I'm with my pal Howie.

Run Savage Run!!

"I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."

-- Karl Rove, explaining the rationale behind Bush’s immigration plan.

Well, remember how you thought Karl Rove was a serious dick?

Yeah...well, he is.

Well today should be interesting.

I got two calls today, to go on Al Arabiya at 1:30 PM (you can find on satellite tv and maybe web stream) and Al Zazeera, which might also have a live stream but is not able to be viewed in this country.

I am guessing Obama. We'll see. Should be fun.

I bet I'm in Gitmo by the end of the day.

Iraq War Vet Files Papers to Recall McCain

I've just heard from a source that there is an effort in place to recall John McCain in Arizona. The papers have been filed by an Iraq war veteran in Phoenix. His name is Leonard Clark and he refers to himself as "that damn liberal."

I also hear he is not just messing around, but deadly serious about getting "his comrades" safely out of a war that is "John McCain's attempt to fight Vietnam over again." I will be contacting him and updating you.

Will it go anywhere? We don't know yet. But I am told a signature-gathering effort is now set to begin.

Bill Donohue: Right-Wing Hypocrite

The Catholic League's Bill Donohue thinks it's just terrible anyone would say anything that can be construed as anti-Catholic, as we've discussed (well, at least if they're working for a Democrat).

Being a 54-year old man who got an 18-year old girl drunk, took advantage of her and then became Bush's Catholic outreach guy, now that's a whole different story.

In fact, to Donohue, this borderline date rape was make-a-lame-joke funny.

Yes, say hello to the ethically pure Bill Donohue everyone! Please hold your applause until the end of the show.

Radio Days

Remember, I am going on The Peter B. Collins show based out of San Fran but also up in Phoenix tongight at 6:30 PM EST to talk about John McCain and our online project/my book. You can listen online here.

And, here is Republican Sexcapades from The Young Turks show yesterday. I think it was one of our best. Check it out.

Oh, and Bill Donahue thinks "secular Jews" who "like anal sex" run Hollywood.

Yet, he should be a trusted source on who is or isn't a bigot by the media when it comes to John Edwards' bloggers?

Ok.

More to the point, Donahue is--what do the kids call it these days--oh right, fuckin nuts!

Yeah...um, Mary Matalin is an absolute idiot.

I know, shocked ya!

Only the Christian Right could see Ted Haggard's secret life as a homosexual as more proof that their beliefs are correct.

Read this paragraph from a great piece written by my talented Gadflyer colleague Sarah Posner:

The recruitment canard explains a lot about why Haggard’s fall from grace, although swift and thorough, did not irredeemably condemn either the man or the empire over which he presided, including the political movement to make gay marriage unconstitutional. Instead, Haggard reinforces the need to labor on. If Haggard could be recruited -- and, by the other side of the coin, converted -- then why concede the point that God could have made gay people in his image?

So because Haggard went all SpongeBob, after he was, of course, born a good white heterosexual Christian who liked to bowl and only ate what he killed, ipso facto, everyone's heterosexual by nature and we're all one soy-cheese pizza away from getting dinner napkins adorned with the rainbow flag.

Make sense? And if he wasn't gay, that would prove their beliefs work too. Ain't it grand, they're right no matter what!

And if you want even more scary stuff on the Christian Right, read this piece in AlterNet about the rise of Christian fascism in America.

It's enough to make you sick

Remember a couple of years back, a provision protecting Eli Lilly from potential damages in a class action suit resulting from its manufacture of thirmesol (a vaccine preservative) was mysteriously inserted in the 2002 Eli Lilly (Homeland) Security Bill?

Did you hear today that the autism rate in the U.S. is now 1 in 150? Do you know the connection?

The National Autism Agency reports that there is a causal link between mercury (in thirmesol) exposure and autism, and that because the HHS wasn't aggressive enough in removing thirmesol, children are exposed to more thimerosal today than ever before.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr wrote in Salon in 2005 that in a June 2000 meeting of every major vaccine manufacturer, the CDC and FDA , evidence showed that "since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children."

Someone in the family values party slipped this lovely provision into a national security bill, and we never found out who that was. Though Dick Armey took responsibility for writing the provision, no one took responsibility for including it in the bill. White House budget director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., a former Lilly executive, has denied any part. So has Bill Frist, the original author of the bill.

Anyone out there know how to get Henry Waxman's attention!

Bob Geiger nails it on the head in this piece. Senator Judd Gregg, of New Hampshire, is the "Smokescreen Man." Whenever the GOP nees someone to put out a bs proposal, like they do on Iraq right now, he is there.

Apparently he didn't see what happened to partisan Republicans in New Hampshire in 2006. Sununu will be destroyed in 2008, and then we can turn our attention to Gregg.

My good pal Mike Stark (you may remember George Allen's storm troopers tackled him and it was all over the national news, not helping his ultimately doomed re-election prospects) is doing some great work to try and support bloggers, and keep a growing and thriving independent media source viable.

Read his diary at Daily Kos here, about funding progressive activists through BlogPac.

Reminder

The Young Turks this morning at 8 AM EST. My weekly gig. Republican Sexcapades. Be there. Don't cut and run.

According to ABC News, Rep. Charlie Norwood, of Health Care Bill of Rights fame, is leaving Conress because of lung cancer. While he wasn't always on our side, Norwood did try to help on health care, and that's more than most GOPers ever do. My best wishes for him and his family, if this is true.

UPDATE FROM CLIFF: I must slightly disagree with my good friend BC. I don't wish lung cancer upon anyone. But you may remember that Norwood backed off a Patient's Bill of Rights after saying he wouldn't, because Bush told him to.

So I do feel sorry for him, but more sorry for all those who didn't have access to healthcare because of him.

You may have been following the recent "controversy" engulfing the Edwards Campaign that has made it's way into the media, when the MSM are not too busy covering cases of homicidal astronauts wearing adult diapers for jaunts through southern states.

If not, all you need to know is that two bloggers working for John Edwards, Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, may be fired (information is still a bit sketchy/contradictory right now) because right-wing morons like Michelle Malkin have been cwying ovuh bad wanguage the two used, in blog posts they wrote before working for Edwards.

B-O-O-H-O-O.

The fact that CNN and the NY Times would pay any attention to a woman whose reasoning in her books/columns falls somewhere between My Pet Goat and Millie's Book is bad enough. Yet, worse even, is that the press would try to turn "bad language" into a controversy (or now it's anti-Catholic ideas I hear...um, Bob Jones anyone?) and ignore a McCain campaign manager who consorts with criminals and approved the virulently racist ads used against Harold Ford by the NRSC in 2006.

That would be Terry Nelson. As head of the NRSC's indepependent expenditure unit in 2006, Nelson is the one who approved the "call me" race-baiting ad that played on fears of miscegenation, which led those liberals at Wal-Mart to fire his firm they found it so offensive.

Nelson was an unindicted co-conspirator of Tom DeLay's in his money laundering scheme in Texas (the TRMPAC scandal), and was forced to testify in the matter. He was also in the middle of Republican efforts to jam phones in New Hampshire in 2002, to hamper the Democratic GOTV effort in a tight senate race. He was James Tobin's boss at the RNC, a man who was eventually convicted of this crime. Nothing fishy there

(and of course I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED that "Mr. Integrity," John McCain, would hire someone with the ethical inclinations of Mike Tyson--could it be he's flip-flopped yet again? Might Robert Greenwald have to upate his fantastic video short on the subject?).

So let me try and understand this. John Edwards should have to fire two woman because they used a few swear words, but John McCain's hiring a man who's been involved in multiple scandals that led to indictments and convictions--not to mention his penchant for racist ads--is hunky dory. And the former is somehow a legitimate story for the media to swarm upon, but not the latter?

Wow, that's some liberal media out there.

I promised an analysis of the Iraq vote the other night, with every Republican, save two, voting not to allow debate on the non-binding resolution

1) In terms of politics, this could not be any better. A non-binding resolution achieves nothing. But with this vote, and not a single Dem voting to block debate over Iraq (thankfully we sent the dad on Alf packing in the Connecticut primary), this is the GOP's war to try and defend in 2008. Good luck guys. You just handed us the keys to an enduring majority (if we are smart enough to take 'em).

2) The obstructionism of Mitch McConnell - I worked against this man in 2002 and have written extensively on him here, here and here. He is an amoral loser, a guy who will pore over numbers the whole night, because he has no life and no compassion for the people his votes effect.

But this also makes him a master tactician. He has already blocked bills on lobbying reform, the minimum wage and Iraq (whether or not these bills were passed later in a different form doesn't matter, he initially blocked votes just to make things tougher on Dems). He is working on blocking a common-sense vote to make tobacco regulated by the FDA. This is what he is good at. Wrecking good legislation and counting votes.

3) John Sununu is an idiot. He is from New Hampshire. You know, that state that gave us control of both houses of the legislature, both Congressional seats and a Dem governor over 70% of the vote in 2006. Sununu has now voted to eliminate the minimum wage, not debate Iraq and he will have to defend himself over his party's role in a phone jamming scandal that helped elect him in 2002. Have fun pal.

4) Other swing-state Republicans are going to be in real trouble (save Norm Coleman and Susan Collins, who voted with Dems). Besides Sununu, Gordon Smith, Liddy Dole, Mitch McConnell, John Warner, and a few others should have fun explaining this one.

5) The Democrats were united. That, in itself, is a good sign that so called "moderate" Dems may have finally realized where they need to be on this issue.

There is much more at play here, and this is just cursory. So take it for what you will.

While we're on dictionary definitions of trampy wingers, my good pal Rick Perlstein, fantastic historian (he wrote the best account of the rise of the Right and Goldwaterism I have ever read) and good progressive, led me to this one.

I mean this stuff just writes itself!

col·ter Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kohl-ter] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun

a sharp blade or wheel attached to the beam of a plow, used to cut the ground in advance of the plowshare.

Also, coulter.

I hear the alternative definition is:

-noun

woman with Cheney-sized goiter who shows up on television in cocktail lounge outfits looking like she just tossed her lunch.

But, of course, that one could just be a rumor...

McCain Sucks Up To Extremists For The 4,157th Time

We learn from Right's Field today that John McCain, this time in Texas, is once again selling his soul (quite literally) to the very same Dominionists he once thought were the "agents of intolerance."

He is now sucking up not only to the Reverend Jerry Falwell, but professional homophobe the Rev. Richard Land and professional nuclear-Armageddon-fantasizer the Rev. John Hagee.

Nice group of new friends you've got there, Senator Double Talk.

The General, as in Jesus' General, is doing a fundraiser over at his place. He is easily one of the funniest/most insightful progresives online.

And we need good satirists on our side. So help him fight "Francoslamunistofascism" and go give him a bit of scratch if you can afford to do so.

Get Your McCain Fleece!

It's only $200 bucks! Get 'em while they're hot!

I hear it looks the same if you turn it inside out, wear it backwards or forwards upside down or right side up.

It's also not very wind-resistant. If the wind blows in a particular direction, it tends to follow.

Cross-posted at The Real McCain

Always last minute. My mom warned me about this...

On the Bill Mazer radio show on WVOX in New York, in well, a minute or two. Go to wvox.com for live stream.

More on the turning tide..............

In a NYT on line column today, William Stevens suggests that the breadth of evidence on global warming, underscored by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report, may be sufficient to not only carry the day in civil court, but perhaps now in criminal court as well http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/science/earth/06clim.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin

White House and EPA, take notice. Your history of feigning impotence and obscuring the truth cannot continue. This and future administrations may no longer get away with flimsy excuses and reckless disregard for the public's health, as we have seen in the last 6 years.

One example: the current suit brought by 12 states against the EPA for failing to limit automobile emissions that contribute to global warming - the Bush Administration insists that the E.P.A. does not have the power to limit the gases (This from an administration that has routinely done as it has pleased in Iraq without regard for Congressional oversight.)

Or the case of the White House having to publicly dismiss reports from Christine Todd Whitman at EPA citing human causes, including automobile emissions, as important causes of global warming (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/06/03/tech/main510920.shtml
(Christie left EPA before the end of the year, and the White House has since nominated such beauties as Michael O Leavitt, who apparently has a problem limiting mercury emissions http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=36176 ) , and Stephen Johnson, who was exposed during Senate confirmation hearings for refusing to cancel the Children's Environment Exposure Research Study, which advocated recording the effects of pesticides on children from infancy to age 3 http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2005/2005-04-11-05.asp

And then there's the chief of staff for the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, previously a lobbyist the American Petroleum Institute ( a seamless transition, no?), who was exposed by the NYT for editing climate change documents. Poor guy had to resign and a week later took a job with Exxon Mobil. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SourceWatch

I don't really feel like bothering to analyze the pathetically hollow man-behind-the-myth that is Rudy Giuliani, or his chances in the race (really lack thereof)--even though he's stepped closer to running for prez.

Thankfully, Taylor takes care of the former for me, and Matt Browner-Hamlin the latter.

Let's leave it at this: Before 9/11 he had Bush-level popularity in New York, and was considered a sinking ship and pariah. The man announced his split from his second wife to the press before he told her, and insulted the family of an African-American man the police shot--which is maybe why the entire black community in New York loathed him.

His own party's most powerful members in New York hated him (and most likely, still secretly do).

Ok, I've wasted enough space on this amoral sellout.

Oh wait, one more thing. Can a guy who had enough comb-over to feed the homeless seriously be considered for higher office?

This is priceless. A commenter at Huff Post, MSheppard, sent me to the definition of a "malkin" in the dictionary.

mal·kin
[maw-kin, mawl-, mal-] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun British Dialect.

1. an untidy woman; slattern.
2. a scarecrow, ragged puppet, or grotesque effigy.
3. a mop, esp. one made from a bundle of rags and used to clean out a baker's oven.
4. a cat.
5. a hare.

Somewhere in the world, after reading this, a hare is weeping.

The "Dean" strikes again.

AP Headline "Republicans Block Senate Debate on Iraq."

Memo to Democratic consultants, the first tv ad script for 2008 has now been written.

(edit) Apparently, the New York Times agrees with my assessment.

Inhofe, where are you?????

For kicks, I've asked the good Congressman, you know, the one who retorted that climate change was the biggest hoax perpetrated upon mankind, what his reaction is to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that has effectively laid debate on the issue to rest.

I'm not expecting a response, but you never know..................

You may have seen the non-controversy over John Edwards' hiring of talented blogger Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon fame. Or maybe not.

The basic story is that uber-moronic Right-tards such as Michelle Malkin, whose IQ has been in an internment camp for the better part of her life, thinks it's really bad that Amanda said words like, "fuck" on her blog.

Oh no, what shall we tell the children?

I think Malkin's right, actually. Amanda's not qualified to work in such an important position when she tosses about obscenities with such gusto.

Kind of like a man who refers to a reporter as a "major-league asshole" when he is too Quayle-brained to know he's near an open mic. Furthermore, perhaps the very same man is not fit to be a leader of this nation when he has in the past given the finger to members of the press and routinely refers to his top henchman as "turd blossom."

And then what about that gelatinous goo of a humanoid known as our veep, who responded to a U.S. Senator's salutation with the not-so-oft-used greeting of "go fuck yourself."

What say you oh self-flagellating lover of concentration camps? Perhaps, as usual, you spoke with a bit of haste? We wait with bated breath for your inevitably witty response.

There is a new and interesting piece in The Washingtonian, looking at Jack Abramoff from a--gasp--human side. Think what you will about Jack, and I don't think very much more of him than say, herpes, but his descriptions of those who denied knowing him after he got into trouble is still really interesting stuff.

On Bible thumping hypocrite/forced abortion supporter Ralph Reed:

Jack said the career of his former friend Ralph Reed, then running for lieutenant governor of Georgia, was 'flushing down the drain with his outright lies about his relationship with me.'

Or, geriatric retard/thankfully former U.S. Senator Conrad Burns:

Jack expressed anger at politicians who now claimed they never knew him. He was particularly annoyed that Montana senator Conrad Burns had been quoted as saying he wished Jack 'had never been born.'

'Was he wishing I was not born when we were together in Florida, or when we were dining at Signatures, or when he was using our sports boxes or getting tons of money?' he said later in an e-mail.

Check out the rest for his thoughts on others such as The Decision-Making Decider, House Minority Leader/automatic tobacco-check dispenser Boehner, etc.

It's pretty fascinating stuff.

I don't mean to pry into Mary Cheney's oh-so-important life--after she worked to get her Gorgon father reelected so their party could snoop into all of our lives on so many levels--but I wonder if she made this pledge.

She ain't married. She's having a baby.

Slut

In my years in the consulting business, I've never had the opportunity to work with Dan Gerstein, Joe Lieberman's erstwhile defender. So I hesitate to call him names, like a delusional egomaniac. But after reading his latest treatise, it's hard to think of him in any other way.

Gerstein goes on to say that there are two kinds of Democrats - Polarizers (i.e. the people who disagree with Joe Lieberman) and the "Problem Solvers." (i.e. the people who agree with Joe Lieberman). Only in the twisted mind of Gerstein can the people who want to end the war in Iraq be described as polarizers, but the folks who want to extend the conflict through the "surge" are the problem solvers (Dick Cheney, problem solver! Who knew?).

Gerstein goes on to explain that Lieberman-Lamont match-up showed what happens when these two groups fight each other, as the race "provided the party with a nearly pure real-world test of these two competing approaches." In his mind, the "problem solvers" won out.

This is where Gerstein shows he is, in fact, delusional. During the cycle, Gerstein not only worked for Lieberman, but also participated in another Democratic primary in New York. He worked for Tom Suozzi, a conservative Democrat who ran against Eliot Spitzer. Like Lieberman, Suozzi ran to the center in his primary, ostensibly to gain the vote of these "problem solving" Democrats. And like Lieberman, he lost his primary. So in primaries, Polarizers 2, Gerstein-Problem Solvers 0.

So clearly, for Gerstein to proclaim the Problem Solvers as winners, Lieberman must have really racked up a huge margin among Democrats in the General Election. Here's what he writes

"The Election Day exit polls said it all. They confirmed that Lamont's partisan, polarizing strategy failed to drive down Lieberman's Democratic vote. He won 33 percent of the Democrats, almost the same percentage he had gotten in the first major poll nine days after the primary."

Yes, you read that correctly. Gerstein admits that Lieberman got only 33% of Dems on Election Day. So "Problem Solvers" lose in the primary and then get beat in the General Election by a 2-1 margin. Yet Gerstein claims victory! With such dysfunctional math skills, no wonder the Lieberman team thinks we're winning in Iraq.

The real message, as the numbers show, is that Democrats oppose the accomodationist strategies of Gerstein and Joe Lieberman. They want Democrats who will opposed the President when he is wrong (which seems to be most of the time) and work with him when he is right, not sell out their beliefs for a quick peck on the cheek.

If Gerstein doubts my analysis (and considering his delusion, he most certainly will) he ought to listen to the speeches made before the DNC meetings this past week. Every major Democratic contender took a so-called "polarizing"tone. So either they all want to turn off Democratic voters, or Gerstein doesn't know anything about Democrats.

Pre-Super Bowl Notes

1) It was a rough week on The Young Turks for my little segment. First they thought I was someone else (actually my colleague at The Gadflyer, Paul Waldman, not due to go on until 8:30 AM, not 8 AM), no biggie, but then it seems I reported a story that is an Internet hoax (Donnie Davies).

I had heard rumblings, but decided to go with it anyhow, as it is a "funny" segment, as opposed to well-sourced, hard-hitting news like the fact that Barack Obama was educated at a Madrassa.

2) I wrote a piece for Huff Post summing up our success (over 200,000 views and counting of Robert Greenwald's short video John McCain vs. John McCain) at launching The Real McCain site. Progressive synergy.

Hey, it got us a front-page article on the LA Times and coverage in numerous other MSM venues (supposedly on CNN tonight, but I'll be watching other things...we'll get to that in a minute).

3) I have a new piece up at The Real McCain. It shows how Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has now called Double-Talk McCain's Iraq plan "intellectually dishonest."

4) I am going on the Cup O' Joe Radio Show on The Head-On Radio Network tomorrow at 10:15 AM EST to discuss using technology in message politics (a la our McCain site). From the picture it looks like it's based on Chicago. I don't know much more. Should be fun.

Finally, who ya want to win tonight in the Superbowl, if you indeed give a crap? I was pulling for Peyton Manning, and I do try to separate my sports from my politics, but just found out he maxed out to racist Bob Corker in the last election. And I do love Chicago. But Paddy's from Indiana. So, really, as you can see, I have no freakin idea who I am pulling for anymore.

Now off to the gym to pre-work off that pizza and beer.

The Way To Talk To A Republican

This is among the many reasons I like New York Governor Elliot Spitzer:

'I am a fucking steamroller and I'll roll over you or anybody else,' the Democratic governor told Republican Assemblyman James Tedisco in a private conversation last week, the New York Post reported on Wednesday.

And yes, when asked by that same right-wing Riefenstahlesque rag whether he indeed said that, he stood by it.

He wins the new award we are giving out here, The Jim Webb.

I think we may just give out the monthly Joe Lieberman too. I'll let you figure out what that's for.

Nothing says "Thanks for helping me get elected!" like sleeping with your campaign manager's wife. Hey Gavin, they frown on that, even in San Francisco.

In the future, take your cues from America's lothario mayor, Rudy Giuliani. If your going to sleep with a staffer, make sure she isn't married to another one of your staffers.

I hate to have to scare everyone, just when we're feeling like perhaps the Bush Administration might have to confront lawmakers in both parties, all who've grown tired of foreign policy decisions reached by Ouija Board and men who as little prep-school snots got picked last during recess kickball games.

Yet, my pal Sean-Paul Kelley, editor of the Agonist, has a pretty scary account of the Bush Administration's current march to war in Iran (unlike many of the pajama-clad warriors in Bushland, Sean-Paul has actually been to Iran). A snippet:

The drumbeat for an attack on Iran is getting louder and louder.

Fears of Iranian economic dominance in Iraq are being stoked, although the story is already weeks, if not months old. We've also been told the Iranians are cooperating with the North Koreans in their bid for nuclear weapons. Never mind that the North Koreans use plutonium in their reactors and the Iranians use uranium. Ooops.

Read the whole thing. You'll inevitably think one thing to yourself.

Here we go again.