Heh Heh Heh

Josh Marshall has the good news this morning. Latest poll of Florida's Senate race:

Bill Nelson (D) 60%
Katherine Harris (R) 25%

I think Cruella DeVille is headed down the tubes.

Couldn't happen to a nicer thief and liar.

Think We've Got Santorum Beat? Think Again.

Rick Santorum is, arguably, the most dangerous and deranged member of the Senate, and that takes some doing in a Senate that contains Sam Brownback and Tom Coburn. He is an appalling, fanatical authoritarian who thinks that the government has the right to regulate our private sex lives and that women who work outside of the home are under the spell of "radical feminists". We're happy when we see that Santorum is endangered, and brag that he's through. Don't be so sure.

Santorum's commercials, according to a very recent story, are "proliferating" on Pennsylvania's airwaves. Santorum has taken the offensive, deliberately trying to belittle Democrat Bob Casey. Santorum has more than nine million dollars in cash on hand--more than $4 million more than Bob Casey, and he'll use every dime of it if he has to. And Santorum, the #3 Republican leader in the Senate, can tap into a lot more money where that came from. His corporate friends and lobbyist buddies will help him generously.

A recent survey gives Casey only a six point lead, hardly insurmountable three months out. Santorum will tap into the entire right wing blogosphere and the whole right wing noise machine to smear and destroy Bob Casey. He also has the Robertson-Falwell-Dobson axis that will support him ferociously. Our job is a daunting one and we're in a tough fight. We don't have him out yet, not by a longshot.

It would be tragic if a dangerous, far right lunatic like Santorum were to win another term. He is a passionate enemy of personal privacy, women's rights, and the right of people to live their own lives. He is a Bush-Cheney-Rove robot, as bad as any politician in America. He is also a pathological liar who will say anything to win. And yet he is, in my opinion, even money to get reelected. For the sake of America's future, we can't have that.

Please don't be complacent in this race. It ain't over yet, and it's gonna be tough as hell. I urge you to set aside any differences you have with Bob Casey and send him any support you can, financial or otherwise. Santorum has to go, and with our help, we'll have the joy of watching the son of a bitch give a concession speech on November 7.

Let's get the job done.

Bush's People Wanted to CUT Explosives Detection Money

This is freaking unbelievable:

While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology

Congressional leaders rejected the idea, the latest in a series of steps by the
Homeland Security Department that has left lawmakers and some of the department's own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.

Homeland Security's research arm, called the Sciences & Technology Directorate, is a "rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course," Republican and Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee declared recently.

Remember folks, it's Bush and his people who

• STILL haven't implemented comprehensive cargo searches for ship-borne loads coming into the U.S.
• Recently cut back homeland security funds for New York and Washington.
• Issued an idiotic list of thousands of "terror targets" that earned universal ridicule.
• Used the color-coded alert system as a political tool in 2004.

My God...when will EVERYONE see through these people?

Conservative Republican Education Strikes Again

The respondents had been asked to evaluate whether evolution was true or not.

Bush at a New Low!

And no, I'm not referring to frog torturing, freshman hot-iron branding, chronic drinking, cocaine snorting, draft dodging, bankrupting various businesses, using the governorship to reward his friends, vote stealing, war starting, or screwing the most helpless people in the country.

I'm talking about his newest AP-Ipsos Poll ratings:

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted this week found the president's approval rating has dropped to 33 percent, matching his low in May. His handling of nearly every issue, from the
Iraq war to foreign policy, contributed to the president's decline around the nation, even in the Republican-friendly South.

More sobering for the GOP are the number of voters who backed Bush in 2004 who are ready to vote Democratic in the fall's congressional elections — 19 percent. These one-time Bush voters are more likely to be female, self-described moderates, low- to middle-income and from the Northeast and Midwest.

Two years after giving the Republican president another term, more than half of these voters — 57 percent — disapprove of the job Bush is doing.

Thirty-three per cent? Oh baby! And the Democrats hold an 18 point lead in the Congressional election preference--the same as in the most recent Fox "News" poll.

Democrats, speak up STRONGLY on national security this fall. Don't let the Republicans once again cynically exploit fears of terrorism. Smack them down hard for their failures. And above all--

MAKE THE ELECTION A REFERENDUM ON BUSH AND CHENEY.

I'll think we'll be happy with the results if we do.

Of COURSE the Republicans Are Going to Play It For Politics

What in the hell did anyone expect?

AGAIN: IRAQ AND 9/11 ARE NOT CONNECTED.

THE IRAQ WAR WAS BASED ON LIES, FRAUD, AND
DELIBERATELY MANIPULATED INTELLIGENCE.

THERE ARE NO WMDs IN IRAQ.

THE IRAQ WAR IS HURTING THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM.

NO TERRORIST ON THIS PLANET GIVES A RAT'S ASS ABOUT
JOE LIEBERMAN LOSING.

THE REPUBLICANS HAVE, FOR FIVE G-D DAMNED YEARS,
BEEN RUTHLESSLY AND SHAMELESSLY EXPLOITING
FEARS OF TERRORISM FOR THE POLITICAL BENEFIT OF
THE RADICAL RIGHT.

Any doubt about where I stand?

Republican Priorities

This says all you need to know:

Congress appears ready to slash funding for the research and treatment of brain injuries caused by bomb blasts, an injury that military scientists describe as a signature wound of the Iraq war.

House and Senate versions of the 2007 Defense appropriation bill contain $7 million for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center - half of what the center received last fiscal year.

Proponents of increased funding say they are shocked to see cuts in the treatment of bomb blast injuries in the midst of a war.

"I find it basically unpardonable that Congress is not going to provide funds to take care of our soldiers and sailors who put their lives on the line for their country," says Martin Foil, a member of the center's board of directors. "It blows my imagination."

The Brain Injury Center, devoted to treating and understanding war-related brain injuries, has received more money each year of the war - from $6.5 million in fiscal 2001 to $14 million last year. Spokespersons for the appropriations committees in both chambers say cuts were due to a tight budget this year.

"Honestly, they would have loved to have funded it, but there were just so many priorities," says Jenny Manley, spokeswoman for the Senate Appropriations Committee. "They didn't have any flexibility in such a tight fiscal year." [Emphasis added]

And what might be causing such a "tight fiscal year"? You think maybe it might be related to the Republican obsession with giving huge tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans in wartime?

It's a disgrace. It's a f-----g disgrace.

A Forgotten Quote

Trying to eliminate Saddam .. would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible ... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ...there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.

George H. W. Bush, President of the United States 1989-1993

A Composite of All Bush Polls--and It Ain't Good News for Him

Hey Washington Pundits: WE'RE the Majority! YOU Are the Elitist MINORITY!

From the most recent public opinion poll on the war:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sixty percent of Americans oppose the U.S. war in
Iraq and a majority would support a partial withdrawal of troops by year's end, a CNN poll said on Wednesday.


It was the CNN poll's highest number opposing the war since fighting began in March 2003, a figure that has risen steadily since then, according to the Opinion Research Corp. survey conducted last week on behalf of the cable network.

The poll showed 36 percent of respondents said they were in favor of the war -- half the peak 72 percent who supported the war as it began, said the poll of 1,047 Americans.

So can we stop hearing this puke about how the Democratic anti-war candidates are "radicals" and "extremists" and "out of the mainstream"? It's the incestuous, Republican ass-kissing Washington media elite who are grotesquely out of touch.

There needs to be a BIG housecleaning this year in Congress. But there also has to a BIG housecleaning in our political media as well.

Ned Lamont Has Won; Lieberman Must Abandon Independent Bid

I welcome the primary victory of Ned Lamont over incumbent Joseph Lieberman. Lieberman has utterly offended me by his refusal to admit the Iraq War was a mistake and by his constant toadying toward Bush and his vile insistence that anyone who criticized Bush was undermining the country.(!)

But it wasn't just the war. It was Lieberman's yucking it up with right wing dirtbags like Sean Hannity. It was Lieberman supporting school vouchers and Social Security privatization. It was Lieberman constantly running down his own party and providing cover for the right wingers who are destroying America.

The voters have spoken. Lamont is the Democratic candidate for the Senate from Connecticut. I wholeheartedly support him, and I hope you do, too. Lieberman must be forced to drop out of his independent bid. The Clintons, Schumer, Biden--the whole Democratic establishment must now rally to Lamont.

Now, let's focus on whipping Santorum (oh HELL yes), Allen (stupid AND malicious), DeWine, Talent, Burns, Chaffee, Ensign, and every other Republican we can knock off this year.

Lieberman, your time is done.

Take Action!

The Democratic National Committee is doing a countdown of action items you can do every day until the election on 7 November. Check it out here.

And then get going!

Bonddad Again Crushes Republican Economic Lies

You owe it yourself to read this. It is the inimitable bonddad's smackdown of the radical Republican right's latest economic BS. Bonddad was good enough to include some handy-dandy graphics as well:

As we say in the Blog Biz, read the whole thing.

And pass it along to everybody.

America Betrayed: A Study in Right-Wing Mythology

Buzzflash, certainly one of the most valuable sites on the internet, has people that scour the web for articles. Buzzflash then posts dozens of them a week. One in particular caught my eye today, and I think it needs your attention. It is a brief history, appearing in Harper's and written by Kevin Baker, of what has been a recurrent conservative theme since the Second World War: the idea that domestic enemies have stabbed America in the back repeatedly.

Baker points out that betrayal stories have a long history in our species, forming the core of much of our literature. He also reminds us of the way the German far right used the myth of the "Back Stab" to gain power in post World War I Germany. The Back Stab story was that the German armed forces hadn't really been defeated in the war. Rather, they had been undermined by powerful domestic forces within Germany itself, especially Jews and Socialists. It was all complete idiocy of the worst kind, utterly false in every respect, but it gave millions of Germans a strange sort of comfort. They could blame their country's failure on someone else, a convenient target that would explain, with terrible simplicity, why they had failed. It became a psychological crutch to them, absolving them of responsibility for the disaster that had befallen their country.

In a similar sort of way, the political right in this country has persistently--and successfully--used betrayal stories not only to gain political power but to shape the whole cultural narrative of American life. Baker offers compelling, well-documented examples of right-wing myths that have been pushed into our nation's historical consciousness:

--At Yalta, FDR supposedly "handed over" eastern Europe to Stalin, egged on by State Department traitors who manipulated the sick and dying Roosevelt into delivering the east Europeans into Soviet tyranny. (FDR made no such agreement, by the way, and there is little the U.S. could have done to dislodge the Red Army from Poland, Hungary, and other eastern European nations without launching an all-out war for which the American public had zero enthusiasm.)

--In the late 40s and early 50s, Communist sympathizers in our government handed over China to Mao and refused to let Douglas MacArthur win the Korean War. (Yes, there were some Communists in the U.S. government, but the idea that they were driving U.S. policy in Asia is laughable.) Not only Joseph McCarthy but Richard Nixon built careers around these myths.

--In the 1960s and 1970s, it was the Vietnam war protesters that undermined our troops, spat on returning war veterans, and caused us to lose in Vietnam. (Amazing assertions, especially the overwhelmingly false notion that Vietnam veterans were regularly abused, ignored, or subjected to hateful activities.)

--Enlarging these themes into domestic politics, it is "ungodly", "immoral" liberals that are undermining our country by promoting the "homosexual agenda", attacking the "traditional family", trying to destroy free enterprise, waging "class war", and trying to destroy religion (witness their fiendish attacks on Christmas!!).

You see where this is going, don't you? The new backstab myth is being created. If the United States fails in Iraq, it won't be the fault of the conservatives that pushed us into war and then handled it with disastrous incompetence and dishonesty. It will be our fault, those who think the war was a disastrous mistake, for not "supporting the troops". The outlines of this new variation of the myth are being created even now.

Read this compelling article. For those who are older and versed in our nation's modern history, it will remind you of many things you may have forgotten. If you are younger, it will be an education to you--and a warning of what the radical right is preparing to throw in our faces once their disastrous policies have--once again--failed.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Apocalypse"

This is simply too brilliant not to steal.

Lying Republican Sociopath Horowitz Hits a New Low

Eric Alterman linked to Media Matters for this item concerning one of the three or four worst people on the political right in this country, David Horowitz. (Think about that--one of the three or four worst. Now think about his competition in that category. Sobering, isn't it?) In his fevered determination to destroy progressive supporter George Soros, Horowitz reaches new depths of savagery and sheer viciousness. Examples:

In a book to be released August 8 that otherwise recycles the authors' old attacks from the discredited, Richard Mellon Scaife-backed right-wing website FrontpageMag.com, David Horowitz and Richard Poe newly charge that progressive financier, philanthropist, and political activist George Soros was a Nazi "collaborator in fascist Hungary" and "survived [the Holocaust] by assimilating to Nazism" as a 14-year-old boy.

Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived the Nazi occupation of Budapest. The unsourced smearing of Soros as a Nazi collaborator echoes the obscure anti-Semitic rantings of political extremist Lyndon LaRouche and his followers, who have referred to Soros as a "Nazi beast-man" and a "small cog in Adolf Eichmann's killing machine," aiding "the Holocaust against 500,000 Hungarian Jews." (See, for example, the article "Dope Czar Bids to Buy Up The Democratic Party," from the 2004 LaRouche pamphlet Children of Satan II: The Beast Men).

In echoing the LaRouchite Nazi collaborator smear in their new book The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party -- published by Nelson Current, an imprint of religious book publisher Thomas Nelson Inc. that started as a partnership with conservative website WorldNetDaily -- Horowitz and Poe mark a new low in the long-running Republican Party and conservative movement campaign of scurrilous personal attacks against Soros, a major supporter of progressive causes in the U.S. and abroad.

Vile. Monstrous. Despicable. Words fail me, actually, in describing these insane and shockingly ugly accusations. Read the entire Media Matters post, by the way. It details, in sickening clarity, the utter depravity of Horowitz and his neofascist collaborators. Like so many others on the Right, there is no lie Horowitz will not tell, there is no slander he will not utter, there is no tactic too gutter level for him, and no accusation too ridiculous for him to make. He's the worst, right down there with Coulter and the other Republican members of the Ministry of Propaganda.

In the 1960s, Horowitz was a member of the Idiot Left. Now he is a proud member of the Idiot Right.

But at least he's been consistent in one way.

Ominous News

Alerted to this issue by progressives on the major blogs, I read this very disquieting item from The Jerusalem Post:

[Israeli] Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria.

God help us. I don't see who else can at this point.

Is He Delusional or Just Lying Through His Teeth?

Donald Rumsfeld, that is. By way of Think Progress, check out these statements. And then look below them for the punchline:

Dec. 18, 2002: KING: What’s the current situation in Afghanistan? RUMSFELD: It is encouraging. They have elected a government through the Loya Jirga process. The Taliban are gone. The al Qaeda are gone.

Feb. 7, 2003: “It is unknowable how long that conflict [the war in Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”

Feb. 20 2003: “‘Do you expect the invasion, if it comes, to be welcomed by the majority of the civilian population of Iraq?’ Jim Lehrer asked the defense secretary on PBS’ The News Hour. ‘There is no question but that they would be welcomed,’ Rumsfeld replied, referring to American forces.”

Mar. 30, 2003: “It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”

Punchline: Today Rumsfeld asserted in his Senate testimony that he has NEVER been overly optimistic about Iraq.