My, how the times they are a-chaninging:
Lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis, the law firm that’s home to Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr and Bush administration official Jay Lefkowitz, have given more to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign than to all of the top Republican candidates combined…
Lawyers say the change is largely due to disenchantment with the Republican Party’s social policies and the war in Iraq.
When I found the fundraising letter from Al Franken in my Florida mailbox, I almost dumped it in the “throw away unopened” stack. Instead something made me put it in the “look at it later and then throw it away” pile.
I looked at it today and now I — a Floridian with absolutely no way to vote for Franken in his run for senator in Minnesota — am writing his campaign a check.
That the man has a way with words (although having read his books, I’d say he got help with this letter) is obvious. Still, somewhere in the midst of a professional assessment that he was using too many metaphors and spending too much time on the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, he won me over.
I knew nothing about his opponent, incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman. But when Franken compared him to, “your obnoxious uncle who loves to listen to Rush Limbaugh and ruins Thanksgiving every year,” I understood immediately.
It’s important to get idiots like Coleman out of the Senate and get smart people like Franken in, whether they are running in Minnesota or Florida or California. If you got the letter, don’t toss it. If you weren’t on the mailing list, go to Franken’s web site and look around. You can donate on the spot, and right after you do, Franken will thank you via video. Nice touch.
In a review of the new bio out on Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, an editorial writer for the rightwing New York Sun suggests Cheney may be considering getting into the 2008 presidential race:
The book quotes Senator McCain as saying, “Dick doesn’t like campaigning.” Nothing in the Hayes book suggests that Mr. Cheney is about to do it — except for that the vice president spent nearly 30 hours cooperating with the author and apparently gave the okay for many of his friends and colleagues to grant similar access. The Richard Cheney described in this book isn’t vain enough to do that simply for his reputation in history. My own guess — okay, hope — is that Mr. Cheney has taken a look at the Republican presidential field and sees an opening. If Iowa and New Hampshire Republicans start receiving copies of ” Cheney” in their mailboxes, Mr. Cheney’s popularity may yet begin to climb.
If Cheney gets in, I would seriously consider switching my support for the most beatable GOP nominee from Newt Gingrich to the vice president.
Meanwhile, back in reality:
The Washington Post’s polling expert, Richard Morin, noted that at 18 percent approval, Vice President Cheney was less popular than Michael Jackson after he was tried for child abuse and O.J. Simpson after he was tried for murder. Mr. Hayes quotes Mr. Morin as reporting that Mr. Cheney was “less popular with Americans than Joseph Stalin is with Russians.”
Via: Blogometer: Howard Wolfson, spokesman for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, went on Bill O’Reilly’s show Tuesday night to defend DailyKos from O’Reilly’s recent attacks. This line stands out:
Unfortunately with all due respect for you, the days where you can dictate where Senator Clinton and other Democrats go, who we talk to, are over.
Bill O’Reilly just can’t get it through his head that he is seen as such a bully that it actually helps his opponents when he attacks them. Just ask Al Franken, whose book, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,” made millions more than it would have if Bill hadn’t sued over Franken’s depiction of him.
Or ask Keith Olbermann, whose almost daily attacks on O’Reilly as the “Worst Person in the World” have helped make “Countdown” the most popular live show on MSNBC.
Now O’Reilly has turned his guns on DailyKos, labeling it a “hate speech” site, a charge he bases on a few vile and nasty statements cherrypicked from the site’s comments section — one of the largest boards on the Internets. O’Reilly’s campaign against DailyKos has had some success. He forced JetBlue to reneg on its promised level of sponsorship for the upcoming YearlyKos conference. Now he’s trying to bully the presidential candidates into skipping the event.
Predictably (to everyone but Bill), his attacks on the Kos community have had the unintended consequence of improving Sen. Clinton’s popularity among the Netroots. Until now, conventional wisdom considered the online left to be a big obstacle for Clinton in the primaries because of her conservative positions.
That dynamic appears to be shifting — thanks entirely to Bill O’Reilly. As a DailyKos member put it:
[O’Reilly] thinks he’s destroying kos’ credibility when in fact what he is doing is causing all the candidates to stand behind the [YearlyKos] conference and the web site, and by Hillary being so up front in defending Daily Kos, he is helping people here who don’t like her start to rally around her.
Hey Bill: We’ve been attacking you for years (the cartoon of your big giant head with a loofah background is a little something we worked up in 2005) — so, how about it? Show us some hate. There’s some pretty salty stuff — and some of it is about you — in our comments section, so please feel free to call us a hate speech site. It’s good for business.
Not only have Republicans told pollsters they don’t like their party’s candidates, they are also holding back donations.
First came the news that “none of the above” is increasingly the top choice among potential GOP voters.
The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that nearly a quarter of Republicans are unwilling to back top-tier hopefuls Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain or Mitt Romney, and no one candidate has emerged as the clear front-runner among Christian evangelicals…
A hefty 23 percent can’t or won’t say which candidate they would back, a jump from the 14 percent who took a pass in June.
Now we hear that the big money in Florida, one of the deepest pockets for the Republicans, is missing in action.
Two-thirds of the top Florida donors to President Bush have yet to write a check to any Republican presidential candidate this year, reflecting a nationwide disquiet in the GOP that threatens to undermine its hold on the White House…
”We’re six months before the Florida primary. I would think at least half would be signed up with one campaign or another,” said Fort Lauderdale lobbyist Justin Sayfie, a top Bush donor turned fence-sitter.
The habit of giving to those lovable, whacky Bushes is hard to break, and harder to replace.
A Bush — the 41st president named George, the 43rd governor of Florida named Jeb, or the 43rd president named George W. — has appeared on seven of the last 10 general-election ballots in Florida.
”It’s hard for some of us who have been loyal to one family for so long just to flip over to someone else,” said Michael Hightower, a Jacksonville healthcare executive who served as the local GOP chairman. “I’m not saying we don’t have good candidates, but you ask yourself: Is it going to be the same as it was with Bush 41, with Jeb or with W? And the realistic answer is no, because we don’t have the same relationship.”
Excuse me while I gag.
Our team, of course, is doing fine.
Among Democrats, it’s a different story. About three-fourths of the leading fundraisers for the 2004 Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry, have put their money on a 2008 contender.
Those who really can’t find anyone they like still have a choice. The Committee Against Mediocrity in Politics (CAMP) is urging them to back an amendment that would let them vote for None of the Above.
CAMP is calling for Amendment XXVIII to the United States Constitution. This Amendment would add “None of the Above” to all federal election ballots, allowing voters to choose not to vote for a ballot of mediocre candidates.
Should the “None of the Above” option receive a majority of votes in any given election, then that election would yield no winner and the election would need to be rerun with new candidates on the ballot.
Ralph Nader should love it.
“We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Bush Administration.”Mitt Romney is too stupid to live.
“Our president, for all the criticism he receives, has kept America safe these last six years, and he has done it by: One pursuing the Patriot Act, which has given us the intelligence information we needed to find out who the bad guys were and get them out before they got us, and No. 2, when al-Qaida was calling America, he made sure someone here was listening,” Romney said. “And No. 3 … when terrorists were detained, were captured, he made sure we interrogated them.”
Le Douche on an all-male, all-white panel on Meet the Press today:
[ROBERT NOVAK]: Republicans are very pessimistic about 2008. When you talk to them off the record, they don’t see how they can win this thing. And then they think for a minute, and only the Democratic Party, with everything in their favor, would say that, “OK, this is the year either to have a woman or an African-American to break precedent, to do things the country has never done before.” And it gives the Republicans hope.
It’s all about bucks, baby.
Under the equal-time rule, if a network gives time to one political candidate, it is required to provide the same amount of airtime to his or her opponents. In other words, if Thompson appeared on a “Law & Order” episode for 10 minutes during prime time, NBC would have to give Thompson’s rivals for the Republican nomination 10 minutes of prime time each.
“The equal-time requirement applies when the person has legally qualified as an official candidate in a relevant state — for example, having his or her name formally approved to be on a state’s primary ballot — not merely when he/she declares his or her intent to run,” an NBC spokeswoman said. “If Fred Thompson formally announces his intention to run for president, NBC will not schedule any further repeats of ‘Law & Order’ featuring Mr. Thompson beyond those already scheduled, which conclude on Saturday, September 1st.”
Pres. Nixon didn’t want Fred Thompson as minority counsel during the Watergate hearings because he doubted the mental capacity of the future actor and lobbyist.
Thompson, then 30, was appointed counsel by his political mentor, Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker, the top Republican on the Senate committee. Thompson had been an assistant U.S. attorney in Nashville and had managed Baker’s re-election campaign…
Nixon was disappointed with the selection of Thompson, whom he called “dumb as hell.” Nixon did not think Thompson was skilled enough to interrogate unfriendly witnesses and would be outsmarted by the committee’s Democratic counsel.
This assessment comes from audiotapes of White House conversations recently reviewed by the Associated Press at the National Archives in College Park, Md., and transcripts of those discussions published in Abuse of Power: The New Watergate Tapes, by Stanley Kutler.
“Oh, s—, that kid,” Nixon said when told by his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, of Thompson’s appointment on Feb. 22, 1973.
“Well, we’re stuck with him,” Haldeman said.
The two were concerned that Thompson would be outgunned by much brighter lawyer John Dean, who was ready to desert their sinking ship. Appealing to Thompson’s strong partisan side helped him focus and prepare for the questioning.
Dean, the panel’s star witness, had agreed to tell what he knew if he was granted immunity.
Nixon expressed concern that Thompson was not “very smart.”
“Not extremely so,” [Nixon lawyer J. Fred] Buzhardt agreed.
“But he’s friendly,” Nixon said.
“But he’s friendly,” Buzhardt agreed. “We are hoping, though, to work with Thompson and prepare him, if Dean does appear next week, to do a very thorough cross-examination.”
Five days later, Buzhardt reported to Nixon that he had primed Thompson for the cross-examination.
“I found Thompson most cooperative, feeling more Republican every day,” Buzhardt said.
Later in the conversation, Buzhardt said Thompson was “willing to go, you know, pretty much the distance now. And he said he realized his responsibility was going to have to be as a Republican increasingly.”
That seems to be one lesson that got through Thompson’s thick skull and stuck.
Independent weekly columnist and author Hal Crowley was no doubt already working on this masterpiece when headlines proclaimed that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would — incredibly — not yet consider impeachment an option for either Bush or Cheney.
Crowther tries to MOVE US ALREADY from our collective inertia and the delusions we’ve accepted about what we have to lose by leaving Iraq (nothing) and by impeaching Bush/Cheney (nothing).
He also asks a damn good question.
The Bush administration is a cadaver decomposing on America’s doorstep—yet no one will take responsibility for it, no one will give it a decent burial, no one even has the courage to step over it and try to get on with a nation’s decent business.
Democrats are so desperate to win the presidency in 2008 that they refuse to relinquish their two most persuasive, most visible arguments for regime changeThis is the president who cannot be resuscitated and cannot be removed. A lame duck is a thing we’ve dealt with before…A dead duck in the White House is a constitutional crisis no scholar ever anticipated and no think tank ever analyzed.
The president’s Memorial Day speech at Arlington was a crowning outrage, one that pushed many a patient, hopeful citizen over the edge into incoherent despair… “Now this hallowed ground receives a new generation of heroes,” he declaimed. “I hope you find comfort in knowing that your loved ones rest in a place even more peaceful than the fields that surround us here.”
…Hypocrisy of such concentrated toxicity seems almost superhuman. “Shame!” the dead cry, but in America, shame died years ago and lies buried in an unmarked grave, perhaps at Arlington…
As Baghdad disintegrated, body bags proliferated and his henchpersons’ interlocking scandals reverberated—as his approval rating scraped bottom near an historic 25 percent, meaning he’s squandered the trust of at least half the people who voted for him in 2004—President Bush faced no future but no certain reckoning. Can no one rid us of this albatross?
…Across the country, from Hawaii to Maine, 70-odd city councils and 14 state Democratic parties have voted to impeach both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney…But in Congress no one seems to have the stomach for the job.
From Trump’s “stolen election” lies, we can’t get no relief,
He carps on about stolen votes, but he never names the thief.
Somebody needs to tell this guy
Americans aren’t buying his lies,
And that he’s turned us into the United States of Disbelief.
