To the surprise of probably no one, the Bush Administration has been interfering with the career scientists at the EPA.

More than half the Environmental Protection Agency scientists who responded to an independent survey made public yesterday said that they had witnessed political interference in scientific decisions at the agency during the past five years.  Read more 

As the Democratic primary wears on, a little montage for the person that must be defeated this fall.

Offered without comment:

All of this might make some sense if McCain didn’t have this ridiculously cozy relationship with the press that’s been solid as a rock for more than a decade. He is going to be terribly difficult to redefine. It will take everything they have to do it. And if they don’t do it, he could very well win this thing even if he is as old as Methuselah and has the campaign style of a pet rock.

I was talking to a staunchly liberal friend of mine over the week-end who told me that he really didn’t worry about the primary because if the party is damaged and McCain wins, it will probably be ok. The reason: he’s not stupid like Bush or crazy like Cheney. After I picked up my brains from the floor and put them back in my head, still reeling from the explosion, I tried to explain how that was wrong. It was pulling teeth and I don’t think I succeeded. He just likes the guy and doesn’t believe he’s really capable of being as bad as Bush because he “thinks for himself” and isn’t a GOP lackey.

The Democrats had better get themselves together. The Republicans picked the only candidate in the entire country who could elicit that kind of praise from my pal and others like him. He’s the only one who could possibly win, and win he may very well do if just let this congenial image continue without challenge.

I’m sure this may come as a shock to you, but military is hiring bloggers to work as moles, “verbally attack[ing] specific person[s] or promot[ing] a specific message.”

Wait, sorry, wrong link.

Here’s the article.  Read more 

In Part I we saw where the term “ratfucking” originated and met two of the most infamous ratfuckers. In this part we will see how ratfucking went from being a small part of GOP political campaigns during the Nixon era to being the centerpiece of campaigns under Bush I.

Harvey Leroy “Lee” Atwater (February 26, 1951 – March 29, 1991) was an advisor of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. As shown in Part I, He got his start as a ratfucker thanks to Karl Rove. Rove, then the National Chairman of the College Republicans, introduced Atwater to George H.W. Bush who was then the RNC Chairman.  Read more 

Did you ever wonder what some of the obnoxious trolls claiming to be Obama supporters are hoping to accomplish by insulting the supporters of Hillary Clinton? Their tactics aren’t likely to win converts, and seem designed to make enemies.

Maybe they aren’t really Obama supporters after all.

Maybe they are a special breed of GOP trolls called “ratfuckers.”

Part I

Ratfucking is an American slang term for political sabotage or dirty tricks. It was first brought to public attention during the Watergate scandal investigation that during the 1972 presidential campaign the Nixon campaign committee maintained a “dirty tricks” unit focused on discrediting Nixon’s strongest challengers.  Read more 

God Damn America!

From The Truth About Trinity United, a blog run by a parishioner of Barack Obama’s church, we see that in 1966, Hospital Corpsman Third Class Jeremiah Wright was personally commended by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s physician for his part in caring for President Johnson, who was a patient of HC3 Wright’s when he had his gallbladder removed. You can see him in the photo above on the right, although part of his face is obscured by the IV pole. photo and letter at link
…
The letter of commendation reads:

Dear Hospital Corpsman Third Class Wright,

The President thanks you for your help at the time of his recent hospitalization.

He greatly appreciates your skill and competence in your field which added greatly to his comfort and speedy recovery from his operation.

With warmest personal regards,

Sincerely,

George G. Burkley, Vice Admiral MC, USN, Physician to the President

Kinda hard to be Killing Whitey when you’re helping keep a president alive, isn’t it?

I’m just saying. Maybe we shouldn’t judge Pastor Wright’s 30 years of service to his country and his community by 30 seconds of passionate, mid-sermon remarks.

Although when I stop and think about the Tuskeegee experiments, where black American citizens were treated worse than lab-rats, injected with toxic chemicals, lied to, and systematically denied proper medical treatment from 1947 to 1972, well, all I can really think is “God damn, America”, myself. I mean, goddamn.

But why on earth are black people so angry? I can’t imagine, can you?

Facts are such annoying things.

I’d act shocked, but this was entirely predictable:

it now seems as if New York Gov. David Paterson had more than one extramarital affair, at least one of which was with a younger woman who worked for him. Recently. As in, during the past few years. This is, to say the least, politically damaging to the governor, an enormous gift to political comedians, and could very well, depending on the press coverage, lead to Gov. Joseph Bruno.

So let me see if I can get the sequence of events right:  Read more 

A must-read article from The Village Voice shows the universal pattern we’re all too aware of: right-wing media figures hyped Obama and demonized Clinton—exploited and distorted the highly explosive issue of racism—in order to game the race for the weaker Obama or, at least, cripple a Clinton candidacy. Only when Obama became the apparent nominee did they tip their hand.  Read more 

The last post I wrote on this site took us through the backdoor sliders that Rove and Atwater plunked on Democrats in the Republicans’ last successful bids. At first, I was going to examine how some of the previous backdoor sliders were being used today(The Dean Scream morphing into The Hillary Cackle, for example), but recent events have pushed that one to the far burner.

While it looks like the Rezko situation, which I first believed was going to be the Backdoor Slider that makes Obama freeze at the plate for Strike Three, and would give McCain the White House at that point, I’ve come to realize that Rezko will be the frontal assault – or the High-Inside Fastball that Rove and company will throw at him. McCain, thanks to the  Read more 

Melissa McEwan

Obama would like to appoint Republicans Chuck Hagel and Dick Lugar to key cabinet positions, like Secretaries of Defense and State, if elected.

So what, precisely, would change under a President Obama?

If you’ve been following the saga of Special Assistant to the President Timothy Goeglein today (also here and here), you probably know by now that the editorial team at his hometown newspaper has fired him as a columnist for plagiarism.

Wow. I have undergraduates try that all the time — and I catch them when they do it.

In fact, I now require all undergraduates to submit their papers in electronic format through a plagiarism-detection website.  Read more 

[Note: I’ve decided to break this into 2 parts to make things much easier for me to deal with. Enjoy, or not]

Watching the SCLM and FRWC start their opening salvos on Barack Obama this week - as well as the responses from his many supporters - made me remember a few things about some of the previous Presidential elections - and how there seemed to be a backdoor slider that made the Democrats (sans W. Clinton) freeze at Strike Three.

1988 - Bush vs. Dukakis.  Read more 

Let’s hope this is a sign of things to come:

ALBANY — In a major victory for Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his party, a Democratic assemblyman won a stunning upset in a State Senate election on Tuesday in a district that has been in Republican hands for a century.

The win reduces the Republicans’ majority to one seat and will intensify pressure on the majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, as he tries to maintain his party’s grip on the Senate, which it has controlled for more than 40 years.

The Democrat, Darrel J. Aubertine, a dairy farmer, leaned heavily on Mr. Spitzer’s media consultant and the state Democrats’ money as he waged a costly campaign against the Republican, William A. Barclay, a lawyer and an assemblyman whose father once held the Senate seat.

Mr. Aubertine won 52 percent of the vote to 48 percent for Mr. Barclay, according to unofficial results. Republicans outnumber Democrats 78,454 to 46,824 in the north country district, and Mr. Barclay had been favored to win.

“I think it has to send shivers up their spines,” said the state Democratic chairwoman, June O’Neill, about the Republicans, as whoops and hollers erupted around her at a victory party for Mr. Aubertine at an Italian-American civic club in Watertown.

She added: “The Democratic Party can meet and beat the Republican machine anywhere. If we can do it here, we can do it anywhere.”

Link  Read more 

That title is probably too clever by half, and I’m sure LB will yell at me for it, but he’s busy elsewhere today so don’t tell him, k? I submit this in full for those who’ve been too busy bashing Dems to notice the Republican frontrunner exploding in the room. It’s been suggested to me that McCain running out of matching funds money practically guarantees Mittster as Veep, I’m not sure if I’m convinced but we’ll see. Meanwhile, does the above play into the McCain/Iseman fun and games? Gotta love the Brit snark, “another pencil-thin blonde.” Heh. Anyway, pass this one on to your Republican friends bitching about the “lying, librul JooYork Times.” This is what blogs do best, and GOS is still a nice place to go for that. Remember, it’s “what he did for her afterwards, not what he did to/under/with her in their as-yet undefined private time before.”  Read more 

Boo! - I’m scared…

Where’s Jack Bauer?

They have no shame.

Via Movienightboi.

Via Digby:

Delahunt: You said if an opinion was rendered, that would insulate him from any consequences.

[Mike Mukasey, Attorney General of the United States, before the House Judiciary Committee today]: We could not investigate or prosecute somebody for acting in reliance on a justice department opinion.

…

Delahunt: If that opinion was inaccurate and in fact violated a section of US Criminal Code, that reliance is in effect an immunity from any criminal culpability.

MM: Immunity connoted culpability. [Well, is anyone culpable? -scar]

…

Delahunt: I find that a new legal doctrine. The law is the law.  Read more 

This doesn’t surprise me at all, indeed, I would name it a “feature” and not a “bug.” Democracy Now!

A startling new report has predicted the subprime mortgage crisis will cause people of color to lose up to $213 billion, leading to the greatest loss of wealth in modern U.S. history. The figure appears in a new report from United for a Fair Economy called “Foreclosed: The State of the Dream 2008.” The group accuses mortgage lenders of deliberately targeting the poor and people of color with high-cost loans.

Predatory lending is as old as 40 Acres and a Mule. Poor people are the easiest to scam when it comes to complex financial vehicles, and I would like more bloggers to speak about this angle of “how we got this crisis.”

It’s pretty clear that greed, willful ignorance, Bushist “logic” and a criminal lack of regulation brought about the mortgage crisis. But so too did racism- again and again I’ve read of poor and brown and black people conned into believing they could afford mortgages when they couldn’t. Now this report confirms this endemic of racist lending practices. Want to impress me, Obama, Hillary? Speak about this angle of the mess one of you will be cleaning up soon.

My point: this is going on all over, from the Federal gov’t to the MIC complex to diplomatic agencies. I’m posting these two pieces because it gives us a glimpse into a culture of corruption the SCLM rarely covers, but is everywhere. A str8 Republican! No, really!

ouston, Texas) The district attorney who defended the Texas law criminalizing homosexuality before the US Supreme Court is desperately trying to keep his job following the discovery of e-mails containing sexually explicit videos, racist jokes and what is described as torrid love notes to his executive secretary.

Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal (R) is facing a state investigation into the emails which were discovered on his office computer.

…

Rosenthal who argued before the US Supreme Court that the Texas law against sodomy was upholding the moral values of the state and was in place to protect families. The case was Lawrence v Texas.  Read more 

It’s the campaign all the kids are sure to talk about: Grandpa Buford is gonna give you a whuppin!

Thompson, for his part, answered with Southern-fried aplomb. “Did you ever see the movie ’Walking Tall’?” he said, referring to the 1973 action flick about Buford Pusser, a Tennessee sheriff who single-handedly rid his town of crime and corruption. “You know the ax handle that old Buford used to carry? I got me one of them. I knew Buford Pusser. His daughter gave me one of those ax handles and I still got it. I thought about it many, many times. There’s a lot you can do with that.”

I suppose “the Pusser” wouldn’t be right…

An unintentionally excellent argument from Dick Morris about why JRE should stay in the race:

John Edwards… helps Hillary Clinton if he stays in the race and boosts Barack Obama if he pulls out.

The more I look at Obama, the more my comfort that he’ll govern to the left of Hillary just keeps fading and fading. I’m not dissing him because he isn’t as angry and progressive as Edwards. I’m dissing him because he isn’t as angry and progressive as the Clintons.  Read more 

video below Heh. This is what he really thinks of you, OFB. In plain language even you can understand:

“There is a nasty aspect to politics on the internet that has to be dealt with.”

The thing is: it’s more likely that someone like myself, albiet who stayed in the mix a bit more than I have, will “deal with” you, when this one is in charge. You don’t like me when I’m Angry, do you? And to think I’ve not even really shown you my “bitchy” aspect out of respect for your intertube sensibilities. Feel the Nasty. And it’s “Miss Jackson,” in case you forget:  Read more 

Why is it that Black and Native (and now Latina/o) people are just supposed to “get over” genocide and slavery and segregation, but White folks get to mourn the loss of the Confederacy for ever and ever?

(h/t Phila)

Praise Be to the FSM, that we still have McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — Ten years ago, a Canadian icebreaker was parked in an ice pack 300 miles north of Pt. Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost point in the United States, and allowed to drift so scientists could study the Arctic environment and global warming’s effect on it. The icebreaker drifted with the ice for a year and more than 1,800 miles as researchers tracked changes in the Arctic ice pack.

Top-secret U.S. spy satellites were among those tracking the icebreaker. With the approval of a little-noticed government body known as the Civil Applications Committee, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency