SmithAntics

I shit you not, BushCo’s new campaign theme is “we've turned a corner, and we're not turning back.”

In other words, “My presidency has been an unmitigated disaster, but all the bad stuff is over now, so stick with me. Don’t let John Kerry take us back into the hell from which we have emerged.”

Yeah, okay.

This is part desperation, part Jedi mind trick. It’s also funny—in a gallows humor kind of way.

By what measure have we turned the corner? The economy is still in the tank and the chaos in Iraq is worse than ever—not to mention the disaster that is Afghanistan, which I guess we’re supposed to forget about.

And what’s around this corner we've just turned?

Whatever it is, it appears it will still include that special BushCo blend of Stalinism, racsim, and large-scale deception.

Yes, Dubya, I’d like another helping of horseshit.

Well, I may as well shut down this blog, because Ron Reagan just dropped the hammer on BushCo.

And I’ll say it again. Josh Marshall has a way with words.

President Bush's new line of attack is that John Kerry is a man of few achievements.

But coming from George W. Bush? A guy whose handlers had to get some of the more gullible run of journalists to refer to his life before he turned forty as his 'lost years'?

I mean, even if you grant that Bush's presidency has been a tenure of transcendent achievement (and it has undoubtedly been eventful), it's a bit hard to get around the fact that even by his own account he spent his first five decades kicking back, living off family connections and playing solitaire.

It's certainly true that Mr. Kerry said certain things in his war protestor days that can now be used against him. But until he was well into middle-age President Bush's most noteworthy public utterances seem to have been limited to various invocations and inflections of the word 'par-TAY' and reciting the alphabet under legal compulsion.

Nearly showered my monitor with Mountain Dew after reading that last line.

I watched Kerry’s speech with justified skepticism, criticality, and a clear understanding that the Democratic Party is, in fact, the moderate wing of the state-corporate duopoly that rules America. No informed and honest appraisal of the structure of political power in the United States can discount this reality. The evidence is undeniable. The scholarship cannot be refuted.

But I have no choice but to believe in John Kerry. The years of the Bush presidency have been marked by darkness, despair, and a sense of unreality like I have never experienced. What BushCo has gotten away with is nothing short of stunning. I swear to God they must have put something in the water supply. How else to explain the mass psychosis that—if the polls are correct—has stricken roughly half the adult population in this country?

This nightmare must end.

So, despite my well-founded cynicism and doubt about the Democratic Party, I allowed myself to be moved by Kerry's message of hope and change.

And he delivered.

If there was any doubt that John Kerry is ready to be president, it was shattered, in my opinion, by his thundering speech, which brilliantly stated the Democratic Party vision by contrasting it against the foul and morally bankrupt policies of BushCo.

Deliver us, John.

Don't let us down.

I’m pretty busy and rather scatterbrained today, so this late post will be kind of a stream-of-consciousness grab bag.

I thought Edwards was very good but not great last night. He looked kinda nervous. I suppose I’d be shitting my drawers if I had to give such a cosmically important speech, so I’m not gonna harp on him for being a little shaky. Shit, I even gave Bush a break the other day by not posting this. See, I'm a compassionate conser--....

Oh, and the talking heads who are covering the Convention for CNN, MSNBC, and FAUX are a collection of corporate, careerist, RNC-talking-point-spewing clowns. I guess this is where I’m supposed to provide corroborating evidence of this. I don’t have time right now. If you have cable, just tune in to the pre-and post-game coverage. Set your stopwatch and time how long it takes one of these hacks to break out some thinly disguised shot at Kerry, Edwards, or liberalism itself. It’s flat-out disgusting how subservient these shills are to their corporate-conservative masters. Just watch.

Also, I’ve added a new link to the First Reads section on your right. I have found that the Latest Breaking News forum on Democratic Underground is an excellent source for important breaking stories. I check it several times a day, so I thought you might find it useful as well. If you want to get right to the really hot stories, just check for the posts with numbers of replies (on the far right column) or post icons that are on fire (on the far left column).

Last but not least. I’d love to see more comments on the posts here. It would sure liven up this blog. You don’t have to include your email address to post comments. You don’t even have to include your name; you can come up with an alias. C'mon, chime in! Tell your right wing cousin to come aboard and give me some flak. I really appreciate those of you who do comment. I'd like to know if more than five people are reading this blog.

Okay, back to work. Let’s hope Kerry hits one out of the park tonight!

The snack-sized Alterman.

Let's get this straight everybody. Journalists are socially liberal, just like every single well-educated, well-paid group of urban professionals. On occasion this shows up in the coverage, when it comes to say, creationists and people who think homosexuals should burn in Hell sooner rather than later. But even on this issue set, where attitudes are consistent, there is evidence of considerable effort to bend over backwards to be nice to Bible-thumpers. On most political issues, however, journalists are not only not liberal, they are often more sympathetic to the conservatives than to the liberals; this is in part a reflection of their economic status and in part a reflection of the fact that they are but a weathervane of the force of gale winds attacking them and until recently, just about all the attacks have been coming from the right.

Add this to the fact of corporate demands that no major segment of the audience be offended and you end up with coverage that politically speaking, favors the right almost every time. Look at the impeachment coverage and Whitewater. Look at the 2000 election. Look at Florida. Look at the run-up to this horrific war. Look at the coverage of this extremely moderate if not downright conservative Democratic convention.

If Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer constitute the "liberal" media then we really do need to find another country.

Damn good summation. Here’s the longer version.

If you’re not watching the Democratic Convention, you are missing out on history.

There are some barnburner speeches being delivered at the Fleet Center, with more to come tonight, and the culmination coming with Kerry’s speech on Thursday night.

This is it, guys. This is the official beginning of the end for Bush.

The convention is not an infomercial. The speeches are not empty rhetoric. This is the opposition laying out its vision to deliver us from the Darkness.

I, for one, am shelving my cynicism until the election. I’m allowing myself to believe that our long national nightmare will soon be over.

Let's put Kerry in the White House, and then start demanding that the Democratic Party own up to its promise.

If they don't. I will find a party that will.

Brought to you by the Sacramento Dawn Patrol, loyal disciples of the Freewayblogger.

This message was viewed by thousands of commuters this morning, until it was yanked down—probably with great anger—by a Bush troll.

Do you want to know what an authentic sinister government conspiracy looks like?

The kind you may have read about in cheap political suspense novels?

The kind you hoped our system of checks and balances—hell, basic morality—would make virtually impossible to carry off?

It looks like this.

Until this fucking abomination is properly exposed and corrected (i.e., BushCo goes down for this), this will be the signature subject of this blog. For what it's worth, I am not letting this go.

But here’s the problem. This thing can never be truly corrected. The sadistic gang of thugs that is the Bush administration has ensured that America will be an object of burning, vengeful hatred by the Arab world for centuries to come.

This is BushCo’s War on Terror. This sickening rape.

This morning I was infuriated by MSGOP “analyst” Andrea Mitchell’s brazen right-wing spin job on Kerry. “Reporting” from the Democratic Convention in Boston, she was dutifully reciting the standard GOP line on Kerry. It goes a little something like this:

“The ultra-rich, ultra-liberal, ultra-aloof Massachusetts Senator, John Kerry, faces a long uphill battle in convincing the American people, who, on the whole, believe George W. Bush is better qualified to lead the country in the apocalyptic struggle against terror, that he is not the ultra-rich, ultra-liberal, ultra-aloof Massachusetts Senator that we all know he is.”

Seriously, it was just about that bad.

Well, while reading Josh Marshall this morning I learned that Mitchell is married to non other than the high priest of the Reaganite orthodoxy, Alan Greenspan!

Go figure.

Can you believe this race is still neck and neck?

How can the wingnut (s) in your life still be buying into BushCo? Christ, this past three and a half years has revealed just hordes of gullible nincompoops — about 50 percent of the adult population of this country, if the polls are correct. Bad scene.

I’m sorry if I’m offending a close friend or family member, but, good lord, how ignorant one must be to support Bush in light of the mountain of evidence that his administration is the worst in the history of this country. What makes Republicans so childishly stubborn? Jesus, open your eyes, you nimrods.

I really believe it’s ignorance and partisan hatred—not ideological or policy differences— that fuels Bush’s rank and file support. Better to blindly back a demonstrable idiot that talks Texas tough than to throw in one’s lot with the hated librulz.

How sad that the Rush Limbaughs of this world have successfully painted liberalism—a proud, intelligent, progressive political philosophy—as a massive entitlement program for gay, pacifist, pregnant, Mexican illegal aliens.

BushCo thrives on dumb animal ignorance, and, most unfortunately, there’s plenty of that to go around in this country.

So true.

I still hear people refer to PBS as "liberal." But this is more an outdated article of faith than a reality. Any vestige of liberal fire on PBS has been fully extinguished by corporate funding. The exact same can be said of the infuriatingly wimpy NPR.

Today, any truly progressive media organization would be devoting its entire programming to exposing the fraud that is BushCo and proposing strategies to get these maniacs out of power. Referring to the current incarnations of PBS and NPR as “liberal” is about as foolish as saying the same of CNN (which people living on other planets are still prone to do).

For truly liberal media, turn to the flawed but often excellent (e.g., Al Franken) Air America (1240 AM in Sacramento) or the indispensable Democracy Now!, created and hosted by national treasure, Amy Goodman (9:00–10:00 a.m. with a repeat broadcast at 6:00 p.m. on 95.5 FM out of Nevada City).

Hello again, from Arcata, California, where progressive politics are alive and well.

This is a town in which open dissent against BushCo is displayed by the town's residents and its political leadership. What a novel concept!

Yes, green is not only the color of this area's most beloved "produce" (as commenter Lisa described it), it's also the color of its political consciousness.

Why the hell did I leave this place?

Anyway, onto the 9/11 Commission report--er, politically concocted whitewash job.

What a bombshell, eh?

Once again, BushCo gets a free pass under the guise of "bipartisanship," which is really just code for a sustained and systematic coverup of this massively corrupt and criminally incompetent administration and its allies. When will we escape this alternate reality? Almost four years of this shit. What a tragic waste. Make it stop!

Regular Altercation reader Charles Pierce nails it.

So, it was the acronyms who did it.

CIA, FBI, NSC, but not the NSA, God knows. DOT. DoD. The acronyms did it. Fire all the acronyms.

I don't know at what point my head exploded. Maybe it was when Tom Kean was complimenting Bill O'Reilly on the latter's analytical abilities, or when Condi Rice was waxing all serious with Sean Hannity. Maybe it was earlier, when Lee Hamilton suggested that nobody was reading enough Tom Clancy. (After yesterday, and given the dive he took 20 years ago on Iran-Contra, Hamilton is now the Greg Louganis of the national security state.) I mean, Christ's sweet name, a failure of imagination? Not on the part of Gary Hart or Warren Rudman or Al Gore, or Coleen Rowley, or the people in Phoenix, or poor, dead John O'Neill. Their imaginations didn't fail. In fact, the single most preposterous part of yesterday's report was its tsk-tsking of how the recommendations of previous commissions were ignored. Who ignored them?

Nobody.

It was the acronyms.

Everybody's guilty so nobody is.

Read the footnotes, and remember, every time a conversation with either George Bush or Dick Cheney is cited, that this testimony was not given under oath, and under circumstances that were flatly bizarre, and that the testimony was given by two men who fought hard against the very existence of the commission, especially the former, who has made no mistake that he can recall, and is not specifically contradicted in any way by this report. Instead, it was an exercise designed -- as was the Tower Commission before it -- to reassure us that the problem is in structural institutional details, and not in the men tasked to do great deeds for us so that we don't strain ourselves in the exercise of self-government. (To his everlasting credit, Bob Kerrey seemed to be rather pissed on this very point.)

I, for one, completely trust the administration that brought Elliott Abrams back into public service, hired John Ashcroft and Ted Olson to oversee the Justice Department, and continues to employ Paul Wolfowitz to appoint a new "Intelligence Czar," essentially handing to that person a job it took J. Edgar Hoover 50 years to build for himself. I'm feeling very bipartisan about that.

Also, the Democratic people better get ready. The report may be bipartisan, but it's political utility won't be. If the specific blame isn't in the report, it's going to be part of the campaign whether John Kerry wants it to be or not. After all, this fall, we all get to decide whether, finally, after more than three years, somebody besides 300,000 baggage handlers will actually lose a job behind the atrocities of September 11, 2001.

Indeed.

Tick...tick

Hello from Arcata, Humboldt County, glorious Northern California, my favorite place in the world.

I'm here doing research for a paper I'll be giving this fall. But how am I supposed to do research when I'll I want to do is soak in the beautiful sites and memories of this place? After all, this is where I spent three of the best years of my life, where discovered my love for history, where I made lifelong friends, and, most importantly, where I met my future wife. I guess I'll just have to do both in my short time here.

Hey, former Humboldt kids, share some thoughts or memories in the comments box.

I'll have a beer for you all at Toby & Jacks tonight!

A spoiled little snot, just like her daddy.

Jenna Bush, daughter of the President Bush, sticks her tongue out at the media Tuesday, July 20, 2004, as she departs Lambert International Airport in St. Louis for an appearance with her father in St. Charles, MO.

This is a twenty-three-year-old? Sticking her tongue out? What an infantile little jackass.

Just like her daddy.

I’ll be on the road for the next few days. I’ll try to post if I can. Catchya’ later.

It sounds just too outrageous to be true, but it appears that this story is for real, guys.

Could a more heinous crime be perpetuated by our government?

The rape of children?

If this doesn’t blow the lid of the administration, our little democratic experiment is officially dead.

More here.

UPDATE: Oh my….

The Brownshirts are gettin' uppity in Sin City.

LAS VEGAS - Singer Linda Ronstadt not only got booed, she got the boot after lauding filmmaker Michael Moore and his new movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" during a performance at the Aladdin hotel-casino.

Before singing "Desperado" for an encore Saturday night, the 58-year-old rocker called Moore a "great American patriot" and "someone who is spreading the truth." She also encouraged everybody to see the documentary about President Bush.

Ronstadt's comments drew loud boos and some of the 4,500 people in attendance stormed out of the theater. People also tore down concert posters and tossed cocktails into the air.

"It was a very ugly scene," Aladdin President Bill Timmins told The Associated Press. "She praised him and all of a sudden all bedlam broke loose."

Timmins, who is British and was watching the show, decided Ronstadt had to go — for good. Timmins said he didn't allow Ronstadt back in her luxury suite and she was escorted off the property.

Who would have guessed that Linda Ronstadt hates America?

Boy, do I feel dumb.

Last night my friends Jessica and Brad hosted a MoveOn.org house party to show the excellent new documentary exposé of FOX News, “Outfoxed.”

This was the first political house party I had ever attended, and I now realize what I've been missing. What a cool gathering this was! What a pleasure to meet and discuss politics, media, and activism with like-minded progressive people in my community. I think everyone in attendance felt the same way. Of course, there was plenty of venting about Bush, which was undoubtedly a great release for everyone.

A highlight of the party was the MoveOn-sponsored nationwide conference call to discuss FOX, the state-corporate media machine in general, and opportunities for progressive media activism. Al Franken was on the call and provided some FOX anecdotes that were both hilarious and infuriating. Very cool!

If you’ve been considering attending or hosting a house party, I strongly recommend doing so. MoveOn and the Kerry Campaign will be organizing more of these events as we approach the election. Aside from their political value, these parties are damn fun!

If you’re one of the attendees from last night’s party, welcome to my blog. I hope you become a daily visitor. You’ll definitely want to check out the excellent blogs and political sites listed on the right side of the screen. And please don’t hesitate to comment on the postings here. I’ll provide info and updates on local events. I look forward to seeing you all again.

Thanks to Brad and Jessica for hosting the party!

Steve

From the best investigative journalist in the business.

When will the dam break?

I’m not at all up to date on what’s going on today.  I made a quick Atrios check and found this.  Holy crap!

I’m in a rather sour mood today, and shit like this doesn’t do much to improve the situation.

Signing off for the day.

Update: For some inexplicable reason, this picture gave me a laugh and cheered me up. Until tomorrow….

Clowns

Arrest the entire Bush Cabal.

Today.

Seymour Hersh says the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

In case you are not familiar with him, Seymour Hersh is considered by serious journalists to be the best investigative reporter in the business. This is the guy who blew the lid off the My Lai Massacre. In other words, he is no partisan hack. If he's got the goods, he's got the goods.

So how long can the state-sponsored propaganda organizations keep this thing out of the headlines?

I suppose for just as long as your elected representatives--on both sides of the aisle--can cover for the murdering, torturing, lying Bush Gang.

Welcome to Orwell's Amerika.

Pictures of my rock band here.

We’re allowed to play in drinking establishments if a chaperone is present.

The NYT has a good article on the documentary take-down of the official White House propaganda channel.

It is not exactly earth-shattering, of course, to learn that Fox is more conservative than other news networks. What ''Outfoxed'' does is detail the specific ways, both onscreen and behind the scenes, in which the network's conservatism shapes its news and opinion programs. The most stinging blow that ''Outfoxed'' delivers to Fox's ''fair and balanced'' claim comes in a segment of the film on the daily memos apparently sent to the entire Fox news operation by John Moody, Fox News's senior vice president for news and editorial. The memos, which Greenwald says were provided by two unnamed employees at the network, set the agenda for how events will be covered. One memo, thought to have been circulated at Fox in April, instructs employees how to report on the increasing number of American fatalities in Iraq: ''Do not fall into the easy trap of mourning the loss of U.S. lives,'' it reads. Another memo outlines the approach to covering the United States military's siege on Falluja: ''It won't be long before some people start to decry the use of 'excessive force,''' it says. ''We won't be among that group.'' A third, on the 9/11 Commission, is equally firm: ''The fact that former Clinton and both former and current Bush administration officials are testifying gives it a certain tension, but this is not 'what did he know and when did he know it' stuff,'' it cautions. ''Do not turn this into Watergate.''

Based on what I've read about the extensive research that went into this DVD, their promises to be plenty more blows against the despised FAUX. It's about time someone went after these cranks.

Click here to find an “Outfoxed” house party (this Sunday evening) near you. If you’re in Sac, we’ll be attending the event titled “What Liberal Media?” in the 95825 area code

Man, this Limbaugh guy is good.

"If you haven't seen this yet, what you need to do, you need to go to the Drudge Report, www.DrudgeReport.com and take a look at the pictures there. Uh, you gotta click on the link that says "Can't Keep Hands Off Each Other." Looks like these guys are bringing that old Frankie Valli song from 1967: "Can't Keep My Hands Off of You." They're bringing it to life Kerry and Edwards are. You've got to look at these pictures. My gosh it's a couple of metrosexuals, and I'll tell you why. The issues have just gone south on them. The job numbers are the best they've ever been since 2000. We've got the situation in Iraq straightening out. So all these guys can do is act weird! It's absolutely el strange-o out there. Greetings -- and to me it looks like John Kerry finally, ladies and gentlemen, has found what's he's been looking for his whole life, and that is a trophy wife, in his vice presidential nominee, John Edwards."

Yep, that’s right, the economy is roaring back to life, the situation in Iraq is “straightening out,” and Kerry and Edwards are metrosexual lovers. With insight like this, it’s no wonder that Rush is the most popular political commentator in America.

You GO, Rush!

That was how my friend Tom summed up the specter of a delayed or suspended November election. Democracy on the brink.

Jesus, how to process this latest development? This administration is so radical, so criminal, so fucking Orwellian it seems that no trampling of democracy is off the table.

Is floating this story their way of softening up the country for an actual suspension of the election?

I can’t tell you how ridiculous I feel writing that.

On numerous occasions my friend Murph raised the possibility of BushCo calling off the elections. I practically laughed in his face. This is just stunning. I feel a sense of vertigo. Bad fucking times.

Anyway, the consistently excellent Billmon has an interesting take on this. Check it out.

Also, I highly recommend this refresher on Dick Cheney’s (i.e. BushCo’s) deep ties to Ken Lay and Enron. Please take the five minutes to read this piece, and then ponder why the mass media doesn’t consider this unholy alliance to be news.

We are in uncharted waters, my friends. I’m truly beginning to be frightened. Fuckin’ a.

The plain truth that FOXCNN won’t report.

Not.

Good.

Please tell your Bush-supporting [friend / neighbor / mother / father / uncle / brother / sister / coworker] that now would be a good time to pull [his / her] head out of [his / her] ass.

With straight faces the media are selling the Republican hand job (signed off by the spineless Senate Democrats) that the CIA misled the Bush administration into war on Iraq.

A second report which deals with how the administration used the intelligence will be released after the election.

We’ve jumped the shark.

President Bush’s National Guard records were accidentally destroyed.

Damn! Now he can never clear his good name with the electorate.

Oh yeah. Remember this bombshell I linked yesterday.

Not a mention of this on cable news last night.

The President of the United States REFUSED TO ANSWER questions about his well documented personal, financial, and political relationship with the man at the center of the BIGGEST CORPORATE SCANDAL IN U.S. HISTORY.

This is not news?

Did I mention that Ken Lay’s Enron was the single largest donor to the Bush/Cheney 2000 campaign?

And did I mention that Ken Lay was a principal member of Dick Cheney’s secret energy task force, and that the script to Cheney’s deregulatory fantasy was pretty much written by Lay and cut and pasted into our national energy policy?

The same script that was used to screw California up the ass.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

From Yahoo

US President George W. Bush walks away from a briefing with the media, refusing to answer questions after he was asked about Enron and the reported indictment of former CEO Kenneth Lay, who was a close adviser and fund-raiser for Bush and his father, earning him the presidential nickname of 'Kenny Boy.'(AFP/Paul J. Richards)

The

Wheels

Are

Coming

Off.

I hear Al Qaeda is in "operational phase."

I'm hiding under my desk.

I hear John Edwards might be encouraging the terrorists to strike.

Dick Morris is a Bush-suckling whore. Well, duh, he works for FOX.

Check out this crap.

Kerry has to hope Bush will succeed so well in fighting terrorism that it disappears as an issue. Only if voters feel genuinely safe will they be willing to reject the man who brought them safety and take a chance on a man they don't entirely trust on the issue.

Should another terrorist attack hit our shores, Americans will likely react the opposite from their Spanish counterparts and we'll rally around the president both as an act of patriotism and as a recognition that his skills at fighting terror are still needed.

Unfortunately, parroting RNC talking points and trying to pass them off as objective political analysis is the norm in the mainstream media.

Dick Morris is not an aberration. He is a standard bearer. What a fucking joke.

BTW: While searching Google for an image of Dick Morris, I ran across this hilarious site: The Dubya’s Media .

Nice job, Dick!

What the...?

But what the fuck happened to the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal?

The brutal torture authorized at the highest levels of our government of mostly innocent Iraqi detainees by American military personnel and contract sadists has been reduced to a back-burner discussion point among the cowed corporate press, and apparently a non-issue among our elected representatives.

How can this be happening?

An issue of such staggering importance to our country and our standing in the world now ranks somewhere between commentary on John Edwards’ hair-grooming practices and the “news” that an Olson twin has a propensity to upchuck her lunch.

Infuriating!

Remember this?

Lawmakers Shocked By Evidence Of Abuse
Images from Iraq prison more graphic than expected
From Journal Sentinel wire services
Posted: May 12, 2004

Washington - Lawmakers who viewed hundreds of images of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners said Wednesday that the photographs were even more graphic than they had expected and included pictures of forced sexual acts between male detainees, consensual sex between American soldiers and a soldier posing with the body of a dead prisoner.

All afternoon, a parade of solemn senators and House members filed into secure rooms in the Capitol and House Rayburn Office Building to view more than 1,600 images, along with some video clips. The lawmakers emerged shaken and aghast, even though they already had seen some of the images in news photographs.

"What we saw is appalling," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said.

"I don't know how the hell these people got into our Army," Colorado Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who served in a police unit in the Air Force, said after viewing what he called a fraction of the images.

"I saw cruel, sadistic torture," Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) said.

"It's like looking at one of the rings of hell, and it's a ring of hell of our own creation," Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) said.

A ring of hell of our own creation.

That sounds pretty serious to me. In fact it sounds like the most serious situation our government has faced in fifty years—perhaps ever.

So where is this issue?

In the Arab world, it's the single most powerful terrorist recruiting tool ever.

In America, it's now barely a blip on the radar.

Where is Congress?

Where is the press?

Out to fucking lunch, as usual.

Unbelievable.

UPDATE: The abuse of children and the media indifference.

I'm about to blow a gasket.

I'm pretty excited about the Edwards pick. This is a damn solid ticket. The seasoned war hero and the fiery southern stallion. Both Senators, both intelligent and articulate as hell. Shit, look at ‘em. They look damn good together. This is a winning combo, for sure.

And as one of the talking heads correctly pointed out last night, Edwards is a mega-successful trial lawyer who has been carving up courtroom opponents for years. If you don’t think he can handle Cheney in the debates, you haven’t heard him speak. Edwards is no lightweight.

Sure, I could justifiably go Nader on these guys and talk about their massive combined wealth, their apparent disconnect from working class Americans, and the corporatized party they represent, but I’m not gonna do that today. We have priorities. These are our horses. Let’s ride them into the White House.

Bye-bye, BushCo.

UPDATE: Those pinko liberal bastards at CNN are at it again.

UPDATE II: Alterman weighs in. Solid analysis, as usual.

Barring the round up and arrest of the Bush Gang--or some other earth-shaking event--I won't be blogging again until early next week.

Have a great Fourth of July weekend!

These are the kind of juvenile assholes we’re up against.

What will we tell the children?

All of the recent attention on Cheney is a good thing.

And it is long overdue.

For he is the Don of the BushCo Mafia, and the source of all of our woes.

Let the sun shine on this mysterious bunker president.