What Obama must do to win

 

by Gene Lyons

"I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation [n ] or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office." —John F. Kennedy, 1960 Any Democrat who imagines that Barack Obama's got the presidential election locked up needs to watch the so-called Saddleback forum featuring him and John McCain online at cnn. com. Broadcast live on Aug. 16, it was hosted by Rick Warren, the California televangelist and author of "The Purpose Driven Life," a spiritual self-help manual for people who think God drives an SUV and a Christian's highest calling is monitoring others' sexual behavior. The calculatedly casual Warren—he preaches to congregations of upwards of 17, 000 wearing blue jeans and an untucked, open-collared shirt—definitely marks an evolutionary step up from the Virginia divines Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell. During the two hours, there were no melodramatic Armageddon predictions, no accusations that Democrats are in league with Satan, nothing about flinging virgins into volcanoes to appease a wrathful God.

OK, maybe even Falwell never said that. Warren's more like a TV game-show host, a description he embraces, than a fire-and-brimstone shouter. He urges his followers not to hate people they disagree with.

Even so, it's possible to feel disquiet about presidential candidates submitting themselves to spiritual inquisition by any preacher. Will they next undergo questioning by a Catholic cardinal ? A rabbi ? Orthodox or Reformed ? A Muslim imam ? By Christopher Hitchens, bestselling scourge of God ? I know a female Methodist preacher I'd enjoy watching give McCain the third degree.

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/234811

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That's the Ticket!

 

Why loquacious Delaware senator Joe Biden is a terrific vice-presidential pick for Barack Obama.

 

by Jonathan Cohn

 

It's a great pick! He connects with blue-collar voters and reassures voters worried about Barack Obama's foreign policy inexperience.

 

It's a lousy pick! He's prone to gaffes and, as a senior member of the Senate, steps on the message of change.

In the next few days, pundits will be obsessing over the political impact of putting Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket. But the more important questions are the more tangible ones. Is Biden qualified to serve as an advisor to the president and, in an emergency, his stand-in? What does this selection tells us about the way Obama makes decisions?

The answer to the first question is unambiguously "yes."

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e0b42753-0d7e-4be0-9b6b-d4a626e8d4e9

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Good one, George

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"The lack of any consistent lines of attack against McCain is becoming palpable"

by John Aravosis

John McCain again today basically accused Obama of treason. Within that attack is the usual Republican blood lie about Democrats - that they hate America, hate the troops, etc. - with a bit of subtle racism thrown in (playing on Obama's African heritage, and on the fact that some of his ancestor's were Muslim, all adding up to someone "less than American").

Today, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo indicated his growing exasperation with the Obama campaign's response, or lack thereof, to these ongoing attacks:

With so many instances of corruption and influence-peddling around him and whatever problems with the candidate that are keeping the campaign from letting reporters interview him anymore, John McCain is now again charging Obama with what amounts to soft treason -- wanting to lose the war in Iraq in order to make himself president. The lack of any consistent lines of attack against McCain is becoming palpable.

When Josh exhibits this kind of frustration publicly, we take notice. Josh is one of the cooler heads in the blogosphere. He's not as prone to fits of temper as, well, I might be. And he has a solid background in journalism that gives him a certain gravitas that the corporate media respects. So when Josh starts to blow a gasket, even in his typically subdued way, it means something.

 

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/lack-of-any-consistent-lines-of-attack.html

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'Obama the Antichrist?' CNN actually asks

by David Edwards and Nick Juliano

Just so we're clear: Barack Obama is in fact not the Anti-Christ, sent here to feed on the souls of the innocent, resume Satan's reign over earth and bring about the apocalypse as foretold in Revelation.

Not. The. Anti-Christ.

That such a subject is even speculated about in any but the most backwards, unreconstructed segments of American society -- let alone on a 24-hour cable network -- is a testament (no pun intended) to the depths to which political debate has fallen. But there was the caption on CNN Friday in big bold letters: "OBAMA THE ANTICHRIST?"

Apparently a not-insignificant number of Americans, after viewing John McCain's Web ad The One, with its Messianic overtones -- come away thinking that Barack Obama has been sent from Hell to Earth to turn its citizens against God. For inspiration, some of these people seem to be drawing from the fictional Left Behind series, which posits a dystopian future where the Anti-Christ comes to Earth as a charismatic politician.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/CNN_Since_McCain_ad_Obama_Antichrist_0815.html

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Endangered species act

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Why Soldiers Rape

by Helen Benedict

Jennifer Dyer, in an interview with 60 Minutes, explains the pressure of reporting rape in the military. (Photo: CBS News)

    Culture of misogyny, illegal occupation fuel sexual violence in military.

    An alarming number of women soldiers are being sexually abused by their comrades-in-arms, both at war and at home. This fact has received a fair amount of attention lately from researchers and the press - and deservedly so.

    But the attention always focuses on the women: where they were when assaulted, their relations with the assailant, the effects on their mental health and careers, whether they are being adequately helped, and so on. That discussion, as valuable as it is, misses a fundamental point. To understand military sexual assault, let alone know how to stop it, we must focus on the perpetrators. We need to ask: Why do soldiers rape?

    Rape in civilian life is already unacceptably common. One in six women is raped or sexually assaulted in her lifetime, according to the National Institute of Justice, a number so high it should be considered an epidemic.

    In the military, however, the situation is even worse. Rape is almost twice as frequent as it is among civilians, especially in wartime. Soldiers are taught to regard one another as family, so military rape resembles incest. And most of the soldiers who rape are older and of higher rank than their victims, so are taking advantage of their authority to attack the very people they are supposed to protect.

    Department of Defense reports show that nearly 90 percent of rape victims in the Army are junior-ranking women, whose average age is 21, while most of the assailants are non-commissioned officers or junior men, whose average age is 28.

http://www.truthout.org/article/why-soldiers-rape

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The Biggest Story of Our Lives

by Jim Lampley

At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the Presidential election. John Kerry was a two-to-one favorite. You can look it up.

People who have lived in the sports world as I have, bettors in particular, have a feel for what I am about to say about this: these people are extremely scientific in their assessments. These people understand which information to trust and which indicators to consult in determining where to place a dividing line to influence bets, and they are not in the business of being completely wrong. Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.

And he most certainly was, at least if the votes had been fairly and legally counted. What happened instead was the biggest crime in the history of the nation, and the collective media silence which has followed is the greatest fourth-estate failure ever on our soil.

Many of the participants in this blog have graduate school educations. It is damned near impossible to go to graduate school in any but the most artistic disciplines without having to learn about the basics of social research and its uncanny accuracy and validity. We know that professionally conceived samples simply do not yield results which vary six, eight, ten points from eventual data returns, thaty's why there are identifiable margins for error. We know that margins for error are valid, and that results have fallen within the error range for every Presidential election for the past fifty years prior to last fall. NEVER have exit polls varied by beyond-error margins in a single state, not since 1948 when this kind of polling began. In this past election it happened in ten states, all of them swing states, all of them in Bush's favor. Coincidence? Of course not.

Karl Rove isn't capable of conceiving and executing such a grandiose crime? Wake up. They did it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-lampley/the-biggest-story-of-our-_b_576.html

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Nope

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No blood for oil

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Is Laura Leaving Bush After he Leaves Office Because He's Been Hitting the Sauce Again?

by Mark Karlin

Okay, don't tell me you don't look at the tabloids on the sly when you are in the supermarket checkout line. I do. Sometimes, yes, I even buy one, if there is a timely potentially believable political scandal story.

Most of the time, the tabloids focus on Britney and Paris (now also of John McCain ad fame), but when they go after a political figure, we have found that some of them have about a 50% chance of being onto something. For instance, The National Enquirer had such specific details of the Edwards trip to the hotel in Beverly Hills that he could have sued them for libel if it weren't true. And as sleazy as these publications are, The Enquirer was credited with being one of the more accurate sources on the Lewinsky scandal.

The main reason that the mainstream press looks down on them on political stories is that they pay for information if they need to, not to mention that "real" reporters look down on their tabloid brethren.

So it's not surprising that there's been a persistent tabloid story that the corporate establishment media has been ignoring: allegations that Laura Bush has basically decided to part company with Junior after his term of office is over again.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorblog/112

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Persian diplomat

Iranian comic Maz Jobrani tries to help
Americans think beyond the idiot box

SCHOOLING THE WEST ON THE EAST: Jobrani

by NARCEL X

Nursing a broken ankle and eagerly awaiting the birth of his son, Maz Jobrani, the Persian element of the Axis of Evil comedy quartet, is no stranger to multi-tasking. From starring alongside Sean Penn in The Interpreter to being a staple voice at the world famous Laugh Factory, Maz is at his best under pressure.

From making fun of his heritage by saying Iranians refuse to be called anything but Persian (like the cat, he says) to teaching the crowd how to pronounce the current president's name (Ahmed I'mma-need-a-job), Jobrani serves as a light-hearted diplomat in the ever-growing gap between the East and West. Hitting the stage for this year's Just for Laughs, he spoke to me from his Los Angeles home about future plans, political misconceptions and his knack for Iranian spiced humor.

Mirror: With all the rhetoric and finger pointing at Iran in the last couple of months, what do you feel your role as a comedian is?

Maz Jobrani: It's to educate and shed light on the origin of my people. A lot of Americans don't think beyond the idiot box. Iran has been demonized and definitely simplified—there are 75 million people there. I think it's important to humanize my people, and make the advocates of war realize the cost of war. Before war, there is diplomacy. That's what I do, a form of diplomacy. I try to make people laugh and leave with a different perspective on Iran.

http://www.montrealmirror.com/2008/071008/comedy3.html

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30 years later...

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Back on the bottle?

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How to blow it

It's the most winnable presidential election in American history - but the Democrats are old hands at losing. Michael Moore offers some helpful hints on how they might gift it all to the Republicans.

by Michael Moore

"Let's snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."
"We never met an election we'd like to win."
"Why get elected when you can be defeated!"

These have been the mantras of the Democratic Party. Beginning with their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in American history, Richard Nixon, and continuing through their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in the world, George II, the Democrats are the masters of blowing it. And they don't just simply "blow it" - they blow it especially when the electorate seems desperate to give it to them.

After eight years of Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office, the public had seen enough. The Democrats chose Michael Dukakis as their nominee. Two months before the election, he was ahead of Bush I in the polls. Then he went to an army tank factory in Michigan, put on some kind of stupid-fitting helmet and rode around in a tank with a goofy smile on his face. Weeks later, when asked what kind of punishment he would like to see given to someone who might rape his wife, he started mumbling some sort of bleeding-heart gibberish instead of just saying what anyone would say: "I'd like to tear the bastard limb from limb!" The voters were so put off by his wimpiness, they elected an actual wimp over him, George H W Bush.

For years now, nearly every poll has shown that the American people are right in sync with the platform of the Democratic Party. They are pro-environment, pro-women's rights, pro-choice, they don't like war, they want the minimum wage raised, and they want a single-payer universal healthcare system. The American public agrees with the Republican Party on only one major issue: they support the death penalty.

So you would think, with more than 200 million eligible voters, the Dems would be cleaning up, election after election. Obviously not. The Democrats appear to be professional losers. They are so pathetic in their ability to win elections, they even lose when they win! Al Gore won the 2000 election, but for some strange reason he didn't become the president of the United States.

If you are unable as a party to get the landlord to turn over the keys to a house that is yours, what the hell good are you?

http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=1035

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Too good

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Yes, she can

By Maureen Dowd

 

WASHINGTON: While Obama was spending three hours watching "The Dark Knight" five time zones away, and going to a fund-raiser featuring "Aloha attire" and Hawaiian pupus, Hillary was busy planning her convention.

You can almost hear her mind whirring: She's amazed at how easy it was to snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby, except Beanpole Guy doesn't eat candy. In just a couple of weeks, Bill and Hill were able to drag No Drama Obama into a swamp of Clinton drama.

Now they've made Barry's convention all about them - their dissatisfaction and revisionism and barely disguised desire to see him fail. Whatever insincere words of support the Clintons muster, their primal scream gets louder: He can't win! He can't close the deal! We told you so!

Hillary's orchestrating a play within the play in Denver. Just as Hamlet used the device to show that his stepfather murdered his father, Hillary will try to show the Democrats they chose the wrong savior.

http://iht.com/articles/2008/08/13/opinion/edowd.php

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Should Barack Obama or Cindy McCain really be in prison?

 

That's the mad logic of the 'War on Drugs'. So why the silence?

by Johann Hari

 

On January 20th 2009, either the president of the United States will be a man who used to snort coke to ease his blues, or the First Lady will be a former drug addict who stole from charity to get her next fix. In this presidential campaign, there are dozens of issues that have failed to flicker into the debate, but the most striking is the failing, flailing 'War on Drugs.' Isn't it a sign of how unwinnable this 'war' is that, if it was actually enforced evenly, either Barack Obama or Cindy McCain would have to skip the inauguration -- because they'd be in jail?

At least their time in the slammer would feature some familiar faces: they could share a cell with Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and some 46 percent of the US population.

The prohibition of drugs is perhaps the most disastrous policy currently pursued by the US government. It hands a vast industry to armed criminal gangs, who proceed to kill at least excess 10,000 citizens a year to protect their patches. It exports this programme of mass slaughter to Mexico, Colombia and beyond. It has been a key factor in reviving the Taliban in Afghanistan. It squanders tens of billions of dollars on prisons at home, ensuring that one in 31 adults in the US now in prison or on supervised release at any one time. And it has destroyed an entire generation of black men, who are now more likely to go to prison for drug offences than to go to university.

And for what? Prohibition doesn't stop people using drugs. Between 1972 and 1978, eleven US states decriminalized marijuana possession. So did hundreds of thousands of people rush out to smoke the now-legal weed? The National Research Council found that it had no effect on the number of dope-smokers. None. The people who had always liked it carried on; the people who didn't felt no sudden urge to start.

So where's the debate? The candidates have spent more time discussing froth and fancies -- how much air is in your tyres? -- than this $40bn-a-year 'war."

http://johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1354

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And then I warned Putin...

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Police seek motive in shooting of Arkansas Democratic leader

 

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Police on Thursday sought to uncover what led a gunman to burst into the headquarters of the Arkansas Democratic Party and kill the chairman, a top ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, US media said.

Bill Gwatney, 48, was shot multiple times in the upper body and died shortly afterward at the hospital, police said.

His assailant, 50-year-old Tim Johnson, was fatally shot after a police chase into a neighboring county.

He had no criminal record and had reportedly been fired earlier that morning from his job at a Target store, but it was unclear if or how he knew Gwatney, according to local news reports.
Police were called to a Target store in Conway, about 25 miles north of Little Rock, early Wednesday after coworkers complained about an agitated employee who had been fired for writing graffiti on a wall, the Arkansas News said.

The employee, Johnson, was "very agitated and shaking, and they feared for their safety," said Conway police spokeswoman Sharen Carter, who added that Johnson had departed by the time police arrived.

Several hours later, just before noon, Johnson walked in the state Democratic Party headquarters and asked for Gwatney.

A volunteer who was in the office at the time said Johnson had indicated he was "interested in volunteering, but that was obviously a lie."

Once Gwatney came out to meet him, "they introduced themselves, and at that time he (Johnson) pulled out a handgun and shot Chairman Gwatney several times. He then turned and left the business," said police lieutenant Terry Hastings.

The killing left fellow Democratic leaders in shock less than two weeks before the party's national convention in the midst of a fierce battle for the White House.

 

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jm9DYuIE_x8ICCCwKAhyi3PneK_A

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Drill American

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Haunted by Elizabeth

A Powerful Campaigner Missed the Cold Facts of a Modern Election

By Anne Taylor Fleming

 

John and Elizabeth Edwards in Tipton, Iowa, in June 2007.

(Photo by John Edwards 2008 Campaign)

What what she thinking?

That's the question that continues to haunt the painful saga of John and Elizabeth Edwards. Not that she loves him and stayed with him after he confessed to having an affair (and possible lust child; though whether he told her about that we don't know).

If we have learned one thing watching Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, it is that marriages are complex, each and every one, with its bargains, and attachments, and wounds that run deep. After, of course, insisting she was not some little woman standing by her man, Hillary Clinton was in many respects just that. It was clearly what she needed to do, sailing on post-presidency into the Senate and her own fierce run for the White House.

No, the question in Elizabeth Edwards's case is: Why in the world did she go ahead and let him run — run with him, run hard all across the country, giving her all despite her stage four cancer and her two young children — after she knew. After she knew about his dalliance with a bouncy, blond so-called filmmaker with a penchant for New Age spirituality.

In these days of her public humiliation, one wants not to add to it. He is the cad, the creep. Looking back at his charm, his expensively coiffed hair, his caramel-voiced defense of the poor — while he built a palatial country estate. All this was a bit suspicious at the time. There were overtones of another Slick Willy.

But then there was Elizabeth Edwards. She was the moral anchoring point, the class act. So authentic, so warm, so unslick, so graceful, so brave. If a woman of such obvious depth and concern for the country, a woman who had lost a son and had faced cancer with openness and strength — sharing it all but not in a sympathy-begging way — if a woman like that loved a man like that, well then, he must be OK, too.

http://washingtonindependent.com/179/haunted-by-elizabeth

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Paying the piper

By Tom Mockaitis

Well, it has finally happened. The crisis born of unilateralism, strategic overreach and bravado has come to pass. With U.S. forces tied down in two protracted wars, American credibility on the international stage at a record low and our dependence on foreign oil painfully obvious, a revitalized Russia is on the move. And the blow has fallen where most analysts expected it would: on America's closest ally in the Caucasus, the tiny Republic of Georgia.

Traumatized by its fall from superpower status at the end of the Cold War, the Kremlin has nursed a growing resentment at a series of humiliations and needlessly provocative moves by the Bush administration over the past eight years. NATO's war against Serbia revealed the limits of Russian power after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The confrontation at Pristina Airport between British Gen. Michael Jackson's Kosovo Force and Russian troops rushed in from Bosnia ended with President Boris Yeltsin backing down, largely because NATO hopefuls Bulgaria and Romania closed their airspace to Russian aircraft that might have flown in reinforcements. The episode should have served as a poignant warning that Moscow would not take another such embarrassment lying down. Conciliation, not confrontation, should have guided American foreign policy in Eastern Europe during the past decade.

Instead, Washington continued to poke the Russian bear with a stick. The first prod came with plans for a missile defense system of dubious value in Poland, supported by radar installations in Slovakia.

The Bush administration justified the deployment as part of its global war on terrorism, assuring a skeptical Vladimir Putin that the defense system aimed to protect the U.S. from attack by a rogue state such as Iran.

Putin didn't buy it. While the White House focused myopically on Al Qaeda and bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, Putin consolidated power in Russia, dealt with Chechnya, and bided his time.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0818georgiaaug13,0,2100829.story

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I'm typing as fast as I can

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Russia says Georgian move for South Ossetia was 'like 9/11'

Georgia's attempt to reclaim South Ossetia has been compared with 9/11 by Sergei Ivanov, the Russian Deputy Prime Minister.

By Jon Swaine
Seeking to justify Moscow's overwhelming response to Georgia's attempt to reassert itself over the breakway province, Mr Ivanov said that Russia had no choice but to take military action, just as the US felt bound to respond after the attacks by al-Qa'eda on New York and Washington in September 2001.

"We just reacted because we didn't have any other option. Any civilised country would act same way. I may remind you - September 11th, the reaction was similar. American citizens were killed. You know the reaction," Mr Ivanov said.

International condemnation for the Russian response had taken Moscow by surprise, according to Mr Ivanov. "We didn't think that we annoyed anybody," he said.

Mr Ivanov also rubbished comments by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary. Mr Miliband earlier accused Russia of engaging in "19th Century forms of diplomacy" in its "blatant aggression" towards Georgia. He said "the sight of Russian tanks rolling into parts of a sovereign country on its neighboring borders will have brought a chill down the spine of many people, rightly".

Mr Miliband's claim that Russia was keen restore the Soviet Union was "total rubbish - to use a proper English word," Mr Ivanov said.

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, earlier taunted the US and Georgia over the crisis, describing the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili as a "special project" of the Bush administration rather than a proper state.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/georgia/2556139/Russia-says-Georgian-move-for-South-Ossetia-was-like-911.html

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Distraction

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Obama without his script

Judging by his reaction to the Georgia-Russia crisis, Obama's make-believe presidency isn't ready for prime time

 

by Jonah Goldberg:

 

The Obama campaign has for months pursued the odd strategy of having the junior senator from Illinois act as if he were already kinda-sorta president of the United States. In June, it tried sticking a quasi-presidential seal on his lectern. Then in July, he conducted what seemed like official state visits with foreign leaders and delivered something like a "prenaugural" address in Berlin, inviting comparisons to JFK and Reagan.

It's an understandable ploy. More than most candidates, Barack Obama needs to appear like a plausible commander in chief because he's not only inexperienced (during the last Summer Olympics he was still an Illinois state legislator), he's novel. The name, the skin color, the cosmopolitan upbringing: Fair or not, all of these things give Obama the aura of otherness that is both part of his charm and a potential handicap.

If the would-be president can seem plausibly presidential, voting for him might not seem like such a crapshoot. It all makes sense, even if it fosters an air of presumptuousness.

(David Letterman recently offered a list of the top 10 signs Obama is overconfident. Among them: "Asked guy at Staples, 'Which chair will work best in an oval-shaped office?' "; "Having head measured for Mt. Rushmore;" and "Offered McCain a job in gift shop at the Obama Presidential Library.")

Now fate has given Obama a chance to be presidential rather than pretend. Taking advantage of the Olympic distraction in Beijing, the Russians invaded South Ossetia, a territory on the north side of Georgia, a democratic U.S. ally. Out of the blocks, the Russians bombed civilians, rolled tanks across an internationally recognized border and threatened to launch an all-out, destabilizing war. Now it looks as if their army has cut Georgia in two.

Moreover, Russian bombs reportedly targeted the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which runs through Georgia on its way to the Mediterranean -- the only oil pipeline in Central Asia not under Russian control. Russia is tightening its chokehold on oil and gas at precisely the moment energy costs have become the paramount domestic issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.

Obama's response?

First, late Thursday evening, he gave a conventional written statement calling for calm, U.N. action and "restraint" from both sides -- followed an hour later by a slightly stronger condemnation of Russian aggression and a call for a cease-fire.

The invasion of Georgia elicited a wan written communique instead of the sort of exciting rhetoric we've come to expect from his make-believe presidency. But he did make it in front of the cameras the next day for a rally celebrating his vacation in Hawaii. He promised "to go body surfing at some undisclosed location."

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg12-2008aug12,0,6742318.column

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What, me worry?

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Ground control to Major Dick

by Eric Alterman

 Last month, when President Bush signed the FISA compromise bill into law, the Nation joined a lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union over the spying program. The new laws secure for the federal government "sweeping and virtually unregulated authority to monitor the international communications," and so naturally the Nation, which frequently reports from conflict zones, was concerned that their communication might not be private.

This should be a concern for all U.S. news outlets that do international reporting, although sadly the lawsuit didn't get much coverage from any of them. But one would think this should change things:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Friday that it had improperly obtained the phone records of reporters for The New York Times and The Washington Post in the newspapers' Indonesia bureaus in 2004.

Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I., disclosed the episode in a phone call to Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, and apologized for it. He also spoke with Leonard Downie Jr., the executive editor of The Washington Post, to apologize.

F.B.I. officials said the incident came to light as part of the continuing review by the Justice Department inspector general's office into the bureau's improper collection of telephone records through "emergency" records demands issued to phone providers.

The records were apparently sought as part of a terrorism investigation, but the F.B.I. did not explain what was being investigated or why the reporters' phone records were considered relevant.

This proves that the government monitoring the overseas communications of news organizations is not a theoretical concern -- though it would be no less important even then. They've done it at least once recently, we now know. But why? What reporters, and what phone records? Have they done it any other time? To whom? What safeguards are in place, if any, to keep this from happening again?

http://mediamatters.org/altercation/200808120002#5

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Really Lame Duck

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McCain - Obama taxcut chart

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Fox News suffers another debate snub; bloggers take a bow

by Eric Boehlert

Coveted assignments for presidential debate moderators were handed out last week, and guess who was left off the list ... again.

After suffering the bitter, and unprecedented, blow during the Democratic primary season of having candidates refuse -- twice -- to appear in Fox News-sponsored forums when bloggers raised hell about the news organization's lack of legitimacy, Rupert Murdoch's news channel was again left off the list of news anchors tapped to moderate the must-see TV events in the fall.

Instead, the questions during the three presidential forums and one vice presidential debate will be posed by PBS' Jim Lehrer and Gwen Ifill, as well as NBC's Tom Brokaw and CBS' Bob Schieffer.

Unlike the primaries, Fox News this time won't be locked out entirely; all the networks will be able to broadcast the debates. But the snub means that once again Fox News will be denied the chance to leave its imprint on the all-important debates. It won't be able to build its brand on the back of Democrats who have injected extraordinary passion and interest into the White House run.

That passion and interest has helped boost ratings for Fox News' cable competitors, while Fox's numbers have remained stagnant. Meaning, the unfolding presidential campaign has been a ratings dud so far for Fox News and its unofficial year of woe.

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200808120001

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Flying piece of art causes museum chaos in Switzerland

 

A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday.

The art work, titled "Complex S(expletive..)", is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200 metres (yards) from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children's home, said museum director Juri Steiner.

The inflatable turd broke the window at the children's home when it blew away on the night of July 31, Steiner said. The art work has a safety system which normally makes it deflate when there is a storm, but this did not work when it blew away.

Steiner said McCarthy had not yet been contacted and the museum was not sure if the piece would be put back on display.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080811192637.nkspe7sd&show_article=1

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Obama is too smart to be president

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Assisted Living Firm Rejects Medicaid, Evicts Elderly

by Joseph Shapiro

"To provide the best care for residents and to remain a solvent business, there are limits on the number of Medicaid residents any assisted living facility can serve."

Assisted Living Concepts statement

 

All Things Considered · A nationwide chain of assisted living facilities promised elderly residents that if money ran out, they could pay for services with Medicaid. A change in policy by the company, Assisted Living Concepts, means Medicaid is no longer accepted and those who cannot pay are being evicted.

Older people often say one of their biggest fears is to wind up in a nursing home. That is one reason the assisted living industry has boomed. It offers a comfortable alternative, where people get to live in their own private apartments and leave the cooking and cleaning to the staff. But assisted living is expensive. And when people run out of money, there are few government rules to protect them.

Evicted At Age 99

Cordelia Robertson turned 99 in May. Two days later, she got the eviction notice.

Her son, Gene Robertson, says even though his mother is confused and doesn't understand what's going on, she would be devastated if she had to leave the home outside Seattle she has lived in for nearly 10 years.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93260987

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Warrior John McCain: Far More Dangerous Than Bush

by Steve Weissman

    During the hottest days of the Cold War, Gen. Thomas Power headed the Strategic Air Command, whose nuclear-armed B-52s were meant to deter the Soviet Union. General Power, like many of the Air Force brass at the time, believed that nuclear war with the Soviets was inevitable. He thought the United States would do better to fight that war sooner rather than later and believed we could emerge victorious. "At the end of the war," he argued in 1960, "if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!"

    Listening to John McCain talk about Iraq and Iran, I keep thinking of Power. Counter-insurgency and nuclear obliteration are poles apart, I know. But McCain's insistence on "winning in Iraq," remaining there "until Iraq is secure," and "bomb-bomb-bombing Iran" reveal the same mindset that made General Power so dangerous. Caught up in his fear that a military failure would encourage America's enemies, McCain can see no alternative to military victory, no matter what the cost. This might be a laudable spirit to drum into raw military recruits, but could prove extremely self-destructive in a commander in chief.

http://www.truthout.org/article/warrior-john-mccain-far-more-dangerous-than-bush

 

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Lady Justice

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The Pundits Speak: Keith Olbermann and other traditional journalists on gay issues

by Michael Jensen

As part of the research for our Gay-Baiting '08 article, AfterElton.com interviewed various television commentators about their opinion on the role of gay issues in the upcoming election. These are their responses.

AfterElton.com: How much have things changed since the 2004 election when the Republicans used anti-gay sentiments to increase turnout for their party?
Keith Olbermann, Host, Countdown with Keith Olbermann: When nobody can afford to go to a gay wedding, a straight wedding or a protest of a gay wedding, [the issue] is not going to make any difference. This is the danger of values, if you will, and that's used as a facetious term, values politics – when that's all you've got, when reality intervenes, like nobody can afford to keep their home or put gasoline or home winter heating oil in it this winter, people are going to say, "You're serious? You want me to vote for you when you've ruined the economy, ruined our place in the world, haven't stopped terrorism, made us kind of the bullies of the world, and I'm supposed to vote for you because you have some phony baloney belief that gay people shouldn't have the right to be just as miserable as all the straight married people?" Really, I sense in the country a strong sense of incredulity to a lot of this and it's not just gender or sexual orientation issues, but all these other things are just being trotted out and thrown out and nobody's responding to them.

Joe Scarborough, Host, Morning Joe: Well, Karl Rove's job was to get George Bush elected. I'm sure Rove looked at it and people who worked for Bush looked at it as a wedge issue to drive evangelicals out. And if you look at the results of 2004, it was an Evangelical base that ended up making the difference to George Bush in Florida and Ohio and in a lot of other states that really mattered. As far as the strategy they employed, it worked. But the world has changed, I think, at least, when it comes to social issues like gay marriage being used as a wedge issue.

http://www.afterelton.com/people/2008/8/pundits

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Iraq Should Use Its Oil Sales to Pay for Rebuilding, Levin Says

By Aliza Marcus

The U.S. should stop paying for reconstruction projects in Iraq because the Baghdad government can fund the rebuilding from its sales of crude oil, two U.S. senators said.

Proposed legislation in the Senate would stop the U.S. from using any more taxpayer money to fund reconstruction projects in Iraq, Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a Michigan Democrat, said today on CNN's ``Late Edition'' program.

``It is an outrage. It is absolutely offensive that American taxpayers who are paying $130 a barrel for Iraqi oil, $4 a gallon at the pump for Iraqi gasoline, are also spending taxpayers' dollars to reconstruct Iraq,'' Levin said.

U.S. agencies spent $23.2 billion on security, oil, electricity generation and water projects since the ouster of the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and his regime in 2003, according to an Aug. 5 report by Congress's investigative agency, the Government Accountability Office. The Iraqi government spent $3.9 billion on those needs in the past three years, the report said.

``We need to put a limitation on the use of building -- rebuilding of infrastructure in Iraq using American taxpayer funds,'' Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said on the show.

President George W. Bush also should demand that Iraq reimburse the U.S. for continuing reconstruction costs, Levin said. ``We're spending money to build hotels in the economic reconstruction zone at the Baghdad Airport. Those hotels will be owned by the Iraqi government. It is an outrage. It should end.''

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=ans3XHizFktA&refer=home

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Oil fight could trigger a federal shutdown

by Zachary Coile

House Republicans, who've been hounding Speaker Nancy Pelosi for weeks over her refusal to allow a vote on new domestic oil drilling, are plotting a high-stakes confrontation this fall that could spark a shutdown of the federal government.

Republicans see an opportunity when Congress returns Sept. 8 and will have to pass a temporary measure to keep the government funded beyond Sept. 30. Democrats are likely to include in the measure an extension of the congressional moratorium on offshore drilling, which would otherwise expire at the end of September. GOP lawmakers warn they may try to block the measure - or pressure President Bush to veto it - if Democrats won't relent and allow the drilling ban to lapse. If neither side gives in, it would force at least a temporary shutdown of the government.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/10/MNLM12704T.DTL

 

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Let's hear it for 'em

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President Bush: The Clockwatcher-in-Chief?

By David Corn

I'm still on vacation--lucky me--but I've managed to watch a bit of the Olympics. The opening ceremony was rather impressive. Talk about organization and competence: two thousand and eight Tai Chi practitioners forming a perfect circle and maintaining it through a series of elaborate moves.

That was some counterpoint to George W. Bush. Later that night, during the parade of nations, he was practically slumped in his seat, toting a small American flag--was it made in China?--with a bored expression on his face. Prior to the games, there was a debate over whether he should attend and further legitimize the repressive Chinese regime. But as he sat there, that debate no longer seemed so relevant, for he looked irrelevant. There was no one next to him but his wife. And the question was, didn't he have anything better to do with his time? The apparent answer: no.

War was breaking out between Russia and Georgia. The economy in the United States was continuing a downward slide. Negotiations between Washington and Iraq over an agreement governing U.S. troops had seemingly failed. And his presidency was running out of time. Yet he seemed like not such a busy guy. He even stayed in China to watch events. I, too, would have enjoyed witnessing Michael Phelps first gold-medal victory of these Olympics, but, then again, I don't have a superpower to run. At least, Bush was able to hobnob with Henry Kissinger at that event. (He did meet with Chinese President Hu on Sunday for what he described, of course, as a "constructive" conversation.)

This all raised the question in my mind: what does Bush want to get done before the W. years are over. Not much, it seems.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/davidcorn/2008/08/president-bush-the-clockwatche.html

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Bend over

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