California, in spite of Reckless Kelly’s song reproduced below, has set national trends for quite some time now.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest executive order, which will reduce state employees’ wages to $6.55 per hour indefinitely, appears to be trying to capitalize on that history.

How was California?

Did they teach you how to surf?

Was it everything they said it was?

Was it all that you deserved?

(Chorus)
Did you hate the Golden state?  Read more 

Prediction — A Major Assault By The Health Insurance Industry Will Be Launched To Destroy the Medicare System Before BUSH Leaves Office  Read more 

I got this link through the Personal Democracy Forum. It’s a site set up by Newt Gringrich. It’s title is “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.
A Real Change Campaign to Lower Your Gas Prices”

http://www.americansolutions.com/

According to the site, they have over a million signatures on their petition

The Republicans think this is one issue they can get traction on against the Democrats. It has been the topic of endlessly repeated propaganda on right wing radio for weeks. Larry Kudlow has pushed it over and over.  Read more 

I’m jumping on this announcement by candidate Obama, because I hope to subvert the impulses of some of my fellow Fellows and some of our readers to make of this moment a chance to accuse Barack Obama of being a liar, breaking a promise, not really being about reform, undermining efforts to reform our increasingly broken system of elections, and other ways not to like Obama that I’m not clever enough to even think of.

You don’t need to go there; the VRWC is way ahead of you. As Roy notes, there is high comedy to be had in the deep disappointment of the McCain campaign, the Republican Party, and their right-winger supporters, most of whom have bellowed long and hard against any sort of limitations on the financing of political campaigns. Of course that was when they were the ones rolling in money.

Yes, I know, McCain has been an advocate, of sorts, and a sponsor, of sorts, of campaign finance reform, but when Obama states, as he does in the video message in which he announced his decision, that the entire system, including the so-called reforms of it, by which we finance our elections is “broken,” he’s right.

Here is as much of what Obama says on the video that I could get off the story as it appears in the NYTimes and Reuters:  Read more 

Feeling blue? Read the Fez. Snort. I wonder if McStain expects to have a secretary for nuke launching, as he doesn’t know how to press buttons.

I do love Pam and all Her Works.

Yessssss…it’s nice to see the case of Glenn Murphy, Jr. resolved during the campaign season. It’s a reminder that the GOP ranks are rife with Republican Sexual Hypocrites, perpetrating their sexual and criminal deviant behavior while presenting a pious, judgmental image to the public.

The former chairman of the Clark County Republican Party pleaded guilty today to criminal deviate conduct as part of an agreement that could result in two years behind bars.
Glenn Murphy Jr. was arrested after authorities said he performed oral sex on a sleeping man following a July 28 party at a home in Jeffersonville.

…Murphy, who was also chairman of the Young Republican National Federation, resigned from both posts when the allegations were made public in August.  Read more 

You don’t have to click on the icky WaTimes link, here’s the funny part:

Tom DeLay will vote for John McCain but the former House Republican leader said his wife, Christine, is planning to vote for Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr.

Ha-ha!

Anyway, I hope Dems do more to convince Real Republicans that the only True Conservative Choice is Barr. After all, as we heard so much of in the primary, real conservatives know that “McCain is too liberal.” Remind a conservative friend today.

And if you can’t afford a gift, let me suggest sending him this link. I’m sure with a little research the remainder of the originals (cause of course they were all scrubbed as soon as Grandpa’s Crack Intertube Team slept off the cow manure hangover) can be found as well, but the choice ones are up at JC’s place.

I’m so glad he’s on our side now. /princess hair toss/ Try to remember that I was one of the first people here to link to him, despite his membership with the jammymedia crew. He’s not the first conservative to see the Light, nor will he be the last.

I’m sure you’ve seen this.

Among the images on the site were a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. He defended some of the adult content as “funny” but conceded that other postings were inappropriate.
Kozinski, 57, said that he thought the site was for his private storage and that he was not aware the images could be seen by the public, although he also said he had shared some material on the site with friends.

I just got off the phone with someone following this a little more closely, and I’m told that this is the gentle description of the stuff that was on his “private” public site. Yadda yadda, to each his own, if it doesn’t involve the unwilling or children I’m OK with it. But: ick. What is wrong with republicans? Cows? Cows??? Anyway, besides being totally grossed out, and not at all surprised that even ’libertarian’ Republicans are sick fucks, this comment from that link pissed me off:

besides, everyone looks at porn of some sort. most people are just afraid to admit it.

No, not “everyone.” I’ve written some porn here, so I won’t make the claim that I’m ’porn-free.’ But mostly, I did that to raise some money so the site admin here doesn’t have to sell blood to keep this place going. And frankly, it made me uncomfortable and somewhat depressed. But whatever, I grok that people will look at porn all the livelong day but can’t be bothered to read and/or lift a finger to save American Constitutional Democracy. Still, I hope the commenter eventually is told: no, and I’m speaking both as a non-conusmer of visual porn, as well as a friend to lots of (mostly women) people who aren’t either; not everyone “enjoys” porn.

There’s a whole nuther discussion about why porn is hateful, hurtful, misogynist, anti-feminist, ubercapitalist, hurts children, encourages rape and violence, and degrades our ’moral values.’ I won’t start that here as I don’t think most of you want to hear it. But while I’m enough of a Freedom of Speech All the Time sort of person, I will not accept that porn is always “healthy” and “normal” and that “everyone” should “enjoy” it. If you do, that’s your right. But please understand, there are actually quite a few of us who don’t. That’s our right as well.

I’m sorry Twisty doesn’t post so often anymore. She said it best, and I have to agree: what’s wrong with long walks on a beach at sunset? Holding hands? Reading poetry? Linking arms over a toast? Is a pretty face not enough anymore? Must it be closeups of clits and fake tits, all the time, and nothing else? Is perceiving the whole being/object of your attentions/attraction really that hard, such that people (men?) must always and only see the “juicy” parts to get excited? If so, that strikes me as really sad, and a sign of the degree of sickness in our society.

Time after time after time, discredited GOP stars rise again — and ruination follows after, on a pale horse.

John McCain’s top economic adviser? Phil Gramm, than whom you cannot get more FITH.

Yeah, that would be the ex-TAMU (sorry, Aggies) economics professor once famed as “the meanest man in the US Senate.”  Read more 

is my congressional representative. It’s so embarrassing, really. He’s apparently completely out of ideas as to how to run a campaign. I like Kay Barnes’s response ad to this tactless attack.

(For more on the national coverage of Graves’ pathetic ad, go here.)

If you want to learn more about Graves, you should go read this article. It’s pretty informative and tells you about all you need to know about Sam Graves’ thuggish campaign tactics.

I’m so proud he’s my congressional rep.

In November of 2006, Bill Moyers was asked to give the Sol Feinstone Lecture on The Meaning of Freedom, an endowed serial event for the men and women cadets of West Point.

It is an amazing speech to read, and it should warm the hearts of all liberals that West Pointers are being exposed to material like that Bill Moyers chose to honor them with.

I suppose I could, and perhaps should, leave the link and let you go and read it, but I’ve decided to highlight certain aspects of Moyers’ lecture, although you should still go and read the extended excerpt published at TOM PAINE from which I am working.  Read more 

On Wednesday, Joe Lieberman published a piece on the opinion pages of WSJ which essentially accused the entirety of foreign policy positions held by the current Democratic Party of being essentially a stab in the back to the entirety of foreign policy positions of the Democratic Party of FDR, Truman, and JFK. Interestingly, LBJ wasn’t included in the litany of Democratic golden oldies. Joe may have succeeded in performing a lobotomy on himself, resulting in a weird sort of frontal stupidity, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t still wily.

Today, Joe Biden, has a superb answer to Lieberman, also in the pages of the WSJ, one in which Biden touches all the right bases, not more, not less, and then heads confidently for home plate, leaving that other Joe in the dust.  Read more 

Frankly, I don’t find all that much to get upset about in the Chris Bowers Open Left post to which Lambert refers here. Okay, the post has a slightly condescending tinge to its tone, but why shouldn’t Democrats be proud that now more than ever the Democratic base looks like America? Bill Clinton himself once noted the same, and pledged that his administration would too, one pledge among many, many that Clinton kept.

While I’m on this subject, I want to remind everyone that neither any particular African-American nor the African-American community as a whole needs to apologize for voting for an African-American candidate for President, or any other office, for that matter. Black folks have been voting for white folks for decades now. And it isn’t as if Obama got their support automatically. It was only when he convinced many of them that he was viable, and presented a vision they obviously found inspiring, as is true for a large swathe of the electorate, that they have flocked to him. So, we are not talking about identity politics here. Remember, it was Obama who has been running as a post-racial candidate, for which many of us here at Corrente criticized him, rightly so, in my opinion.

Back to Bowers. It’s this stunning post that should be the focus of our incredulous ire, although I do realize that in Lambert’s majestic takedown, of Matt Stoller’s chilling foray into Obama triumphalism, this Bowers post is mentioned along with the fact that Bowers starts with an admiring nod to the Stoller post.

In his post, Bowers is imagining/predicting what kind of changes in Democratic governance we might be seeing from an Obama presidency. Fasten your seat belts.

Cultural Shift: Out with Bubbas, up with Creatives: There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types. Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism, to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR. These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades. Given the demographics of the blogosphere, in all likelihood, this is a socioeconomic and cultural demographic into which you fit. Culturally, the Democratic Party will feel pretty normal to netroots types. It will consistently send out cultural signals designed to appeal primarily to the creative class instead of rich donors and the white working class.

I’m not even sure what that means. Who the hell are the creative class?  Read more 

To the surprise of probably no one, the Bush Administration has been interfering with the career scientists at the EPA.

More than half the Environmental Protection Agency scientists who responded to an independent survey made public yesterday said that they had witnessed political interference in scientific decisions at the agency during the past five years.  Read more 

Offered without comment:

All of this might make some sense if McCain didn’t have this ridiculously cozy relationship with the press that’s been solid as a rock for more than a decade. He is going to be terribly difficult to redefine. It will take everything they have to do it. And if they don’t do it, he could very well win this thing even if he is as old as Methuselah and has the campaign style of a pet rock.

I was talking to a staunchly liberal friend of mine over the week-end who told me that he really didn’t worry about the primary because if the party is damaged and McCain wins, it will probably be ok. The reason: he’s not stupid like Bush or crazy like Cheney. After I picked up my brains from the floor and put them back in my head, still reeling from the explosion, I tried to explain how that was wrong. It was pulling teeth and I don’t think I succeeded. He just likes the guy and doesn’t believe he’s really capable of being as bad as Bush because he “thinks for himself” and isn’t a GOP lackey.

The Democrats had better get themselves together. The Republicans picked the only candidate in the entire country who could elicit that kind of praise from my pal and others like him. He’s the only one who could possibly win, and win he may very well do if just let this congenial image continue without challenge.

I’m sure this may come as a shock to you, but military is hiring bloggers to work as moles, “verbally attack[ing] specific person[s] or promot[ing] a specific message.”

Wait, sorry, wrong link.

Here’s the article.  Read more 

In Part I we saw where the term “ratfucking” originated and met two of the most infamous ratfuckers. In this part we will see how ratfucking went from being a small part of GOP political campaigns during the Nixon era to being the centerpiece of campaigns under Bush I.

Harvey Leroy “Lee” Atwater (February 26, 1951 – March 29, 1991) was an advisor of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. As shown in Part I, He got his start as a ratfucker thanks to Karl Rove. Rove, then the National Chairman of the College Republicans, introduced Atwater to George H.W. Bush who was then the RNC Chairman.  Read more 

Did you ever wonder what some of the obnoxious trolls claiming to be Obama supporters are hoping to accomplish by insulting the supporters of Hillary Clinton? Their tactics aren’t likely to win converts, and seem designed to make enemies.

Maybe they aren’t really Obama supporters after all.

Maybe they are a special breed of GOP trolls called “ratfuckers.”

Part I

Ratfucking is an American slang term for political sabotage or dirty tricks. It was first brought to public attention during the Watergate scandal investigation that during the 1972 presidential campaign the Nixon campaign committee maintained a “dirty tricks” unit focused on discrediting Nixon’s strongest challengers.  Read more 

God Damn America!

From The Truth About Trinity United, a blog run by a parishioner of Barack Obama’s church, we see that in 1966, Hospital Corpsman Third Class Jeremiah Wright was personally commended by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s physician for his part in caring for President Johnson, who was a patient of HC3 Wright’s when he had his gallbladder removed. You can see him in the photo above on the right, although part of his face is obscured by the IV pole. photo and letter at link
…
The letter of commendation reads:

Dear Hospital Corpsman Third Class Wright,

The President thanks you for your help at the time of his recent hospitalization.

He greatly appreciates your skill and competence in your field which added greatly to his comfort and speedy recovery from his operation.

With warmest personal regards,

Sincerely,

George G. Burkley, Vice Admiral MC, USN, Physician to the President

Kinda hard to be Killing Whitey when you’re helping keep a president alive, isn’t it?

I’m just saying. Maybe we shouldn’t judge Pastor Wright’s 30 years of service to his country and his community by 30 seconds of passionate, mid-sermon remarks.

Although when I stop and think about the Tuskeegee experiments, where black American citizens were treated worse than lab-rats, injected with toxic chemicals, lied to, and systematically denied proper medical treatment from 1947 to 1972, well, all I can really think is “God damn, America”, myself. I mean, goddamn.

But why on earth are black people so angry? I can’t imagine, can you?

Facts are such annoying things.

I’d act shocked, but this was entirely predictable:

it now seems as if New York Gov. David Paterson had more than one extramarital affair, at least one of which was with a younger woman who worked for him. Recently. As in, during the past few years. This is, to say the least, politically damaging to the governor, an enormous gift to political comedians, and could very well, depending on the press coverage, lead to Gov. Joseph Bruno.

So let me see if I can get the sequence of events right:  Read more 

A must-read article from The Village Voice shows the universal pattern we’re all too aware of: right-wing media figures hyped Obama and demonized Clinton—exploited and distorted the highly explosive issue of racism—in order to game the race for the weaker Obama or, at least, cripple a Clinton candidacy. Only when Obama became the apparent nominee did they tip their hand.  Read more