Churches on both the left and the right are getting more and more involved in the political process. That isn’t a bad thing (as long as the churches on the left win). The United Church of Christ is offering a new web site on how churches can become involved in the political process and still adhere to IRS laws for non-profits. Churches cannot, for example, endorse political candidates and maintain their tax exempt status. Yet churches can endorse ballot measures or reversely urge their congregants to oppose measures. Visit Our Faith, Our Vote and learn how your congregation can become involved in Election 2004.

thanks to jj of cookies in heaven, we find this washpost story about the administration flunky who accidentally left his notes and phone log from his office at the defense department on a table at a dc starbucks:

did you hear the one about the guy at starbucks? no? okay. a guy walks into the starbucks at connecticut avenue and r street nw on sunday to get his favorite latte, and sits down at a table.

on the table, he spots four pieces of paper. one is stationery with the heading “office of the secretary of defense,” and right under that “the special assistant.”

it has a penciled map of directions from the pentagon to defense secretary donald h. rumsfeld’s house in northwest washington. another sheet says, “eric’s telephone log.” someone has written “conf. call” at the top and some notes, some in partial shorthand, on one side. these apparently were taken by eric…

our good citizen, no dummy he, concluded these were significant papers and should be turned over to the appropriate people. so that would be the pentagon or the white house?

oh, no. he turned them over to none other than that most left-leaning think tank, center for american progress, headed by none other than former clinton chief of staff john d. podesta.

you can download these papers for your own perusal at cap’s website.

we pretty much ran all over blogtopia (yes! we coined that phrase!) this morning announcing that air america radio was not airing in los angeles at 9 am real time, which would have been simultaneous (what we in the media call “live”) with the 12 noon airing on the east coast.

as two spanish dj’s introducing “funky town” and “hotel california” graced our los angeles radio at 1560 am, we listened to the live feed coming out of san francisco’s kabl. our opinion of al’s debut comes a bit later.

however, later in the day, we tuned the radio into the los angeles affiliate kbla at shortly after 12:30 pm. and what did we hear? a taped delay of the o’franken factor, pretty much the exact same thing we heard a few hours earlier.

now, this is troubling. los angeles has got to be the second biggest market in the air america radio network, yet the shows are coming to us three hours after the fact. we don’t need to point out that this is going to be very bad for any radio call-in listener interactive format that they would want to promote.

we don’t know who is in charge of scheduling, but we can assure you that if we can’t get to an internet connection to hear air america radio live, we probably won’t be tuning in. the three hour tape delay, along with kbla’s poor signal that we can barely pick up on our boom box, makes it hardly worth our while. it makes no sense how san francisco, in the same time zone as los angeles, can carry the feed live, but the los angeles radio cannot. it made us want to listen to “hotel california” in spanish.
Read the rest of this entry »

A poll conducted by Gallup last week shows some interesting results in the wake of the Clarke news. I’d say it’s premature to know what effect it will have in the long term (I expect a slow erosion), but even at that, the findings are instructive.

On terrorism, his support has slipped among Democrats and Independents, which is bad news for his re-election. I don’t need to remind you that he won the election by getting a half-million few votes than Gore. If he loses the battle outside his base, he loses the election.

Handling of Terrorism (Percent approving), Dec 7, March 28
Republicans: 93%, 93%
Independents: 64%, 49%
Democrats: 42%, 26%

Read the rest of this entry »

I think I’ve mentioned before that my litterbox dining dog is a Republican Team Leader. Tonight, he received an email inviting him to sign up to be a GOP Latter Day Saint Team Leader. (Latter Day Saint is the relatively new, politically correct term for Mormons).

I’m very curious about why he received this invitation. Has the Church been sharing its membership lists with the GOP?

I haven’t been an active Mormon in over 25 years, but I’m still on the membership rolls. Just last Saturday, I had to politely remind a couple of cookie bearing “home teachers” that I’m a happy apostate. In any event, the only way my dog, or anyone in my family, could be linked to the Church is through my address, and the only organization who could make that link is the Church–my mother updates the Church every time I move, so that the missionaries and home teachers can work on me. I live in Washington, not Utah, so they couldn’t be making a guess based on demographics.

If the Church is indeed sharing membership lists with the GOP, they are abandoning a doctrine that was first revealed as a revelation from God over a hundred years ago by my great great grandfather, the prophet Wilford Woodruff. God, he claimed, told him to separate the Church from politics and to abandon polygamy so that Utah could become a state.

Of course there could be another reason my little dung-dining Republican dog was invited to be a GOP LDS Leader. They could be blindly sending the same invitation to all the team leaders in the hope of snagging a few Mormons as part of their GOTV (get out the vote) strategy. Mormons are a GOTV prize because they’re nearly uniformly Republican. Inasmuch as partisan politics is prohibited at Church functions, the GOP may be trying to set up a parallel political organization for Church members as a way to mobilize them in the same way they mobilize fundamentalists within their churches.

I think this explanation is faulty. It wouldn’t be in the GOP’s interest to blindly invite all team leaders. That would not go over well with their Christian base, many of whom think Mormonism is a cult.

now, we’re not saying we had anything to do with it, but…

the day after we set up a new poll on our own blog asking if condoleeza rice should testify before the 911 commission, the white house does the one flip flop we like to hear, and announces that dr. rice (and her uncle ben) will indeed testify publicly, and under oath, too!

however, there is a condition (and we’re not talking about awol’s skin blotches): the
atjoucon tells us:

the decision was conditioned on the bush administration receiving assurances in writing from the commission that such a step does not set a precedent and that the commission does not request “additional public testimony from any white house official, including dr. rice,'’ white house counsel alberto gonzales said in a letter to the panel.

well, one hand, they apparently don’t have a dictionary handy, because once you do something the first time, that’s the very definition of “precedent.”

on the other hand, this administration is never one to worry about precedents.

It is not enough for liberals to attack Our Noble Leader themselves. Now they have resorted to necromancy for their mud-slinging. Thanks to the soulful sisters at Interfaith Nunnery, we see that the Bard Of Avon himself has been resurrected and given a web site at The Wooden O, just so that he can snipe at our President, whom he belittles as “Prince Shrublet”. He goes on insultingly “I never did make a play in which the King and the Fool were one and the same … Think on it, gentles: Bottom, in his dream, made an emperor! Or Dogberry, from police constable, become a great man, prince of a nation. Such a play I could make!”

There is more of the same at “The Most Lamentable Comedy of King George II”. One shudders at the prospect of his new work, perhaps ending with Bush, abandoned by his Secret Service agents as invading marshals from the International Criminal Court approach, shouting “A Hummer! My administration for a Hummer!” (On second thought, that would be more proper for a play about The Clenis.)
Read the rest of this entry »

Update: Go see Lis Riba for local affiliate web feeds.

You folks may have heard that there is a new Liberal radio network going on the air tomorrow at noon with (I love this) The O’Franken Factor.

Here’s how you listen.

New York WLIB - 1190 AM

Los Angeles KBLA - 1580 AM

Chicago WNTD - 950 AM

Portland, OR KPOJ - 620 AM

Inland Empire, CA KCAA - 1050 AM

XM Satellite - Radio Channel 167

San Francisco Coming Soon

You can also get the feed at their website.

FYI: I spent some time yesterday talking to Janeane Garofalo and her cohost, Sam Seder during a runthrough of their show, the Majority Report, and I hear (to my utter amazement) that I’m going to be back at some point when they go on the air.

Bloggers you will definitely be hearing from on the Majority Report: Atrios, Kos and the editor of Liberal Oasis.

Word is that all three of them give really good radio.

Click through for the schedule.
Read the rest of this entry »

let us preface this post with the caveat that we are long-time moveon.org supporters. readers of our blog will know we actively promote every action alert and news piece that fine progressive organization puts out.

we also have contributed money, and have urged everyone else to do so, too. so, please read the following as if it were a good friend saying something that only a really good friend would have the compassion to say. a lefty intervention, if you will:

we got an email from moveon.org today promoting their new book moveon’s 50 ways to love your country: how to find your political voice and become a catalyst for change (which we had already promoted in an oblique yet clever-as-a-kangaroo manner here).

but our complaint with the email was the heading, and the thrust of the missive: take the moveon book to #1.

the gang at moveon asked us to order the book from amazon, so it could move up the best seller list, from the current (as of this afternoon) #2 spot all the way to #1!

our problem with that was, at the time we received the email, the #1 book was richard clarke’s against all enemies.

it seemed to us at the time (and still seems to us, even though, indeed, the moveon book is now #1) that there was a tiny bit of hubris at work here. begging people to make moveon’s tome #1, thus pushing clarke’s book out of the top spot, would only be for bragging rights. and what good is bragging that you’re better than another person on your own team?
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to tell whether the White House is simply playing a kind of shell game, but it’s clear that a larger agenda beyond even covering up its failures to protect the nation from terrorist attacks is at play in the refusal to let National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice testify under oath before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.

Closer examination, in fact, reveals that the agenda at work is an unprecedented expansion of presidential powers, so that it becomes in effect unanswerable to any power other than the voters every four years.

Rice herself was rolling in the obfuscation this weekend on CBS’ 60 Minutes when she explained why she just couldn’t testify before the 9/11 commission:

“Nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to testify. I would really like to do that. But there is an important principle involved here: It is a long-standing principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress.”

As Atrios points out, there are multiple problems with this explanation, not the least of which is that the 9/11 commission is not specifically a creature of the Congress — it was created as an independent body with key members named by the president himself. The traditional understanding of executive privilege is that it extends only to congressional inquiries.

Executive privilege, in fact, deals only in situations in which presidential advisers are compelled to testify before Congress. Of course, national security advisers have in fact testified before Congress on multiple occasions — but they rarely are compelled to do so.

In other words, Rice is not only arguing against being compelled to testify. She is arguing that any kind of appearance, compelled or otherwise, before the commission might endanger the executive privileges of the president. She’s making the preposterous claim that the White House must refuse an invitation to appear — even though, in her words, they would like to testify [yeh, right] — because doing so would undermine its power to resist subpoenas at a later date.

What is clearly happening in the Rice case is that Bush administration is seeking to expand the principles of executive privilege to the point where it simply has no accountability to anyone other than the voters. It marks, in other words, a radical rearrangement of the constitutional separation of powers. This is not a new agenda — and in fact, it has been one of the consistent operating principles of this administration since the day it took power.
Read the rest of this entry »

Despite last week’s important instance of truth-revelation about the Bush administration, I must confess to being worried about the direction that the Bush-Kerry battle has taken over the past 2 weeks. It seems like Bush’s attacks on Kerry over the past two weeks had their intended effect – people are having more doubts about Kerry, his negative ratings are rising (which was inevitable, but still…), and in particular the perception that Kerry flip-flops has been gaining ground – though Kerry luckily had a brief respite last week thanks to the Clarke affair. Nevertheless, articles like this one by Dick Morris, close political aide to Bill Clinton, point out that the problem is a potentially serious one.

The Economist addresses this issue in its most recent issue. They framed the issue quite well:
Read the rest of this entry »

During the last 3 plus years, Condoleezza Rice has been Bush’s advisor and confidant. During the 2000 election, she was Bush’s tutor about foreign policy and when he came into the White House, she was named his National Security Advisor. Condi is the one woman today that plays in the hardball world of war and terrorism with the big boys, including Rumsfeld, Cheney and Colin Powell. But, unlike the macho men surrounding Bush, Condi is someone who sees Bush like he would like to see himself.

Back last July (during the 16 words in the SOTU troubles), it appeared that Condi might in danger of losing her place in the administration. And I wondered if she didn’t survive the storm, what would happen to Bush who relied on her even more than she relied on him.

As far as I can tell, she is the only one who is always and consistently loyal to him no matter how the political winds are blowing.

…Without Karen Hughes, it looks like his friendship with Condi is the premier relationship with someone in the administration who really likes and appreciates Bush. Is it possible that he can find someone else who will trust him without question? Or someone else who will assert that he makes intelligent decisions because he seriously considers the information? What will happen when he doesn’t have someone to “take care of that problem?” How will he make a decision then?

Now, Condi has had another very rough week and it seems that she could be forced to testify before the 9/11 commission publically despite her best efforts to avoid that trap. Bush’s policy before 9/11 was certainly driven by her advice and she was the gatekeeper that blocked Richard Clarke from talking directly to Bush about the urgent need to do something about terrorism. From this article dated December 2002, there is some indication that she was the one that encouraged Bush to focus on Iraq rather than dealing with the real problem of stateless terrorism even after 9/11.

The Quiet Power of Condi Rice, Evan Thomas, Newsweek, December 16, 2002.

Bush’s moral impulses were easier to channel after 9-11. Rice was one of Bush’s advisers who instantly saw that the war on terror was global. “The initial knee-jerk reaction after 9-11 was to go after Al Qaeda,” Powell told NEWSWEEK. He credits her with focusing as well on states that sponsor terrorism. Bush’s description of an “Axis of Evil” caused a sensation in the press when Bush uttered the phrase in the State of the Union address this January, but in fact Rice had been privately talking to Bush about going after all rogue nations harboring WMD within a week of 9-11.

Condi is utterly loyal to Bush, but can he afford to be loyal to her? Especially when things are turning so ugly. How much better would it be if Bush could blame Condi’s judgement for the mistakes made in his administration.

No wonder the latest news is of the return of Karen Hughes to once more help shape Bush’s message and to shore up his need to have someone reflect the great leader he believes he is.

Readers looking for West Wing intrigue will be disappointed by the Hughes book; when the subject is the President or Hughes’ colleagues in the Administration, Ten Minutes from Normal is all kiss and no tell. Bush is presented as “humble,” “wonderful,” “tough-minded,” “decent and thoughtful,” with a “laserlike ability to distill an issue to its core” and “a knack for provoking discussion.” Even his tendency to mangle words is a sign, to Hughes, of a “highly intelligent” mind outpacing a sluggish tongue. Occasionally—and this is as critical as it gets—her boss can be “impatient” and “challenging.” But the author insists that the man in her book is the man she knows. “Here’s someone who’s worked for the President for 10 years,” Hughes told TIME last week, “who has seen him in almost every possible situation and who thinks more highly of him today than she did when she first went to work for him. And that’s pretty incredible.” A former White House colleague observes, “She just doesn’t see his downsides. It’s not spin with her. Her admiration for him is total.”

So for now, Hughes will play Bush’s counselor. And poor Condi who has made some of her own enemies in Colin Powell, Cheney and Rumsfeld while she had the upperhand can only watch her place being supplanted and wonder why she is being left out to dry. Perhaps that’s the real reason she has been scowling lately.

Jobs are a hot button issue in this year’s Presidential Election, and a criminally underexamined aspect of our President’s record on jobs is his lack of interest in keeping American workers safe and healthy. Fortunately, we have Jordan Barab’s outstanding, Koufax-nominated blog Confined Space to shine a spotlight on issues of workplace safety. Today, the blog celebrates its one year blogiversary.

As Jordan looks back on a year of blogging, the conclusion he comes to about the President’s record of helping American workers in the past year is not surprising:

And think of what’s happened since Confined Space hit the web. One year ago today, George Bush was president, OSHA was sinking into irrelevancy and still hadn’t issued its Tuberculosis or Payment for Personal Protective Equipment standards, most public employees weren’t covered by OSHA, immigrant workers were dying and being injured in record numbers, American soldiers were dying in Iraq and weapons of mass destruction had yet to be found.

Whereas, today, one year later…..

Nevermind.

Congratulations, Jordan, and thanks for bringing your passion, compassion and humor to bear on such vital concerns.

As we’re all too well aware, the Bush White House strategy for policy change revolves around the President and other High Ranking Officials repeating something with conviction at every possible opportunity, in an effort to get it burned into peoples’ brains.
….
More often than not, the “infoganda” foisted by the Administration upon the public is flat-out wrong, and at the same time wildly successful.

In the tort reform debate, the early mantra was: tort reform = health insurance coverage. Cap damages now, and we can make sure people can afford to keep their health insurance.
Read the rest of this entry »

Has anyone else noticed that the Google ad box on the right is almost exclusively filled with ads touting Bush? If so, did you stop to think that every time someone clicks on one of those ads, the Bush campaign contributes a few cents to keep TAS going.

Update: In the comments section, Richard notes that he sees different ads. It looks like Google targets its ads to individual users. If that’s the case, they must have identified me as being a conservative. I see these Bush ads everywhere I surf. They must think I’m a righty because I spend a lot of time at Jesus’ General. More irony.

When Matt Margolis is trumpeting his free speech rights while disrupting Kerry rallies, does he ever think about Bush’s use of Orwellian “free speech zones” to prevent dissenters from coming within blocks of his events?

What happened to Matt is inexcusable. We on the left should never adopt the right’s violent tactics. That said, If Matt really cares about free speech, he should address the Administration’s use of police powers to stifle dissent.

Tomorrow is César Chávez Day in those few places that recognize the holiday. Here’s a quote I thought has some meaning today:

“People who have lost their hunger for justice are not ultimately powerful. They are like sick people who have lost their appetite for what is truly nourishing. Such sick people should not frighten or discourage us. They should be prayed for along with the sick people who are in the hospital.” — César Chávez

linkfarming on a Sunday afternoon. xposted

Costco’s Dilemma: Be Kind To Its Workers, or Wall Street? Wall Street says their stock price could be higher if they abused their workers, and they owe that to stockholders, even though poor service would put them in direct competition with Sams Club. But is that why WalMart’s stock price is higher?

Or could there be some other reason? In Washington, Wal-Mart has five lobbyists on its payroll, and a bench of hired guns led by Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., one of Capitol Hill’s best-known lawyer-lobbyists. The company’s political action committee was the biggest corporate donor to federal parties and candidates in 2003, with more than $1 million in contributions — up from $182,000 during the 1997-98 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission disclosure reports. Wal-Mart’s PAC ranks as the second-largest in Washington. Thomas Hale Boggs Jr. is also Cokie “I will hold my breath until I turn blue if Clinton isn’t impeached because we cliffdwellers have really stringent moral codes” Roberts’ brother.

So, hows that working out for them? Recent news reports indicate that federal regulators have refrained from pursuing monopsony antitrust action against Wal-Mart for putting the squeeze on its suppliers because of the price benefits to consumers. Sounds like a real comforting situation for a stock owner.

via StoutDemBlog, we find Billionaires for Bush. They were in ball gowns and suits and drinking champagne. “Bush and Cheney are good for us,” they chanted. “Look at all these liberal hippies coming around with their boo-hoo signs,” said one of them, a woman in a silver lame wrap and designer sunglasses. Some of the protesters turned, stunned. But then someone pointed to the signs the fancy-dresssed group was carrying — “Free the Enron Seven” and “Corporations are People Too!” — and the crowd erupted with shouts of approval. “We should let them get up front,” somebody shouted, telling the crowd to part and let them pass toward the hotel.Last night, it was unclear how well the message sunk in. Having been allowed through the crowd to stand in a prime place by police barricades, they enthusiastically threw fake $10,000 bills. But when they tried to lead the crowd in a chant of “No justice, no problem!” few of the traditionalists seemed willing to join in. The Billionaires dispersed.

and then the Times does. When the Billionaires started a chant — ‘’Tax Work Not Wealth'’ — the pro-Bush folks shouted back, ‘’Tax Cuts!'’ But irony has a toxic effect on earnestness. The counterchant quickly faded, and right away the anger began to smolder. ‘’How many of you Billionaires put somebody to work, huh?'’ a Bush supporter named Nick Diaz shouted. ‘’Work?'’ replied Phil T. Rich (otherwise known as Andrew Boyd). ‘’We’ve put 2.7 million people out of work.'’
Read the rest of this entry »

You think the White House expected Clarke to say this?

“I would welcome it being declassified, but not just a little line here or there. Let’s declassify all six hours of my testimony….

“Yes, and those documents I just referred to and Dr. Rice’s testimony before the 9-11 Commission because the victims’ families have no idea what Dr. Rice has said. There weren’t in those closed hearings where she testified before the 9-11 Commission. They want to know. So let’s take her testimony before the 9-11 Commission and make it part of the package of what gets declassified along with the national security decision directive of September 4 and along with my memo of January 25.

“In fact, Tim, let’s go further. The White House is selectively now finding my e-mails, which I would have assumed were covered by some privacy regulations, and selectively leaking them to the press. Let’s take all of my e-mails and all of the memos that I’ve sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20 to September 11 and let’s declassify all of it.”

Note to Bill Frist: when you demand records be opened up to settle political scores, make sure you know what the hell you’re going to find.

The results of an internal poll taken for the campaign of Republican US Senate candidate Bob Schaffer show good news for the Democrats in Colorado. With a 4.5% margin of error, the poll, taken in mid-March before the recent 9/11 Commission hearings, showed Bush barely ahead of Kerry in the state:

Bush 46%
Kerry 42%
Nader 4%

(Note: It is easy to get on the presidential ballot in Colorado so expect Nader to be on there, possibly as the candidate of Ross Perot’s Reform Party.)

The same poll showed Democrat Ken Salazar leading Schaffer 43 to 32 percent, with the large number of undecideds one usually sees in internal polls commissioned by an underdog candidate.

The Democratic Party has an opportunity to pick up Colorado’s 9 electoral votes, the senate seat currently held by retiring Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell, and from one to three US House seats. What has happened to give Democrats so much hope? I think it’s mostly the economy, and the lack of any meaningful response by the state’s Republicans to our economic problems.
Read the rest of this entry »