about this story until now. It wasn't until I did my daily surfing of blogs that I came upon this story on Who Hijacked Our Country. Why would we hear about it? After all, it's only the things that anti-war people do that gets coverage. But when pro-war pigs beat a grieving father of a deceased soldier, all we get is ...SILENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This took a long time to read all the blogs today. I saw a lot of great posts and even added three new blogs to my blogroll. See everyone tomorrow with a new BWR.
To comment on this BWR go HERE.