White Kid's Woodstock in DC

I was offline all day so I missed the live coverage of the Stewart/Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. By all indications it was a great success. CBS hired an aerial estimator who put attendance at 215,000 people, far surpassing the estimated 87,000 at Glenn Beck's earlier fan club gathering. And there could have been more but, "TBD reported that because of the high turnout many would-be rally attendees retreated to bars to watch the event." I also read that a lot of people were stuck outside of DC on buses.

I browsed the establishment media coverage last night. The Caucus live blog was good and had a nice photo gallery. The photo gallery at WaPo was also surprisingly good.

As with all rallies of this sort, the messaging was rather nebulous, but Jon Stewart's closing speech put the event in focus. Read it all, but I especially liked this bit:

Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light we have to work together. And the truth is, there will always be darkness. And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land. Sometimes it’s just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together.

Steve Benen has the video of Stewart's speech.

Looking at the photos, a couple of things stood out. This rally was no more diverse than any Tea Party event. It was sea of white faces. The biggest difference was obviously that the attendees were young, slim, apparently healthy and packed jaw to jaw on the Mall. No room for lawn chairs and medical equipment at this one. It looked very much to me like Woodstock, only the kids were better dressed and there was no mud, literally or figuratively.

The lack of mud-slinging against the GOPers was apparently causing some discontent among the tragically cynical youth in the crowd. Hearing this morning that twitter was full of young liberals complaining that the rally wasn't political enough. Maybe they forgot these guys are on the teevee but not on Fox. They can't be overtly partisan. I mean they still essentially work for Republicans.

But though they may not realize it, the rally made a point that won't be missed by many observers. Even though there was little politicking, by their numbers they showed the world that the Tea Party isn't the only voice worth listening to in our political discourse and the dearth of progressive enthusiasm is just another media myth. One can only hope that the energy translates to the ballot box on Tuesday. (Photo Credit: AirPhotosLive.Com via CBS)

I voted and I feel fine

Didn't post yesterday because I had a long shift in the afternoon/evening and had to spend the better part of the morning figuring out the down ticket races so I could sneak in for the last hour of early voting since I'm on the work schedule right through the election.
It was pretty good early turnout for this little town. I was voter 8234. During the run-off primary I was 300 something. Everyone was eyeballing each other, counting up the Dems and GOPers. I might as well have been wearing a neon sign saying I'm a Democrat. But the obvious Republicans were still very polite to me. And my intuitive count tells me at least a third of the line was Dem as well.

Needless to say I voted a straight Dem ticket where I had a choice. Sadly, Dems pretty much write off my county. State offices didn't have a Dem choice, neither did my district judge roster, nor the county commissioners. Well, actually the commissioners did have that one hapless sad sack running that I met at the Dem county convention. He's a bit disconnected from reality, but I cast a token vote for him anyway. He'll never win, but I didn't want him to get NO votes besides his own.

The biggest list of choices was for judges at all levels. That's what took so long to figure out. Finally managed to find a list of endorsements and match them up to my ballot for the higer court positions, so I was glad I didn't have to skip that section. Only office I passed over was water commissioners.

Sadly, I didn't get as involved in the local scene as I had planned to since my life got so complicated in last few months. Won't have any time to help out with GOTV either. But I'm feeling good about Billy Kennedy and Elaine Marshall. Sending out positive visualizations non-stop. Can't hurt.

Rove served with subpoena - Media MIA

Long time lefty activist Harvey Wasserman has been pursuing the theft of the 2004 election by the GOP and their connection to the Diebold/Sequoia voting systems for the last six years. He's apparently reached the deposition stage of his investigation.

A federal subpoena, issued by Ohio attorney Cliff Arnebeck and sanctioned by the Office of Ohio Secretary of State, was served last Sunday in Washington to Karl Rove on his way to an appearance on the CBS news program Face the Nation.

In an article written by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman and published at OpEdNews.com, the federal subpoena orders Rove to testify in deposition about his role in the alleged theft of the 2004 election, and to discuss his orchestration of tens of millions of corporate/billionaire dollars in this year's General Elections on November 2.

The moment was captured by our stalwart gatekeepers of the establishment media.

According to an affidavit of the process server, Brad Bokoski, the civil case subpoena (Case Number: 2:06-CV-00745) was served on Rove at 10 a.m. on October 24, 2010 at 2020 M Street, Washington D.C. Bokoski said service took place "on the sidewalk in front of the address and was captured on video by CBS and CNN camera men."

As of yesterday, a google search produced no mention of the story in any establishment media outlet -- print or television. Wonder why our "liberal" media would be sitting on this story, involving a real scandal and crime, when they so gleefully run every crazy conservative conspiracy theory through endless news cycles? [h/t ahuntre.]

The difference between the left and the "right"

I wouldn't normally link to Hot Air, but it's worth noting that Allahpundit is surprised lefties are defending Christine O'Donnell in the wake of Gawker's disgusting hit-whoring in publishing a smear piece about O'Donnell's wild night with some anonymous boor in Philly.

Allapundit marvels, "but this is worth blogging anyway for the unusual degree of bipartisan contempt directed at the “scoop” in question."

Well that's the difference between the left and the "right." Lefties will call out misogyny, no matter where it comes from. Conservatives could take a lesson from that in light of the recent events in Kentucky. The left didn't launch into "the bitch deserved it defense" even when the target of the abuse is a political opponent. And Gawker was just stomping on O'Donnell's reputation, not literally on her head.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Conservatives excel -- at cheating

Not really a surprise. Natural progression for the "right" to make from astroturfing to astrotweeting with fake accounts.

Political groups have been caught red-handed trying to create a false sense of grassroots momentum on Twitter.

The discovery made by Indiana University's Truthy data mining tool is just the latest example of how activists are using social networks to their advantage. [...]

One blatant example the team unearthed came from the Twitter accounts @PeaceKaren_25 and @HopeMarie_25.

Both tweeted the same 20,000 messages that included links to gopleader.gov and the Twitter handle belonging to Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), helping to increase the popularity of those links on Twitter and in Google searches.[...]

So far, Truthy's examples of Twitter astroturfing all lean right, a fact the researchers attribute that to the popularity of conservative activism in this election cycle.

Again, not a shock. Cons have been gaming the system all the back to the early days of blogging when they figured out how to raise their ranking in the in the TTLB Ecosystem. Seems like light years ago when that was the barometer of internet success.

Goon squad

Great editorial on the Kentucky head stomping in the local newspaper.

We keep hearing this is the year of the angry voter. But what motivates people to physically assault a woman who's carrying a political sign they don't like?

Certainly not respect for the Constitution, which enshrines the right of all citizens to express their opinions without fear. Not a belief in the rule of law. Not common decency.

Some members of Paul's Tea Party issue paranoid warnings that President Barack Obama and Democrats are totalitarians out to impose Marxist control over our country.

But look which side produced the goon squad.

Also makes a great point about the false equivalency of the weaselly "both sides do it" justifications.

I'm really tired of hearing that one myself. And the biggest difference the cons always ignore is "both sides" aren't stockpiling guns and ammo and calling for an armed revolution if they lose at the ballot box.

There's a reason law enforcement uses the phrase, "armed and dangerous." Of course, in today's world, sadly, that can all too often apply to the cops as well the criminals.

Fox polarizes public for profit

I'm a bit late with this one, but it flew under the radar and deserves wider exposure. Quote of the day goes to Major Garrett, formerly of Fox News, for exposing the slimy underbelly of the Fox business model:

“For a certain amount of marketing points of view, Fox actually wants to keep that polarization and say, look, we’re different. ...That is an embedded part of the marketing that surrounded what happens at the news division at Fox that’s been incredibly successful. ...Keeping America divided through media polarization is FNC’s brand strategy."

Jason Easley aptly puts Garrett's full remarks in context:

"When Barack Obama talks about unifying America, he is threatening the very business model that Fox News is based on. Polarization and division are the heartbeat and lifeblood of Fox News. If America ever became more politically unified, FNC would go out of business. A suspicious and divided nation is good for FNC’s bottom line. Fox News does push the Republican agenda, and they do try to divide the nation, because that is how they make money. It’s not just about ideology and politics at Fox News. It’s also about profits, and when polarization stops being profitable, Fox News will cease to exist."

Of course, we all knew this to be true, but it's good to see Major confirm it, and on Morning Joe of all places.

Update: Post expanded. Inaccurate quote attribution corrected.

[Much thanks to Doug J at Balloon Juice for the link. Wish I had thought of that post title.]

Rand Paul's head stomper wants apology from his victim

I know I'm spending too much time on this story but this is priceless. Of course, we all knew it was only a matter of time before the usual conservative "I'm the victim here" defense would arise. In a video interview with a local news station, Rand Paul's head stomper Tim Profitt wants Ms. Vallee to apologize to him. Apparently for making him stomp on her after she allegedly started the altercation.

You have to have to wonder if he's even watched the video, which the station kindly put on a loop while he was demanding said apology. Maybe he hasn't noticed that Vallee is lying perfectly still on the ground, in a fetal position, both prior to and during his attack on her.

The most appalling aspect of this for me, as a former victim of domestic violence myself, is to see how many men are making excuses for beating up this woman. The abuser always says she deserved it.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Rand Paul's head stomping thugs identified

The man who stomped on the head of Lauren Valle outside the Conway/Paul debate came forward shortly after being ID'ed by a local blogger. Now Rand's county campaign co-ordinater Tim Profitt claims his beating up Ms. Valle was misunderstood. He claims he acted out of fear for Rand Paul's safety.

Rahter a weak argument since it's clear Ms. Valle was recognized as a lefty activist before the attack and she has no history of violence. Furthermore, the five burly guys that surrounded her and warned her that they "might have to take somebody out" in the name of "crowd control" makes the attack on her look pretty much premeditated.

In any event, Profitt is now a former campaign volunteer. Rand Paul has severed their relationship and scrubbed all references to Profitt from his websites. However, it was too late to pull the full page Rand Paul ad in the local paper featuring Profitt's endorsement.

The other guy who assisted in the attack on Ms. Vallee has also been ID'ed:

Profitt’s accomplice, who held Valle down while he stepped on her head, has been identified as tea party activist Mike Pezzano. Gawker reports Pezzano “belongs to Lexington’s Rand Paul Meetup group and is an “assistant organizer” for Kentucky Open Carry, a group that wants to make it legal to carry firearms openly and in public.”

Anyone who is still thinking of sitting out the vote this round should consider that these are the people who will win if you do. [Photo via Think Progress.]

Rand Paul reacts to head stomping - Updated

Or maybe a more accurate title would be Rand Paul excuses head stomping by his supporters. When asked for his reaction in an appearance on the always friendly Fox News, Rand claims it was a simple matter of passionate people on both sides of the fence "jockeying back and forth." The video is worth watching if only for Rand's bland demeanor.



Meanwhile, it's been confirmed that the woman was hospitalized with a concussion and neck and shoulder injuries. And the excuses from the usual thugs of Wingnuttia just keep getting uglier. They're already moving to, "the b*tch deserved it" phase. Figure it's only a matter of time before they declare her assaulters their heroes of the day.

Update: Apparently, the Paul campaign figured out the bland comments were not playing well, so they issued a slightly stronger condemnation this afternoon that suggested they knew the perp. Which as it turns out, they did, but that's another post.

Rand Paul supporters literally tread on dissenter

The big ass pin on one of the Rand Paul supporters who assaulted a peaceful protester outside of the Rand Paul/Jack Conway debate says, "Don't Tread on Me." Apparently that rule doesn't hold for a tiny woman holding a small sign they didn't like. The video speaks for itself:



Via TPM, here's another angle that shows the head stomping more clearly.

To be fair there were obviously some Paul supporters who were appalled by the violence and were calling for police, but you have to ask why they didn't try harder to stop these guys or turn them in immediately when the police arrived. I mean, they're clearly identifiable in the photos and video. Somebody has to know who they are and last I heard there were still no arrests made.

Meanwhile, the usual far right wing suspects* are making light of the incident. She deserved it because she's also a GreenPeace activist and she was going to "attack" Rand Paul and you know, "both sides do it" so it's no big deal. Besides she has no right to exercise her free speech rights in their country. [*No, I'm not going to link directly to them.]

Make no mistake, these thugs are the dogs that respond to the dogwhistles of the far right media and GOP politicians who are giving a wink and nod to "Second Amendment solutions" to losing at the ballot box, but you know, they're not advocating violence and it's not their fault if these "lone wolves" attack.

Family crisis - Updated

Posting will be light today. Won't have time to post anything till later tonight. My Dad was taken to the hospital late last night. He appears to be okay now but they're keeping him at least another day so of course, I'll be there and not on line. Please send a good thought for him.

Update: Dad was released from the hospital yesterday afternoon. So far, so good. Posting should resume at a somewhat normal pace now.

The real GOP threat

The Tea Party types and far right GOPers keep insisting that liberals are wrongly painting their movement as violent, insisting that they're just concerned citizens who want to rein in an out of control government. Hard to keep making that argument when their Congressional GOP candidates call for an armed revolution if they lose at the ballot box.

Republican congressional candidate Stephen Broden stunned his party Thursday, saying he would not rule out violent overthrow of the government if elections did not produce a change in leadership.

This brought the obligatory "refudiation" from the county GOP head, but one can imagine he might well be congratulating Broden in private for his "courage." [Think Progress has video.]

This comes the day after a serious threat to a Hispanic Democratic Congressman:

Police locked down the Tucson congressional office of Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) on Thursday afternoon after staffers received a package containing a “confirmed” toxic substance, a Grijalva spokesman said.

A suspicious package with swastikas written on the envelope was mailed Thursday to the Tucson office, where about a dozen staffers work. Upon inspection, it was found the package contained a white powder authorities later determined to be toxic, said Grijalva campaign spokesman Adam Sarvana.

And then there was the apparent intimidation of voters in minority districts of Houston a couple of days ago by Tea Party trained poll watchers.

This is what they're doing before an election that the media keeps telling them they're going to win. With early voting numbers suggesting they may not see that sweep the pundits are predicting, I don't even want to think about what they might do if they lose big.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Why it's necessary to vote for Dems - Part Two

Great ad concept. Pass it on.



[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Why it's necessary to vote for Dems

I'm not the only one that noticed how many of the disappointed left are threatening to either not vote or vote third party this time around in order to "teach Dems a lesson." Robert Parry reviews the political outcomes of the last 42 years and posts the best explanation I've ever seen on why that's a suicidal strategy for anyone who truly cares about advancing progressive policy.

Seriously must be read in full. Should in fact be required reading for anyone under the age of 40 who honestly believes Democrats can be taught a lesson and losing the majority now will somehow push them to the left. Forgive the lengthy excerpts:

However, modern American political history tells us that this strategy never works. After the four key elections in which many progressives abandoned the governing Democrats – in 1968, 1980, 1994 and 2000 – not only did Republicans take U.S. politics further to the right, but the surviving Democrats tacked more to the center and grew more timid. [...]

Tragically, too, the Left’s sideline-sitting contributed to the unnecessary deaths of millions of people in wars from Vietnam and Central America to Iraq and Afghanistan. Arguably even worse, U.S. inaction on global warming – a neglect surely to be continued if Republicans and Tea Partiers are victorious in Election 2010 – may doom the future of a livable planet.

In other words, the “teach-the-Dems-a-lesson” strategy not only doesn’t work, it’s extremely dangerous. [...]

After 42 years, the Republicans are far more right-wing than Richard Nixon (and arguably even crazier), and most governing Democrats are far more centrist than the likes of Tip O’Neill, Lyndon Johnson and the old Democratic lions of that earlier era. [...]

In other words, the Left’s notion of “teaching the Democrats a lesson” is a myth. It may make some progressives feel morally pure, but it doesn’t work. And, the results of the last 42 years should make clear that the idea is not only folly but it is dangerous.

If the pundits are correct and the Democrats go down to a crushing defeat on Nov. 2, the result will not be more progressive legislation but even less; not more spending on green jobs and a rebuilt infrastructure but more neglect; not a strengthening of the middle class but even starker financial inequities and enhanced corporate power; not a reordering of priorities away from the military-industrial complex but more tough-guy foreign policies.

Indeed, some of the more extreme Tea Party-backed candidates have made clear that their ultimate goal is the total repeal of FDR's New Deal. For both governing Democrats and disaffected progressives, the results of Election 2010 could well prove catastrophic.

I'm afraid some of my younger friends on the left don't understand just how catastrophic a GOP takeover in this round would be. The stakes have never been higher and the damage this time, even in only two years, could be irreparable. If progressives want better candidates, then successfully primary the establishment pols. Or build a third party that can really win. But until then, you vote for the disappointing, overly centrist, corporatist Dems because the alternative will only push the window even farther to the right.

Besides, if everybody actually went out and voted and the Democrats crushed the GOPers, especially the TPs, progressives would have the satisfaction of proving the vapid punditry wrong. In 2010, that could be an even greater victory for the left.

Juan Williams: free speech isn't the issue

Due to my now years long boycott of idiot pundits that only raise my blood pressure without enlightening me, I haven't followed Juan Williams work at all outside of reading the occassional blog post or tweet. But I've read enough so that my first reaction to his being fired by NPR for making that intemperate remark on Fox was: No great loss to journalism. He was a lousy analyst.

As for whether he should have been fired for making this remark, well probably not, but that's not the point. And to all the usual suspects howling about free speech and First Amendment violations, it's not about that either.

As Glennzilla explains, this is mainly about applying equal standards to paid speech in the media. The right wing brigade who are trying to make a martyr out of Williams, didn't raise the same objections to others who were similarly and summarily fired for their speech, like Octavia Nasr at CNN, Phil Donahue at MSNBC and Helen Thomas being kicked out of the White House briefing room. Hell they cheered wildly about Helen.

No, it's not fair that Williams, or any of the others, got fired under similar circumstances. But life isn't fair and lots of ordinary people get wrongly terminated every day. This is the reality in corporate America. Seems to me the answer isn't to lionize or demonize any single person, but to fight for equal standards for everyone. And within that context and given the current rules of engagement in our political discourse, it seems to me that NPR was at least correct in dumping Williams, regardless of whether or not he is really a bigot.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Hey Mr Soros...

The right wingers have been falsely claiming that he has been funding just about every liberal organization in the book for what seems like forever. It's finally coming true for one of them and is much deserved. Just announced today, Soros gave Media Matters a cool million. Apparently he was particularly impressed with their pushback against Fox "News" and their resident liars.

No doubt the usual suspects on the far right will now be crowing about how liberals take billionaire bucks too, and thus can never criticize their secret funders again, but of course the difference is obvious.

“We are especially pleased that in this moment of hidden right-wing billionaire money corrupting our democracy, Mr. Soros, upon deciding to support our efforts, quickly and transparently has made that support public,” the statement from Media Matters says.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for that check that my critics claim he's sending to me...

[Nice. Thanks to The Caucus for the Around the Web link.]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Searching for context

Greg Sargent raises a lonely cry from his outpost at Kaplan Prep Daily for some context in the media coverage of the propaganda ads enabled by Citizen United.

And no one is talking about what's in the ads themselves. No one is talking about how these ads are filled with multiple distortions and debunked falsehoods. In other words, no one is talking about what it is the voters themselves are seeing in these ads on an hourly basis. The discussion is largely a Beltway process argument about matters such as whether attack ads are effective and whether the Dem criticism of the secret cash is working politically for them.

None of this discussion does anything to undercut or challenge what the Chamber and Rove's groups are actually up to here: They are flooding airwaves across the country with a massive, secret-donor-funded campaign that's designed to tip control of Congress with a campaign of misinformation, distortions and falsehoods that have been widely debunked by independent fact checkers but nonetheless have attracted little to no notice.

To use a much over-worked phrase, follow the Benjamins. The teevee media isn't going to call out the lies while they're raking in hundreds of millions in ad revenue from them. Just not going to happen. [Via John Cole]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Much ado about Jack Conway

I'm late to the party on this latest intercine battle among the left over Jack Conway's Aqua Buddha ad. Josh Marshall tells me:

Either you think it's outrageous and awful and something every Democrat should disown Conway. Or you think you want to move to Kentucky to vote for Conway because he gets that you don't bring a knife to a gun fight and you have nothing but contempt for Dems who don't have the stomach for getting a little into the gutter.

In case you missed it too, here's the ad in question.



Two weeks before the election and lefties are fighting about this? Really? Wonder how many people who are offended actually live in Kentucky? Or have even spent any amount of time in the south? Conway is trying to reach the Christian slogan voters of the Bible Belt. It's the perfect ad to reach that demo. Sure it's a drag that religion is an issue in elections, but that's the grim reality in the south. Conway didn't say anything that isn't true and he's fighting an avalanche of completely false third party ads. Are progressives really willing to insist on ideological purity and help Rand Paul walk away with a win?

For crying out loud, it's just a thirty second ad. And I suspect a lot of the people complaining are the same ones that bitch about the Democrats' failure to fight back against the GOPers. This is what fighting back looks like. Conway is just using the best weapon he's got to defeat his adversary and this close to the election is not the time for the left to be engaging in fraticide.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Advancing the progressive agenda

Almost two years ago, high on the Democratic sweep of the 08 elections, a whole lot of people pronounced the GOP dead for generations to come. I wasn't one of them. I've been around since Eisenhower was President. I remembered the average voters have very short memories. The pendulum always swings and I was pretty sure Obama wasn't going to be the Messiah of progressive politics and that the Democrats would disappoint us with the same old kabuki.

So now we're only a couple of weeks away from the midterms and sadly, via Rising Hegemon, we're at a place that Rude Pundit describes all too well.

You can't unfuck something that you've fucked. Republicans have paid almost no long-term price for the Caligula-like madness of the Bush administration. There's a chance that, now, two-years later, they're gonna get rewarded for refusing to participate in running the country. It's like setting free an arsonist after you've started to rebuild the house and telling him, "Oh, and here's those matches we took from you. Sorry for the inconvenience."

We can rightly blame the media for uncritically broadcasting completely false GOP narratives. We can blame Congressional Democrats for their ineffectual response to the GOP's relentless obstructionism. We can blame Obama for not using his bully pulpit to push a progressive agenda. But in the end, within the context of the recent Reid/Angle debate, Lance Mannion nails what's driving the GOP resurgence.

But Angle doesn’t have to explain. She doesn’t have to explain anything. All she has to do is show her potential voters she’s as incoherently angry at everything and everybody they hate as they are. This is the year of Republican Revenge and all they want is to bring the temple crashing down around their ears in order to enjoy the sight of their enemies being crushed in the rubble. That anger is what’s bringing them out to vote.

And John Ballard at Newshoggers finds the flaw in the progressives' response.

Innocent viewers who just came from Sunday School, knowing none of the back story about this woman, will have nothing but a positive reaction to what she says. Never mind that along with Beck, Palin and the rest of the crowd she is blowing smoke. Just because the words are as devoid of content as cotton candy it is a mistake to mock and point at those who buy them. There is a market for cotton candy, too, you know.

Far too large a market in this election. The irrationally angry right doesn't care about facts. They won't believe anything that contradicts their world view, even if it came down on graven tablets from heaven. Mocking them may be good sport for the left but it doesn't advance progressive policy. Neither did it stop the tea party types from winning a lot of major primaries.

Look around. How many Congressional primary wins can progressives point to? It comes down to this, if the "teatards" are so stupid, why are they winning?

[Big thanks to DougJ at Balloon Juice for the link.]

[Adding hugethanks to Batocchio at Crooks & Liars, who's sitting in for Mike at the Blog Roundup and to Think Progress for the links.]

But they like scantily clad girls

It's getting so I wince every time I see the Democrats and "the left" jump on these small GOP sex "scandals". Think it's a big mistake to make an issue out of these things.

The problem is, the Tea Party insurgency is largely driven by Walter Mitty-esque, white, middle class men who fantasize about dressing in duckie pjs and hanging out with scantily clad women. This is a plus, not a minus for these TP candidates. It's why Palladino's raunchy emails and Scott Brown's naked Playgirl layout didn't derail their races. The guys who support the TPs love that stuff and that it apparently pisses off liberals just makes them love it all the more. It's more likely to inspire guys who otherwise probably wouldn't bother, to show up at the polls and vote.

The internets as a force for good

When you blog politics it's easy to get discouraged about the ugliness of the internets. It's a given you're going to suffer troll attacks and bear daily witness to the dark side of human nature. Good to reminded the internet is a very big place and much good resides there as well.

Can't say I loved this band Atomic Tom. This song was a little too repetitive for my taste, but I did love their video. Staging it on the NYC subway and using their iPhones as instruments amused me enough to sit through the whole song.

On another note, I didn't think I would sit through all 18 minutes of this TED presentation, but as Ezra said, it made me feel all warm and fuzzy about the internets as a power for good. The last couple of minutes are really the best part. I was humming peacefully to myself for the rest of the day.

And of course, I can't do one of these linkfests without still photography. This high-speed photography was as cool as advertised: Water Balloons Without The Balloons.

I would love to see this in person. Reminds me of Christo, only with better colors. Berlin Festival of Light 2010.

Fall colors slowly making their way south. Just starting to turn here but farther north there's already some beautiful MD countryside.

Hat tips to Ezra Klein, KevinOfMI, expatina and newmediajim for the links.

Democrats report record fundraising month

Well so much for the "donor fatigue" the media was obsessing about last week. Today the DSCC reports "raising $15.5 million in September, its largest one-month haul ever." It brings their total numbers to about $10 million. The Republicans raised only "$8.3 million in September, and has collected a total of $86.4 million in the two-year election cycle."

Of course the GOPers also have all those conservative stealth groups pouring hundreds of millions into television advertising. They've been flooding the local networks in my little city with hit jobs on the local Dems, for months now. In fact, some of them have been buying up big airtime for anti-Democratic ads since Operation: Death Panel, during the health care reform war.

I saw weeks worth of negative ads on hcr. I can barely remember seeing a couple of pro ads. This is why the GOPers are more successful in their messaging to the low involvement demographic. They're spending more money all year long on directly implanting it in the public narrative.

[graphic via]

Brilliant

Got this from my Facebook friend Red Fulton this morning. This deserves to go viral. One simple question that explodes the shallow arguments of the anti-gay bigots.



Strikes me as the perfect response to every argument made against equal rights for the LGBT community.

[Much thanks to Brian Fairbanks at Nerve for the link and passing on the video.]

Revolutionary schooling

I've been saying our public education system needs to made relevant for rapidly changing world since the 70s. Of course, rote learning was rapidly losing its utility even before that in a society whose problems demand critical thinking. Kids need to be taught how to learn, to be imbued with the joy of acquiring knowledge. They don't get it in public schools. Now via James Joyner, come Sir Ken Robinson who makes the point with an innovative illustrated lecture.



Exactly the sort of "revolutionary" methodology which would resonate with today's kids but which teachers aren't allowed to use on threats of penalty. Watch it in full size here.

There is no peak wingnut

I'm off to work but a couple of things I didn't get to last night. First, it's uncanny how much this South Dakota candidate resembles Sarah Palin. I mean, all of these Tea Party women have the same Palin vibe, but this Kristi Noem, it's like they cloned the Klondike Queen. Enough to make you believe that The Stepford Wives was a documentary.

And this would be funny if they weren't so pathetically serious. The Birthers are no longer satisfied with mere paper doucumentation. Forget the long form birth certificate. The World Nut Daily guy, Farah, is sponsoring some new splinter group that wants Obama to submit to a DNA test. To prove he's really a human and not a Cyborg, or something. There apparently really is no limit to their paranoid fantasies.

Fourteen and counting...

The whole country is rightly celebrating the ongoing miner rescue in Chile. I've been riveted by the raw live feed of the Chilean mine rescue myself. Stayed up half the night watching the first four get out. The joy of the reunions between the miners and their families is so heartening. It's so rare to see such a happy ending to such a serious mining accident. This rescue is truly a wonder of technology and international co-operation.

I see President Morales has joined President Pinera at the site. Assuming Morales showed up to visit the one Bolivian miner that was rescued last night. I'm impressed at how fresh Pinera and the guys running the rescue rig look this morning after being at this all night long. But I guess the adrealin is keeping them going. Me, I'm thinking it's going to be a very long day at work today.

Whose money?

Big buzz today is Reid's opponent in Nevada, the seriously unhinged Sharron Angle, raised a cool $14mil in the last quarter. My first question was, who the hell is donating to this crackpot? Surely not the nearly broke residents of Las Vegas.

Chris Cilliza broke the news, but don't give him the traffic. First Read quotes the gist and TPM runs down the other Tea Party favs who pulled in the big bucks from that army of the usefully fooled.

No one has the answer to my question yet. Apparently Angle hasn't filed the FEC disclosures, but suddenly, the utility of villifying Reid and Pelosi in the GOP ads nationally makes more sense. The joke will be on the GOP though if it works and the Dems manage to keep a majority in the Senate. Keeping the majority and losing Reid is a win/win in my book.

The truth about terrorism

As Curly of the Three Stooges might have said, "What a revolting development."

In 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld commissioned a task force to study what causes Terrorism, and it concluded that “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies”: specifically, “American direct intervention in the Muslim world” through our “one sided support in favor of Israel”; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, “the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan” (the full report is here). Now, a new, comprehensive study from Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, substantiates what is (a) already bleedingly obvious and (b) known to the U.S. Government for many years: namely, that the prime cause of suicide bombings is not Hatred of Our Freedoms or Inherent Violence in Islamic Culture or a Desire for Worldwide Sharia Rule by Caliphate, but rather. . . . foreign military occupations.

As Atrios often says, but we can't leave until all the people who want us to leave are dead. [Via John Cole.]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Recession is over -- on Wall Street

Unless you're a WSJ subscriber, don't bother to click the link, it's behind the paywall, but here's the money quote:

About three dozen of the top publicly held securities and investment-services firms—which include banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money-management firms and securities exchanges—are set to pay $144 billion in compensation and benefits this year, a 4% increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009, according to the survey. Compensation was expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms.

A lot of these people deserved to be indicted. Instead they're handsomely rewarded for gaming the system for their own profit. This is why the voters are pissed off at Democrats. Scapegoating Bernie Madoff for an entire industry's de facto criminality wasn't enough. A few more frogmarches would have gone a long way to sating the public anger.

Obama channels Atrios

Not sure why he waited so long, but Obama made a speech in support of rebuilding our infrastructure that Atrios could have made, if Atrios was given to making long speeches. As it is he's written that speech many times over in the last two years, in his trademark style. Certainly he's posted something similar to this quote more than once.

But the fact remains that nearly one in five construction workers is still unemployed and needs a job. And that makes absolutely no sense at a time when there is so much of America that needs rebuilding.

It was a good speech and it's great policy even if it is, once again, probably too modest a proposal. That's just Obama's style. But he is calling for major infrastructure investment. That's a change I'm willing to fight for. I just hope our President is now ready to take command in the inevitable battle.

Big Blogiversary for Andrew Sullivan

I am not one of the Very Important Bloggers who was invited to roast or toast Andrew Sullivan's tenth blogiversary. But hey, the internets are free, so I'll congratulate him on hitting this milestone tomorrow. In blog years, ten is practically forever. It's an accomplishment well worth celebrating.

For his part, Sullivan reflects on the blog's history at length today. For myself, I've never been a faithful reader. However, like all of the other responses I've read so far, I've had a love/hate thing going with him for years. Back when he was the darling of the right, spinning his defenses of Bush and his ill-begotten wars, I used to spit out his name like an epithet, as in -- that fucking idiot Sully. I was slow to warm to him once he saw the light, suspicious of his conversion. But as the years passed I came to appreciate his work. His posts on torture alone earned him a place in my heart.

I'll probably never be the sort of fan that checks in religiously to see what's on his mind. To this day there are still times when I'll catch a post and say WTF is he thinking? But just as often I'll think, right on, that needed to be said and I'm glad the guy with the big megaphone is saying it.

I've never thought of him as particularly eloquent. He's never left me breathless with an elegant turn of phrase as say my pals Capt. Fogg and Lance Mannion often do. I don't find him subtle or witty. I would describe him as relentless, prolific, endearingly conversational and most of all courageously honest.

But whatever else can be said, it can't be denied that Andrew is an original voice and a true internet phenomenon. I'll raise a glass to toast his tenth year and wish him another decade of success.

Soros is not a Democratic party operative

Jane Hamsher did a post recently about traditional donors to the Democratic party holding back their money this cycle. A lot of people were agitated by it. It generated an hours long twitter bitchfest. I sat it out at the time, even though it irritated me too, but for a different reason. My gripe was Jane held up George Soros as the poster boy for absent donors and implied that he decided to give to other causes instead, notably marijuana reform, which her own FireDogLake only recently embraced. The thing is, Soros was never a big donor to political parties and has been supporting marijuana reform long before FDL was even launched.

I bring it up today because The Caucus posts a couple of excerpts from a recent interview.

“I made an exception getting involved in 2004,” Mr. Soros, 80, said in a brief interview Friday at a forum sponsored by the Bretton Woods Committee, which promotes understanding of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

“And since I didn’t succeed in 2004, I remained engaged in 2006 and 2008. But I’m basically not a party man. I’d just been forced into that situation by what I considered the excesses of the Bush administration.”

That's what I was planning to say in response to Jane's post. Soros' political involvement during the Bush regime was an anomaly. He's traditionally spent his money on issue based advocacy with an eye toward building a more civil society. He rightly recognized the Bush administration's policices were threatening his life's work. He's not an political operative who cares about the intrigues of The Village and never has been. That's a wingnut fantasy no progressive should be promoting.

"Winning" by losing

I understand the frustration, but I just don't get the tactics. I mean why does the so-called professional left think you prove your effectiveness by helping Republicans win? And why blame Obama for a piss poor Congress?

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), said that Obama has only himself to blame for disillusioned voters who provided the winning surge in 2008.

“The 20-year-old kid who voted for Barack Obama and then saw this White House cut backroom deals with special interests instead of truly fighting for big change like the public option doesn't need a public shaming,” Green said.

“He needs to see Democrats acknowledge that the Rahm Emanuel strategy of pre-emptively caving before a fight is a failure -- and that if he trusts Democrats with his vote again, he will be electing a fighting Democratic Party.”

So in the interim, you talk down the turnout and let the Tea Party GOPers take charge? Call me crazy but I can't help but think pushing to elect the few progressive Dems that are running this cycle would be far more useful than trashing a Democratic president for stuff that's largely out of his control.

Again, I do understand the disillusionment. It comes down to this, via Atrios. I didn't even read the article behind this quote that sums it up for me.

And Democrats may come to regret their eager embrace, this spring, of deficit-cutting rhetoric. Then, as now, the trouble in labour markets should have been the primary focus. With these figures sure to feature in Republican stump speeches for the next three weeks, those up for re-election will pay for their mistake.

The Dems let themselves get played by the GOPers at every turn since 08, and longer. GOPers may have gone crazy but they're not stupid. They seized the daily news cycle with stuff like the deficit scaremongering claptrap. The Dems, instead of defending the opposite postion, and standing for something clear and easily defensible, like necessary spending to save jobs, try to out-concern troll the GOPers. That never works and then the GOPers then are the first to seize the narrative the Dems should have been promoting all along. Where are the jobs?

Atrios wonders what they were thinking. The answer is they're weren't thinking at all. They were reacting to polls, driven by false rhetoric. And as Jay Ackroyd often says, you do have to ask whether the Dems really want to lose these fights. But handing the government back over to GOPers isn't going to change that dynamic.

Losing won't convert establishment Democrats. More likely it will just move them farther to the right. But a GOP majority isn't going to confirm liberal SCOTUS judges and it will set back the progressive agenda even further. Hard for me to see that as a win.

Leave his Slurpee alone

You know how much I love Mark Knoller and his geeky stats fixation. He keeps track of everything including how many times Obama evoked Slurpee sipping. It's nearly supplanted his fixation on the Obamas trashing tater tots.

I suspect he enjoys that frozen confection himself now and again, perhaps with a big old plate of tater tots on the side. On one level it's kind of sad that this election has been so substance free that Mark has the room to indulge a piece like this, but have to love a guy who will use his national forum to defend his (presuambly) favorite foods.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

It can drive 55

This makes me very happy. I've been waiting forever for the Google car that drives itself. The tests are impressive.

With someone behind the wheel to take control if something goes awry and a technician in the passenger seat to monitor the navigation system, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation. The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light.

Robot cars. And the Google guys really invented them. Would like to know how they do in say, Boston or Atlanta, but love that I lived long enough to see this happen.

Quick bit

Working this afternoon. Have a lot to talk about but no time to post right now. So I'll just give you this quick link that I found somewhere on the internets. This site, Information is Beautiful does spacial visualations of numerical data, and they really are quite lovely.

Frankly scrolling through, I didn't get some of them on quick glance, but this billion-dollar-o-gram is especially good. It shows the relative size of spending on a lot of issues we all talk about regularly. Does a great job of showing the relativity between the numbers.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

HoJo has gotta go

You know I've come to loathe polls. I think they've contributed greatly to the trivializing of our political discourse. I avoid linking them on the premise it only encourages them to do more, but I just can't resist this poll on Joe Lieberman:

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds "there's one thing Democrats, Republicans, and independents in Connecticut agree on: they want this to be Joe Lieberman's last term in the US Senate. Only 24% of voters in the state say they would vote to reelect Lieberman in 2012 to 66% who say they will vote to replace him. Majorities of Democrats (72%), independents (63%), and Republicans (61%) alike say it's time to swap out Lieberman for someone new."

If only they had figured that out in 06, it might have changed a lot of outcomes in the Senate that HoJo screwed up with his prima donna theatrics. Thinking particularly of the Medicare early buy-in that he single-handedly blocked, but better late than never. Much as I hate to take pleasure in other's misfortunes, this is one downfall I'll be happy to see.

Quote of the Day

QoTD comes from the very popular Borowitz Report who I don't follow:

"I worry that our children who are raised on Twitter will not have the attention span for Facebook."

Via Lance Mannion whom I would follow to the ends of the earth. He's a living treasure of the internets and you should read his blog too.

Burning down the house - Part two

Following up on my earlier post, now Mr. Crannick tells his side of the story. You have to sit through Olbermann's build up but it's worth the wait to watch Crannick on the tape. This guy is the classic "real Murkin" of the rural south. He sure looks like a farmer and think it's safe to assume he owns more than one gun.

He wouldn't seem out of place at a Tea Party. The kind of guy likely to vote Republican. Maybe he even believed in their small government mythology. Before the fire. Probably not so much now.


[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Where good bills go to die

Alex Pareene updates the count and finds a grand total of 420 bills passed by the House are now languishing in the Senate for lack of action.

As always, some of this is post office-naming. And some of it is food safety, and energy, and other things that might be nice for the country. [...]

Senate procedural reform should probably be the number one progressive priority, considering that the Senate is what is standing in the way of most other big domestic progressive goals (softening the blow of years of far-right Republican judicial appointments, appointing liberals to the Fed, fixing the nation's crumbling infrastructure, etc.) -- but I'm not holding my breath.

Nor am I holding mine. While there are certainly some legitimate and important policy criticisms being made in the progosphere, too many progressives are too busy mocking teabaggers and bitching that Obama didn't use his bully pulpit effectively enough to get their favored issue resolved to their satisfaction this hot minute, to actually engage in collective blog swarming on policy issues that might actually change the system.

You could see it coming. Bloggers started making money, obtaining press credentials and getting booked on the teevee talk shows and inexorably, the progosphere became more competitive and less collaborative. While there are more than a few notable exceptions, I look around at the powerhouses of Leftopia these days and see the same horserace coverage and obsessing about trivialities that the tradmed dines on daily. I suppose it was inevitable, but it still makes me a little sad.

Burning down the house

Unsurprisingly, the usual suspects think this is just fine and are defending the policy on the grounds that it weeds out freeloaders, or something like that. This what their conservative/glibertarian free market utopia looks like in real life.

Imagine your home catches fire but the local fire department won’t respond, then watches it burn. ...

The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning. Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay. The mayor said if homeowners don’t pay, they’re out of luck. [...]

No exceptions. This county government, which is the only local representation rural residents get in much of the South, apparently makes no provisions for overall fire protection in its rural districts that don't have a fire department of their own. Pay the extra fee or your house burns down and no one will help, not even if they're available, or even on the scene.

These are mostly poor farmers that are being left unprotected. We don't know what the story is about this poor guy who lost his house, but chances seem good that he probably just couldn't afford to pay the extra fee and was hoping for the best. The thing is the county did have other options.
A quick google search turned up a report from 2008 [pdf] detailing the problem, predicting just such a scenario, and offering some viable solutions that would have benefited the county's fire departments more so than the current policy.

The county collects property taxes. Couldn't find a budget detailing their expenditures but apparently the county did establish a fire district plan on paper in 1987 and never took action on it. The report also notes that the uncovered rural areas had been receiving free coverage for decades and the average cost of fighting a fire was about $500.

And one other interesting aside, although I saw in a newspaper comment section, and wasn't able to verify it as fact, this commenter said the county commissioners get $200 compensation for every meeting they attend. No matter what the length of the meeting, which sometimes only runs 20 minutes. And there are 21 county commissioners. So it costs the county significantly more for them to convene and effectively do nothing about a serious public safety problem than it would have to help this poor resident save his home.

Make it stop

I dropped off the radar out of pure exhaustion on Sunday. Yesterday, I was composing a post when I got a phone call. Yet another close friend has been diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. She starts chemo next week so maybe there's hope they can arrest the progress but I fear it doesn't look good for long term survival. Needless to say, I'm kind of a wreck.

I hate this. I'm not young anymore, but I'm not so old that I should be losing so many friends who are even younger than me.

Chart worth a thousand words

I'm sure you high denominator readers need no explanation. Via TNR How the recession affected the rich and the poor.

Of course the Catfood Commission falls at the far right of this chart. Explains a lot, no?

One Nation rally - Updated

I'm thinking attendance won't be as big as it might have been if Stewart and Colbert hadn't decided to hold their joint rally at the end of the month, but looking at the crowd shots, it appears they have a respectable turnout at the One Nation rally and certainly the crowd is more diverse than any Tea Party event I've seen.

You can see for yourself on The Nation livestream which started at 11:00 EST and is supposed to run all day. Just heard it crashed but I assume they'll fix it. In the alternate, CSPAN livestream started at noon. Not sure how long they plan to stay.

Update: If you're on twitter, OneNationTeam is livetweeting from the site. Just picked up this crowd shot. Looks like they got a very good turnout after all.

Economic accomplishments that can't be touted

The program expires this weekend, but hated as it was, the TARP bailout might see a profit. Seems more likely it will cost at least the $50 billion lowball Treasury estimate but outside of the miserably failed HAMP program, it was a success. It did save the big banks and they're the ones who paid their loans and the government made a profit on when they sold their collateral. Seems it's the small banks who are in default and/or holding onto their money.

I have some mixed feelings about this. Not sure I think it's so great that the big banks are coming out on top but it's good that it won't cost as much as the dire predictions of hundreds of billions down the drain.

In related news, stimulus spending under the Recovery Act met its Congressionally mandated deadlines and "with strikingly few claims of fraud or abuse." I have to agree with Atrios, who regularly suggests the money wasn't spent enough on direct hiring of low skilled workers for environmental upgrades to the infrastructure. But, they did put a lot of money into roads.

Most of the major thoroughfares and a fair number of smaller ones are newly paved in my little city with stimulus funding. I can see that money coursing through the local economy from my own crummy little job. Recovery Act didn't work well enough, but it worked well for what it was, and it was certainly better than nothing.

The irony is, the GOPers, thanks to a compliant he said/she said media, succeeded so well in poisoning the public perception of the programs, that the Democrats can't use their small success in rescuing us from the Republicans' recklessness in their campaigns.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Beam Me Over

I've been suffering a little burnout lately. The news has been 90% stupid for what seems like forever. I look at Memeorandum and it's almost all polls, speculation, unsolicted advice and unsubstantiated rumors. Real news is hard to come by. The lunatics have taken over the asylum. Leftys are engaged in bitter intercine warfare...

I mean, who wants to deal with this mess. They've screwed up this planet so much, I want to get beamed over to the new planet Gliese 581g that they just discovered.

Astronomers say they have for the first time spotted a planet beyond our own in what is sometimes called the Goldilocks zone for life: Not too hot, not too cold. Juuuust right.

I want to go there and start over, or in the alternate, they can send all the crazies over there and I'll stay here and try to repair the damage to this planet. But if we go to the new planet, it definitely needs a better name. Something like New Sanity.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]